The Charlotte News
Thursday, September 7, 1950
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that allied troops had repulsed two fresh North Korean attacks north of Taegu, as the U.N. forces were poised for a major attack on the city. One attempt was stopped by the U.S. First Cavalry seven miles north, along the Kumhwa "Bowling Alley". The other was stopped east of Yongchon, 20 miles east of Taegu. An attempted approach to Pusan in the southeast sector was also repulsed. Advances by American troops took place in the central sector west of Yongsan, 32 miles south of Taegu. The challenge of the previous two days was eased momentarily by the actions, with the allies holding firm on all fronts. Enemy casualties were estimated to have been 20,000 killed and wounded during the previous week in ground fighting, out of 150,000 engaged in battle.
Most of the 84 enemy tanks placed into battle the previous day had been destroyed. Allied aircraft had accounted for destruction of 19 tanks and damage to 22 others, in a record 625 sorties, with seventeen additional tanks knocked out the previous day.
B-26 light bombers hit a North Korean convoy of more than a hundred vehicles after its position was marked by flares dropped along a road north of Andong on the northeastern front.
While Pohang remained in Communist hands, the airfield six miles away was under American control.
A captured North Korean lieutenant had related vital information regarding the master plan of the enemy, consisting of taking Taegu in a surprise attack, the approach to which had been changed because of determined American resistance in the "Bowling Alley" and for a report concerning Yongchon being only lightly defended. The plan included steady pressure against Taegu, while a concentrated effort was brought to bear on the southwestern front. The plan had crumbled because of rapid recovery by the U.S. forces on the latter front and quick reaction to the Yongchon threat. The lieutenant had also disclosed that supply lines remained open despite allied hammering based on a bucket brigade, whereby villagers were being held at gunpoint to move equipment from one village to the next, with packages of ammunition being kept light enough to carry by hand.
The Navy acknowledged that two of its fighters had shot down the Russian bomber off the west coast of Korea on Monday, the first official confirmation of the episode which had drawn the ire of Russia. The Russian plane had attempted to attack a U.N. naval force by attacking a U.N. fighter patrol protecting it and was then shot down. Russia, in a note to the U.S. the previous day, had contended that the bomber was unarmed and made no such approach.
At the U.N., Russian chief delegate Jakob Malik again tried unsuccessfully to exclude South Korean Ambassador John Chang from U.N. debate on the resolution proposed by Russia to end the allied bombing attacks on North Korea, alleged to include targets without military justification as schools and hospitals. Mr. Malik compared the U.S. tactics to those of Hitler. He quoted a dispatch by correspondent Hal Boyle describing a flight over a bombed city, comparing it to the damage at Nagasaki after the second atom bomb had devastated that city on August 9, 1945. President of the Security Council for the month, Sir Gladwyn Jebb, turned aside the Malik challenge as being out of order, as the Council had already seated Ambassador Chang. The previous day, Russia had exercised its unilateral veto on the Security Council to block a U.S.-sponsored resolution to ban aid to North Korea.
The first U.S. tanks, thirteen Shermans, arrived in Belgium as part of the rearmament program of Western Europe under NATO.
Secretary of Interior Oscar Chapman denied any ties, past or present, to Communist organizations, as charged the previous day by Senator Andrew Schoeppel of Kansas. In testimony to the Senate Interior Committee, he said that the Senator's remarks were "another instance of the use of smear technique which has become the stock-in-trade of little men in high places." The President expressed full confidence in Mr. Chapman.
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was reported to have told the Senate Appropriations Committee in executive session that his agents were ready to arrest 12,000 dangerous Communists if war should occur with Russia. He wanted his agents to be able regularly to observe these individuals. He was testifying in favor of the President's recommended six million dollar increase in the FBI budget for additional agents and support employees. According to unnamed Senators, the 12,000 persons had been listed as "dangerous", out of the 50,000 Communists in the country.
In Paris, the French police rounded up 208 foreign Communists, including some Russians, to be expelled from the country within two days, aimed at crippling the fifth column in France.
The President visited the Marine Corps League meeting in Washington and said that he hoped that there would never be another misunderstanding with the Marines, following his released letter to Congressman Gordon McDonough of California in response to the latter's suggestion of inclusion of the Marine Corps commandant as part of the Joint Chiefs, in which the President had said that the Navy adequately represented the Marines on the Joint Chiefs and that the Marines, in any event, had a propaganda arm equal to that of Stalin. The President apologized for this latter remark and was given a standing ovation. The President also said that there had been unfounded attacks on men in public service, apparently because of the approaching midterm elections, attacks in fact, he said, aimed at the President.
