The Charlotte News
Wednesday, December 20, 1950
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports that the allied defenders of the Hungnam beachhead continued
to hold against the pressing Chinese Communist troops, as the
evacuation
Marine and Navy pilots hit 24 enemy troop concentrations and claimed 1,300 casualties. American wounded were now being evacuated to a hospital ship after abandonment of Yonpo airfield.
On the western front, the Eighth Army fought minor engagements as North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel in a 30-mile front around Chunchon, 45 miles northeast of Seoul. A South Korean force repelled 200 North Koreans trying to cross the Imjin River, fifteen miles east of Kaesong. According to MacArthur headquarters, the Eighth Army held all of its positions in the Hwachon sector, 20 miles north of Chunchon, and north of the 38th parallel.
After finding the Associated Press to be in "clear violation" of security for mentioning the dimensions of the Hungnam beachhead and describing it as an "escape pocket", MacArthur headquarters imposed the right of censorship over all news of Korean military operations, requiring that all stories and photographs be submitted for screening and clearance by military authorities. Until this point in time, a voluntary system of self-censorship had been relied upon since the start of the war on June 25; but it had not always worked, as the interpretation of what constituted matters of security to be excised from stories differed among correspondents. Some correspondents had sought formal censorship to make the required safeguards clear and provide an even break among reporters on big stories of only marginal security concern.
West Germans made it clear to the Big Three that they desired more than they had been offered for participation in NATO's combined defense effort. They had been demanding full equality of participation in the defense planning. It was suggested by sources within NATO that the West Germans might be offered a position on General Eisenhower's staff but would not be allowed either a foreign or defense minister on the council.
The Western powers agreed in principle to meet with the Russians if talks with the West German Government extended to cover points of East-West tension rather than solely concentrating on the German question of participation in NATO defense.
The President's announcement that more U.S. ground troops would be sent to Europe, though not yet specifying how many, brought demands from both sides of the aisle in Congress for detailed information on the troop commitments of other NATO members and for assurance that the U.S. would not be stripped of military reserves at home.
Former President Herbert Hoover said that no more troops should be sent to Western Europe until the people and the Congress had an opportunity to explore the whole question. He was planning to deliver a radio and television address this night at 8:00 over two networks, regarding national policies in the current crisis, and would outline his views on what the course in relations to free nations resisting Communism should be.
You don't want to miss that.
Secretary of State Acheson was returning home from the NATO council meeting this date and would soon address Congress regarding the agreements reached anent building a million-man army in Europe by the end of 1953. Democrats and the President had rallied around Mr. Acheson amid cries from some Republicans and resolutions from the GOP membership in each chamber that he resign for loss of public confidence. Senators Taft and Kenneth Wherry led a group of Republicans who said that there would be no unity on foreign policy as long as he remained. Other Republicans, as Senators Wayne Morse, Leverett Saltonstall, and George Aiken, urged Republicans to accept the President's decision to retain Mr. Acheson and support a bipartisan foreign policy.
Congressman Paul Shafer of Michigan, member of the House Armed Forces Committee, criticized fellow Republican Thomas Dewey for his defense recommendations contained in his address the prior Thursday to the nation, calling it "manifestly absurd" and the first salvo in the 1952 presidential campaign. He said that Governor Dewey had not explained how he would propose to house and train 100 divisions, consisting of 12.6 million men, on short notice.
The President signed the three-month extension of rent control passed by Congress during the extra session.
House Majority Leader John McCormack said that a general excise tax on manufacturers would be the appropriate means to raise the 16 to 20 billion dollars to balance the defense budget.
Union labor leaders demanded of the President that any Government wage controls allow for pay increases commensurate with increases in the cost of living. They also wanted new legislation to allow for greater controls on food prices and rents.
Congressman Walter Brehm of Ohio was indicted on seven charges of illegally taking political contributions or kickbacks, totaling $1,380, from two former employees. The Congressman proclaimed his innocence of the charges. The charges carried a maximum prison term of two years and a fine of $5,000.
In Candor, N.C., the FBI announced the arrest of three Maryland men who admitted robbing at gunpoint the Bank of Candor, taking between $900 and $1,000 about an hour and fifteen minutes earlier. The cashier said that two of the men had walked into the bank and told him: "This is a stickup. Get 'em up."
Get who up? There's nobody asleep in here.
On the editorial page, "Eisenhower to Europe" finds that the appointment of General Eisenhower to be the supreme commander of NATO in Western Europe, long anticipated, was a shot in the arm to the whole free world, given his prestige and name recognition from the war. He would serve as European counterpart to General MacArthur in the Far East and would remind Americans that the battle against Communism was worldwide. He would also stand as a reminder to Congress that it was important to keep Europe out of Communist hands. As Europeans respected his diplomatic skills and tact, his appointment would serve to bolster confidence that America was not going to abandon Europe, thus producing greater cooperation within NATO and providing thereby greater deterrence to Russian aggression.
Agreement during the week between the council of foreign and defense ministers that a million-man army, inclusive of 25 combat regiments plus tactical air groups from West Germany, was a major step forward. It urges bringing the force into being quickly, as time was short.
"More Doctors Needed" tells of Dr. Leslie Hohman of Duke University, prominent in the pre-frontal lobotomy program at Butner State Hospital, having written in the North Carolina Medical Journal that the State mental hospitals were not recognized for training or treatment by the AMA, that the number of trained psychiatrists in the hospitals was small, no more than four or five, that the reason for that paucity was low salaries, and that physicians of the state should demand that the Legislature provide adequate funds to eliminate the "deplorable conditions" in these hospitals. He recommended appropriation of $40,000 to $45,000 to remedy the situation.
