[CougarGA7]

Here's an interesting document from around the same time.

Nanking International Relief Comittee - 20 June 1938

I just ran across this the other day and didn't realize the scope of the attempted relief effort after the rape of Nanking (Dec 1937).

[Homer_J_Simpson]

That is a remarkable letter. And timely (6/20). It is amazing what is available on line. I don't think the younguns today appreciate what they have that their parents didn't.

I have made some progress on Barbara Tuchman's book Stilwell and the American Experience in China. She explains that the American public got an idealized version of the Chinese from the missionary societies. Supposedly there were hundreds of millions of souls just dying to be converted to Christianity and to set up an American-style democracy. So Americans gave big bucks to the missionaries for relief while the government tried to look out for our far eastern interests without sinking too deeply into the exploitation practiced by the old colonial powers. Tuchman does a much better job of explaining the situation in China in the early twentieth century, so I recommend her book to anyone who wants background on the China of 1938.