The Charlotte News

Tuesday, September 11, 1951

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Don Huth, that the U.N. command had acknowledged the previous night that an allied plane had mistakenly strafed the Kaesong neutral zone on Monday, consistent with the latest Communist complaint. Vice-Admiral C. Turner Joy, chief allied ceasefire negotiator, stated that the violation resulted from a pilot's error in navigation and that appropriate disciplinary action had been initiated. He noted that no injuries or damage had resulted from the incident.

While there had been no official reply, Communist radio broadcast an official message rejecting General Matthew Ridgway's suggestion of a new site for the ceasefire talks to enable them to resume, suspended since August 22 at the insistence of the Communists on claims of violations by the allies of the ceasefire neutrality zone.

In ground action in eastern Korea, savage hill fighting continued, as North Korean troops launched repeated counterattacks against allied-held hills, but were repulsed. In the west, fighting decreased to sporadic patrol contacts but there was no indication of a reduction in the Communist war-potential in the region.

In air action, four F-84 Thunderjets of the Fifth Air Force engaged a flight of 16 Russian-built MIG jets over Chongju, with one probably destroyed.

In Hof, Germany, a Czech locomotive engineer successfully drove his locomotive across the border to freedom in West Germany, with 107 passengers in three train cars trailing behind. He informed West German authorities that he and 20 of the passengers wished to stay, and shortly thereafter a new Czech engineer was assigned to cross the frontier and return the "fugitive" train to Czechoslovakia. It represented the most unusual political escape from behind the Iron Curtain which had thus far occurred.

Defense Mobilizer Charles E. Wilson said, before a meeting of scrap experts from industry and Government, that he was shocked at the prospects for steel during the winter and rejected the steel industry's production forecast, demanding that the figure be increased by at least a million tons during the first quarter of 1952, plus an additional two million tons during the second quarter, and that increased scrap collection take place to make it possible. He adverted to what had occurred the previous week in San Francisco at the Japanese peace treaty conference, at which Andrei Gromyko had led the Russian delegation in an attempt to disrupt the treaty, and insisted that the demanded increase in production was vital to national defense. He did not divulge the first-quarter estimate which he said was deficient.

The President, speaking at the dedication of a new seven-story building for the General Accounting Office, denounced as "just a pack of lies" charges that waste and extravagance were running wild in the Government, saying that such claims were based on "butterfly statistics", so meaningless that they seemed to have been "plucked right out of the air with the butterfly net"—perhaps akin to butterfly ballots. He said the claim was designed to frighten voters "as visions of elections dance through the heads of gentlemen who are politically inclined". He referred in particular to a recent unnamed magazine article, one, informs the report, which had appeared in the Reader's Digest, which had carried a table of figures showing that non-defense spending had increased from between 100 and 1,000 percent during the decade of 1940 to 1950. He said that a man would go into a nightclub and think nothing of plunking down 40 or 50 dollars but would grumble over 30 dollars in a tax bill. He stated he did not want to "lose a horse through being too stingy to buy strong enough rope to tie him with" or to have the horse starve to death for being "too stingy to buy the oats and corn to feed him".

Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois offered a series of amendments to cut between 600 million and a billion dollars from the multi-billion dollar defense bill. As further stated in an editorial below, he had let loose in the chamber the previous day with a warwhoop during debate on the bill.

As displayed in a photograph, new lightweight plastic body armor, including plastic helmets, was about to be issued to the soldiers in Korea, considered superior to existing such garb, including the steel helmets.

The State Department reported that North Carolina had been selected as the site for a powerful international broadcasting station, though the particular site would not be announced for several weeks. Another such station would be located in Washington State.

Vic Reinemer of The News provides the second in a six-part series of articles on the 1947 Hoover Commission report, this time focusing on the recommendations made for the Department of Interior and the often overlapping jobs of the Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation, with considerable waste having been found to result regarding harbors, dams and rivers projects. The Commission had found, for instance, that an attempt of the two agencies to coordinate functions on the planned Missouri Valley Authority, similar to TVA, had nevertheless turned out to be wasteful as the compromise arrangement resulted only in a division of projects, with each agency agreeing to forgo criticism of projects assigned by agreement to the other, with no integration of the developmental plan, the result being more costly than had the two agencies not agreed to cooperate.

