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England, the mother of parliaments and the oldest democracy, has not dared risk an election for ten years in a time of trouble. Yet you have heard Chiang Kai-shek cursed up & down because he has not held an election in the midst of a cruel war for sheer survival and in a country which has never before held an election in its 4,000 years of history, and half of which is occupied by an enemy and 80% of whose people cannot read & write. It is ridiculous.
The established democracies all restrict their people's freedoms in war, even in victory; but Chiang is supposed to extend freedoms in his country even in the midst of defeat. It is an absurd counsel of perfection.
Then there is deterioration of morale, one more of the diseases of defeat. You can hold on indefinitely as long as you have hope, or can see a turn in the road ahead; but if you begin to lose faith in the ultimate objectives of some of your allies, then something goes out of you. That is what is happening in China's heart and therefore to morale. Under Chiang's leadership they have done their best to hold the line against Japan so that we in the West could concentrate on beating Hitler first. They have tried to do their part loyally according to the strategy which we determined. They did not wholly like that strategy because it put them last, though they had been fighting tyranny first, but they accepted it without complaining. But now there is a mounting fear that, no matter how great their efforts and their sacrifices, they are not going to be given a chance to become really strong, free and independent in their own right. They wonder whether they may not be sold down the river in the peacemaking.
Defeats from one's enemy are bad enough; verbal attacks and pressures from one's allies are even worse. They are the straw which has threatened to break the back of China's resistance.
Imperialist Propaganda. For over a year there has been in this country a concerted propaganda campaign against the Central Government of China and the Generalissimo. There are three main sources. One is some of the imperialists of Europe. They know the foundation stone of the whole colonial system in Asia is people's continuing to believe that all Orientals are congenitally incapable of governing themselves as democracies. If China gets on her feet and moves along progressively under her own power, that fallacy is automatically exploded and the foundation of the empires begins to collapse.
When Mr. Churchill got back from Quebec, he said in his first speech in Parliament that "after all the lavish aid which America has given to China, these defeats in China are most disappointing and vexatious."
England did not do so well in Belgium and France. Did we jump on her? No. She had some rather "disappointing and vexatious" defeats in Greece and Crete and Tobruk and in Burma. Did we spend our time pointing them out? No—we redoubled our efforts to help hold her up. And she