The Charlotte News

Thursday, March 16, 1950

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senator Joseph McCarthy complained that the Civil Service loyalty review board had delayed for more than a year action on the case of John Service, whom he had accused of Communist sympathies. Mr. Service was en route to India to be consular general at Calcutta before having been ordered back by the State Department the previous day following the accusations on Tuesday by Senator McCarthy. The Senator demanded an explanation for the delay in action from the loyalty review board, having claimed also that the board had determined to disapprove the security clearance of Mr. Service and recommend that the State Department loyalty board consider the matter anew. The Senator also said that Lincoln White, press officer for the State Department, had been quoted as denying the claim that the loyalty review board disapproved of the security clearance but that the head of the board had been quoted that the action had occurred March 3. The State Department stated that the board's decision had not reached the Department until five hours after the Senator's Tuesday testimony regarding the Service matter.

In an address at the University of California in Berkeley, Secretary of State Acheson challenged Russia to demonstrate its desire for peace by accepting his new seven-point program, which included an end to Russia's aggressive diplomacy toward the West and the Soviet satellites, new efforts toward establishing peace treaties for Germany, Austria and Japan, and formulating controls on nuclear energy. Mr. Acheson, however, predicted Russian rejection of his proposals. The seven particulars are listed.

In Geneva, exiled King Leopold III, who had won 57.7 percent support in an advisory national plebiscite in Belgium the prior Sunday, stated that he would respect the final determination of Parliament as to whether he should be returned to the throne. By a 1945 law, the final decision was vested with Parliament. The issue of the return of the King, who many believed had sold out Belgium to the Nazis in June, 1940, but who also had been imprisoned by the Nazis and finally exiled to Germany in 1944, had divided the country.

The attorneys general of eleven Southern states, including Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, filed a joint amicus curia brief in the case of Sweatt v. Painter, before the Supreme Court to determine whether Herman Sweatt, a black man, had to be admitted to the University of Texas Law School for the State having failed to meet the Plessy v. Ferguson standard of provision of separate-but-equal facilities for the study of law. The Southern states contended that elimination of segregation would destroy the public schools. The brief, in probably self-fulfilling prophecy, said: "If these decisions [upholding Plessy] are overruled, the power to prevent conflict and violence in schools, pools and other public facilities [possibly including fools sitting on bar stools in proximity to the cool marble of the bar, itself] will be reduced to (1) termination of the facilities or (2) continuation with police protection for the few [of the medium cool] who elect to use the facilities."

Ultimately, the Court would not find it necessary to disturb the 1896 holding of Plessy as it would rule unanimously that Texas had not met the separate-but-equal standard in establishing a black law school, requiring that Mr. Sweatt be admitted to the University law school for which he had qualified but for his race. The case, however, helped to lay the groundwork for Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, overturning Plessy as not having served to create separate but equal facilities in the public schools, holding that desegregation of public schools would have to take place "with all deliberate speed".

In Norfolk, general courts martial were ordered for the captain, the operations officer and the navigator of the U.S.S. Missouri for it having run aground in Chesapeake Bay on the prior January 17. The courts martial would convene March 27. A Navy board of inquiry had heard from fifty witnesses during February and issued a report on which the decision to convene the courts martial was founded. The combat operations officer was only reprimanded and the assistant navigator was cleared of any neglect of duty in the matter. The engineering watch was found to have responded to the situation well without any warning of the approaching danger.

Secretary of Agriculture Charles Brannan testified before a Senate Agriculture subcommittee that he had made a "very serious tactical error" by proposing a maximum limit of $20,000 to $25,000 per farm on Government benefit payments to farmers as part of the Brannan farm plan, as his enemies or opponents had used it to embarrass him. The limit had been designed to encourage small family farm operations. He had proposed a trial run of the plan the next year on potatoes only, overproduced potatoes having been the source of controversy for the Government having to destroy more than half the potatoes which had been bought at support prices, costing the taxpayers several million dollars. The Senate and House had rejected the plan the previous year but new bills were before the Senate, one including the provisional potato plan and one not, the latter instead providing for rigid controls on production while maintaining the existing support price formula.

