The Charlotte News
Tuesday, December 4, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Communist negotiators had insisted this date on four limitations to the supervision of the truce in Korea, those being that both sides would be free to build airfields during an armistice, that neutral inspection would be limited to ports of entry, that troop rotation would be banned, and that there would be no interference with or inspection of any reconstruction in Korea. The allies opposed each of these four provisions, as the airfield requirement worked to the advantage of the Communists who had few airfields at present, the allies wanted inspectors free to go anywhere in Korea, wanted to be able to have troops stationed in Korea sent home and replaced by other troops of occupation, and because construction work in North Korea was taking place underground and could not therefore be observed or inspected easily. To try to work out the differences, each side appointed two-person subcommittees, as had been the case previously with the conditional agreement on the buffer zone. Vice-Admiral C. Turner Joy, head of the U.N. negotiating team, in an effort to speed up negotiations, also sought to have subcommittees appointed to begin work on fashioning a plan for exchange of prisoners.
In ground action, British and American Marines made the most powerful hit-and-run commando raid of the war to date, storming ashore on the east coast near Tanchon in North Korea on Sunday night under cover of heavy Naval gunfire, shooting up Communist communications and transport facilities midway between the Soviet frontier and the front. Two British commandos had been wounded, but there were no casualties among the U.S. Marines. Bitter cold became the worst enemy on both sides to ground troops along the front as temperatures dropped to zero in the eastern mountains.
In Paris, the U.N. political committee voted 50 to 6 on a Pakistan-proposed invitation to representatives of East and West Germany to take part in the debates on all-German elections, with only the Soviet bloc nations and Israel in opposition. Russia's chief delegate Jakob Malik contended that the question of German elections was not within the realm of proper U.N. concern, signalling the lack of likelihood that the East Germans would accept the invitation.
The U.S. formally demanded that the Hungarian Government release the four American airmen forced down in their C-47 transport plane by Soviet fighters in western Hungary on November 19.
Peyton Ford, former deputy Attorney General under former Assistant Attorney General Lamar Caudle, testified to the House Ways & Means subcommittee investigating prosecution of tax fraud cases, that Mr. Caudle had been leaking grand jury information on an Alabama tax fraud case to an unnamed Congressman in 1950, and that the Congressman was believed to have been sharing the information with the defendants. Mr. Ford thus arranged for information on the case to bypass Mr. Caudle's office and believed he had informed Attorney General J. Howard McGrath of the issue.
In the Philippines, the Hibok Hibok volcano had erupted over four square miles of Camiguin Island, killing at least 141 villagers, with the casualty toll expected to rise.
In Lexington, Va., an investigation was underway into a noisy and destructive uprising among students at Virginia Military Institute, after windows and lights had been shattered, furniture burned, property destroyed and some rooms flooded with water in a cadet protest Sunday night. There was disagreement among VMI officials as to what had provoked the protest, which lasted for more than half an hour. Some cadets had resented a general tightening of regulations regarding the required time by which cadets had to return to barracks on the night of a dance the prior weekend. Cadets, themselves, however, said it was the result of strict bed checks by one officer who was on duty the night of the uprising. Colonel Frank Pancake, commandant at the school, ordered all men except those on guard duty or on the sick list to march five miles along U.S. Route 11 for three hours as discipline.
He did not waffle in imposing iron rule.
In Dublin, Iriculture, the
propagation of manners, culture and a refined type of blarney among
the Irish, had been inaugurated, receiving $263,000 from George Bernard Shaw's
In Philadelphia, a real estate agent told police that as he was sitting in his office the previous night, a stranger had entered and asked in a courtly manner how he was, then pulled a pistol and asked him to open the safe, to which the agent replied that it would take quite a while to accomplish and that there was no money in it anyway. The would-be robber said that he could open it himself if he wanted, but would take his word for it, adding that he did not usually go in for that type of job but had gone broke and needed some quick capital, apologized for bothering the agent and making him nervous, then departed. The agent confided to police that there was about $200 in the safe.
That's not right. He lied to the nice man.
In Western North Carolina, up to four inches or more of rain had fallen in some areas, the first major rain in several months.
Small craft warnings had been issued from Cape Hatteras, N.C., to Savannah, Ga.
On page 14-A, the eighth installment of the twelve-part serialization of Senator Taft's recently published A Foreign Policy for Americans appeared, this one regarding the problems of defense of Europe and the Senator's position on military and economic aid to those nations.
