NATIONAL AFFAIRS

Defeat

THE NATION Defeat The U.S. and its allies stood at the abyss of disaster. The Chinese Communists, pouring across the Manchurian border, had smashed the U.N. army, this week were clawing forward to pursue and destroy its still-organized fragments. Caught in the desperate retreat were 140,000 American troops, the flower of the U.S. Army--almost the whole effective Army the U.S. had.

It was defeat--the worst defeat the U.S. had ever suffered. Even though the U.N. forces might still have the luck, skill and power to slow the Communist drive and withdraw in good order from the devastated peninsula, it was a defeat that could not be redressed in Korea. If this defeat were allowed to stand, it would mean the loss of Asia to Communism.

The only way the statesmen could save the U.N. forces would be through a plea for an armistice, or acceptance of a deal with the Communists. By any such deal, Communism would emerge triumphant. The alternative was war--that is, a recognition of the terrible fact that the U.S. and Communist China were already in a state of war. That would mean, inescapably, a campaign against the mainland of China by sea and air.

That war would have to be pursued in the full knowledge that it might go on for years. The war would have to be begun in the knowledge that Russia might come in too, which would lead to the atomic horrors of World War III.

There was no sign of where or how the enemy onrush could be stopped.

As Chinese hordes poured around the Eighth Army's open right flank, the 24th, 2nd and 25th Divisions fell back to the Chongchon and began crossing at Sinanju where a valuable airfield was lost, Anju and Kunu farther upriver. It was obvious that General Walker would have to keep his whole Eighth Army moving south if it was not to be trapped.

The Communist drive down the center of Korea's waist broke all contact between the Eighth Army and General Almond's X Corps, sprawled out over northeastern Korea. At the Changjin reservoir, Major General Oliver Prince Smith's 1st Marine Division had made a vain try to cut in behind the Chinese attacking the Eighth. Now Smith's men were attacked by ten Communist divisions, which threw an iron ring around the reservoir.

The three marine regiments, which had been in separated positions around the reservoir, finally fought their way through to junction in Hagaru, to the south, after running into bloody ambushes along the roads. The Communists fired on them comfortably at steep grades and hairpin turns, where the marines' vehicles slowed to a crawl. A dreadful indication of the casualties in this sector was that 1,200 wounded were flown out in the first two days.

Retreat of the 20,000

"Retreat, hell!" snapped Major General Oliver Prince Smith of the 1st Marine Division. "We're not retreating, we're just advancing in a different direction."

Said Colonel Lewis ("Chesty") Puller, battle-scarred commander of the 1st Marine Regiment: "We'll suffer heavy losses. The enemy greatly outnumbers us. They've blown the bridges and blocked the roads but we'll make it somehow."

The running fight of the marines and two battalions of the Army's 7th Infantry Division from Hagaru to Hamhung--40 miles by air but 60 miles over the icy, twisting, mountainous road--was a battle unparalleled in U.S. military history. It had some aspects of Bataan, some of Anzio, some of Valley Forge.

Assembled in Hagaru, south of the frozen, blood-stained beaches of the Changjin Reservoir, the 1st Marine Division and the 7th had already suffered heavy casualties. They had heard the screams of their comrades when the Reds lobbed phosphorous grenades into truckloads of U.S. wounded. When the order came to start south, the enemy was already closing in on Hagaru's makeshift airstrip, whence thousands of wounded had been flown out. The last plane waited an extra hour for one desperately wounded man. The marines abandoned none of their disabled men, but bulldozers pushed the dead into mass graves by hundreds.

The fight to Koto, six miles down the road, was the worst. The crawling vehicles ran into murderous mortar, machine-gun and small-arms fire from Communists in log and sandbag bunkers. The U.S. answering fire and air attacks killed thousands of the enemy and held the road open. When the lead vehicles reached Koto, the rearguard was still fighting near Hagaru to keep the enemy from chewing up the column from behind.

Beyond Koto there was a bad stretch of road winding through steep gorges. Moving at 3 m.p.h., the column halted several times while engineers filled shell craters in the road. The airplanes silenced much of the enemy fire, except on one agonizing day when the air cover was grounded by a driving snowstorm.

At week's end some 8,000 marines broke through the last thin crust of enemy resistance and poured into Hamhung. More kept coming in every hour as tanks brought up the rear. Frantic photographers called to the bedraggled men, asked them to "wave and look happy." They obliged. The triumph was marred by more than 30% casualties, but the bulk of the marine division's and the 7th's survivors reached safety.

THE CONGRESS Horrendous Swing

The Senate, which likes to go home to dinner, got stuck with some nightwork. Wisconsin's rash-talking Joseph R. McCarthy rose and swung the tails of not one, but 81 Communists and party-liners (or so he said) in a wild attempt to decapitate both Harry Truman and Dean Acheson in one horrendous swing.

In a 5 1/2-hour speech he read case histories of all his exhibits, cried that 80 of them were employed in the State Department, that one card-carrying comrade was a presidential speechwriter. He refused to name one name. And his story was also weakened by the fact that he had been using all kinds of differing figures for weeks: first he had said there were 205 disloyal employees in State, then 57, before settling on 80. By demanding a quorum to listen to him, he forced a night session for the first time in five years.

Two days later the Senate voted unanimously to investigate McCarthy's charges. Republicans hoped they might turn up another Alger Hiss case; Democrats felt that they didn't dare stifle an inquiry--and besides, they said confidently, they weren't worried.

TRIALS The Reckoning

In silence, the eight women and four men filed into the jury box. From his seat, Alger Hiss looked at each one, his lips set in a tight smile. None returned his look. Priscilla Hiss fingered her handbag, stared straight ahead.

The court clerk spoke in the courtroom hush: "Madam Foreman, have you and the members of the jury agreed on a verdict?"

"I have," said Mrs. Ada Condell self-consciously.

"How say you?"

"I find the defendant guilty on the first count and guilty on the second count," said Mrs. Condell.

Hiss's face paled. His wife's cheek twitched. The eyes of a young defense attorney filled with sudden tears, and he took off his glasses and wiped his eyes. Patient old Federal Judge Henry Warren Goddard told the jury: "I think you have . . . rendered a just verdict." Sur rounded by swarming newsmen, the defendant walked out of the courtroom and into the cruel light of flash bulbs.

Thus came Alger Hiss, 45, to the bitter day of reckoning. He had been found guilty of perjury. But implicit in the charge was Hiss's conviction for a far deeper crime that, because of the statute of limitations, justice could not reach. The verdict branded Hiss a spy.

Few men had seemed more surely marked for success. Handsome, popular, effortlessly brilliant, Alger Hiss had sat at Franklin Roosevelt's shoulder. Only the narrowly vindictive greeted the verdict with a sense of jubilation. A brilliant but weak man had proved unworthy of the great trust placed in him. By the jury's verdict he was marked as a man who, having dedicated himself to Communism under a warped sense of idealism, went on making of his whole life an intricate, calculated lie.

MANNERS & MORALS The Vanishing Nickel The New York State Public Service Commission threw the once ubiquitous U.S. nickel for another fall. The commission told the New York Telephone Co. that it might raise its basic coin-box charge to lOc. New Jersey, California, Washington and Oregon companies had asked for the same boost. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.