The Charlotte News
Tuesday, April 24, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that nearly a half-million enemy troops crashed through a hole in the center of allied lines during their third invasion of South Korea during the war, bending back the right flank of the allies. South Korean units crumbled at the center of the 100-mile line, exposing other allied divisions. The penetration into South Korea was at least four miles but censorship prevented disclosure of the exact additional distance of the penetration.
On the eastern flank, the enemy overran Inje, as defense of the town, four miles north of the 38th parallel, collapsed.
Enemy losses were estimated at being ten to twenty times greater than that of the allies.
New supreme allied commander Lt. General Matthew Ridgway visited the front and ventured that the great battle might prove decisive and that he had complete confidence in his forces.
Columns of Korean refugees clogged the highways moving south of the central and western fronts.
Senator Richard Russell, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, announced that the Senate inquiry into the firing of General MacArthur and Far Eastern policy would begin May 3.
In answer to a press question regarding a statement by General MacArthur's aide that the General did not know precisely why he had been fired by the President, press secretary Joseph Short said that the President had sent to the General a written list of the reasons at the time of the firing.
In New York, a man hit on the head with a half-pound paper weight thrown amid the confetti in New York City during the General's parade the prior Friday, died of a fractured skull.
In London, Prime Minister Clement Attlee's forces and the rebellious Laborites on the left, led by resigned Labor Minister Aneurin Bevan, formed a compromise to keep the Labor Government in power as long as possible, to prevent a general election at the current time. In exchange for unity, the Attlee forces agreed to allow Mr. Bevan to abstain without objection in the vote in Commons this night regarding the Government bill to add a 50 percent surcharge on false teeth and spectacles, while his supporters would support the bill. Ordinarily, such a bill would not require a vote for passage. The deal came after a third Government leader, John Freeman, parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Supply, had resigned, following Mr. Bevan and future Prime Minister Harold Wilson, head of the Board of Trade, the previous day. The Government announced the appointments of Alfred Robens as the new Labor Minister and Sir Hartley Shawcross to replace Mr. Wilson.
In Yokohama, Japan, at least 97 persons, seven of whom were American soldiers, were killed when a dangling power line set fire to a wooden railway coach. Thirty-nine persons escaped through windows but all were injured.
The Government granted 276,000 stores another 30-day extension, until May 30, to put in place the new price ceilings, issued February 27.
The Democrats nationally were considering opening the 1952 campaign on Labor Day weekend the following year at the farm of Governor Kerr Scott, a proposal made by a group of North Carolina Democrats, including the Governor, future Senator B. Everett Jordan, and national committeeman Jonathan Daniels, to serve notice on the Dixiecrats that the North Carolina gubernatorial candidate would be a regular Democrat. DNC chairman William Boyle looked favorably upon the idea and promised to recommend it to the presidential nominee.
Ellsworth Bunker of Yonkers, N.Y., former chairman of the Board of National Sugar Refining Co., arrived in Buenos Aires to assume his duties as Ambassador to Argentina. Ambassador Bunker would achieve prominence as Ambassador to South Vietnam during the crucial period of the Vietnam War, between 1967 and 1973, serving under both Presidents Johnson and Nixon.
French forces struck this date into the area around Saigon routed of Communists, destroying one arms factory and setting afire a number of Vietminh installations.
Benjamin Gitlow testified before the Subversive Activities Control Board that Russian secret police had been operating in the country for about 30 years and that he had been ousted from the Communist Party after a dispute with Josef Stalin in 1929. The Board was holding hearings to determine whether to require registration with the Attorney General of Communist Party members as a foreign-controlled organization.
Actor Marc Lawrence
In Dallas, N.C., three prisoners
overcame a road gang guard at the State prison camp the previous day,
stole a prison camp truck, held a guard and a foreman captive until
they could steal an automobile and effect their escape. By nightfall,
police had recaptured two of the men but the third, considered the
most dangerous of the three, was able to absquatulate
The American Red Cross issued an urgent call for 168 pints of Type "O" blood from 504 donors in the Charlotte regional area, to be shipped to Korea by Friday morning. Only Charlotte area blood would do, as it was blue.
On the editorial page, "Offensive in Korea" tells of the spring offensive initiated by the Communist forces in Korea, estimated at between 400,000 and 700,000, being set to drown out the "political popguns" in Washington. Early reports showed small retreats by the allies to better positions while artillery and air support had a field day. New field commander, Lt. General James Van Fleet, believed his forces would stem the tide of the enemy, but observers in Washington appeared not so certain in light of the buildup of air strength by the enemy north of the Yalu River.
Each side had its sanctuaries thus far, China having Manchuria in which to stage operations and from which to provide supplies, and the allies having Southern Korea, Okinawa and Japan for the purpose. But if enemy air power were to become effective, the calculations to avoid extension of the war might become moot. As the President had said that the U.N. forces would not withdraw from Korea, the piece assumes that in the event of a newly effective enemy air war, the war would be expanded to include the strategy favored by General MacArthur, hitting the Chinese supply bases, blockading coastal areas and using Chinese Nationalist troops in the war.
"Britain's 'Great Debate'" discusses the resignation
Britain therefore appeared now engaged in its "Great Debate" and the outcome would affect the United States. As former Ambassador to Britain Lewis Douglas had recently said, the U.S. and Britain needed one another in a united front more than ever as Britain stood as the last effective bulwark to Communist aggression before it would reach U.S. shores.
The piece posits that no domestic issue should be permitted to destroy the fundamental unity of interest and purpose of the two democracies.
"Kids and Nature" praises the Junior League for its dedicated help over the prior six years in formation of the recently opened $68,000 Children's Nature Museum in Freedom Park, for helping to educate children raised in the city to an understanding of the fauna in the country.
