“Mr. Speaker, over this weekend we have learned the extent of the disaster that has befallen China and the United States. The responsibility for the failure of our foreign policy in the Far East rests squarely with the White House and the Department of State. The continued insistence that aid would not be forthcoming, unless a coalition of government with the Communists were formed, was a crippling blow to the National Government.…This is a tragic story of China, whose freedom we once fought to preserve. What our young men had saved, our diplomats and our President have frittered away.”
(President John F. Kennedy, referring to the fall of free nationalist China, under Chaing Kai-shek, to the Chinese Communists under Mao Tse-tung. John Kennedy: A Political Profile, p. 80. January 25, 1949.)
