The Charlotte News

Monday, June 4, 1951

TWO EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via William Barnard, that allied troops fought through driving rain in an offensive aimed toward the main enemy redoubt in North Korea, the "iron triangle" of Chorwon, Kumhwa and Pyonggang, this date, beating off a strong enemy counter-attack, which the U.N. troops, backed by artillery, were able to repulse. The enemy counter-attacked everywhere along the front, from newly captured Yonchon in the west to Kansong in the east, as the U.N. forces advanced. Tank-led forces gained three miles in some spots while at others the forces stood still. Some of the advances came in hand-to-hand fighting. The triangle of cities presented an objective because of dominating an important network of highways and affording flat country well-suited to the allied type of fighting. Rain no longer hampered movement of the tanks and infantry as the U.N. troops had learned how to maneuver in the conditions during the rain-soaked month of May.

In Hanoi in Indo-China, Vietminh forces attacked weak posts on the southern perimeter of the sector and threatened a breakthrough into the rice delta. The operation was not large but potentially dangerous. The French sent a parachute battalion and several artillery units into the area. The section had been inactive for four years and so had only weak garrisons, several of which were quickly overrun by the Vietminh of Ho Chi Minh. An estimated 30,000 guerrillas put pressure on the French in the whole southeastern sector along the Day River. The Vietminh were attacking from mountains running parallel to the river. About 75 of the Vietminh came across the river but Sherman tanks and French artillery destroyed them, while B-26 bombers sprayed napalm on concentrations of troops south of the river.

The previous day, the French Army announced that more than 2,000 Vietminh had been killed in northern Indo-China during the previous 24 hours. It said that Communist General Vo Nguyen Giap pushed more than a division of troops against French posts along a 15-mile front between Minhbinh and Phat Diem.

Secretary of State Acheson continued his testimony before the joint Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, saying that he did not believe that Communist influence had affected the formation of U.S. policy toward China during the prior five years. In response to a request, he read a long summary of American policy in the Far East for the prior five years. He said that the U.S. had provided two billion dollars worth of aid to the Nationalist Chinese since 1945, half of which was in military supplies and the other half in economic aid, and that 75 percent of the war materiel had wound up being captured by the Communists. He cited a November, 1948 report by General Barr saying that no battle had been lost by the Nationalists for lack of equipment or ammunition but rather because of the "worst leadership and many other morale-destroying factors" which led to "complete loss of the will to fight". The Secretary also said that the decision to fire General MacArthur was based on his challenge to the policies set forth by the President and that he had concurred in the decision and helped to draft the announcement.

In Paris, Russia agreed this date to meet with the three Western powers in a foreign ministers conference in Washington on July 23, provided NATO and U.S. bases overseas would be on the agenda, both items having been previously rejected by the West.

In Dennis v. U.S., 341 U.S. 494, the Supreme Court upheld the convictions under the Smith Act of the eleven top American Communists in a 6 to 2 opinion delivered by Chief Justice Fred Vinson. It held that the conspiracy to organize the Communist Party and to teach and advocate the overthrow of the U.S. Government by force and violence created a "clear and present danger" of an attempted overthrow of the Government by force and violence, and so the defendants, convicted in October, 1949, had been constitutionally found guilty under the 1940 Act, which forbade such activity, as the statute did not infringe First Amendment free speech or free press constraints, or violate the First Amendment by infringing Fifth Amendment Due Process for indefiniteness. Justices Felix Frankfurter and Robert Jackson wrote separate concurring opinions. Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas dissented, primarily on the basis that the statute did violate the First Amendment. Justice Tom Clark, Attorney General at the time of the prosecutions, did not participate.

The campaign manager of Senator John Butler of Maryland was fined $5,000 for violating that state's election laws during the campaign the prior fall in which Mr. Butler defeated incumbent Senator Millard Tydings, as well as during the Republican primary. It was the campaign manager's first campaign and he had not expected to be in the role, mitigating circumstances which the trial court considered in sentencing. He was convicted for not keeping proper accounts of campaign expenditures.

Many sectors of the economy, including UAW leader Walter Reuther, were speaking out for and against renewal of wage and price controls, as sought by the Administration for two years. Mr. Reuther, in a prepared statement for the Senate Banking Committee, urged reduction of "the standard of luxury of the few" before reduction of the "standard of living of the many". He was willing to accept wage stabilization as long as accompanied by equality of sacrifice. He favored price ceilings for cost-of-living and defense items.

In New York, a police officer jumped six stories to his death out of a courthouse window during his trial for protection of gambling rackets.

In Clinton, N.C., seven members of a Sampson County farm family, sleeping on a quilt in the woods near their home, were run over by a car driven by a 20-year old son of the family, but only two of them, the mother and a 14-year old son, were injured, neither seriously. The young man had returned home at 4:00 a.m. to find it empty and went looking for his family in the woods when he inadvertently drove over them.

In Charlotte, a Florida man, his wife and their two-year old son miraculously escaped death when a tractor-trailer truck overturned onto their convertible. A small black dog belonging to the child also was spared. The man had pushed his wife and son out of the front seat as he saw the truck toppling over toward the car and he then followed their exit. The dog leaped out on its own. Where the man had been sitting, the steering wheel sliced into the seat. The Akers Motor Lines truck was carrying a load of yarn when it jack-knifed after it tried to return to its lane while passing, forced by another car also passing.

An Associated Press piece reports that no matter how bad the weather was where the reader lived, it was a good bet that it was worse elsewhere. The South, for the most part, was parched, after seven weeks of drought. In Wyoming, Colorado and Montana, temperatures in many areas dipped into the 20's over the weekend and a foot of snow fell in Colorado. San Antonio, Tex., had 6.1 inches of rain. Nebraska had experienced three days of torrential rains. Showers were occurring from the eastern Great Lakes region southward to the Appalachian Mountains, into the Ohio Valley, to the lower Rio Grande Valley. And so on, and so forth...

On the editorial page, "Shall We Unite or Perish?" recommends exploration of the Atlantic Union concept, as explored the prior Thursday and Friday in two articles by News publisher Thomas L. Robinson. The concept, which would be approved, if at all, by a citizens convention, would enable the seven originally participating countries, the U.S., Britain, France, Canada and the Benelux nations, to form a common federal union to which would be delegated certain powers which could be more efficiently handled by the combination than individually, to produce a more efficient common defense and pooling of their resources and industrial production capabilities. It ventures that since the diplomatic route to avoidance of war had failed over time, it was worth at least exploration, especially as so many prominent citizens of both political parties were advocating its creation.