The Charlotte News
Monday, May 21, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports, via Olen Clements, that the enemy began withdrawing
Lt. General Edward Almond announced that the Tenth Corps he commanded had killed or wounded 48,341 enemy troops on the east central front, with 24,700 of those casualties inflicted on Sunday, the largest single-day total of the war. Many of the casualties occurred when the Chinese troops were trying to carry away their dead along a 2.5 mile long valley. Allied officers estimated that another 10,220 casualties were inflicted on the west-central front. U.N. forces suffered comparatively few casualties.
The Second Division, covered by air and artillery fire, had moved to the east to plug a critical gap in the allied lines which had occurred when two South Korean divisions had collapsed. The Second Division, which the Communists had set out in their new offensive to destroy, had inflicted an estimated 37,750 casualties in five days. The Communists had hurled 125,000 men at the allies since Thursday. They had become entangled in barbed wire and were blown up by mines.
Before the joint Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, General Omar Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, resumed his testimony, interrupted the prior Wednesday regarding the issue of whether he should be compelled to discuss his conversations with the President anent the firing of General MacArthur, said that the Chiefs had no objection to use of Chinese Nationalist troops on the mainland of China, as recommended by General MacArthur, provided their use did not necessitate action by U.N. troops or dilute the protection of Formosa. He said that to carry out General MacArthur's proposal to carry the war into China would cause the military to have to strip its troop concentrations elsewhere in the world and that while it was a good proposal to bomb their bases provided Russia would not be induced thereby to enter the war, such was not a guarantee anyone could give.
The U.S. and Russia had reached loggerheads on the proposed treaty with Japan, with the U.S. saying in response to the Russian proposals for a treaty conference that Russia was "conniving at aggression" by seeking complete withdrawal of all occupation forces within a year after execution of the treaty, and the weakening of Japan's internal defenses. The U.S. completely rejected the proposed Big Four meeting, which would include Communist China, regarding the treaty.
The President told Congressional leaders this date that he expected in the ensuing two or three days to ask Congress for slightly more than two billion dollars in ERP aid, plus additional billions for economic and military aid to allies in the coming fiscal year. Senate Majority Leader Ernest McFarland said that the amount would be far less than anticipated at the start of the four-year Marshall Plan in 1947-48.
With the Defense Production Act set to expire on June 30, the future of economic controls remained uncertain. Industry was against further controls and wanted existing controls rolled back, while the President wanted more controls. John L. Lewis of UMW wanted all controls scrapped. Farmers and stockraisers were complaining, as were city dwellers, about controls.
Cattle receipts at the nation's stockyards were light, as price controls went into effect this date on live beef animals. In twelve principal markets, there were an estimated 41,100 head of cattle received, compared to 77,700 the previous Monday and about 68,000 the same week of the prior year. The new price control order required cattle to be priced ten percent below the averages for the prior January.
Head 'em up, keep 'em in...
The Supreme Court, in Schwegmann Bros. v. Calvert Corp., 341 U.S. 384, a 6 to 3 decision announced by Justice William O. Douglas, ruled that state "fair trade" laws did not prevent stores from cutting prices if the stores refused to sign price-fixing agreements. The laws in question, adopted in at least 31 states, including Texas, Louisiana, Vermont, and Missouri, plus D.C., permitted the fixing of minimum retail prices by agreements between manufacturers and retailers, per a 1937 Federal law which exempted from the Sherman Anti-Trust law such agreements for products flowing in intrastate commerce. Justice Felix Frankfurter dissented, joined by Justices Hugo Black and Harold Burton. Justice Robert Jackson wrote a separate concurrence, joined by Justice Sherman Minton. A grocer in Louisiana had been prevented by court order from cutting prices in derogation of a price-fixing arrangement between markets and distillers of liquor, entered pursuant to the State's fair trade laws, and the decision reversed that order, holding that the Federal law exempted only the contracts and the parties thereto, but did not apply to non-signing parties.
In Hackensack, N.J., Joe Adonis, reputedly one of the seven czars of organized crime in the country, pleaded no contest to a series of State gambling charges and threw himself on the mercy of the court for sentencing. Four of his accomplices likewise entered pleas. Jury selection in their trials had been about to begin. Mr. Adonis faced a maximum of 18 years in prison plus fines.
