No Time for Illusions

Cheered by the news from Korea and the lack of news about Russia's intentions, the U.S. indulged its constitutional tendency to optimism. In the war theater there was no such feeling. One day last week, General Douglas MacArthur flew to the Han River front. After his inspection he slowly dictated a statement to frontline reporters.

The Communists will never dislodge U.N. forces from Korea, he vowed; the strategy in Korea was working all right. There had been "exhausting attrition upon both [the enemy's] manpower and supplies." But, said MacArthur, "there should be no illusions in this matter." Unless there are "major additions" to U.N. strength, unless "the existing limitation upon our freedom of counteroffensive action" is lifted, "the battle lines in the end will reach a point of theoretical stalemate."

In Korea, the U.S. and its allies were up against an implacable and callous will, which shocked even the old Asiatic campaigner, Douglas MacArthur. "That they should continue this savage slaughter despite an almost hopeless chance of ultimate military success . . . displays a complete contempt for the sanctity of human life." And faced with that, he was raising once again the question of all-out attacks by air and by sea against bases in China as possibly the only way to end the bloodshed. MacArthur put it up to U.N. Decisions beyond his authority as "the military commander," he said, "must provide on the highest international levels an answer to the obscurities [of] Red China's undeclared war in Korea."

MacArthur was not talking about colored pins on a staff officers' war map. He was talking about thousands of human lives--Chinese troops sent in to be slaughtered, a U.S. war-death list that had averaged 245 a week since the war began. But in Washington there was only silence. U.S. policymakers had weighed the question and made their decision: the risk of making war against the Chinese in China was too great; it might bring into the conflict Russian aircraft and Russian submarines.

So far as Washington was concerned, there was no immediate decision to make. The decision still rested with Red China. Washington knew that Mao was planning one more major offensive. If that failed,

China might decide to acknowledge the terrible efficiency of General Matthew Ridgway's "Operation Killer" (see WAR IN ASIA) and consider a ceasefire. But for the moment, there appeared to be nothing to do but continue the strategy of attrition.

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