Evening star., 1953-07-02
Hopeful President

1nere is very IlLLle on the race OF General
Eisenhower's press-conference remarks, or in
the neVs dispatches from Seoul for that matter,
which would seem to justify the Presidents
belief that satisfactory solution is coming out
of the bogged-down Korean truce negotiations.
1t is quite true, as General Eisenhower says,
that the application of broad principles to par
ticular cases has bedeviled coalitions through
out history, and that in this respect we should
not become too discouraged about our current
difficulties with the very difficult Mr.. Syngman
Rhee. To the extent that this presidential OBJ
servation applies to the Korean problem, it i'm
plies that Mr.. Rhee eventually will be brought
to terms And General Eisenhower may have
good reason to believe that this will be the
ultimate result of the haggling which has been
going on Presumably he has more and better
information than is available to the public
and certainly logic, assuming that Mr.. Rhee is
familiar with the word, should persuade our
ROK ally that reasonable agreement is to be
preferred to national suicide.
Although he may have implied as much,
however, the President did not say that the
satisfactory solution which he believes will be
forthcoming necessarily includes an agreement
with Mr.. Rhee. Perhaps he was thinking of an
armistce signed without South Korean partici-
pation-a solution which, if accepted by the
Communists, might be considered satisfactory in
the sense of being the least evil of the choices
which would be left to us.
There has not been any official public
appraisal of the consequences of such sou-
ton, although the prevailing popular view has
been that it would mean the loss of virtually
everything for which we have sacrificed so
much in Korea. Interestingly enough, however,
Lieutenant General Eichelberger, who COM
manded the 9Th Army prior to the Korean
war, does not agree. Writing in the current
issue of NeWsweek, General Eichelberger says
that continued recalcitrance on Mr.. Rhee's part
may leave us with little recourse except to sign
a separate truce, withdraw our forces, and leave
him to fight the war alone as he demands. In
that case, Red victory would not be long de-
layed, but General Eichelberger adds:
This would be bitter pill indeed for us to
swallow. However, it would not do any great
harm in the strategic sense. The grand objec-
tive of the war has been achieved The spread
of Communist aggression to the rest of the
world has largely been halted. Japan has
been made into great forward base. safe and
friendly. An Anerican-tr trained and equipped
Japanese army and navy are IN process OF
formation. I am convinced that the security
of Japan is not major reason for continuing
the war, provided we now reach an hon
orable peace. And peace with honor does not
necessarily include the indefinite appeasement
OF Syngman Rhee.
This is a strategic estimate, especially as
it concerns the safety of Japan, which is not
shared by other eminent military figures. 1t is
a point of view for which an argument can
be made, however, and MIR. Rhee might prove
more amenable to reason if he should become
persuaded that this Government is thinking
seriously along these lines.