The Charlotte News
Monday, April 16, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that allied troops had penetrated Yachon, nine miles above the 38th parallel and made limited gains along the rest of the 150-mile North Korean battle front. Yanggu, three miles southwest of Yachon, had been captured by the allies the previous day on the east central-front.
On the eastern front, South Korean troops occupied the high ridge north of Inje.
On the west-central front, U.N. troops advanced against light resistance and had complete control of the Hwachon Reservoir.
In the air war, F-86 Sabre jets encountered dogfights twice with MIG-15s this date, with sixteen F-86's tangling with 30 MIGs in the first confrontation and 18 Sabre jets clashing with 15 MIGs in the second. Two MIGs were reported damaged with one possibly destroyed. In all, the Fifth Air Force flew 684 sorties.
Since the start of the war the prior June 25, 184 allied planes had been destroyed compared to 317 enemy planes.
Special Ambassador John Foster Dulles arrived in Tokyo to discuss plans for the Japanese peace treaty and reassure the Japanese that General MacArthur's departure as occupation commander would not impact the treaty negotiations. Mr. Dulles said that General MacArthur assured him of his continuing support and advice. Lt. General Matthew Ridgway, the successor to General MacArthur, said that there would be no change in policy toward Japan.
Congressman Albert Gore of Tennessee said that the U.S. had perfected new atomic weapons which spread deadly and "cataclysmic" radioactivity and urged the President to use them in Korea, to produce a belt across the peninsula which would be unfit for human habitation and serve therefore as a barrier between the ground operations, to stop the "meat grinder" of allied forces. He also wanted such weapons used to repulse submarine attacks on allied naval forces and any attempt to invade Japan.
Secretary of State Acheson urged the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to act quickly in sending two million tons of grain to India where a famine was developing more rapidly than anticipated. In February, he had urged the Congress to act early to enable the grain to leave the U.S. by April 1 to assure supplies for India by mid-summer. But, he reported, that had been overly optimistic.
The House agreed unanimously to hold a joint session with the Senate to hear General MacArthur on Thursday. The Senate would go through the formality the next day of accepting the invitation to the House chamber to hear the General. The White House said that General MacArthur was welcome to call on the President when he arrived in Washington
General MacArthur was flying home
the next day from Honolulu to San Francisco after arriving early this
date from Tokyo and receiving a hero's welcome in Hawaii. The air
police roughed up about a dozen photographers and pitched one through
the air, according to one of the photographers. The General would ride at the
head of a parade through Honolulu and receive an honorary degree from
the University of Hawaii. He would then visit Waikiki
Did he have his pet monkey, General Tojo, with him as in 1942?
In Washington, the trial commenced of Congressman Walter Brehm of Ohio for illegal acceptance of campaign gifts worth $1,380 from two female employees of his office in 1947 and 1948. The Corrupt Practices Act forbade campaign contributions from Government employees. Government workers were excluded from the jury. Dr. Brehm, a dentist, was in his fifth term in Congress.
In Baltimore, former Air Force General Bennett E. Meyers was sentenced to a year and a day in prison and fined $15,000 for evading $61,400 in Federal income taxes between 1941 and 1946, when he under-reported his income by over $120,000.
Two cotton mills, one in Virginia and one in South Carolina, provided a two percent wage increase, which they said was the maximum allowable under Government wage control.
Tom Fesperman of The News tells of over 4,000 marriages in Mecklenburg County slated to break up temporarily during the year, of which about 400 would end in divorce. Hundreds of other marriages would hit the rocks without ever coming to court. Thousands of children would become frustrated prizes of tugs of war between parents. Some 300 to 400 children would be born out of wedlock, among other statistics he indicates as showing the American family in trouble.
On the editorial page, "Welcome Home!" predicts that every American would extend a generous welcome to General MacArthur when he returned to the U.S. the following day for the first time since 1937. He had accomplished great things in the Pacific war and in the occupation and rebuilding of Japan after the war. He would be considered a great man in the history of the country, no matter what transpired in the coming weeks.
He would now direct a debate on whether it was better to fight international Communism in the Far East or in Europe. In advancing his view that the Far East was the appropriate theater, he could either document his position methodically or engage in the kind of political rhetoric which many Republicans had adopted. The nation could benefit from a debate maintained on a high level of honesty and integrity but not from a partisan brawl. The choice, it concludes, was General MacArthur's.
"The President's Address" tells of the President's Saturday Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner message, broadcast nationally on radio and to a more limited audience on television, having been on a loftier plane than the usual such partisan political message. He had asserted the undeniable facts that the opposition had no global foreign policy and engaged in self-contradictory inconsistencies. It presents his list of those inconsistencies, all of which were documented in the voting patterns of the West and Midwest Republicans on most foreign policy matters since 1945. He had also indicated the benefits of engaging in the Korean war, serving to check Communist aggression in other areas, as Greece, Turkey, the Middle East, Italy, France, and Berlin.
The President also said that those who now disfavored the intervention in Korea neglected to realize that the Soviets would have intervened elsewhere in all likelihood had they not been checked in Korea. The war had interrupted the Soviet timetable of conquest, giving the free world warning and time to build up its defenses, and imposed a strain on the Communist dictatorship, which could not survive continual reverses.
