The Charlotte News
Friday, September 7, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Andrei Gromyko and the Russian delegation had been escorted by the police to the Opera House in San Francisco after a threat had been received to stage a truck accident on "Bloody" Bayshore Boulevard as a means to assassinate the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister. A truck accident on the boulevard which occurred before the escort came through, was quickly bypassed and the delegation arrived at its destination without incident, first to arrive at the Japanese peace treaty conference session this date, the slowest to start of the sessions thus far.
Twenty-six nations had been heard on the treaty the previous day and only two, Russia and Czechoslovakia, had denounced the treaty. At least 22 more nations were scheduled to be heard this date and all except one, Poland, were expected to endorse the treaty, as Indonesia had decided at the last moment to sign the treaty. The final tally was therefore expected to be 48 to 3 in favor of the treaty, assuming the three Communist nations did not walk out of the conference before the vote.
Speculation still remained that the Soviets would depart the conference. John Foster Dulles said in a radio interview that he doubted the Russians would sign the treaty or stick around to watch it being signed. Senator Styles Bridges said that he had heard from a foreign delegation that the Russians would depart.
As pictured, Representative O. K. Armstrong of Missouri the previous day had presented to Mr. Gromyko a map of forced labor camps in the Soviet Union, and Mr. Gromyko had handed it to another member of the Russian delegation, who promptly threw it to the floor.
New Communist notes rejected the allied denials of responsibility for violations of the neutrality zone around the ceasefire conference site in Kaesong in Korea, but there was no reply yet to General Matthew Ridgway's insistence on selection of a new conference site.
In ground action, the allies, using artillery and tanks, drove Chinese Communist troops from two hills on the western front northwest of Yonchon where Communist troops had earlier encircled U.N. outposts. Further north, the allies took a second hill after three hours of close-quarters fighting. In the eastern sector, Communist resistance stopped two allied attacks by the U.S. Second Division infantrymen. It appeared still that the Communist attacks along the front were part of a prelude to a new offensive.
Czechoslovakia's Prime Minister Antonin Zapotocky attacked the "Winds of Freedom" balloon project, carrying anti-Communist leaflets behind the Iron Curtain, charging in a radio attack the previous day from Prague, according to Radio Free Europe, that since the Americans could not attack the Czechs openly as they had done in Korea, they had tried to introduce to Czechoslovakia "rubble and filth". Radio Free Europe said that, according to intercepted reports, the program, organized in part by Drew Pearson, had been a great success in both Poland and Czechoslovakia. Rewards were being offered to youths who collected the most dropped leaflets. The previous year, the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia had accused the U.S. of dropping beetles from planes to sabotage their crops.
Senator Milton Young of North Dakota told reporters that the U.S. had more than one devastating new weapon powerful "beyond imagination", which would be ready to use in the event of a war. Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota said that he believed that the new weapons were not intended for use in Korea as the atom bomb would be usable if deemed advisable without compromising secrecy regarding the new weapons. The comments came in the wake of approval by the Senate Appropriations Committee of a five billion dollar increase in defense spending for air power. One member who did not wish to be named said that some of the funding would be devoted to guided missile production, as well as to powerful new aircraft which could deliver atomic bombs to any part of the world. The Committee adopted a 95-wing minimum for the Air Force, an increase from the 70-group minimum voted the previous year by Congress.
Frank Graham, U.N. mediator in the dispute between India and Pakistan regarding Kashmir, was scheduled to leave New Delhi on September 19 for Geneva where he would present his findings for the Security Council. He had just presented a formal proposal for settlement to Prime Minister Nehru, which had been rejected. He intended to present the same proposal to Pakistan Prime Minister Ali Khan. Mr. Graham was said still to hold out hope for a resolution of the matter.
Ambassador to Colombia, Capus Waynick, took his name out of the running for governor of North Carolina in the 1952 race.
In Paris, actress Maria Montez, 31, drowned in her bathtub.
Bob Quincy, sports editor of The News, starts his annual look at Southern Conference football, with the prospectus for Davidson being that they had possibly their best team ever.
On the editorial page, "Still on Schedule" finds the deft planning of the Japanese peace treaty conference by John Foster Dulles and Secretary of State Acheson to have forestalled the Russian attempt to disrupt the conference. Herbert Elliston, editor of the Washington Post, had stated in an editorial in The Reporter that the Communist effort would likely succeed and concluded that to hold the conference, which he believed would be perceived in Asia as a Diktat with the U.S. calling the shots, was therefore a blunder, opening the door to Soviet propaganda in response.
That it had not turned out that way was testimony to the excellent planning in setting forth a set of rules which frustrated attempts by the Russians, and as demonstrated by the passage, 45 to 3, of those rules. Foreign Minister Robert Schuman of France declared flatly that France would sign the treaty and New Zealand's spokesman reminded the delegates that his nation had fought Japan for four years while the Soviets had done so for only six days at the end of the war, and denounced postwar Communist aggression in the Far East.
