The Charlotte News
Saturday, October 27, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Robert Tuckman, that the U.N. negotiations team made it "perfectly clear" to the Communists that their proposed Korean armistice buffer zone could not be considered further, but that the U.N. proposal that the line be drawn along present battle lines was subject to minor modifications. The Communist offer required the U.N. forces to give up hard-won ground, in some cases as much as 15 miles of territory, providing, according to the U.N. spokesman, a necessary buffer zone which the allies would not relinquish. The negotiation teams would meet again the following day.
In ground action, fighting erupted in the hills of the western sector the previous day, where about a thousand screaming, bugle-blowing enemy troops charged a U.N. outpost northwest of Yonchon behind a heavy artillery barrage, before being repulsed in two prolonged attacks. In the central sector, three American tank columns struck at enemy positions in the Kumsong area and were met by heavy mortar fire, mines and torpedoes which knocked out two of the tanks and damaged three others.
In air action, for the seventh straight day jets engaged in battle over northwest Korea, with eight Russian-made MIG jets damaged after they failed to stop an allied bombing strike on a bridge and rail lines. For the first time in months, the allied pilots held the advantage in numbers, with 112 allied jets and eight B-29s being challenged by 105 MIGs. All allied aircraft returned to their bases safely.
The U.S. agreed to send modern heavy weapons to Yugoslavia, following weeks of secret negotiations. Details of the agreement were not disclosed, but it was understood that a quid pro quo for the arms would be provision for a U.S. military mission in the country.
In London, new Prime Minister Winston Churchill appointed himself as Defense Minister and Anthony Eden as the Foreign Secretary, Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the House of Commons, positions he had held in the former coalition Cabinet of Mr. Churchill during the war. The Prime Minister also made six other appointments, with more to come the following week. The average age of the appointees was just over 60, whereas the average age of former Prime Minister Clement Attlee's Cabinet had been about 59 and a half.
The final tabulation of the popular vote in the election showed that 200,000 more people had voted for Labor than the Conservatives, though the Conservatives had won a few more seats in Commons.
In New York, fistfights broke out in the ongoing wildcat dock strike, in its 13th day, after 200 non-striking longshoremen broke through the picket lines. Police quickly quelled the melee, which had broken out shortly after the strikers had rejected an appeal by the President to return to work in the interests of national defense.
In San Francisco, the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, headed by Harry Bridges, had gone to court to try to block the rival International Longshoremen's Association from unloading ships, on the basis that such a strike-breaking move would lead to strife and bloodshed on the San Francisco waterfront. The ILWU said it would stop work on all shipping if the unloading continued by the rival union. The ILWU had agreed to unload ships necessary to defense.
In Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Charles Mecadon, president of a UMW local, was fatally injured when his car was blown to bits a few hours after he had received a death threat demanding $2,000. The note had been signed, "The Avengers". Other threatening notes, according to the victim's wife, had been sent to him during recent times.
In North Reading, Mass., a missing heart specialist, who had disappeared the previous day, was found dead this date in his car in a lonely wooded area. The doctor had been the victim of a sensational $18,000 robbery ten days earlier, committed by three teenage girls at his home. Details were lacking regarding his death.
In Pittsburgh, FBI agents arrested the 14th person on embezzlement charges regarding over three million dollars taken during the previous 13 months in the region of West Virginia and western Pennsylvania. The latest arrest was of a cashier and director of the First National Bank of Indiana, charged with embezzling over $30,000. He told the FBI that he had always intended to make the shortage good. He was the second employee of the same bank to have been arrested.
In Chicago, a report to the American Institute of Physics said that single atoms had been discovered of iron, tin, copper and zirconium, as well of the gases bromine and krypton, within cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere. It was anticipated that gold and silver might also be discovered. The discoveries were being made via photographic plates sent up aboard large balloons. When the atoms hit the emulsion, they left electrified trails, the density of which identified the elemental nature of the atoms.
In Washington, Senator William Benton, long an opponent of big-time college football, stated that girls on Saturday afternoon might offer advantages over both physics and football. A former Governor of Connecticut had been touring Europe for the State Department and had written Senator Benton that during his tour of the libraries at Bergen, Norway, he found that on Saturday afternoons young men were working out problems in nuclear physics, and said he thought they ought to play a little more. The Senator referenced his own son, a student at Yale, who, rather than working out physics problems or attending football games, was planning to bring a girl home for the weekend, and said to the former Governor that the two would probably agree that the latter activity was preferable to both of the others.
In California, a Superior Court
judge denied damages to a woman who had sued Norwegian scientist
Thor Heyerdahl for $150,000 because pictures of her hula dance had
been included in the film "Kon-Tiki"
On the editorial page, "Churchill's Victory" tells of the victory by the Conservative Party in Britain having been largely a function of the defection of the Liberal Party from support of Labor to the Conservatives, supplying the latter a marginal victory in Commons, though in the overall popular vote, Labor had outperformed the Conservatives.
It suggests that the Conservative victory would not substantially change either domestic or foreign policy and that most of the revolutionary social and economic changes brought about by Labor during its six-year tenure since the end of the war would remain.
