The Charlotte News
Saturday, December 16, 1950
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President this date declared a national emergency, the text of which is included, in follow-up to his speech the previous night in which he outlined stepped up mobilization of the country's defense and called on the citizenry to undertake sacrifices to maintain freedom. The declaration called for placing the "full moral and material strength" of the country at work for protection of freedom from Communist aggression.
The declaration was said by officials to be mainly a rallying cry for mobilization and would entail few new powers which the President did not already possess or could quickly obtain from Congress. For instance, the Defense Production Act of 1950, passed in August, had already granted him economic control powers. The country also was legally still at war since World War II. The officials said that a proposed standby piece of legislation providing for broader powers, including censorship, lend-lease, manpower controls, seizure of alien property, and consumer rationing, had been drafted for presentation within 24 hours in case of the emergent need for full mobilization.
In response to the rearmament program, the stock market moved up sharply, as gains extended to $4 per share, especially on war industry stocks, such as aircraft and constituent raw materials.
In Korea, allied forces abandoned Hamhung this date at 12:30 p.m. and fell back into a tight ring around Hungnam, as the Chinese troops pounded them in waves of attacks for the third straight day, with three successive predawn attacks on Saturday. Demolition charges were set off in the heart of Hamhung prior to the evacuation, after which Chinese troops in the surrounding hills moved into the suburbs. Meanwhile, American offshore Naval guns pounded the enemy troop concentrations of 112,000 men converging on Hungnam, while carrier-based planes also strafed the enemy lines, albeit impeded by murky weather. North Korean refugees swarmed by the tens of thousands across frozen fields and along roads toward the new allied beachhead. An Army security blackout continued to limit reports from the fighting fronts. Staff officers predicted that an enemy offensive might come against the Tenth Corps within the new perimeter during the ensuing two days.
At the U.N., the Indian delegate, Sir Benegal Rau, would report during the weekend General MacArthur's terms for a ceasefire to the Communist Chinese chief delegate, General Wu, and seek from the Chinese their ceasefire conditions. The terms were conveyed by General MacArthur in secret and would not be made public for several days. Mr. Rau was acting for the three-man ceasefire commission just appointed pursuant to the 13-nation Asian and Middle Eastern peace resolution passed earlier in the week by the General Assembly. The other two members were Lester Pearson, Foreign Minister of Canada, and the chairman, Nasrollah Entezam of Iran, president of the General Assembly.
The President, in his speech the previous night, had announced the appointment of Charles E. Wilson, president of G.E., as the new director of the Office of Defense Mobilization, to have authority over the economic control powers conveyed by the Defense Production Act of 1950. He formalized the appointment this date. Mr. Wilson was leaving his position with G.E. where he earned $175,000 per year to take the $22,500 per year Government post. He had been vice-chairman of the War Production Board during World War II. The appointment was subject to Senate confirmation.
The Republican effort to have Secretary of State Acheson step aside was called by Senate Majority Leader Scott Lucas "an invitation to Stalin to strike anywhere." The House GOP members, by overwhelming voice vote earlier in the day, had adopted the resolution, which said the country had lost confidence in the Secretary and that a thorough housecleaning was needed in the Department to change personnel and policies, and the Senate Republican policy committee adopted it by a vote of 23 to 5, although adding a note drafted by Senator Taft pledging cooperation with Administration foreign policy in the "present national crisis". Both the White House and State Department declined comment. The President had previously indicated his intention to retain Mr. Acheson and the Secretary had said that he had no intention of resigning—no matter what some bunch of goddamned Republicans say.
In response to the President's urging in the speech the previous night, most of the railroad yard workers on wildcat strike returned to the job this date. The Post Office Department canceled its embargo on parcel post shipments. Three Federal courts had issued back-to-work orders and the Attorney General had threatened to seek contempt on Monday for disobedience of the orders, the court in Chicago already having issued an order to show cause re contempt. The Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen had also urged the workers to return to work.
The Springs Cotton mills of Lancaster, S.C., planned for an equipment change of 315,000 cotton spindles from Saco-Lowell Roth long draft to the new superdraft Casablanca, developed in the research department of Springs Cotton in conjunction with Whitin Machine Works of Charlotte and H & B American Machine Co.
