Quibbling in Korea ?
Correspondents in Tokyo and Korea have begun to cast doubts on the competence of the United Nations negotiators at Pan- munjom, or at any rate on the wisdom of the directives by which they are presumably bound. Both sides seemed by the middle of this week to have reached a wide measure of agreement on the question of when and how a cease-fire line should be fixed ; yet Admiral Joy and his colleagues, whose public utterances after their sessions have not in all cases been distinguished by that urbanity which is still a useful lubricant in Oriental negotiations, seemed bent on raising as many obstacles as possible to this hard-won accord. In all history there has probably never been a parley between two armies in which the precise terms of the final agreement mattered less to the commanders, to the civil population in the battle-zone or to tlie world at large. The last thing with which to oppose the Communists' combination of rigidity and skill in negotiation is a combination of rigidity and clumsiness ; and it looks very much as if the tactics of General Ridgway's representatives have been pedestrian if not actually flat-footed. Meanwhile, justifiable annoyance has been caused by the Eighth Army censors, who only released the news of a sharp action in which units of the Commonwealth Division (in particular the King's Own Scottish Borderers) distinguished them- selves after Peking radio had made it abundantly clear that a security " stop " was serving no useful purpose. There are few enough compensations for the troops fighting in Korea ; to be slow or niggardly in giving them credit for their gallantry la inexcusable.
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