Return from Peking

Dag Hammarskjold returned from Red China last week. As Secretary-General of the United Nations, he had flown to Peking to seek freedom for eleven American flyers and other U.N. soldiers captured while fighting in Korea. He brought back some hope for their release and some insight into the tortuous mind of their chief jailer, Red China's Premier Chou Enlai. In time, the gain may compensate for the loss to the U.N.'s prestige by his journey, which was heralded in Asia as a "great diplomatic victory for Red China." Hong Kong's anti-Communist newspaper Sing Tao Man Pao commented bitterly: "Hammarskjold went as a lung [dragon] but came back as a chung [worm]."

A Time to Talk. Hammarskjold, a polished, professional Swedish diplomat, conferred four times with Chou, the cold-chiseled Communist. In all, they talked for 13 hours and 35 minutes across a table in Peking's Hall of the Western Flowers. A Chinese Harvard man interpreted, a few advisers listened silently. Thrice daily, blue-uniformed Chinese servants noiselessly served tea and cookies while the discussion continued. Only once, said Professor Ahmed Bokhari, who accompanied Hammarskjold, was there "a slight relaxation for about five minutes. Otherwise, the conversations were intense, earnest and continuous."

Afterward, Communist Chou tendered a great banquet (on the menu: swallow's-nest soup, kidney, chicken, fish, shark's fins, crab, abalone, mushrooms, Peking duck, broccoli in oyster sauce). Toasts were drunk in Chinese wine. The Chinese showed a movie in color, a harrowing love story. Both sides issued a short statement: "We feel that these talks have been useful." Then Hammarskjold flew back to New York via the Pacific, completing an around-the-world swing. On leaving, he sent Chou his "sincere personal thanks."

In New York Hammarskjold, brick-red from a sunbath during his stop at Hawaii, conferred immediately with Henry Cabot Lodge, U.S. representative to the U.N., who later announced: "I am confident that progress has been made and that our flyers will be free." Hammarskjold himself, at a press conference the next day, rated his own hopes at "a temperature somewhat lower than that reflected in the word 'optimism.'

A Time to Wait. Except in private reports to top United Nations delegates, Hammarskjold told very little of his conversations with Chou. "I achieved what I had hoped to achieve," he said. "We remain in touch . . . The door has been opened and can be kept open." The door to what? To "an attitude, let us call it, of playing fair."

The U.N. General Assembly had directed Hammarskjold only to seek release of the prisoners, but, he made plain, the discussions covered much more ground: such issues as the 35 Chinese students held in the U.S., Chou's demand to enter the U.N., and many other "grudges, worries, concerns." "No deals of any kind" were suggested, he said, but "there is a very definite link between" the prisoners and the Red objectives.

At week's end, President Eisenhower, who does not intend to pay blackmail for American prisoners, called on the nation for patience. "We must have faith in the community of nations and in the tremendous influence of world opinion," the President proclaimed. "We must not fall into a Communist trap, and through impetuous words or deed endanger the lives of those imprisoned airmen . . . We must support the U.N. in its efforts so long as those efforts hold out any promise of success."

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