Mr. Churchill was a practical politician and understood that the British Empire had diminished on the world stage, and was a firm believer in U.S. leadership of the Anglo-American alliance. He had been one of the earliest proponents of the European union and would be warmer to the idea of cooperation with NATO than had been Clement Attlee and the Labor Party, which had preferred to remain somewhat aloof from the Continent.
It was likely that Mr. Churchill would soon embark on his noted personal statesmanship and suggest a meeting with President Truman. He also favored a Big Three meeting with Premier Stalin, which the President opposed, wanting all negotiations to be conducted under the auspices of the U.N. It expects to hear a louder voice from the new Prime Minister than was heard from the self-effacing Mr. Attlee, and though Mr. Churchill recognized the junior position which Britain now occupied vis-à-vis the U.S., as one of his aides had said, his position was not "too darn junior".
"Our Congressmen's Voting Record" provides the voting record on various issues in the first session of the 82nd Congress of Senators Clyde Hoey and Willis Smith and Congressman Hamilton Jones of Charlotte, finds them on the whole moderate. In 22 major roll call votes analyzed by Editorial Research Reports, the two Senators had cast similar votes 18 times and disagreed four times. It recaps the individual votes, finds that Senator Hoey was slightly to the left of center and Senator Smith slightly to the right, while Congressman Jones usually sided with Senator Hoey on foreign affairs but occasionally voted with Senator Smith on domestic matters.
"A Carolina County Agent Abroad" tells of a former North Carolina county farm agent, Horace Holmes, having started an agricultural revolution in India, as chronicled by John Fischer in his recently published Master Plan U.S.A. Mr. Holmes had joined the Point Four program, designed to provide technical and agricultural assistance to underdeveloped nations, and gone to the disease-ridden area of Mahwa two years earlier, where he proceeded to teach the farmers to use an iron plow, a cultivator and fertilizer. After introducing new wheat, which increased the crop yield by 43 percent the first year, he taught the farmers crop rotation, increasing the yield another 20 percent, followed by introducing a new kind of potato which more than doubled the output.
Mr. Fischer reported that the Soviet agents within India outnumbered Mr. Holmes by thousands to one, and that a thousand persons like him could do more to stop the march of Communism than 10,000 soldiers and at far less cost.
The piece concludes that the Point Four program, which had not received much support from Congress, combined humanitarianism with the national interest in showing other nations how to produce their own food, with the result that the country would probably not have to send military aid later.
"Raft Romance" tells of the "Lethargia", the raft on which an adventure down the Mississippi River arranged by a sociology graduate of the University of Michigan who sought through an article in the student newspaper three others to form two couples, all strangers to one another, having, according to the captain of the adventure, spawned no romance, which, she said, withered on a raft.
The piece wonders why that was when Kon-Tiki and The Sea Around Us continued on the best-seller list while other sea-going adventures, such as The Caine Mutiny and The Cruel Sea continued to be enjoyed by readers. It suggests that Huckleberry Finn and Eddie Rickenbacker would not be dissuaded from the belief that romance could flourish on a raft, whether on the Mississippi or in the Pacific.
It quotes from Oscar Wilde that "Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in a woman", wondering whether the captain of the rafting expedition had put a damper on the notion of romance during the moonlight cruise, suggests that the national magazine articles which were to follow might shed further light on the matter, positing that such publicity was actually the motivating factor for undertaking the adventure rather than the touted desire for study of group sociological dynamic among strangers.
You forgot "Lifeboat"—perhaps, in a visual world, the more likely stimulus for the adventure, though in theaters a few years earlier. Such do childhood and adolescent images float back to the college student on occasion to act as impetus for scholarly research. Fortunately, Deliverance had not been published, else a damper might have been placed on the adventurous ardor with which the scholars approached their task. "Easy Rider" also, had it been in general circulation, might have had a deterrent effect regarding heading south.
A piece from the Moore County News, titled "Back He Comes", relates of Chatham County having at one time been renowned for its rabbits, as much so as Smithfield had been known for its hams. But in more recent times, that reputation had diminished and been forgotten, until being resurrected at a local dinner at the Rotary Club where rabbit was served and appreciated by the patrons, who thought it was chicken pie. Now, it informs, Chatham residents were determined again to become the major producer of domestic rabbit, chasing California for the honor, which produced 80 percent of the rabbit meat of the country.
In a little over two years, Chatham will
also have to contend with Chicago, if it hopes to become the
rabbit-production champion
Drew Pearson tells of South Carolina Governor James Byrnes, at age 70, having dubbed Bernard Baruch, 81, "old man diem". Recently, Mr. Baruch had phoned Governor Byrnes regarding the former's surprise meeting with the President, informing him that the President had been quite cordial despite their prior embittered relations, and that Mr. Baruch had greeted him likewise. He also informed Governor Byrnes that the President had referred to the Governor as being extremely capable, to which the Governor responded that such a compliment must have been stimulated by the fact that following was an election year. Mr. Pearson notes that despite the compliment, Governor Byrnes would be for General Eisenhower in 1952, regardless of whether he would run as a Democrat or Republican.
