The Charlotte News

Monday, June 11, 1951

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that allied troops and tanks had knocked out the props of the "iron triangle" of the enemy in North Korea, capturing Chorwon and Kumhwa after eight days of battle, and pushed almost three miles deeper toward new enemy defense lines south of Kumsong, before being stopped by 1,500 Chinese troops and heavy artillery fire. The enemy pulled back toward Pyonggang, apex of the triangle. The capture of the two legs opened the way for allied tanks into the flat Pyonggang Valley, source of the two enemy spring offensives. Kumsong appeared now to be the new center of enemy operations. The enemy had lost about 40,000 men during the prior ten days trying to defend the triangle.

To the north, 72 F-84 Thunderjets hit the Sonchon supply area in one of their heaviest raids of the war, destroying 400 buildings and other military targets with napalm, bombs, rockets and machinegun fire.

On the eastern front, the allies were fighting through some of the heaviest enemy artillery and mortar fire of the war, causing the allies to dig in as at no time since the very beginning of the war. Much of the captured ammunition was U.S.-made, abandoned on the battlefield. The rest was Chinese, Russian, Japanese and Czechoslovakian.

Secretary of Defense Marshall was returning home after his surprise visit to the Korean front. He told the press that the Chinese Communists had gotten themselves into a difficult situation and did not expect a Chinese peace move anytime soon. He also said, however, that he did not foresee the war going on for years, though he could foresee the tension lasting for years.

Lt. General Alfred C. Wedemeyer, commander of the Sixth Army with headquarters in San Francisco and until 1949 deputy chief of staff of the Army, testified to the joint Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees this date, saying that he would adopt General MacArthur's proposed bombing of Communist China's bases and blockading its coast even if it meant a general war. He said that he had asked to be relieved as deputy chief of staff as he was frustrated by not being in agreement with the policies regarding American plans in the East and the West. He became the first witness before the Committees to testify in favor of the MacArthur program.

The Iranian Government replied to the President's urging of moderation and negotiation in the dispute over nationalization of British oil interests, but the content of the reply was not yet released.

General Omar Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, returned from a 10-day round of talks with U.S., British, and French military leaders in Europe.

Senators were more or less in agreement regarding the need for an investigation of the Nationalist China lobby but no one seemed to want to conduct the inquiry. The President had issued an order for all Government agencies to cooperate in the investigation. Alfred Kohlberg in New York, a reputed leader of the lobby, said that he had never registered as a lobbyist because all of his efforts were strictly personal and that the real China lobby was within the State Department for the Communists.

In London, Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison sidestepped questions in the House of Commons regarding the political views of Britain's pair of missing diplomats, believed fled behind the iron curtain with State secrets. Mr. Morrison said that he had no evidence that the two men, missing for two weeks, had taken any documents with them. An M.P. asked Mr. Morrison to investigate reports of widespread sexual perversion in the Foreign Office.

The President named Thomas F. Murphy, prosecutor of Alger Hiss for perjury, to a Federal judgeship in the Southern District of New York and nominated Federal District Court Judge Harold Medina, who presided over the Hiss trial, to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, to replace Judge Learned Hand who had recently retired. The President also named Freida Hennock, a member of the FCC, to become a judge for the Southern District of New York.

Five Japanese war criminals were hanged in Australia for murdering Australian prisoners of war.

The News became a part of the Associated Press teletypesetter circuit this date, automatically receiving big national stories. The circuit included eighteen newspapers in states from Pennsylvania to South Carolina and Tennessee, and enabled stories to be provided on perforated tape fed directly to the Linotype machine which produced the type. The innovation meant that within five minutes after a story came over the wire, it would be set into type, whereas under the old system it took a half hour.

What will they think of next?

MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MO

On the editorial page, "The Soap Boxes Roll Wednesday" tells of the Soap Box Derby holding its annual race in Charlotte during the week, with the winner to compete for the national trophy and a college scholarship in Akron, O., later in the summer.

Grease your wheels, head 'em up, and let 'em roll.

"We're Country Folks" tells of the UNC News Letter informing that most of the state was rural, with it having the largest farm population in the nation, save for Texas, and third largest rural population, behind Texas and Pennsylvania. The state was 44th in urban population, with only a third of the people living in towns of more than 2,500 population. Four of its cities had more than 70,000 and 85 had more than 2,500.

