The Charlotte News

Saturday, November 18, 1950

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that tank-led American infantrymen of the Seventh Division pushed through a snowstorm in a four-mile drive to within 21 air miles of the Manchurian border in the northeast sector of Korea, against only scattered rifle fire. The storm and dropping temperatures were reported by correspondent Tom Stone to be the primary obstacles. A field officer said that by Sunday they expected to reach Kapsan, from which smoke was still rising from allied air strikes covering the advance. American casualties were reported to be light compared to 128 Communist troops having been killed and more wounded in an ambush by the Communists from the hills above the mountain gap road of advance, six miles southeast of Kapsan. Air observers saw no Communist troops up to the Yalu River in the area. The Seventh Division expected to reach the near side of the Yalu by Monday.

Elsewhere along the 250-mile meandering front, resistance also was meager, but in the western sector, 100,000 Communists, both Chinese and North Korean, were reported to be digging into a low mountain defense line south of the shared Yalu River power stations. The strategy appeared to be to allow the allied forces to get into the mountain gaps at the extreme end of their snow-bound supply lines, where they could be trapped during the winter cold, and then to resist along a 60-mile line from Taechon on the southwest to the Tokchon and Chongchon River areas, where intelligence sources estimated there were 28,000 Chinese troops and 70,000 North Koreans holed up, with other units in support. There was no report of Communist units withdrawing north of the power dam sites, the apparent points of greatest concern.

Peiping radio on Friday had derided the assurances by President Truman and U.N. that the U.S. and the U.N. had no designs on Chinese territory or its power dams. They described it as a "curtain of lies and bellicosity", "a mixture of honeyed words and threats", which would not fool the Chinese people. It claimed that America was the aggressor in Korea, in Formosa, and was threatening Vietnam, had violated the Manchurian boundary several times by air. It said that Senator William Knowland of California had bared the true intentions of the U.S. by suggesting, while touring Formosa and Korea during the week, a neutral zone ten miles north of the Yalu River in Manchuria. The broadcast contended that the U.S. Government was using such "lesser lights" to soften up the "unwilling public" to such ideas regarding the Chinese border that the U.N. troops might eventually cross it without undue controversy. It also quoted President Syngman Rhee of South Korea that the war could not stop at the Yalu River.

General MacArthur stated that thefts of G.I. clothing had no bearing on the temporary delay in delivery of winter clothing to the troops. He said that the sole reason for the delay was the swift advance, outrunning supply lines, disrupted by destroyed bridges and primitive road systems plus scarcity of operable air fields. Reports that up to a third of winter clothing had been stolen, he said, were incorrect. Winter clothing had reached Japan and South Korea on time.

The previous day at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, the first 41 Purple Hearts presented to soldiers in the Korean war were awarded in a ceremony. General Washington had established the tradition for each man wounded in combat during the Revolution. The piece describes two of the men receiving the decorations. One had been wounded twice previously, during World War II while serving in France in 1944. He said that the Purple Heart in Korea would soon be a worth a "dime a thousand", as fast as soldiers were being wounded.

At the U.N., Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky warned the U.N. General Assembly that it was useless to think of peace through the organization if the Russian peace plan, to abolish atomic weaponry, though without international inspection, was to be ignored. The plan was voted down by an overwhelming majority the prior day. Mr. Vishinsky also again asserted that the U.S. was the aggressor in Korea and attacked the 20-year peace plan of Secretary-General Trygve Lie, which he said had to be conditioned on admission of Communist China to the U.N., on which the proposal had been silent. He viewed the plan as a "loudspeaker" for the U.S. Mr. Lie actually had agreed with the Soviet contention regarding admission of China but did not support the Soviet peace proposal, as Premier Stalin had sought to sell to Mr. Lie the prior May when he visited Moscow.

A nine-power resolution was circulated the previous day as alternative to the Soviet proposal, commending the Lie proposal, but asking for special consideration of portions regarding which the nine nations, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Haiti, Lebanon, Sweden, Yugoslavia, Pakistan, and the Philippines, were concerned.

Senator Wayne Morse proved via a letter from Senator Arthur Vandenberg that he had the latter's backing in filling the empty Republican seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, occurring because of reorganization allowing only a simple majority for the Democrats on the Committee, compared to the two-seat majority in the current Congress. Other Republicans, however, did not agree with Senator Vandenberg on the assignment and favored instead Senator William Knowland of California, a vigorous critic of the Administration's foreign policy.

In New York, a well-dressed woman checked into the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and then ten minutes later jumped to her death from a 14th story window.

