The Charlotte News
Tuesday, January 23, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that 33 U.S. F-84 Thunderjets shot down four of 18 to 28 Russian-made MIG-15s over Sinuiju in Korea in the largest jet battle to date, knocking out one and damaging four others—the story not explaining the thus stated discrepancy between four and five enemy jets shot down. All the American planes returned to base safely without damage. The battle occurred after the allied planes, flying in groups of four with air cover from the others, struck Sinuiju airfield where a number of enemy planes had been spotted in reconnaissance photographs. The enemy jets then came from across the Yalu River in Manchuria at Antung and the air battle ensued for half an hour. One U.S. pilot commented that the MIG pilots were "damned good" and not afraid of the American pilots.
In a companion raid, 46 F-86 Shooting Stars hit Pyongyang to clear the way for a large B-29 strike.
Allied combat teams, bolstered by tanks, reoccupied Wonju and its airstrip, against lessening enemy resistance in the face of repeated U.N. probes since the previous Friday. The allies also seized nearby Hills 233 and 273, ousting about a hundred enemy troops from the latter with an artillery barrage, the enemy then taking up positions anew on a nearby height from which they fired on allied troops throughout the remainder of the day. To the southeast, allied troops were battling enemy forces in Yongwol and some 3,000 enemy troops in Tanyang.
Intelligence reports told of the Communist Chinese moving troops via pontoon bridges across the half-frozen Han River south of Seoul. Allied patrols had moved far into positions normally occupied of late by the Communists, in the western and central sectors, without contacting the enemy.
Secretary of Defense Marshall, testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, said that U.S. troops in Korea needed 15,000 replacements per month before the divisions would reach normal strength. He thus indicated his support for universal military training and lowering the draft age from 19 to 18 while extending induction from 21 to 27 months. He said that the current goal of U.S. armed forces comprised of 3.4 million men by the end of the fiscal year would have to be increased if the situation worsened. He informed that General MacArthur's four divisions in Japan at the start of the Korean action were at about half strength the prior June and that the General had to put about 30,000 South Koreans into the ranks to complement the strength, 36 percent of the total complement having only three weeks of training. Secretary Marshall praised General MacArthur for his swift buildup of manpower. He said that during the fall when he had taken over the Defense Department, American units were 20 percent short of manpower. He added that out of the 240,000 men being drafted in the first three months of the year, only 165,000 would emerge from basic training by the end of August, with gradually increasing monthly numbers in the interim, starting with only 5,000 in January.
Members of the House Committee agreed that 18-year olds would have to be drafted but also assured that no one would be sent into combat without adequate training, from four to six months in duration. Chairman of the Committee, Congressman Carl Vinson, said that it was the only method by which to avoid the drafting of veterans and married men.
In Frankfurt, Germany, the U.S. Army bolstered its forces in Germany by extending tours of duty by six months. The Army had announced the prior September that it would increase the number of soldiers being sent to West Germany but that thus far no significant numbers had arrived. It was the second six-month extension of tours of duty, such that three year tours now would become four years.
You'll get home about 1958.
At the U.N. the previous night, the members heard a "clarification" by Communist China to its earlier rejection of the ceasefire proposal previously approved by the political committee. Thus heartened, the 12 Asian and Arab nations, led by India, who had favored exhausting all efforts at negotiating a ceasefire before condemning Communist China as an aggressor in Korea, as proposed by the U.S., wanted to delay further a vote on the condemning resolution. Prime Minister Clement Attlee told Commons in London that while the British Government favored the condemnation proposed by the U.S., it believed that responsive sanctions against China should await expenditure of all efforts at negotiating a ceasefire. Winston Churchill warned against allowing Soviet actions to interfere with the Anglo-American alliance.
The Senate sent to its Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees the resolution proposed by Senator Kenneth Wherry, to prevent the President from sending troops as part of NATO until Congress approved the action. The Senate had been prepared to vote directly on the matter until Senator Tom Connally, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, proposed the adopted alternative to enable further study of the proposal in committee. In so doing, he promised that it would not be sidetracked.
The President named William Paley, chairman of CBS, and four others to study long-term effects on essential needs for military security, civilian welfare and the continued economic growth of the country caused by the expanding defense program. Meanwhile, an increased program of economic controls was being prepared to stem inflation caused by the war.
The price of a haircut was increasing in Washington from $1 to $1.25. The barbers' union said that 91 percent of the members favored it.
