The Charlotte News
Wednesday, August 9, 1950
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that North Koreans retreated from U.S. onslaughts on the southern and western fronts, and pilots reported that the enemy was preparing to evacuate Chinju, as U.S. patrols had reached within seven miles of the city, the apparent objective of the two-day U.N. counteroffensive. A pincer action on Chinju was within seven miles of closing around enemy troops. Gains of an average of three miles were reported on the southern front. Two enemy battalions of about 1,600 men supported by tanks had been eliminated from one bridgehead across the Naktong River, the last water barrier protecting Taegu and Pusan. Threats to Taegu were eased by the offensive action. South Korean forces also pushed the invaders back across the Naktong in the central front. The enemy was putting pressure on the northern front, forcing the South Korean defenders to withdraw two miles at unspecified points. The enemy was also building up troops at Yongdok in the northeast corner of the arc line of defense.
Tom Lambert reports from the southern front of the fight for Chinju, as soldiers clasped hands on a hill five miles west of Chindong at dawn this date, then stormed from their foxholes with fixed bayonets and broke an enemy "victory" charge in hand-to-hand combat, in one of many skirmishes during the early morning hours in the five-mile drive toward the city. They had climbed a hill in darkness in the face of machinegun fire and kept going when they heard the "gooks" hollering "victory, victory" in English from a higher hill and saw them begin moving toward their position, at which point, by then daylight, the U.S. troops conducted their charge. They killed about 25 in the first line. The second line broke, except for the company commander whose head was blown off. Another 15 were killed.
Averell Harriman returned home after a three-day visit to Japan and Korea, expressing confidence of victory in the war. He informed the President of his visit with General MacArthur and his observations of the front.
Robert S. Bird and Ogden R. Reid of the New York Herald Tribune, in the third of their ten-part series on American defense, examine home defenses. A thin radar screen protected the country but the equipment was largely obsolete. Alaskan radar was no better and the Canadian system was ill-equipped and not yet integrated with the U.S. system. It was now working round the clock, whereas it had been operating only 40 hours per week prior to the Korean attack. It would, however, give no more than fifteen minutes of notice of an attack. There was no continuous air, sea and underwater patrols offshore to supplement this screen. Interceptors were under-equipped to ward off a major attack.
Radar, interceptors, and anti-aircraft batteries were all handicapped by the limitation of their locations as the land-based facilities were largely confined to government sites and fighters were primarily located at air bases. Steps to acquire more flexible locations were being taken.
The likelihood of an attack on the U.S. was discounted in Washington, as the stockpile of nuclear weapons was believed to provide enough deterrent. But some planners were uneasy about the prospect of Russia being able to carry bombs to U.S. cities, complicated by the early explosion of an atom bomb the previous August, some three years ahead of most high-level estimates of their capability. Russia had a good radar net, making a counter-strike harder.
HUAC this date proposed anti-subversion legislation stronger than that recommended by the President. It would incorporate major features of the Mundt-Nixon bill, requiring registration of Communists and Communist-front organizations, and bar Communists from Government employment or defense production under Government contract. The Senate Democratic policy committee was also busy drafting a bill which would include some of the President's suggestions and some of the features of the Republican House bill. The President had called the registration bill "unnecessary, ineffective and dangerous", but did want registration for foreign-trained spies and saboteurs.
The House defeated by overwhelming voice vote a proposal to compel the President to impose wage and price controls when the cost of living index rose five percent over the June 15 level. The final bill out of committee, which gave the President broad discretion in imposing controls and rationing, was expected to receive final action this date.
In Idaho, former Senator D. Worth Clark was pulling away in a close race in the Democratic primary with incumbent Senator Glen Taylor, who had run as vice-president with Henry Wallace on the Progressive Party ticket in 1948. Mr. Clark led by 1,400 votes with about 80 percent of the precincts counted.
Former Vice-President Wallace resigned from the Progressive Party the previous night because it had condemned the U.S. stand in the Korean war.
A Polish ship had picked up a passenger a hundred miles at sea out of New York this date after the man rented a seaplane for a 15-minute excursion and then disappeared over the horizon, landing near the ship on the sea. The ship called the Coast Guard to pick him up but they responded that their job was to save lives. The man claimed to the captain that he was lost and out of fuel. He had rented the plane under a different name from that which he gave to the captain. Authorities wanted to know why he chose that ship when others were in the vicinity.
