The Charlotte News
Monday, August 11, 1947
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Howard Hughes labeled Senator Owen Brewster, chairman of the Senate War Investigating Committee, "too cowardly" to continue their fight, as the Senate hearings of the Subcommittee were adjourned until November 17 by its chairman, Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan. Senator Ferguson stated that the postponement was because of the failure to locate the Hughes publicity agent John Meyer for further testimony and because members of the Subcommittee had to go to Europe. Senator Brewster had departed Washington on Friday amid charges by Mr. Hughes that he was running away, headed to the "backwoods of Maine", leaving the other Senators to fight his losing battle for him. Mr. Hughes made his statements to the press in the hearing room after the adjournment.
Senator Brewster stated to the press from Augusta, Maine, that he challenged Mr. Hughes to make his charges before the Committee that Senator Brewster had sought in February to coerce him to merge TWA with Pan Am to get the investigation dropped. He said that Mr. Hughes was "crying" to the Subcommittee to try to obtain dismissal of the investigation. He said he was unaware that the investigation had been dropped and believed it would continue in November, that it was entirely in the hands of the Subcommittee.
Russell Birdwell, former employee of the Hughes companies, stated that he intended to file a lawsuit for libel against Noah Dietrich, executive vice-president of the Hughes Tool Company, for his testimony before the Subcommittee that Mr. Birdwell had falsified an expense account in which he claimed to have entertained in 1942 Jesse Jones, former Secretary of Commerce and RFC chairman, to get him interested in a prototype for the F-11 photo reconnaissance plane. Mr. Birdwell insisted that he had so entertained Mr. Jones.
Mr. Birdwell likely would not get too far with his claim as the law has long recognized absolute immunity for testimony on the premise that to subject testimony to claims of defamation would potentially cause witnesses to shade their testimony to avoid suit. Of course, it also has the paradoxical effect of granting immunity for defamatory statements, by definition false, made under penalty of perjury, when ordinary statements not made under oath and published to third parties are subject to suit for defamation. While the law recognizes prosecution for perjury as the ultimate sanction to deter such false statements, perjury also requires that the testimony in question be relevant and material to the proceeding, and thus defamatory matter which is presented which is tangential to the matter before the tribunal would likely be deemed not sufficiently relevant to constitute grounds for a criminal perjury prosecution. So, if you wish to do dirt to someone, make sure you are testifying on a matter which is not in issue at a hearing.
Colonel James G. Hall, former head of the Army Air Corps photo reconnaissance section, stated that the investigation had been "a skunk circus which has been stinking up the entire nation." He made the statement to the press after the Subcommittee refused him the opportunity to respond to the statements of Mr. Meyer, regarding the expenditure of $3,700 on entertainment during three years to obtain war contracts. He admitted having accepted the entertainment but did not allow it to influence his decision to award Hughes Aircraft an 18 million dollar contract for the photo reconnaissance planes, following on the recommendation in 1944 by Colonel Elliott Roosevelt, who had preceded Col. Hall as head of photo reconnaissance, that the contract go to Hughes. Col. Hall said that Committee counsel William P. Rogers—future Attorney General in the second Eisenhower Administration and Secretary of State in the first Nixon Administration—had told him July 23 that the Committee desired his testimony. He had stated that he would be glad to testify but first had to travel to Brazil at the invitation of Ambassador William Pawley. Mr. Rogers had arranged for him to testify on the morning of this date, and then told him he would not be able to do so before November, despite Col. Hall's protestations, demanding to be heard. Mr. Rogers told him that he was in no position to demand a hearing in that he had violated General Hap Arnold's standing orders not to accept entertainment from war contractors. Col. Hall said that he had known Mr. Hughes for 20 years and accepted the entertainment therefore out of friendship. He also said that the claimed amount of expense for the entertainment for himself and his friends was a gross exaggeration by Mr. Meyer. He admitted, however, that he was not a saint.
Premier Nokrashy Pasha of Egypt warned the U.N. Security Council that failure to evacuate the British from Egypt could lead to open warfare with the British, not only in Egypt but throughout the Middle East. He said that the inhabitants of the Nile Valley resented the British presence and that flare-ups could thwart the peaceful intentions of his Government. A 20-year treaty with the British concluded in 1936, he continued, had been superseded by the U.N. Charter. He accused the British of continuing imperialism. The British rested their authority to maintain troops in Egypt on the treaty.
U.S. Consul General Walter Foote conferred in Jogjakarta with Indonesian President Soekarno and leading Republican Cabinet officials to try to work out an acceptable permanent peace with the Dutch Government. The 15-day fighting between the Dutch and Indonesians had been ordered ceased by the U.N. Security Council and both sides had complied. Both sides asserted, however, that the other had committed truce violations. Mr. Foote was the first representative of the State Department to visit Indonesia since it had declared its independence August 17, 1945. Republican leaders stated their hope for an arbitration commission with the Dutch. The Republic pledged restoration or repayment for all non-Dutch foreign property destroyed during its scorched earth policy and by military action which took place during the period of fighting.
