The Charlotte News
Thursday, December 6, 1951
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Robert B. Tuckman, that the U.N. negotiators had agreed this date with the Communist demand that only specified points be subject to inspection during a Korean armistice, abandoning their previous demand of unrestricted inspections behind the lines. It was part of an eight-point plan put forward by the U.N. negotiators to try to resolve the disputes over policing the armistice, including the demand that the checks would be made by joint teams of representative from both sides. The Communists immediately rejected the latter proposal, continuing to insist that the inspections be made only by representatives of neutral nations, a proposal not yet formally rejected by the U.N. The allies did not regard the rejection of the single point to be a rejection of the entire eight-point proposal and the discussion of it would continue the following day. Of the points, each of which is listed, the Communists had previously objected to the naming by military commanders of a military armistice commission responsible for supervision of the armistice, that it would have authority to check ground, sea and air centers throughout Korea and have freedom of movement over all principal lines of communication, as well as being responsible for aerial observation and photo reconnaissance, and that neither side would increase the strength of its forces, equipment, or military facilities or matériel during the armistice. In addition to the Communists demanding neutral inspection teams, they wanted the inspections limited to specified "ports of entry", although not willing to specify what that phrase meant—apparently referring to some deviated preversion, hence the reticence—, as well would not permit aerial and photo reconnaissance or rotation and replacement of troops and equipment.
In the air war, allied planes made 107 attacks on front-line Communist mortar and artillery guns this date in the largest air attack since action had diminished the previous month. The enemy mortar and artillery guns had been harassing U.N. infantry positions since November 28. American jets engaged Communist jets for the eleventh successive day, a new record in the war for continued air action. While one enemy jet was reported shot down and one probably destroyed, plus another damaged, no allied planes were hit.
In the largely quiet ground war, enemy guerrillas caught South Korean troops in a rear sneak attack in the Mount Chiri area, as the South Korean troops had sought to close in on an estimated 2,000 guerrillas. That battle continued.
In Paris, the U.N. General Assembly temporarily postponed the election of an 11th member of the Security Council, after a deadlock developed between White Russia and American-backed Greece. Chile and Pakistan were elected to fill two of the three vacancies, which regularly alternated on the Council.
In Tehran, at least three persons were killed and more than 200 injured, many seriously, in a five-hour battle between 5,000 yelling pro-Communist students marching on Parliament and 2,000 police and troops backed by angry mobs of Nationalists, supporters of Premier Mohammed Mossadegh. The students had shouted "death to Mossadegh". The mobs of Nationalists smashed and burned Communist headquarters, raided pro-Communist newspapers and a theater, and dumped bushels of torn and burned propaganda books and leaflets into the streets. Observers believed that the Nationalists were taking advantage of the riotous atmosphere to wipe out known centers of the outlawed Communist Tudeh Party. It was the bloodiest violence since the prior June, when riots had left twenty persons dead. The situation was brought under control early in the afternoon.
New York businessman Larry Knohl told the House Ways & Means subcommittee investigating tax fraud prosecutions that he was unaware that Lamar Caudle would receive a $5,000 commission when he bought an airplane for $30,000 the previous year. He said that there was no connection between the airplane purchase and the tax troubles of two New York business associates of Mr. Knohl, the Justice Department's prosecution of whom was believed by members of the subcommittee to have been slothful. Mr. Knohl said that he may have made as much as $25,000 from gambling the previous year but was not in the gambling business. He acknowledged contact with gambling kingpin Frank Costello, to whom, he said, he had sold some oil.
In New York, Mr. Costello pleaded not guilty in Federal court to eleven counts of contempt for not answering questions before the Senate crime investigating committee the previous March.
Near Madrid, Spain, two Frenchmen were killed and French actress, Suzet Mais, and two others injured when the car in which they were riding left the highway and turned over several times.
In Charleston, S.C., a policeman and two other pedestrians were killed when a driver ran onto a sidewalk and proceeded for a block along the sidewalk in the downtown area. There was no indication whether the operator of the vehicle, proprietor of a grocery store, had done so intentionally or had simply lost control of the car.
In Memphis, Admiral William Fechteler, chief of Naval operations, said that as atomic bombs got smaller and lighter, a carrier could launch a multi-bomb attack from any place on the world's oceans at targets up to 600 miles distant.
