The Charlotte News
Thursday, October 27, 1949
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Washington Post had stated that Admiral Forrest Sherman, commander of the Mediterranean Fleet, was returning to Washington and would possibly be named chief of Naval operations to replace Admiral Louis Denfeld.
Plans for a 56,200-man cut in the Navy were announced by the Defense Department to match planned cuts by the end of the fiscal year in the operating fleet.
Elton C. Fay, in the fourth in a series of articles on the Navy-Air Force dispute regarding the effectiveness of the long-range strategic B-36 bomber as the mainstay of air defense versus the Navy supercarrier, ordered stopped by Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson the previous March, looks at the debate on whether atomic bombing was inhuman, immoral, and militarily ineffective, as claimed by Navy personnel recently testifying before the House Armed Services Committee. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Omar Bradley, had, in his testimony, disputed those claims. The Air Force generals had also disputed the contentions, stating that if killing had to be done, it was no more immoral when accomplished by the atomic bomb than by other means.
Mr. Fay observes that a Navy man, now Rear Admiral William Parsons, had set the fuse on the Hiroshima bomb as the "Enola Gay" flew toward the target. In 1949, he was a member of the weapons systems evaluation board, which determined whether the B-36 and other weapons of mass destruction were useful tools of war.
Mr. Fay quotes from some of the competing testimony, from General Bradley, Admiral Arthur Radford, and Rear Admiral Ralph Ofstie.
According to White House press secretary Charles G. Ross, the President had no plans to intervene in the steel and coal strikes and had set no deadlines for Government mediation efforts to end. He had not discussed the situation with any individual member of the Cabinet. He had kept abreast of what was transpiring in the mediation talks.
The 115,000 Ford UAW members approved the settlement with the company providing for a maximum $100 per month pension plan at age 65, the first in the auto industry. It would be paid entirely by the company except for that included portion paid by the worker's Social Security stipend. Pensions had been the top objective of the UAW in 1949.
In New York, the stock market hit a peak for the year during the day, with initial gains between a few cents and a dollar, though trimmed before closing based on the announcement that the President did not intend any immediate intervention in the coal and steel strikes.
In Stockholm, two European scientists, Dr. Walter Rudolph Hess, 68, of Zurich, and Dr. Antonio Cateano Deabreu Freire Egas Monitz, 75, of Lisbon, were awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine for separate work with human and animal brains.
In Nuremberg, the Mayor said that he would protest to U.S. authorities regarding alleged molestation and beatings of German civilians by U.S. occupation troops. Some women complained that they were afraid to go out after dark.
In Chicago, a robber killed a young female factory worker. A black man arrested several hours later, after the woman's purse was found near his home, confessed to the fatal stabbing and related details of the victim's killing. He had been implicated earlier in the kidnaping and rape of a black woman.
In Clearwater, Fla., a young pilot from a prominent family terrorized residents for two hours late the previous night, making wild dives in a stolen Piper Cub airplane, before landing and then shooting himself to death. On one pass, he had missed a bridge tender's shelter by inches. Patrons of a night club and cafe along the beach said that he had buzzed so low that they could see the grim expression on his face. He had also made dives toward residential dwellings.
In Miami, convicted murderer Reed Leroy Hatton, 20, said that he would rather die in the electric chair than have his sentence commuted to life by Governor Fuller Warren.
Be that way.
In Wilmington, Del., a manhunt was underway for eight convicts who had escaped the New Castle County prison with guns and ammunition taken from the jail arsenal, escaping through the front gate using a guard as a shield. Five of the escapees had boarded a Pennsylvania Railroad freight train bound for Reading, Pa.
They just wanted to reach Oriental Avenue before being sent back to jail when they had to take a chance.
Two others forced a guard to drive them two blocks before shoving him out of the car. During the escape, one guard was injured slightly when struck in the back of the head with a window sash weight.
The North Carolina Veterans Administration announced that veterans might have some or all of their National Service Life Insurance dividend deducted to pay outstanding debts to the State, resulting from overpayments of subsistence allowances.
In Charlotte, the police were looking for an alleged rapist, a black man who had allegedly attacked a white woman the previous afternoon as she was returning home on foot through a wooded area after work. He was described as carrying a single-barrel shotgun, which he had used to threaten her and accomplish the rape. A black man matching her description was picked up near the North 29 Drive-In but released when the victim said that he was not the man.