On the editorial page, "Grounds for a Perjury Charge" finds that the testimony of Justice Department attorney John Mitchell to the House Ways & Means subcommittee investigating handling of tax fraud cases by the Justice Department, with focus on former Assistant Attorney General Lamar Caudle, former head of the tax division, was sufficiently at odds with the testimony of Mr. Caudle with respect to the latter's interference with the prosecution of an Alabama tax fraud case that it called for a grand jury investigation of possible perjury charges against one or the other of the witnesses.
In fairness to Mr. Caudle, Mr. Mitchell had indicated, as set forth in the front page story of the previous day regarding Mr. Mitchell's testimony, that Mr. Caudle had never told him not to prosecute the case, which was finally prosecuted to conviction, but had indicated that he wanted to know about the prosecution at every stage of the proceedings.
The piece also thinks the subcommittee should follow up on the assertion that the defendants in the case had made large contributions to the DNC in an effort to have their tax case "fixed", as there had been frequent reports of similar large gifts being made by tax dodgers.
"Tar Heels Go on the Record" tells of the Congressional Quarterly now tracking down Congressmen who either had failed to record a vote during a roll call or had not paired with another member of Congress to vote while absent, and asking them how they would have voted. Its new report for the 1951 session had found that Senator Clyde Hoey had recorded his vote 98 percent of the time in roll-call votes, while Senator Willis Smith had done so only 79 percent of the time.
In the North Carolina delegation in the House, freshman Representative Woodrow Jones led the field with 98 percent of his votes recorded, while Charlotte Congressman Hamilton Jones was in fourth place among the delegation, at 93 percent. It provides the percentages for the remainder of the delegation.
It concludes that a Congressman might have a legitimate reason for not being present during a roll call but that there was no reason why he should not answer when polled by the Congressional Quarterly, as voters had a right to know how their elected representatives stood on given issues.
"The Presidential Primary" tells of the April 1 Wisconsin primary shaping up to be a major contest among Republicans, with Senator Taft already committed to run in the state, and delegate slates being prepared for Governor Earl Warren of California, Harold Stassen and General MacArthur, with General Eisenhower also possibly to be entered. Thus, while the Wisconsin vote would provide some indication of popular support for the various candidates, the overriding concern remained that there were few presidential primaries and candidates could, if they wanted, remain out of those races, resulting in a system which did not provide a true indicator of national support for any given candidate.
Roscoe Drummond, chief of the Washington bureau of the Christian Science Monitor, had come up with what the editorial believes was a sound proposal for improving the situation, that being to redraft state laws governing primaries so that candidates could not withdraw their names or refuse to have them entered in the contests.
It remarks that it was increasingly
possible, with the advent of television, that "a candidate who
is a demagogue, a good orator, or a man who exudes stage personality
could charm the voters into electing him to the Presidency. Such a
candidate would undoubtedly poll many votes in a Presidential
primary, and the parties would tend to nominate the candidate with
high 'box office' appeal
It concludes that the present system resulted in compromise, that political trades usually resulted in decisions which were acceptable to most of the people even if the results were desired by few, but that the modern age required a chief executive who was more than a compromise candidate selected because of his place of residence or some similarly insignificant criterion. It asserts that the people were better qualified than the conventions to name candidates desirable for their leadership and administrative qualities.
"Anglo-Iranian Profit" tells of the British chairman of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in Iran having taken out a page and a half advertisement in the New York Herald-Tribune which had stated that the anticipated dividend for 1951 would, barring unforeseen occurrences in the remaining weeks of the year, reach the same level as in previous years. In 1949, the dividend paid had been 25 percent.
The piece finds that the facts showed that the company was still in business for profit, ignoring the troubled recent past with its nationalization by Iran, that paying dividends as high as 25 percent usually portended labor trouble and also prevented redirection of profits into expansion of capital structure. It finds that the U.S., in bailing Britain out of the problems in Iran, needed to drive home this lesson.
A piece from the Rock Hill
Evening Herald, titled "Progress and the Past", tells
of Army engineers, in seeking a good design for winter tents for the
U.N. soldiers fighting in Korea, had come up with a design to
withstand the bitter winds, snow and zero temperatures, with the
result that it resembled an Indian teepee. "And so it was!
Twentieth century engineering genius had created a teepee-like tent
to protect man from the wrath of Winter
Merle Gulick, writing in the Wall Street Journal, discusses the new gambling tax, made part of the Federal tax package recently enacted and signed into law. Bookmakers had contended either that the requirement had put them out of business or that they would not pay the tax as they were already operating illegally. The Treasury contended, however, that the bookies would soon decide that it was best to comply with the law, which required a 10 percent levy on certain types of wagers, primarily bets on sporting events and numbers. Anyone required to pay the tax also had to pay $50 per year as an occupational tax. Americans gambled an estimated 20 billion dollars or more per year, roughly equivalent to annual automobile sales. Congressional staff officials had estimated that the tax would bring in approximately 400 million dollars per year, about one-third of the total excise tax revenue expected under the new law.
