The Charlotte News

Monday, April 2, 1951

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Don Huth, that allied tanks led infantry patrols which penetrated the 38th parallel several times the previous day and this date in the central front in Korea, with the patrols presumably having withdrawn to the original allied lines. It was reported that the crossings had no particular significance but were part of routine reconnaissance to locate the enemy. One patrol encountered stiff enemy resistance on the west central front and then withdrew. Some troops were stopped south of the parallel, north of Chunchon, by heavy enemy mortar, artillery and machinegun fire from a hill.

Twenty B-29s dropped 120 tons of bombs along the main enemy supply routes in North Korea, hitting three vital bridges.

In Paris, General Eisenhower urged, in response to a question posed at a press conference, that any delay in Congressional action on defense measures would delay the whole preparation of defense of Western Europe. He also said that he did not foresee a shortage of equipment and arms for NATO troops. The General had assumed official command of NATO this date.

The Senate voted against a proposal to ban sending of U.S. infantry troops under age 20 to serve NATO. The Senate continued to debate the two resolutions which would express the sense of the Senate that the President should get Congressional approval before sending troops to NATO. Neither would carry the force of law.

In Washington, as reported by correspondent John Scali, visiting French President Vincent Auriol told a joint session of Congress that if France were to fall to the Communists, the whole world would be in mortal danger. He urged that the West stand together and defend itself by shielding Western Europe from attack.

In Belgrade, Yugoslavia, a street brawl involving an Hungarian diplomat and a Bulgarian military attache had caused undefined "diplomatic steps" to be undertaken by the anti-Cominform Yugoslavia foreign ministry.

In Ansbach, Germany, former SS General Erich von dem Bach Zelewski admitted to American officials that he had utilized a bar of soap to secret the poison for Hermann Goering, with which the latter committed suicide before his scheduled execution at Nuremberg in 1946. The General had been a prisoner at the war crimes trials with Herr Goering. Officials said that he appeared to be telling the truth, though not the first person to have made such a claim.

Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snyder, testifying before the House Ways & Means Committee, called for prompt Congressional action on the Administration's ten billion dollar initial tax increase and said the second proposed boost of an additional 6.5 billion could be postponed until 1952 because of the improved budget situation. He said that there should be a three billion dollar surplus at the end of the current fiscal year rather than the 2.7 billion dollar deficit forecast in January. The projected deficit for the following fiscal year of 16.5 billion had been cut to 13.5 billion by added projected revenue.

An estimated 40,000 textile workers went on strike in five Southern states, with picketing having begun the previous night in some mills in the two Carolinas, where more than half the strikers worked, with nearly 19,000 in North Carolina. Production was completely suspended at four mills in Charlotte. The majority of the South's textiles mills, which employed 425,000 workers, continued to operate normally. Only about 90,000 workers belonged to the TWUA which had called the strike. The striking workers were demanding an hourly minimum wage of $1.14.5, which Cone Mills vice-president Clarence Cone of Greensboro said that he did not see how the mill could pay.

In New York, actress Rita Hayworth returned to the U.S., indicating her desire for a hot dog and denied published reports of a rift with her husband, Prince Ali Khan.

An excerpt appears from chapter 1 of Dale Carnegie's How to Stop Worrying, in which he tells of the founder of Carrier Air Conditioning having worked out a plan whereby he analyzed a given troubling situation honestly and fairly to determine the worst which could result, then reconciled himself to accepting it, if necessary, and then calmly devoted his time and energy to diminishing the worst-case scenario.

He probably also turned on the air conditioning.

The late professor William James, the father of applied psychology, had told his students of approval of such a method for relief of stress and worry. Lin Yutang, the Chinese philosopher, also approved of the technique.

It also works with the bomb.

On the editorial page, misdated March 31, "The Graham Street Controversy" tells of an uprising in the Fourth Ward over the proposal to make a lane of Graham Street currently used for parking into a truck lane. It finds that as Charlotte had grown from a time when its streets had been laid out in the horse and buggy era, downtown traffic and parking had reached the breaking point.

Graham Street had to carry part of the truck traffic because of its many arterial connections and when it did so, traffic would become even more congested. Curb parking was an expensive luxury which had to give way to relief of congestion.

The solution to the problem could be the costly one of widening many streets downtown, building of off-street parking facilities, or limiting movement of private vehicles in congested areas.

"Legislative Change Needed" finds that the Mecklenburg legislative delegation needed to take steps to make sure that a future Charlotte City Council could not play politics with the independence of the Park & Recreation Commission, as had the current Council by appointing an entirely new Commission during the previous year after being upset by the Commission having won the battle over building a recreation center in Latta Park in 1950.

"Thad Lincoln Tate" tells of a black businessman of Charlotte who had died at age 88 after coming to the town at age 11 in 1877—even if those dates do not quite add up. He had established a barber shop and made it a great success, enabling him to invest in other businesses. He had contributed greatly to the community and to the work of his church, Grace A.M.E. Zion Church, of which he had been a charter member. He had also helped establish the Brevard Street branch of the public library and was a leader in the movement to establish a black branch of the YMCA.

