The Charlotte News
Friday, February 16, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that allied bayonets had stopped enemy attempts to outflank both ends of the line in the central front this date. On the left, southeast of Seoul, American infantrymen, nearly out of ammunition, bared their bayonets and charged, chasing the fleeing Chinese half a mile while killing 56 of the enemy, after artillery had already killed about 100 of the dug-in force of 500. On the right flank, South Korean infantrymen used bayonets and hand grenades to push back Chinese troops north of Chechon, though Communist pressure in the area continued. Action all along the relatively quiet central front was small in comparison to that of the prior five days.
The Eighth Army tabulated 4,935 enemy casualties on Thursday, of which 2,275 were in the central front, between Chipyong and Wonju.
The enemy appeared to have shifted much of their fighting strength to the area north and northwest of Chechon.
Elton C. Fay reports that American airmen had spotted an unusually fast jet fighter being flown by the enemy in an area north of where the enemy air force typically flew out of their Manchurian bases. Whether it was a new fighter or an improvement on the MIG-15 or LA-17 was not yet known. It had pulled away from the fastest operational jet fighter the Air Force had, the F-86 Saber.
Bet it can't beat an Oldsmobile.
Secretary of State Acheson said to the joint meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees this date that he expected Western Europe to double its defense forces during the ensuing year and hoped that Spain, Turkey, and Greece could be linked into NATO plans. He said that the West's principal deterrent to Communist aggression, the atom bomb, was being eroded with time, requiring the building of a balanced force in Europe, that waiting until Europe had built up its own defenses before committing American troops to NATO would damage Western European morale and diminish the opportunity, and that acting only after an attack would produce a mood of non-resistance and neutralism in Western Europe, a "short-cut to suicide" for the democracies. The Senate Committees were considering a resolution of Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska to place the Senate on record as being opposed to sending troops to Europe without Congressional approval.
According to an unnamed Government source in Paris, the Big Three Western powers would propose in their latest joint diplomatic note to Russia a meeting date of March 5 in Paris for deputy foreign ministers to arrange a subsequent Big Four meeting of foreign ministers to work out problems of world peace. The sticking point in arranging the meeting had been Russia's insistence that the question of German remilitarization and unity would be the sole issue considered, albeit the proposal having been altered by the Russians to require that the issue take top priority vis-à-vis any other issues discussed.
The six public and industry members of the Wage Stabilization Board voted this date to ban wage increases of more than ten percent which had occurred since January 15, 1950 or would take place before the ensuing July 1, whereupon the three labor members of the Board walked out, condemning the control measure as unfair to workers. The move appeared to forecast a wave of strikes ahead. Economic Stabilizer Eric Johnston hoped to patch up the differences on the Board and thus delayed announcing whether he would impose a wage ceiling. He planned to consult first with his special assistant on labor problems, George Harrison of the railroad unions.
In Massachusetts and New Jersey, picket lines began forming for an estimated 70,000 CIO textile workers against 160 wool and worsted mills in the first industry-wide walkout in the 11-year history of TWUA.
In Washington, the Peace Information Center and four of its officers, indicted for allegedly failing to register as foreign agents, pleaded not guilty at their arraignment and trial was set for April 2 in Federal District Court. Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, 82, chairman of the organization, entered the plea for the Center and for himself. A fifth defendant, the mother-in-law of William Remington, the former Government economist convicted recently of perjury for denying to a Grand Jury that he had ever been a Communist after being accused by Elizabeth Bentley of passing to her secret documents for transfer to the Russians many years earlier, was not present because she was in Europe, but was returning voluntarily to face the indictment. Her daughter, the former wife of Mr. Remington, had testified against him at the latter's trial.
In Raleigh, the State House Roads Committee rejected a bill to provide a mandatory five-day jail term for conviction of drunk driving. The bill had been recommended by Governor Kerr Scott's Committee on Highway Safety.
The State House Committee on Constitutional Amendments approved a bill which would ratify the amendment to the Federal Constitution to limit the terms to which a President could be elected to two. A similar bill had been defeated in the State House in 1949 for being a Republican proposal—though actually initiated by President Truman in 1945. The amendment would not apply to the sitting President when proposed by Congress in 1947. The 22nd Amendment would be ratified on February 27, upon adoption by Minnesota. North Carolina would become the 37th state to ratify, the following day.
