The Charlotte News
Tuesday, November 27, 1951
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that allied and Communist truce negotiators signed a ceasefire line agreement in Korea this date, but immediately developed two vital differences on how to supervise an armistice. The U.N. negotiators insisted on joint allied-Communist inspection teams with "free access to all parts of Korea" and a provision against military buildups by either side, points not included in the proposal by the Communists, who had never permitted outsiders in North Korea. The Communists had desired an adjournment until the following day to study the U.N. plan. The two plans did agree that shooting would stop when an armistice was signed, that a joint commission would supervise the truce, that all forces would withdraw from the buffer zone and enemy territory after the armistice was signed, and that armed troops would stay out of the buffer zone. The ceasefire line agreement would be extant for 30 days, pending agreement on the other issues necessary for a final armistice.
The full five-man truce negotiating teams met for the first time since October 25, during which interim the two-man negotiating subcommittees had been working out the ceasefire line and buffer zone.
Fighting quieted all along the 145-mile frozen front in the ground war, but two jet battles erupted in the air war, as one U.S. Shooting Star and four enemy jets had been shot down, with four other enemy planes damaged.
A report from London indicates that Moscow-trained Rudolph Slansky, the one-time hatchet man for Czechoslovak Communism, had been, on orders of Communist President Klement Gottwald, fired as vice-premier and arrested in Prague for "activities against the State". American officials suggested that the move demonstrated the internal struggle for power in Czechoslovakia, with President Gottwald wanting to consolidate his power and eliminate all prospect of Titoism.
Former Assistant Attorney General in charge of the tax division, Lamar Caudle, testified further before a House Ways & Means subcommittee investigating his handling of tax fraud cases, admitting that he and Charles Oliphant, chief counsel of the IRB, had been, during the summer of 1947, fishing guests in Florida on two occasions of a North Carolina manufacturer who was under investigation for tax fraud, but that he did not know at the time that there was a tax fraud case pending and that if he had, he would not have invited Mr. Oliphant. On both occasions, other Government officials had also accompanied them on the trip. He said that the man in question had never mentioned his tax case during the Florida trips, but he had learned of it in subsequent telephone discussions with the man, during which he had asked how he could obtain relief, to which Mr. Caudle had replied that it was a matter for the IRB collector in Greensboro, and that he also might have suggested that he call Mr. Oliphant who might be able to tell him what to do. He said that he called Mr. Oliphant and may have asked him to remove the tax liens against the man or see what he could do about the matter. The committee counsel said that the tax liens were removed the next day, but Mr. Caudle said he did not know anything about that.
IRB commissioner John Dunlap, according to an informed official, was preparing to release a report the next day designed to improve efficiency and weed out employees who had betrayed their trust.
Joseph Ferguson, opponent of Senator Taft in the 1950 Senate election, testified before the Senate subcommittee investigating spending during the campaigns of the two candidates, indicating that 100 million dollars had been spent toward the re-election of Senator Taft, if calculated on the same basis Senator Taft had used to suggest that the Ferguson campaign had spent two million. He said that the actual expenditures of the Taft campaign were five million dollars. He stated that it was a "deliberate lie" by Senator Taft that the Democratic campaign had been orchestrated by a Communist named Gus Hall. The Senator had claimed that Mr. Hall had written an article in a Communist magazine which had provided the "blueprint" for opposition to the Senator's re-election. Mr. Ferguson said that the only Communist of whom he was aware, who entered Ohio during the campaign, was Ben Gitlow, who had made several speeches for the Senator. He said that there were plenty of people from outside the state who came into the campaign on behalf of Senator Taft, contrary to the assertions of the Senator that outsiders had appeared for Mr. Ferguson. Mr. Ferguson listed Senator Kenneth Wherry, RNC Chairman Guy Gabrielson, actor Adolphe Menjou, Harold Stassen, and Senator Joseph McCarthy as having made appearances for the Senator. Mr. Ferguson also said that the Government was cheated out of tax money because large companies had run political advertising in support of Senator Taft and then deducted that advertising from their taxes. The purpose of the hearings was to formulate legislation to regulate campaign spending.
The second installment appears of the 12-part serialization of Senator Taft's A Foreign Policy for Americans, in which he takes to task the tendency of the President and State Department to declare foreign policy and to engage the country in the Korean War, without consulting the people's representatives in Congress. He suggests that for many years the State Department had put forward a theory of action by executive agreement instead of by treaty, as in the area of trade and tariffs, insisting that the executive department had the right to raise and lower tariffs through reciprocal trade agreements, apart from any standard prescribed by law. These agreements had never been submitted to Congress for approval and Senator Taft indicates that the State Department had adopted an attitude of hostility toward Congress while demonstrating a complete distrust of the opinion of the people.