In Paris, Winston Churchill, on a brief vacation in the city, invited General Eisenhower to lunch.

In Des Moines, a 23-year old woman was stabbed in the back with a hunting knife as she approached the communion rail during mass at St. Ambrose Catholic Cathedral. Police said that a 24-year old man had stabbed her because she had told him she wanted nothing more to do with him. She was hospitalized in critical condition and the man was taken into custody, not yet charged.

In Raleigh, former interim Senator and Congressman William B. Umstead was expected to announce late this date that he would enter the 1952 gubernatorial race—a race he would win.

In Key West, Fla., the Coast Guard said that a report that a 10,000-ton tanker, the Gulfray, was on fire had been a hoax.

In Sangatte, France, it was reported that Florence Chadwick, 32, had swum the English Channel from Britain, starting near Dover, to Sangatte, in nearly record time, 16 hours and 14 minutes, the first woman to swim both ways across the Channel. As she arrived, police were investigating reports that she had been lost at sea, after she had failed to appear as expected in Cap Gris Nez, where crowds awaited her arrival. Practically no one was present to greet her at Sangatte beach, save a handful of French children and their parents. She was 51 minutes behind the record set by Tom Blower of Britain, and when told of the fact, was disheartened.

The "Our Weather" box informs that hurricanes vary in their origins from month to month, with the early summer storms more likely to come out of the western Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico and the August-September storms more likely to come from the eastern North Atlantic, moving in a westerly direction, and again more likely to originate out of the western Caribbean in late September through November.

On the editorial page, "Wanted: More Washington Worriers" tells of Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois consistently worrying on behalf of the nation's taxpayers regarding Government expenditures, as exampled by his effort to scrutinize the five billion dollar military expenditures bill, worried about quarter million dollar bomb sights, the Norden versions of which had cost $6,000 each during World War II. It had been suggested during debate that his amendments might be interpreted by the Communists as a sign of discord and division, to which the Senator, usually calm and scholarly, had let out what had been described as a "warwhoop" and momentarily left the floor. An aide reported that he had not slept for two nights.

It praises his consistent efforts and urges that a few more such worriers were needed in Washington, members of Congress who would worry and provide warwhoops if necessary for the taxpayer.

"Economy Begins at Home" tells of two different sites having been approved in Congress for the new 33 million dollar Air Force base for two troop-carrier wings. A House committee had approved the Raleigh-Durham airport as the locus, while the Senate had voted to place the base at Seymour Johnson Air Field at Goldsboro, with a savings of ten million dollars for the availability of existing structures built during World War II.

It provides verbatim the Senate rationale for its choice and finds that, while the Raleigh-Durham airport would be of greater commercial value after the national emergency was over, it did not justify the expenditure of an additional ten million dollars. It hopes that the Raleigh and Durham Chambers of Commerce would follow the lead of Charlotte, when its Chamber of Commerce had objected to a proposed new Veterans Administration hospital being located there because no demonstrated need for it had been shown.

"Absenteeism in the Senate" discusses the debate in the Senate over the 5.8 billion dollar military public works bill, with Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, fielding questions about its various provisions, and upon its third reading before a final vote, Senator Robert Hendrickson of New Jersey having risen to express his compliments for the "tremendous and magnificent" work of the Committee, but then calling for a quorum, after observing, to his shock, that on such a large bill only a handful of Senators were present on the floor.

The piece indicates that at the time, seven Democrats and two Republicans were present, and finds it no wonder therefore that the taxpayers, with only a "spendthrift Administration and an irresponsible Congress to choose between", shouldered their burden with great reluctance.