Also in Charlotte, taxicabs would be equipped with meters well before the November 30 deadline set by the City Council. It provides the new rate structure in case you need to catch a cab for parts unknown.
In White Plains, N.Y., a Westchester County Jury Commissioner received a letter supposedly written by a man who had been dead since 1938, advising of the fact but adding that he would be glad to serve on the jury provided the Commissioner would contact St. Peter. In a postscript, the letter explained that it was the third notice for jury service since his death.
Must be some kind of ghost
On the editorial page, "The Rent Control Issue" tells of 35,000 rental units in the city being still subject to rent control. The City Council had determined to delay consideration of the petition by the Charlotte Property Management Association to remove control until the Atlanta office could complete its survey of Charlotte's conditions. As the decision would impact 70,000 or more people in the city, it finds the decision wise.
"State Advertising Contract" tells of the Board of Conservation & Development awarding the State advertising contract to a High Point firm, albeit not explaining why it was superior to the Charlotte firm which had held it for the previous two years. The Board had decided against the company to which Governor Kerr Scott wanted the contract awarded.
Now that the question had been settled, concludes the piece, the State could proceed again to sell itself to the world.
"Subsidized Bigotry" tells of George W. Armstrong being willing to donate 50 million dollars to the Jefferson Military College in Washington, Miss., for the purpose of spreading bigotry. A condition of the gift would be that blacks, Asians, and non-Christians would be excluded from the student body and faculty of the institution. As another condition, the school would have to teach the "true principles of Jeffersonian democracy and the Constitution, Christianity and the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon and Latin-American races."
It concludes that while the South needed more money for education, it did not need that kind of money.
"Ah, For the Bucolic Life" finds that someone, appearing to be Governor Scott, had been pulling their leg, as, contrary to the Governor's assertions, the Institute of Public Opinion had found that two-thirds of all urban dwellers who were polled said they believed that the farmer was happier than the city dweller, while only 21 percent said that the urban dweller was happier, with 73 percent of the farmers reaching the same conclusion. It also found that 73 percent of city people believed the farmer was better off than in the past, a conclusion with which 83 percent of farmers agreed. More than half of urban dwellers wished to live on the farm.
It concludes that the Governor would need to do a lot more convincing of the people to prove his case of the downtrodden farmer.
A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "Mr. Green Goes to Washington", tells of North Carolina playwright Paul Green writing a "symphonic drama" for the sesquicentennial of the nation's capital. The author of the outdoor pageants, "The Lost Colony", performed each summer in Manteo, N.C., and "The Common Glory", performed each summer in Jamestown, Va., was now busy on what was tentatively to be called "The Merciless Days", a title suggested by the Washington Post. It would follow the Revolution from the time of Valley Forge.
The piece asserts that he would likely, judging by his former work, make those times come to life for the viewers of the pageant.
Drew Pearson tells of Congressman Franklin Roosevelt, Jr., having an eight-year old son named Christopher who might turn out to be a "chip off the old block", as he had told his father, when the latter asked him whether he would like to visit Washington, that he would, provided he could meet the President and sleep in the beds in the White House.
The House Ways & Means Committee was preparing to investigate a loophole in the tax laws which permitted insurance companies not to pay income taxes, a corrective action being heavily resisted by the powerful insurance lobby.
Prime Minister Nehru's statement that India would take no sides in the cold war had disappointed many in the U.S., though it came as no surprise to the State Department which had invited him to the U.S. for the purpose of trying to soften India's suspicions of the West, formed from years of distrust of the British. The people of India regarded Russia as having a higher standard of living than India and were less fearful of Soviet Communism than of Britain. While The State Department did not expect to change his view overnight, there was hope that when he got home, he would gradually align India with the U.S.
Mr. Pearson notes that Pandit Nehru and Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson had become close friends during the visit and the two were spending the weekend at White Sulphur Springs, W. Va.
The President was planning to take his Fair Deal program to the nation on a fall tour, though the details had yet to be finalized.
The President was being warned that idle steelworkers in Gary, Ind., would be forced into breadlines if the coal and steel strikes soon were not resolved.
