The Charlotte News
Thursday, September 20, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Don Huth, that the Communist high command had suggested that the ceasefire negotiations be resumed immediately in Kaesong. The talks had been interrupted by the Communists on August 22 following an accusation that the allies had strafed the neutrality zone around Kaesong, a charge which the allies, after investigation, had found to be untrue, though having found true one more recent charge of a later strafing incident by an American pilot who had made a navigational error. A second incident involving four South Korean troops entering the zone had also been admitted by the allies during the present week, but only involving unarmed soldiers equipped with DDT.
The Communists no longer insisted, as previously, that the allies take responsibility for all of the claimed incidents but only that "suitable organization" be set up to guarantee the neutrality of Kaesong. Allied headquarters indicated hope that this message would enable resumption of the talks, but also stated that the hope had to be tempered by the realization that a renewal of the talks did not necessarily indicate that the previous difficulties, especially with respect to establishing a ceasefire zone, would not resurface.
The Communists had rejected General Matthew Ridgway's previous demand that the site of the talks be shifted to some other location, such as Panmunjom, and it was believed that General Ridgway would not insist on a change of the site, provided agreements could be reached which would obviate future claims of violations of Kaesong's neutrality.
In ground fighting, in the "Battle of the Hills" on the east-central front, U.N. troops faced withering enemy mortar fire, after clearing weather had enabled needed air support. Enemy troops on a commanding height had unleashed artillery and mortar fire at the attacking allied infantrymen. Elsewhere on the front, Eighth Army soldiers continued local attacks against Communists dug in on high ground. Some U.N. advances were also reported on the western front.
In air action, U.S. warplanes damaged three Russian-made MIG-15 jets in a series of dogfights over the northwestern sector, with a total of 49 allied and 78 enemy planes involved, and no allied losses. In two days of fighting, the U.N. planes had destroyed one MIG and damaged eight others.
For the first time in history, giant helicopters transported troops into action, delivering a reinforced company of Marines and their equipment to a rugged mountain summit in only four hours, whereas by foot, the same operation would have taken two days.
In Ottawa, the NATO Council was slated to end its session this date with a significant decision to extend into the strategic, oil-rich Middle East its system of joint defense against potential Soviet aggression. After Denmark had withdrawn its veto, the 12-nation Council also approved the U.S.-sponsored resolution recommending that Greece and Turkey be admitted to NATO as members. The resolution was subject only to acceptance by Greece and Turkey and later ratification by the governments of each NATO member.
The President said that the country would continue to seek agreements with Russia but would build up its arms strength to assure enforcement. He said, in response to a press question, that he had not meant to indicate that an enemy had to use force first before force would be used. The President had said Monday that the agreements with the Russians were not worth the paper on which they were printed, prompting the questions in response.
The President said that he was standing by the nominations of two Federal judges for the District Court in Illinois despite the lack of recommendations by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which had responded to the opposition to the two candidates by Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois. The failure to approve or disapprove the nominations effectively locked them up in committee. The President said that he was satisfied with the two nominations and therefore would not submit new ones.
The President predicted a Democratic victory in 1952, as he said the Republicans were without issues and had resorted to misrepresentation and smears. He again declined to say whether he would be a candidate. He had no comment on the statement the previous day by Edward Flynn, DNC committeeman from New York, that he thought the President could beat anyone, including General Eisenhower. He also said that he had the word of DNC chairman William Boyle that he had taken no fees in connection with RFC loans, and that he believed him. In response to a question, he said that he had not engaged in deficit financing since entering the Presidency, but that the defense program might make it necessary if there were no increase in taxes, as he had proposed. He also said that the prosperous conditions in the country were not based artificially on either war production or deficit financing.
The Senate Banking Committee voted 9 to 4 to rewrite the Capehart amendment to the economic controls bill, which the President had described as "terrible". It also voted to recommend repealing of the section dealing with import controls.
The Army said that it had received offers of over 190,000 pounds of beef in response to its request for bids on 13 million pounds, and that only two of 212 packers solicited for bids had made offers. The Army would therefore necessarily turn to overseas markets to obtain the boneless or carcass beef which it needed for supplying the European command. The packers had stated that Government price controls and a shortage of high-quality beef had caused them to refuse to submit bids.
Where is the beef?
Ask Senator Wherry.
East and West Germany signed a new trade agreement this date after the Russian zone reportedly guaranteed that traffic to West Berlin would be safe from harassment.
In Philadelphia, an Eastern Air Lines employee was taking care of a customer making reservations for a flight to Mexico City, when the customer asked if she was entitled to a hangover in Houston, to which the employee responded that it was entirely up to the passenger.
She did not ask about a limited hangout.
In Los Angeles, a measure introduced at a recent State Bar Association conference would, if passed by the State Legislature, prevent landlords seeking back rent from seizing false teeth, toupees, wooden legs, crutches or other prosthetic parts in lieu of payment.
In Hollywood, actress Betsy von
Furstenberg
On page 7-A appears the fourth installment of Facts of Life and Love by Dr. Evelyn Millis Duvall, regarding "Parents and Dates".
