The Charlotte News

Saturday, July 14, 1951

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Communists agreed to remove armed guards from the negotiations site at Kaesong and admit twenty Western correspondents, but wished to discuss the remainder of General Matthew Ridgway's demands for resuming the talks, which included the area of the neutral zone around Kaesong, methods of facilitating free movement by the negotiators and the number of personnel to be admitted.

Secretary of State Acheson proposed at a press conference the previous day that the armistice should be concluded on present battle lines and said that he did not favor withdrawal to the 38th parallel. The proposal received mixed reaction on Capitol Hill, with lawmakers, such as Senator Styles Bridges, indicating dissatisfaction with any proposal which would leave Korea divided, though finding Secretary Acheson's proposal better than the notion of dividing the country at the 38th parallel.

With the Administration trying to prevent defeat of its proposed stronger economic controls, the House bill was scheduled for vote on Thursday and then would proceed to conference for resolving conflicts between the House and Senate versions. The Republicans had formed a coalition with Southern Democrats in the House to defeat the President's proposed measures, especially those regarding food price rollbacks. The Senate bill reduced the President's power over controls and gave none of the new authority he sought.

In Kansas City, Mo., officials closed all but essential businesses as flood and fire gripped the city, after the Kansas and Missouri Rivers had reached their highest crests in history, with dikes protecting two vital industrial areas still threatened with collapse. Damage was assessed in the flooded areas of Kansas City and Kansas to be at 500 million dollars, with half a million persons displaced. A large fire had erupted after the explosion of about 20 oil storage tanks in Kansas City, caused by a floating 6,000-gallon oil tank striking an electrical line. Among the businesses destroyed was the Last Chance Tavern where political operative Charles Binaggio had been last seen alive before his gangland-style slaying the previous year. At least 13 deaths had resulted from the flooding and many more were missing.

A House Appropriations subcommittee voted to approve 15 million dollars for Federal relief for the flooded areas. The bill would be submitted to the full committee Monday morning and to the full House at noon.

Arizona, most of New Mexico, southern Utah and southern Colorado suffered from drought conditions, affecting cattle and sheep country, and also dipped into rice and cotton country in Texas and Louisiana. New Mexico was in a dispute with Texas over water from the El Vado reservoir in northern New Mexico, with Texas threatening to sue New Mexico in the Supreme Court to obtain more water. On the eastern edge of the Navajo Reservation, Indian families could obtain only a pail of water per day for both drinking and washing, as their springs were drying up.

In Tehran, Ambassador Henry Grady said that he was hopeful of a resolution to be effected by Ambassador-at-large Averell Harriman, when he arrived the following day to become the mediator of the oil nationalization dispute between Iran and Britain. Ambassador Grady said, however, that both sides would have to give a little.

A 15-man Philippines presidential committee unanimously rejected the American draft of the Japanese peace treaty and expressed betrayal by the U.S., with one member, the foreign minister to the Japanese puppet government during the war, proposing severance of all ties. The latter member said that the treaty represented a "delusion that the Japanese will fight America's battles in Asia" and resulted from an "oppressive guilt complex" regarding Hiroshima and Nagasaki, amounted to "victory for the enemy and surrender for the ally"—as incongruous as those three notions are.

Governor Thomas Dewey received a cordial welcome in Formosa. He said that he would study land reform and consult with Nationalist leaders on the Pacific situation.

The President planned to visit Detroit on July 28 to participate in the city's 250th anniversary celebration.

In Sacramento, Governor Earl Warren commuted to time served the five-year prison sentence of actress Madge Meredith, after she had been in Tehachapi State Prison for Women since May 9, 1949 for being complicit in the kidnaping and beating of her former business manager and his bodyguard.

In New Kensington, Pa., two men and two women were set to begin a voyage down river by raft to New Orleans, where they hoped to arrive by October 1, in an experiment on living in small groups. The leader of the group was a University of Michigan graduate student in sociology. She had formed the group by writing in the college newspaper and asking for volunteers. They had formed a budget of $200 of which they had spent $150.

Don't stop long in Georgia.

Bob Sain of The News reviews Catcher in the Rye by young author, J. D. Salinger, on page 9-A. Catch it if you can, but beware of becoming an assassin as a result.

