Where the News Ends:

...The Spectator referred to American policies in the Far East as "insane" and, with a strange disregard of a fine British tradition that runs from Sir Richard Grenville to Winston Churchill, announced that it is better to be dishonored than dead...

...The much-vaunted Red Chinese Air Force was shot out of the skies by the much vilified and disparaged Nationalists, operating with American Sidewinder missiles...

...It would have been even more satisfactory if tie Nationalists had been given weapons of sufficient power to knock out the shore batteries...

...It is a lesson that will serve us in good stead in the war of nerves which Nikita Khrushchev has unleashed over the issue of Free Berlin...

...and a defensive victory has been won in Quemoy...

...I don't think any of these objections apply to my own letter to The New Statesman, which I append herewith, in the hope that at least the English readers of THE NEW LEADER will be able to become familiar with a viewpoint which The New Statesman did not publish: "I have read and re-read your leading article, 'The Rim of Hell,' seeking in vain for even incidental mention of the fact that there would be no crisis in the Strait of Formosa if the Chinese Communists had not launched a heavy artillery bombardment of Quemoy and that the crisis, created by the Communists, would end immediately if they would stop shooting and consent to what Secretary Dulles has suggested: a dependable cease-fire...

...But I think it would be worthwhile for some group with research facilities to collect a symposium of the wilder predictions of gloom and doom to come if the course of appeasement and defeatism was not followed in the Formosa Strait...

...it defends itself.' " Of course, editors do not like to be made to look ridiculous by having attention called to grossly exaggerated and profoundly mistaken comment...

...Imagine how much worse the outlook for holding Berlin, object of the latest Communist smashandgrab designs, would be if we had turned tail and run away from Quemoy...

...There would seem to be three sound reasons why an editor might refuse to print a letter o,n a subject of legitimate controversy raised by his own comments: A plethora of communications on the subject, excessive length, or excessive violence of language...

...What was at first widely interpreted as a serious threat to peace has been downgraded to an exercise in petty homicide and harassment...

...What started off as a bang has abated to a whimper...

...Far from being "indefensible," as so many would-be military experts asserted, Quemoy has proved eminently defensible and has been the scene of a decisive check to Mao Tse-tung's expansionist ambitions...

...The lesson to be learned from Quemoy is that the Communist bark is a good deal worse than the Communist bite, and that a policy of refusing to yield to force or threat of force is the course of safety as well as the course of honor...

...The New Statesman published a leading article, "The Rim of Hell," upholding the proposition that the world was close to nuclear annihilation, not because the Chinese Communists had committed an act of unprovoked aggression, but because Secretary Dulles did not give in to Communist aggression...

...Regardless of political partisanship, sincere anti-Communists owe a debt of gratitude to President Eisenhower and, still more, to Secretary of State Dulles, who refused to panic and realized .throughout the crisis that the basic issue was not Quemoy as a territory, but whether Communist imperialism should be allowed to expand by force...

...Some British organs of public opinion, but not, fortunately, the British Government, were absurdly intemperate in their advocacy of defeatism and appeasement during the Quemoy crisis...

...Still, a defensive victory is better than running away...

...Incidentally, my own previously high opinion of the British sense of editorial fair play was lowered because letters which I addressed to The Spectator and The New Statesman, trying to prove that our Far Eastern policies are not "insane" and that the Communists could end the crisis in the Strait of Formosa if they would only stop shooting, were not published...

...So far as I can learn, M other vindication of American policy was published in either journal—yet such violent diatribes against the American position as these magazines published would seem to create some obligation to publish the other side...

...Could it be that your attitude toward Nationalist China and the United States is in line with the wellknown saying in the French fable: " 'That animal is very wicked...

...There should be some pretty red faces among those on both sides of the Atlantic who displayed an attitude of near hysterical alarm in the face of Communist force and threat of force, who painted grisly pictures of the whole world going up in a nuclear holocaust unless the Chinese Reds were given just what they wanted...