THE GLORY OF PLUMBING

One of the world's most important cities (to the U.S. position in world strategy) is Mukden, capital of Manchuria. Last week Mukden was virtually under Communist siege. If it fell, the Communists might well carve Manchuria from China and incorporate it into the Soviet bloc. TIME Correspondent William Gray went to Mukden to see how the war was going. His report:

Mukden is subzero country at this season. A ragged blanket of snow spreads over the surrounding plain; canals and streams are ice. The wind cuts through the warmest clothes. Yet there seemed to be less spiritual desolation in Mukden this week than when I saw it under Russian rule in February 1946, after the Soviet rape of Manchuria's industry. A lot of people can muster a smile now. But nobody could find cause for confidence; the Chinese talked of cold homes, high and rising prices, the failing electricity supply. Seven provincial governors wait to enter provinces which the Communists hold, and the appointed mayors of Harbin and Soviet Dairen are also stalled in Mukden. Some talked about "the good old days" from 1932 to '45 under the Japanese.

With a Warm Heart. An American official said: "I don't know whether we'll be here next spring or not. The sixth offensive was successful; the Communists accomplished everything they wanted. They are winning the war of attrition."

Said a Chinese businessman of another, perhaps even more crucial, deficit: "It takes a cause and a strong conviction to be willing to die. Our soldiers don't have it. It's simply the old story of haves and havenots. The Communists convince their troops that they are fighting to get something, the Nationalist troops don't know what they're fighting for."

This poverty of "cause" is nowhere more vividly illustrated than inside the frigid walls of an old Japanese prison in Mukden where the Nationalists are "re-indoctrinating" or "changing the minds" of some 2,000 Communist prisoners. The camp commandant claimed that this indoctrination course changed the minds of 90% of the Communists brought in. How did he do it? First, he said, with good treatment and "a warm heart." There are also big signs painted in white-and-blue characters which cry "Honor the National Government--Obey the Generalissimo!," pamphlets explaining the three People's Principles of Sun Yat-sen's earlier revolution, patriotic songs and U.S. propaganda posters.

My officer guides took me first through some dim, barnlike barracks (the stoves gave hardly enough heat to warm a small coffeepot). Several children who had been playing in the yard eyed us closely. They too were prisoners (the Communists use children for petty spying and to plant explosives, the guide said). Most of the other prisoners, standing in military formations, were singing. Phrase by phrase, the grey-uniformed men followed their tenor leaders in one song called I Love My Gun, another, Victory Song. They sang in excellent unison, breath steaming in the cold air.

With a Happy Little Girl. Recently, at the request of the Mukden camp commander, the U.S. Information Service has supplied a bright assortment of American propaganda posters. They cover the walls of the prison auditorium, a cold and cavernous building called Sun Yat-sen Hall. They stand out like dark flowers on snow. One shows a small American girl sitting on a modern flush toilet and looking round-eyed, with embarrassment no doubt, at being thus photographed. Chinese captions describe the sanitary advantages of such equipment.

There are also pictures of helicopters, a small family airplane, Congress in session and Vandenberg orating, portraits of Truman, Stassen and La-Guardia, big bridges, Admiral Byrd at the South Pole, an American ballot box, a synagogue and some Christian churches, the Supreme Court, the varied races in America, happy American home life, a modern swimming pool, an American luxury liner.

To an American briefly in Mukden in this winter of war, such propaganda seems to say that there is a curious shallowness and unreality in the American effort to transmit our message to other peoples--who in this case can never be lifted out of Manchuria's present misery by the sight of a happy little girl with flush plumbing, or luxury liners starting off on pleasure cruises.

More seriously, it seems to say that China's Nationalist forces, if they are grateful for these posters, must be in fairly desperate need of some message of their own. They have little to offset the ancient propaganda of famine and misery which has turned millions of Chinese into the warring forces of world Communism, and given them the will to fight which seems to be deciding, more than anything else, the destiny of China.

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