The Charlotte News
Wednesday, December 6, 1950
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Eighth Army forces halted their retreat south from Pyongyang and dug in for a new stand in the northwest sector of Korea, with the new locations of the line being kept secret for the present. General MacArthur's headquarters reported that the allies, equipped with superior transportation, had outrun the pursuing Chinese Communists and were busy establishing a bulwark in the precious interim before the Chinese could catch up. The new line ran from some point south of Pyongyang to positions south and east, possibly near the 38th parallel.
Army chief of staff General Lawton Collins said that he regarded troop morale as high, following his review of the situation during his visit to the area just south of Pyongyang. He also said that he saw no possible tactical use of the atom bomb in Korea. He planned to fly this date to the northeast front.
In the latter sector, where 100,000 Chinese troops threatened allied troops, one Chinese spearhead had cut the main highway between Hungnam and Wonsan, the two major east coast ports. MacArthur headquarters reported decreasing pressure against Marines and soldiers surrounded at Hagaru and Koto, south of Changjin reservoir.
Associated Press correspondent Tom Stone reported from Koto, after flying into the town and then flying out, that Marines there appeared hopelessly trapped but were determined to wage a fight to escape. He quoted Col. Lewis "Chesty" Puller, commander of the First Marines, as saying that they would suffer heavy losses as the enemy outnumbered them, had blown the bridges and blocked the roads, but that they would get out somehow. The escape route was flanked on both sides by enemy troops along a river gorge road for 50 miles. The Marines were cut off from supply lines and were being supplied and the wounded evacuated by air.
Elton C. Fay tells of a high, unnamed Pentagon official describing the situation in Korea as being "very grave" and that there was little chance of diplomatic resolution with China. No one at the Pentagon appeared to have a plan for militarily stemming the onslaught of the Chinese and their million-man army.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Omar Bradley, clarified that his reference to an evacuation plan and the withdrawals making it possible to evacuate the troops if necessary was only to the hard-pressed troops in the extreme northeast sector and not a general evacuation of the peninsula, which some had taken as the meaning. The troops in the northeast, he said, were now moving back to concentration in a beachhead.
At the U.N., Russia's Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky, speaking before the General Assembly, derided the 13-nation direct appeal to Communist China to halt its forces at the 38th parallel, saying that peace in Korea would come only after complete withdrawal of U.N. forces from the peninsula. Mr. Vishinsky called General MacArthur an "evil genius" and "war maniac". He also denied that the Chinese were fighting on the side of the North Koreans or that they had intervened in the conflict. The effort had been sparked by India, which had originally abstained from the vote on the U.N. troops exceeding the parallel. Other Middle Eastern and Asian nations had joined that peace proposal. The Assembly had convened in emergency session to discuss the six-nation proposal, including the Western Big Three, to have China withdraw its forces from Korea.
India's Prime Minister Nehru told the Parliament of India that the nation's representatives had suggested a ceasefire and establishment of a demilitarized zone in Korea, to be followed by negotiations with China. It appeared that he referred to an earlier effort to halt the U.N. drive below Manchuria rather than the current Chinese offensive. He said that he hoped that the talks between British Prime Minister Clement Attlee and President Truman would yield a resolution.
The President and Prime Minister Attlee agreed this date that a special effort needed to be made to increase production and assure the most effective use of scarce raw materials available to the U.S. and Britain. The two were to meet again this afternoon following a third conference during the morning.
Former White House press secretary Steve Early, taking over duties of the office following the sudden death the previous day of press secretary Charles G. Ross, said that the emphasis in the joint statement should be on increased production.
Prime Minister Attlee declared before the National Press Club in Washington that as long as the "Stars and Stripes fly in Korea, the British flag will fly beside them." He defended Britain's recognition of Communist China as facing of the fact that they ruled the Chinese mainland. He also warned against emotional development of Korean war policy. He praised the leadership of General MacArthur and said the talks with the President were aiding an understanding of each government's approach to solving their common problems. Mr. Attlee said this date that there would be "no appeasement" of Communist China in an effort to halt the fighting.
The National Association of Women
Artists announced their selection of the ten most stimulating faces
in America, saying that beauty had little to do with the matter.
Secretary of Defense George Marshall headed the list, followed by
actress Ava Gardner, Vice-President Barkley, conductor Arturo
Toscanini, singer Rosemary Clooney, baseball catcher Yogi Berra,
socialite and minister to Luxembourg Perle Mesta, writer Ernest
Hemingway, radio and television emcee Dan Seymour
Hey, stupid, "stimulating faces" have nothing much to do with anything except in your stupid mind. For behind a "stimulating face" is, as often as not, either a corrupt or vacuous mind. Many dogs, cats, birds and chimpanzees have "stimulating faces". It is what people say and do which count. But in the Time-Life world old Henry Luce created for you, it is no wonder...
Snow piled up from Canada into the American South, from Lake Superior to Louisiana and from Iowa to Ohio, as a blizzard struck with winds up to 40 mph, dropping up to two feet of snow in some areas, such as Superior, Wisc., and a foot and getting deeper in Duluth, Minn., setting a record for snowfall in a given duration.
