The Charlotte News

Tuesday, April 11, 1950

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that, at the behest of Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee investigating his claims subpoenaed former Communist Louis Budenz as the "mystery witness" the Senator had promised to support his claim that Owen Lattimore was the top Soviet agent in the State Department at one time.

Mr. Budenz had previously testified before HUAC in both 1946 and 1948, in the latter instance identifying several individuals as having Communist affiliations, and also testifying, under examination by Congressman Richard Nixon, regarding the contentions of Whittaker Chambers that Alger Hiss, formerly of the State Department, had been, during his time in Government service, part of an underground Communist group.

Russia, in a formal protest lodged with the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, charged that a U.S. B-29 bomber had opened fire three days earlier during a flight over Latvia within Soviet territory and that one Soviet pursuit plane had returned the fire. The Russians claimed it as a violation of the Soviet frontier. The Air Force said that the plane might be one missing since the previous Saturday over the Baltic, identified as an unarmed B-24.

Keep your shirt on, Redsky. Accidents happen.

Democratic Senate leaders spoke with the President after his return from his three-week vacation in Key West, telling him that they believed that they could obtain no more than about half of his Fair Deal program in the present Congress. Taft-Hartley repeal was out, according to Majority Leader Scott Lucas; but he said that he had hopes that, before the end of the session, the House would pass an aid to education bill, already passed by the Senate.

Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois introduced a bill to cut sick leave of Government employees from 15 to 12 days and vacations, from 26 to 20 working days. Under the proposal, postal workers would receive an increase from 15 to 20 vacation days and an increase from 10 to 12 sick days.

Premier Pibul Songgram of Thailand disclosed that the U.S. had provided his country ten million dollars in aid to combat Communism, following a conference with U.S. Ambassador-at-Large Philip Jessup in Bangkok in February. Premier Songgram had led a democratic reform movement in the country and had fought for recognition of French-backed Bao Dai in Indo-China, whose opponent, Ho Chi Minh, was backed by the Communists.

Strikes were threatened in the following weeks in the maritime, railroad and telephone industries.

In Cleveland, the bodies of four Boy Scouts were found on a rubber raft in Lake Erie, after drifting through the night, dead from exposure. Wearing only light clothes, they had been swept into the lake, which had water temperatures of 36 degrees, while seeking to recover a drifting canoe at dusk the previous day. Heavy winds had whipped the water over the raft during the night.

Dust storms swept across the wheatlands of Kansas and Oklahoma and through the Texas Panhandle, Eastern Colorado, and New Mexico the previous day and Sunday. Visibility at times in parts of Kansas was at zero, and one road west of Salina was closed by the Highway Patrol.

In Raleigh, Col. C.R. Tolar, commander of the State Highway Patrol, had been cited Sunday for going 60 mph in a 35 mph zone. He told the patrolman who stopped him that he was en route to visit his sick mother-in-law. He was traveling in a state-owned vehicle. The Motor Vehicle commissioner said that he was consulting later in the day with Governor Kerr Scott on the already embattled commander, who recently had been indicted in Beaufort County for reckless driving for not obeying a traffic directive during a funeral, saying that he was en route to a reported traffic accident at the time.

In Tarzana, California, Wanda turned on the ignition of the family car, pressed the starter button, and drove the car through a market window. Her feeble excuse was that she was two years old.

We all have to grow up sometime.

On the editorial page, "Segregation under Fire" discusses the pending Sweatt and McLaurin cases before the Supreme Court regarding whether Plessy v. Ferguson separate-but-equal doctrine had been violated in public higher education facilities, the former case involving contested admission for a qualified black student to the University of Texas Law School, the State contending that the segregated black law school was adequate, and the latter involving segregated class seating in the University of Oklahoma graduate school program to which the student had been ordered admitted for want of a separate-but-equal program at a black school. The petitioners sought to overturn Plessy from 1896, and have segregation in public education facilities declared unconstitutional per se. The piece also mentions the Henderson case regarding segregated dining car facilities on the Southern Railway, as permitted by the I.C.C., a practice challenged by the Justice Department as violative of Federal law as well as under Plessy.

