Foreign News: The Dummies Go Down

"The prisoners were unlawfully transferred," cried Peking radio, "in the face of knives and clubs of special agents, and circling American planes . . . The U.S.

will surely pay an incalculable price for its criminal action." The Communists did not seem anxious to exact this price in renewed fighting. They tried instead for a penny's worth of propaganda.

The Communists first refused to accept their own 347 pro-Communist P.W.s—325 South Koreans, 21 Americans and one Briton—hoping to prove that the U.N. release of the anti-Communist P.W.s was a "violation of the armistice." Their P.W.s would have to stay where they were in the cold, until the nonexistent political conference determined their fate.

India's Lieut. General K. S. Thimayya pleaded with the Communists to accept the P.W.s "under protest." The Communists refused. "Ah, well," said Thimayya.

"We shall have to let the P.W.s know their owners don't want them." At midnight, Jan. 22, the Indian guards withdrew from the pro-Communist compound, leaving the P.W.s with a week's supply of food, which the Reds fore-handedly provided for them. Later that week, the Red rigmarole began. The P.W.s skated gracefully upon frozen paddies.

The 21 Americans turned their native ingenuity to a new game they called "relay race." They set up "imperialist dummies" of Dulles, Adenauer, Chiang Kaishek, Syngman Rhee and Japan's Shigeru Yoshida. They chose sides, one to each "imperialist." The lead-off men then sprinted 100 yards to their imperialists, clouted them on the heads with cudgels and ran back to start off their No. 2s. The No. 25 then attacked the imperialists, and the game went on until the dummies lay torn in shreds. The Communist propaganda game would presumably continue too—until the P.W.s lay broken and worn.