The Charlotte News
Tuesday, March 6, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Don Huth, that American Marines, attacking over new-fallen snow, had driven slowly ahead this date in central Korea, pushing toward Hongchon, fifteen miles north of recaptured Hoengsong, resisted by the Communist Chinese, who were believed to have concentrated their largest front line forces at the location. The Marines captured Hill 336 three miles northeast of Hoengsong. To the right flank of the Marines, elements of the Second Division were reported to have advanced more than a mile southeast of Hoengsong, finding hundreds of enemy dead in the area.
On the east-central front, North Korean troops fought hard on the ridges near Taemi, the mountain stronghold ten miles northwest of Pangnim from which they had been routed on Monday.
Despite suffering losses estimated at 22,250 since February 21, the enemy was believed to have 300,000 troops below the 38th parallel. Lt. General Matthew Ridgway, commander of the allied ground forces, however, said that he did not think a concerted counter-attack was imminent and that his forces could repel such an attack in any event.
The Army issued a draft call for 60,000 men in May, bringing the total draft requests to 590,000 since the beginning of the draft call-up in the wake of the start of the Korean war the prior June 25. The 60,000 was 20,000 fewer men than the monthly average since January.
In Paris, the Big Three Western nations' representatives at the preliminary conference to plot the agenda for the foreign ministers conference to follow sought agreement on their proposed answers to a Russian-proposed agenda. They refused to divulge the substance of the proposals. A French spokesman said later that he thought the two agendas could be brought into agreement, there being only substantial dispute over one of three matters set for discussion. The Russians wanted to discuss concluding a peace treaty with Germany and then withdrawal of occupying troops, while the West wanted to discuss unifying Germany, was less inclined to discuss withdrawal.
In Key West, Fla., Defense Mobilizer Charles E. Wilson met with the vacationing President to discuss allocation of manpower and the continuing problems with labor.
Senator James Murray of Montana contended the propriety of his prodding of the RFC to provide a million dollar loan to the Sorrento Hotel in Miami Beach, for which his son was attorney. He said that the recommendation was "routine" and "consistent with established Congressional practices", and saw no reason that he could not recommend the loan simply because his son represented the hotel in question. He wanted the Senate to publish a list of all phone calls, interviews and letters from members of Congress to RFC since its inception. The Senate Banking subcommittee performing the investigation disclosed the previous month that several Senators, whose names were maintained in confidence, had received free accommodations at the Saxony Hotel in Miami Beach, recipient of a 1.5 million dollar RFC loan.
In Washington, the case of Oscar Collazo, the Puerto Rican Nationalist on trial for murder in the killing of a White House guard in the attempted assassination of the President on November 1 at Blair House, was expected to go to the jury the following day. Mr. Collazo was the only witness called by the defense. He testified that he and his accomplice, Griselo Torresola, killed by guards and Secret Service in the attack, planned only to demonstrate in front of Blair House to draw attention to the plight of Puerto Rico and had not intended to kill anyone or to break into the temporary residence of the First Family. He admitted, however, that he fired first, intending to hit one wounded guard, Donald Birdzell. Attempting to explain his actions, he said that people in Puerto Rico were being "shot up" by Americans.
At least four persons had died in Western Canada and Montana from the winter storm sweeping across the Midwest and into Wyoming and the Dakotas. A woman and her two children were among the dead as their car stalled in a Montana blizzard. More than 35 passengers on three stalled buses were marooned overnight in 20 below zero weather in Alberta. In British Columbia, a woman had frozen to death a short distance from where she had departed a midnight bus during the storm.
In Raleigh, a simple majority the State House voted to take the proposal for a statewide referendum on liquor from the unfavorable calendar and place it on the favorable calendar. But the proposal required a super-majority of two-thirds for action and so it amounted only to a moral victory for the dry forces supporting the measure, designed to eliminate local option.
A reapportionment bill was introduced to realign membership in the General Assembly, to provide for the populous Guilford, Mecklenburg, and Forsyth counties receiving two Senators each instead of one. A bill introduced to the State House would increase from one to two Representatives the representation of Alamance and Rockingham counties while Cabarrus and Pitt each would lose one.
