The Charlotte News
Monday, February 26, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that Seventh Division infantry moved ahead on the right flank of the Eighth Army's "Operation Killer" to a point six miles north of Pangnim. A patrol of that division met rifle and anti-tank fire but air observers reported that the Communist forces were withdrawing. It marked the first time that the Seventh Division, the only American unit to reach the Manchurian border the prior fall, had been identified in combat operations since it was forced to withdraw from the Changin reservoir to the Hungnam beachhead the previous December.
The Second Division moved forward on the left flank of the Seventh to a point eighteen miles north of Chechon, where it had begun operations at the start of the current offensive the prior Wednesday. The Second and Seventh were spearheading the Tenth Corps advance along the mountainous spines of central Korea.
The retreating enemy fought only rearguard actions to avoid a trap but suffered 1,861 killed and wounded in action Sunday, as U.N. forces advanced 3.5 miles. An estimated 14,000 North Korean soldiers withdrew as the allied thrust bogged down in heavy rains and mud during the weekend. It appeared that the enemy, however, were preparing for a stand in the mountains.
Joint Chiefs chairman General Omar Bradley disclosed to the House Armed Services Committee that approximately 250,000 Americans in all branches were fighting in Korea. The Committee was considering the compromise manpower bill which would allow for universal military training and drafting of 18-year olds for 24 months of service. General Bradley said that the Joint Chiefs were recommending partial mobilization by a force of 3.5 million men which might persist for between 5 and 20 years.
Ouch. You're gettin' that bayonet into a lot of cribs there, buddy.
During the weekend, Russia told Britain in a diplomatic note that it may have less than half as many men under arms than the Big Three Western powers, France, the U.S., and Britain, and also said that it was ready to negotiate its differences with Britain. The reference to military strength suggested that Russia had no more than 2.5 million men under arms, far below Western intelligence estimates, placing it at four million with another 1.5 million in the satellite countries of Eastern Europe, compared to a total of 4.5 million for all twelve NATO nations in Western Europe. The size of the army of Communist China was placed by the West at three million.
British Prime Minister Clement Attlee announced to Commons this date that it had been agreed that the deputy supreme commander of NATO naval forces would be British. He said that he was therefore satisfied with the naming of U.S. Admiral William Fechteler as supreme naval commander, as Britain would also retain operational control of its home fleet. Conservative Leader Winston Churchill had complained that Britain, with its long Naval tradition, had been "brushed out of the way".
Former Republican Senator John Sherman Cooper, adviser to the State Department, told the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees that if Congress barred or limited the President's authority to send troops to NATO, it could "kill the effort and the confidence" of the Europeans to defend themselves against Soviet aggression and would constitute the "greatest surrender in history". The Wherry resolution being considered by the jointly meeting Committees, was likely to be sidetracked in favor of the newly proposed resolution sponsored jointly by Senators Tom Connally and Richard Russell, which, rather than requiring Senate approval before the President could send troops to Europe, would put the Senate on record as supporting the sending of troops and suggest that the President ensure that the NATO partners were making contributions commensurate with their ability, geographic position and economic condition.
Senator Cooper would be named along with Senator Russell by President Johnson in November, 1963 to be two of the seven members of the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of President Kennedy. The others, in addition to Chief Justice Earl Warren, were Congressmen Hale Boggs and Gerald Ford, former CIA director Allen Dulles, and former Assistant Secretary of War, U.S. high commissioner to West Germany and World Bank president, John J. McCloy.
Jury selection began in the trial of Oscar Collazo, the surviving Puerto Rican Nationalist who had sought to assassinate President Truman the prior November 1 outside Blair House as the President, oblivious to the attempt, took a nap inside. He faced possibly death by electrocution, as one guard on duty had died during the shooting spree which followed, along with Mr. Collazo's accomplice, Griselio Torresola, shot by one of the guards and Secret Service.
A former official of the the Dallas RFC office testified this date to a Senate Banking subcommittee that Dallas attorney Ross Bohannon had approached him during a Christmas party in 1948 about getting someone to influence the granting of a ten million dollar RFC loan to the Texmass Corp., a Texas-Massachusetts oil developer, and promised a "nice fat fee" if he could get either E. Merle Young or DNC chairman William Boyle aboard. The subcommittee was looking at inconsistencies between testimony of Mr. Bohannon and Mr. Young as to who first suggested to whom the payment of the influence money and whether one had committed perjury. Mr. Bohannon had testified that Mr. Young proposed to help him for $85,000 while Mr. Young said that Mr. Bohannon approached him with the proposal. Both agreed that no deal was consummated. The former Dallas RFC official said that during a telephone call with Mr. Young, the latter told him that Mr. Bohannon was a "fixer" and not to have anything to do with him.
The President was planning to send to Congress a message urging a rise in the second class postal rate, covering such items as magazines and newspapers.
The Senate Banking Committee approved a stopgap 90-day extension of Federal rent controls until June 30. Under the present law, it would expire at the end of March.
