The Charlotte News
Tuesday, January 9, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that allied forces in Korea fought to stem the tide of the Communist troop advance toward the heart of South Korea, menacing the continuing fast retreat of the Eighth Army toward Pusan on the southeast coast. Two U.N. battalions had attacked a North Korean force two miles south of Wonju, the recently abandoned road hub leading south. Another allied regiment counterattacked against Communist forces six miles southeast of Wonju, as allied artillery and bombers hit the enemy forces. Fighting was reported as still raging shortly before midnight Tuesday.
On the western side of the peninsula, action was limited to patrols south of abandoned Osan, 28 miles south of Seoul, but reports stated that the Chinese were building up a large attack force, possibly numbering as many 80,000, around Osan. Ten thousand enemy troops had been observed in the vicinity.
Associated Press correspondent Stan Swinton reported that the Communist troops' habit of wearing civilian clothing to avoid detection from the air had caused an order to issue from Air Force headquarters in Tokyo to allied airmen to shoot at anyone observed, whether in or out of uniform, except for obvious family groups and children.
Field censors were clipping large segments from news stories, including leading paragraphs explaining the most salient points of a given story. Correspondents were being prohibited from using the word "retreat" in reference to allied withdrawal. One story by Tom Lambert had been completely blocked for delving into the thoughts of American troops regarding the retreat. The minimum delay for all stories as they passed by censors was an hour. Eighth Army headquarters said that war correspondents violating censorship restrictions would be expelled or subject to trial by court martial. If their publishers distorted the stories, the correspondents would be suspended. Use of words conveying hidden meanings would also result in suspension.
The President presented the Congressional Medal of Honor to the families of five Army infantrymen and officers killed or missing in action in Korea. He said that the infantry were the men who won any war. The five included missing Maj. General William F. Dean, who would survive the war in a prison camp after going missing while actively engaged in rearguard action the prior July at Taejon. The other four recipients are also named in the story.
The Senate was scheduled this date to vote on whether to send American troops in support of NATO. Senator Kenneth Wherry promised to seek action soon on his proposed measure to bar such assignment until Congress could establish an overall policy. The President had not addressed the issue in his State of the Union address the previous day.
The U.S. Consulate at Hong Kong said that it would warn on Wednesday all U.S. citizens to evacuate their dependents because of deterioration of the Far East situation.
General Eisenhower arrived in Brussels to study the five-nation Brussels pact, after first visiting Paris, as he assumed command of NATO in Western Europe.
Former 1948 Republican presidential candidate and current president of the University of Pennsylvania, Harold Stassen, returning from a trip around the world, predicted that if Russia began a general war, it would face counter-revolution from within, including from the Red Army. He said that the entire world was waking up to the threat of Communist imperialism. He added that he intended to give a radio broadcast to the nation during the following ten days.
Will you tell of how you found
abroad the redness of the maraschino cherries?
A tentative agreement was reached between Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snyder and Senate and House finance committee leaders regarding a timetable for hearings, to start February 1, on tax legislation which would include a proposed increase in taxes designed to raise ten billion dollars in additional revenue each year. The President had written Senator Harry F. Byrd that it was necessary to "tax until it hurts" to raise the necessary revenue for increased defense spending. Talk also began of imposing a Federal retail sales tax.
In New York, a 38-year old housepainter confessed to Brooklyn's dime-locker torso slaying a few hours after police arrested him as he sought to flee his boarding house in pajamas. He said that he had killed a woman of Saugerties, N.Y., the prior November 25 during a drinking bout in their Brooklyn room during a big storm. He said that after she became boisterous, he put his arms around her neck, whereupon she fainted. He sought to revive her with a cold compress around her neck and then went to sleep. In the morning, he discovered to his horror that she was dead. Her dismembered body had been found on December 4 stuffed into two suitcases deposited in two lockers in the Long Island Railroad station. An autopsy showed that she had died from strangulation. The man said that he did not know why he had dismembered her body.
In Raleigh, a proposed bill to the 1951 Legislature would reduce from one gallon to a quart the amount of liquor which could be legally transported from a wet to a dry county or from outside the state into a dry county.
Both the State Senate and House introduced measures to investigate the building of the proposed ultra-modern State Fairgrounds arena, following the signing by the State Agriculture Commissioner of contracts to build it at a cost of 1.3 million dollars.
