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Andrew HeiskellAndrew Heiskell
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Europe, and then deal with the Pacific at a later date?” Harry was already then the sort of Mac Arthur bandwagon, if you can call it that, of which much more occurred at a later date. Having been born in China, having been brought up in China, having a father who was a Chinese missionary, this had an enormous impact. It marked him for life. To his last days he felt that we had done right by China.

Q:

We, meaning America?

Heiskell:

We, America. He tried to influence, and succeeded in influencing the posture of Life on that score. He was in the post war era, he became really quite, not violent--[pauses]--you just couldn't win an argument about China with him. He felt that the government wasn't doing right by China. He felt that--he did not belong to the Joe McCarthy category of people who said that our Communists sold down China down the road. But he felt that the U.S. could have saved China, and that it didn't, and that this was a terrible thing to have happened. At all times, all throughout the years, China was on his mind. It wasn't quite China first, but it was nearly China first. That was the one subject about which one could really say that Harry was quite unreasonable, and somewhat dictatorial.

As a generality, Harry didn't like to give orders. He didn't want to tell the editors what to do. He really wanted to convince them, and he was a great one for argumentation. He would try to argue the case, whatever, forgetting China, whatever. He wouldn't say, “Well, we've got to take a stand on this, or on the following





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