The Charlotte News

Tuesday, November 13, 1951

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Communist truce negotiators in Korea had, according to an allied spokesman, made it even more clear this date that they wanted to create a buffer zone across Korea which would presently result in a ceasefire, contradicting their earlier statement that fighting would not cease until an armistice was finally signed. The U.N. negotiating team was adamant about there being no ceasefire buffer zone until after agreement on all terms of the armistice was reached. During a five-hour session this date, arguments had become more heated as the Communist delegates became more impatient and their tempers grew shorter. They complained that an allied plane had violated the Panmunjom neutrality zone on Saturday and the U.N. spokesman conceded that there was some truth in the complaint as a propeller-driven plane dropping U.N. surrender leaflets had flown over the edge of the zone but had turned away immediately, that some of the leaflets had blown into the zone though dropped outside it.

In ground action, U.N. troops stopped a series of coordinated enemy attacks along a three-mile front on the east coast in the Kosong area, with fighting continuing all night until dawn. Otherwise, only patrol clashes were reported.

In the air war, U.S. Fifth Air Force fighter-bombers cut North Korean rail lines in more than 100 places.

In Paris, at the meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, the Assembly refused to reconsider the Russian-backed proposal to give a seat to the Communist Chinese and agreed to consider the Western plan as a first step in reuniting Germany, while also agreeing to consider a Yugoslav complaint against hostile Soviet actions designed to destabilize Marshal Tito's regime.

Iran, almost bankrupt in its dispute with Britain over nationalization of Iranian oil properties belonging to the British, had been provided an 8.75 million dollar emergency credit this date by the International Monetary Fund.

The Supreme Court agreed to rule on the contempt citation issued against Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer and eight other persons regarding the refusal to sell the Government's Dollar Steamship Co. stock, after being directed to do so by the Federal Court of Appeals the previous spring. The Government's possession of the stock had arisen from a Government loan to the company made in 1938 and assignment of the stock as security.

In Hot Springs, Ark., Governor James Byrnes of South Carolina declared to a news conference that the South owed its loyalty to no political party or candidate in the 1952 presidential election and said that he was opposed to the renomination of the President, would support instead either Senator Richard Russell of Georgia or Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia. His statements came in reply to the urging by Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn that Democrats remain loyal and unite in the coming election year. The Speaker had also said that Texas would never have voted for Herbert Hoover in 1928 against Catholic Al Smith of New York except for "prejudice and bigotry" and that his home state never again would vote for a Republican for president. Governor Theodore McKeldin of Maryland, the only Republican Governor present, stalked out of the meeting during the Speaker's speech, later accusing the Speaker of turning the annual dinner into a "Democratic rally of a very low order". Governor Fielding Wright of Mississippi, strongly opposed to the President, said that the speech was "a partisan political talk which should never have been made" at the Southern governors' conference.

The Commerce Clearing House, a business and tax law analyzing agency, estimated that the Government would take 29 weeks' worth of additional pay out of the average working life of an adult under the just-passed Federal tax increases which took effect November 1.

Near Evanston, Wyo., rescue crews continued to probe two wrecked passenger trains in which 20 or more persons had died and eight others seriously injured, during a snowstorm the previous day. The City of San Francisco had slammed into the rear of the stopped City of Los Angeles, both Union Pacific luxury trains. No reason for the accident had yet been disclosed beyond the inclement weather.

In Atlanta, police would not comment on why a 38-year old Fulton County deputy had shot and killed a 23-year old high school basketball coach outside the high school gymnasium and then committed suicide, after the deputy had made statements that the high school coach had broken up his home and caused him trouble.

In Statesville, N.C., the Reverend J. Livy Hood of Troutman ARP Church, a member of a well-known Mecklenburg family, had been killed shortly before the previous midnight in an automobile accident, when the car he was driving struck a tractor-trailer truck. At a coroner's inquest during the morning, the driver of the truck was cleared of responsibility for the accident.

