The Charlotte News
Friday, October 27, 1950
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that South Korean interrogators said that Chinese prisoners told them that one full corps of Chinese Communist troops, about 30,000 men, had entered Korea from Manchuria to bolster the faltering North Korean army. An American adviser with the South Korean First Division said that it had been attacked by a Chinese division on Thursday and many Chinese troops had been killed or wounded in the battle, in addition to four being captured. The adviser said that the enemy used no artillery in the engagement and that heavy American guns forced the enemy back during Thursday night. The South Korean commander believed the enemy troops had withdrawn to the northwest of Unsan. He had fought against the Chinese when part of the Japanese army in Manchuria during the war and believed that when they were hit hard, as they had been the day before, they would not continue to fight.
The American adviser was skeptical of some of the prisoners' information, as South Korean troops had already gone north of a line which had been described as the Chinese defense line, parallel to the Yalu River, about 18-20 miles to the south. One regiment of South Koreans, reported as surrounded the previous night, was still in trouble and other allied forces were on their way to relieve the pressure. Some observers theorized that North Korean troops had integrated some Chinese Communists into their divisions after removing Chinese uniform insignia.
An Eighth Army spokesman said that the South Korean reports of facing large numbers of Chinese troops could not be verified and he doubted that they were true.
Thinly clad allied troops made their way over snow and tortuous summits toward the Manchurian frontier along the west coast of the peninsula. Behind the forward-most troops, the enemy put up a fight, about 50 miles south of the border, around Unsan, directly south of Chosan, the only border point reached by the allies. Not one enemy soldier was spotted at the latter location. But many bypassed North Koreans were popping up in scattered areas to the south.
Two battalions of U.S. and South Korean Marines were rushed 30-40 miles south of Wonsan on the east coast to stop a marauding band of 4,000 enemy troops who emerged from the mountains. The situation was deemed not serious. There were scattered reports of such marauders coming out of the hills and attacking villages.
At the U.N., the U.S. supported softer U.N. restrictions on Franco in Spain, a resolution to lift the ban on sending ambassadors and to provide Spain permission to join organizations affiliated with the U.N. Britain intended to abstain from the voting. The resolution had solid Latin American and Arab support and so appeared set to pass against Soviet-bloc opposition.
The military committee of NATO had completed its recommendations the previous night in Washington and they were to be given to the twelve nations' defense ministers on Saturday. It was hoped that within two months the combined military force for the defense of Western Europe, with an American supreme commander, would be up and running. It was believed that General Eisenhower would be named the supreme commander.
Secretary of Defense Marshall appointed an eight-man study committee comprised of regular and reserve officers and civilians to develop long-range plans for maintaining a strong American reserve force.
GOP chairman Guy Gabrielson reacted to the President's indication the previous day that he might call a special session of Congress in late November by saying that the President was intending to try to "jam through as much of his Socialist program as possible" before the end of the current Congress. Mr. Gabrielson interpreted it as a belief by the President that the Republicans would regain control of the Congress in the upcoming midterm elections. The President had only suggested action in such a special session on rent control extension, statehood for Alaska and Hawaii, and enactment of an excess profits tax.
The Air Force reported that a twin-engine navigation plane with four aboard was presumed to have crashed into Lake Ponchartrain on the northern edge of New Orleans in the predawn hours, having taken off from Craig Air Force Base at Selma, Ala., and landed at New Orleans and then taken off for the return trip. The engines were heard to cut out shortly after takeoff.
On the editorial page, "Two Birds with One Stone" praises the decision of the Board of the State Department of Conservation & Development in recommending establishment of a technical school in the Piedmont to teach metalworking, woodworking and electrical work. The Department was advertising the state to industry as being in "accessible isolation", far enough from the "bomb-target" large cities while still close enough to the major markets.
Affording a school to nurture these trade skills would also serve to draw heavy industry to the state.
It hopes that the Governor and General Assembly would take up the recommendation and put it into action.
"We're Dealing with Barbarians" tells of a piece from sometime earlier from the New York Times Magazine, concerning Averell Harriman, at the time of the article about to become the President's special assistant on foreign affairs, in which it pointed out that Mr. Harriman believed, based on his extensive experience with Russia, that the Kremlin leaders were barbarians.
The piece thinks it a fact not stressed enough in American thinking. It formed the keys to understanding Russian soldiers as depicted by Alexandra Orme in Comes the Comrade.
The Russians were different, seeing the world with different perceptions from the West. They were suspicious, devious, impulsive, and unthinkingly cruel, much as children.
It concludes that the country would be much better prepared to deal with them by understanding that they were barbarians.
"The Underdog Comes into His Own" finds that, according to one unnamed college football coach, youngsters had taken over college football after the departure of all of the older men who had populated the game after the war, resulting in unpredictability of the sport. The prognosticator who once boasted an .875 correct prediction percentage now settled for .725.
Yet, more dollars were being spent to buy football players than ever before. Still, however, the dollars did not make adults out of kids. But it likes better the unpredictability of the game and the upsets, as spontaneity was more important than precision in preserving the competitive zeal of collegiate athletics.
