A LOYALTY INQUIRE A REPORTER’S VIEWS ON THE DAVIES CASE

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26523, 11 September 1951, Page 6

A LOYALTY INQUIRE A REPORTER’S VIEWS ON THE DAVIES CASE

(By JOSEPH ALSOP in the "New York Herald Tribune") (Reprinted bu Arrano«m«nt.)

Washington—Every so oft-n a reporter has a personal experience interesting enough to call for breaking the good rule of impersonality, and telling what happened to him. One such has just come to this in the form of an a PP’" r ® n .?* the State Department Loyaltyßo®™ in the case of John Paton Davies, To be sure, there was nothing very Stirring about the hour or so at the hearing. The three-man’ board, headed hv n shrewd, dry-spoken jncw Englander, Conrad E. Snow, clothes itself in no special , ma jesty. The setting is an ordinary State Dep«ctment office borrowed for the occasion. After the oath, the routine of question and answer goes forward m an but businesslike way. The board seart both sensible and patient. When it over, your first reaction is. wen, i thought there would be more to it “’(to‘reflection, however, it Mem* to me that there is more to it than th , which is the reason why the first per son singular is being sphere for the first tune in six years. D Si and publicly suspended from duty on the eve of - a most impo*® l * ±nv" gs U the farrtily house. And all for what. To make a burnt offering with a sweet savour in the peculiar nostrils of Senator McCarthy and Senator McCarran.

Was Stilwell Adviser Certainly, if anyone can testify, competently as to the sense or nonsense of this proceeding against Davies, it is this reporter; for in the war-time years in Chungking we were, so to speak, competing backroom Davies was the political adviser of General Joseph W. Stilwell; 1 was toe adviser of Dr. T. V. Soong and Major General C. L. Chehnault. I fought for air power and a policy of strengthening the Chinese national government; and he defended General Stilwell s views and advocated American military aid to the Chinese Communists. Davies was finally defeated when General Stilwell was dismissed. BUt it was a bitter battle while it lasted, and on toe principle that no one knows you as your enemy knows you, I think I know John Davies pretty well. , ~ As to his loyalty, no doubts ever occurred to me, even in the most squalid moments of the long, squalid .struggle in Chungking. Indeed, the thought that I could not escape as I set before the Loyalty Board was the thought that Davies’s judgment of the Chinese scene had stood the test of time rather better than my own.

. The difference between the two views was simple enough. By the end of 1843 and the beginning of 1944, it wm already clear that toe regime of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek would succumb to the Chinese Communists after the war, unless something pretty Srastic was done. My view was that a ommunist triumph could prevented by replacing General Stilwell with a wiser man, increasing the seal* of American aid, and intervening very actively to reform the rotting Nationalist government. Given toe satisfaction of all these difficult conditions, particularly th* indispensable third. I still think I might have been proven right Davies held the view, on the other hand, and with many excellent reasons, that the Generalissimo’s government was already past saving. If this wa* the case the question was not how to prevent a Chinese Communist victory, but how to come to terms with it. Davies also knew certain things that very few people in America seem to know even to-day—that Mao Tse-tung and his Communists had developed their party and their policy in isolation from, and somet-mes in defiance of, the Kremlin, for example; and that throughout toe course of th* China war, the only recipient of Soviet aid had been the Generalissimo. A Brilliant Deduction With this special knowledge. Davi« made what must now be accounted an extremely brilliant deduction-th*t Titoism was possible before Titoism had been heard of. Believing Chiang Kai-shek was past saving, believing also in the possibility of Chines* Titoism. Davies, therefore, recommended moderate American aid for the Chinese Communists. His avowed aim was to promote their Chines* Communist confidence in America, and thus to achieve a division between them and the Kremlin. And if Davies’s recommendations nad been followed I now believe he would hav* been proven right. ... In short there were two Perfectly logical snd defensible American policies in China, and you could take your choice between them, what actually happened—what I. for one. had certainly never foreseen—was that after the dismissal of General Stilwell we Ceased to have any China policy at all. Even when General Albert C. Wedemeyer was performing -o admirably as military commander his hands were politically tied; after that there was total vacuum. . Having no policy led inevitably to the present disaster. For this outcom* John Davies, the man being sacrificed to senator McCarran and Senator McCarthy, had no more Visible responsibility than I. As I thug reviewed the past, it struck m* w* would be much wiser to start loyalty investigations of the politics ns who are now working all out to destroy th* last vestiges of decency and fair play in our public life than to waste tun* picking over the by-gone views of such men as John Davies.