The Charlotte News
Thursday, August 17, 1950
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that 25,000 to 30,000 North Korean troops opened a massive drive on Taegu, pouring through central mountain passes 15 miles north of the town, east of the Naktong River, with only two South Korean divisions acting as defense along the mountain pass roads. The enemy came from areas which had been heavily bombed the previous day by B-29's, the largest raid thus far in the war, inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy and widely dispersing them in confused retreat. The attack began a few hours after the Marines and 24th Infantry Division had struck at the Naktong east bank bridgehead near Changnyong, 23 miles southwest of Taegu, in the fiercest fighting of the war for the Marines, the type of fighting, according to correspondent Don Whitehead, which had characterized the Pacific engagements of World War II. The enemy was making its most serious threat north of Taegu, a thrust which was termed by Eighth Army headquarters as the most serious yet facing the U.N. forces.
According to correspondent Stan Swinton, American forces west of Masan were also preparing for an enemy assault.
Hal Boyle reports that North Koreans murdered 32 American prisoners with their hands tied behind their backs on Hill 303, west of Waegwan, the area bombed the previous day in the large B-29 raid, just prior to an American patrol of the First Cavalry reaching the position. They sought to kill 37 in all but five survived to tell the story. Three North Koreans were captured shortly afterward and one was identified by one of the survivors as a participant in the massacre. That prisoner was to be sent behind the lines for questioning, with a recommendation that he be tried as a war criminal. One other survivor said that he favored shooting the men, just as they had shot American prisoners. Murdering prisoners was typical retaliation by the North Koreans for air and ground assaults.
Correspondent Jack MacBeth reports that three North Korean prisoners captured Wednesday by the 24th Division told American interrogators that their regiments had a Russian adviser. They carried Russian-made carbines and a U.S. carbine and were discovered in civilian dress attempting to mingle with a large group of refugees. They told of miserable life in the North Korean Army, that morale was low, and said they would be shot if they returned. They had been told repeatedly that victory was imminent but they did not receive enough food. They fought tenaciously only out of fear that failure to do so would result in their being shot by their own leaders. Casualties, they reported, had been heavy and most of their friends were dead.
The U.S. called on cooperating U.N. members to increase the speed with which they sent troops to Korea and to pay more attention to existing units rather than recruiting and training special units for the purpose. The report, submitted by U.S. chief delegate Warren Austin, said that only American troops thus far had arrived in Korea but that eight nations had supplied naval forces and other assistance. He also praised the tenacity of the South Korean troops who, he said, withdrew more to preserve continuity in fighting than because of enemy pressure.
John Foster Dulles stated that he had accepted the invitation of the President to serve again as part of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. He said that he would continue to be an adviser to Secretary of State Acheson and would not be a candidate for the Senate from New York—a position in which he had served for a few months in 1949 by appointment of Governor Dewey after the retirement of Senator Robert Wagner, before being defeated by former Governor Herbert Lehman for the remainder of the term set to expire in 1950.
The President tacitly accepted the offer of the Philippines to send 4,000 to 5,000 troops to fight in Korea, as he expressed pride that the soldiers of the U.S. and the Philippines would again stand side by side against forces of aggression.
Robert S. Bird and Ogden R. Reid of the New York Herald Tribune, in the tenth and last installment of their series on American defense policy, discuss the indicated needs for improvement of policy to set the country on a proper footing to contest Soviet aggression. Those who favored a policy of initiative wanted to build a first-class intelligence service and, once done, utilize it to find out what Russia was doing, to determine the military capabilities and national resources of the country, and assess American foreign policy and its commitments. The advocates of this policy believed that the U.S. should station troops in all sensitive areas where Russia or its satellites might make a move and that the President ought issue a firm statement that further aggression in those areas would invite total war.
But enthusiasm for such a policy of initiative was not shared by the majority of officers of Cabinet rank charged with the nation's security. Their prevailing opinion had it that unless the "one-alarm fire" in Korea developed into a four-alarm affair, there was no need to urge a stronger military effort and that, indeed, such an effort might be exactly what the Russians wanted, to wear down the country economically.
The advocates of initiative, however, answered that more strength was necessary in such places as Formosa, where only twelve American warships faced 4,000 Communist Chinese junks poised for invasion. Western Europe also needed immediate defensive build-up, requiring 35 divisions as a minimum force to resist or deter Communist attack, whereas those nations presently had ten. Only sixteen more divisions had been committed by Britain, France, Belgium and The Netherlands. The U.S., the other U.K. countries, and Spain, with 22 divisions, might have to provide the balance.
