The Charlotte News
Saturday, November 24, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Robert B. Tuckman, that hope was fading for final approval of the Korean buffer zone during the weekend as liaison officers reported that agreement had been reached on only half the line, after more than five hours of meeting on Saturday. The U.N. spokesman said it was too early to determine whether the two sides had hit a snag and that they would meet again on Sunday, hopeful of resolving the line as progress was still occurring in the agreement process, attempting to determine the present line of battle, with which the line was to be coterminous for 30 days, contingent upon resolution in that time of the remaining issues necessary for a final ceasefire. Major differences had arisen regarding five miles of territory or a strategic point such as a hill.
In the ground war, the Communists launched thousand-man attacks in four sectors along the front, outnumbering allied troops two or three to one, but had made no dent in allied lines. The attempt appeared to be to attack at night and pull back before daylight to avoid being hit by allied planes and artillery. The heaviest of the attacks was on the western front, west of Yonchon, where Chinese forces had knocked allied forces from a hill known as "Little Gibraltar" on Friday night, after which the allies had counterattacked in subfreezing temperatures on Saturday and regained the position. By the end of the day, the allies held three of the four hills which formed the crest. It appeared that the problem experienced Saturday in establishing the battle line was the result of the ongoing battle for "Little Gibraltar" and that the disagreement over the line might not be resolved until this battle was finally determined. The other three points of attack were north of Yanggu, northwest of the "Punchbowl" and south of Kosong on the east coast.
In the air war, 18 U.S. F-86 Sabre jets encountered 35 Russian-made MIG-15 jets south of the Yalu River and damaged three, with all allied planes returning safely to base. During the week, allied planes had destroyed or damaged 18 enemy jets while six allied planes had been shot down.
On the central front, Vice-President Alben Barkley celebrated his 74th birthday by firing an autographed artillery shell toward the Communist Chinese lines. He said that he expected to live to be 105.
In Paris, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky insisted that the Western powers rewrite their disarmament proposal made to the U.N. General Assembly earlier in the week, so as to make it acceptable to Russia, proposing twelve amendments which essentially would transform the proposal into the one Russia had submitted two weeks earlier, including immediate ban of the atomic bomb and an immediate one-third reduction in arms by the five permanent Security Council members. Some Assembly delegates believed that the reply left the door open for further negotiation. Ambassador Philip Jessup of the U.S., however, expressed disappointment in the reply.
Mr. Vishinsky claimed that Russia had been offered a seat on the Security Council for White Russia in exchange for concessions on disarmament but that he had refused the offer. The rotating seat was about to be vacated by Yugoslavia.
General Matthew Ridgway, supreme commander of U.N. forces in Korea, submitted a report to the Security Council which stated that as many as 8,000 American prisoners of war had been killed while in enemy captivity, an increase from the 6,000 recently announced by allied headquarters.
The U.S. also accused Russia of intercepting and firing on an American plane, missing and presumed lost since November 6, over international waters off Siberia. The plane, with a crew of ten men aboard, had been on a weather reporting mission and was under the command of the U.N. in Korea, and the formal protest stated that it had not come closer than 40 miles from Russian territory—according to sources, off Vladivostok.
In Tehran, Premier Mohammed Mossadegh's Government announced that it would call for immediate national elections and challenge Parliament's decision to delay same until December 18. The Premier had just returned from a 47-day trip to the U.S., returning by way of Egypt. He had conferred for over five hours with the Shah, presumably to obtain his support for the decision. The major issue in the election would be the financial crisis in Iran resulting from the loss of oil royalties accruing to the Government before the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company by the Government.
The President had ordered an end to tariff agreements under which the U.S. gave Russia and Poland trade concessions as "most favored" nations, meaning that they would be subject to regular import duties. Bulgaria, Communist China and Czechoslovakia had already lost their "most favored" nation status. The President also ordered a ban on bringing into the U.S. several types of furs from Russia and Communist China.
Friends of former Governor of Minnesota Harold Stassen urged him to throw his hat into the presidential ring before January 1, and Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, indicating that he could not say yet whether he would support Senator Taft or Mr. Stassen if General Eisenhower were not available, said that General Eisenhower ought declare his candidacy immediately. The pressure appeared to derive from the early entry to the race by Senator Taft, followed by Governor Earl Warren of California. It was likely that the supporters of Mr. Stassen would enter his name in the March 11 New Hampshire primary, but might withdraw it should General Eisenhower allow his name to be placed on the ballot. Mr. Stassen would apparently be entered in the Minnesota primary the following week, regardless of whether the General was on the ballot.
