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Military government weekly information bulletin
Number 56 (August 1946)
Press and radio comment, pp. 24-[27]
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Page 24
MARSHALL-STUART STAT AS APPEAL FOR CHINA COMPROMISE US newspaper editorials, discussing the effects of a joint statement by Gen- eral Marshall and US Ambassador to China John Leighten Stuart, generally agreed the purpose of the statement was to present stark facts concerning the situtation in China in the hope of evoking positive action by Chinese negotiators toward a settlement of the grave problem. They expressed the belief that General Marshall will continue the task given him by the President to help bring about a unified and strong China. The New York Times said: "No bleaker prospect for China could be outlined than that presented by the Marshall-Stuart joint statement that they have found it impossible to bring about a peaceful settlement in the civil war there. That half a billion people should be plunged into a fratricidal con- flict against their will and at the cost of complete economic collapse because the leaders of two opposing forces refuse to accept a common formula for local govern- ment and military merger must seem utterly fantastic to men of good will everywhere ... "Perhaps peace is impossible in that strife-torn nation, martyred now for almost nine years... but there may still be hope that the sheer pessimism of the American negotiators and the stark realities they foresee will now evoke sufficient respon- sibility in Chinese party leadership to avoid final catastrophe. Perhaps the mournful voice of the Chinese people, yearning pas- sionately for peace, may somehow yet penetrate the stubborn walls of Yenan and Nanking." The New York Herald Tribune said: "Al- though Marshall and Stuart declare that settlement of China's spreading civil war seems impossible, they do not indicate that they intend to discontinue their efforts as mediators. It thus appears that their use of the word 'impossible' was designed to bring pressure, on rival -Chinese negotiators by stressing the imminence of disaster. But it should not be thought that they overstated the gravity of the situation.... "As long as any possibility of peace re- mains, of course, the United States should do everything possible to try to prevent a catastrophe.... Liberals in the Kuomintang party, increasingly distrustful of Commu- nists.... are no longer such firm advocates of peace as they were earlier. They have been driven toward the right by excesses of the Communists, just as many liberals outside the party have been driven toward the left by excesses of the reactionaries." The Philadelphia Inquirer's editorial said: "Half a billion people in China, as declared in the Marshall-Stuart manifest to be prac- tically unanimous in their desire for peace, face only national destruction and chaos if the conflict fully engulfs them. The United States cannot afford to have civil war in China. Peace-seeking nations of the world cannot afford it.... "The seeming hopelessness of the Marshall- Stuart declaration certainly demands imme- diate and utmost efforts of Mr. Truman himself to retrieve the situation and, failing that, a call upon the United Nations to deal with a conflagration that gravely imperils world peace." The Washington Post: "The despair of uniting China which runs through the Mar- shall-Stuart statement may be to a certain 24
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