Must have something to do with
hangovers and limited hangouts
On the editorial page, "McCarthy's New Twist" finds that Senator Joseph McCarthy, expert on guilt by association, had provided a new twist on the subject by asserting that Senator Thomas Hennings, Jr., of Missouri was a law partner of a man who had defended one of the eleven Communist leaders in the New York trial wherein they had been convicted of Smith Act violations. The law firm of Senator Hennings had also represented the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which Senator McCarthy had claimed had opposed his anti-Communist fight. He had therefore suggested that Senator Hennings should disqualify himself from service on a subcommittee investigating Senator McCarthy's fitness to serve in the Senate.
The piece points out that in the trial of the top American Communists, responsible defense counsel had been necessary to delineate properly the Constitutional issues involved in whether the Smith Act infringed the First Amendment. It also points out that the Post-Dispatch had not simply opposed Senator McCarthy's anti-Communist fight but rather, as with any good newspaper, exposed and fought his "vicious, underhanded and unprincipled methods" to smear without proof, while enjoying the protection of Senate immunity from claims of defamation. In addition, it points out that the Senator should be cautious about casting stones, as a recent Senate Rules subcommittee report on the Maryland Senate election of the previous fall between Senator Millard Tydings and the eventual winner, John Butler, had determined that Senator McCarthy and his staff were a "leading and potent force" in the "backstreet" campaign for Mr. Butler, creating unfounded claims that Senator Tydings was sympathetic to Communists, including a manufactured composite photograph of the Senator with former Communist Party leader, Earl Browder.
It thinks that Senator McCarthy had been unfit for participation on the Rules Committee action on its subcommittee's report. It finds that he was simply trying to sidetrack the investigation of his role in the Maryland election and that the ruse would not succeed. It asserts that there was great need for bringing the official spotlight on him, "so that his fraudulent and un-Senatorial devices will be arrayed in full view of the people of his state and of the whole nation."
"There's More to Be Done" finds satisfaction in the belated report that the Young Democrats of North Carolina had adopted a code of ethics for political campaigning, especially after the Senate Democratic primary race between incumbent interim Senator Frank Graham and Willis Smith, the eventual winner of the race, whose campaign had engaged in Red-baiting and race-baiting.
The piece wonders whether the code, however, would go beyond mere paper and have any impact on future North Carolina political candidates. It urges the Young Democrats to advocate to the General Assembly adoption of a new set of election laws which would define more clearly illegal and improper campaign tactics and establish an enforceable limit on campaign expenditures.
"Unanswered Charge" tells of Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada having evaded the issue when he charged that there was a "certain coordinating agency" behind newspaper attacks on the work of the Senate Internal Security subcommittee which he chaired. The piece finds that the only attack, beyond general criticism of the methods utilized by the subcommittee, had been a column by Joseph Alsop in which he charged that the subcommittee was accepting "demonstrably false" evidence, citing the testimony of former Communist Louis Budenz regarding his original statement the previous year that he lacked knowledge of whether John Service and John Carter Vincent, both State Department officials, had Communist affiliations, while more recently having asserted that he did have information that they were Communists. The contradictions suggested perjury and the charge had been called to the attention of Senator McCarran.
The piece finds that he had failed to answer that inquiry by claiming that some "coordinating agency" was behind the charge.
"The Diplomatic Belly Laugh" finds disagreement between the below column of Drew Pearson, regarding the statements of General Eisenhower to Congressman Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, and the rendition of the conversation recounted by Marquis Childs the previous day. Mr. Childs had said that the General had said that he had taken risks and that those who believed in him had also to take risks if they were dedicated to the cause of welding the free world together. Mr. Pearson had said that Mr. Scott had read into a mere belly-laugh by the General, in response to a question as to whether he had always not been a good Republican and the following comment by an aide that he had never known the General to say anything to the contrary, that the General definitely would accept the Republican nomination if he were drafted by the convention and did not have to campaign actively for it.
It suggests that the General would reserve his greatest belly laugh for the pundits who continually tried to read things into his remarks and gestures.
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Whichburgers and Whatfurters", tells of the National Geographic Society having questioned whether the chickenfurter would take its place alongside the frankfurter and the hamburger as an American favorite. The piece thinks that, if anything, the chickenfurter should take its place only beside the chickburger, which had beaten it to the menu. It was only now becoming an accepted notion that anything which could comprise a burger could also comprise a furter. It was open to the notion that the two could be swapped to produce a hamfurter and a frankburger, or even a furterburger or burgefurter.
It predicts that when that day arrived, there would be a place for the person who had "both feet on the ground all along, and both hands on a cold boiled ham sandwich."
Bill Sharpe, in his weekly "Turpentine Drippings", snippets from newspapers around the state, provides one from the Camden Chronicle, in which a big fish story by an old judge was recounted, in which the judge had remarked, while telling stories around the campfire with his friends on a fishing trip in the Adirondacks, that one time he and his party had been fishing on the Grand Banks, and when he stopped short of being able to say what it was for which they were fishing, another camper had asked whether it was not whales, to which the judge then replied in the negative, that they were using the whales for bait.