Wage Stabilizer Eric Johnston was considering relaxation of the wage limitation formula in an effort to bring labor back aboard with the mobilization program.
The national secretary of the United Electrical Workers Union, Julius Emspak, was found by a Federal District Court in Washington to be in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer HUAC questions. He faced a potential sentence of a year in jail and a fine of up to $10,000.
The new rule of Constitutional law, starting in fall, 1947: Everybody in the country gets to plead the Fifth, including organized gangsters, except the Commies and Commie-sympathizing Pinkos, along with a few smart-aleck Ivy League types. Call it Dick's Rule.
In Springfield, Ill., fugitive Nathan Corn, who had escaped February 2 from the Columbia, S.C., State penitentiary where he was serving a life sentence for the murder in June, 1948 of George Beam, his employer, was captured by the FBI while on a bus headed to Chicago. Two other convicts had confessed to aiding Mr. Corn's escape and prison officials indicated that circumstantial evidence suggested involvement of a third.
An insurance company agreed as part of a court settlement in Dublin, Ireland, to pay a twelve-year old boy 4,000 pounds, the equivalent of $11,200, for the loss of his tongue after he was pinned by a tractor on a farm near Ballboy. He was able to speak and eat again by means of a plastic tongue. What was he doing on the tractor at age 12, or was he on it? Was there not comparative or contributory negligence? Maybe comparative, forcing the insurance company to pay part of the claim. Maybe not. We may never know of this mystery further. Who were the London surgeons who gave him his prosthetic tongue? And how does a tractor fall on someone's tongue? Where is Ballboy and does it have bats? These are the burning questions at the tip of the matter.
On the editorial page, "The Cynical Attitude of Labor" finds that labor had recently nearly proved the Marxian doctrine that capitalism would eventually destroy itself through greed, leading to cycles of economic depression about every twenty years and a resultant dwindling middle class, finally culminating in a workers' revolt. While there was evidence that the rise in cost of living had outrun the rise in wages, the way to handle matters, it ventures, was not to walk out on the mobilization program as had the three labor members of the Wage Stabilization Board upon its 6 to 3 approval of the wage control formula limiting wage increases to ten percent on contracts formed after January, 1950 and before the end of the 1950-51 fiscal year.
Labor, it offers, had apparently forgotten about the fighting men on the front lines in Korea, many of whom were young draftees, making the supreme sacrifice for their country.
"Highway Commission Tactics" tells of recent activities of the Highway Commission now coming to light making a mockery of the words of its chairman, Henry Jordan, who had told a State Senate committee several weeks earlier that the Commission was not fighting the city streets bill, to provide more State money for the purpose. But a State representative of Mecklenburg said that he had been warned that the last section of Independence Boulevard would not be completed as soon as planned if the Mecklenburg delegation voted for the bill.
The previous week, Mayor Marshall Kurfees of Winston-Salem said that an official of the Highway Department had suggested that the city might not get a proposed arterial highway and railroad overpass if it continued to support the bill.
At a meeting of local officials in Alamance County, attended by Governor Kerr Scott, pressure was allegedly applied to fight against the bill.
Other such instances of coercive conduct had also been reported.
It opines that if the Commission's case against the bill was meritorious, there was no need to apply pressure to members of the General Assembly to vote against it. If it continued, it recommends that the Assembly find a means to restrict the Governor's influence over what was supposed to be a non-political commission.
You got to have them roads and schools in Naw' Ca'lina. That's all there is—a road to get you to school and take you home again, a road to get the produce to market and from the market to the supermarket and from the supermarket to your home. That's all you need in Naw' Ca'lina for ever'thing to be alright.
"Symbol of the Revolution" finds that the announcement by the AEC that it was in the blueprint stage of planning a nuclear-powered airplane demonstrated that the scientists had learned to control nuclear reaction and put it to peaceful uses. Such a plane, it was estimated by scientists, could reach speeds of 2,500 miles per hour, further shrinking the planet, already shrunk by the recent announcement by the British that they had flown a jet for the first time across the Atlantic, accomplishing the feat in about 4.5 hours. The atomic revolution would revolutionize, it predicts, the whole way of life.
Need one of them atomic cars to go from New York to San Francisco in fourteen minutes, twenty-three seconds—now.
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Spring in February?" references the recent editorial from The News anent the false spring and its question of the title, says that it had heard of it, as well as Indian summer sometimes in November and June in January.
It finds as exhibits of spring in February, the Forsythia acting as a nest egg for the sun, "Charles A. Shull in the Asheville Citizen-Times (though not this year)", and the period February 15-20 as described by the late Senator Josiah W. Bailey's "The Song of the Cardinal".
"To be sure, Spring hasn't taken up residence in the Old North State just yet, but she's peeping in when you least expect her. She's liable to flash a forsythia bush at you one minute and shovel sleet down the back of your neck the next. But anyway that means she's round about, the darling."
