The Charlotte News
Thursday, July 13, 1950
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that North Korean troops had started two heavy attacks in the morning of this date with about two divisions in the central Korean peninsula area. The American sector was quiet as the North Koreans shifted their weight of attack to the South Korean lines on two flanks. The South Koreans had given up some ground but not much. Australian and American planes bombed the attack area from dawn to dusk and were planning to renew operations the next morning. Chochiwon, abandoned by the American troops the previous day, was heavily bombed by American B-26's late in the day, hitting tanks and a broad road junction.
Along the Kum River line, weary American troops dug in on the south bank for a new defense line under a new commander, Lt. General Walton Walker, veteran tank fighter of World War II and current commander of the Eighth Army in Japan. He had commanded the armored "Ghost Corps" of General Patton's Third Army in Europe during the war. He was commanding operations for the present from Japan. Former commander Maj. General William Deane would revert to division commander or be used in some other capacity.
Correspondent Russell Brines reports that nearly 50 B-29 bombers dropped 500 tons of bombs on North Korean military targets the previous morning, delivering the mightiest air blow of the war. World War II-trained crews flew the bombers from two Far Eastern bases through rain and mist, targeting a railroad center. The planes and crews had come 8,000 miles and delivered the raids over a roundtrip distance of 1,500 miles, all within eight days of the initial orders permitting bombing of the North. The first mission was directed by Maj. General Rosy O'Donnell, former Army football coach who had led the first B-29 raid on Japan during the war. About 60 percent of the men under his command were battle-tested during the war.
Elton C. Fay tells of the belief by U.S. Naval sources that Russia had an assorted collection of about 800 naval craft deployed near Korea, and that a third of the submarines were the new Schnorkels, adapted from German submarines, capable of remaining submerged for prolonged periods. Many of the vessels were believed to be small craft and there was nothing larger than cruisers in the area. The Russian Navy still had no aircraft carriers. It was not known, however, how many of the vessels might be landing craft for deployment of troops and supplies, a source of great concern for the U.N. forces. The submarine fleet appeared to have as it chores cutting off the Asiatic-Indonesian lifeline through which the U.S. would supply help in the event of a general war in the Far East and to provide reconnaissance of American and British transport ship and air movements in the Western Pacific and in the inland seas bordering East Asia. The U.S., in response, had recently sent to the area the Bataan, a carrier specializing in launching submarine-hunting planes.
General MacArthur disclosed that American losses thus far in the fighting had been 42 killed, 190 wounded and 256 missing. He added that American losses had been greatly exaggerated in press reports from the front. One such report was the so-called "Lost Battalion" of the 34th Infantry Division, reported as completely annihilated when only two had been killed and 12 were missing. The exaggeration came from unrestricted press reports being allowed from the front, an experiment undertaken for the first time in modern warfare. Those who were wounded or in shock often provided, according to headquarters, exaggeration of losses while under emotional strain. The report from headquarters praised the holding and rear guard actions of the American ground units.
In an area temporarily regained by the U.N. forces in South Korea, four dead American troops with their hands tied behind their backs, shot through the head by the North Koreans, had been discovered, one of whose corpses is pictured on the page.
Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson ordered the military branches to clamp down on news about movement of troops, ships, and supplies to Korea. The censorship only applied to the military source and not publications receiving their information from sources, regardless of origin.
The Army said that it had no present plan for another draft call after the current one for 20,000, to be filled by local boards by September 30. Another call could come for another 20,000, however, in October.
Senator Lyndon Johnson called for placing in service 800,000 National Guardsmen and reservists, saying that the time would come when it would be required anyway and that the sooner it was done, the better. He also said that the three military branches had suffered "withering away" not intended by Congress, that for too long the Congress had been more interested in balancing the books than in balancing military strength.
Senator Hubert Humphrey wanted to know why, with the billions spent by Congress on defense, it was taking so much time to get the fleet out of mothballs and generally to gear up for military preparedness.
