The Charlotte News
Monday, March 12, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that two Russian-made MIGS had collided together in midair while giving chase to four American F-80 Shooting Stars. An American lieutenant who piloted one of the F-80s described the collision as the "best damn show" he had ever seen. The F-80s reported damaging four other MIGs, bringing the bag to seven MIGs in two days, in the largest air action in such a short period during the war. Sixty-one MIGs had engaged F-80s and F-86s in four dogfights during that period.
In ground action, enemy resistance collapsed on the east-central front, as the allies seized Mount Taemi without firing a shot, and also faded in the face of a three-pronged allied spearhead along the west-central front, as U.N. tank columns rolled to within five miles of Hongchon against little resistance, though the enemy the previous day had waged strong rearguard action in protection of the town.
In six days since the launch of the new allied offensive, 33,000 enemy casualties had been inflicted.
As the preliminary Big Four conference of deputies trying to arrange an agenda for the proposed Big Four foreign ministers conference entered its second and final week, there remained confusion as to whether agreement could be obtained on an agenda, with a British representative assuring that arrangements had been undertaken to reach agreement by the following weekend, while a U.S. representative said that he was aware of no such arrangement.
The House Armed Services Committee approved lowering of the draft age from 19 to 18 and a half and extending service from 21 to 26 months. Chairman Carl Vinson said that he expected debate on the bill to begin before the full House by Wednesday and that a vote would be achieved before Easter. The Senate had the previous week passed a bill lowering the draft age to 18, while taking those eligible between ages 19 and 25 first, and extending service to 26 months.
The National Production Authority ordered that all American users of pig tin would be brought under allocation control as of May 1 and designated the RFC as the only importer of tin, placing the metal on the same basis as rubber. The move was designed to end foreign price gouging on tin of 150 percent incurred since the start of the war, as found by the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Former Senator Frank Graham of North Carolina was named Manpower Administrator in the Labor Department. Labor Secretary Maurice Tobin announced the appointment. His job would be to coordinate all manpower activities of the Labor Department. Mr. Graham recently had successfully completed a special assignment to mediate an Alaskan labor dispute. He had also been a member of the War Labor Board during World War II. His appointment was believed to help resolve the recent rift between labor and the defense mobilization effort regarding the order of the Wage Stabilization Board to cap wage increases through fiscal year 1950-51 at ten percent, prompting the three labor members of the Board to walk out.
George Levy, general counsel for the Roosevelt Raceway, told the Kefauver organized crime investigating committee that he paid $60,000 over a four-year period to New York gambling kingpin Frank Costello to rid the trotting track of bookmakers so that he could save the track's license. He said that the track thereafter had no further trouble with bookmakers. Mr. Levy said that Mr. Costello was honest some of the time and sometimes was not to be believed, but that the underworld reputation given him by the newspapers was undeserved.
Joseph Casey, former Congressman from Massachusetts, testified to the Senate Banking subcommittee investigating RFC practices, that he had invested $20,000 in a company which bought five surplus Government tankers and later sold the stock for about $270,000. He had an association with a lawyer in practice before the Maritime Commission and received $15,800 in fees from him. The subcommittee had found that this lawyer had unusual success in obtaining for clients RFC loans, which they attributed in part to his friendships with White House aide Donald Dawson and Washington insurance man E. Merle Young, whose wife was a White House stenographer.
The Supreme Court refused to hear the petition by Alger Hiss, in appeal of his conviction for perjury and sentence to five years in prison, affirmed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals following his January, 1950 jury conviction. Three of the Justices, Tom Clark, who had been Attorney General at the time of the Hiss prosecution by the Government, and Stanley Reed and Felix Frankfurter, both of whom had testified as character witnesses for Mr. Hiss at his first trial, recused themselves from considering the petition, meaning that four of the six remaining justices would have needed to vote to accept the petition for hearing. Mr. Hiss's first trial in 1949 had ended in a hung jury, 8 to 4 for conviction. Mr. Hiss had contended on appeal that there was insufficient evidence to convict him and that the Federal prosecutor had engaged in "persistent prejudicial conduct". In his petition to the High Court, he had asserted that the motive for Whittaker Chambers to fabricate his allegations against Mr. Hiss may have been to hide the actual source within the State Department of the documents in question provided to Mr. Chambers or because of his "psychopathic personality" in which case, the petition said, it would be futile to seek a rational explanation.
