The Charlotte News
Tuesday, September 5, 1950
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that North Koreans had cracked the northeastern arm of the 120-mile defense arc and threatened all allied forces dug into the mud in that sector, 2.5 miles north of Kyongju, along the road from Pohang to Pusan, potentially forcing withdrawal of all U.N. forces from the northern front. The allies were preparing to defend high ground near Angang, west of the Kyongju-Pohang highway, linking the northern front forces to Taegu. Eighth Army field headquarters reported that the enemy force was of unknown strength and breaking through along a wide front, with the principal penetration at Kigye, nine miles northwest of Pohang, and also across the Pohang-Yongchon road.
On other fronts, the U.N. forces held their ground and took a heavy toll on the enemy. Twelve miles north of Taegu, the First Cavalry withdrew under enemy fire from the walled hilltop citadel near Tabu. U.S. Marines and the Second Infantry Division assaulted "no-name ridge", 32 miles south of Taegu. On the extreme southern anchor of the line, the 25th Division chewed up a sizable force of North Koreans trapped west of Masan.
Heavy rain prevented normal air support all along the battle line. The few fighters able to penetrate the cloud cover and rain were sent to provide cover for the northeastern front ground fighting.
A bomber bearing the Russian insignia and with a Russian pilot aboard was shot down by American forces while attacking a U.N. naval force off the west coast of Korea in the area of the 38th parallel. At the U.N., U.S. chief delegate Warren Austin was preparing a report on the matter to the Security Council. It marked the first time that an ostensibly Russian force had taken a direct role in the war.
A Soviet war correspondent claimed that the North Koreans had shelled Pusan with artillery fire at dawn this date, but the closest positions of the enemy to Pusan, as reported by allied sources, was 35 miles away, well outside artillery range. The correspondent also said that a list of war criminals was being compiled who would pay thrice over for every misdeed committed.
That's good to know. What say we start with you for wasting our time?
The President said that the Marines had a propaganda machine nearly equal to that of Stalin. The statement was contained in a letter of the President addressed to Representative Gordon McDonough of California, who had suggested that the Joint Chiefs include the commandant of the Marine Corps. The President said that as long as he remained in office, the Marines would continue to serve as the "police force of the Navy" and that the chief of Naval operations, a member of the Joint Chiefs, sufficed for Marine representation. Congressman McDonough, a Republican, was "astonished" at the President's tone in his reply and believed that "many Marines" would be also. That's a very unifying statement in time of war, conducive to high troop morale on the battle front.
The Army asked for a draft of 70,000 men during November, raising the total draft call to date to 170,000 for the Army, including 50,000 in each of September and October. The age range was 19 to 25, with the older men being called first.
House Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Vinson of Georgia wanted Selective Service to lower its intelligence test standards for admissions, for the fact that so many inductees had been rejected for mental or physical deficiencies.
North Carolina Selective Service officials estimated that the state would be called on to supply 2,100 of the 70,000 nationwide November call-up, based on the percentage of the September and October calls.
Maybe, you had better consider raising the intelligence requirements rather than lowering them.
A special three-judge panel of the Federal District Court, including two members of the Fourth District Court of Appeals, ruled that Gregory Swanson, a black applicant, had to be admitted to the University of Virginia Law School as a graduate student, having already become a lawyer. The Virginia State Attorney General conceded that there was no defense to the case in light of the U.S. Supreme Court decision three months earlier in Sweatt v. Painter, ruling that the University of Texas had to admit a qualified black law school applicant for want of substantially equal separate facilities within the state, to comport with the separate-but-equal doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson. Virginia had no black law school.
Chief counsel for the N.A.A.C.P., Thurgood Marshall, future Supreme Court Justice, said that he believed similar action would take place in other Southern states during the ensuing six months.
In New York, picket line violence erupted at a struck G.E. plant, aimed at workers seeking to enter the plant, resulting in injuries to six. Four persons were knocked down by automobiles. Atomic energy workers struck a G.E. plant at Schenectady. Strikes continued to take place despite the International Union of Electrical Workers agreeing to cancel the general strike order set to begin this date and resume negotiations the following day. Some 31,000 workers remained on strike, at two plants in Massachusetts and one at Syracuse.
A hurricane passed over Cedar Keys in Florida, 52 miles southwest of Gainesville, with winds between 75 and 80 mph, dissipated to 32 mph four hours later, after it had passed 40 miles inland. Gainesville experienced even less wind. No injuries were reported and only a few small buildings and cottages had been destroyed.
