THE CONSEQUENCES OF KOREA

...The UN went ahead with balloting in South Korea...

...But it would be a gross exaggeration to suggest that we of America covered ourselves with glory, or earned even a passing grade in our handling of the problem of Korea...

...III This is the background, greatly telescoped, of course, to the North Korean invasion of South Korea on the morning of June 25...

...There has been considerable commotion in Washington in recent weeks over the need for a great psychological offensive to counteract the striking success of the Soviets in this critical field...

...William L. Roberts, head of the American military mission in South Korea, was reported in a copyrighted dispatch to the New York Herald-Tribune of May 29 to have said: "The Communists will probably en~ gage in some limited action, but at this point we rather invite it...

...In August, 1948, the United Nations ordered general elections for all Korea, hoping through the instrument of a free country-wide ballot to unify the nation under a democratic regime...

...Inside the U.S.A...

...Acceptance of this basic approach to the fact of aggression must not for a moment lead to the slightest relaxation of pressure for an honorable truce to permit mediation and a negotiated settlement...

...At the time of the South Korean election, for instance, Brig...

...Some half-a-hundred nations, including traditionally neutral Sweden, Nehru's India, Social Democratic Norway, capitalist Belgium, Protestant Denmark, Catholic Italy, Jewish Israel, and Arab Lebanon, responded affirmatively to the plea of the United States that the UN embark on collective action to resist Red aggression...

...Meanwhile, a much harsher note was developing on both sides, and it seems clear enough that some American officials in Korea were disgracing their country and fanning the flames of conflict by their warlike chatter...

...Subsequently the North Koreans formed their own "People's Republic," and the two halves settled down to a war of nerves and ideology, with sporadic border skirmishes to punctuate the arguments...

...the UN Security Council took the most decisive action of its history...

...It recommended that "the members of the UN furnish such assistance to the Republic of Korea as may be necessary to repel the armed attack and to restore international peace and security in the area...

...The decision to stand and resist has greatly strengthened the UN and greatly enhanced its hopes of becoming a genuine instrument for peace...

...Certainly it is clear enough that almost everyone involved contributed a share of the fabulous blundering that preceded the showdown in Korea...

...the result brought Syngham Rhee to power as President...

...June 26 The UN Commission reported from Lake Success that the UN "cease fire" order might prove academic...

...The United Nations appointed a special Commission to investigate the whole situation and move toward uniting Korea...

...But the Russians, aware of the fact that the population of American-influenced South Korea outnumbered that of Russian-dominated North Korea by two to one, refused to permit elections in North Korea...

...V If we were in Mr...

...The Soviets, as is their custom, became intensely possessive over their chunk of Korea...

...Inspired dispatches in the London press have emphasized the possibility of reaching honorable accord with the Russians, but have also reported the gloomy fact that the United States has chilled such hope by insisting on an instransigent position...

...Frederick Kuh, London correspondent for the Chicago Sun-Times, reported that our ambassador to Britain, Lewis Douglas, had gone to see Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin to advise "an absolutely firm attitude toward Russia...

...the aftermath was much the same...

...In Moscow a U.S...

...We seem to have developed a national genius for picking as our "boys" reactionary leaders who have little or no following among their own people...

...But there can be no serious rejection of the fact that the act of aggression by Red Korea was an out-and-out violation of international agreement and a head-on challenge of the authority of the United Nations...

...Unhappily, up to the time this was written, our Government had failed dismally to press such a position before the world...

...It was a State Department official on the line with the crushing news that North Korean armored forces had just swept southward across the 38th Parallel...

...In 1943, the Messrs...

...air and sea forces into action...

...While our position has been closer to the pacifist view than that of any other category of past or present critics of Administration policy, we can see no hopeful or workable alternative to UN intervention to repel aggression in Korea...

...The subsequent developments can be summarized in a few sentences: June 25 The U. S. Government instructed Gen...