"The Weather" quotes an anonymous poem on the subject, that man was formed by the weather around him, because this time of year provoked thought of the coming of warm weather and its many benefits, including that "bathing girls will be available for observation on the beaches".
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Imperious Direction, Pro and Con", reprints General MacArthur's letter to the VFW of August 28, 1950, in which he called "fallacious" the argument that to defend Formosa would alienate continental Asia and added that those who so advocated failed to understand Oriental respect for aggressive, resolute leadership and lack of respect for timidity.
It then quotes from his speech to Congress the prior week in which he said that the people of Asia "covet the right to shape their own destiny" and were seeking "friendly guidance, understanding and support, not imperious direction, the dignity of equality and not the shame of subjugation."
No comment is included.
Drew Pearson tells of a new super bomb in development which would be tested on Eniwetok Atoll on May 6 or 12, with top Congressional and military leaders present to observe. A giant howitzer, capable of firing atomic shells, also had been developed and was set to be in production within three to five months. Radiological warfare had also been developed, capable of contaminating a city without loss of life or property. The latter was that which Congressman Albert Gore of Tennessee had in mind when he proposed establishment of an atomic belt across Korea to act as a no-man's land between North and South.
The joint Atomic Energy Committee was looking into Mr. Gore's suggestion, but AEC representatives had testified that radiological warfare would cut down on the availability of material with which to produce atom bombs. They suggested, however, the alternative of using radioactive waste, buried in the southwest deserts, for the purpose. But such waste might remain active for centuries, indefinitely preventing any army from entering the contaminated zone. It was possible to isolate from the long-term radioactive ingredients those which were only short-term, but the process was expensive and the radioactive components had to be used immediately. Moreover, the lead-lined containers in which such material had to be transported to prevent contamination of the handlers were clumsy and heavy.
Letters regarding General MacArthur were being sent by constituents even to former members of Congress, as former Senate Majority Leader Scott Lucas of Illinois, defeated the prior November for re-election, who had received about 500 such letters. One of them, from a school teacher, said that she had become convinced since the former Democratic Leader had taken office that he was first an American and second a Republican, wondered therefore why he had let the Administration get away with such a "high-handed deed".
Senators Karl Mundt, Bourke Hickenlooper and William Jenner chided Senator Herman Welker of Idaho for joining in a eulogy of Senator Arthur Vandenberg, as Senator Welker had been a major political opponent of the deceased Senator's bipartisanship on foreign policy.
Joseph Alsop, in Tehran, tells of the crisis in Iran potentially bringing down the country's shaky government, especially as a rumored trip to Paris by the Shah for an appendectomy would remove the last element of stability, with the potential also for a chain reaction generally through the Middle East. The stakes were high, as the denial of oil to the West would potentially turn the balance of world power.
Just when Russia probably intended to use force in the region, as in Korea, it had switched strategies to temporary amiability, to lull the feckless ruling class in Iran to sleep. Nationalization of the oil, depriving thereby the oil to their Western protectors, would likely not have occurred had not the politicians forgotten the threat posed by Russia on Iran's northern border.
This amiability had facilitated during the prior year the growth in strength of the Tudeh Party. If the army remained loyal and dependable, dependent in part on the actions of the Shah, the crisis might be weathered. But the country needed a strong government to reduce the internal problems associated with poor living conditions for the masses. To do that would require strong British and American effort and aid. Things had drifted for so long, however, that it would be difficult.
Robert C. Ruark tells of emerging from his temporary health setback in time to see General MacArthur's speech before Congress the prior Thursday, having been spared the process of the firing. The General had stressed that the object of war was victory, not "prolonged indecision", and Mr. Ruark thinks that was something of which the country should not need reminding. Yet, it was not how things had been going in Korea.
He finds it hard to understand why the Communist Chinese were the enemy to be killed in Korea but not in Chinese territory, for fear of provoking general war, when, technically, the U.N. forces were already at war with China. He thinks it to suggest something out of the jabberwocky world of Alice in Wonderland.
He says that during his illness he had dreamed quite fancifully, but not so much as that General MacArthur would be fired and return home a hero, "to the slavish adulation of his nation." The General had also left Washington, following his return to the U.S. for the first time since 1937, without visiting the President, another peculiar circumstance in the drama.
General opinion appeared to be that while the President had looked initially brave in the firing, after the speech, he appeared as bullheaded and childish.
Nothing made much sense when a midget had to fire a giant "to make the giant loom taller and the midget shrink smaller."
Lay off the fire-water and it might not seem so when your head is clear and you stop thinking militaristically, restoring your faith in the Constitution and its provision for civilian control of the Government.
A letter writer criticizes syndicated columnist Thomas Stokes for suggesting that General MacArthur had been partially responsible for the court martial conviction of Billy Mitchell for insubordination, as the General had sat on the court martial. But the writer corrects that General MacArthur had been the only dissenting vote against conviction.
A letter writer from Pittsboro supports the newspaper in its editorial supporting the President's decision to fire General MacArthur to preserve civilian control of the military under the Constitution. He says that two world wars had been lost during his lifetime and the country could not afford a third such loss, urges the country to stop playing with fire.
A letter writer answers a previous letter from a minister, advises refraining from engaging in political debate and sticking to the study of the Bible and preparation of sermons. He disagrees that General MacArthur had gotten too big for his britches.
"Its true that sometimes a
person gets to big for their britches and it is also true that
sometimes a person gets to little for their britches and so when a
man is to small for haberdasher store business he is to small for
presidential britches
English was sort of a second
language, we take it, to this writer, or at least proper orthography,
considered tertiary to understanding of what the hell about which he
was talking. We are not familiar with these participial phrases "to
big", "to little"
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.