The Charlotte News

Tuesday, January 17, 1950

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senate Democrats united behind the President's policy of hands-off Formosa. Majority Leader Scott Lucas said that a party caucus showed all Senate Democrats behind the policy not to send military aid to the Chinese Nationalists on Formosa, out of concern that any intervention would result in war. Republicans had been critical of the policy.

A test in the Senate of the support for repeal of the ten-cent per pound discriminatory tax on margarine won 48 to 37, defeating a substitute measure offered by the dairy state Senators. The vote served as harbinger of repeal of the tax, which had already passed the House. The substitute would have repealed the tax but then banned shipment of yellow-colored margarine across state lines. Senator William Langer of North Dakota, one of the dairy state sponsors of the substitute measure, promised to bring up civil rights measures as amendments to the repeal bill to create delay. Most of the backers of the bill to repeal the tax opposed the civil rights measures.

Belgium provided full diplomatic recognition to Israel the previous night.

In Tokyo, police disclosed that 43 Government officials had been arrested for suspicion of bribery on the basis of giving preferred status to certain entities in the sale of assets of Government agencies which had gone out of business after the war. The employees of the commission responsible for the task had been wined and dined by brokers and industrialists seeking favorable treatment in the purchase of the goods.

The Social Security Administrator asked the Congress to expand Social Security to embrace practically all employed persons and that benefits be increased more than that afforded by a bill which had passed the House in the previous session.

The Census Bureau reported that in 1948, 3.5 million Americans over age 65 had no income, accounting for nearly one-third of those in that age group, not counting inmates of institutions. The remaining two-thirds had a median cash income of $808 per year.

The Army Corps of Engineers and the Red Cross ordered 12,000 persons out of a flood area in the vicinity of New Madrid, Mo., as emergency plans were implemented to combat the worst flood threat on the Mississippi River in thirteen years. Hundreds were homeless in Indiana, Illinois, and Arkansas. Rain and snow plagued Northern California and rain extended to the San Joaquin Valley of the central part of the state.

The coal strike of 79,000 miners in the captive steel mines had cut into steel production and threatened a power shortage in Pittsburgh. The President again refused to invoke Taft-Hartley's injunctive provisions for a national emergency triggered by a strike.

In Chicago, a man who had been drinking commandeered an airport gasoline truck and crashed into the wingtip of an American Air Lines plane, then, as police and fire officials pursued, took off down one runway, then another, before coming to a halt.

Near Norfolk, Va., the U.S.S. Missouri, on the decks of which the formal surrender of Japan had been signed on September 2, 1945, ran aground 1.5 miles east of Old Point Comfort. A dozen tugboats were dispatched to free the ship. No explanation was given for the mishap. The ship had been outbound for Guantanamo, Cuba.

In Charlotte, in the preliminary hearing of a 19-year old boy accused of murdering a cab driver after the defendant and his date had met the cab driver and his wife at a party, the wife of the deceased testified that no argument had preceded the sudden shooting. The defendant had claimed that he got sudden, terrible headaches and had blacked out at the time of the shooting. The defendant had also allegedly shot the wife and was held to answer on that charge.

Also in Charlotte, the City, led by Mayor Victor Shaw, extended a formal invitation to the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in the city to locate a seminary in Charlotte.

On the editorial page, "Playgrounds and Politics" favors allowing the volunteer Park & Recreation Commission to work out its own problems and that the City Council allot the money requested, already approved by the voters, to complete the Commission's mandate for building more recreation facilities in the community. The City Council, however, because of the recent controversy over the location of a recreation facility in Latta Park, had indicated that it might intervene. The piece thinks that would be a mistake, which would introduce politics into the recreation policy of the community.

"'Revolt' of the Miners" finds that John L. Lewis appeared ostensibly to be on the spot with the miners, as they were refusing his suggestion to return to work in the captive mines of the steel companies for their protest against the three-day work week called by Mr. Lewis. The piece wonders whether it might be a ploy devised by Mr. Lewis to force the hand of the President to invoke Taft-Hartley and obtain a court order to end the strike and order resumption of the five-day work week, to relieve Mr. Lewis from his predicament.

"General 'Hap' Arnold" laments the death on the previous Sunday of the former commander of the Army Air Forces during the war, who had retired four years earlier. Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson had said that General Arnold was more responsible than anyone else in building a modern Air Force. He had, finds the piece, helped to save the nation with that Air Force during the war and laid the groundwork for keeping the nation safe in peacetime, had remained active to the end through articles regarding the recent conflict between the Air Force and the Navy over the proper role for each branch in the nation's defense, urging the need for the branches to work together as a unit to maintain an adequate defense at the cheapest possible price.

Finding no extant entity capable of planning a unified defense without self-interest playing an undue role, he had recommended in October, 1949 creation of a nonpartisan, non-political War Advisory or Planning Board, comprised of military, industrial and political leaders, to be appointed by the President to meet once per year, or as the President deemed necessary, and make recommendations for preventing war, planning for effective defense in the event war came, and to create plans for winning the peace after any such war.

"A Neighborly Welcome" finds it likely that former Secretary of State James Byrnes would win the 1950 South Carolina gubernatorial race, into which he had recently entered. As an effective opponent of the Fair Deal and a believer in states' rights, he would make an interesting study, it posits, in how he would govern the state.

A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "A Brighter School Picture", tells of a New York Times survey of the the improvements in the nation's schools during the previous year having found that North Carolina had a greater increase in the number of teachers than any state save California, adding 4,500, that there were fewer substandard or emergency teachers than any state of comparable size except Iowa, cutting the number from 699 to 300, that there was a greater relative increase in salary than any state except North Dakota and Delaware, and that the state received the thirteenth largest school appropriation.

