Wounds

From Mukden's railway station many trains chugged northward last week. Their cars were jammed with trucks, bicycles, ammunition--and Russians. The Soviet Army was evacuating Manchuria's largest metropolis, leaving the stunned, hungry, overcrowded city to the Chinese.

In Mukden, factories lay like raddled skeletons, picked clean of their machinery. Fires raged amid the tenements. The cloud of civil war cast a shadow on the scene; as Chinese Government troops took control of the city, Chinese Communists were poised menacingly on the outskirts.

Ravaged, still-disputed Manchuria was the ugliest wound that would have to heal before the pattern of Chinese unity could be complete. To heal other sore spots in Shansi, Honan and Hupeh provinces, tireless U.S. Peacemaker George Marshall toured North China, working in the difficult lower political levels to win practical realization of the military truce he and China's top leaders had arranged. Amid his stops was isolated Yenan, capital of Chinese Communism. There he remained overnight, caught cold watching an elaborate performance of drum dancers and folk singers in an icy auditorium, had a long talk with No. 1 Communist Mao Tse-tung. It was a good bet that Manchuria was mentioned more than once.

Marshall's final call was at bomb-torn Hankow, where he summed up his observations: "Military agreements will be carried out. . . . The situation is most encouraging. . . . Last month and the next two are the most critical months in the history of China for the next 50 years." At week's end the General took off on a 12,000-mile hop to Washington. There he would tell President Truman and Congress how the U.S. could provide concrete assistance to China in her critical months. The principal item on his list of recommendations would be a generous loan to help finance China's reconstruction.

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