#5-372
Off-the-Record Statement to Editors1
February 23, 1946 Chungking, China
. . . I am taking a step which I imagine is very unusual to China and particularly for a person in my position—very much as I found it necessary to do a number of times during the war in the United States. About a week ago, or 10 days ago, I thought I might ask you to come in because I feared there would be a great deal of feeling in the press on the various matters that are involved in the accomplishment of coalition government, but it appeared to me that all the press reviews I saw were in such a restrained nature that any comments by me were inappropriate, but now I feel from the events of the last few days we have arrived at a very serious situation—so serious that I thought I was justified in asking you to come in for an informal conference. I feel great reluctance to injecting myself into a purely Chinese situation. However, I have become involved in it by invitation and I am now at a very critical moment in the matter of negotiations. So I cannot escape a feeling of at least some responsibility for the effect of what has happened. If everything I have been concerned with since I arrived out here is going to be wrecked then I think I have a very definite interest in what has happened out here. This matter was brought to a head, in my opinion, by the recent demonstration at the Executive Headquarters in Peking. That actually threatened the continued existence of that Headquarters.2 If I have any correct understanding of the situation, that is one of the most important institutions in China today for the good of China—to the good of the Chinese people. If that one agency we have set up which has within its structure the ability to compromise and negotiate the various complicated situations all over North China—if that one agency is going to be torn down, then we are right back where we started when I came out here last December.
I know the character of the demonstrations as it was given publicly, but I don’t accept that. I am certain that there is an ulterior motive behind this which the people involved in it are largely ignorant of, the same for the students. There is some ulterior motive in it—I cannot be convinced otherwise. Now we are just on the verge of completing a successful negotiation for the demobilization, the reorganization and the integration of the armies of China which, I believe, has been regarded as almost an insoluble problem. Now there is no question that at least some, if not all, these demonstrations have a very definite purpose beyond that which appears on the surface. Now I am certain the students quite have a perfectly justified motive, but I am not so certain that the gathering has not been inspired as a cover for rough performances by other agencies. . . .
Now when the radical groups of either side start to tear down the Executive Headquarters that is the destruction of the only practical means I see for implementing the tremendous things that have to be done to bring about a cessation of the chaotic conditions that now exist. Now I have been sent on a diplomatic mission, but I am not at all a diplomat. I only know how to deal with facts as facts in the plainest of English. I have been astonished at the unexpected ease with which we have been able to negotiate so many difficult things—the attitude here upon both sides trying to reach an acceptable solution. . . .
I have now found a situation, as I have already said, which threatens the success of our negotiations. I can think of no other way of trying to save the situation than by turning very frankly to you gentlemen of the editorial press. I ask you to understand that I am very reluctant to step out, as it were, in dealings with the situation, which is purely Chinese, but I am hopeful that through the influence of your editorials and the attitude of your papers that you can halt, or at least moderate, this present highly emotional wave that is being used for other purposes that are not at all emotional. Now some of your papers represent various interests but I am only talking about China now, I am not talking about any interests other than China. I would like to try to analyze the situation as I see it right now and its possibilities for China.
If this Executive Headquarters is wrecked in Peiping then I see no other way, and no one has shown me any other way, of carrying out to the field the negotiations which we have now completed. If the rough character of these demonstrations go much further, you risk the loss of public opinion of America and I would like to explain to you what I think that means.
Now at least for those radicals that are probably opposed to what I am doing, it would probably terminate my mission. When you terminate my mission, you terminate a great many other things, which I don’t quite see which you are going to make good for yourselves. If you are not already aware, please understand that there is a very large group in the United States who are opposed to practically anything outside of the United States and all they need is a good argument to force the Government’s hands to terminate a great deal of its activities overseas. The American people and the American government do not want any soldiers out here at all. They want them home just as quickly as they can get them home. This same group are opposed to the foreign loans and opposed to almost everything that goes beyond the United States. It is a return to the old isolationism. The arguments of such a group are greatly enlarged by the assertions of other countries that the United States is endeavoring to obtain special interests in China. That has no foundation whatever in fact. It is quite the contrary. The whole effort on the part of the United States has been to help at a great expense to the United States and a great effort on the part of the United States and in spite of political difficulties in the United States.
I am going to ask Captain Eng3 to read you a press report of yesterday which refers to the accusations from outside which are really to assist in breaking down what we are trying to do to help China.
An Article in todays Daily Worker . . . . “Manchuria has long been on the tip of the tong[ue] to most American military men in China. One prominent General, in the very thick of recent headlines is known to be quite hysterical about the importance of Manchuria. Over the hard whisky glasses, he will tell anyone who is willing to listen that the United States must fight the Soviet Union within two years, and the plans for Manchuria are ideal for this noble purpose. . . . One thing is certain: though the Soviet Union recognizes Manchuria as Chinese soil, Americans should not expect the USSR to stand by idly while American generals openly talk of war on the Manchurian plains, and American officers lead Kuomintang divisions, and American big business moves to pick up the pieces of Japans empire.”
