The Charlotte News
Friday, January 19, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that a U.N. force had retaken abandoned Wonju without resistance on the western front in Korea. Meanwhile, two U.N. regiments smashed a large enemy force seven miles southeast of Yongwol on the eastern front and sent the enemy on the run, after air attacks killed about 700 enemy troops and ground forces, another 300. The enemy attack appeared to be preliminary to a concentrated attack by massed enemy troops in the center of the peninsula and in the eastern sector. Elsewhere along the front, Communist patrols tried to close gaps between their forces and the U.N. forces after two weeks of enemy inaction, with troop movements toward Yongwol, Wonju, and Yoju, towns along the roads leading to Taegu, pivot point of the old Pusan perimeter established early in the war in July and August until the Inchon landings of September 15. The heaviest enemy concentrations, however, remained in the western sector, where about 90,000 Chinese troops were present.
On the east central front, the bodies of ten American soldiers, nine of whom had been murdered by the enemy shooting them in the head after being taken prisoner, were discovered by a U.N. patrol this date. The tenth soldier had apparently died of battle wounds.
The House was considering a bipartisan resolution introduced by both Majority Leader John McCormack and Minority Leader Joe Martin, both of Massachusetts, condemning Communist China as an aggressor in Korea.
At the U.N., the prospects of success of the resolution to condemn the Chinese was considered unlikely of passage because of a split in the non-Communist bloc of nations, with twelve Asian and Arab nations, including Indonesia and India, opposing it for fear that it would only antagonize the conflict and prevent a chance for further attempts at resolution by ceasefire after China had earlier in the week rejected the ceasefire resolution passed by the General Assembly's political committee on January 12 by a vote of 50 to 7.
At March Air Force Base in California, Maj. General Rosie O'Donnell, who had directed the first six months of the U.N. Far Eastern Air Force bombing in Korea, stated that he believed the U.N. should have authorized dropping of an atomic bomb on China as soon as its forces crossed the Yalu River in November, but that there were also plenty of targets available for conventional bombing. He said that he still believed in the U.N. but that it was not an effective command headquarters from which to operate a war and that the allies were being hamstrung by Marquis of Queensbury rules. Chief of staff of the Air Force, General Hoyt Vandenberg, clarified that General O'Donnell spoke only for himself and not the Air Force or the Government.
Admiral Forrest Sherman, chief of staff of the Navy, told the Senate Preparedness subcommittee, under questioning by chairman of the subcommittee, Senator Lyndon Johnson, that unless international conditions improved, the armed forces would likely need more than the present target for the end of the year of 3.5 million men. He supported the Administration's proposal to lower the draft age from 19 to 18 and to institute universal military training with draft induction extended from 21 to 27 months. He said that the Navy would depend primarily on four and six-year enlistments to build up its forces, as 27 months was too short of a period to build a civilian into a good sailor.
It takes time to learn them knots, don't it?
The Defense Department asked Congress to grant combat bonus pay of $50 monthly for enlisted men and $100 for officers for service in Korea for at least six days, retroactive to June 27, the start of U.S. commitment to the war. Officers would receive a larger bonus than enlisted men under the proposal, according to a Defense Department official, to attract more experienced enlisted men into acceptance of combat promotions to commissioned officers, as there was a much higher casualty rate among commissioned lieutenants than among master sergeants, with little pay differential. The differential promised to be controversial in the Congress.
Economic Stabilization administrator Alan Valentine resigned and was replaced by Eric Johnston, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, which had given him a leave of absence for nine months to serve in the Government post. Mr. Valentine, who had been in the position for only three weeks, left over an honest difference of opinion with the Administration regarding the precise timing and methods of introduction of overall wage and price controls, Mr. Valentine contending that ESA was not adequately staffed to put in force an overall freeze at the present, as being pressed by Mobilization director Charles E. Wilson.
In Dade City, Fla., more than a hundred persons were overcome by smoke and fumes after an explosion of a tank containing sterilizer powder at the Pasco Packing Co., labeled the largest citrus packing plant in the world. The extent of the injuries was not yet known.
