The Charlotte News
Tuesday, July 11, 1950
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that a major North Korean push behind 80 enemy tanks forced American defenders back nearly to the Kum River, in the Chonui area of South Korea, driving the Americans from Chochiwon, five airline miles north of the Kum, the last major defense line before the provisional capital at Taejon. The action occurred despite an estimated 65 enemy tanks and 190 trucks having been knocked out the day before in a single-day record bag, nearly a third of the total of 170 tanks knocked out thus far in the 16 days of fighting. Communist troops disguised as civilians had infiltrated the American lines during the previous foggy night, emerging with trees and "everything else" as camouflage. At least two American tanks were knocked out by the Communist attackers in a seesaw battle along the 45-mile front.
The Communists advanced five miles against the South Korean defenders on the eastern flank of the line in the vicinity of Chinehon, 35 airline miles north of Taejon.
The Air Force had flown 315 sorties the previous day in clear weather, a record number thus far in the fighting. The first appearance of Russian-made jets was noted, but there were no allied losses against the aforementioned record toll of the enemy.
New York Times correspondent Richard J. H. Johnston reported that at least a third of the 32 injured soldiers who had been among the "Lost Battalion" trapped near Suwon in South Korea for two days against overwhelming odds, numbering 15 to 1, without ammunition, suffered from battle fatigue, laying on their cots in the hospital staring into space or crying softly. A hundred men, ordered to hold at all cost, had taken out a thousand North Korean troops during the standoff. They ran out of food and water in the process and had to drink the filthy rice paddy water. There had been no place even to dig foxholes. According to one veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, they had discovered quickly that it was futile to surrender to the Communists as they had seen a jeep driver try it, whereupon he had been shot while standing with his hands above his head. Thirty of the men had saved themselves by running seven miles, most of the time while under enemy artillery fire.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously approved the Senate-approved 1.222 billion dollar military aid bill, also providing, in addition, for creation of a Far Eastern Defense Pact, similar to NATO in Western Europe. (SEATO would be formed among Southeast Asian nations in 1954.) It was hoped that the full House would approve the bill and that it would be sent to the President by the weekend.
General Omar Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, according to Senator Millard Tydings, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in executive session that American ground forces would soon be joined by other U.N. ground forces, that certain unnamed countries had offered their troops and that the offers had been accepted.
The Army was studying plans to open induction centers to obtain the 20,000 new soldiers necessary for Korea, either through volunteers or draftees.
The head of the National Security Resources Board, Stuart Symington, discussed industrial mobilization plans with Secretary of Labor Maurice Tobin and top union leaders, except for John L. Lewis who failed to show.
The President nominated Gordon Dean to become the new chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, to replace David Lilienthal who had resigned the post in January. Mr. Dean was acting chairman and a member of the AEC.
The President asked the Senate to appropriate the full 35 million dollars for his proposed "Point Four" program of technical assistance to underdeveloped nations. The Senate Appropriations Committee, which had voted to reduce the fund to ten million, probably, according to chairman Alexander Smith, would reconsider its action.
Harold Stassen, president of the University of Pennsylvania, charged before the Senate Finance Committee that the House-passed bill to cut excise taxes represented an effort by the Treasury Department to bring American colleges and universities under the control of the Federal Government by the fact of permitting that Department to determine what business activities were "related" or "unrelated" to educational purposes and thus tax exempt or not, acting as a form of censorship. He emphasized that the association of American colleges had taken the stance that institutions of higher learning should not engage directly in commercial or industrial enterprises.
On the editorial page, "Council May Regret Hasty Action" urges the City Council to undertake considered rather than precipitate action in determining whether to approve the transfer of a franchise of Duke Power Co. to Piedmont Natural Gas Corp. for serving Charlotte. Two other companies were vying for the right to serve Charlotte with natural gas. Speedy action would only provide natural gas a few months earlier and it was more important to determine which company would best serve the community at the best price.
"Murder in Korea" discusses the first atrocity of the Korean war, the murder of seven American soldiers who had surrendered to the North Koreans after becoming trapped. The piece finds it emblematic of the fact that the enemy was not civilized, were Communists first and soldiers second. If the murders galvanized the country to action, it concludes, the deaths of the seven would not have been in vain.
"Political Maneuver Defeated" tells of the confirmation the previous day by the Senate of Sumner Pike as AEC commissioner having signaled the laying aside of politics in deference to national security interests in time of war. The Atomic Energy Committee had disapproved the nomination by a vote of 5 to 4, largely at the instance of Senator Owen Brewster who feared that Mr. Pike, a Republican, would challenge him for the Maine Senate nomination in 1952. Senator Bourke Hickenlooper, who had ostensibly led the fight against the nomination, maintained that stance to the end on the floor. The final vote for confirmation was 55 to 24, permitting the AEC to get on with its functions.
A piece from the
Detroit News,
titled "Logical
Drew Pearson tells of the President's ultimatum to the railroads having come from the advice of Senator Harry Darby of Kansas, a director of the Rock Island Railroad, who said that Midwest grain had been held up in shipment by the strike. Senators Elbert Thomas and Wayne Morse had advised the President to make only an appeal to patriotism to provide the union leaders a basis for a like appeal to the rank-and-file, that such would be sufficient. Instead, the President gave the ultimatum that if the strike continued, he would seize the railroads.
