Towards Jan. 22

It was below freezing at Panmunjom. The anti-Communist P.W.s buttoned their tents against the chill Siberian winds, and huddled around their potbellied stoves. There were no demonstrations against the Communist explainers; the P.W.s felt too confident to bother. The Communists dared only once last week to screen a North Korean compound, and they took another humiliating defeat: explanations 227: conversions 6. One P.W. argued two hours with his explainer about the Soviet loan to North Korea, then remarked: "You just don't seem to have any grasp of economics." Another P.W. asked the Indian chairman, in perfect English: "Doesn't this all seem a bit ridiculous to you?" The Indian grinned. On the P.W. tents now, beside the red, white and blue flags of Nationalist China, hung black and white streamers that read: "We Support the Indian Troops."

In faraway New Delhi, India's Prime Minister Nehru was still not ready to support the P.W.s. He suggested that their fate be "considered afresh" by the belligerents if there is no Korean Political Conference before Jan. 22, when P.W.s who do not succumb to explanations are due to go free. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles promptly reassured the P.W.s that they would indeed go free on Jan. 22, as the armistice agreement provides. Indian officers at Panmunjom guessed that Nehru was speaking "for external consumption." The P.W.s themselves trusted Nehru's autonomous agent,

Lieut. General K. S. Thimayya. Once more last week, as he has all along, Thimayya refused to let the Communists coerce "the boys," as he calls the P.W.s. On Jan. 22, the Indians on the scene would like simply to turn back the remaining P.W.s to their earlier keepers, the U.N. Command. On that day, said one of Thimayya's officers,"our job will be done."

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