The Charlotte News
Tuesday, May 22, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that allied troops of the Second Division advanced in western Korea and probed a buildup of 130,000 Chinese troops on the east-central front, seeking to stem the Communist sweep in the east, as the enemy were driving a wedge in South Korean lines near Soksa. A U.N. officer said that he found nothing significant in the forward movement and said that it indicated a slowdown of the Communist offensive in the prior three days.
The U.S. destroyer Brinkley Bass and battleship New Jersey were hit by Communist shore artillery on Sunday and Monday respectively, causing the deaths of two sailors and injuring twelve. Both were at anchor while bombarding the Communist-held port of Wonsan at the time. The ships quickly pulled anchor and steamed away out of range.
Joint Chiefs chairman General Omar Bradley again testified before the joint Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, stating that the military had high hopes that peace could be negotiated in Korea if the present Communist offensive could be stopped. He said that the aim was to inflict maximum casualties on the enemy with a minimum number incurred by the U.N. forces. That basic strategy had been discussed regarding the Communist spring offensive as early as February. He said that an effort to effect a truce in March had to be abandoned when it was undercut by General MacArthur's direct invitation to the Chinese field commander to discuss peace terms before the U.N. ordered air strikes on Chinese bases.
Senator Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin denied that there was an attempt afoot by him and other Republicans to "get" Secretary of State Acheson, called reports to that effect a "damned lie". Senator Richard Russell, chairman of the joint Senate committees investigating the firing of General MacArthur and Far Eastern policy, said that he would not forward to the President a letter sent by Senator Wiley to him, saying that unless the Senate committees could get at the facts, the investigation would be a "whitewash" and a "washout".
The House would begin debate this date on whether to send two million tons of U.S. surplus grain to India. The Senate had passed the bill on the basis of making the grain as a loan to India.
Iran's Moslem religious leaders and its Communist underground called mass rallies this date to encourage growing resentment against Britain and the U.S. The Moslems threatened a jihad if the British resisted nationalization of the oil owned by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. The Communist Tudeh Party opposed Premier Mohammed Mossadegh's proposed electoral reforms and accused him of delaying nationalization. Iran issued a diplomatic protest against the U.S. for interference in its internal affairs by siding with the British on the oil dispute, thus stirring resentment against the U.S in both the press and Parliament.
Before HUAC, Academy Award
Former Justice Department trust-buster Wendell Berge testified before the Senate Banking Committee that big business and banking interests were behind the move in Congress to abolish the RFC, seeking to remove it as a source for loans to small business.
The head of the National Grange predicted that the Government's program of price controls would soon force rationing of meat.
In Hays, Kansas, the worst flood took place since 1907, killing at least three persons, with several reported missing. The flood was caused by a sudden cloudburst.
In New York, Prince Alexander
Hohenlohe, trying to win custody of his two children from his former
wife, charged tenor Morton Downey with breaking up their marriage in
the guise of friendship. He also claimed that Mr. Downey and his
former wife had sought to alienate from him the affections of the two
children of the marriage. The Prince's former wife married Mr. Downey the prior
October, about a year after the divorce. At the time of the divorce
Another compelling episode of "The Edge of Night" will continue after these equally compelling words from our sponsor.
On page 9-A, Vida Hurst's Married in Haste begins in serialized form. Don't miss out on a single scintillating installment of another masterpiece of literature.
On the editorial page, "A Strike against the Public" tells of the threatened strike by bus drivers starting Thursday against the Duke Power Co. The public was not yet in a position to assess the merits of the two sides.
Part of the controversy appeared to be that the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, representing the bus drivers, had refused to agree to Duke's terms, accepted in December, 1950 by the rival Amalgamated Union, which represented drivers and mechanics in Greensboro and Durham. The BRT appeared to want to discredit Amalgamated by continuing the dispute.
The previous year, a threatened strike was resolved by the efforts of Mayor Victor Shaw and the mayors of the other five impacted cities in the Carolinas. The terms were accepted by Duke, and BRT continued working under the terms, but no contract was ever signed.
The piece notes that the state had no adequate machinery for dealing with public utility strikes, leaving the public vulnerable to this type of labor dispute.
"Another Inventory Needed" tells of the Greensboro Daily News making a point which had been overlooked in Governor Kerr Scott's call for an investigation of the state's electric power production, that the Utilities Commission failed to maintain an inventory of the electric power facilities in the state. It was not the first time that the Commission had shown itself less than a model of competence and efficiency. It wants the inventory ordered by the Governor of electric power undertaken, but also favors taking an inventory of the Commission to find out why it was falling short of its public obligations.
"Easy as Pie" finds that dictator Juan Peron in Argentina had used the same tactic as other dictators to try to win over the people, promising them pie in the sky and robbing from the rich to make an initial offering along those lines. The same had been practiced by Huey Long in Louisiana in the 1930's, by Hitler and Mussolini in Europe.
In Argentina, inflation had become a real threat and Sr. Peron was running out of things to give the people, having used the army the previous fall to break up a strike by a previously favored labor union. It predicts that there might come a time when the resources would not support the living standard to which the descamisados had become accustomed and then a coup would inevitably take place.
"Diplomatic Thrust" finds clever the retort of the U.S. to the rejected Soviet proposal for a Big Four conference to resolve the treaty with Japan. The proposal had contended that Formosa ought be given to Communist China as the Cairo accord of 1943 had provided as much. The State Department replied, however, that the Cairo agreement required that Manchuria, Formosa, and the Pescadores be restored to the Republic of China, i.e., Nationalist China. State counter-parried therefore with the inquiry whether the Soviets wished that to occur.
