"Abandoning Korea would be more than a military defeat. It would mean that the nations had abandoned the pledge made when they banded together in San Francisco in 1945: to fight any aggressor who threatened freedom of any people. Such a course could save thousands of American, British, Australian and Turkish lives... If MacArthur fights on until the defeat which now seems inevitable, it could mean the sacrifice of a quarter of a million men for a principle, the same principle which would be discarded in a [U.N.] surrender."
