The Charlotte News
Thursday, October 19, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that U.N. troops, both the South Korean and American forces, had occupied most of Pyongyang and complete conquest of the capital was reported by four correspondents to be only a matter of hours away. Only a small amount of resistance remained. The U.S. First Cavalry Division was first inside the capital, entering from the south, beating by three hours the South Korean forces, entering from the east. After the last of the resistance was broken at Hukkyo, 13 miles south of the city, the rest had been easy. An end to the war was believed to be at hand, but some commanders warned that guerrilla resistance might lie ahead.
Correspondent Don Whitehead reported that the North Koreans surrendered by the thousands, some running from houses and fields into the open, clad only in underwear with hands above their heads.
The two roads leading northward were clogged with civilian refugees and soldiers, as the capital was found for the most part deserted.
Two of three bridges across the Taedong River flowing through Pyongyang had been blown by the enemy, but the third allowed the allied forces to cross in concert from the east.
Premier Kim Il Sung and his regime had apparently fled to the north, possibly as far as Manchuria or Soviet Siberia.
Along the east and west coasts of the peninsula, the allied forces pressed toward the Manchurian border.
Russell Brines reports that informed sources in Tokyo said that neither the Chinese nor the Russians would enter the Korean war with any chance of success, as undoubtedly they would have, had they entered the conflict earlier, in July or August. Soviet air power would be the only effective aid which could be supplied from the outside and there was no sign it was forthcoming. Since the Inchon landing on September 15, the Soviets had given every indication that they intended to abandon the North Koreans. The Russians did not have enough ground troops in the Far East to contribute to the ground fighting. While the Communist Chinese had about 300,000 troops on the Manchurian border, they could only supply immediately around 60,000 and those troops would have to advance through a killing field under an allied air umbrella. The Chinese air force was too small to be a factor. It was unlikely that the Russian air force could pair with the Chinese infantry to produce a cooperative effort, given the differences between the two countries diplomatically and militarily. General MacArthur reportedly had told the President as much during their weekend meeting on Wake Island.
CBS would present this night at 10:30 p.m. an address to the nation on foreign policy by former President Herbert Hoover, labeled "One Nation Indivisible". You won't wish to miss that.
One of the pilots of the three F-86 fighter planes which had crashed the previous day in the area of Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, said that the three had misjudged altitude in a haze and instead flew into a body of water in tight formation. The pilot's plane bounced off the water, permitting him to land in a nearby field, but the other two had gone under and perished.
In London, Sir Stafford Cripps, British economic czar as Chancellor of the Exchequer since 1947, quit the Cabinet because of ailing health. He had led the successful drive to build up Britain's dollar and gold reserve and was associated with Britain's austerity program.
The Justice Department barred Spanish Falangists of Franco's Spain from entering the U.S. under the immigration provision of the new McCarran anti-subversive law. The law banned entry by anyone belonging to a totalitarian party. The State Department had only stated that consuls abroad should suspend any decision on whether to grant or deny entry visas to Falangists pending further instructions. Members of the Peronista Party in Argentina were likewise included in the ban.
A Commerce Department official testified to a Senate Commerce subcommittee that about 13,000 barrels of a 24,000-barrel shipment of oil had gone from the U.S. via Japan to Communist China by August, after the start of the Korean war June 25. None of the oil shipped prior to the war required an export license.
The Government considered an emergency ban on the construction of racetracks, dance halls, bowling alleys and other amusement facilities, to save materials for munitions production. Additional credit controls were also likely.
In Philadelphia, the sentencing of Harry Gold, who had pleaded guilty to providing atomic secrets to the Russians in 1944, was postponed by mutual consent until December 7.
Damage of southern Florida from the hurricane which had swept through Miami and four "Gold Coast" counties late Tuesday and early Wednesday was set at twelve million dollars. Three persons had been killed by the storm, which had gradually diminished in intensity as it swept north into Georgia, to the west of Columbus.
In Baltimore, writer and social critic H. L. Mencken was reported to be near death after suffering a heart attack the prior Thursday. He would live on until 1956.