In Charlotte, David Ovens, vice-president of Ivey Department Store and Charlotte's Man of the Year, announced a gift of $100,000 to Davidson College, less than a month after donating $250,000 to Queens College. Davidson would use the bequest to build a new student union.
On page 2-A, radio and television
critic John Crosby tells of "The Pharmacist's Mate"
You can sit back and get yourself a Schlitz and watch that son-of-a-gun while thinking about the capture of the torso slayer in New York and the 1951 General Assembly meeting in Raleigh.
On the editorial page, "Governor Scott's Budget Message", a by-lined piece by editor Pete McKnight writing from Raleigh, tells of Governor Kerr Scott's special budget message to the 1951 General Assembly the previous evening. He stressed in his address that there should be no new borrowing or no new taxes, pleasing to the legislators.
The Governor did, however, seek money for many things things which the Advisory Budget Commission had omitted for not finding the available revenue for them. Those included the permanent establishment of the increased salary range for teachers, adopted in 1949 on a contingency basis, costing 17 million dollars over two years; continuation of the hospital building program, scheduled for completion in 1951, costing about 6.5 million; and an additional ten million dollars in deficiency costs produced by inflation for the remaining third of the permanent improvements program voted in 1947 and 1949, plus other programs, totaling 38 million dollars.
A fight might lie ahead on this additional spending. To allow for the additional spending, the Governor favored revision of the three percent sales tax exemptions, plus restoration of the gross receipts tax on theaters, eliminated during World War II, and better tax collection.
He stressed that advances in public service in the state had produced great dividends by attracting large industry and that therefore the world situation should not halt the move toward progress in the state, even if it had to be slowed.
"No Appeasement" finds the President, in the State of the Union address to Congress the prior day, having spoken the truth when he said that the country would not engage in appeasement and, while always willing to negotiate a reasonable settlement with Russia, would fight if necessary to preserve freedom.
He said that NATO partners had strict systems of universal military training and several had increased the term of service. He warned that if Western Europe fell to the Communists and they were to take over the free nations of Asia and Africa as well, they could strangle the U.S. with isolation by gaining control of superior resources and productive capacity at that point. He urged support for complete mobilization and asked for authority from Congress to expand production and further stabilize prices, wages, and rents.
The piece suggests that there would be little criticism of these broad aims of the President on foreign policy.
While he had not been specific about domestic issues, he would have opposition to extension of social benefits at such a time, including the proposed 300 million dollars in Federal aid to education.
Yeah, it might break the bank to spend that kind of money on education when you are contemplating spending upwards of 75 to 80 billion dollars on defense in the next fiscal year, especially when that education benefit might come with certain strings attached, requiring the dreaded "i" word, integration of poor little, helpless white boys and girls, especially the little girls, with Negroes.
"Farewell to Frivolity" tells of frivolity being laid to rest in the wake of hostilities in Korea. Flair, a monthly magazine published by the Cowles brothers of Look, had ceased publication. The editor, Fleur Cowles, wife of Mike Cowles, said that it was a temporary suspension because of rising costs, an imminent shortage of quality paper, and the critical foreign situation. The magazine had catered to lavish tastes and the primary reason for its demise, ventures the piece, was that the public did not have the money to support such tastes. It concludes that the end of the magazine was a portent of things to come in 1951, a return to austerity left behind for a time in the postwar period.
Drew Pearson discusses the Democratic caucus vowing to fight back against the type of defamatory action which had led to the defeat of Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland, after a fabricated composite photo had circulated during the campaign of him with former Communist Party leader Earl Browder. Republican winner John Butler had participated in the deception. Senator Clinton Anderson of New Mexico warned that every Senator would be under such an attack in future elections unless they did something about the chicanery. He said that he had seen a picture of a Senator who had gone bathing at Bikini Island while wearing little, and that it would be very easy to place a picture of a "lewd woman" holding his hand. He said that a campaign was already afoot in Texas to try to characterize Senator Tom Connally as a Communist sympathizer for not standing up to Secretary of State Acheson. He suggested that Senator Richard Russell, as had been Senator Tydings, might be charged in the future with costing American men their lives in Korea, as Senator Russell was replacing Senator Tydings as chairman of the Armed Services Committee.
Senator Brien McMahon, chairman of the joint Atomic Energy Committee, explained that a Fascist publication had sought to brand him a Communist sympathizer in Connecticut, and accused him of treason for supposedly helping to leak the atomic secret to the Russians.
