DANGER ZONES: Official Tour

News of the December defeat in Korea swept like a winter blizzard through Tibet’s remote mountain passes, where another Red Chinese army is invading. Communist prestige soared. Tibet’s boy ruler, the 16-year-old Dalai Lama, last fortnight left his capital, Lhasa, on what the Indian government representative in Tibet described as “an official tour.” Indian newspapers reported that the Lama was planning to set up a new seat of government at Yatung, a town in the Chumbi valley just across the Himalayan divide separating Tibet from the Indian-protected state of Sikkim.

As he headed south the Chinese were still some 300 miles from Lhasa. Reports from the Tibetan border citadel of Cham-do, which the Chinese captured on Oct. 19, said party commissars were giving captured Tibetan troops a thorough Communist indoctrination, 100 sangs ($5) each, and sending them back to their homes.