Tom Fesperman of The News reports on draft induction in Mecklenburg County, including 81 men taken into the Army that morning. One young inductee said that he was only going so that he could write a book as had former News reporter Marion Hargrove during World War II. Some wanted to know whether their grade on the I.Q. tests was good, to which non-commissioned officers replied that it had been good enough for them.
Hot dang. Let's go lick some Redses...
On the editorial page, "Will Charlotte Be Bombed?" finds that while an atomic attack seemed remote, with the Korean war apparently nearly at an end, such operations were usually prelude to more Russian aggression, notwithstanding Russian peace feelers. Civil defense preparedness, as recommended by the National Security Resources Board, was thus appropriate. Mayor Victor Shaw had therefore taken the proper step in announcing establishment of such a program in Charlotte.
"The ROKs Almost Made It" finds that, contrary to reports of retreat during the early phases of the war when the South Korean forces were out-manned with inadequate leadership, they had turned into a formidable fighting force under the guidance of American officers. They had nearly beaten the U.S. First Cavalry Division into Pyongyang, but finally fell short by three hours. While it was good that the U.S. troops added to their firsts, in Manila, in Tokyo, many Americans had secretly hoped that the South Korean troops would win the race.
"Under a Cloud" finds contrary to practice and tradition in the state a ruling by State Attorney General Harry McMullan that clerks of court had the discretion to keep from the public filed civil complaints. Mr. McMullan had found no State Supreme Court decision on the matter, but that other state courts had provided wide discretion to the clerks in the absence of clear statutes governing their conduct.
The Greensboro Daily News had objected to the practice for opening the door to exertion of pressure, influence and politics on the clerks. The piece agrees. While civil complaints often were packed with charges which were untrue, the evil of suppression of information was greater than the potential evil of airing irresponsible charges. It advocates revision of the applicable statute to specify that such filings were matters of public record.
"An Inflexible Rule" finds compulsory religious instruction in the public schools at variance with American tradition and the First Amendment Establishment Clause requirement of separation of church and state. It violated the right to freedom of religious belief. Thus, the Mecklenburg-Charlotte Ministerial Association had taken the proper stance when it voted down such a proposed course of action. It had instead opted to cooperate in choosing religious books for school libraries insofar as the school board wished.
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "In Case of Fire", tells of a 16-year old boy from Charlotte who had been left by his mother to watch over his four younger brothers and take charge of bread in the oven while she went to a prayer meeting. He then discovered that the kerosene was ready to explode and so shut the front door to avoid a draft and then removed to the back door and held his shoulder against it. After the stove exploded, he and his four brothers removed all of the furniture in the house to save it from the resulting fire. He had been taught what to do in case of fire at Harding High School, where he also played in the band. The piece suggests that he could play in the band in Greensboro whenever he liked.
Whoever wrote this piece may have been hitting the bottle a little, as it is a bit hard to follow unless you were there.
Bill Sharpe, in his weekly "Turpentine Drippings", snippets from newspapers across the state, tells of Charity & Children reporting of a Sunday School class having been asked who could tell of each saint, Matthew, Mark, or Peter, to which there was no answer, until, in response to the latter query, one child said, "I fink it was a wabbit."
John Wesley Clay of the
Winston-Salem Journal quotes a young poet who celebrated being
alone
The Durham Sun recommends a quote appearing in the Atlanta Journal from Duke football coach Wallace Wade who, when asked how the war and draft would affect his team, said that he was more concerned about the war than its effect on his team.
The Camden Chronicle suggests that when young, the cold and heat had never too much bothered the writer, despite the winters being colder then, so much so that the branch had frozen over each winter, enabling the children to use it as a path on their way to school, now hardly ever occurring. Yet their feet never seemed to get cold. It supposes that children were just that way.
So is global warming. It did not
start in 1970 or 2000 or 2010. Try 1850. Because you only noticed
something for the first time yesterday does not mean that it did not
preexist your presence in life
Frances Frazier of the Waynesville Mountaineer tells of four people traveling northward through the North Carolina mountains and being puzzled by the map, deciding to turn back to Asheville as there were too many gaps in the roads.
You'll find some more down the way, up in Washington, by 1973. They will have lost their way completely by then.
