Trouble in China
The removal of General Stilwell from his command in China is disquieting. At his Press conference on Tuesday President Roose- velt put the best complexion on the business, suggesting that the tension between the American general and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek was simply one of those questions of temperamental in- compatibility which arise from time to time and leave no option but h dissolution of partnership. There was nothing political about the incident, said the President, and it in no way affected relations between China and the United States. He added, more surpris- ingly, that the influence of the so-called Chinese Communists was not a factor in the recall. But American correspondents tell an entirely different story. We have heard little about conditions in China of late ; one reason for that is supplied by the statement by an American correspondent in that country that he had had 338 words cut out of his despatch by the American censor and another to8 by the Chinese censor, leaving precisely to standing. It is therefore on, journalists who have recently been in China and are now out of it that we must depend for impartial news. One of them, Mr. Brooks Atkinson, of the New York Times, declares cate- gorically that the difference between General Stilwell and Chiang Kai-shek derived from the fact that General Stilwell wanted to fight the Japanese and the Generalissimo was more concerned about fight- ing Chinese Communists. Another correspondent lately in the Far East, Mr. Thorburn Wiant, of the Associated Press, says the same thing even more emphatically. This is a case in which facts must be faced, whatever the facts are. So far it has been expedient to treat China as one of the four Great Powers, as indeed she poten- tially is, largely as an encouragement to herself ; but the war in China has not been going well, and the British and American Governments, which are primarily concerned, since Russia is not at war with Japan, need to consider the situation very seriously.