In Vineland, N.J., a young appliance salesman, Eugene Ingenito, admitted, after hours of questioning by police, that he had shot to death five members of his estranged wife's family and wounded four others, including his wife, in three different homes. The wounded, except for his wife, were in critical condition. He had been caught following a car chase by police. There were wounds on one of his wrists, albeit not serious, apparently from a razor found on the seat of the car when he was caught. He was charged with murder.

In Lake City, S.C., the theft of more than a dozen cars, most of which had been found abandoned shortly after being stolen, had been solved, according to police, by the arrest of a sixteen year old boy.

In London, actor Jimmy Stewart was recovering from an appendectomy received Wednesday, and, according to doctors, was "getting on well". He had been working on a movie in England.

In the Nantahala Forest of North Carolina, General Jonathan Wainwright, hero of the Bataan death march of 1942, was hunting deer, bear and wild boar.

On the editorial page, "Piedmont Given the Edge" finds that the Federal Power Commission approval of Piedmont Natural Gas Corporation of Spartanburg, S.C., to become the provider of natural gas for eight cities in the Carolinas to have given the company an edge over the competition, Carolina Natural Gas Corp., and Public Service Co. of North Carolina. It was not a final decision but only a recommendation, which could be appealed by the two competitor companies. The FPC, itself, could also reopen the matter within ten days.

Charlotte, along with Winston-Salem, Salisbury, High Point, Burlington, Spartanburg, and Greenville would be served by the company ultimately to be chosen. Duke Power Co. had agreed to sell its gas manufacturing plants to Piedmont for conversion to natural gas. All eight cities were close to the Transcontinental Pipe Line and so the cost of connection would be relatively low, allowing for low rates.

The other two companies had the advantage of making gas available to more customers in the Carolinas but it was doubtful that the rate structure could be made to work for smaller towns further away from the pipeline. In addition, Piedmont had been the first to promote natural gas for the area and so, with all other factors at work, deserved the award of the service.

"A Set of Principles" informs that the Inter-American Press Conference of newspaper publishers and editors of the American nations meeting in New York recently had put a high priority on adoption of a set of principles to encourage freedom of the press in the hemisphere. The newspapers sponsoring the Conference, including The News, were publishing the adopted Charter this date, to bring home to readers the real meaning of freedom of the press.

It then prints the eight points of the Charter, concluding with: "The free press is basic in forming and expressing public opinion. America, by reason of its tradition and its destiny, must be a continent of public opinion."

"We Love a Parade" finds that the citizens, despite a light rain, got a lot of pleasure from the "Carolina Carrousel" Christmas parade the prior Thursday.

A piece from the Baltimore Sun, titled "In Defense of Losing One's Temper", finds apt the advice of Dr. Gertrude Gross of the mental hygiene clinic of the University of Maryland, that it was appropriate now and again to lose one's temper with a child. But it should not be routinized as it would lose its value then as a lesson. The advice was compatible with that of George Bernard Shaw, who, in one of his early plays, had made the point that a parent had the right to strike his or her child, but only when angered.

It finds that if parents refused to lose their tempers with their children, only weakly admonishing misbehavior, then the child would continually seek to test the limits of parental will. A shaking of the child, a tweak of the ear, a slap on the cheek, a denial of dessert or order to leave the table was necessary on occasion to instill the lesson to avoid worse conduct into the future. Dr. Gross had also admonished that it was necessary to impart to the child that for which the punishment was being administered, lest the lesson be only an embittering experience.

We might, however, question the wisdom of parents who punish children for exercise of free speech, as opposed to conduct, whether the former encourages respect for and understanding of our laws and Constitution, and understanding and respect of others' rights to free speech when they become adults. We strongly doubt the wisdom of such punishment, in fact, find it asinine.

Speech, no matter how vile it might sound, is conveying something to the careful listener or reader. It may be artistic; it may be emotional. But it is conveying something to which one, as a parent especially, ought listen and address, not seek help from professionals, but utilize common sense in seeking to understand the source of the idea being conveyed. Squelching the unwanted speech is the worst thing which can be done. For the child then grows up believing that no one else in society is entitled to speak their mind, seeks then to harm others for doing so, the result being the equivalent of Fascism.

Drew Pearson tells of the 87th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address coming up the following day—four score and seven years after that Thursday before the first proclaimed Thanksgiving. The Chicago Times had reported in 1863 that the speech had been "flat and dish-watery". President Lincoln, himself, had told aides that he had been a failure in the two-minute speech dedicatory to the Gettysburg National Cemetery, wherein were buried the remains of the Union soldiers who had fallen in the battle the previous July 1-3. The photographer was still loading his camera as the President sat down, following the two-hour address by the great orator, Edward Everett.