A Princeton University scientist, in answer to a 12-year old girl's question regarding civil defense, said that if an atom bomb were to fall on the United States and fail to explode, it could be made safe by placing something in between the two parts of the device, joinder of which was required to form a critical mass, or by removing the device designed to bring the two halves together. The girl received a medal for posing the question and stated that she was satisfied with the scientist's explanation.
But how do you know where the dividing point is between the two halves and what the detonator looks like? Are there red arrows and labels?
In Denver, Colorado or North Carolina not being specified, a police officer gave himself a parking ticket and nearly lost his job the previous day after he had searched his pocket for a nickel to feed the meter but found no change, so promptly wrote himself a citation and placed it on the windshield of his car. But fellow officers had detected the ruse, called a sergeant to investigate, who, finding the ticket blank, had another officer write out a proper ticket. The offending officer was lectured by the chief and returned to duty, instructed to work two days without pay.
In New York, hobos who had borrowed $2,000 from the Modern Industrial Bank to set up a "model flop house", after being backed by an unidentified New York philanthropist who had co-signed the note, had been unable thus far to find a suitable vacant lot or condemned building in which to set up their proposed 50-cents per night hotel, with the proceeds planned to pay off the mortgage. The hobos, led by Bozo Clarke, remained hopeful.
The co-signer was likely not the pappy of the current occupant of the White House, not known for his tender feelings for the less fortunate and likely, instead, to have regarded the hobos as unsavory competition.
On the editorial page, "Two Down, Two to Go" finds that while it was certain that Lamar Caudle had so abused his office that he no longer had any claim to it, the investigation of Charles Oliphant, chief counsel for the IRB, had not suggested such a necessary outcome. Mr. Oliphant, opines the piece, had more ability and intelligence than Mr. Caudle and had exercised his official duties more cautiously. The link between Mr. Caudle and Mr. Oliphant had been only tenuously established, but he must have decided, ventures the editorial, that his days were numbered and so resigned before being fired.
It suggests that the House Ways & Means subcommittee investigating the tax fraud prosecutions would wish to hear from Mr. Oliphant, and also ought hear from Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark, who had been Attorney General from 1945 to 1949, during Mr. Caudle's initial period of time as Assistant, first in charge of the criminal division. It asserts that Justice Clark had known of Mr. Caudle's shady associations and frequent pleasure trips, some of which the Justice had admitted taking with him, despite those trips being afforded by persons who were under investigation for tax fraud, even if there had surfaced no evidence that either Justice Clark or Mr. Caudle had been aware of that latter fact at the time of the trips.
It also asserts that Justice Clark appeared in an unfavorable light in the attempt to hush the investigation of the Kansas City vote fraud scandal of 1946, involving Enos Axtell defeating in the Democratic primary, in the President's home district, incumbent Congressman Roger Slaughter, opposed by the President because of Mr. Slaughter's opposition to the President's program—all explained, of course, by the visit of Supreme Court Justices with the President that October of 1946, during the deciding game seven of the World Series, before Justice Clark had been elevated to the Court to replace deceased Justice Frank Murphy in 1949.
"Spare the Rod and Spoil the Congress" says that it favored the House Ways & Means subcommittee investigation into the reasons for delayed or sidetracked tax fraud prosecutions, an investigation which had led to the ouster of Mr. Caudle as tax division chief, but was disappointed by the fact that the subcommittee appeared to pull its punches when it came time to investigate its own chairman, Representative Cecil King of California, in connection with his alleged influence regarding California tax cases, as well as not asking Mr. Caudle to identify those in Congress whom he claimed had placed great pressure on him to relent in prosecution or investigation of tax matters involving their constituents. Likewise, the subcommittee had heard from attorney John Mitchell that Congressman Frank Boykin of Alabama had taken "unusual interest" in an Alabama tax fraud case, but did not subpoena Mr. Boykin after he declined an invitation to testify before the subcommittee.
It finds that the failure to proceed further in these investigations of Congressmen weakened public confidence in the legislative branch.
"Rural Planning Needed Now" tells of Coleman Roberts and Frank Thies having put forward suggestions which the piece believes ought to obtain a full hearing from the County Commissioners regarding zoning and property-use planning, which, they proposed, would be wise to establish in the county. Both men had a lot to do with Charlotte planning during recent years and could be considered authorities on the subject. It provides their four specific suggestions.
