The Charlotte News

Friday, September 15, 1950

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.N. forces had effected an amphibious landing at 6:30 a.m. this date behind enemy lines, at the port of Inchon, 22 miles west of Seoul in South Korea. After the Marines spearheaded the landing, the 10th Army Corps had gone ashore eleven hours later and, led by tanks, moved two miles into Inchon within thirty minutes. The initial landing was on Wolmi Island, connected to Inchon via a half-mile causeway. Though under heavy fire, the Marines planted the flag on Wolmi within 32 minutes and the island was captured with a minimum of casualties. General MacArthur personally directed the action from the flagship just offshore and asserted that the deep penetration might break the back of the North Korean army.

At the same time, South Korean Marines landed in the Pohang area on the east coast.

The aim of the operations was to cut enemy communications and crush the enemy in a giant nutcracker.

A piece explains the relative location of the landing and of Seoul, 120 miles southeast of Pyongyang and 30 miles south of the 38th parallel, visible on the maps. Recapture of Seoul was crucial as it served as the funnel through which all enemy supplies were coming from the North.

William Jorden, with the U.S. Second Division, tells of American soldiers testifying to an Army inquiry that at least three of their buddies, one of whom was badly wounded, had been thrown into a roaring fire by North Korean troops after the soldiers had been captured on August 31 when their position was overrun.

In Collingdale, Pa., a woman received a letter from her husband and father of their two small children, an Army private in Korea, who had been killed in action three days earlier. He had also served in World War II as a paratrooper. The letter, addressed to the children, is reprinted in full.

The House Armed Services Committee approved legislation to amend the 1947 National Security Act to permit General Marshall to serve as Secretary of Defense. The Act prohibited anyone from serving in the post who had been on active military duty as a commissioned officer during the previous ten years. The vote was 18 to 7, the opposition coming exclusively from Republicans.

NATO nations opened a two-day conference in New York to discuss strengthening Western European defenses. As a result of the meeting between the Big Three foreign ministers, they would propose that NATO take immediate steps to create a unified military force capable of resisting any Soviet attack and that provision be made for a force of West German units. The Big Three conference would continue Monday with unfinished business regarding ending the war with West Germany by treaty and other matters pertinent to Germany.

An official source stated that plans for peace with Japan contemplated no limit on the right of the country to rearm and that the U.S. would not seek military bases in Japan but would settle for control of Okinawa under a U.N. trusteeship. U.S. forces would underwrite the security of Japan with troops. The President had authorized talks to begin with the thirteen nations of the Far Eastern Commission, which included Russia, to construct a treaty. He ignored the Soviet demand for the previous three years that the treaty be constructed only by the Big Four Pacific powers, including Communist China. He made no comment on whether, if Russia persisted in this position, the other nations would seek a treaty without Russian participation.

Near Orangeburg, S.C., a converted school bus carrying saw mill workers to work collided head-on on a small bridge with a tractor-trailer truck, killing ten men. The cause of the wreck had not been ascertained.

On the editorial page, "The Tide Is Turning" finds the new landing of U.N. troops at Inchon, occurring at 4:30 p.m. the prior day Eastern Time, to be a turning point in the war, not just a commando operation. Its objective would be to cut the enemy supply lines and isolate the troops in South Korea, all of their supplies having been funneled through Seoul from the North. Ground opposition had been light and so the North Koreans had been caught off guard, enabling the Marines quickly to advance to the streets of Inchon, with Army reinforcements pouring ashore after them.

On the east coast, simultaneous landings by South Korean troops threatened to cut off and isolate the enemy forces in the Pohang area.

The operations would eventually force the enemy to surrender or fight their way out of the trap back toward the 38th parallel.

It finds it to be the tonic the U.N. troops needed after two and a half months of weary retreat, finally winding up confined to the 120-mile arc protecting Pusan. Now, enough men and materiel had been transferred to Korea to stabilize the southern front and allow creation of a new theater of operations to the north. An end to the war appeared to have been brought a lot closer.

Next would come the delayed decisions on whether to cross the 38th parallel and reunite the country and on what to do should the Chinese Communists or Russians enter the fight.

The new offensive had also increased the need for speedy confirmation of General Marshall as Secretary of Defense.

"One Step at a Time" finds appropriate the decision of the City Council to meet with Duke Power, along with the City Manager and the City Traffic Engineer, on September 21 to discuss the Traffic Engineer's recommendations for expanded bus service, with some existing routes curtailed or eliminated.

The newspaper had not specifically endorsed the Engineer's report, but believed that such a proposal was in order to provide for more efficient and expanded service while enabling Duke Power to make money. It was important to have such a service to minimize the number of cars flowing into the city, creating traffic snarls and parking problems.

"Resource and Responsibility" praises the group of citizens who had met the previous day to study a "Charter for North Carolina's Children", especially concentrating on special needs children, as viewed through the eyes of specialists who spoke to the group. It agrees with their assessment that the children were the state's greatest resource and responsibility.