Now I am not concerned about such a press statement in China, but I am much concerned about the effect of such a statement in the United States. There are many of that kind coming in now and there will be a great many more. It is all propaganda, of course. This refers to me personally. The danger is on public opinion in the United States. The danger, as I see it, to the interests of China is what happens out here if the tremendous effort the United States is now making is hindered or abolished. I am not concerned about what the public in the United States will feel at the end or in Great Britain for that matter because I can make a statement and they will all believe me, but I must not make any statement because it would destroy all my possibilities in the way of mediation out here. It seems to me that the next three months are a crisis in the history of China. I can see nothing else than a completely chaotic condition if there is a breakdown in carrying out what has been agreed to. I can certainly say that if radical elements in either side are successful in breaking down the progress thus far made, this will terminate the interests of the United States. It would seem to me that that would be utterly tragic at the present time. For example, I have had all the surplus shipping all over the world frozen, while we could select the portion that could be used to the best advantage here in China. The American navy now is supporting the troops in Manchuria with its shipping. It is moving them there and it is supplying them there. They have no basis of existence without it. We are trying to make available and we are endeavoring to assist you in obtaining crews to restore your coast-wise shipping and your river shipping as quickly as possible. We are making a tremendous effort to try to get the railroad and other equipment to restore your communications, telephones, telegraphs—everything of that nature. The United States is trying to do that. So it seems to me utterly tragic to see this thing torn down just at the moment when we are reaching a final agreement on the most difficult part of it here, that is, the integration of the Army, the demobilization of the Armies and the establishment of a normal basis for the military forces in China. I repeat again that I am not implying that students have gathered for an evil purpose—have not gathered for a evil purpose. I am asserting that those gatherings are being made use of for an evil purpose by others with an ulterior motive. I am not implying that the poor people who gathered at Executive Headquarters and ran all over the building at Executive Headquarters in Peiping did of themselves handle themselves in an evil purpose—they did not. That was an organized demonstration for another purpose of which they themselves were ignorant. I have a wealth of information from a number of sources, so I am pretty certain of what I am talking about. I am intensely concerned to try to render every assistance I can to help the people of China and I am talking mostly about the poor people of China. I am very definitely not talking about the man who may lose his job, by some of the changes that are in prospect—I am not talking about him. I cannot sit silent and see such men do a terrible harm at the present critical situation. I felt utterly powerless to do anything to help the situation until I thought possibly by talking very frankly with you gentlemen to see if you could do it for me. The most powerful thing in the world is a free press. A democracy without a free press is a joke. I hope you can agree with me and see your way clear to do something in your papers to try to help this present situation before it reaches a final crisis. I have been talking as we say in the United States, “off the record”. I am trusting to your confidence to not quote me because that will give a great offense particularly to those that are looking for an opening such as that. I have [been] sitting through all these almost endless negotiations and have been struggling with the various small crises that we have had in the gradual growth of the Executive Headquarters and the exercise of its power over a great deal of Northern China, and I therefore wanted you to have the picture at least as I see it, whether I am right or whether I am wrong, in the hope that it might influence you to some action that might be helpful. Here is a group with all of your various interests. I am hopeful that you can do what we have done around the table—take action for China alone. We succeeded in stopping the fighting in negotiations in this room and we have had endless negotiations here about the reorganization and demobilization of the armies—again in this room. It would be a very wonderful thing to me and I think a wonderful thing to China if this meeting here today might bring forth a unified effort that would save this situation before it leads to a disaster. I repeat again for the third time that I am very reluctant to inject myself into this particular Chinese situation as now cited, but it seemed unavoidable because I could not sit silent and see this crisis develop. I am speaking purely for China. . . .
I wish you to be perfectly clear on one point. I am not asking you to support me. I am asking you to support these successful negotiations. I am nothing in this. But your PCC resolution, your cessation of hostilities and now next your reorganization of the army; those are three very great things in the interest of China. Governor Chang Chun, General Chou En-lai, General Chang Chih Chung and myself are just implements. It is the agreements that I ask that be supported. What I am asking is for your resistance to those that tear down what has been done for an ulterior motive that we are all aware of. This is the mission, I think, of a free press. . . .
Document Copy Text Source: Records of the Department of State (RG 59), Lot Files, Marshall Mission, Military Affairs, Correspondents, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland.
Document Format: Typed draft.
1. Thirteen Chinese editors and two members of the U.S. Embassy staff were present. Omitted portions of the document include Marshall’s introductory remarks on the meeting’s timing, two brief breaks while late-arrivals entered, and some praise by attendees for Marshall’s efforts and Marshall’s response to these at the meeting’s end.
2. On February 20, “a noisy mob of 500 or more” twice invaded Executive Headquarters offices at Peiping Union Medical College and insisted upon seeing the Communist commissioner, General Yeh Chien-ying, in order to demand means to return to their homes in the outlying districts of Hopei province, “restoration of communications, cessation of Communist grain levies and other protests directed toward Communist administration in the outlying areas. Apparently no effort was made by [Nationalist] civil or military authorities to prevent entry of the mob into the corridors of the building.” The Communists subsequently “stated their reluctance to do business on the premises.” (Byroade and Robertson to Marshall, February 21, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, 9: 438–39.)
John F. Melby commented in his memoirs that by mid-February the “rioting and disorders [in Chungking] are beginning to get on Marshall’s nerves, and he is sharp about it, as he begins to suspect that he has something by the tail that is bigger than any one person. Nothing he does or says to anyone stops the violence, and this exasperates him.” On February 22, the day before Marshall’s meeting with the Chinese editors, there had been a lengthy anti-Russian get-out-of-Manchuria protest demonstration in Chungking involving over ten thousand university students. “Some nosing around,” Melby noted, “produced the fact that it had been organized by the CC clique, with a large part of the crowd participating only under the threat of having their food rations cut off for two weeks.” Following the student protest, a “CC police” mob broke into Communist headquarters, sacked the Communist newspaper’s office, and then attacked the offices of liberal newspapers. (Melby, Mandate of Heaven, pp. 90, 93.)
3. Of Chinese-American ancestry, Captain Ernest K. H. Eng was one of Marshall’s aides and interpreters.
Recommended Citation: ThePapers of George Catlett Marshall, ed.Larry I. Bland and Sharon Ritenour Stevens (Lexington, Va.: The George C. Marshall Foundation, 1981– ). Electronic version based on The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, vol. 5, “The Finest Soldier,” January 1, 1945–January 7, 1947 (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), pp. 470–475.