The Court also agreed to hear a New Jersey public school case regarding whether the State's required daily Bible reading violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
On the editorial page, "Paul Douglas for President?" tells of the Senator from Illinois being ranked in a United Press poll of Democratic state committeemen and chairmen right below the President in their preference for the 1952 nomination. Some had expressed the view that the President was ethically bound by the 22nd Amendment, ratified at the end of February, from seeking the nomination, though not legally so bound as the Amendment did not apply to the sitting President when the amendment was sent to the states in 1947. (It had been forgotten that it was the President who originally had proposed the amendment to Congress in 1945.)
The chairmen and committeemen favored Senator Douglas over General Eisenhower, Chief Justice Fred Vinson, Justice William O. Douglas, Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, and Senators Richard Russell and Harry F. Byrd.
It regards Senator Douglas as having impeccable integrity and political honesty, plus courage to stand up against public opinion when principle called for it. Such were virtues lacking in most members of Congress. Among liberals, he was also a rarity in that he did not blindly align with the liberal position on every issue. He did not, for instance, endorse the entire platform of the Americans for Democratic Action.
But, it predicts, if he sought the nomination in the event the President chose not to run, he would find it hard to obtain as he had made many enemies among his fellow Democrats for having refused to trade votes in the Senate on pork-barrel issues.
It concludes that after the previous few years, it would be refreshing to have a man of ability and integrity in the White House such as Senator Douglas. It predicts that the American people would support him if the Democrats were to nominate him.
"The Last Lap" tells of the prospects of passage of the highway bill which would provide increased State funding for local streets and roads, finds it likely to pass the State House, though some doubt still lingered. It would then go to the Senate for concurrence in minor amendments, the Senate having already approved the main bill. The third and final reading of the bill in the House this night would provide the acid test.
We shall be awaiting the results on pins and needles by the side of the road in the Macademy. But it may be a veiled attempt to bring about socialism which is always followed by Commm-mmm-mmmunism.
"The Korean Stalemate" discusses the tendency on the part of the American people to view the Korean war in black and white terms, insisting on either complete victory or full withdrawal. General MacArthur, in his recent statement that the war could not end except in stalemate unless he were provided authority to bomb Chinese mainland supply and reinforcement sources, was partly to blame, it posits, for this conceptualization.
The piece finds such simplicity as suggested by General MacArthur to be dubious, assesses the intangible benefits from the war, the uniting of the U.N. behind the action in Korea, the making of collective security a reality, the awakening of the country to the need for resistance to Communism and its aggressive nature, and the U.N. success and pertinacity in the war dissuading Mao Tse-Tung from aggression against Formosa or Indo-China. It had also served to disabuse the nation of the notion that a push-button war could be waged with success against guerrilla tactics and therefore reinforced the need for conventional defenses. Thus, it concludes, Korea had not been, as many assumed, a liability for the nation and that a stalemate was more attractive than withdrawal, urges therefore the American people to assess the situation carefully, in other than black and white terms.
A piece from the Winston-Salem Journal, titled, "At Last Teacher Has Her Day", tells of the students at Greensboro's Gillespie Park School having staged a surprise "teacher appreciation day" to honor the faculty at a special assembly. Only the principal of the school had been aware of it in advance. Two students had written an original skit for the celebration.
It finds that the teachers would perform better at their duties as a result of such appreciation and thinks it a good idea for other schools to follow, as teachers were only human and appreciated being appreciated.
Drew Pearson, in Athens, Greece, finds the chief subject in every country he was visiting in Europe to be the temperament of the President. They wanted to know why he wrote so many caustic letters, called people so many names, and made so many quick statements to the press. The President's letter to Washington Post music critic Paul Hume the prior December anent his critical review of daughter Margaret's operatic performance had received wide attention in Europe. The totality of the reports on the President's temperament had left the impression that America had an unsteady hand at the tiller.
When the President had said recently that he was leaving to General MacArthur the decision on whether to cross the 38th parallel again, Europeans had gleaned from it the impression that the President was allowing General MacArthur to usurp too much command control over matters which properly belonged to the U.N., that despite the fact that the President's statement was not true in this regard. The British and French had begged the U.S. not to cross the 38th parallel prior to the previous disastrous advance by General MacArthur the prior fall. It also caused Europeans to question who would be calling the shots in NATO, especially given that there were Americans in charge of the NATO ground, naval and air forces. The President's prior statement that the U.S. was considering whether to drop the atomic bomb on Korea had caused Prime Minister Clement Attlee to make a trip to Washington to discuss the matter and obtain assurances that no such action would take place without prior consultation with the British and agreement by the U.N.
