The Charlotte News
Saturday, September 6, 1958
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Taipei, Formosa, that Communist China was moving faster and heavier naval power toward the Formosa Strait area this date, according to the chief military spokesman for Nationalist China, Rear Admiral Liu Hoh-tu, who said that the reported build-up of the Communist seapower was increasing the threat to the Nationalist-held offshore islands. More Communist warships could be used to intensify their efforts to cut off the Nationalist supply lines from Formosa to the islands and would be needed to cover any invasion attempt against the islands. Indications mounted on Formosa, meanwhile, that the Nationalists were preparing to bomb the Communist mainland should the Communists initiate massive artillery or bombing attacks on Quemoy. Admiral Liu said in an interview: "Intelligence reports trickling in indicate [the Communists] are moving bigger naval units in from the northern area. Up to now, they've used only smaller type torpedo boats against us." He said that reports indicated that the Communists were sending south from the Shanghai, Tsingtao and Yangtze River areas gunboats resembling the 300-ton Kronstadt and the 900-ton Riga-class warships of the Soviet Navy. The Communist torpedo boats presently in the Formosa Strait were less than 100 tons. With both sides in the "vest pocket war" jockeying for position, actual shooting had slackened. The Communists had given no indication of carrying out their threat of the previous week to redouble bombardments of the offshore islands. Up to mid-afternoon this date, the Nationalist Defense Ministry had no reports of shelling since the previous day, which had been the lightest day since the Communist shelling of Quemoy had begun two weeks earlier. The indications of bombing preparations came after a top U.S. official in Washington said that the complex of new Communist airfields near Quemoy would be bombed almost immediately if used for assaults on that Nationalist stronghold island close to the mainland. The U.S. official hinted that Nationalist planes would do the job, but if the Communists tried to carry out reprisal raids on Formosa or the Pescadores, the U.S. would be bound by its treaty to protect them. The official said that only conventional weapons, not nuclear weapons, would be involved in possible bombings. The U.S. threat was matched by the unofficial one from Moscow, which, as the strongest Soviet denunciation of the West since the 1956 Suez crisis, saw Soviet newspapers and broadcasts indicating that the Soviet Union and Communist China might be about to join in some decisive action, diplomatic or otherwise. The Communist Party newspaper Pravda said that any spread of hostilities over the offshore islands would provoke Communist retaliation throughout the Far East. Western diplomats in Moscow sensed an approaching climax to the crisis as Premier Nikita Khrushchev cut short his vacation in the south to return to the Soviet capital.
In Tokyo, it was reported that Communist China's Premier Chou En-lai this date had called on the U.S. to resume ambassador-level talks "to make another effort for the defense of peace." He reiterated in a Chinese language broadcast Communist China's claim that Formosa and the Pescadores Islands had always been Chinese territory and it was a "Chinese internal affair to exercise Chinese sovereignty and to liberate these areas." The broadcasts had been the first comment made by Chou on the Formosa Strait situation. The talks he wanted resumed had broken up in Geneva the previous December 12, having been opened in 1955 between U.S. Ambassador Alexis Johnson and Communist China's Wang Ping-nan as negotiations for the release of 40 Americans held in Communist China, and other issues. When most of the Americans had been released, the talks switched to other issues between the two nations, including a U.S. demand for a pledge by Communist China not to use force in the Formosa Strait area. Four Americans remained prisoners in Communist China. The implication of Chou's statement was that Communist China now wanted to bring the Formosa Strait pocket war into the diplomatic field. On June 30, Communist China had made a similar demand for resumption of the Geneva talks. A Peiping radio broadcast had said at that time that if Washington took no action on resumption of the talks by July 14, it would be considered responsible for breaking off the talks. Communist China then added a threat against Formosa. Following the 73rd meeting in the talks the prior December, they had adjourned with no future meetings set. Ambassador Johnson had later been transferred to another post and Edwin Martin, first secretary of the U.S. Embassy in London, had been appointed the temporary U.S. representative. In April, the Communist Chinese had charged that his appointment had been a U.S. trick to stall further talks and demanded that the U.S. appoint a diplomat of ambassadorial rank to resume the talks. After the cessation the prior December, the U.S. was reported to have offered to resume the talks in January, with the reports indicating that the U.S. wanted a Communist pledge not to use force to take Formosa from Chinese Nationalist control.
In Hong Kong, it was reported that Communist China's supreme state council this date called for general mobilization of the nation's 600 million people "for the struggle against war provocations by American imperialists in the Taiwan area."
In Beirut, Lebanon, newspapers said this date that the city's nightly curfew would be shortened by an hour starting on Monday.
