The Charlotte News

Tuesday, October 17, 1950

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that American and South Korean columns had reached to within twelve miles of Pyongyang, as the war appeared running swiftly toward victory. Each force wanted to be the first to deliver the knockout blow. The South Koreans expected to reach the North Korean capital on Wednesday and officers had difficulty restraining the men from running along the road to the city. Many had not stopped to rest in two days, driving from Suan to Sangwon on Tuesday, and then advanced another eight miles, a gain of 26 air miles, much longer along the winding road. The Americans expected to have the capital in range of their artillery within 24 hours or less, had advanced 30 miles from Sohung, reaching Hwangju, 23 miles south of Pyongyang. Behind the Americans, British and Australian troops sped 31 miles to Sariwon, capturing that city.

Hal Boyle reported that the Americans were driving on the capital in a 30-mile long column.

On the east coast, South Korean forces captured Hamhung and its port, Hungnam.

On all fronts, the enemy was shattered and surrendering by the hundreds, leaving behind along the roads heavy weaponry.

From Formosa, the Chinese Nationalists reported that 32,000 Chinese Communists had deserted and joined the Nationalists in the mainland province of Hupeh.

Harold Faber of the New York Times had been injured in a plane crash October 12 in southern Japan and lost his leg to amputation this date.

At the U.N., the U.S. proposed appointment of a supreme civilian boss to oversee the rebuilding of Korea, to be known as the "agent general". There was speculation that General MacArthur might be offered the position. The Economic and Social Committee appointed a seven-nation commission the previous day to study how much money would be required for the rehabilitation effort and to determine how to raise it.

U.S. delegate John Foster Dulles and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky discussed privately the American-backed anti-aggression plan presented by Secretary of State Acheson to the U.N. the prior week, including a proposal to allow the General Assembly to act in emergencies without being encumbered by the Security Council veto of the Big Five, and to control a U.N. police force. Mr. Vishinsky had requested the meeting to try to work out differences on the plan, part of which Russia opposed for running contrary to the Charter with respect to diluting the power of the Security Council. Russia wanted the Council to control the police force.

The President was preparing to speak to the nation at 8:30 this night from the Opera House in San Francisco, during the fifth anniversary year of the birth of the U.N. at that location. The speech would concern his meeting with General MacArthur at Wake Island during the weekend and the future of Korea and the Far East generally. The President was staying away from politics during the trip.

Stuart Symington, head of the mobilization effort, told U.S. News & World Report that Americans would need to work longer hours and endure cuts and sacrifices in their living standard for the mobilization effort. An Agriculture Department official, in a speech prepared for delivery in Atlantic City, said that there was no need yet for price controls.

A member of the crew of the Isbrandtsen Lines merchant ship Flying Cloud, an American vessel, testified to the Commerce Committee that the ship had delivered radio tubes, steel wire and light steel plates to Communist China from Japan. The ship was one of a number of Isbrandtsen ships attacked by the Nationalists late in 1949 and early in 1950 off Shanghai, during the blockade of the Chinese mainland. The crew member said that the ship had also been carrying oil but that after he reported it to Army intelligence and questioned its propriety, it was removed prior to delivery to Communist China.

In London, a twin-engined air liner of British European Airways crashed into the Mill Hill suburb, killing 28 of 29 persons aboard, as it attempted to return to the London airport after experiencing problems following takeoff. It appeared to witnesses that the fuel tanks had caught fire in the air and exploded on impact.

In Albany, N.Y., Democrats cited a letter from GOP Lt. Governor Joe Hanley to buttress a charge that he had been paid off to step aside from the gubernatorial race, making way for a third term run by Governor Dewey, which the latter had originally eschewed. Mr. Hanley had instead become the Senatorial candidate. The letter said that if he took the nomination instead for the Senate seat, he was assured of cleaning up his financial obligations within 90 days. Governor Dewey claimed the charge was false. Newspaper publisher Frank Gannett, long a Republican backer, called for an investigation.

In Baltimore, H. L. Mencken, 70, suffered a severe heart attack the prior Thursday and was listed as critically ill in Johns Hopkins Hospital. He had suffered a stroke in November, 1948. Mr. Mencken would live until 1956.

Southern Florida and the Keys were preparing for the approach of a hurricane which had hit Cuba the previous night without reported loss of life. Kingston, Jamaica, was also hit. It was the ninth hurricane of the season and had wind gusts higher than 75 mph over Cuba.

On the editorial page, "What Will Mr. Truman Tell Us?" wonders what the President would say this night in his address from the Opera House in San Francisco, regarding his meeting with General MacArthur at Wake Island over the weekend and the future of the Korean war and the Far East generally.