Congressman Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, future Senator and Secretary of the Treasury, and vice-presidential nominee in 1988, said that he would give the North Koreans a week to get out of South Korea, under a Presidential ultimatum of use of the atomic bomb on designated cities for failure to comply.
Senator Owen Brewster said that the decision to use the atomic bomb ought be left to General MacArthur and added that the Russians needed to be convinced that the U.S. was not building the bombs merely for scientific research.
Former Undersecretary of the Army Tracy Voorhees told a House committee that an atomic attack on the U.S. by Russia was now "more than a possibility".
Senator Walter George, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said that he foresaw no prospect of increased Federal taxes during the current session of Congress, despite the war in Korea. Many in Congress expected reimposition of the excise taxes should the situation in Korea worsen.
On the editorial page, "The Palmetto Primary" finds the victory of incumbent Senator Olin Johnston over Governor Strom Thurmond in the Democratic Senate primary in South Carolina to have produced few lessons, as the candidates possessed similar stands on most issues, save Federal aid to education and the Marshall Plan, both opposing the Fair Deal civil rights program and integration. The choice had boiled down to personalities and which candidate offered the better method of preserving states' rights, whether within the Democratic Party or as a Dixiecrat, the latter position having been championed by Governor Thurmond as the presidential nominee of the Dixiecrats in 1948.
Thus, the only thing which could be taken from the election was that Democrats had been persuaded to remain within the framework of the party, albeit not necessarily implying that South Carolinians had abandoned the principles of the Dixiecrat movement, only the third party technique of promoting them.
James Byrnes, as predicted, easily had won the gubernatorial nomination and was also a believer in states' rights. The piece asserts that he also appeared aware of the responsibilities which were attendant that stance and that he would move forward with those responsibilities as Governor more rapidly than his predecessor.
"Military Fallacy Exposed" finds that the Korean war had pointed up the fallacy of too much reliance on the atomic bomb and the long-range bomber, premised on the next war being directly with Russia. The atomic bomb was useless in South Korea, where the fighting was taking place, and North Korea was not so dependent on its cities for supply, as had been Japan during the war, coming as it was primarily from Russia and Communist China. The B-36 long-range bomber, for obvious reasons of localized fighting, had no place in the Korean war.
It suggests that it was not too late to correct this error in reliance too much on the long-range weaponry, that the country could still build its conventional ground forces, but that it could not be done by half-measures.
"A Wise Council Decision" praises the City Council for its decision not to allow the sale of the Duke Power Co. franchise for supplying Charlotte with natural gas to Piedmont Natural Gas Co., as no reason for quick action had been demonstrated to the Council, with two other companies vying for the franchise. First, the FPC had to determine whether the area needed natural gas from the Transcontinental-owned pipeline, then determine, if so, how much was needed, and to select one or more of the three rival companies to build and operate a branch line for service to the Carolinas. That would take several weeks and after that occurred, the Council could make its decision in a more informed manner. It encourages in the meantime study by the Council of other cities with municipal ownership of natural gas service to determine whether the system made sense for Charlotte.
A piece from the Carlsbad (N.M.) Current-Argus, titled "A Lesson from Colorado", tells of the new Democratic Governor of Colorado, Walter Johnston, having initiated an economy campaign in State government which had attracted national attention, as the surplus of the State had grown to more than nineteen million dollars and was still increasing. He had taken office in mid-April following the appointment to the Federal bench of the former Governor. Among his waste-cutting measures were eliminating private use of state vehicles, wasteful purchases in small lots, and failure to put in a full day's work. He also demanded that State agencies return all unused funds to the general fund.
The piece praises the effort.
Bill Sharpe, in his weekly
"Turpentine Drippings", snippets from newspapers across
the state, provides a piece from the Moore County News,
telling of actor Sydney Blackmer of Salisbury having received the
Antoinette Perry Award, Broadway's equivalent to the Oscar, and that,
according to a writer in The State, the fact caused a surge of
pride among all North Carolinians. The piece, however, confesses lack
of awareness of either Mr. Blackmer
John Wesley Clay of the
Winston-Salem Journal relates of spending several days at the
beach and that an English woman in their party had provided several
new words
"Plodging", meaning
wading, yes. But surely you had heard of treacle and scones
Drew Pearson tells of Senator Estes Kefauver's crime investigating committee starting an investigation of the contribution of a million dollars by gambling interests to the campaign of Governor Fuller Warren in Florida. That Governor Warren was a Democrat was not deterring Senator Kefauver from launching the probe.
