Irresponsible Ally?

For months, a mixture of misinformation, ignorance and fear of U.S. conduct in Korea had been piling up in Britain like loose gunpowder on the floor of a fireworks factory. The surprise news of the big U.S. air raids on North Korea's power network was the spark that set it off. The explosion belched smoke and flames through Britain's House of Commons.

Was It Wise? The left-wing Laborite firebrands of Aneurin Bevan saw the news as a made-in-America chance to clobber both the U.S. and the Conservative government. "If you want to go to war," cried Bevan dramatically, "why not say so?" But this time the hostility did not stop at the left. Winston Churchill, embarrassed and angered by the U.S. failure to consult him in advance of the air raids, made only fitful attempts to douse the diplomatic blaze, and in the main debate he pointedly took no part. Quiet, colorless Clement Attlee, no enemy of the U.S., was so worried over the growing Bevanite strength in his own camp that he dare not leave the issue to them, and solemnly led his whole party into a posture of qualified hostility to the U.S. ally. "Her Majesty's government...ought to have been allowed to express an opinion as to whether this was wise," said he. "I think it is a profound mistake in psychology, and it is not the first...I think it...may lead us dangerously nearer to a general conflagration in theEast."

Pushed into the defender's role, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden began forcefully enough: "The [House] must bear in mind that all these targets .. . lay within Korea itself and are military targets . . . We were not consulted . . . There was no specific obligation to consult us. Although we are sorry we were not ... we give our allies full support in it." But the more he talked, the more halfhearted Eden's defense sounded. Attlee could conceivably be right, Eden confessed, in fearing that the bombings might upset the truce negotiations. "I do not care myself to try to estimate that at all . . ."

"It Was Clear." In came Nye Bevan from Labor's back bench, with klaxon at full blast. He had, he recalled, supported the late Labor government's decision to fight with the U.S. in Korea, because he believed the North Koreans had started it. But now Nye Bevan, reflecting the view of the pinkish wing of the British press, was questioning even that. "A good many commentators have expressed the view," said he mysteriously, "that there was quite considerable evidence that military moves had been made by the South Koreans ... It was also quite clear that there were certain elements, particularly in the U.S.A., who regarded these circumstances as an opportunity for counterrevolutionary action."

To Bevan, the Yalu River bombings represented a new Washington extend-the-war plot, fiendishly timed to take place just when the Korean truce hinged on but one unsolved issue.

"No earnest attempt has been made to seek a basic political solution," Bevan roared. He had his own formula for peace in the Far East, and he announced it without giving credit to the Russian and Chinese Communists who have been mouthing it since the truce talks began. Its sum: call off the American jingo-dogs and give the Communists what they want. "If the American Administration will . . . give effective assurances to the Chinese People's government that they accept the Chinese revolution as an accomplished fact; that they are prepared to accept China on the [U.N.] Security Council; that they are prepared to disband Chiang Kai-shek's forces in Formosa and not connive...in a counter-revolutionary movement...the armistice could succeed quite easily."

What was most jarring about the Bevanite accusations and innuendoes was that they seemed to be a more outspoken expression of what a lot of other Britons were thinking, including many who should know better. "I cannot possibly support [Eden] on his lying down to the contempt with which he is treated by the U.S.," cried onetime Defense Minister Emanuel Shinwell, who as Laborites go is often ranked as a moderate. "To take action of this particular kind in this particular place and at this particular time without any consultation," said the Economist in a hand-wringing editorial, "is a capital blunder. It will revive (however unjustly) all the suspicions of the other free nations that the Americans are trigger-happy." The anti-American New Statesman and Nation, which talks habitually from the far left of Labor, called the Yalu River raid "a crime." "Unfortunately," cried the New Statesman, "this is not the first occasion on which this kind of sinister intervention has taken place. We recall General MacArthur's offensives...each delicately timed to scotch peace talks and provoke Chinese intervention...For two years the British have shown exemplary patience and loyalty to an ally. That patience and loyalty have been exploited while the purposes for which the United Nations entered the Korean war have been confused and perverted."

The Defense. Only a few Britons rose to give their ill-informed countrymen a straight picture. Just back from a tour of the Korean battlefronts with Defense Minister Lord Alexander, Minister of State Selwyn Lloyd retorted with annoyance: "This idea of a collection of bellicose, irresponsible Americans thirsting to extend the war is a gross injustice to a very fine body of men." Tory M.P. Fitzroy Maclean, who parachuted into Yugoslavia in 1943 to head the British mission to Tito, spoke up in the House. "Many honorable members," he snapped "...were extremely censorious in 1938 and 1939 about the policy of appeasement which was followed by the then government. . . Why do they feel differently about it when [aggression] is committed by a Communist country?"

Dean Acheson was in England to receive an Oxford degree and attend a Big Three Foreign Ministers' conference. Hearing the furor, he lunched with Anthony Eden, quickly agreed to a proposal by Lord Alexander (made before the fuss began) that Britain should have a deputy on the high command in Korea. Then he stepped before a special meeting of some 300 M.P.s in the grand committee room of ancient Westminster Hall. The bombing, he said, was a military undertaking, not a political move, and the U.S. was not obliged to notify Britain in advance. He expressed regret, however, that Washington had not informed London; it was all, he said, an administrative mixup. Reporters in London, briefed on the private session, all wrote of Acheson's "apology"; when Congressmen back home set up a howl, the State Department announced that Acheson had made an explanation, not an apology.

Complaints & Exasperations. There was little doubt that one top Briton had a complaint: the U.S. should have passed the word to a soldier it implicitly trusts, Field Marshal Alexander, who was touring the battlefront and visiting his old friend Mark Clark just before the bomb bays were loaded. But Alexander himself, though surprised by the raid, said he approved of it. That set off Bevanite demands for Alexander's head.

Through the uproar, the U.S., long ago used to a standard British label--"the irresponsible Americans"--kept its composure, though there was ample reason for exasperation at Britain's reaction. Too many Britons are too ready to believe that Washington is aching to plunge into World War III. Britain's government--Labor or Tory--has been lax about telling Britons the facts of life in Korea, has kept alive the notion that the best way to peace is to be nice to Mao Tse-tung. Britain's newspapers have treated the Korean fighting as a dull, disagreeable affair worth only a few sticks of type. The House of Commons debate was marked by ignorant assertions that went unchallenged--such as that the U.S. is training Chiang Kaishek's troops in Korea itself. Some Britons actually seemed to believe that a truce had been in operation in Korea until the U.S. bombers dropped their payloads last week, and seemed shocked when Acheson told them the "lull" had cost the U.N. 30,000 casualties.

London's Sunday Observer was set to add its voice to the critical clamor until the cold facts sunk in. Instead, the Observer confessed: "Everything . . . turns on the question; Was there, prior to the Yalu raids, a lull, a tacit cease-fire or near-cease-fire in Korea?" The Observer had done a little quick homework and was startled by its findings: "The plain fact--continuous and hence unreported--is that there has been a long-drawn battle which has been in progress almost since the start of the armistice talks." In this light, the Observer was alarmed at the way Britons were talking. "It is still possible to criticize the raids because they indirectly affect Manchuria and Siberia as well as Korea," it added, "but this, compared with the charge that the raids were a deliberate resumption of a discontinued war, is almost a quibble."

That was more to the point. As allies, the U.S. could at least ask that its critics know what they were talking about.

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