The Charlotte News
Saturday, March 3, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that American Marines, having moved forward four miles in three days, had pushed north of captured Hoengsong on the central front in Korea as heavy Chinese mortar and automatic weapons fire slowed progress. There were signs that the Chinese were sending reinforcements to the area in an effort to save the heights guarding the roads to the town.
In the Pangnim sector east of Hoensong, American Seventh Division infantrymen repulsed with bayonets a North Korean counter-attack.
To the west, Second Division troops cleared North Koreans from a hilly area three miles northeast of Haanhung.
On the eastern flank of the Hoengsong front, British and South Korean troops gained up to 1.5 miles as they pushed to within a mile of the Yongdu-Hoengsong highway.
At the U.N., the U.S. dared Russia to let the U.N. start counting its soldiers, sailors, guns and other armament. The U.S. agreed to undergo the same inspection. Russia had rejected all previous demands for such a count. The move was triggered by the Soviet note to Britain the prior week stating that the Western powers had twice the arms and men as the Soviet Union. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had said on February 14 that the numbers in fact were that Russia had four million men under arms with an additional million in its satellites, not including Communist China, while the Western allies had 4.5 million. The challenge did not mention atomic weapons.
Senate leaders claimed that they had enough votes to defeat the test vote on Monday of Senator Wayne Morse's amendment to the draft revision bill, which would lower the minimum draft age from 19 only to 18 and half, rather than to 18, as the proposed bill did. Senator Lyndon Johnson, floor leader for the bill, declared that the Morse amendment would be defeated by a substantial margin.
Correspondent Fred Hampson reports that dissidents were active in Communist China, in Swatow, opposite Formosa, where there was a crushed guerrilla movement, and in Kwangsi, where there was peasant unrest. Mainland Chinese jails were reportedly jammed with suspected adherents to Chiang Kai-Shek, and 60 or more dissidents were nightly executed, 2,700 having been put to death in Swatow in the prior two months, with thousands of others being executed in Kwangtung Province. Peiping had admitted recently that 3,000 of its agents had been killed in Kwangsi.
In Paris, Henry Queuille, a member of the Radical Socialist Party, gave up his attempts to form a new French cabinet and President Vincent Aurioll prepared next to ask the Socialists, led by Guy Mollet, to try. Georges Bidault, leader of the Catholic Popular Republican Movement, had first been called on by the President to make the attempt but he had given up the previous day. The Government of Premier Rene Pleven had resigned the prior Wednesday night.
The Office of Price Stabilization said that it tentatively planned to issue an order on cotton prices during the afternoon of this date but did not say what the order would be.
The CIO charged that the new index for assessing the changes in cost of living did not properly reflect the actual rise in prices for fairly determining cost-of-living adjustment increases in pay, just allowed by Wage Stabilizer Eric Johnston to four or five cents per hour.
The President began his three-week working vacation in Key West, Fla. He was welcomed by locals for his ninth visit there.
In Washington, Drew Pearson sued Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Washington Times-Herald, and seven other persons, including conservative columnist Westbrook Pegler and conservative radio commentator Fulton Lewis, Jr., for a total of 5.1 million dollars in damages for defamation and, as to Senator McCarthy, for assault. Damages included loss of sponsors of Mr. Pearson's radio program.
In New York, an artist dressed in a woman's beige sports coat and paint-stained shoes was arrested on Staten Island for the fatal stabbing of his seventeen-year old stepson and the wounding of his estranged wife. He had fled the apartment of the wife the previous night after a failed attempt at reconciliation, allegedly culminating in the stabbings. The fatally wounded stepson had staggered across the street and begged that police be called before collapsing. The wife's wounds were not serious.
You need some pointers on your debate style.
Heavy snow, accompanied by sub-zero temperatures, hit the Midwest, in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa. Snow accumulated to 31 inches in Land O'Lakes, Wis. A thousand persons, most of whom had been attending a basketball tournament, were stranded in Glenwood, Minn. Meanwhile in the South, temperatures climbed into the 80's over the Gulf States, hitting record highs for the date.
The Radio in American Sector (RAIS) of Berlin broadcast the Russian instructions for shirts manufactured in the sector, which said not to boil them, wash them in hot water, rub, brush, wring or tear them, and after rinsing, to pull them back into shape, if possible, and to avoid application to them of heat from stoves or the sun.
On the editorial page, "A Time for Cautious Optimism" tells of the Washington bureau chief for the Christian Science Monitor, Joseph C. Harsch, having taken an assessment of the world situation recently and found cause for optimism, that war could be prevented by the facts that the military situation in Korea was infinitely better as the U.N. troops were no longer subject to being driven from the peninsula and China had suffered terrible losses; that Korea was no longer a net military drain on the country with the increase in military power since June; that air power had improved dramatically; that the alliance of free nations had been strengthened by the Korean war; that NATO had improved to the point where the Rhine could be defended, perhaps next the Elbe and then the Oder; that the defection of the Italian Communist leaders and the widespread deviation from Moscow within the satellite nations indicated growing dissatisfaction with Stalin; and that Stalin's interview recently gave no indication of intention for renewed aggression beyond his gratuitous prediction that China would emerge victorious in Korea.
