The Charlotte News
Wednesday, June 13, 1951
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that thousands of enemy troops streamed northward in the North Korean hills this date, beaten by the allies who were able to roam unopposed over the abandoned "iron triangle" of Pyonggang, Kumhwa and Chorwon. The allies made good advances toward Pyonggang, the apex of the triangle, but censors prevented inclusion of distances in the reports.
The new type of action over the ridges was described by American soldiers as "bouncing bottle", as U.N. forces attacked North Korean entrenchments on the hilltops, halting them with artillery and mortar fire, followed by air strikes and artillery, forcing the enemy to retreat to the next ridge, etc.
The Fifth Air Force, which had flown 535 sorties the prior day, flew about one-third the missions this date, hitting the ridges over which the enemy fled.
The President stated, in an address to the highway safety conference in Washington, that fewer than 80,000 American casualties, battle and non-battle related, had been incurred in Korea, whereas there were more than one million deaths and injuries caused by auto accidents in the country the prior year. He wondered why there was no outcry against it by the press, columnists or "the Congressional demagogues". The report notes that General Omar Bradley had recently testified to the Senate joint committees that there were 142,000 battle and non-battle related casualties, and that the latest official casualty figures had placed the battle-related casualties at 68,000, prompting question as to where the President got his number.
Lt. General Albert C. Wedemeyer, testifying again before the joint Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, recommended this date that the U.S. take a "calculated risk" of war with Russia by bombing the Manchurian railroad supply line controlled jointly by the Chinese and Russians. He viewed it as questionable whether such bombing would expand the war, that Russia, regardless, would choose its time and place to go to war. In early 1945, he had supported FDR's efforts at Yalta to get Russia into the Pacific war, but believed that it was a strategic mistake in his judgment at the time. He said that he did not regard the four State Department advisers, who had good things to say to him in 1944-45 about Communist China and negative things to say about Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist Government, to be Communists but rather keen men. He believed the U.S. should alone make a peace treaty with Japan if nothing could be worked out with Britain, Russia and other nations involved in the Pacific war. He claimed that the Nationalists' chief problem in the civil war with the Communists had been lack of ammunition, contrary to a statement quoted from Maj. General David Barr by Secretary of State Acheson, that the problem lay not in lack of equipment but rather poor military leadership adversely impacting troop morale.
Secretary Acheson said that the U.S. proposed agenda for the prospective Big Four foreign ministers conference would not preclude discussion of NATO, declining to elaborate. The statement suggested that the Russians understood that not having it included per se on the agenda did not prevent its discussion. The Russians had demanded that the issue, along with that of American bases abroad, be included on the agenda.
In Tehran, a Government source said that three days earlier, an Iranian frontier patrol soldier was shot and killed by Russians along the border east of the Caspian Sea. The source said that the Russians claimed that he was on the Russian side of the border.
Officials of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. were meeting this day with Iranian Government officials to discuss settlement of the proposed seizure of the oil company holdings, 53 percent of which were owned by the British.
General MacArthur was expected to arrive in Austin, Texas, this date to kick off a whirlwind tour of six Texas cities in four days. He was to be presented with a new Cadillac in Houston. Much pomp and circumstance was expected to greet him at each stop, where he was slated to speak before large crowds in large venues.
Two Air Force jets collided over Providence, R.I., but both pilots parachuted to safety, albeit injured.
The House Ways & Means Committee voted to raise excise taxes on gasoline, automobiles, and many other items.
Price director Mike DiSalle said that expected controls on apparel pricing would produce little change on the cost of clothing to consumers.
Office of Price Stabilization officials said that they were working on uncovering a suspected beef black market involving "big people" in the beef industry.
Near Wheaton, Ill., a truck driver and member of the strife-ridden Teamsters Union was found tortured and shot to death along a highway. Police theorized that the man had been kidnaped after leaving a North Side Chicago tavern where he was a part time bartender. He was then bound and a knife pressed slowly into his chest until it penetrated eight inches. One of his shoulders was pulled from its socket. The knife was then withdrawn and an adhesive plaster placed over the wound. He was then shot seven times at close range. Police believed that the slayers had sought information from him on violence in the union. Within the previous year, homes of four union officials of Local 705 had been bombed and two other officials had been shot and wounded, while another had been killed in a hit-and-run incident.
It's just a friendly little organization to get better living conditions for the truckers.
In New York, State hearings
continued into narcotics use among teenagers, as the schools
superintendent estimated that one of every 200 students in the city's
junior and senior high schools used drugs, with addicts numbering
about 1,500, while another 3,500 not attending public schools also
might be addicted. The superintendent had earlier said that there
were 154 known addicts in the schools. One student was quoted from an
essay as saying that you took a puff of marijuana, then another,
until you had consumed a "bomber" and then asked a friend
for another bomber
Miss California, a teacher from Sacramento, was crowned.
Must be the result of the new A.P. teletypesetter circuit to which the newspaper now belonged to bring it the greater national news stories.
Who was Miss Wyoming?
On the editorial page, "A Job for the Council" urges scrutiny of the tentative City Government budget of nearly seven million dollars and provides its reasoning. If you are particularly interested in the City budget for the 1951-52 fiscal year in Charlotte, you may read it. Perhaps, you will wish to write a paper on it.
We're on vacation.
"Law Needed for Utility Strikes" tells of the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen having received an offer from Duke Power Co. to resolve the dispute over the demanded ten percent raise in wages for bus drivers and mechanics in six cities, including Charlotte, apparently sufficient for the union to put the matter to a vote, though the details had not been disclosed. It was likely therefore that the 1951 bus dispute was over, but it did not mean that it could not resurface in subsequent years.
