The Charlotte News

Tuesday, November 28, 1950

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that General MacArthur had issued a statement that an "entire new war" had erupted in Korea, as Chinese Communist troops, numbering 200,000, had surged along the entirety of the allied front, ending hopes of the end-of-the-war push, begun five days earlier, which had as its aim ending the war by Christmas. All along the 75-mile front, the allied forces were in retreat.

General MacArthur met for four hours with his top field generals, Walton Walker and Edward Almond, and called upon the U.N. to negotiate an end to the war politically or provide him authority to attack Chinese supply lines over the Manchurian border, which he said he was powerless at present to interdict.

Field dispatches said that Chinese troops were swarming into the northwest sector, 35 miles north of Tokchon, and, if they continued pouring through the gap in the lines, would eventually threaten the allied supply lines established from Pyongyang. South Korean forces had been pressed into retreat for as much as twenty miles. Other allied troops in the north-central and northeast sectors also faced fresh masses of Chinese troops. Twenty-one Chinese divisions were officially identified in the border region between the allied front and Manchuria.

Secretary of State Acheson gave Senate foreign policy leaders a briefing on the situation in Korea and pleaded for united backing of Administration measures. He made it clear that the Chinese Communist intervention was being directed by the Chinese Government.

The State Department issued a formal statement charging Communist China with aggression in Korea and the U.S. delegation echoed the charge before the U.N., a statement immediately supported by the White House. At the U.N., the U.S. asked the Security Council to face the issue of Chinese aggression squarely. The move was hastily arranged based on the news from Korea, as the Council prepared to hear the Soviet-backed Chinese charges of U.S. aggression in Formosa and Korea.

Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snyder said that his estimate that the Government budget would be 45 billion dollars, with a two billion dollar deficit, during the current fiscal year was a low figure as things now appeared, in light of the need for military spending.

Southern Democrats, finding themselves split in caucus, determined not to try to filibuster to death the statehood bills for Alaska and Hawaii, opposed for dilution of Senate power by adding four new Senators.

With the war news, the stock market tumbled, with prices of major stocks falling between one and four dollars per share. Among the heaviest losers were railroad, radio, oil, steel and automobile stocks. In commodities, prices climbed on rubber, cocoa, wool, hides, sugar and vegetable oils in New York, and grains in Chicago.

The Atomic Energy Commission announced that the Government had selected a 250,000-acre site in Aiken and Barnwell Counties, S.C., near the Savannah River on the border with Georgia, for building a facility to produce materials for the new hydrogen bomb. To make way for the site, some 1,500 families would have to relocate in the coming eighteen months. The du Pont Co. would plan and build the plant. The site was selected from among a hundred possibilities in a four-month study.

In Wake Forest, N.C., Dr. Harold W. Tribble was formally inducted as the tenth president of Wake Forest College. He discussed in his inaugural address the plans to move the campus to Winston-Salem, 110 miles away, a developing "Christian adventure" toward making the College into a University.

You can't convince us of any "Christian adventure" by moving from a quiet, bucolic village to that God-forsaken tobacco town.

On the editorial page, "We Need Europe's Steel" quotes journalist Richard L. Strout from the Christian Science Monitor as saying that if the steel production of Europe could not be defended and wound up in the hands of Russia, things would be gloomy, that the U.S., for self-preservation, needed to defend Western Europe. With the European steel in the Western arsenal, Russia's ability to wage long-term war was impossible.

In 1949, the U.S. and Canada had produced 94 million metric tons of steel, while Western Europe produced 60 million metric tons, and Russia and its satellites, 27 million. Thus, with Western Europe's capacity included, Russia would nearly equal the U.S. and Canada. There was little steel production to take over in the Far East, about 8.5 million tons in Japan, Australia and India, combined, the bulk of it in Japan.

It hopes that Senator Taft and others who were wondering why the U.S. should continue to defend Western Europe would consider this cold, hard fact.

"Doughton Lives Up to His Name" refers to House Ways & Means Committee chairman Bob Doughton's nickname of "Muley Bob" becoming apt again as he steered the Committee toward the excess profits tax favored by the Administration.

Business groups opposing the tax had made a deep impression with their alternative proposal, to raise the whole base of corporate taxes instead. Both approaches had their drawbacks. The most equitable solution was probably in between, with a moderate increase in corporate taxes and a lower rate of excess profits tax than the 75 percent of the profits over and above the average for the base period of 1946-49, as in the Administration's proposal.

