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TRUMAN, Harry S. Typed letter signed ("Harry S. Truman") to Will Durant, Washington, 7 November 1951. 1 page, 4to, on White House stationery, marked "Personal".
TRUMAN LASHES OUT AT THE "MURDERERS AND CROOKS IN CHINA" AND HOPES THEY WILL NOT BE "THE TAIL TO RUSSIA'S KITE"
"PROBABLY AFTER YOU AND I ARE BEING INVESTIGATED BY HISTORIANS FIFTY OR SIXTY YEARS FROM NOW, THERE WILL BE A SETTLEMENT IN CHINA". The President had met with noted historian Will Durant earlier that day, and while their talk had been cordial, Truman still had a few things to get off his chest. "I am not in complete agreement with what you suggest," he tells Durant in a letter not meant for public circulation, but he invites Durant to listen to his radio address that night: "and I think you will find that, with the exception of the murderers and crooks in China, we are in pretty close agreement. The Chinese communists confiscated all our Government property in China, imprisoned our consuls and murdered some of our missionaries and I am not quite broadminded enough to endorse that procedure. I am hoping you are right that they will not continue to be the tail to Russia's kite but I've got to see a demonstration of it before I believe it. I've been very badly mistaken in Chinese Governments. When I became President of the United States I thought Chiang Kai-Shek's Government was on the road to a real reform government in China. I found by experience that it was the most corrupt and terrible Government that China ever had. I am never to be satisfied with a Government that maintains its power by murder and slave labor. I think sometime or other, probably after you and I are being investigated by historians fifty or sixty years from now, there will be a settlement in China - at least I hope so." Truman took the nation to war against North Korea - and then against the Chinese communists themselves - because he was convinced that Communist powers from Moscow to Peking to Pyong-yang to Hanoi all acted out of a coordinated strategy of international aggression. Durant had evidently tried to argue the differences between Chinese and Russian communists, but Truman wasn't buying.
TRUMAN LASHES OUT AT THE "MURDERERS AND CROOKS IN CHINA" AND HOPES THEY WILL NOT BE "THE TAIL TO RUSSIA'S KITE"
"PROBABLY AFTER YOU AND I ARE BEING INVESTIGATED BY HISTORIANS FIFTY OR SIXTY YEARS FROM NOW, THERE WILL BE A SETTLEMENT IN CHINA". The President had met with noted historian Will Durant earlier that day, and while their talk had been cordial, Truman still had a few things to get off his chest. "I am not in complete agreement with what you suggest," he tells Durant in a letter not meant for public circulation, but he invites Durant to listen to his radio address that night: "and I think you will find that, with the exception of the murderers and crooks in China, we are in pretty close agreement. The Chinese communists confiscated all our Government property in China, imprisoned our consuls and murdered some of our missionaries and I am not quite broadminded enough to endorse that procedure. I am hoping you are right that they will not continue to be the tail to Russia's kite but I've got to see a demonstration of it before I believe it. I've been very badly mistaken in Chinese Governments. When I became President of the United States I thought Chiang Kai-Shek's Government was on the road to a real reform government in China. I found by experience that it was the most corrupt and terrible Government that China ever had. I am never to be satisfied with a Government that maintains its power by murder and slave labor. I think sometime or other, probably after you and I are being investigated by historians fifty or sixty years from now, there will be a settlement in China - at least I hope so." Truman took the nation to war against North Korea - and then against the Chinese communists themselves - because he was convinced that Communist powers from Moscow to Peking to Pyong-yang to Hanoi all acted out of a coordinated strategy of international aggression. Durant had evidently tried to argue the differences between Chinese and Russian communists, but Truman wasn't buying.