The Charlotte News

Saturday, April 28, 1951

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that all allied troops had withdrawn to a new defense perimeter four miles north of Seoul, running from the west coast to the Pukhan River and then to the Choyang and eastward to Yongpo, then southeast of Inje along the 38th parallel to the east coast, as enemy troops continued to pour into Uijongbu, eleven miles north of Seoul, the fall of which appeared imminent. As allied vehicles streamed south, rearguard elements slowed the Communist advance. The orderly withdrawal on the central and eastern fronts continued with no contact reported with the enemy.

On the east-central front, in the only major action of the day, North Korean troops advanced through no-man's land at the east end of the Hwachon Reservoir around Yanggu but failed to break through the allied line.

In the west-central sector, the allies abandoned Kapyong, 35 miles northeast of Seoul, and none of the U.N. forces wound up trapped by the enemy after it had cut the highway south.

Refugees continued to flee Seoul.

Senate Majority Leader Ernest McFarland attacked claims by Senator Taft that the President's policy of containment of the war in Korea would lead only to stalemate and that Secretary of State Acheson was engaged in "appeasement", saying that no one in the Administration had advocated either such stance. GOP Senator Kenneth Wherry challenged statements of DNC chairman William Boyle, who had said that there been a determined effort by some political leaders, newspapers, and radio commentators to becloud the issues surrounding the firing of General MacArthur, that the issue was containing the war or broadening it and risking thereby a world war.

University of Pennsylvania president Harold Stassen, former and future GOP presidential candidate, wrote the President, urging him that for the good of the country, there should be a reconciliation with General MacArthur.

Hungary released Robert Vogeler, the American businessman held there on a charge of espionage for seventeen months. Mr. Vogeler said that he had been subjected to mental and physical coercion prior to the trial in which he confessed being an American spy. He said that in the eyes of the Hungarians, he was a combination of Dick Tracy and J. Edgar Hoover. He said he wished to say no more because of his concern for British accountant Edgar Sanders, still in custody in Hungary after being sentenced to thirteen years in the same trial with Mr. Vogeler.

Drew Pearson has a second piece, appearing on the front page, in which he reveals the contents of the report of the Kefauver organized crime investigating committee, set to be released to the public the following week. The most explosive charge was that former New York City Mayor, now Ambassador to Mexico, William O'Dwyer, had, while District Attorney of Manhattan and as Mayor, failed to take effective action against the top gamblers, narcotics dealers, waterfront racketeers, organized crime murder and bookmaking operations, and had impeded promising investigations of such rackets, contributing to the growth of organized crime in the city. The report also found him friendly with friends of both gambling kingpin Frank Costello and racketeer Joe Adonis, having appointed their friends to high public office.

The report pointed primarily to two major rackets, the Costello-Adonis-Meyer Lansky syndicate in New York and the Tony Accardo-Jack Guzik-Charles Fischetti syndicate in Chicago, with the Mafia tying the two syndicates together along with other major criminal organizations throughout the country. The Mafia, it found, had been responsible for hundreds of murders as a method of enforcing its ruthless code upon member organizations. In California, as revealed by the California Crime Commission investigation, representatives of the Attorney General's office, with the apparent blessing of State Attorney General Fred Howser, had sought to organize a statewide system of protection for slot-machine operations and the distribution of punch boards.

The report placed the responsibility for eradicating such crime on the public, to demand local enforcement of the laws and to stop bribery of public officials, allowing the corruption to continue with impunity.

Government ceilings would be announced by the Office of Price Stabilization this night on meat, in an attempt to reel in inflation on the component of the average American's dinner table, with a four to five cent cut per pound due by August and another such prime cut by the fall.

In New Delhi, a dozen or so Himalayan monks, members of the Hindu Naga, a nudist sect, dropped their loin cloths and paraded nude during a procession of India's highest Hindu priests. The sect believed that nudism of its monks and nuns was a path to eliminate sin and corruption. Police, however, had insisted they wear loin cloths during the parade, but the sect's representatives threatened to go home unless they were allowed to disobey the order and disrobe. Their leader said in an interview the previous night that he had nothing to hide and that such a thought was the basis for good will among men, that clothing was a badge of "lost innocence".

Don't need no stinking badges.

The coalition Government of Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies had apparently been returned to power despite gains in the parliamentary elections by Labor opposition, with a 69 to 52 majority in the lower house, a loss of five seats for the Government. Labor held the majority in the previous Senate but there was little indication of the outcome of those races as they were chosen by a complicated system under which it would take weeks to determine the winners.

Coast Guard rescue ships were headed amid rain and high seas to a stranded Japanese freighter with 54 persons aboard off the coast of San Francisco. The freighter had radioed that its engine room bottom was smashed as it crashed in a fog.

The "Our Weather" box finds that there were many indications that the earth was getting warmer during the prior twenty years since 1931. Some scientists believed it was the result of the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, helping to retain the earth's heat. Other scientists, however, claimed it was caused by warm air moving over the land from the oceans, while still others said it was resultant of the sun providing more heat, a quarter of a percent, to the earth during the previous two decades, affecting thereby the climate.