He could have flown to Death Valley for a vacation maybe.
Charlotte City Traffic Engineer Herman Hoose recommended a new network of twelve Duke Power buses for the city, as well as other changes, including a crosstown line and a loop line, to supplement the fishing line.
On the editorial page, "The News from Korea" tells of an article by H. A. DeWeerd in the August 15 issue of The Reporter, stating that Americans found it troubling and hard to understand why the North Koreans were having such success against a man of the military skill and repute of General MacArthur. But that problem, suggests the piece, had been diminished somewhat this date as American and South Korean troops pressed closer to Chinju, 55 miles west of Pusan, pushing back some of the enemy troops who had crossed the Naktong River, the last water barrier before Taegu and Pusan, the last foothold on the peninsula.
U.S. offensive action now appeared possible as the Eighth Army daily report stated success in every engagement with the enemy, refraining, however, from calling the success a general offensive.
There was still no guarantee that the shrinking beachhead could be held, as it was still a good distance back to Seoul. Some enemy troops were still across the Naktong and continued to pound forward under cover of darkness, continued to have superior numbers. But the new two-day offensive had helped to restore allied troop morale to a degree.
While the news was good this day, there was still a long way to go before there would be victory. The idea, it concludes, that Korea was only a police action for the Marines had to be abandoned. It was a defense of the nation, calling forth the best it had to offer.
At least one other article from this issue of The Reporter is worth reading, asking, eerily for the present state of things, whether in 1950 the U.S. should use the atom bomb on North Korea with President Truman having already placed that option firmly off the table while Secretary of State Acheson appeared to have left it in play. The article is obviously highly relevant today, as we approach mid-August, 2017, with plentiful and unprecedentedly bellicose words, "fire and fury", issuing from the "President", mixed with calmer rhetoric from the State Department, to the fatso kook in North Korea threatening to use his new ICBM or MRBM potentially deadly toys to strike, within a few days, within about 20-25 miles from the U.S. Territory of Guam—a standoff in brinksmanship not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, though this crisis is not so imminently precarious, being not so close to our shores and thus freighted with far greater difficulty of achieving precision with the missiles being threatened with use, presumably unarmed, at present.
Should the U.S. practice its missile intercept program under live conditions, with the prospect of conceivable failure in ready view of the world? That is one question. Should the U.S. respond in some military manner, with the ante increased in the game of high-stakes poker? That is another. Would that, if done, either preemptively or after such an exercise in insanity by North Korea, in turn, lead to a nuclear or conventional strike by North Korea on some less distant target? That is the next and most deadly question.
The other question, not asked much publicly so far, is whether the North Koreans are planning a strike somewhere else, at some other time, while issuing a threat calculated to distract and then bring false relief to American defense analysts, much as the present kook's grandpappy did, with the full concurrence of his puppet-master, the Soviets, during the intervening 18 months between Soviet evacuation of North Korea in December, 1948 and the June 25, 1950 invasion of South Korea? Or is it just an elaborate ruse, a practical joke of sorts, to see how the U.S. will react?
One thing becomes clear from reading this August, 1950 article: This "President" has not been studying the President he claimed to admire so much during the campaign, Harry Truman. Or has the "President" just decided to reverse roles with his Secretary of State and send mixed signals to counter the possibility of a ruse?
We just hope that, whatever happens, should push come to shove and the missiles, somewhere down the line in the next year, fly from North Korea toward the West Coast, the "President" will, prior to that time, practice some good fellowship by way of representation of all of his fellow Americans and become thereby accustomed to being President of all the people all the time, not just, as thus far, the idiotic kooks with their idiotic agenda of pettiness, e.g., the continuing reverberant chronicle of "lock her up", who voted wholeheartedly for him in the "election", and so to be ready with exceptionally honed judgment operating for all of the people in that deadly event—not, in other words, making the West Coast, where some of his most adamant opposition resides, become a guinea pig in inadvertently failed or untimely launched defenses—a cute little "whoops" strategy to be rid of those three million or so "illegally voting" recalcitrants—against North Korean belligerence and thus a post mortem excuse for a full nuclear retaliatory response.
If so, you will know, we suppose, by the suddenly loud humming sound at the other end of the phone.
