Mission to Tragedy

FIFTY YEARS IN CHINA (346 pp.)--John Leighton Stuart--Random House ($6.25).

In 1946, when China was still the great country of the open door, Leighton Stuart had long personified the U.S. tradition of humanitarian service in China. From boyhood as a missionary's son under the Manchus down to wartime imprisonment by the Japanese, he had shared the tumultuous experiences of the nation's modern awakening. As founder and president of Peking's Yenching University, the greatest of China's Christian colleges, he had won the affection and trust of a generation of rising Chinese leaders.

Then, at the age of 70, writes Dr. Stuart in Fifty Years in China, "I was catapulted by strange circumstances into the U.S. ambassadorship at Nanking." The circumstances: General George Marshall wanted his help in the ill-fated mission to bring together the country's Nationalist rulers and Communist rebels in a coalition government. ("Broadening the base of Chinese democracy" said the Truman-Byrnes directives, which Author Stuart appends to his book, and which make hair-raising reading in 1954.) The author of Yenching's famous motto, "Freedom Through Truth for Service," accepted this last, fateful call to service. Thereafter, by one of history's harsh ironies, Missionary Stuart served as chief U.S. representative while China's door was slammed shut and "all that I had previously accomplished in the country . . . was apparently being destroyed."

The White Paper. The coalition talks collapsed before Communist intransigence. Marshall hurried home to take over the State Department, and while the U.S. fumbled its help to Chiang, the Red forces rolled down from the north to win the civil war. Washington was looking the other way. To despairing Nationalist friends, despairing Dr. Stuart could offer only sympathy. "I failed," says Stuart simply. "I was unable to influence those who controlled either American or Chinese political action."

Despite this humble assumption of fault, almost Chinese in its politeness, Leighton Stuart cannot refrain from criticizing his superiors. When the State Department published its white paper--which justified the Acheson line on China and blamed the Nationalists for everything--Ambassador Stuart recalls being "astonished and alarmed . . . shocked ... perplexed and filled with apprehension." The white paper, concludes Stuart, was "an accurate display of the materials on which the U.S. Government relied [for] its decisions . . . What had been omitted were materials . . . which had not been relied upon." The implication is strong that his own advice was not relied upon; it is as close as polite Diplomat Stuart will come to saying that the paper was a dishonest document.

.The Future. This is not the "China Lobby" talking, but a gentle missionary who tries hard to avoid recriminations. Yet, Dr. Stuart recalls how, on his return to the U.S. in 1949, Walton Butterworth director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs, and other State Department pros shushed Stuart, screened him from the press and censored his speeches.

As for future policy, Dr. Stuart believes the U.S. should help Chiang Kai-shek on Formosa. Says he: "I devoutly hope that, both on moral grounds and on political grounds, both for its own good and for the good of all mankind, the U.S. will continue in its refusal to recognize China's People's Government' . . . will be firm in its opposition to action calculated to strengthen that government."

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