The Charlotte News

Monday, October 22, 1951

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note The front page reports, via Robert Tuckman, that allied and Communist liaison officers had completed their agreement on Monday regarding ground rules for renewing ceasefire negotiations, terminated by the Communists on August 23 amid claims of violations by the allies of the neutrality zone around Kaesong. The U.N. command promptly ratified the agreement and called on the Communists to reopen talks without further delay. The Communists had not yet replied, but if they did by Tuesday morning, according to a spokesman for the U.N., the negotiations might be resumed as early as that afternoon or Wednesday at the latest. The new site for the talks would be at Panmunjom.

In ground action, U.S. tanks rumbled into Kumsong for the second time in three days as the Chinese retreated before allied infantrymen, and after four hours in the former Communist stronghold on the central front, the tanks withdrew to their own lines. Ground action quieted all along the front with the announcement of the agreement by the liaison officers regarding resumption of the ceasefire talks.

A front line officer estimated enemy casualties in the ten-day U.N. offensive to have exceeded 15,000.

In the air war, there were six jet battles, with American pilots reporting that they probably had destroyed two MIG-15 jets and damaged one other after a 20-minute battle Monday afternoon between 35 F-86 Sabre jets and more than 50 MIGs in one of the battles, and between nine F-84 Thunderjets and 20 MIGs in another. A total of 182 enemy jets were involved in the six battles. All American planes returned safely.

The Department of Defense disclosed that 55 Americans had been killed, 184 wounded, and 11 missing in action since its previous weekly report.

In Egypt, Britain moved fresh troops from Cyprus into the disputed Suez Canal zone this date, as Cairo newspapers reported a guerrilla underground to be forming to drive the British from Egypt, asking for aid from the Soviet Embassy. The Egyptian Government reportedly moved toward general mobilization on a war footing. The Government charged in a note to Britain that it was "moving in to conquer the country". The British had sealed off the Canal zone and guarded the two entrances and key spots along the waterway.

A Treasury agent testified before a House Ways & Means subcommittee that Denis Delaney, former tax collector at Boston, had once obtained a new Cadillac and two new Chevrolets for $750 plus the trade-in of a two-year old Cadillac from two dealers who had tax difficulties. He obtained the new 1949 Cadillac, with a list price of $4,500, by trading in his 1947 Cadillac plus $250 in cash. The deal had first been turned down but later was approved by the head of the dealership after disclosing that Mr. Delaney knew of the dealer's tax trouble.

Near Las Vegas, the smallest U.S. atomic explosion on record occurred at sunrise and was observed from a mountain 50 miles from Las Vegas as a sharp flash for about a tenth of a second. The early morning sun obliterated the flash to observers in Las Vegas, where five large flashes had been observed previously from atomic tests conducted during the winter. Atomic scientists likely regarded the test as a grand success, proving that atomic explosions could be controlled for use in strategic scenarios, thus usable on troops rather than for use only on large population centers. The blast was made from the top of a 100-foot steel tower.

The Supreme Court reversed itself and agreed to hear an appeal by six attorneys who were cited for contempt and sentenced to jail for their conduct during the New York trial of the eleven top Communist Party leaders in the country. The jail sentences had ranged from one to six months, imposed by Federal Judge Harold Medina. The High Court had denied the petition the previous June, at which time Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas had favored granting review, requiring the approval of at least four justices.

In New York, the wildcat strike among longshoremen spread to Staten Island and threatened to tie up the entire port of New York by nightfall. The workers were protesting the terms of a new wage contract ratified recently by a majority of the union members from Maine to Virginia. The new contract provided a 10-cent hourly increase and the strikers wanted 25 cents per hour. Incidents of scattered violence were reported by police.

In Naugatuck, Conn., police discovered that a woman had been confined without clothing by her four brothers for two years in the family residence. The brothers, ranging in age from 31 to 45, had refused to say why they had imprisoned their sister, who had not been seen by neighbors since their mother's funeral in July, 1949. They were arrested on a charge of cruelty. The sister, in her late thirties, had been sent to a mental hospital under an emergency commitment.

On Formosa, a day-long series of earthquakes occurred, resulting in two deaths and seven injuries in Tainan. Superstitious Chinese set off thousands of firecrackers to try to appease the spirits, but the temblors continued.

In Wursterheide, Germany, a dispute between the local volunteer fire department and that of a nearby city took place while a wing of a local dwelling was burning to the ground. The volunteers, claiming the blaze to be within their jurisdiction to extinguish, turned a stream of water on the other firefighters, who then retreated from the scene. The burning wing was destroyed.

In Raleigh, State Treasurer Brandon Hodges was reported to be considering whether to run for governor the following year and would make his decision known soon.

On the editorial page, "Not in the Public Interest" finds that an amendment to the taxicab ordinance in Charlotte proposed by Councilman Basil Boyd, which would permit the taxi companies to use either meters or a flat-rate system, permit companies choosing the latter to rent or lease their cabs to drivers on a weekly or monthly basis, permit taxis to cruise for passengers, and establish cab stands at certain sites in the business district, was problematic on the first two points, while posing no problem on the latter two. It suggests that the Councilman had not proved that the present taxicab system, using meters, was unsatisfactory, and so there was no reason to return to the old system, fraught with many problems in terms of regulation of the drivers and consequent passenger safety.

