The Charlotte News

Saturday, April 29, 1950

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senator Millard Tydings, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing testimony on the charges brought by Senator Joseph McCarthy regarding alleged Communists in the State Department, had initiated charges of contempt against Earl Browder and Frederick Vanderbilt Field for refusing to answer certain questions of the subcommittee on Thursday and Friday. Before the citations could proceed to court, the full Committee and then the full Senate would first have to approve.

Louis Budenz stated the previous night before a patriotic group in New York that he would name this date before the Senate subcommittee an "important conspiratorial Communist", an alien in the country illegally, not a Government employee, and connected with theft of Government documents found in the office of the now-defunct New York magazine, Amerasia. He also claimed that the Owen Lattimore and Amerasia cases were inextricably linked and would lead to one of the greatest scandals in American political history. John Service, the report notes, was one of six persons arrested, but not indicted, for providing war secrets to Amerasia. A Senate committee had ordered a new probe of the matter, including Mr. Lattimore's alleged role in it.

Four weeks from primary election day, the North Carolina special Senate race between Senator Frank Graham and Democratic opponents Willis Smith and former Senator Robert Rice Reynolds was heating up, with the candidates trading blows at one another, Senator Graham and Mr. Smith through surrogates.

The House Ways & Means Committee was looking for revenue to replace the nearly billion dollars in recommended cuts in excise taxes—up from the 600 million reported the previous day, which was down from nearly a billion reported the day before that. When they make up their minds, we shall let you know.

In New York, following four days of riotous behavior by protesting high school students, incensed over the refusal of City Hall to provide higher bonuses for teachers, resulting in cessation of many extracurricular activities at the schools, all was quiet as it was now Saturday, offering no reason for playing hookey. Police on horses continued to patrol the area around City Hall, object of the protests, where some 6,000 shouting students had turned out the previous day, after 22,000 had protested on Thursday. There had, however, been little real violence, save for a few arrests of non-student "toughs and hoodlums". Of the students, 21 were detained and released to their parents. A representative council of 250 students voted the previous day to return to school, and parent-teacher groups sought to restore peace.

Well, you better get out there on the ball field and start coaching and restore prom night. Everybody needs to find a way to reach home base.

A snowstorm hit the Western prairie areas and the Rocky Mountain states while tornadoes swept Oklahoma and West Texas.

In the third "Guideposts" column, former heavyweight champion boxer Gene Tunney, author of Arms for the Living, tells of experiencing fear before a fight in early 1920, just after returning to the ring following service in World War I as a Marine. He had prayed before the fight to avoid permanent injury, not to win. He then lost his fear as he gained confidence from the prayer. He went on to win the fight. Before his title fight subsequently with champion Jack Dempsey, the heavy favorite in the press, he experienced a similar fear again. He even had a vision of himself bleeding in the ring. He again prayed and overcame the fear, went on to win the fight and became the heavyweight champion of the world.

Bob Sain of The News tells of two North Carolina brain surgeons having launched a program in mental hospitals of the state to conduct pre-frontal lobotomies as a means of correcting mental aberrations associated with mental illness. They claimed the procedure to have proved successful in nearly a hundred cases since the previous August, at Camp Butner and the State Hospital at Morganton. One-third of the successful patients had been discharged. Five patients per week in the state's mental hospitals were undergoing the operation. Neither the superintendent at Morganton nor a staff physician at Camp Butner, however, claimed the procedure to effect a cure, as, they said, they did not use the term "cure" regarding mental illness.

Well, there is only one conclusion therefore for ameliorating, with some chance of success, the mental ills of the country's entire population, including the two brain surgeons. Get out those scalpels, or icepicks, as the case may be. Start with the present "President" in 2017. Who knows? Maybe miracles can occur.

On the editorial page, "Mr. Jones, Meet Dr. Magnuson" tells of Congressman Hamilton Jones of Charlotte needing to square accounts with Dr. Paul Magnuson, medical chief of the Veterans Administration, regarding the former's assertion that the 279 million dollars in new V.A. appropriations for hospitals was needed. Dr. Magnuson had recently said that the V.A. did not need the 16,000 new beds provided by the funding, that they would cost too much to maintain and, in any event, could not be adequately staffed. Moreover, he said, all veterans who had been disabled in service had an available bed, unless the veteran insisted on being admitted to a particular hospital. The 26,000 veterans on waiting lists had illnesses not traceable to their military service. Two-thirds of the veterans hospitalized were there for non-service related issues.

It finds, therefore, that a strong case had been made by Dr. Magnuson against the election-year, pork-barrel politics represented by the appropriations bill recently passed by the House, with the support, though not the presence, of Mr. Jones.

