The Charlotte News

Monday, April 23, 1951

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that U.N. troops withdrew as much as 12 miles after enemy offensive action along a hundred miles of the Korean front this date, while in other sectors the enemy was stopped. The offensive had begun Sunday evening with 700,000 men moving behind the enemy's heaviest artillery barrage of the war. The advance eased Monday but was renewed at nightfall. The allied command said it was too early to tell whether this was the long-awaited spring offensive.

The enemy had forged the Imjin River along a 15-mile front in the west, checked by concentrated U.N. air and artillery fire which killed numerous enemy soldiers, estimated at 1,800, the largest single-day toll in the previous three and a half months. U.N. troops withdrew south of the Hantan River in the adjoining sector to the east, blowing the bridges behind them. All along the central front, allied troops "'rolled with the punch'".

Allied forces stood firm on the east central front against enemy assaults through Sunday night and Monday morning, at which point action quieted.

On the extreme eastern front, the enemy drove wedges into the defense line north of Inje.

Correspondent John Randolph, on the western front, tells of an account of the charge by the enemy, that they were blowing bugles and yelling "Mansei" as they came up the valley toward the allied troops. A soldier said he held a bazooka from which he fired all of his seventeen shells as they approached in darkness. At one point, as he was treating their warrant officer who had been shot, an enemy soldier rushed their position and he stabbed him with his bayonet, then shot him. He said that he did not think the enemy would get past them this time.

The Defense Department asked for the draft during the months of July through September of 1,202 doctors who had been deferred during World War II to attend medical school and who had served less than 90 days in the armed forces, to fill a gap not met by volunteers.

Senator Taft said to a reporter that Republicans would insist on an investigation of every aspect of the Truman-MacArthur controversy on Far Eastern policies. The Senate Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees had agreed to conduct investigations of the firing by the President of General MacArthur two weeks earlier.

General MacArthur received a cable from South Korean President Syngman Rhee lauding him for his "magnificent" address to Congress the prior Thursday.

The General, his wife and son remained in seclusion at their New York hotel and planned to attend the circus during the afternoon of this date, no doubt so that Arthur, 13, could see some more monkeys.

We went to see some Monkees at age 13 but had stopped by then going to the circus, being by that point more interested in the opposite sex, sitting a couple or three rows in front of us.

The Administration's drive to stiffen inflation controls was about to be switched to labor and agriculture after the job with respect to business had been completed.

Former Ambassador to Great Britain, Lewis Douglas, told an annual luncheon of the Associated Press that Britain and the U.S. needed each other more than at any other time, because of the threat posed by Russia to the security of Western Europe, with Britain as the last reliable bastion to withstand aggression before it could reach U.S. shores.

In London, Aneurin Bevan said to the House of Commons that he had quit as Labor Minister in the Labor Cabinet of Prime Minister Clement Attlee because Britain had been "dragged too far behind the wheels of American diplomacy." He was protesting increases in Britain's expenditure on arms and commensurate cuts in medical services in the new fiscal year budget, warning that it would undermine the civilian economy of the Western world outside America by gobbling up raw materials.

Many in the Labor Party believed that the budget debate would defeat the Attlee Government during the week, bringing on the necessity for general elections. Future Prime Minister and current president of the Board of Trade, Harold Wilson, had been reported by many newspapers to have also resigned after Mr. Wilson did not show up at a Cabinet meeting this date at No. 10 Downing Street, and it was speculated that other junior ministers in the Government might follow. Conservative publications howled that Mr. Bevan had brought down the Labor Government when Mr. Churchill had failed to do so. Conservative Party Leader Mr. Churchill was delighted that his party, he believed, would soon be back in power.

The Supreme Court rejected the petitions for review of seven Nazis sentenced to death in Germany for atrocities during the war in concentration camps. They were the last Nazis scheduled for execution as war criminals. Only Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas favored review, with Justice Robert Jackson, who had served as chief U.S. prosecutor during the Nuremberg war tribunal, recusing himself from participation in the decision. The seven men had originally been scheduled for execution on February 14, delayed so that the High Court could consider their petitions.

Actor John Garfield testified before HUAC that Communism was "tyranny" and that he had never been a Communist. He offered to tell anything he knew about Communist activities in Hollywood but disclaimed acquaintance with many of those about whom he was asked by the Committee.

