The Charlotte News
Thursday, November 15, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Robert Tuckman, that that Communist negotiators in Korea had abandoned their insistence on an immediate ceasefire following an accusation by Maj. General Henry Hodes, chief of the two-man U.N. negotiating subcommittee, that the Communists wanted to "substitute a legal clause in place of good faith". He had called on the Communists to work out a joint proposal for settlement of the buffer zone dispute, so that they could move on to the remaining issues necessary for a final ceasefire. The Communists had contended that they had never sought to effect an end to the fighting before a full armistice was signed, despite their having indicated on Wednesday that a de facto ceasefire would be the "unavoidable result of the agenda" in the event of U.N. acceptance of the Communists' previous condition that a ceasefire zone be adopted on current battle lines which could not be altered by subsequent fighting without mutual assent.
The ground war was bogged down by rain, with the only action reported being a small see-saw night battle to advance allied positions northwest of Yanggu on the eastern front.
The aerial war was also hampered by the weather with only a few weather reconnaissance planes operating before noon, while the previous night allied planes again struck enemy rail lines and front line positions.
The U.S. Eighth Army intelligence division report the previous day that the Communists had murdered 5,500 U.S. prisoners of war in Korea caused outrage and anger in the country and prompted a call by Congressman W. Sterling Cole of New York for use of atomic weapons in the war. Congressman Paul Shafer of Michigan said the report was more reason why General MacArthur's insistence on a full strike against the Communists was necessary to achieve complete victory. The State and Defense Departments had been caught off balance by the report as they were unable to say whether the Government officially supported the claims. The President said that if true, the slaughter was horrible and uncivilized, but that no official report had yet been made. U.N. commander General Matthew Ridgway also apparently had not anticipated the release of the report as he was duck hunting at the time.
House investigators regarding the IRB tax collection scandals sought an order from the President providing them with new powers, following the President's announcement the previous day that he would direct the Justice Department to provide all files the investigators wanted regarding tax fraud prosecutions.
The Washington Post had quoted Assistant Attorney General Lamar Caudle, head of the tax division, as stating that he had disqualified himself from an income tax case against a Charlotte taxi fleet owner because of his long friendship with the individual. Mr. Caudle had also stated, according to the article by George Draper who had interviewed Mr. Caudle at length, that he and the chief counsel for the IRB had made a trip to Florida three years earlier in a private plane owned by a Charlotte businessman, adding that he did not know at the time that the man was under investigation for tax fraud. He also claimed that he had taken no part in an Alabama tax case wherein there had been a dismissal of a criminal conspiracy charged against a group of liquor dealers who pleaded guilty in Louisville to selling whiskey above the OPA ceiling price during the war.
In Manhasset, N.Y., an inspector for the IRB in New York City shot and killed himself with a shotgun the previous night, according to police. His wife said that he had shown no indication of worry about anything.
The President declared from Key West that he was drafting his State of the Union message, committing the Democratic Party to campaign in 1952 under the Fair Deal banner, but refused to comment further to reporters on whether he would support General Eisenhower for the Democratic nomination or whether he would again run himself. He reiterated that during his meeting with the General the previous week, the two had at no time discussed domestic politics. He also said that Governor Earl Warren of California, who had announced his entry to the 1952 presidential race the previous day, was a fine man and that he at one point had not known whether Governor Warren was a Democrat or Republican, an uncertainty which persisted. He also stated that the Korean War should not be a 1952 campaign issue, responding to Senator Taft having raised whether the United States should have become involved in the conflict. He disclosed that both the late former Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and former Justice Owen Roberts, both Republicans, had recommended his appointment in 1946 of Fred Vinson as Chief Justice, upon the death of Harlan Fiske Stone.
Winston Churchill had trouble with the Court of St. James spelling his surname as "Spencer-Churchill", in accord with his birth certificate, but the Prime Minister insisted that his surname was just Churchill, originating from his days at Harrow when his name had been called out under the "S's" rather than under the "C's", causing him to drop the hyphen.
In Montpelier, Vermont, high school authorities found 102 of the 217 students absent, as it was the beginning of deer-hunting season in the state.
They needed to prove themselves men rather than boys by hunting the deer only with their bare hands. Catch a buck by the horns that way, boy, and then you can say you have accomplished a manly task.
In Asheville, the North Carolina State Baptist convention this date adopted a resolution opposing compulsory military training under the universal military training program. It also approved a resolution reaffirming the need for separation of church and state, regarding the appointment of an ambassador to the Vatican. It condemned the Ku Klux Klan. It also condemned the President for the appointment of General Mark Clark as Ambassador to the Vatican, stating that if the nomination were confirmed, then all Catholic bishops in the U.S. should be registered as agents of a foreign government.
In northern Italy, the death toll had risen to more than 80, resulting from several days of flood and storms.
In the coalfields of northern France, the mines were virtually shut down by a Communist-called strike protesting a Government order increasing the cost of the miners' health services.