The piece concludes: "Touche!"
A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "Europe Gains", informs that, according to ERP, Western European industrial production stood at 30 percent above prewar levels, a measure of the efficacy of the Marshall Plan. Other indicators were the reduced level of Communists in the Marshall Plan recipient nations and the three-to-one contribution of the beneficiary nations to the two billion dollars worth of plants built with American aid.
The quid pro quo for America was the inter-dependency of the European and North American economies. Just as the Eastern industrial area of the country had benefited from the prosperity of the West and South during the prior several decades, the same could be true for the U.S. as a whole as a result of European prosperity.
Drew Pearson tells of the Joint Chiefs having told the President that it was "militarily advisable" to fire General MacArthur, phraseology picked deliberately after some debate, rejecting the word "recommend". The Chiefs found the General too rash as a commander and likely to get American forces into more trouble.
They decided to give authority to General MacArthur to bomb Chinese bases if the latter threw in enough forces to jeopardize U.N. ground troops or if they attacked any U.N. ships or installations outside Korea. But they added the proviso that he had to consult the Joint Chiefs before undertaking any such bombing.
The second reason for approval of the firing was the General's refusal to take suggestions or guidance from the Joint Chiefs. He had refused to heed their warning about the absence of liaison between the Eighth Army and the Tenth Corps during the November offensive, a mistake which allowed the Chinese to exploit the vacuum in between and flank both forces.
The third reason was the way the General's statement about using Nationalist troops on the Chinese mainland worked to kill the universal military training bill, which occurred two days after his statement in that regard.
These three reasons, incidentally, do not precisely track those which were reported the previous day by Stewart Alsop regarding General Bradley's statement of the reasons, which had not been read to the Senate committees.
Though Democrats in the Senate did not usually agree with Senator Kenneth Wherry, most liked him. The same was true of Senator William Knowland.
Senator James Duff of Pennsylvania, though a freshman, had already become an outstanding Senator.
Joseph Alsop, in London, finds the Anglo-American partnership in crisis because of the repercussions from the controversy over the firing of General MacArthur and because of the Iranian oil dispute in Britain. The latter was causing the U.S. and Britain to redefine their relationship. The British probably would be unable to prevent nationalization of the oil in Iran, given the extremist nature of the Government of Premier Mohammed Mossadegh. That would mean that the British would either passively accept loss of the oil, on which it depended for its world position, or send troops to occupy southern Iran to prevent nationalization. In the latter event, it would need the support of the U.S. to avoid condemnation by the U.N. as an aggressor.
If the U.S. refused the backing, Britain would blame loss of its oil resource on the U.S.
The British had learned a lesson in two-way partnership in Iran and most in Britain had conceded that the proposal to bribe Communist China with a seat in the U.N. and control of Formosa had been a bad idea.
The time was ripe for cooperation between the U.S. and Britain in the Far East. The source of the trouble, Mr. Alsop posits, had been the decision by the President to neglect Western defense after the election of 1948.
If the nations of the West did not now pull together, then the Soviets might be able to destroy the West by piecemeal aggression.
Robert C. Ruark tells of a judge in Cleveland refusing a request for alimony to a woman who had divorced her husband after only a month. The judge said that she was young and able to care for herself, had not sufficiently contributed to the marital union to be entitled to alimony after such a short marriage.
Mr. Ruark applauds the ruling, thinks that women were able too much to profit from divorce. It was a different situation if there were children or if the husband was guilty of infidelity or cruelty. But aside from those exceptions, he thinks the union ought be of sufficient duration that dissolving it would genuinely harm the woman's capability of caring for herself, before alimony and division of property should occur.
A letter writer from Richmond, Va., tells of driving north on Highway 1 recently and being passed by two Trailways buses loaded with children, traveling at a high rate of speed. A sign on one bus read "Charlotte, North Carolina, School Safety Program". He clocked the buses at speeds between 72 and 84 mph, though his car had never traveled at such speeds previously. The buses had driven through a school zone during school hours going 35 mph. He stopped trailing them in Petersburg, where he had business. He provides the license numbers of the buses. He fears for the children aboard.
Be on the lookout. They may still be out there.
A letter writer agrees with the President that important decisions were being made and that it was hard to face real facts, but finds the President not being able to admit he was wrong and willing to spend other people's money. He refused to face the fact that Secretary of State Acheson had lost the confidence of the people and most members of Congress. The President's tacit approval of the corruption of Ambassador William O'Dwyer while Mayor of New York, in permitting organized crime to flourish with impunity as revealed by the Kefauver committee, had shaken confidence in his integrity. He therefore wants the President to fire Secretary Acheson, to restore confidence and unity.
A letter writer from Birmingham, Ala., favors education of the owners of "dumb brutes" regarding their need for adequate food and water and against abuse of them. The Boston Humane Society was doing a good job in this respect. He purports to quote from the Bible: "The groans of dumb brutes will rise up against you in the days of judgment."
If it isn't the Rooskies and the atomic bomb coming to get us, it's the mistreated dogs and cats in the days of judgment.
Even if you own no such animal, be
sure to leave a bowl of water and another of milk outside your door
at night, just in case. You would not wish to wake up being judged by
a strange dog or cat
There gon' be a risin' up one of these days. You know?
Framed Edition
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