China Man?

Donald Nelson landed in Washington last week after a 63-hour plane ride from Kunming, China. He went to his apartment to wait for the White House to call for his report. Don Nelson seemed more cheerful about China’s future than about his own.

Last month, when the President dispatched Don to China, he told Julius A. (“Cap”) Krug to “take over WPB and run it.” Last week, when reporters asked if Nelson would come back to WPB, Cap Krug, busily reorganizing WPB up & down, answered in a hurt voice: “That’s not a nice question.”

The Chinese junket removed Don from Washington in time to avert an explosive feud inside WPB (TIME, Sept. 4). Otherwise, the trip’s purpose was something of a mystery. But Donald Nelson had bustled happily for 16 days through Chungking’s mud and rain, conferred and consulted dynamically with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his advisers. The patient Chinese, even after seven years of war, were polite—in fact, they were so courteous and cooperative that Don Nelson fell in love with China. If the President will only allow it, he would rather like to go back to China as the U.S. Government’s No. 1 “China man.”