Once again the exhausted, rag-clad mobs of refugees fled south, silently watching their babies and their aged die by the roadside. By their own fatalistic tradition and by the standards of the Chinese Communists who drove them southward, they were hopeless chattels of war. By U.S. standards and by the declared standards of the U.N., they were pitiable war casualties who must be helped.
In the middle of a precarious military situation, U.N. commanders and civilian relief agencies were trying to cope with 3,000,000 refugees. Last week U.N. officials planned to send 600,000 civilians to . the islands of Cheju and...