They conclude that at home, air raid warning systems were needed along with stockpiles of medical supplies, to provide for the contingency of atomic attack by plane through the porous extant radar screen, porosity which would persist until the country had the protection of guided missiles—the Nike surface-to-air "ring of fire" system.
Senate and House committees approved legislation intended to provide $85 to $125 per month in support payments to families of enlisted GI's in the three lower grades.
The Senate Finance Committee unanimously approved an amount nearly equal to the President's proposed five billion dollar tax increase, a three billion dollar increase for individual taxpayers and 1.5 billion for corporations. It gave full tax exemption to GI's fighting in Korea. It did not provide for an excess profits tax.
The President insisted on cutting a Senate Federal aid to highways bill from 620 million dollars to his originally proposed 500 million.
Chief Judge John J. Parker of the Fourth District Court of Appeals had designated a three-judge special panel to decide whether the University of Virginia had to admit a black applicant, Gregory Swanson, an attorney, to its law school for graduate study in the law. Judge Parker would sit on the panel, along with Court of Appeals Judge Morris Soper and District Court Judge John Paul. The application had been rejected based on a State Constitutional provision and state laws making it unlawful to have integrated educational facilities.
Halifax County in North Carolina became the first county in the state to report to Selective Service a hundred percent reporting of selectees for physical and mental examinations, as all 61 showed up on time. Of 101 men examined the previous day from Halifax and Edecombe Counties, 21 failed the physical exam. Of 93 selectees from Alamance and Warren Counties, 50 failed the mental test.
You need to stay out o' over there.
A severe hurricane with 140 mph winds was moving westward in the Atlantic, threatening the northern Bahamas from 300 miles east of Nassau and 570 miles east of Miami.
You better get them boats in and tied down 'fore they get carried 'way by the wind.
Dick Young of The News tells of a possible bond election on October 7 to approve of a three million dollar issue for the Charlotte auditorium-coliseum complex—to be opened, much as proposed, in 1955.
On the editorial page, "The Auditorium-Coliseum Plan" praises the plan developed by a planning committee for the auditorium-coliseum complex, to occupy a single parcel of land away from the downtown area. The proposed auditorium would seat 2,500 and the coliseum, 12,000, including 2,000 portable seats. It would have ample parking space for 3,000 cars and cost around three million dollars to build, including acquisition of the land. Two principal objections which might arise were that it was not close enough to downtown and that the size of each structure was too small. The piece thinks, however, that the planning committee had balanced these objections against practicality of expense and established a reasonable plan which could allow the facilities to be useful into the future for some time to come.
"Mr. Boyd Is at It Again" finds that City Councilman Basil Boyd had not taken an appropriate stand on the bus route extension plan put forward by the City Traffic Engineer hired by the Council for the purpose. The plan was designed to improve service to all residents of the community while enabling Duke Power Co., which operated the buses, to operate more efficiently so that it did not continue to lose money. To effect the plan, some routes had to be curtailed and some neighborhoods would thus be inconvenienced. Mr. Boyd, however, had sided with the complainants in one neighborhood who wanted the bus routes left as they were, saying that improvement could be accomplished while also preserving existing service. But the piece thinks that such an approach could not occur without also creating bigger losses for Duke Power and so prefers deference to be given the Engineer's recommendations.
"Ah, Woman..." tells of
Hollywood columnist Aline Mosby
Then came Rudolph Valentino, followed by Rudy Vallee.
So, it concludes, the mothers of 1950 had once been bobby-soxers, too, but were called flappers. Grandmother had been also, though her nominal classification was unclear.
"Ah, woman—infinite in variety, yet ever the same."
Incidentally, it was fifty years ago this summer, in mid-June, that we read In Cold Blood, while on a trip to Wilmington, via New Bern and Jacksonville, to Wrightsville Beach and back. There you are.
A piece from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, titled "C'est La Guerre", tells of 24 million pounds of beans, controlled by the Commodity Credit Corporation, shortly to become homeless because a Federal judge had ordered their eviction from a warehouse in Cleveland needed for G.M. to manufacture tanks for the Korean war. Shortly, it suggests, they were to become "has-beens" and the taxpayer would be required to pay the funeral expenses as no one wanted the beans.
Bill Sharpe, in his weekly "Turpentine Drippings", snippets from newspapers across the state, provides one from the Moore County News which expresses being tired of hearing and reading stories of some new device being routinely invented, designed to wipe out mankind, that it had survived for time immemorial, threatened only by the Flood of Noah, and would likely continue.
The Twin City Sentinel of Winston-Salem tells of a Tennessee mountain evangelical church being split over whether sermons would be in English or German, finally deciding to opt for English. The minister, who had been in America only for a short time, began his sermon the next Sunday: "Der subject of my sermon vill be 'Der Devil'. I vill speak along three lines: Who der Devil iss he; Vat der Devil iss he doing; Und vy de Devil iss he doing idt!"