On the editorial page, "A Grave Disservice" finds Senator Clyde Hoey's urging of immediate evacuation from Korea to be a disservice to reasoned consideration of the situation there. It cast a pall of doubt over the entire venture and caused distress among those with relatives or friends serving in the war. It doubts that the Senator had sufficient information on which to base such advice. Before such a decision should be made, it suggests, the Chinese had to reveal their intentions regarding whether they intended to cross the 38th parallel. General MacArthur might decide that a perimeter again should be established around Pusan or even at Inchon.
In such critical times, it was incumbent on members of Congress and on the press, it counsels, to show restraint until such time as adequate information was marshaled, and await the decisions of the President in consultation with his Cabinet, the Joint Chiefs, and General MacArthur.
"Civilian Defense Gains Speed" tells of the coming of bomb shelters to Charlotte within a few years, in preparation for the day when an atomic attack might occur, part of the 3.1 billion dollar civil defense plan presented to Congress during the week to match all expenditures made by state and local governments on preparations. The President had appointed former Governor Millard Caldwell of Florida as the new director of Civil Defense.
Some would scoff at the creation of bomb shelters and other civil defense preparedness but there would be many others who realized that the time to begin preparing for a catastrophe was before it occurred.
Well, let's get to it by all means. That concrete bunker is going to be the sine qua non for your survival from the hydrogen bomb, and it will be fun to camp out for a couple of years underground with the canned foods and cots and the gas generator, until the gas runs out and then you're in the dark. Yessir. Don't get caught left behind. Get your survival rations today.
Wait, we have a special extra edition just in, which has come to us from the future, to instruct, from out of the past, how to facilitate operations of motors under such conditions, without regular electricity. Use a water pump to motivate your generator. Of course, if you're nowhere near a river or a good-sized stream which can be dammed to operate a water wheel, you might be in trouble, as the municipal waterworks will inevitably be shut down, not to mention the fact that the entire water table will likely be irradiated and dangerous therefore to be around—which means hard traveling without shower, bath, or potable water for a couple of years or so. Bring plenty of paper plates and plastic cutlery to the underground picnic.
In any event, we pass it on for what it's worth, buckaroos—and just how we came to this particular piece from the future
"Useful Community Service" tells of being surprised by the scope of the Salvation Army's program, from providing a ping-pong table for underprivileged boys to spiritual rehabilitation of unwed mothers, far beyond playing Christmas carols on the corners. There was a new Salvation Army service in the city, the Men's Social Service Center, located in the old Baptist Church on Central Avenue. It would house 40 men and serve as a rehabilitation center for men in need of help in making them productive members of society again, by collecting scrap paper and repairing broken household items donated to the Army, to be sold in the Center's Thrift Stores. The program had been successful throughout the country and the piece believes it would also enjoy success in Charlotte.
A piece from the Washington Star, titled "Mr. Truman's Helpers", collects the opinions of various Senators on Korea, from Senator Tom Connally's belief that the Security Council should bring about a quick showdown, to Senator Joe O'Mahoney's opinion that the Russians should be given an ultimatum to get the Chinese out of Korea, Senators Owen Brewster's and Styles Bridges's views that General MacArthur should be given authority to use the atom bomb if he thought it necessary, and Senator Harry Cain's view that the General be given authority to send troops and planes across the Manchurian border.
The piece thinks it unlikely that the President would find these proposals very helpful and suggests that it might be simpler for him to adopt all of them and then wash his hands of the mess. But, as President, he could not escape responsibility for his actions. He had to make the decision himself and in that, it ventures, would have the sympathy and support of the thinking people of the country.
Drew Pearson tells of the British having made three successive proposals prior to the present debacle in Korea, to avoid a clash with China, that General MacArthur hold the line at the 38th parallel, that he halt forty miles from the Manchurian border, and that no move be made to bomb Chinese bases inside Manchuria. Consequently, the State Department had been beset by inquiries from diplomats aware of these suggestions, asking where General MacArthur was leading the U.N. forces and whether he was making the decisions. The General's opposition to the British proposals was why Prime Minister Attlee was threatened with revolt from about 100 Labor MP's.
Officials admitted that General MacArthur had overreached his authority but were inclined to blame Joint Chiefs chairman, General Omar Bradley, for not being tough enough on his old friend. General Bradley usually had deferred to General MacArthur's wisdom for his being in the field and thus having the better sense of the situation. The President invariably approved the grant of authority.
General Bradley, however, did not attempt to cover up mistakes when he conferred with the President, the Cabinet and Congressional leaders the previous week. He said that General MacArthur was on his own in leading the "end-of-the-war" initiative and that he could not understand why General MacArthur had not been ready for the onslaught of the Chinese army of 500,000 troops on the Manchurian border, the presence of whom had been known for two weeks before the attack. General Bradley reported that General MacArthur claimed that he did not expect an attack or would not have dispersed his troops. The General, he said, did not know that the Chinese were massing in such numbers.
Mr. Pearson notes that Secretary of State Acheson had refrained from any criticism of General MacArthur at any closed-door session of Congress or elsewhere.
