The Charlotte News
Friday, April 27, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that U.N. troops withdrew at both ends of the 100-mile Korean front this date, moving back to Uijongbu in the west and abandoning Yanggu in the east, withdrawing below the 38th parallel, the last active North Korean foothold on the front. In both withdrawals, loss of contact occurred with the enemy.
Civilians fled by the thousands from Seoul as five enemy divisions approached, some to within eleven miles at Uijongbu, with 200,000 inhabitants of Seoul already having crossed the Han River and another 200,000 expected to follow, leaving about 100,000 still in the city.
In some sectors the enemy had gained 30 miles but paid a terrible price in lives for so doing, with the U.N. command estimating 35,000 killed during the previous four and a half days of the spring offensive.
Correspondent George A. McArthur, reporting from the west central front, tells of three American battalions fighting their way out of encirclement with nearly incredible acts of valor being demonstrated. A captain was wounded nine times and still fought. Two soldiers who had never fired an artillery gun hammered the enemy at point-blank range with a 105-mm. Howitzer. The three battalions were covering the allied withdrawal when they were ambushed and encircled.
Senator Taft said that unless Congress expressed itself clearly on Far Eastern policy, he feared that they would awaken to find Secretary of State Acheson's "appeasement" policies in effect. He said the country could follow three courses, that of containment in Korea, as favored by the President and the Joint Chiefs, the "appeasement" policy of Mr. Acheson, or the MacArthur policy of bombing Chinese bases and using Chinese Nationalist troops.
He said that the realistic choice was between that of Mr. Acheson or General MacArthur as the containment policy could not be followed indefinitely, leading as it did only to stalemate.
In Chicago, General MacArthur the night before spoke for 12 minutes at Soldier Field before an estimated crowd of 50,000, defending his policy in Korea, calling for a "positive and realistic" policy in the war, to "stop through strength this slaughter of America's sons." Many shouted repeatedly "no" when he said his public life was now closed. The speech climaxed the biggest and most clamorous celebration in Chicago's history. His next stop would be Milwaukee, his hometown, which planned a large greeting for him of some 700,000 persons. There were no planned speeches.
Russia had received considerable aid from the U.S. and Britain, some knowingly during the war and some by espionage afterward. Soviet satellites were already using some of the weaponry thus gained. It was speculated that the Soviets would be probably two to five years behind the U.S. in atomic development had it not been for espionage regarding nuclear secrets and the providing of prototypes of the best jet engines in existence.
In London, Winston Churchill canceled a trip to the U.S. at the invitation of president Harold Stassen to speak at the University of Pennsylvania, because of the British Government crisis resulting from the resignations of Aneurin Bevan as Labor Minister and Harold Wilson as head of the Board of Trade, as well as other lower Cabinet officials. It was also speculated in the British press that Mr. Churchill did not wish to become embroiled in the political debate in the U.S. regarding the Administration policy versus that of General MacArthur.
The British Admiralty announced that the Royal Navy munitions ship Bedenham had blown up at Gibraltar during the morning killing six persons and injuring an undetermined number. The cause of the blast was as yet unknown.
In Paris, the National Assembly rejected a proposed new election law, potentially precipitating a new Cabinet crisis, with Premier Henri Queuille, in office for only a little more than a month, hinting before the vote that he would quit if the measure failed of passage. The bill passed by a simple majority but needed three more votes for a legal majority.
The House Appropriations Committee recommended cuts to the 1951-1952 fiscal year budget for 27 Federal agencies by ten percent, a total of 666 million dollars, reducing the overall budget for the agencies to 6.17 billion dollars, whereas the President had sought 6.84 billion. The same agencies had received nearly twelve billion the previous year.
Federal Reserve Board member Marriner Eccles told the Senate Banking Committee that the RFC should be abolished without further delay. He said that there was no place for Government lending to private business in the private enterprise system.