Democratic Governor Mennen Williams of Michigan named Blair Moody, Washington correspondent for the Detroit News and a Democrat, as the interim Senator to replace deceased GOP Senator Arthur Vandenberg, who had died the previous week after a protracted illness. Mr. Moody was described as a "New Dealer from the start." The appointment increased the Democrats' majority in the Senate to 50 to 46, whereas it had been 49 to 47. The interim appointment would not expire until January 3, 1953.

On the editorial page, "The Military Takes Over" finds the future not being good for preservation of civilian control of the military and diplomatic foreign policy of the nation after General MacArthur's speech to Congress upon return to the U.S. for the first time since 1937. He had come home to "sell" his policy on the Far East, in response to General Eisenhower having toured European capitals in January and February to "sell" the idea of NATO.

The scheduled hearings before Congress on Far Eastern policy promised a line of prominent military figures, including Generals Marshall and Bradley, as, respectively, Secretary of Defense and Joint Chiefs chairman, as well as the other Chiefs.

It suggests that the military men should only be advisers on policy not policy-makers. The nation needed stronger civilian leadership. The President was held in low public esteem and Secretary of State Acheson had never been popular with the people, and insinuations against his loyalty had caused his image to suffer even more. The diplomatic corps was filled with vanity appointments. The Congress also lacked leadership, Senator Vandenberg, who had just died, having been the only giant in Congress standing for bipartisan foreign policy. That left Senators Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., Leverett Saltonstall, both of Massachusetts, and James Duff of Pennsylvania to pick up the slack, but the other Republicans were considered lackeys of party lines, concerned primarily with jockeying for success in the 1952 presidential election.

It finds that after the public heard the military testimony in the hearings on the MacArthur policy conflict with the Administration, opinion would turn shortly to strong civilian leadership as the American people instinctively rebelled against military control.

So, in 1952, they will vote for General Eisenhower, the first and only career military officer to become President since U.S. Grant in 1869.

"Mark of a Dictatorship" tells of the Franco dictatorship in Spain being as bad as ever, after a report appeared that a New York Times correspondent had his press credential revoked by the Spanish Government for the way he and the Times generally had presented the picture of Spain in the newspaper. Since a hunger strike in Barcelona the prior month, censorship or delays in approval of press reports had been imposed. While it was acceptable for censors to stop reports which threatened a nation's security, this strike did not fall in that category and might threaten the Franco regime, thus newsworthy.

It finds that the Franco attitude fell consistently in the same vein as that of Stalin, Hitler, Peron, Mussolini and Hirohito, that a dictatorship could not survive amid a free press. The revocation of the press credential was another indication that the precept was still being practiced in Spain, as in Russia and Argentina.

"The Perilous Passage" finds it no surprise that in such troubling times, divorce rates were high locally, with 3,500 divorce cases taken to court, and that representing only about one in five marriages actually in trouble. Tom Fesperman, in his three-part series published the previous week on the problems of Mecklenburg County families, had suggested the need for expanded court facilities to handle family law matters, with social workers also needed to follow up on the problems adjudicated. But there was not a great deal which could be done to cure the sick marriages and divorce was often the only remedy. The next generation, it predicts, would benefit from a better domestic relations program.

A piece from the New York Times, titled "Teddy Roosevelt's Letters", comments on the publication of the first two of nine projected volumes of letters of the former President and Vice-President, starting at age ten.

It notes that while enjoyable reading, the letters also confirmed that it would do no good to warn children that if they could not spell they could not become President, as President Roosevelt had always referred to President Grover Cleveland as "Cleavland".

It is perhaps an unfortunate accident of history that one writing in particular from TR's writings is likely the one best known to historians.

Drew Pearson tells of having last spoken to recently deceased Senator Vandenberg the previous December following the defeat of allied forces in Korea and their forced withdrawal from the Yalu River front, following which GOP Senators had turned bitterly against bipartisan foreign policy. He had told Mr. Pearson that his fellow Republicans were probably not subject to his cajoling to get together with the Administration by that point, that when he was active in the Senate before his illness, there were constant conferences to encourage teamwork between the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the State Department. The result had been NATO, out of a truly bipartisan effort. But now that relationship appeared to have eroded. Mr. Pearson posits that part of the reason for that erosion was the absence of the Senator, himself.