General Lucius Clay announced from Berlin that the United States had released all of its eight million German war prisoners, the first of the four occupying powers to do so. The Russians still held 900,000 prisoners and the British, 367,000 in the U.K. and 77,000 in the Middle East. The French were reported still to be holding several hundred thousand prisoners.
In New Orleans, Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi underwent a medical checkup and tests. The hospital attendant stated that there was nothing about which to be alarmed.
Senator Bilbo would be dead ten days hence.
In Lumberton, N.C., a Rowland man whose wife on May 11 allegedly hired a man who sought to murder him, told The Robesonian that he did not wish his wife to suffer retribution and that she had been a good mother to their children, Patricia and "Sonny Boy". He needed his family together and she had asked for a second chance. If she would do her part, he said, they would get along fine, go home, and attend church and Sunday school.
No more hiring of men to murder him. That was right out. Sonny could see to it, maybe, as family counselor.
The hired farmhand who was to do the murder had already been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon, his sentence having been deferred pending trial of the wife. The farmer said he only wanted the man to stay out of his life.
The hireling had shot the farmer in the chest while he was sleeping, but the farmer was able to rise and chase the man from his bedroom. The plan was to make the murder appear as a suicide.
Anyway, it is good to see that the farmer no longer held a grudge. Such things happen in domestic life practically every day. We must be forgiving of little inconsistencies in character and move on.
A longtime Charlotte business leader active in civic affairs, Thomas Griffith, died at age 83.
The Agriculture Department predicted record wheat production at 1.3 billion bushels and corn at 2.6 billion bushels. That was enough corn for everyone in the country to have twenty bushels for the year. That comes out to about 2.66 ears per person per day. Of course, the hogs had to have their share.
A farmer, as featured in "The Carolina Farmer" section, had taken the "g" out of "gambling" on his farm by conquering soil erosion—apparently through the practice of ambling about his farm.
On the sports page, the 15-year old winner of The News sports writing contest for teenagers, Glass (Buddy) Carrier, reports from Knoxville re his experiences as a reporter covering the Charlotte Hornets baseball team.
We recommend a catchier column heading for the lad than "The Looking Glass", freighted with the implication of too much observation and not enough action. Maybe something like, "Don't Drop the Glass on Your Way to Home Plate".
On the editorial page, "Political Ideas in the Church" tells of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ having become, in the minds of the Southern Presbyterian laymen, suspect as a Red organization. The Presbyterians had met the previous week in Greenville, S.C., to consider whether to withdraw from the organization. The Council favored making permanent the Fair Employment Practices Commission, to insure equal employment opportunity and pay regardless of race, religion, or national origin, supported anti-segregation legislation and socialized medicine—all plainly anti-Christian positions.
The Presbyterian laymen had as their main beef that the Council was threatening the doctrine of separation of Church and State by taking political and social stands—again thoroughly un-Christian.
The piece finds the concerns ill-founded, that the Council was addressing matters directly pertinent to Christian principles. If there were any real Communist influence, the Presbyterians could do more to fight it by remaining within the Council.
"Clark Gable vs. Clement Attlee" wonders whether the confiscatory tax imposed by Britain on American imported films, estimated by the Motion Picture Association of America to erode 75 percent of the profits made in Britain on American films, in turn representing 80 percent of the film fare attended by Britons, was enacted to remind Americans of the poor economic plight of Britain rather than to improve directly its economic situation, the rationale offered by Prime Minister Attlee. Britain had to realize that it would result in some form of curtailment of American film exports. MPAA had declared a ban on exports in response.
But that alternative explanation did not seem reasonable as America was already aware of the bad situation in Britain. The real reason, asserts the piece, was probably the long-standing resentment in British circles of Hollywood's success in the country and the fact that Britons had decried the effect of American films as debasing of British culture.
The British public was quite upset at the ban. An English engineer's wife had declared the ban to be the last straw, that there was no one like Clark Gable in British movies. She now had nowhere to go for escape.
"Soap Operas and World Unrest" tells of a timely attack on radio soap operas
The piece finds, however, that the appeal of these soap operas lay in the very fact of their pseudo-psychiatric advice, that the self-flagellation which listeners underwent was a means of escape from the world's daily problems.
Mr. Maisel advised that 90 percent of Americans were basically normal psychologically. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company had found that there was a below average rate of mortality thus far in 1947, reinforcing the conclusion of pate normality.
