Petition to Peking

"Passivity is fatal to us" Mao Tse-tung has written. "Our goal is to make the enemy passive"

All last week the U.N. passively dragged its feet and averted its eyes from the unpleasant fact of Chinese Communist aggression in Korea. Nobody even wanted to call it aggression.

Though a Russian veto had blocked Security Council action (TIME, Dec. 11), no move was made to bring the issue before the General Assembly under the new formula that permits veto-free condemnation of aggressors and recommendations for action against them. Instead, the U.S., Britain, France, Norway, Cuba and Ecuador offered the Assembly a resolution charging Red China with "intervention" in Korea, asking withdrawal of its troops, promising protection for China's border rights. The six powers made no suggestions for U.N. countermeasures.

"We want to seal the enemy's eyes and ears as completely as possible," Mao Tse-tung once wrote about the Japanese, whom, he now says, the Americans have replaced. "We want to render them blind and deaf; we want to take the heart out of their officers; we want to throw them into utter confusion, driving them insane."

While the Assembly sluggishly took up the six-power resolution, India's Sir Benegal Rau bustled about on another project conceived by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in New Delhi: a petition to Peking. Signed by 13 nations,* the note "earnestly" appealed to Red China and North Korea "immediately to declare that it is not their intention that any forces under their control should cross to the south of the 38th parallel." Then, the petitioners added, the whole dangerous issue could be talked over.

Sir Benegal had the document delivered to Red China's Wu Hsiu-chuan for forwarding to Peking. Wu, and later Russia's Andrei Vishinsky, cynically asked why the petition was not sent to Washington and other non-Communist capitals which had previously approved the U.N. army's advance across the 38th parallel. Meanwhile, Red forces in Korea crossed the parallel.

Peking Radio called on Red China for more conscripts, beat the drums for a bigger effort in Korea. The U.N. Commission in Korea reported: no Red Chinese volunteers, only Red Chinese regulars in Korea. But Russia's Vishinsky brushed Peking and the U.N. witness aside, vilified MacArthur as a "maniac, the principal culprit, the evil genius," railed against the six-power resolution. With satanic effrontery, he proposed withdrawal of all "foreign forces" from Korea. Chinese Red "volunteers," he explained, could not be counted as "foreign forces."

"Communism is not love," Mao Tse-tung has said. "Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy . . ."

By week's end, the Assembly was still in desultory debate. Sir Benegal Rau had received no reply from Peking. But from Peking's envoy, Wu, he heard that his petition was getting full "consideration," that Red China was "desirous of bringing the fighting to an end as soon as possible." Skeptical newsmen asked: "By conquest or negotiation?" Rau just smiled.

India, Rau continued, would propose to the Assembly this week a cease-fire in Korea and maybe a demilitarized buffer zone between the U.N. and Communist forces. Rau had also received word from New Delhi that Mao and other Red bigwigs were in close conference with Indian Ambassador Kavalam Nadhava Panikkar, whose anti-Western slant pulls Indian policy towards "neutralism." Panikkar had reported that Peking would negotiate on two conditions: equality in conferences, which seemed to mean recognition by the U.S.; and discussion of all major Far Eastern problems, which seemed to mean acceptance of Communist demands for Korea and Formosa.

Rau carefully observed that while he had not abandoned hope of a settlement, the word "hopeful" was still too strong to describe his feelings. Secretary General Trygve Lie, who had advocated a seat for the Chinese Communists in the U.N., also refused to surrender hope. "I cannot believe," he said, "that the hand of friendship, extended in this spirit, would be, for long, rejected by any nation or any people."

"Revolution," Mao Tse-tung has explained, "is not a dinner party, nor an essay, nor a painting, nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot be advanced softly, gradually, carefully, considerately, respectfully, politely, plainly and modestly."

*Afghanistan, Burma, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen.

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