The Charlotte News
Wednesday, January 3, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the vanguards of seven Chinese Communist armies, aided by some tanks, reached the outskirts of Seoul before dawn and began reforming for an assault on the virtually deserted city. The infantrymen continued to move in waves despite incurring heavy losses from allied aircraft strafing the open roads along which they moved. Pilots reported killing about 1,200 enemy troops, bringing the total enemy dead from allied aircraft fire to an estimated 10,000 since the offensive had begun Sunday.
Correspondent Stan Swinton reported from an Eighth Army post that the speed of reformation of the lines would be the determining factor as to how fast the former South Korean capital, still held by U.S. and allied infantrymen, would fall. Eighth Army headquarters predicted that the final assault would come by this night. President Syngman Rhee and his Cabinet had fled the city only a few hours earlier, when the enemy crashed through a second line of defenses seven to ten miles north and northeast of the city. Air traffic from southern Japan to Kimpo airfield near Seoul was suspended temporarily. Associated Press correspondent William Waugh made the last commercial telephone call from Seoul and until cut off, reported that there was little opposition to the advancing enemy, whose booming guns could be heard muffled in the distance.
In addition to the Eighth Army, two other American divisions, the First Cavalry and the 25th, plus a British brigade, were engaged in battle for Seoul and heavy casualties were reported on both sides.
Secretary of State Acheson said that the West had to have further clarification of Russia's position on a proposed four-power meeting before it could assume that Russia was ready to take up outstanding world problems beyond only the German question, which Russia had originally proposed as the only issue to be considered at the conference, a limitation to which the Big Three had objected. The Russians, according to the British and French foreign offices the prior day had accepted the Big Three counter-offer of a conference on all issues which bore on international tensions. But Mr. Acheson said that was not the case, that the Russians had only agreed to preliminary talks by deputy foreign ministers to set the agenda for the foreign ministers, that they had merely restated the same position they had issued two months earlier, rejected by the Big Three.
At the U.N., the three-person ceasefire committee set up by the General Assembly to explore a truce arrangement with the Communist Chinese reported on the rejection of their efforts, which proposed having the Chinese stop at the 38th parallel, with establishment of a twenty-mile demilitarized zone just north of the parallel, the ceasefire to be monitored by a U.N. commission and prisoners of war exchanged on a one-for-one basis until further terms could be set. The terms had been laid down by General MacArthur. After two weeks of trying, the committee said that it had been unsuccessful and offered no recommendation for further efforts at the present time.
The President signed the excess profits tax bill passed by Congress, providing for a 77 percent tax on corporate profits above 85 percent of the 1946-49 base period average, with a 62 percent cap on all corporate taxes. Estimated to raise revenue by 3.3 billion, the President, who had urged a four-billion dollar measure, was critical of some of its provisions. He also said that he would soon submit a proposal to Congress for increases on all taxes.
The President set up a new Defense Production Administration, which tied together the scattered emergency production agencies of the Government under a central administration. The new Administration would be headed by William H. Harrison, present chief of the National Production Agency. He would now have authority over industrial output, transportation, fuel, minerals and power.
The new 82nd Congress convened this date at noon in its refurbished chambers.
Strangely, some very short men garbed in green were observed in the hallway outside the Senate chamber discussing heatedly some matter with Senators McCarthy and Nixon. The word "aliens" was repeatedly overheard by passersby and some strange currency with unknown symbols was observed being passed to both Senators.
The President and Government officials from the three branches joined in special services at the National Presbyterian Church to pray for peace and divine guidance for the new Congress.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, in an opinion delivered by Chief Judge John J. Parker, reversed a decision of the Federal District Court in Virginia which had upheld a contract provision between the railroad brotherhoods and the railroads permitting the railroads to restrict the hiring of black firemen to no more than fifty percent of the employed firemen. The Circuit Court voided the provision, noting that no railroad had ever hired a black engineer and that the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen had argued without rational basis that because blacks were not subject to promotion to that position, they should be excluded from employment as firemen.
In Raleigh, the 1951 General Assembly convened following the election by the Democratic caucus of W. Frank Taylor as Speaker, defeating Fred S. Royster. The Mecklenburg County delegation voted three to one for Mr. Taylor. New State Senators were sworn in by State Supreme Court Justice Sam J. Ervin. The major issue confronting the Assembly would be increase in State taxes, to which there was indicated strong opposition.