There is nothing smoother or more
hospitable to easy spinning than a superdraft Casablanca. Get
yourself one today
On the editorial page, "Two Schools of Thought" tells of the differing approaches to defense policy of the Administration, as set forth the previous night by President Truman, advocating only partial mobilization, and that of Governor Dewey in his speech two nights earlier, advocating full mobilization. The latter approach assumed that the full war-footing in peacetime would eventually provoke an attack by the enemy and result in an inevitable war, while the Truman-Marshall approach assumed that war was preventable and that it would be hard to maintain a war-footing for long in peacetime.
The piece thinks the latter approach the more realistic, if the former, more dramatic and exciting, and suggests the great debate would transpire on these two approaches during the ensuing months in Congress.
"Impeding the War Effort" finds the wildcat strike of the yardmen of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen in Chicago and other cities on the line to be obstructing the war effort, and contrasts it with the heroic effort of the fighting men on the Hungnam front, finding the trainmen cynical. The work stoppages in World War II occurred on an average of 2,600 times during the first three prewar years through 1940, 4,288 in 1941, just under 3,000 in 1942, 3,752 in 1943, 4,956 in 1944, and 4,750 in 1945. Thus there were more strikes during the war years than in the prior non-war years, though there had been some decrease in the idle man-days during the war, but only because the defense industries could not afford to hold out against the demands of the workers.
The railroads had rejected Government mediation efforts at one point and the railroads were seized and placed under Army supervision.
It finds the current strike unpatriotic and irresponsible in time of war.
The strike, according to the front page, had been called off this date and the yardmen were returning to work.
"Investigation in Order" tells of an escape Thursday night from Mecklenburg's supposedly "escape-proof" jail by five prisoners, through four floors of courthouse below and by a night-duty jailer. The men had sawn through two steel bars, formed ropes out of mattress covers, hung the ropes over the edge of the third-story roof outside the window and lowered themselves to the ground. The escape had not been discovered until 5:30 a.m., by which time the prisoners had been long on their way. It poses several questions for the Sheriff.
The first one it might wish to ask is how the prisoners hung their strung-together mattress covers over the ledge of the third story outside their window when there were four stories of courthouse beneath their location—unless one was subterranean—probably the traffic court—, begging the question how their homesick blues could have hoped to get them homeward bound any time before Christmas from a story under ground, had they gone that far. And if not, why suggest that they got by four floors rather than three On the bright side, the Sheriff might wish to search the basement, as they might be still down there, trying to dig
Louis Graves of the Chapel Hill
Weekly provides a piece titled "CHARlotTEANS or
CharLOTTeans?" in which he wonders of the pronunciation of the
inhabitants of Charlotte, favoring the former for sonorousness but
the latter for distinguishing from "charlatans", as
Charlotte, he allows, had no more than any other city.
He goes on to wonder whether
Greensboroans were Greensboroites, Savannah residents, Savannahites,
Austin natives, Austinians or Austinkers, Norfolkers, Norfolkites, and
Asheville inhabitants, Ashevillians or Ashevillains.
He concludes by relating that a
writer for the Raleigh New & Observer had used
"Raleighians" to refer to N.C. State fans headed to
Charlottesville, and he concludes, never having seen the word form,
that she probably meant "Raleighfans".
How about Raleighpackers?
Are those of Charlottesville,
Charlottesvilliers?
But that would lead, we suppose, to
all kinds of mess, such as Chapel Heelers, Durhamvils or Winstonmon
Drew Pearson tells of new Price
director Mike di Salle telling the President recently that he had
polled his five children on use of the atom bomb and all favored it
except his youngest daughter, age 10, who said that she did not think
it wise because if it were used, then someone else might use it
against the country. The President said that she made a lot more
sense than some other people to whom he had been talking of late
about use of the bomb.
Three Michigan Congressmen,
including Clare Hoffman, paid either a reporter or his wife for the
reporter to write about them, at the rate of $58 to $100 per month.