He regards the trend as having reached a climax when the President committed the country to the Korean War without telling Congress for several weeks what he was doing, and the question remained whether the country could be committed to a war by the President without the consent of Congress.
In London, the New Theater presented the farce And So to Bed the previous night, and it had been a "swimming success", as in the first act, Hazel Jennings, while reaching for the top note in "Gaze Not on Swans", was hit in the neck by a jet of water from a fire sprinkler, and in the second act, Keith Mitchell and Jessie Royce Landis, during a torrid love scene, were drenched by the fire sprinklers, whereupon the stage managers cut off the sprinkler system at the main and the show went on.
On the editorial page, "A Vast Future Unfolds Before Us" finds that while many predicted the downfall of the human race from the atomic armament race, fighting in the Far East, inflation, corruption and tax burdens at home, and oppressed and hungry millions throughout the world engaged in fanatical, nationalistic revolt, the emergence of the new political concept of a community of free nations and the commensurate breakdown of national sovereignty comprised the prevailing attitude in the West. Despite the arguments among the allies, enormous progress was being made in the postwar world toward cooperation, as exhibited in the U.N. action in the Korean War.
Europe bore no resemblance to the spiritless shell it had been immediately after the war and Communist strength there had progressively decreased, while in the U.S., it had virtually disappeared. The traditional nationalism of Europe had been shattered during the previous four years through the Marshall Plan, its European subsidiary, the Organization for European Economic Cooperation, the European Payments Union, the Schuman Plan for pooling European coal, iron and steel industries, and the European army being integrated under NATO.
As well, Canada and the U.S. were slowly but surely breaking from the isolationist mold followed after World War I, though the internationalism now being advocated, free-world internationalism, with NATO its chief exponent, was different from that advocated by President Wilson, that of one-world internationalism.
NATO was forming an alliance which grouped together like-minded peoples with the majority of the world's material resources, thus forming the solid foundation for eventual world order, which could be expanded as time went on. As General Eisenhower had said, the future of NATO lay not only in military union but also in political union. Some U.S. Congressmen and their European counterparts advocated European and Atlantic union.
Edward R. Murrow of CBS had summed it up well recently in a talk with Jean Monnet, the modern French revolutionary, when he said that nation-states could no more live alone than could the caveman, that the "narrow, national compartment" was as outdated as the clan, and that in modern times larger communities were needed, where all shared the responsibilities, leaving the "jungle of international life for the high ground of federation."
It concludes that Communism, through its negative force, had effectively spurred the free world onto the right track.
"Fading Furs" tells of the President's order banning the import of certain furs from Russia and Poland having put a dent in the prospect of American women owning fur coats. But, sable and Persian lamb imports had not been banned, although trade concessions impacting them were being abolished. Also, New York furriers estimated that they had enough Russian furs on hand to meet the demands of American women for another year or two, and that if they were to run short, they could obtain the furs in a roundabout manner, although at a consequently higher price.
The piece indicates that it had long believed that rabbits, muskrats and sheep provided coats just as warm and beautiful as did minks of Europe and Asia, and if the global economic war forced the upper classes to settle for a Montana muskrat or Alabama possum, that would be fine.
A piece from the New York Times, titled "Birth of a Newspaper", tells of the new La Prensa having appeared in Buenos Aires with all the trappings of the old newspaper, but now under the direction of dictator Juan Peron's Labor Confederation, and thus subservient to the dictator as his mouthpiece, promoting his supposed efforts on behalf of a free press and free labor. Whereas the original La Prensa had been a check on the Government, openly critical of the Peron regime, since it had been taken over by El Presidente, it no longer had any connection with democracy or freedom of the press and speech.
Drew Pearson tells of Secretary of Interior Oscar Chapman, having served as protégé to former Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes, who had left the post in early 1946, now refusing most of the time to take the calls of his former boss. Recently, Mr. Ickes had phoned Secretary Chapman to oppose the granting of electric power from Hungry Horse Dam in Montana to Anaconda Copper Company for the purpose of putting it in the aluminum business. When Secretary Chapman did not return his call, Mr. Ickes sent a letter to the President registering his concerns over the fact that the move would provide Anaconda an even greater monopoly on the state of Montana than it already had. Thereafter, Secretary Chapman spoke with Mr. Ickes and was convinced of the argument, such that the Secretary wrote a letter to the Defense Plants administrator stating that he would not transfer the Government power to Anaconda.
