The Charlotte News
Tuesday, March 13, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that American troops had re-entered Yudong this date and wrested control of the village from a battalion of Chinese troops. A U.S. Second Division patrol on Monday had entered the village, only three miles from an area of Chinese concentration, and then withdrawn after a brief fire fight. At the same time, Fifth Air Force fighter-bombers hit enemy concentrations to the northeast of Yudong.
Elsewhere along the 70-mile front, U.N. forces were chasing strangely elusive Chinese and North Korean troops back toward the 38th parallel. There was no explanation for the withdrawals from the mountain redoubts where the enemy had fought bitterly for every bit of ground. Some front line officers speculated that they were pulling back in preparation for a new stand in prepared defenses in the ridges north of Hongchon.
A sergeant commented on the contrast between things having been tough the previous day and the lack of fighting this date, with only rearguard resistance. The troops regarded the outlook with optimism but they were keeping up their guard.
More than 1,500 enemy trucks were observed moving southward from North Korean bases on Monday, the most seen in two and a half months.
The Army said that a rotation system to replace combat troops in Korea would begin April 1, with 150 company grade and non-commissioned officers set to leave the U.S. on that date to relieve that number of officers in Korea.
The House Armed Services Committee rejected, by a vote of 21 to 14, tying the universal military service bill to a bar of sending troops to Europe without Congressional approval. Republicans had also sought unsuccessfully the previous day to split the measure in two.
Price director Mike DiSalle said that plans were being finalized to tie price ceilings more closely to manufacturing cost increases since the start of the Korean war. He was preparing to meet with thirty top industrialists regarding the plan.
In New York, a selling wave hit the stock market, though losses were kept at between $1 and $3 per share. Brokers posited that the sell-off was the result of a combination of factors, talks that the Korean war might soon end, intensification of the Government's effort against inflation and uncertainty over the Government bond market.
In New York, gambling kingpin Frank Costello testified to the Kefauver organized crime investigating committee that he did not run a national crime syndicate and demanded to see any evidence of same which the committee had. Senator Charles Tobey told him that the committee had heard enough testimony to support his deportation, including evidence of falsification of his naturalization application in 1925 plus his admitted bootlegging activities during Prohibition.
Another witness testified to the committee that former Mayor New York William O'Dwyer, now Ambassador to Mexico, had been present when the witness had met Mr. Costello at Joe Adonis's restaurant in Brooklyn, where, he claimed, Mayor O'Dwyer often visited.
Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan had still not rallied from his February setback in health. He had been urged by many Republicans in Michigan to resign his Senate seat.
In New York, in the espionage trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and Morton Sobell, David Greenglass, Mrs. Rosenberg's brother and confessed spy previously employed at the Los Alamos, N.M., facility while the atomic bomb was being developed, testified that his brother-in-law had provided him elaborate instructions for contacting the Russian Ambassador at the Russian Embassy in Mexico City. Mr. Greenglass had testified the previous day that he had given Mr. Rosenberg plans for a later version of the atomic bomb, only a month after the Hiroshima bomb had been dropped August 6, 1945. He also said that Mr. Rosenberg had tried to get him to flee the U.S. following the arrest in Britain of Dr. Klaus Fuchs on espionage charges and then further, after the arrest of Harry Gold in the U.S., with whom Mr. Greenglass had contact.
Mr. Greenglass claimed to have received $1,000 from Mr. Rosenberg and a promise of $6,000 more, said that Mr. Rosenberg then instructed him to see the Russian Ambassador in Mexico and say something favorable about the Russian position at the U.N., then go to the statue of Columbus with a travel guide three days later and when a contact approached, say: "It is a magnificent statue. I am from Oklahoma." He would then receive a passport and money with which to travel to Vera Cruz, then to Sweden, where he would arrange via a similar procedure to travel to Czechoslovakia, where he would write to the Soviet Ambassador.
He further explained that Mr. Rosenberg had told him that the Russian spies had obtained information regarding a plan for a spaceship which would be suspended between the moon and the earth, orbiting the earth as a satellite.
They got one of them now.
During testimony, according to correspondent Howard Blakeslee, Mr. Greenglass had, in discussing in detail the atomic bomb, revealed atomic secrets which could enable a developer to overcome difficulty in getting an atomic bomb to work. There was no stenographic record kept of the testimony and reporters were instructed to use their judgment in reporting on the matter. Morning newspapers nevertheless published extended accounts of the testimony.
