The Charlotte News

Thursday, February 1, 1951

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that allied forces had advanced as much as three miles this date in the western sector of the Korean front. A French-American combat team, near the junction of the western and central fronts near Chipyong, was trapped by two entrenched regiments of Communist Chinese and had been fighting at close range for several hours, as there were increasing signs that the U.N. forces had reached the main Communist defense line south of the Han River along the outskirts of Seoul. Bayonet-wielding Turkish troops made the greatest advance on Thursday, against dug-in enemy forces in hill country, making their way to within 4,000 yards of Anyang along the road to Seoul, eleven miles to the south. Front line officers said that 400 enemy bodies were left behind. A few miles to the east, an American tank-led task force moved to within 2.5 miles of Wonchon but then withdrew. Some enemy forces abandoned their empty guns and fled.

For the third straight day of the eight-day limited allied offensive, enemy armor hit the U.N. positions.

At the U.N., the General Assembly approved the resolution approved Tuesday night by the 60-member political committee, branding Communist China an aggressor by the same 44 to 7 vote, with eight abstentions and Saudi Arabia not participating. The Soviet delegate said that the resolution was from the U.S. and was "directed toward its further aggression in Korea against the people of China".

General Eisenhower, arriving in Washington to meet with the President, Pentagon officials and Congress regarding his trip to Western Europe to assess the capabilities of the other NATO nations to participate in the common defense, told an hour-long informal meeting of House and Senate members that he was confident in the ability of NATO to defend Western Europe and that the nations had the "spirit to resist" Russian aggression. He urged that the U.S. had to build a program of defense which could be supported for the ensuing two to three decades, that while the cost would be high, the cost of total war would be higher and would entail the destruction of civilization. He said that France had promised to supply, by 1952, 25 battle-worthy divisions to NATO, that the major need was arms rather than troops, that the U.S. needed a much stronger information service, and that U.S. commitment of troops should be in a ratio to the troops provided by Europe.

Most of the members applauded his talk but some, including Senators Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska and Richard Nixon of California, objected that the General had not given them enough specific information, with Senator Nixon wanting more specifics regarding the size of the anticipated U.S. commitment. Democratic Majority Leader, Senator Ernest McFarland of Arizona, said that the General had set the standards which Congress should follow.

A British aviation journal said that Russia's best jet, the MIG-15, of which it had about 1,000 in service in East Germany, could outmaneuver and fly faster than the American F-86 Sabre jet.

How about an Oldsmobile?

The journal also said Russia might have as many as a thousand of its version of the B-29 in service, capable of carrying an atomic bomb.

In Las Vegas, in the predawn hours, another atomic bomb blast was felt and seen from the Nevada test range, less than a week after the first and second such test detonations. The police reported that they received no calls on this one.

Go back to bed. It's just a li'l ol' atomic bomb for our protection from the Rooskies.

But early risers in Los Angeles, 300 miles away, who also reported seeing the flash, had been surprised by it, one saying that he had nearly dropped his razor.

The Veterans Administration announced that it would distribute a $685,000 life insurance dividend during 1951, beginning in April, with average payments amounting to $85 per veteran. An initial 2.8 million dollar dividend had been paid in 1950.

The UMW pay raise approved by the coal mining companies went into effect this date without Government interference based on its freeze of prices and wages ordered the prior Friday. Price director Mike DiSalle said that new ceiling prices on coal would be set by the next day and would likely allow for the increased wage costs. The Wage Stabilization Board gave its approval to all salary increases scheduled to go into effect prior to February 9, provided it had been agreed upon prior to the January 25 freeze date, which included the coal agreement though not signed until January 26. The three industry members of the Board disapproved of the ruling.

The rapidly spreading railroad switchmen's "sick call" strike, which had begun in Detroit and Chicago, had further paralyzed the nation's rail shipping, hitting 34 railroads in more than twenty cities. The President was reported to be considering a direct appeal to the workers to weigh their actions against tying up defense shipments needed in Korea. St. Louis business leaders termed it an act of treason. The Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen insisted that it did not authorize the strike, and the Government contended that it was a ruse to get around the anti-strike injunction ordered in December. Since that point, the Government had operated the railroads.

Former General Bennett E. Meyers, serving a 20-month to five-year prison sentence since 1948 for his conviction for suborning the perjury of an associate relating to testimony regarding his ancillary business while serving as Army procurement officer during the war, was released on parole. He was then immediately arrested, however, by Federal marshals on a pending charge of Federal income tax evasion out of Baltimore.

In Raleigh, the State Senate education committee voted to leave the task of setting teacher salary scales to the State Board of Education, contrary to 1949 legislation which had attempted to set the scales and, according to one committee member, had resulted in a mess. The available scale ranged between $2,400 and $5,400 per year under the new bill.

A bill to hold a statewide liquor and beer referendum was introduced to the State House. A bill already passed by the State Senate was approved by the House Judiciary Committee to limit localities from setting school zone speed limits below 20 mph.

