The Charlotte News
Monday, January 17, 1949
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in China, the Nationalist Government amassed about 150,000 troops along a 300-mile front to defend Nanking, considered hopeless by neutral military observers with Communist forces numbering more than 300,000 north of the Hwai River 105 miles to the northwest and ready to move southward. The Chinese Navy had evacuated the garrison at Tangku, ocean port of Tientsin which had fallen to the Communists on Saturday. Pengpu had already been evacuated and Nationalist forces pulled back to Chuhsien, 30 miles northwest of Nanking, on December 17. A peace delegation was preparing to depart Peiping to engage in peace talks with the Communists.
The Kuomintang at its meeting this date had reached no agreement on how to proceed, but generally appeared to favor obtaining first a ceasefire agreement before entering negotiations with the Communists on their eight-point demand for surrender issued the previous week by Communist chairman Mao Tse-Tung.
In Berlin, the U.S., Britain, and France announced the creation of a permanent security police force to assure that Germany remained disarmed. It would assume the demilitarization function of the defunct Allied Control Council which had effectively gone out of existence when the Russians boycotted participation during the previous year. The Benelux countries also participated in the conference creating the "military security board", which would report to the three military governors of the Western zones.
In Frankfurt, the U.S. Army canceled all permits for enlisted men under the rank of sergeant to wed German frauleins, part of a program to halt such marriages in the American occupation zone. An exception was recognized for special cases. The order also voided all previous permission granted for marriage, prompting one private to call it a "dirty trick". Too many German girls were gaining admission to the U.S. via marriage, with only the ulterior motive of getting to the U.S.
In Lochgoilhead, Scotland, a U.S. B-29 crashed with twenty American airmen aboard, returning home to the U.S., killing at least six aboard. Reports conflicted on whether there were survivors. The plane's ultimate destination was Salina, Kansas. The plane was part of the 301st Bomb Group, in Britain for a three-month tour of duty.
The Supreme Court, in Klapprott v. U.S., 335 U.S. 601, a decision delivered by Justice Hugo Black, reversed by a vote of 5 to 4 a decision of a lower Federal court which had canceled the citizenship of August Klapprott, once the president of the German-American Bund. The majority found that Mr. Klapprott had been wrongfully imprisoned for four and a half years on charges the Government could not sustain. A dissent was filed by Justice Stanley Reed, joined by Chief Justice Fred Vinson and Justice Robert Jackson. A separate dissent was filed by Justice Felix Frankfurter.
In New York, the trial of the twelve leading American Communists began, as one of the largest police court guards in New York City history, a 466-man detail, stood watch on the proceedings, presided over by Federal Judge Harold Medina. Defense attorneys charged that the large police presence was by design to prejudice and intimidate prospective jurors in the case. The twelve defendants were charged with conspiracy to overthrow the Government. William Z. Foster, national chairman of the Communist Party, was absent from the trial because of illness.
Also in New York, former soldier Martin Monti, 27, pleaded guilty to treason and was sentenced to 25 years in prison for having surrendered himself and his airplane to the Nazis in Italy between October 13, 1944 and May 8, 1946 after going AWOL in Karachi, India. He allegedly then had made broadcasts for the Germans from Berlin under the name "Martin Weithaupt" and thereafter became an officer in the S.S. Following the German surrender, he had gone to Italy and joined the American Fifty Army.
The President asked for authority to reorganize the Executive Branch, pursuant to the recommendation of the Hoover Commission. The President wanted authority to reorganize subject to veto by Congress within 60 days of an order of the President.
In Washington, preparation was almost complete for the inauguration of the President, set for Thursday. A crowd of between 750,000 and a million were expected for the President's address.
In Monongahela, Pa., an employee of the Tube Motor Company was driving by the showroom when he noticed that a $3,000 1949 Lincoln was missing. Thieves had gained entry through a side window, taken $500 from the cash drawer and then driven the car away.
If you see a 1949 Lincoln
In Cannes, France, actress Rita Hayworth and wealthy Aly Khan announced that they would be married as soon as his divorce from his current wife was final. They were staying at his hilltop chateau at Le Cannet, four miles away.