In Battle Creek, Mich., a 14-year old boy, who had run away from his sixth grade classroom in West Virginia a month short of graduation, had been located in the Army's Percy Jones Hospital as a victim of frostbite while serving as a soldier in Korea. He said that he had wanted to join the Army since he was eight and had tried three times before being accepted, lying about his age to join the prior June 9. He was big for his age, said that he was as big as an 18-year old and that since folks said 18-year olds were fit for combat, he thought the Army ought not discharge him for his age. All of his toes and fingers had been frostbitten but had cleared up with the exception of his big toe, which doctors said would clear up soon.
Unless someone pulled on it hard.
In Washington, Piedmont Natural Gas Co. of Spartanburg, S.C., had been awarded the authority by the Federal Power Commission to deliver gas service to eight North Carolina cities, including Charlotte, Winston-Salem, and Greensboro, presently being serviced by Duke Power. Piedmont planned a 75-mile pipeline through the two Carolinas from Spartanburg to connect with the Transcontinental pipeline which ran from Texas to New York.
In Hollywood, cowboy actor Jack Holt
Also in Hollywood, actor Lionel Barrymore had a cold and had to stay in bed for a week to ten days, forcing him to forgo a movie role. He would be replaced in the role by Lewis Stone.
On the editorial page, "'Sell-Out' on the City Street Fund" tells of its disappointment in the compromise plan worked out by the League of Municipalities with the State Highway Commission and Governor Kerr Scott to obtain more State money for city streets, whereby an increase of five dollars in State license plate fees and a one-half cent gas tax would be imposed to provide a new municipal street fund of nine million dollars.
It provides the history of the relative responsibilities in constructing and improving roads between the State and municipalities. The Commission had found, in reviewing that history, that the State owed the same responsibility to the cities and towns as it did to rural areas in maintaining the roads. The urban dweller contributed a major portion of the highway fund revenue but got little in return.
The piece views it as an inequity which should not be remedied by new revenue obtained from increased fees and taxes, as favored by the Commission and the Governor, but rather by diversion of existing funds to city streets. The League, it concludes, bowed to political expediency in making the compromise and deserved censure from urban residents for doing so.
"Archie Caleb Lineberger" pays tribute to Mr. Lineberger of Belmont, the textile industrialist who had died suddenly the previous day at age 50 after being hospitalized for three days. He had followed in the footsteps of both his grandfather, who bought the old Pinhook Mill in Gaston County in 1935, and his father, A. C., Sr., who built the Imperial Mill, the first mill constructed in the South to make combed yarn.
"Complaint of the Reservists" tells of Colonel Harry S. Keck relating to The News of his complaints of treatment of the Airborne Infantry reserves. He said that one employer placed pressure on an employee to leave the reserves, that an employee had to sign a statement saying he was not a reserve in order to get a new job, that several men in line for promotion had been bypassed because of being in the reserves, that job applicants were asked about their reserve status, and that some firms required reservists to use vacation time for the mandatory 15-day reserve training period. The piece hopes that such practices were not widespread but finds them, if occurring in any degree, to be reprehensible in time of crisis.
H. C. Gaddy, principal of Bain School in Charlotte, elaborates on a letter to the editor he had written on January 9, illuminating how the public schools were doing in undertaking the most ambitious program of education in history, the education of all children and each child as a whole child.
The teacher, 90 percent of whom were female, did the best she could with each individual student among 35 in the average classroom. Yet, 16 percent of those entering the first grade would drop out before the fifth grade, 44 percent before high school, and only 32 percent would graduate, with a mere 12 percent entering college and four percent graduating college.
Mr. Gaddy had spent the better part of a year talking to young drop-out students who were in the Civilian Conservation Corps and National Youth Administration programs during the 1930's to try to find out what lay behind these low statistics. The main reasons he found for dropping out were that the students had not liked their teachers or the school generally, could not go to school regularly, had to get a job to help out at home, got behind and dropped out, did not make the grade or had a dispute with the school's principal. Many of the boys in the CCC did not have respect for themselves or anything else when they first arrived in the program, but some learned respect by being forced to work and remain disciplined.
Mr. Gaddy believed that community delinquency was as responsible as either juvenile or parental delinquency in bringing about such drop-outs.
