The Charlotte News

Thursday, May 10, 1951

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that allied armored patrols without opposition moved into Munsan, 21 miles northwest of Seoul, after eliminating an enemy threat to flank the former South Korean capital. The patrols then withdrew. An Eighth Army spokesman said that 6,000 North Korean troops who had participated in the attempted flanking operation had been killed or routed by the allies.

Elsewhere along the 100-mile front, the greatest problem encountered by allied patrols was from mine fields covered by small arms fire.

Lt. General Edward Almond, commander of the Tenth Corps, said that the enemy was "wilting on the vine" from lack of supplies. Ground commander Lt. General James Van Fleet said that the U.N. troops were in excellent spirit and at their highest peak of determination.

Lt. General Matthew Ridgway said that the U.N. battle in Korea may have started the defeat of Communism's effort at world domination. He gave high praise to General Van Fleet's Eighth Army and the supporting air and naval units.

In air action, 275 Fifth Air Force fighters and bombers struck rail yards in half a dozen North Korean industrial cities. No U.N. casualties had been suffered in the previous day's largest air raid of the war.

At a White House press conference, the President said that there was no basis for the rumor that Secretary of State Acheson might resign in the coming months. He also said that reports that he would recall Ambassador William O'Dwyer from Mexico because of the criticism he had drawn from the Kefauver committee while Mayor and District Attorney of New York were also just rumors. He also said that he was backing completely the price control order issued by Price administrator Mike DiSalle.

The President also stated that Secretary of Defense Marshall's testimony about General MacArthur was the complete truth and that he had well summarized the Administration position on the Far East. Secretary Marshll had testified that General MacArthur had to be dismissed because his publicly stated positions on Korea and Formosa were inconsonant with Administration policy. In answer to a question whether Korea could be unified if China were driven out, the President said that if that question could be answered, the person so answering would be a genius.

The House Ways & Means Committee tentatively approved a two billion dollar increase in corporate taxes and an increase of the normal tax rate by five percent. The Administration had sought an eight percent increase. The total increase would raise an estimated five billion dollars in new revenue, half of that which the President had said would place the defense program on a pay-as-you-go basis.

White House patronage aide, Donald Dawson, testified to the Senate Banking subcommittee that he believed he had done nothing wrong in his recommendations for appointment of directors to the RFC, though each had been recommended by the DNC. He could not remember who else had recommended them or the names of those candidates not chosen. He said that the White House had not orchestrated a campaign to undermine the subcommittee and that the subcommittee had been unfair to him in its charges.

The President urged that veterans of the Korean war ought receive every benefit made available to veterans of past wars. The law presently allowed the V.A. to deny hospitalization to a Korean war veteran for a non-service related disability, as had occurred the previous day with a veteran of Korea suffering from throat cancer. The V.A. said it could not treat the malady because Korea had not been officially recognized as a war. Congressman John Rankin, chairman of the Veterans Committee, quickly introduced a bill to remedy the problem. (The fine print better be examined carefully, however, as it might exclude those not of pure Aryan blood.)

Singer Vic Damone was inducted into the Army, causing him to give up a $20,000 per month income for $75 per month G.I. pay. He said that maybe he would get some mental relaxation after five years of nightclub and theater engagements.

You might also get your fanny blowed off.

The British Government announced that it was cutting off all rubber exports to Communist China for the remainder of 1951. Opposition Leader Winston Churchill had demanded the move to improve relations with the U.S. regarding Communist China and British early recognition of the Government in 1949. President of the Board of Trade Sir Hartley Shawcross told Commons that Britain had sent 357 million dollars worth of exports to Communist China during the nine months following the start of the Korean war the prior June 25.

Conservative M.P. A. C. Bossom asked whether the figure included 2.8 million dollars worth of rubber which left Singapore this date for Hong Kong as well as Canton in Communist China, to which Sir Hartley responded that he would look into the matter.

The question was a bit padded.

Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was scheduled to visit West Point this date, specifically the grave of Col. David Marcus, who had died in Israel's war of independence. The Prime Minister had received a tickertape parade in New York.

In Chaoyang in Communist China, a strict judge sentenced a former colleague to death and then was confronted by his own father as the next defendant, accused of being a "vicious exploiter". The judge disqualified himself, whereupon the military school commission stripped the judge of his Communist uniform and dismissed him for having "incorrect ideas". His father was then convicted, sentenced to death and shot. The judge fled.

In Decatur, Ill., a man who had bet for 46 consecutive years that it would rain on May 10, collected again for the 37th time as it rained cats and dogs, paying him nickels, quarters and cigars.

In Butte, Mont., a judge dismissed a public disturbance case between a man, 82, and another, 68, saying, "You kids better try to get along." The older man said the younger had hit him as they waited their turn to use a water faucet in their hotel, and that he was able to lick him with one hand tied behind his back. But the younger man said that he would not hit an old man.

They are perpetually fighting about water rights in Montana, where, they say, the first dam was built from the corpse of a man who trespassed on another's riparian rights.

On the editorial page, "Dawson Takes the Stand" hopes that the Senate Banking subcommittee would get out the facts in the murky charges leveled at White House aide Donald Dawson, alleging help in obtaining RFC loans.

"One Man Police Patrols" discusses the four one-man patrols in Charlotte each night being adequate except on weekends. But the need for more manpower and cars at that time was not within the budget. It explains that some studies found that one-man patrols were safer while other studies found that they were more dangerous, especially in high-crime neighborhoods at night.

