The Charlotte News
Wednesday, August 16, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that 98 B-29's hit enemy positions across the Naktong River in force over a 26-square mile area, a little larger than the size of Manhattan, causing North Korean troops to flee from the east side to the west and thence to dug-in positions toward the hills, in complete desperation and confusion. Many troops abandoned their packs and rifles as they fled. The 875-ton raid, the equivalent of 30,000 heavy artillery shells in two hours, was designed to break the 60,000-man force which had prepared for the drive on Taegu and Pusan. It encountered no anti-aircraft fire as had been usually the case, and lost no planes. Nor had there been any bombs inadvertently dropped on allied lines, as had been the case during the bombing mission preceding the St. Lo breakthrough at Normandy in July, 1944. South Korean troops gave pursuit across the Naktong and the North Koreans hurriedly sought to take up their previously emplaced sunken bridges across the river to prevent use by U.N. forces. U.S. patrols also crossed the river west and south of Waegwan and met little resistance.
Hal Boyle reports from the latter area that it was hard to see how the enemy could mount any offensive anytime soon given the beating they had taken in the raid.
Generally, all fronts along the defense line were quiet this date following the raid.
A dispatch from Taipei in Nationalist China reported that Russia and Communist China had tentatively agreed that the latter would enter the fight on the side of the North Koreans, supplying 150,000 troops with Russia supplying armor, should the U.N. forces cross the 38th parallel. The commander of the troops would be a Communist Chinese general with assistance from Soviet advisers and the Cominform. A proposed agreement to that effect was reportedly being taken to Moscow by Vice-Premier V. M. Molotov for consideration and instructions, after which he would return to Peiping for further negotiations with the Chinese.
A U.S. Army officer said that American combat troops had captured Soviet-made weapons and ammunition manufactured in 1949 and 1950, which would, if confirmed, give the lie to the claim made recently by Soviet chief U.N. delegate Jakob Malik that there had been no Soviet weaponry or ammunition supplied the North Koreans other than that sold to them upon withdrawal of Russian occupation forces in December, 1948. The weapons, discovered in the southeastern front, were turned over to U.N. observers on the scene.
An Army private serving in Korea received his first mail after five weeks of combat. It was greetings from his local draft board telling him of his induction.
The President sent a plan to Congress to set up family support allowances for G.I.'s. The plan was premised on the notions that the G.I. would bear a good portion of the support from his service pay and that a G.I. with many dependents should not be in the service in the first instance. A tentatively approved Senate plan would provide the wife with $60 per month, a wife and one child, $81, and a wife and two children, $105.
The White House said that the President did not have any plans to seize the nation's railroads to avert a threatened nationwide strike, set to start the following Monday, by the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen and Brotherhood of Railway Conductors.
Democratic leaders in the Senate sought to turn back a Republican effort to inject into the standby controls bill an anti-Communist amendment requiring Communists to register, the Mundt-Ferguson (and Nixon) measure.
The House voted to restore residential mail service to two deliveries per day after it had been cut by the Post Office Department in mid-April to one as a cost-cutting measure. A Senate committee had also approved the bill.
Senator Tom Connally predicted that the Senate would approve the nomination of New York City Mayor William O'Dwyer as Ambassador to Mexico.
A poll of GOP leaders in seven of eleven Southern states showed that they wanted General Eisenhower to be the Republican presidential nominee in 1952. Senator Taft was the choice in Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Other choices in the poll were Governor James Duff of Ohio, Harold Stassen, and Governor Earl Warren of California.
On the editorial page, "The Missing Key" tells of the Soviets exploiting the animosity toward colonialism running through Asia, trying to convince the people of the region that the U.S. was an imperialist invader in Korea, protecting American economic interests. The Western democracies, it posits, had not effectively answered the claim. The independence of the Philippines and Indonesia was not enough. A positive program of information was necessary to educate the peoples of the Far East that Stalinism in fact had imperialist motives, depriving the people of basic freedoms in every Soviet satellite country, whereas the democracies had flourished under capitalism and the assurance of individual liberty.
"Another Victory for Farm Bloc" tells of the Washington Post having found a gimmick favorable to farmers in each of the House and Senate bills regarding standby price controls, whereby the prices of farm commodities could not go below either the support price or, in the House version, the highest price received by farmers during the month ending on the day before the Korean conflict began, or on June 15 under the Senate bill. The formula worked to protect the farmers, again resulting in the usual victory for the farm bloc. It finds such favorable treatment reprehensible in wartime.
"Top Communists Belong in Jail" favors revocation of the appellate bonds of the eleven top American Communists convicted the previous fall of violations of the Smith Act, asserts that most Americans would likewise approve. They were scheduled to appear in court the following week to show cause why the bonds should not be revoked after their convictions had been affirmed by the Court of Appeals and while they awaited determination by the Supreme Court. It suggests that in the current times, their remaining at large any longer posed a threat to national security.
