The Charlotte News

Wednesday, October 31, 1951

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Nate Polowetzky, that Communist truce negotiators in Korea had offered to create a buffer zone along their version of current battle lines, still not exactly coterminous, however, with the battle lines drawn by the U.N. negotiators, but stated by the Communists as being their "last and best proposal". The Communists wanted to retain Kaesong, which the allies insisted on having within the buffer zone, and the proposed lines were two or three miles south of where the allies had placed them in their proposal. Still, the surprise proposal by the Communists had raised allied hopes that a piece might be forthcoming, though several questions still remained even if agreement was finally reached on the placement of a buffer zone. Meetings would resume again the following day.

Meanwhile, ground fighting, under rainy conditions, came to a virtual halt.

The Defense Department identified 219 more battle casualties in Korea, including 26 killed, 178 wounded, and four missing in action, with 14 injured in accidents.

In Belgrade, Yugoslav Premier Marshal Tito declared that he was willing to cooperate with but not join NATO, and that the West could count on Yugoslavia as a friend in the event of a third world war. He hoped for better relations soon with Italy and Greece and supported the rearmament of West Germany. He stated repeatedly that there was a danger of war, but that the people should not despair of preventing it.

In Cairo, a British Army spokesman said this day that British troops had seized the road and rail bridge outside Port Said, at the Mediterranean end of the Suez Canal, and were operating it without interference. The British had also seized an Egyptian Government girls' school at Ismailia for use by British servicemen's children, following the Egyptian closure of all British private schools in that town.

Congressman Albert Gore of Tennessee, having returned from witnessing the atomic bomb tests in the Nevada desert at Yucca Flat, stated to the press that "atomic bombs are no longer mysterious uncertainties—they are now specific, accurate, and certain", and could be used on the field of battle. He refrained from providing specifics because of secrecy. He said, however, that the third explosion in the series of tests appeared capable of destroying an enemy division which was reasonably concentrated for attack. The fourth explosion in the series of tests was scheduled for the next day and was expected to combine Army maneuvers with a nuclear detonation.

In Washington, the Democratic Party organization met to select a new chairman, acting favorably on the President's choice of Frank McKinney, an Indianapolis banker.

As explored further in an editorial below, individual income taxes were scheduled to increase the following day, as part of the 5.7 billion dollar tax increase package passed by Congress the previous month and signed into law by the President. The story provides the principal excise tax increases and changes, including a 26-cent rise in taxes on liquor per fifth of whiskey and one-third of a cent per 12-ounce bottle of beer.

House investigators began looking at Department of Justice officials and top officials of the IRB in their continuing investigation of Federal tax collection irregularities, which had resulted in several collectors being terminated from service and two being indicted. Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee announced that when Congress reconvened in January, he would offer legislation to place collectors under a Civil Service system and bar them from outside activities.

In Kayford, W. Va., an underground explosion trapped twelve coal miners deep in the earth this date, and ten hours later, three bodies had been recovered while the others were given little chance of survival.

Washington was ready to greet Princess Elizabeth and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, fresh from their tour of Canada, which had concluded with a huge reception in Montréal, where thousands gathered in the streets to see the royal couple. It was the first visit by British royalty to the United States since King George VI and Queen Elizabeth had visited with the Roosevelts in 1939. The Princess and the Duke would be staying with the Trumans at Blair House, as the White House remained under renovation, and several receptions were planned during the two-day visit, including television and radio network coverage coast-to-coast of the arrival by plane of the royal couple.

Whether former Senator Robert Rice Reynolds and the Hope Diamond would make an appearance was not yet disclosed. It being Halloween, perhaps someone would appear as Marie Antoinette, before or after the surgery, dressed in Carolina blue.

In Mt. Ida, Ark., five or six ferocious circus animals were reported on the loose in a wooded mountain area after a circus truck had overturned.

In San Francisco, a merchant seaman walked into a bar the previous night and announced that he would buy everyone in the place a drink because he had just killed his wife. Blood was dripping from his hands. He was arrested on suspicion of murder and told police that he had killed his wife with his bare hands because after he had returned from a voyage a week earlier, he had discovered that she had been seeing other men. Her body was found in the hotel next door to the bar.

In New York, conductor Leopold Stokowski, 69, and his wife, heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, 27, were expecting their second child in January.

In Las Vegas, former actress Marion Davies, close friend to the late William Randolph Hearst, who had died the previous August, and owner of his Beverly Hills home following his death, was married to Horace Brown, captain of a military transport ship and also a friend to the late newspaper publishing magnate.

Whether there were rosebuds at the ceremony is not stated, and it was a little early, at least in Las Vegas, for sledding.

On the editorial page, "Negroes Are Quitting the South" tells of the Census Bureau having found that in the decade between 1940 and 1950, the non-white population of the thirteen Southern states having risen from about 9.3 million to a little over 9.4 million, a net gain of one-half of one percent or 55,637 persons, while during the same period, the white population in those Southern states had risen 16 percent or 4.4 million, from 27.6 million to 32.3 million.

