Stalin's Mustache

Out of the Kaesong cease-fire talks, world Communism is making a loud, crude but effective propaganda symphony. One of its two themes is Red "victory"; it portrays the "Western aggressors" as wounded, dragged in the dust, waving the white flag, and helplessly suing for peace.

The other theme is Red "peace"; it portrays the same aggressors miraculously risen from the dust, intact and blood thirsty, hell-bent for more and bigger wars -- while the Communist bloc, pure of heart and with malice toward none, waves the olive branch.

Billionaires' Dreams. Asians are getting the fullest force of the victory blast. The Reds took movies of white-flagged U.N.

convoys and unarmed U.N. negotiators surrounded by armed Communist guards.

Hong Kong is sure that the pictures have had immense impact in Red China and elsewhere in Asia. The New China News Agency cried last week: "The Chinese and [Communist] Korean forces are invincible. The Korean war is wearing out America's war resources, exposing its aggressive plans, and weakening its war potential at a staggering rate. The war of attrition in Korea has completely shattered Wall Street billionaires' dreams of conquering Korea cheaply."

The Reds, now rocked by General Ridgway's decisive reversal of the course of the truce conference, are not trying the full-blast victory theme in Europe -- be cause they know that they cannot get away with it, and knew it even before Ridgway struck the issue. Instead, they are plugging the peace theme. Communist papers complain of Ridgway's truculence in breaking off the talks, represent the Communists as "patient," the U.S. as "power mad." The London Daily Worker printed a photomontage showing five smiling world leaders sitting around a conference table: Truman, Stalin, France's Schuman, Britain's Attlee and Red China's Mao Tse-tung. Banner: THESE FIVE MEN CAN MAKE PEACE. Caption: "This is the picture the world is waiting to see."

Psychological Attack. Moscow's men launched a new English-language semi monthly magazine, quaintly christened News. Piped the first issue of News: "We do not believe that war is inevitable.

We are firmly convinced that peaceful international cooperation is possible and indeed essential for tranquillity and security . . ."

The peace theme is the more dangerous of the two: it is, in fact, a psychological attack on the resolution of the free world.

Said Stalin's former pupil, Tito, last week :

Moscow's cease-fire overture is "only a maneuver -- to calm things down in Korea in order to open fire in another place . . .

The North Koreans have heated up the soup and now they have burned themselves . . ."

Concluded Tito: "Stalin is known the world over for his mustache, but not for his wisdom."

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