Who vas he?
The Fuquay Independent told of a clergyman visiting Port Huron and playing a round of golf, asking his caddy the distance of the hole, being informed it was 350 yards, remarked, "Just a drive and a putt," teed up and proceeded to drive the ball twenty yards. The caddy remarked, "Reverend, that's gonna be one helluva putt."
The Fairmont Messenger wonders which of two suitors in town would land a very attractive blonde. It reports that she was very nice and that the two gentlemen vying for her affections would do well to make hay while the sun was shining. They were okay, too, it reports. Time would tell.
You can't kid us. She was no good, just a tramp leading men on, all the while planning to move to Hollywood to carry on with a movie star, and they were a couple of fops.
And so on, and so on, and on and
forth
Drew Pearson, still on vacation, has his column written again by Fred Blumenthal and Jack Anderson. They tell of right wing Republicans and Southern Democrats planning a secret alliance to take over the electoral college through control of Congress to be obtained in the 1952 elections. They intended to merge their seniority status and run Congress jointly. The next step would be to dominate the electoral college and elect a conservative President. The leader of the plot was J. Harvie Williams of North Carolina, claiming to have the support of Republican Senators Karl Mundt and John Bricker and Congressmen Charles Halleck and Frederic Coudert, plus Southern Democratic Senators Harry F. Byrd and Richard Russell and Congressman Gene Cox and Governor-nominate James Byrnes of South Carolina.
Mr. Williams had detailed the plan in a series of confidential memos which the column had obtained. He calculated that of the 64 Senators in the bloc, three Southerners and seven Republicans would refuse to join, still leaving a 54-seat majority for the alliance. In the House, it would lose 21 Republicans and 12 Southern Democrats, giving the coalition a 240 to 195-vote margin. It would allow, through realignment, the creation of a new party without anyone needing to change party labels and consequently losing support and seniority.
He had formed an organization called the Citizens Political Committee to carry through with the plan and named former Senator Albert Hawkes of New Jersey as the primary money raiser.
Senator Mundt had responded to his letters by saying that he believed there were too many practical barriers to arranging the plan in Congress but that it could be carried out in the electoral college.
They note that Mr. Williams believed the U.S. was a nation of "mongrels", with most of the "alien" elements concentrated in the urban North, and that his realignment would rest on unification of "white, English-speaking stocks" to elect a "conservative President", whom Mr. Williams envisioned to be either Senator Bricker, the vice-presidential nominee with Governor Dewey in 1944, or Senator Byrd.
If the plan sounds all too familiar, it is because it was tried in 1960 without success, in 1968, with success, settling for "the new" Richard Nixon, in 1980, in 2000, and again in 2016—never stopping to realize that an attempt to bring back "the good old days" of the antebellum South, their true desire, would neither be the least bit possible in modern times nor desirable for anyone.
Joseph Alsop, in Korea, completes the report which he had begun two days earlier on the offensive toward Chinju, taking place August 6-9. He describes in great detail the further action, which by August 9 saw the 5th Regimental Combat Team voluntarily stop short of its goal by half the distance, to the consternation of headquarters. The First Marine Brigade, however, had the way open to proceed down a track among the sea cliffs, as General Kean, the leader of the offensive, hurried to the front to take personal command of the continuing drive of the 5th RCT. Most of the day's gains, by both the 5th and 35th RCT's, were made against only light resistance, as the latter pushed down the upper road to meet the 5th.
By afternoon, the Marines, led by three heavy tanks, had begun their move. "As the first tank rounded a shoulder of the curving sea cliff and was silhouetted against the blue bay beyond, the late, deep-golden sun struck all the long, quickly marching files of men wending along the mountain track for a full mile behind."
Marquis Childs discusses the bad effect on Western Europe psychologically of the Senate passage of approval of the 100 million dollar loan to Spain's Francisco Franco in exchange for an American base behind the Pyrenees. Such a proposed exchange with a Fascist dictator, despised throughout Europe, had harmed morale, a key component to Western solidarity against the Communists, and provided the Communists with a source of propaganda.
To many in Western Europe, it suggested that the Americans would allow the Communists to occupy Western Europe before taking action from the Pyrenees base, much as the Nazis had occupied all of Europe before the Normandy invasion.
Certainly the loan, if approved by the House and the President, would strengthen Franco. And if it reduced Western Europe to neutrality status vis-à-vis the U.S. and Russia, it would not be a very efficient use of the military aid which the U.S. planned to provide the Western European nations.
Framed Edition
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