When Marshall arrived in China, the Nationalist Armies were over-extended, that is, their supply lines were stretched so long and so thin that they could not be protected from constant Communist raids. Chiang’s Armies held the main lines of communication, to be sure, and all the large cities of North China and a few in Manchuria. However, these Armies, although many of them were trained and equipped with American arms, had little ammunition, and they were surrounded on all sides by the Soviet-backed Communist Armies. The Communists retained the initiative, could strike when and where they wished, and thus succeeded in keeping their opponents paralyzed. It was not difficult to see that the future of Chiang’s Armies was dependent solely on aid, especially on munitions, and that no country on earth but the United States could supply their requirements. To shut off this aid meant strangulation and death. Marshall’s first act was to set up a headquarters in Chungking, where he assembled his American experts on China and started a series of conferences with Communist and Nationalist leaders. From the beginning, the Chinese Communists showed, by their every action, that their only interest was in cutting off North China and Manchuria. They had no intention whatever of joining any kind of coalition government, over which they would not have complete control. After a great deal of discussion, these conferences resulted in superficial agreement on a few points of the controversy. Prior to his return to Washington, the General decided to make a hasty trip to Yenan, probably out of curiosity. He must have wanted a closer look at these people whose propaganda he appeared to have accepted as fact during the entire war. Whether this was emotional caprice or political expediency only history can tell. We cannot assume that he was ignorant, therefore we must assume that he knew what he was doing. Certainly the utterances of that period indicated that Marshall subscribed to the idea that we were dealing with “agrarian reformers.” In his testimony before Congress, Marshall stated flatly that he had known all the time that the Chinese Communists were Marxists “because they told me so,” he said. But while he was negotiating with them he certainly gave the impression to others that he did not think they were the same brand of Communists as were the Russians. This fact, in itself, makes him doubly culpable, in my opinion. It is an intent to deceive, which makes the deception all the more sinister. If he knew all the time that the Chinese Communists were the same brand of Communists as the Russians, and he still threw the weight of every decision he made in China to them, then he could not possibly have given more aid and comfort to the enemy, Stalin, had he been a member of the Communist Party.