During the 1945 U.N. Charter conference in San Francisco, then Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee had met up with an old friend who had been a Labor Party member 30 years earlier and had dinner at the home of the man and his wife. Afterward, Mr. Attlee donned an apron and began washing the dishes.
Marquis Childs finds the political dilemma nearly as bad as the military one regarding Korea, with the ensuing few days to determine how much could be salvaged on both fronts. Western European diplomats were engaging in more explosive rhetoric privately than publicly, exhorting the U.S. to make a greater effort than any heretofore to avoid war with China, lest all hope of saving Western Europe be dashed.
General Wu, chief Chinese delegate, had appeared to close the door on any possible cooperation with the West, as he had said to the Indian delegate that nothing could be expected in the way of a concession until Communist China was admitted to the U.N. That would be out of the question given the intervention in Korea. But America's bargaining position was far from strong.
Mr. Childs favors admission of India's Prime Minister Nehru to the Attlee-Truman discussions, as his presence would contribute to a settlement.
Militarily, there remained the possibility of allowing General MacArthur to bomb across the Manchurian border to interrupt Chinese supply lines. He had implied in his communications with the Pentagon that without that permission, he would find it difficult to win the war.
If estimates were correct that there were now 600,000 Chinese troops in North Korea, then the time for bombing Manchuria may have passed, as bombing would have to be concentrated on the armies threatening the U.N. lines. Whether bombing, including the atom bomb, could prove effective on the limited Chinese supply lines in any event was doubtful.
The CIA report on Korea had warned of the Chinese concentrations across the border and in Korea, and that report had been available to General MacArthur on November 21, before his initiation on November 24 of the "end-of-the-war" offensive, which had proved so disastrous.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop find that the people of Athens, Greece, according to Thucydides, had received the news of the fall of Syracuse 2,500 years earlier with "consternation unutterable". They suggest that the country faced a similar reckoning with respect to Korea and its apparent imminent defeat. The disaster had adversely affected U.S. standing in Asia, which might make it impossible to contain China, emboldened by its success, from attacking Indo-China and perhaps seizing Hong Kong. The Japanese people, with the American garrison preoccupied in Korea, might attempt to throw off the yoke of occupation. All Asian governments were afraid and the loss of Indo-China could precipitate the loss of all of Asia.
To prevent such nightmarish occurrences, decisive action against China would be necessary. But America did not have the forces or wherewithal to fight a war 10,000 miles from home against the vastly outnumbering Chinese ground forces. To be effective, a naval blockade would need to be implemented along with disruption of Chinese communications by air attack and aiding of the anti-Communist forces in fomenting internal strife, in the hope that the Chinese would have their hands so full at home that they could not afford to wage aggression elsewhere.
Enforcing the policy, however, would be difficult, because the purpose of Prime Minister Attlee's visit to Washington was to avoid entanglement in a full-scale war with China. Whether the British could be persuaded to support more limited measures would await the outcome of the conference. More than likely, General MacArthur would have to be relieved of command of the U.N. forces to restore British and European confidence in the leadership of the forces.
"The shock of the Korean defeat", as they describe it, had paralyzed the whole Western alliance. Feeble hand-wringing in Europe had supplanted positive action, such that the alliance was in danger of falling apart.
The discrepancies between Western and Soviet armament timetables was terrifying, with the U.S. having shortened from four years to two years its plan to rearm fully, placing the target date in early 1953, whereas the Soviets would have a complement of 60 atom bombs by mid-1952, leaving a six-month gap during which the Soviets could launch major aggression before the West could respond adequately.
Duck and cover, lie down, watch for the new sun and run in the opposite direction when you see it.
A letter writer from Newton provides a letter he had written to Osmond Barringer, the first car dealer in the South, as revealed in a front page story by Bob Sain and accompanying picture on November 30. The writer was manufacturing Oldsmobiles in those times fifty years earlier. He remembered the times fondly, when one of the chief worries was that one might have to hire a horse to tow the car home, finds such carefree days long gone.
Ah, romanticization of the past... It must have been wonderful, with no indoor plumbing, especially in winter. And in the carefree days of summer, with the flies and mosquitoes, no air conditioning, and tuberculosis and small pox and polio and... But you did not have to hear on the radio or on the tv how miserable you ought to be. You had to be able to read to understand that. And think of all the good times ahead, what with a world war, a depression, and another world war birthing on the horizon. Ah, the good old days.
Make Amurica grate agin.
It shor is now, ain't it?
A letter writer finds the American people at a low ebb of spiritual understanding and union with the human race, in need of the Democracy of Truth.
Whatever you say, lady.
A letter writer says that she had been impressed by a radio sermon of Billy Graham. She urges all Americans to pray and believes that until they did so, American boys would continue to be killed.
A letter from the chairman of the Inter-American Press Association in Louisville, Ky., thanks the newspaper for its editorial on the Association.
A letter writer from McBee, S.C., finds a lot being written about love-making, purple passion and how to get a man to say yes to marriage. Grandpa had married young and did not believe in excessive meditation over the matter, but rather married Grandma upon first impressions. He had believed that women were meant to be loved and not analyzed or looked at.
Framed Edition
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