The Charlotte News
Friday, March 16, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that U.S. troops had overwhelmed the enemy in an artillery duel which saw the heaviest use of artillery by the Communists since the inception of the war, allowing the allies then to move ahead for new gains into the high ground north of Hongchon, after that city, formerly a stronghold of the Communists, had been taken the previous day by the allies without a fight. The American artillery barrage had topped that of the enemy by a ratio of 50 to 1. The distance of the advance and the specific American units involved were not disclosed.
Elsewhere along the 70-mile front, enemy opposition crumbled as allied infantry moved northward. At the western end of the line, American troops crossed the Han River in force and captured high ground east of Seoul. South Korean troops moved through Seoul and set up positions north of the city.
Secretary of State Acheson said at a press conference that he hoped Russia would renew talks on a Japanese peace treaty and join in concluding one before the end of the year. He also disclosed that Germany's reservations over accepting a proposed German-Franco coal-steel merger had been resolved. He hoped that the British and Iranian governments could reach agreement regarding Iran's oil resources, which would benefit both sides and prevent Iranian oil from flowing to those markets which it had served in the past. He said that to his knowledge there had been no efforts by the three-person U.N. good offices committee to open negotiations regarding a Korean peace settlement. He would not disclose whether General MacArthur had authority to cross the 38th parallel in Korea. He praised the efforts of Ambassador Philip Jessup in his conduct of negotiations in Paris among the Big Four to establish an agenda for a proposed ensuing foreign ministers conference.
The House Appropriations Committee recommended a 36.5 million dollar cut in the Treasury and Post Office Department appropriations out of the proposed 71.5 billion dollar overall budget submitted by the President for the ensuing fiscal year.
The Kefauver organized crime investigating committee, meeting in New York, was scheduled to hear during the afternoon session further testimony of Frank Costello after he had walked out of the hearings the previous day, claiming that he was too ill to answer questions. He had been instructed by the committee to return in the afternoon this date or face arrest for contempt of Congress.
Directors of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce called for abolition of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation because of the facts disclosed in the Senate Banking subcommittee investigation of the agency, which, said the Chamber, had caused "uncertainty and distrust" regarding RFC's operating procedures.
In Boston, a TWUA strike of 20,000 textile workers at a woolen mill was settled and the workers were scheduled to return to work the following Monday. The new agreement provided for a twelve cents per hour increase in pay. The agreement was expected to be accepted also by 50,000 other workers in 140 mills on strike for a month.
Bob Sain of The News tells of the local TWUA official stating that negotiations with four Charlotte mills would be resumed immediately following the New England contract settlement. The strike which was to have begun this date had been postponed, though some mills in the Carolinas had gone on strike as planned.
Senator Robert Taft would speak this night at 7:00 in the Hotel Charlotte at a banquet sponsored by the Young Republicans. Tickets were $7.50 each. Be there on time. No one will be admitted after the speech begins.
In Salisbury, the Senator had told the Salisbury Post that he did not believe that President Truman would run in 1952 and that if the election were held at present, the Republicans would win. Senator Taft also visited Kannapolis where he had breakfast with Charles A. Cannon, towel king. He told Concord and Kannapolis newsmen that he was not a candidate at present for the presidency, at least in the sense of organizing a campaign to win the GOP nomination, but said that he would accept the nomination if it were offered to him.
In Doncaster, England, a British express train crashed killing eleven adults and a baby and injuring 20 others, twelve seriously, after nine of thirteen coaches jumped the rails at a switch.
In Naples, Italy, an explosion in an oil tank aboard a ship in Naples harbor killed seven persons. About a hundred workmen plus the crew were aboard at the time.
In Washington, the Government filed tax evasion charges against Ralph Capone, brother of the deceased Chicago gangster.
In Greenwich, Conn., Mrs. Winifred Rockefeller Emeny, a grand-niece of John D. Rockefeller, murdered her two young daughters, ages 12 and 6, and killed herself by carbon monoxide poisoning, locking herself and her daughters in a garage with an automobile running.
In Raleigh, the State Senate
approved bills to allow Winston-Salem and Greensboro to conduct
elections on whether to have ABC-controlled liquor sales in those
cities. The Winston-Salem bill had already passed the House but the
Greensboro bill had yet to clear that hurdle. A bill was introduced
in the Senate to provide for education
On the editorial page, "An Old Problem Comes Up Again" finds that the allied recapture of Seoul had provided a tremendous weapon for world propaganda and restoration of the morale of South Koreans. But it also raised the prospect of again crossing the 38th parallel, carrying with it the concomitant prospect of another concentrated Chinese push with consequent potential for extensive U.N. casualties, as U.S. planes could not attack the Chinese bases and supply lines across the Manchurian border.