In Danville, Va., a TWUA union official was arrested on a charge of illegal possession of explosives and another charge of adultery—"criminal conversation", as it was sometimes called under the statutes of the original colonies.
A question for the jury might be
whether he intended to use the explosives in his commission of
adultery.
On the editorial page, "Are We Ready for the Next Step?" discusses the belief of the opponents of General MacArthur's four-point plan for winning the war in Korea, bombing of Chinese supply bases, blockading of its coastal areas, stepping up economic sanctions, and use of Nationalist Chinese forces in the war, that it would result in entry to the war by the Russians or provoke Russian aggression elsewhere. Proponents of his plan, however, appeared to accept the General's contention that Russia would not necessarily intervene in the event of adoption of the plan.
But both groups, posits the piece, had overlooked the advice of former Ambassador to Britain Lewis Douglas, that a fundamental rule of behavior in international relations was to be "ready to take the steps which may be required after taking the first". Failure to recognize it, he added, could lead to full-scale war.
If the General was right and Russia did not intervene, then his plan would presumably sweep the Communists out of Korea. But then there would need be an allied force present for an indefinite duration to maintain the border.
If the General was wrong, and Russia did intervene, then the U.N. forces could either withdraw completely from Korea or provide enough men and materiel to meet and repel Russian intervention, possibly entailing bombing of the sanctuary in Manchuria, extending westward across Siberia, even to the Soviet satellite countries, thus very likely provoking a third world war.
It asks rhetorically whether the country and its allies were prepared for either such contingency and finds that they were not.
Thus, it concludes that until Ambassador Douglas's advice was heeded, no thoughtful American could endorse the MacArthur policy without serious apprehensions regarding the country's security and that of the free world.
"'The Awful Responsibility'" finds the Administration strategy of containment of the war in Korea to be paying off, as the orderly retreat of the allied forces in Korea, trading ground for more enemy lives, was working well, with allied casualties maintained at a minimum. One American commander said that the cost to the Chinese in the current offensive was the highest in the history of warfare. Air and artillery had been so effective that in some areas, the allies had not needed to use their rifles.
The hope of the Administration policy was to bring China to the peace table in the realization of the fruitlessness of their effort in the midst of their own slaughter.
The President appeared to say the previous day that if the Chinese enlarged the area of conflict, it would result in quick retaliation by the allies. The choice was up to China.
"A Change in Climate" finds that, in contrast to fall, 1947 when the "Hollywood Ten"
refused to testify before HUAC and went to jail for their beliefs,
the dam had broken as one of their number, director Edward Dmytryk,
had testified that he had been a member of the Communist Party and
had turned against it. Actors Sterling Hayden and Larry Parks had
preceded him to the confessional
HUAC chairman, Congressman John Wood of Georgia, said that Mr. Dmytryk turned out to be not much of a Communist.
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had estimated that about one-third of the Communist Party members in the country were disaffected and wanted to pull away from the party but had been deterred by fear of imprisonment or public disgrace and loss of employment from admitting membership.
It finds that by making it easier for former Communists to make the break, the area of distrust was being narrowed while the country recovered its values, permitting a man to make a mistake as long as he was willing to make amends for it.
The piece fails to discuss, however,
the price for the admission with impunity of party membership, that
being naming names of others present at Communist meetings, in the
parlance of the film noir movies of the time, "becoming
a rat
"April Evening" poetically describes the soft rain of an April evening.
"And then through the rustle of the rain there comes a new set of sounds—the scraping of a small table against the flagstone porch floor, the thump of a heavy object, the placing of a chair, the crinkle of paper, and finally the soft tapping of typewriter keys as, while the Saintpaulia are soaking, he fills up tomorrow's editorial column."
We think "he", however, should be "we" or "one", as "he" is too personal. But we are not he; nor is it raining this evening.
Drew Pearson tells of Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn supporting the President in firing General MacArthur but deploring aspects of the way it was handled, thought the President could benefit from good public relations men.
