The Charlotte News
Wednesday, May 9, 1951
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that the largest allied air raid of the war was staged this date as more than 300 planes hit the Chinese air force at Sinuiju airfield, inflicting great damage among 70 to 100 Chinese planes which were caught on the ground, apparently being readied for an air attack.
On the ground, South Korean forces, led by tanks, advanced in the western sector two additional miles toward Inje.
The Defense Department reported that American casualties in Korea had risen by 1,256 from the previous week, to a total of 64,055, based on those reported to next of kin through May 4. The total included 9,765 killed, 43,350 wounded and 10,940 missing.
Lt. General Matthew Ridgway, supreme commander of the U.N. troops in Korea, received his fourth star, thus making him a full general. The President sent the promotion to the Senate for confirmation.
Secretary of Defense Marshall testified for the third successive day before the joint Senate Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees, saying that General MacArthur's quarrel over Korean war policy had created "uneasiness" among U.S. allies and threatened to cause the country to have to go it alone in Korea. He said that the allies had not brought about the firing. He stated in response to questions that no Japanese troops had been allowed to serve in Korea primarily because of the Russo-Chinese defense pact being aimed at Japan.
Secretary of State Acheson said that Russia was trying to maneuver the Western powers into suspending their defense program but declared it was too high a price to pay for a Big Four meeting. The U.S. had about reached the end of its rope in trying to formulate an acceptable meeting of Big Four foreign ministers in Paris. Andrei Gromyko had demanded that the Russian formula for arms reduction be adopted for the meeting, without reference to the general level of world armament or the rearming of Communist satellite countries.
The President said in a speech before some 400 industrialists in Washington that a concrete plan had been developed for greater military strength and industrial mobilization in the event that Russia started a third world war. He said that an end of the Korean war would not end the global danger of Soviet aggression.
The border area between Syria and Israel was quiet following a ceasefire order issued by the U.N. Security Council. An Israeli official said that it was now up to the U.N. to assure that Syria departed the demilitarized area in Israeli territory.
In Pamplona, Spain, police fired on a crowd of strikers demonstrating against the high cost of living, and five were seriously wounded while fifty others sustained minor injuries. There was no indication that the strike would end before the next day.
In Panama City, shooting and mob violence occurred during a general strike against President Arnulfo Arias, which had paralyzed the whole capital. A radio station which had supported the President was attacked.
A group of businessmen urged that the U.S., Britain and Canada make up the dollar deficit faced by non-Communist nations of Europe, caused by the Western arms build-up. Germany and Italy were particularly short of sterling.
In New York, twenty-one police officers, including two retired inspectors, a retired captain and two retired lieutenants, were arrested on an indictment charging conspiracy to protect a twenty million dollar per year bookmaking racket.
The Government put a ceiling on the price of wool, 65 to 75 percent higher than before the start of the Korean war.
On the editorial page, "Decision by the Voters" finds the decision in the municipal elections the previous day to have been wise, re-electing Mayor Victor Shaw and electing five of his slate of six candidates to the City Council, in addition to former Mayor Herbert Baxter and a Charlotte businessman, Steve Dellinger, who had finished ahead of Alonzo Squires.
The School Board would benefit from the experience of three re-elected members, along with Emily Bellows as the fourth member.
The two NAACP candidates, one for the Council and one for the Board, had fared well while coming up short of election, receiving votes outside the predominantly black precincts, suggesting that a substantial part of the city's voters believed that there should be minority representation on those two bodies.
"The MacArthur Testimony—II" provides some of the questions which General MacArthur did not wish to answer during his testimony before the Senate committees. He had refused comment on universal military training, whether to increase the ceiling of 2.4 million on U.S. armed forces, on the fate of Hong Kong should Britain either support Formosa or the bombing of Manchuria, regarding the threat to Alaska from Russia, on whether the Korean war could be won faster if the country prosecuted the war directly rather than working through the U.N., on how to defend the U.S. in the event of a general war, on the number of atom bombs in the stockpile, on the state of civil defense in the country, and a number of other such global and domestic defense questions. In each case, the General said that it was not within his field of expertise or understanding as he had been a theater commander and deferred to the Joint Chiefs on such matters.
