The Charlotte News
Saturday, April 1, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Owen Lattimore arrived in the U.S. from his U.N. mission in Afghanistan, prepared to respond to the charges leveled at him by Senator Joseph McCarthy for supposedly being in sympathy with Communists, saying that the Senator was a "base and miserable creature" for whom he felt "unutterable contempt". He reiterated that he was not a Communist or fellow traveler, and had never been. He was tentatively scheduled to appear Tuesday before the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee investigating the charges of Senator McCarthy.
Senator Theodore Green of Rhode Island said that he believed Senator McCarthy ought produce the documents on which he relied to make his charges, and that if he did not, the subcommittee should subpoena them. Another member of the subcommittee, Senator Bourke Hickenlooper, said, however, that he believed that while the Senator ought turn over the documents, the subcommittee had no right to subpoena documents from another Senator.
Mr. Lattimore was met at Idlewild Airport in New York by a son and his lawyer, future Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas—in 1968, to be nominated by President Johnson to become chief, but having his nomination filibustered to death, led by Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, enabling, in the end, President Nixon in 1969 to name the successor to retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren, who, fearing a Nixon victory, had announced his retirement at the end of the 1968 term in the course of a presidential election year. Republicans, then, as now, with recalcitrant states' rights Southern Democrats then in tow, stole the seat—and nothing has been the same on the Supreme Court since that time.
Is this the nation we want, where a minority party rules us? As long as that condition prevails, it is not a democracy in any true sense, now is it? Is it any wonder, with such games being played with the Supreme Court through time, that the people are cynical about their government?
We vote to keep the Supreme Court in its present status, with eight sitting Justices, just as the Republicans desired last year, until a Democrat next occupies the White House. It has nothing to do with individual nominees' credentials or fitness for the job, just as the Republicans said last year. Last year, Chief Justice John Roberts said that the Court could get along just fine with eight. So, let's leave it at eight.
As we have said before, the people spoke last year, and they voted, by a margin of nearly three million votes, 2.1 percent of the voters casting ballots, in favor of Hillary Clinton. Nothing could be clearer, save to the unutterably stupid and intellectually dishonest. Moreover, never before in our history as a nation has any Senate refused to hold hearings on a Supreme Court nominee, until 2016, even when a vacancy occurred early in our history after the election in which the incumbent making the appointment, John Adams, had lost in the election of 1800, that nominee having been confirmed by the Senate before President-elect Thomas Jefferson took office. But this Republican Senate thinks itself, somehow, above history and above the Constitution. If you really believe that these Republican crackers are on your side, you are fit for a mental institution.
How much wealth is represented in the Trump Cabinet? Find out if you are one of the blind being led. And if you think that wealth alone and contributions to the candidate during the election cycle, without any qualification for the office to which appointment is made, are attributes which ought recommend someone for high office, you need to move to Russia.
Governor Chester Bowles of Connecticut, vice-chairman of the Americans for Democratic Action, in an address to the ADA convention, said, not mentioning Senator McCarthy by name, that even true conservatives were revolted by the McCarthy tactics, and added that reactionaries at home and abroad presented the greatest danger to the fight against Communism. ADA chairman Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota urged liberals to "smash the reactionary coalition" in Congress and attacked Republicans for a "slanderous and sustained campaign" against Secretary of State Acheson, weakening the country's foreign policy. He warned that old-guard Republicans wanted to share a presidential ticket in 1952 with Southern Democrats.
Columnist Bruce Barton tells of the ring of Boss Tweed having stolen between 30 and 75 million dollars from New York City's coffers in a period of 30 months between 1868 and 1871, with Mr. Tweed, himself, taking twelve million, bringing the City close to the edge of bankruptcy. But after his conviction and sentence to prison, where he eventually died, the people had lined the sidewalks to wave their hats at him and cheered as he passed. He suggests that the reason the people had cheered such a convicted felon and thief was that they did not understand that he had robbed them. They thought he had robbed only the rich.
He finds a different sort of Boss Tweed alive in the land in 1950, a legal robber who made Boss Tweed's haul appear as peanuts, the hidden taxation of the poor. The cost of taxes in 1948 at every level of government, including sales and excise taxes, as well as the indirect taxes built into the cost of goods, had equaled the amount of money spent on food in the country.
He thinks that the people should be better informed of their taxation and how Government dollars were spent, that it should be included in the tax booklets. Everyone paid taxes of one sort or another but not enough people grumbled.
