Answers to Aggression

Trygve Lie last week called upon 50 U.N. members to send troops to Korea. Cabled Lie: "The unified command is in urgent need of additional assistance , . . particularly ground forces."* When a reporter asked "whether nations should confine themselves to token forces," Lie answered bluntly: "No, I think they should give effective assistance."

At week's end, the first wave of replies came in. Sweden promised an ambulance unit "completely in line with Swedish tradition," Israel declined to send ground troops "because our neighbors still obstinately refuse to make peace," Norway offered merchant shipping, Egypt nothing at all. Warships from Australia, Canada, The Netherlands, New Zealand and Britain had already joined the U.S.-led naval force. British, and Australian planes are also in action. There were indications that Canada, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Pakistan and the Philippines would send troops.

The participation of Filipino and Pakistani soldiers would undermine the Red propaganda line of "white man's aggression" in Asia.

Lie counteracted another Red propaganda line at his press conference. Joseph Clark of Manhattan's Communist Daily Worker asked why Lie had not cabled MacArthur the same message he had sent to the North and South Koreans, asking them to bar atrocities. (Both sides promised to do so.) Asked Lie angrily: "Don't you know that the U.S. Army has always adhered to the Geneva Convention--always when they have been in action?" The Worker correspondent admitted: "I understand that very well."

In answer to other questions, Lie: 1) rejected mediation in Korea "at this time"; 2) refused to bar use of atomic weapons there; 3) left it to the Security Council to decide whether U.N. forces should drive north of the 38th parallel, but recalled that U.N. had repeatedly urged unification of Korea; 4) declined comment on whether North Korean leaders should be treated as war criminals, but added: "I am quite sure they started the attack and the aggression."

*The nine U.N. members not asked for armed aid: the U.S., already in Korea up to its ears; Nationalist China, whose offer to send troops was being stalled because the U.S. State Department still could not make up its mind to cooperate with Chiang Kaishek; Costa Rica whose constitution forbids it to have an army and the six of the 59 U.N. members (Yugoslavia and the five Soviet-bloc nations) who did not give some form of backing to the U.N. action in Korea.

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