The Charlotte News
Tuesday, August 22, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that American troops and tanks had wiped out a threatened North Korean roadblock ten miles north of Taegu while other American troops took three commanding hills near Chungam in the vicinity of Haman, to block the gateway to Pusan in the south where the most bitter fighting of the previous 24 hours had taken place. A tank battle north of Taegu resulted in ten enemy tanks destroyed in three days without any loss of American tanks. Black troops of the 24th Infantry Regiment retook "Battle Mountain" near Chungam for the fifth time in four days, winning back all of the ground lost Monday. Along the 120-mile defense arc, the U.N. troops either held firm or advanced. Again, MacArthur headquarters omitted a midnight communique as the situation had not changed since the previous one.
South Korean Marines effected a landing at Ejak Island off Inchon on the west coast, their third such island landing of the week. Other South Korean Marines were conducting mop-up operations on Koje Island, 21 miles southwest of Pusan.
Seventy B-29's dropped 700 tons of bombs again on Chongjin, 60 miles from the Siberian border.
The U.N. was considering a resolution to allow the action in Korea to proceed north of the 38th parallel, as disclosed by Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson on July 25. He had estimated to a Senate committee that the fighting could end in February, provided there was a campaign to push the Communist insurgents no further than the 38th parallel. He also had said that the decision two years earlier to withdraw occupation forces and write off Korea as a military base was made at levels above the military. He said that there was no specific warning from intelligence resources regarding the impending attack.
France agreed to send an infantry battalion of about 800 troops to Korea. The only French aid supplied thus far had been a naval sloop from Indo-China. French leaders had objected to contributions because of the necessity to devote the nation's forces to combatting the Communist guerrilla action led by Ho Chi Minh in Indo-China.
Senate leaders aimed to pass before nightfall an aid for G.I. dependents bill. The companion bill in the House won approval from the Armed Services Committee.
Nine Senators sought imposition of Universal Military Training legislation, recommended by both Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson and Joint Chiefs chairman General Omar Bradley, as the only way to meet the gap in trained men.
The Senate approved by a vote of 85 to 3 the economic controls bill which gave discretionary standby wage-price control and rationing powers to the President. The House had approved a similar measure August 10. The two bills, differing in other respects, would now head for reconciliation.
General MacArthur received the equivalent of three dollars in Japanese yen from an anonymous donor, suggesting it be used to purchase flowers for American soldiers making the supreme sacrifice in Korea.
Presidential aide John R. Steelman continued his attempt to settle the rail strike. New five-day token strikes occurred in Pittsburgh and Chicago, designed to call attention to the wage-hours demand of the Trainmen and Conductors.
At Brookhaven, N.Y., the most powerful postwar atomic reactor went into service, designed wholly for research. Located 75 miles from Manhattan, it could produce heat to power a village of 2,000 to 3,000 people. Other reactors had been placed in service since the war, in the U.S., Canada, Britain, and France, but none so powerful.
Average tobacco prices hit their highest mark on opening day sales in at least 31 years, at $58.01 per hundred. Sold Amur'can...
The hurricane in the Atlantic hit Antigua with 100 mph winds the previous night, but appeared to be losing force afterward. It was reported during the morning as being 50 miles from the island of St. Kitts in the Caribbean with its future movement uncertain.
At Dover, England, five persons swam the English Channel, two of them, Hassan Abd-El Rehim of Egypt and Roger Le Morvan of France, in record times, within ten minutes of one another, under the 11 hours, five minutes set in 1926, the faster of the two being Mr. Rehim at ten hours, fifty-three minutes. It was Mr. Rehim's third Channel swim. The London Daily Mail paid him the equivalent of $2,800 in their sponsored challenge. Six of 24 swimmers attempting the crossing, including two women, remained in the water.
As pictured, in New York City, a 17-year old boy climbed a forty-foot high clothes pole and remained there for two hours and forty minutes until firefighters on the scene coaxed him to fall into a net. He was then placed in a straitjacket and taken to a hospital for observation.
That is the way the Channel swimmers ought be handled in wartime—or perhaps fit handling for the publisher of the Daily Mail.
The same is also true of the money-grubbing, short-sighted, narrow-minded, hypocritical idiots at Sony who own the copyrights currently to Beatles songs and have proceeded to destroy access to fifty-year old and more songs on Youtube for the last three years or so. You have to be complete idiots, just as anyone who would pay over $100 for a 50th aniversary edition of an album which, when released in 1967, cost about $3.78. You know where you can go and what you can do when you get there. Sit on top of the rotating spindle on the turntable. Music is meant to be shared and enjoyed, not for the sole pleasure of a bunch of corporate Pigs
Until it changes, we recommend a boycott of purchase of any Beatles music or any other old material being subjected to claims of "copyright" to shut down links on the internet, effectively then locking away the material and consigning it to eventual obscurity. In the case of the Beatles, no one other than twelve-year olds don't already have the collection two or three times over as it is. How many times must we buy this plastic crap
You see, Mr. Dumbbell Sony? you cannot stop free speech. You only irritate and ultimately cost your own pocketbook the pearls you cannot buy with money.