Emery Wister of The News tells of an eighteen-year old private first class in the Army, former employee of the newspaper, who had been to the Korean war, shot in the hand, taken prisoner, beaten and nearly starved by the Chinese, but managing to escape back to his lines in November. He was home on a furlough. He imparted to Mr. Wister his treatment at the hands of the Chinese interrogators, who had hit him in the stomach when he answered their questions by saying that he did not know. He and the other fifteen or so prisoners each received a handful of rice each day. They stayed alive on the apples they could steal from houses in the Korean village, about five miles from Chosin reservoir, where they were being kept. The enemy captors bandaged his wounded hand but never attended to it again. He finally escaped by commandeering one of the U.S. Army trucks captured by the Chinese. The Chinese soldiers ran out into the road jabbing and cursing at him, some firing, but he got away.
Readers of the newspaper gave high praise to the new Corona 8-point type being used in replacement of the old Ionic. The story provides anecdotal accounts of readers who found it easier to read.
Whether, however, the reaction was the result of actual perception or merely from the suggestion planted by the eye doctors quoted in stories printed earlier in the week may be subject to question. Regardless, these readers were seeing something we do not. So far as we can tell, the print hasn't changed a whit in twenty years. It is still a bunch of squiggly lines.
On the editorial page, "The Legislature's Priority List", a by-lined piece from Raleigh by Editor Pete McKnight, tells of the General Assembly setting up a priority list of legislation in the face of requested appropriations totaling 69 million dollars more than those recommended by the Budget Advisory Commission. There would not be sufficient revenue to pay for the requests without a significant increase in taxes, and that possibility appeared remote, requiring cuts.
The increase in teacher salaries to the annual range of $2,200 to $3,100 on a permanent basis, irrespective of the contingency of there being a surplus in the General Fund with which to pay it as during the prior biennium, would be a top priority for the Assembly. That would require 17 million dollars more than the Commission's recommendation. The Assembly would also do more for mental institutions than recommended, but permanent improvements would have difficulty in passage, as the proposed $750,000 psychiatric wing at the UNC teaching hospital would have an even chance of going south, along with the proposed $200,000 in salaries for in-training nurses and attendants. There would be some money for State employee salary increases and hospital construction, but not that proposed by the Governor. There would be prioritization of other areas as well.
The final total would likely be more than 20 million dollars above the Commission's recommendations.
A tax on cigarettes, theater attendance, and soft drinks would be considered but had little support.
The Assembly was not going to allow Governor Scott to push it around. In 1949, he had enough public support, flush off of his 1948 unexpected primary campaign victory, to get the State House on his side, and had a favorable bargaining position therefore with the Senate. But now his influence had waned in the second half of his single term and the Assembly would determine fiscal policy for the biennium, with the Governor, not possessed of the power of veto, able to do little about it.
"Money in the Bank" discusses the era of routine bank robberies by such persons in the Thirties as John Dillinger and "Pretty Boy" Floyd having largely passed, as it was a risky business, ending in death or jail sentences. But some still persisted. The local FBI agent was kept busy in the pursuit of bank robbers, with fifteen banks having been robbed in the state in recent years. Of those, nine had their money restored within a day and only one remained unsolved, from April, 1950, in Maiden.
The robbery of a bank in Granite Quarry during the week had resulted in two of the three culprits being in custody within a short time after the robbery, and the third, within a matter of hours.
Guess the old handkerchief around the hand trick to hide those fingerprints while distracting from the unmasked faces did not work.
"Fixing Responsibility" tells of Budget Director Frederick J. Lawton having outlined to the House Ways & Means Committee three basic factors in budget-cutting during the week: that prior slashes by the Budget Bureau had brought retaliation from Congress; that many of the proposed expenditures had been authorized by Congress in past years; and that some of the projects being criticized most severely had been approved by Congress since the outbreak of the war in Korea.
The piece finds therefore that the Administration was not interested in reducing the services of the Federal Government, but rather with expansion of them, and that the Congress, in control of the purse strings, was equally responsible by not cutting the budget. It believes that when enough people came to realize this problem, the Congress might do more than pay lip service to budget-cutting, as they were now doing in the face of the President's dare to cut the 71 billion dollar proposed budget.