A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "The Battle Flag, Suh", tells of the Confederate flag or "Stars and Bars", sprouting from the aerial of every jalopy on the road, being neither one. Rather, it was the Battle Flag or Southern Cross, neither of which were given official recognition by either Robert E. Lee or Jefferson Davis during the Civil War. The true Confederate flag consisted of three bars, red, white, and red, with a blue union bearing a circle of seven white stars, susceptible of increase as new states joined the Confederacy. It was originally conceived to be as similar as possible to the U.S. flag, was raised from the capitol dome in Montgomery by the granddaughter of President John Tyler, and from that point forward had been regarded as the Stars 'n' Bars.

In The Confederate States of America, E. Merton Coulter told of the flag having been so similar to the Stars and Stripes that it was difficult in battle to distinguish the two, with the result at the First Battle of Manassas that it had been confused by the troops, such that immediately afterward General Beauregard and other Southern generals had decided that there needed to be a new battle flag, which resulted in a flag similar but still not identical to the familiar crossbars, having been fashioned out of Saint Andrew's Cross enclosing the stars for each state, with the colors still remaining red, white and blue. But it supplanted the original Stars and Bars only on the battlefield.

Some, however, thought the new battle flag resembled a pair of suspenders or was similar enough to the U.S. flag to make it "utterly detestable", leading to the development of many new designs, until on May 1, 1863, the Confederate Congress adopted a flag with a white field on which the Battle Flag was superimposed in the upper left corner.

But this new flag had so much white on it that it appeared as a flag of surrender when it was draped or drooped, or a mere tablecloth, and was easily soiled. It was not until March 8, 1865, a month before surrender at Appomattox, that the Confederate Congress agreed on a third battle flag, based on the old one, with the red bar extended down the outer width of the field. From First Manassas to Appomattox, the flag used in military operations was the Battle Flag or Southern Cross.

It concludes: "Of course, given another month and another shipment of replacements, the late Confederacy could have produced a flag and an army of overwhelming proportions. It will yet."

John Gould, writing from Maine in the Christian Science Monitor, tells of recognition of four kinds of corn in New England, yellow field corn, insilage corn, popcorn and yellow sweetcorn. Field corn was grown in small tracts of a few acres. Sweetcorn was a steady Maine cash crop. Ensilage corn was important to the fluid milk area. A considerable part of Maine farming involved corn, but when the Government divided the bushels of field corn by the acreage in corn, the figure became misleading.

He goes on to describe a new type of hybrid sweetcorn, with which he recently had become familiar. He advises that sweetcorn for home consumption should be picked after the pot is boiling. He further advises that the etiquette of eating sweetcorn consisted largely of getting enough, but without fouling anyone. It was permissible to rest one's elbows on the table but the corn eater should not lean forward too far, as it bothered other eaters who were reaching for more. With medium ears, the hostess would allow two feet between diners, but with longer ears, a commensurately greater distance was required for safety.

He favors buttering and salting the entire ear at once, as he intended to eat all of it. He also favors buttering anyone who talked or putting salt on them and pushing them into the shed.

The principal thing to recall, he insists, if one wanted the finest sweetcorn, was that you had to be in Maine at this time of year and catch it when it went by. He says he offered his advice without bias or rancor, because it was so. He had just resolved the issue to his satisfaction, and would do so again when they had another meal, as he liked proving the point over and over again, until the frost struck on the September moon and the end of the season came again, leaving behind memories.

Erle Cocke, Jr., national commander of the American Legion, substitutes for Drew Pearson, still on vacation, states that it was rare that the Legion got the opportunity to tell its side of the story against those who labeled it either a pressure group, warmongers, Treasury raiders, or hoodlums. He says that they had raised over 87 million dollars to help the nation's needy children, had organized 16,500 junior baseball teams to provide citizenship-training for more than a million teenage boys each summer, had sponsored nearly 4,000 Boy Scout troops, had created a Boys State program through which 18,000 selected high school students learned how the Government operates, and conducted an annual national oratorical contest for 350,000 participating high school students who wrote essays on the Constitution and Bill of Rights. So, he concludes, the charge that they were a pressure group was correct insofar as their pressuring against juvenile delinquency, the same way Drew Pearson was pressuring, as he had for years, Fascist and Communists enclaves, through such projects as his recent "Friendship Balloons" floated across Czechoslovakia.

