A Face to the World

This was the official face which the U.S. in various statements from its leaders turned to the world last week:

The U.S. is living in fear of war. It is in a jam in Korea, and unable right now to defend Europe. In one breath it begs its enemies to hold their fire; in another breath it confesses its own weaknesses. It does not want to get in trouble with anybody; it just wants brotherhood and peace.

Behind the statements was the exquisite and unconcealed anxiety of U.S. leaders over the world crisis, their dread of a winter campaign in Korea, their ignorance of Communist China's reason for plunging into Korea, their bafflement over what Mao Tse-tung would do next. It was at Mao, chiefly, that they talked.

"Everything in the World." Secretary of State Acheson led off. As a sounding board he used a convention of some 200 delegates of labor, industry, professional and religious organizations in Washington. He assumed for diplomatic reasons, or perhaps because he still believed it, that the Red Chinese were merely concerned about their property, that they had come into the fight in Korea just to protect their border. "We are in very considerable difficulties," Acheson said. "We must clear away any misunderstanding that there may be in the minds of the Chinese. Everything in the world," he said, in the statement beamed directly at Peking, was being done to make the Communist Chinese "understand that their proper interests will be taken care of."

The next day, Harry Truman flagged Peking with a message which was a mixture of mild indignation and reassurance. It complained that U.N. forces were being attacked by planes which fly from the "privileged sanctuary" of China, "and then flee back across the border." Mr. Truman did not think this was cricket. Said the President solemnly: "We have never at any time entertained any intention to carry hostilities into China . . . We will take every honorable step to prevent any extension of hostilities into the Far East."

"I Do Hope . . ." Last but not least, Omar Bradley, a professional fighting man who, like the rest of his tribe does too much public talking, spoke out for all the world to hear. His audience was a convention in Atlanta of newspaper editors. He dealt by indirection with other implications of the Red concentrations along the Yalu--that they might be planning to make North Korea a permanent open sore, that they might be trying to trap the bulk of U.S. strength while another, major Red assault was launched elsewhere.

"I do hope we can get together with China," Bradley said, "and find out what they have in mind. I am sure we could work out something with them on a satisfactory basis . . . War, if it comes, may mean the atomic bombing of our cities and homes. We have created the atomic bomb. Today, we would gladly trade it for a genuine course of righteousness in the world . . .

"It is a bruising and shocking fact that when we Americans were committed in Korea we were left without an adequate margin of military strength with which to face an enemy at any other specific point. Certainly we were left without the strength to meet a general attack ... except for the atomic bomb. We cannot continue this unnecessary jeopardy to our own security." As a first step in ending the "unnecessary jeopardy," the nation's highest military chief thought that the U.S. should try to acquire a "greater degree of readiness"--which, after all, was primarily his job.

"This Curtain of Lies." The U.S. leaders got their answer and it was one they had coming to them. The Peking radio flung back lies and insults: "This mixture of honeyed words and threats . . . We find Truman again offering reassurances and Acheson imploring . . . There is no misunderstanding. America has lied and smashed her way across the world to Chinese territory and into it, has seized Formosa and is threatening Viet Nam. The Chinese people are not deceived by ... this curtain of lies and bellicosity."

A Communist Chinese delegation was on its way to the U.N., not to plead their case but to accuse their accusers (see WAR IN ASIA). The U.S. and its allies awaited them, not in a mood to rebuke them but in a mood to conciliate.

It was a situation that invited the kind of reckless enemy misinterpretations which had made war look attractive to Hitler. The U.S. leaders' confessions of weakness and misgivings, their apparent willingness to make a deal with the Communists in spite of the lessons of the past, their air of pessimism akin to jitters, were not in the underlying U.S. currents of thought. Even through the Acheson, Truman and Bradley talks had run the determination of a nation to fight if there were no other choice. Korea itself was a guarantee of that. But this determination, so softly stated, so barely audible amidst the cries of woe, might be missed. Chiefly it was the face of fear and anxiety which last week the U.S. presented to the world.

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