The Charlotte News
Saturday, April 22, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Roscoe Drummond, European information chief for the Marshall Plan, sought the support of American editors for a "North Atlantic Political Council" to be created at the London conference of the NATO foreign ministers the following month. In a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, he said that it would have the advantage of not being encumbered by the veto on the U.N. Security Council.
In Prague, a state court sentenced two Czechs to death by hanging, following pleas of guilty to charges of high treason and spying at the direction of the U.S. Six co-defendants were given life sentences on the same charges. Three others received sentences ranging from 18 years to 25 years. The defendants, after reportedly pleading guilty to the charges, had expressed remorse for their actions. The prosecution claimed that they had been directed by the U.S. Embassy.
The head of the Embassy's political department and an aide had already been ordered expelled from the country the prior fall for allegedly being leaders of the group. The Embassy denied the charges. An employee of an American military attache had also been arrested and held for allegedly supplying wireless sets to the defendants, before being expelled.
The Republic of South Korea had ordered all foreigners to register by July 10 or face deportation, to prevent Communists from being smuggled in from China and elsewhere.
Communist Chinese invaders on Hainan Island were reported by the Nationalist press to be on the outskirts of Hoihow, the island capital, and, the reports said, Nationalist claims the previous night of a great victory had been unwarranted.
In Toya, Japan, southwest of Tokyo, a large Air Force transport with 35 persons aboard crash-landed the previous night. Ground and air searches were underway for survivors in the mountainous region, hampered by a wet fog. One of General MacArthur's key officials was aboard the plane.
The President inspected Eglin Air Force Base in Florida this date after viewing war games at Fort Benning, Georgia, the previous day.
Columnist Bruce Barton urges American tourists traveling to Europe to act in accord with the country's new role of world leadership and behave themselves. A German editor had told him recently that the British were currently less popular than Americans in Europe, for the fact that the British were dismantling factories, claiming that it would prevent Germany from rearming when actually they were in fear of competition from German manufacturing. He complained also that the British were stuffy and often rude. He praised American GI's for being good ambassadors.
Mr. Barton urges that tourists could be that type of ambassador of good will.
He cautions that the tourists should be prepared, however, to be overcharged sometimes and that overly generous tips were expected, as Europeans were suffering and Americans were perceived as wealthy. But it should be endured with understanding and without gripe. He advises to "pay the price, keep smiling" and have a good time.
Southern Railway said that it would meet the threatened strike by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, threatened for the following Wednesday, by shutting down all freight and passenger service.
A nationwide telephone strike also loomed by the following Wednesday, possibly beginning Monday, unless Western Electric changed its position on demands made by 104 telephone installation workers in South Bend, Ind., affecting 10,000 workers. The workers had struck on March 27 when six complained that the company wanted them to walk a half mile across a muddy field to work on a new television center. A separate issue of wages was at stake in the Wednesday deadline, exacerbated by the South Bend situation.
In Athens, Ga., a woman was found guilty by a jury and sentenced to two to four years in prison for shooting the girlfriend of her ex-husband and firing five shots at her former husband, the dean of the School of Journalism at the University of Georgia. The shooting took place after she found the two together at the girlfriend's home the prior December 23. The two victims were married the previous month.
In Chester, S.C., police were
seeking three masked men who robbed an elderly merchant at home of
between $30 and $40 dollars the previous night at gunpoint and
threatened to hang him if he did not provide them with $200. When he
denied having that much money, one of the gunmen kicked away a box
supporting him from a noose which the two had placed around his
neck, but the cord snapped. Police believed that the men were only
trying to frighten
On the editorial page, "The Soundproof Curtain" discusses the President's speech two days earlier to the newspaper editors, telling them that he wanted to present the truth about the country to nations abroad, to combat the lies and propaganda of the Soviets, and so had directed Secretary of State Acheson to increase his information dissemination service.
James Reston of The New York Times had recently commented in The Atlantic Monthly that while people needed to be informed of the activities of their government in a democracy, the opposite was true presently, primarily because of the chary attitude of the State Department in providing information. It was an opinion shared by many journalists in Washington, who believed that representatives of the Government generally, with the exception of headline-hunting members of Congress, were trying to conceal news from the press.
Most of the stories which were broken were important but innocuous, as the press had exercised responsibility in not revealing secrets and would continue to do so. But since a few unscrupulous reporters had caused problems for some statesmen, the Administration had lowered a "soundproof curtain", blocking much of the flow of information.
It hopes that the President's directive to Secretary Acheson regarding increased dissemination of information would be followed.
"An Unnatural Marriage" praises the report of prison specialist Dr. Austin MacCormack of the Osborne Foundation for his recommendations to the State Prison Advisory Council that the Highway Commission be separated from the Department of Corrections and that prisoner rehabilitation be made the chief aim of the Department, with emphasis on diversified employment and organized training. He had also recommended that prisoners be made available on a selected basis to the Highway Commission, at a fixed rate of reimbursement to defray operating costs of the Department.
The piece finds the previous marriage between the Highway Commission and the Department unnatural and in need of the suggested changes, for persons in charge of constructing highways had no knowledge of penology.
"Above the Mists" praises Senator Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin for taking on the role of stimulating bipartisanship in foreign policy by supporting the Administration's 3.4 billion dollar foreign aid bill. As the number two Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, behind ailing Senator Arthur Vandenberg, traditionally the leader on bipartisanship in foreign policy, he had an important effect on other Republicans.
