Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946, The Far East: China, Volume X

Marshall Mission Files, Lot 54–D270

Minutes of Meeting Between General Marshall and Mr. Tung Pi-wu and Mr. Wang Ping-nan, Communist Delegation, at No. 5 Ning Hai Road, Nanking, September 29, 1946, 10 a.m.

Nanking, September 29, 1946, 10 a.m.

Also present:	Colonel Hutchin
	Captain Soong
	Mister Wu7

General Marshall: I received yesterday this memorandum (Chou’s letter dated 27 Sept) from Chou En Lai. Also, Dr. Stuart told me of his conversations with you gentlemen yesterday and of your desire to see me today. Knowing what Dr. Stuart had already said, I see no immediate need for me to repeat that, so I wait your pleasure for whatever statements you may wish to make.

Mister Wang: The original document was in Chinese. This is a translation which General Chou signed.

Mister Tung: In the past, General Marshall and Dr. Stuart have made many efforts to bring peace in China. Although I personally have not participated in the negotiations, General Chou has told me about them. General Chou is for the moment in Shanghai. He asked me to represent him and the’ Communist Delegation and to continue to confer with you. General Chou En Lai very much appreciates the letters you and Dr. Stuart have forwarded to him.

General Chou En Lai wishes to know if the Government has made any concrete explanations regarding the cease fire. From General Chou’s and my view, the Government is planning to enlarge the civil war in those regions where civil war is going on; for example, in Northern Kiangsu and Shantung as well as Shansi. In those regions where war has ceased, such as Manchuria, the Government is driving toward new places such as Antung and Harbin. Also in Chahar, there was no war but now the Government has opened an offensive against Kalgan. Under such a situation, we do not see any expression on the part of the Government that it will exert itself towards a cease fire arrangement.

On June 25, General Marshall, General Chou En Lai and General Hsu Yung Chang and Yu Ta Wei had arrived at a tentative agreement. In this agreement it is prescribed that the regions occupied by both sides, Communist and Nationalist armies alike, should be evacuated; that is, their general status should be restored to conditions which existed prior to the January agreement. Later on General Chou told me that General Marshall had given him the impression from the Government that the Government had no intention to evacuate those places occupied by it.

Yesterday, Dr. Stuart told me that the informal Five Man Committee and the Committee of Three might be convened at the same time. I do not know the Government’s view, but I have conveyed Dr. Stuart’s idea to Shanghai for General Chou En Lai. This is the point upon which we want to confer with you today. We want to know what is the Government attitude at the present time. Our basic attitude is to bring about a cease fire, a cessation of hostilities.

In the past, the Communist Party was not sure of the Government attitude towards the cessation of hostilities. Therefore, they argued back and forth whether the Committee of Three or the Five Man Committee should meet first. It is over the issue of cessation of hostilities that the Communists are not sure what the Government attitude is. It is over that basic issue that they argue that the Committee of Three should meet first.

General Marshall: Regarding the word “basic”, what is the interpretation given?

Mister Wu: That was the wrong word. I did not understand Mr. Tung’s idea.

Mister Tung: When Dr. Stuart proposed the informal Five Man Committee, we said we were willing to participate on the condition that the Government would agree to issue a cease fire order. We would issue one too after an agreement had been reached in that Committee. Although General Marshall and Dr. Stuart have made many efforts toward bringing about peace, toward persuading the Government into accepting this condition, no reassurance has been obtained so we proposed to arrange for the meeting of the Committee of Three. Dr. Stuart said yesterday that the two committees can be convened at the same time. We do not know if the Government agrees to that or not, we do not know if the Government has made any definite expression regarding that point.

General Marshall: I appreciate the detailed statement you have just made.

First, in reply, I would say that I have only had one conference with the Generalissimo since his return and that was immediately after his arrival. I went over the entire situation with him at that time and made my best efforts to persuade the Government to an action which I thought would lead to a peaceful settlement. He did not give me a reply, but told me he would consult with his staff and then talk to me later. Included in my proposal was a simultaneous meeting of both groups, the Committee of Three and the Five Man Group.

Later the same day, he saw Dr. Stuart and talked to him. Dr. Stuart, I believe, has given you the benefit of that discussion. I do not know accurately, but I believe the Generalissimo either talked to his Supreme War Council yesterday or was going to do so this morning. That is as much as I know of definite facts regarding the Government.

