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"The Chinese people are engaged in an effort which should command the grateful cooperation of the entire world. It is an effort almost without precedent. Their leaders are making daily progress toward the settlement . . . of deep-seated and bitter conflicts which have lasted for 20 years . . . . They are succeeding in . . . ending hostilities . . . and are now engaged in the business of demobilizing vast military forces and integrating the remainder into a national army. They have agreed to the basic principles for the achievement in China of political and economic advances which were centuries coming to Western democracies. . . ."
George Marshall paused, puckered his brow intently, continued with even more deliberation: "If we are to have peace—if the world wants peace, there are compelling reasons why China's present effort must succeed. This depends in a large measure on actions of other nations. If China is ignored, or if there is scheming to thwart her present aspirations, her effort will fail. . . .
"I feel quite certain of the sympathetic interest of the American people in China, but I am not quite so certain of their understanding, or that of their political leaders, of the vital importance to the U.S. of the success of the Chinese efforts toward unity and economic stability. . . . The next few months are of tremendous importance to the Chinese people and . . . to the future peace of the world. . . ."
The great citizen-soldier who, in a totalitarian war, had assembled and directed an army without deviating an inch in the direction of totalitarian practices, had become a leader and spokesman of the drive for a nontotalitarian peace.
The Experiment. George Marshall had just donned the mufti of retirement when the call came from Washington for one more great task. One day last November he was at his Leesburg (Va.) farm, where he takes a countryman's joy in pruning trees, growing sweet corn and keeping compost pits. President Truman, troubled and hard-pressed by the explosive resignation of Ambassador Pat Hurley, was on the wire. Would the General postpone his well-earned rest to do an emergency job in China? With a sigh, the General looked at his half-unpacked bags. Ten days later, he was on his way to Chungking, 12,000 miles from Leesburg.
The immediate problem was how to help China's dissident factions translate general agreement into specific cooperation. Marshall struck straight for the specifics—a truce in China's civil war and a plan to fuse China's rival armies.
For his experiment in applied democracy, the Special Envoy set up his main laboratory in Chungking, in a Western-style villa of faced stone called "Happiness Gardens," above the confluence of the Kialing and the Yangtze. Into the living room, deeply carpeted and warmed against the damp Szechwan winter by a charcoal-burning fireplace, came leaders of China to pay their respects, to present gift scrolls, and to argue their cases before Ma Hsieh-erh, as "Marshall" is transliterated into Chinese.