The Charlotte News
Thursday, December 27, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Communists had hinted this date that 50,000 unlisted allied prisoners of war in Korea were all dead of disease or exposure. The U.N. negotiators indicated that if the Communists would provide a full and honest accounting for all prisoners, the allies might consider prisoner exchange all at once, as the Communists had demanded, rather than the man-for-man exchange which the allies had thus far demanded. The conference ended with agreement on only one point, to meet again this date, as the 30-day deadline for preserving the provisional agreement on the ceasefire buffer zone would expire at midnight. There was no indication of any plans to extend the agreement. Sources in Washington indicated the belief that General Matthew Ridgway would approve a 15-day extension of the period and that he had been authorized to do so if he believed that there was hope of reaching an agreement.
The Communists and the allies took further steps for allowing mailing of letters by the prisoners on both sides. The Communists had delivered 803 letters the previous day, which had arrived in Tokyo this date and were turned over to the Army postal authorities for forwarding. More letters were on the way from the prison camps in North Korea, according to a Communist newsman at Panmunjom.
With the expiration of the 30-day ceasefire line agreement imminent, the question had arisen as to whether fighting would resume in full force, there having been no serious fighting during the previous month. The probability, however, that no agreement could be reached by the deadline had been apparent since December 15 and yet still no serious fighting had taken place in the meantime.
In the air war, U.S. Sabre jets shot down two enemy jets and badly damaged another in a renewal of air battles over northwest Korea this date. The 30-minute battle was between 32 Sabres and 50 MIG-15s. Earlier, 100 enemy jets had run for cover when a flight of Sabres had opened fire on them. No American planes were damaged in either encounter. The Far East Air Forces indicated that the aerial bombardment of the previous four and a half months had destroyed the enemy rail system in North Korea, preventing the Communists from massing supplies and troops during the ceasefire negotiations.
The ground war remained quiet amid subfreezing temperatures, and for the third day within a month, no American soldier had been killed in ground action during the previous 24 hours.
In Pittsburgh, it was believed that the United Steelworkers Union would vote to delay its scheduled nationwide strike set for New Year's Day, at the expiration of the current contract. The Union's 36-man executive committee and its 170-member wage-policy board met this date to determine its action. There was no indication as yet as to what had taken place.
The Government had decided to pay the $120,000 fines of the four captured U.S. airmen imprisoned in Hungary and recently tried for aiding spies, and found guilty with the fines imposed in lieu of 90-day jail sentences. A plane was ready in West Germany to pick up the men and fly them back in the event of their immediate release. Their wives were in West Germany awaiting the return of their husbands. The U.S. Embassy in Vienna said that the Hungarian Government was still considering the American offer to pay the fine, a position which conflicted with the announcement of Hungary's legation in Washington the previous night that the offer had been accepted for prompt release of the men. It was not clear whether Hungary was imposing new conditions on their release.
In Miami, another mysterious explosion had taken place early this date, just four hours following a blast which had shaken a wide area in suburban Hialeah. The explosions followed warnings by the dynamiters the previous day that they planned to strike again. Police were unable to determine the exact location of the explosions and no damage had been reported. Eleven explosions had taken place in the area since the previous June, several of which had targeted churches, all without damage.
In New York, Gus Hall, one of the eleven convicted American Communist Party leaders, was sentenced this date to three years in prison for criminal contempt of court. The sentence was to be served consecutive to the five-year term which he had received for his conviction under the Smith Act. The contempt citation had stemmed from his failure to surrender the previous July 2 to begin serving his prison sentence and for fleeing the jurisdiction of the United States to Mexico.
In Santa Monica, California, movie producer Walter Wanger, who had shot the agent of his wife, actress Joan Bennett, had his arraignment on a grand jury indictment for assault with a deadly weapon with intent to commit murder, continued until January 7. His attorney told the court that he would insist that reports of private detectives who Mr. Wanger had hired to follow his wife, as well as Mr. Wanger's diary, be introduced at the trial. The deputy district attorney assured the attorney that all of its evidence would be presented. The court made no order regarding the evidence. Mr. Wanger had shot the agent in his groin and his leg after encountering him in a parking lot stepping out of a car in which Ms. Bennett was seated. He told police that the agent had broken up his home. Ms. Bennett had said that the meeting was for business purposes only and that they had been driving around. The victim was recovering at home.
