:

Military
matinee
idol

By DEREK KARTUN

HE man who is running the

American war in Asia, al-
legedly for the UN _ Security
Council, is a third-rate strate-
gist with the affectations of a
matinee idol.

The name — General of the
Army Douglas MacArhur, Su-
preme Commander for the Al-
lied Powers, commonly known
in Tokyo as the Yankee Emper-
or of Japan.

In his five years as supreme
culer of the Japanese, General
MacArthur has performed the
feat of antagonizing every news-
paper correspondent who has
ever had to sit through an inter-
view with him.

“He wraps himself in thunder-
ing generalities,’ wrote Time
magazine last year. “He some-
times sounds, annoyingly, as
though he had just received a
special briefing from heavenly
quarters,”

MacArthur’s career in the U.S.
Army has been sensational and
flashy.

Born in 1880, he saw his first
fighting in the Philippines, later
to be the scene of his greatest
military blunders.

In the First World War he
commanded the U.S. Rainbow
Division in France. From 1930
to 1985 he was Chief of Staff of
the Army, in Washington, Then
he retired, \

In 1941 President Roosevelt
recalled him to organize the de-
fences of the Philippines.

“The Philippines cannot’ be
held against a Japanese attack,”
said the military experts.

“They can and will be held —
by me,” said MacArthur.

Within a year he was escaping
from Bataan, seasick and vic-
time of an uncontrollable attack
of nerves, in.a tiny motor boat
—his armies smashes, the Phil-
ippines lost.

MacArthur restarted his ca-
| reer in Australia as Far Eastern
commander, and throughout the
war he issued frequent state-
ments crying for more men and
ships, and denouncing the plans
for a second front in Europe.

As the armies under his. com-
mand grew, so did his conceit.

His highly - organized press
department, ‘on one occasion,
issued a document listing the
three greatest figures in military
history.

The first was Hannibal, the
Second Napoleon, and, you have
guessed the third—MacArthur.

In the 1944 U.S. presidential.
election campaign, although he
was a serving officer, MacAr-
thur ‘launched a public attack
on his commander-in-chief, Pre-
Sident Roosevelt.

He is a backwoods Republican
in politics, and both he and the
right wing of the Republican
party still hope to get him into
the White House. _

In Japan, MacArthur has re-
Peatedly delivered public eulo-
gies of the blackest fascists in
Japanese public life.

For nothing embarrassed this
Strange character—a combina-
tion of the barrack-room bully,
and the ‘effeminate dandy, who
Wears purple satin ties, Japan-
ese ceremonial robes over his
Uniform, and smokes his cigar-
ettes in a long jewelled holder.

MacArthur has always longed
for war against the Soviet
Union, The reverse he’ suffered
in China rankles deep. _

At last, in Korea, he has a
Chance to play again the great
historic figure with power over
the lives of men\ and the destin-
ies of states. : y

That, at any rate, is how he
Sees the thing.

It is unlikely, however, that
he will do any better this time
than he did in the Philippines.
<a ‘

Wall St

A LOT of people in the Amer-
icas, and particularly in the
United States, never knew about
Korea until President Truman ex-
plained to them how important it
was for Americans to die there.
But J. P. Morgan knew.

You see, J. P. Morgan had a

big slice of Korea.. But not
enough. It’s never enough, you
know.

And so, if we move aside the
“flag of the United Nations” and
the Truman “crusade for demo-
cracy” in Korea, we see greedy
men in-Wall Street, waiting to
pounce on the gold mines, the
railroads, the wealth of that part
of Korea which has thus far elud-
ed them. .

It happened in Korea, But —
imagine it happened in your coun-
try ... and to you. Your home-
land had been a conquered prov-
ince for 50 years. Your Japanese
overlord had taken possession of
the land and industry. Then, lib-
eration comes but, instead of the
restoration of their property to
the people, the new» conqueror
grabs it. :

It happened in Korea. That is,
it happened in South Korea. The
people of the north didn’t let it

happen.

A Japanese monopoly owned

the mines and the banks, and at

least 50 percent of the farm lands
of Korea during the Mikado’s
reign as conqueror of the Land
of the Morning Calm. This Japan-
ese firm, the Oriental Develop-

ment Company, was worth. $1,250,-

000,000.
Then came 1945. The Soviet

Union had broken the back of

Hitler’s army in Europe and had
joined in the defeat of the Japan-
ese fascists in the Pacific.

U.S. troops entered Korea.

The American occupation
changed the name, but kept the
game. The Oriental Development
Company became the New Korea
Company. But the company was
kept intact, and its stock was
taken over by the American mil-
itary Government.