In the United States, for reasons unstated, women's clubs were threatening to boycott movies in which Ms. Hayworth appeared as an actress. Whatever the cause, it obviously made a lot of sense.
When, by the way, does the movie-going public generally come to understand that actors and actresses do not generally create the movies in which they appear scene by scene? The movie is created by writers, a director, the editors, and the other production functionaries. The actors deliver their lines and go home or to their trailers to await the next scene. Stop being so gullible and plain stupid to fall for this deliberate gimmick of the cult of personality, promoted as a product by movie studios, which has, unfortunately, over time crept into and infected American political life in a cynical and disturbing way.
When people say that they do not want "politicians" to be their leaders, who the hell do they think is going to lead them but the granddaddy politician of them all, he or she who claims falsely not to be a politician while running for high office. Are these people just crazy or plain stupid? If anything, these "non-politician" politicians, these political insider "outsiders", are the most dangerous of all, as they are the most subject to becoming puppets of the powerful special interests, are devoid of political past and so have no track record on issues or governance. They can thus use the worst forms of demagogy without being checked for past performance in office.
Grow up. There is no such animal, by definition, as a "non-politician" seeking the presidency or the Senate or other high offices. It does not and never will exist except in celluloid fantasies as "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington". Tell us when in the entire history of the country it ever came to be in reality. The Founders were among the best educated the country had to offer at the time, all with a track record. Why should it be different now?
Or are these people who want such a "revolution" in fact seeking a Hitler type, the ultimate folk politician, to tell them what to do? It would seem so by the type of rhetoric and proposed policies to which they are usually drawn.
Bitter cold hit the Western half of the nation again, stranding travelers in the Rockies and Southwest, in Arizona and New Mexico, where 300 vehicles were reported stalled near Lordsburg on Highway 80. The cold and stormy weather also impacted fruit growers in Southern California, where freezing temperatures were recorded, and electric power users in the Pacific Northwest, where a brown-out occurred.
In Davis, W. Va., the body of a seven-year old boy and his nearly frozen companion, 16, the latter still alive, were found after the two had been missing for two days along with the nine-year old brother of the dead boy, still missing. The survivor would lose his feet because of gangrene. They had become lost in the mountain community about five miles from the home of the brothers.
Always break those twigs and carry a good flashlight.
The Carolina Farmer section of the newspaper imparts of how a family built a 9-room home for $1,119.50 on an eleven-acre parcel.
But was each room of sufficient size to accommodate a chicken? And if so, how many chickens did the family have?
On the editorial page, "A Palliative, Not a Solution" finds State Senator Julian Allsbrook's bill to require State agencies and administrative boards to maintain their rules and regulations on file with the General Assembly to be a step in the right direction, but one not going far enough.
It would cover the 21 licensing boards which operated without much oversight and would enable the public easily to find out how the boards were supposed to operate, a difficult task at present. But the bill did not insure that the boards would operate in the interest of the public.
It recommends a review to determine which of the boards should be eliminated for lack of constitutionality, such as those regulating cosmetologists, photographers and tile-layers, the latter subject to greater penalty for lack of licensing than physicians and architects.
But if it were not for the regulation of cosmetologists, couldn't anyone go up in space? And, as we have insisted previously, good tile laying is essential to sure footing on earth, such that one is not catapulted on a trip into outer space by unsuspected interstitial edges projecting above the square and the level.
"Seventeen Senators and Majority Rule" tells of a proposed bill on whether to amend the Senate rules to change cloture to make filibusters more difficult, to be taken up by a Senate committee starting January 24. As things stood, 17 Southern Senators of the 96 in the Senate could hold up business on a given bill through the device.
While many Southerners might be in sympathy with the goals at times of the Southern Senators, filibuster could not be justified on abstract political principle. The concept of majority rule was made a travesty by the filibuster. It subverted the concept of democracy.
It urges therefore a change in the Senate rules to ban filibusters completely.
"New Role for Hoey" tells of Senator Clyde Hoey of North Carolina having been named chairman of a Senate subcommittee in charge of investigating the executive branch. It hopes that he would use his talents to see that it was properly pared down to eliminate excess and duplication in the various agencies and bureaus.