It urges the Governor and State Attorney General to get about drafting a model law to prevent strikes by public utilities and to provide for a means to redress labor issues short of strike, to be submitted to the 1953 Legislature.
"Tunes and Tea Rooms" tells of South Korea banning all Japanese music from the tea rooms, which meant all music, as the South Koreans had no music of their own after a half century of Japanese occupation through the end of the war. The piece thinks it not a good idea as the South Koreans needed music more than ever in the crisis besetting them at present.
It concludes that "Open the
Door, Richard"
"Fraises Des Bois" discusses "Import Snobs", who were quick to let it be
known that they were serving delicacies from abroad, as with
marmalade from Scotland. The latest craze was fraises des bois,
shipped fresh each day by special air delivery from Paris to New York
and sold at a buck per eight ounces. They were wild strawberries
"Intruder at Dawn" tells of having breakfast alone at dawn as a squirrel looked on, having apparently warned the birds to stay away from the intruder into their ordinarily exclusive early morning enclave.
Another slow day after vacation, we take it. We didn't get one, so that's okay.
Four editorials are presented. One from Business Week discusses the House Ways & Means Committee's approach to the pending tax bill.
Another from the Saturday Evening Post tells of a schoolteacher, a veteran of the Pacific war, under investigation by the school board in New York for refusing to join in the celebration welcoming home General MacArthur, stating his reasons that he was certain the General's policies would lead to world war three and that, as a veteran, he did not care for the General. The piece regards the expressions as his business and not that of the school board, that they should respect and encourage individual expression of opinion. It concludes that people were getting pretty hysterical in those times.
That extends to these times as well, where free speech takes a decided backseat to gun rights in the country.
The other day, we were in a store
browsing the merchandise. A young man standing a few feet away,
looking at the merchandise, suddenly blurted out to no one in
particular that if he heard another anti-gun ad he did not know what
he would do, making us aware of the apparently just concluded
anti-gun message on the radio being piped through the store, to which
we had been oblivious, as to most such Muzak. There was only one thing
to do. And so, without saying a word, we pulled out the gun we
happened to be packing
A piece from the Baltimore Evening Sun criticizes Congress for getting so little done in the session, less, it contends, than any other Congress in modern times.
The Christian Science Monitor remarks on the statement a couple of months earlier by El Presidente Juan Peron that technicians of his government had developed thermonuclear reactions identical to those produced by the sun, causing atomic scientists to be skeptical of the accuracy of the statement. Now, the scientist on whom the dictator had relied for the information was held in disrepute in Argentina and in danger of arrest for perpetrating a hoax.
Eva Peron was quoted as saying to Japanese residents in Buenos Aires that El Presidente was "God" and that they could not conceive of heaven without him, being their sun, air, water, and life. The piece remarks that such went beyond the adulation accorded even Hitler by the Nazis, though lacking in the volume of that provided Josef Stalin on his recent 70th birthday, concluding that the deification of Sr. Peron would likely ultimately fall as flat as his vaunted claim of an Argentinian thermonuclear discovery.
Drew Pearson discusses underworld figure Murray "The Camel" Humphreys, a lieutenant of the late Al Capone, who once went to prison for 18 months for taking a $50,000 ransom payment for a Capone-gang kidnaping and not paying taxes on the ransom.
He recently appeared before the Senate crime investigating committee and was grilled by Wyoming Senator Lester Hunt, who found it repulsive that he would not even answer questions about his daughter's schooling. "The Camel" engaged in considerable rancorous sarcasm with the Senator and the Senator finally warned him that he would be cited for contempt of Congress for not answering the committee's questions, designed to get at the basis of what causes crime in the country, to which Mr. Humphreys responded that the Senator therefore must be under the impression that he was a criminal. Senator Hunt mockishly then said that he refused to answer on the ground it might incriminate him.
New Hampshire Senator Charles Tobey also tried to get Mr. Humphreys to cooperate but to no avail, with Mr. Humphreys saying that it was only the Senator's opinion that he could tell an "interesting story" if he would. He also refused to discuss his criminal past.
Marquis Childs finds that Senator Edwin Johnson, by remaining mum, appeared to have perfected the art of being a Senator, stirring resentment among his colleagues in the process. As chairman of the Interstate & Foreign Commerce Committee, he had successfully been ignoring hints and suggestions to undertake two investigations. One was of the shipping industry and the sale and resale of Government-built tankers and merchant ships to those with inside knowledge, and the operation of the vessels under foreign registries by foreigners, particularly Greeks, who paid no taxes to any country, some of which ships were believed to be involved in transporting war materials to Communist China.
The other was of the rumors of influence exerted on decisions of the Civil Aeronautics Board re awards of airline routes and airmail pay. He provides the details, involving an award of a route to Pan Am for Hawaii in summer and fall, 1948 in competition with Northwest Airlines, and the President's reversal of the CAB decision against merger between American Overseas Airlines and Pan Am. He says that diligent investigation would likely show an $85,000 payment before the 1948 election to an agent of the Democratic Party by an agent of an airline company.
As the Atlantic routes would expire in 1952, another election year, the likelihood of the routes being placed on the political auction block, he concludes, was substantial.
But to undertake the investigations required first leadership and second an adequate staff of investigators, especially for the shipping industry where matters tended to be hidden in complex transactions.
Robert C. Ruark praises his friend, Mrs. Lucille Vogeler, wife of Robert Vogeler, recently released from 16 months of confinement by the Hungarian Government for being a supposed spy for the U.S. Mrs. Vogeler, originally from Belgium, had more to do with the release than anyone else. He praises her devotion to family and loyalty to her husband, which he regards as peculiarly European traits. He says that he would gladly propose to her tomorrow but for the objections of his own wife and that of Mr. Vogeler.
Framed Edition
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