The Charlotte News

Saturday, February 7, 1953

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that U.S. Sabre jets, outnumbered 14 to 8 by enemy MIGs, had shot down two of the enemy jets over northwest Korea this date, as allied fighter-bombers hit front line positions, a rail line and supply concentrations.

The Air Force said that during the previous week, its planes had shot down two enemy MIGs, probably destroyed another, and damaged three. Three allied planes had been lost during the week, none of which had been Sabres.

In ground action, three allied patrols clashed with enemy units as large as 75 men in skirmishes lasting up to an hour in no-man's land, with one fight near the Mundung Valley on the eastern front and another northeast of the "Punchbowl" on the eastern front, with a third on the western front, north of the "Hook". The temperature was near zero all along the battle front.

Set to take command of the Eighth Army on the following Wednesday from retiring commander General James Van Fleet, Lt. General Maxwell Taylor toured the battle front with General Van Fleet this date, as the latter bade farewell to the multi-national army he had headed for nearly 22 months.

The U.N. this date was reported to be preparing an emphatic call on the U.N. allies for more help in Korea, as a part of a new grand strategy being worked out by the Eisenhower Administration for ending the war. The U.N. released a survey which declared that a quick 1.75 billion dollars in aid and investment would be necessary to save South Korea, adding that black marketing and illegal profiteering were rife in that nation. There were also indications that diplomatic experts were studying the possibility of a blockade of Communist China, though some sources said that while there was little chance of such a move, there might be an increase in economic restrictions presently in effect. Some U.N. members were said not to favor a blockade and there was doubt that it would be completely effective in any event.

U.N. postal officers disclosed this date that there had been a sharp decrease in the amount of mail from allied prisoners of war to their families, whereas the volume of letters to the prisoners had been high. Seven months earlier, the North Korean and Chinese Communists had stopped all mail going to Communist prisoners held by the allies. The Communists also appeared to be discouraging allied prisoners from writing home. The allied postal officer had provided 1,900 letters from families of U.N. soldiers to the allied prisoners in camps in North Korea, and the Communists had delivered only ten letters from those prisoners to their families. Since the mail exchange program had begun 13 months earlier, the allied command had delivered to the Communists 230,000 letters for U.N. prisoners, whereas the Communists had provided 52,000 letters from allied prisoners to their families.

Senator William Knowland, chairman of the Senate Republican policy committee, rejected a demand the previous day by Senator John Sparkman that President Eisenhower inform the country of what steps and consequences might follow from his announcement that the Seventh Fleet would be withdrawn from the Formosa Straits. Senator Knowland said that the previous Administration had signaled in advance its intentions to the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communists, and he wanted the Communist world to have to wait anxiously for awhile. Senator Alexander Smith of New Jersey said that Secretary of State Dulles had promised to provide details of the Administration's plans in Asia to a subcommittee on Far Eastern relations, upon his return from Europe. Senator Sparkman complained that though the President had stated a promise of bipartisan foreign policy, he had not consulted with Democrats regarding his decision to deneutralize Formosa. He demanded to know whether it was the first step toward involving the U.S. forces in mainland China and thus possibly the first step toward global war. Senator Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin, on the Foreign Relations Committee, said that when President Truman had ordered the neutralization policy implemented after the start of the Korean War, Communist China had not yet entered the war, and once they had entered, the fleet, he contended, acted as a barrier to protect the mainland rather than Formosa. Senator Sparkman replied that Admiral William Fechteler, chief of Naval operations had been quoted as saying that at no time had the Seventh Fleet prevented the Nationalists from undertaking sorties against the mainland.

In Brussels, Secretary of State Dulles arrived to continue his survey of European defense planning, buoyed by his finding that Western European leaders generally believed a common army offered the best guarantee of peace and security. He arrived in Belgium after touring the flood-devastated Netherlands the previous day, both Belgium and Britain having also been hit by the terrible flooding. The following day, he would complete his survey in Luxembourg, before returning to Washington. He would, in addition to his defense recommendations, provide a report to the President and to the Congress on what the U.S. could do to relieve suffering in the Netherlands and enable it to pull its own weight in the continental defense plan. Thus far, none of the participating countries, France, Italy, West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands or Luxembourg, had ratified the Army plan, regarding which the Secretary had informed them he wanted to see definite progress toward ratification by April 1.

In Belgrade, the Greek Foreign Minister said this night that Greece, Yugoslavia and Turkey had arranged a meeting for Athens later in the month to draft a "little three" Balkan pact of friendship and alliance to combat the threat of Russian aggression.

After the President had released wage and some price controls the previous day, the country was beginning to adjust again to a free-market economy amid predictions that there would be little immediate change in the costs of living. Additional price ceilings would be canceled gradually until all were phased out by their previously scheduled expiration date of April 30. The President had removed all meat, clothing, furniture, restaurant meals, bar and tavern drinks, and virtually all articles sold in department stores from price control. Controls remained for the time being on other items, such as milk, bread, cigarettes, cosmetics, and large household appliances such as stoves and refrigerators.