In Central Falls, R.I., seven new-born infants were saved from a fire which swept a hospital in sixteen-degree weather. They were removed to a nearby nurses' home and none appeared to suffer ill effects.
In San Francisco, the carrier Independence, which had been used to study the effects of radiation after an atomic blast, following its use in the test blasts at Bikini Atoll in 1946, was consigned to Davy Jones's Locker, its usefulness consumed. It would be towed to sea about 500 miles and there sunk with explosives, probably in February, the precise date being maintained as secret. Radiologically hot, it had been anchored at the shipyard off Hunter's Point in San Francisco during its term of study. It was deemed unsafe for scrap and decontamination too costly to make it worthwhile. The carrier had been commissioned in January, 1943 and served in the Pacific during the war.
In Raleigh, the State Senate Judiciary Committee heard a proposal to censor comic books. A proposed bill would provide payment of the contingent salary increase to teachers, principals and superintendents across the state, provided it became available during the year. Another proposed bill would require taxi drivers to show financial responsibility.
In Atlanta, a man was convicted of drunk driving despite his explanation to the judge that he had taken paregoric to ward off stomach pains occasioned by the fact of his stomach transplant with that of a sheep, causing him severe distress whenever he passed by fields of grass.
A photograph appears of Senator Taft with three new GOP Senators, dubbed "The All-American Upset Team of 1950", including Senators Herman Welker of Idaho, John Butler of Maryland, and Richard Nixon of California.
At least one
And someone ought explain to Senator
Taft that in basketball season, "All-American" teams
require five for a full complement, including a post man and a
playmaker
On the editorial page, "Highway Fund Bookkeeping" tells of there being ample available funding to carry out a nine million dollar program of improvement to local streets throughout the state without resort to the proposal, favored by Governor Kerr Scott and the State Highway Commission, to raise the fund through a half-cent gasoline tax and a $5 increase in the cost of license plates. It provides a table of figures demonstrating that the Budget Advisory Commission had consistently underestimated the available revenue in the Highway Fund, amounting to a total of 105 million dollars over eight fiscal years, over thirteen million per year, more than enough therefore to cover the nine million dollars per year in local street improvements. Moreover, Federal matching money would be available to the amount of twelve million per year for the ensuing two years. The secondary roads were being taken care of with 200 million dollars worth of bond money, releasing virtually all of the Highway Fund to the local roads.
The piece again favors therefore ending the discrimination against urban dwellers who would pay for most of the taxes which paid for the secondary roads while having to foot the bill again for the primary roads in the cities and towns across the state.
"On Drafting 18-Year-Olds" finds that the needs for defense of the nation had to override emotional considerations by those who found a difference between drafting 18-year olds and 19-year olds. It clarifies that there was no prospect of sending 18-year olds into an immediate combat situation but that the induction would be part of the universal military training program. Had it been in place at the outbreak of the Korean war, it posits, North Korea might not have attacked, as it would have understood that the country was prepared for the fight.
"Time for Action on Gas Franchise" tells of the way being clear for the City Council to approve the transfer by Duke Power of the gas franchise to Piedmont Natural Gas Co. following the Federal Power Commission having approved the company as the supplier of gas to Charlotte and seven other Piedmont cities in the Carolinas. It urges that clean, affordable natural gas could be a boon to the economy of the community and that Piedmont had shown a commitment to the project which had not been exhibited by Duke Power during the previous 20 years.
A piece from the New York Times, titled "Point Four on the Land", tells of Dr. Henry G. Bennett, technical administrator for the Point Four program supplying technical assistance to underdeveloped nations, having given an illustration of the utility of the program by the fact of a county agent from North Carolina having given advice to Indian farmers near Calcutta, resulting in substantial increases in their wheat and potato production. He said that if the country could invest in this program to improve the lot of farmers and industry in the underdeveloped countries, then Communism would lose its appeal. He encouraged the governments of those countries to undertake meaningful land reform in the capitalistic pattern, giving incentive to the farmers to produce, not present under the Communist land reform systems.
A reprinted editorial from Business Week discusses the ongoing debate in the country regarding how to deal with world Communism. Some questioned continued provision of aid to foreign countries as under the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and NATO. The recent setbacks in Korea along with growing disappointment over the lack of progress in Europe toward self-sufficiency, had brought that criticism into focus. Former President Hoover had recently counseled the U.S. to abandon its efforts abroad and concentrate on shoring up defenses at the two contiguous oceans.
Many Americans felt the latter plan would be cheaper and others embraced it out of frustration with current events.