The Legion had authored the universal military training bill and hoped that it would become law within another year. So, if that made them warmongers, he suggests, they were proud to claim the title.

They had brought attention to Communist infiltration within the labor unions and farming cooperatives, as well as in the legal profession and the courts. The Legion had also exposed the way Communist teachers had infiltrated the schools, leading to the formation of neighborhood groups of vigilant parents to defeat the Communist "kiddie-klubs". He says that it was a commander of one of the Legion posts who had started the longshoremen's refusal to load or unload supplies from Communist ships bound for Communist troops fighting American soldiers.

He says that the Legion had demanded that wounded and disabled servicemen and women obtain fair treatment and, to effect that end, had authored the G.I. Bill of Rights which had provided higher education and vocational training for 7.5 million veterans of World War II, with the result that there were no veterans of that war selling apples on street corners.

He says that no city which had ever hosted their national convention had failed to invite them to return.

Three times they had been called upon to defend the country in war and three times they had responded with victory.

In addition, during the previous two years, they had collected and distributed more than ten million toys to the underprivileged children of Europe and the Pacific.

He concludes by thanking Drew Pearson for enabling him to make the Legion's case.

Joseph Alsop indicates that while the column normally did not make it a practice to reveal classified documents, no matter how idiotically so classified, he was making an exception this date with respect to the still classified report of former Vice-President Henry Wallace to President Roosevelt in the spring of 1944 regarding China. The Vice-President had just returned from a tour of the Far East, where at the time Nationalist China was embroiled in the struggle against the Japanese offensive in eastern China.

In the report, the Vice-President warned that a repeated string of heavy defeats might lead to the disintegration of the Nationalist regime, leaving a vacuum which might be filled by the Chinese Communists, indicative of "how serious" the situation was. He stated that upon his parting from Chiang Kai-shek, the Generalissimo had asked him to request of the President that he name a personal representative to the Nationalists, and that General Joseph Stilwell, commander at the time in the China-Burma-India theater, would not be suitable for the assignment as he did not have the confidence of Chiang. He had suggested Maj. General Patrick Hurley for the role, and the President followed suit during the ensuing fall, installing General Albert Wedemeyer, also suggested by the Vice-President, to succeed General Stilwell, who was called home.

At the time of the report, General Stilwell was refusing to take any serious counter-measures against the Japanese in eastern China and instead was planning to take advantage of Chiang's weakness resulting from the defeats so that the latter would grant General Stilwell unlimited authority over all military forces in China and oversight of all distribution of American aid within China, authority which he intended to use by providing American military equipment to the Chinese Communists.

Mr. Alsop concludes that the long-rumored report, contrary to expectations, given Mr. Wallace's later affiliations with known Communists during the 1948 presidential campaign, had actually been decisively anti-Communist in its advice, one of the more decisive of the war. He states that it was such an important commentary on the current attempts to reconstruct the history of American policy in China that it deserved further consideration in subsequent columns.

Robert C. Ruark tells of British nationalism running high in the U.S. because of the arrival of Randy Turpin to fight Sugar Ray Robinson during the week, in a rematch after Mr. Turpin had beaten Mr. Robinson in July in London.

Not since Max Schmeling had arrived to fight Joe Louis at the height of Nazi propaganda had there been such a fevered sense of nationalism aroused by a prize fight. He suggests that at the time, the outcome of the fight, with Mr. Louis having thrown a haymaker at the outset which dropped Mr. Schmeling, might have been foreseen as the harbinger of things to come for the Nazis. Mr. Schmeling returned home in disgrace and obscurity, with one newspaper reporting that in Berlin it had been authoritatively reported that Mr. Schmeling had been discovered to have a Jewish grandmother.

He finds that in the current instance, the British were jutting out their jaws more than at any time since Winston Churchill had last visited the country. He had lunched with three Britons, and was convinced that if Mr. Turpin won the fight, Britain would declare war on Russia, retake India and institute proceedings to have America legally returned to the status of colony.

Framed Edition
[Return to Links
Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News<i><i><i>—</i></i></i>Framed Edition]
Links-Date Links-Subj.