The Charlotte News
Tuesday, July 10, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that after the first two sessions of the ceasefire talks at Kaesong in Korea on Tuesday, U.N. representatives reported that progress had been made. The next session would begin at 7:00 p.m. Tuesday, EST, Wednesday at 10:00 a.m., Korean time. According to U.S. Army information officers, Admiral C. Turner Joy, head of the U.N. delegation, said at the outset that discussion would be limited to military matters in Korea and that no discussion would be had concerning politics, including a seat at the U.N. for Communist China, economics or military affairs elsewhere.
Correspondents were not permitted at the first sessions and would not be at the next session either, though a plan had been in place to allow 16 reporters to attend on Wednesday. General Matthew Ridgway said that American reporters would be permitted to attend once the talks were on track and there was reasonable assurance that they would stay on track.
Helicopter pilots said that the U.N. delegation was met by fifteen jeep loads of Chinese, some with side arms, and that armed Chinese stood guard around the field where the helicopters were parked throughout the day. Jeeps which carried the five U.N. representatives from Kaesong to the U.N. house where they were staying in Munsan, traveled under armed Communist escort.
North Korean radio in Pyongyang said that one of the requirements for peace was withdrawal from Korea of all foreign troops and that the people of Korea should decide the future of the country.
Meanwhile, small groups of enemy soldiers infiltrated the "iron triangle" area on the west-central front, while sharp but minor skirmishes dotted the entire front. There was no sign of military activity in the vicinity of Kaesong.
Rain and poor visibility limited the Fifth Air Force to 22 effective sorties.
Enemy radio claimed major ground and air victories but there was no confirmation from allied sources of any such reports.
Senator Tom Connally, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that the peace efforts in Korea could not be allowed to slow down the military buildup in the U.S. and in Western Europe. He endorsed the President's urging of the prior day to give the President authority to end the state of war with West Germany. Congressman Mike Mansfield of Montana also supported the move, while Congressman Jacob Javits of New York urged going slow. Senator Taft also supported the proposal.
Unidentified Western observers in Moscow said that if the Big Three followed through with their intent to conclude a treaty with Germany apart from the Soviets, then the latter would likely retaliate in Berlin. The Russians primarily opposed remilitarization of West Germany. Russian newspapers were describing the move to conclude a peace treaty with Japan as part of a plan to remilitarize Japan and that the Chinese Communists would never allow it.
The Administration was preparing a bill to provide for free education for Korean war veterans, similar to that passed for World War II veterans, though one draft proposed only giving the benefit to those whose education had been interrupted by service.
In Tehran, the British had switched tactics in the oil dispute with the Iranian Government, now soft-pedaling the threat to withdraw British technicians who operated the Abadan refinery, leaving the Iranians unable in that event to operate it and keep oil flowing. The new approach was to hang on as long as possible in the face of nationalization. One Iranian official boasted that they always knew the British had been bluffing and that Premier Mohammed Mossadegh's "no compromise" strategy was working. The Premier was said to be considering President Truman's offer to send Averell Harriman to mediate the dispute, though the Premier told U.S. Ambassador Henry Grady that the offer had come "a little late". Official observers believed the Premier, however, would accept the invitation to avoid offending U.S. public opinion.
In New York, Government prosecutors sought to revoke the existing bail of fifteen lesser Communist leaders charged under the Smith Act, and raise it to $50,000 each. The bail had been furnished by the Civil Rights Congress and the prosecution charged that they were "wholly irresponsible". Three of the trustees of the Congress's bail fund had the night before been sentenced to jail for contempt for refusing to answer questions and produce fund records in the wake of the failure to surrender by four of the eleven convicted top Communist leaders whose convictions had been recently upheld by the Supreme Court. Author Dashiell Hammett, one of the three contemnor trustees, sought to raise appellate bond after being sentenced to six months for refusing to furnish the demanded information on who posted the bond for the four fugitive Communists.
Frederick Vanderbilt Field, who had posted appellate bond on his contempt conviction based on the same refusal, had been subpoenaed to testify before the Senate Internal Security Committee, according to its chairman, Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada. He would be questioned on the following Thursday about the $80,000 bond for the missing four Communist leaders and who raised it, the same matter on which he had refused to testify leading to his contempt citation.
