The Charlotte News
Tuesday, June 12, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that three long enemy columns had fled through the eastern mountains of Korea to escape being trapped by the allied tanks moving through the "iron triangle" in the flat Pyonggang Valley. U.N. forces mopped up enemy troops in the hills around captured Chorwon and Kumhwa, the legs of the triangle. The northern front had been cut to about 75 miles, whereas at the height of the enemy spring offensive, it extended 125 miles. Little action was reported on Tuesday night, with patrol activity probing for remaining enemy in the triangle being the most prevalent action.
Lt. General Albert C. Wedemeyer continued his testimony before the joint Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees this date, saying that the U.S. might not be able to meet its commitments in Europe or elsewhere if the effort continued in Korea. He foresaw no decisive allied victory in Korea and believed it might yet drag on for months. He favored withdrawal. He said that he believed the war in Korea would have been avoided had Manchuria been made a trusteeship of the U.N., as he had recommended in 1947. He also asserted that the U.S. should have helped the Chinese Nationalists as it had helped the Greeks against the Communist guerrillas. He felt that the Chinese Nationalists should receive aid before Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia. He said that the Yalta agreement, giving concessions to Russia in Manchuria, hurt the Nationalist Chinese very deeply. He believed that the time was coming when the U.S. would have to draw a line and say to Russia, "No more, this is it."
Secretary of Defense Marshall arrived back in Washington after his quick trip to Korea, saying that he discussed matters involving only U.S. troops with General Matthew Ridgway, and found a very successful operation at work in the U.N. forces in the field.
In Tehran, Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh assured President Truman, in his reply to the President's urging of negotiation and compromise on the nationalization of British oil, that the nationalization would not jeopardize the world's oil supply or imperil international harmony. He also blamed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., of which Britain was a 53 percent owner, for many of Iran's postwar ills. Negotiations with British directors of the company were scheduled to begin the following day.
In Rome, the Christian Democrat and pro-NATO coalition forces of Premier Alcide de Gasperi stripped the Communists of administrative control in three major Italian cities, and won in seven others, in local elections. The Communists retained control of Taranto.
The Air Force ruled out sabotage in the crash of eight jet fighters the prior Friday over Richmond, Indiana, the largest simultaneous jet disaster in history to that point, declaring that the cause was icing of engine inlet screens from a peculiar occurrence in local atmospheric conditions.
Shipments of cattle increased in the nation's major livestock markets this date for the first time since the Government had rolled back prices. The increase brought shipment to nearly the same level as the week a year earlier and 10,000 more head than a week earlier.
Defense Mobilizer Charles E. Wilson stated that the rollbacks in prices were firm, rejecting cattle industry complaints and demands for relief.
Macys's in New York was restrained by court order from cutting prices in price-fixed drugs items in intrastate commerce, based on the state's fair trade law.
In New York, an anonymous 16-year old girl's tape-recorded story of how narcotics led her to a life of prostitution and thievery began a State hearing into narcotics traffic among teenagers. She had gone to a dance at age 13 and smoked a reefer with a boy she met, then four months later, tried cocaine, then began sniffing heroin. When her use became addiction, she needed money for her habit, leading to prostitution and stealing. She and her boyfriend were caught burglarizing a home and she was sent to a mental institution for six months. Upon her release, she began a relationship with another boy and resumed using drugs, including heroin. She then began a sexual relationship with an older man in exchange for drugs. She said that she had now, however, met a boy who took a sincere interest in her and that she was trying to get off drugs.
The problem is you and your weak-kneed character. You may not like the truth but that is the truth, stupid. You cry in your milk and seek escape from yourself. Grow up. Oh, oh, oh, abusive. No, you're a stupid little tramp with low self-esteem, being much warranted for your worthless little life.
In Tokyo, the four-hour musical comedy, "Madame Sada Yacco Goes to America" had in its last death scene the lines: "He's not dead. He just faded away."
In West Los Angeles, actress Hedy
Lamarr
Good luck... It ought to last a
couple of days anyway, until about the ninth hole
On page 10-A, Emery Wister of The News, again writing from Hollywood, provides his interviews with actress Ava Gardner, regarding her romance with Frank Sinatra, and with Clark Gable, regarding his recent breakup.
On the editorial page, "Democrats Are Looking Southward" tells of Democrats being so impressed by their Denver meeting seeking to unite the party that they had proposed such a meeting in the South, with the object of keeping Southern Democrats in the party fold in 1952. They no longer feared a repeat of the Dixiecrat movement as in 1948, as that movement was dead, as was civil rights for the foreseeable future. But they wanted to prevent a GOP-Southern coalition from occurring.
The President had not lived up to the high standards expected of the presidency, despite his "numerous acts of courage and decision in international affairs", but the Republicans also did not reflect the internationalist-minded South.
The piece recalls the meeting in Raleigh under the guidance of Jonathan Daniels in early 1950 which few Southern Democrats attended and turned into a mutual admiration society for the various Administration members on hand. It suggests therefore that such a meeting be handled differently this time if the Democrats hoped for success in accomplishing their goal.
"Nice Going, Mr. President" compliments the President for appointing New York Federal District Court Judge Harold Medina to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Murphy, present New York City Police Commissioner, to the Federal District Court. Judge Medina had presided over the trials of the top eleven American Communists and the perjury trial of Alger Hiss, had handled both well, dispassionately discharging his task in the face of querulous defense tactics in the former case. Mr. Murphy had prosecuted Mr. Hiss. While the President had been rightfully criticized for many of his appointments, these, thinks the piece, were to be commended.
"Mud Flaps for Trucks" wishes that all of the trucking companies would equip their trucks with mud flaps to avoid spraying mud onto motorists' windshields.
