I would appreciate it, sir, if you would tell us approximately the period of time covered by those doubts and what were the prime reasons which gave rise to the doubts in the minds of the Far East. Admiral BADGER. The prime reason was the boastfulness and the effectiveness of the Soviet propaganda.

That propaganda drifted down into China, and from China, into other parts of the Far East. It was augmented by a quotation of some of the statements of our own people in regard to our disarmament, and so on, which they had picked up and spread around, and I think that that was the prime reason.

Senator CAIN. Admiral Badger, may I ask you this, in this connection: We spend considerable sums of money, though perhaps not well enough or large enough, on our Voice of America.

What is there about the Russian propaganda which, in your opinion, has made it more effective in terms of selling ideas to the people of the Far East, than our own psychological warfare or propaganda methods?

Admiral BADGER. Well, for one thing, it is an entirely different pattern. There is always a background of fear and threat in it-"Come with us and join us, or else"

And, although that may not always be expressed, it is always implied.

One of the first things that you always noticed before a Communist advance, in those countries, is that your employees start to leave you, for no reason whatsoever. They may be house employees. They may be industrial employees; and the reason for it is that they foresee a Communist occupation and advance, and they do not want to be identified as employees of the imperialists when they enter that particular area where they live.

That is done, and I have seen it done, by no real threat of advance at the time, but just infiltration of propaganda that comes in there says they are going to do it.

It is a question that you and I could discuss for an hour or two; but there is, in the Communist propaganda, I believe I am correct in saying that it is patterned to support a plan. It is very aggressive. It is well thought out, and there has been evidence of a certain type of propaganda offensive which has been too true not to give it weight among those people.

Senator CAIN. Well, Admiral Badger, I think you have just said something very significant.

If we are to remain in the Far East, it stands to reason that we are going to have to find a way in which to compete on an equal basis with the propaganda of the Soviet.

INCREASING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF OUR INFORMATION SERVICE

Out of your large experience, would you have any recommendations to leave with us now, in brief form, or later on, in written form, as to what we need to do in terms of propaganda to be more effective in the Far East, Admiral, than has been the case in the resent years?

Admiral BADGER. Yes, sir. If you will allow me, I have some material partially prepared on that subject, because I have been giving it great thought

Senator CAIN. If the chairman were to permit it

Admiral BADGER. And if you will permit me, I will be very glad to go back and, within a reasonable time, or sufficient time, to prepare, or to streamline it a little bit, and I will be glad to send it as part of the record, or part of my testimony, if you like.

Chairman RUSSELL. We should be very glad indeed to have it, Admiral. I think the matter that Senator Cain is discussing is one that has been of great concern to every Member of the Congress who is interested at all in this international picture. We apparently are defeated on every front in the propaganda war.

Admiral BADGER. I have seen this thing. May I have time to give you a couple of examples?

Senator CAIN. Well, let me say, sir, all I am sitting here for and all the other members of the committee are sitting here for is to benefit from the advice of witnesses, and if you will just proceed at your own pace, I will appreciate it.

Admiral BADGER. I will give you two brief examples of how this thing works. A newspaper reporter who is identified as a man who is at least a follower released a dispatch which said that we were going to reduce the number of marines in Tsingtao, sometime in 1948, by a thousand, and it came out in the papers and went all over the world, and I saw that thing when I landed.

I was coming in from somewhere and they handed me this news report and I didn't even leave the airfield. I got in a plane and flew from Tsingtao to Shanghai and called an international press conference, and there were 31 different nationalities present as I remember it, and I said, "This is not true and it has gone all over the world, and I request that you give the denial as broad a coverage."

Well, before I got to Shanghai, which was some 8 hours after the release, the Chinese currency had depreciated nearly 40 percent in value, and when the denial came out the next morning, why, the Chinese currency recovered and went back to a little bit better price than it had ever been before.

Now that is the international effect of the untruths, when people are edgy. A thousand marines, think of it.