Presidents Harding and Coolidge required press questions in writing, after an impromptu remark by President Harding had to be clarified by the State Department. Only FDR had been adept at impromptu replies to unrehearsed questions. President Truman, he urges, had committed boner after boner and the effect abroad had been disastrous.
The differences between Communist and capitalist countries in Europe, he observes, was dramatic, from the availability of taxis, the speed of doing business and the general vigor apparent. Greece, thanks to the infusion of American aid, now was one of the most efficient countries in Europe. The Greek Army was an efficient fighting force, thanks to the training by General Reuben Jenkins, a former Georgia National Guardsmen. Greek airways now covered the country, whereas it once took days to travel around Greece by boat. American food now came via Yugoslavia, the fastest route. Yugoslavia, until recently, had been the chief supplier of arms to the Communist guerrillas fighting in the hills of northern Greece.
Stewart Alsop tells of an unnamed Russian diplomat having disclosed to an unnamed source information regarding the Russian agreement with Mao Tse-Tung over Korea, that neither Russia nor China would entertain any settlement in Korea as long as Americans remained, whether it involved the 38th parallel or any other boundary, and that if the Americans attacked China or approached the Manchurian border again, the Soviet Union would be forced to intervene. The Russian diplomat also had said that the failure of China to have air power and artillery had prevented their total victory but that in time, with Soviet "technical assistance", China would develop same, perhaps within a year or so, and drive the "imperialists" into the sea.
Mr. Alsop interprets the statements in light of the Russo-Sino pact of December, 1949 in which Stalin agreed with Mao that the latter's contribution to the conquest of Korea would be manpower should the North Korean troops fail to win the war and that Russia would intervene with its Siberian air force if China were attacked on the mainland. Mao had kept his end of the bargain, but the Russians had not supplied to the Chinese any of the equipment which they had provided to the North Koreans initially.
He finds it to mean that, based on the Russian diplomat's statements, Russia wanted to convince the allies that the Korean war was endless and hopeless, but that it also wanted to convince the allies not to take any action against China which would force Russia to keep its agreement and intervene. The Russians also were reluctant to support China with aircraft and heavy weapons, to avoid the prospect of China becoming supreme in Asia. Mere "technical assistance" would not enable the Chinese to develop those weapons on their own.
Eventually, he ventures, the Chinese would grow weary of being played the fool in Korea, taking all the losses in manpower, while doing the bidding of Russia, without Russia taking any of the risk. It was to be hoped, therefore, that if the U.N. stood firm, China eventually would stop playing Russia's game and seek a settlement with the allies on reasonable terms.
Marquis Childs discusses the Alger Hiss case and its expenses, running as high as $100,000 through the appellate process, and the need of Mr. Hiss in consequence to finance it through his legal defense fund. Senator Joseph McCarthy, he posits, if things held true to form, would publicize the list of donors and seek to brand them as Communist sympathizers even though they were interested only in seeing to it that Mr. Hiss received a fair shake from the legal system.
He points out that a young veteran of World War II, a Wisconsin legislator, had introduced a bill before the Legislature to make legislators liable civilly for remarks made under the ostensible protection of legislative immunity. In his speech in support of the bill, he had said that his motivation was to save the Republican Party from the "irresponsible actions of such members as Senator Joe McCarthy". The legislator, according to his colleagues, had ruined his political future by introducing the bill. Mr. Childs suggests, however, that it might not be the case as the people might find such courage to be laudable in the end.
He adds that it was ashamed that some would proclaim the criminal trials of Communists to suggest that the trend toward Communism was large in the country when in fact it was small. "But if the slanderers have their way, they will make it a truth."
Robert C. Ruark discusses Rosemary Williamson and her claim that her Romeo, Sid Levy, a gambler, had "forced" upon her a Cadillac convertible, and provided also a diamond ring, a mink coat, and a diamond wristwatch. "I never asked the creep for the gifts," she explained. Mr. Ruark converts the statement into Shakespearean prose: "Oh, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo? Wherefore art thou? Thou creep, thou?"
And he goes on in that vein, wondering how a Cadillac was forced upon her. She said also that someone had stolen her mink but that the other stuff was lying around her apartment "somewhere". She had sold the Cadillac for $3,800, but Mr. Levy had repurchased it for $4,100 and gave it to her a second time. He suggests Mr. Levy as therefore having been the most selfless Romeo in history. She had said that their first meeting was when they went for coffee and she had paid the bill. "Oh, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou? Thou creep. And I do mean thou."
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