It was believed that the President should have fired the General after the Korean disaster of December rather than waiting, as public support was now in the General's corner whereas earlier it would have favored the President.
With few exceptions, such as Dean Acheson, FDR had never fired anyone outright. He usually sent them abroad to undertake a survey and then eased them out afterward. With Mr. Acheson, then Undersecretary of the Treasury, President Roosevelt had fired him as he waited in an outer office, oblivious to his impending fate, being fired for disagreeing with the President about devaluing the gold content of the dollar.
Movie theaters were now showing the MacArthur address to Congress. Vice-President Alben Barkley had sat behind the General and maintained a stoic expression throughout the speech. The Vice-President's son-in-law was Douglas MacArthur III, a State Department adviser to General Eisenhower and nephew of General MacArthur.
The chief Congressional champion of the working girl was Congressman John Dingell of Michigan, who decried unfair taxes on women's cosmetics and handbags, the latter being subject to a 20 percent excise tax. He argued that no excise tax was imposed on paint for barns and so should not be on cosmetics. The Government should not be giving tax relief to a cow barn, he suggested, and not to a pretty woman's face. He also disfavored the 100 percent excise tax on cigarettes and the tax on beer.
Marquis Childs discusses the problem to come in the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings on the firing of General MacArthur and Far Eastern policy. The White House had released memos and messages between the General and the Pentagon, some of which had been to the consternation of the Pentagon for releasing valuable information to the enemy, such as the desire to establish a stable U.N. defense line south of Pyongyang the previous October. Similar information had been contained in a message between the Pentagon and the General when the General was dismissed. The issue was more important than who was right and who was wrong, for release of such delicate information could compromise the safety of the men fighting in the action.
The Joint Chiefs therefore were determined to keep certain documents completely secret, though wanting to remain aloof from the political controversy swirling around the firing. They intended therefore to try to separate the argument over strategy from the emotional quarrel over the dismissal of the General. If it could be done, he ventures, the public would likely be much more enlightened as to the real nature of the dispute and the need to avoid enlarging the war.
An important aspect of preventing enlargement of the war was the state of Japan's defenses, presently supplemented by two National Guard divisions sent three to four months earlier as a contingent force against the four Russian divisions amassed on neighboring Sakhalin.
He finds it fortunate that the inquiry would be conducted by Senator Richard Russell, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, who was judicious of mind and temperament and did not resort to the "hot-foot" techniques of Senator Tom Connally, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. The test of the Committee would especially come during the interrogation of General MacArthur.
Joseph Alsop, in Tehran, finds the current crisis in Iran to have become as an endemic disease. The patient had so far survived but, soon or late, the disease would prove fatal and at that point Iran and the Middle East would be lost to the West. Only a dramatic cure delivered by the U.S. and Britain acting in concert would prevent that catastrophe.
The Shah, the official government and the army were also gradually losing authority, as the depressed masses were encouraged to undertake more desperate action. The Tudeh Party was the only hard organization in the country, leaving a vacuum made to order for Soviet planners.
The Soviets were planning a "liberation" force to enter from their side of the border when strikes materialized. With the Iranian army scattered to deal with unrest in various places, the result was foreordained.
Iran therefore needed a strong government, had to deal immediately with unemployment, and develop a long-term program of social and economic improvement.
But to bring about these changes was easier said than done. The U.S. needed to form a partnership with Britain, even at the risk of alienating Iranians who despised the imperialist British. Then the question arose as to how to exert influence. Somewhat harsh diplomatic measures might have to be undertaken to make it plain to the ill-informed Iranians where their interests actually lay.
The U.S. also would need to provide aid, approximately a quarter of a billion dollars worth, to make such a program work. A joint Anglo-American body would be required to administer it. The task ahead, therefore, was difficult. But the price for shirking the responsibility would be disastrous and irrevocable.
Robert C. Ruark tells of Gilda Gray
She was suing Columbia Pictures for
pirating her specialty in the film "Gilda"
Framed Edition
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