Now, with reference to my last statement, I wish to say to you (indicating Mr. Tung), as I have already said to Mr. Wang Ping Nan, that I have been very careful to bring from the Government or the Generalissimo, an exact understanding so far as I could obtain it. It has often been disagreeable information, but I have made a very careful effort to avoid all misunderstandings.

There was one recent example where a general statement by the Generalissimo appeared very favorable and Dr. Stuart gave it to General Chou and, through him, to you gentlemen. However when General Chou came to me, I gave him all the qualifying terms which I had obtained by very close questioning of the Generalissimo. My endeavor has been to give the exact intentions and exact meaning of the Government to avoid any possible confusion and irritation. In the same manner I have given the Government, as nearly as I could understand them, the exact proposals of the Communist Party and their intentions. I mention this because I notice in your propaganda regarding me personally, I was attacked for bringing disagreeable news from the Generalissimo. That was a stupid piece of business.

In all of these negotiations I think it is most important, I mean “most” important that you keep clearly in mind what are the basic difficulties with which Dr. Stuart and I have to contend, and which at the present time are blocking all of our efforts. For that reason, it is very difficult if not impossible to make a logical deduction from the various facts unless you have at the same time carefully analyzed the basic difficulties to which I wish to refer now.

At the time of my first negotiations in Chungking in early January, the trouble as I saw it then was that on the Government side a fairly numerous and a powerful group were convinced that the Communist Party did not intend to go through with any agreement they might make for the organization of a coalition government. They asserted time after time that it was the purpose of the Communist Party to disrupt the Government in favor of Soviet Russian influence. I have stated that specifically because it comes right down to the present day.

I took the opposite point of view and accepted the sincerity of General Chou’s statements and of the intention of the Communist Party to enter into a coalition government. I was accused first of knowing too little about China, too little about the Communist Party, and I was attacked under cover here and directly in the United States by members of the Kuomintang Party for misleading the Government. That continued until very recently and only ceased because of the Communist propaganda against me personally. But the resistance to my view continues unabated.

Now on the other side, I felt that I recognized the Communist feeling or fears that the Government did not intend to have a genuine coalition government, that it was maneuvering for a military superiority which would crush the Communist Party, and that it would continue to employ Kuomintang secret police, Government secret police, railroad guards, etc., to suppress political meetings of the Communist Party and practically destroy the body of the party. At that time I recognized the organized demonstrations which were hostile to the Communist Party and which indulged in violence against Communists in Chungking, Peiping, and possibly other places. And I made a public statement of that at the time of the signing of the agreement of February 25th. I felt then that this particular group in the Kuomintang Party was trying to incite the Communist Party to some retaliation in order that they could accuse the Communist Party of specific acts indicating that they intended to break their agreements. I therefore asked General Chou to refrain from any retaliatory statements or other acts of retaliation, which he did very successfully at that time. So we had a brief period of apparent acceptance of good faith and of very solid agreements. But with my departure for the United States, there began a series of steps by one side or the other which rapidly mounted up to a complete disruption of all that we had struggled to achieve. The missteps, or bad judgment, were displayed successfully by both sides until we now have reached the present tragic situation.

Now I have not only been working to see that a coalition government was established but one which removed the arbitrary power of government from one party and evolved a democratic set-up. This naturally under any circumstances would be vigorously opposed by those who were going to lose power and position. I was also involved in persuading a considerable group in the Government, political and military, to a course of action that they felt was perilous for China because of their conviction that the Communist Party’s purpose was to disrupt the Government and not to cooperate in the Government.

You are familiar with the actions of the Government which you felt were in violation of our understandings, such as Tu Li-ming’s early operations in Manchuria and the refusal of the Government to admit teams into Manchuria, such as continued Government advances after they occupied Changchun, and the active operations carried out in Shantung the latter part of June. You are also familiar with the statements credited to Government leaders, and to the Generalissimo himself, that a policy of force was the only practical procedure. I won’t go into the details of those factors because you are already familiar with them. I merely want to remind you of the series of events which greatly weakened my position in dealing with the Government and which continue to be held up to me time and again.

The first error, as I told you the other day, I thought, was an inexcusable one which has weakened your position ever since. It was your failure to submit that list of troops in three weeks in keeping with the February 25th agreement. That immediately confirmed the assertions by the irreconcilable members of the Kuomintang. Its issuance could not possibly have done you any harm. The refusal to submit the list was apparently used as a political weapon but frankly, I think it was a tragic error of judgment, because it was a direct and serious violation of a very recently signed agreement. Now I am not comparing that refusal to the refusal to submit a list of delegates to the State Council or to the National Assembly scheduled for May 5th. I am not comparing the two acts. The reasons were quite different. I could understand something of your hesitancy at that time regarding the delegation for the National Assembly.