Drew Pearson tells of Mobilization director Charles E. Wilson getting ready to assume, because of shortages, drastic power over aluminum, copper, and steel, starting in mid-June, putting them under a controlled material plan, allowing regulation of them to the last pound for the sake of the defense program. He had warned Congress that the steel shortage would be the most critical. But by 1953, he said, the aluminum supply would be sufficient for both civilian and military needs.
Mr. Pearson next summarizes several letters from G.I.'s regarding complaints, one from a soldier who had been drafted and complained that he had not been home since, though promised ten days of leave, subject to cut to three, before being shipped overseas, which was imminent. Mr. Pearson says that after inquiry to the Army, it promised to extend minimum furloughs to seven days before shipping out G.I.'s.
A captain in Korea said that he wished everyone could see the horrors of war, with hundreds of civilians dying daily from starvation and cold. Mr. Pearson answers that CARE was now rushing food and clothing to the Korean refugees.
A sergeant in California wondered what had happened to the point system announced the previous fall, whereby enlisted reservists with enough points would not be sent overseas. The column answers that it had been abandoned hastily on November 7, less than two weeks after adoption because of Chinese intervention in the war. After it was pointed out that the military situation had been worse at the end of October, there were no further excuses offered.
Mississippi's two Senators had affidavits from twenty rural mail carriers, postmasters and contractors, who claimed that they were charged as much as $1,500 for jobs and favors. They claimed to have been approached by representatives of the so-called Truman faction of the Democratic Party. Contractors claimed that they had to pay $200 to be placed on a nonexistent eligibility list for war contracts and one claimed that he was told that he would be blacklisted if he did not pay it.
Marquis Childs tells of Senator Taft recently proposing that a civilian commission be appointed to explore methods to cut military spending while achieving the same results, specifically proposing that the number of support personnel be cut.
The number of Russian divisions was usually placed at 175, with 12,000 men per division and often below full strength. The American division consisted of 18,000 men, but with support personnel would be twice that number in combat. Thus, when compared to division strength of the Russians, America would be much stronger per division.
There were 1.35 million men in the U.S. ground forces, which included 24 divisions and several regimental combat teams, artillery and anti-aircraft units. On a division basis equal to the Russian computation, it should number actually around 34. It also cost more for America than for other nations to maintain the infantryman because of supply of better food, clothing, medical care and other amenities.
The Russians, by contrast, did not keep records on casualties and medical care was poor and sporadic. The same was true of the Chinese Communists in Korea. A recently captured Chinese prisoner told his captors that he had not received mail in three months.
Yet, ways could be found to economize and Mr. Childs believes that Senator Taft's proposal was a way to discover them. But, he advises, security could not be bought on the cheap.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop look at mobilization and the many problems inherent with it, as every sector sought to cover themselves. Sensible labor leaders agreed in private that the ten percent allowed wage increase was reasonable, given that it was greater than the increase in the cost of living. They also agreed that Secretary of Labor Maurice Tobin should not be running manpower requirements, including military deferments and inductions.
But the issues went deeper, as labor believed that the President had not paid his dues for the victory of 1948 delivered to him by labor. The Alsops find the labor leaders to sound as King Lear when he complained, "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child." Labor believed that business and agriculture had managed to get their share of favoritism in mobilization and they wanted theirs.
As the farm lobby had assured, through the Congressional exception on food price control, that food prices would have to climb five percent before controls kicked in, the pressure to allow commensurate increases in wages was great. Mobilization director Charles E. Wilson therefore was planning to urge that Congress control certain food prices, though it was opposed by Secretary of Agriculture Charles Brannan. It was likely that the President would support Mr. Wilson in the endeavor, thus involving the Mobilization chief in another row with the Congressional farm bloc.
Mr. Wilson and his aides were also looking at business greed, as Economic Stabilizer Eric Johnston had found that five billion additional dollars had been expended by the Government on higher prices for defense materiel since the start of the war, with not all of it attributable to inflation. Mr. Wilson intended to deal with these matters, as well as the high amortization rates on depreciation, allowing effectively big business to build plants at taxpayer expense.
A letter writer from Pittsboro favors the highway bill before the State Legislature, believes that rural roads were no more entitled to State funds than urban streets and highways.
He also finds that the country was converting from a peace-time military to an indefinite wartime military, a change of national policy. The change was attended by utter confusion. It deserved consideration, he suggests, by the nation, not just the military or by politicians.
A letter writer complains that the President had allowed Winston Churchill to dictate U.S. foreign policy with his "iron curtain" speech at Fulton Missouri, in March, 1946 and that the country had since entered on the "Road of No Return" with continuing armament, had failed to cooperate after the war with its Russian ally to bring about peace in the world.
A letter writer suggests that Senator Willis Smith, along with Senator Taft, apparently enjoyed immunity from being labeled Red because of their having labeled others Red, despite both favoring a policy of pulling out of Korea and leaving it to the Communists.
They simply followed Dick's Rule, corollary to which is the caveat that if one does not plead the Fifth, beware the adjudicators of the Truth as between two contradicting witnesses, resulting in perjury for one.
Framed Edition
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