The Charlotte News
Thursday, May 3, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that allied tank-infantry patrols, fanning northward out of Seoul, had fought a series of engagements this date with the enemy about ten miles from Seoul. Apparently the patrols then withdrew southward.
Another patrol brought back to allied lines from the area of Uijongbu two tanks which had been abandoned earlier.
On the central front, a two-hour battle southeast of Chunchon was fought for an enemy-held hill which was retained by the enemy but at a cost of two-thirds of the 150 enemy troops.
Two American F-8 Shooting Stars were shot down by enemy gunfire.
Action up until dusk was light, as on the preceding day, one of the quietest of the war. Ground and air action accounted for only about 870 enemy casualties on Wednesday, unusually low. Allied ground troops took the opportunity to engage in rest and recreation.
General MacArthur testified in executive session before the joint Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees for the first time and said that the Joint Chiefs had recommended on January 12 that a naval blockade be imposed on Communist China, that air operations be conducted over Manchuria and that supply occur of the Chinese Nationalist troops. He assumed that the Joint Chiefs were overruled by the President or Secretary of Defense Marshall. The General said that a few ground troops, if backed up by air and naval forces operating against Communist China, could complete the fight in Korea. He said that without such air and naval operations, it was beyond the country's capacity to provide enough troops to win the war on the ground. He also said that he did not believe that Russia was in a position to initiate attack from Asia.
Senate Republicans voted to support Senator Owen Brewster for a place on the Foreign Relations Committee to replace deceased Senator Arthur Vandenberg. Democrats had to approve the seating.
In Greensboro, an official of the TWUA called upon its state directors in the South to encourage employers of struck mills to submit the issues to the Wage Stabilization Board. The 33-day old strike for higher wages affected 45,000 textile workers in seven Southern states, the bulk of whom were in North Carolina.
Ralph Gibson of The News provides a report of a father who had killed his eight children, ages three to sixteen, and then himself the previous night near Collettsville as he set the house ablaze after killing the children apparently with a blunt instrument, and then shot himself in the head with a shotgun. The wife had separated from the husband a month earlier.
James E. Sparks, who took photographs of the family's house which burned down, sent his pictures to The News, appearing on the front page, and provides a first-hand account of what he saw in the aftermath of the tragedy.
On the editorial page, "School Board Needs Experience" departs from the newspaper's rule of not endorsing candidates in local elections and endorses the three present members standing for re-election, as their experience would be critical in the school building program ahead. A fourth member would also be elected.
"O'Dwyer Should Be Recalled" finds not to be ignored the growing public clamor for the recall of William O'Dwyer as Ambassador to Mexico following the criticism of him in the Kefauver organized crime committee report as allowing organized crime to flourish unabated in New York City while he had been Mayor and District Attorney.
While he had done nothing criminal, he should not be left in a position of honor in the Government, as his integrity had been placed under a cloud of doubt.
Mr. O'Dwyer would remain Ambassador until December, 1952, just after the election.
"Iran and Oil" discusses the piece on the page by Bob Sain of The News, providing the opinion of Dr. C. R. Eberhardt of Davidson College anent Iran and the Middle East after he had just returned from a visit there.
Agreement between the British and Iran over the oil, as suggested by Dr. Eberhardt might come to pass, seemed further off than ever. Iran did not appear to be in a compromising mood, with various warring factions at work internally. The Shah and his followers were inept and the country appeared as an adolescent child, stubbornly aggressive, intent on principle without regard to practicality. One of its growing pains would be its inevitably abortive attempt at nationalization of the oil.
"'The Chattering Sphinx'" discusses the piece on the page from The Reporter, finds its hypothetical conversation in Moscow regarding what to do on the world stage vis-à-vis the West to be something to grasp when so few things could give Americans comfort in a time of such great confusion over the proper direction of the country's foreign policy.
A piece from the New York Times, titled "Longevity in the U.S.S.R.", tells of Pravda claiming that Russians were living much longer than those in capitalist systems. One member of a collective farm had supposedly reached age 145.
But others quite healthy and expecting longevity, remarks the piece, might come down with pneumonia on the way to Siberia or wind up committing "suicide" in Moscow. Whole groups of people might wind up labeled enemies of the State and not live much longer.
