The Charlotte News
Saturday, April 8, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that future Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, acting as attorney for Owen Lattimore, said that his client would welcome any investigation by any authorized agency resulting from the charges brought against him by Senator Joseph McCarthy that he was the top Soviet agent in the State Department.
Senator Bourke Hickenlooper of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee investigating the claims, labeled "unwarranted" the statement of the chairman, Senator Millard Tydings, that the summary of Mr. Lattimore's loyalty records provided four of five members of the subcommittee by J. Edgar Hoover and Attorney General J. Howard McGrath, had cleared Mr. Lattimore of any Communist taint. Senator Hickenlooper was the lone member not present when the two provided their summary of the files.
In London, Vaslav Nijinsky, 60, one of the world's greatest dancers, had died of nephritis in a clinic after being insane for the prior 31 years.
In Chapel Hill, the body of a UNC student was discovered in an off-campus rooming house, slain by five bullets. Eighteen hours later, the body of a former student was found in the Forest Theater on campus with a self-inflicted bullet wound. Police said that the latter individual, a former roommate of the murder victim, had killed him after an argument regarding an allegation by the former political science major that the victim had taken his rifle. His mother said that he was a war casualty, having served in the South Pacific during the late war, including six years in the Air Force, and that she was afraid something of the kind would occur, as he showed signs of mental abnormality. He was described as normally soft-spoken.
That's a bit spooky as we once saw "Hair" performed in Forest Theater one night freshman year, in the raw. That is, the performers were in the raw, for one memorable scene anyway. We went there on Halloween night freshman year, as well, to see a graduate student with a half-beard and half-mustache, fully clothed, declaring dominion over his invisible universe. Had we known a suicide had once occurred there, we might have instead sought out the spot to see if some remnant of the bloodstains
In Raleigh, in the trial of the Wake Forest College student accused of murdering a former student the prior December 14 on the campus, regarding a dispute over a gambling debt, the State began its closing argument after four days of trial. The prosecutor read a statement made by the defendant to the police upon his capture in Los Angeles, after he had managed to skip from police at the scene of the killing. It was hoped that the case would go to the jury late this date or Monday.
You people did not even take off the Saturday before Easter? Were you crazy or what? Do you not understand what that implies to the objective observer about this particular defendant, guilty or not? Temporary stupidity can be rectified among the intelligent by taking a little breather for consideration, brain-healing and rejuvenation, while explaining to the public, in a couple of sentences, why the break in the action was appropriate. But perhaps there were powers that be, beyond the public, at work in the action.
Former Senator Robert Rice Reynolds had finally opened his campaign for the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat occupied by Senator Frank Graham, saying that he would campaign from his car and would be his own manager. He said that Senator Graham was a "well-meaning, dreamy-eyed reformer" and that Willis Smith was a "well-heeled, aristocratic corporation lawyer".
Mr. Smith campaigned in Charlotte and Shelby, stating his opposition to the FEPC and deficit spending, saying that the latter would lead to socialism, and then Communism.
Various Easter celebrations were set around the country for the following day.
Another picture of a baby in diapers appears as part of the new contest, replacing the space previously occupied by Fulton Oursler's The Greatest Story Ever Told. It's probably apropos, if you think about it.
On the editorial page, "At the End of His Rope" quotes from "Shakespeare"—actually, John Dryden—in finding Senator McCarthy to obtain pleasure from "being mad", as he had even gone so far as to suggest that Senator Millard Tydings and J. Edgar Hoover had dissembled in their conclusion reached that Owen Lattimore had no Communist ties, after Mr. Hoover and Attorney General McGrath presented a summary of the record to the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee studying the Senator's charges.
It finds Senator McCarthy's attitude "shameful and irresponsible". He insisted that he knew what was in the files on Mr. Lattimore and would prove it. He had cornered himself by insisting that his contentions on Mr. Lattimore would be the keystone of his claims that there were Communists in the State Department. With the FBI giving Mr. Lattimore clearance, the arch built by Senator McCarthy had collapsed.
The piece hopes that, come November, Wisconsin voters would consign him "to the oblivion he has so richly earned."
