The Charlotte News
Monday, July 31, 1950
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that troops of the U.S. Second Infantry Division, under the command of Maj. General Laurence B. Keiser, had landed with tanks in Korea. Many of the fresh troops immediately set out in trucks to plug holes in the defense lines. Meanwhile, South Korean troops were shifting the force from the central sector to the west and southwest. Up to 200,000 Communist troops were engaged in the surge against the allied defense positions.
The Communists had captured Chinju, 55 miles west of Pusan, following a three-day battle, enraging a general who had directed the defense of the road and rail center. He expressed frustration at having lost nine battles in a row to the enemy. American casualties were fairly heavy, but front line officers said that enemy casualties were nearly double that of Americans. American pilots reported that enemy bodies littered the battlefield "like confetti". Three precious Sherman tanks were reported lost. Americans withdrew to new positions less than 50 miles from Pusan, the key supply port. In the central front, pressure was placed on Kumchon, 32 miles northwest of Taegu, key rail head.
MacArthur headquarters reported that the Communist food supply was running low, as reports of looting by small bands of troops had been received. Railroad tunnels were being used to hide ammunition from aerial bombardment by American, British, and Australian planes.
Correspondent O. H. P. King tells of being with the First Cavalry troops as they torched hundreds of thatched-roof huts in front line areas as a scorched-earth measure to halt the Communist advance and take away hiding places for guerrillas and tanks. A predawn commando raid on a command post had killed one South Korean and four American officers, while wounding eight Americans. Five of the raiders were killed and ten to fifteen escaped.
An American attack during the morning on Chirye had, according to North Korean prisoners, disrupted the timetable of the enemy. A counterattack by the North Koreans drove the attack northward. By nightfall, Chirye was a no-man's land.
All along the line from Kumchon to Chinju, the enemy were driving forward against Americans desperately trying to hold their positions.
There was mounting evidence gathered from many prisoners that Russian officers were in the field with the the North Koreans, providing tactical advice.
General MacArthur and his top advisers had flown to Formosa to consult with Chiang Kai-Shek. Chiang had offered 33,000 troops to fight in Korea plus some air force units, thus far rejected by General MacArthur as being needed instead to defend Formosa. The Chinese Nationalists had conducted an air raid on the junks assembled in readiness for attack on Quemoy, 100 miles from Formosa. Apparently, the raid had not been sanctioned by the U.S., as it had instructed the Nationalists to cease waging war against Communist China unless they first attacked, so as not to provide provocation for attack.
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill, introduced by Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, to allow the death penalty for spies for the ensuing two years. The maximum penalty at present was 30 years for peacetime espionage.
An atomic scientist of the Atomic Energy Commission at Oak Ridge, Tenn., told a press conference that if an atomic bomb were smuggled into the country in a crate via ship, it could not be detected without opening the crate.
The AEC said that since January, it had set a record for production of U-235 and plutonium, the explosive materials for atomic bombs. It was exploring the possibility of making a poison atomic bomb. Work had accelerated on all atomic bombs, including the hydrogen bomb.
The President told Congressional leaders that he was providing a message seeking an additional four billion dollars in foreign military aid. Expedited action was expected.
Administration leaders in Congress were contemplating giving to the President standby price-wage control and rationing powers, for which he had not asked, but to which he was not objecting at this point.
In Brussels, King Leopold III, recently restored to the throne after being in exile since the war, offered to delegate temporarily his royal powers to his son, Crown Prince Baudoin. He did so on the condition that the Socialists would withdraw their political and economic demands and present them instead through parliamentary channels.
Charles Barrett reports from Atlanta that the Dixiecrat movement in the South was dead, following a series of state primary defeats. But resistance to the civil rights program of the President and liberalism generally was as fierce as ever in the South. At the same time, Southerners were as loyal as ever to the Democratic Party. Alabama had rejected Dixiecrats from their state committee in favor of regular Democrats. South Carolina had rejected Governor Strom Thurmond in favor of incumbent Senator Olin Johnston, a party loyalist. Arkansas Governor Sid McMath, friend of the President, won the primary over former Governor Ben Laney, founder of the Dixiecrat national committee. Senator Russell Long of Louisiana had also won his primary as a regular Democrat.
