I recommended that we establish contact with [the Chinese communists]. We had established contact through a military mission there but that we did not... we should not withdraw recognition from Chiang Kai-shek at that time, but we should recognize the inevitability of the loss, Chiang's loss to Mao, and that therefore we should, establish relations of the type that I described that we had with warlords, with the communists, and that we have, say, a consulate there, so that there was a political contact in addition to the military. That, of course, did not go down.

Interview

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN PATON DAVIES - 14/1/97[nsarchive2.gwu.edu]