"Baptist Independence" discusses the debate at the Baptist State Convention during the week regarding whether to accept public funding for construction of a new wing for Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem, resulting in a decision to refuse the funding to preserve separation of church and state.

The wing would be built with Baptist money and so the public had no stake in the controversy. It finds the decision encouraging as against erosion in recent years of the doctrine of separation. It also praises the decision for it being an exception to the rule of seeking government funding.

But did the 1890 North Carolina Supreme Court case, Baptist Female University v. Borden, as argued by Federal Judge Johnson J. Hayes to the convention during the week, mandate acceptance of available government funding for the fact of implied expectation by contributors to the hospital subscription that it would accept such funding?

The Judge apparently was referring in fact to a 1903 case of that name, at 132 N.C. 477, 500, 44 S.E. 47, which, in upholding the mutual consideration for a somewhat complicated debt as a devise by will of $1,000 to the University, stated, in relevant part, the following:

"The University is duly incorporated, with the power to receive such subscriptions. It is under the control of the Baptist Church, of which the testator was a member. Its trustees had appointed agents to solicit subscriptions. It had incurred liabilities for their expenses and payment for their services. The subscription was made to the president of the University and an announcement thereof made in a Baptist convention. The subscription was thereby accepted, and by its acceptance the University assumed the responsibility, duty, and obligation of applying the money to the purposes for which it was given. Other persons at said time and place made subscription for the same purpose. Announcements of each were made in the presence of Judge Faircloth. Most of these subscriptions were paid, and it must be understood, as a reasonable conclusion from the facts stated, that these subscriptions were made at the same time and place, and therefore operated as an inducement for other persons to make subscriptions for the same purpose, which were received by the University, and the duty or trust thereby imposed of expending the money for the purpose for which it was given assumed by the officers of the University."

If the wing was in fact built contrary to the State law then in effect, do the remaining living subscribers to the fund which built the wing, or their heirs, have the right in 2017 to file suit to demand either that the money be returned or that State and Federal money, as was then appropriated in 1950, be sought today for the purpose—assuming that the Establishment Clause is not infringed by receipt of the government funds for the fact that the purpose of the hospital wing was secular and not for religious indoctrination during administration of medical care?

"The Hainan Debacle" reports that the China lobby had yet to make any statement regarding the loss of Hainan Island to the Communists. It would be harder to pin the blame in this instance, it suggests, on the usual scapegoats as the State Department, General Marshall, and Owen Lattimore. Senator McCarthy had proclaimed on March 30 that the Nationalists still had the best equipped army in China. And they had superior numbers on Hainan, but surrendered nevertheless without a fight, repeating the scene of the mainland the prior year.

It concludes that the defeat was the result of Chiang's cause being "rotten to the core" and his troops no longer loyal. The China lobby would need a new scapegoat.

A piece from the Washington Evening Star, titled "The Maddening Tribute of Tipping", discusses two members of the Mississippi Legislature striking a blow for liberty by introducing legislation to ban tipping, imposing a $100 fine on any business allowing the practice and a $50 fine on any tipping customer. The piece thinks it a masterpiece of legislative ingenuity and wishes it success, finding the traditional practice insidious, whether in restaurant or in cab.

Drew Pearson reports of a cocktail party thrown for Republican leaders by Washington socialite Mrs. Robert Low Bacon, attended by such conservatives as Senators Karl Mundt, Homer Ferguson, Alex Smith, and Leverett Saltonstall, notwithstanding its intent as a liberal Republican gathering. Senator Smith, when he became aware of the reason for the meeting, suggested he might withdraw if it was designed as an anti-Taft affair. Senators Irving Ives and Wayne Morse agreed with the liberal policy statement laid forth by Russell Davenport, editor of Fortune, but suggested that it meant nothing unless put into action. Harold Stassen, now a college president, appeared the most cautious of the potential presidential aspirants, saying he came to the party only to listen. The meeting eventually adjourned after a few more guests made cautious remarks, appearing reticent about adopting Theodore Roosevelt's form of progressivism for the GOP.

Secretary of Agriculture Charles Brannan had given a purely political speech at St. Paul, recorded by wire recorder.

Former Communist Louis Budenz had emphasized in his Congressional testimony and to the FBI that "proof" of Owen Latimore's Communism had been provided in an article by Father James Kearney in the Knights of Columbus magazine. But, in fact, the article had provided no proof at all, asserting only that Mr. Lattimore and his small group of followers deserved great credit for the "Sino-American disaster".

