The Charlotte News
Thursday, August 24, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that a heavily armed North Korean division moved, in three infantry and armored columns originating in the area of Chinju, eastward along the Korean south coast toward American positions, fifty miles from Pusan. Correspondent Stan Swinton reported that two of the columns were preparing to hit the area where the American 25th Infantry Division was located near Masan. The enemy was moving in small groups to avoid being hit by strafing American aircraft. Near Masan, American and South Korean troops fought a bitter battle for the commanding heights of Sobuk ridge. The shift of the North Korean action to the south left the heights north of Taegu to American and South Korean infantry. Pressure eased on the central front after probing actions had been repulsed by the allies for five consecutive days in their efforts to reach the "bowling alley" plains corridor to Taegu.
Correspondent O. H. P. King reports that some South Koreans believed that Maj. General William F. Dean, missing since July 22 in the action around Taejon, had died of battle wounds after being nursed by a South Korean family and then been buried by the South Koreans. MacArthur headquarters disclaimed knowledge of such reports. The report was incorrect. General Dean had been taken prisoner and would remain so for the duration, living until 1981.
At a news conference, the President said, in response to a reporter's question regarding Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson's prediction that the end of the war should come within six to eight months insofar as pushing the enemy behind the 38th parallel, that he could not predict with certainty when the war would end.
He announced that the U.N. delegation now had three Republicans, chief delegate Warren Austin, John Foster Dulles, and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., plus two Democrats, Eleanor Roosevelt and Senator John Sparkman. The addition of the two Senators was made after consulting with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Among the alternates was former GOP Senator John Sherman Cooper, an adviser to Secretary of State Acheson. Republicans had been recently complaining of being left out of foreign policy discussions.
The President also denounced as without foundation the report that Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer had lobbied for authority to handle priorities and allocations—a report repeated this date by Marquis Childs.
He also declared that the nationwide railroad strike had been called within an hour after he had received assurances that there would be no strike and felt that he had been dealt with unfairly by the two Brotherhoods, the Conductors and Trainmen. The walkout would begin Monday morning. He would not say whether he would seize the roads, as the unions had been urging for weeks.
The House passed a measure to provide between $45 and $85 per month to the dependents of enlisted men in the military, to be in addition to regular pay. The Senate had passed a similar bill and the differences would proceed to reconciliation conference.
The House Appropriations Committee approved a 16.7 billion dollar emergency defense measure, including four billion to arm allies. It was scheduled for House vote the following day, where passage was expected.
Senator Styles Bridges favored cutting 200 million dollars from the Marshall Plan funding for the year.
Senator Walter George, chairman of the tax-writing Finance Committee, said that the five billion dollars in tax increases on individual and corporate income would pass the Senate without an excess profits tax attached. Senator Joe O'Mahoney of Wyoming had sought an amendment to add 3.5 billion in excess profits taxes and some of his fellow Democrats agreed with the proposal. Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota said that the Finance Committee had turned the President's tax bill into a "pork barrel and smoke screen" for the relief of wealthy taxpayers and that he would submit remedial amendments.
Informed diplomats in Germany said that Russia was proceeding with its plans for political and military development of East Germany. The reports indicated that the Soviets had divided the police force into two organizations, one for actual police work and the other for regular army training, the latter being without further pretense of police activity—not dissimilar to some of our modern urban police departments since the mid-1960's, the increasing paramilitary nature of which has led to the shoot-first, ask-questions-later mentality on the part of some officers across the land in burgs big and small, the cheap wartime thrill of action in Jackson, not just riding around in a patrol car all the boring, live-long day.
It was believed that the aim of this effort in East Germany was a Korea-type assault on West Germany. For it to happen, the Russians would need first to conclude a peace treaty with the East Germans and then remove their occupation forces while disclaiming responsibility for the puppets left behind. It had led to the question as to how and when to undertake controlled rearming of West Germany.
Ann Sawyer of The News reports of the impact of the war thus far on Charlotte families during its first two months. One soldier from the area had been killed, four had been wounded and one was missing.