The three major American trade union organizations, AFL, CIO, and UMW, asked the President to take immediate action to halt mass deportations of innocent citizens by the Hungarian Government, begun in mid-1950. The deportees to the Soviet Union were estimated at between 47,000 and 70,000. The message said that there were an especially high number of Jews among the deported, including many who had barely escaped death by deportation during the war.
The House Appropriations Committee voted to cut the budgets of the State Department by 18 percent, the Commerce Department by 20 percent, and the Justice Department by 1.5 percent for the coming fiscal year. The report did not mention anything about Secretary of State Acheson, but Republicans seeking his ouster were likely to raise the subject during debate in the House, where, Democrats conceded, the vote would be close.
In a preliminary vote on economic controls, the House rejected a Republican attempt to require the Administration first to try indirect controls before imposing direct controls. Administration leaders in Congress were thus sensing victory ahead later in the week on the vote to extend controls.
On the editorial page, "Courting National Suicide" warns that a Korean truce would not end basic Soviet Politburo policy of replacing all capitalist societies with Communist societies and so should not cause a relaxation of the national mobilization program begun in the wake of the invasion of South Korea a year earlier.
There was evidence that the Korean venture had backfired on the Soviets, that their prestige, rather than that of the U.S., had suffered in the Far East and that Russia had suffered indirectly a great military defeat.
The next strategic Communist move might come in Indo-China, India, Iran, Western Europe or Scandinavia. Wherever it would come, the success or failure of the move would be determined by the ability of the free world to meet it quickly and decisively.
Thus, it concludes that to use the prospect of a truce in Korea as grounds for ending economic controls and curtailing mobilization would be to court national suicide, and that nothing would suit the Russians better.
"New 'Get Acheson' Move" finds that the latest maneuver by Representative John Phillips of California to get Secretary of State Acheson ironically would also get John Foster Dulles, his Republican assistant on foreign policy. The proposed amendment would prevent any official of the Departments of State, Commerce or Justice or the Federal judiciary, who had been a member of a law firm which had dealings with a foreign government during the previous five years, from getting paid. Secretary Acheson's former law firm represented Poland. But Mr. Dulles's former law firm had also represented a foreign government, as had many other such Federal employees' former firms.
Many Republicans viewed it with dismay as they wanted to keep the issue of Mr. Acheson and his supposed Communist Chinese sympathies alive for the 1952 elections. One unidentified Republican policy maker told the Associated Press that they had come too far to drop the fight against Mr. Acheson at this point, lest it be perceived as an endorsement of his policies "which seem to be bringing the fighting in Korea to an end."
The piece finds it no wonder that the Republican did not want to be named as he was saying essentially that the continuation of the Korean war would be more convenient for GOP politics than an armistice.
"Law and Logic on City's Side" supports the City Treasurer, L. L. Ledbetter, in his campaign to rid the City budget of a $75,000 item for school bond debt retirement, which he sought to transfer properly to the County, proposing that the City Attorney bring a test case on the matter. State law gave the responsibility to the counties for providing school buildings. For many years, Mecklenburg County had assumed the responsibility on the school bond indebtedness, but when it paid off the bonds of other small districts in the County, it stopped paying on the City school bonds.
A piece from the Greensboro Daily
News, titled "Fishin' Needs Some Sittin'", finds that
it was generally inclined to agree with a St. Louis Post-Dispatch
editorial, previously reprinted in The News, suggesting that
the world would not be so crazy if there were more trout streams and
more fishermen
It prefers a flat-bottom boat from which the fisherman could cast his line or rest and reflect as he wished.
It does not object to trout fishing as it was fine for those who liked it. But it exhorts the Post-Dispatch to recognize that there were other forms of fishing and that those who preferred the former to restful fishing from a boat might be "just a leetle bit touched in the head".
A piece from the Congressional Quarterly tells of a strong Democratic-Republican coalition continuing to make its influence felt in favor of the Republicans on major domestic issues based on key votes between the prior January and July. It provides the results of several votes on economy in Government, cutbacks on low-cost housing, barring of price rollbacks, public power policy, and the proposed 7.2 billion dollar tax increase, all, save the latter, demonstrating the pattern. The North Carolina Congressional delegation votes on these issues are also listed.
