Under the Sun

General Douglas MacArthur usually sloughs off Soviet gibes at his occupation policies with silent, five-starred disdain. Last week he broke with custom, made a sharp reply to the latest official Russian blast against him--a letter from Lieut. General Kuzma N. Derevyanko, Soviet member of the Allied Council for Japan.

Derevyanko's letter accused MacArthur of permitting the Japanese government to balk democratization of the country by (among other things) crushing human rights with police brutality. Derevyanko's case in point consisted of a series of minor riots last month during which a trade-unionist demonstrator was killed in a clash with Japanese police. Replied MacArthur:

"Its [General Derevyanko's letter] talk of greater liberality for Japanese workers and the Soviet practice of labor exploitation is a shocking demonstration of inconsistent demagoguery." The letter, MacArthur thundered, was designed to incite Japan's irresponsible and unruly "minority elements" against the country's duly constituted government and "to screen the Soviet's unconscionable failure to abide by the Potsdam commitments in the return of 400,000 Japanese citizens, long held in bondage, to their homeland."

Concluded MacArthur: "For the Soviets to speak of democratic rights, suppression of legal activities, arbitrariness and chastisement is enough to challenge the late lamented [Robert] Ripley at his imagination's best, and leads one to conclude that now there must really be nothing new under the sun."

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