A piece from the Richmond News Leader, titled "The Answers May Come", finds illustrative the idea that when taking the Empire State Building to be the age of the earth before the advent of man, the time of man would be represented by a quarter at its top, and civilized man would be the tarnish on the coin. It suggests that more tarnish would still be needed to find answers to the problems facing man.

An editorial correction to "False Fall" remarks on "leafs", suggesting that "sheafs and sheafs" of letters ought pour in from readers about it.

We saw it, but chose, as we usually do with such errors, to take leaf to ignoar it and chawk it up to tyred typesetters.

Drew Pearson finds that the appointment of General Marshall to be Secretary of Defense would resolve the ongoing conflict between Secretary Johnson and Secretary of State Acheson, as General Marshall saw eye to eye with Secretary Acheson on policy. As Undersecretary to Secretary of State Marshall, Dean Acheson had drawn up the Marshall Plan in 1947 and drafted the Harvard commencement address of Secretary Marshall in which he announced the idea. The U.S. would now concentrate on Europe and, after the conclusion of the war in Korea, would seek to stay out of Asia as much as possible. That was the policy of Secretary of State Marshall, inherited by Secretary Acheson.

Mr. Pearson recounts some biographical information and highlights of General Marshall's prior career.

During the war, as Army chief of staff, he had been military minded, as when he sought to secure bases in Latin America regardless of what the countries where the bases were thought about the matter. He had also criticized labor for delaying the war. But he was also civilian minded, as when he had recommended in 1947 that the President veto Taft-Hartley.

President Truman had always revered General Marshall, practically regarded him as a hero. The General had also convinced his good friend, General Eisenhower, not to run for the presidency in 1948, doing the President a great political favor. Both Generals and the President had a strong dislike for General MacArthur.

The worst mistake of General Marshall was not to warn General Walter Short, the Army commander at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, of the potential for imminent Japanese attack, except by slow commercial cable which arrived too late. He had also opposed sending small arms to the British and French in 1940 and also had asked for only six B-17's in 1940. He had predicted Moscow would fall within six weeks of the Nazi invasion in June, 1941 and predicted the need for a land invasion of Japan just a week before the August, 1945 surrender.

While the President's envoy to China in 1946, he had told DNC chairman Robert Hannegan that he had learned a lot while earlier being stationed in the Philippines serving under General MacArthur, primarily that the worst civilian rule was preferable to best military rule.

Marquis Childs discusses the rearmament conference of the Big Three, with the ultimate outcome to be some form of agreement for rearmament of Western Europe to provide deterrent against Soviet attack. In the meantime, while the defense strategy was being implemented, Western Europe would have to live with the threat of potential surrender or annihilation. There were some differences regarding how much West Germany would be rearmed, with Foreign Minister Robert Schuman of France differing with Secretary of State Acheson, who favored allowance of a substantial West German armed force. But overall, there would be agreement that NATO had to be rearmed.

In the meantime, the U.S. B-36 bases stationed in England might become a bargaining point by the Soviets, demanding that they be removed or atomic attack would ensue. It was regarded as a real possibility and represented the critical choice which the three foreign ministers were facing.

Robert C. Ruark discusses the reaction of doctors to the special draft call of those who had been educated at Government expense during World War II but had served less than 90 days, the first to be called up under the new bill. The younger doctors were angry at being singled out and the older doctors who had served extensively in the war praised the move for it relieving them from further service.

He finds that those who had received the free education but had not served in the last war had a duty now to do so and so there was no inequity in drafting them as doctors, needed in wartime.

A letter writer, responding to the series of three articles by John McKnight on the Durham test case, finds the use of a vagrancy statute to prohibit distribution of a petition in support of the Soviet-backed Stockholm peace treaty not to appear consistent with the First Amendment.

A letter writer from Morganton responds to another letter, agreeing with the assertion that North Carolina needed a strong two party system. He finds states rights and individual liberty to be as dead "as the late Hugh Johnson's do-do", that the Republicans and Democrats of the state were feeling the "oppression" of the New Deal and Fair Deal.

A letter writer from Pittsboro favors leaving Korea to be settled by the non-participating Asiatic countries and believes that the U.S. should then withdraw from all of Asia. He asserts that no general war could be won in Asia by air or sea power.

He adds that he did not like the fact that doctors and others had been trained at Government expense, that they should be drafted and forced into service on a private's pay, says that he did not like to see anyone given anything as it resulted only in ingratitude.

A letter writer finds that with the departure of Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, it had to be recalled that when he began his program of economy on defense, most of Congress supported him, Republicans and Democrats alike.

A letter writer from Norfolk finds the Democrats providing only politics rather than statesmanship and believes the courts were in league with them, such as when the Federal District Court had recently allowed a black student to enter the University of Virginia Law School, while, he finds, a jury was prohibited by a court from delivering justice to seven blacks who had committed a serious crime in Virginia.

What happened to them good ol' days when you'd just take a feller out when he got uppity and string him up right quick? Make Amurica Great Again!

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