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PARTISAN REVIEW
Kai-shek "an Asiatic statesman of real genius" while the Communist
party line was to support Chiang against Japan; his urging that the
United States get out of Korea, distrust Synghman Rhee, give Chiang
no support in Formosa, accept a proposal to recognize the Kremlin's
imperialist puppet as the government of China, withdraw our forces
from Japan, refuse to support a pact of Asiatic countries to defend
themselves against Communist aggression-with restraint and consider–
able care and a weighing of all Lattimore's subtle .qualifications of his
shifting line, Miss Utley builds up a picture that will carry overwhelm–
ing conviction to all who care to study the record. Her only mistake is
to defend the ill-prepared and blundering overstatements of Senator
McCarthy, which have provided an unexpected defense of Lattimore
by making the true picture as it gradually emerges seem an anti–
climax in place of a convincing indictment.
Miss Utley's criticism of our policy-makers for their share of
responsibility for the weakening of China's struggle for independence
is also done with sober restraint. She finds that the Republican Party
and the general articulate public held the same illusions as the policy–
makers. Only one important process escapes her notice: the extent to
which the line of the policy-makers has become firm since the Korean
war began. In this regard, but in this regard only, her book is out of
date. True the responsible officials have failed to acknowledge their
errors-an acknowledgment which would have enormous sanitive and
educative value but one \;Vhich it is perhaps too much to expect from
fallible human beings approaching an electoral melee. But if they have
failed to acknowledge their errors, they are not failing to correct them, as
rapidly, on the whole, as the enormously deteriorated situation permits.
For policy-makers as well as for all thoughtful Americans who are
pondering the problem of how we lost 450 million allies and what we
can still do to cut the losses and reverse the trend, Freda Utley's
China
Story
is the most important work that has so far been published
on our relations with contemporary China.
Bertram D. Wolfe
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