"What Can Li Do?"

Defeated and helpless, Chiang Kaishek, for 22 years the dominant figure in China, stepped down last week. His retirement symbolized one of the great shifts in the 20th Century's turbulent history: some 460 million Chinese, a quarter of the human race, were passing under the domination of Communism.

When Chiang told Kuomintang officials to support Vice President Li Tsung-jen, one of his hearers asked: "What can Li do? What are his ways & means to improve the present situation?" Everybody in China, including Li, knew the answer. Li had almost nothing with which to bargain with the Red armies who at week's end stood within 15 miles of China's capital, Nanking. The government was preparing to move to Canton on the south coast and its armies were pulling southwest toward Kweilin and south toward Chekiang Province.

Although Li was a respected, energetic man, he was left a sorry legacy and had no policy except to sue for peace with the Reds. The Communist Boss Mao Tse-tung had won the war; he could dictate the terms of peace. What Mao wanted was power to put China in the Communist bloc. That he already had. He could proceed along the path of compromise and coalition certain that, with Chiang's passing, the back of anti-Communist resistance in China had been broken.

Mao's victory made a major change in the political and strategic world picture on the western shore of the Pacific. From Bering Strait to the Gulf of Tonkin Communism was now the major force. The western world merely held sentinel positions in Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia. Indo-China, Malaya and Burma --all three in turmoil--lay beneath the Communist threat.

Not since Hitler had stood on the French coast looking west across the Atlantic had the danger been so great.

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