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The Big Job. In effect, T.V. last week was China's Premier—though his every action as chief of civilian and foreign affairs must have the Generalissimo's watchful approval. In the task of coordinating and streamlining government, stepping up production, promoting constitutional reform, healing the breach between political factions. T.V. would need every shred of his talent for administration, negotiation, compromise, and plain getting-things-done.
He had few illusions. "People must not expect miracles from me," he says. But, ever mindful of China's vital relationship to the U.S., he urged the need for ever closer Chinese-American cooperation. He regretted that Donald Nelson (China's new WPBoss, now in Australia arranging for suplies) had not come to Chungking a year ago. Of U.S. Ambassador Pat Hurley and Major General Albert C. Wedemeyer (Chiang's chief of staff), he says: "We are on intimate terms. They see the main issues and they see them clearly." For T.V. still believes what he used to say in pre-Pearl Harbor days: "The wars in Europe and Asia are parts of one great struggle—the struggle of democracy against totalitarian aggression. In this struggle China fights on the side of the democracies."
A Big Problem. It would not be an easy fight. One of the main problems confronting T.V. was a settlement of China's civil war. Last week a truce between the Chungking Government and Communist Yenan seemed in the making. Communist envoy Chou En-lai had delivered Yenan's latest demand for a coalition government. Chiang Kai-shek still shook his head; he was "still opposed, as the head of any independent nation must be, to an armed state within a state. But he had made a counteroffer. Its details not disclosed, Chungking said authoritatively that the Generalissimo's plan did not exclude Communist participation in the Government. If this meant what it seemed to mean, it was sensational news. Said T.V.: "If a settlement is not readied, it will not be because of lack of an honest desire on the part of the Government."
Meanwhile T.V.'s appointment had given China and China's friends a new burst of hope. In a full summer and autumn of battle, the Chinese had been defeated at Hengyang. They had been defeated at Kweilin. The first break in their successive defeats was last week's victory in Kweichow. The road to victory was still up the sharp sides of mountains. But with T.V. at work again, there was a new faith that China would one day get over the hump.
* But T. V., holding an honorary doctor's degree from Shanghai's St. John (later from New Haven's Yale), preferred to be called "Dr. Soong."
* Presumably he is still serving a ten-year (1937~47) expiatory confinement somewhere in China. The confinement is called "rusticating," includes in its routine golf, tennis, bridge.