Dozens of warplanes sold to colleges as war surplus for $100 to $200 each were going to South America, despite it being specified in the contracts of sale that they would be used only for educational purposes and not flown.

Senator Tom Connally was upset about the reported peace made between the President and GOP Senator Styles Bridges.

Chiang Kai-Shek was chartering a plane to fly American newsmen to Formosa to provide good publicity for the regime's new locus on the island.

Two agents of Generalissimo Francisco Franco were seeking to obtain a loan for Spain from the Export-Import Bank for building a nitrogen plant, on the hook that they needed it for manufacturing fertilizer. But nitrogen could also be used in manufacture of explosives.

Marquis Childs suggests that the balance between total destruction and law and order appeared to be tilting toward the former after the shooting down of the unarmed Navy plane by the Soviets over the Baltic on April 8. The Soviets had even decorated the crew.

The Soviets had done so, he posits, on the theory that the plane carried sophisticated reconnaissance equipment which permitted snooping while still within the legal offshore international limit. It implied that the Soviets had that sort of equipment.

The incident, like the U.S. Panay gunboat sunk by the Japanese in December, 1937 on the Yangtze River in China, which did not lead to war, similarly had not led to war in the present instance. The U.S. had not severed relations with Japan in 1937.

The stakes were high and the men who conducted such missions as that over the Baltic and elsewhere deserved the support of the people at home, which included keeping as calm, collected and sane as possible.

Whether he, in part, aims this editorial in response to the one the previous day by Robert C. Ruark, favoring retaliatory action, including shooting of any captured Russian airmen and sinking of any submarines found lurking off the U.S. coast, in preference to the weak-kneed response of diplomatic notes of protest, is not stated.

Stewart Alsop reports on visits he had with RNC chairman Guy Gabrielson and DNC chairman William Boyle. Mr. Gabrielson was a likable person despite having made some fierce statements in recent months, suggesting that the President's announcement in September of the detonation of the Soviet atomic bomb had been designed to divert attention from the then transpiring Republican farm rally, and, more recently, stating his support of Senator Joseph McCarthy's campaign to root out supposed Communists in the Government. Mr. Gabrielson was not a professional politician, was seeking accord with party principles.

Mr. Boyle, by contrast, was a practicing professional career politician. The DNC office reminded of a corporate office, sleek and modern. The party coffers were quite full as the great labor organizations, for the first time, were working effectively within the party framework. Mr. Boyle was in the business of attracting votes.

Mr. Gabrielson, by contrast, appeared more interested in principles than gathering votes. He was conducting a school for educating fledgling Republican candidates to the basic principles of Republicanism. Mr. Boyle, meanwhile, was not concerning himself with the vast differences, for instance, between Mississippi Senator James Eastland and Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey, both Democrats.

The rules of the political game, he concludes, had changed and the old rules and rulers, as the RNC seemed intent on maintaining, could not be restored.

Tom Schlesinger of The News, in his weekly "Capital Roundup", tells of opposition to Senator Clyde Hoey costing $100,000, accounting for the fact that no one had filed to run against him in the May 27 primary. In the hotly contested other race, against Senator Frank Graham, the expense might be twice that.

The Florida Senate primary, between incumbent Senator Claude Pepper and two-term Congressman George Smathers, and the Alabama executive committee contest, between the Dixiecrat slate of candidates and the slate supported by Senators Lister Hill and John Sparkman, were set to occur the following Tuesday, bellwethers for the fall elections, as they were effectively referendums within the Democratic Party on the Fair Deal.

Thirty-eight percent of eligible North Carolina voters had voted in the presidential race in 1948, compared to the national average of 51.9 percent.

Neither of the two V.A. hospitals slated for Salisbury and Charlotte could be built under the proposed V.A. hospital measure, likely to be vetoed if it were to pass the Senate, having been passed by anonymous voice vote in the House.

Jonathan Daniels had a new biography, The Man of Independence, coming out in the fall anent President Truman, about which he had recently conversed with the President.

The testimony of Louis Budenz had been disturbing to many of Owen Lattimore's supporters.

The Congress appeared still to intend adjournment by late July for the fall elections, despite several issues, which he lists, remaining on the agenda.

A Quote of the Day: "In Ottumwa, Iowa, school authorities won't let 21 high school seniors graduate because they don't know their English grammar. Just between you and I, it is our opinion that the authorities hadn't ought to of done it." —Greensboro Daily News

You can't fool we. It should of ought done been "between you and we" and the "of" was wholly superfluous, indeed results in a split of the infinitive, bad for it's implication of an atomic fusion explosion involving heavy hydrogen atom nucleus's.

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.