The President said at a press conference that he would address the nation on Saturday night regarding domestic economic controls associated with the war effort. Stuart Symington, head of the National Security Resources Board, charged with coordinating mobilization, said that a seven-point economic controls program would be put into effect shortly after the President signed the passed mobilization bill. The President also said that he would not sign the McCarran Communist control bill, the old Mundt-Nixon bill, if it passed Congress, requiring registration of Communists and front organizations. He also stated that he expected U.N. forces during the week to recapture ground lost in the previous few days. When asked about a statement by Senator Taft that the Administration lacked the brains to carry on in the current crisis, the President responded that he was not running for office as was Mr. Taft in November.
In Boston, a woman, despondent because her husband could not find work, tossed her two sons, ages seven and two, from a fifth floor window and then jumped after them. Only the younger of the two sons had survived, seriously injured.
Bermuda was placed on alert for an approaching storm with 150 mph winds, moving through the Atlantic at about six miles per hour, set to approach Bermuda by nightfall, as northeast Florida and southeast Georgia felt the last gasps of the Gulf hurricane.
And if you are in Florida tonight, September 8, 2017, thinking you will "ride out" Hurricane Irma, why don't you instead make it easy on yourself, climb to the fifth floor of a building and jump. It will be about the same thing. Hit the road, before it is too late. Winds of 150 mph plus storm surges of ten feet are nothing to "brave" or "ride out". They may find you blown to Georgia by both wind and water on Monday. Better to leave voluntarily than ride with Dorothy to Oz.
On the editorial page, "On the Agenda for the Future" finds the County Commissioners' decision not to allocate $6,500 to move the charity health clinics from the County Health Department to two private hospitals able to take care of the services, to be placing traditional Scotch parsimony above sound decision-making, as the move had been recommended by the City Health Officer for its delivering a better grade of service to the patients and not being a traditional public function in the first instance.
"Radio Should Strike Back" agrees with the column of radio critic John Crosby on the page, anent Jean Muir's firing by General Foods from its sponsored radio program, "The Aldrich Family", as the column had commented the prior week, for it being a violation of her rights to earn a living and enabling control of radio programming by the pamphlet "Red Channels", which had listed her name as one of 15 persons in the dramatic arts who allegedly were or had been members of Communist-front organizations.
It warns that if such a pamphlet were started regarding the newspaper business, a couple of hard-boiled city editors would assign a crew of ace reporters to investigate it and its publishers and would then print their findings without fear of retaliation. Radio had its own investigators for such "intellectual Ku Klux Klanners" and, it recommends, ought use them.
"The Other Side of Formosa" tells of being inclined to accept General MacArthur's recently withdrawn statement to the VFW insofar as he stated the importance of Formosa to preservation of the Far East from Communist domination; but also admits being without the ability adequately to weigh Formosa's value against the liabilities inherent in trying to hold it.
To keep Formosa from Communist
Chinese domination would deny to the people of Formosa any
opportunity freely
General MacArthur had been out of the country since 1936 and stationed the whole time in the Far East, leading to an obsession with the region and thus perhaps causing him to be purblind to the broader world picture. During the war, he had wanted President Roosevelt to stress the Pacific war to the exclusion of the European theater, leaving the latter until after victory over Japan, which, when viewed in retrospect, would have been a disastrous mistake.
The overriding danger of occupation of Formosa would be a war with Communist China. If the U.S. had to engage in war with the Communists, it would be against Russia and confined to Europe. U.S. policy would naturally seek avoidance of another two-front campaign.
Finally, the piece questions the thesis of General MacArthur that Formosa was the linchpin to the security of Japan, the Philippines, Indo-China, and the entire region of Southeast Asia. Japan's use of Formosa during the war to launch air attacks had come at a time when the U.S. was relatively weak militarily, a status which had changed. Moreover, at no time had American forces found it necessary during the war to land on Formosa to defeat Japan.
It concludes that it was unable to
make a clear choice between the Administration's policy of
neutralization of Formosa only for the duration of the Korean crisis and permanently defending it unilaterally, as favored by
General MacArthur, but considers the matter not to be black and
white, rather a "collection of grays
Bill Sharpe, in his weekly "Turpentine Drippings", snippets from newspapers around the state, tells of the Zebulon Record recounting of a Zebulon boy who entered the Marine recruiting office in Raleigh and, after inquiring whether he was in the office of the Fighting Marines or Reserves, being told that he was in the office of the Fighting Marines, at which point he excused himself for being in the wrong place.
The same piece then recounts a story of two drunks in a bar, one inquiring of the other what he had in his closed hand, the first instructed then to guess, having thereafter failed at June bug and blue bird, wondered whether it might be an elephant, to which the closed-fisted drunk inquired, "What color?"