In addition to Congressional ratification of NATO, he had been responsible also for passage of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe economically. He, unlike most politicians, had the capacity to change his mind, as during the Thirties he had been an isolationist, even encouraged in 1936 by isolationist publisher, Col. Bertie McCormick, to run as vice-president with Alf Landon on the GOP ticket of that year. The Chicago Tribune and Col. McCormick never forgave him for deserting the isolationist cause after the war.

Mr. Pearson finds that the Senator deserved all the tributes which the American people could give him and that he would go down in history as one of the political heroes of the times.

On the Armed Services Committee, only Senator William Knowland of California had the courage to vote against the President's promotion of his personal physician, Brig. General Wallace Graham, to Major General, after hearings had investigated his past grain speculation which he claimed had ceased, and his meteoric rise between 1941 as a first lieutenant to become a brigadier general in 1946, through the assistance of White House military aide, Maj. General Harry Vaughan. Senators Richard Russell and Lyndon Johnson of the Committee had come to General Graham's defense, citing his war record as a field surgeon and his many decorations, Senator Johnson adding that the Congress also had a full-time physician on duty for their care.

Stewart Alsop finds that the first round in the debate between the Administration policy and that of General MacArthur had gone to the General by virtue of his speech to Congress the prior Thursday, with its dramatic conclusion in which the General said he was an old solider fading away. But, says Mr. Alsop, he was not going to fade away, as the MacArthur personality was clearly a major factor in American politics, with a long-term decisive impact on domestic politics as well as foreign policy.

When Mr. Alsop had visited with General MacArthur two years earlier, he had been regarded as something more than human even by those who were his critics. He reminds, however, that the General was, while a remarkable individual, a man, not a god, and "extremely human, oddly old-fashioned in manner, transparently patriotic, often very shrewd, sometimes quite moving when he speaks, sometimes simply theatrical." To find him after all of that to be only a man and not a god was extremely disappointing.

Those in the Administration mounting the counter-attack were counting on that very reaction of the country eventually. The Administration in consequence was looking forward to the hearings on the policy dispute before the Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, where the General would be forced to defend his proposal on Far Eastern policy, which he believed would end the "prolonged indecision" regarding the Korean war, and the problems associated with the U.S. unilaterally undertaking his proposed attacks on China, over the will of virtually all allies. The Administration hoped that his responses would reduce the General back to human stature.

Marquis Childs tells of extremist admirers of General MacArthur probably being disappointed in his speech, as merely a carefully worded exposition of his policy stand on Communist China and the Chinese Nationalists on Formosa. His one surprise was that the Joint Chiefs had agreed with him that China's supply bases ought be bombed and coastal areas blockaded and that the Chinese Nationalists, with U.S. logistical support, ought be used against the Chinese Communists.

Two days earlier in a Chicago speech, General Bradley had said that the strategy of the military was to confine the war to Korea. Some had said he was merely following the political line of the President in so saying. But that was false because of the circumstances surrounding the speech, which he proceeds to provide.

Mr. Childs concludes that as far as he could determine, there was no disagreement among the Joint Chiefs over strategy and thus the statements by General MacArthur required further investigation by Congress to determine the truth.

R. F. Beasley, of the Monroe Journal, starts his piece: "Jaybird flew in a peckerwood's hole,/ Peckerwood said 'dog gone your soul.'" It was stimulated by Nell Battle Lewis of the Raleigh News & Observer observing that a peckerwood had drilled holes in one of her columns of her piazza.

Why was she eating piazza in the first instance?

She understood that Louis Graves of the Chapel Hill Weekly had a blunderbuss with which he could blow away such noisome birds and so called upon him for help, which he was delighted to provide. But before he could get there, Ms. Lewis set a rat-trap for the woodpecker and after snapping at it a couple times, it departed the premises.

The incident had caused the two to begin writing columns about the birds they found acceptable and those which were deemed pests. Pigeons had fallen under the latter group.

While Mr. Beasley had liked the taste of squab, he had not eaten it but one time, found the bird amiable enough but also selfish, biting the hand which fed it, were it to its interest.

An old preacher had said of women that they were like an old oak tree, fine appearing on the outside but "doty at the butt". The pigeon was of that sort, with a "Queen Anne front and a Mary Jane back."

The pigeon smokes dope?

A Quote of the Day: "There are some things men can do and women cannot. There are some things both can do. There are some things women can do and men cannot. And war needs a lot of the services that only men can do; it needs some of the services that both can do, but it has no need for the things only women can do." —Kingsport (Tenn.) Times

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