The piece finds that many of these issues were what the Joint Chiefs had to weigh in determining the best approach in Korea against the backdrop of the world situation and that General MacArthur's lack of familiarity with them was the weakest part of his "otherwise convincing and dramatic program for victory in Korea."
An excerpt from the Congressional Record of an exchange between General MacArthur and Senator Lyndon Johnson appears on the page. Senator Johnson asked the General what would occur if the General's plan for Korea were adopted and the Chinese withdrew behind the Yalu River but still would not enter into a treaty, whether that would require a substantial U.N. force to patrol and protect the border with China. General MacArthur replied that he did not believe such a scenario would occur as it would not be reasonable for the Chinese to retreat back into China and then not enter into a treaty, as their cities and bases would be in peril from U.N. air attacks. He said that he did not think a large force would be necessary to maintain the peace, that the South Koreans could defend the area adequately, with the backing of allied air and naval support.
An editorial from the Asheville Citizen discusses spring in May.
Drew Pearson tells of Rita Hayworth staying at his Maryland farm for a few days as she was in the process of separating from Prince Ali Khan. Mr. Pearson's wife reported to him, however, that the spring pump had failed and their regular repairman was unavailable. Ms. Hayworth could not take a bath and the dishes could not be washed. He suggested to his wife that with the water shortage in New York and the water shortage generally in the country, they were preparing for the future. And surely Ms. Hayworth during her desert travels with Aly Khan had gone for a few days without a bath.
Eventually, he had to give in to his wife's insistence, however, that they dig a well rather than being reliant on the pumped spring water. Mr. Pearson blames Ms. Hayworth therefore for his predicament.
Marquis Childs recaps the successes in Korea since latter December when Lt. General Matthew Ridgway first became ground commander, succeeding Lt. General Walton Walker, killed in a jeep accident. He had regrouped the U.N. forces and given them new fighting morale. Now that General Ridgway was supreme commander, replacing General MacArthur, the Communist Chinese spring offensive had thus far been held and turned back.
General MacArthur had denied to Congress that his forces had been dangerously split, with no intercommunication between the Tenth Corps and the Eighth Army during the November offensive. But in fact, as reporters on the scene attested, the lack of intercommunication, with all liaison forced to go through Tokyo headquarters, had enabled a relatively small number of Chinese troops to penetrate into the vacuum between the two forces and flank the allies, forcing a withdrawal. General MacArthur had claimed the withdrawal was orderly and planned. But again the news reporters on the scene had told a different story.
Mr. Childs thinks therefore that the Senate committees ought hear from these correspondents, such as Stan Swinton of the Associated Press, Keyes Beech of the Chicago Daily News and Homer Bigart of the New York Herald Tribune. Their observations rather than their conclusions could prove most helpful to the investigation.
Robert C. Ruark finds that the Kefauver organized crime investigating committee had presented a good show, stimulating a lot of public interest in the problem, but that so far nothing much had come of the investigation. Former Mayor William O'Dwyer of New York, for instance, remained as Ambassador to Mexico despite being criticized for allowing organized crime to flourish in the city while Mayor and District Attorney.
Governor Fuller Warren of Florida had reappointed Jimmy Sullivan as Sheriff of Dade County after he had been suspended, and Governor Warren, himself, was accused of receiving as much as $400,000 in campaign contributions when he had listed only $9,000.
Senator Kefauver had made a name for himself and might eventually be a vice-presidential candidate for the Democrats.
Still, nothing much had happened as a result and Mr. Ruark says that he would be glad to retract his criticism of the show when some of the persons exposed were fired, jailed or deported.
Framed Edition
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