We may have the solution, courtesy of Robert C. Ruark in 1950, from "All Quiet on the Western Front". Female participants, in deference to modesty, are exempted from the gladiatorial combat. Perhaps, in fact, it could be mano a mano, confined to the respective leaders of the two countries, as, after all, our "President" already has demonstrated his wrestling prowess in the ring
"A 'Yardstick' of Progress" tells of American Bankers sending a report which showed great progress in Charlotte in the amount of money being spent and the size of checking accounts during the previous three years, one indicator of general economic progress. During the first six months of 1950, Charlotte handled an amount of checks equal nearly to the combined amount of the next two largest cities of the state and nearly the equivalent of that of the four leading South Carolina cities. That translated to money spent for goods and services.
A piece from the Winston-Salem Journal, titled "The Ring in the Cities' Nose", complains of the plight of the cities, being led around by the nose by the rural parts of the country, though half the people in Ohio, for instance, lived in seven counties. The same was true in North Carolina, where the populous Piedmont was outvoted by the more sparsely populated Eastern counties.
Reapportionment of Congressional districts had long been neglected, causing the mayors of the country recently to declare the status quo to be repugnant to democracy. Before the division between urban and rural taxation could become more equitable, such reapportionment would need take place.
U.S. News & World Report presents an interview with J. Edgar Hoover regarding how citizens could recognize subversive activities. He advised to be alert to the dangers of Communism and report the information to the FBI while avoiding recitation or circulation of rumors and gossip and refraining from attempt at private investigation or drawing of conclusions from the information being reported. As the rest is outdated information, you may read it on your own for historical interest.
But don't make the mistake of those idiots on the radio in Texas who think all liberals and Democrats are "Communists". Those people are far too young to know anything about Communism, in any event, and are basically stupid, their ring-leader recently having stated, without correction, that D-Day occurred in 1943 and the fall of France in 1941, indicative of his knowledge of basic Twentieth Century history—that by way, incidentally, of jumping all over a single innocuous sentence in a USA Today review of the movie "Dunkirk", commenting that no characters of color were in the movie, as if such a review or incidental comment therein, however flawed contextually by time and setting, made any great difference in anyone's general opinion of society.
It is really better to go to college for four years than grabbing a radio microphone shortly after high school and becoming so impressed by the sound of one's own voice and salesmanship of this or that widget, that arrogance intrudes on reality to the point that he or she comes to believe that higher education is only a useless hindrance to the ability to inform the general populace of his or her grand Poobah wisdom, unsullied by fact or reason, anathema to the listeners to whom appeal is made. The bulk of the population do not reject such gibberish because they are part of an "elitist" cabal of "Globalists", but rather because it is, daily, unrelentingly, uninformed nonsense, lies and garbage spewed from "articles" equally derived from nonsense and rumor, all to sell products to make the purveyor thereof rich, nothing more. There is no ultimate intent to inform, seek truth, or educate, only to brainwash, to "dumb down" through mantra-like repetition of catch-phrases perversely decrying the straw men they erect, dubbed with overbroad and ultimately meaningless labels, to receive redundant daily accusation for doing, en masse, that which these promoters of illiteracy piously denounce, engaging thereby in the slick salesman's trick of the untrained or susceptibly entranced mind, focusing the listener on "the other" while engaging in the very behavior being attacked in gross and unsubstantiated generalization, all to fit a preformed political funnel into which to pour the falsely empathized frustrations of the thus duped.
Those who listen for other than the same reason one slows momentarily to observe an accident on the highway are wasting their time and mental energy on nothing more substantial than the breeze through the trees, that to be gleaned from which by observation
Drew Pearson provides his last column before starting a two-week vacation, telling of contrasts between East and West affecting the future of the country, which Congress might rectify. One was that 1,200 to 2,000 Chinese students were going to Moscow every month to be indoctrinated to Communism, in the manner of Mao Tse-Tung, who had received his Communist indoctrination in Moscow. Russia had set up a special university of the Far East for the purpose and was still looking down the road. By contrast, the U.S., which once had brought 1,200 Chinese students to the country per year, had not sponsored any for about a decade. When they did come on their own, they were victimized by red tape, including the necessity of posting a bond.
Another contrast was that the Russians had brought the publisher of three Indo-Chinese newspapers to Moscow, granted him an interview with Stalin and treated him to the best hotels and food, prompting his newspapers to support Russia. The U.S. had brought over such visitors as the mayor of Tokyo and members of the Japanese Parliament, accommodating them, however, on an allowance of only $10 per day and denying them access to the President. City officials had been accommodating but not Federal officials.
