The Charlotte News
Friday, June 15, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that large numbers of fresh enemy troops were reported to be digging in along the rain-swept ridges of eastern Korea this date. The enemy battled U.N. tank columns on the central front but vanished in the western sector as tank columns moved toward the new enemy base at Kumsong.
U.N. fighter-bombers aided the advance to Kumsong. Two enemy planes struck further behind U.N. lines than in months.
U.N. patrols operating in the occupied "iron triangle" of Pyonggang, Kumhwa and Chorwon, met only light opposition.
President Syngman Rhee of South Korea bared his arms and worked in a rice field on "Farmer's Day" in his food-short nation.
The U.S. was reported opposed to seeking any ceasefire agreement with the Chinese at present in Korea, but would not preclude peace talks if the Chinese made the first move.
The Big Three Western powers suggested to Russia that the proposed Big Four conference of foreign ministers take place in Washington starting June 23 based on the agenda already worked out in Paris and that no further adjustments be made. Russia replied that it would do so if the Big Three agreed to include on the agenda the subjects of NATO and American bases in Europe, which the Big Three had already declined to do.
Former Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson continued his testimony before the joint Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, stating that he feared the U.S. was moving toward recognition of Communist China. He said that he regarded the State Department document of December 23, 1949, which questioned the strategic value of Formosa and predicted its fall to the Chinese Communists, to be a "false document". He said that upon the initial intervention in Korea the previous summer, there was no war plan and it was a case of "shooting from the hip".
The President the previous night had addressed the nation via radio and television urging Congress to extend economic controls and broaden his authority to impose further controls to enable continued stemming of inflation. As a result, Congressional leaders sympathetic to the Administration hoped that public opinion would help them obtain greater controls.
The Senate Banking Committee agreed this date to extend controls beyond June 30 and apply them to critical defense areas. No definite time, however, was set for the length of extension.
The President signed the bill providing 190 million dollars as a loan to India to purchase surplus U.S. grain. The new shipments, supplementing the 250,000 tons already being shipped per month from the U.S., would bring the total U.S. supply of food to India to two-thirds of its food being obtained from foreign sources. Earthquakes, droughts and plagues of locusts the previous year had threatened millions in India with famine.
In Houston, many seats were empty in
Rice Stadium
Congressman Graham Barden of North Carolina, chairman of the Labor and Education Committee, revived the issue of 300 million dollars of Federal aid to education. It would bar funding of such ancillary services as school bus transportation, an issue which had drawn the ire of Francis Cardinal Spellman and other Roman Catholics in the earlier version of the bill for it having barred parochial and private schools from participation in the proposed Federal aid. The prior bill had passed the Senate but died in the House Committee at the conclusion of the prior Congress.
In Montreal, forty persons were reported trapped in a fire at the Roman Catholic Hospice St. Cunegonde, with at least two having died. Some 200 children were led to safety by nuns. Those trapped were mainly elderly women on upper floors. The fire was brought under control after two hours.
In Akron, O., as shown in a photograph, a convertible was crunched between two trucks, one hitting it from the rear at high speed and pushing it into the truck in front as both vehicles sat for a red light. No one was injured.
It appears to be a 1951 Oldsmobile, judging by the hubcaps and trim configuration, but the door latch is too low on the door, the bumper does not have the right ear for that car, and the strip of trim should continue along the door, possibly the result, however, of the crash unseating it; but it may be another make. We are still investigating. We know we have seen at some time in the past that make and model car, and it's just a matter of jogging our memory banks correctly to pin it down. We shall keep you apprised.
The store in the background, by
coincidence, was exactly where we encountered the pro-gun advocate
who, sadly, we had to teach a lesson
Come to think of it, they may have stuck another door on that car just to fool us. It looks fishy. The truck in the rear is plainly a Ford, though not a 1951.
On the editorial page, "The Bomb … and the Bases" tells of American superiority in atomic bombs, key to defense deterrence for the ensuing two and a half years, being nothing if not supported by adequate overseas bases from which to deliver a potential nuclear drop. These bases had to be located in the Mediterranean and Western Europe to be effective against Russia. If the bases were lost, the capability of reaching the heart of Communism would be seriously limited if not destroyed.
That alone would be enough, it urges, to resist the strategy of General MacArthur to engage in a broadened Far Eastern war, which in the meantime would harm relations with European allies whose good will the country needed to preserve.
"Where Your Tax Money Goes" provides how much the Federal budget for the coming year provided for each category of non-defense spending and finds that it gave ample ground for budget-cutting of inessential matter. While the President might be sincere, it allows, in his claim that he had presented a tight budget to Congress, the figures showed that his judgment was open to question.
It does not, however, propose to suggest even one such item from any of the listed categories which might be cut. As with the weather, it's easy to carp...
"The Injured and the Dead" finds the President's statement at the annual highway safety conference to have been apropos in comparing the U.S. casualties in Korea, at 80,000, to the more than one million traffic deaths and injuries during the prior year. It adds that the highway death toll of one million during the previous 50 years equaled roughly the number of Americans who had died in all wars in which the U.S. had been involved.