The Fordham University seismographic lab reported recordation of an earthquake centered some 2,450 miles from New York, emanating from an undetermined direction, felt at 7:28 and 7:34 a.m. EST.
It may have come from Berkeley.
Radio and television critic John Crosby, in his column on page 2-A, finds much of the television and radio humor available to be mechanized or topical and that the best humor around was regarding the imminence of tragedy.
On the editorial page, "A Fateful Decision Looms" discusses the looming U.N. decision whether to condemn the Chinese for aggression in Korea, as the intervention was now crossing the 38th parallel into the South. The cost to the U.N. in maintenance of fighting forces in Korea had to be weighed against its benefits, especially as it imposed on the ability to raise U.N. forces for other trouble spots in the world. An orderly withdrawal would be the result if the cost-benefit analysis showed it more costly than beneficial to maintain the foothold. Such a withdrawal would not be a disaster as it had been precipitated by the intervention of the Chinese, with vastly superior numbers of men at their disposal. The limited U.N. manpower was needed elsewhere and so national interests would not be served by spreading these forces too thin to be effective in those areas.
It urges retention of perspective such that it would be recognized that the intervention by China had produced a new set of conditions not previously anticipated, enabling better the correct policy to be adopted to meet those new conditions.
"On the Diplomatic Front" tells of the U.N. front in Korea again being tested at the U.N. by the determination of whether Communist China would be deemed an aggressor in Korea and if so, the sanction to be imposed, economic, diplomatic, or military. The U.S. also was seeking U.N. approval of armed aggression to be waged against Communist China, though had not determined what type of sanctions it would seek.
While moral sanctions would not stop the aggression or prevent Chinese occupation of all of Korea, it would be a first step in the right direction. It hopes that the U.N. nations fighting in Korea would join in support of such sanctions. It also hopes that India would join in the effort, though, because it had recognized Communist China, having been reluctant to condemn the intervention, especially before the Chinese crossing of the 38th parallel. It also hopes that Egypt would support sanctions, as united and unanimous action by the non-Communist nations was important to the condemnation of aggression.
"The Resignation of Editor Ball" finds the retirement of W. W. Ball as editor of the Charleston News & Courier to be a loss to journalism. He had expressed strong, angry and often controversial opinions and the editorial page of the News & Courier had therefore been studied by journalism students. He would continue to contribute editorials and special articles to the newspaper.
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Circus Performers?" tells of California Congressman Carl Hinshaw being upset because the newly remodeled House chamber appeared as a "cross between a Babylonian bordello and a Roman circus." He complained that only two Americans, Thomas Jefferson and an "unidentified man" named Mason were on medallions over the doorways.
But, points out the piece, the foreigners included only lawmakers, Napoleon, Justinian, Alfonso X, and Pope Gregory IX. It finds it appropriate that Congressmen be reminded of those who preferred clarification of the law to its further confusion.
It suggests that there were 25 Masons in the Dictionary of American Biography and that Congressman Hinshaw should start with George Mason, who had drafted the Bill of Rights in the Virginia Constitution, which became the model for the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights. He was not therefore a "circus performer".
Drew Pearson tells of the continuing Senate subcommittee investigation into Lt. Governor Joe Hanley of New York as to whether he had received improper inducements to withdraw from the gubernatorial race in 1950 so that Governor Dewey, who had originally elected not to run for a third term, could do so. Mr. Hanley had been promised money to pay off his personal debts, including a claimed debt which he inherited from his father. But a check by subcommittee investigators had failed to turn up any such debt. So the money appeared to have gone into his pocket.
Senator Joseph McCarthy had placed the Saturday Evening Post and one of its writers, columnist Joseph Alsop, on his list of pro-Communists, after Mr. Alsop had penned an article critical of the Senator, published in the Post. The Senator, per his typical practice, secured Congressional immunity by writing a letter to the Post and inserting it in the Congressional Record, accusing the Post of lending its space to the "Lattimore-Compass-New Masses-Daily Worker line that there is being created a dangerous miasma of fear in Washington." He had mentioned that the Government was trying to get sex perverts and disloyal people out of the Government, but had not mentioned that he had a sex pervert on his staff and that even after this person had been caught by the police and offered to resign, the Senator had told him that it would not be necessary.