The next serious error, though not as great as the failure to submit that list, was the attack on Changchun. That was a serious error because it was utilized to force a course of political action which meant that later the Government would probably utilize a similar success to force their desired course of action and would excuse it accordingly.

The last of these overt series of mistakes, as I see them, were the offensive operations in Shantung after June 8. I had had the greatest difficulty in persuading the Generalissimo to agree to the truce arrangement of June 7. I had tried to have him take that action while he was in Mukden but his generals there had evidently over-persuaded him against my recommendations. I finally got him to accept my recommendation on June 7. Then in a five day campaign in Shantung, from June 9 to June 14 or 15, you about wrecked everything I was trying to do. I begged General Chou to halt the operations somehow or other because it was inexcusable. He never gave me any explanation about it, so I assume that probably matters had gotten beyond control; but it wrecked almost everything I was trying to do to restore peace to China. It was threatening key points of the Government at Tsingtao and it was in direct violation of a truce that was only a few days old.

Now I ask you also to have in mind that my representations to the Government have been, in effect, the opposite of what I have been representing to you here now. I have taken every one of their actions which I thought were wrong or inexcusable and emphasized them, perhaps even more than I am now doing regarding the Communist actions; because I thought the Government in its position was the more responsible, and with its more effective communications, it could more easily control its people; but also because there were Government leaders who were making provocative public statements which in effect discredited, or certainly discouraged, what I was trying to do. I told General Chou the other day that I seldom had a pleasant conversation—that my interviews were always disagreeable, I sit in the middle and I get nothing but the disagreements, the unpleasant aspects of the situation. At each conference all of the objectionable acts of the other party are brought forward and I have to characterize them one way or another.

I have made this lengthy statement because it is the first opportunity I have had to talk to you direct. I am doing it in the effort to have you understand what is in my mind and also to give you the picture, as I see it, of what is in the mind of a number of Government leaders—you know what is in your own minds.

Now, under these circumstances, in early August, Dr. Stuart and I found ourselves at a complete impasse regarding the military settlements. We sought for some way to open up a new lead to provide us with a basis for bringing hostilities to an end. The Generalissimo insisted that the Communists must agree to evacuate the region from Hwaian north to the Lunghai railroad. He insisted that the Government would take over the local governments—the magistrates. The Communist Party did not agree. I tried to break that deadlock by finding some compromise regarding the question of local government. The last proposal as I recall was that in those hsiens which had been under Communist control prior to the Japanese invasion, the governments would continue under Communist officials until the State Council had settled the issue. General Chou explained to me that such a partial adjustment was dangerous because it would be applied to all the Communist occupied areas whereas that was to be settled under the PCC on a political basis and not in connection with military negotiations.

In the effort to break that deadlock I arranged for General Chou to see the Generalissimo personally. I had hoped that only those two would be present so that they might have a freer interchange of views and get some confidence in each other; in the sincerity of the other’s views. I have been struggling all along to find some way to create confidence of one side in the other, some degree of confidence or trust which is absolutely necessary if agreements are to amount to anything.

You are familiar with the small group convened at that time which got nowhere, though the Government representatives did suggest the proposal for a compromise arrangement regarding local governments. We had the same disagreements about the city of Chengteh. There was some disagreement regarding the Tsingtao railroad, but I did not regard that as a serious matter for adjustment. There were also the matters of the local government in Hopei and a portion of Jehol and in Antung. Again, I did not regard those as too difficult of adjustment. But we found ourselves in a situation of a complete impasse and the fighting was growing more and more serious. It was then that Dr. Stuart and I turned to the question of this Five Man Group. It was our understanding that General Chou had finally accepted the proposition of going ahead with that meeting without a flat statement that the cessation of hostilities would be automatically determined at the close of that meeting. General Chou does not agree with us on this—the misunderstanding is merely a matter of opinion, but I mention it so there will be no confusion in your minds as to the Government attitude. It was Dr. Stuart and I who misunderstood, not the Government. We were struggling to produce some evidence of good faith on both sides to give us a lever sufficient to effect an agreement for the cessation of hostilities. Then the situation completely reversed itself—the Generalissimo who had been difficult to persuade to agree to the Five Man meeting now insisted on the Five Man meeting, and General Chou who we thought had agreed now insisted on the Committee of Three. If it wasn’t so tragically serious, it would be amusing.

