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Dr. John Earl Baker - 2

"Because more than 85% of the population of China is agricultural and for centuries has been almost entirely unmolested by government, a system of ethics was evolved by which were governed people of the same household, of the same neighborhood, as well as those who merely chanced to meet -- all this without the intraposition of anything more than the reminder of an occasional bystander as to what were the accepted rules in the case of any difference.

"Not one Chinese in a thousand can trace his ancestry to a military figure in a thousand years. Left to themselves the Chinese people have no visions of conquest, no aspiration for world dominion. They ask only to be allowed the opportunity to work out for their children better homes, better schooling, better opportunities.

"China is one big area of frustration for the communist agitator. There was a period back in the twenties when warlordism made the prospect so dismal for some of the most patriotic of China's intellectuals who, partly in a mood of despair and partly in that of scientific experimentation, turned to Moscow in the hope that the central principle which held Russia together and was able to expel foreign invaders would do the same for China. Probably none of us here would deny that certain agrarian conditions in China were crying for remedy, yet communistic technique after four or five years of trial in Kiangsi proved such an utter failure that the forces behind it, on their historic march into the Northwest, changed their tactics very decidedly and now follow a method, which, according to all reports more resembles the New England town meeting than anything else in modern history.

"Against this agricultural people struggling to find a practical basis for cooperating in modern government and ready not at all to challenge any other people to arms, there has come an invader with battleships, heavy artillery, tanks and a great air armada. Wherever he can bring to bear this heavier type of weapons he prevails, for you can't stop a battleship with a rifle, nor a tank with a bayonet; but wherever the terrain is unsuitable for these heavier weapons and he must meet the Chinese with rifle, machine gun and hand grenade, he is stopped dead in his tracks. Hence, there are no occupied areas in China -- there are only penetrated areas -- routes of invasion not wider than a cannon can shoot. Some 3,000 miles of railway and navigable river together with the coastline of China has been taken by these invaders -- not more than five or ten miles wide, total in area less than half the province. So long a line can be only thinly held. It is subject to a tremendous daily attrition.