ARMED FORCES: Go Slow

When Colonel Frank Schwable, U.S.M.C., arrived in Washington last month, he promptly went around to pay his respects to Marine Commandant Lemuel Shepherd. Schwable never got past the front office; hard-bitten Lem Shepherd angrily refused to see him. Last week the Marine Corps announced that an investigation was under way in the case of Colonel Schwable, Annapolis man, regular marine of 24 years’ outstanding service and the highest-ranking American P.W. in Korea to confess to the Communist fantasies of germ warfare.

Schwable was one of some 600 men whose P.W. records were, as Defense Secretary Charles Wilson put it, being “carefully and sympathetically” examined by the services to see if “there has been an unreasonable failure to measure up to the standard of individual conduct which is expected even of a prisoner of war . . .” Of that total, only 34 were considered by the Pentagon to be “serious” cases, e.g., those of P.W.s who signed germ-war confessions, and those of men who spied on their fellow prisoners in return for preferential treatment from the Reds.

There is a very broad range of degree of Communist pressure on prisoners. In some of the cases described in Dr. Charles Mayo’s report to the U.N. (TIME, Nov. 2) men withstood frightful beatings and torture, as well as concentrated attempts at brainwashing, without confessing. On the other hand, Colonel Schwable was not beaten or tortured in the ordinary sense. He said he was subjected to mental cruelty and kept in a dirty hovel, without shaves or haircuts, to “the point where I was as filthy as a tramp.”

Question before the military: Can an officer who broke, whatever the treatment he got, be allowed to go back to command of troops or even to a desk job? The professionals’ answer: no. The Pentagon intends to move slowly and cautiously in these cases, seeking a rule that will be fair to individuals who broke under duress and at the same time preserve the integrity of the services. The civilian heads of the military establishments have still to make up their minds what should be done. The military men have reached their own decision.