International: Agreeing to Disagree

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Bloody Nuisance. Britain's willingness to discuss the recognition question at the Korean conference rested on the tiny word "etc." tacked onto Article 60 by the Communists. The much more urgent objective—Korean unity—is regarded in London as nothing more than a bloody nuisance. British editorialists almost unanimously regard Syngman Rhee as a dangerous man and John Foster Dulles as too ready to give in to him. Then, to rouse these feelings even higher, came the Aug. 7 U.N. declaration that all 16 members who fought in Korea would jointly resist a Communist breach of the armistice. The last sentence read: "The consequences of such a breach . . . would be so grave that, in all probability, it would not be possible to confine hostilities within the frontiers of Korea."

To most Americans, this was fair warning that Peking should not expect to escape from a second aggression as easily as it had from the first. To the British Labor Party it was senseless warmongering which the Foreign Office had no right to agree to. This outburst struck the London Economist as proof that the Labor Party is against "any British firmness anywhere (except, of course, in Washington)." But the Tory government hastened to explain that the warning was not really a warning, but only a statement of probabilities.

This dustup only served to prove how futile and eventually disillusionary a practice it is to cover over disagreements with calculated ambiguities. In the new, more realistic vein, the West's proposal for the forthcoming political conference declares that no nation on the U.N. side need be bound by any decision for which it has not voted.