Close to the Enemy

What has Grand Rapids, Mich, to do with the Far East? Why do these twain keep meeting?

Last week in Grand Rapids, Mrs. Alfred Medendorp heard that her husband, a lieutenant colonel of the U.S. Army, had been killed, along with another U.S. officer, when the Chinese Communists bombarded Quemoy Island, five miles from the Chinese mainland. In 1942 the same woman heard that her first husband had been killed fighting the Japanese on New Guinea. Medendorp was his buddy in the New Guinea campaign. In the deaths of these two friends there was more than coincidence.

Again and again the U.S. had resolutely turned its back upon the other shore of the Pacific. Again and again came a reminding nudge or knock. Quemoy was no Pearl Harbor--not the stuff that touches off wars. But it was, perhaps, part of the stuff of which wars are made. It is an island held by the Nationalist Chinese--Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese--and the U.S. had every right to send Medendorp there as part of a military mission advising and aiding Chiang in what he sees clearly--and the U.S. sees unclearly--as a struggle for Asia and for the world.

This struggle has been marked by armistices, truces, ceasefires. When the firing officially ceases, the Reds advance--usually firing. At present there is peace in the Far East. Medendorp was not (officially) killed in action. Nor was a U.S. plane shot down last week by an (official) enemy. Nonetheless, a U.S. plane was shot down by Russian fighters in the Japan Sea, 40 miles (by U.S. count) outside Soviet territorial waters. The U.S. State Department sent Moscow a note calling the attack "wanton and unprovoked." Republican Senate Leader William Knowland said that the U.S. should break off diplomatic relations with the U.S.S.R. because of the plane incident.

At Manila Secretary of State Dulles was assuring Filipinos that the U.S. would come to their defense if the Reds attacked them, a proposition that had scarcely been in doubt. What is more dubious and more important is whether the U.S. has a forward policy in the Far East. Was Medendorp simply waiting for an enemy attack? Is that what Chiang Kai-shek is supposed to be doing? Or are U.S. servicemen and U.S. allies waiting for the U.S. to make up its mind about what it will do in Asia?

Last week, commenting on the Red bombardment of Quemoy, Assistant Defense Secretary Fred Seaton said: "We are alert to our responsibilities in the area, and certain of our units [from the Seventh Fleet] are at sea."

This did not mean that the U.S. was close to World War III, but it did mean that it was very close to the enemy in the Far East. In the end, the U.S. would not permit an enemy to control those coasts. A woman in Grand Rapids had lost two husbands in proof of that proposition.

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