"The Closed Shop Hangs On" tells of many devices having been worked out to dodge the Taft-Hartley ban against closed shops, one being preferential hiring policy whereby workers previously employed in an industry operating under the closed shop got first choice at new jobs, and another being the requirement of union membership as proof of job competency. Business Week had pointed out that in some cases there was no effort to comply with the law, such as in the construction industry where employment on a job was so brief that there was insufficient time to permit the slow NLRB certification of the legal union shop.

Representative W. M. Wheeler of Georgia had donned old clothes and gone undercover, seeking a job at an atomic energy project as a construction worker, being told that he would first have to join the union and pay an initiation fee of $108, got the brush-off when he informed them that it was illegal to discriminate under Taft-Hartley in the hiring of employees by encouraging or discouraging union membership. Congressman Wheeler then asked Congress to investigate, but his investigation was pigeonholed before Saturday's adjournment.

The piece thinks this instance provided clear grounds for an investigation, more worthy than the investigations into the past being conducted by the present Congress. It was not only unfair to charge a carpenter $108 before he could obtain a job on a Federal project, but was also illegal. It favors putting Mr. Wheeler's complaint at the top of the Congressional agenda in the new session.

"A More Realistic View" tells of the Chattanooga Times taking issue with a tax bill rider which repealed secrecy provisions of the Social Security Act and argued that the way to correct any abuses of the relief rolls was to elect honest officials and insist upon strict honesty in relief payments.

It finds that the Times had missed one point and ignored another, as it was not so much the lifting of secrecy provisions which was at stake as it was the right of the states to determine for themselves whether relief rolls should be made public, and the Federal mandate for secrecy, it finds, constituted a violation of states rights. North Carolina had a secrecy law and other states could follow the same course. Moreover, the taxpayer had the right to know where tax dollars were being spent, so as to avoid the prospect of politicians in political machines seeing to it that certain families were certified for relief to obtain their votes. It was not, as the Times had contended, a lack of sympathy for the privacy of needy mothers, children, the blind and the old which prompted support of the repeal.

"Cold (Brrr) War Strategy" wonders whether Winston Churchill, as he had during World War II, might, should he again become Prime Minister after the general election in Britain, propose that icebergs be used as aircraft carriers, cheaper than conventional carriers. It finds that while such an innovation might be practicable, the base personnel on such icebergs would likely think it carrying the Cold War too far. Moreover, not a single berg was reported in 1951 to have drifted below the 46th parallel from Greenland, from which thousands had in the past floated into Atlantic shipping lanes.

A piece from the Atlanta Journal, titled "All You Need Is Rhythm", tells of slot machine operators squawking about three gamblers moving through the West using their "system" to obtain big winnings. When the operators called in the police, the police found nothing wrong. The gamblers claimed it was a "rhythmic touch" which they had perfected to cause the machines to come up with three bells or plums or oranges in a row. They had learned the secret while being slot machine repairmen in Las Vegas. The piece wishes them well because of venomous memories of lemons coming up on slot machines in its past use of them, and hopes that the men emptied out every machine and rendered every operator broke.

R. F. Beasley, writing in the Monroe Journal, welcomes his grandnephew, Montford Beasley, 15, to the newspaper business with his column of high school news in the Montgomery Herald. He finds it pleasing that the younger Beasley was describing how the Bible was being taught at his school and had suggested the Bible to contain the "greatest poetry, the most wonderful love stories, and the most comprehensive biographies" which had ever been written. Mr. Beasley finds it distressing that the Bible was passing out of the consciousness of people in modern times, despite more Sunday schools and more preaching. In earlier times, all educated people had a working knowledge of the Bible. But now it was being passed up by educators, writers and students, "for the fiddlesticks of present newspaper lingo."

He welcomes his grandnephew to the newspaper business, advises that happiness and success in the field was not to be measured wholly in financial terms, but in the attitude toward fellow human beings. "And in no field is there greater opportunity for understanding and appreciating others, nor greater opportunity to be understood and respected."

Drew Pearson predicts that historians who evaluated the closing days of the first session of the 82nd Congress would probably make special note of the confirmation debate regarding Ambassador Philip Jessup, as it registered the high-water mark of "legislation through fear". Such Senators as Guy Gillette of Iowa and Alexander Smith of New Jersey had been fully aware of the unfairness of the charges against Mr. Jessup but bowed to their fear of a small, intolerant segment of the American people, sometimes called "McCarthyites". It also marked a period when newspaper editors were criticizing the White House regarding freedom of the press, while one wing of the press seriously confused the public by distorting or suppressing important facts necessary to a free press. He looks at some of the facts in the hearing regarding Mr. Jessup to show how they were twisted by some publishers with political axes to grind.