...These convictions we deeply hold, but none of them, nor all of them together, can argue away the fact that, given the naked reality of Red aggression and the violation of international agreement and the United Nations charter, the only meaningful reply by the rest of mankind could be armed resistance...

...Both great powers soon fell to work indoctrinating the people in their sphere with their own ideology...

...bases in the Philippines, and a speed-up of military aid to French Indo-China...

...During the morning U.S...

...Roosevelt, Churchill, and Chiang Kai-shek agreed at Cairo, in language that was slightly weaseling, to fay the least, that Korea would be granted her independence in "due course" following the conquest of Japan...

...in January, 1949, but both left teams of military advisers, technicians, and experts to help North and South Korea develop their own military establishments...

...Both the U.S.S.R...

...We are convinced, as we have said monthly for three years, that the Administration's tough-minded policy of "total diplomacy" by whatever name it has been called from time to time, was too negative and sterile to provide any" real foundation for lasting peace...

...Here again, the cold, aloof, chip-on-the-shoulder state of mind which has characterized Acheson diplomacy during the past year was all too evident, with the result that the British have sought to fill that void by conversations with the Soviets...

...This has a depressingly familiar ring and would seem to forecast the strong possibility that we may squander what we have left of the moral initiative and hand the Kremlin another opportunity to don the disguise of peacemaker...

...Not the least of many results was the speed with which the non-Communist world reached unprecedented agreement to stand together against aggression...

...and the U.S...

...The hope for national unification began to fade as the deadlock hardened...

...That's a violation of the United Nations Charter...

...Douglas is said to be opposing [in behalf of the U. S. Government] any concessions to the Soviet which might enable Moscow to call off a North Korean invasion without loss of face...

...The collapse of the South Korean army, about which our brass had been bragging so much, was no reflection on the fighting qualities of the South Koreans, but a powerful commentary on the lack of morale, the lack of a fighting faith in the institutions and policies of their government, a lack of conviction that there was anything very much worth fighting for in the face of invasion by the Communist forces of North Korea...

...The moderate parties, which had boy-cotted the 1948 elections for fear that balloting in only half of Korea Would make permanent the artificial barrier at the 38th Parallel, participated in the 1950 contest, and won a decisive portion of the new Assembly...

...Critics of the Truman Administration's foreign policy, ranging from Sens...

...Acheson's striped trousers we would turn the finest phrasemakers in the nation loose on the wording of a proclamation to the world which would make it clear that while we are determined to work with the UN in the exercise of collective defense against Red aggression in Korea, we are prepared at all times to participate in any plan of mediation that did not require acceptance of any part of the aggression which led to hostilities...

...We are convinced that we have built badly in South Korea—morally, socially, and psychologically, as The Progressive warned fully a year ago—and we are today paying a frightful price for that mismanagement...

...MacArthur as commander of all UN military forces fighting in defense of Korea...

...The UN Security Council, meeting in emergency session, voted 9 to 0 (Yugoslavia abstaining and Russia absent) to call on North Korea to "cease hostilities" and withdraw invasion forces, and urging all UN members to "render every assistance to the UN in the exercise of this resolution...

...II A quick survey of Korea's recent past may help illuminate the present...

...In May of this year new elections were held in South Korea under the eye of the UN Commission...

...The clear-cut violation of the UN Charter by the Korean Communists was to have a decisive impact on the events of coming weeks...

...For four decades Korea had been an exploited dependency of Japan— because the Japanese had beaten czarist Russia in a military crap-game for control of that unhappy country...

...But somewhere subsequently— there is disagreement about where and when—we agreed with the Russians that they would accept Japanese surrender in that part of Korea lying north of the 38th Parallel, and we would do the honors south of that geographers' line...

...Failure on the part of the UN, with or without U.S...

...It was in this same press conference that the garrulous general was quoted as saying that the South Korean Army was a great fighting force, "both well trained and well equipped, and the best insurance the Western World has in these parts against Communist aggression...

