The Charlotte News
Wednesday, April 18, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that allied troops advanced 2,000 to 3,000 yards on the western front in Korea behind heavy air and artillery attacks, as the enemy grudgingly gave up the ground southeast of Chorwon.
Other U.S. forces crossed the Pukhan River four miles southeast of Hwachon after the Chinese repelled two allied thrusts at the Hwachon dam. Allied infantry moved ahead against little opposition east and north of Yanggu on the western tip of the Hwachon dam.
South Korean forces on the east-central front fought a five-hour battle against 250 North Korean troops.
The State Department said that a weekend message to the U.N. from North Korea was propaganda, not remotely intended as a peace feeler. The document was written in Russian and touched off rumors of a communique interested in peace negotiations. The only line in it concerning peace, according to the State Department, was a demand for adoption by the U.N. of the plan put forward recently by the Communist-dominated world peace council at Berlin, which did not deem as essential the Chinese Communist claim on Formosa, leading to the speculation about a peace feeler. State Department analysis called it a "gory document full of the usual wild accusations, baseless vilifications and perversions of fact" about alleged atrocities by U.N. troops.
General MacArthur, upon his return to the continental United States for the first time since 1937, had intended to "slip in the back way" by plane at San Francisco after dark at 8:30, but boisterous crowds greeted him, delaying his arrival at his downtown hotel by over two hours. MacArthur flags and buttons were being held and worn by the crowd. A small group of peace crusaders in the downtown area were met with boos and laughter, with sailors seizing some of the signs which urged getting out of Korea and not dropping the atom bomb, and hurled them back at the demonstrators.
Correspondent Don Whitehead reports
that the celebration in San Francisco had turned into the wildest
event the city had seen since V-J Day in August, 1945, as tens of
thousands of people poured into the streets. The General would have a
parade through downtown this date. He was greeted outside the St.
Francis Hotel at 9:44 in the morning by a tremendous ovation from the
crowd of admirers as he departed for the parade
He would address a joint session of the Congress the next day at 12:30 p.m.
Whether, incidentally, the General planned with a point his formal arrival in San Francisco for this date or not, after delaying it by a day for a stopover rest in Hawaii on the return trip, is not clear, but it coincided with the 45th anniversary of the Great Earthquake
Senator Herbert O'Conor of Maryland urged the President to meet with General MacArthur and confer on the Far East situation. The White House said that he would be welcome but had sought no appointment.
The General was planning to visit the meeting of the American Society of Newspapers and the D.A.R. convention in Washington the next day but no speech was planned at either event.
Air Force public relations apologized to the press photographers who had been forcefully restrained by Air Force police from photographing the General at Hickam Field in Honolulu on Monday.
Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Senator Richard Russell promised a full inquiry by his Committee into Far Eastern policy and the conflict which led to the dismissal of General MacArthur. He opposed a Republican move to create a special committee for the purpose.
The Army cut its May draft call from 60,000 to 40,000 men after the call for April had been cut in half from 80,000, both cuts based on nearly double the expected volunteer enlistments since the beginning of the year.
In England, faint signals spurred a
search
On the editorial page, "A Way to Dispel the Fog" tells of Senator Harry Cain of Washington having introduced a resolution to declare war on Communist China and against the part of Asiatic Russia being used by the Communists for supplying men and materiel for the war.
It thinks the resolution went too far, that such a resolution should be limited to declaring the sense of the Senate that the President should carry the war more aggressively to Communist China. It would not force the President to do so but would so authorize him.
Debate on such a resolution would clear up the confusion in the wake of the firing of General MacArthur and alert the people to the full potentialities of a general war with China, as well awaken them to the catastrophic results to Western Europe which would follow a major commitment of American men to the Far East. Such a resolution would end much of the loose talk and force Administration critics out into the open. Most, it predicts, would run for cover and the resolution voted down by a majority larger than the Democratic majority in Congress.
The people did not want another major war, whether in China or elsewhere. It expresses confidence that the people, given time away from the celebration of the return home of General MacArthur, would show the good sense they had displayed at other critical times in the nation's history.
"Public Apathy and Highway Safety" tells of the chairman of the Governor's Advisory Committee on Highway Safety having said that the bias in the Legislature against Governor Kerr Scott had caused all of the major bills favored by the Committee to die.
