The Charlotte News
Monday, October 30, 1950
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page indicates that two mostly Communist Chinese divisions, numbering 30,000 men, had reportedly driven this night against Hamhung on the east coast of Korea. A captured North Korean said that they were under orders to capture the chemical center by Wednesday. The most critical area was at Onjong, about 45 miles below the Manchurian border, to which U.S. tanks and artillery were rushed to aid the embattled South Korean forces, depleted by one-third of their strength in three days. A spokesman for the U.S. Tenth Corps said that two Chinese regiments were in action in the same area. American advisers said that they considered the situation serious. There was no indication yet whether the reports indicated full intervention by Communist China. North Korean women were also reported at the front.
Correspondent William Jorden reported that the Americans of the 24th Division had suffered heavy casualties from mortar and small arms fire on the left flank, two miles east of Kusong, after a five-mile advance.
More evidence of atrocities was discovered at Pagchon, 46 miles north of Pyongyang, as 80 North Korean civilians had been killed by fleeing North Korean troops.
The Defense Department released its latest Korean war casualty report, indicating 48 Americans dead, 208 wounded and 12 missing.
Tibetan troops were reported to have retreated in the face of the Communist Chinese invaders to Tibet, after reaching to within 200 miles of Lhasa at Pemba Go. The Tibetan troops had abandoned Lho Dozong on October 23 and Shoshado on the 27th, and had fallen back to Pemba Go. The journey to Lhasa from Pemba Go usually required a month but could be made in two weeks. It was believed that the Chinese were planning a three-pronged drive on Lhasa.
From San Juan, a report indicates that Puerto Rican Nationalists clashed with police in three towns in what appeared to be an organized uprising. Six persons, including a policeman, had been killed. Thirty policemen were conducting a search for the head of the Nationalist Party, Pedro Albizu Campos.
On Wednesday, two Puerto Rican Nationalists would attempt to assassinate President Truman at Blair House in Washington.
At the U.N., Russia's chief delegate Jakob Malik demanded that the Security Council keep trying to elect a new Secretary-General instead of turning the decision over to the General Assembly. A session of the Assembly had been called for the following day to act on the U.S.-backed plan to extend Trygve Lie's tenure. It was expected that the Council would deadlock and the matter would again be sent to the Assembly for resolution.
At the meeting of the NATO defense ministers in Washington, the last session was taking place to form the combined defense force. The 12 nations were again struggling to decide whether German forces should be organized to participate in the common defense, generally opposed by the French, at least until the Western European defense force was formed. The British and Americans believed that the West German force should be formed immediately under strict controls.
Politicians were predicting possibly the closest election for Congress in the prior six years on November 7, as well as a record turn-out for a midterm election.
At Vatican City, more than 500 cardinals and bishops of the Roman Catholic Church approved the decision of Pope Pius XII to proclaim the bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven as a dogma of the Church. The proclamation was considered to be the most important ceremony of the 1950 holy year. Every Catholic was required to accept the belief.
In Oregon, the Willamette River and other smaller rivers were flooding after five days of storms, resulting in two dead and one missing. Scores of towns were isolated. The flooding was the worst since 1927.
In Quincy, Mass., a two-year old boy was found wandering alone a long way from home at 2:00 a.m. His parents had found the same condition occurring three weeks earlier.
He obviously had a drinking problem and needed help.
Tom Fesperman tells of the trouble of a News photographer in getting a picture of a 101-year old man on his birthday. The picture appears on the page.
On the editorial page, "Thoughts on Public Power" finds no good argument that public power projects were able to provide power to the people at lower cost than private utilities. The proof had not been convincing that public power, while sometimes good, as in TVA, was good for North Carolina, where private companies had been aggressive in development of power resources. It so finds for the Roanoke Rapids dam project and thinks the Government ought step aside from it. It urges Congress to exercise its responsibility over public power to restrain construction of pet projects which were not needed and leave them to the private producers.
"Exit Marcantonio—We Hope" tells of the nation looking closely at the upcoming race in Harlem for Congress in the hope that Congressman Vito Marcantonio, perceived as a prime spokesperson for the Kremlin, would be ousted from his seat. The three major New York parties had joined behind a conservative Democrat, James G. Donovan, in the hope of defeating the American Labor Party Congressman. Mr. Donovan was expected to win. It examines Mr. Marcantonio's voting record and finds that he ought be defeated for using the Congress as a sounding board for his Communist views.
"Happy Halloween" finds
preferable the fright induced by a snaggle-toothed jack-o'-lantern to
having their pants scared off by speculation on how many thousands
might be killed in an atomic blast in Charlotte. It offers best
wishes for a "frightening, eerie
Go as Herblock's Mr. Atom, or as Mr. Nixon, the costumes being interchangeable.
A piece from the Oklahoma City Daily Oklahoman, titled "Why Not Oklahoma?" tells of the South gaining new industry by 50 percent between 1939 and 1947, while the rest of the country averaged 36 percent. It suggests that what the South had done, neighboring Oklahoma could do. With seven new industries having been established in the region every day for the prior decade, it questions why not also in Oklahoma.