"Stassen Runs, But for Whom?" comments on the prospective presidential candidacy of Harold Stassen, former Governor of Minnesota, finding that he may have gotten off course in his testimony to Congress, seeking to suggest Ambassador Philip Jessup as a Communist sympathizer because of supposed pro-Communist Chinese sympathies during the war, sympathies which he sought to broaden to include others in the State Department. In 1940, when he was 33, Mr. Stassen had been regarded as the young, upcoming Republican future presidential prospect. During his third term as Governor, he resigned to join the Navy, and in 1945, helped draft the U.N. Charter at San Francisco. Since the end of the war, however, he had been drifting, presently the president of the University of Pennsylvania, after having traveled abroad and written a book which garnered little attention.
But his recent testimony regarding Ambassador Jessup and others appeared in the mold of Senator McCarthy, a backfiring ploy to grab headlines. The previous week he had surprised the press by suggesting that Senator Taft join him in a movement to draft General Eisenhower for the Republican nomination. At present, he was traveling to Paris to talk to the General. Meanwhile, a small organization favoring him for the nomination continued to roll along. It concludes that, as in 1944 and 1948, Mr. Stassen was running again, but that it was not clear for whom he was running. It says it would await "breathlessly" his coming statement promised in January regarding his position.
He would be running and running and running again, right up until his death in 2001, so much so that he became a standing joke in American politics.
"Edwin L. James" laments the death of the New York Times managing editor since 1932, tells of him having been one of the ablest journalists of the century. He had been a reporter and foreign correspondent before being news director at the Times, and had demonstrated all the proper attributes for those positions, including complete integrity. He was also a warm and colorful personality, was liked by those who worked under him as well as by friends and admirers in the newspaper business.
In all likelihood, this editorial was prepared by News publisher Thomas L. Robinson, formerly of the Times.
Bill Sharpe, in his weekly "Turpentine Drippings", snippets from newspapers across the state, provides one from the Greensboro Daily News, which wonders how many years it would be before the State Legislature would regulate the erection of signs on the public highways so that they would not interfere with sightseeing.
Penn Seawell of the Moore County News provides several witticisms about drunkenness, such as the one related in Paul Wellman's book, The Walls of Jericho, in which the incredulous district attorney had denied the defense attorney's suggestion that the State's witness was not so drunk as the prosecution contended when the witness was inveigled by the clever defense attorney to state that the alleged victim of the assault in issue had actually tried to murder the defendant, there being five stages of drunkenness: "Jocose—Morose—Bellicose—Lachrymose—and Comatose."
He left out Verbose
Sarah F. Halliburton of the Belhaven Pilot finds some relation in meaning between "chorea" and the conflict in Korea, that both were convulsive disorders.
Horace Horse of the Stanly News & Press tells of electrified wire being a suitable deterrent for cows or bulls to remain aloof from fencing, after a touch of their noses to the energized strand.
It also works on doggies. But don't turn up the voltage too high, lest the result be a bunch of fried patties.
Did Horace have a brother, Harry?
The Sanford Herald provides a story forwarded by a soldier fighting in Korea who had once written for the newspaper, wherein a sentry heard someone moving around in the bushes and demanded that the person identify himself, obtaining no answer, demanded again, and upon the next occasion after continued silence, demanding to know who the person is or he would tell him, with his M-1 rifle at the ready, who he was.
The fact that the story is related in "colored" dialect adds absolutely nothing to the idea.
And so on, on, on more, more on, and so forth, more forth on.
Drew Pearson tells of the Navy having turned down a request from the Air Force commander in the Far East that carrier-based Navy jets help the Air Force in combating Russian jets. The enemy was sending more jets into the air, resulting in the Air Force sometimes being badly outnumbered. The reason for the refusal was that the Navy carriers were supposedly outside the fighting range, but Air Force officers had stated that the Navy had once flown its fighter planes as far north as the Yalu River and so presumably could do so again. They expressed considerable exasperation at the lack of unified action in a supposedly unified armed forces and asserted that the Navy was trying to hide the fact that Russian MIGs were faster than the Navy jet fighters. Only two MIGs, Mr. Pearson notes, had been shot down by Navy planes thus far during the Korean War, one of which was bagged by an Air Force Sabre jet.
Averell Harriman was advising the President to fire Attorney General J. Howard McGrath and name in his stead Senator Estes Kefauver to clean up the Justice Department, a proposal backed by White House counsel Charles Murphy. The President appeared to like the idea, but on the other side, Matt Connelly, the President's appointments secretary, vigorously defended Mr. McGrath and was seeking friends of the President likewise to advise against the move. The new DNC chairman, Frank McKinney, remained on the fence.