The Sanford Herald tells of a clerk in a local store having asked a customer looking at blankets whether he could help him, whereupon the customer said he was only looking for a friend and did not expect to buy, to which the clerk had said that if he expected to find her in that blanket he had been observing, he would take it off the shelf for him.
Chet Davis of the Winston-Salem Journal tells of one of the best feelings while on a canoe trip being resumption of the water course after having lugged the canoe and gear over a stiff portage, akin to the feeling after ceasing to beat one's thumb with a hammer.
The Camden Chronicle tells of a story reminding it of the issue of whether Russia or China should first be defeated, that being regarding a wife having called a neighbor to tell of a mouse running down her husband's throat while he lay sleeping with his mouth open, to which the neighbor had recommended waving a piece of cheese in front of the man's mouth to attract the mouse back out, but finding, when the neighbor arrived, that she was instead waving a sardine in front of his mouth, and after inquiry by the neighbor as to why, said that she first had to get the cat to come out.
The Greensboro Daily News
tells of the taste for fine old Southern hams being a cultivated one,
similar to that for old wine and old cheese, that they were close to
being works of art. It says it had known cultivated people who
actually preferred the "callow, juvenile and tasteless hams of
the Midwest
And so on more, more, on, on more and so, so.
Drew Pearson tells of backstage maneuvering at the AFL convention in San Francisco, in an effort to dump the President and patch up labor relations with Senator Taft. While the move was certain to be blocked, he provides the strategy, orchestrated by a group of Republicans, headed by Bill Hutcheson of the carpenters' union, inside the labor organization. The deal was that Senator Taft would agree to amend the Taft-Hartley Act in exchange for the AFL refusing to back the President for re-election. The Senator had already introduced a bill in the Senate to help the building trades, consistent with this plan. The bill would abolish elections in the building trades unions and protect the union from charges by another union of unfair labor practices, permitting an employer to back an election with a phony union which was not representative of the workers. Mr. Pearson finds this agreement contrary to the principles for which Senator Taft had stood.
Harry Bridges, head of the West Coast longshoremen, had sought to enlist other West Coast labor in staging a giant rally in Los Angeles on the same day in early October when the President was slated to attend a $100 per plate Democratic dinner in Los Angeles. John L. Lewis, head of the UMW, was slated to be the main speaker at the rally, planning to speak against both the President and the head of UAW, Walter Reuther. Both Mr. Bridges and Mr. Lewis hated the CIO and wished to cause it problems.
As indicated in the above editorial, he tells of Congressman Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania having announced that General Eisenhower would accept the Republican nomination, but that his assumption had been premised on interpretation of the General's reactions to questions by Mr. Scott when he had visited the General in Paris recently. When someone present at the meeting suggested, after Mr. Scott had asked the General whether he had not always been a good Republican, that he knew nothing which the General had ever said to the contrary, prompting a huge belly laugh by the General, which Mr. Scott interpreted to mean an affirmative response. Mr. Scott had also announced that Western Europe would be in such good shape by 1952 that the General could turn over the command to a deputy, leaving him free to run for the presidency.
He notes that more accurate word that the General would be the Republican candidate had come from his brother Milton, president of Penn State.
Stewart Alsop, in Germany, again discusses the issue of France and its contribution to Western defense in Europe. The French soldiers believed that there were two issues, but for which France could have a great army in short order. Those issues were the war in Indo-China and the lack of money available to France. The war in Indo-China was draining the professional soldiers and officers who trained the young soldiers to fight, as these officers were necessarily being sent to Indo-China.
Because of lack of money, officers were paid very little and there were scarcely more candidates than there were places, such that only one or two officers and three or four regular non-commissioned officers were assigned typically to an infantry company of 350 recruits. Everyone appeared to agree that the present core of professionals was not large enough to provide the necessary training. But France lacked the money to increase the number of officers and training facilities. Almost all of the open-air camps built just after the war in France had been abandoned for financial reasons.
He concludes that the war in Indo-China and the lack of money were so serious that the investment by the U.S. in military aid to Western Europe could go down the drain.
Marquis Childs, prior to the day's news regarding the Communists' desire to resume negotiations in Korea, tells of the belief in the Pentagon that the latest message from General Matthew Ridgway to the Communists regarding the ceasefire talks might be the last one. They believed that a full-scale Communist attack was imminent, based on large-scale preparations, which he details. If the Communists were to deploy the 1,200 planes which they had accumulated in Manchuria, the war would be expanded almost immediately and General James Van Fleet had orders to bomb the Communist air sanctuary in Manchuria should a mass air attack occur.
Pentagon planners were in the dark regarding the truce talks, about which they had been suspicious from the beginning as a means for the enemy merely to regroup and build up its forces. A difference had developed between the State Department and the military, with the policy planners at State believing that a stalemate in Korea with the fighting ended would be acceptable even if it did not entail a formal truce accepted by both sides, that is an informal armistice. The military viewed such a stalemate as too uncertain with respect to American strength committed in Korea, as such a stalemate would require virtually the entire American force of an estimated half-million men to remain, thus depriving other areas of this much needed manpower.
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