It finds that while reasonable to argue that since Europe probably could not be held against Communist aggression, there was no need to spread American forces thin and risk another Korea, such an approach to defense would be a dangerous course to follow and would effectively cede control of Western Europe to the Communists, giving up without a fight.
Stalin understood that a war in Europe would not only result in a ruined prize even if Russia should win, but also would entail retaliation against Russia and potentially the fall of his regime. Turning over Europe to Russia intact would give it the greatest industrial resource on the globe outside the U.S., plus a skilled work force to operate it.
To be left alone on the world stage would render the U.S. a siege state, with a reduced living standard and less freedom under complete militarization, amid a war for survival being fought alone.
It favors the course advocated by Governor Dewey that there be complete mobilization, and relies on the judgment of General Eisenhower who, as supreme commander of NATO, was wholly supportive of the concept of combined defenses of Europe.
Drew Pearson tells of returning to Swarthmore, Pa., the small town where he had grown up and from which he had departed some thirty years earlier. He had returned to dedicate the new town hall after the old one had burned down. The visit had reminded him that small towns were the backbone of the country, not Washington.
He was also reminded of his past police record in Swarthmore, arising from the aftermath of a football game in which Swarthmore College had beaten rival Haverford, during the celebration of which he had rung the fire bell and been fined $5. He wonders whether the investigators for Senator McCarthy would find the record and seek to make something of it or whether it might have been consumed by the fire. But if not that one, he recounts, they might discover another arrest from Reidsville, N.C., also from his college days, when he helped in taking down the tents on the Chautauqua circuit, after which he had taken a bath in an open area at 3:00 a.m. and was arrested. The case had been dismissed, with a lecture by the judge delivered to the arresting officer re the public necessity for cleanliness.
He concludes by saying that the communities of the nation had ceded too much of their power to Washington and that the most centralized government in the world was that of the Soviet Union, where power resided in the fourteen-man Politburo in Moscow. He ventures that the more that scheme was copied, the greater the chance that the country would fall into the Soviet pattern.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss various preparations by the Soviet Army and the armies of the neighboring satellite states of Bulgaria, Hungary, and Rumania for what appeared to be an attack on Yugoslavia set for sometime in the spring. As a consequence, Marshal Tito was preparing for war. Previously it was believed that his forces could handle the combined force of the Soviets and the satellites, but, with the increase in those forces, that was no longer the case. It appeared that the satellites would attack first, to be followed by the Soviet Army if the Yugoslavs resisted.
Other bellicose steps had also been taken by Russia in East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia, as the large forces in those states were apparently being readied for quick movement.
Because of problems of mobility, until recently, Western Europe was considered reasonably secure against a fast-moving Soviet capability to take over Western Europe within a matter of weeks. But with the construction of the Berlin railroad bypass and quadruple tracks laid from Berlin to Frankfurt-on-Oder and double-tracking to Ngorelye, where the Russian-gauge track began, that scenario no longer held. It was also likely that the autobahn was being completed from Berlin to Warsaw.
Almost every obstacle to Soviet attack in Europe had been or was being removed. It was not known for sure that these preparations, especially those more definite ones along the borders of Yugoslavia, unambiguously signaled an imminent attack, but more careful analysis of the matter was required, along with planning for the possibility.
They promise a subsequent report.
Robert C. Ruark tells of bidding
farewell to the nickel as a means of barter with the hike of the cost
of a public payphone call to a dime. It had once been the case that
nearly everything, from movies to coffee to soft drinks to candy,
even milkshakes, could be had for either a nickel or a dime. A nickel
had been accepted as a generous tip in those times by waitresses,
cabbies and bellhops. The sandwich and lemonade vendor had made the
rounds on campus at night, selling his wares for a "jit"
apiece. A nickel could buy a pack of cigarettes, as well as
transportation roundtrip with gum thrown in. Haircuts cost twenty
cents and a shoeshine, a nickel. Now, a haircut was between $1.25 and
$1.50 and the shine
On a modest salary a decade earlier, he had been able to support his wife, own a seven-room house and afford a servant, with 13 dogs in the household to boot. He had lost the house and eleven of the dogs in the meantime.
But for all of the doubled inflation, he finds that had they left the nickel phone call intact, one could at least find a symbol of times past on which to cling. Now, that, too, was gone. With the demise of the buying power of the nickel would soon come that of the dime as well. In time, he supposes, it would cost 50 cents to engage in three minutes of banter on the pay phone.
Framed Edition
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