Attorney General J. Howard McGrath had urged to the high Court that segregation under Plessy was "an anachronism which a half-century of history and experience has shown to be a departure from the basic constitutional principle that Americans, regardless of their race or color or religion or national origin, stand equal and alike in the light of the law."

It finds it hard to forecast the upheaval a decision overturning Plessy would cause. But, even if it were upheld, the handwriting, it predicts, was on the wall from earlier decisions, since 1937, that segregation was on the way out, as more demands for its elimination would be forthcoming.

It instructs that public education facilities were not equal, as the North Carolina Education Commission had found in its study, with expenditures on white schools ranging between $459 and $40 per pupil in the state's hundred counties, while that on black schools was between only $187 and $2.13. And North Carolina was one of the more progressive of the Southern states in providing equality of educational opportunity.

It concludes therefore that no matter how the Supreme Court ruled in the three cases, the South was going to have to change in the ensuing decade and urges therefore that it get about alteration of its thinking accordingly, as a great amount of adjustment was in store—a hem here, a haw there.

"Spartanburg's New Auditorium" tells of Spartanburg, S.C., having appropriated 1.2 million dollars to build a new auditorium. It suggests that the proposed Charlotte auditorium and coliseum would run two to three times that cost, and urges therefore that such a bond issue be soon proposed by the Mayor and City Council, as it would take a good deal of selling to the populace.

The Ovens Auditorium and Charlotte Coliseum, both still extant, albeit the latter having not been used as the primary sports facility since the 1980's, would be opened in 1955.

"Crime and Politics" suggests that perhaps the gangland slayings of Charles Binaggio and Charles Gargotta in Kansas City the previous week would accelerate the stalled resolution of Senator Estes Kefauver to investigate organized crime and gambling in the country. Mr. Binaggio, according to Missouri newspapers, had been second in command of Missouri's Democratic Party and Mr. Gargotta had been his right-hand man. But Mr. Binaggio also had been active in gambling, believed linked to Frank Costello in New York and the successor gang of the late Al Capone in Chicago.

The opponents of Senator Kefauver, who claimed that the rackets were gaining power politically, had contended that it was all a product of his imagination and so had delayed action on his resolution, introduced in the Senate the previous January.

Mr. Binaggio had the power to buy politicians and sway elections. He would no longer do so, but the piece wonders how many more such persons were at large in the country. It hopes the Senate would now listen to Senator Kefauver.

Senator Kefauver, in 1956, would narrowly defeat Senator John F. Kennedy for the vice-presidential nomination with Governor Adlai Stevenson, in an unusual convention left open insofar as the second spot on the ticket, given that Governor Stevenson was the party nominee for the second time in succession. It was the only time in President Kennedy's political career that he was ever defeated in an election.

A piece from the Wilmington Star-News, titled "Courtesy a Prime Need", tells of the National Safety Council advising that courtesy was needed in traffic as lack thereof was a principal cause for most traffic fatalities, including drunk driving and driving on the wrong side of the road. The piece agrees, noting that the increase in fatalities by six percent over the January-February period of the prior year had probably been the result in part of inclement weather.

Drew Pearson tells of President Gabriel Gonzalez Videla of Chile, one of the country's best friends, arriving in Washington the next day. He had helped keep Chile free from revolution while retaining the parliamentarian system and peacefully purging Communists. He had been Chile's Ambassador to France during the war and had thus seen the results of totalitarian rule. Early in his term as President, he had encountered a coal strike by Communists by visiting the mine and confronting the strikers, making an impassioned plea that they end the strike, issuing no threats in the process. The shocked miners returned to work.

Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine had sought to amend the Republican statement of principles issued in February, with a ten-point plan, which culminated in a directive to "smash the filibuster on civil rights". By the time it was incorporated in the statement, however, it had been diluted to read only, "Protecting the rights of veterans and minorities." Two other points she had proposed, opposition to curtailment of veterans' benefits, and support for bipartisan foreign policy, were completely omitted. Nevertheless, to mollify progressive Republicans, RNC chairman Guy Gabrielson had sent out a postcard saying that the statement had been adopted after consultation with Senator Smith, leaving the false impression that she had agreed with the entire statement.

