Three to Make Peace
The combination of Oriental touchiness with Communist `Tigidity continues to bedevil the prospects of a truce in Korea, where early this week the Chinese delegate walked out in a huff from a meeting held to discuss procedure for reopening the Kaesong negotiations. The seemingly pointless sparring over obscure and unimportant points of protocol has gone on so Jong as to give grounds for a theory that the white flag is really being used by the Communists as a red herring--that, in other words, they do not really want a truce but hope to derive some advan- tage from keeping the possibility of negotiations in view like a sort of ignis fatuus. It is not easy to see in what the rewards of such a stratagem might be supposed to lie, and the dim explanation of what looks like childish behaviour is almost cer- tainly to be found in considerations of "face." It is apt to be forgotten that there are three, not two, parties involved in the negotiations, and that the fraternal relations between the Chinese and the North Koreans are themselves balanced on the razor- edge of national prestige. The representative of one army cannot afford to be one whit more accommodating or more reasonable than his colleague ; and it may be suspected that many of the repeated breakdowns have been due to factors stemming from this circumstance. General Ridgway's new proposal to reopen the talks on a new site, and then proceed at once to the demarca- tion of a demilitarised zone, must be taken as his last word. If nothing comes of this the fighting will go on unchecked.
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