But Senator Guy Gillette of Iowa, supposed to be investigating campaign finance violations, was taking a blasé attitude toward such probes in a year in which more money had been injected into Senate campaigns by both parties than in any prior year in the country's history.
Mr. Pearson tells of his own investigation of Miami gambling having turned up several key facts. The old Capone gang of Chicago controlled dog racing. The S and G Syndicate, a group of local businessmen, controlled bookmaking. And the New York mob of Meyer Lansky, an associate of Frank Costello, operated in Broward County, north of Miami Beach. The gangs subsidized the elections of the sheriffs and the Governor to maintain their control of these operations.
Over $300,000 had been contributed by these interests to the campaign of Governor Warren, made in two equal lump sums, both in violation of the limit of $5,000 per individual. The Kefauver committee now wanted to know what the gambling interests received in return.
Big manufacturers had contributed large sums in Pennsylvania to defeat Governor James Duff. Yet, Senator Gillette was not very interested in these contributions, sending the son of Dixiecrat Governor Fielding Wright to investigate the Pennsylvania problem. But the only thing the latter did was to pay a social call on the Pennsylvania Secretary of State. Senator Gillette was oblivious of what Mr. Wright had done and ducked questions by the column on his prior experience for the job of investigator and what he did in the job. The Senator preferred to meet with the Boy Scouts.
Marquis Childs discusses the necessity for an air merchant marine for the purpose of transporting soldiers to the front in Korea, representing the difference between three days to make the 6,000-mile journey from the West Coast and three weeks by ship. Only ten percent of seating on commercial airlines was available for the purpose and it served no more than a small amount of the necessary transportation. The requirement of a Navy escort for the transport ships neutralized the cost factor, raised as the primary obstacle to the air merchant marine. The Government subsidized the airlines by an amount of 50 million dollars per year and was getting precious little in return.
Senator Edwin Johnson of Colorado, friend to the airlines, had held up a bill in committee to establish an air merchant marine.
The chairman of the air transport command during the war had recently testified that it would take 1,200 large transport planes to make up the current deficit in needed military air transport. Meanwhile, the Russians had developed a submarine fleet five times the size of that of the Germans in 1940.
The Berlin airlift of 1948-49 had provided a false sense of optimism that the job could be done adequately by existing American transports. But that transportation spanned but 250 miles and carried at its peak 5,000 tons per day. It would require a lot more to make the 6,000-mile trip in wartime to Japan and Korea.
The savings in time would also save lives at the front, and he concludes that the fighting men had to be wondering why it was taking so long to bring up men and supplies to support them.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop tell of the war in Korea siphoning off all conventional war equipment and manpower such that the only thing left for defense elsewhere was the atomic bomb. The arguments for and against national mobilization turned on this premise.
The State Department believed that further Russian aggression could only be stemmed through national mobilization. A powerful group within the Defense Department, however, pushed the argument that serious rearmament would provoke the Politburo into war.
There had been talk of sending six divisions to Korea when only three outside Germany were even partially ready for combat. The First Marine Division, on the way to the battle front, was at less than half war strength; the rest for the most part were even less prepared for war. Thus, practically every prepared combat unit which existed, other than those in Germany, would need be sent to Korea.
Great Britain and France were deeply committed in the Far East, in Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Indo-China, in addition to their forces in Western Europe, and so could provide few ground troops.
The Soviets were now known to have planned a drive on Iran for the early fall. Averell Harriman, Secretary of State Acheson, and the State Department's Russian experts were unanimously convinced that further Russian aggression could be prevented through mobilization as a deterrent. Indeed, it was Stalin's respect for the military potential of the U.S. which was preventing general war.
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