Two such newspapers, controlling a major segment of U.S. circulation, were the Chicago Tribune, published by Robert McCormick, and the New York World-Telegram, published by Roy Howard, both Republican newspapers, the latter bitterly critical of the State Department. On October 7, when Harold Stassen accused Ambassador Jessup of lying, the World-Telegram found that Mr. Jessup's denial that he attended a White House conference at which cutting off aid to Chiang Kai-shek was discussed formed the heart of his veracity, and proceeded to criticize Mr. Jessup on its front page. When on October 9, the State Department showed the Senators confidential documents which supported Mr. Jessup's claim and showed that Mr. Stassen was wrong, even Republican Senator Smith admitted the fact. But that story was buried inside on page 19 by the World-Telegram and failed to reveal that Senator Smith had supported Mr. Jessup's version. Furthermore, on October 10, former Republican Senator Warren Austin, now the lead U.S. delegate to the U.N., stated that U.N. records showed that Mr. Jessup had been in New York on the date Mr. Stassen claimed he was at the White House conference on China, but the World-Telegram again buried this fact on page 28. On October 15, General Eisenhower confirmed that Mr. Jessup had been conferring with him in New York at the time, a story carried by the World-Telegram on page 5.

Meanwhile, the late Senator Arthur Vandenberg's diary had been made public, showing that Mr. Jessup was not at the White House conference, refuting Mr. Stassen's claimed "crystal-clear" memory of the fact. But on October 11, when Mr. Stassen charged that Ambassador Jessup had urged recognition of Communist China at a State Department round-table discussion, and claimed that the transcript of the meeting would support his claim, the State Department promptly published that transcript, showing that Mr. Jessup had not taken part in the discussion and that the State Department had opposed recognition of Communist China, that only private parties had so urged. Notwithstanding, the World-Telegram featured an editorial the following day criticizing the State Department while carrying a glowing feature story on Mr. Stassen's career along with a positive review of his book, which was no more than a collection of quotations from Mr. Stassen.

Joseph Alsop finds that perhaps one of the strangest characteristics of the time was the distortion of the "sense of history", in that views espoused during the war by conservative Republicans were now forming the basis for hauling people before Senate investigative committees to answer charges of being pro-Communist. Ambassador Jessup had taken part in the "America First" movement prior to the war and now bragged about the fact as a means to show he was not a Communist. Far from the fact of his membership in such an extreme movement being used to suggest that he lacked the judgment for a position of high responsibility as a delegate to the U.N., it was being nonsensically suggested that it was a strong point in his favor.

Mr. Alsop had recently testified before the Senate Internal Security subcommittee which was investigating Far Eastern policy as it had been shaped by the State Department, focusing on former Vice-President Henry Wallace and his trip to the Pacific in spring, 1944, followed by recommendations to FDR upon his return, recommendations which members of the subcommittee were trying to suggest were pro-Communist, when the reverse was true. On the day when Mr. Alsop was waiting to testify, the subcommittee focused on a pamphlet the former Vice-President had written for the Institute of Pacific Relations in 1944, titled "Our Job in the Pacific". But far from being supportive of the Chinese Communists, the pamphlet did not even mention them and in fact mentioned Chiang Kai-shek at one point in glowing terms.

Mr. Alsop was perusing an article from the fellow-traveling publication, Amerasia, which had referenced fall, 1944 quotations from Life and the New York Times, both of which had taken editorial stances entirely consistent with those for which Mr. Wallace was being questioned, the Times favoring a coalition government between the Communists and Chiang. Yet, former Communist Louis Budenz had recently testified that advocacy of such a stance was tantamount to taking the Communist Party line. But it was Mr. Wallace who was on the hot seat rather than the Times editorial writer. "The reader can find his own language to characterize this sort of thing."

Marquis Childs finds that while the Senate was busy conducting a post-mortem on America's policy toward China, the Middle East crisis continued to worsen. Soon, there might be little in the latter region over which to fight, as the Middle East was quickly being lost to the West, in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, etc. The historical forces in Egypt had some parallel with those in China, rooted in colonialism which ignored the aspirations of the masses in a quickly changing world.

A British proposal for an international commission which would appraise the British administration in the Sudan was a start in the right direction, as it avoided any complication with Russia. But should it prove unacceptable to Egypt, a U.N. trusteeship should be proposed, despite the prospect of a Soviet veto or, worse, Russian participation in the trusteeship. U.N. action would likely result in preparation for the departure of British administrators from the Sudan. Egyptian authorities said that they could wait out the British by starving their troops of food and water, but British spokesmen said that they could hold out for years by bringing in their own supplies. Mr. Childs suggests that the latter course courted disaster.

That the Senate at such a critical juncture was busying itself trying to figure out what Henry Wallace had said and intended in 1944 was a phenomenon historians would have a difficult time explaining. It also impugned the loyalty of individuals who may have been mistaken but sincerely and honestly sought the best course at the time in a nearly impossible situation. The fact that the nomination of Ambassador Jessup to become a member of the U.N. delegation had been shelved by the Senate was a tragic case in point.

He suggests that if it were a crime to be mistaken, a high percentage of the members of Congress would be in jail. When the war had ended, a large majority of both Republicans and Democrats had demanded that the troops be returned home, sometimes with a denunciation of high-ranking officers in the process. That tendency had a lot to do with creating the vacuums of power from which so many of the current troubles had stemmed.

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