The Charlotte News

Tuesday, April 17, 1951

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that allied troops had hit Communist forces in the battle for Hwachon dam after an enemy man-made smoke screen hindered allied progress for awhile in the late afternoon, permitting allied war planes to drop napalm, rockets and machine gun fire. Censorship prevented disclosure of the size and exact location of the enemy. The object of the attack was to throw off balance the planned enemy spring offensive.

On the western front, the allies maintained pressure south of Chorwon. Yonchon, on the road leading northwest to Chorwon, was evacuated by the enemy.

New Eighth Army ground commander, Lt. General James Van Fleet, visited the troops on the western front.

The GOP policy committee approved a plan of Senator Homer Ferguson to have a joint committee broadly to investigate Far Eastern policy.

In a speech prepared for delivery to the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters, Joint Chiefs chairman General Omar Bradley said that General MacArthur's policies with respect to China and Korea could have precipitated world war three and that the intervention in Korea in June had likely prevented such a war, being planned then by the Soviets, in Indo-China, Thailand, and Formosa. He said that the war might be headed to stalemate but also could be concluded honorably. He found that the use made thus far by China of air bases in Manchuria had not warranted their bombing. He also said that the U.S. would not engage in preventive war or appeasement and that attempt to end the war by ultimatum of bombing Russia would be impracticable and potentially create backlash. His speech, per Administration directive, had been cleared first by the State Department.

The President canceled plans for Thursday to address the American Society of Newspaper Editors, so as not to interfere with General MacArthur's address to Congress.

The House formally invited the General to speak at 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, after the Senate, by unanimous consent, agreed to the joint session.

In San Francisco, the city awaited the arrival of General MacArthur, who had requested that initial greetings be limited to formalities of brief military honors. The next day, the General would ride in a motorcade through the streets.

The British submarine Affray, with 75 men and officers aboard, vanished during maneuvers in the English Channel. The U.S. Navy began assisting in the search for the submarine. It was considered possible that the commander had misread his orders regarding his time for reporting in the morning and might still be proceeding submerged. The last submarine disaster for England had been in January, 1950 when the Truculent was rammed by a Swedish tanker and sank in the Thames estuary, costing the lives of 64 of 79 aboard.

The Senate Banking Committee ordered an investigation into whether members of Congress had engaged in influence peddling in providing RFC loans to businesses. The investigation would be performed by the same subcommittee, chaired by Senator John McClellan, which had performed the previous RFC investigation.

In Greensboro, management and TWUA union leaders charged each other with causing violence which had erupted in Durham, where a female textile worker's house was bombed, though without injury to any person, and in Danville, Va., where a shooting of a striker and tear gassing had taken place at the Dan River Mills.

Tom Fesperman of The News, in the second in his series of five articles on the problems faced by families in Mecklenburg County, describes testimony of a woman in Domestic Relations Court, who said that her husband had beaten her with flailing, pounding fists, to which her husband replied, "That's right." She said he had told her not to talk back to him when he was drinking because he got mean. The store had repossessed some of their furniture and he began drinking in the afternoon, after which she began fussing at him and so he hit her. He was also mean to their three children sometimes and so she put them in another home. The husband confirmed the testimony. The judge recommended he consult Alcoholics Anonymous over his drinking problem but the man said he could quit on his own. The woman said the couple had known each other a month before marriage and that she had loved him but stopped a few months earlier.

The judge sentenced the man temporarily to jail until he could get an alcohol rehabilitation counselor to see him. He told Mr. Fesperman afterward that it was a typical case, involving one of the major causes of domestic disturbances.

"The Edge of Night" will continue after this brief commercial message.

In the fourteenth installment of Dale Carnegie's How To Stop Worrying and Start Living, he extends advice to housewives on combating fatigue.

On the editorial page, "The Area of Agreement" points out that amid the debate between those favoring the dismissal of General MacArthur and those opposed, there remained areas of basic agreement, that Soviet Russia was the principal seat of Communism, which could not be stripped of potency until Russia was defeated or checked, that it was better to have allies in peace or war than to be left to live or fight alone, that it was of first priority to protect physical security of the nation and then to protect and expand freedom wherever it existed or could exist elsewhere, that possibilities for peace always had to be explored fully, that if war came it should be fought on the country's terms, and that if democracy was to remain free, final authority over military and diplomatic policy had to reside with the duly elected civilian government.