Tom Fesperman of The News tells of Max Pardue, a Wilkes County youth who had refused to be inducted into the Army the previous day in Charlotte, saying he would not change his mind even if he had to spend five years in prison as a result of resisting the draft. He said that he was not opposed to war per se or to bearing arms in general, but that it was his belief that he was not good enough to hold an inimical opinion about another man or another country, that he could not adjudge whether Russia or Communist China was right or wrong. His father had been called to jury duty once in Wilkes County and had refused to take the oath for the same reason. His mother said that she would rather see her son die than sent to war.
In Pearl River, N.Y., a hunter aimed his gun at a crow and instead hit a small fireworks factory, which then blew up, shattering dishes and windows for a mile around the Hackensack River plant and impacting communities fifteen miles distant.
In Cedar Rapids, Ia., police were searching for "The Devil" who stole a pen from the study of a minister, leaving a note which read: "I hate you. The Devil."
On the editorial page, "Three Letters" urges the reading of the three letters on the page, one from a corporal in the Marine Corps to his father, the second from the father to Secretary of State Acheson, seeking advice on how to answer the troubling letter, and Secretary Acheson's reply. The piece finds the letters elucidative of the dilemma into which the country and the world found itself in the postwar period and of the confusion which had arisen on the part of the public as to why the war in Korea was being fought.
"Potomac Peace Pact" tells of the newspapers having trouble understanding the recent "peace pact" between the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board. It makes an effort, however, to do so, suggesting it as the difference between the desire of the Board, following a decade-old policy, of buying up Federal bonds at par from insurance companies, banks and other institutions, stimulating the flow of credit with money provided to the banks, and the Treasury argument that unless the market were kept stable, the interest rates on bonds would need to be raised.
The previous weekend, the dispute had been resolved for the time being by Treasury agreeing to issue new, non-marketable bonds at an interest rate of 2.75 percent to be exchanged with certain holders of bonds bearing 2.5 percent interest, to induce those holders to accept the replacements and hold them until maturity, thereby stabilizing the market.
It suggests several shortcomings of the plan, that the quarter percent increase in interest did not appear sufficient to induce holders to exchange the bonds rather than cashing in the old ones, as no bank would wish to tie up its assets, and that the new bonds would be available only to certain holders of existing bonds which would not mature until the period 1967-72 and that banks, the primary source of inflation, held bonds of shorter duration and thus would not be materially affected by the policy. (But is not objection one, assuming banks as the primary holder of the bonds in question, contradictory of point two?)
To reel in the inflationary spiral, prices and wages had to be controlled and credit had to be limited, along with imposition of heavier taxes, to stem the flow of money into the economy. Government expenditures also had to be curtailed. But, it finds, the agreement on bonds was a step in the right direction, the question being whether it would be enough.
"Campaign of Misrepresentation" tells of State Senator M.T. Leatherman of Lincoln County responding to an open letter from the crusading young editor, Ed Post, Jr., of The Cleveland Times, recommending that the General Assembly abandon its effort to rescind the 1949 "World Government" resolution, saying that as co-sponsor of the bill to rescind the resolution, Mr. Leatherman was not necessarily personally opposed to world government but that sufficient opposition had developed within the state that he had helped to introduce the currently pending resolution.
The opposition, says the piece, had come mainly from the V.F.W. and D.A.R., both of which groups apparently had been misled by their national officers, repeating unfounded allegations such as that the resolutions would abolish the United States and the Constitution, turn the country into a slave-state, open up immigration, destroy the dollar and work to confiscate American property.
