UNTIL THE MacArthur explosion, all the propaganda powers of the administration were devoted to an attempt to black-list all critics of the Korean war and the Truman-Acheson foreign policy as isolationists and appeasers. Chief target, of course, was the Republican party, although the conservative Democrats were getting the same sort of treatment.

Suddenly, the tune changed. Now, the Republicans and other anti-Truman forces are being branded as war-mongers, and accused of trying to meddle into foreign affairs on a grand scale. At the same time, the Truman critics have turned the charge of appeasement of the Chinese Reds and of Soviet Russia back against the president and his secretary of state. [Sec. of State Dean Acheson]

But certainly it is strange to hear the Democratic leaders talking about their opponents as the war party. It wasn’t a Republican administration that plunged this country into a miscalled “police action” in Korea that has cost more American lives than the first full year of the second world war. Nor is it a Republican executive that demands the power to send American troops into any and all parts of the world, and risk another war, all without the consent of congress.

The Democratic party must accept the title of the war party, whether it likes it or not. Two world wars, and the grim possibility of a third, are the responsibility of the Democrats.