On the editorial page, "Bethel Proposal Makes Good Sense" tells of all of the 1943 Brown Report on the local health department having been implemented save one, the transfer of clinics for indigent patients, with the exception of cases of TB and VD, from the health department to the regular hospitals. It urges approval by the County Commissioners and City Council of the proposal to make the remaining transfer, as it would save the City and County about $6,250 each per year.
But what about the BVD's? Where will they go for care?
"February—But What Year?" wonders what year Secretary of Defense Johnson had in mind when he said that the war in Korea could be won by February, insofar as pushing the North Koreans back behind the 38th parallel. It ventures that it was time for the "Pollyanna of the Pentagon" to stop making predictions. His economizing had led to the current unpreparedness for the war and his consistent air of optimism had proved false. It advises the House Appropriations Committee to take his latest prediction therefore with a grain of salt.
"End of a Controversy" tells of the newspaper having devoted so much space four days running to the Latta Park controversy and the effort to amend the zoning ordinance to send the authority to build recreation centers henceforth to the City Council from the Park & Recreation Commission, because of the importance of the issue to the community. It expresses regret over disagreement with Mayor Victor Shaw and three Council members, plus the Latta Park residents, but was gratified that a majority agreed with the newspaper's opposition to the amendment. It would approach with an open mind the new proposal by a member to make the Commission more responsible to the Council.
Were it not for the repeated "Editorialettes", we might buy that rationalization, but find it thus to justify a summer's end trip to the beach—which is okay, we suppose, for lazy, good for nothing people.
"The Finest Tradition" tells of the National Guard being mobilized, including the 378th Combat Engineers Battalion of North Carolina, for action in Korea, the fourth war into which Guard units had been sent, since the 1916 Pershing punitive expedition into Mexico to hunt for Pancho Villa following his attacks on New Mexico, then in World Wars I and II. It questions whether they would be fighting in World War III. It wishes them the best in their courageous endeavor.
That next engagement, unfortunately, would probably occur at Kent State in 1970.
Oh, we know, we know, we know, Massa
"Pres-i-dent". There was blame to go round on "many
A piece from the Saturday Evening Post, titled "Ordeal by Innuendo", finds that the Senate's 55 to 24 vote to reconfirm Sumner Pike as a member of the Atomic Energy Commission had not only dealt a blow to the ill-willed effort of Senator Bourke Hickenlooper to do him dirt for political reasons but also had likely encouraged others previously discouraged from seeking Government employment because of this very thing.
Bill Sharpe, in his weekly "Turpentine Drippings", snippets from various newspapers across the state, provides one from the Mullins Enterprise which recounts that as a kid, the writer had, while riding on an old wood-burning train the 18 miles to Columbia, S.C., over the course of an hour, counted telephone poles, so much so that he or she could not stop. For a long time thereafter, the urge was so great that it was difficult to enjoy a train ride. There was also the need to count the pipes in the organ in the new church or the beams overhead, etc.
Get some help. We used to take from the backseat tabulations of new Fords versus Chevrolets on the road during the first month or so of the new-car release each year, but we quickly became bored with that practice after about three or four consecutive falls and quit. And we have never had the urge since to resume it. Try instead reading In Cold Blood or The Autobiography of Malcolm X as a substitute pastime.
Beatrice Cobb of the Morganton News Herald explains that blue moons were not impossible of occurrence.
The Waynesville Mountaineer reports that the former chief of police believed that the proliferation of snakes in the mountains during the summer was the result of the scarcity of hogs, as the latter and deer kept the snake population down, both being predators of snakes.
Don't get upset, Mr. Hunter, and start killing the deer while eating your side of ham for breakfast. It is a part of the natural order.
The Sanford Herald tells of a flood in the West in which a neighbor girl was perched on top of a house with a small boy, at which point a derby hat had flowed by, then turned around and came back upstream, regarding which the boy replied to the statement of amazement by the girl that it was only their father, who had vowed, come hell or high water, to the cut the grass that day.
Drew Pearson's column is written by Tom McNamara, who discusses Jakob Malik, chief Soviet U.N. delegate, being about to be recalled home following the end of his monthly rotational term as president of the Security Council at the end of August. Insiders reported that his mission to the U.N. had ended with the U.N forces' victories near Changnyong which had wrecked the North Korean timetable to be done with the fighting by September 1, per the commandment of Premier Kim Il Sung, moved back already from August 15. Mr. Malik was to have then negotiated for a final peace treaty, with the contingency of recognition of Communist China by the U.N. and ousting of Nationalist China. Mr. Malik would likely not return.