Now, by all the logic that Dr. Stuart and I can command (I mention him frequently because it is a reassurance to me when I can find a man who knows China as well as he does and knows you people as well as he does, to be in agreement with me) it appeared greatly to the advantage of the Communist Party to go through with this meeting of the Five Man Group rather than to prolong the discussion while the military operations grew more and more serious. Meanwhile, to add to the difficulties, we have had a tornado of propaganda which has done much to influence both sides. Propaganda for the purpose of influencing public opinion is one thing, but when the propaganda influences Government leaders or the party leaders, that is another. I find that even General Chou is influenced in his position by the provocative statements of the Government leaders and I find the Government people similarly influenced by the provocative statements of the Communist propaganda. Now when a leader bases the logic of his actions on propaganda, which is notoriously inaccurate, you have an impossible situation on your hands. I find both sides reacting to this mess of misinformation which is being put out to influence others. The theory, of course, of propaganda is that if you repeat a statement often enough, the people will believe it. Here a situation has developed where the leaders responsible for the propaganda have begun to believe their own propaganda, and are basing their considered actions accordingly.

Let me give you one example that is now widely circulated. I am talking about this Surplus Property transaction. I hardly expect you to believe what I am about to say because your suspicions are possibly too great for that. The fact of the matter is that I have never discussed surplus property with the Generalissimo or any military leaders in the Government. They have never brought any pressure to bear on me in regard to the matter. My only discussions had been with Dr. Soong and they had been entirely directed toward what reduction would be made below the original cost. What per cent of interest would be paid on any debit established? What allowance would be made for the cost of handling the property in the far-off Solomon Islands, New Guinea and such places where no labor was obtainable? What allowances, if any, would be made by the length of time it would take to evacuate the property and for the deterioration from the tropics that would ensue? What restrictions could I have imposed to prevent the War Department and the Navy Department in Washington from drawing upon this property and moving it back to the U. S.?

There was never a word said by Dr. Soong in urging an early settlement. To the contrary, it was my duty in presenting the interest of the U. S. Government to urge that this matter be settled and gotten out of the way. These discussions went on from last January down until this August. The Chinese Government could have settled this in February or March or April or May, but they were trying to drive the best bargain they could and we were confronted by many intricate complications in the handling of the materiel.

It came to a head in August merely because we were closing out all surplus property negotiations outside of the United States. The head of that activity, Mr. McCabe, came out here to finish this affair and then to resign having completed his job in Europe and in the Pacific. Representatives of the War and Navy Departments came out here, not at all with regard to China, but to insure that Mr. McCabe’s negotiations would not be upset by the War and Navy Departments after he returned to Washington because of their habit of taking over certain portions of this property.

This deal had to be completed then, or China thrown out of any further consideration. It could not be delayed. We would have had to go ahead and sold the cream of that property to other Governments—the Dutch, Australians, New Zealanders and maybe up to Japan—and allowed the rest to deteriorate or to dump it in the ocean. It could not be put in abeyance while a struggle here for 18 years prolonged itself into, we know not, how many months or years. We either had to deny China—that is, deny the people of China—the economic opportunity that should finally result for the rehabilitation of the country through the proper handling of this property or go ahead as we did for the benefit of the people of China. It can have little, or no, relation to this present military situation. It will be months and months before they really can bring anything in through the port of Shanghai. The point I want to make is that the Government never pressed for a conclusion; they would probably have been willing to drag out these negotiations, but we would not do that. The propaganda converts this 800 million dollar program into a tremendous support of a military campaign which it was and is not at all.

That propaganda effort is quite a little bit like that regarding the lend-lease procedure in the U. S. which came almost entirely from my effort in Washington when I was home to get the matériel for your 10 divisions and I have been slapped in the face with that ever since, but I got it. This [for?] your 10 divisions at the end of the 18 months period. I felt a moral responsibility to see that such materiel would be available. I organized this Military Advisory Group without waiting for the authority of Congress, to provide me with a staff to work out the details for the Communist school at Kalgan which was to have started April 15 and which General Chou asked to have delayed until July 1 and for which I had accumulated the necessary materiel in Peiping.

I wish to conclude this lengthy statement by saying that if your purpose is sincere in the desire to go ahead and participate in the reorganization of the Government, and is naturally accompanied by a desire for the cessation of hostilities, I think you must endeavor to quite some of your suspicions and some of your fears sufficiently to enable us to make a new start. Dr. Stuart and I are endeavoring to secure the same reaction from the Government. The whole struggle is one of a lack of trust and suspicion of insincerity and of evil intent.