He also said that the same statement made about Russia not entering the war if the Chinese bases were bombed had been made to him regarding the Chinese not entering the Korean war in strength, a statement conveyed to him by General MacArthur on Wake Island the prior October.
The speech and the statement to the nation the prior Wednesday explaining his decision to fire General MacArthur were the opening salvos in an offensive to preserve the five-year foreign policy of the Administration. Later in the week, General MacArthur would address a joint session of Congress to explain his positions.
"Something's Wrong Here" finds Senator Taft's logic to be out of Alice in Wonderland when he said on the one hand that sending an additional four divisions of American troops to Europe could provoke the Soviets to war and, on the other, that sending Nationalist Chinese troops to Communist China, as favored by General MacArthur, would not provoke a general war. It finds that the Senator's logic led inevitably to the conclusion that Europe was more important to the Soviets than China, the converse of what the Taft-Wherry wing of the Republican Party, and General MacArthur, asserted.
Drew Pearson writes an open letter to Senator Taft, tells of Mr. Pearson's father-in-law, a general and career military man, having had about the same opinion of President Taft which General MacArthur had of President Truman. President Taft had incurred the wrath of many military men because he stayed within the budget and kept the military in their place. He understood the Constitution, that there is a civilian government in which the military takes orders from the President.
He suggests that the easy way was to kick the President in the pants for firing General MacArthur, but states that Senator Taft had not made his career by doing things the easy way. A general could not run the Government or overrule the President because of his political ambitions.
He says that his personal feelings toward the President were similar to those of Senator Taft, but that he had respect for the office of the President. It might be popular to talk of impeaching the President, but it should be done, if at all, on the corruption in the Administration, not on the basis of firing General MacArthur, which the President had every right to do.
It was easy to jump on an unpopular President and it was easy to engage in a lot of phony flag-waving on this issue of a general's insubordination, which President Taft would not have tolerated, as would no other President. He concludes that he hopes the Senator's leadership and courage would keep the country on an even keel and away from such sentiments.
An editorial from the Louisville Courier-Journal discusses the controversy ignited by the firing of General MacArthur by the President, regards the Republican demands for impeachment to be baseless and "silly", likewise the call to investigate the State Department. It points out that under Secretary of State Acheson, the Department had been under constant investigations, with the Secretary appearing 80 times before Congressional committees since his appointment in early 1949.
It also finds the Democrats in Congress achieving little credit in suggesting investigation of General MacArthur in his conduct of the war, which was not at issue. It finds it "discreditable and stupid" of both parties to make a political fight out of General MacArthur.
General MacArthur believed that the way to fight Communism was through fighting China, whereas the Administration believed such a fight would start a war which the country wanted to avoid. It finds the President's thinking more persuasive.
The political furor had developed around the General because of his foray into presidential politics in 1948, where he fared poorly as only a weak favorite son of Wisconsin. The piece finds that the brush fire thus stirred would burn itself out and public opinion would conclude that the President had done what he had to do.
Stewart Alsop finds that the timing of the firing of General MacArthur might prove advantageous to the General because the outcome in Korea could vindicate his position favoring bombing of Chinese bases and coastal areas, while making the President appear as the architect of disaster by not authorizing such attacks.
The Joint Chiefs were taking seriously reports that the Soviets were arming the Chinese and lending 500 Soviet fighters and light bombers to form a Chinese air force. While the latter could not seriously challenge the American Air Force, it could, under cover of the rainy season, fly hit and run attacks and strafe U.N. forces behind allied lines.
If the Chinese launched such larger air attacks from Manchuria, then there would be great pressure on the President to authorize bombing of their bases and lines of communications, and then their cities. Such would force the Soviets to intervene to avoid defeat. The small war would have developed into a great war, that which the President was seeking to avoid. The logical progression, he asserts, could not be avoided by either the President or General MacArthur but only in the event the Kremlin decided to cut its losses in Korea or if General Ridgway and his men crushed the prospective spring offensive by the enemy.
A letter from J. R. Cherry, Jr., who was at one time in 1949 being touted by the UNC student body as the man to be the next President, finds the newspaper's editorial on the firing of General MacArthur to have been "far from brilliant". He explains why.
Commm-mmm-mmunism. Bourbon and benedictine.
A letter from Portland, Ore., tells of the Portland newspaper quoting the editorial on General MacArthur and that it was being quoted all over the country, thus congratulates the newspaper.
A letter from a high school boy says that the dismissal of the General was one of the worst things which could happen to the people since Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge.
Not that
He admits that the General disobeyed orders but feels the Government should not take away his freedom of speech. He thinks the President might have to eat his words.
A letter writer from St. Pauls, N.C., finds the editorials of the newspaper for years to have been below par, takes issue with the April 13 editorial, "Issues at Stake—Not Men", which suggested examining the substantive matters in the controversy between the President and General MacArthur rather than their personalities.
A letter writer from McBee, S.C., finds the President to have compromised with the evil forces of Communism in relieving the "great Christian" General MacArthur from his duties.
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