Salt Lake Tribune Oct 31 1953 DAVID LAWRENCE Atrocity Story Calls for Ostracizing Red Regimes WASHINGTON The terrible facts are out at last. No amount of glossing over by the apologists for Red China and the Communists in this country and in Europe now can hide the awful story of torture and barbarism in Korea which has been made public by the U. S. Army. For now it is disclosed that 6,113 Americans were the victims of indescribable atrocities and that hope has been abandoned for nearly all the 7,955 American boys listed as missing in Korea. The Army report, prepared last spring, has been suppressed since that time so as not to create any new incidents which might interfere with the return of surviving American prisoners. About 250 Communist prisoners, known to have engaged in the atrocities, were held to the last by the U. N. side but now have been released to the Communist side or to the neutral commission and hence are beyond the reach of any American instrument of justice. Case Histories The Army report is replete with case histories and sickening photographs. Entirely apart from the 6,113 American victims, there were 23,702 other persons nearly all Koreans against whom atrocities were committed. The United States government has begun to tell the story to the whole world. For nothing apparently can be done to punish the individuals who were the war criminals. The only thing that can be accomplished now is to hold the Peiping and North Korean and Moscow governments responsible for the acts committed by their agents in North Korea. This means more than merely condemning the war criminals by a resolution of the U. N. For the time has come to ostracize as barbaric and uncivilized the governments of Red China, Soviet Russia and North Korea. Diplomatic relations with such governments, if carried on for reasons of expediency, could only mean that the free governments would be treating them as equals indifferent to the crimes committed. U. N.s Failure There are many Americans who have been told that the U. N. constitutes the hope of the world for peace and that it is a means of enforcing collective security. But that organization thus far has failed to purge itself of governments which violate the spirit of the charter and ignore its resolutions. There is no way, of course, short of war to compel physical compliance, so the only means left is moral force. But moral force takes considerable courage, too. In the present Sequence of events, moral force would be exerted if the members of the U. N. examined the evidence furnished by the U. S. Army concerning atrocities in Korea and condemned the governments responsible for those brutal and barbaric acts. Then it would follow logically that no nation would be admitted to the U. N. which had not redressed the wrongs done and meted out punishment to the war criminals. Barred From U. N. Until and unless such steps satisfactory to the U. N. were taken, any government whose troops or agents committed the crimes in Korea would be barred from the U. N. This would be an example of collective resistance to aggression which the whole world would understand. It would awaken in the peoples behind the Iron Curtain, who are themselves the victims of brutality, a hope that liberation for them could not long be postponed. Certainly if the peoples now under Communist rule knew that the rest of the world would not recognize such uncivilized governments, this would form a rallying cry for the overthrow of those governments. The report on Korean atrocities merely confirms the belief that to attempt to negotiate with a gangster government is as useless as it is to make deals with gangsters in the underworld of our American cities.