A third contrast was that the U.S. only permitted a handful of Latin Americans to obtain a free education in the U.S. while many came at their own expense, with good results in terms of Latin American relations in Brazil and Ecuador.
A fourth contrast was that the Senate had voted to cut 2.3 million dollars from the budget for exchange of foreigners and other propaganda.
He concludes that what the world needed was hope, as it lived too much in fear and worry. There was concern over what would happen when the U.N. forces reached the 38th parallel, what would happen at the end of the Korean war, about arming to the teeth, taxing the country to the bone, and living in a world fraught with atomic danger. The only way to dispel such fears was through moral and total mobilization. Senator Brien McMahon, chairman of the Joint Atomic Energy Committee, had proposed some time earlier world disarmament to negate the Moscow cry that the U.S. was a warmonger and to give hope.
He favors telling Russia soon that the country was prepared for mutual total disarmament and interchange of peoples, books, newspapers, religious worship and the end of the iron curtain. No city would allow a citizen to build up an arsenal and terrorize his neighbors. Nations should be dealt with accordingly.
Dollars were not as important as ideas, which, he explains, is what he means by moral mobilization.
Stewart Alsop tells of the most recent intelligent estimates finding that the U.S. was no stronger than Bulgaria in ground forces, suggesting that Yugoslavia might be the next place in which the Soviets would launch a strike directly or stimulate one through a satellite, Bulgaria, Hungary, or Rumania. Previously, the latter three had been deemed too weak to launch an attack on Yugoslavia, but in light of the underestimation of the North Korean forces, that calculation was being reevaluated. Bulgaria had ten fully equipped divisions, including one armored division, almost the same as that of the American forces at the time of the initiation of the attack by the North Koreans on June 25. The Hungarians and Rumanians had another twelve divisions. The entire ground defense of Western Europe consisted of only twelve divisions and those were undermanned, about half that of the three Eastern satellites.
The satellites had 700 to 800 T-34 Russian tanks which were playing havoc with the U.N. forces in Korea. They also had adequate ground support by air in the form of Yaks and other planes supplied by the Russians.
Marshal Tito had about thirty divisions, but that ground superiority was to an extent offset by problems of terrain, hemmed in by the three satellites, with a long frontier which was difficult to defend. Belgrade was in an open plain and thus vulnerable to attack from the close satellite frontiers. If Belgrade were taken, Tito would have to fight a mountainous guerrilla campaign. Moreover, his army was equipped with Russian arms for which he could receive no replacements because of his estrangement from the Soviets. The satellites did not share that problem.
He concludes that these were some of the reasons that the satellite armies, especially that of Bulgaria, moving up to the Yugoslav frontiers, were being taken more seriously by U.S. officials.
Marquis Childs tells of the lack of team play between the diplomats and the military being partially at fault for Korea. The first such episode was General MacArthur's visit to Chiang Kai-Shek on Formosa without, according to rumor, first obtaining State Department advice and approval. General MacArthur had long been virtually a law unto himself, but the rumor was not entirely accurate as Secretary of State Acheson and one or two of his assistants knew of the meeting, prompting efforts to persuade him to take a diplomatic officer to coordinate the political with the military approach. Instead, he had gone on his own.
The meeting had repercussions for the world as it could result in the U.S. fighting the Chinese Communists on the mainland, at a time when India's relationship with the U.S. was uncertain.
Secretary of State Acheson knew little of the results of the conference and so only said that the question of whether to send arms to Chiang was being studied.
A second episode involved Lt. General James Van Fleet, former administrator of aid to Greece, who had recently returned to New York where he told the New York Times that Greece enjoyed too many civil liberties for its own good, and that Communist collaborators, masquerading under various labels, remained in the Government despite a ban on the party, enabling them to bore from within. It amounted to a military man's attack on a friendly foreign government and stood as a rebuke to Ambassador to Greece Henry Grady and the State Department policy, favoring a moderate coalition government enjoying popular support, not the case for the cynical rightists who had been in power. The belief in Washington was that Ambassador Grady had succeeded in this regard, in consequence of which he had been sent to Iran where it was hoped he could arrange similar coalition of the warring factions. Ambassador Grady had objected to General Van Fleet's remarks, finding that they went far beyond his military authority to interfere politically in Greece.
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