Under the Tent

At the mud-hut village of Panmunjom, the place agreed on as the new site for cease-fire talks, the Communists put up a large tent. Under it, Communist and U.N. liaison officers met last week to haggle--not over peace, but over how wide the neutral zone must be in which to discuss the peace. At this point, two U.N. planes, strafing the Kaesong neutral area by mistake, killed a twelve-year-old Korean boy and wounded his two-year-old brother. After an investigation, General Matt Ridgway accepted responsibility for the occurrence, expressed his "heartfelt grief" and promised "prompt and appropriate disciplinary action."

The Red protest had been mild, almost perfunctory. Since the incident had been real and not a piece of propaganda trumpery, the Reds seemed almost to regard it as only a nuisance. For reasons of their own--perhaps the weight of allied firepower in the battle zones--they seemed anxious to get on with the truce talks.

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