The Charlotte News
Tuesday, February 20, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports that General MacArthur visited the Korean front
Reports from the front line said that 30,000 enemy troops were massing at Hongchon, 25 miles north of Wonju, with another 10,000 northeast of Wonju.
Senator Tom Connally, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, proposed that the President notify Congress of any transfers of American troops to Europe, but it failed to satisfy Senator Taft, who still wanted a ceiling placed on the number.
A Senate Banking subcommittee, chaired by Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, ordered an investigation into the charges of preferential treatment on loans granted by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.
Top labor leaders went to Economic Stabilizer Eric Johnston regarding their issues with wage control. Mr. Johnston called in Cyrus Ching, chairman of the Wage Stabilization Board, which had approved the controls 6 to 3, with the labor members walking out. The controls limited wage increases to ten percent for those already approved the prior year and to be approved through the remainder of the 1950-51 fiscal year.
Attorney General J. Howard McGrath announced a grand jury indictment against a New Jersey meat packing firm, its vice-president and two soldiers, for conspiracy to deliver inferior meats to the Army, defrauding the Government and bribing Army inspectors with gifts.
The D.C. Court of Appeals refused hearing on a habeas corpus petition for clemency regarding the execution of seven convicted Nazi war criminals, summarily affirming the ruling of the U.S. District Court the previous week that Federal courts lacked jurisdiction over sentences imposed by military tribunals in enemy-occupied territory. The Court did, however, delay filing of the order affirming the judgment until Friday to provide attorneys opportunity to petition the Supreme Court. The seven were the last Nazis awaiting execution.
In Phenix City, Ala., a 14-year old girl told her father in Tacoma, Wash., that she was "going baby sitting" and was discovered this date in Alabama with her 16-year old husband whom she had married in Georgia during their cross-country venture to his parents' home. The husband had been discharged from the Air Force after discovery of his underage enlistment.
In Raleigh, the State House was considering a resolution to put the body on record as favoring making permanent the $2,200-$3,100 annual increased salary range for teachers, replacing the contingency formula for the same range, approved by the Legislature in 1949, and expanding the category to include all teachers. The proposal would have no legal effect.
Governor Kerr Scott told a press conference that he had received 60 to 75 approving letters regarding his Friday night state-wide radio address, in which he criticized the "hold-the-line" group of legislators, saying that "issues before the Legislature are being overshadowed by personalities and factional politics." He said that only a couple of letters disapproved. He gave as example the fact that no increase in appropriations for food to mental institutions had been made, despite there having been a 30 percent increase in the food costs during the prior year.
A reporter asked the Governor when black students would be admitted to the Greater University, pointing out that residents of 30 foreign nations were enrolled. The Governor responded that it was an evolutionary process and that equality would not occur in this world, when it did, St. Peter would "ring the bell".
On the editorial page, "Labor and the Defense Program" finds labor's attitude toward wage controls to be compromising the control program generally and national preparedness. It urges working out disagreements on wage controls calmly and dispassionately rather than in an atmosphere of coercion. Price control would not work without wage control. And it was essential therefore to have labor onboard.
"Secrecy Works Both Ways" comments on the editorial this date by the Alsops in which they describe a visit from the FBI investigating their disclosure of the proof of the Soviet detonation of the atom bomb in 1949 and the number of atom bombs in the Soviet stockpile accumulated since. The piece agrees with the Alsops that this information was not classified and ought be shared with the American people.
Generally, it ventures, concealment led to fanciful speculation, as on the number of American troops contemplated by the State and Defense Departments for defense of NATO. General Marshall had recently told the Senate that it would be a total of six divisions, including the two already present in Western Europe, not the huge numbers some had suggested it would be. The average American, it suggests, deserved to know this information also.
"Gone But Not Forgotten" tells of the flying saucer myth being officially laid to rest with the Navy's disclosure that they were "Skyhooks", plastic, gas-filled balloons, a hundred feet in diameter, used to gather information about the upper air and cosmic rays.
Now, such persons as the salesman from Los Angeles who claimed to have seen one crash in Mexico with two midgets aboard would no longer serve to intrigue and entertain. Dr. Gee, a scientist Frank Scully had said in his book had provided details of the construction of the space ship and reported that it had arrived flying faster than the speed of light along magnetic lines of force, would no longer be credited.