...July 7 The Security Council called on the United States to establish a unified command for the armed forces defending South Korea and authorized that command to fly the UN flag "at its discretion...

...so much so, in fact, that he and his associates took a drubbing in the recent elections...

...At noon President Truman made public the decision of the night before, and added that in addition to sending U. S. forces into combat in Korea, he had ordered the Seventh Fleet to prevent any attack on Formosa, directed reinforcements of U.S...

...withdrew their occupation armies, the Russians in December, 1948, and the U.S...

...By God, they can't do that," Lie cried out in the stillness of the early morning...

...prodding, to act decisively would have been the death blow of the United Nations, and the crushing of all hope for collective action against aggression in the pursuit of collective security...

...The President transmitted to MacArthur a secret order to send U.S...

...Certainly our past refusal to take the initiative for world-wide disarmament and our present insistence on Soviet loss of face as an essential in peacemaking are not what we want to spend millions of dollars translating into a hundred languages and proclaiming to the world...

...note was delivered to the Soviet Foreign Office asking the Russians to use their influence with the North Koreans to call off the invasion...

...Taft and Wherry on the Right to the Socialist Party and Henry Wallace on the Left, and including such middle-of-the-road opponents of the Ache-son-Truman "total diplomacy" as Sens...

...MacArthur...

...July 8 President Truman appointed Gen...

...McMahon and Tydings, supported President Truman's decision to throw American military forces into the Korean struggle and mobilize the moral and psychological forces of the United Nations behind that policy...

...The Progressive agrees that there is desperate need for such a campaign, and we have said so for many months, but it's a leadpipe cinch that it isn't so much that we've lacked selling know-how as it is that we've lacked a hope-inspiring policy to sell to the peoples of the world...

...If Kuh's reporting is correct, and it usually is, our Government is insisting on Soviet loss of face as a quid pro quo in any negotiations...

...We are convinced, as we intend to say as long as hostilities continue in Korea, or anywhere else, that our Government would be shockingly indifferent to the wishes of its own people and the people of the world if it failed to keep every door open for mediation, conciliation, negotiation, and settlement on any honorable basis...

...Soviet refusal to permit democratic elections certainly wrecked the hope for a democratic, unified Korea...

...jets and bombers went into action in South Korea...

...In Korea the Rhee regime has ducked most of the basic issues of social and economic reform...

...Twice in one week Sir David Kelly, British ambassador to Moscow, conferred with Andrei Gromy-ko, vice commissar of foreign affairs, and discovered a remarkably soft-spoken reaction in the Kremlin...

...IV Korea has found "liberation" from the Japanese a painful, destructive, and bloody experience...

...The outcome was a slap at Syngham Rhee, our man in South Korea, and a repudiation of the Rhee regime's failure to build a better society...

...At 10:45 p.m...

...The Progressive supports the decision for collective UN action to turn back the North Korean invasion...

...Douglas MacArthur to rush military supplies to South Korea...

...However, the Soviets refused to let the Commission cross into their sphere...

...The only hold-outs at home were the Communist Party and the Chicago Tribune, with separate axes to grind, and the true-blue pacifists whose total and unselfish dedication to peace robs them of the capacity to see how meeting force with force can result in anything but war...

...Now the United States must lead the United Nations in moral dedication to the pursuit of peace by proposing, every day and every hour, if necessary, our eagerness to mediate the Korean conflict as the first step in a larger quest for over-all understanding between East and West...

...Congress received official notification of the President's action that afternoon...

...Never were creative intelligence and moral purpose more urgently needed in world affairs...

...June 27 The Moscow radio announced that the UN "cease fire" resolution "has no force" because Russia and Communist China were not represented...

...The United States has led the United Nations to military action against Red aggression in Korea...

...This stabbing protest by the Secretary-General of the United Nations was to turn out to be vastly more than a pre-dawn understatement...

...It will give us target practice...

...In Washington, President Truman conferred with top advisers and held a two-way conversation with Gen...