Ridgway’s Fears Of Move By Rhee In Korea

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27875, 25 January 1956, Page 3

Ridgway’s Fears Of Move By Rhee In Korea

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

NEW YORK, January 23. General Matthew Ridgway, the former United States Army Chief of Staff, states in an article today that President Syngman Rhee of South Korea might still set the whole world aflame by trying to invade the Communist North. “And nobody, so far as I am aware, knows exactly what we would do if that should happen,” he says. The general, who formerly commanded the United Nations forces in Korea, gave his views in the second article of a series he is writing for the weekly magazine, the ‘‘Saturday Evening Post.” In his first article, he stirred up a nation-wide controversy by declaring that “political expediency” had led to damaging reductions in the size of the United States Army so that it could no longer meet its world-wide commitments. General Ridgway said he believed the United States had too many troops committed to Korea, but the presence of 600.000 South Korean troops under arms presented another facet. “No one knew what our old and belligerent friend, Syngman Rhee, might do if we were not there to restrain him in his determination to drive his country’s enemies back across the Yalu,” he states. “Possibility Still Exists” “The possibility that Dr. Rhee may send his armies marching north at any moment still exists.” General Ridgway says that the decision of what to do in such a case rests with President Eisenhower. It would be a very difficult decision, he said, because “the flare-up in the Far East might well be the spark that would set the whole world aflame.” Once again he asserted his conviction that nuclear weapons had not done away with the need for large armies nor provided a “quick and i easy key” to victory. “I have little confidence in the

theory that by bombing alone we can. beat a people like the Russians or the Chinese into submission,” he writes. “They are not yet sufficiently advanced to be truly vulnerable to the nuclear bomb. Their civilisation is not based on a complex nerve fabric, a web of inter-related and interdependent functions and services, as is ours.” The General said that if the United States found itself in a major war with nuclear weapons, ground troops would still be needed to move into the bombed area, seize it and restore law and order.

“Unless this was done, who would exercise control to prevent another evil conspiracy from arising from the ashes of the atomic avalanche?” he asks.