On the editorial page, "'To Meet the Common Danger'" welcomes the three-way mutual defense pact between the U.S., Australia and New Zealand, finds it a good complement to NATO, though no direct U.S. aid was contemplated for the Pacific pact.

George Fielding Eliot, writing in the July Harper's, had said that successful coalitions in the past had a common objective, agreed on the broad means to achieve it, and had centralized political and military agencies for working out the mechanics of the coalition. He had asserted that the U.N. coalition in Korea had been stymied at the outset by the question of whether to cross the 38th parallel and then by the intervention of the Chinese, suffering from not thinking enough ahead. By contrast, within NATO, the long-range planning and coordination was being handled.

Andre Laguerre had pointed out in the current issue of Life that such a problem occurred in "the supply of twelve armies which used 33 types of machine guns and 90 types of heavy guns". Those issues were being resolved before a war might break out in Western Europe. The piece hopes the lesson would be applied also in the Pacific pact.

While some envisioned inclusion eventually of Japan and the Philippines in the pact, it urges proceeding slowly in this regard, to make sure that the nations who joined were compatible with one another so that teamwork could be established to produce effective political-military organization.

"A Lesson for This Generation" tells of having been irritated initially when HUAC undertook to investigate the Bonus March of 1932 for it having been led by Communists, but later having reassessed the situation as an opportunity to show the true nature of the March, that it was a group of soldiers from World War I who had been beaten down by the Depression, many homeless and jobless, and were trying to obtain a means for a new start. That there had been some Communists who organized and directed it was merely incidental and not any longer important.

Communism thrived in such depressed economic conditions and the answer to it was neither terror nor fear. The best way to overcome it was to share the technological talent and economic assets with the underdeveloped nations of the world, where other other men of desperate means were being organized and led by Communists.

"Son of a Slave" tells of Henry Lawrence McCrorey, who had come to Charlotte in 1886 to attend Biddle University and eventually, 21 years later, became its president after excelling as a student. Biddle University was transformed under his leadership into Johnson C. Smith University. He remained in the post for 40 years until age, health, and the sudden death of his wife in a fire forced his retirement in 1947. He died at age 88.

It finds it fitting that the new black YMCA had been named in his honor the previous April. He had demonstrated ideals in religion and education which were representative of the purposes of the YMCA.

A piece from the New York Times, "Parisian Birthday", tells of Paris celebrating its 2000th birthday, suggests, however, that the previous two centuries were the years of its history which really mattered. It had its problems as with any city but its glory shone through.

"Here are taste and wit, and here is beauty. Here is the mellow wisdom that was old twenty centuries ago and is young today. Here is civilization as we like to think about it."

It finds the city's spirit the antithesis of Moscow, its new nemesis. It wishes it countless years ahead of freedom and beauty.

Drew Pearson tells of Congressman Herman Eberharter of Pennsylvania having adapted a version of "Happy Days Are Here Again" to the lyric, "Steakless days are here again,/ The price of beef is dear again..."

The Navy had refused to take part in bombing of Russia in the event of war rather than submit to Air Force command. The Navy wanted the strategic air role for its carriers, but the Joint Chiefs had refused and assigned it to the Air Force. Chief of naval operations, Admiral Forrest Sherman, however, had offered to accept a secondary role for the carriers with naval air support in the event of strategic air operations against Russia. The Chiefs had agreed to use the carriers for strategic bombing, provided they took orders from the Air Force, which Admiral Sherman refused unless the Navy commanded its own flights.

There was concern at the State Department that the present negotiations in Korea might be prelude to an attack by the Communists, similar to Pearl Harbor having occurred after eight months of negotiations with the Japanese during 1941. There was evidence to back up such speculation, as the Chinese were concentrating troops on the French Indo-China border and were also sending kerosene, used for jet fuel, to that area as well. There were also heavy troop concentrations north of Iran and reports of troop maneuvers on the Yugoslav border. There were also maneuvers in Poland and East Germany, albeit having gone on for years and not necessarily, therefore, out of the ordinary.

He cautions against peace at any price as it was never a lasting peace.

He corrects a previous column in which he said Congressman Hamilton Jones of Charlotte had voted for the bill to hand to the states the tidelands oil. Mr. Jones had in fact voted against the bill. It had been Congressman Woodrow Jones, also of North Carolina, who voted for the bill. He made the same mistake with respect to Congressman Claude Bakewell of Missouri, who in fact voted against the bill.