Another equally annoying thing is when truckers buy flappers with messages or adorn their rear ends with those with the chrome-plated figure of a woman flapping about in the wind and rain off the wheels, and for unknown reasons, perhaps suggesting someone down and dirty. But it tends to be distracting at 4:00 a.m., when you have been driving for hours and then are forced by habit to read the flaps on the flappers of the truck as you proceed along the curvy, slow road in front of you for forty miles, up and down grades where you can't pass, the while with Miss Upper Forty on the lower reflecting alternately in your face as your headlights catch her bounteous curves. Just keep those flaps blank and bland and we'll get along.
"E Pluribus Unum" tells
of reading a handout by the French Government explaining that Paris
street names were of "fetching oddity", including the
Avenue of Elysian Fields entering the Place of the Star, and
possessing the Street of the Fishing Cat
It wonders why Charlotte's street names were, for the most part, so mundane—and admits, in the end, that the piece helped the editor to "fill up the column on that terrible first day back at the desk after vacation."
Why don't you tell us about your
trip with the mud
A piece from the Baltimore Evening Sun, titled "Silly Tariff Is Written Off", tells of copper being exempted from import duties until early 1953 or the end of the present national emergency, whichever occurred first, provided the domestic price did not fall below 24 cents per pound in any calendar month. The move made sense, says the piece, as it was not reasonable to penalize foreign copper-producing nations when the Government needed copper and was its biggest domestic user, resulting under the tariff in goods made of copper costing more, thus costing the Government more, neutralizing the effect of the tariff.
Drew Pearson tells of former Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson having taken his ouster better than most of his predecessors bounced from the Cabinet. He had recently talked by phone with the President and had a friendly chat, after Mr. Johnson agreed not to testify for General MacArthur during the Senate hearings, as had been predicted he would by Mr. Pearson in his radio broadcast. But when Brig. General Louis Renfrow heard the broadcast, he called Mr. Johnson and urged him not to say anything, which Mr. Johnson agreed to do, leading to the President calling to thank him.
Congressman Frank Boykin of Alabama had invited members of the Fisheries and Wildlife Committee to a luncheon to refute Congressman Howard Smith of Virginia who had made a derogatory speech about the Government pamphlet, "The Love Life of Raccoons". But the members then met with representatives of the paper industry who proceeded to lobby them about the controlled materials regulation of the Office of Price Stabilization, leaving the members nonplussed at this attempt to influence their vote at such a luncheon. Mr. Pearson explains that they would have been even more taken aback had they known that Mr. Boykin and his four children had a large amount of stock in Mobile Paper Co. and that the stock had been acquired after the Congressman helped the company to obtain a $750,000 loan from the RFC.
The President had angered Eastern Senators because of his appointment to the ICC of an old Missouri friend, defeated former Congressman Ray Karst, over a well-qualified original appointee from Maryland, supported by several Congressional leaders. He suggests that with the President, old friendships never died nor even faded away.
Stewart Alsop suggests again, as three weeks earlier, that there was a smell in the air around Washington of a potential peace settlement in Korea. One basis for it was Russia's sudden faint indications of willingness to engage in a reasonable settlement, though never reaching the level of peace feelers.
The more important indicator was the U.S. Government determining finally that it would accept a peace based on the 38th parallel followed by staged, U.N.-supervised withdrawal of all foreign troops. There would be no discussion of either Formosa or admission of Communist China to the U.N. as terms of peace. General Omar Bradley had just returned from discussion of these points with the British military chiefs in London. Secretary of State Acheson had outlined these acceptable terms before the Senate joint committees.
But broaching the subject with the enemy was another issue, to avoid the appearance of appeasement. It was likely to be handled through the U.N. insofar as China and North Korea, with a secret diplomatic approach made to Russia. The latter had been used with effect by Dr. Philip Jessup in 1949 to resolve the Russian blockade of Berlin—for which, he notes, Dr. Jessup earned from the "Congressional Neanderthals" label as a Communist.
The Soviets had to realize now that the U.N. forces could not be defeated in Korea without Russian participation, which would inevitably trigger world war, and so expectations were high for a peace settlement soon. But the final choice lay with the Soviets.
"And, thus the world, in the early Summer of 1951, quivers on the knife edge between war and peace."
Oh, hell, five years can't pass since World War II without us needing to quiver over something, somewhere in the world, regarding some little bastard trying to challenge us to a duel at high noon in the streets. It gets old.
3-2-1, go.
The most recent little showpiece by the "President" in 2018 with respect to North Korea reminds of Neville Chamberlain returning from Munich in October, 1938 with that piece of paper and declaring "peace in our time", does it not? What a moron...
James Marlow discusses the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Dennis v. U.S., upholding the convictions of all eleven top American Communists for violation of the 1940 Smith Act, outlawing conspiracies to teach or advocate the forceful overthrow of the Government as well as membership in such an organization provided the purpose to overthrow the Government was known by the member. Now that the statute had been upheld by the Supreme Court as Constitutionally valid, the Government was free to move against other leaders of a secondary level, local, state and regional leaders, for instance, but not against individual members, as proof of knowledge of the unlawful purpose would be difficult to muster. The FBI estimated that there were 43,000 card-carrying members in the country and so it would be an impracticability in any event to prosecute all of them.
The primary purpose of the prosecution of the eleven leaders was to keep the organization off balance so that the rank-and-file would be left to wonder whether they might be next.
Robert C. Ruark tells of television taking away live audiences from baseball and boxing, theaters, and even movies. People preferred to stay at home and watch such fare free from their living rooms rather than fight traffic and crowds and pay big ticket prices. Eventually, he suggests, the event managers for the live presentations would need to come up with some way of competing with the televised version, or they would, themselves, move into television.
He prefers to see Frank Sinatra
As we have said before, keep away that Kukla. It made us physically ill.
Framed Edition
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