There was still room for improvement, it suggests, as teacher salaries remained below the national average by about $300 per year and represented only the third highest in the South, at an average of $2,550 per year. But there was ongoing improvement during the previous year.

Kays Gary, later, starting in 1956, a columnist for thirty years for The Charlotte Observer, reports from Shelby on O. Max Gardner, Jr., son of the late Governor and Ambassador to Great Britain who had died in early 1947 as he was setting sail from New York to assume his post at the Court of St. James. The young Mr. Gardner, 27, had announced his candidacy for the State Senate the previous week. He was just graduating from the UNC Law School and appeared to have a bright political future in the state. But he had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth and was a member of a family which had dominated North Carolina politics to a degree for forty years, both strikes against him in the public mind. Yet, he was not seeking to advance through his family connections, which included his grandfather, former Judge James Webb.

The piece provides his many academic achievements. Mr. Gardner had said that he hoped to practice law in Shelby and be of service to the textile industry from the standpoint of both management and labor.

Drew Pearson tells of a secret plot, as reported by American intelligence officers, by a cabal of Russian and Hungarian generals to attack Yugoslavia being behind the State Department's sudden offer of aid to that country. A recent Russian military conference determined to establish bases in the Tatra Mountains of Hungary for firing rockets into Yugoslavia. Tito meanwhile had told the Americans that he regarded the rumors as part of Russia's ongoing campaign of fear-mongering. He predicted widespread guerrilla warfare against Yugoslavia in 1950, utilizing the Communist guerrillas who fought against Greece, whom Russia would claim were rebellious Yugoslavs. Tito, meanwhile, a master of guerrilla warfare, had established his own defense line in the mountains.

When Secretary of State Acheson had met recently for six hours in executive session with the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the questioning concerned Franco's Spain almost as much as Formosa. The Secretary continued to assert the policy that as long as the "undependable" Franco remained in power, the U.S. would not fully recognize Spain. He said, however, that if the U.N. ever rescinded its 1946 resolution against Franco, then the U.S. would likely re-establish its embassy in Madrid. He said recognition would probably come quickly if there were a change of government. The Marshall Plan, he added, had found it nearly impossible to do business with Franco because of his various financial restrictions.

Mr. Acheson denied under questioning that the U.S. "desertion" of Formosa and Chiang had caused widespread desertion of Chinese troops to the Communists. He said Chiang lost the confidence of the people because he was strictly a military leader who did not grasp the need to raise the living standard and implement social reforms. That problem, added to the corruption of the Nationalist Government, left the door wide open, Mr. Acheson said, to the Communists. He added that the Formosan people had also been victimized by the Nationalist regime, with numerous natives having been executed for rebellion against mistreatment, and others, including doctors and lawyers, for the crime of owning property.

Mr. Pearson again imparts specific examples of how the American Legion had collected toys for the children of Europe at Christmas, as a gesture of good will and friendship.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss Titoism in Communist China and Japan, calling for an eventual policy of recognition of Communist China without expressing approval of the regime. Such, they posit, was the real reason behind Secretary of State Acheson's speech on Far East policy, to lay the groundwork for such eventual recognition. It served no purpose, they venture, to ignore realities and pretend that the Communists were not in control of the mainland.

Mao Tse-Tung had gone to Moscow recently and reportedly was offered by the Soviets a traditional role of a satellite for the new government, on the order of Poland or Rumania, to which he had responded that he would demand as quid pro quo the return of the industrial booty stolen by the Russians from Manchuria after the end of the war, re-establishment of Chinese control of the principal Manchurian cities, and permission to direct affairs in China as local necessities required. While the Soviets were in military control of Manchuria, the Chinese Communists still had military control of the rest of China. Furthermore, the party apparatus had not been penetrated seriously by the MVD, the Russian secret police. Thus, Mao was able to speak as an equal to the Kremlin.

In Japan, a friend of Mao, Sanzo Nosaka, possessed the real power in the Japanese Communist Party. Instead of following his mandate from Moscow, however, he had established an apparatus with himself as the dominant figure, similar to Tito in Yugoslavia, and had thus been denounced by the Cominform. And there was no indication of a change of course by the Japanese Communists in response to the denunciation.

While in China the chances of the emergence of real Titoism was unlikely, it was important to retain the power of maneuver, and thus recognition was the better course.

Henry C. McFadyen, superintendent of the Albemarle, N.C., schools—who has returned to being a "Mc" after being a "Mac" for three weeks—in the twentieth in his series of articles on childhood education, looks at the importance of a well-maintained physical plant for children to have respect for their school. He tells of reminiscing of his own elementary school, a three-story brick affair with a gravel playground and no shrubbery, possessed of restrooms in the dark, dank basement, never properly maintained, thus stimulating the children to write dirty rhymes on the walls.

Perhaps one read thus:

There once was a girl named Shanty Towne,
Who got herself into a terrible fix.
But when the boys stopped coming 'round,
Shanty joined a magic show.

He posits that children who went to school in such surroundings would be content to live in shabby towns the rest of their lives, whereas a student who attended a school with beauty in the classroom would not be satisfied with anything else in the home or town in which he lived.

If any such graffiti wound up on the walls of the better schools, it would not remain long. And if children never saw such writing on the walls, they would never think of doing it themselves. He suggests that the school should therefore impress upon the pupils that it was their school and should not be abused. Furthermore, the janitorial staff should be instructed to remove such marks on the walls as soon as discovered.

He suggests a visit to the local school and, while not expecting it to be spotless for the presence of children, one could make an assessment of whether it was generally clean or given to being routinely dirty. The fault might be that of the principal or the janitors or the parents of the children who attended the school. If the parents were unconcerned, then no one else likely would be the less so.

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