The Congressional hearings regarding alleged influence exerted by Congressman Cecil King of California to stall tax prosecutions of some of his friends demonstrated the problem of Congress investigating its own, especially when the subcommittee assigned to make the investigation was the same which Congressman King chaired, albeit stepping aside for the time being during the investigation. The questioning of witnesses by the subcommittee counsel, who had pulled no punches in the past, appeared aimed at defending the chairman, of whom he had asked no questions at all.
Mr. Pearson reiterates that Lamar Caudle had been concerned over the failure to prosecute these particular tax cases of Mr. King's friends, and had, the previous March, demanded an investigation as to why they had not been sent to Washington instead of being handled in Los Angeles by local officials friendly to the Congressman. It was highly unusual for tax cases to be referred from a local IRB office to the U.S. Attorney without first being sent to Washington, but that had been the practice in the Los Angeles situation.
Joseph Alsop discusses the prospect of Chief Justice Fred Vinson becoming the President's hand-picked successor to the Democratic nomination, pursuant to the Thanksgiving dinner discussion between the Chief Justice and the President at Key West. Some months earlier, the Chief Justice had appeared willing to enter the Democratic race, provided he did not have to jump from the Supreme Court directly into politics, and could have an interim position as Secretary of State, should Secretary Acheson resigned. The latter prospect now appeared unlikely, and in any event, the Chief Justice believed that it was too late for a successor Secretary to enter the role without the perception of political aspiration, which could be harmful to the nation's foreign policy.
While it was not known whether the President and Chief Justice had discussed politics at Key West, it was possible that the discussion centered on what other role the Chief Justice might have as a transition from the Court to the nomination process. While then-Justice Charles Evans Hughes had gone directly from the Court to the role of Republican nominee in 1916 in his bid to defeat President Wilson, Chief Justice Vinson thought it a bad precedent. Some people were guessing that, with the Secretary of State's position no longer practically available, the President might create a role of a kind of assistant President for the Chief Justice, to enable him eventually to enter the race.
Of course, none of that happened.
Robert C. Ruark finds the new preoccupation with the female breast to have degenerated to an obsession, such that all mystery had been "stripped from the bosom by television, stage, Hollywood, the press, advertising and economics in general." One individual with a successful syndicated column devoted his attention principally to chest measurements. "He who studies television carefully enough must wear slit goggles to escape snow blindness."
He had been talking to British actress Julie Harris recently and she had expressed amazement at this preoccupation, indicating that in England, acting was still performed with the face, whereas in America, the female profile had been freshly discovered. She expressed surprise that the Statue of Liberty had not been replaced with a statue of Dagmar.
Mr. Ruark makes clear that he was not knocking a pleasant portion of the female anatomy but contended that too much emphasis on anything spoiled its long-term effectiveness. The female breast was not news and yet it was being treated as if it were. He cites a United Press headline recently which described the gasps of "Dagmar's rival" as drawing gapes, suggesting that when she breathed, she could knock the observer's eye out.
There had been too much importance attached by the GIs during World War II to pinup girls, and recently he had observed at a jet airbase a set of safety-stressing comic strips involving a caricature of a major with a secretary who never said a word but walked in and out of the episode, "playing a mute Jane Russell." He thought it was a poor way to focus young fliers' attention on safety regulations.
He asserts that the commercialization of the bosom had reached a peak in the previous couple of years, to the point where if one bought a car, rode in a plane or train, or ate a certain kind of food or consumed a certain kind of beverage, one would not only become healthy, wealthy and wise, but also develop a 38-inch chest measurement.
"Grant a modicum of mystery, maidens, and remember that faith, not a D-cup, moves mountains. You might also reflect that allure is sometimes based on underplaying a valued possession, rather than hitting the consumer market over the head with an already obvious fact."
We remind again that Mr. Ruark died at a relatively young age in 1965, having drunk himself to death. Better obsession with the female anatomy than the bottle.
A letter writer responds to the
controversy in the letters column stimulated by the letter of A. W.
Black knocking hillbilly music, says that he was a student of music
and that in his studies, he had noticed that not all people liked all
types of music, that while he liked Bach, Brahms and Beethoven, and
true folk music, others liked Kirby, Carle and Crosby. He suggests
that true folk music formed the basis
A letter writer also comments on the
music controversy, finding Mr. Black's argument weak, that musical
tastes were individual and that there was no inherently bad form of
music, just as there were individual tastes in colors, foods, or
other recreational activities. Mr. Black had made it clear that he
was against the music which had made Roy Acuff
What's a lowdown hoedown?
A letter writer says that she enjoyed the column of Dr. Herbert Spaugh, had for years found it inspirational, and hoped the newspaper would continue to publish the column into the future.
A letter writer praises a letter of November 24, which had praised the President's political speech before the Women's National Democratic Club in Washington, and urges more political awareness and writing to Senators and Congressmen.
Framed Edition
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