893.00/6–447
The Ambassador in China (Stuart) to the Secretary of State 38
[Received June 11.]
Sir: I have the honor to report further developments in what seems to be an impending political crisis. The most significant feature would seem to be the obscurantist attitude of the Government. President Chiang and his associates explain away the student and other agitations as incited by Communists or by the Democratic League as their willing tool. There doubtless are Communist agents planted in the colleges and elsewhere who have been instigating disturbances and inflaming the grievances of students or other discontented elements of the populace. This is their well-attested policy and they can be counted on not to neglect the opportunity which the Kuomintang is providing for them. But if ever there could be an unmistakable manifestation of the people’s will it is in the present widespread and swelling demand for peace. The tragedy of the situation is that President Chiang primarily and the more responsible men around him fail to understand this and are trusting to their own intelligence service, unable to sense the spontaneous note in the popular appeal. They tend, therefore, to rely on suppression by force which, of course, plays into the hands of the Communist Party. This policy stems chiefly from fear, almost from desperation. In crediting the Communist Party with unscrupulous infiltration everywhere, including Government offices, they entirely over-estimate the Communist ability to influence the people generally to accept their doctrines and methods. The vast majority are neither Communist Party nor Kuomintang but are merely Chinese, concerned with their livelihood. They prefer instinctively to support their National Government. Even the students and the intellectuals are radical or revolutionary chiefly because of bodily distress and spiritual disillusionment. To attribute all this to Communist machinations and to try to crush it out by brutal force is to intensify the growing disaffection.
Meanwhile, word is reaching me that the Communist Party is by no means so averse to resuming peace discussions as is generally assumed. While the Government is faring worse than they in the general deterioration, yet they are suffering also in the material as well as moral consequences. They have never seemed to me to want this Government to collapse in order that they might take over a task for which they know themselves to be at present ill-prepared. But [Page 162] they will make more stringent terms than in the earlier negotiations. The intimations are that American mediation would again be sought. Incidentally, there seems to have been no trace of anti-American sentiment in the recent student and other demonstrations.
The military situation in itself is at least no better for the Government than when I sent my previous despatch, and with the rapidly worsening economic trend and the psychological or emotional factor becoming more pronounced, these will soon have a more direct bearing on the fighting morale.
President Chiang has thus far been obdurate. He has had the dangers of the present course and the possibilities of another approach pointed out to him by more than one person whose opinion he respects. He knows quite well what my opinion is but seems averse to listening to me urge it on him further. I feel myself pitifully impotent in having failed to help him apply in this concrete issue the idealistic abstractions to which he has given his assent when the emergency was less apparent. I have also been almost too cautious perhaps in expressing myself for fear that he would be influenced by hopes of American aid. I have wanted him to act because it was right and wise in relation to his own people regardless of considerations of that nature.
Whenever he next gives me the chance I want, however, to make one more effort to enable him to perceive the futility and imminent disaster of continued warfare and the needlessness of fearing Communism if only he will identify himself with the people and their desires, take the lead on their behalf in an appeal to the Communist Party, and commit himself publicly and unreservedly to the democratic principles which he has frequently proclaimed but has thus far failed to put into effect. He could so easily rally his people to something of their old enthusiasm and confidence and in so doing neutralize the Communist Party encroachments which he now resents and dreads. This course is, however, becoming rapidly more difficult and he may have to learn in the hard way the truth of Abraham Lincoln’s dictum that “no man is good enough to govern another without that other’s consent”.
There is almost universal gloom among all the more or less liberal, non-partisan groups and this is about equally true of Government employees, though less vocal. But I still have hope that Chinese common-sense will somehow assert itself before the crash comes that it is generally felt cannot be long delayed.
As a slight indication of these possibilities I am enclosing a free translation of the action just brought to me by Mr. Hu Lin, Chairman of the committee for formulating the various peace proposals within [Page 163] the P. P. C. I have just learned that in the closing session of the P. P. C. this resolution was passed with minor changes.
Respectfully yours,
- On June 26 the Director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs (Vincent) called the attention of the Secretary of State to “important and interesting observations on the situation in China” contained in this despatch.↩