On the editorial page, "Profitable Arbitration" recaps the accomplishments of the American Arbitration Association during its 25 years of existence, having supervised the arbitration of approximately 35,000 legal disputes, involving awards from de minimus amounts up to 2.3 million dollars. Headquartered in New York, it maintained a national panel of 12,000 arbitrators in some 1,600 cities. If a union and a company decided to use its services, they had to agree to be bound by the decision. In addition to saving time and money, the arbitration was strictly confidential and the arbitrators were sworn to secrecy. The continuing recourse of both labor and management to the Association reflected their mutual confidence in its decisions.
"Word H. Wood" laments the death the previous day of the founder of the American Trust Company in Charlotte and leader in other banking and financial enterprises, including the establishment of a Federal Reserve Bank branch in Charlotte. He had helped to establish the Charlotte Country Club, the Hotel Charlotte, and the Charlotte Memorial Hospital. He had also directed successful community drives for the Salvation Army, the Community Chest, and U.S. War Bonds sales.
The News most revered him for his role in bringing North Carolina's mentally ill citizens out of neglect and into proper care and treatment. He had been named by Governor J. Melville Broughton in 1942 as a member of a special investigating committee, in the wake of a series of articles in the News by the late Tom Jimison, who had voluntarily committed himself to the Morganton State Hospital, and then, with the full cooperation of the director and staff, proceeded for a year to take careful notes on the hospital's conditions, which he then committed to writing in his series of articles. Mr. Wood had performed his duties admirably on the committee, asking many searching questions of witnesses who appeared before it and persistently seeking larger appropriations and better facilities, eventually carrying his fight to the General Assembly, which created the North Carolina Hospitals Board of Control, resulting in significant improvements to mental health care in the state.
"Memorial for Dr. Bennett" tells of Dr. Henry Bennett, director of the Point Four program to provide technical advice to underdeveloped nations in industry and agriculture, having died along with other Point Four officials in a plane crash on the way to Iran. The program, already hampered by short-sighted Congressmen, now was harmed further by the loss of its far-sighted leader.
It suggests that the best memorial which Congress could erect to Dr. Bennett would be a bill providing funds for expansion of the work which he had pioneered, work which was as much in the interest of the country as it was for the assisted underdeveloped peoples, as such assistance decreased the likelihood that Communism could take hold in a land enmeshed in poverty and hunger, the conditions in which Communism thrived, as Dr. Bennett had stated just before his departure on the fatal trip.
"How about Public Spanking?" tells of Senator Charles Tobey "thinking seriously" of asking Congress to revive the whipping post for punishment of public officials who betrayed their public trust. Such punishment had been widely used until about a century earlier, especially in Senator Tobey's native New England. Yet, there was no noticeable deterrent effect on crime.
While the suggestion was facetious, the piece thinks that, with some ingenuity, punishments might be devised for corrupt public officials, which would not involve physical pain but would provoke mental anguish and embarrassment. It suggests that tax fixers and evaders could be caged in the IRB offices and paraded in front of honest citizens who paid their taxes. It favors even more adopting the practice of public spanking, and suggests Judge Thomas Murphy as the Public Spanker, after he had declined the job of heading the clean-up campaign of the Government.
A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "Easy Does It", tells of the income tax forms instructing taxpayers to hasten to obtain any needed advice from IRB field representatives in filling out their returns or else the representatives would be "snowed under" and unable to assist. The piece finds the use of plain English by IRB commissioner John Dunlap to be refreshing and hopes that it was a harbinger of good things to come for a troubled agency.
Bill Sharpe, in his weekly "Turpentine Drippings", snippets from newspapers around the state, provides one from the Greensboro Daily News, which tells of the decline of the vest, with only 37 percent of Americans wanting vests with their suits. More vest lovers lived in the South than in the North, which, the piece suggests, was likely because no true Southerner ever shut a door, instead spreading his coattails and backing up to the fire, requiring a vest in front.
We haven't the foggiest...
The Franklin Press reported of a woman tourist telling the Highlands police chief recently that water was pouring over the highway and that something therefore must be broken, to which the chief had responded that it was only the result of flow from Bridal Veil Falls on the Highlands-Franklin Road, one of Macon County's top scenic attractions, to which the woman retorted that she thought it ought be fixed anyway.
The Chapel Hill Weekly suggests that all the efforts by highway safety departments, law enforcement officers and editorial writers to urge drivers to conduct themselves more safely could not be effective until there was a change of heart and mind in drivers, such that they had a greater sense and decency than they possessed at present regarding the risk to human life by careless and unsafe driving.
