China's American

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek last week appointed a U.S. Army officer his Chief of Staff. The officer: peppery Lieut. General Joseph W. Stilwell.

When General Stilwell arrived in Chungking a fortnight ago, on a special mission for President Roosevelt, the Chinese welcomed an old friend who literally spoke their language. Joseph Stilwell began to learn Chinese in 1919 (when he was a captain, 15 years out of West Point). Later the Army sent him to Peking to perfect his Chinese dialects. Off & on, he has spent 15 years in China.

General Stilwell is a soldier's officer, whose one passion is leading and training troops. His mouth is thin, his face hard and decisive beneath greying black hair. Fast of foot and mind, General Stilwell is forever barking: "Yah-Yah!" when his thoughts leap ahead of a companion's words. When they jump far ahead, he barks in triplicate: "Yah-yah-yah!"

In the Army they say of Joseph Stilwell that he is much more likely to be in a sleeping bag with troops than holed up in some comfortable headquarters. Last week Chinese and British officers on the Burma front (see p. 20) heard General Stilwell's "Yah!" He had already left Chungking for the front.

The China Front is still a future front for the U.S. Army and Air Forces. Fearsome problems of supply, aircraft and possibly troop transport remain to be solved before China's potentialities for an Allied offensive can be fully realized, by Joseph Stilwell or anybody else.

The Washington Front is the place where any Chinese offensive will have to start. To Washington last week the Generalissimo dispatched a distinguished Chinese military mission. Its head is rugged, handsome General Hsiung Shih-hui (who speaks excellent Japanese but little English), who has been a divisional commander and Governor of Kiangsi Province.

General Hsiung's prospective hosts in Washington said that he would be welcomed to the innermost Allied war councils--when they concern China. As China's ranking military spokesman in Washington, he will have "full opportunity" to express his views. He will advise the War Department in all Chinese military affairs. But in Washington, apparently, the Chinese will still have the status of guests at the Allied table, not equal members of the Allied command.

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