Mon Wallgren had upset the President by refusing to accept a recess appointment to the National Security Resources Board, his nomination to which having been withdrawn after the Senate objected to his lack of experience for the position earlier in the year. Mr. Wallgren, instead, opted to be appointed to the Federal Power Commission, for which he had already been confirmed.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop look at the effort of ERP administrator Paul Hoffman to align the European nations in a common economic union, starting with France, Italy and Belgium, and then branching out to West Germany, the first obstacle to the European union having been eliminated with the devaluation of the pound, forcing the European nations to devalue their currencies to a more realistic level as well.
The first phase of the Marshall Plan, the reconstruction of Europe, had been completed now that the nations were producing industrial and agricultural output equal to that of prewar levels. The second phase was to make the nations self-sufficient.
To hold the European nations accountable on what they did with the American aid, Mr. Hoffman and Averell Harriman had withheld distribution of the aid for the second half of the fiscal year. It was within their discretion to distribute the remaining 1.8 billion among the nations based on performance. That, plus the danger of Congress limiting aid, would be used to place pressure on the nations to form an economic union, though a single economy would not be pushed until later. Currencies would be made fairly freely convertible. Import quotas would be reduced and a unified trading area established among the European nations.
They suggest that no more complex or constructive task had ever been undertaken by an American negotiator as that now being done by Mr. Hoffman.
Robert C. Ruark finds the heated squabble before the House Armed Services Committee regarding whether, to achieve military security, the Air Force ought stress long-range strategic bombers or whether the Navy's carrier force ought be the stress, having proved nothing and merely devolved to charges and counter-charges, boasts, claims and denials. He finds it remindful of two boys arguing over who owned the best scooter.
Chairman Carl Vinson and Secretary of Defense Johnson had made a kind of peace between the sides for the nonce and matters appeared to be back where they had started before the hearings. But there needed to be, he opines, a way to determine who was right and who wrong in this important battle of opinions. The only result had been "fishwivery", a commentary on the "selfish deafness" of both sides.
He wants to know whether the B-36 was any good or whether it was necessary to have a carrier-based Navy, whether too much reliance was being placed on bombing capability—which scooter, in fact, was the faster.
A letter from Harry Golden, editor of the Carolina Israelite, begs to differ with the letter from J. R. Cherry, Jr., who had praised Senator Clyde Hoey for voting to resubmit to the Judiciary Committee for further study the revision to the Displaced Persons Act, designed to remove provisions discriminatory to Catholics and Jews, rather than letting it come to a vote on the floor after the House had passed it. Mr. Cherry had suggested that the revised bill would allow all manner of "riffraff" from Europe into the country.
Mr. Golden tells of such notable persons as Enrico Caruso, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, who discovered the cure for pellagra, Dr. Wakeman, who discovered streptomycin as a cure for tuberculosis, Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, and Nils Bohr, having come to the nation as immigrants.
He asks rhetorically for Mr. Cherry to explain who he regarded as an "American" after 300 years of hybridization. He wonders in what year one applied the stopwatch.
He recommends to Mr. Cherry a lesser known work of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Leap of Roushan Beg", about a horse owned by the famous bandit Kurroglou, which had leaped across a 30-foot chasm to enable escape for Kurroglou from a band of pursuing horsemen, the leader of whom, Reyhan the Arab, when witnessing the feat, proclaimed Kurroglou the greatest horseman of Koordistan. Mr. Golden offers in interpretation that the praise for the bandit was because Kurroglou, once safe on the other side, did not stop to thumb his nose at his pursuers who could not make the crossing but rather showed his true nobility by traveling onward.
A letter writer responds to the letter which had explained that the lock of hair found in a walnut tree was not a voodoo spell but rather a folk cure for the "tizi", tells of her grandmother having maintained a sourwood stick in her attic which the writer, as a young girl, had discovered and with which began playing, using it to jab at tadpoles and lizards by the river, until her grandmother explained that it was the "tisic stick" of the girl's aunt and as long as it remained dry, her aunt would not contract tisic. She says that her aunt, as far as she knew, never had, and so recommends her grandmother's cure as being as effective as cutting off human hair and placing it in a walnut tree.
A letter writer urges early shopping for Christmas to avoid the crowds.
A pome appears from the Atlanta Journal, "In Which Is Reflected the Thought of a Fellow Not Too Much Concerned About Money:
"I'm mercenary,
But not very."
But best be chary,
Lest ye be funerary.
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