The Charlotte News

Monday, January 10, 1949

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President submitted his budget to the new Congress for the 1949-50 fiscal year, seeking 41.858 billion dollars, the largest to that point in peacetime, 1.678 billion above that of the previous year. It amounted to $282.82 for every adult and child in the country. About half of the budget was for defense and foreign aid.

The budget had a deficit of 873 million dollars on top of 600 million for 1948-49. During the 1947-48 fiscal year, the Government had an unprecedented surplus of 8.419 billion dollars, before the 80th Congress passed during 1948 its tax cut over the President's veto. The President forewarned that future Americans would have to pay for the country's mounting world responsibilities and its consequent expansion of the military. The President thus renewed his plea to Congress to raise taxes by four billion dollars on corporations and middle and upper income taxpayers. He hoped to finance the proposed national health insurance with a one-half to one percent tax on payrolls in the coming fiscal year, with employees and employers contributing equally.

The President foresaw 1.3 billion dollars less spending on veterans in the coming year and proposed to eliminate a fourth of the 90 veterans' hospitals planned during and right after the war, including a planned 921-bed neuropsychiatric hospital in Salisbury, N.C., a 500-bed hospital for Charlotte, and two 200-bed South Carolina facilities, one each for Greenville and Columbia.

Social Security expansion sought by the President would cost an additional six billion dollars per year, with nearly two billion added to payroll taxes to defray the cost.

The budget received both praise and criticism from Capitol Hill, the praise from those who favored expansion of Government programs and the criticism from those who opposed it. Individual reactions are set forth.

The Commerce Department reported that individual income was up in November 1.1 billion dollars to an annualized rate of 216.7 billion, half of the rise ascribed to farm income.

General Lucius Clay, military occupation commander in the U.S. zone of Germany, in his monthly report, stated that the Soviet effort to attract West Germans to Communism had miserably failed, as proved by the municipal elections of December in which the Communists had lost badly. He noted, however, that nationalist movements were beginning to surface again in Germany and that German authorities were complaining of the cost of occupation in the U.S. zone. The two primary nationalist groups were the National Democratic Party and Otto Strasser's "infamous" Black Front, founded in 1933 after Herr Strasser had been expelled from the Nazi Party for taking the idea of "national socialism" too seriously. Herr Strasser, living in Canada, was planning to return to Germany in March. He was the brother of Gregor Strasser, the number two Nazi until the Hitler purge of 1934 when he was murdered.

The U.S. urged Britain and Israel to regard the Israeli shooting down of five RAF planes the previous Friday over Palestine as a "regrettable incident" but one which should not interfere with negotiations on peace in Palestine, set to open the following Wednesday on the Island of Rhodes. The Israelis claimed that the planes were over Israeli territory while the British claimed that they were in Egyptian territory. The British thus had registered a protest with the U.N. Security Council.

The Supreme Court declined to hear petitions from the twelve leading American Communist Party members who had been indicted for conspiracy to overthrow the Government by force and violence. They had sought dismissal of their indictments.

In Milford, Va., eleven cars of the Orange Blossom Special, traveling from Florida to New York, derailed, injuring more than twenty persons. The wife of bandleader Paul Whiteman was among the injured, albeit suffering only minor lacerations and bruises.

In Gastonia, N.C., a car crashed through the brick walls of a hospital room the previous day, injuring four patients. The car, driven by a 22-year old woman, had rolled down a hill, out of control. The driver was charged with reckless driving and driving without a license.

In Los Angeles, actor Robert Mitchum was convicted in a short trial of felony conspiracy to possess marijuana. His two co-defendants arrested at the same time as Mr. Mitchum in a planned police raid were also convicted.

His career is over.

In Hollywood, war hero and actor Audie Murphy, 24, was married.

The Carolina Farmer section of the newspaper examines the chicken and the egg, the combination accounting for 84 million dollars of North Carolina farm income annually. And that's no small potatoes. There was plenty of work to be done on the chicken farm in the early part of the year and Frank Jeter explains it to readers.

But does he explain which came first?