The column pays tribute to several
well-qualified men of the private sector who had given up lucrative
positions to work for the Government: Dr. William Langer, Harvard
history professor and expert on Europe, who now worked for the CIA;
Robert Lovett, Undersecretary of Defense, who had gone against his
doctor's orders to return to Government service; William H. Jackson,
deputy intelligence chief to General Omar Bradley, who had given up a
partnership in a lucrative law practice; Anna Rosenberg, Assistant
Secretary of Defense, who had previously made a quarter million
dollars annually as adviser to the Rockefellers, R. H. Macy and some
other big corporations; and Allen Dulles, who had left a lucrative
partnership in a law firm to come to work for the CIA—of which
he would become director under President Eisenhower, and serve in that capacity until
being asked to resign by President Kennedy on November 29, 1961,
following by seven months the disastrous Bay of Pigs operation
recommended by the CIA, having been planned during the last two years
of the Eisenhower Administration to overthrow the Castro regime, with
Vice-President Nixon being responsible for much of the basic
planning.
He notes that such selfless
individuals often also had to dig into their savings to pay their
income taxes from the prior year of high-salaried employment
preceding their Government service.
Actual American casualties were
running 20,000 ahead of the figures contained in official
announcements, even before the recent break-out of the Marines from
the trap below Changjin reservoir, which meant actually 53,212,
rather than the officially announced 32,645 of the prior week.
The war demand on power, already
running 20 percent in shortage, would be even greater the following
year.
Presidential adviser John Steelman
recommended to the Joint Chiefs use of slower planes so that pilots
could get a better view of the targets, but did not offer what they
were supposed to do should they encounter the faster Russian-built
MIGs.
An alarming number of American
troops in Korea were shooting themselves to get back to Japan.
Doctors blamed severe battle conditions.
An Oregon war hero and editor of
Purple Heart said of Senator Joseph McCarthy
An associate editor of Catholic
Weekly also said that the Senator's voice was a "poisoned
and fearful thing" and that though demagogues through political
history had been known, he was "an evil kind, a deliberate
kind", who added "falseness to the already false",
"the spurious and the counterfeit
Marquis Childs discusses the problem
the Pentagon brass were having in dealing with the seniority of
General MacArthur, who had become a brigadier general in 1919, had
become the commander at West Point two years after current chief of
staff of the Army, General J. Lawton Collins, had graduated, had
become a general when General Collins was a lieutenant, had finished his tenure as
chief of staff of the Army in 1936 when both Generals Eisenhower and
Omar Bradley were majors. It had been therefore very difficult for
these men to disagree with the advice of someone of the stature of
General MacArthur, previously for long their superior.
General MacArthur had been out of
the country for 13 years. Had he come home in 1946 or 1947, he would
have likely received a hero's welcome. Instead, he felt compelled to
remain to finish the job of occupation of Japan. In that regard, he
had made two astute decisions, according to Mr. Childs, retaining the
Emperor and keeping Russia out of the occupation, making his duties
go much more smoothly than those faced by General Lucius Clay in
Germany.
Had his November "home by
Christmas" remark, preceding the November 24 "end-of-the-war"
offensive, come true, he would have been able to come home a hero. As
it was, with the debacle of the previous three weeks, he would likely
now feel that he had to stay on to remedy the situation, though many
at the Pentagon hoped he would voluntarily take retirement in the
coming months, considered, however, an unlikely prospect.
That he would remain was a problem
for the Pentagon and almost everyone else in Washington, for it was
believed that he would begin to demand the authority to bomb bases
across the Yalu River in China, thereby bringing on a general war
against a nation with virtually unlimited manpower and which, because
of Oriental fatalism and the fanaticism of Communist ideology, did
not value human life as did the West.
If the Chinese agreed to stop at the
38th parallel and negotiate peace under a temporary ceasefire, then
General MacArthur could be eased out of his command. But he would
have to be given a new assignment commensurate with his rank, as, at
age 71, he had shown remarkable vitality throughout the Korean
campaign.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop find that
the President's new mobilization program was not the total
mobilization which had been suggested it was, even if the butter
before guns defense budgets had now been abandoned. Yet, the new
policy involved a good deal of both butter and guns rather than guns
before butter as the perilous situation required.
