So Happy

The American in China who has most eased General George Marshall's ticklish mission with sound advice is a spare, aging missionary named John Leighton Stuart. In his 70 years, lively, thoughtful Dr. Stuart, one of the oldest and wisest of Old China Hands, has learned more about China, its mind, habits, languages, rulers and governments than most Chinese.

The invaluable education of Leighton Stuart really began in 1905 when, as a newly married, newly ordained Presbyterian minister, he returned from the U.S. as a missionary to the-country where he had been born, the son of a missionary. After eleven years of teaching the New Testament at the Nanking Theological Seminary, Stuart got the job that really suited him; he became president of China's famed No. i Christian university, American-endowed Yenching.

As the top U.S. educator in China, Dr. Stuart traveled the country far & wide, stayed aloof from China's politics, met and endeared himself to Chinese of every stripe. More important, he came to be well known and trusted by Chiang Kaishek, Madame Chiang, Premier T. V. Soong and Communist negotiator Chou En-lai (some of Communist Yenan's leaders are Yenching graduates).

Often during the five years before Pearl Harbor, Dr. Stuart acted as a Sino-Japanese middleman. Betweentimes, he was kept busy bailing his Nationalist-minded students and faculty members out of Jap occupation headquarters and stalling Japs who wanted to hoist the puppet flag over Yenching. After the start of U.S.-Jap hostilities, when Stuart himself was interned in a house in Peiping, the Japs, who had hoped to exploit his close personal friendship with Chiang, refused to let him be repatriated to the U.S. He spent the war writing a commentary on the New Testament and playing anagrams with other prisoners.

Plan for the Future. After the war Dr. Stuart planned to set Yenching going again; then he would retire, to end his days in China. But last month General Marshall's man-to-man attempts to get Chiang and Chou En-lai to continue talking peace stalled. He called in Dr. Stuart, asked him to speak to the Nationalist leader. In a few days, Old China Hand Stuart helped Westerner Marshall achieve the truce he sought. And he had given Marshall an idea.

Last week, in a move that surprised the nation, the State Department and Congress, and delighted the Chinese, President Truman appointed Leighton Stuart U.S. Ambassador to China. Dr. Stuart will not supersede Marshall, who will remain in China indefinitely as U.S. Special Envoy, nor will he be Marshall's leg man. He will complement the General, suggest policy, warn, recommend.

For China, which celebrated with unprecedented unanimity Dr. Stuart's new "face" and Harry Truman's excellently inspired choice, the appointment meant another hope of unity. For Leighton Stuart, it was a stirring climax to a life of service. Never had China had so much need for the dean of its U.S. missionaries.

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