The Charlotte News
Wednesday, April 25, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that allied tanks and troops had engaged in counterattacks against the enemy on the central front, resulting in an estimated 750 enemy killed north of Kapyong, 33 miles northeast of Seoul. Allied troops, however, withdrew north of Seoul and on the extreme western front in the face of the enemy crossing of the Imjin River. The enemy had been stalled on the central front since their 20-mile breakthrough during the prior two days, while at other points they had been pushed back.
Field commander, Lt. General James Van Fleet, told the troops that in three days of battle, they had proved themselves superior to the 400,000 enemy troops engaged in the spring, rainy-season offensive. The General expressed confidence in victory.
The Department of Defense announced that U.S. casualties increased during the week by 969, to a total of 61,744 for the war since the prior June 25. The total included 9,380 killed, 41,428 wounded and 10,936 missing. The counts were of those for whom notification had been made to next of kin through April 20.
The Army announced plans to cut its June draft call to 20,000 men and bring home around 20,000 men from Korea starting in May.
Secretary of State Acehson said that aid to Nationalist China was being sent by the U.S. for the purpose of maintaining Formosa's internal security and for self-defense.
Republican Senators Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin and Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa called for the bombing of Chinese supply bases in Manchuria, while Democratic Senator Bob Kerr of Oklahoma questioned a report by an aide of General MacArthur that new supreme commander of U.N. forces, Lt. General Matthew Ridgway, had urged use of the Chinese Nationalists in the war, as had General MacArthur.
Film director Edward Dmytryk, one of the "Hollwood Ten" found guilty of contempt of Congress and sentenced to jail, broke his previous silence before HUAC in 1947, the finding of contempt for which having resulted in his serving six months in jail before his recent release. He admitted that he was a member of the Communist Party briefly during the period 1944-45, but said that he had a change of heart since 1947 and now believed the party to be engaged in "treasonable" conduct, so agreed to talk about Communist activities within the movie industry.
We would be tempted to suggest, were
Tricky Ricky still on HUAC, that Mr. Dmytryk had been r.f'd., so to
speak
Among Mr. Dmytryk's better known directorial efforts were
"Crossfire"
Abraham Polonsky, author,
screenwriter
Economic Stabilizer Eric Johnston approved a six-cents per hour wage hike for a million railway workers, even though it exceeded the Government's ten percent ceiling above wages set in January, 1950. He followed the recommendation of a three-person panel which reviewed the matter, finding that the six-cent increase was due under a cost-of-living clause in the contract.
The House Appropriations Committee found puzzling a claim by a contractor employed by the Army Corps of Engineers to rehabilitate Sampson Air Force Base in New York, which stated that one worker had put in for 23.5 hours per day during a Friday through Sunday period after already working forty hours during the first four days of the week. One Congressman guessed that he was sleeping during part of this claimed work time, and another added that the case illustrated the dishonesty and fraud against the Government being used by such contractors. The man had claimed he had worked without sleep or shaving and had eaten only one meal per day during the three-day period.
He was Sampson.
In Pittsburgh, CIO leader Philip Murray, following a trip to Youngstown, O., was reported seriously ill with acute inflammation of the pancreas. He would live until November, 1952.
In London, new British Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison, speaking at a luncheon of the American Chamber of Commerce, pledged that Britain would cut its standard of living before cutting its proposed rearmament program, over which Labor Minister Aneurin Bevan and president of the Board of Trade, Harold Wilson, had quit earlier in the week.
In Prague, the chief of the
Associated Press bureau, William Oatis
In Yokohama, Japan, the death toll in the fire of a wooden railroad car the previous day, caused by a fallen power line, was raised to 104, of whom three, rather than seven, as initially reported, were American soldiers. The doors had trapped passengers and the Transportation Minister said that the wooden coaches would be redesigned to permit the doors to open in case of emergency.
Off Key West, Fla., a commercial DC-4 airliner, operated by Pan Am, and a Navy training plane collided and crashed into the ocean this date. The commercial plane carried 34 passengers.
On the editorial page, "A Study in Contrast" suggests that the debate over foreign policy might result in a Republican victory in the presidential election of 1952, causing either demolition or radical remodeling of the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, NATO, and even the U.N.
In Britain, resigned Labor Minister Aneurin Bevan had triggered a debate regarding whether the largest peacetime military budget in that country's history, 13.6 billion dollars, was too much, resulting in cuts to the national health care program. Just as this controversy threatened to turn Britain away from NATO unity and harm the Anglo-American alliance, so, too, did the debate over the MacArthur policy threaten the security of Britain and Western Europe. No one could plan ahead if there were no continuity of foreign policy from government to government in each country.
It suggests, therefore, seeing the country and its policies as others saw them, to better inform the "Greater Debate" regarding whether to follow the Administration's policy of putting Western Europe first and limiting the war in Korea to Korea or to follow the MacArthur policy, fraught with its many uncertainties and dangers of expanded war to include China and Russia, plus preoccupying larger U.S. forces in the Far East when men were needed to supplement the security of Western Europe.
