"It Is Inhuman"

When the explanations started at Panmunjom, the Communist explainers screened some 500 P.W.s in less than four hours. Last week they took eight hours to screen 136. This was the long-expected Communist move to sabotage the explanations that were costing them so much face in Asia. The go-slow tactics imposed a new strain on the P.W.s, but they did not seem to be swayed. Of the first 136, only two chose to go back to Communism.

The neutrals on the Repatriation Commission were also ready for any tricks by the Communists, whom they no longer trust. After one hour-long explanation, a Swiss pointed emphatically at his watch. The Indian chairman told the explainer, "Hurry up." At this note of friendship, the P.W. serenaded the explainer, beating his feet on the floor in rhythm. "March together," he sang, "against the Communist pigs. Death to the traitor Mao." The Indian listened, half amused, then gently told the guards, "Tell him to stop singing now. He did not come here to sing." Five minutes later, the Indian snapped to the explainer, "That's enough."

Turmoil in a Tent. In another tent, a P.W. stood his ground for almost four hours. The Swiss and the Swede kept asking him if he wanted to leave, but the P.W. seemed quite happy to stay. The Communist explainer moved halfway round his table, and threatened the P.W. The Swiss wagged his finger in the explainer's face, and cried, "You shut up. You shut up." The Poles and Czechs shouted at the Swiss, and the Indian shouted in Hindi to the guards. At this moment of turmoil, a black U.S. Chevrolet with three stars on its bumper drove up to the tent, and India's strapping Lieut. General K. S. Thimayya stepped out. "This is absurd," said he. "It's got to stop." He promptly ordered a ten-minute recess for every tent, and instructed his officers to see that explanations were not dragged on after the P.W.s' intentions had been made clear. "Are you expecting any more trouble?" someone asked him. "Not from the P.W.s," he replied.

Letters from Home. Next day he called a press conference about the Communist go-slow campaign. "It is inhuman," said Sandhurst-educated General Thimayya in precise British accent. "As long as India is responsible, I cannot permit this to grow." Thimayya thought the explainers should get through a compound of 500 P.W.s a day or "forget about those who are not explained to." If the explanations stalled altogether, Thimayya implied, he would use his own troops to give the P.W.s a fair hearing.

Then Thimayya disposed of another Red trick. The 22 U.S. and one British "nonrepat" P.W.s complained they were getting mail from the U.S. designed to "intimidate, slander, coerce and bribe" them to go home; they demanded that the neutrals censor their mail. Thimayya said all right, if the other neutrals agreed, but "I asked them what we should do in the case of a letter from a man's wife who writes 'Oh, darling, please come home to me,' and they seemed a little unclear."

Then, looking toward Communist Correspondent Alan Winnington, Thimayya confided: "Frankly, we had expected that five or six thousand of [the P.W.s] would want to go home." Explanations' box score to date: prisoners held, 22,592; explanations, 2,204; decisions to go back to Communist territory, 64.

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