In Winston-Salem, a sudden gust of tornadic winds, which had been clocked by chief meteorologist Wiley Sims at Smith Reynolds Airport at 75 mph, hit the downtown area of the city, causing widespread damage to roofs, store windows and parked vehicles. It had missed, however, a number of planes on the ground at the airport. A light pole hit a moving car but the driver and sole occupant was uninjured.

It done blowed the roof off the tobacca barns downtown though.

General Eisenhower and wife Mamie are pictured with their two grandchildren, David and Barbara Ann, upon the General's return the prior weekend to the U.S., stopping off at West Point, after his tour of the other NATO capitals.

On the editorial page, "Branding an Aggressor" tells of the military thinking about Korea, once thought to be indefensible, having changed such that now it was considered quite defensible and had to be defended to protect Japan's flank, to pin down the Chinese from attacking Indo-China or Formosa, and to buy time for General Eisenhower to fulfill his mission for NATO's common defense. The defensive line had stabilized and what appeared a month earlier to have been a rout was now being viewed in an entirely different light, with the Communist Chinese armies appearing to be stalled with their longer supply lines from Manchuria and inadequate winter clothing to withstand the sub-zero temperatures at the front.

The action of the U.N. in approving overwhelmingly the resolution to brand China an aggressor had given the lie to those who, a few weeks earlier, had written off the U.N. and to those who wanted the U.S. to withdraw completely from Korea. The reasons for the delay and hesitancy in voting for the resolution was not because the U.N. had lost its fortitude but because it had not wanted to foreclose the possibility of peace before it had been completely explored and exhausted.

The resolution had been amended to prevent hasty sanctions, by seeking appointment of a committee to examine that issue and to enable it to defer to a three-person committee of good offices, of which the resolution approved appointment, when and if it found a pathway to peace.

Any sanctions which might be approved, the piece adds, had to be capable of implementation by the U.N.

"Last Call for Auto Inspection" finds that the state had become the "junkyard of the nation" with its uninspected rattle-traps populating the roads and highways of the state. The Legislature apparently had foredoomed the renewal of the auto inspection law, abandoned by the 1949 Legislature after it had failed in a two-year experiment because of inadequate inspection services, resulting in long lines for motorists. A better administered program had been proposed by Governor Kerr Scott, allowing for inspections by private shops and providing more lanes for State inspections.

The piece finds that the reason for the failure in the Legislature was the familiar rural versus urban orientation. Rural residents did not so much confront the problems associated with poor brakes and inadequate lights and signals, as did urban residents. Many legislators were not convinced that there was any significant correlation between accidents and defective or poorly maintained vehicles.

It urges the citizenry concerned about the issue of highway safety to write their State representative immediately and urge that the inspection law be passed.

"Pigs vs. People" finds that the special committee of the Legislature which had approved the 1.35 million dollar State Fairgrounds arena must have submitted to the demands of the farm bloc as nothing else explained their acquiescence. While it was true that $200,000 worth of construction had proceeded, it posits that it might be better to lose that money than spend the rest on an unnecessary facility for displaying "fat blue-ribbon pigs and cows", especially in the face of it siphoning off necessary defense materials to build it. The pigs and cows did not merit such a palace.

Meanwhile, the 1949 Legislature had turned down approval of receipt of Federal funds for urban redevelopment to remove slums of the cities of the state, as the same Legislature had approved the original appropriation of 1.25 million for the cow and pig arena.

It suggests that if the 1951 Legislature approved the coliseum, it could not in good conscience turn down higher teacher salaries, better institutional care, and the expansion of other essential services of the State. If there was enough money for a 1.35 million dollar "cow and pig barn", there was enough for these other worthy programs.

A piece from the Baltimore Evening Sun, titled "Unwelcome Machine", finds that news that El Salvadorans in Central America had developed a machine for making tortillas, substituting for the age-old process of hand-making them, was not a welcome sign for modernity, immersed as it was already in the machine age. It suggests that El Salvadorans might one day have to educate "progressive" peoples to their "backward" ways again, and that they ought bear it in mind, regardless of the aims of the Point Four program to educate underdeveloped nations to new methods of technological and agricultural achievement.

Bill Sharpe, in his weekly "Turpentine Drippings", snippets from newspapers around the state, provides one from Penn Seawell, who praises his rural, woodland retreat but then tells of his hair having turned to a "tattle-gray" rather than silver and his teeth having fallen out, concluding that if he met the woman who had written "I Took to the Woods", he would bow, address her with deference and then knock out her front teeth.

The Laurinburg Exchange favors the proposal before the State Legislature to lower the voting age to 18, but resignedly concludes it would probably not change much as most would follow the trend of the general voting-age population and not exercise their franchise.