In 2010, that relative amount of rural population had not changed as Texas continued to have the greatest population of the states living in rural areas, based on the same population parameter of less than 2,500, with 3.8 million so classified, while North Carolina was second with 3.2 million, followed by Pennsylvania with 2.7 million. The percentage of North Carolina's population so classified had reversed, however, with only a third of its 9.5 million people living in rural areas. North Carolina ranked 46th in people per square mile. Maine and Vermont were the most rural states by percentage of population, with 61 percent living in rural areas. The most rural region was that encompassing Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi, with 59.9 percent living in rural areas. Not surprisingly, California and New Jersey were in 2010 the most heavily urbanized states, with 95 percent of their populations living in towns of more than 2,500 persons, 92 percent in New Jersey living in areas of 50,000 or more, making it the most heavily urbanized state. California and New York were the most densely populated of the states.

Of course, census data do not measure urbanity versus rusticanity or provinciality. Perhaps the best indicator thereof, inversely correlative to the first such characteristic, would be the percent of time spent watching or listening, with approbation, to Hannity, with a similarly inverse correlation with respect to sanity.

"Age of Mysterious Miracles" comments on the sudden, unexplained crash of the eight Air Force jet planes over Richmond, Indiana, the previous Friday, leaving three pilots dead and two injured. Two had crash-landed and one parachuted to safety. Sabotage was being investigated as a cause. Six other Air Force airmen had been killed in crashes the same day in other places.

If the incident in Indiana was sabotage, it concludes, then the enemy had to have some very sophisticated weaponry and well-placed agents, or it could have been, it posits, mere coincidence.

"Beware the Ragweed" urges killing the noxious weed with either 2,4-D or cutting the plant without jerking it out of the ground, as that could disturb dormant seeds.

A piece from the Durham Morning Herald, titled "MacArthur Jokes Are Not So New", tells of most of the jokes coming out of the hearings on General MacArthur being recycled old ones, some having been applied to FDR when he ran for his third term, and was said to have wanted God as his vice-presidential running mate. But two quips were new, one saying that "five hundred stark naked DAR's would jump from the Washington Monument screaming 'Banzai'", upon the arrival of the General in Washington, and the other that the General had said to his wife, when the band began playing "The Star Spangled Banner", that they were playing their song.

The hearings had not dampened much of the ardor for the General in the country, but they had set the matter in perspective and showed that the other side, represented by General Bradley and Secretary of Defense Marshall, had points to make, stripping General MacArthur of his quasi-divinity and apparent omniscience. The "Sustain MacArthur Committee" in New York, for instance, had booked Carnegie Hall for $750 and paid $150 more for attendants to take care of what was expected to be a capacity crowd of 2,760, but only 39 people had shown up.

Drew Pearson tells of Senator Hugh Butler of Nebraska being opposed to the NPA pressure on brewers against use of tin in beer cans. The brewers were resistant to use of bottles, as favored by Senator Lyndon Johnson's watchdog committee which considered the beer industry's use of tin inessential to defense production. Mr. Pearson remarks that Nebraska was a long way from Milwaukee, the center of the nation's beer industry, but Senator Butler contended that his protest was on behalf of the entire tin can industry, not just beer.

General J. Lawton Collins, chief of staff of the Army, had been critical of U.S. Army maneuvers in West Germany the previous week, saying he preferred more stress on firepower and less on manpower.

That Jon Jonkel, the campaign manager from the Chicago Tribune, supplied to the campaign of John Butler for the Senate the previous year, resulting in the defeat of incumbent Senator Millard Tydings, had pleaded guilty to campaign irregularities in reporting finances and fined $5,000 had been no accident, as it had been pursuant to a prearranged plea bargain. Mr. Jonkel had been sacrificed to save the seat for Senator Butler, as some Republicans were afraid that if other campaign operatives were brought under the spotlight, they might talk, whereas Mr. Jonkel was a professional public relations man and accustomed to the heat. Other Republicans, however, were unhappy with the result as the President remained loyal to his men and they favored taking the same tack to encourage party loyalty.