The lack of proportionate change in the non-white population was the result exclusively of migration of the black population to the eight large industrial states, California, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where the white population increased 14 percent while the non-white population increased 55 percent. Much of that migration had occurred during the war, as people went to the industrial states in search of higher-paying war-industry jobs.

It suggests that the migration might have a favorable impact on the South as the smaller a minority group generally became in a particular region, the less difficulties it experienced with the majority population. It cites Montana, where there was hardly any black population and also no racial problem. The strongest agitation for forcible civil rights legislation had come from the big industrial states of the East and Midwest, which, until modern times, had no significant racial problem. It posits that a continuation of the trend toward migration to these industrial states would provide them "a new understanding of the slow processes of racial progress in the South."

It finds, however, that there was also a bad side to the picture in that the blacks who were leaving the South were generally those who were the more ambitious, better skilled and educated, and if this leadership were drained from the black community, it would adversely impact progress. It concludes that the loss of the best young people, both black and white, could impede the forward movement of the region.

"A Sound UMT Proposal" regards favorably the report of the National Security Training Commission, formed by the present Congress, which, according to U.S. News & World Report, proposed that all males upon reaching their eighteenth birthday would register and, six months later, begin training in the military for six months. Draft boards would determine deferments to be granted in extreme hardship cases and college students would be allowed to finish their academic year. The Army would get half of the trainees, with the remainder divided almost equally between the Navy and Air Force, and the Marines getting five percent. Men with vision impairment and other physical disabilities which prevented them from regular duty in the armed forces would nevertheless be accepted for UMT. The Commission believed that the fourth grade equivalency educational requirement and the physical standards would disqualify about 20 percent of the potential trainees.

Following the six months of training, the trainee would choose either to sign up for a four-year enlistment in the regular armed forces, remain for an additional six months of training in technical courses or go home. Those who chose the latter course would automatically become members of the Ready Reserve, subject to recall for seven and a half years by the President in the event of an emergency. Those who trained regularly for three years would be eligible for the Standby Reserve, to be called up only in the event of an actual declaration of war by the Congress.

About 800,000 young men would be trained under the program at an estimated cost of two billion dollars after an initial year of cost estimated at four billion.

As many World War II reservists were unfit for further duty, it finds the plan for the program good, to have a trained force available for quick mobilization in the event of a national emergency or declared war. It finds the measure to promise a better long-range defense than the present draft and urges its enactment as rapidly as possible by the Congress after the first of the year.

"Indirectly Democratic Republicanism" tells of a letter writer taking issue with Drew Pearson for his use of the term "democracy" in reference to the form of government, claiming that the country was actually a "republic". It quotes from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary the definition of "democracy" and finds that it matched quite well the form of representative government present in the United States.

Mr. Pearson, it suggests, could have differentiated between direct democracy and indirect democracy, the latter being the actual form present in the United States, but that could have led to charges of "un-Americanism" by the likes of Senator McCarthy for qualification of the form of American democracy. Mr. Pearson might have also referred to "Republicanism", in lieu of use of the term "democracy", but then he would be associated with "Mr. Republican", Senator Taft, "and that would probably please neither of them."

It concludes that he just could not win.

A piece from the Pittsburgh Press, titled "Daring Proposal", finds laudable but hopeless the campaign of Senator Robert Hendrickson of New Jersey to stop the Senate from talking so much by proposing a rule to the Rules Committee that debate be limited to matters which were relevant to the subject at hand. It concludes: "Asking the Senate to stop talking is like asking a lawyer to stop taking fees."

Drew Pearson tells of diplomats in Washington suggesting that the victory during the week of the Conservatives in Britain, putting Winston Churchill back into office as Prime Minister, would be a harder situation with which to deal than that of the "drab, pedestrian" Clement Attlee. Mr. Pearson recaps the various conferences in which Mr. Churchill had participated with FDR and, at Tehran and Yalta, also with Stalin. He suggests that the memories were still extant among the diplomatic corps at the State Department of the days when Mr. Churchill, wearing his crimson and gold kimono, wandered the halls of the White House, keeping Harry Hopkins awake until 3 a.m., pushing British policy across on the reluctant FDR and ultimately getting his way.

He had been the principal advocate of hitting Nazi Germany through its "soft underbelly" through Italy, a strategy which turned out not to be so wise for its time consumption of nearly a year.

Mr. Pearson finds that the wisest policy for which Prime Minister Churchill had argued occurred at Tehran in late 1943, albeit a couple of years late. Early in 1942, U.S. military leaders had begun planning a cross-Channel operation from England into France, but Mr. Churchill had sidetracked it in favor of the Italian campaign, which turned out to be a long, drawn-out affair, taking until May, 1944 to conclude, with Rome finally taken just before D-Day. But Mr. Churchill was adamant that he would not sacrifice the youth of Britain, when the earlier generation had been decimated by the losses of World War I, and so insisted that any cross-Channel operation would require a 75 percent commitment of manpower from the U.S., stopping the American military planners in the spring of 1943, as the U.S. did not have the required troops in England to undertake such an operation, as they were all in North Africa and Italy.