"The Dawn Breaks" tells of some positive occurrences during the week toward restoration of bipartisan foreign policy, starting with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., who declared that he deplored McCarthyism and urged quiet, nonpartisan examination of the State Department foreign policy. Senator Taft then impliedly repudiated his earlier endorsement of McCarthyism. Then, President Truman named John Foster Dulles to be an adviser to Secretary of State Acheson, after having named former, and future, Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky to accompany Mr. Acheson to the London foreign ministers conference.
Republican isolationist Senators Watkins, Malone, and Knowland, however, still registered disapproval of the moves.
The piece ventures that most Americans would be pleased by the President's moves again toward bipartisanship, that unity in foreign policy was vital to the security of the country.
"Ready to Serve" praises members of the Charlotte Life Saving Crew for working quickly to revive firemen overcome by chlorine gas at a small laundry fire in the city.
"And the Stone Was Rolled Back", an Easter week guest editorial by the Right Reverend Monsignor John P. Hanley, V.F., St. Patrick's Church, tells of the sorrows of holy week having passed and the joys of Easter Sunday being at hand. The sad event of the crucifixion had been supplanted by the joy of resurrection. Jesus had been condemned as an impostor and crucified as a criminal, but his followers still believed in his divinity. He had said, "Destroy this temple of God and in three days I will rebuild it." The disciples went to the Sepulcher to roll back the stone and found that it had already been displaced.
That, he posits, was still the experience of the disciples, as Christian duty appeared often as an onerous stone to be rolled back, but, to the believers, was found to have been done for them. God's grace, he concludes, was always a step ahead of the believer, was always sufficient, and the believer had the privilege of making it efficacious.
A piece from the Flamingsburg (Ky.) Times-Democrat, titled "The Human Touch", praises a doctor in Morehead, W. S. Reeves, who had answered a call to deliver a baby on a cold, rainy night, having to walk three miles in the rain, deliver the baby, and then return by mule at daylight. It recommends the story to Ralph Edwards for "This Is Your Life", as it was typical behavior of that doctor.
Drew Pearson tells of there being more than meets the eye behind the attempt to block the resolution of Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee to have an investigation of organized crime and gambling, first proposed the prior January but not having passed the Senate. While some of the delay was the result of wrangling over which committee would investigate the different aspects of the problem, Senator Kefauver had encountered pressure from friends he never dreamed had connections to gambling interests, as well as from the gambling interests, themselves.
Meanwhile, in California, where Attorney General Fred Howser was notoriously friendly to the gambling interests, it had been revealed by the California Crime Commission that one of Mr. Howser's former aides had received about $400 from Jack Dragna, the Al Capone of California, when Mr. Dragna's racing news service was under investigation. The aide was in charge of investigating loan companies whitewashing the Guaranty Finance Co., determined by a Los Angeles Grand Jury to be a collection agency for gamblers. Mr. Howser's office, according to the Commission, had exerted pressure on behalf of Guaranty at the time the aide was investigating it while receiving payments from Mr. Dragna.
During the Senate debate over the natural gas bill, the press gallery received a phone call asking what was being debated, to which the caller replied "gas", to which the inquiring party said that he knew, but wanted to know what bill was up.
The National Association of Manufacturers had prepared several hundred letters to be sent to editors criticizing Mr. Pearson. The letters were identical but signed by different persons, purportedly from different cities. The letter claimed that the column the prior month had falsely stated that NAM had "quietly" staged a meeting at which a GE executive outlined a campaign to win labor votes by stuffing pay envelopes with circulars and other promotional gimmicks for employees. They claimed it was not "quiet" but public. He notes to NAM that next time, they would only need send him a letter of correction and he would pass it on in the column.
Ed Rivers, son of former pro-Klan Georgia Governor E. D. Rivers, had started a pro-black radio station in Decatur, Ga., which had proved so successful that he was starting another in Savannah, despite local opposition.
Senator Elbert Thomas of Utah had authored a book, This Nation Under God, in which he attempted to show that faith in God could conquer the atomic age, as it had guided the nation throughout its history.
