The Face of Mars

The nation received the fearful news from Korea with a strange-seeming calmness--the kind of confused, fearful, half-disbelieving matter-of-factness with which many a man has reacted on learning that he has cancer or tuberculosis. The news of Pearl Harbor, nine years ago to the month, had pealed out like a fire bell. But the numbing facts of the defeat in Korea seeped into the national consciousness slowly out of a jumble of headlines, bulletins and communiques; days passed before its enormity finally became plain.

On the surface the U.S. went on about its business almost exactly as if the smothering hordes of Chinese Communists had remained massed, placid and inscrutable, behind the Yalu River. The season's last football games drew cheering crowds; the opulent department stores and streets were filled with millions going through the usual rites of Christmas shopping.

"It Looks Bad." But as it became apparent that 140,000 U.S. troops had met crushing defeat and perhaps faced annihilation, the disaster and its implications became the subject of endless shocked conversations. Some of them were almost monosyllabic: men meeting on the street sometimes simply stared at each other and then voiced the week's most oft-repeated phrase--"It looks bad." This silence marked many men who had fought in World War II. Said a Purple Heart veteran in Des Moines: "I quit turning on my radio--I don't want to hear the news." Through all the talk there were overtones not of fear but of futility.

Across the nation there were some who cried, "What were we doing in Korea in the first place?"--even though on second thought they well knew and had approved the answer. There was a discernible restiveness about the United Nations (would it "tie our hands"?), against Britain and France ("for trying to run out on us"). Three Cabots, a Coolidge and a Lowell joined in a group telegram to Truman and Acheson asking arbitration and concessions to the Communists. There were peeved cracks about MacArthur's misconstrued "home by Christmas" remarks--the familiar fate of a general in a jam and a public caught by surprise. There was outspoken criticism of the Administration. Said an Iowa filling-station operator: "They piddled around and piddled around. I wonder what the hell they were thinking about?"

The Real Villain. But, mostly, men & women wasted little breath over bygones: millions sadly accepted the probability that war of some kind, perhaps even World War III, had already begun and that their world might be sacrificed to it, and tried to understand what might have to be done. Russia--apparently in all U.S. minds--was the real villain, the real and terrible foe. Said Detroit Salesman Zacharias Cosmas: "Hit the main Bolsheviks. The tail won't bite if you hit the head." Said New Orleans Policeman Ernest F. Curtis: "We should declare war on Russia officially and then drop all the A-bombs we can on her." But most people didn't talk that way.

In Atlanta, Dr. Louie D. Newton, pastor of the city's largest church, said: "In my 31 years as a pastor, today's congregation was by far the most sober and serious that I have ever seen." The gloom, the doubts, the confusion, the feeling of helplessness to reverse the disaster in Korea could be misinterpreted; there was no panic, and though there was a desperate scurrying for any possible hopeful solution, there was little talk of appeasement. The way ahead would be hard, and everybody knew it. It had to be traveled, and the nation knew that, too.

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