Evening star., 1951-05-22
How Much More Can They Take?

Although the signs may be deceiving, the
second round of the enemy's spring offensive in
Korea appears to be petering out. After five days
of violent "human-wave" attacks, the indications
are that he has begun, once again, to withdraw
from the front. As in the first round--his short
lived April drive-he seems very definitely to
have suffered terrible mauling, and the big
question now is G) whether and when he will
come back for more of the same or ca whether
and when he will decide that he has had enough
and that the time has arrived to try for a
negotiated settlement. &fft ts%
Certainly, unless they are determined to keep
on fighting war of attrition regardless of the
cost to themselves, or unless the Kremli1 has
committed itself to help them match our fire.
power on the ground and challenge our sea and
air dominance, the Chinese Communists must be
wondering about the sanity of a strategy that
apparently does nothing but bring down slaughter
upon themselves. AS 1t has worked out thus far
that strategy has been the strategy of butchers
hook hooking the butcher. As a result of it, they
and the North Korean Reds have suffered-within
less than years tirne-casualties totaling in
the neighborhood of 100000 men. BY way of
contrast, the losses of our American and allied
United Nations forces have been relatively light
Thus, in their brief drive last month, the
Communists lost upwards of Is per cent of the
100000 troops they had committed to that battle
but our own casualties from January through
April (ncluding the first round of the Red spring
otenSlve) averaged only three tenths of per
cent of every 100 men engaged Similarly, in
the first five days of round two (Which seems
to be ending), the enemy has suffered losses
totaling between 10000 and 10000, with almost
$4,000 of these suffered on last Sunday alone
the biggest one-day toll of the war; Our End
Infantry Division, which has borne the brunt of
fho oI,t
acclaim of General Ridgway, is to be credited
with having meted out more than half of this
fearsome punishment. The lop-sided nature of
that punishment can best be measured by the
almost unbelievable fact that in the same period
United Nations dead and wounded have totaled
1913, some $50 of them Americans.
Tremendous as is Red China's population,
its trained armies are by no means so mex
haustible that they can afford to suffer losses
OF this sort-far more grievous than those of the
United Nations-in one abortive offensive after
another. The thing simply makes no sense,
either politically or militarily. It adds up to
nothing but predictable piecemeal destruction
Of Chinese Communist armed strength kind
OF suicidal strategy that fails to yield any real
profit in terms of inflicting comparable destruc-
tion on the U. MS forces. This will remain true
as long as puppet Peiping, despite its great
numerical superiority in troops, lacks the where
withal to cancel out our overwhelming advan-
tages in ground firepower and in virtually COM
plete mastery of the sea and sky in the Korean
theater of action.
In such circumstances, If the Kremlin is not
going to risk precipitating an all-out war by
helping the Chinese Communists to overcome
those advantages, what can the Mao Tze-tung
regime hope to achieve by subjecting its troops
to further slaughter in futile new Korean often
civ, TY0rry Io,.w ILL, b.
battling and inhumanly callous strategy without
wrecking the morale of its own armies and arous-
ing the wrath of the people of China? The
questions speak pretty much for themselves
Sooner or later, unless the Russians offer them
aid on much larger scale, it would seem that
the Peiping puppets if they are sane, must seek
a negotiated settlement-a fact that makes the
current crop of peace rimors sound plausible
whether true or not