Background of news –
Wallace’s trip to China
By Jay G. Harden
Washington –
Rarely have home politics and the war abroad been so tangled up as they are in speculations relating to the trip of vice President Henry A. Wallace to China, cryptically announced to occur “sometime in the late spring or early summer.”
The political implication, which diligent inquiry in Democratic Party circles so far has failed either to remove or amplify, is self-evident. It arises from the circumstance that the vice-presidential nomination has been boiling up as the chief point of contention in the Democratic National Convention July 19, and Mr. Wallace’s prospective tour would seem to synchronize exactly with the time when he should be making his bid for delegate support.
Proceeding from the assumption that Mr. Wallace must be going abroad at President Roosevelt’s request, two diametrically opposite theories as to the latter’s political purpose are advanced.
One of these is that Mr. Roosevelt, desiring to be rid of Mr. Wallace as a 1944 running mate, is providing him with a graceful exit. The counter-conjecture holds that the President, having decided in favor of Mr. Wallace’s renomination, is seeking to build him up as a second horse that, in interest of winning the war, it is imperative not to change in midstream.
Chinese attitude important
A serious feature of this political speculation is the foreign skepticism as to Mr. Wallace’s official standing which it has aroused. For example, a leading spokesman for the Chungking government commented that:
If Mr. Wallace is being sent to China merely to shunt him off, it is an insult to the Chinese people.
From the standpoint of foreign opinion alone, it would seem necessary that Mr. Wallace’s political status be clarified before he embarks on his mission.
There is plenty of reason, entirely unrelated to Democratic politics, why an outstanding American envoy just now should be sent to China. Due to rapidly mounting currency inflation, coupled with severe shortage of food, the domestic economy of that country has been reported very near the point of total breakdown.
Coincidentally, it is said, Soviet Russian encouragement of rebel elements has placed the Kuomintang government of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in serious danger of disruption and that there have long been serious differences between Allied military authorities in the Chinese-Indian theater is well known.
At a meeting of the Kuomintang Central Committee last September Generalissimo Chiang publicly recognized an existing state of armed revolution by calling on the “Chinese Communist Party” to:
…abandon its policy of forcefully occupying our national territory and give up their past tactics of assaulting national government troops in various sectors.
Prestige feared slipping
The subsequent meeting of Generalissimo Chiang with President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill at Cairo, coupled with the naming of Chinese at Moscow as one of the “Big Four,” helped the Chungking government greatly, but latterly its prestige again has been slipping away.
One cause for this decline, State Department authorities say, was the seeming Soviet support of the Chinese Communists, contained in the issuance from Moscow of a blast against the Chiang-sponsored government of the Chinese-Russian border province of Sinkiang.
The report that, after Chungking, Mr. Wallace may go to Moscow suggests that he is being sent to mediate between the Chinese and Russians.
The main American military dissatisfaction arises from the distaste which both British and Chinese have shown for fighting in Burma.