The Charlotte News

Tuesday, July 31, 1951

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Robert B. Tuckman, that after another hour and a half of talks, the Korean ceasefire negotiations remained stuck on the issue of where to establish a ceasefire zone, at the 38th parallel, as demanded by the Communists, or along present battle lines, as favored by the U.N. According to the U.N. briefing officer, there appeared no indication of a compromise on the horizon.

General Matthew Ridgway, supreme commander of the U.N. forces, had cabled Washington seeking instruction on whether he should set a cut-off date for negotiations, after which full-scale fighting would be resumed. The Pentagon had not yet answered but the issue would likely be decided in the next day.

In Pusan, South Korean demonstrators shouted, "We oppose any ceasefire at the damned 38th parallel." Thousands marched through the streets, some holding signs stating that they opposed "to the death" any ceasefire without unification of the country.

Allied warplanes hit Communist positions in the iron triangle in the Kumsong area on the western front and ground fighting was limited to patrol activity, with two light Communist probing attacks on allied lines between Kumsong and Kumhwa having been turned back.

The Fifth Air Force reported that it had flown during the war 175,000 combat sorties, an average of 43 per day.

About 62,700 college students out of 165,000 taking the first draft aptitude test failed to pass. A passing grade was required to receive a college deferment from the draft if class standing did not serve to earn it. An additional 175,000 men had taken the test on subsequent dates but those results had not yet been determined. By class, 53 percent of the freshmen, 64 percent of the sophomores, 72 percent of the juniors, and 77 percent of the seniors received passing scores of 70 or better.

At a press conference, the Atomic Energy Commission disclosed that it had spent thus far 4.9 billion dollars and had another 1.4 billion appropriated, had asked Congress for 1.2 billion in additional funds. It also disclosed that it was developing new storage sites for atomic weapons and was planning more frequent atomic tests.

The President was being urged by economic stabilization aides to sign the economic controls bill passed the previous day by Congress but to issue a statement with his signature severely criticizing the legislation as inadequate to curb inflation. Existing controls expired at midnight this date. Price Administrator Mike DiSalle reportedly had urged the President to ask Congress to revise the legislation as soon as possible by scrapping the ban on livestock slaughter quotas and overhauling the provision permitting price rollbacks on non-farm commodities to pre-Korean levels plus cost increases. Mr. DiSalle believed that the latter provision would allow more prices increases than reductions. He was said to have the backing of Mobilization director Charles E. Wilson and Stabilization director Eric Johnston.

In Abadan, Iran, the oil flowing from the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. Abadan refinery, largest in Iran and manned primarily by British personnel, was cut off because there was no more room to store the product at the facility. Oil tanker traffic had been halted a month earlier by the company after the Iranian Government and the company demanded payment for oil shipments.

U.S. special envoy Averell Harriman, acting as mediator in the oil nationalization dispute, returned to Tehran from London, saying that he was confident that there would be no further difficulties preventing resumption of negotiations on the dispute.

Iran's lower house of Parliament voted to extend martial law another two months in Khuzistan Province, where its oil industry was centered.

A former Russian general, now head of the State Department's Voice of America Russian unit, testified to the Senate Internal Security subcommittee that in the early 1930's the head of Soviet intelligence referred to occasional State Department consultant and Far East expert Owen Lattimore and Joseph Barnes, a former foreign correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune and former secretary in the early Thirties of the Institute for Pacific Relations, as "our men". Mr. Lattimore responded to press inquiries by saying that the story that he was ever their man was "pure poppycock". He also said that a book he was writing in 1933, The Mongols of Manchuria, had been "savagely criticized" by the Russians when published in 1934. He further said that he had not been a member of IPR at the time.

In Singapore, Governor Dewey, speaking at a luncheon in his honor, urged the people of the city to try to effect a better understanding of the social and economic conditions in the U.S. and expressed shock at a story on the front pages of Singapore newspapers regarding an incident of U.S. race prejudice involving a few hundred people, the recent race riots in Cicero, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Asian newspapers regularly published reports on U.S. race problems. Governor Dewey said that while such incidents were inexcusable, it was also misleading to highlight them as the major news from the U.S. on a given day and that such incidents also shocked the public conscience of Americans, an impact omitted from the Asian press. He said that largely America had a "peaceful, happy life based on freedom, equality and justice for all", that ancient prejudice which lingered in some sections of the country was diminishing and that within 12 years, by 1963, at the century mark since the Emancipation Proclamation, "the ugly concept of discrimination will have been extinguished."

Senator Wayne Morse attacked the proposal of Senator Karl Mundt that fellow Republicans form a coalition with Southern Dixiecrats, as a repudiation of the basic Republican principles of human rights set forth by President Lincoln, and placing the party on the auction block.

In Charlotte, a jury found the Wisconsin drifter, accused of murdering a night watchman at a warehouse recently, incompetent to stand trial, after hearing testimony that he had previously been in a mental hospital in Wisconsin and that following his arrest, he variously contended to an examining psychiatrist that he was a Catholic priest, commandant of the Marine Corps, heavyweight champion of the world, and the father of twelve children. Police Chief Frank Littlejohn testified that the man threatened him during his interview with him. The man's mother had been committed to a mental hospital when he was two years old. The jury took only three minutes to render its verdict. He would be committed to the Central Prison Division for the Criminally Insane.

In Daytona Beach, Fla., a young man charged with reckless driving had purchased a foot-long boa constrictor at a tourist attraction and then placed it in his hat for safekeeping, then placed the hat on his head. He had become perturbed when the snake managed to get out of the hat and slithered down his arm as he drove. After being booked and released on bond, the driver disgustedly released the snake back into the wild in the grass in front of the police station.

Columnist Earl Wilson tells of an interview with actor Cary Grant, who met him dressed only in a towel.

On the editorial page, "Missouri Muck" discusses the report that DNC chairman William Boyle received $8,000 from a St. Louis company shortly after it had been approved for an RFC loan. Mr. Boyle said the money was for legal fees, having nothing to do with the loan. It recaps the facts developed by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which had already been reported on the front page. No action had been taken yet against Mr. Boyle.