In Belgrade, Yugoslavia, it was reported that President Tito this date opened the 55th Zagreb International Fair, which had attracted about 4,500 exhibitors from 27 foreign countries, along with nearly 1,000 Yugoslav enterprises.
In Geneva, it was reported that the first nuclear-powered plane engine of the United States had operated under full power on the ground for 230 hours with success, according to a report to the atoms-for-peace conference conveyed this date. Just don't try to fly the thing, at least not over any area populated within a distance of 1,000 miles.
The President interrupted his Newport, R.I., vacation this date to attend a Washington conference on integration. He was scheduled to confer with Attorney General William Rogers at the White House. White House press secretary James Hagerty said only that they would discuss "various matters before the courts on the subject of integration."
Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas had said the previous night that he believed that the feeling against integration in Little Rock was much stronger and deeper than a year earlier, when nine black students had entered Little Rock's formerly all-white Central High School. He ascribed the stronger feelings to the result of the troubles from a year earlier, when the President had federalized the Arkansas National Guard and brought in Army paratroopers to ensure the safety of the students while attending classes. Initially, Governor Faubus had deployed the Arkansas National Guard, following violence on registration day, to prevent the black students from attending classes. The Governor said the previous night: "If you have to use force to integrate, it means it cannot be done peaceably. I am unalterably opposed to forced integration."
In Georgia, a Superior Court judge warned that if FBI agents investigated his court and its actions "in any high-handed and menacing manner I will not hesitate to put them in the common jail of the county." He had issued the statement from his home after learning that Federal officials had filed a civil rights suit against three Terrell County voter registrars and two deputy registrars whom he had appointed. The suit, which represented the first test case of the 1957 Civil Rights Act voting rights provision, charged the registrars with discriminating against prospective black voters in the Terrell County seat of Dawson, located in south Georgia. The judge found the suit "arrogant, unwarranted and high-handed." Acting on a request from the registrars, he had ordered them not to furnish any documents under their control to Federal agencies unless they were ordered by a court to do so for use as evidence. He also directed the sheriff to employ as many deputies as necessary to enforce the order and protect the registrars in performing their duties.
In Montgomery, Ala., the segregationist police commissioner paid the $14 fine due from the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., following his arrest earlier in the week for allegedly loitering during another civil rights leader's speech, a fine which he had refused to pay. It meant that he would not have to serve time in jail to pay off the fine.
In Detroit, a new outbreak of wildcat strikes had hit the automobile industry this date and General Motors said that the walkouts, idling more than 25,000 workers, threatened productions of all of its new 1959 model cars. UAW members who had walked out this date had done so in protest of assignment of Saturday overtime while many fellow unionists remained laid off. The walkouts came on the basis of a meeting by top G.M. and union negotiators the previous day, attended by UAW president Walter Reuther, in which both sides reported reaching a better understanding of each other's position in new contract talks.
In Atlantic City, N.J., Miss America would be crowned this night and start her year-long reign as holder of the oldest national beauty title. Among the 52 contenders for the title, Miss North Carolina, Betty Lee Evans, 18, of Greenville, had won in the third round of preliminary judging the previous night. Her favorite sport was swimming and she had won the swimsuit competition. Miss Mississippi, Mary Ann Mobley, who went on to have an acting career, would ultimately win the title.
On the editorial page, Walter Lippmann indicates that the offshore islands around Quemoy represented pieces in an elaborate game which was being played for high political stakes. There was reason to believe that the bombardment of Quemoy was part of a plan to invade and conquer Formosa, but there was also good reason to believe that the Communist Chinese were striking at it to injure the prestige of Chiang Kai-shek, who had committed many of his troops to protection of the offshore islands, while at the same time causing the U.S. to lose face vis-à-vis the people of Asia.
He indicates that the timing of the Communist Chinese action appeared significant, calculated to come to a climax just about the time the regular session of the U.N. General Assembly would meet during the month in New York. That, plus the fact that there appeared to be no military build-up on the Chinese mainland for any large action, indicated that the Communists, with the blessings of the Soviets, were engaged in a political maneuver. If that maneuver were successful, it could unseat Chiang and oust the U.S. from Formosa, possibly then resulting in Communist China being admitted to the U.N. as the only Chinese government remaining.
It was the policy of the Communist Chinese, just as with the U.S. Government, to keep everyone guessing. He suggests as his guess that the Communist Chinese and the Soviets were pushing the U.S. into a dilemma, on one side to stand by and let some of the smaller islands fall while Quemoy was battered and blockaded, and on the other to entice the U.S. to intervene to defend the islands and then be denounced in the General Assembly, where, on the Chinese question, there was a substantial majority against the U.S. He suggests that in the days to come, the U.S. might find that it would have to choose between abstaining, a shattering blow to Chiang's prestige, and intervening, which would be deplored and condemned not only by all of the uncommitted nations but also by most of the closer allies of the U.S.