It finds the meeting more than a political gesture. It had brought together for the first time the two men principally responsible for conducting the venture into collective security and hopefully enabled them to work out differences which had created confusion at home and abroad. It would be regarded as a success if the President could report that he and the General had agreed on the major Far Eastern questions and then explain in detail what those agreements were.

"New Ray of Hope" tells of Navy Secretary Francis Matthews having recently said that the Navy was on the verge of solving the submarine defense problem. If accurate, then one of the weakest links in U.S. defense was about to be remedied. While having superiority in numbers of ships and firepower, the submarine deficit against the Schnorkel-equipped Russian submarines, able to remain submerged for prolonged periods and to sail at high speeds, diminished American control of the seas. When remedied, the U.S. would have yet another deterrent to Russian aggressive action.

"Indo-China: Another Korea?" tells of Secretary of State Acheson responding to a reporter that the U.S. had no intention of sending troops into the conflict between the French-backed Bao Dai Government and the Vietminh guerrillas of Ho Chi Minh, backed by Moscow.

The piece ventures, however, that considering the importance of Indo-China, the U.S. might be forced to reconsider the position soon. The French were being beaten and could be forced out of Indo-China. Legally, there was no invasion taking place as in Korea and so there was no basis for intervention under the auspices of the U.N. But there was evidence that the Chinese Communists were training and supplying Ho's forces. The U.S. commitment to stopping the spread of Communism provided another reason for sending supervising troops, so that the commitment of military aid for the French would not be in vain. Conquest of Indo-China by the Communists would leave Siam and the Malay Peninsula exposed to attack and provide a flanking position for attack of the Philippines.

There were also arguments against sending troops. The French were following the old colonial pattern of exploitation in Indo-China, as the natives were living in abject conditions, and to help them eliminate the guerrillas seeking to depose a tyrannical government would make America look bad to Asians. The presence of the American military mission and increased military aid had already committed the U.S. to support of the regime.

But the final decision whether to send troops had to rest on the fact that Ho sought to install a Communist system. It thus favors, as long as the country was committed to fighting Communism, providing whatever help was needed to Indo-China, including troops.

Send the Duke....

A piece from the New York Times, titled "Chickens Home to Roost", finds that of the many absurd features of the McCarran anti-subversive law, among the silliest was the immigration provision which sought to erect an "iron curtain" around the country to prohibit entry by Communists or any other adherents to totalitarian parties of foreign states.

The result was that such persons as Friedrich Guida, a 20-year old pianist from Austria, who at age ten had been forced to join the Hitler Youth, had been barred from entry until the Attorney General gave him special leave to remain for six days. The same had been true of other musicians who had fleeting membership either with the Nazi Party or the Fascists in Italy, in addition to Communists, even though they may have renounced their past affiliations.

The effect was to deny entry to those who had redeemed themselves and could now offer cultural stimulation to American audiences. The policy made no sense and it hopes that Congress would revisit the Act and modify it when it reconvened after the elections.

Drew Pearson provides his fourth column on the Mafia, focusing initially on Frank Costello, the gambling kingpin who was subject to deportation for falsification of his naturalization papers in 1925. But he had not been deported thus far because he had contributed heavily to political campaigns, especially to Democrats in New York.

He next provides the names of more Mafia leaders, starting with Anthony Accardo of River Forest, Ill., and Surfside, Fla., an heir of Al Capone and probably the most influential Mafia member in the Chicago area, who confined himself to gambling operations. He was avoiding appearance before the Kefauver crime investigating committee.

Charles Fischetti, of Chicago and Miami, cousin of Al Capone, had connections with every important mob on the East Coast, had loaned $300,000 to the late Bugsy Siegel to build his Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, was equally prominent to Mr. Accardo, and was also ducking the Kefauver committee.

Louis Campagna, of Chicago, was a leader in the Capone gang, had a long criminal history.

Philp D'Andrea, of Chicago, was another member of the Capone gang, also had a criminal past.

Charles Gioe, of Chicago, was also a member of the Capone gang, had a criminal past.

Rocco De Grazio, of Melrose Park, Ill., was another Capone mobster, also had a criminal past.

Paul De Lucia, alias "Ricca", of River Forest, Ill., and Berrien Springs, Mich., was a member of the grand council of the International Mafia, was a multi-millionaire close to the Fischetti brothers and financially backed gambling houses, had a criminal past.

Ray Patriaca, of Providence, R.I., was head of the Rhode Island rackets, was associated with Frank Costello, had a criminal past.

Frank Iacone, of Worcester, Mass., was closely associated with Mr. Patriaca, had worked together with him during Prohibition, after which Mr. Iacone eventually became involved in big-time gambling.

