In the Cause of Peace

"We are not at war," said the President of the U.S. last week. Then he went on to explain. The U.S., said Harry Truman, was engaged in a police action. A "bunch of bandits" had attacked the Republic of Korea--a government established by the United Nations--and the Security Council had asked U.N. members to suppress this bandit raid. That was what the U.S. was doing. "We hope we have acted in the cause of peace--there is no other reason for the action we have taken," said Truman.

That was how the cold war (which was neither cold nor war) ended.

What was this new thing the U.S. was in? World War III? Could Armageddon begin with so feeble a fanfare as the muffled Battle of Korea? Could the pushbutton war of the physicists start among the grass roofs of a land where men had hardly caught up with Galileo? Was this the place and was this the way in which Marx and Jefferson came to final grips?

It could be. The fire in the grass roofs of Korea might spread into atomic war--and it might not. It might, on the other hand, be the beginning of peace.

The Communist intention to destroy what order existed in the rest of the world had been plainly published and implacably pursued. The U.S. had first ignored and then underestimated this challenge. In Europe, the U.S. had partially met the Communist threat by gifts of goods, and promises of military aid if the Red threat became an all-out war.

In Asia, this had not been enough. In Asia, the props of ordered freedom were just not strong enough to withstand the Communist pressure. So China fell while the U.S. argued about the political morals of Chiang Kai-shek and consoled itself with babble about the hopeless "complexity of the situation." After that, "the situation" became infinitely more complex and the reality harder & harder to ignore. The reality was: Communism was winning the victory and might never have to resort to all-out war.

By decision of the U.S. and the U.N., the free world would now try to strike back, deal with the limited crises through which Communism was advancing. Russia's latest aggression had united the U.S. --and the U.N.--as nothing else could.

Already the Communists had paid for their attack on Korea; when Truman said "I have ordered the Seventh Fleet" to Formosa, he denied Communism a rich strategic prize that had been in its grasp. The fact that Douglas MacArthur, who has long understood the Communist intentions in Asia, was defending Korea meant that the Reds would not get that country cheaply.

The road ahead of the U.S. was going to be harder than any it had ever traveled. Among the perils, all-out war was a possibility, but not a certainty. If they could strike back at Communism, if they could learn to fight the wars that were not called wars, if they could prove their power and purpose in Asia, the U.S. and the free world might win through to peace.

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