The Return

• Share

(2 of 2)

Who Attacked? Malik hammered away. The real aggressors in Korea, he cried, were the South Korean government and its American masters. They had first invaded North Korea. To prove U.S. instigation, he waved aloft a news picture of State Department Adviser John Foster Dulles with other American officials and South Korean army men in South Korean trenches.-"This picture shows," cried Malik, "that the aggression of the United States Government in Korea has been the result of a long-hatched plan . . . Hardly any member of the Security Council will contend that Mr. Dulles [was] in those trenches gathering violets."

Britain's Sir Gladwyn Jebb delivered the free world's telling reply. A brilliant career diplomat, a trusted counselor of Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin and one of U.N.'s architects,* Sir Gladwyn had just taken over from Sir Alexander Cadogan as chief British delegate. Said he: "No amount of photographs of Mr. Dulles in a trench—and I only wish there had been more trenches—no suggestion that he himself first rushed across the frontier, no repetition of arguments which a child could refute . . . can obscure the patent fact that it was the North Korean troops who, in large numbers and heavily armed, crossed the frontier and overran the territory of a government which had been established by the United Nations."

The Briton caused Malik's face to redden as he derided "the queer, upside-down language . . . employed by U.S.S.R. propaganda . . . We really do seem to be living in a rather nightmarish Alice-in-Wonderland world . . ."

Peace or War? Then Malik virtually served an ultimatum. If the U.N. persists in "illegal" decisions on Korea (i.e., any decision not agreed to by Red Russia, Red China or Red Korea), grave consequences would follow. "The issue," he blustered, "is one of peace or war."

The Council was not intimidated. Four times it voted, and four times Malik was defeated. The Council approved the U.S.-sponsored agenda which would make North Korean aggression this week's first order of business.