It speculates that perhaps Mr. Doughton did not like the excess profits tax and was proceeding on the belief that the Senate would turn it down, leaving him to start over with a new plan in the new Congress. Nevertheless, he was proceeding apace at passage of the tax in the House during the special session.

"Opportunity for Southern Democrats" tells of the internationalism of the Southern Democrats, discussed by Drew Pearson this date, having been overlooked in the discussion of the probable direction of the new Congress in foreign policy. With these Democrats offsetting the small but growing Republican isolationist bloc, it would be impossible to effect a return to the disastrous past of isolationism. The Southern Democrats could have great impact, therefore, in resisting the inevitable attempts in the new Congress to pare spending on foreign aid and defense.

"Pity the Poor Pedestrian" tells of having had hope when the pedestrian signals had been installed at crosswalks downtown that a salutary remedy had been effected, but having lost that hope as traffic simply tended to ignore them. While some of the fault lay with pedestrians who did not obey the signals, more courtesy by motorists was needed, in addition to an alert police force, to assure pedestrian safety at the busy Charlotte intersections.

A piece from the Wall Street Journal, titled "Here's to Missouri and Texas", tells of that newspaper having always found Fair Trade laws suspect for insisting that manufacturers could not maintain product prices at the same rate without running afoul of anti-trust laws, while retailers could offer the products at the same price and remain in compliance, unless they went below the established minimum prices.

The American Fair Trade Council had been holding closed meetings recently to counsel member-manufacturers in Missouri and Texas, no longer with Fair Trade laws, how to operate under the prevailing anti-trust laws preventing price fixing. The two states had undertaken suits to prevent minimum price fixing and it hopes that they would continue the good work so that other states could benefit from the example.

Drew Pearson finds that the current session of Congress might become reminiscent of the post-World War I days during the Woodrow Wilson Administration, in terms of dissension on foreign policy. Having signed the Armistice November 11, 1918, the U.S. had been winning in Europe, but in the 1918 midterm elections, a few days before the Armistice, the Democrats had lost strength in Congress, losing control of the House, causing the President's vision for the League of Nations to lose strength, resulting in 1921, under President Warren Harding, in the nixing of U.S. membership in the organization. Similarly, the U.S. had been winning in Korea at the time of the elections while the Democrats had managed only to retain scant control of the Senate and, with Southern Democrat-Republican coalitions, questionable control of the House. Senator McCarthy's attack on the State Department and Chinese policy had been the primary factor undermining public confidence in Truman foreign policy, resulting in these losses in the midterms.

The result, he finds, would be a growing isolationist bloc in Congress. The GOP owed Senator McCarthy a political debt for his thirty stump speeches across the country in key states during the elections. It showed that his tactics paid dividends politically and the Republicans would respond accordingly, giving the small group of isolationists more strength. Senator Taft's re-election in Ohio placed him more firmly in that camp.

The Liberal Republicans in Congress held the balance of power on foreign policy among Republicans, as they would consistently vote for the Administration-favored policy, in diametric opposition to the isolationists. Southern Democrats, who voted against the President on domestic issues related to the Fair Deal, would usually support him on foreign policy.

Senator Arthur Vandenberg, once an isolationist who had become the leading Republican advocate for bipartisan foreign policy before his illness a year earlier had forced him to withdraw from the floor, had been expected to return to the floor in January, but now was ill again and probably would not return. Since Michigan had a Democratic Governor, the Senator would not resign.

Many Republicans, out of jealousy for his youth, would not follow Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., the heir apparent to the mantle of Senator Vandenberg on foreign policy, whom Senator Vandenberg favored as the new GOP leader in this effort.

While the President had appointed many Republicans to prominent foreign policy advisory positions, including Senator Lodge, John Foster Dulles, and former Senator John Sherman Cooper, the isolationist bloc remained unsatisfied with the direction of foreign policy.