On the editorial page, "What About Greece?" tells of Andre Michalopoulos, adviser to the Greek Embassy in Washington, having suggested a Mediterranean pact between Greece, Turkey, and Yugoslavia, the latter having been at odds with Greece for serving as a base for the Communist guerrillas in the north during the civil war following the end of Nazi occupation in 1944.
While Greece would prefer inclusion in NATO, Denmark and Sweden opposed both Turkey and Greece as members, as that would reduce the military and economic aid available for Denmark and Sweden.
The piece ventures that for Russia to gain control in the Middle and Near East, it would need to control Greece and Turkey, and that without that control it would be a dangerous proposition.
It concludes that the country had let go of another defensive bastion in the late Forties in Korea and the result had been disastrous; such should not be repeated in the Mediterranean.
"The Japanese Peace Treaty" finds the Soviet proposal for a Big Four conference to conclude the treaty with Japan to have been preposterous, that the Russians wanted the existing plans for the treaty to be discarded and Communist China included in the treaty planning process, that all foreign troops would depart from Japan within a year after the treaty was executed, and that Japan's self-defense program would be sharply curtailed. Only the Big Four would have a say in the treaty, excluding smaller nations as Australia, which had helped considerably to defeat Japan during the war.
The U.S. rejection of the terms was the only course it could take.
"Presidential Indiscretion" finds typical of the President his recent statement to the press that he had been considering firing General MacArthur for the previous year before finally making the decision in the wake of his open statement to the Communist commander in Korea on March 24, soliciting peace talks. The press then wondered why the President had subsequently appointed General MacArthur supreme commander of U.N. troops if he had been considering the firing for a year. White House press secretary Joseph Short then had to clarify that the President was speaking generally and that he had begun to think of firing the General the previous August after his message to the VFW, disagreeing with Administration policy on Formosa, had been made public. By the time the correction was made to the President's statement, however, the damage had been done, again calling into question the President's judgment.
"Renewing a Suggestion" suggests again that Congress allow full tax exemption for medical expenses. Current law allowed for deduction of expenses exceeding five percent of gross income so that a person earning $5,000 got no deduction for the first $250 of expenses. The piece finds that it would be a start in the right direction toward the goal of making health care more affordable, as championed by the Administration in its effort to establish compulsory health care insurance.
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Fearless Winnowing?" wonders whether the University of Wisconsin still stood by its 1894 statement cast in bronze on John Bascom Hall, that the University should always encourage a "continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found." Recently, the University had withdrawn an invitation to Max Lerner to speak on the campus because of his reported membership in the Communist Party.
The piece finds the notion that Dr.
Lerner would corrupt the students to be preposterous. He had taught
at Williams College, was currently on the faculty of Brandeis
University, had lectured at dozens of universities
It hopes that the University would change its decision as it hurt the University far more that Dr. Lerner.
Drew Pearson tells of the President sending to Price Stabilizer Mike DiSalle a letter, the advance alert of which had caused Mr. DiSalle some moments of trepidation before opening it. It turned out, however, that it only congratulated him for his sense of humor on Washington, as the President had read in the Sunday New York Times. The President said that it reminded him of how they used to use a "trocar on a clovered bull", producing a loud explosion after which the bull resumed its normal shape and usually recovered. He concluded, "Keep sticking 'em." Mr. DiSalle then looked up "trocar" and found it was a surgical spear sometimes used to release gas pressure in bloated cattle. "Clovered bull" was one, presumably, which had become bloated from eating too much clover.
Mr. DiSalle had said, among other things, according to the Times article, that the President had the man he wanted in the job of Price Stabilizer, one with "plenty of guts", pointing to his ample girth. Everyone in Toledo applauded the appointment of the city's Mayor as Price Stabilizer, half, he said, wanting him to move up and the other half glad to see him gone. He had also said that a man applied for a job as a postmaster but was reminded that he could not read, whereupon he said that he did not want to be assistant postmaster but postmaster.
