The Charlotte News

Thursday, October 20, 1949

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President said at a press conference that he would recommend to Congress in the coming year that taxes be increased to balance the budget, to compensate for the "rich man's" four-billion dollar tax cut of the 80th Congress, passed over his veto, and the anticipated five billion dollar deficit for the current fiscal year. The President reminded that he had sought a tax increase from Congress of four billion dollars the previous January. He said that he would like to find the money to make up for the deficit in some other way, but knew of no other.

The President also clarified that his decision to enable the Atomic Energy Commission to utilize 30 million dollars of reserve funds for expanded production of atomic energy was not in consequence of the Russian explosion of an atomic bomb but derived from careful study of the atomic energy situation.

General Eisenhower told the House Armed Services Committee that military unification, he believed, would work henceforth and called on the quarreling services and Congress to give unification a chance and not panic at the first setback.

The previous day, General Omar Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, testified that the airing of grievances had done "infinite harm" to national security and blamed "Fancy Dans" who would not give their all for the team.

Army chief of staff General Lawton Collins testified, in response to Marine Corps commandant General Clifton Cates, that the Army was not trying to take away the "right to fight" from the Marine Corps and was not trying to impose its will on the "sister service".

What? Did you call them "sister"?

Congress adjourned for the remainder of the year. In the House, three girls who worked for Congressional committees, serenaded the representatives with "The Eyes of Texas" and "Down by the Old Mill Stream".

Speaking of which, someone will have to explain to us this moron's "humor" when he made the crack anent Watergate at the 2016 Al Smith Dinner in New York. Since when was Hillary Clinton "kicked off" the Watergate "Commission"?—whatever that was. "How corrupt do you have to be to get kicked off the Watergate Commission"? Does that not imply that this Watergate "Commission", itself, was crooked, and thus President Nixon, the victim of a crooked inquiry, that, indeed, ergo, he was not a crook. Now, we understand why it is that Donny has been using that phrase throughout the campaign in reference to Secretary Clinton. He thinks anyone who was part of the investigation into the Nixon articles of impeachment was "crooked". Whatever the case, it calls, undoubtedly, for another House investigation to see if concealed therein is a dark secret, the revelation of which is needed for satiation of the inquiring minds' right to know. The eight-year olds who write Donny's scripts will insist upon it. Get the Russians and that radio nut out in Texas on it right away. (To save time and nuts, it turns out that it was because President Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, rendering further work on the impeachment moot, resulting in termination of all of the Judiciary Committee staff hired for the impeachment inquiry, including Hillary Rodham. Still, there must be a dark conspiracy in it somewhere. Martha Mitchell. Enough said.)

This Donny guy needs a steady job, perhaps at a vet who specializes in cats. Maybe he can get elected cat-catcher in Idaho next year.

His son says that the presidency would be a step down for Sir Donny. And that is what he would be asked to do if he were to win.

Funny, no?

The President said that he had no present plans to seize either the coal or steel industries to end the strikes and urged them to settle.

Yugoslavia won a seat in the U.N. Security Council, beating out Czechoslovakia, 39 to 19, to replace the Soviet Ukraine, whose term ended the coming December 31. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky charged that the election of Yugoslavia was in violation of the U.N. Charter because it failed to take into account geographic distribution of council seats, charging that it was an attempt to have the Council side with Anglo-American interests. Pakistan, opposed by India, also won a seat, and the other opening went to Ecuador, succeeding Canada and Argentina, respectively, in three of the six rotating seats on the 11-member Council.

In China, the Communists moved westward from newly conquered Canton, by one unconfirmed report, routing two Nationalist armies in a thrust toward Kweilin in Kwangsi Province, suggesting an effort to take over all of the mainland.

In Baltimore, a lieutenant in the Army in 1944 had raised the allotment he was sending home to his family to $170, but the Army mixed it up and raised it to $270. He tried to get it straightened out and the Army promised that it would be. But when he was discharged 23 months later, he was sent a bill by the Army for $2,200. He explained the problem and it was finally corrected, until recently, when he received another demand for the remittance.

Col. Elliott White Springs, a World War I ace aviator and head of a textile empire in South Carolina, had created a fictitious story, provided, regarding a supposed Major General Joe Gish, hero cavalryman of the Battle of San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War of 1898, who came out of retirement to testify in criticism of the cutback by the Joint Chiefs of the cavalry—all in mock of the similar stance taken by the Navy regarding the anachronism of the battleship in the modern era when juxtaposed to the strategic preference for long-range bombers and atomic bombs. General Gish had concluded: "It is useless to survive the next war unless our great traditions survive with us!"

Bully, bully.