Yet, divorces had reached a peak in 1946. And so it concludes that perhaps the country was listening to too many soap operas
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Unsound Dependence", tells of North Carolina farm income jumping twenty percent above the 1945 level to an unprecedented 764.5 million dollars. But the state's farmers were still too dependent on tobacco, representing 57 percent of the total income. A drop in price or production would thus have substantial impact on farming, which could create a disaster similar to that of 15 years earlier.
Editorials from various newspapers are recorded in reaction to the 88-page special edition of The News on the industrial potential of the Piedmont Carolinas, produced under the editorial direction of Burke Davis. The Wilmington Evening Post, The Wilmington Evening Star, The Durham Sun, The Winston-Salem Journal-Sentinel, and The Shelby Daily Star each record their approbation of the edition.
Drew Pearson tells of Kenneth Royall having been selected as Secretary of War because of his "brilliant" defense of the Nazi saboteurs in 1944 who had landed off Long Island by submarine. Col. Royall was given the job on the recommendation of Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, for whom Mr. Royall had been a protege while at the Harvard Law School, where Mr. Frankfurter taught before coming to the Court in 1939. He had learned his technique arguing cases in his native Goldsboro, N.C.
Someone in the drugstore in Goldsboro told him how well he had argued a particular case, to which Mr. Royall responded that he had not seen the person in the courtroom. The person responded that he had heard him from the drugstore.
He had done a lot of work for blacks in North Carolina and was considered a friend.
As Undersecretary of War, he had been in charge of liquidating war surplus property, settling war contracts, and handling courts-martial, performing efficiently all of the tasks.
He notes that Justice Frankfurter had been indirectly responsible for naming three Secretaries of War in succession, Henry Stimson in 1940, Robert Patterson in 1945, and Mr. Royall.
Robert Hannegan, he states, would resign as DNC chairman and as Postmaster General on November 1. Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson would succeed him as DNC chairman—an erroneous prediction. Former Senator James Mead of New York was under consideration for the job of Postmaster General. DNC vice-chairman Gael Sullivan would also step aside. Mr. Hannegan, though absent from Washington much of the time for health issues, had been the most vigorous FDR man left in the Cabinet. His bitter opponent in the Cabinet had been Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snyder, a conservative.
The column tells of Congressman W. Kingsland Macy having voted for budget cutting. One result had been that the President had fired his brother from the State Department. Mr. Macy then hurriedly found a new position for his brother on the Government payroll.
Paul W. Ward, beginning the second week of the series of reports from the Baltimore Sun, collectively titled "Life in the Soviet Union", tells of law in the Soviet Union, starting with a quote from M. Kareva from an article, "The Role of Soviet Law in the Education of Communist Consciousness", appearing in the bi-monthly Russian publication Bolshevik, that Socialist law was different from every other form. The article had appeared on the eve of the start of the Big Four Conference in Moscow.
Mr. Kareva had stated that Soviet law was guided by expediency, to impel society forward to communism. Soviet authorities had dispensed with both grand and petit juries, as well as examination of witnesses. Judges who heard cases relied on their intuition to render decisions as the evidence was seldom conclusive. Cases were generally ill-prepared and required no such evidence as the American system to achieve a conviction.
He recounts a trial of a youth accused of razor-slashing the face of a ticket scalper, in which there was no eyewitness, no razor adduced, no medical testimony to back up the fact of the injury, and sympathetic audience laughter when the defendant argued that he was being prosecuted simply to cover police protection of the scalping racket. At least he wasn't accused of shaving his head.
The trials did not have the "'confessions'" which had characterized the political purge trials prior to the war. Defendants with employment
Soviet police routinely compelled workers to remain on the job under rules relaxed during the war, now revived.
Marquis Childs discusses the War Investigating Subcommittee hearings into the Howard Hughes war contracts, finds James Stewart or Gary Cooper a good fit for the role being played by Mr. Hughes. He appeared younger than 41, standing in stark contrast to his older questioners, a major ingredient of the theatrics. He stood for bold, new experiment needed in aviation. There appeared to be an effort by the large airlines to scale down experimentation to the old pattern of restricted monopoly.
Recently, Lt. Commander Langdon Marvin, Jr., had appeared before an aviation subcommittee to testify of his experience with the Navy Air Transport Service, advising that three million pounds of air freight could be carried across the Pacific each year at a profit of 2.6 million dollars. Pan Am had estimated that only 152,000 pounds could be carried across the Pacific, arguing therefore that it would not be adequately profitable for more than one airline to handle. Mr. Marvin stated that the peacetime cargo service could be transformed quickly into military cargo in time of war and so had residual benefit beyond mere profits to the airline industry.
Mr. Childs suggests that such forward thinking was necessary as opposed to the major airlines, wedded to the past.
Framed Edition
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