In Key West, the vacationing President signed the bill to eliminate the discriminatory Federal tax on oleo margarine in deference to butter.

It's about time.

The President, who had suffered from seasickness during his voyage from Washington aboard the yacht Williamsburg, said that after awhile the ocean had become as "smooth as a mill pond". He said that he had lost four pounds during the voyage.

The House Appropriations Committee had tentatively determined to cut 1.2 billion dollars from the President's budget for the 1950-51 fiscal year.

In Dublin, California, a head-on collision, as pictured on the page, involving three cars, killed four persons and injured two others.

In Presidio, Texas, a 24-year old Mexican national, captured after a pursuit by the border patrol and other law enforcement personnel through the mountains, was arrested for the killing of the Sheriff of Presidio. The man admitted the killing, saying that the Sheriff had stopped him to see his immigration papers and when he said he did not have them, the Sheriff jumped on him and the two began fighting, whereupon the man grabbed the Sheriff's own gun and fired four times.

In Atlanta, a man received his income tax refund check of $26.50, only to have his two-year old son consume half of it. The header quips: "Deduction Eats Up His Income Tax Refund". The IRB promised to replace the check.

In Colwyn Bay, Wales, a man arrested for drunk driving had sought to demonstrate to police at the station that he had not been drinking by placing a jar of water on the back of his neck while lying prone on the floor and then rising after picking up a coin in his teeth, all without spilling a drop. The court dismissed the charge.

A part of chapter thirty-seven of The Greatest Story Ever Told by Fulton Oursler appears on the page as part of the abridged serialization of the book.

On the editorial page, "Alive and Kicking" finds the election of Jim Baley as chairman of the state GOP to be a harbinger of a new era for the party in the state. It also finds the decision not to field a candidate against Senator Clyde Hoey interesting, the party apparently considering him unbeatable and having, in any event, a voting record generally acceptable to Republicans.

The state GOP platform had failed to take a stand on the proposed Lodge Constitutional amendment to make electoral votes proportional to the popular vote, surprising for the fact that the amendment would help the Republicans of the South generally by counting their votes for the first time since Reconstruction in the quadrennial national elections.

"The Russian 'Election'" tells of Josef Stalin again sweeping to victory, according to Moscow Radio, with virtually unanimous approval of all the qualified voters, exceeding, suggests the piece, even Ivory soap's claim of being 99.44 percent pure.

It finds the Herblock cartoon of this date to sum it up aptly.

The door to the caricatured studio may have been red in the real world.

"Guardian of Our Morals" comments on Senator Ed Johnson of Colorado stating his belated criticism of the film studio for releasing "Stromboli", directed by Roberto Rossellini and starring Ingrid Bergman, mother of their out-of-wedlock child. Senator Johnson described her as a "common mistress" whose star had faded, and him as a "common love thief". He then went on to attack the entire movie industry for insuring stardom to actors and actresses for getting arrested or involved in some immoral affair.

The Senator intended in April to call representatives of the industry before the Commerce Committee which he chaired. He proposed to license movie actors through the Commerce Department, a license susceptible of denial or revocation should a holder or applicant be found to have been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude. A $10,000 permit would need be acquired under the proposed legislation to transport any film in interstate commerce.

The Motion Picture Producers Association had responded that their industry had no more than its share of persons violating moral codes.

But, suggests the piece, they had overlooked the fact that applying the proposed law only to actors was unduly limited, that, if they were to be singled out, then writers, musicians, radio announcers, Senators, or anyone else, ought also be licensed. It concludes that no one should be held accountable to the Commerce Department for their morals, that it was a matter for God and the police department.

"Mr. Wilson's Expense Account" tells of Jeff Wilson, head of the Traffic Safety Division of the N.C. Bureau of Motor Vehicles, being in the midst of controversy for charging to the State private activities on behalf of the Lion's Club and Young Democrats Club, totaling $31 plus the expenses of his chauffeur, who turned in vouchers for $43. The matter was now being reviewed by his boss, head of the Bureau.

The piece recommends to Governor Kerr Scott that he find out how many other sub-officials had chauffeurs driving them around to conduct private business at State expense.