Thus, it finds that if the present allied offensive were to be halted somewhere around the 38th parallel, it would not be considered a defeat, for it would establish that the enemy had been unable to fulfill its promise of pushing the allies completely from the peninsula, while not incurring the onslaught again by the threatened Chinese Communists. It would instead constitute a real victory and apprise Russia and China that allied arms superiority more than matched Communist manpower superiority.
While it would be desirable to cross the parallel and reunite all of Korea, it was not practicable at the present time without waging full-scale war with China, tying up men and materiel needed elsewhere in the world to combat Communism.
"No Need for This Law" finds the State House Judiciary Committee having done a good job in killing a bill which would have prohibited the publication of the names of rape victims. It did not mean that rape victims' names usually were published or that they should be, as most newspapers, including The News, did not do so.
Yet, in rare instances, it was the business of journalism to disclose the name of the alleged victim, as when professional prostitutes came forward to charge rape against an innocent man or threatened to file such charges as a form of blackmail.
It concludes that newspapers were generally responsible in this area and should not be compelled by law to refrain from publishing the names of rape victims absent gross violations of the public trust.
"Wasting Our Greatest Asset" finds that without the threat of retaliation with the atom bomb delivered from bases around the world, Russia would have probably already reached the English Channel, if not crossed it. These weapons had bought the U.S. time while defenses were being rebuilt since the start of the Korean war, before the nation's atomic superiority would be nullified by the build-up of Russia's atomic stockpile and means to deliver those bombs. Yet, it finds, the country was wasting that precious time in "puerile and profligate indulgence in oratory by the Hannibals and Napoleons of the United States Senate."
Many weeks had passed since Senator Taft had first raised objection to sending troops to Western Europe without Congressional oversight and approval, preventing General Eisenhower from getting on with the business of building up the common defenses of NATO. It concludes that wars could be lost in too much debate and the cold war was no exception.
A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "To Win Without War", praises the International Development Advisory Board, appointed by the President to clear international slums. Headed by Nelson Rockefeller, it had proposed specific steps to coordinate American economic aid abroad as an extension of the Point Four program. It was designed to enable cooperation of free peoples in an international public works program and to insure needed supplies of strategic materials, with an underlying purpose of stemming the tide of Communism.
It suggests that it was far easier to win the world with bread than with bombs and that it was necessary to combat the promises of Communism with enabling of self-help by the free enterprise system.
Point Four had been harmed by being portrayed too much as dollars and cents aid when in its original conception was to provide technical assistance to stimulate self-help in underdeveloped countries. But dollars were not enough without the technical assistance to enable their use productively. It was, it suggests, a program which could win the world from war, provided it was "guided by wisdom and inspired by love."
Drew Pearson, in Rome, tells of the new armament program in Italy having been arranged after some backstage wire-pulling. It began when Foreign Minister Carlo Forza became concerned about bad press Italy was receiving in the U.S., about which he had asked some of his American newspaper friends and was told that it came from the fact of Americans dying in Korea while Italy did nothing after receiving American aid. Ambassador James Dunn, fearful of intervening in internal matters, did not try to stimulate rearmament at a faster pace. Mr. Forza came up with the rearmament plan which had turned into a 400-million dollar arms bill recently approved by the Italian Parliament. The appropriation could bring about the end of Communism in Italy, provided Italian industry could obtain steel, aluminum, and copper from the U.S. It would revitalize the automobile and tank factories in the north which had been idle since the war and wipe out Italian unemployment, the chief breeding ground for Communism. But a lot of the money would be wasted as needed economy in the military, such as the elimination of the outdated horse cavalry and duplication of personnel in the bureaucracy, had not been undertaken.
Just before the visit to Rome of
General Eisenhower during his January tour of the European capitals,
signs had appeared telling him to "go home", as well
containing other deprecations too nasty to report—maybe "Go
Fight Dwight"? These signs had been the work of Communists, but
since the walls
The American head of ERP in Italy, Frank Gervasi, organized a committee of pro-American Italians who concocted effective posters in response—maybe, "We Like Ike, But Not Dick—For He Is the One!"? One such set of posters quoted from the Soviet press at the time of the liberation of Europe in May, 1945. Another showed the General doffing his Columbia University mortar board and gown and donning anew an outgrown military uniform. Mr. Gervasi had enabled the Italian people to understand the benefits they had received from the Marshall Plan while obscuring the authorship. He had developed three publications, including a poor man's version of Collier's, for which he had worked, with a circulation of 200,000. Notwithstanding his prodigious efforts, when plans for future American publicity were presented to Ambassador Dunn, he had nixed them.