But in Georgia, conservative Governor Herman Talmadge, who was opposed to the civil rights program, was re-nominated.
The head of the states' righters in Alabama said that he believed Alabama would elect eleven anti-Truman electors in the 1952 presidential election as it had in 1948, when it supported Strom Thurmond.
Editor Ralph McGill of the Atlanta Constitution agreed with Governor McMath that the Dixiecrat movement was dead but added that the sentiment for states' rights persisted. He said that he would not be surprised to see Governor-nominate James Byrnes of South Carolina leading the states' rights movement in the South within the regular party structure.
On the editorial page, "Reflections on the Crisis" finds that U.S. intelligence had not detected the coming invasion of South Korea despite the CIA detection of an aggregation of troops along the 38th parallel in advance of the incursion on June 25. General MacArthur had briefed Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson and Joint Chiefs chairman General Omar Bradley not long before the invasion that there was nothing to worry about with respect to Korea, that it was Formosa which merited attention as a target for attack by the Chinese Communists.
The fighting quality of the North Koreans was greatly underestimated, such that it was initially believed that the South Koreans could drive them back, absent support by Russian or Communist Chinese forces.
Communism had shown that it was arming men to die, in contrast to the democracies.
The Russians had shown that they had military know-how which could be imparted to their satellites. And Russian war materiel, especially the tanks, was much better than expected.
The conflict had dispelled the notions that pushbutton warfare had arrived, that the atomic bomb was an effective deterrent to conventional aggression, and that air superiority, while important, provided a certain path to victory.
Americans were unenthusiastic about a war thousands of miles away from home requiring American manpower and blood. There had only been a small amount of voluntary enlistment since the war had begun, including a paucity of reservists asking to be activated.
There were no war songs thus far celebrating the war as there had been at the start of each of the world wars.
It posits that Stalin may have shown shrewdness in picking such a theater for the initial test of American resolve to resist Communist aggression. It finds that the war with Communism might not be won or lost in Korea but rather in the council rooms wherein the campaign was studied. Brains were as important to the war effort as brawn.
"Full Mobilization Now?" is not so sure as the Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial on the page, ascribed to editor Virginius Dabney, that it was time for complete economic and industrial mobilization, with institution of wage and price controls and rationing. The Times-Dispatch, it indicates, had been opposed to all Fair Deal measures which would exert control on the economy and so it was a particularly noteworthy stance for it to favor wage and price controls.
If the Russians were bent on control of the world and the Korean war was a first aggressive move toward that end, then full mobilization was appropriate. But it was not yet clear that the Russians were willing to wage a war directly with the U.S. any time soon.
"Vote of Confidence" finds disappointment in the voter turnout for the local bond election the prior Saturday, with only 4,000 voting, about a tenth of the registered voters in a city of 133,000. All five bonds had been approved, as recommended by The News, pertaining to water, sewage, street repairs, and railroad crossing improvements to alleviate congestion downtown.
As indicated in the above editorial, a piece from the Richmond Times-Dispatch favors immediate full mobilization as favored by Bernard Baruch rather than the limited mobilization proposed by the President, with full mobilization to come later. The piece thinks that there was no reason to wait, that the time to impose wage and price controls as well as rationing on goods likely to be in short supply was while plenty of consumer goods were available, before prices inevitably would begin to climb and before labor decided to seek higher wages in an election year.
Those who thought otherwise were laboring under the illusion that the nation's production capacity could absorb the demands of the military. But Business Week had pointed out on July 22 that such was not the case.
It warns the country against becoming its own worst enemy at home through economic instability.