In Prague, two of ten Czech high-ranking Catholic clergymen, charged with treason, pleaded guilty to the charge in the country's first mass trial of churchmen. Six of the accused testified by the end of the opening day of trial, three pleading not guilty and one admitting partial guilt by associating with anti-state activities.
In China, two waves of Communist troops invaded Hainan Island this date, but the Nationalists claimed that they were bloodily repulsed, with 3,000 killed in a four-hour battle on the beach.
Good, they don't need our help then.
In San Francisco, the jury deliberating the fate of ILWU president Harry Bridges, in his Federal perjury trial for claiming not to have been a Communist in 1945 when he obtained his citizenship, continued their deliberations into the second day. The two defense attorneys, Vincent Hallinan and James MacInnis, had been held in contempt during the proceedings and the judge sentenced Mr. Hallinan to six months in jail, but had not yet passed sentence on Mr. MacInnis. Mr. Hallinan would run for the presidency in 1952 on the Progressive Party ticket.
In Chattanooga, Tenn., two police officers were raiding a moonshine whiskey operation, finding a woman in the kitchen of the house pouring the evidence down the drain. The officers soaked a towel in the sink and then unscrewed the sink trap, enabling them to obtain enough evidence for prosecution.
A piece by Noel Yancey in Raleigh provides the various stances of the three North Carolina Senatorial candidates vying for Senator Frank Graham's seat, including the interim incumbent, Raleigh attorney Willis Smith, and former Senator Robert Rice Reynolds.
In San Francisco, a couple, Bob and Dianna Bixby, took off for Newark, seeking to break the round-the-world airspeed record.
In Washington, the "Spring is a Wonderful Thing" celebration of cherry blossoms blooming had to be postponed for wind and rain.
Well, of course, as they were pink, producing red fruit.
In Redlands, California, a six-year old girl with a quarter in lunch money, playfully tossed it in the air while catching it in her mouth, and then accidentally swallowed it. Her mother recalled that her brother had swallowed a nickel and so saw it as a sign of inflation.
Don't you educate your children that money is one of the most germ-laden things one handles in a given day for the fact of its typically many prior handlers?
In San Angelo, Tex., the estate of big game hunter Frank Buck, who had died of lung cancer the previous Saturday, was valued at $100,000.
Speaking of which, not mentioned on the front page, this date in 2017, UNC nipped the University of Oregon 77 to 76 and Gonzaga tucked the University of South Carolina 77 to 73, in the semifinals of the N.C.A.A. Tournament. The championship game will be played Monday in Phoenix, and, according to our information, supplied by Tarus Heelius Nippin Tuckus, the Greek goddess of basketball, we can expect a very good game with a very nice result, both teams being number one seeds in their respective regions, the South and the West.
In any event, insofar as UNC is
concerned, it is five down and one to go—it being the first time since 1981-82 that a Tar Heel team has achieved the finals in two successive seasons, winning the latter game by a point against Georgetown by dint of a sleepy cross-court pass by Georgetown right into the open hands of a UNC player
Also, we neglected last week to
remark on the 1950 Academy
The 1950 Census enumeration began this date, with 165 takers abroad Mecklenburg County during the ensuing month.
Tell them nothing, or be prepared to tell them everything.
A census taker who had previously been involved in the New Orleans count in 1940 tells Emery Wister of The News that this one in Charlotte would be much easier, as she had to contend with the Spanish and French quarters, where people locked their gates when they saw her coming.
Well, that was because they were smart. They understood that you brought death and pestilence with your sharpened pencil and worn out soles.
In Delview, N.C., the census count took only three minutes, as there were only seven people in the town, all of whom had gathered in one location for the count.
No excerpt from The Greatest Story Ever Told by Fulton Oursler appears on the front page this date, but we glean from Monday's edition that the portion appearing elsewhere in the newspaper was from somewhere between page 255 of the book and the start of chapter sixty-six, as part of the presentation of the abridged serialization.
On the editorial page, "A Timely Rejoinder" finds that the President was not overstating the case when he said that the greatest asset the Kremlin had was the attempt in the Senate to sabotage the bipartisan foreign policy. The criticism of the statement by Senators Bridges, Wherry, and McCarthy, it indicates, would not deflect attention from the effort by Republicans to undermine the foreign policy of the country with their attacks on the State Department, especially the attacks of Senator McCarthy. He had not produced any evidence to support his claims of 207 or 205 or 81 or 57 Communists in the State Department, or even one.