I think I know exactly how you feel regarding the menace of the secret police and how you feel regarding the suppression of freedom of expression. I have expressed to you how the Government feels in its suspicions and in its fears. Now we Americans have been sitting in between, trying to establish some basis of action that would demonstrate good faith on both sides and we are defeated by suspicion and defeated by fear.

You can well understand without my commenting on it, the effect of the present Russian propaganda. It certainly doesn’t help us in any settlement out here. It merely fortifies those members of the Kuomintang Party who have opposed me from the start and makes them that much harder for me to deal with. That is a fact regarding which we can do nothing, but I ask you to have it in mind when you are dealing with the Government in your efforts to reach some acceptable compromise.

I have endeavored to exercise sufficient pressure on the Government to prevent repetitions of the Kunming affair, and particularly demonstrations such as that at the Nanking railroad station, and the threatening surveillance in Shanghai. I cannot prevent, nor do I think the Generalissimo can entirely prevent, the provocative statements of certain leaders, particularly military leaders. I know for a fact he has deplored many of these statements and reprimanded the individuals.

But you must remember that these individuals are absolutely convinced that the Communist Party is not to be trusted, that they are afraid the Generalissimo will make dangerous concessions and they come out into public speech accordingly. When you are weighing such provocative statements, don’t forget that you issue in English from Executive Headquarters, which I created and which has for its purpose mediation and peaceful adjustments, that you issue provocative statements and also attacks on me personally, utilizing Executive Headquarters for that purpose.

Have that in mind when you get mad at the other man.

I have given you everything in my power to facilitate your movements about China, your communications and your materiel for that purpose: I have virtually forced the Government for agreements for your communications, etc., to facilitate your business. I think the only hope for the present situation is to bury some of these suspicions and irritations for the moment in the effort to find some basis of compromise without continuing to delay and allow the military situation to go from bad to worse. I can assure you of my most honest efforts to influence the Government to that end. I have been just as frank with them as I have been with you. If there is any action on the part of the Government that I have thought was wrong or unjustified, I have just as plainly indicated that as I have these various illustrations of what I thought were Communist errors.

As I told Mr. Wang Ping Nan the other day, if you have lost confidence in me, you should say so and I will withdraw immediately. I was told the other day that the Chinese procedure would be for both sides, whatever their intention, to go along with me in order to save my face. I am not interested in face, I am only interested in peace in China. Dr. Stuart, I hope, commands your confidence and I know he will be untiring in his efforts to find some basis of settlement. He may not be quite as brutally frank as I am, but you cannot possibly question his integrity or honesty of purpose unless you have lost all faith in human nature.

Now I repeat again that the Generalissimo did not give me his reaction to my proposal or proposals which included the meeting of both the Five Man Committee and the Committee of Three, but I presume that he will after talking to his people.

I ask you to acknowledge to General Chou that I received his memorandum and I appreciate it. I have had great respect for General Chou’s personal integrity. I apologize again for the length of this statement but it is my first opportunity to talk to you and I wanted to put all my cards on the table. I want you to have no doubt about what was in my mind. I had no ulterior motive of any kind unless it’s peace in China. That may be impossible to believe in this year of international bickerings. My one hope in the matter is to establish some trust. I fought the war on that basis and finally arrived at a situation where the other Allied officials came to believe that I was not scheming for the advantage of the United States. It was very difficult for about a year and a half to reach a point where the sincerity of my purpose was unquestioned.

Mister Tung: We are very appreciative of your long statement regarding your views. Your frankness and sincerity has moved us a great deal. The views you have spoken to us and the mistakes on our side you have pointed out, belong to the past. These points—the Communists did not hand in the list of their divisions, the incident at Changchun, and also the serious incidents in June—all these points you have already told to General Chou En Lai. Our interpretation of these incidents has already been given to you by General Chou. I am not going to make any more statement or argument regarding these points at this time. Regarding the issue of propaganda, I think you have it very clear because in the past we have for two times made an agreement on cessation of propaganda with the Kuomintang, once in Chungking and again in Nanking.

General Marshall: I confirm that.

Mister Tung: The Kuomintang Party has every facility for propaganda. For example they have all radio stations, Central News Agency, and other kinds of facilities. Because they have all these facilities they will not enter into an agreement with us regarding cessation of propaganda. Regarding the statement you have made on repeated propaganda, the Government side has repeated its propaganda time and again and at last they believe it themselves.

