BOOKS
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over Manchuria, the industrial base of any possible "modernization" of
China, to Russia's control over Port Arthur and Dairen, "joint opera–
tion" of the Manchurian railways by China and Russia, "pre-eminent
interests" for the Soviet Union in that area, and the further outflanking
of China by Soviet control of northern Korea and the islands north of
Japan. The rights we there gave away were not ours to give. The story
Freda Utley tells is the story of what influences prevailed to reverse
our traditional foreign policy, and what consequences flowed from that
reversal.
It is a pity that Miss Utley does not show, as she easily might have,
that there are only two politically organized forces in China: the Kuo–
mintang, under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek, fighting against
the most incredible odds for the territorial independence and integrity
of China and her transformation on the basis of her own ancient
heritage; and the Chinese Communists under the leadership of Mao
Tse-tung or whatever puppet or combination of puppets Stalin may
choose in his place, fighting for the subordination of China to the rule
of the Kremlin. She underestimates the complacent ignorance of the
average American intellectual concerning the real forces in conflict in
China, and the degree to which most Americans are victims of one of
the greatest campaigns of psychological warfare in all history.
But that campaign itself, and how Americans fell victims to it, is the
heart of her story. Most interesting is her examination of the "Case of
Owen Lattimore," after the Hiss case the most interesting
cause celebre
of American intellectual and political life. From Agnes Smedley, through
Owen Lattimore, John K. Fairbank, Edgar Snow, Nathaniel Peffer,
Theodore White, Annalee Jacoby, Richard Lauterbach, Harrison For–
man, and Gunther Stein, she traces one of the most striking examples of
propagandistic inbreeding and mutual log-roIling that American cul–
ture has ever exhibited. How they echoed each other, reinforced each
other, reviewed each other's books, and disposed of any China authority
who managed to get published a book which questioned their line, how
they influenced the public and the policy-makers, is a story told in
quiet and remorseless detail. Her chapter on Lattimore-his defense of
the blood purges as "part of a new advance in the struggle to set free
the social and economic possibilities of a whole nation ... (which may)
give the ordinary citizen more courage
to
protest"; his attack on the
Truman Doctrine; his misrepresentation of the quantity and the con–
tinuity of our aid to the Chinese government; his repudiation of the
war in Europe as one "between the established master races and the
claimant master races" until Hitler attacked Stalin;
his
finding in Chiang