We have never heard that before and we are glad that whatever it was which was causing it, melted away like the Wicked Witch of the West to leave us all happy and living a fretless existence in an analog to Nirvana.

On the editorial page, "'Feckless Folly' in Iran" discusses the recent Joseph Alsop pieces from Tehran, elucidating the problems of Iran, moving perilously toward internal revolt, forgetting its dependence on Western protection, exposing it then to Communist domination, in turn potentially taking away 35 percent of the oil for Western Europe, weakening the region's military capabilities to withstand Soviet aggression.

He had pointed out that five years earlier, when the Russians were pressing down on northern Azerbaijan, the British wanted to occupy southern Iran and embark on an ambitious program of social and economic reform but had not the money to do it. The State Department, through chief planner George Kennan, had formulated an economic-diplomatic program for Iran but little had come of it. Meanwhile, Russia's Tudeh Party had created problems within the country as the U.S. sat by and welcomed the Shah on a visit but sent him home empty-handed, with nothing to offer his depressed people.

It concludes that there was not much which could be done to regain the initiative, as strikes were continuing among the workers in the recently nationalized oil fields, and sporadic shutdowns were occurring at the refinery, reducing the country's output of oil.

Because of the commitment in Korea, there was little to spare in the way of men and materiel to offer in support of Iran in the event of such an internal revolt. The U.S. had only the atomic bomb to deter Russia from raw aggression in the region. It asks whether it was time to give such an ultimatum and whether if Russia called the bluff, the U.S. would be prepared to follow up with military action.

It concludes that the State Department had slept too long regarding the Middle East and that time was growing short to correct past mistakes of inaction.

Tie a yellow ribbon 'round the ol' oak tree...

"Will Russia Intervene?" finds that the MacArthur formula for victory in Korea, bombing of Chinese supply bases, blockade of ports and use of Nationalist Chinese troops, would have been adopted much earlier were it not for the prospect that it would cause intervention by Russia, developing then into a third world war.

The New York Times had recently printed an account of the Wake Island conference between General MacArthur and the President in which it was ascribed to the General that he told the President that the Chinese Communists would not intervene in Korea in substantial numbers in the event of a projected U.N. offensive to have the "boys home by Christmas". General Courtney Whitney of General MacArthur's staff had responded that intervention in Korea by the Chinese was inherent in the original decision of the President to provide military support to the Government in South Korea against the incursion by North Korea of the 38th parallel. He had dubbed it a political question, beyond the reach of General MacArthur to affect.

The piece finds it inappropriate to suggest that Russian intervention in the war would be a political question also beyond the reach of General MacArthur's field intelligence.

"Joe Martin—Smear Expert" tells of House Minority Leader Martin having stated that a "smear job" was being prepared against General MacArthur. It finds that he ought to know, quoting from his statement, which went on to say that the State Department had become a "bastion of deceit, retreat and defeat", and that Secretary of State Acheson was playing the role of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain at Munich in 1938, appeasing the enemy.

A piece from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, titled "How Not to Discipline", tells of an unidentified high-ranking officer at Turner Air Force Base in Georgia having ordered officers to clean up the field of cigarette butts as punishment for not keeping the field clean enough. The piece criticizes such discipline as fundamentally flawed for breeding disrespect among the enlisted men for their officers, suggests that it was a prime rule of discipline in any organization never to allow the underlings to see the discipline of those who had authority over them.

Drew Pearson discusses Congressman Walter Brehm of Ohio and his kickback scheme, similar to that for which former HUAC chairman during the 80th Congress, J. Parnell Thomas, had gone to prison for defrauding the Government. Dr. Brehm, a dentist before entering Congress, had attacked Mr. Pearson's assistant, Jack Anderson, for supposedly coercing a statement from Dr. Brehm's secretary in January, 1950 regarding the kickback allegations. Yet, Mr. Anderson had only suggested that she make a statement for the good of the people, and eventually she had called Dr. Brehm on the telephone, who then arrived shortly thereafter at her house and proceeded to harangue Mr. Anderson for poking around in the Congressman's affairs, after which Mr. Anderson became convinced he was guilty even though the secretary at the time denied it. Eventually, before the news could be published on the prior September 26, more facts had to be found.

Now, the secretary had just testified in the trial of Dr. Brehm that she had taken the kickbacks, thus was lying previously.

The buildup of Soviet planes and submarines in and over Siberian and Korean waters had stimulated the fear that air attacks might soon be launched against allied ground forces in Korea, prompting the Joint Chiefs to agree, in such event, to retaliate against Manchurian bases. He notes that, notwithstanding the threat, American ground troops had not undertaken daytime camouflage or darkened lights at night in preparation for an air raid.

Marquis Childs discusses the errors committed by the West since the Communist Revolution of 1917, starting with the half-hearted effort by the British to undermine the initially unpopular revolt, which might have succeeded had it been backed by adequate men and materiel. As it was, it only created resentment and suspicion among the Bolsheviks toward the West.