In Providence, R.I., a 63-year old retired farmer was out walking when he realized that two dapper-looking men were following him, whereupon he loosened his belt and dropped down one leg of his long underwear his wallet containing $200, an heirloom watch and two rings, all of which lodged in his sock. A few minutes later, the two men pointed a pistol to the farmer's back and demanded his money, whereupon he provided them $10.60, the men then skipping the 60 cents and fleeing.

He saved his family jewels, but why did he not let his loose silver slither down his longjohns?

In St. Charles, Missouri, a bowler who had rolled two successive strikes in his last frame of a game, was suddenly startled when a 40-pound light fixture fell from the ceiling onto his head, leaving a gash which required 10 stitches. No one remembered his bowling score.

Presumably, the cut would not have been so bad had he thrown a split on the first ball. But, perhaps, the light fixture was framed for the rap.

On the editorial page, "Sale of Bus System in Order" finds the sale of the Charlotte bus system by Duke Power Co. appropriate, as the reason for having an electric power utility operate the buses had long passed since the elimination of the electric trolley car. Duke had operated the bus system fairly well, doing so usually at a loss, but also having to make up those losses with higher electricity rates to customers around the state, an illegal practice which had been overlooked. Having an independent company operate the bus system therefore made good sense.

"People and Politicians" tells of the disparity between two recent Gallup polls published on the front page, the first of which having stated the general preference among the population for General Eisenhower over the President and Senator Taft, while the second, just published the previous day, having shown an overwhelming preference among Republican county chairmen for Senator Taft over General Eisenhower, suggesting the need for preferential primaries in each state to determine party nominees rather than turning it over to the professional politicians at the convention.

The Republicans had relied upon the professional politicians and their desire for patronage to select the nominees in each case since the defeat of President Herbert Hoover by FDR in 1932 and appeared poised to make the same mistake in 1952, which inevitably would lead to another defeat, the sixth straight for the Republicans.

"The Truman-Churchill Meeting" finds the prospective January meeting between the two heads of state to be inevitable since the Conservative Party victory in the recent British general election, returning the Conservatives to power for the first time since July, 1945, and also signaled a return to personal diplomacy. It suggests that Congressional leaders of both parties be included in the Washington conference, to avoid complaints of secret deals, excluding the American public. The conference could then take on the beneficial atmosphere which pervaded the U.N. foundation-laying Dumbarton Oaks conference in fall, 1944, the U.N. Charter conference in San Francisco in spring, 1945, and the recent September Japanese treaty conference in San Francisco.

"Cut Cops' Pay?" refers to the front page report of the Yonkers, N.Y., voters, after turning down a raise in pay for its police force, experiencing a sudden spike in traffic citations during the two-day period following the election, and finds that, according to the Stanly News & Press, only an average of 19 traffic citations for speeding had been issued in the first nine months of the year in each county per month, far too few when observing the number of speeders on the roads, leading it to suggest that perhaps the electorate ought vote in each county to cut police salaries until greater enforcement of the speeding laws was undertaken, speeding being the chief cause of traffic fatalities.

A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "Food, Drink and History", tells of a British freighter bound from Tientsin to Hong Kong having been attacked by Chinese pirates recently and, following some gunplay, having come aboard, whereupon the captain invited the pirate leader to the bridge for tea, after which the pirates decided to depart the ship without any further act of piracy. It was not clear whether they had changed their minds or had been convinced by the tea or the diplomacy to abandon their task. The piece hopes it was some of both of the latter.

It recounts that during World War I, Prime Minister David Lloyd George had held most of his conferences over breakfast where plenty of bacon and orange marmalade were present. Marshal Joffre gave his successful order to prepare for the Battle of the Marne in that war while nibbling on beef stew, and William Pitt, the younger, it was said, worked best against Napoleon when claret was handy, and, according to a biographer, was supposed to have said as his last words, "I think I'd like another of Bellamy's beef pies."