Alright, we shall venture one against the odds: UNC 28, Miami 27.
You had better not make us look silly tomorrow. Life could get worse.
A piece by Beatrice Cobb of the Morganton News-Herald, titled "Garbroth and Jack Robinson", tells of receiving two responses to her request for information on the meaning of "garbroth", as in the old saw, "as mean as a garbroth". It was two words, said one respondent, "gar" being a fish, and the broth made from it being bitter. Another writer, however, claimed that "gar" was actually "gall", hence bitter.
She also had realized that before one could "say Jack Robinson", it would be 1951, then paused to wonder where that phrase had originated and who Mr. Robinson was.
He was in the dark for quite awhile.
Drew Pearson, in Seattle, tells of artificial rain-making in the West by seeding the clouds when crops needed water. One farmer in Prosser, Wash., had his crop yield increase from 8 to 10 bushels of wheat per acre to 20 bushels after the process had begun. Seeding could render expensive irrigation systems unnecessary, could raise the water level in the Central Valley of California, and settle the bitter water feud between California and Arizona over access to the Colorado River. Meanwhile, Senator Clinton Anderson of New Mexico had proposed legislation to control rain-making to prevent one area from taking the rain from another area.
The Korean war had exposed the fact that the Army Medical Service had trained few doctors for front-line hospital duty. As a result, troops had suffered needless agony and even death because doctors did not always know how to set up tents and organize field operating rooms. Most of the doctors in command of the field hospitals had never served outside modern hospitals. The Army only operated one small field training center, in Texas, and few had been able to partake of the training there. Even the Surgeon-General, Maj. General Raymond Bliss, had no background in field surgery.
Loyola University of Los Angeles canceled its football game with Texas Western at El Paso recently because Loyola had a black halfback whom Texas Western would not allow to play. Loyola had to pay Texas Western $8,000 to cancel the game, but the administration said that it was worth it. Meanwhile, a representative of Universal Pictures, Stanley Meyers, went to Noah Dietrich of Hughes Tool Co. of Houston and asked him to pay the money on behalf of Loyola, which he did.
Governor Dewey had asked Lt. Governor Joe Hanley for a copy of the letter in which he agreed to step aside from the gubernatorial race to make way for the draft-Dewey movement. The same group, led by Kingsland Macy and Frank Gannett, who had put up the money to pay Mr. Hanley's debts as an incentive to leave the race were also backing General Eisenhower for the GOP nomination in 1952. After Mr. Hanley refused to provide the letter, Governor Dewey got a copy elsewhere and shortly afterward endorsed General Eisenhower for the nomination. Mr. Pearson, however, asserts that Governor Dewey would have better served the General by saying nothing, as it did not pay to stick one's neck out too early.
He adds a note that one reason Mr. Hanley needed money was his penchant for betting on horse races.
Marquis Childs, in Jaipur, India, describes the procession of Dussehara, part of the ancient Hindu ceremony to celebrate the harvest. First in the procession were the elephants, followed by the carts, many 300 to 400 years old, each pulled by four white bullocks. Next came the regimental band, and toward the end of the procession was His Highness, the Maharajah of Jaipur, with his ceremonial sword and scabbard. Behind him were cavalrymen.
The procession was what was left of feudal India, rapidly passing away. The Maharajah was no longer the absolute monarch of his principality. He was the governor of Jaipur and 21 other princely states of the province, based on an agreement of merger with the central government. The British, who had played the princely rulers off against one another and against the independence movement, had predicted that the princely rulers could never be amalgamated with the government without a century of bloodshed and war. But it had taken place.
Yet there still remained to be resolved issues of large landownership among those who once had semi-autonomous rule under the princely rulers. They still had their land in the province but no longer any power.
The Maharajah was the commander of the army of the province, which had a 600-mile border with Pakistan and so was important in light of persistent border incidents.
The reception which followed the procession was a long step into the present and perhaps the future. It was not known whether it could be made without disintegration and perhaps breakdown.
Robert C. Ruark tells of his friend, a veteran of the war, who, at 27, was an advertising executive earning $25,000 per year while spending an account of a million dollars for the firm. While others whined about the war having robbed them of their youth, his friend had constructed his American dream, proving that it was still there.
A letter writer finds that conformity was being defined as sanity and that doing so was stifling creativity in the society. She believes that the psychologists had taken all the romance out of love.
A letter writer does not understand "An Inflexible Rule" of October 19, praising the local ministers for supporting the First Amendment Establishment Clause and not recommending religious instruction in the schools. She thinks the public school was the ideal place to teach children about God and religion and that to prevent the teaching was to imitate Communism.
A letter from former Marshall Plan administrator Paul Hoffman thanks the newspaper for its remarks during his European trip about his leaving the position to return to private life.
A letter writer, originally from England, says that she had just moved to Gastonia after spending several years in other American cities, and wanted to meet other overseas wives in the area.
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