Another Gallup poll appears, this one finding that 28 percent of voters identified themselves as independents, and thus determining that neither party could win the 1952 presidential election without attracting a substantial number of such voters. The Republicans had a greater problem in attracting independents than did the Democrats, with Republicans needing nearly two-thirds of their number and Democrats, only a little more than one-third.
Dr. Cornelius Pickens, 84, one of the most widely known Methodist ministers in Western North Carolina, had died at the Methodist Home in Charlotte, having served, during more than 50 years as a minister, several pastorates throughout the Western part of the state, in Tennessee and in Virginia. He had been in ill health since September. He had also been the president of one college and on the boards of trustees of three.
The coldest weather of the season hit the Midwest, with temperatures going below zero in parts of North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. Snow flurries fell in the Great Lakes region and the west central Rockies. The Gulf states and the South and middle Atlantic states continued to have mild weather. Temperatures were close to normal from the Rockies to the Pacific Coast.
News sports editor Bob Quincy finds the Duke versus UNC football game, to take place this date in Durham, to be not so attractive as it had once been, with more people in Durham showing up to see the Christmas parade than attending pep rallies for Duke. Likewise, in Chapel Hill, there was less interest than at any time in the prior 25 years, as students were home for Thanksgiving and so few remained in town. Not a single "Beat Dook" sign was in evidence and few stores in Durham showed recognition of the game. The Washington Duke Hotel downtown had experienced numerous cancellations of reservations. Hair-clipping and stadium painting, which had once been part of the rites of the rivalry, were absent, after being condemned by student and faculty leaders.
What about the little doggies with the horns, one light blue and one dark blue, and the bell?
On the editorial page, "The Empty Stocking Is Hanging On" tells of the beginning of the 20th annual Empty Stocking Fund sponsored by The News, to provide Christmas for underprivileged families of the community through donations from the public, in large and small gifts. The emphasis had shifted over the years from giving outright gifts of merchandise to providing cash directly to enable those who received the assistance to plan their own Christmas in advance. It urges giving to this worthy cause.
"The Product of our Penal System" tells of news stories about the murder-kidnaping near Washington, N.C., to which the following editorial also relates, having stressed that the defendant had been released on parole from a burglary conviction a year earlier, against the advice of the authorities of Beaufort County, after serving 8 1/2 years of a 12 to 15-year sentence—the Thursday front-page story having indicated, however, that the conviction occurred in 1944. It suggests that this emphasis might obscure the fact that it was the State's penal system, rather than the parole system, which needed re-examination.
The defendant's parole officer had said that the defendant had a good parole record and had been employed. Yet, the previous Wednesday night, he had decided to obtain an automobile and so fired through the window of the home of the victim, killing him, then forced the victim's wife to drive him a few miles before stopping on a dirt road and forcing her into the trunk. He then was stopped by two Highway Patrolmen as he headed toward Greenville, at which point the crime was discovered.
The defendant had been 16 when he was sentenced on the burglary conviction and, presumably, had been assigned to one of the prison camps where he was confined with hardened adult criminals and where there was no apparent effort at rehabilitation. He had left prison obviously with no comprehension of right and wrong and no understanding of the value of human life. It concludes that his stint in prison had turned a youthful burglar into an adult murderer and kidnapper and finds it a significant example of the failure of the penal system in the state.
Parenthetically, the Thursday report had indicated his age as 21, indicating his age at the time of the 1944 conviction to have been even younger, 14 or 15.
"Proof Positive" finds remarkable the excuse given by the two Highway Patrolmen near Greenville for pulling over the black driver of the automobile and making a "routine check", finding that he had murdered the owner of the car and stuffed the man's wife in the trunk. The Patrolmen said that he was driving at the appropriate speed of 35 mph, but that they hardly ever saw anyone driving that slowly at night and so thought that the driver might be drinking, but after following him for about a half mile, abandoned that notion, yet decided to pull him over anyway to make the check.
The piece thinks it was testimony to the bad driving habits of the populace generally that the two Patrolmen found it extraordinary that someone was traveling 35 mph at night.
That which it should have questioned, of course, was whether there was in fact probable cause to make the stop, and then to make the search of the vehicle, and therefore whether all of the evidence thereby obtained in the search, including statements of the wife and admissions by the defendant as fruit of the poisonous tree, had to be suppressed, and the charge of murder against the man thus dismissed—assuming no other evidence could be found at the scene of the murder, independent of the vehicle stop and search, which would connect the defendant to the crime, such as footprints in soft earth matching the defendant's shoes or a piece of torn clothing or the like.
