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U.S. military men believe that a Red invasion can be turned back by the U.S. Seventh Fleet, together with the Nationalist army of about 500,000 men who have been licked into top shape by V.M.I.-trained General Sun Li-jen. They concede, however, that the Red Chinese air force of about 300 fighter-bombers and 100 medium bombers might deal crippling blows to ports and industries of the island stronghold.
But the defense of Formosa, and the U.S. stake in it, is not purely a military matter. A large, vocal body of U.S. opinion has persistently suggested that the Nationalists are not fit allies for the U.S. The Chinese who are building a stronghold on Formosa today should tell Americans another story. One of the most important of these Chinese is Governor Wu.
The Measure of Maturity. Wu Kuo-cheng was born in 1903 in the mountains of Central China, grew up in Peking, where his peasant-born father was director of military training for the Imperial Chinese army. In Peking's yellow-roofed Forbidden City, Dowager Empress Tzu-hsi (also known as the "Venerable Buddha") still occupied the Dragon Throne, and China still lay in the heavy torpor of her past. While Wu was in school, Sun Yat-sen and his followers rudely yanked at the queue of Chinese tradition, dethroned the Manchus and established the Chinese Republic.
The din of these great events was only dimly heard in Wu's classroom. Wu was a bright pupil. Because he was the smallest boy in his class, he was invariably seated in the first row where he could get a better view of the blackboard. Next to him in the front row usually sat a mandarin's son named Chou Enlai.
Their generation of Chinese was discovering (almost simultaneously) the Bible and Karl Marx. Wu eventually turned to the Bible and became an Anglican; Chou turned to Marx, is now Premier and Foreign Minister of China's Communist government.
When he was 17, Wu weni to the U.S., enrolled at Grinnell College in Iowa. The only course in which Wu, later to be the mayor of three cities, did not get an A was municipal government. In 1923 Wu moved on to Princeton to take his doctorate in political science. He faced the formidable Dean Andrew Fleming West who personally interviewed all graduate students seeking admission. "Young man," said West after contemplating the round, boyish face of the applicant, "you are immature." "Sir," replied Wu, "to judge maturity by the criterion of age is an immature thought in itself." Dean West promptly admitted him to Princeton.
Technician of Order. When Wu returned to China in 1926, Sun Yat-sen was dead. Vast areas of the country were bitterly contested by warlords with their private armies and by Nationalist revolutionaries. The best of the Nationalists, Chiang Kaishek, Sun's disciple, set out from Canton at the head of a revolutionary army on his famous Northern Expedition to quell the warlords. Young Nationalist K. C. Wu tried to join Chiang's army. He was rejected with the explanation: "You are too educated."