Representatives of both sides in the tugboat strike in New York said the previous night in separate statements that progress was being made toward negotiating a settlement, with negotiations set to continue this afternoon. The strike was in its seventh day, and the Federal Mediation Service in Washington had urged it to be called off pending arbitration. The suggestion, however, was put aside for the time being, in the hope that a settlement could be reached without resort to Federal intervention. The NLRB office in New York had announced the previous night that it was prepared to seek a Federal injunction to bar picketing under the Taft-Hartley Act. The picket lines had resulted in a tie-up on Thursday of 75 percent of the New York Port's traffic, as non-striking longshoremen refused to cross the picket lines, until a State court order obtained on Thursday night had banned the pickets from the city's piers, resulting in resumption of business on 36 of the 112 idle piers the previous day. The State appellate division had, however, reversed the order the previous day and thus the pickets were free to be set up again, but the union decided not to do so to avoid the prospect of a Federal injunction.

In New York, friends of former Mutual Security administrator Averell Harriman had begun a movement to nominate him for the Democratic ticket in the mayoral race the following November.

Near Bordeaux, France, a French DC-4 passenger liner crashed in a fog, killing at least seven of the 14 passengers and seven crewmen aboard, with 12 having survived, though some with severe burns. The plane had been attempting a landing when it cracked up on a forest road not far from the airport.

Near Franklin, W. Va., searchers found two men, ages 30 and 20, from Washington, D.C., who had been lost since the prior Wednesday afternoon in a vast cave, without food and in the dark after their flashlight had burned out about an hour after entering the cave. They had to keep moving to avoid freezing, but were able to walk out on their own steam, though hungry and exhausted. The cave had been used by the Confederate Army as a gunpowder depot during the Civil War. Their families had organized a search party after becoming concerned when they did not return home.

In Raleigh, during the week, the General Assembly had passed a bill creating a three-member Board of Paroles; the Senate had passed a measure which would allow the Governor to replace the 15 members of the Board of Conservation and Development; and bills were presented to both chambers authorizing reorganization of the State Highway Commission, all programs favored by Governor William B. Umstead in his inaugural address.

In Greenville, S.C., Carter "Scoop" Lattimer, 58, sports editor of the Greenville News and considered dean of the South Carolina sportswriters, had died early this date from a heart attack suffered in a downtown café shortly after leaving the newspaper office, dying a few minutes later in the hospital. He had joined the staff of the Greenville Piedmont in his late teens, and later became city editor of that newspaper, had, in 1923, served as U.S. vice-consul in Québec, and had later become a columnist for the Hall-Lavarre newspaper chain, then sports editor of the Atlanta Georgian, before returning to Greenville to become sports editor of the News. He had fought for several years to clear the name of "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, a member of the notorious Chicago "Black Sox". Former Governor Strom Thurmond had named Mr. Lattimer a "colonel" on his staff in 1947.

Speaking of "Shoeless" Joe, that so-and-so, his sport, basketball, Quebec, colds and Louisville, we, candidly, have seen, in the entire history of sports observation to date, of which there have been many observed contests of various forms of gladiatorial intrigue, only once before, at least on an ashen floor, such a spectacle, should you deign to call it that, when, boiled to cases, it being more elliptical in its nature, at least to certain faces, as that which transpired in Chapel Hill this Saturday in 2020, that prior event having occurred in 1974, also in Chapel Hill, though then witnessed from courtside in personam, not via the translated medium comprised of wavering lines of questionable interpretation by those who propose themselves as judges of ye and thee, I and thou, the interpreters, who, nearly as often as not, in our observational experience, when the judgment is the least subject to artistic exegesis, flub the call, even when slowed to a crawl for their aging perceptive devices, uncontrolled by any visible artificial contrivances, to discern, presumably, more perspicaciously that which, in reality, had, moments aforehand, temporally slipped interstitially between other points along the continuum of time and space, but, notwithstanding those plentiful errors, we are compelled, by the sheer persistency of will power displayed of the opponent, even if devilish in its deep-blue inspiration, to congratulate the victors, who, in the end, obviously, wanted the prize more, this time. Yet, our school did run, as we counseled, and, for the most part, though not thoroughly throughout the contest, were concerned more with winning than worried about not losing, which could translate well into the remaining contests. And there will come another...

On the editorial page, "Once Again, a Free Economy" indicates that the President's order to lift controls on wages and many prices had furnished a test of two fundamental economic tenets, that collective bargaining, without governmental interference, was the best way to settle wage disputes, and that the normal free-market would produce lower prices than controls. The piece quotes from his State of the Union, in which he had made similar statements, now putting his theory to the test by removing the controls.