Jack Dragna, of Los Angeles, was Mafia boss of the West Coast, operated the Universal Sports News, which distributed racing news to California and parts of Nevada, had received $500 per week from the Illinois Sports News of Chicago. He was involved in the labor rackets, in which he associated with John Roselli, who had been jailed during the period 1944-47 as part of the Browne-Bioff movie extortion scheme along with Messrs. De Lucia, Gioe, and Campagna, all of whom had since been paroled. Mr. Dragna had an extensive criminal past. Mr. Roselli, as he had testified before the Kefauver committee on the prior October 7 in Chicago, had also been an associate producer on a couple of movies produced by Robert T. Kane for Eagle-Lion Films in 1948, one of which, by the description in testimony at page 402 of Volume 5, was "Cañon City" and the other, presumably, "He Walked by Night".

Mr. Roselli wound up in a barrel, dreamily floating down the stream.

Joseph Alsop, after returning from his prolonged visit at the front in Korea, seeks to sort out his impressions of the war, finding that it would be far harder to rebuild the military strength of the West than most supposed. The false economy of the Defense Department under Secretary Louis Johnson had accounted, he ventures, for most of the unpreparedness of the U.S. forces against a weak Soviet satellite. But the war had also revealed inherent, fundamental defects in the broad design and plan of the military machine, that being the American mode of fighting by use of overwhelming firepower prior to assault of the enemy positions.

The weapons used in Korea to accomplish this firepower were not impressive. The Sherman tank was poor beside the Russian T-34 tanks. The Pershing could be used and the Patton was a match for the Russian version of the German Tiger, but the U.S. still lacked a heavy tank. The only effective anti-tank weapon was the 3.5-inch bazooka, but it had not been tested against the heavy Russian Stalin tanks.

Tactical air power was also missing to a great extent from the U.S. Air Force to enable reduction of enemy manpower to a level which would match the size of the armies the West could put in the field.

Lack of adequate combat training and organization of occupation troops had also been a problem. More divisions, air groups and ships were necessary to combat the larger numbers of men which the enemy could deploy. Otherwise, he grimly predicts, the West could not survive.

Robert C. Ruark tells of dime store heiress Barbara Hutton being done with marriage to foreign royalty, having realized that they were more interested in her bank account than true love. She had married and divorced a Georgian prince, then was married to a noble Dane or Norwegian or Swede, the betrothal also going sour. She next married Cary Grant, who was marrying her rather than her money. After that folded, she married another Russian prince.

During the Twenties, a rich American girl could achieve social standing only by marrying foreign nobility, no matter how economically depressed the particular title. With the war and the Marshall Plan, Europe had lost its shine for the American heiress. The titles no longer carried social standing of note.

Times had changed, he concludes, and the counts and dukes and princes of Europe would now have to go to work to obtain a bank account.

A letter writer from St. Pauls, N.C., prefers "Barney Google and Snuffy" to another letter writer, who blew his top at anything smacking of Republicanism. The latter had recently said that if a Democrat had written the letter which Harold Stassen had recently addressed to Josef Stalin, suggesting a civilian peace conference, he would have had the Mundts, Nixons and McCarthys breathing down his neck as subversive.

This writer thinks, however, that these Republicans would have been justified in any such suspicion because of the mess which the New Dealers had created at Yalta in early 1945. He attributes the war in Korea to these blunders. He says that he was a Democrat of sorts but finds the likes of the previous writer to be why the symbol of the Democratic Party was a braying jackass.

No, they choose that. It is a bit of ironic light-heartedness for fools like you, with memories made fat with nonsense and unfounded factual assumptions, walking ploddingly in circus lockstep, as an elephant.

A letter writer from Pinehurst finds that the recent U.S. District Court decision against Floyd McKissick and others, denying them admission to the UNC Law School, finding the N.C. College for Negroes Law School in Durham to have been substantially equal, underscored the confidence he and others had reposited in Senator Frank Graham. For, as University president during the Thirties, Mr. Graham had worked for establishment of the College Law School and to render it equal to the University Law School.

The Senator had been maligned by Willis Smith on the issue of segregation for being too progressive, but his approach, suggests the writer, offered the best hope of preserving segregation on a truly separate-but-equal basis.

He says that he would not vote for Mr. Smith in November, might instead write in the name of Senator Graham. He recommends to other voters doing likewise. Mr. Smith might not be defeated but would go to Washington with less of a majority than otherwise.

A letter writer, age 12, wants the newspaper to carry more children's contests for those ages six to fifteen. She loved contests and enjoyed reading The News since she started reading, especially the front page and the comics.

They have the "Better English" quiz every now and again, and we even provide all the corrected answers for your edification. You don't win a radio or anything but the exercise is to your lasting benefit.

Here's one you can seek to answer, discernible as to its import from some of the above: Who was AMLASH? What, if anything, did AMLASH have to do, during the time prior to November, 1963, with Frank Sturgis, alias "Fiorini", one of the subsequently convicted Watergate burglars? Here is a hint or three. If you win, you will receive a checkerboard.

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