Drew Pearson tells of secret testimony taken on April 6, 1949 before the House Foreign Affairs Committee from Maj. General David G. Barr, former military adviser to Chiang Kai-Shek, stating that Chiang's staff officers were incompetent and lazy, sometimes dishonest. He described the surrender of some of the Manchurian cities to the Communists as being so suspicious as to raise the possibility of a sellout to the enemy. In some cases, the officers were not present when the troops surrendered. In one case, a large allied supply base with large amounts of American equipment stored there was left virtually undefended, suggesting a sellout when the Communists easily seized it.
General Barr said that he believed Chiang was honest but that his troops, without good leadership, had long earlier lost the will to fight.
A recent meeting between General MacArthur and Senator Taft produced a renewed assurance of the General that he did not intend to enter politics and also showed that he could out-talk the loquacious Senator Taft.
Former President Hoover, during his term from 1929-33, had become unpopular for court-martialing Maj. General Smedley Butler for causing an international incident when he claimed in a speech that Mussolini had run over a child with his car. Eventually, because of the outcry, President Hoover relented. Mr. Pearson compares the episode to the firing by President Truman of General MacArthur and the outcry in its wake. He notes that President Hoover admired President Truman, as the latter had called him back into service several times after a 13-year absence from Washington under FDR.
Marquis Childs discusses the increasing power of Southern Democrats as the stock of the President had gone down in the backlash from the firing of General MacArthur. Senators Tom Connally and Richard Russell, as respective chairmen of the Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, and Congressman Carl Vinson, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, all Southerners, were the mainstays protecting the President from his attackers in Congress.
As a concession to their loyalty, they might demand the resignation of Secretary of State Acheson. Secretary of Defense Marshall might also resign for health reasons as he had largely finished the job of mobilizing defense for which he agreed to come aboard.
The fact that Senator Taft had attacked the integrity of the Joint Chiefs, including General Omar Bradley, had not been taken well by the press and would not help General MacArthur's cause.
Parenthetically, Secretary Acheson would remain until the end of the term in 1953 but Secretary Marshall would resign the following September after a year in the post.
The Southern bloc had been taken for granted by the Democratic Party for a long time and now intended to assert itself, and could become a powerful force in 1952. He predicts accurately that the ticket would have a Southerner in the second spot, to be Senator John Sparkman of Alabama. Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee would join on the ticket Governor Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic presidential nominee again in 1956, after narrowly defeating Senator John F. Kennedy for the vice-presidential nomination, thrown open to the convention to placate the Southerners and because Governor Stevenson was nominee a second time.
A piece from The Reporter, as indicated in the editorial above, suggests an hypothetical conversation in Moscow in which the bosses decided that the best thing to do was to wait, as America grew increasingly distrustful of their European allies while an anti-American wave in Europe increased. Yet there was also discussion of moving aggressively to keep their people under tension, with the understanding that it would also unify their enemies.
Bob Sain of The News, as indicated in another editorial, tells of Dr. Charles Eberhardt, a professor of Biblical studies at Davidson College, having returned from a trip to the Middle East convinced, after discussion with the president of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., that the Iranian oil could be saved for the West. He believed that nationalization would be only pro forma while the British would continue to administer the oil fields.
He, unlike Joseph Alsop in his recently chronicled visit to Tehran, did not find a coup d'etat imminent in the Middle Eastern governments and believed Russia not capable of a successful invasion as long as Britain and the U.S. could work together and remain strong. While there was need for financial aid, such as the American loan for 100 million dollars, the desperate need in the region was for intelligent administration of such funds to undergird Middle Eastern economies. The region needed better housing, health care, mechanization and markets. The assassination in March of Premier Ali Razmara of Iran had left a vacuum of leadership which was amenable to Anglo-American policy. The unrest in Iran suggested the need for better Western understanding of the region. In getting oil from the Middle East, the West had to see to it that the people of the region benefited.
A letter writer suggests that the ouster of General MacArthur must have brought great comfort to those who wanted peace without recourse to a third world war. Rearmament still proceeded, however, and, he ventures, was not conducive to peace.
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