The Charlotte News
Monday, April 9, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that the Chinese Communists had opened the flood gates of the Hwachon reservoir dam in central Korea this date and sent thousands of tons of water rushing down on allied-held ground. U.N. troops, however, resumed their advance toward the reservoir as the flood waters slowly receded. A task force moved toward the reservoir to try to seize it. The allied forces remained on high ground above the water.
An American engineer said that the allies were glad that the Chinese were bleeding the river in that manner as they would not have so much water should they open the gates fully. The engineers said that the enemy could not do any worse unless they blew up the dam.
The White House remained silent about the controversy over General MacArthur and his statements the prior Friday in a letter to House Minority Leader Joe Martin that the General disagreed on Administration policy with respect to use of Chinese Nationalists as guerrilla forces on the mainland, as well as stating that the Communist stand was in Asia rather than Europe. Press secretary Joseph Short said he had no comment in answer to a question as to whether the President was planning to rebuke the General. House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Senate Majority Leader Ernest McFarland, meeting with the President, said that there was hardly any mention of the General and no discussion of reprimand.
He would be relieved from command and called home on Wednesday.
Speaker Rayburn said that the country was in "terrible danger" which could bring on another world war because the Russians were building up concentrations "here and there and everywhere". He told reporters, when asked, that he had not made a similar comment the previous week just to get the universal military training bill passed.
In French Indo-China, a French army source said that a Chinese battalion, probably comprised of Communist irregulars, was believed to have halted its march toward Lai Chau, 170 miles northwest of Hanoi. The Chinese battalion had crossed the frontier on April 1 and headed toward Lai Chau after seizing the frontier villages of Ban Nam Koung and Phong Tho.
A Senate investigating subcommittee, chaired by Senator Clyde Hoey, opened public hearings in Jackson, Miss., into charges that pro-Truman Democrats had peddled Federal jobs at $300 each. Senator Hoey said he expected to call about 40 witnesses before the three-person committee, including Senators Karl Mundt and John McClellan.
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, in executive session testimony to a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, blamed "the hypocrisy and sham" of college athletic codes for inspiring the fixing of basketball games and "very atrocious crimes" committed by college students. He wanted something done about 17 and 18-year old girls who ran wild "like a pack of animals" committing "sadistic assaults" on citizens of New York, Los Angeles and other areas. He complained that students received automobiles and jobs but did not have to do any work for it, many employed ostensibly during the summers as bus boys and porters in hotels while only playing.
Hey, what do you do all day, besides sit on your duff and pronounce edicts and issue memoranda accusing everybody you don't like, especially uppity Negroes, of being a Communist?—never apparently stopping to realize that those pronouncements against your fellow citizens, the creation of suspicion, was serving Communist propaganda more than any public enemy you ever helped to put behind bars.
The Kefauver crime investigating committee, preparing its report, was expected to devote part of it to the fixing of college basketball games.
In the TWUA textile workers strike in five Southern states, the union was signing up strikers for food orders so that they would not be starved into acceptance of a compromise agreement. They were seeking a 13-cents per hour raise to a minimum of $1.14.5 per hour.
During the weekend, 22 persons were killed in two military air accidents, one, taking 19 lives near Charleston, W. Va., and the other taking three lives inside a house hit by a bomber after the crew had parachuted to safety. Twelve soldiers were among the passengers of the Southwest Airways plane which crashed near Santa Barbara, California, taking the lives of all 22 aboard on Friday night, and discovered during the weekend.
In Mankato, Minn., about 4,300 persons were forced to flee from their flooded homes after the swollen Minnesota River sent flood waters into the town, while the spring thaw also caused the Red River to rise.
In Alabama, the Tombigbee River had flooded and relief workers were busy rescuing 1,035 marooned residents.
In the seventh installment of Dale Carnegie's How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, not on the page, he tells of how to stop worrying about ingratitude.
On the editorial page, "A Proposal without Merit" tells of the Legislature refusing to perform its State Constitutional duty to rearrange the Senatorial districts in the state to make them roughly of equal population after each decennial census. It had now proposed an amendment to prevent any county from having more than one State Senator. The piece thinks it ought be defeated as popular representation was the heart of democracy and such an amendment would weaken it.
"The Lobbyists Take Over" laments the facts of a story, if true, as reported by the Raleigh News & Observer, regarding a committee of the Legislature caving in to the beer lobby regarding a local bill.