It concludes that perhaps the fashioning of history should be turned over to the trenchermen, as hungry men had not done so well by it.

Drew Pearson tells of Winston Churchill, Princess Elizabeth, and General Eisenhower having played three different parts in three different parts of the world recently, each of which was a symbol of hope, "tired, discouraged, lagging hope, it is true, but nevertheless hope." Princess Elizabeth had come to the U.S. as a front-person to produce goodwill for the inevitable need for a British loan, while Mr. Churchill had won a marginal victory in the recent general election in Britain and now had the unenviable task of stopping the skid in the British stock market and halting the dollar drain and the general slide in the economy. Meanwhile, General Eisenhower was attempting to build a Western European army to defend countries so war-weary that they almost preferred to be conquered rather than again have to fight. And again, his task depended on American money.

Mr. Pearson urges that there were two great principles which had made America great, without which, he believes, Europe could not long survive, one being the concept of a United States of Europe, and the second being the principle of equality embodied in the Declaration of Independence. While France and some other countries in Europe had political equality, there was no economic equality, as those born into one economic caste generally stayed within it the entirety of their lives with that status passed to each subsequent generation. The only way to overcome this caste status was to emigrate to the United States.

"Thus the great mass of the people, stuck in one groove, with little chance of improving themselves, abandon hope." In consequence, Communism, with its phony promises of new horizons, brought hope to thousands of converts within Europe. While the U.S. had spent billions on economic and military aid, it had done little to bolster spiritual, cultural or philosophical aspects of society.

To encourage the United States of Europe was a principal reason General Eisenhower had returned the previous week for a visit with the President and Joint Chiefs, as he had to put the cart before the horse in trying to build up a European army when the countries of Europe still remained as separate sovereignties with separate economies and no binding federation. It was tantamount to General Washington having to draft the Revolutionary Army out of the thirteen disparate colonies to fight the British. General Eisenhower had no more control over the number of troops France, for instance, might provide for this incipient army than did General Washington over the size of the militia to be provided by one colony. The United States had eventually formed out of this experience and it was General Eisenhower's hope that the same might prove true in Europe. The U.S. was the only nation in the world which had solved the problem of Federal Government while preserving some degree of states' rights. Europe needed a similar system.

And now, we have a moron in the White House who favored Brexit and also appears to want to undermine, if not abolish, NATO, completely oblivious to the paradoxical nature of those two stands, along with his moronic support for "nationalism", i.e., a return to the very conditions after World War I which produced Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. It pays to study history in some detail, its trends in a temporal nexus of particular events, its problems and consequences, so that past mistakes will not be repeated, and not just bank statements, the stock market ticker and public opinion polls, to determine both domestic and foreign policy. It takes a lot more than a moron in the White House to do that.

That said, we see no great reason to celebrate the centennial of the end of World War I, falsely labeled at the time as the "War to end all wars", for, as it turned out, the Armistice concluded at 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918, proved no more than a prelude to World War II and all of its many horrors, the results of which we live with to this day. September 2, 2045, will be a day to celebrate, perhaps, but November 11, 2018 is no more commemorative of the dead than any other Veterans Day, designed to commemorate the dead of all wars, not just those of World War I, and so we don't fault so much the moron in the White House for not attending the ceremony in Europe designed to commemorate the dead of that particular war. We say that as someone whose great-uncle was a veteran who fought and died at a young age in the trenches of France in that war and certainly do not mean to suggest that the soldiers who fought and died in that cruel war do not deserve the honor which belongs to them by their sacrifice among the poppies. But there is no reason specially to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of an Armistice which proved to be only a 21-year hiatus in a continuing world war started in Europe over essentially the same internecine conflicts.

