The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. —Fable of Archilochus
The cool veranda, with its silvery curtains and pale green furnishings, is always a quiet and tranquil place. There is a soft, slurring sound of slippered feet from within, and an aide comes to attention: "The President." The man who steps onto the veranda is all in black—black skullcap, black Chinese gown, black felt slippers. As the President of Nationalist China stands bowing and smiling politely, the visitor notices the thin, angular face and skull, to which the years of adversity and self-discipline have given a sculptural distinction. It might be the head and face of a monk. He waves his visitor to a sofa, then takes a straight chair beside him. Barking his comments at the interpreter in his staccato, rough Mandarin, he fixes his dark eyes on his visitor, brightening with interest at a comment on Indo-China. turning grave as he states his unshakable determination to return to the mainland. Tea is served, and at exactly 6 o'clock an indescribable look comes over the President's face. The visitor instinctively rises and takes his leave. Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, frail and formidable in his black gown and skullcap, bows his visitor out without moving from his place.
The Bitter Grapes. Many of the U.S.'s top officials have come to this cool veranda, worried, harassed, urgent. Chiang's visitors emerge with no pronouncements made, no decisions taken, but with the sensation that Chiang imparts—that they are men of like mind on the issues that really matter, and that to be of like mind with the Generalissimo is a thing of importance. In a time of confused issues and uncertain men, his sureness is so intense that he diffuses an air of tranquillity.
For among the foxes of the world, Chiang Kai-shek long ago found the hedgehog's one big thing: the world's primary and implacable enemy was and is the Communist conspiracy directed from Moscow. It was a single-mindedness that in the 1930s exasperated his countrymen (who wanted him to fight Japanese instead of Communists), in the 1940s, General Joseph Stilwell (who wanted him to arm Communist troops to fight in Burma) and President Harry Truman (who insisted that he coalesce with what Secretary of State Byrnes termed "the so-called Communists"). While many bright young foxes were finding that the grapes were bitter, Chiang Kaishek, who himself has erred grievously in other things, both by omission and commission, clung to his hedgehog truth.