The piece asserts that if the remedy
could be effected for so little, then the money ought be made
available for the purpose
"Truman's Challenge to GOP" finds appropriate a statement by the President that the opponents of Secretary Acheson who proposed his resignation should come forward with any alternative foreign policy. Thus far, all they had done was to criticize Secretary Acheson but had proposed nothing positive in response.
The piece suggests that such persons as Senator McCarthy and radio commentator Fulton Lewis had engaged in circular reasoning by setting about to destroy public confidence in Mr. Acheson and then turning around, once done, and claiming that he ought be removed for lack of public confidence in him. If there were facts to support Mr. Acheson's resignation, then, it urges, the opponents ought produce them.
A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled "Whoops, My Dears", tells of the State being able to make about three million dollars on the issue of six million dollars worth of State bonds by the facts that investors escaped taxes on income derived from State bonds and that the State could invest its money in tax-exempt Federal bonds. It recommends that the State go whole hog into this investment scheme and meet all of its revenue requirements in that manner. "It sounds wonderful. It is wonderful. What are we waiting for?"
Whatever you say.
Drew Pearson tells of Secretary of Defense Marshall, despite being a military man, moving with more caution than Secretary of State Acheson with regard to the war in Korea, fearful that any sudden move might provoke the Soviets into initiating an attack, when they did not appear to desire general war. Secretary Marshall had earlier warned General MacArthur against any provoking movements near the Manchurian border after it initially had been agreed that he would stay within the 40-mile neutral zone below the border.
Secretary Marshall made it clear that the country was in no condition to fight the third world war and would not be for at least a year, that getting through 1951 without general war might mean that it could be averted.
Secretary Acheson, who was a friend to General Marshall, was probably the greatest non-appeaser in the Administration, his reputation among Republicans on Capitol Hill to the contrary notwithstanding. He had proposed a naval blockade of China's coast and urged the bombing of Chinese cities and the preservation of a military bridgehead in Korea, all of which had been opposed by Prime Minister Clement Attlee of Britain when he had visited with the President earlier in the month. Top military men also opposed these measures, warning that such speeches as that of Governor Dewey recently were too aggressive, though the speech had been secretly encouraged by the State Department, that military men such as General MacArthur who wanted a preventive war posed a danger, and that State Department officials, including Mr. Acheson, who insisted on aggressive action likewise posed a danger.
The military men, he notes, also warned of drafting too many men before enough camps and training officers were available.
The President had been warned weeks earlier by Senators Wayne Morse and Elbert Thomas, as well as Secretary of Labor Maurice Tobin and Attorney General J. Howard McGrath, of the likelihood of a railroad strike unless John Steelman could bring management and labor together on the wage and hour dispute, eventually prompting the three-day strike of the prior week.
He notes that the railroad union heads were mad at Mr. Steelman for assuring the President of great progress in the negotiations when the only offer was a five-cent raise for a three-year, no-strike contract, also complained that he had told the President that they had agreed not to strike when they had not. He also notes that there was an attempt to ease Mr. Steelman out as mediator and bring in Cyrus Ching or Anna Rosenberg.
Marquis Childs discusses the implications to Asia of a limited war with Communist China, an increasingly likely prospect given that Formosa was not subject to compromise from the U.S. perspective and that the Communists were demanding that it be ceded to Communist China. First there would be a sea and air blockade of the mainland, while increasing aid to the Nationalists, inclusive of providing landing craft and planes to enable their forces to join with the anti-Communist guerrillas on the mainland.
Such an extension of hostilities, however, would likely cause the Communist Chinese to flank India on both sides, penetrating completely through Tibet, where they had now stopped 300 miles short of Lhasa, appearing to await word on a possible truce in Korea, as well as then taking over Nepal. The Burmese were fearful that Chinese armies would then overrun their country. Hong Kong and Malaya might also be overrun.
Finally, the guerrillas of Ho Chi Minh in Indo-China, now with an open border with China, could be supplied adequately by the Chinese to enable the Vietminh to drive out the French, whose border fortifications had already been overrun by the Ho guerrillas.
The politicians maintained that the intention of the Chinese was to communize Asia and a limited war of this kind would at worst speed up the process, while perhaps also throwing the Chinese off balance enough that they would be unable to undertake adequate preparations for such a far-flung venture.
Those in Asia who would be subject to the Chinese aggression, however, would likely resist the concept and if war were to sweep over all of Asia as a result of this limited warfare against China, then the U.S. would be blamed by Asians.
Robert C. Ruark tells of President Truman being an average man thrust into an extraordinary position by circumstances of history and not always behaving well, with the dignity to which the American people had become accustomed in the Presidency. With the dangerous state of the world, the people had the right to expect a President who would exert leadership and do so in an appropriate and dignified manner, not with pettiness and churlish behavior below the station of the office. He posits that Mr. Truman owed such dignity and leadership to the people, without "political deals and dodges". Americans would be solidly behind him if he disciplined himself accordingly.
Hal Boyle, in Seoul, relates of an elderly man crossing the bridge from the south into Seoul, coming from the direction to which the refugees fleeing the Communist approach to Seoul were headed to get as far away from war as possible, to Pusan and then even to Japan. But the old man explained to President Syngman Rhee, whom he encountered as he entered Seoul, that he was returning because he had first fled 300 miles to Pusan, walking for three months to get there, and then, when the allies had retaken Seoul and the North, had felt it safe to begin walking back, taking two months to return. He was tired and wanted to be where he had lived his life, was not planning to leave this time.
President Rhee admired the pluck of the man and wished that all South Koreans felt the same way. He desired, himself, to remain in Seoul but his advisers would not allow it, given his symbolic importance to South Korea. He had spent most of his life in other countries fighting for the freedom of Korea and wanted, at age 75, to be as the lonely old peasant, staying in his homeland, regardless of the consequences.
Framed Edition
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