Mr. Pearson questions, however, whether Senator McCarthy had really won votes for the Republicans, as the returns in his native state of Wisconsin showed that wherever he campaigned, the Republicans lost votes and the Democrats gained versus the totals of 1948. He suggests that the rest of the nation might also wake up to the Senator's tactics later.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop find that the loss of confidence in the policies of Secretary of State Acheson among the people and the Congress had made it virtually impossible for him to deal with the Congress on an effective basis in formulating a policy acceptable to both parties. The members would not even discuss the problem in a rational manner. The result was, they conclude, that he had to step aside. Even many leading Democrats were pressing the President to find a replacement. The President, however, had said that he would not do so.

Mr. Acheson had been a victim of the world situation which had forced him to sponsor the foreign and defense policy which had become so unpopular on Capitol Hill, really the victim of the President, himself, and his tendency to say that "everything is going to be all right" rather than facing the peril in a realistic manner, as Secretary Acheson had sought to do.

The prior spring, Secretary Acheson had addressed the Governors' Conference and provided a no-holds barred view of the menace of Soviet imperialism in four-hour detail. One Governor said afterward that the talk made it appear that Senator McCarthy's charges had been "small potatoes". The Alsops believe that the President should have been as frank with the American people. Every time Mr. Acheson had given a doom-filled press conference during the winter and spring of 1950, the President and then-Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson followed with talk of cheer and defense economy.

Mr. Acheson had sought to create "situations of strength" in the world, as set forth in National Security Council directive No. 68—apparently not 69 as the piece indicates. But nothing was done about it and the invasion of South Korea had resulted, the Soviet miscalculation on which, assuming the U.S. would not enter the conflict, had forced the U.S. to remobilize, saving it from utter disaster.

Senator McCarthy had merely exploited fears already present in the American people re Communism. The outcome to Mr. Acheson, they find, was unjust, as he had become the scapegoat for the Administration when he had been consistently on the right side of decisions.

But the Truman Administration had become, they posit: "like the troika in the old Russian folk tales. The way has been lost in the forest. The horses are tired. The wolves are snapping at the traces. The driver must toss his baby to the wolves. Or the whole equipage will be lost. Dean Acheson is the baby, the innocent sacrifice that must in the end be made."

Robert C. Ruark, in Miami, again, as on Saturday, tells of the local fight against organized crime, the gambling syndicate, which had overtaken Miami during the Twenties. Then came Mayor Frank Katzentine in 1932, who inaugurated a campaign to clean it up, stressing not so much the gambling per se but the impact it had on small businesses forced to compete with the illicit businesses which did not pay taxes.

The Frank Costello-Frank Erickson ring in Broward County operated two major clubs and the Sheriff had an interest in bolita gambling.

Mayor Katzentine brought in a pair of seasoned police officers from each of several cities all over the country which had dealings with organized crime and gambling syndicates. They rounded up the gamblers and brought them before the Mayor, who gave them 24 hours to get out of town or face being beaten up and transported to the Georgia backwoods via their "Hobo Express".

Thus, Mr. Katzentine, after he left the Mayor's office, became the logical choice to head a special citizens' committee to clean up gambling. He hired former FBI agent Dan Sullivan, who began research on the mob members and presented the resulting scrapbook of 150 profiles to the President.

Mr. Ruark concludes: "It was 'Gangbusters' in actual practice."

A letter writer from Morganton responds to a letter writer of November 17, taking exception to the November 9 editorial on the close local Congressional election between incumbent Democrat Hamilton Jones and Republican Louis Rogers, by mentioning that Mr. Rogers had driven a Cadillac during the campaign. This writer finds that other things beyond the car he drove had adversely impacted the Rogers campaign, principally not standing for the Jeffersonian and Lincolnian principles which had made the country strong.

He should have driven a Lincoln.

A letter writer presents an open letter to Charlotte Mayor Victor Shaw, regarding the resentment of merchants in the 300 block of W. Trade Street regarding the implications of the Mayor's statement that he wanted to rid the collection of vagrants from this block with tougher anti-vagrancy laws. The writer finds the problem as bad in the 200 block.

We agree.

A letter writer praises the editorial "Turkey in Korea" but objects to use of the term "Holy Rollers" in the piece to describe what he assumes to be the Pentecostal Faith Church, of which he was a member in Cheraw, S.C. He says that if everyone followed the precepts of God, there would be no wars or need for large armed forces.

The editors respond that in using the term, they did not intend reference to the Pentecostal Church or any other particular denomination, but rather collectively to the small, independent faiths who worshiped in their own way, merely to convey the idea that in America anyone could worship as they pleased.

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