It adds to these factors the strengthening of French forces in Indo-China, the progress toward a treaty with Japan, the solidifying of U.S. public opinion behind NATO, and the magic on morale which General Eisenhower had worked in Europe as supreme commander of NATO.
It concludes with cautious optimism,
that the possibility of world war was diminishing with each day that
passed, provided the country maintained its present course with
"resolute courage
"Will Truman Run Again?" tells of the pundits finding the newly ratified 22nd Amendment, limiting the President to two elected terms and any President who came to office by succession to ten years in office, to work to discourage President Truman, though the amendment did not apply to him, from running again in 1952. They added that Bess Truman did not want him to run again, that he would be nearly 69 by the start of the 1953 term, that the strain of the international situation had already tested his usual optimistic demeanor, and the rush of the Southern Democratic states to ratify the amendment had served as warning that they did not want Mr. Truman to be their standard bearer in 1952.
He 'as a nigger-lovin' son-of-a-bitch. That's why.
The piece concludes that until the President made his own decision, however, he remained the principal contender for the Democratic nomination.
"County Option Upheld" concurs in the decision of the House Propositions & Grievances Committee to kill the statewide referendum on controlled sales of liquor. It finds the argument posited in favor of it to have been fallacious, as the people had voted on the matter in each county or municipality where ABC sales were authorized. A statewide referendum would have been unfair no matter how it had turned out, imposing ABC sales statewide or banning it, thus depriving the residents of each locality of their preference. As local option had worked well, there was no reason to disturb the system.
"Raphael in Russia" tells of the most recent issue of Voks, the official organ of the USSR Society for Cultural Relations, claiming that Raphael's "Alba Madonna" was still hanging in the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, while in fact it resided in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, after Andrew Mellon had purchased it in 1931 from the Soviet Government.
The piece says that it was tired of
such petty Soviet claims to cultural superiority, contending Russia
to be the origin of such inventions as the radio, the airplane and
practically everything else of note, and declares that it did not
care whether Russia had Raphael, himself, at the Hermitage Museum
A piece from the Baltimore Evening Sun, titled "California's Cotton", calls attention to the fact that California ranked fourth among the cotton-producing states, only behind Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi. Houston had recently bragged of being the biggest city in the South after surpassing New Orleans in the 1950 census. But Baltimore, twice the size of Houston, begged to differ. In response, the Houston Post had objected that Baltimore was not Southern at all, as the genuine Southern states raised cotton, of which Maryland was devoid. The Sun had rejoined that if that were the criterion, then California was a Southern state, suggesting, then, that Los Angeles was the largest city in the South. The recently revealed statistic that California ranked fourth in production only reinforced the argument.
It concludes: "Don't blame us, Houston. You all can't say we didn't warn you-all."
The word is "y'all". If you all is going to use Southernese, you yellow-bellied Yankee, at least pronounce and spell it correctly.
Caveat mocker: Those people down 'ere in Houston may take this more seriously than you realize. Be prepared for some shootin'.
Drew Pearson's column this date is provided by his staff as he was preoccupied in Western Europe, traveling from Turkey to another location. They discuss what the "boss" should do about the Senate floor attacks by Senator Joseph McCarthy, in which he had been called a Communist and the public urged to boycott newspapers carrying his column, as well sponsors to drop his radio program. He had ordered copies of the speeches and distributed them, via his franking privilege, to 1,900 newspapers. The Pearson staff had talked to many Senators and found the attack unprecedented.
Senator Lester Hunt of Wyoming had researched Senatorial immunity and wanted the rule changed when it came to defaming private citizens. The system began in the early days of Parliament to prevent the King from executing or jailing members for criticism.
Mr. Pearson's lawyers had devised a way to protect him from defamation, despite Congressional immunity, through the Fair Trade Practices Act prohibiting boycotts. The Taft-Hartley Act, for which Senator McCarthy voted, also prohibited boycotts. They would thus contend that the Senator was prohibited from calling for a boycott.
They posit that the real danger of McCarthyism had been summed up in an editorial of February 18, appearing in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which said: "Gloomy Washington prophets are forecasting a period of 'the big lie', of the furtive informer, of the character assassin, of inquisition, eavesdropping, smear and distrust. They lump the whole under the term McCarthyism, a common noun derived as in the past other expressions have been taken from personalities such as Judge Lynch, Captain Boycott and Vidkun Quisling."
Senator McCarthy had sought to shut off Mr. Pearson's sources in the Pentagon by labeling them "spies".