In a speech to the Senate the previous Thursday, Senator McCarthy had admitted that perhaps he had placed too much emphasis on his claim that Owen Lattimore had been an espionage agent for Moscow while working in or close to the State Department, but added that the major emphasis ought be on whether his aims were those of Americans or of Russians. He had even tempered his claim that Mr. Lattimore was a "bad security risk" by amending it to a "bad policy risk".
The piece thinks that the Republicans were using the "Big Lie" technique of Hitler. Senator Taft had joined the crew the previous day with a speech in Portland, Maine, in which he had said that the only way to be rid of Communists in the State Department was to change the head of the Government. But he had not sought to identify any such Communists.
It finds, therefore, the President's statement to have been well taken.
"How To Save Money" finds the City Manager's order to City department heads to cut non-essential buying for the ensuing three months to make good sense.
"A Dispute Is Settled" tells of the general board of the Baptist State Convention having reaffirmed its earlier decision to accept nearly $700,000 from the Medical Care Commission for building a new wing to the Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem. It finds that there was no conflict with the prescription of separation of church and state in its receipt of the funding from the State. The Baptists, it suggests, were zealous in their insistence on the principle of separation, and had hesitated only because of that zeal, to assure that there was no infringement of the principle.
It finds that a non-profit hospital which did not determine admission of patients or its employment by denomination could not be considered a religious institution, as its function was to heal the sick, not promote religion. It therefore finds the board's decision appropriate.
"Triple Attack on Cancer" tells of the American Cancer Society's drive in Mecklenburg County to be for the triple purpose of research, education, and service, in an effort to discover treatment, to educate potential victims of disease regarding early detection, and training doctors and volunteers how to provide home treatment and beneficial equipment. It urges therefore contribution to the drive.
A piece from the
St. Louis
Globe-Democrat, titled "AB in Piscatorial Science",
recalls, with the onset of spring, "Apology for Idlers"
by Robert Louis Stevenson, observing, among other things, that all of
life is a book, in which it makes little difference whether one
studies a particular chapter
It finds, therefore, a P.E. course on fishing at the University of Missouri to be quite as important as its professor described it, valuable for learning how to live, equally so to learning how to make a living.
Drew Pearson tells of the Dilowa, or living Buddha, in exile in the U.S. from Mongolia after fleeing the Communist Chinese, and his two followers in the U.S., having been in touch with Owen Lattimore, and being the only such foreign "agents" which the FBI had turned up having contact with him. Mr. Lattimore had urged them to seek refuge in the U.S. rather than in Tibet, where the Dalai Lama had offered refuge, and the Dilowa was now cooperating with the State Department in the cold war against Communism in the Far East. When informed of the charges by Senator McCarthy against Mr. Lattimore, the Dilowa said that he would say "fierce prayers" for Mr. Lattimore, to combat the fierce charges. In an interview with Mr. Pearson, the Dilowa had repeated his faith in Mr. Lattimore, being baffled by the attack on such a man for supposedly being a Communist spy when he was actually fighting hard against Communism.
In 1925, Mr. Pearson had gone to the Gobi Desert to visit the Dilowa to see what progress the Soviets had made in their effort to penetrate Mongolia as a steppingstone to seizing the rest of Asia. He suggests that had Senator McCarthy been aware of this trip, he would have had him investigated by the Senate for riding in a Soviet-owned car at the time, even though it was the only way to travel as the Soviets owned all automobiles. He hopes that the Senator might come to realize that not everyone seen talking to a Russian or even working with Russians was necessarily a Soviet spy.
He suggests that it was significant that Mr. Lattimore had realized the importance of befriending the Dilowa, who was the temporal ruler of the western section of Mongolia, close to the Siberian border. The Dilowa was second in importance in Far Eastern Buddhism to the Dalai Lama. The Communists had purged the Buddhist church in Mongolia and subjugated it to Moscow. The Dilowa had been tried in 1931 by the Soviets on trumped-up charges of treason and sentenced to five years in prison, much as Josef Cardinal Mindszenty in Hungary earlier in the year, sentenced to life. In the case of the Dilowa, the sentence had been suspended based on public outcry, prompting the Dilowa then to flee. He now sought to re-establish his church in exile and preserve it so that it could survive Communism. He provided data about Mongolia from his memory to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, which then gave it to the State Department, as the U.S. had no observers in the region.
The Dilowa, he explains, had been ordained as the living Buddha some three years after his birth in 1884 by identifying the silver drinking bowl of the previous living Buddha as his own. He was chosen from forty candidates born about the same time the previous living Buddha had died.