We, for instance, would very much like to change that which is represented in the concluding paragraphs of this ostensibly laudatory precis from 2010, especially as it cites this website without ever having so much as contacted this website for any information, suggesting thereby implicitly that we would agree with the concluding paragraphs, the thoughts conveyed in which we have spent only the last 26 years seeking to enlighten as to the more likely cause of death of W. J. Cash, all, apparently, to no avail. For still there is not even a slight mention of the 31 Nazi spy arrests in New York and New Jersey the weekend before Cash's death, becoming known to the public only the day before, and that leading, in turn, to the frenzied shutting down of the remaining spy apparatus in Mexico City the day after Cash's death, not to mention the fact that William Rhodes Davis, arranger of the Mexico-German oil deal of 1938-39, had been in the Hotel Reforma, where Cash was discovered dead, a mere two weeks earlier and had been the subject of a couple of denunciatory editorials by Cash in early 1941, and that on July 12, Ambassador to Mexico Josephus Daniels, quite aware of Cash's death since a few hours after it occurred July 1, wrote the Mexican foreign minister seeking the arrest, out of the blue and for no apparent reason, of three named Nazi spies in Mexico. That, as we have stated earlier, plus other evidence we have marshaled, would be quite enough in many courtrooms to get someone hanged, especially when not a jot of evidence points to suicide.
Even so despicable a reprobate as convicted Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess has been deemed fit for detailed public airing of whether or not he in fact hanged himself August 17, 1987 in Spandau Prison at age 93 or was targeted for murder.
Yet, even if we could change these uninformed paragraphs, we would not seek to try, not even as to an iota of that stated, as it is someone else's beliefs, even if stated without very good understanding of the subject matter, reliant entirely on the published results of cursory research done in the 1960's and 1980's regarding, specifically, Cash's death, never bothering to look seriously at the very statements uttered by Cash, a perfectly sane man, in his last 24 hours, that he was being followed by Nazi spies, a mere eight days after the Nazi invasion of Russia. Each to his or her own. It is easy enough, if either you disagree with someone or want others to treat them only with the backside of their hand, or are simply jealous of their acclaim, to dismiss them, without one scintilla of evidence in support of the contentions, as a raging alcoholic or some suddenly unhinged lunatic obsessed with Nazi phantoms in July, 1941, never minding the fact that at least 250 Nazi agents, deported in February, 1942, were still in Mexico in 1941 and were quite real, in a world imperiled by Nazism, Fascism, and Feudalism, a month after President Roosevelt had declared a national emergency. We stand on our own marshaling of evidence to the contrary, and argument attendant thereto. But next time, if you desire to cite this website and then proceed to confute, without facts, that for which it ultimately stands and on which it was founded, we would at least appreciate a contact and heads up, maybe even an offer to contribute a paragraph or two of our own, which we do for free when asked.
On the editorial page, "Playgrounds and Politics—IV" again looks at the proposal to amend the Charlotte zoning ordinance to permit the City Council to determine in the future any construction of buildings in City parks, in response to the controversy of the proposed Latta Park recreation center to which objection had been registered by nearby residents for it promising to be a nuisance. The piece takes on the latter objection and seeks to show the fallacy of the position, hopes that the Council would not approve the amendment and instead allow the Park & Recreation decision to go forward while preserving its autonomy.
"The Tide of Battle" tells of the North Koreans running out of time on their timetable under which they were to conquer the Korean peninsula by September 1. They knew that were that deadline to be missed, the ability to conquer would become increasingly harder as the U.N. forces built up strength.
The North Koreans had thrown a lot of men at the Taegu objective during the weekend and lost more than they had gained. U.S. and South Korean troops were now fighting well and holding the hills north of Taegu. The South Koreans had also fought well in the area around Pohang. Moreover, the North Korean troops were showing increasing weakness as supply lines had been interrupted by allied bombing. Retreating troops appeared to be panicking.
Strategists in the field were keeping a wary eye on the 50,000 or more troops re-grouping above Taegu as well as the build-up west of Masan in the south aiming at Pusan.
Barring direct intervention by Chinese Communists or Russians, it appeared the tide of battle was turning.
"Time for Action" tells of the City Council preparing the following day to adopt, amend, or reject the proposal of the Ovens Committee for the three million dollar auditorium-coliseum complex. It hopes the Council would move expeditiously on the matter as the land selected off Independence Boulevard had only a 90-day option for purchase. The piece looks forward to the adoption of the recommendation and approval of the bond issue by the voters.
"Editorialettes" provides several fillers. The peanut-throwing public in Winnipeg, Manitoba, supplied more than half the required food for zoo animals, anent which it concludes, was not peanuts.
A headline in The News had
read: "No Good Gardener
Looks like you went to the beach for a whole week, Mr. Editor.
Drew Pearson's column is again written by staff members, Tom McNamara and Fred Blumenthal. They tell of mysterious submarines having been spotted off the Panama Canal Zone since the start of the Korean war. The U.S. did not have a single fighter plane to protect the Canal. Recently, two private fliers had landed with engine trouble on successive Sundays at Howard Field, the key Army base protecting the Canal, each then fixing his plane and taking off without anyone noticing.
