Hardly Necessary

"PEASANTS OUTCLASS THE MIGHTY U.S.A.," read a headline in Lord Beaverbrook's London Evening Standard last week. The left-wing New Statesman and Nation took another tack, suggested that perhaps the best way to handle the Korean war would be to admit the Chinese Communists to the U.N., remove General MacArthur as U.N. commander in the Far East, and let Britain step in as mediator. U.S. journalists in London also reported that some Britons were getting a certain amount of quiet satisfaction in seeing the mighty "Yanks" get their "come-uppance."

There was no doubt that some Britons were drawing sly comfort from the U.S. reverses; but there was also no doubt that this sentiment was not the reaction of the British people.

In the House of Commons, Tory Earl Winterton asked Prime Minister Clement Attlee if he thought that the government should not try to impress the British public with the fact that ". . . an American force, greatly outnumbered and outgunned, fighting with the accustomed gallantry of the American and British armies in such a situation ... is the only effective opposition to Communist aggression in Korea at present?"

Replied Attlee quietly: "I thought most people realized that."

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