Every gambler who paid the tax and acquired the occupational tax stamp for $50 had to display the stamp publicly, and his name would be added to a public list at the local IRB office. But since gambling was illegal almost everywhere except Nevada, if a gambler complied with the new Federal tax law, he was implicating himself in crime under state and local laws. Underworld figures had stated that it was the publicity factor which they feared, rather than the tax itself.
It would take a small army of tax agents to collect the tax, and the Treasury had already assigned 4,000 men for the task, at a cost of 34 million dollars per year.
Congress had exempted from the law parimutuel bets at racetracks, which were already taxed, as well as betting where the bettors were present, such as at card games and roulette wheels, bets not placed through an intermediary broker. Friendly bets, not made pursuant to a business, were also exempted.
Drew Pearson tells of Defense Mobilizer Charles E. Wilson's sudden trip to Key West to consult with the President having to do with additional problems other than lagging production for the Korean War, including extensive discussion of the fact that the Government might have to stop production of automobiles, refrigerators, televisions, and other such consumer durable goods. It was indicated that if more than a ten percent reduction in consumer durable goods was sought, manufacturers of all such goods would have to stop production as it would not be profitable. Manly Fleischmann, the production chief, stated that a ten percent cut would not solve the problem of material shortages in any event as it would not free up structural steel and brass mill products, which were the primary materials in shortage for defense. He found the prospect for increase in the supply of controlled materials not good. Shortage of electrical power in the Northwest had curtailed production of aluminum and the problem of financing additional aluminum capacity had not yet been solved, and there was no new solution for the copper shortage, the combination of which, complicated by strikes in defense industries, was why military production was lagging. The President was therefore faced with a choice between defense and civilian production as the country entered a presidential election year.
General MacArthur had angered convalescing veterans at a Veterans Hospital in Portland, Oregon, as well as Portland newspapers, when he failed to speak to the veterans during a stopover at the hospital. He subsequently claimed that he did not know he was supposed to speak to the veterans, but the head of the welcoming committee stated that he had been advised on at least three occasions while at the hospital that an address to the veterans was anticipated.
Joseph Alsop, in Baghdad, finds that in the land where civilization was born, it was easy to see where it also might die. There was progressive decay of the British technique of exercising power, which entailed setting up a small ruling class of the rich and then controlling that class through a continued flow of profits. The technique was still being used in Iraq, but had already failed in Iran and Egypt, and appeared on its last legs in Iraq, as soon as the aging Premier Nuri Said was overtaken by an ambitious politician who might nationalize the Iraq Petroleum Company, just as the Iranian Government had done to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co.
The erosion of British power in Iraq was accompanied by an irrational hatred of the British, blaming the British for the persistent slums, which had existed for time immemorial. The same managers who had directed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. managed the Iraq Petroleum Co. and had long ago adopted a policy of keeping the Iraq oil fields largely untapped, angering the Iraqis, whose oil revenues were in consequence only a small amount.
Having learned the lesson in Iran, the British oil managers now were offering a reasonably generous contract to Iraq, but it was likely too late.
There was also a parallel with the Egyptian crisis, as the British, by treaty, had the right to station certain troops in Iraq, which consisted of a corporal's guard, mainly comprised of Royal Air Force men. The British installations were an important forward defense and staging area in case of war. In the event that an anti-British regime were eventually installed, Iraq would follow the lead of Egypt and likely abrogate this treaty.
As throughout the Middle East, there was misery everywhere, accompanied by fear and hatred of Israel, which translated also into distrust and dislike for the U.S., because of its perceived responsibility for the creation of Israel. Because of this latter feeling and because of the hesitancy to challenge Britain as an ally, and also because of sheer inertia, American policy in Iraq, as elsewhere in the Middle East, was paralyzed.
He concludes that much could be done cheaply, but for this lack of American leadership and timid approach to the problem.
Robert C. Ruark examines Samia Gamal, the Egyptian belly-dancer who had recently married oil scion Sheppard King in Houston, with the blessing of Moslem law. For his prior mocking of her, Mr. Ruark had been taken to task by a man who had known her earlier in life and found her quite admirable and honest. So, to do her justice, he quotes liberally from the letter he received from this individual, who had concluded that because she was marrying below the Mason-Dixon Line, she would receive enough challenge as it was, without adding to her problems by mocking her background as a belly-dancer. Mr. Ruark agrees.
Framed Edition
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