Marquis Childs discusses the greatly increased power of the Navy, three times that of the pre-Korean war strength, two-thirds of which would be left intact even in the event of an armistice.

At the outset of the war, the President had ordered the Seventh Fleet to sail into the waters between Formosa and mainland China to prevent an attack by Communist China. Since that time a year earlier, the Chinese concentration of troops and barges for their transport on the Chinese coast opposite Formosa had diminished considerably. Nearly a quarter million rounds of Naval ammunition had been fired at railroads, shore batteries and other installations on the North Korean coasts, reducing the northern peninsula to little more than a central core.

During the preceding year, Navy ships had carried twelve million tons of supplies and more than 800,000 personnel to and from Korea.

A lot of the credit for the change was due Admiral Forrest Sherman, chief of naval operations since November, 1949. At the time he had become chief, the Navy had been reduced to a plan of maintaining two aircraft carriers in the western Pacific and one in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic. Now, there would be six to eight carriers in the western Pacific even after the cessation of hostilities in Korea.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop suggest that it was likely some secret discussions had preceded the proposal for peace talks by chief Russian U.N. delegate Jakob Malik. Starting in early May, top American policy-makers who had been glum about the prospects of ending the war, suddenly became optimistic. Averell Harriman had predicted in mid-May that the war might end at any time. Secretary of Defense Marshall, in his testimony to the MacArthur inquiry, showed the same optimism and referred repeatedly to U.N. channels utilized to negotiate the Berlin blockade crisis of 1948-49. Those channels had involved secret talks between Mr. Malik and Ambassador-at-large Philip Jessup.

The Alsops therefore question whether something of the sort might have preceded the present peace negotiations in Korea. They conclude that there had been too many coincidences of sudden optimism for it to have been a matter of pure prescience on the part of policy-makers.

Tom Schlesinger of The News, in his weekly "Capital Roundup", tells of neither Senator Clyde Hoey nor Senator Willis Smith believing that the Administration proposal for a ten billion dollar tax increase would curb inflation. Senator Hoey, however, believed that a significant increase was required for the purpose of raising revenue, but not as a means of controlling inflation, that the only answer to the latter was full production, impossible in times of artificial shortages.

Senator Smith agreed but thought the tax increase, itself, would be inflationary as adding to manufacturing costs and thus retail prices.

Congressman Thurmond Chatham had purchased the 1788 Georgetown mansion, Prospect House, for $187,000. It had been rented by the State Department for entertaining foreign dignitaries and, prior to that, had been the home for since deceased Secretary of Defense James Forrestal.

A Maine Congressman introduced a bill to prevent lobsters from being sold which were not the true "decapod crustacean of the genus Homarus known as Homarus americanus and found in the Atlantic waters contiguous to the North American coast line from the vicinity of Henley Harbor, Labrador, on the north, to the vicinity of Cape Hatteras, N.C., on the south." Mr. Schlesinger suggests that if the bill passed, someone would have to figure out how to keep counterfeit foreign lobsters out of U.S. fish markets.

Senator Smith was deemed the third least talker of the Senate by George Dixon, a Washington columnist.

The Senator said that the Judiciary Committee's investigation of Communism was still in its initial stage and that its principal problem was to separate the genuine accounts from those who sought to fabricate stories for personal reasons. It was apparent, however, that the Committee had a bombshell to release.

"Farmers' Dam" was an alternative name proposed by Virginia Senator Willis Robertson and Virginia Congressman Watkins Abbitt for the Bugg's Island dam, because farmers had given their land for it. The proposal to name it John H. Kerr Dam, after the North Carolina Congressman, had initially not met with opposition from Virginians, until it was pointed out that the project was 75 percent in Virginia and that Virginia members had also aided in the development of the project.

He tells of Drew Pearson's mistaken attribution of the vote of Congressman Hamilton Jones in favor of giving the Federal tidelands oil to three states.

The New York Times had found "almost hopeless" the mission of Frank Graham to resolve the dispute between Pakistan and India over Kashmir, but also that nothing irreparable had occurred and that a solution was possible, that the alternative was so dangerous to the whole Middle East and would be so costly to India and Pakistan that the democratic world would continue to rely on the peaceful intentions of Prime Minister Nehru of India. Thus far, Mr. Graham had visited the capitals of each of the three countries to try to mediate the dispute.

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