Don't worry. Your man is there in the future, sitting on the Wall.

Gordon Gray, former Secretary of the Army and now UNC president was being urged to return to Government.

American scientists had perfected a small, pocket-sized radio which could be manufactured for $5 and dropped behind the iron curtain to enable listening to Voice of America broadcasts.

What will they think of next?

Major Clarence Davenport of Detroit had become the first black person in history accepted to the Naval Academy for post-graduate study, his field to be radioactive defense.

Marquis Childs, in Des Moines, Iowa, tells of the talk in the area centering on the new price ceiling on live beef and its unfairness to farmers who had already made their calculations on existing conditions and now had to refigure them. The weather was also a hot topic, delaying the corn planting. But the debate between the President and General MacArthur, both as to Far East policy and the firing of the General, had ceased to be of much interest. The Republican officeholders he interviewed showed no intention of embracing the General's viewpoint regarding extension of the war to China and were backing away from the whole issue. Democrats meanwhile had developed a degree of confidence in contrast to the defeatism they had displayed three months earlier. One of the best appraisers of the political scene said that the President was in better shape in Iowa than four years earlier. He had carried the state by 30,000 votes in 1948.

The change in climate was in part the result of the MacArthur hearings, producing a general opinion that the Administration position on the war would prevent it from spreading and thus more likely to bring peace than the MacArthur policy.

The Shreveport (La.) Times had taken a poll and found that 97 percent favored General MacArthur's presentation to the Senate over that of Secretary of Defense Marshall; a similar poll by the Houston Chronicle showed 92 percent to favor General MacArthur. The reason for these reactions appeared to be that the bulk of the respondents believed that General MacArthur's view would end the war more quickly.

But Senator Kenneth Wherry was against any peace compromise which would leave Korea divided at the 38th parallel. That position appeared to suggest prolongation of the war indefinitely and so likely did not accord with public opinion.

While public opinion had nothing to do with rightness or wrongness of a position, the GOP had to know that popular wishes determined elections.

James Marlow looks at the President's agenda in the current Congress and finds that thus far in the session, Congress had only passed the bill to provide wheat for India, the new draft act lowering the draft age to 18 and a half and setting the stage for universal military training later, and the extension of reciprocal trade tariffs for two additional years.

The time had been consumed primarily with the hearings on General MacArthur and whether to send troops to Europe, the latter having been approved.

Still to be considered were the tax increase bill, the sixty billion for defense, the 8.5 billion for arms and economic aid for Europe and elsewhere, the extension of the defense production act and its economic controls, set to expire June 30, the money to run Government agencies, Federal aid to the states for education, unlikely to pass, and changes to the labor law, very unlikely to pass. There were also other smaller matters hanging fire.

A letter writer from Gastonia questions how the June 6 editorial, "Advice from Thackeray", could possibly take the side of the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations against Lt. William Evans, Jr., who had written his caustic letter, with references to Communism, resulting in his being discharged from the Navy. He thinks the two Presidents had never disclaimed Communism and that such columnists as Westbrook Pegler, George Sokolsky and Constantine Brown had shown that the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations were rife with Communist influence. He believes General MacArthur and Lt. Evans were right and it would be better to have fifty million such men.

A letter writer comments on the June 7 editorial, "Rough Going for Mr. Acheson", finds that the committees' Republicans had their opportunity to question Mr. Acheson, had him cornered, but failed to ask him anything of note. He thinks that they would bide their time, wait until he was gone, and then start to raise again the criticism of his policies and cry "Yalta", "Red" and "Appeasement".

A letter from the chief of the Fire Department thanks the newspaper for its "Fan Letter" of June 1, regarding the quick action by the Department in extinguishing the wrecker fire at Keith's Garage immediately below The News windows.

He does not, however, disclose that the primary cause of that fire was the mysterious flock of seagulls flying overhead so far inland.

A letter writer finds that the "arsenal of democracy" had almost run out of political freedom in the face of the "Rightist revolution", as it had been called by one of its victims, columnist Samuel Grafton. It had made nationalization of private enterprise an unpardonable sin and placed the halo on laissez-faire capitalism and free enterprise.

That there is Amur'ca versus Roosha.

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