Bill Sharpe provides his weekly "Turpentine Drippings", snippets from newspapers across the state. The Southern Pines Pilot told of the sounds of winter and summer, remarking of one which was gone forever down the line, the "long, wailing hoo-hooing of an old engine on the Aberdeen and Rockfish", a "Tom Wolfe engine; gone to come no more."

The Moore County News related of a study by meteorologists, determining that 57 percent of the 333 proverbs in the Bible were found to be based on scientific principles and that only 15 percent were false, with the jury disagreeing on 11 percent and no scientific principle found in 17 percent.

The Twin City Sentinel in Winston-Salem told of a Los Angeles pianist who refused to play an "untunable" piano in Thomasville, N.C., prompting the music association president there to have her own piano brought over, necessitating, however, a wait of 30 minutes by the audience while it was tuned.

The Southern Pines Pilot told of a man who claimed to have bought fifty sofas, in reference to camellias. When his listeners inquired, he spelled it out as "Sophia".

And so, so, so on, and so forth on.

Drew Pearson tells of Congress having appropriated 29 billion dollars of the previous year's budget of 42 billion dollars without a record vote, much of the time, without even a Constitutionally mandated quorum present to conduct business. In response, Congressman Dwight Rogers of Florida was proposing a resolution to require a roll call vote on all appropriations measures.

The Soviet press had launched into an attack on Mr. Pearson, calling him a "chained dog of the monopolists of Wall Street", among other things. He quotes extensively from the piece, which appeared in the popular Russian magazine, Ogonek. It suggested that he promoted, with the help of his acquaintances among generals, Government officials, and gangsters, "dark intrigues" involving slanders against the Soviet Union.

Members of the Japanese Diet exchanged political ideas in Washington with members of the Senate, as the Japanese visitors had come to see democracy at work. Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois recounted his days of battle in the Pacific against the Japanese and expressed the hope that they would now fight just as hard and bravely for democracy. One Japanese member of the Diet said that he represented Hiroshima, despite having been educated in the U.S., a fact which his constituents knew but continued to elect him.

Marquis Childs finds Senator Joseph McCarthy to be engaged in something akin to the mock trials of the French Revolution, as described by Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities, or analogous to the political purges of the early Stalinist era in Russia. Though the penalty was not death, the smear tactics amounted to character assassination in public.

He faults the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee chairman, Senator Millard Tydings, for not holding the investigative hearings in which names were used in executive session, as were the claims of Senator Bourke Hickenlooper anent the alleged gross incompetence of the Atomic Energy Commission the previous year before the joint Atomic Energy Committee chaired by Senator Brien McMahon. By the end of the latter hearings, the substance of the charges had plainly devolved to nothing and the public hearings were sparsely attended.

Most of Senator McCarthy's claims were based entirely on hearsay, most of them emanating from the "notoriously irresponsible" California Un-American Activities Committee or from newspapers and magazines.

He thus finds the "ten-cent store Robespierre from Wisconsin" to be engaging in a smear campaign for his own political aggrandizement, wishing the spotlight to remain on him as long as possible and so stringing out the presentation of his claims.

He concludes that it would be a good time for the Senate to define in a new rule what Senate responsibility meant.

Robert C. Ruark tells of having the gout, uncommon for a newspaperman, especially in his mid-thirties, a condition usually reserved for defeated prime ministers or retired generals. He felt a sense of tremendous prestige therefore in having acquired it. Even the President and Secretaries of Defense and State were without gout.

Yet, he informs, George Washington had the gout, as had some of the Caesars. He suddenly feels emboldened to slay a cherry tree or "flip a few slaves to the lions". He finds it to be emblematic of the egalitarian nature of the country that he, a commoner, could become a victim of the gout.

Neither Sherman Billingsley nor Toots Shor nor Darryl Zannuck nor Arthur Godfrey nor oil baron Glenn McCarthy nor Aly Khan nor Roberto Rossellini had the gout.

He finds it, however, to be a dear price to pay for fame as it suddenly hurt when a fly landed on his swollen big toe.

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