"I Cannot Exult"

At a lacquered table in the Communists' new pagoda at Panmunjom this week, Lieut. General William K. Harrison stonily signed his name to 18 copies of a U.N.-Communist agreement for an armistice in Korea. Across from him, resplendent General Nam II also signed. Twelve hours later, the cease-fire went into effect and the guns were silent.

A Disquieting Fear. Within an hour after the signing, President Eisenhower went on the air with a message to the nation. "With special feelings of sorrow, and with solemn gratitude," he said, "we think of those who were called upon to lay down their lives in that far-off land to prove once again that only courage and sacrifice can keep freedom alive upon the earth." He warned that the U.S. had "won an armistice on a single battleground, not peace in the world. We may not now relax our guard nor cease our quest. Throughout the coming months, during the period of prisoner screening and exchange, and during the possibly longer period of the political conference ... we and our United Nations allies must be vigilant."

The President quoted Lincoln's second inaugural address: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in ... to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace . . ."

Secretary of State Dulles spoke: "This is a solemn hour . . . For the first time in history, an international organization has stood against an aggressor ... All free nations, large and small, are safer today because the ideal of collective security has been implemented." Dulles promised that in the political conference the U.S. would press for a united Korea. He, too, sounded a warning: "Let us recognize that the need for effort and for sacrifice has not passed . . . Let us, this time, not relax."

U.N. Commandant Mark Clark, at his advance headquarters near Munsan, signed the truce documents brought to him from Panmunjom. He said: "I cannot find it in me to exult in this hour."

Frozen Confusion. Clark's troops did not exult. They were relieved, as all troops must be, at an end of fighting, but never did undefeated soldiers receive the news of an armistice with less rejoicing.

The U.S. people did not exult. There was little to cheer about, and the nation did not delude itself.

Nor were there many voices raised against the truce. The nation was used to the stalemate in Korea. The truce was neither victory nor defeat. It was stalemate without killing. As such, it could be accepted but not celebrated.

President Eisenhower and Secretary Dulles rightly stressed that the truce was a beginning rather than an end--the beginning of a new effort to bring peace and justice to Asia. The success of that new effort depended in part on how the nation and its policymakers understood the past --including the Korean war.

The Communist strategists ordered the North Korean attack, never dreaming that the U.S. or the U.N. would fight them. The U.S. had plainly said it would not defend South Korea, and it was in no military position to do so. Total defeat in Korea was narrowly averted. Victory began--and with it arose a confusion about the U.N. goals. The U.S. was running the war, supplying the bulk of the troops, and to it belonged the main responsibility for defining the objectives of the war. When its policymakers failed, the voices of the . U.S. allies began to make themselves felt. As MacArthur, intent on victory, approached the Yalu, the Chinese, no doubt encouraged by dissension in the U.N. governments, attacked and threw MacArthur back. He rallied below the 38th parallel, started north again. The U.N. confusion over the object of the war grew noisier. With the firing of MacArthur, the confusion was not resolved. It was frozen.

The stalemate in Korea was not military. There can hardly be any question of the U.N.'s ability to defeat the Chinese in Korea. It was a stalemate produced by a paralysis of wills at political levels. Lieut. Colonel Melvin Voorhees' Korean Tales contains this passage of an interview with General James Van Fleet, who thought the war could and should be won:

Reporter: "General, what is our goal?"

Van Fleet: "I don't know. The answer must come from higher authority."

Reporter: "How may we know, General, when and if we achieve victory?"

Van Fleet: "I don't know, except that somebody higher up will have to tell us."

That sums up the last two years of the Korean war. The men who died fighting it did not die in vain. Even the truce, which represents a long-term failure of U.S. will, is far better in terms of justice than if the Reds had been allowed to overrun Korea.

But at the political conference that is to follow the ceasefire, in the dozens of moves that both sides can make in Asia in the next few months, the real measure of the Korean war will be taken. If the U.S. and its allies develop no more will and purpose than they showed in the Korean war, then further costly stalemate is the best that can result.

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