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The Chinese had never complained publicly about the smallness of the assistance they had received but after that statement by Mr. Churchill, a Chinese official spokesman in Chungking called in the newspaper reporters the next day, not to complain even then, but merely to set the record straight. He told them just how much aid the Chinese had received from America. It was the amount required to keep one American division in the field for one week.
Communist Propaganda. The second source of the propaganda against the Government of China and against the Chiangs personally is the Communist group in China, and the Communists in America. I want to be careful not to be misunderstood at this point because, to many Americans, the word "Communist" automatically means Russia. One of the things I wanted to find out in China was how much, if any, is the Kremlin behind the Communists in China. Russia's official conduct with regard to the Chinese Communists since they made a pact with Chiang in September 1937 has been perfectly correct and circumspect. There was no evidence that I could find or hear about that Moscow has been backing or supplying, either with materials or with guidance, the Communist government in China during the last seven years.
So I am not making charges against the Russians. But I am charging that the Communists in China and the Communists and fellow travelers in this country are working primarily in terms of what they believe will best serve Russia's future policies and interests. I am increasingly convinced the Chinese Communists are first Communist and second Chinese, just as we know American Communists are first Communists and second Americans. In the case of the Chinese Communists this is a reluctant reversal of the opinion I held some years ago. I, too, was taken in for a time by the talk of their being just agrarian reformers, just Chinese patriots struggling only for the freedom of China and for democracy. I am convinced now the primary allegiance of the Chinese Communists is to Russia, whether Russia wants it that way or not, and their purpose is to make Russia overwhelmingly the strongest power in Asia as well as in Europe, which I think would be as bad in the long run for Russia as it would for Asia and for ourselves, requiring enormous armaments and constant tensions and suspicions which I hope profoundly will not have to be in the postwar world.
How can the Chinese Government be asked to furnish arms to a rebel government whose primary allegiance it has every reason to believe is to a foreign power? No government in the world could be rightly expected to do that. The Communists cannot be given full recognition in China until they are willing to give up their separate army. That they have never been, and, I think, never will be, willing to do.
Beginning in 1927, the Communists tried to win in China by bloody revolution. For eight months, May to December in 1930, I was in an area under their control down in south China. I saw firsthand their utterly ruthless purges and slaughterings of anyone who crossed their will. But they could not win converts by that method because the Chinese are basically too peace-loving and orderly a people. When the Communists in China had reached the end of their rope they