The Black Dragon

Many people have conjured up the spector of a Chinese dragon, slinking down Congressional corridors, exhaling its unhealthy influence into strategic offices, and craftily escaping detection. They call it the China Lobby, but until now no one has attempted to document this configuration. This has enabled magazines like Time, whose editor-in-chief Henry Luce has often been considered a charter member of the Lobby, to laugh away the idea of its existence.

Fortunately the time when Time could sneer has come to an end. A magazine has finally gathered the facts and published them in a compendium of the China Lobby's growth, personnel, activities, and connections. In its latest issues, The Reporter has proven the Lobby's presence on the Washington landscape and has detailed its attempts to further the cause of Chiang-kai Shek. The articles published so far lack the invective, the denunciatory tone, and the indignant cries of betrayal that one might expect in a treatment of so controversial a subject, and instead permits the facts to render their impression unadorned.

Though it is perhaps true that The Reporter has but scratched the topic's scaly surface, it has performed a service to the public merely by establishing the Lobby's existence. Once the Lobby has been proved a fact, there is less danger of its subverting American Far Eastern policy, as it has ben trying to do--with some success--for the last two or three years.

In one sense, however, it is unfortunate that The Reporter is the publication rendering this service, for its circulation is small and mainly concentrated on a clientele which has few doubts concerning the China Lobby's existence anyway. But as The Reporter's editorial said, the job has to be done and somebody had to make a start.