In Bangkok, Thailand, a midnight curfew was imposed on opium dens.
In Rutherfordton, N.C., two students, ages 16 and 19, who were angry about being scolded regarding their grades, allegedly had killed both the school superintendent of the Alexander School, a private boarding school at nearby Union Mills, and a 15-year old school friend the previous night. They were charged with murder, utilizing a .22 single-shot rifle. They accused the friend of tattling on them to the superintendent regarding a rules infraction. One of the accused, president of the student body of the school, claimed that the superintendent, a veteran of World War II, had said things about a girl which should not have been said by "a man of that calibre". He said that he was "very sorry" for the superintendent's wife and did not know what had caused him to kill the superintendent. The other accused said that he had been orphaned when his father had killed his mother and then himself in 1938.
They might benefit from reading some Kipling.
In Raleigh, spokesmen for North Carolina cities urged passage of a bill before the Legislature to enable tapping into the Federal fund for redevelopment of slum areas. Among those appearing was Charlotte City Manager Henry Yancey, Greensboro Mayor Ben Cone, and Winston-Salem Mayor Marshall Kurfees.
Stick a freeway through them slums and clean 'em up right quick.
On the editorial page, "Putting the Gray Report to Work" tells of the report to the President by Gordon Gray, former Secretary of the Army, now president of UNC, regarding foreign economic policies, now being put into action by the advisory board chaired by Nelson Rockefeller—future Governor of New York and Vice-President under President Ford from 1974-77. The Rockefeller board had recommended nine points, which the piece lists, filling in the missing pieces of the Gray report. Both reports agreed on basic policies, that it was necessary to expand production of imported raw materials critical to the U.S. economy while expanding also the manufacturing potential of allies that they might be better able to prepare themselves.
It urges that the country so far since the end of World War II had treated it like a football game in which, after the victory, the players took off their uniforms, showered, and went home. It was necessary to tend to the world economy to assure that it did not supply the seeds of another world war. After a shooting war, it was important to keep the people of the world on the side of the victors by means of a completely different kind of approach, through rebuilding their basic economies to the extent that they could then rebuild their own.
"The Other Hiss Story" remarks on the refusal of the Supreme Court to accept review of Alger Hiss's conviction for perjury and sentence to five years in prison. It finds the case a "story of low and despicable disloyalty to the United States, and of subservience to another world power", and hopes that while in prison, Mr. Hiss would serve his country and the younger generation by explaining why he became involved with Communism while an attorney for the State Department during the latter 1930's.
It does not consider the more likely scenario in which admitted Communist courier Whittaker Chambers fabricated the evidence to avoid incurring damages in Mr. Hiss's defamation suit against him and to avoid being indicted, himself, for perjury before HUAC, the original motivation for the accusations before HUAC being perhaps the need for attention, personal animosity toward Mr. Hiss, or some form of blackmail by either the Soviets or the Republicans or both, to disrupt the political process which had been favorable to the New Deal and Fair Deal since 1933.
"Frank Graham's New Job" finds the new appointment of former Senator Frank Graham as manpower administrator under the Labor Secretary to be appropriate given his record of achievement in the area of labor relations, taking a stance which was neither pro-labor or pro-management during his tenure as a member of the War Labor Board and, more recently, his even-handed resolution of a labor dispute in Alaska. His job would likely be to make the voluntary manpower program work at the state and local levels, and he was adept at inducing voluntary cooperation through persuasion rather than compulsion.
"An Impossible Assignment" finds impracticable a bill introduced to the State Legislature to assign the responsibility to the State ABC Board of policing Dry counties for bootleg liquor. It indicates that the way to have ABC exercise such control was to vote in ABC-controlled sale of liquor, in which case the agents would eliminate the trade in illegal liquor in a given county. Prohibition had never worked because it was not possible to police every bit of illegal liquor in a given locality when none was available legally. But when the State controlled sales, it was possible to prevent the remaining illicit trade.
Simeon Stylites, writing in the Christian Century, provides a verbatim speech for all occasions, written by Job E. Hedges of Princeton University.
You are free to use it whenever the occasion might arise where every occasion needs to be satisfied. He assures that it would stir an undertakers' convention, the American Legion, or the hundredth anniversary of the First Church.