Soon afterward, the J. P. Mor-
gan bank, the National City Bank

of New York, was named “fiscal

agent” for the New Korea Com-

S

. .

USE

pany. That meant Morgan con-

trolled the distribution of the ~

company’s bonds, manipulated

the wealth of Korea.

Another lucrative Korean enter-
prise was also grabbed by Wall
Streeters in the wake of the Jap-
anese defeat. For 40 years, the
Oriental Consolidated Mining
Company had drained off the
wealth of the Unsan. gold mines
in North Korea—and the Korean
gold mines were the richest in
Asia, :

From 1939, a large share of the ©

company was held by Japanese
financiers. But in 1945, the US.

army brass eased in American
financiers, Wall Streeters took
over the company and paid

$1,000,000 to the South Korean
government of Syngman Rhee, in
return for which Rhee named an
American, Samuel H. Dolbear, as
his “mining advisor.” The $1,000,-
000, according to the conservative
Korean publicist Kilsoo K. Haan,
was given by the U.S.-owned Ori-
ental Consolidated Mining Com-
pany. — cp kaiete
Rhee promptly announced that
all mining rights in Korea Would
henceforth belong to ~ Oriental
Consolidated. There was just one
hitch. Korea had been divided into
two occupation zones after the

defeat of Japan. North of the

88th parallel, the Soviet zone;
south, the U.S. zone.

In South Korea, under Rhee
and the AMG, the land was not

divided among the people. The in-

dustries once stolen by the Jap-
anese were merely handed over
to new masters in Wall Street.

But in North Korea, the land
was divided, industries were na-
tionalized. And Rhee’s gift of
“all” Korea’s mines to Wall Street
bankers was not binding on the
Korean People’s Democratic Re-
public which thrived north of the
88th parallel 9°

In South Korea, the situation
was different. An American firm

humming factories and railroads,
.were keeping half of Korea’s
wealth from the land’s new “con-
querors.”

“A land ripe for the picking, a
people fit only to be the slaves of
the superior lords from the west’.
That’s how Wall Street thought,
and thinks still, about Korea.
“Many people overlook one of
Korea’s greatest assets. It has the
cheapest labor forces in the world.
if I have anything to say about
it, it’s going to stay that way.”

So says Harold Lady, American
“economic adviser” to Syngman
Rhee. Unfortunately for Lady and
his Wall Street friends, the “cheap
labor” of South Korea has had
its fill of the torturers and Jap-
anese quislings who ruled them.

As long as the democratic re-
public north of the 38th parallel
existed ‘as a beacon light to the
restive millions under the Rhee-
Wall Street feudal tyranny, the

Street's
stake in K

PUM rr ee

was given the tungsten ore de-
posits in Sangdong,. one of the
world’s major sources of that
valuable ore. Thomas Bourne As-
sociates of Washington, D.C.,
“grabbed operation and mainten-
ance of Kimpo Airport, near
Seoul, the South Korean capital.
The Korea Oil Storage Company,
a New York firm for all its “lo-
cal” title, was given South Korean
oil to export.

Gilbert Associates, of Reading,
Pennsylvania, was handed elec-
tric power stations. That’s how
it was in South Korea.

But the Wall Street wolves
hungered for more. They were
incensed that the people in North
Korea, with all that gold, «those

orea

Morgan mortgage on Korea was
. uncertain. Thus it was a “sound
investment” to order the Rhee in-.
vasion of North Korea and then
to follow up with Harry Truman's
“police action”.

There are riches in Korea —-
those in the North which have
thus far eluded the pirates of _
Wall Street, those in the South —
which were slipping from their —
grasp.

The gamble is for all Korea.
It is a gamble being played with
human lives. And the facts prove ©
that: while Koreans are fighting
and dying for their land, their
unity, their liberty, the American
stake in this war is nothing more >
than Wall Street control of all ~
Korea. :

‘peace must prevail

Appeal: whoever may not, they

do, and they certainly know what |

war is. _

But do other feelings fill the
hearts ‘of the inhabitants of Lon-

don, Glasgow, or Manchester, Do
the working people of Britain

victory, lives today not by glory
won in battle, but by good peace-

I know that all the peoples of
the earth thirst for peace. It is

-the howls of certain politicians
cannot make us forget the land
_ that has given to the world one
of its greatest inspirations, Lin-

pt tes

coln, and one of its foremost
_" ‘There is no time to be lost:
events are developed with unpre-
cedented speed.’ Every hour is
precious.

say that it would be well to drop —