"You never hear the one that hits you," the soldiers say. This observation, both comforting and terrifying, applies also to the great nations and civilizations now on history's casualty lists. When disaster comes they are looking the other way, or else they are certain that the disaster does not matter to them.
Of Calves' Feet & Sorrow. Last week U.S. leaders were looking at disaster in China—but not looking very hard. Their detachment clearly said that this bullet did not bear their number. As good humanitarians they would continue to "give aid" to China, with something of the air of a squire's lady bringing calf's-foot jelly to the drunken and dissolute mother of 13. If mother & brood went Communist, that was solely because of her moral disorders. One had, after all, brought the jelly; only so many calves had so many feet; and there were the deserving poor, the non-corrupt poor, the understandable poor on the west side of the village who had to have some jelly, too.
So a smug and desultory debate on "aid to China" droned along in Washington conference rooms. Nobody seemed to think —certainly nobody spoke—of how the U.S. was to get the aid from China it would need in the years to come. Nobody said: "This is our war, and this is a major battle." Nobody asked for whom the bell tolled.
Western leaders, convinced that China is about to fall, are sorry for the Chinese. It does not occur to them to be sorry for themselves and for their children, who may have to fight to retrieve what has been lost in the last month in Asia.
Of Capabilities & Intentions. As of last week, Washington had arrived at these conclusions about China's prospects:
1) Chiang Kai-shek may be defeated by the Reds, largely because too many of his aids are "corrupt."
2) No special effort will be made to help him in his extremity, nor will the U.S. pressure him to step down and make way for anyone else.
3) A coalition government of Communists and non-Communists will wind up under the complete domination of the former. Some Washington advisers who recognize this still think that the U.S. should aid a coalition government in the hope of strengthening the nonCommunists. How this would work out was not made clear.
4) Washington has given no serious thought to the question: What next? It has no plan for stopping a repetition of the Chinese tragedy elsewhere in Asia. It has no estimate of how hard it would be to liberate China, once Communists got full control.
Interviews with leaders in London and Paris last week produced identically worded hopes that the U.S. would not "throw good money after bad" in China. Dr. J. H. van Roijen of The Netherlands delegation to U.N. hoped that no additional efforts would be made to save China. In the next breath, he went on to express the fear that if China went Communist all other Asiatic countries would sooner or later follow suit. "In Indonesia the repercussions would be disastrous," he said.