The Republicans, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, were making Senator Tom Connally of Texas their number one target for defeat in 1952, and were planning to use General MacArthur to do it by means of a Texas speaking tour. The campaign would follow the same pattern as that used to defeat Senator Millard Tydings in 1950, trying to paint Senator Connally, who had always fervently fought against Communism, as a disciple of Secretary of State Acheson. Senator Connally had agreed with the Secretary on most issues, had even brought him to Texas and introduced him to audiences. It would be Senator Connally's first serious opposition since 1928. The Republicans hoped to knock him out in the Democratic primaries with former Congressman and HUAC chairman Martin Dies. The other possible contender was Governor Allan Shivers.
Stewart Alsop finds that the Senate investigation into the firing of General MacArthur might come to a halt amid cries of partisanship, as evidenced by the previous week's wrangling over whether General Omar Bradley should be compelled to testify regarding his discussions of the matter with the President—which the Committees ultimately held he should not.
Republicans were desperately trying to prevent the General from disclosing the points he had prepared to read into the record regarding the reasons why the Joint Chiefs supported the decision to fire General MacArthur. Senator Owen Brewster of Maine had led that effort.
Those three reasons were that the General had violated the chain of command by going to the public, that he had not been in sympathy with the directives to end the war and might therefore commit "grave errors" of interpretation of those directives, and that civilian control of the military was one of the basic principles of the executive branch, violated by General MacArthur. General Bradley had not been give the opportunity to read the statement into the record and the Republicans might boycott the remainder of the hearings on the grounds that they had been unable to adduce the facts, that is, the facts to fit their preferred scenario.
Mr. Alsop observes that during his entire testimony before the Committees, General MacArthur was accorded the respect due a high-ranking general, but that when Generals Marshall and Bradley were testifying, there had been lack of courtesy amounting almost to a slur. That attitude had been particularly evident during the questioning by Senator Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin. He advises that the hero-worshipers of General MacArthur should realize that such behavior ultimately would backfire.
Marquis Childs tells of consideration being given to allowing the public to witness the explosion of an atomic bomb of medium strength in a test to be conducted close to a population center. Persons wishing to view the test could do so safely from seven miles away or behind a foot-thick concrete wall a mile away. Structures would be constructed at the site to demonstrate the bomb's capabilities and limitations. The demonstration would be designed to stimulate public interest in civil defense, as currently the attitude toward it was one of apathy, apparently either from the belief that survival was not possible in a nuclear attack or that such an attack was unlikely.
An effective civil defense program could reduce casualties in an actual atomic attack by as much as eighty percent.
Soon, to convince the public that electricity could pass harmlessly through the home, demonstration centers would also be set up so that whole families could come by and stick their fingers in live light sockets while standing in tubs of water.
A letter from Badin, N.C., favors complete secrecy on the part of the U.S. regarding its defense activities, to counter the Soviet iron curtain. The letter is signed "H. M. Spook".
Well, Mr. Spook, this is a democracy and to enforce such secrecy, the society would then need a secret police, as the Soviets also had, and secret prisons for those who violated the secrecy, and secret executions for extreme violators of such secrecy.
A letter writer from Pinehurst finds a statement of Senator Willis Smith to the Automobile Dealers meeting in Pinehurst to have been full of generalities and platitudes, such as his statement that the proposed aid to India was a good thing but that he had come to question whether the country should undertake it. The writer finds this part and parcel of the delay in Congress of the bill to make the loan to India of two million tons of the nation's ample surplus grain, while the people of India began to starve. Senator Smith had also urged better morals in political and governmental activities, with which the writer agrees but says it ought start with better campaigns by "hungry office seekers", as Mr. Smith, given the tawdry campaign he had run in the primaries the previous spring to defeat incumbent interim Senator Frank Graham—utilizing race-baiting and Red-baiting tactics.
Where is old Jesse? We have not heard from him since that brief appearance last June over there looking into the painting of the Prison superintendent's house by the inmates. He must be biding his time, 'fore he gets a mind to come in heyeh and fix ever'thing.
A letter from the president of the Charlotte Opera Association thanks the newspaper for publicizing the recent performances of the "Chocolate Soldier", says that the Association was now looking forward to presenting "The Marriage of Figaro" in the fall.
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