The Seldom-Fire

The deadly prattle of machine guns fell silent, like an embarrassed gap in conversation. On Korea's freezing hillsides, U.N. soldiers smoked casually in the open and talked of home. On the 3rd Division's front (see WAR IN ASIA), a lieutenant told his men: "There has been an order for a ceasefire, men. Did you get that? A cease-fire." A front-line Associated Press dispatch from Korea reported: "Orders from the highest source, possibly from the White House itself, brought the ground fighting to a complete, if temporary, halt."

In Key West, President Harry Truman saw the A.P. dispatch and spluttered like a pinwheel. The Pentagon fired off a demand to Tokyo for an explanation. From Washington, J.C.S. Representative Major General John E. Hull and the State Department's Deputy Undersecretary H. Freeman Matthews hustled down to Key West. After hurried conferences, a statement was issued flatly denying the A.P. report. In Korea, the Eighth Army's General James Van Fleet said that an order of his had been "misinterpreted" by subordinate commanders.

Angry Lecturer. Next day, standing with his feet planted wide, Harry Truman read a prepared statement to assembled reporters in a voice that crackled with restrained anger. "I hope everyone understands now that there has been no cease-fire in Korea and that there can be none until an armistice has been signed . . . The continued pressure of our forces on the enemy constitutes the strongest incentive for the latter to agree to a just armistice."

Stuffing his script into his pocket, Harry Truman added that he wanted to give the reporters a lecture on fake stories about cease-fires and armistices. He recalled that he had been marching his battery down a road in France on Oct. 27, 1918, when someone handed him a French paper with a headline announcing that an armistice had been signed. Just then a 150-mm. shell burst about 100 yards away on one side of the road, and then another on the other side. That story was put out by Roy Howard (president of Scripps-Howard newspapers), said Truman, and it was a fake. The A.P. story on the cease-fire was a parallel. He understood, he said, that such stories came out because of intense competition between reporters, but it seemed to him that the welfare of the United States, the United Nations and the world was much more important than any competitive situation.

Then Truman sat down, twisting his fingers. Two aides whispered to him that he had the date wrong. No, said the President brusquely, he had the date in his diary and remembered it very well. But soon a White House official rushed back to the press room with one of the now-familiar "clarifications" of the President's remarks. After refreshing his memory, said the official, the President was not sure it was Roy Howard's report. But Howard had put out a false armistice report on Nov. 7, and the President wanted it understood how much harm false reports create.

New Puzzle. All this seemed like a tremendous effort to demolish news reports. It became apparent that what bothered the White House was the idea that the President had ordered the ceasefire. Truman did not want a letdown in morale either in the U.S. or on the Korean front. Nor did he want the Communists to get any idea that he was ready to try appeasement. The Communists' goal is a cease-fire without other agreements. The U.S. wants a ceasefire, plus inspection behind both lines to prevent buildups for a surprise attack, and an agreement for exchange of prisoners.

On the fighting front, if not a ceasefire, at least a "seldom-fire" was on even after the Truman flap. The Korean war, limited in the early stages on the U.N. side by Washington's long-term reluctance to "provoke" the Reds, now had a new and puzzling limitation which would or would not make sense, depending on what happened in the truce negotiations.

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