In Raleigh, former State Prison director J. B. Moore was indicted on five counts of embezzlement and misuse of prison labor, along with A. W. Livengood of Winston-Salem, former prison maintenance foreman, for using prison labor to paint a porch and construct a garage apartment at Mr. Moore's residence in Raleigh. When the charges were first brought to light the prior June by WRAL news director Jesse Helms, the future Senator, Mr. Moore had contended before the Highway Commission, with authority over the prisons, that the prisoners were on the premises only voluntarily while taking respites from their work on a nearby demolition project at N.C. State, supervised by Mr. Livengood, and that they were merely assisting the prison trusty normally assigned to the director's home, furthermore that brick and other materials used in the construction project, supposedly obtained from the State campus demolition work, the basis for the embezzlement counts, were purchased by Mr. Moore some time earlier. Both had voluntarily resigned their positions. Mr. Helms, along with the prisoners involved, were scheduled to testify in the proceeding.
Were
we representing either defendant, we would object to admission of the
testimony of Mr. Helms as being based entirely on a criminal trespass
of private residential property, thus subject to exclusion as a
matter of public policy, and request that a misdemeanor warrant be
sworn out for his arrest. It would then follow, by analogy to the same reasoning underlying the Fourth Amendment fruit-of-the-poisonous-tree doctrine, to deter such illegal activity by private persons, that the fruits of the interview conducted while trespassing, the inmate statements, should also be suppressed, along with all physical evidence discovered as a result of the Helms inquiry. Implied consent doctrine regarding casual entry to non-posted property during normal business hours, by its very nature, only applies to normal business activities
In Peoria, Ill., a radio-controlled model airplane valued at more than $100 had been sent aloft by its builder and lost. He had searched for two days on foot and by air but had failed to find the location of the model.
Ask Jesse. He'll probably locate it with his nose for news.
The National Safety Council reported that at least 551 persons had been killed in accidents during the three-day Labor Day weekend, one more than the prior year, with 381 traffic fatalities, fewer than the 410 killed in 1949 and lower than the 435 predicted by the Council. The president of the Council found the traffic death toll to be the "most encouraging since the war".
On the editorial page, "Turning the Tables" tells of Sir Gladwyn Jebbs of Great Britain taking over on Friday as president of the U.N. Security Council for the month and having, in the course of only one session, seated the Ambassador from South Korea, rejected the Soviet proposal to invite the representative of North Korea, and allowed the South Korean Ambassador to provide a devastating account of the North Korean invasion and Russia's role in it. That had occurred after a month of stagnation under the obstructionist tactics of Russian chief delegate Jakob Malik during his turn as president in August.
While Mr. Malik could exercise his Council veto on substantive matters, he would, by doing so, establish more firmly Russia's support for North Korea's actions.
U.S. chief delegate Warren Austin had met Soviet complaints on behalf of Communist China that the U.S. was an "aggressor" in Formosa as well the Communist Chinese charges that U.S. warplanes had hit targets in Manchuria, by submitting both matters willingly to the U.N. for investigation, denying the first while admitting that the second may have occurred inadvertently and that if so, reparations would be made and discipline imposed on the responsible parties.
It finds the few days of Mr. Jebb's presidency of the Council to have resulted in impressive victories, proving that the U.N. was not the helpless organization which it often appeared to be.
"Mr. Dewey Chooses to Run" finds the decision of Governor Thomas Dewey to run for a third term and cancel his plans to retire from politics to have been one of the major political developments of the year. Had he continued out of the race, the Democrats likely would have swept state politics in New York in the fall. The national Republican Party also would have been left without any significant leader in foreign policy, with Senator Arthur Vandenberg sidelined with illness, and reliant on Senator Taft to carry the ball on domestic policy. Governor Dewey demonstrated advanced thinking in both areas of policy and would lead the GOP down a straight, moderate road. Governor Dewey had said that the country needed a strong opposition party and the piece supports such a position.
Many political experts had written off the Republicans after five successive national defeats in presidential elections. Mr. Dewey apparently did not accept that verdict, though it suggests it as signal of the dearth of competent leadership in the party that the announcement of his seeking re-election as Governor had caused such a stir from a twice-defeated presidential nominee.
"The Johnston Memorial" approves of the estate of Richard Horace Johnston, a prominent textile businessman from the area, providing $400,000 to construct a community building as a memorial to him, to be located on N. Caldwell Street, with a large gymnasium, club rooms and recreational facilities for children and adults. The program was to be supervised by the YMCA.
A piece from the Chapel Hill Weekly, titled "Professional Army", tells of the lesson which Korea had taught the country regarding the need for well trained troops in a well organized Army. It posits that universal military training would be good for the country to establish such an Army. But it would only serve as part of the solution, the rest being supplied by creation of a professional Army, with enlistment of at least half a million, to afford the availability of a trained force for immediate action in the event of emergency, until a regular force could be trained.
Drew Pearson tells of the Senate Finance Committee having allowed corporation lawyers and tax lobbyists to impose their desires on the bill to increase taxes, to the point that enough loopholes were present to finance the war in lost revenue. He names the members responsible for these loopholes, including Senators Walter George, Harry F. Byrd, Robert Taft and Owen Brewster.