On the editorial page, "Missing School Link" discusses the proposal to create junior colleges in North Carolina as a bridge between high school and four-year colleges. New Governor Kerr Scott had suggested the program as a means to improve education in the state, with special emphasis on vocational training.

The report of the State Education Commission had recommended a system of community colleges for the purpose, as many high school graduates who did not plan to go to a four-year college could nevertheless benefit from two years of active vocational training.

The piece thinks it a good idea and recommends that the Legislature conduct a thorough study of the matter so that positive action could begin by 1951.

"Dewey's Program for New York" discusses the proposals of twice-failed GOP presidential nominee Governor Thomas Dewey put forth to the New York Legislature: an increase of the State budget by 20 percent or 150 million dollars; new taxes to allow the State to pay as it went; temporary unemployment insurance; research and preventive measures regarding mental health; extension of State rent controls; an increase in public housing and State subsidies; and State development of the St. Lawrence power project.

It finds, therefore, that there was great similarity to the Truman program enunciated in the President's "Fair Deal" message on the State of the Union the previous Wednesday, that had Mr. Dewey been elected President, he might have put forward much the same progressive program.

"Art, Politics and Furtwaengler" finds that most of the time artists who got into politics made a mess of things, the one exception being Paderewski, the concert pianist who became Premier of Poland in 1919. The previous week, musicians Vladimir Horowitz, Lily Pons, Andre Kostelanetz, Arthur Rubinstein and Alexander Brailowsky had objected to the scheduled arrival in the U.S., at the invitation of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, of Wilhelm Furtwaengler, the conductor who during the war had presented programs for Herr Hitler, Herr Doktor Goebbels, Herr Air Marshal Goering, and the other high Nazis. He was to conduct in Chicago for the year.

But the coterie of musicians believed that he would subject his listeners to "Nazi culture" and so refused to participate in any program which he conducted. The Orchestral Association, in response, reneged on the Furtwaengler contract.

The piece recalls similar objection to Wagnerian soprano Kirsten Flagstad for her supposed Nazi sympathies from the fact that her deceased husband allegedly had been a Quisling Nazi in Norway. The public had largely forgotten the issue and had accepted Ms. Flagstad for her talent.

It treats the Furtwaengler issue the same way, finding that he should be appreciated for his ability as a conductor, not based on his politics. The musicians had a right to boycott the programs. But Americans also had a right to listen if they chose.

A piece from the Winston-Salem Sentinel, titled "Never Strike a Newspaperman", takes a bold stand against Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennesseee for striking and beating journalists, including, it notes, editorial writers. He had landed blows on Nashville Tennessean Publisher Silliman Evans and on Jack Anderson, associated at the time with Drew Pearson as a young, unknown assistant. Both had committed the sin of referencing negatively Mr. McKellar's age of 79, irritating to the Senator.

The piece suggests that if a journalist allowed one man to hit him, he would have to allow others to do likewise and there was no telling where it would end. It says, therefore, that it was foursquare against the practice.

Tom Fesperman of The News expounds further on the junior college proposal for North Carolina. He points out that Mississippi, regarded as the most backward Southern state educationally, had the best organized junior college system in the country, benefiting, in ways not being offered to North Carolinians, those students who did not attend four-year colleges. Georgia, also regarded as educationally backward vis-à-vis North Carolina, had eight junior colleges.

Governor Scott had cited the high drop-out and failure rate among first and second year college students in the state as evidence that some interim form of education needed to be instituted to bridge the gap. He had urged the Legislature to undertake a study of the merits of such a system.

Deceased former Governor O. Max Gardner, who had died in early 1947 as he was about to assume his duties as Ambassador to Great Britain, had, shortly before his death, told the North Carolina State School Superintendent at the time, Dr. Clyde Erwin, that the State had done well by the school children by extending the eight-month school year to nine months and by adding the twelfth grade, and that the next logical step was to provide for a system of junior colleges. Dr. Erwin then began making speeches on the subject across the state.