Nevertheless, the ten sentences comprising the speech had lived on in lore to inspire the consciences and hearts of all free peoples throughout the world. It had been translated into seven foreign languages, including Japanese. Thomas Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia, following World War I, had once called it "America's eternal message".

Just as the country then was fighting to free men from physical slavery, the U.N. was fighting in 1950 to free the people of Korea from mental slavery. Taking the cue from Mr. Lincoln, the country was still "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" and testing whether "this nation, or any nation, so dedicated can long endure".

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington and the white crosses at Normandy and Iwo Jima symbolized that unfinished work of the soldiers lying at Gettysburg.

The country had come a long way since Gettysburg, when the only free black man in the nation to have gained stature was an escaped slave, Frederick Douglass. The nation in 1950 had just paid tribute to Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Ralph Bunche, had celebrated Judge William Hastie, the first black jurist to sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals, Congressman William Dawes, respected by his Southern colleagues, the first black chairman of a Congressional committee, Walter Gordon, chairman of the California Adult Authority, and Brig. General B. O. Davis, the first black general in the military.

No black was permitted to own property in 1863. There had been no free education for blacks except in missionary schools. By 1950, the Supreme Court had struck down restrictive private covenants barring ownership of property by blacks. The Federal courts had ruled that most universities had to admit blacks, for want of established "separate but equal" facilities under Plessy v. Ferguson from 1896—still technically the law of the land but fast becoming obsolete in prelude to Brown v. Board of Education to be decided in spring, 1954.

Yet, Mr. Pearson points out, in Washington, discrimination still existed. Black performers had been banned from Constitution Hall by its owners, the D.A.R. Singer Marian Anderson, who had suffered such a ban in 1938, before being asked by Eleanor Roosevelt to sing from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, could not get a cup of coffee in most restaurants in the city and would be asked to leave. The country had come a long way since 1863, but still had a long way to go.

President Lincoln, in dedicating the nation to the "unfinished work" of the men who died at Gettysburg, had referred to the freedom of all people. Though he had belonged to no church, he added the words "under God" to the speech, missing in the original manuscript, when he said, "...that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom."

Mr. Pearson speculates that Mr. Lincoln, were he alive in 1950, might ask: "Do Americans give their 'last full measure of devotion' only in wartime?" Those who had fought and died in the Argonne in World War I, on the beaches of Normandy and on Guadalcanal in World War II, had certainly done so. But while resolving after World War I never to allow another world war to take place, the country slipped quietly back into "normalcy" and isolation, refusing to join the League of Nations, allowing to rise in Europe and Asia the seeds of World War II.

The country was willing to fight for the freedom of neighbors abroad but often refused to extend aid to those neighbors in peacetime. He wonders whether Mr. Lincoln had not meant to include that international aid as part of the "last full measure of devotion". The country had learned that a world divided against itself by Communism could not long endure, but still had "done little about the professional haters who defile our tradition that all men are created free and equal." Nor had it realized that when a nation becomes "too rich, too fat, too intent on luxury, it falls." The price of privilege was to share it with others, in the fashion of noblesse oblige. He suggests that when the country worried more of war profits than war taxes, there was danger.

Government of the people, by the people and for the people could exist as long as people cared. What transpired after a war was what counted in preventing the next one.

He concludes that were Mr. Lincoln alive in 1950, he might warn the nation to learn to get along with each other as individuals, as "we the people", that it might not perish from the earth.

Marquis Childs tells of John Foster Dulles being one of the three or four most influential advisers to Secretary of State Acheson, after being appointed to the position the prior April following his defeat to Herbert Lehman for election to the Senate, to which he had been appointed by Governor Dewey in July, 1949 following the retirement of Democrat Robert Wagner of New York. Senator Arthur Vandenberg had demanded the appointment of Mr. Dulles as adviser, rather than a less controversial Republican. Since the appointment, Mr. Dulles had taken an active role in advising Mr. Acheson, especially regarding Asia and the urgent need for a peace treaty with Japan. The fact would make it difficult for Republicans in the new Congress to attack the Truman-Acheson foreign policy.

Despite rumors, there was little to indicate that Mr. Acheson planned to resign anytime soon, had said that he would stay as long as the President wanted him. There was no sign that the President planned a change; indeed, the criticism of Mr. Acheson, especially the charges leveled at him by Senator Joseph McCarthy, had reinforced the President's determination to keep him.

Senator Taft had said that he would not demand Mr. Acheson's resignation in exchange for cooperation on foreign policy, though he also said that he realized some Republicans would feel that way. He did not intend to be Mr. Acheson's defender.

