The Charlotte News

Thursday, February 15, 1951

TWO EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, in a piece by correspondent Olen Clements, that an allied relief column, after battling for eight hours, had smashed through a Chinese Communist ring this date to reinforce American and French forces holding the Chipyong anchor in the central sector of Korea. According to one correspondent on the scene, the Chinese had fled, while another reported that a thousand enemy troops were still dug in on high ground north of Chipyong. The American and French garrison had withstood two days of massed assaults to help break the back of the enemy drive south toward Wonju, key to the central mountain passes, stopping the drive on Wednesday. Enemy casualties were counted at 10,593 on all fronts, bringing the total to nearly 100,000 since the beginning of the allied limited offensive on January 25.

On the western front, American infantry and artillery wiped out 400 Chinese troops who had sneaked across the icy Han River via a railroad bridge Wednesday night near Seoul, entrenching themselves on a hill. About 200 troops broke and fled toward the river but none reached it alive. More than 1,100 enemy troops had been killed early Wednesday trying to make such a crossing in the same place.

Secretary of Defense Marshall told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, pursuant to questioning by Senator Lyndon Johnson, that Administration plans contemplated having a total of six U.S. Army divisions in Western Europe as part of NATO, thrice the present complement. The additional four divisions would number about 100,000, including support personnel. The Committee was holding hearings to determine whether there should be a ratio of American troops to those supplied by the other NATO nations. Secretary Marshall said that he was testifying on the matter in open session reluctantly as he favored keeping the numbers secret. The total contemplated NATO forces would number about 40 divisions. There would also be American air and naval forces as part of the combined defense. He said that the purpose of the force would be to deter aggression and defeat it should it occur.

General Eisenhower was bound again for Europe to resume his task of building the combined defense for NATO as its supreme commander. A major question pending was what NATO would do should Russia or its satellites attack Yugoslavia, as anticipated in the spring. The question would be simplified if the NATO allies were to assure their joinder in the event of such an attack, but indications were that they would await the actual occurrence before making that decision.

Representatives of five European governments, those of France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium and Luxembourg, were meeting to determine whether to adopt a French plan put forth by Premier Rene Pleven to pool men, weapons, ships and planes to form a big European army.

In Landsberg, Germany, a last-minute reprieve by a Federal District Court in Washington, issued pursuant to a habeas corpus petition, had stayed the scheduled execution by hanging at a U.S. prison in Landsberg of seven former German S.S. officers convicted of war crimes. The court had previously held that habeas corpus did not apply to enemy aliens and denied a first petition, but it was renewed on the basis that the prisoners had lost their German citizenship by the American conviction at Nuremberg. The seven prisoners included Generals Oswald Pohl and Otto Ohlendorf. West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had urged reconsideration of the death sentences, but U.S. High Commissioner to West Germany John J. McCloy had rejected the appeal the previous night, saying that the enormity of the crimes precluded clemency.

Price administrator Mike DiSalle asked Thomas Murphy, New York City Police Commissioner, to take control of price control enforcement for the ensuing 60 days and Mr. Murphy had not yet responded. Mr. Murphy, while an assistant U.S. Attorney, had prosecuted Alger Hiss in both of his perjury trials, the second resulting in conviction early in 1950 after the first had concluded in a hung jury. He had become Police Commissioner the prior September in the midst of a sensational scandal involving graft and had since shaken up the force.

Two controls on construction were issued by the Federal Reserve Board, one designed to tighten credit by requiring a 50 percent down payment on non-residential construction and the other requiring Federal licensing for new commercial construction, both designed to conserve vital construction materials during the national emergency. The system replaced a general ban in effect since January 13. Construction costing less than $5,000 in a year was exempt from the regulations.

Economic Stabilization director Eric Johnston told the House Ways & Means Committee that legislation would shortly be submitted to equalize and stabilize farm prices and industrial wages.

In New York, gambling kingpin Frank Costello appeared before the Kefauver crime investigating committee for the third day of testimony, held in executive session. On Tuesday he had refused to answer questions regarding a New Orleans gambling outfit and regarding his connections to Tammany Hall district leaders in New York, pleading the Fifth Amendment. Senator Kefauver commented that witnesses, in refusing to answer, were now reacting to a recent Federal District Court decision in Washington which had held, in the case of Harry Russell of Chicago and Miami, that he was permitted not to testify under his privilege against self-incrimination. The committee awaited a Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision on whether jailed convicted bookmaker Frank Erickson could be brought before the committee to testify, resisting the subpoena on the ground that it was invalid against a prisoner.

In Raleigh, Governor Kerr Scott planned to talk statewide via radio the following night at 8:00. The substance of the talk was not yet disclosed but would concern the legislative session in progress, probably the pending bill to provide increased State funding for city streets.

On the editorial page, "Governor Scott vs. the Legislature", another by-lined piece from Raleigh by Editor Pete McKnight, tells of there being two ways to view the measure to aid city streets, which had quickly been passed the prior day by the State Senate, one to consider it on its merits and the other to examine its relationship to the temper of the current General Assembly and to the larger picture of state politics. He proceeds to explain both perspectives in detail and concludes that the present Assembly could not isolate itself in its calculations regarding the present from its anticipation of the future, that the victory of Senator Willis Smith over Senator Frank Graham in the 1950 spring Democratic primary had set the pattern for the current Assembly such that the conservatives, having seized control of state politics, were not going to relinquish it.