WEAKNESS OF OUR PROPAGANDA EFFORT

Another case-we have to watch awfully carefully, and I don't know how the dickens we can do this one, but we are always a little inclined to criticize failure, you know, and sometimes we don't go into the reason for failure. I say that the Chinese Government was confronted `with too high expectations.

Iwon't go into that at any length, but we tried to assume that they were a democracy with all kinds of agencies and planning agencies and they could take stuff and expend it effectively, and so on; that there wasn't any politics in it and all the rest of it. Well, I think that they failed, but I think a heck of a lot of those people tried out there, but every now and then for some reason or other we would see a fellow come out there, maybe in business, and come back and say, "Well, this fellow is no good; he is a crook," and so on.

It would be repeated, and some of our very prominent people would say that. Well, it wasn't always a proper statement. Somees they criticized the strongest friends we had and the strongest

men of China, but that damn propaganda would pick that up and say, "This is what your American people are saying about this fellow, and that is what we have been telling you."

And I know that we ruined two or three very prominent people out there and their status by that vicious circle of picking up these things and having somebody here fall for it or some prominent commentator. It would go out there and come right back and be published in there as a statement of a prominent American.

He might be a prominent commentator, a prominent official. Now how we are going to lick that one I don't know, but it is a fact that that is a part of the effective planning of that propaganda and they never miss an opportunity.

Senator CAIN. Admiral Badger, I know that my understanding is being broadened by what you have just been saying and at your convenience if you will send along the memorandum, I shall be most grateful.

If, sir, you could put some emphasis on a phrase you used a few minutes ago-you said, if I understood you correctly, that Russian propaganda or Communist propaganda is largely effective in the Far East because it is working against a plan and what I want to try to understand is this:

Is one of our weaknesses propagandawise in the Far East that we are not working, as the Soviets or Communists are, against an agreedupon and understandable plan of operation? We seem to be spending money, Admiral Badger, without getting a hundred cents return on every dollar, it seems to me.

Amiral BADGER. I wouldn't want to make a comment on that situation out there now, because I haven't observed it.

Senator CAIN. Yes, sir.

Admiral BADGER. But when I was out there, I realized that that was true, and sometimes our propaganda was not in accordance with a plan.

EFFECT OF A DECISIVE VICTORY IN KOREA ON THE FAR EAST

Senator CAIN. Admiral Badger, if I have the time remaining to stay right with this subject, I wish to ask one other question. In your opinion, against what you have just been talking about, are the peoples of the Far East likely to judge American strength and the strength of the United Nations by what has taken place or may take place in Korea?

Adimarl BADGER. I think it has an influence, a very strong influence under certain circumstances, but we mustn't let that blind us to the fact that there are a good many other factors involved, and that those people are interested in their own welfare and security, mainly, and independence and so on, and regardless of what happens in the rest of the world, it seems to me a good idea not to overlook anything that is going to reassure them as nations or as, almost, individuals. Senator CAIN. Of course, I may be completely wrong, but it seems so obvious to me that a decisive victory, a decisive decision in Korea will do more than anything and everything else and much more rapidly-to convince our friends in the Far East that the United States and the United Nations are possessed of a strength sufficient to restore and maintain a free way of life, so to speak, in the Far East;

and I want other people to punch holes in that theory, if that is possible.

Admiral BADGER. I want to say this: You talk about decisive victory. I want the thing to reach an end and our objective attained as it was stated at the time we undertook the operation.

Senator CAIN. I thank you, sir.

Chairman RUSSELL. Senator Gillette.

(No response.)

Chairman RUSSELL, Senator Brewster.

POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A MODEL AREA FOR RECONSTRUCTION IN SOUTH CHINA

Senator FLANDERS. Admiral, through perhaps a mistaken sense of duty I was somewhere else this morning, and I read during the lunch hour on the ticker the news report of what you have been saying, some of which you have in effect repeated this afternoon.