Drew Pearson tells of an effective campaign for the Senate in Iowa being run by the Democratic challenger to Senator Bourke Hickenlooper, a farmer who had been Undersecretary of Agriculture, Al Loveland. Mr. Loveland had uncovered that the Senator had been present on the Agriculture Committee for only one of six meetings. He had instead led the probe into the Atomic Energy Commission, which backfired badly when no leaks of information from the Commission were found, and then probed the State Department. The latter, following the charges by Senator Joseph McCarthy of Communists in the Department, fared no better, as the State Department had comported itself so well in the Korean war that no one any longer was inclined to put stock in the McCarthy claims.
The Senator would likely win the election given that Iowa was so heavily Republican. But the Republican-controlled State Liquor Commission had not endeared itself to the voters by purchasing three-year old whiskey when it could have gotten four-year aged bonded whiskey guaranteed by the Federal Government at almost the same price. Furthermore, a Republican Secretary of Agriculture in the state had approved purchase of antifreeze for trucks despite the fact that Iowa State College had determined that the particular brand contained salt which would ruin engines.
The McCarran anti-subversive act was stopping young Austrians from entering the country under a friendship program started by the Jaycees a year earlier. They had once been members of the Nazi Party, required to belong, and so were prohibited by the law's provision banning from immigration anyone who had been a member previously of a party favoring totalitarian rule. It was keeping out some of the most ardent anti-Communists in Europe on the basis that they had once been a part of the Communist Party but had since reformed.
U.S. High Commissioner for West Germany, John J. McCloy, was warning that Communist riots were expected in three weeks and he wanted more troops to deal with the prospect, as scores of persons were crossing the border from the East as part of the move to have a united Germany under Communist rule.
Yugoslavia was in dire need of grain, as stated by Ambassador George Allen, after droughts cut the crop by 40 percent.
King Farouk of Egypt had high blood pressure, apparently from his night life.
European millionaires, afraid that the Red Army might overrun even Switzerland, were moving their deposits to banks in Uruguay and Mexico.
Stewart Alsop, in Indianapolis, reports of the Senate election between incumbent Senator Homer Capehart and the State Attorney General, Alexander Campbell. The election would turn on foreign policy, with Senator Capehart making vague accusations of a sellout by the U.S. and the British to Russia at Yalta in early 1945, with Alger Hiss having been supposedly behind that sellout and then forwarded in time by some other person, who was identified variously as Owen Lattimore, Lee Pressman, or Dean Acheson, or just an unidentified person. Senator Capehart then jumped to the conclusion that the policies thus set in motion had led to Korea and "26,000 American casualties". He set forth this "sorry history" with apparent conviction, and audiences readily lapped it up, applauding enthusiastically.
Mr. Campbell, who had run previously as a supporter of the Fair Deal, was now distancing himself from its chief programs, opposing the President's veto of the McCarran anti-subversive bill, the Brannan agriculture plan, and the compulsory health insurance plan.
Senator Capehart was running on the record of the previous 80th Congress, controlled by the GOP, in which the Marshall Plan, NATO, and the Truman Doctrine of military aid for Greece and Turkey were approved. But the Senator failed to acknowledge that he had fought to gut each of these measures.
The Senator was taking advantage of the natural tendency of people to want to blame someone close at hand for problems, as opposed to distant forces such as the Kremlin. If the reactions he was getting during his speeches offered any indication, however, the strategy appeared to be working.
Robert C. Ruark, in Chicago, says
that he had been unable to make heads or tails of the investigation by the Kefauver committee
in Chicago of gambling as there were too
many references to "Paul, the Waiter", Tonys and "Little
New Yorks". Cops had openly admitted receiving payoffs to look the
other way, being privately employed as detectives for the racetracks.
Al Capone was invoked as was now-deceased former Mayor and boss Ed
Kelly. Mr. Kelly had run a "dirty-shirt town" for the
Democrats through a carefully organized party organization. The
primary aim of it was to deliver the vote to keep the party wheels in
power. The wheels dispensed patronage. And the organization needed
cooperation from influential crooks. Rackets had to be protected to
exist and the protection began at the top
Experience had shown that it was
almost a waste of time to crusade against the individual when the
manipulators were able to escape with impunity. He finds Senator
Kefauver, though honorable, to have been "wielding a broom at a
swarm of bats, while the big buzzards
A letter writer from Glen Burnie, Md., resents the attack by the president of Edison Electric Institute on public power, which he views as superior to the efforts of the private companies.
A letter from the librarian at Queens College in Charlotte takes issue with the notion that the Charlotte Female Institute was an "off-shoot" of the Peace Institute for Girls at Raleigh, cites the history to prove it was not the case.
A letter writer from Davidson corrects a caption of a photograph of actor Randolph Scott, appearing October 23, which had stated that he was born in Charlotte, saying that, according to the World Almanac, he was born in Orange County, Va.
A letter from the chairman of the publicity committee of Employ the Physically Handicapped Week thanks the newspaper for its support in publicizing the effort.
Framed Edition
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