Nevertheless, they assure, the "boss" would continue to dig up blunders of bureaucrats labeled "secret" while recognizing the need for security of genuinely sensitive information. Secretary of the Army Frank Pace had assured that Mr. Pearson had not violated national security in publishing the stories regarding secret cables between the Pentagon and General MacArthur about which the Senator was complaining. The Senator had revealed the document number and date of each communique, the only parts of the documents which were deemed secret. The Justice Department was now investigating this revelation.
The Senator had used such tactics previously against the conservative Saturday Evening Post for publishing critical essays about him, comparing it to the Daily Worker. They conclude that freedom of speech meant freedom to differ, even with Senator McCarthy. "Public discussion is a political duty, and criticism is essential to good government."
Marquis Childs discusses the Administration's dispute with organized labor and the President's wise course in downplaying it so as to not to exacerbate the situation.
Charles E. Wilson would remain head of Mobilization despite having been previously head of G.E. when the company had formed a contract the previous September with the International Union of Electrical Workers headed by James B. Carey, a prominent member of the United Labor Policy Board which had led the walkout of the mobilization effort, and who now wanted an accounting of G.E. profits for 1950, on which to base further wage increases.
Before the current dispute, reorganization of the Wage Stabilization Board had already been in the works, to increase it from the nine-member Board from which labor members had departed the prior week after the order was approved to limit wage increases to ten percent, to an eighteen-member board and with Cyrus Ching replaced as chairman. Wage Stabilizer Eric Johnston intended to push hard for this reorganization. Labor was desirous of the reorganization and might return to the fold at that point.
While labor's position with the public was presently tenuous, the leaders believed that if they could make their case that wages had not kept pace with profits, the public would support them. They contended that the latest price stabilization plan would lead to inflation as it relied on the margin of profit for computing the legal price, and thereby sanctioned all price increases for the month after January 25.
Mr. Johnston said that he intended to tackle food prices next, exempted by Congress from price control insofar as they were below parity. But that would mean a fight with the farm bloc in Congress.
Such contests, Mr. Childs suggests, were of more than academic interest to the average consumer as the cost of living continued to rise. The real problem remained, stemming inflation when wages, profits and prices continued to increase out of control.
Robert C. Ruark takes up the cause of husbands after reading Anne Folsom's book, The Care and Training of Husbands, in which she had likened the training of a husband to that of a baby. He had known many husbands who were quite responsible and did not come sneaking into the house at the wee hours holding their shoes after a night of carousing. Such patronizing behavior toward males annoyed him. The male, he posits, had seen his position as head of the household eroded to a point "one cut under the puppy's status". He remained an autocrat only in a minority of homes, and even there, the neighbors whispered maliciously of his unassailable status. In time, his wife would inevitably divorce him.
After lamenting the henpecked status
of the average husband, he admits that now all he had to do was to
sneak the editorial out of the house before his wife caught him with
it, beat him as punishment and took away his tricycle
Tom Schlesinger of The News, in his weekly "Capital Roundup", tells of Senator Clyde Hoey believing that the present investigation into the shady practices of the 1950 race between incumbent Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland and the winner, John Butler, would have an ameliorative impact on future races, serving to warn against such tactics of the Butler campaign which sought to smear Senator Tydings for leading the investigation of the McCarthy charges against the State Department and branding them in the end a "fraud and a hoax".
Ruth Montgomery of The Washington Times-Herald had compared the Tydings-Butler race to the North Carolina Senate race, saying that the White House had thrown everything it could in favor of "leftist" Senator Frank Graham only to have him lose in the primary to Willis Smith—in a race-baiting, Red-baiting campaign.
North Carolina faced a fertilizer shortage and Senator Hoey was seeking to purchase some of that which had been earmarked for Korea before the outbreak of the war.
Former Senator Robert Rice Reynolds had visited the Capitol during the week and was greeted warmly by many friends whose jobs he had secured while a two-term Senator. He called on Senator Smith, whose victory probably resulted from the fact of Senator Reynolds's candidacy and endorsement in the runoff primary after Senator Graham had handily won the initial three-way primary. He congratulated Senator Smith for his isolationist speech in Asheville regarding foreign policy, questioning America's presence in Korea.
Playwright Paul Green had visited Washington and told reporters that revisions were being made to "Faith of Our Fathers", the outdoor drama he had produced the previous year for Washington's Sesquicentennial celebration, which he hoped to make a regular event.
Washington was viewing ratification of the term-limits Amendment as signal of the growing unpopularity of the President, even though it did not apply to him. Senator Hoey, who had taken an active part in its passage in the 80th Congress in 1947, was glad that North Carolina was one of the final ratifying states. Senator Smith also supported it. Eighteen states had ratified it shortly after submission in 1947, when the memory of FDR's four elected terms was still fresh. In 1948, only three had ratified, in 1949, only two, and in 1950, one state. But in 1951, twelve states had ratified, the last seven of which were from Democratic areas, all but two, Utah and Nevada, being Southern. It suggested that the South was registering symbolically its disapproval of any third term for President Truman.
You know why.
Framed Edition
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