"The Voice Grows Weaker" finds it unfortunate that a major part of the 43 percent reduction by the House Appropriations Committee of the President's requested emergency fund had come in the Voice of America budget. Congress had only slightly reduced the Post Office and Treasury budgets, but yet cut the appropriations for this vital information program for the countries behind the iron curtain, thereby weakening resistance to Communism.
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Revealing Incident", comments on the statement of the pulpwood industry to the State Highway Commission that they could not comply with a new eight-ton weight limit on secondary roads, meaning that the rural roads would have to remain unpaved so that the loggers could use them for relatively few loads, leaving rural residents mud-bound. It cites it as example of the type of group which shaped legislation.
Drew Pearson suggests that what the U.S. and Europe needed most was confidence in themselves and in each other. Having a division each of Americans, British and French troops landing simultaneously as a show of unity and strength would do wonders for that confidence.
Senate Republicans were trying to stop the investigation into the Senate campaign shenanigans in Maryland the previous fall which resulted in the defeat of incumbent Senator Millard Tydings, because they were worried that the Justice Department, pushing enforcement more of the Corrupt Practices Act, which for long had been relaxed, might impact Republicans, as many GOP contributors had violated the Act's $5,000 contribution limit. He lists some of the offenders. He points out that during the 80th Republican Congress, the Senate held a two-year long investigation into Maryland Democratic Senator Herbert O'Conor. But the Republicans were now becoming antsy over a three-month investigation of the Republican campaign of Senator John Butler.
Joseph Alsop suggests that Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, in warning that Soviet intervention in Korea, as a prelude to a third world war, was imminent, was merely trying to shake the American people from their complacency. There was no evidence to back up his statement.
Of the 57 billion dollars appropriated by the end of the fiscal year to defense, only about 12 billion dollars worth of arms were actually in the pipeline, as it took time to produce armament after it had been slowed to a crawl during the term of Louis Johnson as Secretary of Defense, from March, 1949 to September, 1950. Plans called for appropriation of another 66 billion dollars in fiscal year 1952, which would enable about 40 billion to translate into defense goods. By the end of fiscal 1953, there would be another 60 billion, with 50 billion in war goods, after which the program would level off to about 40 billion in 1954. After that, the buildup would be complete and it would be a question of maintaining strength at about 35 billion per year, producing 20 billion in defense goods. So by 1955, expenditure of a total of about 260 billion dollars was projected for rearmament.
But Congress did not appear to be willing to make the effort for the ensuing three to four years to make that prospect a reality. The President appeared incapable of exerting the necessary leadership to bring it about. So, the type of shock treatment employed by Speaker Rayburn was that to which leaders were occasionally resorting.
Marquis Childs reminds that the President had said ten months earlier that peace was nearer at hand than at any time since World War II and now, in polar-opposite contrast, Speaker Rayburn had made his statement. The people were not convinced of the emergency and necessity of spending billions more on rearmament. He concludes that the problem appeared to be lack of leadership in the country placing enough trust in the maturity and reasonableness of the American people to understand and grapple with the problem.
A letter writer from Myrtle Beach, S.C., tells of reading that a father was in jail for sending his child to school at age five. He thinks it a burning disgrace that such could happen.
A letter from an "ex-journalist" from Raleigh comments on the editorial, "Revolution in Reverse", of the prior Thursday on the reverse revolution in State politics, says he wonders whether there really was such a thing occurring.
The editors explain that the writer had been closely associated with state politics for years but could not be identified because of his present position.
A letter writer from Richmond, Va., also comments on the father being in jail for sending his son to school a year early by falsifying his birth records, finds the offense minor and thinks mercy ought be extended to the father for merely trying to enroll his son a year early.
What if everybody did that? Then the first-grade classrooms would be busting at the seams.
A letter from Clyde A. Erwin, state chairman of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, writes from Raleigh of his appreciation for the newspaper's cooperation during Brotherhood Week, sponsored by the organization.
This date in 1968, the funeral would take place in Atlanta for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., following his assassination in Memphis on the prior Thursday, April 4. He was a man and not a god, and, as with any man, he had faults. But those faults were far outweighed by his tenacity to principle and purpose, courage in the face of seemingly insurmountable adversity, and leadership toward equality for all. Again we note that it is improbable that we shall see his like again within the living memories of those who were impacted and inspired by his undaunted leadership and his courageous words and actions, ultimately costing him his life as he led others to the Promised Land, fully aware of the risks he took daily in so doing.
His truth is still marching
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.