Drew Pearson, in Rome, finds the reason for France, Italy, and the Netherlands having trouble staying organized to be their vanishing fear of Communism, reducing the need for political coalitions to prevent the Communists from taking power. There was a danger from this turn of events in that the Communists still had the largest single party in these countries, Italy having the largest party outside Russia, with two million members. For three years, Premier Alcide De Gasperi had held together the disparate elements of his fragile coalition Government on the basis of that fear. He had fought against Communists and Fascists. With the fear gone, the political future of Italy was unpredictable.
Four years earlier, when Mr. Pearson had accompanied the Friendship Train to Italy, the Mayor of Bologna, Giuseppe Dozzo, had refused to shake his hand and meet with him because he said that the Pearson column had printed false stories regarding Communists hiding arms in the country in preparation for a revolution and that Mayor Dozzo, a Communist, was a leader in that effort. But it had turned out, after a tip to the Government by two Communist deputies, that such arms were, in fact, hidden, and in some of the exact places pinpointed by Mr. Pearson. Many of them were hidden within Italian factories in sealed off rooms.
Joseph Alsop, in Leipzig, discusses the desire of Russia for "German unity", which the West was concerned would be offered soon by the Soviets to halt Western rearmament and disrupt NATO. Inevitably, the West would require an agreement to hold free elections in East Germany before consideration of any plan for unity. And free elections would destroy the control the Soviets presently enjoyed over the Eastern sector, a necessary part of the Soviet economic empire.
Things had improved in the year since Mr. Alsop was last in Leipzig, with the economic picture still bad but not so bad as earlier. Steel output, for instance, had increased from 250,000 tons per year to a million tons, with the five-year plan goal being three million tons, higher than the East German prewar level. Thirty percent of the industrial output was owned directly by the Russian Government, and the remaining two-thirds by the East German state contributed 1.5 billion marks to Russia in reparations per year. Almost all industrial concerns in Germany were also buying-agents for the Kremlin, securing from Western Europe strategic materials and equipment. It was estimated that more than two billion dollars of revenue from products flowed into the Russian economy from East Germany each year.
Russian control of East Germany was assured by the number of Russians in key positions, advisory or managerial. It was a form of total imperialism to which East Germans had adapted better than the peoples of the other satellites.
Thus, the question remained whether the Soviets would wish to risk losing this model province to halt Western rearmament through a compromised version of unity with free elections.
Robert C. Ruark finds the Pentagon decision to stop calling up National Guardsmen and reservists to be inevitably irksome to those Guardsmen and reservists who were already serving in Korea. They had served previously in one war and should be excused from further service, except in a dire emergency, where others were available. In this instance, 18-year olds were available and he favors calling them up before those who had already served. He suggest to parents of the young men who might be drafted to understand that once the Guardsmen and reservists had also been 18 and had parents who worried about them. He concludes that a debt was owed the men who had won the war and that they should not therefore be called into service in lieu of those who had not thus far fought, while the latter stayed at home enjoying the benefits of civilian life.
A letter writer from Durham wants a statewide convention of drys to nominate dry candidates for public office, and elect a dry Governor and lesser officials. Then, he says, they could tell the liquor crowd "where to get off".
Well, they're already off the wagon, aren't they?
A letter writer wants to know why there had been more highway fatalities in the first two months of 1951 than throughout 1950. He also wants to know why a pistol was considered so dangerous when an automobile was the most deadly weapon on earth save the atomic bomb.
Well, as to the latter, there is no brake on a pistol once you pull the trigger and, should it be aimed at someone at close range, openly or in stealth, there is little chance of being able to avoid being hit and seriously injured or killed. Motor vehicles do not travel at the rate of 2,000 feet per second, or around 1,400 mph, or more. Moreover, in modern times, except for military and police use, there is no utility at all to a firearm, whereas motor vehicles have obvious utility outweighing their dangers.
Any other questions regarding your absurd analogy?
As to the initial question, it would appear to be premised on misread data, as the total vehicle fatalities nationally in 1951 were about 35,000, compared to 33,000 in 1950. Thus, if he is correct, then there would have been only a couple of thousand deaths in the remaining ten months of 1951. But he fails to limit his question to a particular locality and may be referencing only Charlotte or Mecklenburg County. If so, maybe the source of the problem was distraction while dreaming up stupid questions to ask the newspaper.
A letter writer, the district superintendent of the Charlotte District Methodist Church and director of the Charlotte Methodist Training School thanks the newspaper for its stories recently published regarding the Training School.
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