In November, 1943, at Tehran, the Prime Minister argued for a continued second front through the soft underbelly, including Greece, Yugoslavia, and Austro-Hungary, in an effort to keep the Russians out of the Balkans, a politically correct decision. Stalin demanded a second front across the Channel, to take the heat off the Eastern front, where the Russians had been fighting the Germans steadily since June, 1941. The U.S. general staff, however, had in mind military strategy to win the war more quickly than through the soft underbelly, and so ruled against the lengthy transportation required to relocate troops through the Mediterranean into the Balkans, agreeing with Stalin on a cross-Channel operation, more quickly to get at Germany. That had been a correct military decision, leading to a quicker victory.

But, he concludes, the Cold War, which Churchill had foreseen, had been dragging on ever since the end of the war.

Such recapitulation of the past brings to mind that it was ten years ago this date...

Marquis Childs, in Madison, Wisc., tells of Governor Walter Kohler, Jr., heir to his father's plumbing company fortune, possibly preparing to challenge Senator Joseph McCarthy in the Republican Senatorial primary the following September. He contrasts Governor Kohler's wealthy background with that of Senator McCarthy, who grew up poor, unable to finish high school until age 20, when he crammed his entire curriculum into one year. Such personal drive had been characteristic of the Senator ever since. When he attended Marquette, his classmates said he was a glad-hander, capable of instant friendliness but no deep friendships, as he was too completely on the make.

Such contrast would be brought into high relief should Governor Kohler enter the race. The Governor was not vulnerable to any smear technique as a pro-Communist and so the Senator would likely seek to exploit instead his underdog status in society. Whether the Governor would run, however, remained a question, as the Wisconsin delegation to the convention were supportive of Senator Taft for the presidential nomination and the state convention the previous summer had heartily endorsed Senator McCarthy, who had organization strength completely on his side.

But in Wisconsin, Democrats or Republicans could vote in either primary and Governor Kohler could rely upon cross-over voting, therefore, potentially to defeat Senator McCarthy. But if the Senator were to be defeated in the September primary, he might, ventures Mr. Childs, run as an independent, which would split the Republican vote and open the way for a Democratic victory.

Editorial Research Reports relates of the second tax bill to pass Congress in thirteen months, with the result that taxpayers would start the following day to see hikes in taxes taken out of their paychecks, albeit small for lower-bracket taxpayers. For instance, a person earning $80 per week, who was married with two children and claimed the full exemption, would have withheld $5.90 from his paycheck rather than the $5.30 deducted previously or the $4.40 deducted prior to the previous tax increase a year earlier. For an employee earning $100 per week, the amount taken out for taxes would be one dollar more than previously and $2.50 more than a year earlier.

He goes on to explain further about the tax bill and the history of withholding by employers. Persons not subject to employment withholding would not experience the tax increase until the following March 15, when tax returns were due.

A letter from a couple, as indicated in the editorial above, takes issue with Drew Pearson for his use of the term "democracy" to describe the form of government in the country, which they deem "left-wing propaganda" issued by a "laxative peddler", sold to the newspapers and broadcasting companies. They insist that it is "OUR REPUBLIC".

That is a very typical response from idiotic Republicans, then, as well as now. Call it, if you like, as we have said on previous occasions, a "democratic republic" or a "republican democracy", with no capitalization, please, but do not hand us that "Republic" business simply because the Pledge of Allegiance, as referenced by this couple, contains the phrase "to the republic for which [the flag] stands". The Pledge is not part of the Constitution and is not embodied in any law as a required oath. The flag, itself, is only a symbol of the Constitution and has little or nothing to do with "God, country, right or wrong, go to war and damn the rest, shoot 'em all", or the rest of the "patriotic" line of illogical inference.

Retreat from unreality.

A letter writer from Pittsboro dreams up an imaginary conversation of commiseration between Duke football coach, Bill Murray, and UNC football coach, Carl Snavely, each of whose teams had just suffered humiliating losses, the Blue Devils to Virginia, 30 to 7, and the Tar Heels to Wake Forest, 39-7, leaving the latter at 2-4 and the former, 4-2. It is too lengthy to summarize and so you may read it for yourself, should you have an interest.

In his penultimate season, after enjoying considerable prior success, including two Sugar Bowl appearances and one Cotton Bowl appearance, finishing number three in the nation in 1948 and in the A.P. top ten in the two prior seasons, coach Snavely would drop to 2-8 in 1951, before resigning at the end of the following year, after his team went 2-6 in a season shortened by two games because of an outbreak of polio, following a 3-5-2 season in 1950. He would begin coaching at Washington University the following season, having some limited success until he ended his coaching career in 1958.

Coach Murray, in his first season at Duke, succeeding retired Wallace Wade, would wind up with a 5-4-1 season, after which he would have a fair amount of success through the years until his retirement in 1965. His coaching tenure would include taking the Blue Devils to two Orange Bowls, in 1954 and 1957, and one Cotton Bowl, in 1960.

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.