In Yanceyville, N.C., an all-male jury of eight whites and four blacks deliberated in a case of a 44-year old black farmer accused of assaulting a 17-year old white girl by leering at her and trailing her across a field. The jury had been instructed that assault did not require physical touching or that the defendant be within striking distance of the alleged victim, that a person did not have the right to place another in fear by a "show of violence" and thereby cause that person to change their course of travel. The State had twice reduced the charge from the original assault with intent to commit rape, down to the current charge of assault. The defense argued that the charge had originated in the girl's imagination and the "natural anxiety" of her father, "the ambition of an officer to be a Perry Mason" and the desire of the prosecutor to convict someone.
On the editorial page, "The Wayward Course of Justice" tells of an editorial in the Asheville Citizen having reminded of the inequalities in application of the laws, as it told of the cases of two Forest City black men, one sentenced to 13 years on the roads, one year for each of 13 instances of stealing chickens, to run consecutively, and the other man sentenced similarly to 11 years on the roads for 11 such cases, while jukebox king Vaughn Cannon had received only a year and a day active sentence on his probationary two-year sentence after defrauding the Government of taxes for four years.
It quotes from John Galsworthy that "Justice is a machine that when someone has once given it the starting push, rolls on of itself." It concludes that Justice barely scraped some while crushing others.
"Difficult Role in Korea" finds that while the Communists clearly, according to Allied communiqués, wanted to end the fighting immediately in Korea, it was not clear that the U.N. negotiators wanted to do so. The U.N. argued that the remainder of the five-point agenda adopted for the truce talks in July would not be addressed in any timely fashion were the U.N. to agree to an immediate ceasefire, relieving the pressure on the talks.
It could be argued reasonably that the U.N. ought agree to end the hostilities forthwith to end the bloodshed and provide a less stressful atmosphere in which to discuss the remaining issues. It finds, however, that the U.N. position was probably based on "cold-blooded logic" which had been learned the hard way during previous negotiations with the Communists, that to force their hand to agreement meant maintaining military superiority, in this case entailing edging closer to the Manchurian border. But that meant the potential for another violent Communist military counter-offensive, as had been the case the previous November and December, with the consequent possibility of engaging the Chinese Communists in a full war.
It concludes that if the U.N. force, largely manned by Americans, was to attain stature as an international police force, it had the duty to achieve peace with honor in Korea and, after already having won its case, could obtain presently a ceasefire buffer zone with lines superior to those of the former boundary at the 38th parallel between North and South Korea. It needed, advises the piece, to exert restraint and self-control.
"Benjamin B. Gossett" laments the death by sudden heart attack of the 67-year old Charlotte resident who had been active in the community after building up textile mills in Charlotte and South Carolina. His father had also been in the textile business and he had grown up therefore around that business when it was experiencing a bitter struggle for existence, something Mr. Gossett never forgot. Despite the fact that at one point during the Great Depression in the Thirties, it would have been cheaper to shut down the mills, which were losing money, he kept them running for the sake of the workers, who were averaging only $14 per week in wages, pay which he openly recognized was insufficient but also better than nothing, the consequence had he shut down the mills.
It concludes that he was a good citizen who devoted himself to many worthy organizations and worthwhile causes benefiting the community.
"Peron's Grip Is Not Complete" finds some small consolation in the recent election in Argentina, which saw the re-election of dictator Juan Peron for another six-year term, with his principal opponent having polled a third of the total votes cast, demonstrating that the dictator did not hold absolute control over the voters, despite his control of all of the major organs of the press in the country and all of the propaganda being spewed by the Government, in addition to the might of the influential Argentine Army.
It points out that under the country's voting procedure, a voter selected a party ballot and thus announced whether he was supportive of the dictator's hand-picked slate of officials or was departing for the opposition, a choice perilously made by a third of the voters. The fact suggested that perhaps the populace was beginning to tire of their totalitarian ruler and counseled the need to keep alive and strengthen that opposition to the "ruthless police state" set up by Sr. Peron.
A piece from the Louisville Courier-Journal, titled "The Cosmic Clutter", tells of reading of plans for spaceships, rockets or man-made satellites to be sent into the heavens, despite the silent shooting stars which might prove hazardous to interplanetary traffic. While the piece does not wish to turn back the clock, it ventures that "finite pinches around the edges of the infinite are an impudence; and we will remember the crystal blue and velvet black, forgetting the rage of cosmic dust and the rack of meteors."
Bill Sharpe, in his weekly "Turpentine Drippings", snippets from newspapers around the state, provides one from the Harnett County News, which told of teachers getting a day off for an NCEA meeting in Durham, prompting students to try to figure out what the initials stood for, with one student proposing, "No Classes, Everybody's Absent."
The Knoxville News-Sentinel tells of a honeybee courser from Pigeon Roost, N.C., who had coursed bees to seven bee trees, one of which had been traced in a mere two hours while natives had been looking for the tree for four years.
Though the piece does not say so, he apparently received an A in what a bee sees.
The Lenoir News-Topics tells of Dr. Harold F. Dorn of the National Institute of Health having predicted that in a century it would be a woman's world, given the fact that the female lifespan had increased by fourteen years since 1929, such that by 1970, females would be enjoying an average lifespan of 80 years, while males would be limited to 74.