But was it the best of butter?
They use the Air Force by way of
example of the new approach to defense. Present plans were to have 84
air groups by the end of 1952, compared to the 42 groups,
masquerading as 48, during the tenure of Secretary of Defense Louis
Johnson, fired the prior August. Annual budgets for the Air Force
were now anticipated to be 14 billion dollars, providing about 7,000
new combat planes of all types within two years.
While it sounded formidable, these
increases would not allow for new heavy bomber groups during the
first year of the expansion and only three or four during 1952.
Moreover, it would not provide for the huge expansion of production which
the country had achieved toward the end of World War II. Even by the
end of 1953, the Air Force would have only about 12,000 new planes.
It was said that American industry could do no more, but that was not
true, that, according to persons in high positions, industry could
achieve twice that level of production with annual spending at 24
billion dollars, allowing for an Air Force of 165 groups by the end
of 1952. Even with such doubled production, there would be a year
during which few new planes could be produced because it took a year
from the order to manufacture a plane. But in addition to a
substantially greater number of groups under such a doubled budget
would come greater industrial expansion during 1953.
Instead of 12,000 new planes by that
time, there could be 70,000, whereas Russia had an air force of about
19,000 planes. The Government was presently planning an Air Force to
match that of the Soviets. But the country was capable of building
one far exceeding that strength. The country could never hope to
achieve parity in ground forces with the Soviets and so mastery of
the air was obligatory. The present half-way measure was missing,
therefore, an opportunity, they suggest, to create unquestioned air
supremacy.
Tom Schlesinger of The News
provides his weekly "Capital Roundup", in which he tells
of most North Carolina members of Congress backing the passed
three-month extension of rent controls while finding further economic
controls inevitable. Both Senators Clyde Hoey and Willis Smith agreed
to the rent-control extension, but only reluctantly. Only three House
members had balked.
Both Senators supported rearming of
German and Japanese soldiers, though opposed use of the atom bomb.
Senator Hoey would restrict rearming to smaller weaponry, not
inclusive of planes or atomic bombs.
The Republican attack on Secretary
of State Acheson appeared to be losing its vitality—though the
front page tells of the resolution having passed this date among
Republicans of both chambers. Nevertheless, he continues, many
Democrats predicted that Mr. Acheson would have to resign. Mail to
North Carolina members was solidly against his retention.
Senator Hoey opposed statehood for
Alaska and Hawaii and so was glad it had been shelved. He did favor
independence for Hawaii. In a vote earlier in the year, only three
North Carolina Congressmen had favored statehood.
Former Senator Frank Graham would
accept the directorship of the National Science Foundation if asked,
but the Board of the Foundation, chaired by Harvard president James
B. Conant, first had to make their selection for director known,
which would take place in January when they met.
Thus far, no one had mentioned
Senator Graham, who had been a third baseman of minor repute, as a
successor to Happy Chandler as commissioner of Major League Baseball.
(His brother, a physician, was Archibald "Moonlight"
Graham, who played in one game in the Majors, for the New
York Giants in 1905.)
Congressman Thurmond Chatham
returned from a European fact-finding trip disturbed about the
"rampant" anti-Semitism he had observed.
Paul Green's outdoor drama, "Faith
of Our Fathers", on the life of George Washington, to celebrate
the sesquicentennial of the nation's capital, would return for a
second season.
Burke Davis, former editor and
associate editor of The News, who had moved on to the
Baltimore Sun, was reading proofs for his new historical novel
Senator Smith had found it a strange
coincidence that he was sworn in as Senator in the old Supreme Court
chamber, occurring because of renovation work in the regular chamber,
as Senator Hoey, who escorted him to the podium for the ceremony, had
been opposing counsel against him in a case heard in that chamber
before the Court in 1930, regarding the equity jurisdiction of
Federal courts in tax cases.
A Quote of the Day: "Santa
Claus has never yet received a letter from a 'bad' little boy or
girl—though there must be one Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.