Naw, they're real
A piece from the New York Times, titled "Spirit of Protectionism", finds that the House-passed measure to extend reciprocal trade agreements for three years violated the spirit of the free trade policies put into effect by former Secretary of State Cordell Hull and the principles of the Marshall Plan, as well as the aims of the Administration as they related to tariffs and trade. One of four included amendments which would depress trade mandated that the President consult with Congress before setting a rate for import below the point fixed by the Tariff Commission as the minimum without severe harm to American industry. Another restriction prohibited application of tariff concessions to foreign farm products to be sold domestically below the support price paid to farmers for similar American products. The other two amendments, one providing an "escape clause" and the other, prohibiting tariff concessions in the future to Communist countries, were either unnecessary or foreign to the purpose of the reciprocal-trade program.
The measure, it says, showed the loss of effectiveness wielded by the Administration on Capitol Hill. The coalition of Republicans and Democrats who passed it were reverting to protectionism, previously repudiated as contrary to the nation's and the world's best interests.
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Congressman Curtis on the RFC", finds that Attorney General McGrath would have a difficult time rejecting the demand by Missouri Congressman Thomas Curtis for investigation of the RFC. Mr. Curtis asserted that, in perusing a Senate investigating committee report, he had found 21 "serious possible violations" of the laws pertaining to RFC. The piece urges that the Justice Department conduct the investigation into the questionable loans made by the agency and their political connections.
Drew Pearson tells of the incoming surgeon general, Admiral Herbert Pugh, wanting to take over the house at Bethesda Naval Hospital, currently occupied by Surgeon General Admiral Clifford Swanson, who was stepping down to become commander at the Naval Hospital. Secretary of the Navy Francis Matthews had resolved the dispute in favor of Admiral Swanson as he would be staying on as commander. Mr. Pearson's inquiry into the matter was met with mum response, except to admit that the house was paid for the taxpayers.
DNC chairman William Boyle had told the President that his relations with organized labor were at a new low, that labor was threatening to depart the Democratic Party. He said that they complained that the President did not call on them enough and that he had surrounded himself with big business advisers. The final tipping point had come with mobilization and wage controls. The President had received similar warnings from Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snyder, Secretary of Labor Maurice Tobin, and Attorney General McGrath.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop, as stated in the above editorial, tell of being visited by two agents of the FBI regarding their publication of the proof that the Soviets had detonated an atomic bomb in August, 1949 and the disclosure of the best estimates of their accumulated stockpile of bombs. They regarded the visit as amiable, but find that it would have been more appropriate for the President to have ordered the investigation of why the country's leaders had not disclosed to the American people the same information on their own initiative.
The Soviets had developed twenty to thirty bombs and would develop another hundred or more in the ensuing 18 months, facts which deeply affected the American people and the country as a whole. They assert that it was the duty therefore of every reporter to dig out such facts and present them. In a free society, secrecy was not security and national ignorance was the surest road to national annihilation. The FBI investigation of the Alsops, they assert, showed the level of confusion and danger, though they regard the FBI as scrupulous compared to the State Department's special agents, who had done things in the prior two years which, they suggest, would make Secretary of State Acheson's mentor, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, turn over in his grave.
Marquis Childs tells of indignation having been expressed by the press of Argentina for the suppression by dictator Juan Peron of La Prensa, one of the great newspapers in the hemisphere.
The State Legislature of Georgia had before it a proposed series of bills, two of which had passed one house of the Legislature, which would impose political controls on the press. Governor Herman Talmadge was pushing the legislation out of his anger at the Atlanta Constitution and Journal for criticizing his demagoguery in the state.
Such efforts were part of a larger trend across the nation and the world to restrict the free press. The South and its newspapers, he believes, had always been possessed of an acute awareness of individual freedom and encroachments thereon. Perhaps, he suggests, it went back to the Civil War and its aftermath.
The New Orleans States proposed an amendment to the Constitution to disallow incursion on domestic law by treaty, arising from the U.N. wanting the U.S. to ratify its Declaration of Human Rights. He finds the danger theoretical rather than actual but that the viewpoint was cathartic, for new political systems did not always result in better government or more freedom for the people, of which Russia was a prime example. Only education and understanding could produce meaningful change and it was another reason for keeping the channels of dissemination of information free.
A letter writer from Greenville, N.C., finds that the Korean war had increased the importance of the U.N. resolutions of 1949, and, he says, 1941—probably referring instead to the Atlantic Charter, as the U.N. was not formed until 1945. He favors the concept of the World Federation.
A letter writer from Pinehurst comments on the Saturday editorial, "A Question for Mr. Smith", along with the reprinted Asheville Citizen editorial in the same edition quoting from Senator Smith's speech. He thinks the speech betrayed the Senator's lack of knowledge of foreign policy. In the meantime former Senator Frank Graham had gone recently to Alaska to mediate a dispute between labor and management, which he had accomplished successfully. He concludes: "Yes, Mr. Smith did go to Washington, but the unanswered question still remains—Why?"
Jesse'll answer that un fer ye.
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