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The Chinese are not a militaristic people and not many Chinese poets sing the glory and grandeur of war. Mao is one of those who does. Most of his verse has not been publicly printed, but in the three poems known to the West, he plucks harshly the blood & iron string. Sample lines:
We shall not be heroes unless we reach the Great Wall . . .
In the Red army nobody is frightened by the rigors of the Long March.
The thousand mountain peaks and the ten thousand rivers fail to intimidate us . . .
Genghis Khan was favored by Heaven in his generation,
Yet he could only shoot arrows at eagles on the wing.
Not Appeased. By June 1950 Mao, too, was ready to hunt an eagle.
The U.S. had pulled out of Korea and had washed its hands of Formosa, where Chiang Kai-shek's diehard Nationalists prepared their last stand. Mao's army, harassed by Chiang's naval & air blockade, stood poised for an invasion. Then Stalin's North Koreans moved across the 38th parallel. In a dramatic turnabout of policy, the American eagle soared from its lackadaisical perch.
Harry Truman proclaimed that security in the Pacific meant no aggression in Korea. Truman also said: "I have directed the Seventh Fleet to prevent any attack on Formosa." From where Mao sat, this might mean that the whole U.S. policy had suddenly and rashly changed. It might mean that the U.S. would not only try to defend Korea, but would also make the Communists pay for aggression in Korea by protecting their intended victims in Formosa. Mao sat quietly waiting to see if the U.S. would in fact try to regain the initiative in Asia.
He soon saw that the eagle, though roused, was still a muddled bird. Truman's action on Formosa did not mean all that it could have meant. The U.S. still had had no change of heart toward the Chinese Nationalists; it would still refuse to cooperate with the only Asiatic force that had steadfastly recognized and resisted the predatory league of Mao & Stalin. Washington obviously persevered in the opinion that Secretary Dean Acheson expressed last January: "No one in his right mind . . . suggests that . . . the Nationalist government fell because it was confronted by overwhelming military force . . . Chiang Kai-shek's armies melted away . . . the Chinese people in their misery . . . completely withdrew their support from this government . . ."
While the Seventh Fleet steamed toward the Formosa Straits, Washington ordered Chiang Kai-shek to stop his air and water raids which were playing havoc with Communist shipping. Later, it brusquely turned down Chiang's offer to send 33,000 troops to Korea, where they might have come in handy last week. Washington's policy was directed by the fear that any action strengthening Chiang would bring the Chinese Communists into the Korean war and by the belief that appeasing Mao would keep them out.