Senator Guy Gillette said that his subcommittee investigating the elections had found some scandalous financial dealings on the part of Senator Butler which might, according to the Senate parliamentarian, eventually bar him from taking his seat.
Mr. Pearson notes that the composite photo of Senator Tydings had been paid for by the secretary to Senator McCarthy, at a cost of $2,400. Senator Tydings had chaired the committee which the prior year investigated Senator McCarthy's charges of Communists in the State Department and concluded that the allegations were a "fraud and a hoax".
Senator Anderson also stated that vicious material was published against defeated Senator Elbert Thomas in Utah but that there was no evidence that Wallace Bennett, the successful Republican candidate, had taken part in it.
Senator Walter George of Georgia said that he stood by a statement he had made in 1928 in an earlier case of Senator Vare of Pennsylvania, that the Senators should not pass on the Butler case based on deference to state voters, as some had suggested that Southern Senators would oppose on states' rights grounds denying Mr. Butler the seat to which he was elected, deferring to the will of the voters.
Senator Tydings said that he was too old and tired to contest the election but had received numerous letters from Maryland voters saying that they had voted against him but would have changed their votes given what they had since learned.
By the end of the caucus, no Senator spoke out against making the Maryland Senate election an example.
He notes that Senators Anderson and Gillette both charged during the caucus that Senator McCarthy, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Times-Herald, and conservative radio commentator Fulton Lewis had "actively participated" in the smear against Senator Tydings.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss the unreality of both the President's State of the Union address and Senator Taft's speech to the Senate regarding foreign policy. They posit as proof the Tito assessment in Yugoslavia that the Russians would, either directly or through their satellites, wage aggression against that country by spring, resulting in Tito preparing for war. They allow for the possibility that Tito could be wrong, but also state that if he were correct, then the Truman assessment was "dimly inadequate", providing for two years to build up defenses, and that Senator Taft was "living in a sort of cozy dream", with his one year timetable.
The situation reminded them of the business-as-usual mood in Washington after the announcement in September, 1949 that the Soviets had detonated an atomic bomb, rendering the previous American timetable for preparation for that eventuality, based on an early 1953 "A-Day" target date, too little and too late.
General MacArthur had said the prior September that the Chinese Communists would not attack Korea unless the Soviets were willing to risk general war. Again they allow for the possibility that the intelligence predicting an imminent Chinese attack on Indo-China, and, more recently, one on Hong Kong, might be in error. But it was too risky to gamble on that chance as the leadership in Washington was doing.
The daunting expense of raising the necessary military apparatus comprised of six million men would be 150 billion dollars, which was why the military leaders were so reluctant to commit to such acceleration, especially as it would mean raising the men before being able to equip them properly. The Alsops posit, however, that as the admirals and generals had always miscalculated the intentions of the Kremlin, they were repeating that error. There were other leaders in the Government who thought differently and, they suggest, if they were to speak out, all would be well.
Robert C. Ruark discusses the recent death of boxer Sonny Boy West during a prize fight in New York's St. Nick Arena. The New York Legislature had launched an investigation, following 26 boxing fatalities in the ring during the previous two years. Assemblyman Philip Schuyler said that the death was no less than "legalized homicide" and advocated the requirement of wearing proper head protective gear to prevent future recurrences.
Mr. Ruark says that no matter how much padding was in the boxing glove or around the head, the head was simply not meant to take repeated pounding from human fists, causing concussions of the brain against the skull wall and loss of consciousness from sudden upset of the nerves. The result over long periods of time was loss of proper speech, blindness, and finally death. Constant jarring of the optic nerve would inevitably lead to blindness. Hitting a man in the Adam's apple affected speech. Even football linemen could become punchy from too many collisions with other players.
A letter from the principal of Bain School in Charlotte stresses that all children had to be educated in the state and that the education had to be of the whole child, teaching certain fundamentals. He urges parents to visit the schools more and participate in the PTA, rather than criticizing the schools for what they were or were not doing.
A letter writer from McBee, S.C., urges that the New Year's resolution ought be to be cheerful, as for every teardrop there was a little laughter, for every cloud, a little sunshine, that dawn followed darkness, and advocates reaching up to "grasp a bowlful of happiness with a smile instead of a frown."
He goes on a bit and concludes, "This tired world awaits the glow of your smiles."
Are those song
A letter writer thanks the newspaper for reprinting the piece from the Twin City Sentinel of Winston-Salem advocating jail sentence for drunk drivers.
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