Clearing the Decks

On Aug. 14, 1945--one day before President Truman announced the unconditional surrender of Japan--Nationalist China and Russia signed in Moscow a treaty of friendship and alliance. T. V. Soong, China's Premier and leader of its delegation, and Joseph Stalin, who had affably joined the long-dickering sessions, looked on as Molotov and China's Foreign Minister Wang Shih-chieh wrote their names. For the Chinese it was pretty much of a mockery--the terms which gave Russia a stranglehold in Manchuria had already been laid out by the Big Three at Yalta without China's concurrence.

After World War II, Russia backed the Communists in China, thus in effect making war on the nation which the treaty said was her friend and ally. The U.N. officially took note of that fact last year.

This week, galvanized by Dwight Eisenhower's order freeing them for action against the mainland, Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists on Formosa formally abrogated the 1945 treaty with Russia. The act was not a declaration of war against the U.S.S.R., but it meant that Formosa no longer recognized Russia's right to be in Dairen and Port Arthur, or any other Russian rights on the Chinese mainland, and it implied a restoration of the Chinese claim to Outer Mongolia (which, according to the 1945 treaty, was to become an independent nation but which actually has long been swallowed by Russia).

Like the Eisenhower order, the Formosa denunciation was a preparation--not action, but clearing the decks for action. Formosa cannot undertake major harassment of Red China--much less invasion --until she is much more heavily armed and equipped, and better trained in amphibious operations and other techniques of war.

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