The Pentagon, they note, had stated that the Canal was a low priority at present, with troops needed elsewhere, and that the primary concern was sabotage, guarded against by a well-trained ground contingent.
The Government Printing Office had for years been eavesdropping on telephone calls of businessmen, pursuant to an order to plug in a dictaphone to one out of every three long-distance incoming calls, initially performed without knowledge of the caller. A new system issued signals to tell the caller that the call was being recorded, legalizing the effort. The transcripts resulting from the calls were used to keep Government employees on their toes but also occasionally had been utilized to check on contractors.
The President was not planning to create a superagency to handle economic controls and materials allocations but rather intended to allow existing agencies to handle the job.
Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson proved by his own statements that he was no expert on military preparedness. The prior April, he had said that the Soviets would not engage in any war with the U.S. for at least ten years. On June 29, 1949, he had said that within a few years, the world might witness an end to the era of atomic secrecy after another nation exploded its first bomb. The prior February, he had said that the U.S. would be ready to respond within an hour of any attack by the Soviets. Ironically, the Korean invasion had begun at 4:00 a.m., the very hour Mr. Johnson had chosen in his hypothetical. On June 23, he had announced that it would not be necessary to call up the reserves in the foreseeable future, nine days before the President had called on the reserves and begun inductions under the draft for the first time in 18 months, in response to the Korean invasion of June 25.
Congressman Dewey Short of Missouri, four years earlier, had stated, after a tour of Korea, that it was vulnerable and that as soon as the American occupation troops withdrew, the Russians would take it over.
During the previous two months, the cost of living had increased by more than it had during the last two years of World War II.
The Bureau of Standards had a whiz-bang computer. It is probably a lot bigger than the one you have and cost a lot more, too.
Stewart Alsop tells of Republican Congressional leaders, led by Senators Taft and Wherry, deciding to stress in the fall campaign an attack on Secretary of State Acheson and leave Secretary of Defense Johnson, a friend of Senator Owen Brewster, unscathed. It appeared to be giving a pass to the person who had been most responsible for the economy program which had led to the unpreparedness in Korea, while placing blame on the person, Secretary Acheson, who had warned consistently of impending problems with the country's defenses. Secretary Johnson had been able to convince Congress that he knew the military situation better than Secretary Acheson and so his opinions prevailed on economy.
Mr. Alsop finds that the choice of Mr. Acheson as the target was primarily because he had no political base, whereas Secretary Johnson was a prominent member of the American Legion and well-connected. Secretary Acheson was also perceived as cold and intellectual, anathema to such "primitives" as Senator Wherry, who had joined Congressman Vito Marcantonio in voting right down the Communist Party line on defense, placing blame on Secretary Acheson for Korea rather than on Stalin. The Secretary had also rubbed many the wrong way for his continuing affinity to his longtime friend, Alger Hiss.
Secretary Acheson's only primary mistake with respect to the Far East had been his decision to release the State Department White Paper on China, accelerating the Nationalist collapse. The National Security Council paper which had written off Korea as indefensible, however, originated within the Defense Department.
Thus, for a combination of motives, he concludes, there would be in the fall deliberate destruction of national unity on foreign policy at a time of great crisis.
Robert C. Ruark tells of National League president Ford Frick having adjudicated a matter against New York Giants second baseman Ed Stanky after the latter repeatedly had engaged in hand-waving while Andy Seminick was batting for the Philadelphia Phillies recently, in a game which the Phillies had won 5 to 4, but only after a melee had erupted. The fight came after umpires had besought Mr. Stanky to cease waving his hands, which he did for awhile, until Mr. Seminick slid into third base, knocking out the Giants third baseman, Hank Thompson. When he then started waving his arms again, the umpires threw him out of the game, despite there being no rule against distracting the batter. The fight then ensued.
Mr. Frick, however, decided to form such a rule and adjudge that Mr. Stanky was properly ejected for bad sportsmanship.
Mr. Ruark takes issue with the encumbrance to this "inventive genius" of Mr. Stanky, as ballplayers generally tended to be a dull lot and slaves to convention. With a little encouragement, Mr. Stanky, he ventures, might have set bear traps to discourage base stealing.
A letter writer from Chapel Hill, brother of Editor Pete McKnight, responds to a letter of August 16 which had taken issue with an August 12 "Editorialette" which had suggested that the billion dollars proposed by Samuel Goldwyn to fight Communist propaganda would be inadequate to counter the harm done by American films to the country's reputation abroad. Mr. McKnight sides with the "Editorialette" and thinks the previous writer must have been funded by Hollywood. He wants full freedom for Hollywood producers and directors. But he also desires full freedom to inquire into the artistic merit and sociological influence of the product.
His experience abroad was that the average foreign citizen, viewing American films, was induced at best to see America as a never-never country of millionaires and at worst a wild west show where cowboys and Indians fought it out on Fifth Avenue, but young love always conquered all. He believes that no amount of money could disabuse foreigners of these notions.
He had limited his movie-going to
selected Italian
What do you think
A letter writer from Pittsboro is upset about the war effort on the home front, finds it hard to discuss, favors immediate imposition of strict controls of wages and prices.
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