The Mount Olive Tribune tells of "T", age 7 or 8, inheriting his father's .410 with which he was going hunting with his father and older brother, who had received a new automatic shotgun for Christmas. The older brother objected that his younger brother would only be in the way. But when he fired his new shotgun, no birds were hit. The same was true of his father and other brother, but when "T" fired, he hit a bird.

Mrs. Theo B. Davis of the Zebulon Record finds that it was easier to cook for four or six people than for two, though cooking for eight or ten gave the cook a "noble sense of accomplishment".

The Camden Chronicle believes that "monkeys have more sense than humans because a monkey never monkeys with another monkey's monkey."

The Pinehurst Outlook tells of Bennett Cerf, in the Saturday Review of Literature, reporting that on the television program "Who Said That?" Norman Thomas had recalled that Bernard Shaw had suggested: "If it's true that the other planets are inhabited, then the earth must be their lunatic asylum."

And so, so, so, so, forth so.

Drew Pearson finds that there was increasing support for the long-delayed St. Lawrence Seaway project. Mobilization director Charles E. Wilson, once an opponent, now supported it, and Senator Tom Connally and Representative Charles Buckley of New York had promised not to impede it in Congress. The President pointed out that since Canada had been waiting 41 years for help from the U.S. in the construction of the project, it might simply proceed on its own. The U.S. needed the iron ore from Labrador in the coming years, which the Seaway would provide. It would be better to have joint control and access to the electric power generated by the project. The Administration and proponents in Congress were trying to get the railroads, which had been fighting the potential competition from the Seaway, to support the idea.

Former Senator Mon Wallgren of Washington, chairman of the Federal Power Commission, had been such a flop in the job that even his old friend, President Truman, was disappointed in him. Mr. Wallgren had voted against an investigation of Phillips Petroleum for unfairly hiking rates to the State of Wisconsin and the City of Detroit, despite the President supporting the investigation and Wisconsin and Detroit having called for it two years earlier. Mr. Wallgren had also approved a 58-million dollar natural gas pipeline to New England for Texas Eastern, opposed by Democrats and Republicans of New England, including Governor Sherman Adams, future White House chief of staff to President Eisenhower, and Senator Charles Tobey of New Hampshire, both Republicans, as well as Senators Brien McMahon of Connecticut and Theodore Green of Rhode Island, both Democrats. The four had favored a cheaper 38-million dollar Northeastern pipeline, contending that New England could not afford two pipelines.

He notes that a lot of politics, courting of both Democrats and Republicans, had gone on with respect to FPC decisions.

Marquis Childs finds that with Communist China willing ostensibly to go along with the latest Arab-Asian peace proposal, it was believed that their armies were in worse shape than previously believed, causing a shift in strategy at the Pentagon. Virtually uncontested air power and armored power plus frostbite and disease from the cold Korean winter had taken their toll on the ill-equipped Chinese soldiers. There was some cautious optimism that the U.N. armies might advance again to Seoul, although, despite its political desirability, presenting a problem for there being no good defense line to the north of the former South Korean capital.

The present line south of Seoul, by contrast, was believed capable of being held indefinitely, unless Communist China sent in more large contingents of troops. But supplying armies so far south of Manchuria had proved problematic, especially with the U.N. Air Force constantly hitting supply lines in North Korea.

Secretary of State Acheson favored holding the line as long as possible both to undermine Communist Chinese prestige and to preoccupy their armies to keep them from launching another offensive in Indo-China, where the French of late had been having greater success against the Communist guerrillas of Ho Chi Minh. Staying in Korea would also enhance the prestige of the U.N. forces, especially in light of passage by the U.N. of the resolution branding Communist China an aggressor, should it next apply economic sanctions.

Some in the military, however, were raising questions concerning the cost of staying, especially in terms of casualties, though they had diminished with the stabilizing of the new defensive line.

Robert C. Ruark finds the new committee headed by Admiral Chester Nimitz to probe into loyalty and security among Government employees and in war plants, as well as among state and local government employees, private groups and citizens in their homes, to be the beginning of a new Gestapo, though he had great confidence in Admiral Nimitz who had commanded the Navy in the Pacific while Mr. Ruark served in the Navy in World War II.

He finds the committee's scope of operation to be too subjective, allowing it to determine what the wrong or right kind of action was by individual citizens, especially when the President had managed to find bad action in the unfavorable review of his daughter's operatic performance the prior December. He also thought that Secretary Acheson and Maj. General Harry Vaughan, his military aide, were good for the country, while a lot of people differed from his belief in that regard.

Someone might not like their neighbor and decide to report them to the committee for investigation for being "disloyal".

While he would trust Admiral Nimitz to behave honestly and fairly, no one, he cautions, was immune from political pressure. He is skittish therefore about remodeling the country to fit the times with appointment of committees provided loose directives, especially when the committee could tell a person whether they were good or bad without regard to the Constitution and laws, simply based on whimsy. "Who knows, somebody may have an ingrowing hangover."

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