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Because of both the single truth and the errors over the years, no name among the world's leaders strikes such fierce sparks of antagonism or praise as the name of this austere, remote man on the cool veranda. To some he is a "discredited dictator'' who lost China through his own shortcomings; to others he is a "gallant ally" who was let down by the U.S. Left-wing Britons like Bertrand Russell call him a "ruffian, a totalitarian, a bad man altogether." and Labor's Clement Attlee would "pension him off" and send him into exile. Bevanites refer to "the reactionary Chiang Kai-shek gang," and Indians call him "a U.S. puppet." One U.S. general (Stilwell) called him "The Peanut" and one U.S. Ambassador (Leighton Stuart) "a devotedly patriotic, incorruptible, resourceful leader."
The Plighted Word. In the U.S., once itself deeply divided, the Congress recently approved all but unanimously a pledge of U.S. forces to the defense of Chiang's Formosa. Much of the rest of the world, if it had not changed its mind about Chiang, had changed its mind about the nature of the regime that overthrew him. Whatever some may think of Chiang personally—and most personal estimates are frozen, sometimes in grotesque postures, by the memory of the disastrous postwar years when his government disintegrated and his armies were shattered—there is now wide agreement that Formosa should and must be saved as a bastion in the free world's defense. Said Australia's Prime Minister Robert Menzies in Washington a fortnight ago: "There are far too many people who have taken the easy course of thinking about these things in terms of some man or some name. We don't defend a man, we don't defend a system of government—we defend a nation against tyranny from abroad."
In the eyes of many anti-Communist Asians, what the U.S. does about Formosa is the touchstone of their own future security. Said an Englishman in Bangkok: "Your policy out here has been full of enough lunacy as it is—and so has ours, no doubt—but to scuttle Chiang now, or even to give the impression of scuttling him, would be the last one." Added a Filipino columnist: "Formosa has come to mean to the free peoples of Asia one thing: the worth of America's plighted word to little nations."
The Last Retreat. Last week Communist artillerymen on the mainland dropped shells onto the rice fields of Quemoy, splashed other shells among the Matsus' fishing boats. Facing the Communists were three well-trained and well-dug-in Nationalist divisions on Big and Little Quemoy, another division in the Matsus, 150 miles to the north. While the U.S. wrestled with itself over the problem of intervening, and the U.S.'s allies wrung their hands in dismay at the prospect, Chiang insisted calmly that the offshore islands would be defended by him to the last man—whatever his ally might do.