He finds that dilemma, which might be the objective of the Communists, to be at the same time the work of Chiang, for it was he who had locked up such a large contingent of his forces on the island and it would be against the recent advice of the U.S. to try now to disengage them. In any event, he finds, it had been Chiang who had chosen to stake his future in Formosa on a reckless gamble in the offshore islands. Chiang now wanted to entangle the U.S. in a full-scale war with Communist China. Mr. Lippmann finds that the U.S. had become involved in a truly entangling alliance which was now being exploited against it.
When there had been trouble in the Middle East, the U.S. had turned to the U.N. to find the way out, but in the current trouble, Secretary of State Dulles could not turn to the U.N., indeed, would need to avoid it, as with its China policy, the U.S. stood alone. It had also lost the initiative to the Communist Chinese, for Mao Tse Tung was free to go after the offshore islands in nibbles rather than in bites, doing just enough to make it embarrassing for the President not to defend the islands, but doing not enough to justify an intervention which might mean war.
Joseph Alsop indicates that the use of American armed forces, if it proved necessary to defend Quemoy and the Matsus, was now nearly a foregone conclusion. It was thus an even bet that the country would be drawn into the fight for the little islands in the Formosa Strait. Quemoy was fairly effectively blockaded already and the Chinese Nationalists did not have the power to ward off an attack on the scale which the Chinese Communists appeared to be preparing.
Those with the most at stake in the decision whether to fight or not were the President, Secretary of State Dulles and the four Joint Chiefs. Of the latter, only General Maxwell Taylor had been cautious and hesitant, voicing the type of doubts which General Omar Bradley had voiced before the decision to respond in Korea in 1950.
The Navy, represented by Admiral Arthur Radford and Admiral Felix Stump, had the largest share of responsibility for Chiang's heavy, continuing commitment to the offshore islands. Thus, the chief of staff of the Navy, Admiral Arleigh Burke, had been strongly opposed to any surrender or withdrawal. The same line had been taken by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Nathan Twining, and the chief of staff of the Air Force, General Thomas White.
Secretary Dulles, meanwhile, was convinced that any surrender or withdrawal on Quemoy or the Matsus would imperil the Chinese Nationalist regime on Formosa, and further argued that such a Chinese Communist triumph would lead to other grave Western reverses throughout Asia, and thus Mr. Dulles was determined to fight if it had to be done.
A minimum defense line in the Formosa Strait was traced at the top governmental level before Secretary Dulles's flight to see the President in Newport. Certain bare rocks which hardly deserved the name of islands had been classified as expendable. But Big Quemoy, Little Quemoy and the five major islands in the Matsu group were all placed on the "must-defend" list. Such was the trend within the U.S. Government.
The trend in the Chinese Communist Government was equally marked clearly. The only hopeful sign was Peking's domestic propaganda. The Communist leaders had not yet flatly promised their own people that they would "liberate" the offshore islands, but the domestic propaganda tone had been growing ominously sharper in recent days.
Meanwhile, Mao and Chou En-lai had deeply engaged their international prestige by quite openly warning leading members of the diplomatic corps in Peking of their intention to drive Chiang's troops out of Quemoy and the Matsus at all cost. Other than to various Asian diplomats, that warning had been bluntly given to the British charge d'affaires had Peking, A. D. Wilson. The Chinese leaders had added that they would not be deflected from their purpose by U.S. intervention.
He indicates that it could now be stated also that the Chinese Communist military preparations were on an even more massive scale than had been generally supposed. The redeployment of their most important air units to airfields threatening Quemoy, the Matsus and Formosa had already been disclosed. But it had just been learned on high authority that strong Chinese Communist armed forces, numbering about 200,000 men at present, had also been assembled in coastal Fukien Province during the previous month. The only possible purpose for it was to prepare for an attempted landing on the offshore islands. An immediate landing attempt was not anticipated, although such an attempt was possible. In Washington, the best authorities instead believed that there would be a series of increasingly difficult tests of American intentions, beginning with the semi-blockade of Quemoy, which had to be broken if Quemoy was to be held. If that view was correct, the crisis would develop by stages and slowly.
He concludes that for all of the reasons he had stated, the final prognosis was far from optimistic.
Frederick C. Othman, for the second straight day, reports from South Bend, Ind., home of Studebaker, regarding the new Studebaker compact car, not yet unveiled to the public and not named by him. He is speaking of the new Studebaker Lark. If you are thinking of buying one, you might wish to read it or just ask Mr. Ed about it.
As we have fallen behind, there will be no further notes regarding the front page or editorial page, as the notes will be sporadic until we catch up.
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