The Kannapolis Independent finds poorly timed the slogan "the South will rise again" to promote the sale of small Confederate flags, as the South, judging by all economic statistics, had already risen.
You know, of course, that the boys who purchase those little Confederate flags are talking about something else entirely, when they say "rise". They could care less about economic circumstances, for they tend to be of two types, those sufficiently insulated that they do not have to worry about economic ruin or those without sufficient means to have hope of ever rising above their currently degraded condition. Thus, the latter group wave the little flags as a cry of rebellion, while the former join them or encourage them in the practice for the sake of achieving political power to bring about the very economic circumstances which will keep the latter group continually depressed indefinitely and having to work, therefore, at depressing little jobs for the master, Massa Trump.
Billy Arthur, former head cheerleader at UNC, in News & Views, tells of a representative of Inland Newspaper Representatives, Inc., having asked him whether he had ever seen a Truman dime, to which Mr. Arthur replied in the negative, whereupon his visitor produced a one dollar bill.
And so on, on, on, forth, so more on, on more, more.
Drew Pearson indicates that Governor Dewey had not met secretly with General Eisenhower at the Waldorf as had been reported the previous week, but that a meeting had taken place between the Governor, Senator James Duff of Pennsylvania, Herbert Brownell, the mentor of Governor Dewey, and General Lucius Clay, at which was discussed the means of accumulating delegates for the General despite his inability to declare his candidacy before the following spring.
It was now virtually certain that the General would face the President in the Oregon Democratic primary, while also facing in the same state's Republican primary Senator Taft.
The chief Washington lobbyist for Generalissimo Francisco Franco of Spain was passing around $20 tips to Mayflower Hotel waiters when ordering sandwiches and coffee.
The City of Houston had been struggling for several months to raise $8,500 to pay its entertainment bill for General MacArthur, and a Houston hotel owner had sought contributions from San Antonio, Fort Worth and Austin, while in Athens, Texas, the people pitched in $1.93, the proceeds of the auction of one can of black-eyed peas, to help the effort.
Movie mogul Louis B. Mayer appeared to have received particularized favorable tax treatment from an amendment plugged into the recent tax bill, permitting capital gains tax treatment for income when a former employee sold his rights to future profits to his former employer, so crafted that it fit only Mr. Mayer and a few others. Mr. Pearson notes that Mr. Mayer's tax lawyer in the past had been a close friend of Senator Walter George of Georgia, who drafted the tax bill.
Administration Democrats in the Congress had again thrown in the towel on creation of a Missouri Valley Authority to provide flood control and public power, instead seeking a compromise in the next session for a limited system of flood control dams and some power development in the Kansas River basin, a plan recommended by the Army Corps of Engineers to abate the prospect of another series of destructive floods as had beset the region the previous summer.
Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery of Britain had sent a message to General Eisenhower urging him not to give up his post as supreme commander of NATO in February to run for the presidency, warning that Western European defense would fall apart if the General departed. Mr. Pearson notes that General Montgomery's message might have been colored by the fact that the British Army had been sidetracked by General Eisenhower during the Normandy invasion in 1944 for having failed to keep up with General Omar Bradley's forces, but then had provided to General Montgomery's forces two of General Bradley's armies during the Battle of the Bulge six months later, a move resented by General Bradley, prompting Mr. Pearson to speculate that perhaps General Montgomery feared that General Bradley might replace General Eisenhower as NATO commander.
Joseph Alsop tells of General Eisenhower, during his recent trip to Washington for discussions with the President and Joint Chiefs regarding progress in the military situation in Europe, having reassured, albeit only implicitly, his supporters for the GOP nomination in 1952 that he would allow his name to be placed in nomination and accept the draft of the convention when the time came. It appeared untrue that the President and the General had discussed politics, as both had denied it, despite reports that the President had beseeched the General to run as a Democrat the following year.
A group of leading Democrats close to the President, however, had sent emissaries to Europe to discuss the possibility with the General, among them former Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall, who came away with the clear understanding that the General could not, under any circumstances, run as a Democrat.
The Republicans who had talked to the General were Senator James Duff of Pennsylvania and Governor Dewey, both of whom spoke to him by telephone, and the General had made it plain that he would "act and react", indicating that he would be available to run when called upon to do so. He had not made a flat commitment, which permitted him to change his mind, but the remarks had convinced his backers that he would declare himself in the event he was drafted.
There loomed the possibility that the President might use his power as commander in chief to block General Eisenhower's candidacy on the Republican ticket, but it appeared clear that the President had indicated that the General was free to make his own political choice in his own time. That left only the questions whether the General's backers could organize their movement in time for the convention the following summer and whether, notwithstanding that effort, the Republicans would go ahead and nominate Senator Taft because of the declining popularity of the President.
Robert C. Ruark tells of a friend, who had become vice-president of a bustling Texas firm, Ruthrauff and Ryan, just a few years after starting as a $30 per week mailroom clerk, interspersed by four years serving in the war. Now, at age 27, he had left the security of the executive position with that firm and set out on his own to build his own firm, and Mr. Ruark wishes him great success, as it was heartening to see that such entrepreneurial spirit could still be realized.
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