Many techniques had been used to build public opinion in favor of highway safety but all of them had failed. The public became very excited about war but not about highway safety, despite the highways being the cause of as many deaths during the previous half century as all of the wars.
"Let's Take a Walk" poetically tells of the coming of spring and suggests taking a nap.
A piece by Ralph McGill of the Atlanta Constitution, titled "Let's Turn Chiang Loose", finds General MacArthur's backers who favored turning the troops of Chiang Kai-Shek "loose" on Communist China to be ignoring the reality that they had already been chased from the mainland and could present no formidable fighting force without backing from the U.S., including naval and air protection, plus troop support if the Nationalist troops were thrown back, as surely they would be.
Drew Pearson tells of the Democrats being glum and the Republicans elated over the furor which had erupted in the wake of the firing of General MacArthur. He provides several excerpts of the backstage colloquy. Democratic Senator Willis Robertson of Virginia believed the Republicans had a new presidential candidate in General MacArthur. GOP Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire said that he would be better than the old President.
Senator Richard Nixon of California was a backer of General MacArthur but had asked Senator James Duff of Pennsylvania to which party General Eisenhower belonged and Senator Duff, one of the strongest backers of the General, assured that he was a Republican. Senator Nixon said that he hoped so, as General Eisenhower was the man for the Republicans. Yet, he was now "beating the bass drum" for General MacArthur's bandwagon.
We didn't even know he was a drummer.
Senator Taft had disfavored the talk of impeachment started by Congressman Charles Halleck. Senator Taft wanted instead to bring the General back to the U.S. and build up sentiment for his case. Impeachment was dropped but House Minority Leader Joe Martin urged that the talk of it continue.
Mr. Martin had organized the effort to invite General MacArthur to speak to a joint session of Congress. Speaker Sam Rayburn was at first resistant to the idea but cautioned the President that to deny General MacArthur the opportunity might make him into a martyr and so it was decided to allow the address.
James Reston of the New York Times, in an editorial which had appeared in the Times on April 15, presents an hypothetical colloquy between Alice and the Mad Hatter regarding the Far East, the Korean war and the firing of General MacArthur, stressing the many paradoxes of the Republicans, that on the one hand Senator Taft had said the war was not important while on the other, in the same recent speech before the Yale Club, favored extension of the war into China, supported civilian control of the military as long as it involved the President sending troops to Europe, but found no harm in General MacArthur's insubordination regarding Far Eastern policy.
And the President dismissed only those people who were mean to him.
The two conclude that things might go on as they were for years without resolution, that the U.S. might commit more men and the Chinese and the Soviets retire—or maybe not. Alice decides that little wars were better, however, than big wars and thus questions General MacArthur's wisdom. She decides that the Republicans were backing him, but the Hatter corrects that they were taking advantage of all the fuss regarding his firing without really going along with his ideas.
They both were high
Marquis Childs tells of it being General MacArthur's week and that his homecoming would be a greater event than any of the other generals of World War II because of the advent of television in the meantime.
The contest between the General and the President could become one of documents. The President had released formerly top secret cables between the General and the Pentagon by way of showing the General's insubordination. The President had the power to declassify documents while the General did not. Some members of Congress had favored releasing the entire exchange to avoid giving the President such unfair advantage. But to do so would likely disclose things to the enemy which should be kept secret. But, he concludes, it might be a small price to pay to gain some objectivity in the conflict of passions and personalities.
A letter writer from Cheraw, S.C., believes that General MacArthur had overstepped his authority and that the President had acted correctly in dismissing him. He did not always agree with the President and had great respect for the military record of General MacArthur. He also thinks the Republicans who were talking so much in Congress had done little in the previous 18 years for the country. They had nearly ruined it before 1932 when President Hoover was in the White House.
A letter from Rock Hill, S.C., thinks the President, in removing General MacArthur, had shown himself to be more of a Communist than Joseph Stalin. He hopes the General would run against the President in 1952 and beat him soundly, says that if Congress did nothing about the wrong done the General, then many members would not be around after 1952.
A letter from seven members of the 605 TC Squadron in Korea solicits mail from readers of the newspaper.
Send your cards and letters today to the address provided in San Francisco.
A letter from Leon Gutmann of Charlotte expresses blessings on the newspaper for removing "Ozark Ike" from the comics page and replacing it with "Pogo", "as refreshing as Kefauver".
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