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Show 'Man of Peace' Promotes Korean War Against Japs Dr. Syngman Rhee, President of Exiled Government, Heads Conference in Washington Wash-ington to Plan 'Life and Death' Revolt. By BAUKHAGE News Analyst and Commentator. ( : ) ' f ) : WNU Service, 1343 II Street, N-W, Washington, D. C. Washington has just witnessed a most remarkable ceremony. It was what might be called the laying of the cornerstone oY a new revolution. Not a mere revolution of ideas, not a scatterbrained plot of wild radicals, radi-cals, but the orderly preparation for a real, powder-and-ball, life-and-death revolt. The Korean Liberty conference has just met In Washington to commemorate com-memorate the March, 1919, revolution revolu-tion and make plans for a 1942 revolution. revo-lution. The most remarkable thing about this first step toward the smashing of a tyrant's power is that its moving mov-ing spirit is a wistful little figure who describes himself as a man of peace born in the Land of the Morning Morn-ing Calm. He is Syngman Rhee of Korea, president of the Korean government gov-ernment in exile since 1919, and revolutionary revo-lutionary since 1905. With a group of Koreans from Hawaii and others living in the United States, and with the help of a group of American friends who make up the Korean Committee of Los Angeles and Honolulu and the Korean-American council. Dr. Rhee is now busy getting ready for the revolution of 1942. Korea, Dr. Rhee points out, was the first victim of Japan's long-planned long-planned "new order." He foresaw the present war between Japan and America and tried to warn this country. More than a year before the Pearl Harbor attack he said: "If the Koreans had seen Japan In 1894 as they saw her in 1592, the year of Hideyoshi's unsuccessful invasion in-vasion of Korea, they would have saved their country and themselves from the plight in which they find themselves today. On the other hand, if the American people had seen Japan in 1894 and 1904 as they see her today, they would have looked askance at the annexation of Korea and would have tried to meet Japan's expansion of sea power which now offers a powerful threat on the other side of the Pacific." Buy Defense Bonds Long YeQrs Of Giving Warnings This quiet little man ho has been imprisoned, tortured, exiled, had a price set on his head by the Japanese, Jap-anese, has been haunting international interna-tional conferences for nearly four decades. At Geneva, at London, in Chungking, he has moved among the statesmen and delegates quietly whispering his warnings, patiently explaining and urging, ceaselessly working for the freedom of his own people and seeking to build the cooperative co-operative effort of all free peoples. "The forest fire will not extinguish itself," he says. But it will be extinguished: ex-tinguished: "At long last perhaps sooner than we dare to hope " he says, the democratic forces of the world will thrust Japan back on her islands and peace will reign in the Pacific. In that day, Korea will rejoin re-join the ranks of the free and again become known as the Land of the Morning Calm." Buy Defense Bonds Is the U. S. Complacent About War? i Is America complacent about the war? That is the great question which is agitating the various agencies oi government which consider it their function to stir America to the high pitch necessary for maximum war effort. The letters which I receive fairly bristle on that subject. Complacent? We aren't complacent, they say, it's you people in Washington who are the complacent ones. Recently I was in a gathering where three speakers told in great detail what the movie industry was doing as a part of the war effort. It is doing a lot donating its time and its facilities. Many members of the industry are in Washington with army or navy commissions or on civilian salaries far less than they earn at their regular jobs like the dollar-a-year men. Some are patriotic. patri-otic. They are too old to join the fighting forces and they want to do their bit. Some, I daresay, like many "parasites" who have swarmed to Washington are here for less altruistic altruis-tic purposes. ,' War, like patriotism as Dr. Johnson John-son defined it, can be "the last refuge of scoundrels" as well as the medium of the supreme sacrifice. sacri-fice. ' Whether or not the nation as a whole is complacent is a question which nobody can answer. The real problem which we have before us is to turn a .nation, naturally attuned to peace, a nation whose military tradition ,ss limited compared to the countries of Europe. These peoples peo-ples of different language, race and customs are c.row'ded within narrow frontiers-i-boundary lines which have been drawn and redrawn in the blood of thousands who were taught from childhood that the word "foreigner" "for-eigner" Iwas almost synonymous with the word "enemy." We have: lived and worked and had our being, between two unfortified unforti-fied borders and with two once-friendly once-friendly ocpans to guard us. Suddenly Sud-denly we are being forced to play a part in a world which has accepted accept-ed "might is right." We know we are mighty. So mighty that it has Jfor many years he has lived in Washington. "It is one of the great ironies of history," says Dr. Rhee, "that Japanese Jap-anese animosity is now directed particularly par-ticularly against the very nation which broke the shell of her insularity insular-ity and introduced Japan to modern civilization. When, in 1854, Commodore Commo-dore Matthew Perry negotiated the treaty which marked the first step in opening Japan to foreign commerce com-merce and residence, he helped, all unwittingly, to set the people of the Rising Sun in the path which was to bring them later full tilt against the American people." At the liberty conference just concluded con-cluded in Washington, three main steps were taken: The Korean declaration dec-laration of independence of 1919 was reaffirmed; the United States was called on to recognize the provisional provision-al government of Korea, and Korean allegiance was declared to the cause of the United Nations. Without bitterness or recrimination recrimina-tion these devoted patriots pointed out that the United States has its obligations to them, for the treaty of peace and amity and mutual protection protec-tion between the United States and Korea still exists although we stood by without interfering when Japan reached out and "tightened her grip," as Dr. Rhee puts it, on his country back in the days of Theodore Theo-dore Roosevelt. As the leader of these gentle revolutionists. revo-lutionists. Dr. Rhee at 67 watches his predictions coming true he merely feels that the goal is nearer. With the philosophy of his great master Rhee was educated in a Confucian school he looks on a world in flames with new courage. never been a question in the hearts of even the most arrogant war lords of whether we could defeat them. Only a question of whether we would make the effort. Whether, in other words, we would be complacent while they "strut and trot their hour upon the stage." History proves that only a short space of time is granted for tyrants to oppress freemen. Longer than that no tyrant has ever existed. And America, once awakened, awak-ened, will number their days. Conservatives Disagree There are plenty of conservatives who will contest this statement. They will tell you that SOMEBODY has to foot the bill, that even if Germany and Japan and Italy manage man-age to struggle on with no major military defeats, that unless they are totally victorious they will totally total-ly collapse financially. This viewpoint is expressed by those who believe that eventually the thing will happen that many of us were told would happen long ago. How often did you hear before Pearl Harbor, "Japan is almost broke now, she can't afford to go to war with a major power." Or, "Germany "Ger-many is on the verge of absolute and financial collapse." Perhaps these orthodox economists econo-mists are correct. Perhaps it is money that makes the machine gun go as well as the mare, and when the money stops the nations which are on the verge of bankruptcy now will fall like a house of cards. But the new-school thinkers are able to marshal a lot of evidence to support their theory that there are a lot of things that money won't buy and that there are a lot of things which, if you love 'em you don't need money. |