Just outside Charlotte, a family of five was living in a chicken house for three weeks, but were about to be evicted by the owner of the farm, who had invited them to live there temporarily, because she was selling the farm. The owner said that she would pay the rent for the family but had not yet found a house for them.

In Danville, Ill., a counterfeit ten dollar bill was used to pay a traffic fine. At least it was not an eleven dollar bill.

In Toronto, a man was charged with malicious mischief when he threw a rock through the window of the downtown office of Alcoholics Anonymous. Arrested with a partially full bottle of wine in his pocket, he told police that he had tried to borrow a quarter at the club and they would not give him even a nickel.

Students at Duke University were boycotting Duke Power buses for the fare having been increased from a nickel to three tokens for a quarter. No rocks, however, were reported thrown through windows.

On the editorial page, "'Governor' James Byrnes" tells of former Senator, Supreme Court Justice and Secretary of State James Byrnes weighing whether to run for Governor of South Carolina in 1950. It finds that if he so chose, he would surely win, as he was the most popular person in the state. He gave three reasons for considering the run, because governors had lost much of their prestige through Federal and state legislative encroachment on their powers, that a governor could sell the idea to industry that a state offered superior opportunities for development, and that someone needed to arouse the other governors to the encroachment on traditional states' rights.

It suggests that one ordinarily would not expect someone who had served in such prestigious positions as Mr. Byrnes to want to run for governor but it showed his commitment to public service, and if he could accomplish the goals he set forth, he would justify the faith of the people reposited in him.

Mr. Byrnes would run and win the gubernatorial election, succeeding then-Democrat Strom Thurmond, the office being limited to one term. At age 72 when he completed his term, it would be Mr. Byrnes's last public service.

"Our Commies Speak Up" tells of the state's two leading Communists, Junius Scales and Hans Freistadt, the latter the graduate student at UNC who, earlier in the year, had become the center of a firestorm when it was discovered that he was receiving an Atomic Energy Commission scholarship, having spoken out on the guilty verdicts against the eleven top American Communists the previous week in New York following a nine-month trial. Both condemned it and said that the Communist Party would not be driven underground by the result. Both denied that the party was seeking the violent overthrow of the Government.

The piece concedes that maybe those two were not among that number seeking overthrow but that they were naive if they thought they could achieve American Communism without following the Moscow edicts, citing the determined effort of Moscow to punish or even assassinate Tito for his independence from the Politburo.

This, incidentally, apparently represents what it means to make America great again.

"Anniversary of a Miracle" tells of the first anniversary of the Kelly Farm miracle weekend in Charlotte, when the farm owned by two veterans had been transformed with volunteer help and donated machinery from a depleted operation to a thriving farm. Now, a year later, it was fecund.

"Mr. McCray & Mr. Walker" tells of Rube McCray having signed a new five-year contract as football coach and athletic director at William & Mary, also guaranteed a spot on the faculty should he stop coaching at the end of that period. The college president explained it as assuring him the same tenure provided an associate professor or above.

The following Saturday, William & Mary would play Wake Forest, coached by Peahead Walker, who, despite a distinguished coaching career, had not been able to obtain consistency from his players during the season, 1-4 at this juncture. There was talk at Wake Forest of ousting him at the end of the season.

That was the pattern in college football. A coach was supposed to win most of his games. So it was refreshing that William & Mary had placed the character and personality of their coach ahead of win-loss records.

The Demon Deacons would win their next three games but lose their last two, winding up 4-6 on the season and tied for 9th among 16 teams in the Southern Conference. Mr. Walker would leave the program at the end of the 1950 season, finishing on a high note at 6-1-2, fourth in the Southern Conference.

Mr. McCray, ironically, would be pressured to resign both of his posts after the 1950 season following discovery in 1949 that transcripts of athletes' grades had been altered to keep them in school.

A piece from the Chapel Hill Weekly, titled "What Is a Village?", presumably by Louis Graves, wonders when a village got so big that it no longer was considered such. It finds it a subjective determination. Sometimes, friends razzed the writer for not being willing any longer to call Chapel Hill a village. Some of it still deserved the term, while other parts of the community had outgrown it. There were also habits and customs still extant befitting a village. Sometimes, for instance, when calls were mis-switched, the writer recognized the person at the other end. As long as that was the case, it was alright still to consider the place a village.

It must therefore be consistent with the notion of a "global village" to have e-mails mis-switched between here and Russia and the little dictator in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, trying to influence the American election for their own interests. Nyet? Kick him out in the street and indict him and every one of those idiots in Texas egging him and the Russians on for aiding and abetting a criminal conspiracy to commit espionage and invasion of privacy of private citizens.

Funny, no?

There will even be money in it for the enterprising entrepreneur who prints up the t-shirt, "Infowarriors for Prison, 2017".

