CEASE-FIRE: Early Peace?

Wearing a green nylon flight jacket, with a frayed cigar clamped in his teeth and an expression of grim satisfaction on his face, Major General Henry Hodes, one of the two U.N. subcommitteemen at Panmunjom, strode out of the conference tent. Allied newsmen trotted up eagerly. "Well," said the general, "we're agreed in principle on that thing."

"That thing" was the Washington plan (TIME, Nov. 26), agreeing on the present battle line as a post-armistice demarcation line between North and South Korea, if the rest of the agenda items can be settled in 30 days. Both sides agreed that, if no overall settlement should be reached by that time, they would go on talking, but the line would no longer be valid except as a reference point. After some argument over contested hill positions, the battle line was plotted on a duplicate set of maps and initialed by both sides.

Predictions of an early peace flew thick & fast last week. They seemed to be based, not on a change of attitude by the Communists, but on a change of course by the U.N. In retrospect, Matt Ridgway's generals and admirals seemed to have proceeded on the assumption that only "inexorable military pressure" would drive the Reds to make peace. They had tied themselves in knots trying to avoid giving the enemy what they scathingly called a "de facto cease-fire." Washington had interposed a plan based on a different estimate of the Reds—measuring their desire for an armistice by the fact that they had agreed to negotiate in the first place, and by the large concession the Reds had made in giving up the 38th parallel as a demarcation line. In effect, Washington was saying to Ridgway and his negotiators that the Reds might make peace if they were given relief from inexorable pressure at the conference table.

The way things had been going before, the truce talks had been clearly getting nowhere. Perhaps the Washington plan was worth trying.