Unfortunately, because of the very same ideas which are prompting the moron, Republicans in this country, led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (the elder) and others, refused to see the wisdom of President Wilson's Fourteen Points and joining the League of Nations, the refusal of which condemning that forerunner of the U.N. to failure, with the result, inexorably, that World War II followed out of the intense nationalism created in Germany and Italy after World War I and the economic debacle in Europe, as well, by 1929 and onward into the late 1930's, in the United States. But, we give the moron a pass for not going to the cemetery—even if on the weak, trumped-up excuse of inclement weather barring a helicopter ride. We would rather that he had said something along the lines which we just said, regarding not underscoring the historical significance of the hundredth anniversary of the "end" of a war which was not in fact its end, at least, thereby, exhibiting some sensitivity to history.

The reader might note that, despite it having been only six years since the end of World War II and while the Korean War still continued, there was not a single mention of the anniversary of the Armistice on either the front page or editorial page in these days, though perhaps there might have been in other newspapers which published on Sunday, November 11, 1951.

Stewart Alsop, in Cairo, tells of a revolutionary situation ongoing in Egypt where it was only a matter of time before the Government would fall, that appeal to moderate forces might delay that fall, but that it was inevitable with so many extremists afoot. He suggests as a remedy the formation of a benevolent dictatorship as in Turkey under Kemal Ataturk, who had transformed a crumbling, corrupt and anarchic society, much as that of 1951 Egypt, into a modern democratic state functioning surprisingly well.

The British, in effect, had first created the ruling class of Pashas and then controlled them through bribes of one type or another, as the British needed this class through which to exercise their power in Egypt. When, under Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, the British ended the system of bribes to politicians and journalists, there was considerable indignation among the Egyptians who had previously been the beneficiaries. Renewing that system might work for a time, but it could not do so indefinitely.

The remedy lay not in trying to establish democracy in such countries, where the great majority of the population lived below the level of their animals. Democracy in Egypt meant only politicians outbidding for the support of the street mobs, leading to vicious extremism. Thus, there was the need for the benevolent dictatorship.

Robert C. Ruark tells of actor Horace McMahon having become well known as a hoodlum tough in over 60 movies, but just having finished a stint on the side of law and order in the stage and screen versions of Sidney Kingsley's "Detective Story", regarding what went on in a precinct station house. (That would inevitably lead to his recurring role in the television version of the 1948 film "Naked City".)

He had been miscast in a Gene Autry western, as well as in the role of a French assassin in "Marie Antoinette", and had a terrible time in both parts. He said that he was the Lord's greatest gift to writers as a hoodlum, for all he had to say was "Okay, boss," so frequently reiterated that the writers began simply leaving that point in the script blank, knowing that he would fill in the appropriate line in response to the boss's commands.

A letter writer from Matthews responds to A. W. Black's previous letter condemning the local radio stations for playing hillbilly music. This writer enjoys "Hillbilly Star Time" and "G.I. Time", says that the programs were for those who enjoyed them and not for the highly educated society class—in whose ranks we would have to question whether A. W. actually belonged, given some of his earlier writings to the newspaper. He suggests to Mr. Black that he simply turn off the radio if he did not like the fare.

A letter writer from Monroe responds to the November 10 letter of the Blue Ridge Baptist Association of Western North Carolina, which had objected to the appointment of an ambassador to the Vatican, this writer explaining that 44 countries presently had diplomatic representatives at the Vatican and that Maryland, founded by Catholics in 1634, had been the first English settlement recognizing religious freedom, at a time when Catholicism had been prohibited by 10 of the other 12 colonies. He questions whether these Baptists were preaching the gospel of Christ when they dabbled in politics, that addressing the problems of sin was their proper province. He cites the 1946 Encyclopaedia Britannica Year Book and its subsequent year books for his facts.

A letter writer responds to the same letter, saying that she was aware of many Baptists who did not subscribe to the beliefs stated by these ministers and again states that Catholics had not sought or requested that the President send an ambassador to the Vatican. She asserts that Catholics through the ages had made a large number of contributions to intellectual life in the nation and world and that the Catholic Church remained the largest, most unified Christian body in the world presently.

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