It finds, however, the President
wrong when he said that journalists and newspapers did not write
about traffic accidents. They wrote about them all the time but it
did not appear to do any good. Until Americans, it ventures, became
concerned about the highway
A piece from the Boston Herald, titled "Debate by Bludgeon", finds that the MacArthur hearings had perhaps brought a saner climate to the country and, if so, would have served a salutary purpose. For the country had been in danger of becoming a nation of "brawlers, hurling vituperation rather than reasons and shutting all doors to constructive compromise." After both sides had been heard, it was clear that these men were fallible human beings capable of mistakes in judgment, rather than being liars, fools or traitors.
The fact that General Wedemeyer had testified that a compromise between the Nationalists and Communists in China had been been considered by him and General MacArthur took some of the onus off General Marshall's 1946 mission to China which wound up in the recommendation of a coalition government with the Communists, who he found to be better, more effective administrators, effecting popular land reform in the north, than the Government of Chiang Kai-Shek, rife with corruption and incompetence.
It concludes that the lesson to be gleaned from the hearings was that the political bludgeon served no useful end and that logic and reason need not be discarded in the country merely because it had been in Russia.
Drew Pearson tells of Brig. General Emil C. Kiel, commander of the American Air Force in the Caribbean, having gone to Ecuador for an official visit and while there being invited to a formal dinner by the Defense Minister, whereupon, the General, believing it would be inappropriate to attend such a civilian function in military dress, sent his plane on a 2,000-mile round trip to Panama to obtain his formal dinner clothes, at a cost of $4,500 to the taxpayers.
General Walter Krueger, the top general serving under General MacArthur during the Pacific war, had been too busy to serve in the reception committee for General MacArthur when he came to San Antonio.
Former Speaker of the House Joe Martin had, while Speaker in September, 1947, warned that if the situation got worse in Europe, the people might turn to either General MacArthur or General Eisenhower for leadership, to provide an "iron hand", that if General MacArthur returned home to San Francisco and was greeted by a hero's welcome and a parade down Fifth Avenue, a MacArthur-for-President drive might quickly take the country by storm. Congressman Martin had earlier in the year touched off the political firestorm which led to General MacArthur's dismissal by publicizing the letter from the General disagreeing with Administration policy on use of Chinese Nationalists in the war and the need to bomb Chinese bases in Manchuria.
U.S. Ambassador to Iran Henry Grady arranged a luncheon between the British ambassador and Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, in the hope of having them work out a compromise on the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. interests, but instead, the luncheon had wound up in a screaming match.
The U.S. Embassy in Spain had informed the State Department that Generalissimo Francisco Franco was in trouble, that a general strike by his foes was planned in Madrid and opposition parties were secretly forming a coalition for the first time to oust him from power.
Marquis Childs tells of the hope that with the French elections about to be held, a stable government would result which would enable moving forward with NATO cooperation. Communist propaganda had been saying that France was being given over acre by acre to the U.S. and that NATO was only a thinly disguised form of American imperialism to make Western Europe a satellite. As a result of pressure from left-wing forces, a duty had been imposed by the Government on U.S. imported materials necessary to build NATO bases.
But a new optimism had taken root throughout Western Europe as the dreaded spring Russian offensive had not materialized and it was believed now that no war would likely occur before late 1953, giving enough time for NATO to build its defense capabilities. French production had increased 140 percent over prewar levels.
Yet, there was still sloth in forming the combined NATO command, frustrating General Eisenhower. It would be easier to make it a U.S. operation but with that would come the renewed perception of imperialism.
Stewart Alsop compares Senator Joseph McCarthy to a skunk in his latest campaign to undermine Secretary of Defense Marshall for his Far Eastern policy by suggesting that he was implicated in "infamy so black as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man". The charge was so ridiculous that it seemed silly to take it seriously but the Senator had shown his capacity previously for using lies to devastating effect.
The effort was a blatant attempt to reverse the political trend of the previous several weeks since the Joint Chiefs testified to the joint Senate committees that they thoroughly disagreed with General MacArthur's position on winning the Korean war through bombing and blockade of China and also agreed with and had recommended unanimously his firing for openly disagreeing with Administration policy. The initial positive results for the Republicans in the wake of the firing and the General's homecoming and speech to a joint session of Congress had now faded away completely and it was the Democrats who were now being cautiously optimistic while the Republicans had become dour at the prospects for 1952.
Secretary of State Acheson, with his testimony, had even reversed the trend of opinion against him.
It all did not mean that the Administration had won a clear-cut victory on the issue of the firing but the climate had changed markedly. For the Republicans to have any chance of winning, the leadership, especially Senator Taft, would need to distance itself from this latest attack by Senator McCarthy on the sterling record of Secretary Marshall.
A letter writer urges Americans to vote and participate in the democracy to avoid being manipulated by propaganda, as was used to defeat Senator Millard Tydings in Maryland the previous fall, and to preserve the American way of life. She also counsels against the power interests who lobbied against public power.
A letter from the president of the North Carolina Veterinary Medical Association finds the editorial on biological warfare to have been timed perfectly for the group's 50th annual meeting, as the Association was keenly aware of such warfare as it affected animals, regarding foot and mouth disease, hog cholera, glanders, anthrax, rabies and other diseases capable of being spread by animals to man.
The State Legislature, he informs, had appropriated $150,000 to N.C. State for use in veterinary research. Since the State presently had no school of veterinary medicine, it paid $1,000 to the University of Georgia for every veterinary student from North Carolina.
He says that every veterinarian was aware that they were the first line of defense against biological warfare.
Especially beware of Major
Framed Edition
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