As G.I.'s had poured into the educational system after the war and stretched its capabilities to handle the students, the University had provided for temporary extension colleges, including one in Charlotte. The program had proved a success as many veterans had sought the educational benefits. But when the City Council was urged to provide for a permanent junior college, it had to decline for its stated lack of legal authority to do so, though it praised the concept.

But Wilmington had voted to add five cents to the tax levy for the purpose of establishing a junior college and the city now had one which enrolled 800 students. Asheville had done so several years earlier.

The Charlotte School Board was asking the General Assembly for legislation to establish a permanent junior or community college in the city, as the UNC extension college was in its last year of operation.

Educational leaders were in agreement that North Carolina would have to add such colleges to its educational system to catch up with "backward" Mississippi.

Drew Pearson discusses Secretary of State-designate Dean Acheson and his career at State, cherishing a desire for public service and for modernizing the State Department.

In 1946, after the disastrous mid-term election for the Democrats, the President returned from Independence, Mo., to Washington, and only Acting Secretary of State Acheson was on hand from the Cabinet to greet him. He advised the President to issue a diplomatic statement urging cooperation between the President and Congress, citing historical instances of divided Government. Mr. Acheson drafted the statement and the two men had been friends since.

He had been one of the few men ever fired by FDR, while he served as Undersecretary of the Treasury, a position not suited to him. Seven years later, in 1943, Mr. Acheson's friend, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, persuaded the President to take him back as Assistant Secretary of State.

Mr. Pearson notes that Justice Frankfurter urged Mr. Acheson to seek an indictment of Mr. Pearson from the Justice Department, which Mr. Acheson had raised at a Cabinet meeting without success.

Mr. Acheson had run the State Department during periods when Secretary of State James Byrnes was in Paris seeking settlement with the Soviets on the German and Austrian treaties in 1945-46. Mr. Pearson suggests that during that period, the Department probably reached its peak in efficiency.

He was informal and did not like putting on airs.

He had entered the State Department as pro-Russian, believing in cooperation between the U.S. and the Soviets, but he had become disillusioned after Potsdam in July, 1945, since had been a bitter non-appeaser.

Donald Hiss, brother of Alger, was a member of Mr. Acheson's law firm and Mr. Acheson had served in the State Department at the same time as Alger Hiss, causing some to raise eyebrows. The law firm had represented J. P. Morgan, the Soviet Government and the anti-Soviet Iranian Government. Mr. Acheson, however, was above suspicion of any disloyalty or sympathy with Communism.

Secretary Byrnes had begged Mr. Acheson, after he resigned as Assistant Secretary, to return as Undersecretary in August, 1945. At first, he refused, but then reluctantly agreed. He had remained in that position until six months after Secretary Marshall took over the Department in early 1947.

The President was depending on former Secretary of Agriculture, now Senator from New Mexico, Clinton Anderson to put across his farm program in Congress. Senator Anderson almost did not get a position on the Agriculture Committee, but the Democratic steering committee determined that Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, a Dixiecrat during the campaign, should not be able to take advantage of his seniority to be on the Committee. It was anticipated that Mr. Anderson would be able to counterbalance the Southerners on the Committee.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss an unnamed lawyer's analysis of the evidence relating to the Alger Hiss perjury case, to combat the prejudicial notion circulating in the press that the evidence was so overwhelming that the claims of Whittaker Chambers that Mr. Hiss had passed the secret documents to him from the State Department must be true and therefore show him guilty.

The lawyer looked at two episodes which pointed most strongly to Mr. Hiss's guilt, the transfer of the 1929 Model A Ford and the transfer of the secret documents themselves. The Model A was claimed by Mr. Hiss the previous August in his HUAC testimony to have been given to Mr. Chambers because he had no car, a trifle worth only $25. But the registration had been traced to a man who refused to say before HUAC whether or not he was a Communist. Mr. Chambers had claimed that Mr. Hiss donated the car to the West Coast Communist Party. The date on the transfer documents, however, was well after the time when Mr. Hiss claimed to have given the car to Mr. Chambers.

