The Charlotte News

Friday, August 31, 1951

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Don Huth, that an Allied spokesman stated this date that there was no indication that a permanent breakdown in the ceasefire talks had occurred in Korea, as the U.N. command began investigation of a new series of complaints issued Wednesday by the Communists regarding further alleged violations of the neutral zone around the Kaesong conference site. The Communists had not yet answered General Matthew Ridgway's offer to resume negotiations, in the wake of his denial of previous claims by the Communists of violations of the neutral zone.

Allied forces hit Communist hill positions within a 16-mile sector of the eastern front on Friday night and gained four miles within several hours. U.N. artillery was reported to have inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy. Allied troops moved toward four main points between the east coast and the area north of Yanggu after thousands of enemy troops had been reported moving toward the eastern front, where savage fighting had been in progress for more than two weeks. Allied planes hit Communist reinforcements and supply routes throughout Korea, while other planes supplied the allied troops with the biggest airdrop in two months.

The Senate refused to cut another 500 million dollars from the 7.5 billion dollar foreign aid bill, which had been slashed by a billion dollars in the House from the President's proposed bill. The Senate defeated, by a vote of 41 to 31, an effort by 16 Senators to cut nearly in half 1.1 billion dollars of economic aid for Europe. Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, urging the cuts on behalf of 15 other Senators, made a speech before the Senate saying that the Marshall Plan administration had hired the former national chairman of the Socialist Party as a consultant. The man to whom he referred, Maynard Krueger, an associate professor of economics at the University of Chicago, was on the payroll at $45 per day as a consultant on the Southeast Asia aid program. He also said that he did not like the viewpoint of Thomas Blaisdell, former Assistant Secretary of Commerce, who was working on the Marshall Plan administration as an expert on allocations of strategic materials and being paid $50 per day. Senator Russell Long of Louisiana had proposed to cut a billion dollars from the five billion allocated under the bill to military aid for Europe. Senator Taft had proposed an amendment to abolish the separate Marshall Plan administration and turn its functions over to the Military Aid Administration and also to eliminate from the bill 38 million dollars of military assistance to Latin America and double the proposed 15 million in technical assistance to those nations. Despite numerous other amendments still pending, Administration forces hoped to push ahead with passage of the bill late this night.

During debate on the foreign aid bill, Senator Tom Connally of Texas indicated his opposition to a proposal by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas that the U.S. formally recognize Communist China, and said that he thought Justice Douglas ought to "stay home" instead of "roaming all around the world and Asia and making fool statements". He added that the U.S. was, "in a sense", at war at this point with Communist China. Justice Douglas, in San Francisco, had told a reporter that recognition of Communist China would serve as a means to sever its political ties with Russia. Senator Herman Welker had said that Justice Douglas was a "high Administration spokesman" and that the statement was freighted with the prospect of recognition of other Communist regimes in both Asia and Europe, prompting the angry response by Senator Connally that Justice Douglas did not speak for the Administration, the President or the Secretary of State, both of the latter of whom, he noted, had never favored recognition of Communist China. He accused Senator Welker of making a "purely political attack".

The Senate Crime Investigating Committee, in its report following its 15-month itinerant study of crime across the country, urged the nation's cities to band together for war on organized crime and against graft by public officials. It called on Congress to provide $100,000 as a grant to establish a "national crime coordinating council" to provide leadership in this war on crime. It stated that "captive communities" had been enslaved by organized crime and graft and that honest people had lost their voices in local government in many of those areas, while the underworld was profiting from traffic in narcotics and deliberately making teenagers and schoolchildren addicts by the thousands. It also said that wiretapping was a powerful tool in the hands of law enforcement officers and urged new Federal legislation to permit Federal wiretapping in certain instances, with proper safeguards to ensure that the privacy of honest citizens would not be compromised. With issuance of this report, the Committee, originally chaired by Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee but, in its latter phase, chaired by Senator Herbert O'Conor of Maryland, concluded its business.

The Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously recommended reactivation of Seymour Johnson Airport at Goldsboro, N.C., for a troop-carrier wing base, saving, according to chairman Richard Russell, between fifteen and twenty million dollars over the proposed alternative bases at Raleigh or Laurinburg.

