Word: pretexts
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...Clouds Lift. With the forged letters as a pretext, Red China embarked on one of the most massive man hunts ever. Detachments of the estimated 300,000 Red troops in Tibet began to drive painfully into the rugged land south of the great Tsangpo River, which still remained in the hands of the Khamba guerrillas. Supply planes roared over Lhasa; other planes dropped paratroopers to seal off the passes north of the tiny kingdom of Bhutan, which the Dalai Lama might conceivably be heading for. To stifle all word of what was going on, the Chinese surrounded the Indian consulate...
...living up to Antigone's advance billing as the girl who would "Rise up alone against Creon, her uncle, the King." Tragic inevitability is embodied in Antigone, "the pride of Oedipus"; "Death was her purpose," and the matter of the burial of her rebel brother's body only a pretext. Miss Allen does a competent job, quite effective in quiet moments, but she is not heroic...
...Peking but are still determined to be correct, are disturbed by the rumblings to the north. They fear that if the Reds rout the tribesmen, the Khambas might seek refuge in India or the buffer states of Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan between India and China, providing China with a pretext for extending the fighting beyond Tibet into areas that Peking already claims as Chinese. Or, if the revolt spreads to include other Tibetans, the Reds might be driven to pouring in troops to put down the uprising, and force through the Communization of Tibet...
...which enjoys wide currency is the argument that a divided Germany threatens us with World War III. Such reasoning, I think, overlooks the basic source of tension in the world. World Communism, and world Communism alone threatens us today with world war. Germany can be no more than a pretext for war. If war comes this year-God forbid-over the Berlin crisis, it will come as a deliberate, calculated stratagem of Red aggression. Berlin is just another phase of their long-term plan to subjugate the free world. The Berlin question is just a pawn in their hands...
There has, however, been no faltering on Western determination that Berlin must not become a "free" city. Such a situation would be the prelude to a communist controlled Berlin, for under almost any pretext--perhaps disorders caused by their own agents--the Soviet-assisted East Germans could sieze control entirely. But while the West's resistance to the free-city proposal deserves commendation, its failure to suggest alternate schemes is unfortunate for Germany...