Marquis Childs finds that the investigation of the RFC had begun to hit pay dirt, as it had come out that there was influence peddling in the Maritime Commission, rumored for years. Former Congressman Joseph Casey of Massachusetts had testified that he had made $270,000 from a $20,000 investment with partners in a tanker deal, which had profited the partnership 2.8 million dollars.
Mr. Childs thinks that the whole history of the Commission for the previous six or seven years should be investigated, with emphasis on at least two steamship lines which had provided nice jobs for political friends.
He advocates also investigating the Civil Aeronautics Board and especially the approval of the merger between Pan Am and American Overseas Airlines, wherein the Board had recommended against the merger and the White House had reversed that recommendation. He does not think such an extended investigation would happen, however, because Senator Owen Brewster, one of the most powerful Republicans on Capitol Hill, was a good friend to Pan Am. But he thinks that if the Senate was serious about investigating influence peddling, they should investigate how the European air routes had been awarded since the end of the war.
Robert C. Ruark also looks at the RFC investigation and the testimony of former Congressman Casey re the Maritime Commission favoritism which had netted him $270,000. He explains the details of the transactions, that two firms had paid ten million dollars to the Maritime Commission for five tankers, then leased them for five years to Standard Oil, after the expiration of which, they sold them for 2.8 million. Mr. Casey and his partnership had put up only $100,000 as a down payment to buy the tankers and borrowed the balance from an insurance company. The 2.8 million was only subject to a capital gains tax of 25 percent, leaving after-tax profit to Mr. Casey of $200,000. They had also received the rent for the five years, tax free, because one of the companies, the recipient of the rents, was located in Panama.
He regards this method therefore as the way the heavy hitters made their money and avoided high taxation on profits generated ultimately by Government largesse at taxpayer expense.
A letter writer from Morganton finds that Governor Thomas Dewey had isolated himself from the ideals of the Republican Party and continued to do so by claiming that Senator Taft and former President Hoover, who had not isolated themselves from the basic principles of the party, were isolationists. He suggests that had President Hoover isolated himself from the GOP as had FDR from the Democrats, there would have been revolution and secession throughout the states.
Well, then, why wasn't there such a reaction to the New Deal and Fair Deal? You're a complete idiot.
Why don't you say what you mean? Hoover and Taft were not nigger-loving Commies like FDR and Truman.
A letter writer finds the urging in Charlotte by South Dakota Senator Karl Mundt that Democrats desert their party to form a coalition with Republicans to defeat the Truman "forces" in 1952 and the promise of Senator Taft also coming soon to Charlotte showed that the Trojan Horse technique in politics was still viable. Republicans, he warrants, had achieved considerable success in the South through such "tricky" behavior—and would achieve even greater success by perfection of the form in 1968, when the Trojan Horse would come to town in spades.
If General MacArthur won a battle, the Republicans exploited it as a victory by a Republican General, whereas if he lost a battle, it was the loss by the Democratic State Department.
Whatever the Republicans discussed as objection to the Fair Deal and Truman policies, the primary Southern opposition to President Truman and the Fair Deal, says the writer, lay in the Administration's insistence on creation of the FEPC and the civil rights program generally.
He believes that the old Trojan Horse system would continue until there were a dozen Furnifold Simmonses on the scene, with voters expressing sorrow later for having deserted the Democratic Party nationally for a "pig in a poke".
A letter writer thinks that the Wilson Administration had made a major blunder in World War I by not having the AEF march into Berlin and whip Germany to its knees, the failure to do so leading to World War II. The second blunder by a Democratic Administration, that of FDR, was, he suggests, in 1945 when General Patton had his Third Army poised to take Berlin before the Russians could get there and orders were given to allow the Russians to do the job, laying the foundation for World War III. Now, there were more blunders being made, he urges, by the Truman Administration.
He wants the nomination and election of a Republican President in 1952 and predicts that it would come to pass.
But, as the prior writer said,
you're going to get a Pig in a Poke, along with the General, and you
won't even know it until 1973
Framed Edition
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