And so more and so much more, on and
on
Drew Pearson, in San Francisco, suggests that Governor Earl Warren of California had shown himself increasingly to be of presidential timber. California's size had made it important to national politics, as once had been Virginia and Ohio, both states having been the "mother of Presidents" in earlier times. If, on the other hand, James Roosevelt were to defeat Governor Warren for a third term, then Mr. Roosevelt would be a viable Democratic candidate for the presidency. Defeating Mr. Roosevelt, as the Governor was likely to do, would enhance his political stature the more, making him hard to ignore in 1952, though GOP bosses wanted to do so.
Governor Warren had been a first-rate Governor and had learned to gain Democratic votes, as FDR had wooed Republican votes in 1932 when the majority of the country were registered Republicans. His success was illustrated by the facts that 400,000 Democrats had voted for him in his first run for Governor in 1942 and that in 1946, he was the nominee on both tickets.
A year earlier, during an interview with Mr. Pearson, Governor Warren appeared discouraged as many Republicans believed him to be more a Democrat than a Republican and there was talk that Lt. Governor Goodwin Knight would run against him in the 1950 primary. He had said at the time that if a job was worth doing, it was worth fighting for, even if one lost. At the time, he appeared to expect to lose, so fierce was his Republican opposition. Now, the tide was just the opposite. His sense of fair play had been the responsible agent for that result. When asked by a Federal judge what the party affiliations of ten appointed state judges were, Governor Warren informed that he did not know as he did not study such things in the appointment process. When examined, it turned out that there had been five Republicans and five Democrats. He had appointed a black man to head the California Parole Board. He had put in place an old-age pension plan which went further than any other state. He had also implemented a health care plan which, while not as far-reaching as that proposed by the President, nevertheless had stirred opposition among the medical profession. He had taken a firm stand against the witch-hunters on the Board of Regents of the University of California when they had demanded a faculty loyalty oath, siding with the faculty opposition to the move.
General Eisenhower had stated informally at the San Francisco Press Club and again at Bohemian Grove that he did not know of any loyalty oath to which he would not swear, an indirect swipe at the Governor—whom President Eisenhower would appoint as Chief Justice at the death of Fred Vinson in 1953. Governor Warren had commented that he found it interesting that the General's remark had been made off the record so that it would not be quoted in the East, as he and James B. Conant, president of Harvard, had been the first to take such a public stand against loyalty oaths. Moreover, he said, Columbia, of which the General was president, had more Communists on the faculty than any other institution of higher learning in the country.
Marquis Childs, in New Delhi, presents the first of two pieces regarding a four-hour interview with Prime Minister Nehru. He spoke of the need for peace and the avoidance of a third world war as the unapologetic basis for India's foreign policy, which some saw as appeasement. He believed that the danger of Chinese intervention in the Korean war had subsided.
The results of a third world war, he continued, would be tribal barbarism, with military dictatorships set up to supplant organized governments in many regions. The second reason for the government's policy of neutrality was that in the long run China could never become a satellite of Russia or a Communist state in the pattern of Russia, as shown by the recent Chinese policy granting land rights to peasants to farm the land and retain the profits. There was also a restraining element within the cities. The third reason was the influence of the Gandhi philosophy of non-violence on Nehru and most members of the Government. The fourth reason was the fear of American economic imperialism, not a fear held personally by Nehru but extensively believed through Asia.
He was, regardless of the opinions of people in the West, the inheritor of Gandhi's mantle and head of the political party which dominated India.
Robert C. Ruark tells of food costs being up about twenty percent since the start of the Korean war and lumber increasing in cost by about 25 percent. Vital war materials were on the rise. Housing for veterans was therefore increasingly out of reach and the Government had sought to deal with the situation by stiffening credit terms to slow down home construction.
Despite the fact that the war was not that big, it had impacted the economy considerably. The suggestion for stockpiling of goods by the Government, rather than accepting scarce materials from abroad, had caused big speculators to tack on heavy profits.
The response of raising income taxes and curtailing individual credit while engaging in deficit spending to pay for the defense effort, he believes, would not work to control anything. Wages and prices had to be controlled to restrain the dynamic of American greed. The food budget proved the point. Some people did not give a damn about the rest of the country so long as they could turn a fast buck. The jump in food prices robbed the average individual of buying power and further strangled the family paycheck.
Framed Edition
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