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In the years during and after the war, Luce played an active part in the editorial direction of the magazines, sitting in frequently as managing editor of TIME. Time Inc. emerged from the war with a team of correspondents who eventually became the TIME-LIFE News Service, the world's largest magazine news-gathering operation. It set up a TIME-LIFE International division to publish both magazines abroad.
Painful Decision. Luce's greatest postwar sorrow was the fall of China to the Communists in 1949. A staunch supporter and friend of Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, Luce had nonetheless seen the Red handwriting on the wall. In 1946 he visited Nanking while the mission of General George Marshall was trying to effect a peace between the Kuomintang and the Communists. There, he went to see Chou Enlai, who was then the head of the Chinese Communist mission. Over steaming cups of tea, Chou professed to be weary of the negotiations, said that he would like to visit the U.S. "to study your impressive techniques of modern production." Wrote Luce later: "I must record the utter confidence as well as the good humor with which Chou En-lai spoke to me. While he didn't say so in so many words, I had the chilling feeling that he expected soon to be in control of all China. At the end of my stay, I figured he was right. I knew the Marshall mission had failed." Just before his death, Luce was attempting to get into Red China to try to interview Chou again.
In 1952, Luce—who had supported Republican Thomas E. Dewey for President in 1944 and 1948—was for Dwight Eisenhower both before and after the Republican Convention. Both TIME and LIFE supported Ike's candidacy. Luce went to Paris to look Ike over before the general came back to seek the nomination, and was impressed. "As for myself," Luce wrote later, "I had to make a decision which was personally painful. I respected Taft —as who did not? But I decided I must go for Eisenhower. I thought it was of paramount importance that the American people should have the experience of being under a Republican Administration so that they would not forever associate Republicanism with Depression or with isolationism. I was sure that Eisenhower could win. I was not sure that Taft could."
Works, Plays & Prays. With Eisenhower in the White House and his own company in a highly healthy shape (1953 was a year of record revenues of $170.5 million), Harry Luce looked around for another challenge. In 1954, he and the company decided on a daring venture: a sports magazine that would chronicle "the wonderful world of sport" (Luce's phrase) without the cant and cliches that marked most sport reporting. As he reasoned: "It is a safe premise that there would not be a tremendous interest and participation if sport did not correspond to some important elements—something deeply inherent—in the human spirit. Man is an animal that works, plays and prays. No important aspect of human life should be devalued." The result was SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, which had the largest initial circulation (450,000) in magazine history and has since climbed to 1,250,000 circulation.