"That 'Red Market' Idea" finds a worthy suggestion among the letters to the editor this date, calling hoarders "Red Marketeers" for giving ultimate benefit to the Communists in the Korean war by fueling inflation. It finds that if the term would give special attention to the problem, it should be adopted, as "black marketeer" and "gray marketeer" had been in such common use during the war that they had practically lost their ability to shame anyone.
Drew Pearson's column is again written by Tom McNamara and Jack Anderson while he was on vacation. A classified project begun by the Navy during the war, more secret than the atomic bomb, had been turned over to an inexperienced company, Northwest Aeronautics Corp., later Engineering Research Associates, which then employed in high positions the three Navy officers who arranged the contract after they left the service. Twelve other companies were better qualified to receive the contract when let in February, 1946. One of the former officers sold out his interest recently in the company under a contract which prevented him from bringing charges against the company.
An aide to Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, Brig. General Louis Renfrow, had met Major League Baseball commissioner Happy Chandler when the latter came to offer the services of baseball to the armed forces. General Renfrow, while picking his teeth, told him that he had arranged for a personnel procurement officer to sit in on the interview as it would be the shoulder of the latter on which he would have to cry, prompting Mr. Chandler to respond curtly that he had not come to cry on anyone's shoulder. General Renfrow mumbled an apology while still picking his teeth.
At a dinner, Lt. Governor Joe Hanley of New York was being ribbed by Franklin Roosevelt, Jr., for being a little old fashioned, hinting that he was too old to run for the Republican gubernatorial nomination from New York if Governor Thomas Dewey was not drafted for the nomination. Mr. Hanley then took the podium and admitted to the twice-married Mr. Roosevelt that he was old-fashioned, enough so to have been married to the same woman for 40 years.
Railroads received the bulk of military transportation because supposedly the railroads were cheaper than buses or airplanes. But in fact the railroads gave no military discount for Pullman berths and airplanes would be both cheaper and quicker.
Congressman Tom Steed of Oklahoma told the Capitol physician that an epidemic of "Tarzan-eyetis" had developed in Congress from fatigue from watching colleagues swing from branch to branch.
Marquis Childs discusses the radar "fence" around the country, instructing that "fence" was a misleading term for the fact that only about 15 minutes of warning time was afforded for inbound unidentified planes, starting about 100 miles from shore. At that point, fighter interceptors had to be scrambled and then ascend to 30,000 to 40,000 feet to be effective in stopping the inbound planes. Inevitably, as during World War II Allied flights into Germany, which had a sophisticated radar system, some of the planes would penetrate the screen. Even a handful carrying atom bombs would be disastrous for American cities.
Scientists were working to provide
an impenetrable screen, which they believed to be theoretically
possible. That would consist of rockets, wired to a fail-safe
mechanism which would be activated by electronic signal once the
screen was breached and then launch and search out the enemy planes.
Such rockets would be established around key cities and military
installations—that which would become known when established as
the Nike
But it could take up to five years to perfect such rocketry while in the meantime, Russia was building up its stockpile of nuclear weapons, estimated to become sufficient to contest the American stockpile within about two to four years.
A Manhattan-type project
Robert C. Ruark discusses deferments and exemptions from the draft received by athletes for such things as asthma or fallen arches, and the system's inherent unfairness to the average draftee who had no professional athletic skill on which to fall back. The recipients of the favored treatment were well enough to play baseball, football, or box but were deemed not well enough by the Army physicians to engage in training even for duty as supply clerks on the home front and the like.
The Army classification system was generally flexible. One individual he knew had been classified 1-A during World War II but had been rejected by the Army, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard and Red Cross because of his bad eyes. His eyes had not improved in the five-year interim, but he remained 1-A.
Serge Rubinstein had received 14 deferments during the war through false statements which landed him in prison for a short stretch. He knew of several entertainers who had used slight physical infirmities to escape service during the war. Others he knew served honorably despite a variety of ailments.
So he concludes that any man healthy enough to make his living as an active participant in professional sports was healthy enough to work for the military in some capacity as long as others of the same age were being drafted.
A letter writer, as indicated in the above editorial, proposes to call hoarders "Red Marketeers" for their assistance to the Communist cause by encouraging inflation.
A letter writer supports the effort of the United World Federalists to establish world government to avoid further world war.
A letter writer takes issue with the part of "Editorialettes" which had said that Sam Goldwyn's proposed billion dollars for dissemination of American propaganda was not enough to undo the damage done by Hollywood films to the American image abroad, finds it an unfair attack on movies. He thinks that, with few exceptions, movies presented America in a positive light, which was the reason Russia would allow only a handful of American movies to be screened.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.