"Some Questions for the General" suggests the logical sequence of events were Russia not to intervene in the Korean war should the country follow the favored policy of General MacArthur and bomb Chinese supply bases, blockade coastal areas, step up economic sanctions, and use Chinese Nationalists in the war with U.S. logistical support. After preparing those four contingencies, it was presumed by the advocates of the policy that the Chinese Communists would withdraw north of the Yalu River, leaving U.N. forces in control of all of Korea and thus resulting in the desirable unification of the country.
But it questions the General as to what would then become of the war with China, whether it would continue until China sued for peace. And it wonders how the Chinese Nationalist troops would be transported to the mainland and whether the U.S. would continue to supply them after they got there. It also wonders how many troops it would take to patrol and maintain the long Yalu River border with Manchuria and whether the U.N. allies would join in that policing chore. And it further wonders what would become of the whole U.N. experiment in collective action against aggression.
It was to be assumed that the long-range objective of the MacArthur policy was the overthrow of the Mao regime by the Nationalists, with U.S. assistance. It suggests that during his testimony before Congress, General MacArthur should be pressed to follow his strategy to its logical conclusion and state whether he merely intended to win the Korean war or also to overthrow the Communist regime in China.
"Tradition vs. Voting Machine" finds that the League of Women Voters had apparently suggested setting up one voting machine in the coming municipal election as an experiment, which would have been free to the County. But the Board of Elections turned it down and canned the whole proposal of having voting machines, favoring the human component as a traditional incident of participatory democracy. Moreover, transportation and costs of the machines, at $100,000 each, was found objectionable. The piece, however, believes that at least it should have been investigated and the trial run offered by the League accepted.
"Harvest of Happiness" writes of digging a garden being a means to an end, depending on the sort of garden you are digging.
A piece from the Wall Street Journal, titled "Sitting Pretty", says that there were 115 executives in the Economic Stabilization Agency, charged with keeping the lid on prices and wages to hold down inflation, with important enough jobs to rate $279 desks. And if they also had $155 easy chairs or 26 davenports at $268 each, the public should not complain too much as it was nice to know that somebody at E.S.A. was holding down something.
Drew Pearson says that the April 21 New York Times story on the MacArthur-Truman meeting on Wake Island the previous October had been assailed by critics of the Administration and supporters of the General as having been leaked by the White House. The General had responded that no record had been made of the meeting. But, says Mr. Pearson, his own account of that meeting printed on January 23—January 22 in The News—, could not be so attacked as the White House obviously had no affection for the man the President had called an "S.O.B." the previous year.
He thus repeats the salient portions of the previous column.
Marquis Childs discusses the odd juxtaposition of the death of Senator Arthur Vandenberg during the same week in which General MacArthur returned to the United States for the first time in 14 years and gave a speech to a joint session of Congress. Senator Vandenberg, once an isolationist before the war, had become the chief Republican exponent of bipartisan foreign policy and in so doing had alienated many powerful Republicans. When the prospect arose for his potential presidential nomination in 1948, those opponents made their objections known and claimed that he had been ambitiously scheming all along to gain political power.
In early 1944, the Senator had delivered unstinted praise to General MacArthur in a magazine article.
His death had left a change in the ratio of the Republicans to Democrats in the Senate, undoing by a seat a change favorable to the Republican minority the prior November, such that Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had gained a seat on the subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee which oversaw State Department funding, would lose that seat with the newly appointed Democrat from Michigan, Blair Moody, to fill the spot of Senator Vandenberg. It meant that Secretary of State Acheson would not have to worry any longer about facing his nemesis in Senator McCarthy every time he advocated more money for the Department.
In his last letters, Senator Vandenberg had demonstrated that he continued to want to return to the Senate and fight for his beliefs, putting political popularity behind him. His illness of the previous 18 months may have been the determining factor in slowing bipartisan accord on major policies, as his voice of moderation had been needed above all else.
Mr. Childs concludes that the Senator was a patriot and a statesman, something hard to find among modern politicians.
A letter writer finds the public overly enamored of the image of General MacArthur and wishes the country to take a long, hard look objectively at his record rather than following, like the children, the Pied Piper of Hamelin. He had committed the U.N. forces the prior November to a full-scale offensive in North Korea and advance to the Yalu River, precipitating the counter-offensive in late November which proved disastrous for the allies, forcing the mass evacuation at Hungnam. In so doing, he had assured the President and Joint Chiefs that the Chinese would not respond.
He had been insubordinate to the President, refusing to heed his directive not to make policy statements without approval from the State Department and Defense Department, repeatedly violating that directive.
This writer believes that had his policy been followed, it would have led to general war with China and possibly Russia.
A pome from the Atlanta Journal appears, "In Which A Word Of Caution Is Uttered Concerning The Extravagant Dissipation of Resources:
"In times of prosperity
Prepare for austerity."
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