He notes that Senator Owen Brewster of Maine had proposed a plank for "safeguarding liberty against Socialism", which was opposed even by conservative Senator Arthur Watkins of Utah, who argued that, after all, conservation projects were a form of socialism.

Two confusing reports had issued from White House press secretary Charles G. Ross while the President had been on vacation in Key West, one that John Foster Dulles was not going to be appointed as adviser to Secretary of State Acheson and another, that Ambassador Philip Jessup was about to be replaced. Neither story was true, and Mr. Dulles was appointed the next day by the President. The reason for the confusion, Mr. Pearson says, was that there was too much liquor flowing to both the President and his staff in Key West. It was something which no one liked to admit.

Senator Dennis Chavez of New Mexico had been the only Senator from the Southwest to vote against the Kerr bill to deregulate the natural gas industry. He had also introduced an amendment to the displaced persons bill to allow Spanish Republicans who opposed Franco during the civil war in the Thirties to enter the country.

Congressman Andy Biemiller of Wisconsin responded to his colleagues' inquiry that Senator McCarthy's charges made Senator Alexander Wiley appear as a statesman.

Robert C. Ruark finds that the flying saucers belonged to one or more of four sources, the Air Force, the Navy, Martians, or the Russians. Since he had no Russian sources and his Martian correspondent was off on a drunk, he had to content himself with his Air Force and Navy sources.

Airline pilots believed that the saucers were real, as revealed sometime earlier in a piece appearing in True Magazine. Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington said that if they were real, he did not know of them, a statement Mr. Ruark finds to have been either honest or artfully devious.

Radio correspondent Henry Taylor asserted that they were the Navy's XF5U1, appearing as a "poached egg with propellers". Mr. Ruark is inclined to agree and asserts that it might be the case, with the Navy being dismantled and suffering the humiliation of the grounding of the "Mighty Mo", that it had gone adrift on its own and was preparing to take over the continent with these craft. They would not want the public to know that battleships were being replaced with flying disks as peacemakers.

He wishes to go on record, in any event, by declaring that flying saucers did exist, contained life, and that soon their solution would be provided the public. But, like Mr. Symington, he knew from nothing.

He believes that too many people had seen the saucers for them to be discounted as fantastical conjurings of the imagination. He would not be surprised to see Hitler step out of one at La Guardia.

He hopes that the craft might be operated by Martian Airways, Inc., and that some of the owners or their employees would come to call soon. "It might shock us out of a dangerous susceptibility to self-annihilation." Then, no later visitor would say, "'I don't see anything now, Mac, but I could have sworn that planet was here yesterday.'"

Henry C. McFadyen, superintendent of the Albemarle, N.C., schools, in the thirty-second in his series of articles on childhood education, discusses the continuing relevance of the study of Latin in school. He had studied it for four years in high school and another two years in college, on the premise that it would help him better understand English.

But after all of that, he could scarcely remember any declensions and found the entire study useless, thinks that learning how to make a cedar chest was just as relevant and had just as much cultural value.

Well, having done both activities, we disagree violently with Mr. McFadyen on this one, think he is out to lunch and being overly cynical, perhaps from having suffered too much early saturation. Our Latin study was limited to two years in high school and we profited much from the exercise. No, we do not go around speaking Latin and admit that there is little call for it outside the Vatican. But it does engender a deeper understanding of sentence construction and English vocabulary, notwithstanding Mr. McFadyen's sarcasm that many words in English, in addition to those finding their roots in Latin, have Anglo-Saxon etymology, which, if Latin possessed such import, would therefore also militate in favor of the study of Anglo-Saxon. And that would not be a bad idea, if you wish to understand your language better.

He also opines that algebra and solid geometry were fine for those students inclined thereto but not of much assistance to those not interested in the subjects.

