A Rival for U.N.?

The World Peace Council is like Uncle Toms Cabin without the bloodhounds. The hero is very good and patient, the villain is very villainous, the audience knows just when to cheer and when to hiss. Last week the World Peace Council opened in Berlin with the regular cast (not a road company).

In the opening scenes there were a few surprising innovations. Pablo Picasso's peace pigeon (which French anti-Communists call the Dove that Goes Boom) still dominated the scenery, but the US French and British flags were placed in the center of the stage, modestly flanked by the Russian and Chinese Communist hammers & sickles. And Ilya Ehrenburg (the Russian Intellectual who Goes Boom) was playing the gentle Eva, in addition to his usual duties as stage manager.

Butter wouldn't have melted in Ilva's mouth. Cooed he: "Within the peace movement there are people who are for the [West German] Bonn regime, and people who are for the Berlin [Russian] regime. The council will not reproach the Bonn regime for being antiCommunist. If they take internal measures which don't please this or that member of the council, that is their business. But when they undertake negotiations to build a new Wehrmacht, that goes against humanity."

What No Horsewhips? But the new note could not be sustained; the cast soon slipped back into the well-worn groove The Metropolitan Nikolai of Krutitsy and Kolomna, who for many years has been rendering to commissars the things that are God's, described how Simon Legree (the Americans) behave in Korea. Impressive in a black robe and white headdress, the Metropolitan told his hearers that U.S. soldiers had killed from 200,000 to 400,000 Korean civilians. He even told how they did it: "They force wet leathers on their victims. These jackets get tight when they dry, and cause people incredible pain. [There are] mass executions, crucifixions, taking skulls as souvenirs, torturing with electric current."

The Very Reverend Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury, furnished the comic relief, as he usually does at these performances. He said that General Eisenhower had come to Europe to raise a German army under onetime Nazi generals, "to employ these forces against the same

Soviet Union that saved our culture at Stalingrad."

Pietro Nenni, leader of those Italian Socialists who follow the Communist line sounded the main theme: condemnation of the U.N. He said that it was "an instrument of the power politics, provocativeness and aggressiveness of the US" and called the U.N. resolution naming China an aggressor in Korea "slanderous" and "scandalous."

No Business Like Show Business. From Nenni's remarks and other speeches, some Western observers got the idea that the Kremlin was getting ready to pull out of U.N., set up the World Peace Council as its rival. Ehrenburg, indeed, said-"The World Peace Council is the only organization which embraces true representatives of the people of the world."

The Chinese Communists, however have their troubles with the Peace Council, as well as with U.N. The Peking Communist radio lost face by broadcasting a speech which it said had been made at the Berlin meeting by a Japanese Socialist named Ikuo Iyama. Radio Peking quoted Iyama as saying: "The fact that I am here, after surmounting many difficulties, signifies the determination of the Japanese people to wage a resolute struggle against --. American imperialism." Iyama made no such speech. He was not in Berlin, and had sent no message to the conference. Since Aug. 11 he had been in a Tokyo hospital, waging a resolute struggle against a liver ailment.

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