Stewart Alsop tells of Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson having reduced air power by a third, at a time just a few months after the Soviets detonated an atom bomb, were undertaking remilitarization of East Germany, and the Communists had taken China. And many experts had said, even before these reductions, that air power was already too low.
The most important datum establishing real air strength, as pointed out by Walter Lippmann, was airframe weight, not the number of air groups or the worth of the air complement in dollars. In fiscal year 1949, the Air Force had been allowed to order 34 million pounds of airframe weight, representing the calculated risk that the Soviets would not have a stockpile of atomic bombs prior to 1953. After Secretary Johnson succeeded Secretary James Forrestal a year earlier, he had cut that to 21 million pounds, or by more than a third, notwithstanding the protests of Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington and Air Force study groups that procurement was already dangerously low. Secretary Forrestal had intended his cut to be the maximum bearable and that thereafter, through 1953, airframe weight procurement would be increased each year.
The Air Force Policy Board had devised two alternative plans, the first of which provided for eventual annual deliveries of 80 million pounds, designed for sustained offensive and defensive capability in the event of war, while the second called for 45 million pounds, designed to prevent losing a war at its outset. Both presumed that the Soviets would not have their atomic stockpile until 1953.
He posits that while it was conceivable the country could not afford the first plan, it surely could pay for the second, and, at very least, avoid the deeps cuts by Secretary Johnson.
Robert C. Ruark tells of an experiment at the Mayo Clinic revealing that women cried more tears than men, at least until past middle age, when women cried less.
He found "Adam's Rib" to be the cutest movie he had seen in years. The character played by Spencer Tracy showed that he could cry
It had caused problems around his house as he could now cry on cue whenever dinner was not ready on time or when bills mounted. If his wife cried to try to elicit sympathy, he could cry harder. Tears, he concludes, were no more than "sinus of the eyeballs".
He thinks that if men had discovered this female gimmick a great many years earlier, the world would have been saved many problems.
He intends to confound the Mayo Clinic by showing that any man could shed tears as profusely as any woman.
"Weep no more, my lady. Or at least, weep no more at me. You cried at me, now it's my turn to cry all over you
Tom Schlesinger of The News, in his weekly "Capital Roundup", tells of Senator Clyde Hoey returning home for Easter weekend where he would teach Sunday School at the Central Methodist Church in Shelby. Senator Frank Graham would spend his time at home in Chapel Hill with his wife.
Thus far in the session since January, only three bills had become law, the margarine bill, that extending aid to Formosa and Korea, and that increasing cotton and peanut acreages while tightening potato price supports.
Senator McCarthy's charges apparently had not too perturbed North Carolinians, as both Senators had received few letters on the subject, most disapproving of the slurs against Secretary Acheson.
The charges by the Senator of homosexuals in the State Department had prompted jokes in Washington regarding bisexual foreign policy, and anent one State Department employee who supposedly had sought to prove he was fired for disloyalty.
The FEPC fight was rescheduled to the following week, with 18 Southern Senators, led by Senator Hoey, vowing to fight it. The Senator doubted that there were enough votes to stop a filibuster.
The Senator had never missed a roll call because of sickness in six years.
Congressman Harold Cooley of North Carolina had informed the President that the Brannan farm plan was dead for the session, blaming the loss on disrepute to the program occasioned by the potato fiasco.
A letter to the Washington Evening Star had suggested Lamar Stringfield of Charlotte as composer for the music for the Washington Sesquicentennial celebration, for which North Carolina playwright Paul Green had been hired to write the story.
Experts believed that Senator Graham was ahead of his two rivals for the Democratic nomination in the primary, Willis Smith and former Senator Robert Rice Reynolds, but that his lead was narrowing. There was hope that the FEPC bill, which he opposed, would be delayed until after the May 27 primary. Meanwhile, he was campaigning vigorously in the state on weekends and during evenings. He had recently provided a moving talk on the Senate floor regarding the displaced persons bill.
He provides the votes of the North Carolina Congressional delegation on the natural gas bill and the foreign aid bill.
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