The Charlotte News
Wednesday, July 19, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President, in his message to Congress this date, had sought ten billion dollars in initial additional military and foreign aid and said that higher defense spending would need to continue for years to come as a deterrent to Soviet aggression. He did not seek a tax increase but said that would come later. He also sought power to limit time-payment purchases, establish priorities, allocate materials, control inventories and requisition supplies and materials. He did not seek price control and rationing, urging Americans voluntarily to refrain from hoarding in consumer purchases and in company inventories to avoid the need for those controls as during the war. He asked for release of all limits on the size of the military, presently numbering 1.4 million active personnel, and said that he had provided authority to Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson to activate, as needed, National Guard units and reservists to fill military requirements. He said that the U.N. had made it clear in Korea that aggression would be met by force.
Congress indicated general readiness to provide the President with speedy approval of the requests for the men and money he sought. The House authorized the 1.222 billion dollar military aid spending passed previously by the Senate, making available second-year assistance to NATO nations, and aid to areas of the Near and Far East.
The Defense Department announced that it would start immediately selective recall of reserves to active duty. There was no mention of National Guard units. There were about 600,000 men in the Army reserves and another 1.1 million men in the Navy reserves, with another 245,000 in the Marines and Air Force. All reservists recalled would serve at least a year.
Senator Lyndon Johnson the previous week had been credited with making the initial call from Congress for activation of the reserves and National Guard units.
The President would deliver a message this night to the country via television
A bill was introduced by Congressman Carl Vinson of Georgia to freeze military service for the following year for all persons presently serving and to suspend all legal limits on the military size, as requested by the President. A similar bill was introduced in the Senate by Senator Millard Tydings. The Defense Department was expected to ask that the maximum age limitation for the draft be raised from 26, possibly to 35.
In Korea, the Communist troops put a heavy artillery squeeze on Taejon despite elements of a division of fresh American troops of the First Cavalry being established on a new beachhead and another, the 25th Division, backing the line. An initial report of 5,000 new troops being landed was denied by MacArthur headquarters as unrealistic, but the actual figure was withheld for security reasons. While Taejon defenses still held, fighting flared in the area of the central sector's Chungju-Hamchang-Sangju road, where Communist troops were moving south, and in the Yongju-Andong corridor further east. Yechon, on the road between Andong and Hamchang, was now in Communist hands, a position being used to try to cut the American supply lines from Pusan to Taejon. The Communists had been pushed further back from Yongdok, 25 miles north of Pohang, by South Korean troops.
Leif Erickson reports from an American base in South Korea that the landing of the two new U.S. infantry divisions, the First Cavalry and the 25th, was not a signal for an American counter-offensive, that there would likely still be more delaying action and giving of ground grudgingly to the North Koreans to buy time for more men and supplies to be landed at Pusan. Even so, it was thought that there should not be many more weeks of retreat. The First Cavalry, according to headquarters, had gone into action on ten days notice, believed to be a record for mounting an amphibious operation.
Meanwhile, the 24th Division was holding Taejon for the third consecutive day, with its 19th Regiment, fighting a retreat from the Kum River, having reached safety after cutting through North Korean forces who had flanked their position. There were still no sightings of Communist trucks or tanks crossing the Kum after the American Air Force had blasted the bridges away along with any enemy tanks which had made it across, and no enemy tanks had hit the American front since Chochiwon had fallen six days earlier. Some observers said the enemy power was running down as they took longer to prepare offensive operations against Taejon.
American jet fighters downed three Russian-made Yak fighters in dogfights near Taejon and Communist supply lines were hit by allied planes. Pack animals were observed to be moving enemy supplies, indicating disruption of normal supply lines for gasoline. Allied jet fighters had damaged six enemy tanks and 55 trucks.
Prime Minister Nehru of India renewed his proposal to have Communist China admitted to the U.N. Security Council so that Russia could end its boycott and return to the U.N., a condition stated by the Russians as prerequisite to solution of the Korean crisis. Secretary of State Acheson had already rejected the condition, stating that the only acceptable initial condition was removal of the North Korean troops back behind the 38th parallel.
A picture appears of Major De Albert S. Hoke, Jr., of Charlotte, discussing his morning bombing raid over North Korea, and a separate article details his distinguished air combat record from World War II, spanning back to 1940.
In Asheville, N.C., State Senator Max Wilson of Lenoir was sentenced to three years in Federal prison for embezzlement, having been charged also with forgery, making false statements, and using the mails to defraud, in connection with approximately $42,000 embezzled from the Government and others while he had been president of the National Farm Loan Association of North Wilkesboro.
