ATTLEE MISSION TO NEW CHINA IRRITATES AMERICA

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27374, 12 June 1954, Page 7

ATTLEE MISSION TO NEW CHINA IRRITATES AMERICA

(Rec. 10 p.m.)

LONDON, June 11.

“How ’ readily relations between Great Britain and the United States can be subjected to acute irritation when all the facts are not put in perspective is well illustrated by the recent announcement that eight members of the British Labour Party in Parliament headed by the former Prime Minister (Mr Attlee) have decided to go for a visit to Red China this summer,” says a writer in the New York “Herald Tribune.”

“If some of the minority leaders in Congress had suddenly decided during the summer of 1940, after Britain had been bombed, to go on a visit to Adolf Hitler, it can easily be imagined what the reaction inside Britain would have been.

“But while the announcement of Mr Attlee’s proposed visit has been adversely commented upon in some British newspapers, and while the Foreign Office has denied that it was consulted or that it approved the mission, the fact remains that the British people as a whole are not at all exercised about the episode and few persons really know how deeply the Attlee mission can wound the sensibilities of the American people. “Why, it may be asked, is there .such indifference? The answer is that the sacrifices made by the American people—l4o,ooo casualties in Korea—

are not now and never have been impressed upon the British people by most of the newspapers in Britain. “There is a sort of ‘it’s all in the day’s work’ attitude in Britain which seems to say: ‘Well, we have had many killed in little wars for the last 100 years.’

“This is, but another way of brushing off the Korean war itself which seems never to have been convincingly presented in Britain as a war for an ideal—the repelling of aggression 8000 miles away from home, primarily by the forces of a country with no colonies in the Far East and with no commercial interests to defend. “No Other Explanation”

“There is no other logical explanation for the tendency in the British Parliament to forget so soon that China was declared the aggressor by a formal resolution of the United Nations in February, 1951, and that she has

done nothing since to atone for her sins before the world. “Americans cannot understand the British willingness to take the bloodcovered hand of the Red China Government.

“But it would be a mistake to say that the British Government, and particularly its Foreign Office, is unaware of the American attitude. “Had the Attlee - mission come before the Cabinet for permission, which apparently it does not need to obtain, the answer would have been ‘Not at this time.’

“Also there are plenty of member® of Parliament who say privately that the Attlee mission is a grave mistake and they hope that America will understand that it is not the policy of the British Government or of a majority in Parliament. “For after all Mr Attlee and his associates—among them the fiery Mr Aneurin Bevan—do not represent Britain, but only themselves.”