"Tyranny in Alabama?" tells of Marshall County, Alabama, seceding from the State tax rolls until it was granted equal representation by the Legislature to that of all counties with lesser populations. Whether it won or lost, concludes the piece, Marshall County had raised the Confederate spirit again and "made the Bonnie Blue Flag a bonnie thing indeed."

A piece from the Baltimore Evening Sun, titled "Break with Tradition", finds the decision of Western Union to increase the minimum words from ten to fifteen on a telegram akin to allowing sonneteers 21 lines rather than the traditional fourteen. The increase was part of a WU rate increase program.

It concludes: "OPPOSE FIFTEEN MINIMUM. INCUMBENT ALL US COMBAT INFLATION. SUGGEST RECONSIDER."

Bill Sharpe, in his weekly "Turpentine Drippings, snippets from newspapers around the state, provides one from John W. Clay of the Winston-Salem Journal, who tells of a one-armed man who sat down in a restaurant and was approached by a patron who said, "My good man, I see you have lost an arm," to which the man replied in a surprised tone, "Bless my soul, I believe you are right."

That became the foundational jest for the hit mid-sixties tv sitcom, "The Absquatulator".

The Raleigh Spotlight relates of a sewer cockroach eating a crumb and being asked by his friend roach why he was not eating in the new restaurant across the street with the best of food and everything clean, to which the crumb-eating cockroach said, "Please, not while I'm eating."

The Mt. Olive Tribune relates a poem about the frog.

The High Point Enterprise tells of truckers no longer bragging, after increased law enforcement, that they could speed down Lexington Avenue so fast that they sucked the dogs from underneath the houses.

And so forth, so, so, so, and forth so.

Drew Pearson tells of Senator Burnet Maybank of South Carolina offering to send to the President the many constituent letters he was receiving expressing anger at price control, to which the President responded that he, too, was receiving a plethora of such letters and would gladly send his to the Senator. The Senator replied that he could send all the letters he wanted, but "for God's sake, don't write me any!".

India's Ambassador to China, Sardar Pannikkar, had cabled Prime Minister Nehru that there was no chance of peace with Communist China. Ambassador Pannikkar had been the first to warn the U.S. and U.N. that Chinese troops would intervene in Korea, providing the advice the prior September. General MacArthur had testified the prior week that he received no such warning, but Mr. Pearson advises that the warning was sent to him by the State Department and that his own column had published the advice on September 17. Ambassador Pannikkar had favored conciliation toward the Chinese in December and January and believed that there was a chance for a truce. Now, he had reversed himself.

New Orleans Times-Picayune publisher Leonard Nicholson had been given a pass to testify only in writing in a Federal anti-trust suit against the newspaper because of his claimed ill health. But the same day of the report, his newspaper carried the syndicated column of Hedda Hopper in which she reported that Mr. Nicholson was at a party in the dressing room of Gertrude Lawrence, starring in "The King and I", along with other newspaper people. The Justice Department now wanted him to have to testify in person.

He provides the facts about the President's charge that General MacArthur would not allow the CIA to operate in the Korean-Japanese theater, a charge which the General denied in his testimony. The CIA had two agents in Japan but the General's intelligence chief, Maj. General Charles Willoughby, would not let them operate except under his control. They could not collect information but could only analyze that collected by General MacArthur's G-2 intelligence. When General Walter Beedle Smith became director of the CIA, he offered to General MacArthur a man who would be acceptable to him, but the offer was refused. After General Smith flew to Tokyo to persuade General MacArthur personally, the latter agreed to give the CIA free rein, but only after the disastrous November-December retreat following poor intelligence given General MacArthur regarding the prospect of the Chinese intervention in force in the war.

The British Government had accused the U.S. of double-crossing it in Iran by trying to take over the British government-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., after three representatives of U.S. oil companies had approached the Iranian Government with offers to manage the company now that it was being nationalized. British Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison was furious, telling U.S. Ambassador to England Walter Gifford that the U.S. appeared to be playing both sides of the street, by urging the British to accept the nationalization of the oil and then offering to manage the company. Ambassador Gifford had replied that the U.S. had nothing to do with the secret negotiations of the oil companies and had tried to discourage any such underhanded trick.

Send 'em a Merc-o-matic and throw in a couple o' Ford-o-matics, too, and all will be copacetic.

Joseph Alsop, in Paris, tells of not much love or admiration circulating in Europe for the U.S., contrary to the way things had been during the period immediately following the war. Primarily, there was now resentment and suspicion regarding too many Americans leading the NATO alliance.

Yet, there was continuing reverential respect for General Eisenhower as supreme commander of NATO. He had his headquarters in the unassuming Hotel Astoria and talked during an interview with Mr. Alsop in general terms, leaving details to subordinates. He was optimistic but not facile in the approach. He believed in the deep, fundamental truths which he espoused, almost, but not quite, to the point of being cliches. He governed his conduct accordingly. He engaged in no pretense or military panache and feigned no omniscience. He was "a leader whom almost all will follow gladly."

Robert C. Ruark tells further of his misbegotten poodle with a hairdo which covered its face such that no one could tell whether it was going or coming. But now, it had received a coiffure which had caused it to become haughty, comparable to a brunette he had once known who dyed her hair blonde and suddenly went from mundane tastes and desires to becoming a spendthrift who only wanted the best.

His poodle now knew it was a dog and even played it coy with the boxer in the house to which it had at first become attached. Mr. Ruark says that he is tired of the dog preening before the mirror with its new do and declares that he would stop feeding it caviar and filet mignon and return it to dogfood if it did not stop. He was getting a little weary of eating horse meat to balance the household budget against the dog's new-found extravagant tastes.

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