Roy Thompson of the Winston-Salem Journal tells of a couple in Rural Hall not feeling so good recently but having fully recovered, after the husband had said that his head was swimming in the morning and his wife complained that her glasses were pinching her nose, prompting them to go to the doctor and obtain some medicine, only to discover during the afternoon that they had been wearing each other's glasses all day.
Ernest
McKay of the Salisbury Post
says that some drivers missed the opportunity
Beatrice Cobb of the Morganton News-Herald tells of the Blum's Almanac for 1952 imparting information from a Forsyth County farm woman on when it was best to plant certain vegetables and melons, which she proceeds to impart, replete with the signs of the Zodiac, such as: "Plant cucumbers first Twins in May; plant beets dark nights in the sign of the Fish in March; plant watermelons in sign of Twins in May; plant pumpkins in sign of the Scales; plant cantaloupes in sign of Cancer or Crabfish in May."
And
so more, so on, so on, more and so forth, more forth
Drew Pearson tells of the cue for
clean government being set by the President in every administration,
whether Republican or Democrat. Warren Harding had been personally
honest, but spent so much time playing poker at the little green
house
The same was true of President Truman, albeit in a different way, in that he was not only personally honest but also had a well-publicized prior record in the Senate for exposing inefficiency and corruption in government. Though he often held poker parties with high stakes and occasionally drank whiskey, the cue for influence-peddling was being set not by the President but by those around him. Those subordinates on the White House staff accepted personal favors in return for highly valuable concessions made at the taxpayers' expense, and did not get to the roots of corruption, as had the staff and Cabinet members serving under FDR, such as former Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes.
The President's advisers were telling him that the corruption was not really as bad as the press was making it out to be, trying to dissuade him from his clean-up campaign. The most astute member of the White House staff, Matt Connelly, who was a friend to many of the big city Democratic bosses, was not too enthusiastic about a thorough clean-up. Mr. Connelly had first suggested as head of the campaign Federal Judge Tom Murphy, who, as former U.S. Attorney in New York, had led the prosecution against Alger Hiss, but then when Judge Murphy insisted on choosing his own staff and having it possessed of plenty of power, the original enthusiasm had waned.
The President appeared oblivious to the problems created by members of his staff, such as his personal physician, Brig. General Wallace Graham, who had been publicly exposed for gambling on the commodities markets but then obtaining a promotion rather than a reprimand. The result was that the cue was sent to those below that they also could get away with such things. The acceptance of the free deep freezers by the President's military aide, General Harry Vaughan, for Bess Truman and members of the Cabinet in 1946 had not seemed very important to the President, but again it sent the same cue to those below. It was how corruption got started in government.
Stewart Alsop finds it astonishing, after returning from a three-month sojourn across Europe and the Middle East, to find American opinion almost universal in its determination that General Eisenhower had failed in his mission to build a NATO force. In fact, it was quite the opposite. When the General had arrived in Europe less than a year earlier, there were only seven divisions, a force which could not resist a Russian drive to the Atlantic, one which could have been undertaken by the Soviets without warning and been successful. At present, there were 26 divisions, more ground strength than the Soviet forces in East Germany. It would now take two full months of preparation and reinforcement before the Soviets could launch a successful offensive, preparation which would be readily apparent to the West and afford enough time for Western response.
The result was that Western Europe now had a sense of security which it did not have previously. Mr. Alsop had sensed this difference in talking with French infantry officers and in the talk among officials in such capitals as Paris and Bonn.
Although progress had been slow and attended with so much confusion that practically no one had noticed it, General Eisenhower's mission had profoundly altered the entire European atmosphere.
Robert C. Ruark tells of having been ordered by his doctor to refrain from imbibing alcohol during the year and the fact had cheated him of a column at New Year's bemoaning his hangover. But he rose "fresh and rosy each dawn, with no horrid afterthoughts of pinching the hostess or telling the boss exactly how his business should be run."
"Let the other boys stand
thigh-deep in the snow, whilst they carol God Rest Ye Merry
He finds that the peace on earth and goodwill toward men running rife around the land was not so great as it had been, and that there were people whom he would like to punch in the nose before and after Christmas, and that the inclination toward doing so had not diminished by the fact of his not drinking. "The happy haze of blanket goodwill needs just a little lubrication to be effective."
Third
Framed Edition
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