THE COMMUNIST North Korean invasion of South Korea on 24 June (25 June by Korean time) 1950 with what was generally assumed to be Soviet approval, if not indeed connivance, launched the most serious crisis since the Second World War. It occasioned one of the clearest examples of Franks’s influence on both sides of the Atlantic. The attack occurred in an area where Anglo-American relations had faced difficulties, even during the Second World War. The ‘loss’, as many Americans saw it, of China to the communists had produced a good deal of pressure in Congress against Acheson who was blamed for the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists. Even greater insistence was therefore laid on the US government to ensure Formosa (Taiwan), whither Chiang’s forces had retreated, should be protected from falling to the communists. When Britain recognised the new Chinese regime on 6 January, Franks had hoped that the Americans might, in time, follow suit. But he had to report on his visit to London in February that such a development was highly unlikely. So there were clear Anglo-American differences about the best policy for the Far East when the Korean crisis arose. In the first months of the war the British were particularly concerned to ensure that the United States did not extend their action to involve Formosa and thereby risk the possibility of drawing China into the conflict.