Josephine Ripley, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, explains that the Government was hoarding butter, dried milk, and dried eggs bought as surplus under the price support program for farmers, that the surplus commodities were not available for sale, though subject to spoliation, because the Government had to add five percent plus carrying charges to the support price before selling it. The Administration had proposed a measure to allow the Government to sell it at the support price, as long as it did not exceed the market price, providing thereby a stabilizing force on prices. If the food spoiled, then it would result in a larger loss, at 281 million dollars, than the 204 million dollar loss in potatoes the previous year.
Drew Pearson tells of a wiretapping case conducted by a member of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, performed at taxpayer expense, even though having to do with a purely private matter, a department store owner husband who suspected his wife of infidelity with the Argentine Ambassador. The police lieutenant at one point had even intruded on the premises and taken a picture of the pair together. The Ambassador was too embarrassed, however, to prosecute for trespass. The case was only one of many such cases in the nation's capital.
Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson told the Senate Appropriations Committee that he had been captive of the prior budget set up by his predecessor, the late James Forrestal, when he came to the position in March, 1949 and should not be blamed, therefore, for the budget cuts. But, Mr. Pearson reminds, he had suggested deeper cuts and the Congress had been more than willing to go along. Mr. Johnson had said that the requested 10.5 billion dollars of additional military funding for the war was enough to prosecute it successfully and to equip the military for any other emergency which might arise.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Omar Bradley testified in response to questioning that the President's orders were to drive the North Korean Army back across 38th parallel and that going beyond that point would have to await further decision of the President.
Marquis Childs discusses the common misconception of Korea caused by Communist propaganda, that the North Koreans had proved such tenacious fighters because they had been given something for which to fight, land reform and a higher standard of living, while the reactionaries who ran the South Korean Government had been unwilling to make concessions to democratic self-government. These conceptions were distorted.
In fact, the South Korean soldiers had fought hard and were holding three to four times the defense lines held by the Americans. The American press had reported primarily on American action because it was believed that was what American readers wanted to hear.
The South Korean Government of Syngman Rhee had held together despite having to move about during the war.
Korea had been subjected to centuries of feudalism and 40 years of Japanese occupation prior to undertaking self-government since the war. The U.S. might be criticized for pushing the experiment on the South Koreans prematurely before they were ready, as the Dutch had charged was the case in Indonesia.
But the Communism in the North was "brutal, ruthless, totalitarian—a gangster operation conducted behind a screen of propaganda" while democracy was slow and painful. The U.S. had been experimenting in self-government for 150 years and had not gotten it perfect. Thus, there was no reason to expect quick miracles from the South Koreans. An election in South Korea on May 30 had resulted in losses for both the pro-Government forces and the opposition, with great gains in the middle. But in contrast stood North Korea which did not allow observation of its processes by the U.N. special commission, instead only issuing propaganda. What had gone on in the North was not the trial and error method of democracy being exhibited in the South.
Robert C. Ruark tells of the French Foreign Legion being the modern day equivalent of an international police force of the type the U.N. was trying to create. The Legion was an assemblage of fugitives from the law, fugitives from wives, and fugitives from boredom, made up primarily from holdover German warriors from the two World Wars. They were largely ruffians working for mercenary pay who knew how to fight.
They were similar to the U.S. Flying Tigers flying raids under General Claire Chennault during the war. The Tigers had trafficked with the black market and taken pay for flying their planes, but had killed ample numbers of Japanese in China.
In North Africa, the Arab mercenaries had been paid on the basis of how many German ears they brought back. The practice, however, he finds to have been no more horrid than war, itself.
He believes that many societally ill-fitted young men, many of whom were already experienced killers, in the U.S., in England, Germany, and Australia would eagerly join an international police force. They would not need much basic training as they already knew how to fight in a war. Most would work for a small amount of pay plus the chance to profit in the black market in the countries in which they fought.
He finds that while such a picture was harsh, it was no more so than sending green young Americans to the fight in Korea in the name of providing a U.N. police force. He favors instead a global Foreign Legion made up of mercenaries.
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