How Far, Sir?

The British Commonwealth makes frequent and often valid distinctions between being anti-Communist and pro-American. Last week in London, convinced that the U.S. had a bull by the tail in Korea, the Commonwealth Prime Ministers tried frantically to wiggle themselves, the U.N. and the Americans out of the pasture. The Korean problems on the Commonwealth agenda crowded out defense talks, trade negotiations, even the bitter India v. Pakistan dispute over Kashmir.

In the cabinet room of 10 Downing Street, in Canadian Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent's busy suite at the Dorchester and Pandit Nehru's quarters at Claridge's through lunch, dinner and breakfast, the Prime Ministers filtered proposals for another compromise bid to Communist China. "We must build a bridge between East and West," said St. Laurent. Added Nehru: "India must be a window through which the West can see the East."

By week's end even those Commonwealth members (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Southern Rhodesia) who had refused to recognize Red China, were watching Asia and Lake Success through Nehru's pink window. The proposals grew nearer and nearer to what the conferees thought China's Red Boss Mao Tse-tung wanted. In a flurry of cables and transatlantic telephone calls, St. Laurent and Nehru worked out a new cease-fire plan for Korea. They sent instructions to their delegates on U.N.'s Truce Committee, Canada's Lester Pearson and India's Sir Benegal Rau. Nehru himself hesitated at the last moment before endorsing the plan (since a Chinese rejection would pose the implied obligation to do something about it), but St. Laurent finally won him over.

Medium or Well Done? Pearson, Rau and Assembly President Nazrollah Entezam of Iran, the third Truce Committee member, brought the new cease-fire plan before U.N. Its first four provisions were little different from the last truce plan. They included an immediate ceasefire, withdrawal of all "non-Korean" troops, and a new Korean government "in accordance with U.N. principles." But Paragraph Five was a stunner. It provided for a Four-Power conference of Red China, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, immediately after the ceasefire, to settle Far Eastern problems "including, among others, those of Formosa and of representation of China in the United Nations."

Two days later the U.N.'s Political Committee voted 50-7 to send the U.N.'s fourth cease-fire appeal to the Chinese Reds, who have not yet bothered to honor the first three. The Soviet bloc voted against the offer, because Red China and North Korea had not been invited to discuss it. El Salvador and Nationalist China also voted against it, for different reasons. T. F. Tsiang, China's delegate, correctly described the proposal. Snapped he: "The talks will pose only one question to Peking 'How do you like Formosarare, medium, or well done?'

Stop Hitting Me. The U.S. delegation voted with the majority, with some misgivings but in the lame hope that other delegations might be willing to adopt a tougher attitude towards China, if the Reds ignore this proposal as they have the others. It was left to Philippine Delegate Carlos F. Romulo, who abstained from the vote, to express what many Americans outside the U.S. delegation were thinking. Said Romulo:

"How far, sir, can the United Nations keep retreating from established, sound moral position without courting final disaster? A retreat in the course of battle is understandable and sometimes inevitable, but a retreat from right principleswhile a battle is being waged for those very principlescannot be justified on any ground whatever.

"We hold that Paragraph Five constitutes just this kind of abject surrender. Having turned our right cheek to Peking, and the left cheek also, we now say to Peking in Paragraph Five: 'You may stop hitting me now and killing my boys, so that we can discuss how to reward you with the gift of Formosa and a seat in the United Nations.' "

This week, their latest gesture of appeasement safely cabled to the aggressor, the United Nations eagerly and timorously waited for Red China to give some sign that it recognized the U.N.

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