Also included is a "Congressional Quiz" from the Quarterly, against which you can test your au courant familiarity with the arcane of 1951, such as whether there would be more price rollbacks, whether railroad employees should have the right to strike, whether and to what extent the President's program had progressed in the 82nd Congress, what would become of the RFC, and could the Senate force Senators to vote on an issue. The person who gets all of the answers correct wins a free trip to Washington and admission to see Congress in action, provided you pay your own transportation, all lodging, meals and other expenses associated with the the trip.
Drew Pearson tells of a 3:00 a.m. attempt by Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan, on the eve of expiration of price controls, to jam through an amendment to enable price increases on cars, not disclosing that his wife and son-in-law had a substantial interest in stock in a subsidiary of the Chrysler Corp. Senator Willis Robertson pointed out that the generally worded amendment would primarily benefit the auto industry, admission of which Senator Clinton Anderson then drew from Senator Ferguson. The amendment was then defeated, with fellow Michigan Senator Blair Moody voting against it.
An amendment put forward by Senator Edward Thye of Minnesota to allow price increases for peanuts and dairy products passed, despite verbal opposition by Senators Anderson and Paul Douglas.
Senator Anderson, former Secretary of Agriculture, also tried to block an amendment sponsored by Senator Hugh Butler of Nebraska to weaken control of meat slaughtering. Both Senators raised cattle, but Senator Butler was trying to pad his interests while Senator Anderson was voting against his. Senate Majority Leader Ernest McFarland supported the Butler amendment and objected to its characterization by Senator Anderson as a "black market amendment". It passed overwhelmingly, despite Senator Anderson presenting proof that it was opposed by some meat packers.
Joseph Alsop, in Avon, Conn., reflects on his trip just taken abroad to Europe and the Middle East, finds that the success in Korea prompting the Soviets to seek peace had resounded across Europe to the benefit of the West. The U.N. forces had stopped a major Communist aggression which otherwise would have been prelude to taking parts of Western Europe in a disarmed Western world. Korea had put an end to what he calls the Louis Johnson era in U.S. foreign policy, the economic cutback of defense.
Yet, Western leaders, he suggests, were not prepared to meet the new Soviet tactics, as shown by the unpreparedness to meet the crisis in Iran regarding the nationalization of British oil interests. Britain and the U.S. had not come to grips with the gravity of that situation, hoping that Premier Mossadegh would become reasonable and understand that the British would cut off oil royalties to Iran, which would cause the collapse of its economy and lead inexorably to the Communist Tudeh Party taking control of the country. But so far there was no recognition of those dire prospects.
The Americans and British might persuade the Shah to implement a tough reform program, but the British had already tried and failed to do so.
The U.S. had privately assured the British that if the Tudeh Party began to take control, then the U.S. would support British troop movement into southern Iran to secure the oil interests. But by then it would likely be too late to save anything.
He suggests that those events might transpire in the coming one to three months. If so, it would upset the balance of power in the region and also diminish the power of NATO to resist Soviet pressure through both its local effects and demoralization of Western Europe, emboldening the Kremlin to make moves elsewhere. If the new challenges presented by Iran were not met, the result would be even more serious defeats.
Robert C. Ruark tells of a young man whom he knew having committed suicide in Greenwich Village by hanging himself after first failing at the attempt by jumping from a building, the two successive attempts causing the death to hit the newspapers. The police knew little about him and the newspaper had described him as a poet. In fact, he had been a frustrated painter who could visualize the art he wanted to create but could never get it down on canvas.
Mr. Ruark had worked with him at the Washington Daily News and he had several of his pictures. At the newspaper during the war, he had been consigned to drawing cartoons and maps of the German invasion of Russia and the Japanese against the Americans, frustrating his artistic desire.
Most of the time, he had been a normal individual, neatly dressed and groomed, holding down steady employment for a year or so at a time. But then he would enter a dark depression, would forget to sleep, wash, eat, or go home. A female reporter would then take him in tow and feed him forcibly, ply him with bourbon and send him to bed for twenty hours, at which point he would recover and resume drawing his cartoons and maps.
Mr. Ruark decides that something must have finally snapped inside as he sought through endless labor to produce his envisioned picture, which always proved elusive. He decides that "it wasn't his fault that he was born with a carpenter's hands."
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