Two freshman Senators, however, Hubert Humphrey and Paul Douglas, had decided to make a study of taxes on their own and, to that end, called the best tax experts in Washington, from both the Treasury Department and private practice, exposing thereby eleven glaring loopholes in the bill, which the column proceeds to list—in the areas of dividend withholding, family partnerships, the erroneous exemption of life insurance companies from tax liability and the maintenance of that error in the Committee bill, percentage depletion allowances, oil royalties, stock options, exemption for new stocks spun off from existing corporations, amortization, business property sales taxed at the capital gains rate on profits and deductible to the full extent of any loss, foreign subsidies, and deductions for payment of estate and inheritance taxes.
He notes that two of the Senators who had fought hardest for the loopholes, Robert Kerr of Oklahoma and Eugene Millikin of Colorado, were millionaires.
Joseph Alsop, in Korea, tells of a dawn battle between North Koreans and the engineers, cooks and bakers of the U.S. Second Division, absent its regular infantry, halting the enemy advance on the fringe of Yongsan following an earlier rout.
The counter-attack opened with U.N. tank and machine gun fire, which held the enemy back for awhile, but as they began to recover on the crest of a hill, the engineers reached the foot of the hill and the infantry reached their first ridge. The Chinese-American lieutenant gave the order to move forward. The engineers made it all the way up the hill and began firing down the other side. The infantry moved out across rice fields and then reached the crest of the hill as well, to finish the job.
Two American tanks were reported as burning with one other hit, but the battle at Yongsan had been a success.
Robert C. Ruark finds minor league kings, as Leopold of Belgium, who had surrendered his throne to his son, and the "fat", "stupid" Farouk of Egypt, to be outmoded. So were English Channel swimmers, as the "plump" Shirley May France, who had not swum very well while quarreling publicly with her family. He says that he did not need any of it. He would rather interview a seal than Shirley May.
Gorgeous Gussie Moran was a "medium poor" tennis player who had received too much publicity for her drawers.
Hedy Lamarr appeared to be too nonchalant about the alleged theft of a quarter million dollars worth of her jewels, leading him to suspect that the value was overblown by her press agent.
Whether Rita Hayworth and Prince Ali Khan were going to have another baby was of no interest to him. Lots of people were pregnant, just as pants had been discovered before Ms. Moran.
But he was caught up on all such things which did not matter to him. He wonders, however, what was new with the poor people and whether his neighbor had been drafted.
A letter from the president and secretary of the Chapel Hill Branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom explains that the organization had been founded in 1915 on the premise of opposition to use of military force to solve international disputes, had supported both the League of Nations while it had existed and presently the U.N. The group recognized that South Korea was invaded by North Korea and did not condone the action. The letter finds it unfortunate that Korea had been divided along the 38th parallel as two occupation zones after the war.
It cites Article 33, Section 1 of the U.N. Charter, requiring that nations first seek resolution of disputes by negotiation and any other peaceful means available. It believes that the fact that the U.S. was not the aggressor in the conflict did not relieve it of this obligation. It also asserts that Communist China ought be seated at the U.N. as the proper Government of China.
It concludes by urging that the country ought seek a strategy of negotiation of the crisis within the Security Council.
A letter writer questions justice after the decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversing the District Court decision to revoke appellate bond to Harry Bridges for national security reasons, "a sewer rat who is protected that he may roam our country at will". He thinks the country was tending toward anarchy over the previous few years. He recommends that Americans pray.
As indicated, the Court's decision was sound in its reasoning, finding that such national security concerns were the province of the executive branch to remedy, not the judiciary, and that since Mr. Bridges neither posed a flight risk nor had been dilatory in the prosecution of his appeal, as conceded by the Government, and because his appeal appeared meritorious, as the charges had been filed beyond the three-year statute of limitations which appeared applicable to the charged offenses, appellate bond was appropriate.
Take your short-sighted, narrow-minded verbiage about "anarchy", simply because you disagree with court rulings you do not understand in the least as you obviously either cannot read the English language or are too lazy to take the time to afford yourself a reasonable understanding thereof, and shove it where the moon don't shine. Any "anarchy" is only because of you and those of your ilk.
It is perfectly appropriate to disagree with court decisions on a reasoned basis but not in the manner exhibited by this writer, merely reacting, without facts or argument, to that with which he disagrees. Bridges is a Commie rat and therefore... Fortunately, the courts of the nation, at least when not playing to the peanut gallery, do not adopt such a subjective stance in rendering decisions, disserving of justice and fairness under the law.
A letter from the president of the Shelby Lions Club thanks the newspaper, especially Mary Curry, for helping to make the Gardner-Webb Miracle Farm Day a success through its reporting on the event and co-sponsorship of it.
A letter from the chairman of the Blood Program Committee of the American Red Cross thanks the newspaper for its support in the recent appeal for blood for the soldiers fighting in Korea, as the response had been excellent.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.