The Charlotte News
Friday, October 20, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports that around 4,200 American paratroops dropped this date into
North Korea, 23 miles north of captured Pyongyang and 80 miles south
of the Manchurian border, to clean up the war effort and to rescue
mistreated captive Americans. The operation, which shut down the four
rail and road northern escape routes of the North Koreans, was
directed personally by General MacArthur who said that he saw no
opposition and that the war was definitely coming to an end
Russell Brines, with General MacArthur, reports that the parachute drop was commanded by Col. W. S. Bowens of the 187th Regiment of the veteran 11th Airborne Division. It took place between Sukchon and Sunchon. General MacArthur had flown to Seoul from Tokyo and from there, flew over the drop area in a Constellation, returning then to Pyongyang. North Korean prisoners said that the military headquarters had moved to Sunchon, eleven miles east of Sukchon, and that Premier Kim Il Sung and the Government had removed to Huichon, 80 miles north of Pyongyang, near the Manchurian border.
Three nearly starved American prisoners liberated in Pyongyang said that many had died, including some who had been beaten and murdered, during a forced march of 283 prisoners from Seoul. Those who could not walk were shot. They reported that Maj. General William F. Dean, missing since July 19, was among those in the march and reportedly had died—an erroneous report as General Dean would survive the war. The total American prisoners of war liberated in Pyongyang numbered 373. Total U.N. losses, including dead, wounded and missing, approached 25,000.
Bill Shinn reports that a South Korean general told him that eighty South Korean political prisoners, men and women, had been set on fire with burning gasoline while still alive by retreating North Korean troops at Koksan, 50 air miles southeast of Pyongyang. An American military adviser confirmed the atrocity.
Elton C. Fay reports that after the conference between the President and General MacArthur the prior weekend at Wake Island, there remained no indication of what was discussed regarding Formosa. The President said testily in response to a reporter's question at a news conference that he and General MacArthur had no disagreement on the policy, which he said had been cleared up five weeks earlier after the General had been forced to withdraw his written statement submitted to the VFW which had said that the U.S. was supporting a policy of permanent support of Formosa, contrary to the Administration-backed U.N. policy of assuring neutrality of Formosa only for the duration of the Korean war.
At the U.N., the U.S. delegation announced that it was prepared to take part in a five-power meeting on the problems threatening world peace. China was included as a member of the group without reference to whether it would be the Nationalists, the only lawful delegation to the Security Council, or the Communist Chinese, who Russia claimed had the proper right to sit on the Security Council to the exclusion of the Nationalists.
U.S. delegate John Foster Dulles denied the claim of Russian chief delegate Jakob Malik that Mr. Dulles had said that because of certain commitments, the U.S. had to back Trygve Lie for a renewed term as Secretary-General despite Mr. Lie following a "double-faced policy".
The Department of Justice issued rules for forcing the registration of Communist groups under the new McCarran anti-subversive law. Under the law, Communists would have until Monday to sign up voluntarily and then registration by force was to begin. The Communist Party said that it did not intend to register or disclose its membership list. Some had estimated that because of delays by challenges in the courts, registration could take as long as two years.
The Government ordered a 25 percent cut in the use of natural rubber by tire and rubber companies, to become effective November 1.
In Chicago, former Mayor Ed Kelly, 74, died. He had been Mayor from 1933 to 1947 and had wielded great power within the Democratic Party.
Another hurricane, this one from out of the Gulf of Mexico, was bearing down on the Tampa Bay area, the second in a week to affect Florida after the Tuesday-Wednesday hurricane which hit Miami hard with 125 mph winds and moved across four counties before dissipating to the north.
On the editorial page, "Southern Bell Weakens Its Case" finds that Southern Bell had weakened its case for a rate increase before the State Utilities Commission by adding onto its request an additional $834,000 to compensate for Federal tax increases which had gone into effect October 1. Those tax increases were to meet the emergency in Korea and the piece thinks that it would be unfair therefore of Southern Bell to pass the burden to consumers, already bearing their fair share of the cost of the war and mobilization. Bell also had to shoulder its share of responsibility, insists the piece, to stop Communist aggression.
"The Third Lesson of Korea" finds that the proposal to enable the U.N. General Assembly to act in an emergency to control an international police force acting under the auspices of the U.N. whenever the Security Council was blocked by a Big Five veto embodied two lessons from Korea. The first was that the presence of a U.N. commission in Korea had made it possible to identify the aggressor quickly on June 25 when the invasion occurred. The second was that U.N. forces were able to act pursuant to resolution only by virtue of Russia having been in boycott of the Security Council on June 25, since the prior January.
But the third lesson was that the proposal, if enacted, would not necessarily establish peace. For the U.S. had borne the burden of the fighting in Korea and to be truly a recipe for peace, the U.N. had to provide the manpower necessary to resist aggression.
"Civitans Encourage Negro Sports" tells of the upcoming annual Queen City Classic between West Charlotte and Second Ward high schools, set for two weeks hence. The budgets for the entire athletic programs of the two schools depended on the proceeds derived from the game. The Civitan Club sponsored the game and promoted it. It encourages attendance.
