The Charlotte News
Monday, September 18, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that American Marines had driven to within three miles of Seoul, less than one mile west of the suburb of Yongdong, with the main striking force hard on its heels. The tank-led Army Seventh Division force moved out of Inchon toward Seoul, 22 miles to the east, preparing to cross the Han River. The enemy troops defending Seoul had no artillery support but some mortars. They were rushing reinforcements into the former South Korean capital. But liberation of Seoul was at hand.
A second Marine column held Kimpo airfield, 15 miles northwest of Seoul, against five North Korean attacks during the night. The airfield was now in operation again for the allies, accommodating C-54 transports.
Bill Ross, reporting from Kimpo airfield, tells of the Marines holding the airfield after a nightlong savage attack by the enemy. The Marines reported that while the airfield was held, it was not yet secure. The previous afternoon, when the airfield was initially taken, the advance looked deceptively easy as they had met only sporadic light resistance, suffering no American casualties. The enemy had waited for the U.N. forces to dig in on the flat, unprotected ground before opening fire. The Marines waited until the enemy came into the open, sometimes until they advanced to within a few feet of their positions, before firing on the exposed banzai charges. Mr. Ross tells of their having been saved from annihilation by the fact that some of the Marines knew how to fight while the enemy appeared to lack the know-how, as well as artillery and mortar "to back his bolt to kick us to kingdom come."
U.N. forces reportedly made general advances in all sectors against light enemy resistance.
Allied planes dropped leaflets saying, "Surrender or die!"
General MacArthur visited the front lines and chatted with officers and enlisted men while posing for pictures and handing out awards.
In Washington, the Army more than doubled its call-up of reserve officers by adding 9,565 captains and lieutenants to the original call for 7,862 company grade officers.
The first use of the new wartime economic controls was undertaken by the Commerce Department to stop easy credit to consumers and aggressive buying of certain materials by business.
The President sent a proposed bill to Congress to establish a separate Civil Defense Administration, to coordinate Federal, state and local government civil defense efforts regarding both pre-attack and post-attack assistance to 140 critical target areas of the country.
The President signed the legislation to permit General Marshall to be appointed Secretary of Defense, creating an exception to the National Security Act of 1947, which forbade the appointment to the post of any person who had served as a commissioned officer on active duty during the prior ten years.
A Senate-House conference committee agreed on terms of an anti-Communist subversion bill, the McCarran bill, which the President had vowed to veto. It was described as being tougher than the separate bills which had emerged from both the House and Senate. It included a provision for internment of subversives during certain national emergencies. It principally required registration of Communists and front organizations and barred Communists from Federal employment and in defense plants.
The Commerce Department loyalty board had made an adverse finding on an employee and he had been suspended from his job as head of the Far East branch of the Department's office of international trade. The employee announced his intent to appeal the ruling, handed down September 8. Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer had asked him to resign or be fired prior to the ruling, on grounds that his employment was detrimental to the Department, aside from the loyalty issue. His loyalty had been first called into question in 1948 and he had been cleared a year earlier, before having his loyalty again contested.
Alfred Dean Slack pleaded guilty in Federal District Court in Greeneville, Tenn., to wartime spying for Russia. He admitted passing secrets regarding the manufacture of the highly explosive RDX, a component used in the atom bomb. The Government recommended a ten-year prison sentence. Mr. Slack was part of the same ring to which recently indicted Ethel and Julius Rosenberg allegedly belonged.
Former Congressman Andrew May, convicted of taking bribes on wartime Government contracts, was released from prison on parole after serving nine and a half months of his eight to 24 month sentence.
Delegates of the 59-member U.N. General Assembly were arriving in New York to begin its scheduled meeting the following afternoon.
On the editorial page, "Beyond the Parallel" hopes that the U.N. would, in the coming week, authorize the U.S. to go beyond the 38th parallel and occupy all of North Korea, as it would be the only practical way to assure peace on the Korean peninsula. Though costly in men and materiel and involving a great amount of continued occupation to eradicate eventually all vestiges of inevitable guerrilla activity, indoctrinated as they were to Communist ideology, it would be worth the effort to reunite the country under a duly elected Government.
"Parcels of the Past" tells of issue having been made in the Senate race in Utah regarding incumbent Senator Elbert Thomas having offered in a magazine article during the war praise of Russia as the ally of the U.S. Drew Pearson had then found out that Senator Thomas's opponent, Wallace Bennett, head of the National Association of Manufacturers, had invited a group of Russians to visit American industrial plants in March, 1949.
The piece suggests that neither episode made either man an admirer of the Russians and that the people should not be misled into believing such "'portions and parcels of the dreadful past'".