On the editorial page, "Electoral Reform Suffers Set-Back" tells of the House rejection of the Lodge amendment to amend the Constitution to have the electoral college tabulated proportionally to the popular vote in each state rather than on the winner-take-all formula being utilized by the states—albeit determined under the Constitution by each state, not mandated by the Constitution. The action killed the amendment before it got to the states for ratification by three-fourths of their number. The proposed amendment needed a two-thirds majority in each chamber and had received exactly the necessary 64 votes in the Senate but won only by a simple majority of 210 to 134 in the House.
The piece found the proposed amendment just and fair, to eliminate minority group control which existed in most of the large swing states, causing both major parties to extend themselves to attract these key voting blocs in those states, leading to rule by minority interests. Neither party, in consequence, was truly a national party.
But since both parties were unwilling to part with their dominant positions in certain closely contested areas, the amendment had been doomed. North Carolina's delegation had voted for it as had Southern Democrats generally. One argument for it had been that the South would have had a greater voice in national politics, as the heavy Democratic majorities caused the South to be taken for granted by the national party. It would have also opened the way for a two-party system in the South.
Electoral college reform was not dead and it predicts that logic would eventually convince the Congress that reform was needed. It expresses confidence that a start had been made and that eventually the archaic system would be overhauled.
We are still waiting 67 years later and after two relatively recent elections, in 2000 and 2016, which involved substantial claims of suppression of votes, confused voting, or vote tampering, with the outcome that the popular vote loser won the electoral college, and one other election in modern times, in 1960, where questioned vote totals in certain precincts in Illinois and Texas led some particularly vocal right-wingers in the country to question the electoral outcome of the election, arguably contributing, by way of rationalization, to the climate of hatred which culminated in the assassination of President Kennedy.
If not now, when? Of course, there is always a Catch-22, in that the winner solely by virtue of the electoral college never wants to get behind electoral reform and urge it to the country and Congress, and that by the time a successor typically gets to office who might push it, the energy behind such an effort has dissipated in the giddy relief of the people for having regained control of the electoral process.
Instead, today, we get a non-bipartisan "commission" appointed by the "President", co-chaired by the "Vice-President" and a narrow conservative Republican from Kansas who has not the sense to get in out of a shower of rain, to investigate supposed rampant voter fraud in the country among felons, dual-state citizens, and illegal immigrants, of which there is no evidence, plainly with a preconceived agenda to make voting more rigorous when it ought to be easy to vote. And, of course, this "commission", unlike previous truly bipartisan blue ribbon panels on elections such as that in 2014 co-chaired by the attorneys for the Obama and Romney campaigns of 2012, will find that for which it is preconceptually looking in enough places to rationalize recommendations for crackdowns on facilitative voting methods such as early voting, with the design of suppressing minority votes, all in the name of stopping rampant "voter fraud". When the chairman from Kansas says repeatedly, "We may never know who won the popular vote in 2016", after former Secretary of State Clinton clearly won it by nearly three million votes, the outcome of the "commission's" findings is foreordained. We shall be shocked to find any different result. And then that phony report will be touted by conservative Republicans in Congress and in the states as proof of need of legislative crackdown both at the Federal and state levels. We hate to sound cynical but not one thing this "President" has done in six months in office has been the least bit bipartisan or even middle-of-the-road, in most cases excluding Democrats even from the conversation about policy. He is playing constantly and solely to his Neanderthalic base, ignoring the fact that 60 percent of the country reject those politics and have lost all patience with this "President".
"Misguided Mystic" tells of Henry Wallace having received enough votes in 1948 to provide the election in New York to Governor Dewey over the President by 61,000 votes, but since 1948 had been "sulking in the shadows, consorting with his Commie buddies, and trying to figure out his unhappy fate." His Progressive Party had condemned the intervention in Korea, consistent with the Moscow line. But Mr. Wallace had broken from that Progressive stance and supported his country, prompting the Daily Worker to criticize him for "shabby jingoism".
So, having become persona non grata with the majority of the American people, he had now lost favor even with his leftist friends. That would, however, not enable him, it says, to regain favor with the mainstream of the country as he had been wrong too many times in the past to be trusted presently.
"In Which Credit Is Given" tells of the monthly conservative magazine in the state, We the People, having said that the financial condition of the State was much better midway through the second year of Governor Kerr Scott's term than had been expected. The piece concludes that with The News having voiced repeatedly the concern that the Scott Administration would eventually spend so much that higher taxes would be necessary to avoid deficit spending, it admits that the State's business affairs had been managed well in the first fiscal year of the Administration, and provides Governor Scott and the Budget Director David Coltrane credit for the good job, producing a predicted surplus of five to ten million dollars while balancing the budget.
"General Evangeline Booth" tells of the head of the Salvation Army who had died during the week. She had followed in the footsteps of her father, General William Booth, who had founded the organization in London. The work of the organization had been felt all over the world, including Charlotte, in helping those unable to help themselves. It finds Ms. Booth to have been a lasting inspiration.