Meanwhile, the Attorney General was quietly cooperating with the income tax probe being conducted by Senator John Williams of Delaware.
Marquis Childs, in Ankara, tells of the solidarity of the population of Turkey being impressive to the visitor. For the previous three years, the strength and solidarity of the country had been buttressed by American military and economic aid, a foreign policy showcase for the Truman Doctrine, designed to contain Communism. Turkey had medium tanks capable of stopping the heaviest Russian tanks, all courtesy of the U.S., which was also providing the instructors for training in modern warfare. Many of the young soldiers were illiterate peasants who used only the most primitive of tools. Turkish officers, trained by 1,300 American military advisers, performed most of the actual training of the troops. The training consisted, among other things, of instruction on the rudiments of the internal combustion engine, taught through models.
The fact that Pearl Harbor had been just ten years earlier drove home the realization of how profound the alteration in world power had been. Prior to 1941, the Germans and British, and sometimes the French, would have carried out this type of training, unthinkable at the time by the U.S.
Shortly after the beginning of 1952, an airstrip would be completed that would be capable of handling the largest planes currently built or planned. The Turkish Army consisted of 24 divisions, with an effective reserve approaching half a million. They would fight to the very end to preserve their homeland against Soviet aggression.
The question remained of how to sustain that force without the continued drain on the American economy. To do so required improving the Turkish economy as the military improved. Progress had been made toward that end, but the economic side was slower to develop than the military side.
Robert C. Ruark says that he had never been unhappy at Christmas, that when he was very young he had a doll which made him gay but never sissy. Santa also had once brought him a little black boy who did a tap dance when he was wound up, and he believed that the color of the little jig-dancer had not unduly influenced his adult reaction to his black fellow citizens. He also had received at one point a punching bag, but did not go around slugging people, an air rifle and a hunting knife, and bicycle, too, but, to date, had not shot anyone, cut anyone, nor engaged in a six-day bike race. He had, as a child, implicit trust in Santa's knowledge of his wants and did not believe that Santa's reindeer needed to be accompanied by a psychiatrist in the rumble seat of the sleigh.
But he saw by the latest edition of Life that psychiatrists had now entered into the realm of toy selection for children. The article had indicated that American parents haphazardly showered their children with too many toys while also starving them of the few toys they actually needed.
He thinks that this was an area in
which psychiatrists were not necessary, regarding interpretation of
"this or that stimulus in the way of roller skates or erector
sets." Nor did he need any conjecture ventured regarding the
affection which he had for his doll baby when he was four. (Would it
not be the case, Mr. Ruark, that perhaps your later self-perceived
self-consciousness regarding this unusual possession by a boy at that
age led you, at least in part, to that safari you took recently in
the wilds of Africa, compensating as a Hemingway or Teddy Roosevelt,
to masquerade as the great white hunter on the savanna, bagging lions
and leopards, perhaps an occasional impala?
He had banged away at his punching
bag, without any idea that he was actually hitting his grandmother,
and when he slew sparrows with his air gun, was not working out
resentment of his kindergarten teacher. He did not think that a child
had to be helped to play, but rather that the child should be left on his own
with his rubber ducks. (Yes, but the dolls, the dolls, the dolls...
The happiest child he had ever seen
was a country kid who had gravely informed him that Santy had brought
him "a crokernut and a or'nge", something not within his
routine, even if monkeys considered them monotonous. (Yet, but not a
doll
He thinks that society had started a
campaign of confusion against the human being, to the point where
enlightenment took place so much that the individual became a mass of
conflict and complex from cradle to grave. He favored not telling the
youngster what he truly wanted, instead that the youngster ought to
tell the adults, even if he had to do it with gurgles and sign
language. (You go home now, and cogitate some on why you were playing
with dollies at age four, and why, now, as a 38-year old man, you had
the abiding compulsion recently to go out to Africa on safari. No, we
cannot give you a pill to address the matter. Just think about it.
Guns, dolls, knives, taking out dames at age seven...
A Quote of the Day appears, again, from the Lamar (Mo.) Democrat—the home of country and western music: "Overheard in a nightclub: 'Hands off, Columbus, you've discovered enough territory for one night.'"
Framed Edition
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