"Your Share of the Bill" wonders how the journalist who had figured out that the 41.9 billion dollar proposed budget of the President represented $282.82 for every person in the country, as the precise population was not known. Refusing nevertheless to challenge the figure, it points out that the Council of State Chambers in Newark, N.J., had sent out a press release which estimated that North Carolina's share of the budget was $657,830,000, which it also accepts, pointing out that it was three times the amount the State would have in its budget for State Government operations. That figure compared to a high of 6.5 billion dollars for New York's share and a low of 55 million for Nevada.
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Why Constables?" questions the need for constables in North Carolina, in light of the grand jury report out of Mecklenburg County regarding the scheme of the magistrate and three constables routinely to roust and arrest black citizens late at night on gambling charges, then bring them before the magistrate who then routinely had released them on payment of costs. The State had the SBI, police forces in cities and counties, and the Highway Patrol, thus had no practical use in modern times for constables.
It concludes that the constables "ain't" what they once were and should be put out to pasture.
Drew Pearson publishes a letter being sent out by the real estate lobby to newspapers seeking to propagandize against extension of rent control, saying that it had caused hardship wherever it was in operation.
In Strasbourg, France, a Frenchman who had fought in the resistance was now a stained-glass window manufacturer and had contributed a special window to the Merci Train, the train bound for America with gifts to show appreciation for the Friendship Train of November, 1947, bearing food and clothing for the French for the winter prior to the Marshall Plan being implemented. The window bore a map of the United States with the coats-of-arms of the Alsatian cities contributing to the Train.
Senator Sheridan Downey of California, dubbed the PG&E Senator, was busy for the first time greeting part of the California House delegation, urging repeal of the 160-acre limitation on water rights which favored the small farmers. The Congressmen rejected the advice, however, even though one of them owned 5,000 acres of farm land. Senator Downey was busy trying to be re-elected in 1950.
Congressman Arthur Klein of New York was seeking investigation of former HUAC chief investigator Robert Stripling to determine whether he took confidential material from the Committee files to write his memoirs, about to begin syndication in many newspapers through the King Features Syndicate.
Mayor deLesseps Morrison of New Orleans had recently visited the White House and then informed the press that the President had a "very friendly attitude" toward President Juan Peron of Argentina. The report was carried widely in Latin America and served to send the wrong message for an Administration seeking to deter military dictatorships. The Mayor had been recently decorated by El Presidente Peron, his wife provided expensive jewelry by Eva Peron, and the visit to the White House had been carefully arranged by Sr. Peron to try to win over the Truman Administration. The wartime plywood landing-boat builder Andrew Higgins of New Orleans was also behind the visit, as he, too, had recently visited Argentina and been impressed by his reception by El Presidente.
Sr. Peron had also given an award to the President's military aide General Harry Vaughan.
The net result had been a lot of encouragement for Latin American dictators.
He notes that the President did not encourage Mayor Morrison regarding friendship for El Presidente, but rather was "quite cagey."
Stewart Alsop discusses the reduction of the Air Force to 48 groups in the President's proposed budget, saving about 1.4 billion dollars for the year. The defense superiority over the Soviet Union lay in air strength and, specifically, long-range strategic bomber strength. The new B-36 bomber had proved 25 percent better in tests than anticipated, could reach primary targets in the Soviet Union with only about a ten percent loss, could reach those targets, with mid-air refueling, even from domestic bases in Maine or Alaska, in the unlikely event that all British, Middle Eastern, and Far Eastern bases had been eliminated.
Even increasing the Army from ten to twelve divisions would not appreciably counter the superior strength of deployment and deployment capability of the Soviet Army in Eastern Europe. Thus, maintenance of U.S. air superiority was crucial to preserve the balance of power and provide a deterrent to Russian attack and aggression generally.