Had there been probable cause for the stop, there is no question that there was probable cause for the search as the officers said they heard the woman's screams emanating from the trunk after the stop. Had that not been the case, the fact that the man had no driver's license would likely not, in and of itself, have been deemed sufficient to supply the necessary reasonable suspicion, based on articulated specific circumstances, to conduct an invasive search, but would have provided the ground to arrest him for not having a valid license and to make a further detention to determine the man's identity by contacting headquarters by radio, in which case, assuming he supplied his correct name, they might have then determined that he was on parole and, perhaps, as in some states, subject therefore to a search condition, which would have allowed a search of his person, place of residence, vehicle or immediate surroundings with or without probable cause. In any event, an impoundment of the vehicle could have resulted because of his not having a valid license and, presumably, no proof of ownership of the vehicle, at which point a routine inventory search would have discovered the evidence in the trunk, consisting of the shotgun used in the murder and the victim's wife.
But were the Patrolmen basing the initial stop on a hunch because a black man was driving a late model car? If so, case dismissed (subject to the aforementioned contingency regarding discovery of other evidence, the legal discovery and seizure of which was sufficiently distinct to attenuate the taint from the illegal stop), with the only thing for which they could properly send him back to prison being a parole violation.
Of course, this was Eastern North
Carolina in 1951, and they likely will pull the switch, regardless of
the Fourth Amendment
"Neo-Nazism in Europe" relates of disturbing reports on the resurgence of Nazism in Germany
and to a lesser degree in other parts of Europe. The Socialist Reich
Party had been seeking to restore "'the many good features of
Nazism'" and held about ten percent of the parliamentary seats
in several of the German states. By comparison, in 1928, five years
before Hitler had come to power, the fledgling Nazi Party had
obtained only 3.5 percent of the vote. Dueling societies had also
become popular and veterans of the German Junkers officer corps gave
blood and wine toasts beneath the swastika and demanded vindication
for the SS
These neo-Nazis professed their desire to halt the spread of Communism, just like the old Nazis, and thereby hoped to win favor in the anti-Communist West.
In Italy, the Fascist Italian Social Movement was gaining strength, obtaining four percent of the total vote in the 27 large Italian cities in the most recent election, double the percentage obtained in 1948.
Fascists from Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Norway and Denmark had met recently in Sweden to establish an international organization, calling for the expulsion of the U.S. from Europe through "the replacement of the Atlantic Pact in its present unsatisfactory form by a European defense union", a union under German leadership which would seek to pit the U.S. and Russia against one another.
This trend was opposed by a majority of Germans, and the Bonn Government of West Germany had sought in court to outlaw the Socialist Reich Party.
U.S. High Commissioner to West Germany John J. McCloy had acknowledged "disquieting signs" but believed that the Germans were nevertheless ready to govern themselves. He had shown great ability in weaning the Germans from the "totalitarian teat" and toward democracy.
It concludes that the burden henceforth rested largely on the Germans, who would face great difficulty in forming a democracy among extremists who had become accustomed to authoritarian rule.
A piece from the Chapel Hill Weekly, titled "Must We Be Apes?" wonders why so many people dressed by the calendar rather than the actual weather, observing that most of the men seen on the street during unseasonably warm days were dressed as they would be if they lived in New York or New England. It recalls a football game in Kenan Stadium a couple of years earlier on a November day when the temperature was 80 and the people around in the stands were complaining bitterly of the heat while wearing winter clothing, nevertheless uttering exclamations at the writer because of his dress in khakis. Some expressed envy.
"Must we be apes and imitate the clothing habits of the inhabitants of colder regions?"
Drew Pearson tells of the House Ways & Means subcommittee investigating the tax scandals having concluded in executive session that its chairman, Congressman Cecil King of California, had not, as rumored, applied pressure in California tax cases to prevent their prosecution. Witnesses generally had said there was no evidence of such pressure, but one witness charged that the Congressman had used his influence on the side of one of the men who were the object of the tax fraud case, by means of urging settlement of a 30 million dollar lawsuit. Because the hearings had taken place in executive session and Mr. Pearson believes that the Congressman's conduct ought be open to public scrutiny, he publishes the facts which had been disclosed.
Former Assistant Attorney General Lamar Caudle, recently fired as head of the tax division of the Justice Department, had insisted the previous March on investigation of these tax cases, including the charges that Congressman King had exerted political influence to settle the pending 30 million dollar lawsuit brought by the Long Beach Savings & Loan Association against its former officer for mismanagement in making bad loans to three individuals. That matter had resulted in the tax investigation.
The witness, however, agreed with the subcommittee counsel that Congressman King had not exerted any influence on the tax matters. The witness, upon inquiry, said that he had taken the accusation originally to Republican members of the subcommittee rather than to Congressman King directly, because he believed Mr. King had personal feelings against him, then explaining the basis for that belief.