He encourages parents to visit their children's school and get to know the teachers and principal. Indifference by the public to the schools, he asserts, was to blame for schools not doing their job. He offers for illustrative purposes an example of a school where no student from a certain family had been subject to correction by any teacher, and, upon investigation, it was found that the parents had instructed their children not to take any disciplinary instruction from the teachers and if any teacher sought to punish them, to come home immediately. He concludes that the schools could only be as good as the parents of the children demanded, were the schools to mold children to be good citizens for the remainder of their lives.
Drew Pearson discusses the effects of informal lobbying at dinner parties by large corporations while small businesses, according to a report by Senator John Sparkman of the Small Business Committee, were having trouble getting war contracts. He provides the example of a dinner party thrown by Victor Emanuel, a power behind the Avco Manufacturing Corp. and its subsidiaries, Standard Gas & Electric, Crosley Broadcasting and Republic Steel, which was attended by Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana and National Security Resources Board chairman Stuart Symington. Senator Capehart's son, Tom, had a company in Indianapolis, of which Mr. Emanuel became aware and then began writing letters to officers of Crosley, recommending that they contact the younger Mr. Capehart and find out about his company to determine whether it could be a supplier for Crosley. Mr. Pearson provides several of the verbatim letters, including one from Mr. Emanuel to Senator Capehart, thanking him for the dinner and indicating that he was interested in his son's business. A Crosley officer then urged all buyers for Crosley to be alert to Mr. Capehart's company to determine whether it could supply items, provided it would be competitive from every standpoint.
Mr. Pearson points out that most small businesses spent days in Government bureaus or paying fees to five percenters to obtain Government contracts for orders or subcontracting orders from the big corporations, as Mr. Emanuel's large companies were making parts for the B-36.
He commends Senator Styles Bridges for stepping aside for his New Hampshire colleague, Senator Charles Tobey, so that the latter, despite his liberal foreign policy stance, could become the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, despite Senator Bridges having seniority and Senator Tobey being his political enemy.
The Canadian Army had developed a shortwave radio which would dramatically improve field communications in battle, soon to become standard equipment of the NATO forces.
Marquis Childs tells of Secretary of State Acheson being alienated from some of the most knowledgeable technical advisers within the State Department after he had rejected two of their views on major points of foreign policy. One was regarding Germany, on which Secretary Acheson favored rearmament within the context of the West European army under NATO, against advice that it could not be achieved in the West German parliament given that the political opinion was divided on the point, one part fearing rearmament would provoke a third world war and another wanting Germany free to rebuild on its own, as favored by Ruhr industrialists who had helped build up Hitler's military machine.
The other point concerned Communist China, regarding which Mr. Acheson advocated that the U.N. declare it an aggressor in Korea while some of his advisers believed that such a declaration would split the non-Communist bloc wide open and could lead to war with China and its vast manpower.
In Congress, many believed that if the U.N. could not label China an aggressor, it would signal the demise of the U.N. as being impotent. Mr. Acheson's critics called the ceasefire proposal, only reluctantly supported by the U.S. to placate the Middle Eastern and Far Eastern delegations, appeasement. Public and Congressional reaction was also a major factor in the advisers' contrary view on Germany as well.
Mr. Childs thus questions whether the Secretary of State should be the prisoner of Congress and public opinion in developing foreign policy. Mr. Acheson resented the pressure and had denounced in private the American press as irresponsible for encouraging it. He concludes that the dichotomy in views explained in part the dualism in foreign policy.
Robert C. Ruark finds the "gin-soaked" "lost generation" of the Teens and Twenties to have had it easy, compared to the young generation of the present, born in World War I, children during the depression, and confronted by two major wars, inflation and the atom and hydrogen bombs, all within a few years. The goal once was wealth, but now, no one could achieve it for the high taxes. A man he knew, just made vice-president of a large company, was heading back into uniform as a captain in the infantry. People who loved children were not having any for the doubts of their future. All the wonders of the modern television age were being subordinated to the pursuit of survival.
Yet, the present generation did not moan so loud as he recalled the "lost generation" doing.
"Toil, moil and trouble. I do believe we have more dignity, more courage, and less of what the prizefight people used to call ki-yi. That means dog, or yellow or whine, or lack of guts."
You've been hanging around the bars too much again.
Framed Edition
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