FOREIGN RELATIONS: For a Price

To make her dramatic, last-minute plea for more money and arms for Nationalist China last December, Madame Chiang Kai-shek asked the U.S. for a favor: she needed suitable air transport between Nanking and Washington. The U.S. Government fixed her up handsomely. The Military Air Transport Service brought her to California in a Navy plane, flew her and her party (a general, a maid, two secretaries) the rest of the way in the old presidential DC-4, the Sacred Cow.

Last week the State Department let it be known that the gesture was not quite so generous as it had seemed. After...

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