At his funeral, there were three white and three black pallbearers, no mere gesture, as Mr. Tate, it finds, had "personified those qualities that ignore the barriers of segregation and measure a man's worth rather than the color of his skin."

A piece from the New York Times, titled "The Dead Come Home from Korea", informs of the first ship carrying the dead of Korea arriving in San Francisco. Among the dead aboard were men of lower rank alongside Maj. General Bryant E. Moore, as war knew no distinction by rank among those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.

It finds that no one who died fighting for freedom died in vain. Regardless of how the war in Korea would turn out, the peoples of Western Europe and Southeast Asia were more secure as a result of the fighting and the hope for general peace was brighter.

It regards the ship bearing the first dead as a symbol of "the day now faintly dawning when such funeral voyages will be no longer necessary."

Drew Pearson explains that the Office of Price Stabilization appeared more concerned with increasing than reducing prices. The problem lay in there being no consumer representation amid big business men.

Secretary of Defense Marshall indicated recently that he was more worried than previously that Russia might start a war soon. The intelligence estimate determined that Russia was unlikely to go to war during 1951 because it lacked the resources and because of its fear of the atom bomb. But there was also a clique, it warned, within the Politburo who believed that if Russia waited two more years, the Western allies would be so strong that a war would be suicide. There was also growing unrest throughout the Eastern European satellites and, this clique argued, the best way to maintain Soviet domination over Eastern Europe and China was to wage war. It was believed that the view was not shared by Stalin or V. M. Molotov, his likely successor, both of whom were thought to believe that the West would fall on its own by the weight of inflation and corruption.

Defense Mobilizer Charles E. Wilson had blown his stack at a press conference regarding questions over whether he had sold his stock in G.E., of which he had been president before accepting the Government post. So flushed had he become that one newsman remarked that it was too bad the conference had not been televised in color.

He notes that while Mr. Wilson had made strides in defense production, he had also excluded small, independent businesses from the process more than they had been during World War II.

A lot of good men were joining Government at salary sacrifices, as Thurman L. Bernard, who took an 85 percent salary cut as an advertising man for Ivory Soap to help with State Department propaganda.

Stewart Alsop finds the President having belatedly endorsed the work of the Kefauver organized crime investigating committee, while not yet having come around to voice support for the Senate Banking subcommittee chaired by Senator J. William Fulbright, which had investigated favoritism being shown on loans to big business by RFC. The President did not like Senator Fulbright, but many Democrats wanted him openly also to endorse the work of that subcommittee to avoid the appearance that the Democrats were trying to denigrate or minimize the investigation. Already, according to Democratic leaders, the work of both committees had harmed Democratic chances in the 1952 elections.

Both investigations were likely to continue at the behest of the Republicans, eager to continue to embarrass the opposition. Senator Clyde Hoey's subcommittee on Government Expenditures might take over the Fulbright subcommittee investigation, to look into the Maritime Commission. Senator Edwin Johnson's Commerce Committee also might take up the task.

Mr. Alsop thinks the Civil Aeronautics Board also ought come under scrutiny for the favoritism it had shown to Pan Am.

If the President continued to take the attitude that the Administration was above reproach, he offers, then he would be committing political suicide, as Democratic Congressional leaders were quite aware.

He concludes that even so, the investigations demonstrated that the U.S. could not be destroyed by either criminals protected by big city machines or by influence peddlers with friends in key Government positions.

Marquis Childs discusses the state visit of President Vincent Auriol of France, the first head of state of that country ever to come to the U.S. in an official capacity. Much pomp and ceremony accompanied the visit and it pointed up the different roles between the President of France and that of the U.S. The former was merely a ceremonial head of state, with the actual political power residing in the Premier. The U.S. President had both a ceremonial function and his role as head of the executive branch.

He suggests that if President Truman did not intend to run in 1952, as it appeared he would not, then he ought leave a legacy by appointing a special commission to look into the role of the executive branch vis-à-vis the legislative and judicial branches, with an eye toward redefining that role and recommending any necessary Constitutional amendments, to fit modern contingencies. The job had become far too complex for one man, with ceremony, as was the case during this week, taking too much of the President's attention from his official responsibilities. President Truman would have a unique perspective to contribute to redefining the powers and responsibilities of the Presidency.

He concludes that Americans wanted to know whether the Marshall Plan was working in Europe to rebuild the war-devastated economies, as it related directly to the contest against Communism. If the economies were not being rebuilt, then all the ceremonies in the world would not make up for the failure.

A letter writer from Morganton responds to a letter writer of March 23 who complained of Senator Taft having spoken only to paid dinner guests while in Charlotte rather than to the general public. The writer clarifies that the Senator had spoken to non-millionaires at the dinner, and he asserts that the state ought be proud of its distinguished visitor.

A letter from an Army sergeant in San Francisco says that he had recently returned from Korea and was stationed at the Presidio, had found many men in service overseas receiving no mail from home, making them feel unloved, forgotten and their efforts unappreciated. He urges writing letters to soldiers who were relatives, friends or acquaintances, sending along cheery news and snapshots.

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