Office of the Historian

893.00/2–1149

[Extracts]

Memorandum by Brigadier General Marshall S. Carter, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State, to the Assistant Director of the Executive Secretariat (Smith)

[Washington,] February 11, 1949.

At 5:30 last night, Congressman Brooks Hays (Democrat) of Arkansas, called the Secretary. He said he wanted to brief the Secretary on a letter that some 54 Republican Members of Congress had written to the President about our China policy.32 He said he did not suppose the letter had yet reached the Secretary. The Secretary said that he was aware of such a letter.

. . . . . . .

After the telephone call, the Secretary asked me to inform Butterworth33 that a thorough study of this should be made on an urgent basis, so that action by the Department could be taken within the next 24 to 36 hours, (See my previous memorandum accompanying original of the letter sent to S/S yesterday34). The Secretary wondered if this might not be the time to give a direct answer to the letter. We have been holding the rug under the Nationalist Government, which has prevented us from really telling the story. He referred to General Marshall’s35 testimony in closed session before the House Foreign Affairs Committee,36 which he thought was a masterful presentation of the matter. He thought that a re-draft of this was what really should go to the Congressmen, but that such action would definitely pull the rug out from under the Nationalist Government and probably leave us in a worse hole than ever as regards long-range benefits in China and the stopping of Communist take-over. I pointed [Page 124] out that with the Generalissimo absconded, the Cabinet having moved to Canton, and Li-Sun-Jen37 living in solitary splendor in Nanking attempting to negotiate a compromise with the Communists, it looked to me like the rug had already pretty well slipped on all four corners and in the middle. The Secretary agreed, but pointed out that pulling the rug now without some other hook on which to hang our hat would appear to leave the Communists in complete ascendency.

I got hold of Butterworth right away and talked to him substantially along the foregoing lines.

Please take appropriate follow-up action accordingly.

M[arshall] S. Carter
  1. For letter from 51 Republican Congressmen to President Truman, dated February 7, see Congressional Record, vol. 95, pt. 2, p. 1950. Separate letter from Rep. J. K. Javits, of New York, not printed. Both letters handed by President Truman to the Secretary of State on February 10.↩
  2. W. Walton Butterworth, Director of the office of Far Eastern Affairs.↩
  3. Dated February 10, not printed.↩
  4. General of the Army George C. Marshall, Secretary of State, January 1947–49.↩
  5. For text of statement on February 20, 1948, see Department of State, United Mates Relations With China (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1949), p. 380. For public statement oh same day, see ibid., p. 983.↩
  6. Li Tsung-jen, Acting President of the Republic of China.↩