Marquis Childs, in Paris, tells of the reconstruction of Western defenses being dependent more on the dynamic personality of General Eisenhower than his military acumen, that he spent only about a fifth of his time on military details, such as inspecting troops and planning distribution of weapons. In his office, he had a series of charts in a cabinet, which he often showed to visitors, indicating the necessity of the U.S. to have access to raw materials in various parts of the world, such as uranium from the Belgian Congo, tin from Malaya and Bolivia, and rubber from Indonesia. The General believed that it was not just a matter of purchasing these commodities but that it was necessary also to rebuild the spiritual, economic and military base of the free countries so that they would not be hostile to the U.S. or become subverted by Communism.
The General devoted his days to meeting with a steady procession of visitors, including ambassadors, heads of state, cabinet ministers and others. He stood up to the strain of this daily ritual remarkably well, and its effect on these visitors was substantial, as many who arrived as skeptics, left as converts. That applied particularly to newspaper publishers who would pass through NATO headquarters. Most such visitors left thinking that the General shared political views identical with their own, but that remained to be seen until he would enter the political arena.
Despite the General's efforts, Western strength remained puny by comparison to that of Russia. Given the financial crisis in France and Britain, there was a tendency among observers to become pessimistic, but the General resisted this defeatism, though offering no specific plan for remedying the economic crisis. He did not see it as a reason to give up on the recovery of Western Europe.
Stewart Alsop, in Baghdad, tells of an American visitor constantly hearing from Arabs the statement that with a dagger thrust into their hearts, the West should not expect them to be friends. They referred to Israel as the dagger, the state having become an obsession with all Arabs and the central political factor throughout the Arab world.
Four years earlier, one of the camps for Arab refugees from the Arab-Israeli war had been established in Baghdad, containing some 35,000 of the 872,000 Arabs who had once lived in the towns or worked the land which now was in Israeli territory. During the interim, the Arabs had fashioned clay huts in this camp and it had become something of a city, albeit without businesses or shops, and without reason for existence. Visitors were greeted silently and told not to take photographs. The monthly flour ration always ran out after the third week and they never received any meat or cigarettes, had only three doctors. As more children were born, the relief rolls expanded.
The Israelis contended that the Arabs had done little to help their fellow Arabs and considered the continued existence of the refugee camps to be a useful application of pressure on Israel. The camps, housing hundreds of thousands of people in complete degradation, needed remedy before there was open revolt. The aim had to be to avoid another Arab-Israeli war at all costs, as that would be fatal to Western interests throughout the Middle East. The first step in this process, Mr. Alsop asserts, was to deal with these refugees, who surrounded Israel with an "iron ring of hate".
A letter from A. W. Black responds to the several letters which had criticized his previous letter, denouncing hillbilly music being played on the radio. He finds it to have been an "admirable gesture" but unconvincing "to anyone capable of critical analysis". He says that just because someone found hillbilly music pleasurable did not make it good, that hillbilly music bore no resemblance to entertainment "either in terms of refinement or artistic expression". He finds that "for the most part melody is subordinated to naive lyrics, rhythmically unbalanced by tones that violate every concept of harmony." He instructs that poetry was originally music in which the meaning and melody were one, inspiring culture and encouraging civilization. Now, however, everyone with a guitar who could yodel without splitting a tonsil distorted music into an abomination, made worse by disc jockeys who indulged in "monotonous and superficial prattle with little appreciation for, or command of, the English language."
He concludes that such mediocrity tended to corrupt the taste of the people and their appreciation for what music really was–"a medium of expression inspiring the finer human emotions conformable to the individual mood."
Well, A.W., sometimes the individual moods of people, young or old, but especially the young, conform, in some part, to a reversion to the primitive state, from which we all descended down the tree of life, a way of slowly releasing pent-up inhibitions and anxieties to prevent harboring those stored emotions to the point of their release in unhealthy ways, either internally or externally, in one burst of energy, which might even result in violence.
And therein lies the rub. For let's face it, it is hard to boogie to Beethoven and Mozart, and so Bozart sometimes serves its purpose, even in the Sahara...
A letter writer responds to the November 22 editorial, critical of the President's speech before the Women's National Democratic Club in Washington, takes the side of the President and finds it acceptable that he made political speeches on occasion, as it helped to hear from the Democratic side in response to the Republicans, who rarely made any other kind of speech than those which were political. The President had advocated legislation for the benefit of ordinary Americans who were not wealthy and many of the scandals within his Administration had not been substantiated. He finds the President's speech to have been comparatively temperate, considering the intemperate attacks by the opposition. He also finds that the editorial's criticism of the President's attack on "old guard" Republicans and the "special interests", that they would turn back the clock, for it being supposedly without foundation, to be the "Gospel according to St. Luce", as spread by Time, Life and Fortune.
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