Only about 20 of the 70 proposed combat groups were to be long-range bombers, as fighters were necessary to protect domestic shorelines, foreign bases and provide coverage for a ground Army. With the reduction to 48 combat groups, that would leave only perhaps 15 groups as strategic bombers. Thus, for the 1.4 billion dollars in savings, this crucial component of air strength and superiority was to be reduced by one-quarter. Mr. Alsop asks whether the savings was worth the risk.
Marquis Childs, in the second of two pieces on his paper interview with Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, tells of the Secretary being acutely aware of the criticism and suspicion of him as a tool of Wall Street, for his Wall Street background as a former officer between 1938 and 1940 of Dillon, Read. The suspicion was that he was trying to re-cartelize the German industrial machine and give the Ruhr back to the Germans for the purpose. He claimed, however, to have had little influence on German policy, that the State Department under Secretary of State James Byrnes had declined responsibility over Germany, leaving it to the military to administer occupation.
He said that he had been asked specifically not to make speeches during the campaign for the President, that he was not being disloyal, as charged in the press.
Part of the reaction to Secretary Forrestal came from the state of the world, the desire by the American people for peace and the concomitant distrust for militarization. He was also the first Secretary of Defense in the transition begun in mid-1947 from the separate three branches of military service to consolidation under one Pentagon umbrella. The Secretary frequently expressed that the job of consolidation had to occur in evolutionary steps rather than being done at once. Many of the people around him complained that he was not an effective administrator, and many of the civilian staff were as wealthy as he was.
The Truman Administration was becoming increasingly farmer-labor in orientation and as such, the present makeup of the Defense Department was becoming increasingly anomalous. That fact may have contributed to Mr. Forrestal's increasing restiveness in the job and longing, after nine years of public service, to return to private life. But, comments Mr. Childs, such men seemed reluctant to give up the perquisites accompanying Government power to return to the comparatively easy life of a brokerage firm.
Mr. Forrestal's long-tendered form resignation would be accepted by the President in March. Mr. Forrestal would die from a fall out a window at Bethesda Naval Hospital on May 22, thought to be a suicide.
Whether coincidental or not, the fall was from the sixteenth floor, just as had been the fall of former high-ranking State Department official Laurence Duggan from his sixteeenth floor New York office on December 20, 1948, shortly after being falsely implicated in executive session by a hearsay witness as having given Government documents to Whittaker Chambers, a claim subsequently denied by Mr. Chambers. That incident had been a cited reason for former Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, a friend of Mr. Duggan and distressed by his death, having nearly frozen to death, after suffering a heart attack during a late night walk on Christmas near his home in Maryland. Though there was never adduced a shred of evidence of spying activity or disloyalty of Mr. Duggan, immediately after receiving news of his death, then acting HUAC chairman Karl Mundt of South Dakota, in speaking of HUAC releasing names of witnesses who had been so implicated in executive session, said crudely, "We will give out the other names as they jump out of windows."
A letter from a Marine Corps colonel, whose young son had been stricken by polio the previous summer while the father was in the Mediterranean, thanks the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis for providing the urgent care necessary to cure his son, who had shown no signs of the illness since. He therefore urges contribution to the March of Dimes.
A letter writer provides an open letter to the members of the State General Assembly, disfavoring the repeal of the auto inspection law, as the law had helped to reduce accident rates considerably. He favors making inspections easier and more accessible.
A letter from A. W. Black responds to the letter which had responded to Mr. Black's letter suggesting that the United World Federalists had been infiltrated by Communists, in the process of his stated disagreement with the position of UWF board member Dr. Hamilton Holt set forth in his article for The News. Mr. Black says that Dr. Holt was not made immune from Communism simply by his distinguished position in society.
He says further that Dr. Holt was a member of Open Road, a Communist front organization which, according to the Fourth Report of the California Senate Fact-Finding Committee, "operated with technical assistance" from Soviet Intourist. He says that the New York State Legislative Committee report, called the "Lusk Report", had found that Dr. Holt was connected to radical and dubious pacifist organizations.
Mr. Black therefore recommends that the previous writer familiarize himself with these reports "before venturing to wade too far into unfamiliar waters which hold forth no signposts indicating the danger spots."
But there is a signpost up ahead.
Simply because you cannot see it, Mr. Black, does not mean it does
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