Drew Pearson tells of the RFC having loaned in early 1947 1.5 million dollars to Aireon Corp., a jukebox manufacturer in Kansas City, the return to the Government on which would now only be $700,000, with the rest having gone down the drain. The man picked to liquidate the company was a former neighbor of RFC vice-chairman C. Edward Rowe, whose dealings had come under Senate scrutiny. Mr. Pearson proceeds to provide the details of the loan to Aireon and the corporation's demise, which, he finds, smelled of politics from the beginning.
He notes that Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas had deserved credit for uncovering the influence and favoritism in RFC and bringing it to the President's attention, urging him to clean house at the agency.
James Jones of Florence, S.C., had collected nearly $3,000 for the March of Dimes drive, topping his usually high number of contributions collected for polio victims.
B'nai B'rith had been doing an excellent job in adopting entire wards in military hospitals for the care of disabled veterans.
Many cities and states paid poor pensions to its retired or disabled police officers, firemen, and school teachers, making it hard to live in an era of rising cost of living. The New York City Fire Department, for instance, provided only $11.83 weekly, substantially less than the $60 provided to welfare recipients of that city.
Robert C. Ruark finds that people of 1951 were concerned more with heavier topics, destiny and the atom bomb, the front pages and technical books, than before the war when people liked the comic pages of the newspapers, sports, Hollywood, and such radio fare as "Amos 'n' Andy". They had then ignored Washington news and the Cassandra editorials, viewed Russia as far away, the Spanish Civil War as arcane. Now, even the younger people scanned the newspapers thoroughly and housewives concerned themselves with the price of eggs and why they were so high.
This thought had crystallized, he imparts, at one of his purlieus while the habitues discussed the new play, Darkness at Noon, adapted from Arthur Koestler's old book from 1941 about perversion of ideals within the Russian Communist Party. One of his friends had said that he had not paid much attention to it when it first came out but that had been before he became concerned with destiny and his relationship to it.
DeWitt MacKenzie tells of the Moscow press, on the first anniversary of the Russo-Chinese Communist alliance, making much of the joint actions of the two nations having a powerful influence on the future of humanity.
The extent to which it would become true in the future depended on whether Communism grew or, as many observers predicted, would blow up because of mankind's refusal to be regimented as in the Communist-controlled countries. He thinks that Moscow's view, however, should not be lightly tossed aside.
Poverty and hunger were the rule in the Far East, where Communism could thrive for generations to come. China had a vast resource of manpower backed by Russian technological and military resources, enabling the combination to use force, as in Korea and French Indo-China, or threats of force. Revolutionary activities were being encouraged by the Communist alliance and the program was spreading.
If Russia were to take over Western Europe, then it would be able, to a great extent, to rule the globe, providing additional resources at the disposal of the Far East, weakening commensurately the democracies.
The struggle might meet with difficulty when it encountered the Moslem countries, which had just declared, in a conference of 36 representatives held at Karachi, Pakistan, that they would stand together in the face of aggression against any one of them. Part of their motivation would be religious belief, regarded seriously within the Moslem world.
He concludes that there was no reason why the democracies should not look forward confidently to the outcome of the struggle with the Communist world regarding the future of humanity.
A letter from Herbert Spaugh, pastor of The Little Church on the Lane in Charlotte, commends the newspaper for republishing during the Lenten season, in serialized form, The Greatest Story Ever Told by Fulton Oursler, as it had been well received the prior year when the newspaper had also published it. He finds that people were spiritually hungry, more so than ever, and many were looking to wrong places for help. Newspapers could do much to calm hysteria in the community. News stories of calamity were so prevalent that counterbalancing the fare with more spiritually uplifting content was important, and the current feature, he finds, would help in that regard. He adds that he was recommending it in his "Everyday Counselor" column, which appeared in The News and in many newspapers throughout the state.
A letter writer from St. Pauls,
N.C., praises Senator Joseph McCarthy for exposing Communism in high
places in the country, the "Communistic parasites" who
had occupied high places since "the inception of the New Deal
A letter writer, who had recently seen some young looking boys boarding a bus for transport to a military base, hopes that every boy leaving home for the war in Korea could remember that if he might never see home again, he would be able to meet with his loved ones in heaven.
Thank ye, ma'am, that sure is comforting.
Framed Edition
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