Economic Stabilizer Eric Johnston told the Senate Banking Committee that the nation faced costly and possibly disastrous consequences unless three restrictions on price control were removed, per the request of the President. Defense Mobilizer Charles E. Wilson and Price Director Mike DiSalle had testified the previous day to the same effect. Republican Senators Richard Nixon, Homer Ferguson and Welker had proposed that the three provisions be eliminated so that the President would be held accountable for any continued inflation.

The President announced that the U.S. Attorney for the Territory of Alaska, who had "disappeared" after attending a conference of district attorneys in Washington the previous May and was later found practicing law in Montana, had been removed.

The British Air Ministry said that a twin-jet bomber had completed a trans-Atlantic flight from Ireland to Newfoundland this date in record time, four hours and 19 minutes, topping the previous record of four hours and 37 minutes, albeit not beating the earth's movement by the sun across the distance in 3 1/2 hours at a rate of 600 mph. The flight was over 2,000 miles in distance and the average speed of the jet was 480.2 mph.

John Daly of The News reports of Air Force Lieutenant Thomas L. Lewis, Jr., who had returned home to Charlotte after flying 100 combat missions against the Communists in Korea since September 23, 1950, saying that the U.N. buildup of military power in Korea would enable the allies to knock the Communists "all over Northern Korea, if the truce negotiations fail and warfare is resumed full-scale". He said that the Communists had been able to amass tremendous numbers of ground forces during the truce talks but that lack of tanks and armored vehicles was a severe handicap. He said the enemy did not hesitate to throw men headlong into battle where they would be killed or wounded, in contrast to the American policy of saving men whenever possible by use instead of military firepower. He said that he thought eventually there would be a truce but that it was "some time off".

In Chicago, the body of a five-year old girl, missing from her home since the previous afternoon, had been found in a vacant lot at the Cicero-Chicago city limits with her skull bashed in. She was described as having been an exceptionally pretty girl. Police were questioning one man, after another man, with whom the child had been talking the previous day, had been cleared via an alibi.

On the editorial page, "Log Rolling at City Hall" tells of the City Council having taken all of the State money newly authorized to the cities for street repair and maintenance, $335,000 allocated to Charlotte, for the purpose of resurfacing the streets which had cracked and buckled over long years of neglect, leaving $100,000 of local funding for the purpose of widening certain streets, a long-time concern to relieve congestion in the downtown area. The piece finds this use of funding from the State, supplanting local funding, which had gone to support City employee salary increases, to be a form of local log-rolling. It wonders, therefore, whether its support of the State law authorizing use of State funds for the purpose of local street repairs had been misplaced. It adds that it showed why some of the Council members wanted to conduct some of their discussions in private.

"A Start Toward Redevelopment" tells of the City Council having taken the first step in its redevelopment program by affirming its intention to appoint an Urban Redevelopment Commission, necessary to comply with the new State law which enabled cities in the state to acquire Federal funding for the purpose of clearing slum and depressed areas and redeveloping the property for more profitable uses. It hopes that the five Commission members would be appointed by the Council with an eye toward their vision, intelligence, integrity and courage.

"The Japanese Treaty" tells of the upcoming conference in San Francisco, set to begin September 4, to sign the Japanese peace treaty, at which about 50 nations would gather, including Russia. It compares the Versailles Treaty after World War I with this treaty and finds the present treaty much less punitive and designed to enable Japan to complete the job of rebuilding itself financially while enabling it to have an adequate defense. It concludes that while the the harsh effort to penalize Germany under the Versailles Treaty, with reparations and what turned out to be a ten-year foreign occupation, had paved the way for Hitler, this treaty ought clear the way for a rehabilitated Japan to return to the family of nations.

An abstract from the Congressional Record provides a colloquy between Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada, Senator Herman Welker of Idaho, Senator Herbert Lehman of New York, Senator William Benton of Connecticut, and Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, anent the desire of Senator McCarran to curtail shipment abroad of The Reporter, a publication of the State Department, for its criticism of Senator McCarran's acting as "grand inquisitor and Lord high executioner in charge of the extirpation of heresy" as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and acting as "judge, prosecutor and hangman in loyalty cases", a line which Senator McCarran said he believed consistent with the Communist Party line.

