The Charlotte News

Saturday, April 21, 1951

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that allied troops had met heavy enemy resistance this date in their drive on Chorwon, eighteen miles north of the 38th parallel in west central Korea.

Allied warplanes flew 48 sorties, meeting some anti-aircraft fire.

The allies straightened their line from Hwachon due west, making substantial gains against little opposition.

General MacArthur, after his rousing welcome in New York City the previous day, had no definite plans for further visits to major cities, but would likely stop in Chicago the following week.

Senator Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa accused the Administration of "smoke-screening" the issue of whether the Joint Chiefs ever shared General MacArthur's views on the Korean war insofar as striking Chinese bases of supply and use of Nationalist Chinese troops in the Korean war, as General MacArthur had contended in his Thursday speech to a joint session of Congress. The Senator added that the point was not whether the Chiefs concurred in his firing, as had been stated by the Defense Department, but rather whether they ever concurred in the General's favored policy.

Senator Russell Long of Louisiana defended the President's action in firing the General by saying that the General had lost one gamble when the Chinese entered the war and the President had sought to avoid taking the "final gamble" that Russia would not enter the war should the U.N. bomb China, as favored by the General.

The New York Times, in a story by Anthony Leviero, reported that when the President had met with General MacArthur on Wake Island the previous October, the General had been so confident in victory in Korea that he offered his best troops of the Second Division for service in Europe. He also apologized for embarrassing the President by advocating in a message to the VFW the prior August that the U.S. occupy Formosa, contrary to Administration policy of neutralizing Formosa during the Korean war, and predicted that neither the Chinese Communists nor the Russians would enter the war. The Times said that it had reliable sources for the story.

A seven-person House watchdog subcommittee, to be chaired by Congressman Edward Hebert of Louisiana, was formed to keep an eye on the way the armed forces spent money.

The President created the new 18-member Wage Stabilization Board, to be chaired by George Taylor of the University of Pennsylvania and to be comprised of six members from the public, six from labor and six from industry, replacing the former nine-person board chaired by former Government labor mediator Cyrus Ching.

In Budapest, the Hungarian Government agreed to release Robert Vogeler, the American businessman held in prison there on charges of espionage for the U.S. The U.S. legation had successfully negotiated the release.

In the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana, seventeen seamen were known dead and 22 others missing in the fog-bound collision the prior day between the Esso tankers Greensboro and Suez. It was the worst disaster at sea off the U.S. coast since June, 1943 when 84 were killed in a collision of an American tanker and freighter off the Atlantic coast. All of the dead save one were on the Greensboro, which carried 42 men.

In Decatur, Ga., four or five workmen were killed in the collapse of a large building being constructed for the Kraft Cheese Co. outside Atlanta.

The Mississippi River was flooding in three states, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois, forcing thousands to flee their homes.

On the editorial page, "Sign of Political Maturity" finds the "Greater Debate" ongoing as to whether to try to continue to stress the rebuilding of Western Europe as the primary focus in the effort against Communism or to do as urged by General MacArthur and devote equal attention also to the Far East, where he believed the primary battlefront was against Communism, to be a sign of political maturity in the country even though it had divided the country temporarily.

"Politics and Starvation" tells of the Senate probably getting ready to pass the 95 million dollar, half grant and half loan, for grain for India to prevent imminent starvation, with authorization for another 95 million on the same conditions. The bill had been approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after being stated as urgent by Secretary of State Acheson. But whether it would pass the House Rules Committee remained a question.

As the country had the surplus grain needed by India, the piece finds no reason not to provide the half loan and half gift to beat the "race with death", as the situation had been described by the Washington Post.

"The Will to Destroy" comments on the piece on the page by C. Howard Smith from Better Homes & Gardens, suggests that he could have added that destruction of property by children manifested a larger attitude of being generally inconsiderate of others, such as in hot-rodding and making excessive noise. It suggests that parents ought do something about their children before the conduct got worse.

"Austerity Note" comments on an item from the Associated Press which told of the House of Commons dining room in London using tablecloths marked "Milwaukee University Club", and that upon inquiry, it was determined that the reason for the misplaced tablecloths was that they had been rejected as inferior by the Club at a time in 1947 when material in England was scarce and so the cloths were bought by Commons as a cost-saving measure. The piece wonders whether Congress would ever so act under like conditions.

A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "No Subsiding", discusses the North Carolina trucking industry objection to weight limits on paved secondary roads and the increased effort by the Highway Commission to enforce them, that some wanted the roads left unpaved so as not to be subject to the limits on paved roads, even at the expense of rural residents. The piece finds the protests unsupportable.

Drew Pearson finds that the Republicans, following the speech of General MacArthur, were no longer certain that the 1952 presidential nomination contest would be fought only between General Eisenhower and Senator Taft, with the latter the favorite among the party leadership.

