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