The Charlotte News

Wednesday, June 6, 1951

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that U.N. troops pressed forward a mile or two on the western approaches to Chorwon this date through mud and enemy defenses in Korea, but tight censorship had blacked out the details and how close precisely the allies were to the "iron triangle" of the enemy at Chorwon, Kumhwa and Pyonggang, crucial road center, facing the central front. The enemy withdrew as much as three miles between Hwachon and Kumhwa on the eastern approaches to the triangle. In the east, the enemy resisted heavily north and northeast of Yanggu, at the eastern end of the Hwachon Reservoir, the only indication of heavy resistance, but according to the Associated Press, appearing only as a defensive action by North Korean troops, absent any Chinese.

The Fifth Air Force flew 456 sorties in a low haze which impaired visibility.

Secretary of State Acheson again testified before the joint Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, denying that there was any appeasement in U.S. support of the failed U.N. attempt the previous January to effect a ceasefire in Korea by means of a resolution. He also stated, in response to questions, that General MacArthur's statement during his testimony that the State Department had pressured him to make changes in a report to the U.N. which the General regarded as political, in fact were changes to omit matters which the State Department regarded as commentary on the political situation, and which Secretary Acheson regarded as a trivial incident at the time. The report ultimately went to the U.N. unchanged after the General objected. A late bulletin reports that Secretary Acheson said that General MacArthur had a report three months before the North Korean invasion of South Korea that the invasion was planned, but had refused to believe it.

In St. Louis, Secretary of Defense Marshall said that critics of the current situation in Korea failed to recognize that there were those who had cried "stalemate" in the civil war against the Communists in Greece, aided by the 1947 Truman Doctrine, and during the Berlin airlift of 1948-49 to break the Communist blockade of Berlin, both of which operations proved ultimately successful. He urged that the U.S. had a responsibility to the U.N. to preserve the republic of South Korea.

General Eisenhower this date visited Ste. Mere Eglise, the site of the start of the Normandy campaign to liberate France seven years earlier, and said in an impromptu speech that the soil of France was "sacred to all the freedom-loving world" and that all aggressors would do well to remember it. He also then drove 30 miles to the American cemetery at St. Laurent, overlooking Omaha Beach, site of the fiercest German resistance to the Allied landing on D-Day.

The U.S. demanded in a diplomatic note that Russia punish two Red Army soldiers who shot and killed an American corporal in Vienna on May 4, shot down, said the note, without provocation while serving as an M.P. in the international zone. It blamed the Russian high commissioner and other officials for refusing to join in investigating the incident and also demanded indemnification.

The Supreme Court indicated it would consider a last-minute stay of execution of the death sentence imposed against seven condemned Nazi war criminals, claiming that as the new West German Constitution banned the death penalty, they were also exempted from the penalty imposed by the German tribunal. Chief Justice Fred Vinson, who had refused the stay the previous day, had managed to assemble a sufficient quorum of the Justices to consider the request, after the Court had already recessed for the summer.

The Government dropped its so-called "Mother Hubbard" antitrust suit against the American petroleum industry, originally filed in 1940. Attorney General J. Howard McGrath said that the suit was too unwieldy for prosecution in a single case and that the Justice Department instead would divide it into separate suits against segments of the oil industry. Originally, it involved 367 corporations and the American Petroleum Institute as defendants.

The prospect of a shortage of beef increased in butcher shops across the country as slaughtering of cattle by major packers was sharply reduced for the third day in a row.

Time to get the doggies rollin'...

Congressman Franklin Roosevelt, Jr., speaking before the convention of the American Federation of Musicians, said that he had financed part of his successful campaign for Congress with winnings on long-odds bets that the President would win the 1948 race.

In San Antonio, Tex., nine airmen died when a large Air Force plane crashed and exploded.

In Atlanta, the senior class of Russell High School honored a classmate who had terminal cancer and voted her the class's outstanding citizen. She was soon to be married but had been given only months to live.

In Belmont, N.C., as reported by Elizabeth Blair of The News, Governor Kerr Scott addressed the commencement exercise of 205 graduates of the North Carolina Vocational Textile School, advising them to sell to the people the idea that industrial schools were needed in other places in the state to enable it to take its deserved place in national production. He said that the state was short of trained technicians and thus needed more such training facilities.

He concluded with a curious comment: "How's your unawares?"

On the editorial page, "Sharing the Leadership Load", a by-lined piece by News publisher Thomas L. Robinson, tells of Charlotte going through a transition period during which the older leaders of the city were overburdened with duties as a result of a dearth of young blood coming into those roles.

He praises John F. Watlington, Jr., and Stowe Moody for holding a series of dinners at which was discussed the Community Chest's problems and suggests the same sort of approach to ferret out the young leaders in the making in Charlotte and encourage their participation in community life.