The unnamed lawyer, nevertheless, found that the car could have been transferred to Mr. Chambers earlier, at the time and in the manner Mr. Hiss claimed, and then re-transferred by Mr. Chambers to the man who testified before HUAC and in whose name the ownership wound up, who said that he bought the car from a Communist-owned service station. Mr. Chambers said that he knew of the station but had forgotten where it was located. The lawyer determined that, given the paperwork requirements of the time, Mr. Chambers could have made the transfer without involving his own name and sent the papers to Mr. Hiss to sign. Mr. Hiss might have simply signed the paperwork and forgotten about the matter. Such a lapse of memory would be no stranger than that of Mr. Chambers, who had forgotten for which Government department he had worked and the precise date on which he left the Communist Party, a central, defining event, as he had described it, in his life.

The lawyer had posited that the documents fell into three categories: holographic notes allegedly written by Mr. Hiss; documents alleged to have been transcribed on the Hiss typewriter; and photostatic copies of original State Department documents. The first two categories were of great concern because, if Mr. Hiss were a spy, he was rather stupid for an intelligent, Harvard-educated lawyer, as he had provided documents in a form which could be easily traced back to him, especially those transcribed in his own hand.

The lawyer believed that a plausible explanation for the typewritten documents was that Mr. Chambers obtained the Hiss typewriter, himself, for a short period and made the copies. He might also have obtained the handwritten notes of Mr. Hiss, not from Mr. Hiss, but through his own spy network. The drafts may have been simply Mr. Hiss's personal notes on the documents, made as part of his State Department work. Mr. Chambers might then have retained these documents for his own purposes, planning the while to use them to gain sympathy and leniency if cornered and accused of spying.

The Alsops conclude that it was not possible to conceive of the innocence of Mr. Hiss without also assuming that Mr. Chambers had been planning the matter for a long time. But there was no evidence of such a plan. The lawyer, however, believed that it was a real possibility.

But was there not evidence of such planning in the very fact that of the documents allegedly transferred to Mr. Chambers by four Government officials, including, in addition to Mr. Hiss, Walter Pigman of the Bureau of Standards, Henry J. Wadleigh of the State Department and Harry Dexter White of the Treasury Department, the latter having died shortly after his August, 1948 testimony before HUAC, the only documents he preserved were those allegedly from Mr. Hiss? Was the planning not shown by the fact that he secreted the documents for a full decade at the home of his nephew in a dumbwaiter shaft, accessible only though a bathroom window? Was it not made manifest by his hesitancy in revealing the documents and hence his own willingness to commit espionage for the Soviets in 1937-38 until the Hiss civil suit for defamation gave sudden impetus for self-preservation? Was the revelation not so much from the fear of suffering the $75,000 damage claim of Mr. Hiss but rather for the fact that Mr. Chambers, as everyone else, knew that the New York grand jury was assessing who between the two had committed perjury and was preparing, prior to the expiration of the 18-month term of the grand jury on December 15, to indict one of them, as urged by HUAC after their directly conflicting August testimony? Mr. Chambers began releasing the documents, in response to a discovery request in the civil suit by Mr. Hiss's attorneys, only in early November and then mysteriously waited even more time, until December 5, in response to a HUAC subpoena, before leading HUAC chief investigator Robert Stripling to the pumpkin patch on his Maryland farm wherein Mr. Chambers had recently secreted the canisters of microfilm which had previously been stored in the dumbwaiter shaft.

Query whether, given Congressman Richard Nixon's centrality to the Hiss prosecution for perjury, having been the only HUAC member to testify before the New York grand jury delivering up the indictment, the release by HUAC for publication of twelve of the "secret documents" on December 12, 1948 has numerical significance—that is, 12 on 12-12, 312, LLL, Love's Labour's Lost. Was it at the time, in 1948, meant merely subliminally to call to mind the patriotic spirit of remembrance of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 when the Armistice, the thirtieth anniversary of which had just occurred a month earlier, took effect to cease hostilities in World War I? But did it, resultant of subsequent bitterness of either Mr. Nixon, his supporters, or their combination, become something more, something very sinister, 15 years later in Dallas, Texas?

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