Senator McCarthy had also been discovered to be behind the claim of C.A. Hazen of the Shreveport (La.) Times, that 58 instances of left-wing bias had taken place in Associated Press accounts, most of the instances involving reports on Senator McCarthy. The Senator had accused one A.P. reporter and another from the United Press of following the Communist line because they had not reported the Senator's speeches in the way he desired.
Roscoe Drummond, in the Christian Science Monitor, tells of Western Europe not being weak economically or in resources, as Russian propaganda sought to maintain. The combined economic and industrial potential of the West was much greater than that of Russia and its satellites, currently producing four times the steel and pig iron, five times the electric power, ten times the petroleum, three times the coal, eight times the wool, rayon and cotton, three times the wheat, and four times the livestock which Russia and its satellites produced.
Though Russia was the only major power which had not demobilized after the war, the West still had superiority in potential industrial capacity to build a war machine. While it could not be built quickly and dangers would persist for several months into the future, there was also no reason for the free world to be intimidated by Russian rhetoric and threats.
He finds applicable the advice of the late Wendell Willkie during the presidential campaign against FDR in 1940, that only the productive could be strong and only the strong could be free.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop begin
their column from Washington: "This squalid city currently
resembles nothing so much as a drunken beach picnic continuing in
full course, its members reveling, quarreling, gormandizing and
making fools of themselves long after the hurricane warning
They then discuss the prospect of a Chinese offensive in Indo-China, to come on the heels of the anticipated victory in Korea, with some believing that it would probably occur before mid-January. The French in Indo-China had been forced to close their consulates at Kunming and Canton, from which they could observe the massing of Chinese Communist troops in preparation for an attack on Indo-China.
At the same time, a Soviet air mission had been observed on Hainan Island, north of Indo-China, with Russian jets present, presumably transferred by Russia to the Chinese. Those jets would be more than a match for the B-26 bombers and a hundred or so propeller-driven aircraft which the U.S. had supplied to the French in Indo-China.
As an additional indicator of impending attack, Ho Chi Minh had changed his propaganda from being vehemently anti-Chinese, historically considered as much an enemy to the Vietminh as the French. The nationalists within the movement had been defeated and non-Communist nationalists were being purged.
The French would have about 150,000 troops to confront a Chinese army of 250,000 forming at Nanning, in addition to Ho's 70,000 regular troops plus guerrillas.
If Indo-China were to fall, they suggest, it would be as a bowling ball striking the ten-pin, rendering weak, neighboring Siam and Burma likely then to fall.
Marquis Childs discusses the effective leadership shown by Secretary of the Air Force Thomas Finletter, who was determined to expand the 42-group force to 84 groups by the end of 1952, and, with new plants built, could produce expansion as high as 168 groups by that point.
His predecessor, Stuart Symington, now head of the National Security Resources Board, had also favored expansion of the Air Force but had to wage a fight with former Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson and his efforts to bring economy to defense. In so doing, Mr. Symington's relationship with Mr. Johnson became antagonistic and he eventually had to step aside as his effectiveness had been compromised. Mr. Finletter, aided considerably by his able Undersecretary, future CIA director John McCone, had gone ahead with increasing the strength of the Air Force since his appointment in April, 1950, despite the economizing efforts of then-Secretary Johnson, who was fired in August, 1950 and succeeded by General George Marshall.
The new team had developed the B-47
A letter from P. C. Burkholder responds to a letter writer of December 19 who had found a story in the London Daily Mail which had said that few knew that England supplied other nations as much economic aid as the Marshall Plan supplied to England. Mr. Burkholder finds the news of "grave interest" and interprets it, without citing any supporting facts, to indicate that the British Labor Government was providing aid to Russia and its allies, with the connivance of the U.S. Administration. He suggests that the Marshall Plan had served to produce that end, such that the American taxpayer was footing the bill while young Americans were being killed in Korea without enough support from the U.S. Government.
Mr. Burkholder has got his buttermilk logic out again and is giving the skinny on the pro-Russian Administration in Washin'ton.
Tenth Day
Framed Edition
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