Senators Benton, Lehman, and Humphrey questioned Senator McCarran as to whether or not other magazines, such as Time and Life, also criticized members of Congress, the Administration, and the President, but were nevertheless sent abroad, to which Senator McCarran responded that he supposed they were, but said that The Reporter was only an "opinion magazine". Senator Humphrey inquired, "What publication outside of The World Almanac would the Senator call a fact magazine?" Senator McCarran responded that he did not know as there were so many magazines. Senator Humphrey then asked him whether the Government should stop buying, for example, The Saturday Evening Post, to which Senator McCarran responded in the negative, but that he wanted to make sure of what was going into any issue of the Post being sent abroad. Senator Humphrey then asked whether it was a choice between free press and censorship, to which Senator McCarran responded that it was not but that an agency could be set up to select the proper statements to be issued "through the press that is selected".

Millard Caldwell, Civil Defense Administrator, substitutes for Drew Pearson, returning from Europe, urges that time was running out on civil defense preparation of the country, while part of the country was in denial, claiming that the Soviets really had not developed an atomic bomb, as others claimed that an attack could not happen in the continental U.S., and still others insisted on retaliation as the answer to civil defense.

But Communist imperialism, bombers able to span continents and oceans, and the atomic bomb had changed the world markedly since the previous war, such that America could become a battleground any day. Civilians were the first target in this new type of warfare. The Soviets understood that in the event of an attack, the home front had to be knocked out quickly or it could deliver a counter blow.

He recommends to the doubters that they listen to the advice of Representative Clarence Cannon, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, who warned on April 9 that any war which would occur would be fought in the U.S. as well as abroad. General Hoyt Vandenberg, chief of staff of the Air Force, stated that in spite of all the radar forces, shipping, networks of communication and a vast supply of interceptor planes, 70 percent of enemy planes carrying atomic bombs would be able to pass through that curtain and reach their targets, such that America would appear as Germany at the end of the previous war.

Stuart Symington, while chairman of the National Security Resources Board, had said that the worst kind of fool was one who continued to fool himself, especially when his own existence was at stake. Those who favored retaliation as an answer blinked the fact that devastation of Russia would not undo devastation at home.

Mr. Caldwell concludes that "unrealistic thinking" had sapped the strength of the nation and robbed it of precious time. No American city was prepared to cope with an enemy attack. There was no time for "fatalism or fantasy".

Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss the effort in the country to defame General Eisenhower while supporting Senator Taft for the 1952 Republican nomination for the presidency. One such pamphleteer was the "Williams Intelligence Survey", out of Santa Ana, California, which described the General as a "carouser with Zhukov and other high Soviet criminals" and "the man most wanted by the Zionists to head the government". It proceeded to present a melange of anti-Semitic rhetoric linking the General with Soviet interests and "international Jewish revolutionaries".

Another such group was the "Partisan Republicans of California", which listed California Governor Earl Warren, former Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen, and General Eisenhower as the "three principal prospects which the Communists and New Dealers are trying to impose on the Republican ticket". It named Eleanor Roosevelt and the Communist Party as leading backers of the General for the Republican nomination.

These groups typically supported Senator Taft for the nomination, though Senator Taft himself did not subscribe to the kind of rhetoric which they regularly spewed, more in line with that of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his recent denunciations of Secretary of Defense Marshall. The overriding problem was that, while such groups were relatively small, they were beginning to be accepted as having sound political currency by ostensibly respectable politicians. Many conservative politicians of both parties, but especially among Republicans, were beginning to suffer from a milder form of this malady.

The Alsops conclude that Senator Taft owed it to his own high character and great talents, as well as to the country, to repudiate such unfounded statements and to do so emphatically.

Marquis Childs tells of a drive, funded by generous contributions from large corporations and small businesses, to urge application of the Federal corporate tax rates to farm cooperatives. The House Ways & Means Committee had rejected the proposal and it was not included in the 7.2 billion dollar tax increase bill passed by the House. The Senate, however, was now considering the measure. The Senate Finance Committee had voted to tax the larger co-ops while leaving the farm co-ops exempt.

Senator Taft was against the move. He had won re-election to his Senate seat in 1950 through no small measure based on the farm vote. The President was also against it.

Small businessmen contended that they were being squeezed out in the small towns by the co-ops and the chain stores and so the objective in applying corporate tax rates to the co-ops was to curtail them or drive them out of business. But in a politically conscious Congress, with a presidential election year coming up, it was unlikely that any drastic steps would be taken in that direction.

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