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Perhaps Marshall's most effective technique was to reach back for the stories of the great historical precedents which determined the relations of citizens to soldiers in the English-speaking world. Was there an issue about quartering troops on the citizenry? Marshall could tell of the victory Charles I's third parliament had won over him on that point, or how a protest against quartering troops on citizens came to be in the Declaration of Independence and a guarantee against it in the U.S. Constitution. Was there an issue about the size of army units? Marshall knew that wartime efficiency called for army groups. He also understood that army groups in peacetime China would almost inevitably revive warlordism; over China's poor transportation system, a central government would never be able to concentrate enough men to overpower a rebellious army group leader. The Chinese saw the point, agreed that armies of no more than three divisions, reporting directly to the Government, would be the largest unit.
The Chinese recognized Marshall's sincerity. In his own country and in a day of great military peril he had not hesitated to make similar sacrifices of "military efficiency" for the sake of democratic control. Not long after Pearl Harbor his staff had proposed far more rigid press controls. Marshall told them:
"We sit here at the moment with the destiny of our nation resting on our judgment and our ability," he said. "We think we are competent. We think we can fulfill our responsibility. But how can we be sure?" He had added: "And as far as I am concerned the press is one of my best inspectors general."
The Assistant. Between talks, the Special Envoy walked the streets or climbed the steps of cliffside Chungking. Sometimes he would drive a few miles out to the paddy fields, where a countryman far from his own acres could sample another good earth.
In the evenings, over a cup of jasmine tea or a Bourbon oldfashioned, the Special Envoy would mull over the day's progress. In slippers and dressing gown, he would sit at his desk in the study bedroom, where two photographs of. Mrs. Marshall looked at him reassuringly, and pen terse reports to Washington.
One night, while rereading Benjamin Franklin's autobiographical writings, he found an assistant for his experiment. Next day Government and Communist conferees were handed a translation from English into Chinese, with a brief preface: "The following address was delivered to the Convention which produced the Constitution of the U.S. It was given by Benjamin Franklin, then in his 82nd year." The Chinese, who had been grumbling over the unity formula just worked out by their own constitutional convention, the Political Consultation Conference, read what Franklin had to say:
"When you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can perfection be expected? It therefore astonishes men to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does. . . ."