Former commissioner of Major League Baseball, former Senator from Kentucky "Happy" Chandler, had been floating his name as a possibility for the chairmanship of the DNC. Mr. Pearson lists several other prospects for the position.
Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee, for the sixth time, had engaged in assaultive conduct on the Senate floor or in committee, this time brandishing his cane at the commissioner of Displaced Persons, Harry Rosenfield, who had interrupted Senator McKellar during an harangue against Displaced Persons Commission chairman John Gibson, who had difficulty understanding the Senator and asked repeatedly for repetition of his questions, to which the Senator had irritatedly asked whether there was anyone around who understood anything about the displaced persons issue, to which Mr. Rosenfield interjected that if the chairman of the Commission did not know anything about the matter, no one did, a statement which Senator McKellar quickly interrupted, saying that no one could talk to him in that manner, while lunging at Mr. Rosenfield with his cane.
Mr. Pearson lists the other five instances of similar conduct through time.
Joseph Alsop tells of the "wonderfully unsurprising" announcement by Senator Taft that he was running for the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1952 having had the unintended collateral effect of coalescing the relatively disorganized and sometimes mutually suspicious supporters of General Eisenhower for the nomination.
The principal supporters had come together in a series of meetings in Washington, organized by Senators James Duff of Pennsylvania, Irving Ives of New York, Frank Carlson of Kansas and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., of Massachusetts. They had reached agreement on several major points, that the headquarters of the Eisenhower movement would be in the General's home state of Kansas, at Topeka, to be opened shortly and probably under the joint direction of Senator Carlson and former Senator Harry Darby, also that the organizing office would be opened quite soon in Washington and that Governor Dewey would allow his allies publicly to lead the Eisenhower movement, confining his personal effort to New York and the Eastern states while lending a quiet hand elsewhere when needed. The latter was to quiet the speculation that Governor Dewey was, behind the scenes, in supporting the General, maneuvering for renomination, himself.
The leaders of the movement had visited with General Eisenhower in Europe and had come away convinced that he would allow his name to be placed in nomination and would accept a draft at the convention. Some of the leaders in the movement had quietly had representatives out among the states for many months working to get the General nominated.
He concludes that while there were many contingencies remaining within the Eisenhower movement, it was less so than the Taft propagandists would hopefully suggest.
Marquis Childs finds that the revelations about bribes to IRB agents for favorable tax treatment should have been foreseen from the time when the late Robert Hannegan had been appointed commissioner of the IRB in 1943. Mr. Hannegan had been a shrewd politician who would enable his friend, Senator Truman, to become the vice-presidential nominee in 1944, leading to the Presidency.
Mr. Hannegan, as head of the IRB, had done nothing wrong by his own standards, but those were standards of a politician, allowing infiltration by politicians into the jobs of collectors and other important posts.
At the same time that process was happening, Elmer Irey, head of the intelligence unit of the IRB, had gone into semi-retirement and shortly thereafter died. He had been responsible for the prosecution of Al Capone for tax evasion, as well as that of other gangsters and some politicians, the latter including the late Boss Tom Pendergast of Kansas City. Mr. Irey had the backing of Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., who urged prosecutions through the Justice Department whenever he thought the latter was lagging. Mr. Irey's tenacity served as deterrent to tax dodgers and he was alert to any slight hint of wrongdoing by his agents and collectors.
Mr. Childs concludes that the moral laxity which war always produced had flourished in the boom times after the war, resulting in the uncovered problems at the IRB.
A letter writer from Pinehurst compliments the several editorials on the refusal of the Foreign Affairs subcommittee to confirm the appointment of Philip Jessup to become a member of the U.N. delegation, and especially "The Shame of the Senate", which appeared October 24. He compares the rejection of Ambassador Jessup, wherein Senators Alexander Smith and Guy Gillette had found no fault with him but nevertheless found rationale to vote against him, to Pilate's condemnation of Jesus.
He finds that the McCarran Internal Security Committee, of which Senator Willis Smith was a member, also relied extensively on hearsay evidence, which, he suggests, Senator Smith would not allow into evidence were he a lawyer in a trial. He suggests to the Senator that he begin applying the rules of evidence to his committee work.
A letter writer, commenting on the same October 24 editorial, finds that the President had put Ambassador Jessup in "the purgatory of indecisiveness", as the editorial had termed his status. The writer says that he had heard from "reliable sources" that the President and Secretary of State Acheson had been convinced that Mr. Jessup would be rejected for the nomination if it came before the full Senate and so had directed Senator Tom Connally, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, to table the nomination so that a recess appointment could be made by the President. The letter writer thinks this process to have been a circumvention of the will of the people through their elected representatives to vote on the nomination. He thinks that the errors in judgment made by Mr. Jessup, presumably in reference to his debunked supposed sympathy for Communist China, had resulted in the Korean War and so deserved little sympathy for the position in which he found himself.
A letter from two corporals and a private first class of the 27th Infantry Regiment in Korea seeks letters from girls stateside and promises a reply. They provide the address, via San Francisco, where interested parties can write, should you have a mind. But as it took 67 years to get to you, do not be insulted if their reply might take as long.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.