An Old Familiar Tune

At one of the traditional G.O.P. Lincoln's Day dinners, House Minority Leader Joseph Martin once again plugger for a favorite cause of the Republican Old Guard--more military aid for Chiang Kai-shek. Martin argued that Chiang would open a second front on the Chinese mainland if the United States supplied him with planes, tanks, trucks, ships, and ammunition. This country should have learned by now that arms and reaction can't win the loyalty of the Chinese people. Beyond this, it is also a stupid business to force a ruler upon a country whose people have already rejected him.

Perhaps the best illustration of what would happen if Chiang invaded is shown by the desertions from his Nationalist army. Between fifty and seventy percent of the Communist army in Korea consists of former Nationalist soldiers. Demoralized by the Generalissimo's corrupt staff, these soldiers deserted to the Reds where their American weapons were welcome. There is no reason to believe that the Nationalist army now based in Formosa would act any differently when it reached the mainland again and encountered overwhelming Communist forces.

Chiang has been forced to hold constant purges of his Formosan troops, an indiction that his army is still splottered with disloyalty.

Chiang, of course, has always harbored visions of riding back into Peiping on a read, white, and blue tank, but it is difficult to believe that he could win any popular support or succeed militarily. Dissatisfaction with the backward policies of his former Nationalist Government led millions of Chinese to place their hopes in Communist promises of improvement and land reform. Although there have been isolated guerrilla outbreaks in the south, there is no clear evidence that these bands would join the Nationalists. It is just as possible that an invasion by Chiang in cooperation with a foreign power would consolidate these groups in a struggle against the invader.

Besides being a military impossibility, an attempt by the United States to force this discredited dictator back upon the Chinese would be a sad contrast to our professions of democracy. Chiang seems to have more friends in the Grand Old Party than he has in China.