It suggests to the economy-minded Republicans as Senator Taft, who wanted significantly to reduce the bill, that they adhere to the wisdom expressed by Governor Dewey, that everyone was in the same boat and so it would not be a good idea to rejoice at a shipwreck of the foreign policy of the Democratic Administration.
"Nature Subverted" tells of a meteorologist in New York having been responsible for the April snow there, when he seeded the clouds to generate rain, inadvertently producing in the process snow. It suggests that it portended further manipulation of the weather such that the seasons would become confused and, as a result, the flora and fauna, likewise.
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "The Mayor's New House", praises the St. Louis Mayor for creating a separate municipal agency to handle urban redevelopment.
Drew Pearson relates of several instances of V.A. hospitals having been approved in particular areas for political purposes, rather than being practically located for proximity to other medical facilities, the result of V.A. Administrator Carl Gray not being able to resist political pressure the way his predecessor, General Omar Bradley, had. He cites examples.
Robert Doughton, chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee, was able to finagle the location of a hospital for his home district in Salisbury, N.C., rather than having it placed close to the major hospitals associated with the medical schools in either Winston-Salem or Durham.
Likewise, Senator James Murray of Montana had managed to locate one in Miles City, Mont., rather than in Minot, N.D., close to a medical center.
Congressman Carl Vinson of Georgia had gotten one located in Dublin, Ga., far away from any major hospital.
The Budget Bureau had located one in Augusta, Ga., taking over a ramshackle Navy facility, rather than placing it in Atlanta, where the V.A. wanted to locate it near Emory University's medical school.
During the annual church benefit tour of the embassies the previous year, the Egyptian Embassy had caused a controversy when it refused admittance to the wife of a prominent Washington lumber merchant because she was Jewish. The open-house tour in 1950 was transpiring as scheduled, without protest for the snub the prior year, as the Egyptian Embassy remained on the tour.
The wife of General Patrick Hurley, the former Secretary of War, was nearly in tears after her husband debated Eleanor Roosevelt on television, virtually calling her a liar. The Hurleys had been weekend guests at Hyde Park just prior to the show and, according to Mrs. Hurley, Mrs. Roosevelt and General Hurley had spent the whole time fighting.
Marquis Childs discusses the movement to get General Eisenhower nominated by the GOP in 1952. His backers wanted him to pursue his normal duties as president of Columbia University and not make speeches with political overtones. The movement would proceed in the vein of an article by Quentin Reynolds appearing in Life, portraying the General as an able executive of a great university.
The division sown in the party by the McCarthy charges and the encouragement given the Senator by Senator Taft may have hastened the movement toward General Eisenhower as a viable alternative to Senator Taft, who had surprised and alienated moderate Republicans and independents with his urging Senator McCarthy to continue his efforts at exposing Communists in the Government, for if he missed one target, said the tergiversating Ohio Senator, he might hit another.
Mr. Childs analogizes the Eisenhower movement to an iceberg which showed about ten percent of its mass above water and asserts that it foreshadowed a titanic struggle between the Eisenhower and Taft forces for the nomination.
An Ohio supporter of Senator Taft predicted that his majority for re-election to the Senate against a party hack, tapped by the Democrats to be his likely opponent in the fall, would be less than anticipated. If so, that would weaken his case for the nomination.
Among General Eisenhower's closest
associates were the men of the Board of Trustees of Columbia and
chief among those was Thomas Watson, head of IBM
Still, all of it, he acknowledges, was in the speculative stage and it would be difficult for the General to follow the role cast for him. And there were students and teachers at Columbia who were uncomfortable with having a general and a potential presidential candidate as the head of their University.
Robert C. Ruark tells of having had
the opportunity some years earlier to discover "Park Avenue hillbilly" singer
Dorothy Shay
He had finally interviewed her and relates of that conversation. She figured that her singing relaxed people, including Ambassadors, Senators, and lobbyists who came to see her show at the Hotel Statler in Washington. She had become as popular as Frank Sinatra had been among adolescents, albeit with an older crowd of adolescents. She was nearly ashamed of the wealth she had accumulated from her singing.
He finds her refreshing in that she was not encumbered by any global psychology or ideology, did not intend to run for Congress, and appeared not to be envious of her contemporary rivals in the music business. She figured she was doing alright for a mountain gal, even if she had been raised on the seacoast at Jacksonville, Fla.
Tom Schlesinger of The News, in his weekly "Capital Roundup", tells of only 19 Senators voting against the 1.84 billion dollar harbors and rivers bill passed during the week. Senators Clyde Hoey and Frank Graham voted for it, after receiving a plethora of mail, mainly from towns and local chambers of commerce who advocated their pet projects. He provides a list of the projects to be funded by the bill in North Carolina, totaling 4.5 million dollars.
A state newspaper was preparing an article on Senator Graham's stance on civil rights while serving on the President's Committee on Civil Rights in 1947.
The Army and Air Force was conducting Operation "Swarmer" in North Carolina the following week, to demonstrate that 32,000 airborne troops could be landed in enemy territory, then supplied, maintained and reinforced wholly by continuous succeeding airdrops.
Newsweek predicted victory for Senator Graham in the May 27 Senate primary over challengers Willis Smith and former Senator Robert Rice Reynolds.
Senator Hoey joined three other Democrats and five Republicans in rejecting the President's proposal to abolish the position of general counsel to the NLRB, a move favored by labor.
Senator Hoey led Senator Graham 92 to 89 percent on the latest party unity vote tally, as compiled by Congressional Quarterly. He also lists the percentages for each member of the North Carolina Congressional delegation.
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