In view of the testimony of General George C. Marshall before the joint houses of Congress on the hypothetical issue that if we permit Chiang’s forces to attack South China, we will be starting a global war, I would like to quote General Worton on a similar issue. “The occupation of Peking was not specifically in my orders,” he says, “but I was to occupy whatever strategic territory I deemed necessary. In the triangle previously referred to, was located the important mining area of Kailan at Tang Shan, which supplied the coal output of 150,000 tons per month, and the Nan Yuan, Pei Yuan Airfields. When I determined that the Communists would go into Peking if I did not, I decided to occupy Peking. At eleven o’clock one evening, Chou En-lai’s agent in Tientsin informed me that if I moved on Peking, the lives of every American Marine would be the price. I told him I was going into Peking, just when and where our forces would enter, and that he had better have as strong a force as I intended to have, and that I would also be supported by an air cover. We followed our blueprint, and not one of our men was scratched. We had no opposition whatsoever.” With the withdrawal of U. S. forces from this area the coal output, supplying power as far south as Shanghai, dropped to 30,000 tons. In Worton’s opinion, “as small a force as 15,000 troops, officered by men acquainted with China, could have kept the Reds from crossing into the coveted triangle.” But Marshall was determined to withdraw our forces. “The State Department to this day,” says Worton, “has never asked the opinion, as far I can ascertain, of any qualified military men who spent any length of time in China, on this subject.” He adds, “Manchuria should have been occupied and we should have insisted on a joint occupation force there with our allies. Any study of China and the Far East must be predicated upon a study of our relations with China since 1784. We have consistently held to the Open Door Policy for China and the Far East. We went to war with Japan because Japan had seized the coastal areas and was controlling the communication lines of China. Many men died across the Pacific to regain China for the free world, and yet, in the course of minutes, as time is known, we have lost China. It is a truism of students of the Far East that, ‘As China goes, so goes the Orient’.”