Articles from 1951
With the Korean War in full-swing, Major General Edward E. MacMorland (U.S.A.) recalled his experiences some forty years earlier when he was a field grade officer fighting the nascent Soviet Army on their own turf:
It was a tough and surprisingly well-equipped enemy that our soldiers faced in this region…
In the midst of the Imperial Valley labor strife, on June 27, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill by a vote of 240 to 139 making it possible for farmers to hire illegally entered [Mexicans].
This article was penned in 1951 by Hank Hasiwar, a loyal New Deal Democrat and president of the National Farm Labor Union (formerly the Southern Tenant Farmer’s Union). His column was written in order to express his complete and utter outrage that there were members of congress who openly worked to undermine the welfare of American workers:
U.S. Senator Clinton Anderson (D-NM) made a strenuous attempt to flood the farming areas with hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals to be brought in at great expense to the taxpayers in order to provide cheap labor for the farm owners.
Shortly after the Soviet Union successfully tested their first atomic bomb, the brass hats who work in the Pentagon saw fit to take the first step in preparing to fight an atomic war: they gave the order to create a subterranean headquarters to house a military command and control center for the U.S. and her allies.
The finished chamber, according to local observers, will be 3,100 feet long, contain four suites for the top brass (the Joint Chiefs of Staff, among others), and provide operational quarters for some 1,200 technicians in peacetime, or 5,000 if atomic bombing threatens the Washington command.
Commonly known as Site R, it is located not terribly far from the presidential retreat, Camp David, and in the subsequent years since this article first appeared, the complex has grown considerably larger than when it was first envisioned. Today, Site R maintains more than thirty-eight military communications systems and it has been said that it was one of undisclosed locations that hosted Vice President Dick Cheney (b. 1941) shortly after the September 11th terrorist attacks.
A related article can be read here…
In 1951, N.Y. Governor Thomas Dewey (1902 – 1971) made a fact-finding trip to French Indochina (Vietnam), and as impressed as he was with the French command, he wrote urgently in this Collier’s article of his belief in the Domino Theory – Indochina, Thailand and Burma were the Rice Bowl of Southeast Asia:
The Rice Bowl of Southeast Asia is the cornerstone of our Pacific defenses. And Indochina is the cornerstone of the cornerstone.
Nine months after the American intervention into the Korean War, the Congress saw reason to expand the draft pool to an even wider degree:
Eighteen-year-olds were a little closer to the draft this week, and America was a step closer to a system of permanent universal military training…
Click Magazine‘s illustrated article about the sedition of American poet Ezra Pound is peppered throughout with assorted quotes that clearly indicate the man’s guilt. The reporter, David Brown, went to some length in explaining what an odd life decision this was for a poet with such a celebrated past – a decisions that ultimately lead to his conviction in Federal Court, followed by his twelve year incarceration in a mad house.
In an effort to understand Pound’s thinking, we have included excerpts from a Wall Street Journal book review of a 2016 Pound biography that presents the poets queer rationale.
In the February of 1947, he opened eyes and mouths all over the world by showing almost-ankle-length daytime dresses. In the United States this length was christened the New Look. And Christian Dior had won, by inches the title, King of Fashion. His title is still secure. Dior designs accounted for an estimated 60% of total haute couture exports last year.
An interesting column that succinctly sums up how Stalin’s spies were able to compromise the Manhattan Project, who organized the spy ring, the intelligence that was gleaned, how they were caught and what their fate within the legal system would be.
You can read about Alger Hiss HERE…
Here is an interesting review of Charlie Chaplin, a 1951 biography:
The acting of Charlie Chaplin has enriched our lives; it has become part of our experience. Regardless of how his casual and unserious politics are interpreted, irrespective of what attitude is taken toward newspaper stories of his private life, his films have demonstrably healthy influence on audiences. All one needs to do to prove this is to sit in a theater and listen to the genuine laughter which Chaplin evokes.
