Communists in China

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

What went wrong in China? The CRIMSON said we backed the wrong people, the big bad "warlords and bankers," whose utter inefficiency and lack of morale spelled defeat.

This article informed us that "Chiang has received more than three billion dollars from the U.S., much of it in actual war material. Still his armies have melted before Mao's Communists. The reason is obvious incompetent leadership, corruption, and lack of popular support." I suggest that the moral forces that overcame Chiang were very real indeed; but methinks these "moral forces" have taken up more than a little space on the Kremlin-to-China trade route.

The CRIMSON'S accusation that we backed the wrong people "the warlords and bankers" is little short of an irresponsible way of ducking the whole issue. The issue was not one of backing pure good against pure bad, nor one of choosing exactly what kind of government we would like to aid. The issue was which of two sides to help. In China, the choice was between the National Government and the Communists. The CRIMSON implicitly chose a third--the nice middle-of-the-road liberals who, unfortunately, are unable to repeal the law of polarization, and therefore find it easier to exist in the minds of incipient journalists than in the land of China. W. D. Mueller '49

In November the CRIMSON said editorially, "the single alternative to that program [condition government advocated by General Marshall two years ago] is American military support of the Civil War. Such support cannot save the fascistic Kuomintang and will only further catrange the liberals whose friendship is essential to the reconstruction of China along Western lines."

The CRIMSON still believes that the error in U.S. policy toward China was made two years ago in choosing between two evils. The CRIMSON hopes that the lesson of China will bring U.S. support of such non-Communists as the Republic of Indonesia--Ed.