The second mistake was underestimating the force of Communism as an ideology bent on world conquest, emblematic of which were the Yalta and Potsdam conference concessions to the Soviets in February and July, 1945, respectively. FDR had believed that the Soviets, following the alliance during World War II, would live in peaceful coexistence with the West and so offered concessions in Europe and Asia. It was not until FDR's final days in April, 1945 that he came to realize, through insulting messages from Stalin, that his judgment had been probably in error.

General MacArthur, in his speech to Congress the prior week, had reviewed the prior 50 years of Chinese development, but omitted reference to Sun Yat-sen, the principled leader of the revolution against the feudal Manchus. The General said that the Chinese were not ideological in make-up, that Communism had taken hold there because of poor living conditions. Mr. Childs regards this view as ignoring the fanatical faith of many Chinese Communists, encouraging thereby underestimation of the task in overthrowing the Communist regime of Mao Tse Tung.

The fight against Communism could not be accomplished cheaply and would require military preparation far above that presently planned and thus require a commitment by the American people to continued sacrifices and restrictions.

Robert C. Ruark takes on the persona of President Truman and finds in that misery, after firing General MacArthur only to discover him made into a hero upon his return home, prompting the belief that perhaps he should have commanded the General to come to him from Japan rather than going all the way to Wake Island to meet with him the previous October. He wonders whether he would wind up rejected, as former President Hoover, in his last year in office. He could not stand to hear the boos against the Washington Senators baseball team in Yankee Stadium. Finally, he finds everything going wrong in the previous year, from the RFC problems to the organized crime investigation. Now, some of the newspapers complained of a White House smear campaign against General MacArthur.

But he had hope that in the ensuing year, before the 1952 campaign began, some of the issues presently on the scene would dissipate and fences would be mended with the people. Yet, Korea was not going so well and now he had no one on which to place blame, as before with General MacArthur.

"Mac is out from under and the whole shebang belongs to me. Oh, brother. Things were sure simpler in the Senate."

Tom Schlesinger of The News, in his weekly "Capital Roundup", tells of the North Carolina Congressional delegation receiving an avalanche of mail in answer to 16 questions posed by conservative radio host Fulton Lewis, Jr., expressing anti-Truman sentiments. The questions had run the gamut from impeachment of the President and whether the listener would vote for him again to opinions on domestic and foreign policy.

"Do you like little, salivating colored boys and Red Communists, some being Jews, leering at your young, precious daughters as they try to conduct their pastoral studies in their classrooms?"

Senator Clyde Hoey said that he had received 2,500 responses to the questions, far more than reaction to the MacArthur speech the previous week, and all in sympathy with Mr. Lewis's point of view. Senator Willis Smith said that he had received an estimated 3,000 such responses, while only 1,200 had poured in concerning the General's speech.

Senator Richard Nixon of California—a North Carolina boy at heart—, with his office in between those of the North Carolina Senators, had, he claimed, received 30,000 such responses.

In the House, most members had received at least 500 such responses.

The flood of mail caused several legislators to wonder what effect Mr. Lewis might have had on the defeat of Senator Frank Graham in the runoff primary the previous June against Mr. Smith, as Mr. Lewis had conducted a bitter anti-Graham campaign on his radio show. He had given his listeners the impression that Washington is an "unending scene of riotous confusion and political debauchery." One writer had described him as "an entertaining reporter who discovered a gimmick." He pitched to those who were frugal by nature, found the showy distasteful, and only wished to operate some small business in a small town.

We are certainly glad that such demagogic misuse of the restricted airwaves has disappeared and ceased to pollute and infect the body politic with such adulteration of the pure democratic spirit abounding in the country, when left to its own resources to think clearly through any given subject.

Mr. Lewis had also supported Senator John Butler in his successful campaign the previous fall to defeat former Senator Millard Tydings in Maryland, that campaign being investigated by the Senate.

Senator Hoey, 73, said that he did not imagine that General MacArthur, at age 71, had any political ambitions "at his age".

Senator Smith, as a member of the District Committee, opposed a D.C. child labor employment bill which would raise the minimum age to 12 as it would eliminate the ten-year old newspaper delivery boys from the scene. The Senator said that he had delivered newspapers when ten.

That's nothing. We started delivering papers at age two, sometimes in six-foot deep snow, in hail the size of six basketballs, other times amid floods so gorged with whitish-grey sheets of rain water that we actually swum house to house to make the rounds over a 100-square mile populous parcel, all between 2:00 and 6:00 in the morning, in bare feet, with nothing but blisters to show for it as the masters refused to pay for stated fear of violating child labor laws.

The N.C. delegation in the House was leaning toward the House Foreign Affairs Committee compromise on aid to India, which would send 190 million dollars by loan rather than grant, with the ability to repay in goods. The Senate counterpart had also approved a similar measure.

A letter writer favors five of the seven members of the City Council for re-election, plus Mayor Victor Shaw, finds two members to be obstructionists against progress.

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