KOREA ANXIETIES
0 N Koje Island the first major operation to bring the Communist prisoners of war under control has been successful. ' Force was used and fanatically resisted. A number of prisoners were killed, many of them by their own ringleaders when they /tried to surrender. Mr. Eden's statement that the whole compound is to be dug up to discover how extensive these murders /were indicates how seriously the situation is now being taken,/ A spear-thrust cost one American soldier his life and several pthers were wounded. It looks, now, as if the task of splitting tie unmanageably large compounds, in each of which several t ousand prisoners were ableito defy authority at will, into smal r units may go forward relatively smoothly; but Koje, tharlç to obviously mistaken American arrangements, is a name ike Amritsar and Lidice —destined to retain a lasting and a baleful fame. That the 80,000 prisoners on the island were split up into too large compounds and ,were, far too ineffectively supervised is now clear; and the Americans responsible for the Koje prisoners cannot escape criticism. But no good can come at this stage of suggestions that if the British had been in charge things would have been different. They might have been, but what is past is past, and the American General Boatner, by prompt and necessarily drastic action, has done much to clear up the mess. None the less a rather fuller association of others of the United Nations with the Americans in such a case as this would have a good psychological effect.
