Word: stuarts
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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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...
...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...
...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...
...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...