Korean Atrocities
In language impressive by its very dryness and banality the American Army has now given further details of the findings of its War Crimes Division in Korea. Thus case KWC 185, for example, deals with the bayonetting of prisoners, and KWC 164 with torture, while KWC 28 gives details of the Taejon Massacre. There are statistics and photographs. This docu- ment, to say the least of it, sets out an irresistible prima facie case for that reference to the United Nations which, when it was proposed at the beginning of November, was received with chilling suggestions of bad timing, tactlessness—and even of political manceuvre—by various organs of British opinion. Such suggestions show a singular lack of knowledge of how things happen in America. In printing "all the news that's fit to print" American newspapers do not spare the feelings of their readers as newspapers in this country generally do, and the stories and photographs of murdered, starved and mutilated soldiers, American and Korean alike, which appeared in October, were grimmer than anything we have seen since Belsen. The natural consequence was a blaze of public horror and indignation. The Administration reacted sharply, and proposed reference to the United Nations. Publicity, public anger, government action—so events followed upon the dis- coveries, and what sequence of events could be more natural, or less discreditable, in a well-informed democracy ? And what, in the circumstances, could be more damaging to Anglo- American relations than superior remarks from this side of the Atlantic about " timing " ? On such occasions we should do well to remember that we are not the grandmothers of our American allies but their comrades.
Previous page
