The Charlotte News
Thursday, September 28, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Lt. General Walton Walker, ground commander in South Korea, said that the North Korean invading army as a whole was defeated, with dwindling pockets of scattered resistance and men in headlong retreat being its only remnants. Seoul was now completely controlled by U.S. forces, as Marines and infantry, according to correspondent Don Whitehead, wandered relaxed about the still smoldering capital. Col. Lewis "Chesty" Puller told Mr. Whitehead that final victory had come at 6:00 p.m. Wednesday when the last of the enemy withdrew north and east from the city.
North Korean radio out of Pyongyang continued to insist that the fight by North Korean forces for Seoul persisted house to house.
Meanwhile, forces to the south of Seoul recaptured three more cities, Taejon, Namwon, and Hadong. The 24th Division armor entered Taejon after a stiff fight, but encountered little resistance inside the city. Two wounded U.S. soldiers left for dead reported that more than 40 of their fellow American prisoners had been executed by fleeing enemy troops at West Taejon police station during the previous three days.
The North Korean army was in such disarray that it no longer existed as an organized force. General Walker said that more than three-fourths of the former 150,000-man enemy force either had been or would soon be wiped out. He cautioned, however, that hard fighting still might lie ahead to root out the remaining pockets of resistance before they would retreat along mountain paths back over the 38th parallel.
General MacArthur was reported to have authority to chase back over the parallel those who escaped the giant trap produced by the Inchon landings of September 15. General Walker said that he expected to receive his instructions soon on that point.
Correspondent Jack MacBeth, with the U.S. First Cavalry Division, reports that the U.S. Counter-Intelligence Corps had received reports which gave a glimmer of hope that Maj. General William Dean, missing since July 20, remained alive, as a prisoner of the North Koreans. Three escaped South Korean prisoners had reported hearing rumors that General Dean was being moved the previous Saturday from Chongju to Seoul. The report was true as General Dean would survive the war, remaining in captivity until the armistice.
Captured North Korean prisoners reported that the fleeing enemy burned 18 Americans and killed 787 South Korean soldiers and civilians as they withdrew from Chongju. Of the dead South Koreans, 187 had been killed when the stockade was dynamited and 600 were shot.
Correspondent Stan Swinton, with the 25th Division, reports of 91 American prisoners being liberated by two columns of the Division in deep South Korea, 80 at Namwon and 11 at Hadong. All had been abandoned by retreating North Koreans. The allied advance had been so fast that no one yet knew how many enemy vehicles and arms had been captured. In one ordnance dump, twenty new Russian trucks and nine Russian jeeps were abandoned. Behind the advance, South Korean peasants were back in the fields harvesting rice.
The Defense Department released a new American casualty list, showing 300 names, of whom 51 were listed as dead, 197 wounded, 41 missing, and eleven injured in battle zone accidents.
The President named former Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett, who had served between 1947 and 1949 under Secretary of State Marshall, to be the new Deputy Secretary of Defense, succeeding Steve Early, who had resigned in advance of the firing of Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, replaced by General Marshall.
Robert Hanes of Winston-Salem, ERP administrator for West Germany, had asked to be relieved of his duties, held since the prior September after five months in the same post with respect to Belgium and Luxembourg.
At the U.N., American sources outlined a six-point plan for peace for Korea, calling for a unified country to be put back on its feet by combined U.N. resources. The sources said that the U.S. had no desire for bases or special privileges in Korea and desired admission of a free, independent Korea to the U.N. The plan also favored establishment of a strong U.N. commission with authority to handle postwar problems in the country.
The Communist Chinese, through a radio message by Foreign Minister Chou En-Lai, charged that a U.S. destroyer had hurled shells across the stern of one of its merchant ships in Chinese waters on September 21 off the Shantung Peninsula, then boarded the vessel and after search, sailed away. Chou demanded a hearing on the matter before the U.N. General Assembly.
House Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Vinson urged revision of the Selective Service Act to correct inequalities produced by the call-up of National Guardsmen and reserve forces while men without service but who had dependents remained out of the draft.
In Utica, N.Y., a 36-year old gas station attendant with nine children was drafted into active Army duty after having served in the Marines during the war and the Army after the war through 1948.
Representative Clarence Cannon of Missouri was preparing a new Communist control measure to meet the objections raised by the President in his veto message of the existing bill, just passed over his veto. Among other things, the replacement bill would do away with the unconstitutional registration requirement—in 1965 held by the Supreme Court to be unconstitutional because the registration forms could be used as an evidentiary basis for a criminal prosecution, thus violating the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. Congressman Cannon said that the law passed by the Congress would be utterly ineffective and would obstruct more than contribute to defense of the nation.
Senator Irving Ives of New York urged the President to set up price control machinery forthwith to curb inflation.
The Federal Reserve Board issued a report which indicated that the standard of living in the country would soon begin to decline.
In Johnstown, N.Y., one of the country's leading women industrialists, Mrs. Charles B. Knox, died at age 92. She had headed the Knox Gelatin Co. for more than 40 years after taking over from her deceased husband who had founded the company in 1890.
On the editorial page, "A Vote for Our Children" urges voting for the local 5.3 million dollar educational bond issue to provide for more classrooms in an era of a rapidly expanding group of school-age children.
"For Human Welfare" tells of the Ford Foundation, created in 1936 but just now getting underway, following a two-year study to set forth its goals of establishing peace, reducing world tensions, developing international understanding, strengthening the U.N., and expanding U.S. participation in world affairs. To achieve these lofty goals, it ventures, the Foundation would need to have idealistic and non-political leadership.
"Dr. J. W. MacConnell" tells of the Davidson College physician who had left an imprint on the College and the community before recently passing away.