The earlier resolution of 1941 had merely expressed the hope that totalitarianism and tyranny would give way on the world stage to a system of international law governed by such a world federation, and petitioned Congress to accept the principle of world order. The 1949 resolution analyzed the weaknesses of the U.N. and urged the calling of a convention to propose amendments to the Constitution to permit the U.S. to negotiate a new constitution for a world organization with sufficient power to assure peace. It did not commit anyone to anything but rather urged committing the decision to the American people in the form of ratification of such proposed amendments. It would thus serve no purpose beyond a purely symbolic one to rescind the resolution. Indeed, it would serve Russian propaganda as the Soviets could point to it as emblematic of a shift in American opinion against world government. Such a shift, it posits, did not appear to have taken place and it urges instead that the General Assembly reaffirm its pledge of 1949.
A piece from the Omega (Ga.) News, titled "Brave Editor", tells of having written an editorial criticizing control of a forest fire in an adjoining county and, after it had been reprinted in the Atlanta Journal, prompting the Department of Forestry to object and marshal a host of proof that there was no deficiency in its firefighting. The only proof in opposition was the burned land without any firefighters in sight. The newspaper therefore stuck to its guns. The Department eventually cooled down and the representatives agreed to have lunch with the editors. It regrets, however, that they left before it could sell them a subscription and some advertising.
You gonna get your paper burned down, first thing you know.
Drew Pearson tells of the IRB, in response to the column publishing income figures for racketeers, now investigating the Chicago racket, focusing initially on Tony Accardo and Jack Guzik, leaders of the Chicago underworld. The IRB had also discovered that a Chicago Congressman controlled patronage for 7,000 jobs connected with the racket, a billion dollar business feeding off the nickels and dimes of those of modest means, resulting in unsolved gangland murders, bombings and kidnappings.
While the top men of the rackets had paid taxes to keep the heat off, the IRB had found that books had been juggled, such as in the Erie and Buffalo policy wheel, originally operated by Leo and Caesar Benvenuti, where an extra zero was often added or a decimal point shifted to obscure the true amounts of bets which won. The latest receipts showed that wheel producing 5.8 million dollars in 1949 while it paid out 4.6 million in winnings. The juggling of the figures, however, probably represented millions in unreported profits. In 1947, the Benvenuti brothers had their home bombed and then Sam Pardy and Tom Manzo suddenly began operating the wheel. Mr. Pardy had been a salesman until 1948 and reported earnings of around $4,000 per year. His income suddenly shot up to $307,000 in 1948 after he took over the wheel. An entry on the books of the wheel showed a payment of $278,000 to Messrs. Accardo and Guzik for "special services". Messrs. Pardy and Manno therefore appeared to be only front men.
The Senate Labor Committee was rushing to finalize a report on the textile industry, showing lawlessness and terrorism against union organizers in the South, with collective bargaining and self-organization appearing to lose ground. The report said that employer campaigns to inhibit organization were being conducted in violation of the National Labor Relations Act and Taft-Hartley, but that the NLRB appeared powerless to cope with it.
As indicated in the above editorial, a series of three letters appears, one from a young man who was a corporal in the Marine Corps, serving at Camp Pendleton, California, written to his father, one from his father to Secretary of State Acheson, indicating his trouble in responding to his son, and the response by Secretary Acheson.
The son begins by referencing a story in the Los Angeles Examiner stating that a California State Senator had introduced a bill favoring the impeachment of Secretary of State Acheson, finding it to represent the notion that the American people were fed up with the Administration and its foreign policy. He wonders why the Truman Administration was spending money so wildly, why the Congress did not act either to declare war or stop the sending of troops abroad, finds the fighting men in Korea to be without understanding of why they were fighting the war, and says that morale of the majority of the fighting men was low, that they felt tricked into the war. He also favors Communist China being made a member of the U.N.
The father, an assistant to the Mayor of Camden, N.J., tells Secretary Acheson that he is at a loss to answer the letter and asks for help, suggests that based on his experience, foreign policy had to remain fluid and that he would impart that to his son.
Secretary Acheson explains that while he found it good that the son and other young people questioned Administration policy, a healthy sign for democracy, he hoped that they would understand that the reason for the fight in Korea was to prevent Communist aggression elsewhere and ultimately to prevent world war, that freedom had to be constantly preserved and that America had the primary responsibility to do so in the postwar world, in which it had emerged as the primary industrial resource of the world.
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