He recalled that all of his belongings were ordered confiscated by the Communists upon infiltration to Mongolia, but he had already given away all of his possessions. The name of the confiscating agent was translated as "preeminently generous", but, in fact, recalled the Dilowa, he was a "preeminent taker".
Marquis Childs discusses the fact of the Republicans having lost five straight presidential elections and having had control of Congress for only two of the previous 18 years, between 1947 and 1949, thus turning now to desperate tactics to win, as exemplified by the McCarthy attacks on the State Department. They had decided that any means justified the end of returning control of the country politically to the Republicans, who believed in a manifest destiny for their party.
Mr. Childs had seen the same thinking in his late father, a life-long Republican from Iowa, who honestly believed that the destiny of the country was tied inextricably to the Republican Party—no wonder, as it had controlled the White House, and consequently the Federal judiciary for the most part, between the elections of 1860 and 1932, save for the sixteen years of the two separate terms of Grover Cleveland and the two terms of Woodrow Wilson. The farm price collapse of the post-war period of 1920-21 harmed Iowa and the GOP in Iowa, but his father had still clung to the belief of GOP destiny, even refusing to speak to an old friend for weeks for his slight of President Coolidge.
So the demagogic routine on display was understandable in that light of frustration, following so many defeats in a row during the previous 18 years.
He asserts that there was, in his opinion, the potential for disaster for both the party and American political life from the fact. The Truman Administration needed persistent and vigorous criticism, as in some areas it was "shabby, threadbare and specious, or worse", lacking in "vigor and resolution", with too many "misfits and hacks" in key positions. Thus, the need for a forceful opposition was manifest, but the attitude of the Republicans was that they had tried that and found it not to work as long as the Democrats continued to hand out benefits, garnering in consequence votes, thus had turned to the demagogic approach.
But, he finds, the "old timbers" of the party would not stand that type of strain, that a party of demagoguery would not be the Republican Party as it had come to be known. There were Republicans, he says, who had come to understand this fact, but they had to assert themselves quickly were they to put the party in a "hopeful and positive direction."
And so it is, we might suggest, in 2016-17, with the principal difference being that the demagogue in 2016 headed the ticket, while in 1952, the best exponents of that technique were either in the second spot on the ticket or in the Senate.
Robert C. Ruark finds no dignity in murder as it made the daily front pages. Indeed, the perpetrator of the crime appeared to deserve the greater sympathy of the public when compared to the hapless victim, "the stiff" left outside on the doorstep. Thus he sardonically expresses his sorrow for various notorious defendants and broadcasters of woe: the young person in Brooklyn who had stabbed to death four people recently; the woman in Germany who had shot to death her husband after a third party had incurred her ire for mocking her Brooklyn accent after she mocked his Southern accent; the doctor in New Hampshire, recently acquitted, for his euthanasia of his terminally ill cancer patient; the daughter who had shot her terminally ill father in the head, also recently acquitted; an Allentown man who shot his cancer-riddled brother to death, still awaiting trial; a doctor in Detroit who shot to death his wife and then phoned his priest to confess; a man who had shot himself while talking to his wife on the phone so that she might hear the gunshot; the man who had killed thirteen people in a twenty minute shooting spree in his Trenton, New Jersey, neighborhood the prior September and was committed for life to an insane asylum after serving in the war; and a few others.
He concludes: "It seems to me that we must revise our laws to the point where the victim is the guilty party. Otherwise we have no way of making him responsible for the bad luck in crossing the path of a malefactor who has sociology on his side and a frustration complex to argue him loose from a conviction."
Well, unfortunately, that is the attitude you get, we suppose, by having been a journalism major, or perhaps, English or history.
For if we lock them all up and throw away the key, the cost to society, both in terms of dollars and example for youth, outweighs the danger of an occasional systemic problem encountered with paroling the wrong person without the benefit of perfect foresight, cajoled perhaps by the acting with perfect hindsight on the part of the convicted. And, as the tried and true saw goes: it is better to let a hundred guilty persons go free than to convict one innocent. The other way about is Nazi Germany...
Tom Schlesinger of The News, in his weekly "Capital Roundup", tells of chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee Robert Doughton of North Carolina having a device to eliminate the 5.1 billion dollar deficit for the coming fiscal year, a plan conceived by Congressman Wilbur Mills of Arkansas, moving up the date for payment of corporate taxes to within six months after each tax year rather than the quarterly payments presently made after each tax year. Mr. Doughton said that it would provide an additional 4.8 billion dollars in revenue for the 1950-51 fiscal year. The drawback would be that it could only help for that one year.