"Paul Younts' New Assignment" tells of the National Guard Colonel from Charlotte having been selected to command a corps of artillery to be composed of carefully picked officers and enlisted men from the area. After the new unit would receive Federal recognition in a few weeks, Col. Younts would be promoted to Brigadier General. It finds that his experience would enable him to lead the unit effectively.
A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "Autumn Comes to Cape Cod", tells of the signs of fall on Cape Cod, including the ripened late blackberries and grapes, just right for preserving.
What about the cranberries?
Bill Sharpe, in his "Turpentine Drippings", snippets from newspapers around the state, mercifully absent for three weeks, provides one from the Morganton News-Herald, reminding that in the "good old days" when things were supposedly simpler, things were also quite a bit harder, such as the unpleasant and smelly task of having to fill the old oil lamps and keep the wicks trimmed every day.
The Camden Chronicle relates of a prisoner in court accused on his eighth offense, this time for negligent manslaughter, and the judge inquiring of whether he had an attorney, to which the man replied that the offense was so serious on this occasion that he had decided to forgo one and tell the truth.
The Laurinburg Exchange tells of a shop which maintained a book of reasons why customers did not make purchases, and one therein having stated that a woman had browsed, looking only at black dresses, but did not buy because her husband was not yet dead.
John Wesley Clay of the Winston-Salem Journal tells of a woman who lived on the corner of Toothache Street and Misery Avenue, making it hard for her to be sweet, suggests that she should have moved out of the neighborhood.
Those streets exist in Winston-Salem, right off Lockjaw Avenue, near Unaware Boulevard—where the ambulances often cross.
The Rockingham Post Dispatch informs of the August 21 issue of Life listing the names of "honest creeks", Sugar, Crazy, Dirty, and Crooked, to which it adds two Richmond County creeks, Naked and Drowning.
And so, so, so forth, on so.
Drew Pearson tells of the President, at the last Cabinet meeting attended by Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson before his firing, having instructed all of the Cabinet officers to refrain from wiretapping. J. Edgar Hoover, he said, had informed him that he was not the only person in Washington who was engaging in wiretaps. The President said that he did not think much of the practice as it violated civil liberties.
Mr. Pearson notes that Senator Owen Brewster had authorized the taps of Howard Hughes and others in 1947 and that Senator Brewster was a good friend of former Secretary Johnson.
Illinois Senator Paul Douglas had referred to Harold Stassen as reminding of a "pitcher of ginger ale which has been left standing for a day", while discussing the possibility of his being named Secretary of the Navy or some other big job.
Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska, the GOP Senate Whip, was upset about other Republicans, especially Senator Taft, maneuvering to have him take the blame for them, as when Senator Taft had sought that he find a place for Albion Beverage, who was then placed on the payroll of the Small Business Committee. But then Mr. Beverage, it turned out, had ghost-written the speech for Senator William Jenner attacking General Marshall as a "living lie" for his views on the Far East, during his confirmation hearings for Secretary of Defense.
Republican Congressman Charles Halleck, the Majority leader in the prior Congress, was worried about his Democratic opponent, a 52-year old farmer, in the November election, as Mr. Halleck had become known in his district as "two-Cadillac Charlie". He had even sold one of his Cadillacs, made sure that that the other one always remained in Washington, and drove a standard sedan when in Indiana. He had come to Congress as a man of modest means.
While agreeing with Governor Dewey's point that Russia used slave labor, Secretary of State Acheson believed the Governor should not have made the statement at a dinner at which the Russian U.N. delegates, including Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky, were present.
Russian uranium production in East Germany and Czechoslovakia had fallen off precipitously, after they had worn out their drilling equipment, were seeking replacements in Switzerland. U.S. Ambassador John Carter Vincent had warned the Swiss, for their own sake, not to sell the equipment to the Russians.
James Marlow again, as the previous day, looks at the anti-subversion bill, this time explaining the provision under its Title II for internment of Communists who, during a declared war, an invasion of the country, or an armed uprising in support of a foreign enemy which led to declaration of an emergency by the President, were reasonably probable to participate in or conspire to cause sabotage or espionage. The person interned could only be held under a civil commitment and had to be brought promptly before a preliminary hearing officer who would make the initial determination of probable cause as to whether the person met the criteria, giving the person due process rights to have an attorney present, to confront and cross-examine witnesses and to call witnesses and present evidence in their own behalf. The Government could, however, present hearsay information to protect informants and confidential information involving national security. The President would appoint a Detention Review Board to which anyone so held could appeal on a hearing de novo. If the detention was affirmed by the Board, then the detainee could appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals. The right to seek habeas corpus release from the detention also existed at any time in the process. The detention would exist so long as the emergency was declared or until the Attorney General, the Review Board, or the courts determined that the commitment should end.
As indicated, this provision of the Act was repealed by Congress in 1971, after the other two primary provisions, the registration requirement and the ban on Federal employment of Communists, had been struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 1965 and 1967, respectively.
Robert C. Ruark finds that former New York City Mayor William O'Dwyer, in having accepted the Ambassadorship to Mexico, had conveniently absented himself from the investigation by the Kefauver Committee into police corruption in New York with regard to the gambling interests. One witness had stated that he had spread a million dollars around in bribes in order to continue his gambling operation. Mr. O'Dwyer, a former police officer, should have known what was going on in his city. The former Mayor had called the investigation of the police a "witch-hunt".
Mr. Ruark stops short of accusing him of complicity. He would, however, like to be able to ask him pointed questions about police graft in the city and to what extent he knew of it and what, if any, steps he had undertaken to correct it. He concludes that Mr. O'Dwyer had left office with a large cloud hanging over it.
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