Vernal Mood

"Spring in China," cabled TIME Correspondent William Gray, "is marked again by the normal abnormalcy of civil war--this time abnormally serious. There is probably even less cause for optimism now than last fall. By every means Nationalists and Communists are trying to improve their position with all haste before Referee Marshall returns.

"Despite all of Marshall's good efforts, there is little sign that China will soon, achieve what most Americans would regard as a real compromise. The Communists still plainly believe that compromise, while sometimes expedient, means surrender of gains or inhibition of opportunities. Their opportunities this, spring lie in hunger, inflation and hardship."

But There Is No Peace. The veteran Communist negotiator in Chungking, General Chou Enlai, openly proclaimed an all-out struggle for control in Manchuria, where the Russians were slowly pulling out. Factional bitterness was weirdest at Kaiyuan, Manchuria, where the Government's U.S.-trained First Army had broken through a Communist blockade on the road north. There, when a Government-Communist-U.S. truce team arrived, the First Army's commander promptly put the Communist trucemakers in protective confinement, lest they be shot or captured by Communist forces.

According to Yenan, the Communists were sending back to Government lines the bodies of Government troops in coffins "as an expression of a sincere desire for peace and unity." This week Generalissimo Chiang made another gesture of compromise; he invited General Chou and other leaders to tea and a discussion of their differences.

Between the implacable factions writhed the impotent moderates. Cried Chungking's independent Ta Rung Pao: "The corpses of those who have starved to death strew the roads. People eat grass roots and tree bark. . . . Troops are sucking the blood out of villagers. . . . Local officials are making their lives bitter. . . . What makes our hearts ache most is this: all China needs peace, without which we shall not survive. If ambitious persons insist on more adventures, we shall all perish. . . ."

In such a spring of near-despair, all China looked with hope toward the returning figure of General Marshall.

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