I wonder if I would be wrong in saying that it is your conviction that military victory is necessary to peace, but that peace also requires effective economic, political, and social measures to consolidate the gains in a form which is to the advantage of the people themselves. Admiral BADGER. As I understand your question, my answer is in the affirmative; yes, sir.

Senator FLANDERS. Now, I am tremendously interested, as we all are, in what to do next in China, or in that area, all the way from Korea down through Indochina and the peninsula, where conditions seem to be so balanced and liable to go one way or the other.

You just mentioned a few minutes ago the dropping of rice in what, I presume, were famine areas as an example of one of the ways of affecting the minds of people.

I had an idea back in June 1947, and I wonder whether it is still desirable and feasible to work it out.

I wrote a letter to General Marshall, of which I shall read only these three paragraphs:

Would it be possible to clear a restricted area of Communist military strength and mark off that area for assistance and reconstruction? It might be from the Yangtze River south, or perhaps the area 50 to 100 miles north of the Yangtze might be included. If transportation, supporting coal mines and cotton textiles, for instance, could be reconstituted in that area, it would form a basis for reviving normal living for many millions of harassed people.

The difficulties are obvious. It would require close supervision on our part to make sure the assistance is not poured down the military rathole. It would be difficult to get such supervision to be politically acceptable to the Chinese Government, and it would be difficult to recruit and organize the necessary supervision.

Recognizing these difficulties and others which our experience would suggest, it might still be considered as one of the faint hopes in the Chinese situation.

I brought up this letter, Admiral Badger, because on the news ticker I saw, as I understood it, an expression of opinion on your part that North China and Manchuria were probably more or less permanently attached to the Soviet area of power, but that that power was not definitely consolidated, perhaps, in the south of China, which You will see follows the idea that I was expressing 4 years ago.

Now the thing which it seems to me we have got to plan and work on is a possibility of an entering wedge of some sort in this southern area, in which we combine military, economic, political, and social reorganization and other things. If that entering wedge can be devised and applied, is there not a chance that that area may be recovered for civilization?

It is quite an undertaking; is it not?

Your balloons with rice-not balloons, but airplanes with rice are just an example of a faint entering wedge of penetration. Taking the wraps off Chiang Kai-shek's army is a possible instrument to use for that purpose.

Is there any hope in that? That is my question.

Admiral BADGER. t is only a matter of opinion, sir, but my opinion is at the present time that it is not feasible within the limits of what is known as Communist-controlled China at the present time.

I think they would reject it as anything acceptable to them, and I do not believe that such a distribution could be controlled as you would like to have it controlled, or for the purposes or for the people that you would like to have it go to. Nor do I think that the military strength of Chiang Kai-shek is sufficient to establish such an area and maintain it and expand it.

On the other hand, this morning I had given consideration to the fact that we didn't have close contact to the people in China and offered what I considered to be the next most favorable solution, which was to do what you say where we can, which is beyond the limits of the bamboo curtain in Southeast Asia.

I also, because you were away this morning, will end this answer by stating that I emphasized the need for top-flight efficiency in the implementation of any undertaking we have out there.

We must have the highest type of engineering and planning and agricultural experts and so on.

EXPERIENCE OF ECA IN CHINA

Senator FLANDERS. So far as your experience has gone, are there any areas in which you have felt that the ECA has done fairly well? Are there other areas in which you have felt that the ECA has fallen down in these things?

Admiral BADGER. In my experience so far as China is concerned, that is the only direct contact I have had with the ECA. I just cannot say enough for them. The only trouble was they got out there too late. Senator FLANDERS. Yes. Well, I am glad to have that opinion from you, sir, because that organization is still intact.

Admiral BADGER. Yes, sir.

Senator FLANDERS. And still available.

Those are the only questions I had, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman RUSSELL. Senator Long?

(No response.)

POSSIBLE REASONS FOR OUR APPARENT PROPAGANDA FAILURE IN FAR EAST

Chairman RUSSELL. The questioning again comes to me. I had not intended to ask any other questions. I do hope that you will comply with Senator Cain's request and give us your views on this psychological warfare that we call propaganda.