The Reason

Why has no truce agreement been reached in Korea? Beneath the weird and interminable welter of words at Panmunjom, the reason is plain even to the newest soldier on the front.

When the truce talks got under way last July, the U.N. knew what brought the Reds to the conference table: they were suffering heavy losses on the battlefield and they faced the prospect of defeat. U.N. spokesmen said insistently that only by continued pressure could the Reds be brought to sign an armistice. But U.N. strategists lost sight of that fact.

Last summer the Communists set out to test U.N. determination by breaking off the talks for two months. The result was to bring Matt Ridgway's army down on them with almost as much weight as before, and the Reds came meekly back to the table and gave up their demand for a truce line on the 38th parallel. Washington might have learned a lesson. Instead, it all but stopped the pressure. U.N. settled down to a wait & see campaign. Casualties fell off, but over the past ten weeks the U.S. has still suffered a weekly average loss of 60-plus killed, 140-plus wounded. The cost of the war went on at roughly $5 billion a year.

Since the lull on the battlefield, the Red negotiators have been wholly intractable. The U.N. has no policy except to try to wear down the Reds at the conference table. In the game of waiting, the U.N. is up against the champs. Once, the U.N. had the advantage in Korea; now it has got into a contest in which the advantage is with the enemy.

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