Troubled Rock

Anglo-American unity is the rock of the free world. Nonetheless, for some months now, angry seas of recrimination have buffeted and broken against that rock.

On the U.S. side, the petulance reached a sorry point a fortnight ago when six Newark war veterans sent Prime Minister Clement Attlee a cablegram: "Just in case Mr. Chamberlain didn't leave you his, we are forwarding you an umbrella. It may come in handy in Peking."

On the British side, some of the most barbed taunts and reproaches, as reckless as those of the McCormick press in the U.S., have come from London's New Statesman and Nation.

For a Third Force. Last week the New Statesman outdid itself with an article by a timeworn Socialist, G. D. H. Cole, who keeps saying he is not a Communist fellow traveler. Cole explained his view of Far Eastern events: "I looked on the war in Korea as essentially a civil and not an international war ... I wanted the North to win. The Government of South Korea appeared to me to be a hopelessly reactionary puppet affair ...

"When the Americans did intervene in arms, and appealed to the U.N., I felt their action to be entirely wrong ... [It was] a sheer misuse of U.N. to take advantage of the absence of the Russians from the Security Council and of the presence of the wrong Chinese government . . . When the American forces, dragging us with them, advanced right to the Manchurian frontier, I was quite unable to blame the Chinese for intervening . . ." Cole's conclusion: "If Great Britain gets dragged into war with China by the Americans, I shall be on the side of China . . ."

How to avoid such a situation? "The hope . . . lies in ... the Third Force . . . playing for time, and . . . doing what we can to avoid an absolutely clear-cut division of the world into two hostile armed camps--which is precisely what the Americans seem bent on bringing about . . ."

Cole's voice was not the voice of Britain. But his sentiments, which Americans would find shocking, were shared by thousands of his countrymen.

The Socialist government, for instance, does not conceal a certain sympathy for what Prime Minister Attlee calls "the new emerging [i.e., Red] China." From Winston Churchill down, Britons naturally put Europe's security first, fear lest American strength be deflected from the defense of Europe against Communism to a defense of Asia against Communism. Nor do Britons want their commercial stake in the Far East disrupted by war or even sanctions against Red China. James Griffiths told the House of Commons last week that British trade in Southeast Asia was booming: during the first six months of the Korean war, shipments of raw rubber from Singapore and other British territories to Red China had increased to 70,700 tons from 15,881 tons in the corresponding period of 1949.

For Collective Security. Above the intemperate outcry that beat upon the Anglo-American rock rose a steadier voice. London's Economist printed a deadpan parody to remind Britons that the principle of collective security for the free world is the same, East or West. Under the future dateline, "Lake Success, January 22, 1952," the Economist reported another, imaginary "ceasefire debate" in the U.N.:

"Since the withdrawal of the United Nations forces from Bonn, opinion in the Assembly has been veering in favor of the American view that it is necessary to abandon Germany altogether in order to restore peace in Europe. The British delegate, Sir Gladwyn Jebb, has, indeed, continued to press for the condemnation of Russia as an aggressor . . . The American delegate, Mr. Warren Austin, however, is urging caution; he maintains that hasty action would not be in the interests of peace and that time is needed to study the latest Russian counterproposals . . .

"Russia . . . insisted that Russian basic terms . . . must be accepted before the victorious Russian volunteers could be advised to desist from their offensive . . . "The British army having suffered 50,000 casualties in the fighting in Germany, British public opinion is in a somewhat excitable mood ... In Washington, how ever, ... it is felt that the British are liable to be headstrong . . . and that their old imperial traditions are making them unduly bellicose.

"Senator Bebop has ... said it was very unfortunate that nobody seemed to be able to exercise any control over General Eisenhower, who had evidently underestimated the prospects of Russian intervention when he pursued the East German invaders back across the zonal boundary.

'The Indian Prime Minister [opposes the idea of declaring Russia an aggressor. The Russians, he said, had suffered great humiliations in the period before Peter the Great, and naturally it would take them a long time to get over it... If they were to be branded as aggressors simply because they had committed an act of aggression, it might spoil the chances of peaceful negotiation . . ."

The Economist's sharp parody made it clear that the British and the Americans still spoke the same language; the fact that the New Statesman and Nation and the Chicago Tribune also participated in this idiom could be regarded as humiliating, but not catastrophic.

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