American intelligence on Russia far surpassed what Russia knew about the U.S. The Pentagon, for instance, had the locations of every major war plant behind the iron curtain.
Nat Keith, director of the Government's slum-clearance program, was doing a good job.
Reporters called the 27 billion dollar omnibus domestic spending bill the "silo" bill, as opposed to "pork barrel".
Waiters at the House Restaurant received but $27 per week and were not covered by Social Security.
Pentagon generals found the large B-29 attack recently on the North Korean troops to have failed because the infantry failed to follow up with a swift advance.
Ebony had stated that the war in Korea was no more one of color than the last one, when Communists had fought as an ally with the U.S. Rather, it was a battle between two political concepts.
The Communists lived under a rigid caste system, whereunder Russian employees could not even speak to those of the satellite nations.
House whip Percy Priest of Tennessee had, during his primary fight, hit hard Secretaries Acheson and Johnson, saying, upon inquiry as to why he had thus set himself up for a White House rebuke, that he would rather be a "live Congressman than a dead whip".
Mr. McNamara tells of a small company in Fayetteville, Ark., getting the runaround for a Government war contract, the usual practice, despite the facade of competitive bidding. To bid required obtaining blueprints from Chrysler, which refused to see the businessman from Arkansas anent the matter.
Joseph Alsop, in Tokyo, tells of being in Korea with a crack Marine battalion pinned down by the enemy, which had scaled to the crest on the flank of a seemingly unscaleable hill. Other units had similar problems the same day. That night, he read from a pocket edition of Plutarch's Lives about the Roman General Metellus, of whom Plutarch had written 2,000 years earlier that the General, while fighting in Spain, had experience with regular legions trained for close combat but that this fighting involved climbing among hills against fleet mountaineers, who were accustomed to going without food and water and being exposed to the weather without fire or covering, an experience for which the troops of Metellus were wholly unprepared. He finds in the passage a parallel with Lt. General Walton Walker and the unique problems of the Korean war for American troops.
Many of them, including officers, would rather die, he reports, than climb a hill, and every key position in Korea was on a hill or mountain.
The further correspondents got from the front, the more optimistic were the forecasts heard from the command posts, until, in Tokyo, the prediction was victory by Christmas. It made him wonder who had gone mad.
Between 13 and 15 North Korean divisions were in the field, and four new divisions would soon be ready for action. The U.N. forces had the equivalent of eight divisions, including four South Korean divisions rated equally with the American troops for defensive purposes. New troops were on the way, but to assume the offensive required a two to one ratio of troops over those of the enemy, meaning about a three to four-fold increase.
While allied air superiority helped to shorten the war, it would take a military miracle to achieve a quick victory. He recommends that the President and everyone else cease optimistic talk and begin realistic understanding that the war would be hard and long and bloody. Any other approach, he finds, would be a betrayal of the men fighting the battles.
Marquis Childs discusses the Senate economic controls bill, which he ventures was so hacked up by amendments that it might prove unworkable. The worst of these amendments, which would deprive the President of authority over allocations and priorities and give it to the Department of Commerce, had been put in by Senator Ed Johnson of Colorado, who had a vengeful dislike for the President. Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer had been complicit in the effort.
The official hardest hit by the Sawyer campaign—the occurrence of which the President denied in his press conference of this date—was Stuart Symington, chairman of the National Security Resources Board, referee in the wartime defense economy regarding differences arising between departments assigned different but overlapping tasks.
The amendment might be eliminated in the reconciliation conference, but, otherwise, Mr. Symington would be left out of the authority loop, leaving him as a mere adviser.
The Department of Commerce was traditionally a friend to business, making it hard for Mr. Sawyer to exert the kind of economic control necessary in wartime. Moreover, Mr. Sawyer, personally, had never shown the kind of toughness necessary for such a role. Such was where the country stood after 57 days since the start of the war—"a hell of a way to run a railroad."
Framed Edition
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