Moreover, by keeping Mr. Acheson, Republicans could, in 1952, use his performance as a rallying cry for the campaign, especially if the world situation continued to deteriorate, as it appeared it would do. Whether that, however, would be good for the country remained to be seen.

Robert C. Ruark, in Birmingham, finds the spiritual home of the jukebox to be in the South, where it seemed "bigger, brighter, noisier and shinier". "Goodnight, Irene", which he found to be "one of the most dismal tunes with the dullest set of lyrics ever recorded", had followed him wherever he went, along with songs of sad cowboys, sad hillbillies, lucky old suns, the necessity of happiness, and the command to greet the day with a smile.

He finds the American ballad or semi-folk song to be the "most dolorous, tuneless, generally dispirited art form" he had ever encountered, even more so than the Argentine tango. The words were strung together by idiots regarding themes of feuds and faithless lovers, sung to dismal tunes through nasal voices. It was particularly hard to hear through a jukebox.

Recently, while having a steak with a friend at a restaurant, the jukebox was playing "Goodnight, Irene", while on the television, a woman sang, "Biff, bam, alakazam", and out of the kitchen came "The Hadacol Polka", via the radio. For a few moments, he believed that he had died and gone to hell. Everyone else in the restaurant appeared oblivious to the cacophony.

He found music and art in the basic blues and in some modern popular songs, but found them not usually among the fare emanating from the jukebox. Rather it sent forth be-bop and hillbilly torment, raucous jazz and doleful groans from off-key crooners, girl trios, and a one-trick song of the hour, "Irene", "Rag Mop", or "Nature Boy", until the mind reeled backwards.

He supposes that such blending of media sounds did not disturb younger people and he had seen some who could watch television while reading and conversing. He prefers quiet or at least soothing sound. One used to be able to retreat from the tumult of the street by ducking into a cafe or bar for a moment of calm. But the radio, jukebox and television had "murdered rest", as surely as had Macbeth.

He had once tried to form a secret society of terrorists to smash all of the jukeboxes, and now wanted to expand the enterprise to include radio and television, but says it would await first the coming of color television.

Tom Schlesinger, in his weekly "Capital Roundup", tells of Senator-elect Willis Smith having spent a day the previous week surveying the Capitol from Senator Clyde Hoey's office, seeking primarily to understand Congressional minutiae, such as the printing stationery and rules of protocol. He learned that Senator Hoey could request suspension of the rules by unanimous consent to allow a Senator-elect, after certification by the Governor and Secretary of the State, to be seated on the first day of the final session of the current Congress, to convene November 27.

Mr. Smith had decided that the large black leather sofa in Senator Frank Graham's office, which he would occupy, needed to be re-upholstered.

Why don't you do it in pink?

Word was that Charles Green, Mr. Smith's campaign manager, would become his temporary Congressional secretary and stay on if he liked. (Jesse Helms, news director of WRAL radio in Raleigh, instrumental in the campaign, would also become an assistant.)

With the Democrats controlling 49 Senate seats and the Republicans, 47, in the new Senate, the continued health of Senators would determine control during the ensuing two years. There were eighteen states in which the Governor was of a different party from at least one Senator, with eleven of those having Republican Governors. Many of those Senators were advanced in age. Senator Hoey, though not from a state with divided party allegiance, was nearly 73.

The relaxation by the Agriculture Department of export quotas on cotton, to allow a 62 percent increase in exported cotton, was causing nervous anticipation by Department officials. Southerners, especially House Agriculture Committee chairman Harold Cooley of North Carolina, had been critical when the quotas were established in October. Mr. Cooley supported the action but believed it had come too late to help small cotton growers in the early harvesting areas and that it had not allocated the export quotas to certain countries, notably omitting Spain, a traditional buyer of American cotton. Agriculture Department officials said that cotton prices had risen to a 30-year high and that if they rose above 45 cents per pound, it would be devastating, especially if general war broke out, as there would not be enough cotton.

The present Congress was expected to accomplish little beyond taking steps toward establishing an excess profits tax in the coming extra session, to be completed only in the next Congress.

About 200 black students had been admitted to Southern colleges and universities during the fall, formerly barred by segregation laws. Race barriers had been lowered in graduate and professional schools of eleven of the seventeen segregated states. In three of those states, private colleges had eliminated segregated admission.

Appointment of Georgia Senator Richard Russell as Majority Leader could be a strategic move to bring pressure on the Southern bloc, headed in part by Senator Russell, to adhere to the Administration line as a matter of pride.

Most of the defeated Senators, other than Senator Graham, would not likely obtain jobs from the Administration. Senators Scott Lucas and Millard Tydings probably would not accept jobs anyway, as they, like Senator Claude Pepper, were planning to re-enter private practice.

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