The Charlotte News
Saturday, February 24, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that U.S. forces pushed into Hoengsong twice this date but made no attempt to hold the town. A tank-infantry team had withdrawn after three hours of fighting north of the town Saturday morning. The Chinese were slowly withdrawing to a new defense line across the mountains north of Hoengsong.
East of Chipyong, allied infantry defeated a battalion of Chinese on Saturday afternoon in the Sanggosong area.
Elsewhere along the front, there was little action.
U.N. forces on the western front heard that Chinese General Lin Piao, one of the ablest Chinese field commanders, had been returned to South China and succeeded by General Peng Teh-Huai.
Maj. General Bryant E. Moore, commander of the U.S. Ninth Corps, died from either injuries or a heart attack suffered in a helicopter crash on the west central front in Korea, north of Yoju on the Han River. He had walked ashore from the crash before collapsing in a van. He had become Ninth Corps commander less than two weeks earlier and had been superintendent of West Point just shortly before the appointment. During World War II, General Moore had served at Guadalcanal in the Pacific and commanded the Eighth Infantry Division in Europe starting in February, 1945. He had decorations from the British, French and Italian governments and had won the Distinguished Service Cross for his valor at Guadalcanal. The report says that he was the third general to die in the war, including General Walton Walker in a jeep accident on December 23 and Maj. General William Dean, missing since July 21. General Dean actually would survive the war in a prison camp.
Governor Thomas Dewey of New York urged the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, considering a resolution by Senator Kenneth Wherry to prevent the President from sending troops to Europe without Congressional approval, not to "haul down the flag" by barring the sending of troops to NATO, that it would paralyze the capacity of the country to provide for its defense. He said passage of the resolution would tell the Western allies that the nation intended a return to isolationism, that it would be a formal adoption of the "Fortress America" philosophy, a reference to that advocated by former President Herbert Hoover in a radio address the prior December.
Members of the Senate subcommittee investigating political favoritism by members of the RFC in granting loans were upset that the President had obtained 700 to 900 letters from members of Congress to RFC. The President said that he knew of no evidence of illegal influence at RFC. Joseph Short, the President's press secretary, explained that the material was requested to aid the President in his reorganization of RFC. Subcommittee chairman Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas said that RFC members had sought, as a means to discredit the investigation, to plant reports that he had influenced a $500,000 loan to an Arkansas tourist camp, a claim he denied. He said that the President had collected the letters as a means of retaliation against the subcommittee.
Mobilization director Charles E. Wilson, in a radio broadcast the previous night, said, without elaboration, that wage policies were being modified again. His aide clarified that he referred to the 10 percent wage increase ceilings imposed by the Wage Stabilization Board, which had caused the three labor members of the Board to walk out. He generally discussed wage and price control policy as a necessary part of mobilization.
Price administrator Mike DiSalle said in a speech in Toledo, O., that the rise in the cost of living had slowed.
The Office of Price Stabilization said that the price of automobiles might be adjusted in a general price order on manufactured goods.
In Baltimore, quadruplets, two boys and two girls, were delivered to a mother expecting twins. All were doing well.
On the editorial page, "An Answer to Mr. Hoover" tells of Admiral Forrest Sherman, chief of Naval operations, having told U.S. News & World Report that the security of the country lay in keeping war as far from home as possible. Airplanes could easily travel the 3,000 miles across the Atlantic to attack the U.S. Thus, to be able to get at the enemy bases from which these planes would operate was key to defense strategy, requiring an adequate defense of Western Europe to prevent the enemy from capturing the bases there.
The piece finds it an effective answer to the strategy advocated recently by former President Herbert Hoover to withdraw the nation's defenses to the two oceans.
"Revision of the McCarran Act" tells of Congress seeking to place loopholes in the year-old anti-subversive law, preventing entry of any alien to the country who had ever belonged to a party endorsing totalitarianism. Attorney General J. Howard McGrath had interpreted it literally, causing the exclusion of many Italians and Germans who had been forced to join the totalitarian organizations in their respective countries during the 1930's.
The House had voted to lift the ban against former Nazis and Fascists or members of similar parties if the person joined prior to age 16 or was required by law to join or by practicality to obtain living necessities. The Senate Judiciary Committee had provided a similar measure with the age limit set at 14.
It finds that while the proposed revision made sense, the House version had excluded from the exception Communists, raising questions as to the disparate treatment, as Communists, too, had been forced to join the party to maintain a living in Russia and the satellites. Congressman Francis Walter had promised that a subsequent revision would include Communists and the piece hopes that it would.
"The Course of Wisdom" finds that Senator Clyde Hoey had demonstrated wisdom in supporting the plan of Defense Secretary Marshall and Joint Chiefs chairman General Omar Bradley to send four additional American divisions to Europe in support of NATO, a turnabout from his statement a few weeks earlier in which he had recommended withdrawal from Korea.
A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "The Artful Dodger", relates of Senator Joseph McCarthy's 1946-49 tax returns in Wisconsin, as told by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, avoiding payment of any taxes during the four years by virtue of a total of $51,000 in deductible losses from stock speculation plus interest payment deductions. The piece suggests that the Senator, while not qualifying as an investment wizard, ought hire himself out as a tax consultant for being able to incur such losses and still live high off the hog without payment of taxes.
