The plane from Peiping winged down to the airfield inside Nanking's ancient wall. Nationalist Envoy Huang Shao-hsiung, back from peace talks with the Reds, stepped through the hatch into a clamoring crowd of reporters who besieged him with questions. The man from Peiping parried feebly: "Splendid weather we're having, isn't it?"
The news that Huang carried in a five-inch-thick sheaf of papers for the government was grim. At Acting President Li Tsung-jen's big grey brick house, Nationalist leaders conferred until 2 a.m. Exhausted and ill with high blood pressure, Envoy Huang went to bed. It was no wonder. The Communists...