Okay, let's eliminate all of the curriculum not relevant to the students lacking in academic curiosity, who want instead to take courses only in crafts. Cut to the chase after the eighth grade and send those students to technical school. There is a reason for all of it, as useless as some of it might seem at the time—even if the worst students, interested only in wrestling and football, will probably wind up as airport goonsquad police, eating donuts, talking during the long breaks of the good ol' days when America was Great, in between incidents of dragging helpless passengers off of United flights for the emergent circumstance of United personnel needing desperately to dead-head.

We are certain, incidentally, that the four United employees involved in that incident earlier this week in Chicago, were Grateful.

And we do recall more than "amo-amas-amat" and "agricola-ae" from Latin, as Mr. McFadyen professes as his limited retention. "Et tu Brute", for instance, stands forth. But the rote memorization is not the point. It is the principles and patterns imbued to the intellect which are preserved and make reasoning, along with the precise phrasing of the language, a thing of both beauty and immersed application.

Indeed, the lack of stress these days on such subjects, considered consigned to the antiquities, may be a root cause for the obviously ailing culture before us, placing a premium, not on context or substance, but on what particular word is used which is considered offensive, seeking then to destroy the speaker's life for exercise of free speech, never understanding the ironic absurdity of that notion, and that the uglier the words uttered in a democracy, the better, sometimes. Otherwise, be prepared to lose democracy and return to barbarism, a new version of Nazi Germany, where free speech and free thought was verboten.

Routinely, we see idiots online who demand ruination of someone's life for uttering a mere comment with which they vehemently disagree, some comment believed to be unpatriotic, racist, sexist, anti-Trumpist, or some other nonsensically subjective notion, while tolerating, even praising, brutal police tactics, sometimes culminating in death, with a shrug of the shoulders, concluding that, somehow, the victim deserved it, even if unarmed and acting completely within their rights. That is a recipe, sure enough, for revivification of Nazi Germany, warmed over.

Is it any wonder that we have a nut in the White House in 2017, one who has the unmitigated audacity to continue to refer to his opponent in last year's election as "crooked Hillary", after he "won" only by virtue of the archaic electoral college, losing the popular vote by nearly three million? And that after he described the Clintons as "great people" in January. We would bet that he never studied Latin.

A letter writer comments on the editorial, "What About Ted Franklin Willard?" anent the 15-year old who had allegedly murdered a service station operator during the course of a robbery in Charlotte. The author suggests that the youth problem was worse than most citizens realized. He favors prohibiting sale of comic books and formation of citizens' committees to deal with troubled youngsters in each precinct of the city, which would then appoint foster fathers to aid in correction of wayward attitudes, enlisting the aid of the Boy Scouts and 4-H Clubs along the way.

Comic books? You have a lot more to worry about than that. How about starting with guns?

A letter writer suggests a series of articles on runaway teens and the like, given that a teenager had recently been murdered.

A letter from the president of the Friends of the Birds, Inc., in Santa Barbara, California, tells of wrecked nests being wrought by one of fifty million cats in the country climbing trees, resulting in the slaughter of the innocent and unborn by the nestload.

Insects had destroyed about four billion dollars worth of plant life in 1949, according to the Bureau of Entomology, and insects built up an immunity to insecticides.

Birds fed their young chirpers insects in the spring, which would otherwise result in havoc in the garden and on farms. A baby bird would eat twice its weight in insects each day. Bug eggs were also cleared away in the same manner.

Weeds cost the country four billion dollars per year and birds had an incalculably remedial effect on clearance of weed seeds.

"Those who permit the Mr. Hydes to be out at dawn, content to pet their Dr. Jekylls occasionally during the day, are accessories to one of the most cruel and expensive crimes of the nation. We could solve the problem, if we but knew it and would face it."

You bastards! Keep your cats under lock and key or on a leash at all times or suffer the consequences.

A letter writer from Norfolk takes to task the appointment of John Foster Dulles as an adviser to Secretary of State Acheson for it diluting party will, which served as a means of political expression for the people. He cites Augustus Caesar having appointed the profligate Antony to quell the hatred against Cicero.

How dare you seek to bring about unity in the country with bipartisanship. That will not be tolerated.

Framed Edition
[Return to Links
Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News<i><i><i>—</i></i></i>Framed Edition]
Links-Date Links-Subj.