Drew Pearson relates of John L. Lewis's right-hand man having bawled out the Southern coal operators for supposedly leaking the story of Mr. Lewis's oratory before them to Mr. Pearson's column. The operators responded that the account was honest and that Mr. Lewis had not looked too good at the meeting.

Undersecretary of the Navy Dan Kimball had urged the admirals to speak up if they thought that the decision of the President and Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson to cut defense spending was wrong-headed. The admirals did not respond but at the same meeting, Admiral Bogan had written his letter complaining of low Navy morale and Admiral Radford had joined the criticism.

Senator Tom Connally recently had urged a group of Senators to vote against an amendment offered by Nevada Senator George Malone, though admittedly he knew nothing about the amendment. He opposed it because Mr. Malone was one of the leading isolationists in the Congress.

Prime Minister Nehru of India was upset that the State Department had arranged for him to attend 30 formal parties during his 26-day visit to the U.S. He had wanted to get acquainted with the ordinary people of the country.

Senator Harry Cain of Washington tried to make political hay over $238 paid by a group of universities to fellow Washington Senator Warren Magnuson for travel expenses to speaking engagements in New Orleans. But Senator Cain, Mr. Pearson points out, had taken travel expenses from sponsoring organizations on several occasions.

Representative Porter Hardy of Virginia was making good on his commitment to investigate the Maritime Commission, despite Virginia being a maritime state.

Russian troops were infiltrating Azerbaijan Province in northern Iran, in what appeared as a new attempt to stir revolt.

London and Washington were preparing to send lists to France, Belgium, and The Netherlands governments agreeing on what items could be traded with the Chinese Communists. The British would then extend de facto recognition to the Communist Government. He says that the U.S. would be last to act but would also eventually extend recognition.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop tell of the President and Secretary of Defense Johnson having determined that the defense budget for 1950-51 would be limited to 13 billion dollars, two billion less than originally planned. With the pay increases for the military just passed by Congress, the net would be reduced by yet another half billion.

The result would be almost no defense for the country because the Soviets were willing to spend nearly their entire budget on military preparedness and because the strategic plan of the Joint Chiefs was not being followed.

That plan relied on strategic air power to offset the land superiority of the Soviets, to serve as both a deterrent to aggression and, in the event of war, as a strike force against the heart of the enemy's war-making capability. But the Air Force and the Joint Chiefs had relied on a plan for a 70-group Air Force, not the 48-group Air Force favored by the President, with only 14 strategic bomber groups, ten of which were comprised of the aging B-29 and B-50. Those ten minimally would need to be replaced by the B-47. But with the budget thus reduced, it would be difficult to undertake this program in a timely manner.

The result was reminiscent of the inter-war period during the 1920's and 1930's when defense had been cut perilously to the bone. Relative to the Soviets, the country was becoming weaker, not stronger. The admirals were objecting to the reduction in strength of the Navy, a cut based on the idea that Russia was not a naval power. But the Joint Chiefs had advocated a build-up in air, ground and allied strength to compensate for that reduction and that was not taking place under Secretary Johnson.

Marquis Childs, in Oslo, tells of American aid and loans going to Norway in 1949 totaling 90 million dollars, about $30 per capita. Norway would also receive about 45 million in drawing accounts under the mutual aid program of Marshall Plan recipient nations. He provides the figures on where the aid was going in Norway, most of it for rebuilding the country's heavy industry, including restoration of its fleet and iron mines, the latter to be producing a half million tons of iron by 1950.

The only luxury to be provided under the plan was tobacco production. Norway had lived under an austerity program since the end of the war and tobacco was deemed a psychological necessity for Norwegian fishermen who spent weeks at sea. Another large portion went to petroleum products.

The key to Norwegian recovery was shipping. About half of its fleet had been destroyed in the war and it was costly to rebuild it. But there was competition from American shipping, which a powerful lobby wanted to carry all American foreign aid, potentially defeating the recovery of the Norwegian fleet.

Robert C. Ruark praises Federal District Court Judge Harold Medina for his conduct of the trial of the eleven top American Communists in New York on Smith Act violations, resulting in verdicts of guilty the previous week. He had been forbearing of the defense counsel during the trial while they were insolent and insulting to him on a consistent basis. But at trial's end, he found five of them in contempt and sentenced them to jail. He had withheld during the course of the trial to avoid a mistrial.

He had daily reviewed the record for possible grounds for mistrial and researched the law to insure against that possibility.

Mr. Ruark concludes that if there were a truly liberal man on matters of race, religion and politics, it was Judge Medina.

Local poet Maude Waddell provides a poem, "Caw-Caw Swamp", not about the 2016 presidential election.

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