The Sanford Herald reports of a man seeking a money order from a Raleigh bank and being asked to whom it was to be made out, stuttering in response, "The Wha-cha-owe-me," apparently referring to the bank founded and headquartered in Winston-Salem.
We always have heard strangers, unfamiliar with its pronunciation, try it as "Watch-ova-ye", providing strange looks then when we corrected, "Walk-ova-ye".
W. G. Hazel of the Pee Dee Advocate wonders why beach-goers apparently began stripping for entry to the surf a hundred miles from shore, leaving various bits of clothing lining the sides of the roads along the way. He wonders whether women were afraid that people would not know they were beach-bound unless they made the trip semi-nude or were simply so anxious to get to the surf that they began stripping early. He reports that, regardless of motive, they came through town in various stages of nudity and were in many cases offensive to decently attired persons.
Beatrice Cobb of the Morganton News-Herald agrees, finds that women's beach wear should be confined to the beach, as the shortcomings of many women were revealed when entering stores and other public places in bathing suits, making fatter ones seem fatter and thinner ones, thinner.
And so, so, so on.
Drew Pearson tells of the President's personal physician, Brig. General Wallace Graham, having undertaken analysis of the President from a psychological perspective, regarding his concerns and strains in office. He was maintaining a verbatim record of the conversations and Mr. Pearson predicts that it would one day be among the most important reading in history.
General Omar Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was so upset regarding Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson's attempts to dictate military strategy that he wanted to leave his post.
Jakob Malik, chief Russian U.N. delegate, was planning to stay on at the U.N. despite his month-long term as president of the Security Council having expired, though he had returned after a six month boycott only to serve in the position on August 1.
The Army would get the bulk of the three million men the President wanted and would then begin a production-line training program of the draftees. The Army would seek to be more democratic, however, than during World War II, treating trainees as individuals rather than cattle, using more reason and less force. He describes the training regimen.
Secretary of Defense Johnson used his Assistant Secretary Paul Griffith, a staunch Republican, to handle "political matters".
Chief U.S. delegate to the U.N., Warren Austin, had warned the President that the majority of the Security Council were opposed to the U.N. forces going beyond the 38th parallel in Korea, as well as further American intervention in China, opposing General MacArthur's support of Chiang Kai-Shek on Formosa, favored only by the Philippines. Virtually every other Pacific nation was busy recognizing Communist China. As a result, Secretary of State Acheson would review American Far Eastern policy with British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin in about one week.
Marquis Childs discusses the Senate primary in New Hampshire between Republican incumbent Charles Tobey and his principal challenger, J. Wesley Powell, a World War II veteran who had been an administrative assistant to the state's other Senator, Styles Bridges. Aligned against Senator Tobey were such interests as John L. Lewis of the UMW, the Nationalist China lobby, Ed Pauley, rich oilman and friend of the President, whose nomination for Undersecretary of the Navy had been blocked in part by Senator Tobey in 1946, and various other interests which had used the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to bail out bankrupt private corporations which in turn rewarded RFC officials with lucrative employment.
Senator Bridges also was an opponent, though not admitting it publicly. A leading ally of Senator Bridges was William Loeb, the publisher of the Manchester Morning Union and head of the American China Policy Association, defending Nationalist China, who had sought in his newspaper to discredit Senator Tobey at every opportunity.
While New Hampshire voters had a tradition of independence, Senator Tobey's backers were worried, as many voters were preoccupied with other affairs and because of the trend appearing to work against those in office.
John Crosby, radio critic, writes of General Foods having fired Jean Muir from "The Aldrich Family" as a "controversial personality", just days after a publicity release praising her work on the program. A month earlier, her name had appeared in a pamphlet, "Red Channels", published by the anti-Communist "Counterattack", which had named Ms. Muir and 14 other actors, writers, and directors as affiliated in the past or present with Communist-front organizations.
The pamphlet was published by two former FBI agents who based their findings on hearsay, press clippings, old letterheads, unsubstantiated allegations made in Congressional hearings, and other such forums.
Mr. Crosby finds that while some of the names listed were known Communists, others were vehement anti-Communists, easily discoverable as such had the former agents bothered to check.
He wonders why General Foods had allowed itself suddenly to be governed by such an unreliable account and was glad to see that the ACLU was investigating "Counterattack" to find out its motivations. He wants to know how much money its editors were making by exploitation of public hatred of Communism and the source of the funding for the publication. If "Red Channels" was to be the ultimate arbiter of what appeared on radio and television, then the people had a right to know who was behind the publication.
He concludes that the decision to fire Ms. Muir was not only an attack on her right to earn a living but also "pretty childish".
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