He provides a series of statements by members of Congress made the previous January, which they would now wish to forget, regarding the need for aid to Korea. The detractors of the aid included Congressmen Robert Chiperfield of Illinois, Donald Jackson of California, John Vorys of Ohio, and Lawrence Smith of Wisconsin, all Republicans.
He highlights especially the statement of Congressman Richard Nixon of California that Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas, his opponent for the Senate in the fall, was too soft on Communism, for she had been one of the few in Congress who vigorously championed aid to Korea, predicting that if the commitment to South Korea were abandoned, it would fall to the Communists within two to three months and reminding that it was the only remaining democratic foothold in mainland Northeastern Asia, thus worth the gamble. Mr. Nixon had voted against aid to Korea and claimed Ms. Douglas to be pro-Red.
Senator Joseph McCarthy, when making his charge the prior week that Communists in the State Department were in charge of Korean policy, had overlooked the fact that Harry Frelinghuysen, the son of a former GOP Senator from New Jersey, was in charge of that policy and had served in the Army in Korea during occupation, bucking the trend of brasshats to live off the fat. Mr. Frelinghuysen had been one of those who foresaw the danger in Korea and pushed for more aid. He served his country despite being independently wealthy.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop look back on the final days of the late Secretary of Defense James Forrestal in spring 1949, during which the new Secretary, Louis Johnson, had lamented that a sign of Mr. Forrestal's mental breakdown had been his desire to spend so much for defense because he had been paranoiacally concerned about the Soviets.
They posit that the real tragedy of Mr. Forrestal had been not his final break, leading to his suicide, but rather that he had failed in November, 1948 to get the President to face the serious defense needs. They find that it had been the crucial turning point which led inexorably to Korea.
Following the coup in Czechoslovakia in early 1948, Secretary Forrestal, together with Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett, decided that an emergency build-up of defense was necessary, approved by the President. NATO was developed in their minds, along with Senator Arthur Vandenberg, in summer, 1948, and the idea of continued build-up was sustained. Had the plans been fully carried out, they offer, the Soviets would never have dared to order the Korean invasion. There would, in consequence, have been no need to worry about ways to deter repetition of an invasion elsewhere while all of the American military strength was being invested in Korea.
Mr. Forrestal had urged spending in 1949 for defense amounting to 17 billion dollars, with increases thereafter annually to around 19 billion. That was nothing compared to what would now be needed to fight a war.
Presidential aide General Harry Vaughan hated Mr. Forrestal, and Louis Johnson had wanted his job, while Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snyder wanted no increase in taxes and a more nearly balanced budget. The President was cocky over his November victory. The combined effect of these factors led to a defense budget of only 14 billion, and Mr. Johnson soon became Secretary of Defense, with the aim of meeting the spending goal. He did so by cutting aircraft replacement rates, reducing Marine expenditures, slowing down research and development, and ignoring gaps in tank strength and tactical aircraft. The result was an open invitation to the Kremlin to take advantage of the weakness.
The President had no alternative other than to answer the naked aggression with force, but, they add, the guilty parties for the situation were as they elucidate above. The issue now was whether all of the nation's resources could be mobilized at once to repair the defenses of the West in the remaining time left.
That sounds bad, men.
Robert C. Ruark finds that the new Korean war thus far was not an atomic war or a push-button war as the "next war" had been forecast, but rather conventional, with the "useless" Navy being called forth to defend the flank in Formosa, the Marines called up and the first "dogfaces" having landed. "The friendly Injuns panic and blow up the wrong bridges too soon and kill some more friendly Injuns."
By the news since the end of World War II, one would have gathered that it was time to scrap the Navy because of the Air Force, the Air Force then because of the guided missile, the guided missile because of a "radar-detected halitosis that can kill everybody with one whiff."
The new war, however, offered little that was new in the way of conventional fighting, including having the "old relic" General MacArthur, who had fought successfully in two centuries, in command.
The Red Cross was girding itself for action. "Mud, blood and censorship."
No one weapon won a war. A plane was not a weapon but a messenger carrying a weapon. Wars needed people to be won. Wars entailed "mud and mistakes and stupidities and courage and cowardice." Wars were won by the taxpayers.
He concludes that war had come to seem as an "ignoble necessity" of the times, with the "wrong people getting killed and a spurious air of sportsmanship" governing it. It was "unfunny, undignified, and often uncouth". But once started, everyone was needed to fight it, not just "Buck Rogers with a handy-dandy chemistry set."
A letter writer wonders whether South Korea was worth a war, finds that many were saying that it was for the fact that it pertained to freedom, just as the American colonies had fought for their freedom in the Revolutionary War. He believes, however, that the average South Korean might not understand what the term meant and might not know what to do with freedom once obtained. He is fed up with the notion that the U.S. was consigned to fight for freedom for others everywhere on earth, and urges that an end to such "madness" had to occur lest it wind up in disaster.
A letter writer finds that Willis Smith would go to Washington after the fall election in a political no-man's land along with Senator Clyde Hoey and some other renegade Democrats, neither Republicans nor Democrats in the sense of being supportive of Administration policies. He favors able leadership for the North Carolina Republican Party so that it could elect a Senator from the state, that it was no longer a New Deal-Fair Deal state, as evidenced by the primary election of Mr. Smith over Senator Frank Graham.
He implies, however unwittingly, that the state, with the election of Mr. Smith, was missing a few cards from its deck.
Framed Edition
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