"Lewis Carroll Logic" finds that Senator Ed Johnson of Colorado had engaged in such logic when he was reported to have said of Italian director Roberto Rossellini recently that "he was not Italian because he's a scoundrel".
It had brought to mind an editorial from The Nation several years earlier which had found that Mayor O'Brien of New York had engaged in similar logic when he said that he wanted to be a newspaperman because he loved the classics and good literature, and, again, regarding a University of Berlin professor who had said that Hitler could not be persecuting Jews because he did not drink or smoke and led an "exact moral life".
A piece from the Milwaukee Journal, titled "Hiawatha Is Banned, Too", finds that Communist distortion had produced strange consequences, as Hollywood movie makers having suppressed a movie based on Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha" for bearing supposed Communist propaganda. It concludes that things had come to a pretty pass in free America when high ideals, plain words and human hopes, as expressed in the story of Hiawatha, could become tainted with suspicion of Communism.
A piece from Tax Outlook posits that the Government was carrying too much fat in its budget and a trimming of Federal employees was due. The Federal Security Agency, along with the Labor and Treasury Departments were being scrutinized by Congress for such cuts. It concludes by quoting Congressman John Bell Williams of Mississippi that it was just as important for the Government to tighten its belt and concentrate on the war as it was for business and the public to do likewise.
Drew Pearson, in Los Angeles, tells of Colonel Edward Shattuck running for Attorney General of California. He had been planning to run for public office in California for the previous decade, since he had been made general counsel for Selective Service in Washington. In 1941, he fancied running for either Governor or Lt. Governor. He had the job of calling out the lottery draft numbers in July, 1941 and he had sought to milk the occasion for all the personal publicity he could get. Eventually, he had tried to get himself transferred back to California to be state draft director, but Governor Olsen had appointed someone else. He had planned during the war to run as a veteran of two world wars to be either Governor or Senator. Mr. Pearson finds that, judging by his current billboards promoting that very fact, he was now doing that which he had earlier privately proclaimed he would.
Pat Brown, later two-term Governor from 1959-67, and father of four-term Governor Jerry Brown, would win the California Attorney General race, his first statewide office, having been District Attorney of San Francisco for the prior eight years.
Marquis Childs, in New Delhi, provides his second piece on the interview he had conducted with Prime Minister Nehru, discusses his view that Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence, almost three years after his assassination on January 30, 1948, remained a strong influence on Indian life generally and on governmental policy. Gandhi's deepest conviction, according to Nehru, had been that bad means could never justify or achieve good ends. It explained the Indian doubts of the Western use of force to put down aggression. It also was the reason for rejection of the Communist belief that the end of a perfect state justified the means used to achieve it.
Nehru had never placed reliance on Gandhi's rejection of modern medicine and technology or his embrace of handicraft and cottage industries. Nehru favored Western methods to build the standard of living in India, at or near subsistence in 1950.
Purushottamdas Tandon had recently been elected head of the Congress Party and was, to an extent, an opponent of Nehru. Tandon believed in the simplistic, ascetic life advocated by Gandhi, rejecting modern medicine. Mr. Childs talked also with Tandon and he told him that his beliefs were comparable to those of Sinn Fein in Ireland. He wanted to replace English with Hindu as the official language of India.
Nehru believed that knowing what to do with victory before achieving it was essential or it would be empty. He quoted from Ashoka, an Indian conqueror of the Third Century, who had known when to stop. Ashoka had said that "all animate beings should have the security of self-control, peace of mind and joyousness." Mr. Childs suggests that while it might sound hopelessly naive, it nevertheless summed up what was probably in the heart of Nehru.
Robert C. Ruark finds that the President had only engaged in some smart politicking at Government expense by visiting General MacArthur on Wake Island. He believes that with the Korean war almost over, there was nothing which the President could impart to General MacArthur of any help. He thinks the President should have had the General fly to Washington. But to have done so, he ventures, would have caused potential diversion of the press from the elections, something the President did not want.
By having the meeting on Wake Island, the President had paid homage to the shrine of the Marines, after he had recently raised controversy with his remark that the Marines had a propaganda arm greater than that of Stalin. The presence of the U.S.S. Missouri in Korea was giving the Navy renewed prestige, while erasing the episode the previous winter in which the Missouri had wound up grounded off Newport News.
He concludes that the trip was not necessary or especially constructive. He finds it to be simply a large-scale version of the cross-country whistle-stop tour employed by the President with such political deftness in 1948.
A letter from the Fire Chief thanks the newspaper for cooperation during Fire Prevention Week.
A letter from the chairman of the public relations committee and the director of public relations for the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce thanks the newspaper for its support of the bond issue for construction of the municipal auditorium and coliseum, especially recognizing reporters Tom Fesperman and John Daly, Editor Pete McKnight, Managing Editor Brodie Griffith, and City Editor Dick Young, Jr.
A pome appears from the Atlanta Journal, "In Which It Is Pointed Out That Profanity Is Not Only A Bad Thing To Use But Also Does No Good:
"Persons who curse
Make everything worse."
But if you don't goddamned
Get it out of your system,
You're liable to get rod-rammed
Up like a friction-jammed piston.
Framed Edition
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