Holt McPherson of the Shelby Star tells of touring a 33-mile segment of the Blue Ridge Parkway not yet open to the public, stretching from Asheville to Mount Mitchell, to be dedicated by the President later in the summer. He found it "out of this world", as so often remarked about the Parkway experience in general. He goes on to describe in detail that experience and encourages a visit.
We was up 'ere drivin' around one Sunday afternoon in August, 1962 when the news come over the car radio that Marilyn Monroe was dead. We forget which gap we was in or we would tell ye. Whether it took more than 18 and a half minutes to emerge from it, we do not recall either.
Drew Pearson sends an open letter to his 17-year old stepson anent some of the ideals sought by the country to be championed and the problems to be faced in Korea. He starts by saying that he was aware that young persons were more sophisticated, following two world wars and the cold war, than in the time of his youth when the country faced World War I. The "novelty, glamour and excitement" had worn off such that he did not particularly blame the American lieutenant in Korea who said to A.P. reporter Tom Lambert that he had never seen such a "useless damned war". He could understand the sentiment regarding a war fought 8,000 miles from home in defense of a strange people in a strange land.
But the country had reached a peak, he believed, in unselfishness toward the world, as never before exhibited on the world stage. That peak could be lost if selfishness were to become placed above idealism. Some in America were beginning to do that and so perhaps Korea was needed to prevent the country from becoming too soft and materialistic, to set an example of unity against an aggressor.
He stresses that the decision to enter militarily in defense of Korea had to come somewhere sooner or later because of the continuing bullying threat of war by the Russians. What occurred in one part of the world in the atomic age of long-range airplanes affected Americans at home.
In the past, he had attended international conferences as a journalist and watched the seeds of war being planted as the world stood by powerless to prevent it. Now, the country had the power to stop the impending crisis and had moved to avert it. He concludes by telling his stepson that he believed it important for persons his age to understand these ideals and why they were practically necessary to defend. The concerted U.N. action in Korea might lead to establishment of a world police force and a world authority to put down all future wars.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop remark of the irony of Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson preparing to become an advocate for a stepped-up defense effort after spending his first year since becoming Secretary in March, 1949 advocating economy in all military branches, economizing which they assert had weakened the American military to the point that it was the reason for the invasion of South Korea.
Secretary Johnson had set out to save a billion dollars from the 1949-50 fiscal budget for defense, set originally at 14 billion, and did so, first, by weakening orders for new tanks with improved armor and firepower necessary to combat the 60-ton Russian tanks, as previously approved by former Secretary James Forrestal. Those heavy tanks and the consequent inability to defend against them was now being seen in Korea as a result of the cost-cutting program of Secretary Johnson.
He also had weakened the ground forces, the Navy, including the Marines, and the Air Force, depleting available resources outside Korea, making other targets vulnerable. Two ground force divisions, one of which was being organized, were sacrificed in Korea during the economization.
Moreover, Mr. Johnson had misrepresented to the American people the resulting reduced strength as adequate. Such a fraud, they conclude, raised the question of whether he was the right person to lead the defense effort in such time of crisis and danger, like no other since Pearl Harbor.
Marquis Childs tells of American commitments abroad having become so thinly spread for the vast area covered that it had become an invitation to Soviet aggression in a vulnerable spot, Korea. Mobilization would be needed and he discusses in detail the particulars which the President would likely recommend in that regard to Congress and undertake otherwise by executive order where already authorized either by legislation or inherent executive authority. Those steps would include at least four or five billion dollars in new defense spending—whereas the President actually pegged the initial number at ten billion this date. Other steps would be allocation of steel priorities and encouraging production of radar equipment and military vehicles, reducing the availability of some goods as televisions and automobiles. He would—as he said he had given authority to Secretary of Defense Johnson to do—call up National Guard units and reservists as needed.
All of these actions were necessary to provide new confidence by the American people. That had been present three weeks earlier at the initial stages of the crisis when the President initially authorized American naval and air power to be used to defend South Korea, then followed by authorization of bombing in the North and use of American ground troops, but had been waning since that time because of the consistent setbacks experienced on the ground.
It had led to questions about what had happened to the 50-60 billion dollars in authorized defense spending of the prior four years. Part of the answer was the extraordinary cost of modern equipment. But the President, Secretary of State Acheson, and Secretary of Defense Johnson had all reassured the American people in the spring that military preparedness was better than in any previous peacetime period. While it may have been true, this "conspiracy of optimism" had also proved wholly unjustified in light of events of the prior three weeks.
A letter writer from Hickory praises the writer who had written of the work done by the "Shut-In Society" and praises it as a worthy cause. He had written in response to the Society to offer his help.
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