Drew Pearson tells of Senator Taft, in his off-the-record statements to an executive session of the Joint Committee on the Economic Report, having advised that the way to beat inflation was to eliminate overtime pay, lower farm prices, and eliminate the insurance dividend for GI's. Such statements, he offers, were good examples of how not to be elected President in 1952.
The Korean winter had been so severe that, for the first time in history, the Defense Department would award the Purple Heart for frostbite to 5,300 casualties of the malady. During the Battle of the Bulge in December, 1944, into early 1945, many Americans lost arms and legs from frostbite, but were not awarded the Purple Heart as not technically being wounded in battle. He finds the frostbite victims to have demonstrated the same courage and heroism as those who had been wounded by enemy bullets and deserved the recognition which went with the Purple Heart.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop suggest that the defeat of the Chinese Communists in the latest allied limited offensive could prove a turning point in the Korean war. The Communist armies had suffered great casualties, with estimates of 200,000 per month since late November when the Chinese entered the war in force. The reason for the losses was lack of artillery, tanks and air support. The Communist high command could either attempt a different kind of offensive, using modern weaponry, securing tanks and artillery from the Soviet Far Eastern stocks, and the Russians ordering their Siberian air force to enter the war directly and fly over the battle fronts, or the enemy could continue on the present course losing manpower rapidly, or seek settlement at the U.N.
Marquis Childs tells of the Senate Crime Investigating Committee having uncovered, through the dogged questioning of Senator Herbert O'Connor of Maryland, that Detroit gangsters had brought aliens into the country to break strikes.
Pete Licavoli, with a long criminal record, was given a contract by the Michigan Stove Works to haul scrap, giving him the ability to own a house in fashionable Grosse Pointe and a ranch outside Tuscon, though he could barely read or write English. On his tax return for 1948 he had listed $49,000 in "speculations" and refused to answer any Committee questions about the matter under the Fifth Amendment.
A similarly lucrative contract for hauling was given to Carl Renda by Briggs Manufacturing Co.
Harry Bennett, formerly of Ford until Henry Ford II became president of the company, was asked about recruiting a goon squad at the time the company was resisting UAW organization, but gave vague replies.
Rumors had persisted about gangsters exploiting the auto workers in the numbers racket. UAW president Walter Reuther and his brother, Victor, testified that they had tried to keep numbers racketeers out.
The airing of the matter had been healthy as the hearings in Detroit were televised, showing the gangsters' expensive homes and enabling the public to see how gangsters thrived while being indifferent to the law.
Tom Schlesinger of The News, in his weekly "Capital Roundup", tells of both North Carolina Senators Clyde Hoey and Willis Smith favoring the proposed humanitarian aid to India to relieve the hunger there, but Senator Hoey not being sure whether it should be by loan or gift.
A hearing before the House Ways & Means Committee on the President's projected increase in whiskey taxes had resulted in Scripps-Howard columnist Fred Othman suggesting that North Carolinians preferred mountain dew in Mason jars to store-bought whiskey, likely to sear their stomachs. One of the IRB agents testifying before the Committee told Mr. Othman that one moonshiner in North Carolina was doing such a brisk business that he had run out of the elixir and bought liquor from a store, filtered it through charcoal to remove the color and sold it as moonshine.
The IRB agents said that they doubted the additional tax increase from $9 to $12 per gallon would cause them extra work, even in North and South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia and Virginia, where most of the illegal stills were found.
North Carolina's Senators had not yet ordered their quota of mementos salvaged from the reconstruction of the White House, which included pine chunks at $2 each, brick sufficient for a fireplace at $100, stone for a fireplace at $100 and 40 single bricks for $1 each.
Senator Smith had recently addressed the Maryland Bar Association, recommending better understanding between the executive and legislative branches of the Government, observing that entering the war in Korea had been a "terrible mistake", suggesting that had the matter been properly debated in Congress, the dangers of the expedition might have been better understood at the outset, that by staying out, the present dilemma could have been avoided and the 50,000 American casualties prevented.
Senator Hoey had little to say about losing from his investigating subcommittee Senator Margaret Chase Smith, bumped by ranking GOP member Senator Joseph McCarthy in favor of Senator Richard Nixon, who occupied the office between Senators Hoey and Willis Smith. During the prior session of Congress, Senator Smith of Maine had called Senator McCarthy a "character assassin".
Senator Hoey was optimistic about a peanut bill to allot greater acreage to peanut growing in North and South Carolina and Virginia. North Carolina had been cut back from 225,000 191,000 bushels of edible peanuts the prior year because there was no distinction between them and those used for peanut oil, the latter in surplus.
We need those football peanuts next fall.
Why don't they sell peanuts at the basketball games? Are they afraid people will throw the shells on the court in dispute of calls?
The general counsel for Belk Stores of Charlotte had visited Capitol Hill and obtained information on price freezes, which he said should allow for a fair gross margin with no rollback beyond the initial date. He also consulted with the State Department on the Chinese situation and advocated backing of the Nationalist forces and stimulating guerrilla units on the mainland.
Framed Edition
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