NEWS OF THE WEEK A CENSORSHIP has now been imposed by
General MacArthur's headquarters on all news from Korea. It can hardly be supposed that the enemy does not already know, from past communiques and from cap- tured documents, all he needs to know about the United Nations order of battle, or that he is particularly curious about the location of the units which compose it. Nearly all are retreating before him at a steady pace, except the divisions of X Corps, who may be assumed to be awaiting the arrival of the 8th Army in the Pusan bridgehead. So the censorship is unlikely to serve any military purpose, and may not long survive the storm of protests which it is bound to arouse in America. Such facts as have been— voluntarily or involuntarily—revealed about the fighting during the past week suggest that there has not been much of it. Some sort of rearguard action is being fought at Wonju ; but it was the speed of the United Nations withdrawal further west, rather than the tenacity of their resistance at Wonju, which prevented the city's captors from threatening the 8th Army's main " escape-route " (a term now symptomatically applied to all rearward lines of com- munication). In the air the United Nations continue to have every- thing their own way, and Russia continues to turn down the appeals (which she must surely, surely be receiving from her proteges) for air cover from a Korea-based detachment of the Red Air Force. Tfie situation of the United Nations is disheartening if not humilia- ting; but it is far from desperate. . The spiritless retreat across country already twice fought over cannot go on much longer ; and when General Ridgway turns to make a stand about Pusan his adversaries should find that the character of the campaign has altered radically.