General Marshall: I agree with that. That is what I said.

Mister Tung: Regarding the problem of surplus property, there are some kinds of events in the world that have originally no bearing upon another event at all and they may happen at the same time and may have a strong influence on each other. This issue of surplus property is just one of the examples. According to President Truman’s statement last December, no financial aid would be given to China pending a coalition government, and now the surplus property, although not viewed from the military angle, is a financial aid to the Chinese Government. In view of the fact that a coalition government is not organized but a civil war is going on, it does form financial aid to the Chinese Government. We have sent forward to you a memorandum⁸ requesting you to convey to the United States Government our desires for a step more favorable to the Chinese situation.

General Marshall: I did.

Mister Tung: Regarding the consideration in the present struggle that each side should form a basis of mutual confidence and should get rid of mutual suspicion, I think that must be a factual expression and not only a verbal agreement.

General Marshall: That is the reason for the Five Man Group—that is exactly [why] we proposed it.

Mister Tung: We understood that if upon reaching some sort of agreement by the Five Man Committee, automatically the Government would issue the cease fire order. Now we find that the Government will not give the Communist Party any guarantee to issue such an order. The Government wants the Communist Party to issue orders while they will not give a guarantee to issue orders. That is not logical.

Mister Wang: I would like to point out that it is not an issue where the Communist Party has accepted the proposal and reverses to their decision to participate in the Five Man Committee. It was the misunderstanding of where they understood the Government was going to issue the order. We do not want the U. S. mediators to have the impression that we are reversing our decision because we never agreed in the first place. We thought the Government would give such a guarantee. If at that time, the Government could have promised that they would give the guarantee that the cease fire order would be published upon reaching an agreement by the Five Man Committee, that group would have started a long time ago.

Mister Tung: I think if you would review all the records of the meetings, it would verify that. General Chou suggested the meeting of the Committee of Three because that organization deals with the military situation. It is of paramount importance that we should stop these military operations immediately because it is through the military situation that the situation changes from day to day. The Committee of Three, of which General Marshall is the chairman, is not broken up, but is just merely in adjournment. We think that if you could reconvene the Committee of Three, and you could promote peace in China and lead China on the road to democracy. We have confidence in your role of mediation.

General Marshall: I would like to interrupt here to say that I have never had a meeting of the Committee of Three that I had not previously ascertained from both parties sufficient information to make me feel that the meeting of the Committee of Three would be successful. Whatever prestige and confidence the Committee enjoys is because of its success in reaching agreements. We had discussions for over a month before we had the meetings in June and in two or three days we reached agreements on all but those few points I mentioned before. I have felt that if the Committee met under the present circumstances and failed that it would be the end of the Committee, the Executive Headquarters and the end of mediation.

I am very glad to have had Mr. Tung’s views and I appreciate the tolerance and moderation with which he has expressed them. The points I brought up about the Communist errors were not for the purpose of discussing them again, but merely to explain that in all of my present discussions with the Government, they are brought up, as I said, time and again to confuse me and my efforts. Mr. Tung states that the difficulties are all of the past, but they remain with me every day in the present. The Chinese have no difficulty in going back in their memories two thousand years back to Confucius, so they have no difficulty whatever in going back a few months to the performance in Manchuria, Jehol and Shantung. I don’t think the translation of Mr. Tung’s remark about confidence and good faith was accurate because I was sure he did not think that I felt that you could wipe out all distrust and suddenly replace it with complete confidence. It will take many years to establish confidence between the two parties. What I have been strouggling for is enough of mutual confidence to enable us to terminate hostilities.

I have just had handed me a note that the Central Daily News Agency has come out with either a speculation or a direct statement, I don’t know which, that the Government is going to agree to a simultaneous meeting of the Committee of Three and the Informal Five Man Committee.

Mister Wang: That was carried in the Central Daily News paper this morning.

General Marshall: Considering that Dr. Stuart and I recommended that to the Government and no one else, they must have gotten the information from the Government. It wasn’t a Government suggestion.

Mister Tung: As soon as you get some official reaction from the Government we would appreciate it very much if you send it to us. In the meantime, we will immediately transmit the main contents of your remarks to General Chou.

Meeting adjourned at 1215.

7. Presumably Wu Yu-chang, member of the Chinese Communist delegation.
8. See telegram of August 27, p. 1052.