"Two Birds at a Time" finds that General MacArthur had killed two birds with one stone by praising the Marines and the Navy for their perfectly coordinated landing on Inchon. The General had been criticized during World War II for not giving the Navy its due credit and by praising the Marines, he also countered the President's recent criticism that they had a propaganda arm equal to that of the Soviets, thus perhaps getting even with the President for his ordering the General to withdraw his statement on Formosa from the V.F.W. as being contrary to Administration and U.N. policy.
"Paging Thesaurus" tells of Senator William Jenner of Indiana having suggested, in a speech on the Senate floor, that General Marshall had betrayed his solemn trust and set the stage for Soviet victory. Senate Majority Leader Scott Lucas had quickly responded by saying that Senator Jenner had made the "most diabolical, reprehensible, unfortunate speech ever made in the Senate or House."
The piece then adds a series of 37 equally negative adjectives to describe the speech.
A piece from the Salisbury Post, titled "Harken, Beloved", tells of a reader having taken the editors to task for a recent excursion into the vernacular. It defends the practice on the ground that newspaper editorials had to direct their observations to a particular audience and sometimes had to have a change of pace. It was necessary on occasion therefore to make the choice whether to seek an audience with a jutting chin or a recessive chin, and use the appropriate language to appeal to the chosen target based on that facial index. When they used "ain't", it was to appeal to that part of the audience who were naturally mistrustful of anyone who did not use "ain't".
"And what we write then is something you ain't intrusted in no how."
We don't get it, Pardner.
Drew Pearson tells again the story of General Marshall having related to the President sometime earlier that a former Oregon Senator killed in battle in Virginia during the Civil War had an overgrown, obscure grave at Leesburg, which needed cleaning. The President notified Senator Wayne Morse, who sought advice from the Library of Congress, which informed that the Senator had not been buried at the location though mortally wounded at the Battle of Ball's Bluff. As the President and Senator Morse subsequently drove to Leesburg, the Senator told the President of the mistake, in response to which the President suggested that they must not hurt the feelings of General Marshall. The President broke the news to General Marshall and after examining the marker more closely and realizing the fact of the error, the General profusely apologized for summoning the two to Leesburg. Both, however, told him that they were glad to have an excuse to leave Washington.
The Joint Chiefs were urging General MacArthur to use guerrilla warfare tactics to stop the South Korean civilian population from cooperating with the North Korean Army in moving supplies by hand from village to village. General MacArthur remained reluctant, however, to implement this tactic.
Henry Grunewald, the long missing witness in the 1947 Washington wiretap case of Howard Hughes and others, was now before the Senate investigating committee and had refused to testify as to how often he had visited the office of Senator Owen Brewster, believed to have instigated the wiretap to coerce Mr. Hughes to merge TWA with Pan Am, whose chairman Juan Trippe was a pal of Senator Brewster. The committee wanted therefore to hold Mr. Grunewald in contempt. He had admitted frequent visits with the Washington police lieutenant who had made the taps.
Stewart Alsop questions whether, if military spending rose to the level, as predicted, of 45 to 50 billion dollars per year, with inevitably another 25 billion over that for domestic and basic necessary spending, the country would be rendered bankrupt. He answers it in the negative because the gross national product had risen during the war by 75 percent to its present level of 280 billion dollars and was expected to rise by 1955 to 350 billion. That would mean that total government spending of about 90 billion dollars, including 20 billion at the state and local levels, would render spending at only a quarter of G.N.P., whereas it had been half of G.N.P. during the war and was at the level of 20 percent prior to the start of the Korean war.
He finds it therefore too bad that the business-as-usual crowd had managed to obscure this fact for so long.
Robert C. Ruark discusses whether television would put the movies out of business. He finds that, to the contrary, the pressure on movies would be to present better than existing fare, that fewer potboilers would be the result. Radio and television would coexist alongside with the stage and movies. Writing would also continue to thrive, as the basis for all of those media was writing.
A letter writer from Lancaster, S.C., finds the recent statement of principles of the Klan found by police in the home of Thomas Hamilton, Grand Wizard of the Carolinas, to be essential reading for every conscientious citizen, to discover the level of hatred embraced by the group. He finds their claims of being "100 percent Americans" and God-fearing Christians to be completely undermined by their actions and stated beliefs, antithetical to the foundations of American life and Christianity.
A letter writer from Asheville moves to restore the "Dixie Booze Belt" back to the Dixie Bible Belt.
A letter writer from Atlanta praises the September 14 editorial, "The Big Truth", finding that the nation had taken too much for granted after the war, resulting in Korea.
Framed Edition
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