"Advice from Thackeray" remarks of Lt. (j.g.) William H. Evans, Jr., cashiered from the Navy for his letter critical of the Administration and Congress, referring to "Red Dean Acheson", the "pro-Soviet" Administration, and the "senile, ignorant Congress", concluding: "Damn the United Nations. Long live the United States." He had permitted the dissemination of the letter by Alfred Kohl, a textile importer who was prominent in the pro-China lobby.

The piece commends to the former Lieutenant a quote from William Makepeace Thackeray in which he recommended to write only letters which were "safe", without making therein commitments.

The piece also points out that Lieutenant Evans was last in his class at the Naval Academy, and thus did not qualify as a heavy thinker on any topic, let alone foreign policy.

"Those Oil Figures" relates of the American Petroleum Institute reporting that the U.S. in 1949 produced over 1.8 million barrels of crude oil while Russia in the same year produced only 233,170 barrels. But at the same time, in 1947, the U.S. consumed 794,807 barrels while Russia consumed only 33,515 barrels. The U.S. had 70 percent of the world's motor vehicles and was responsible for three-fourths of the world's gasoline consumption.

It concludes that the U.S., contrary to the implied suggestion by the figures supplied by the petroleum industry, could not afford to lose any part of the Western supply of oil, as that of the British being nationalized and potentially seized by the Government in Iran.

"Who's Puzzled?" presents a mangled story from the Associated Press, received from Rocky Mount, N.C., to show how improved the process of transmitting stories on the wire had become over the years.

Sample: "How the mammal, native to South Ameriva.havvenb to establish its home im the city dump,where Smith hit him, still had the expets vuzzled.9"

Harnett T. Kane, writing from New Orleans, tells of American Harriet Ely Blackford, of a patrician Virginia family, who in 1874 had agreed to marry Duke Nicholas of Russia, nephew of the Tsar, to the consternation of the Romanov Government. As a result, after failing to dissuade both of the marriage, Duke Nicholas was arrested and eventually forced into permanent exile and Ms. Blackford was held incommunicado in prison and threatened with being sent to Siberia. Eventually, she was released through American diplomatic intervention, but only after being forced as a condition to turn over the documents of Duke Nicholas in her possession. She continued to be followed by the Russians after she went to France, Belgium and Italy. Eventually, she wrote her own version of the incident.

Just why this appears is a question, as it hardly connects with modern Russia under the Communists except vaguely to suggest some of the same tactics used in Czarist Russia, as if to say: "Them Rooskies is always the same."

Drew Pearson tells of Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut having recently bumped into his close friend, Justice Felix Frankfurter of the Supreme Court, who told him, upon inquiry, that Secretary of State Acheson was being so cautious of late with the Russians because he was punch-drunk and timid from the criticism on Capitol Hill, fearful that if he submitted to peace gestures being offered by the Russians, he would be subject to being labeled an appeaser.

The President was changing Navy nomenclature aboard the Presidential yacht Williamsburg by referring to the forecastle and bow as the "front porch", the stern, the "back porch", and the decks as the "upstairs" and "downstairs". He said that he was a farm boy and not a sailor. The sailors aboard the vessel had accommodated the President by adopting the colloquial references.

Uranium deposits had been discovered in low-grade coal areas of the northern Great Plains states and in Tennessee, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The Government had also developed a process of extracting uranium as a byproduct of phosphate fertilizer.

General Eisenhower had written his approval to Senator J. William Fulbright of the latter's proposal for a development of an ethics code for those in Government service. The General found his attitude, contrary to being naive as some claimed, the "opposite of deliberate racketeering".

The General also called to the Senator's attention a New York Times story in which he was quoted as follows: "The rise in illegal border-crossings by Mexican 'wetbacks' to a current rate of more than 1,000,000 cases a year has been accompanied by a curious relaxation in ethical standards extending all the way from the farmer-exploiters of this contraband labor to the highest levels of the Federal Government." (We quote it verbatim in case some of the Trumpies wish to offer it up as an excuse for the rampant corruption in the Trump Administration.)

The Government Printing Office was consuming fifteen million pounds of paper per year publishing such tracts as "Classification, Identification, and Geographical Distribution of Fleas", "How to Control Vagrant Cats", "Fish for Breakfast—And Why Not?" and "The Sex Life of a Raccoon", all at taxpayer expense. Congressmen, he points out, however, were the largest users of the newsprint, publishing their own speeches and ordering thousands of copies to be disseminated to constituents.

Joseph Alsop, in London, discusses the political paralysis in Britain as a result of disillusionment with Socialism and science as a basis for curing society's ills. Within the prior month, British philosopher C. E. M. Joad, originally an advocate for the latter position, had confessed his change of mind, that science had produced mainly horrors and that Socialism was bringing everyone down rather than lifting them up.