Senator Clyde Hoey had criticized Senator McCarthy for making dangerous, unsupported charges and thereby doing a "great injustice" to the country. Senator Frank Graham supported the statement and said that the effort of Senator McCarthy was playing into the hands of the Russians. He said that Ambassador Philip Jessup was holding the line of freedom in South Asia and trying to consolidate democratic forces against Communist aggression when he was called back to defend himself against the reckless charges of Senator McCarthy.
Mr. Schlesinger notes that Senator Graham, before entering the Senate, while working on the commission to develop principles for the new Republic of Indonesia, had been attacked by Moscow as a tool of imperialism as well by the Dutch seeking to undermine the negotiations.
Senator Hoey had lunch with General Eisenhower during the week.
He provides the positions taken during the week by the North Carolina Congressional delegation on various legislation.
Representative Hamilton Jones of Charlotte had received 75 identically addressed envelopes containing a clipping, folded identically, sponsored by the Charlotte Merchants Association, favoring lifting of excise taxes.
It probably came from a relative of one of those blonde Trumpettes on the tv, who think that no one notices.
By the way, regarding the Monday night matchup between Gonzaga and UNC, we cannot help, resistlessly so in listening to all the commentary on the coming game, but make the observation that Gonzaga's seemingly impressive 37-1 record has come at the hands, largely, of weaker opponents. Of the 33 games played by the end of regular season plus their conference tournament, they had played only six games against top 50 teams in the RPI rankings, all six in the RPI top 25; and three of those six games were against conference opponent St. Mary's, itself with a strength of schedule ranked at 78 and having played only two other opponents in the top 50, no opponents in the top 25 other than Gonzaga. That is why Gonzaga's final strength-of-schedule ranking was at 102, not very good.
Furthermore, Gonzaga narrowly beat the three other top 25 opponents, all in late November or early December, Arizona, Florida, and Iowa State, only one of those teams, Arizona, being ranked in the top ten in the final Associated Press poll and two, including Florida at number 10, in the final RPI rankings. Their only loss came to an unranked team finishing number 66 in the RPI.
Even in the N.C.A.A. Tournament, the Bulldogs have benefited from upsets in the earlier rounds, leaving their bracket in the West Regional paired with the number 16, 8, 4, and 11 seeds, in that order, with the pairing in the semifinals being against a number 7 seed, South Carolina. Only West Virginia, of those opponents thus far in the Tournament, finished in the top 25 at the end of the season. UNC will be their first opponent all season from the final top ten polls and RPI, save for their early season narrow wins over Arizona and Florida.
By contrast, North Carolina, currently at 32-7, had a strength-of-schedule ranking of 14 in the final RPI after the conference tournament. They played nine games, winning five, against top 25 competition and six more games, winning five, against teams ranked in the RPI between 26 and 50. Their wins included two against top ten teams in the final A. P. poll, Duke and Louisville, and four more against final top 25 teams, Florida State, Notre Dame, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Of their seven losses, three came against final top ten teams, two to Duke and one to Kentucky, with one other to a top 25 team, Virginia. Two of the other three losses, to Miami and Indiana, were to teams ranked in the top 25 at one time during the season. The other loss came to Georgia Tech, runner-up in the N.I.T.
In the Tournament, the Tar Heels have faced the stiffest bracket possible in their regional, seeds number 16, 8, 4, and 2, with number 3 seed Oregon in the semifinals, the Ducks having beaten number one seed Kansas in their region. Of those opponents, Kentucky and Oregon were in the final top ten and Butler was number 14 in the RPI and 21 in the A.P. Thus, their Tournament run to the finals has been considerably tougher than that of Gonzaga. The seeds of North Carolina's opponents total 33, whereas Gonzaga's total 46, a sizable disparity spread over the last two opponents of each school—bearing in mind that the best opponent seeding which a number one seed can face by this point would total 31.
All of that, of course, goes fairly out the window come game time, as underdogs have won many times in the finals. But we thought we would make the argument for the sake of those who rely too much on team win-loss records and not enough on the quality of the competition which forms those records. Gonzaga, obviously, cannot help the fact that it is in a weak conference, relative to the A.C.C. Nevertheless, except in one game, they have met their tests thus far this season, even if those tests have not been nearly so tough and regular as those faced by UNC.
So, in conclusion, we feel irresistibly compelled to reiterate
Framed Edition
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