He suggests that if the GOP were to nominate General MacArthur, the Democrats would nominate General Eisenhower. But party leaders disfavored military men because they did not bring patronage with them. The popularity of these two generals, however, might override those considerations.

Vice-President Alben Barkley chided Senator Tom Connally for not telling enough jokes, said that he would probably obtain every vote in Texas if he did so. Senator Connally said that he did not want every vote as he did not want to be obligated to everybody.

He next provides more G.I. gripes, one from Korea stating that the soldiers were brought back from the front for a rest and instead were assigned to build a sidewalk in a village outside Seoul, necessitating long hours of hard work. Mr. Pearson answers that the Army had promised an investigation.

A private in California says that he was forced by the Army to ride by train to return to Camp Stoneman and wants to know why he could not fly so he could spend more time at home on furlough, to which Mr. Pearson responds that the Defense Department had an unofficial policy of giving priority to the railroads on military transport and that the airlines were crowded in wartime.

A draftee says that the Coast Guard was a haven for draft dodgers, a situation unfair to the others. Mr. Pearson affirms that such was true, but says the Coast Guard was short on manpower and so opened units to draft-eligible men for service in port security units, relatively light duty with relatively light training.

Tom Schlesinger of The News, in his "Capitol Roundup", relates of reaction among the North Carolina Congressional delegation to the firing by the President of General MacArthur, finding that while the constituent mail ran primarily opposed to it, most members, including Senators Clyde Hoey and Willis Smith, found the President to have acted well within his authority in preserving civilian control of the military. Senator Smith had added that he agreed with General MacArthur on the necessity to bomb Chinese supply bases and to use Nationalist Chinese troops in the war, but that it was necessary to maintain civilian control of policy.

Only Representative Monroe Redden dissented, saying that the President was a "tool of the Joint Chiefs".

Congressman Charles Deane said that when he had talked to General MacArthur in 1949, the General had described Chiang Kai-Shek as not a very good military leader and that his government was full of graft and corruption.

J. Edgar Hoover reported that there were 43,000 Communists in the country, of whom only 130 were to be found in North Carolina. Senator Hoey remarked that most of those could be found in Chapel Hill.

The wife of Congressman Herbert Bonner was amazed to find her fur wrap still present on a chair where she had absentmindedly left it at the Shoreham Hotel, and remarked to someone nearby that it suggested she was lucky, whereupon a passing bellhop said that it showed rather how honest patrons of the Shoreham were.

The Associated Press provides more editorial reaction from various newspapers regarding the speech to Congress by General MacArthur two days earlier.

It includes nine abstracts: one from the Columbus Ohio State Journal, praising the speech as one of the greatest of all time; the Washington Post, finding the General's course to recommend ultimately war against the wrong enemy on the wrong battlefield to be fought alone, and that the General was a "false prophet"; the Des Moines Register, finding the General moderate in tone and dignified; the Memphis Commercial Appeal, finding he had made an impressive showing against the Truman-Acheson-Attlee "appeasement cabal"; the Boston Herald, finding that the real issue was total war or total peace; the Richmond Times-Dispatch, believing the General to have been blinded to diplomatic and economic relationships in the free world and the U.N.; the Atlanta Constitution, likewise finding him to ignore the fact that the Korean action was by the U.N.; the Minnesota Tribune, finding his view oversimplified and not accounting for consequences; and the Portland (Me.) Press Herald, finding him a "patriot of towering stature" against an Administration "honeycombed with traitors".

As stated in the editorial above, a piece by C. Howard Smith, abstracted from Better Homes and Gardens, discusses young children and teenagers who did not respect the property of others and engaged in destruction of same. He suggests that parents spend time with such children and guide them regarding the proper respect for property, without being overly harsh in reaction to inadvertent destruction. Flying off the handle could lead to the child developing an unduly possessive, selfish attitude toward his or her own property. He also recommends inviting the gang over for hot dogs when the child explained that he had gone along with the gang to fit in and in so doing had destroyed property of others.

A letter writer extols the speech of General MacArthur as "the acme of human physical distinction" and a "consummate vindication".

A letter writer finds the people and Congress being governed too much by emotion and not enough by intellect in the Truman-MacArthur controversy, thinks that the President, while lacking some of the qualities desirable in a President, had acted in his proper role in relieving the General who had contested Administration policies.

A letter writer condemns the 1951 Legislature as unrepresentative of the people of the state, especially so in refusing to pass the statewide referendum on alcohol. He adds that Governor Kerr Scott was right when he said that the 1951 Assembly was a negative one.

Framed Edition
[Return to Links
Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News<i><i><i>—</i></i></i>Framed Edition]
Links-Date Links-Subj.