The British welfare state had largely been established at this point, with nationalization of industry complete, but it had not produced an economic heaven on earth as promised. Advantages had been counterbalanced by disadvantages. Even the leaders of British Socialism were stymied as to the next step to take, intensifying the strain of the cold war.

That strain took two forms, the realization of the weakness of Britain's defenses, and the conflict between the Socialist aims domestically and the policy decisions regarding defense as imposed by the cold war. The major casualty of this conflict was Aneurin Bevan, who had resigned recently charging that he could no longer remain as Minister of Health amid record British peacetime appropriations for defense ahead of national health and other social programs. The actual reason for his resignation was the failure of the Labor Government to compromise on cutting out the free health service for false teeth and eyeglasses, imposed by new Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Gaitskell. Mr. Bevan would have stayed had Mr. Gaitskell yielded some on this point.

Mr. Bevan's position, however, represented the 30 to 40 leftwing Socialist members of Parliament who wielded an inordinate amount of power, given the close Labor majority.

The British Government also suffered from lack of leadership, after the death of Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, replaced by Herbert Morrison, inexperienced in foreign policy. He had been the only person deemed, however, of sufficient stature to replace Mr. Bevin.

Marquis Childs tells of the late Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan being sorely missed in Congress with the advent of another pending appropriations bill for foreign aid, both economically and militarily.

A year earlier he had been thinking of the problem at the U.N. with the challenge of seating Communist China in replacement of Nationalist China. Mr. Vandenberg had drafted a letter to Secretary of State Acheson on the subject, advising that the U.S. should threaten to use the Security Council veto to prevent the seating. As Russia had used the veto to prevent membership 22 times, several times with Italy, it would show the hypocrisy of the Soviets should they object on the basis that membership was not subject to the veto, a position which the U.S. had initially adopted, as China, per se, was not a new member, only possessed of a new Government.

Senator Vandenberg's position would have highlighted the routine use of the veto by Russia, a total of 47 times, with the U.S. never once having done so. It could produce an understanding among the Big Four, the permanent members, along with China, of the Security Council, regarding limitation of its use, resulting in a smoother functioning U.N.

Mr. Childs praises Senator Vandenberg's son who was preparing a story of his father from his private papers, which remained locked away, as it would be helpful to show how he had helped to shape bipartisan foreign policy, at a time when bipartisan foreign policy was missing on Capitol Hill.

A letter writer of Matthews, N.C., finds the newspaper's review of Paul Blanshard's book, presumably Communism, Democracy, and Catholic Power, disturbing, as the book, in her view, promoted Communism or appealed to those inclined toward it. As a Catholic, she favors review instead of The Cardinal, by Henry Morton Robinson, or The Seven Storey Mountain, by Thomas Merton.

A letter writer again favors a "God-inspired, sin-killing revival in America" to bring quick victory to U.S. armed forces abroad.

Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition...

In light of the events of fifty years ago this week and the silencing of Senator Robert Kennedy's voice to respond subsequently to those who might seek to revise history, as had and has taken place, it is important to bear in mind that the reputed feud or "mutual hatred" between Senator Kennedy and President Johnson has been grossly overstated, indeed, appears never to have existed in the least other than in the form of minor disagreements and tiffs, which also arose at times between President Kennedy and his Attorney General. Senator Kennedy stayed on with the Johnson Administration after the assassination of President Kennedy, through the summer of 1964, when he resigned to run for the Senate from New York. Those close to the Senator in his latter days recorded no ill feeling between him and the President, to the contrary, that they liked each other as two strong-willed men. The President expressed genuine concern and dismay at the news of the shooting and subsequent death of Senator Kennedy.

Those today who preach another agenda have sought to suggest even so ludicrous a notion as that President Johnson was responsible for the deaths of both President and Senator Kennedy, as if that makes any sense whatsoever on any basis of fact, the context of history, or the self-interest of President Johnson, beyond the howls of those who so vehemently hated President Johnson, perhaps even more so than these same retrograde individuals had President Kennedy, for his perceived betrayal of his native Southern roots by championing and gaining passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, originally promulgated to Congress by the Kennedy Administration, that they would seek, as they have since that time, to denigrate President Johnson's considerable efforts domestically in the country, usually hiding behind the mask of despising him for his Vietnam policy. Yet, these same rabid voices seem to hold no such brief against President Nixon, and so cannot with credulity maintain that their hatred for President Johnson is based on his handling of the Vietnam War. It is based on his courageous stand on civil rights.

It is important to keep history straight so that one is not subject to such crass attempts to divide and conquer the opposition—as was done in 1968 by the Nixon forces of darkness, especially in the formerly solid Democratic South: "Tell them what they want to hear in the spring and then run like hell back to the center in the fall."

"Leadership, not salesmanship."

...

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