The Soviets might walk out of the conference or refuse to sign, but it would be cold comfort to the men of the Kremlin after being outmaneuvered diplomatically. It ventures that Russia soon had to realize that the free world was alert to all of its tricks.
"Locking the Barn Door" tells of the City Council having voted $125,000 for a complete renovation of E. 36th Street, including widening, curbs and sidewalks, finds that it would be useful but that unless the State agreed to widen Plaza Road, the project might create more problems than it solved.
It finds it a good idea however, that the Council had decided to agree on a long-range street improvement program, though finds that it had come too late.
"Sweetness and Light" tells of a meeting between Mayor Victor Shaw and the City Council having been "all sweetness and light", with Mayor Shaw having said it was "preposterous" that Councilman and former Mayor Herbert Baxter harbored any political grudges, as suggested by a News editorial, and Councilman Basil Boyd having suggested that the writer of the editorial was "a menace to society". It finds that poet Robert Southey's familiar "snips and snails and puppydog tails" to apply to newspaper editors in the episode and "sugar and spice and everything nice" to the City Council members.
"Douglas Fails Again" adverts to the piece on the page from the Christian Science Monitor regarding Senator Paul Douglas's unsuccessful effort to cut Federal domestic spending to compensate for increased defense spending. He had proposed 70 amendments but had only been able to get nine passed by the Senate, totaling 228 million dollars, the bulk of which, 200 million, regarding reduction of annual leave for Federal employees, might yet be reversed. The Appropriations Committee had made reductions before reporting the bills to the floor but further efforts by Senator Douglas during debate on the floor to push for passage of these cuts had made him unpopular with the Administration and his fellow Senators.
It finds fault with the Congressional system as both houses placed full responsibility on their appropriations committees, such that once there had been a report, there was great reluctance by each full chamber to make further reductions. Under the existing system, Congress was not competent to control the purse strings and until a more modern system was devised, Federal appropriations would continue to be voted "freely and irresponsibly".
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Pointing the Way", finds encouraging a story out of High Point in the newspaper that a man had been sentenced to a year in jail for driving on a revoked driver's license. It hopes for more such strict enforcement of traffic laws and stiff sentences in consequence of violations thereof.
Josephine Ripley of the Christian Science Monitor discusses, as indicated in the above editorial, the unsuccessful efforts of Senator Paul Douglas to cut domestic spending to compensate for increased defense spending.
A piece from Business Week tells of the economy running high, with production at 325 billion per year, employment at an all-time high, and joblessness heading toward an irreducible minimum. Yet, relief rolls were the largest and costliest in history, with over 5.5 million on public assistance and the annual cost running to two billion dollars. It suggests that relief was no longer a necessity of the depression, though high demand for labor had little impact on the persons on relief as most could not work or were not subject to being hired. But the failure of relief rolls to decline suggested that some corrupt persons were making a career out of receiving public assistance. The piece finds it one of the weakest aspects of big government.
The Indiana Legislature had determined that persons on relief should be disclosed publicly to reveal fraud and induce relatives to bear the responsibility where possible. Federal Security administrator Oscar Ewing, however, found this disclosure to run afoul of the Social Security Act. The Senate had voted to set aside the ban and the House had not yet acted.
It concludes that only through increased attention by the public would the needy receive the care they needed and those who were taking advantage of the system be exposed.
An abstract from the Congressional Record relates a colloquy between Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada and Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut and Senator Herbert Lehman of New York regarding confusion on the submission of an amendment to an appropriations bill and what a "yea" vote meant and a "nay" vote meant, the former being in favor of 85 million dollars and the latter in favor of 63 million.
Stefan Osusky, former Czech statesman and diplomat, substitutes for Drew Pearson, returning from Europe, tells of the Iron Curtain after World War II having been not only a national tragedy for those countries finding themselves segregated from the rest of the free world but also a human disaster which "tore the heart out of man". The Russians had sought to convince the nations of Central and Eastern Europe that they had been forsaken by the West. The isolation from the West imposed by the Iron Curtain enable the Kremlin to demonstrate convincingly to these captive peoples that they had been so abandoned, paralyzing their will to resist.
He regards the crusade for freedom championed by Drew Pearson, in releasing balloons over Czechoslovakia, to have constituted an initial stage in the great liberating mission of Eastern Europe, enabling the people to understand that they had not been forgotten by the American people and that the Iron Curtain was not impenetrable. It had also enabled these peoples to find anew their sense of belonging, saving them from spiritual and moral decay.
He finds that the next phase of the balloon launch would be of crucial importance as it might determine peace or war. The people of Central and Eastern Europe were being told by the Russians that they had a choice between saving the Communist regimes or returning to the old order as it existed before World War II and sponsored by the U.S. The bulk of the people behind the Iron Curtain did not want either the wartime status quo or that prior to the war. What they did desire was the concept embodied in the Declaration of Independence that all people are created equal, as well as the concept embodied within federalism.
Since both of these concepts were revolutionary to the peoples behind the Iron Curtain, it was critical that Americans help these ideas flourish, ideas which had the capability of undermining the Soviet satellite empire and avoiding a third world war.
Marquis Childs, in San Francisco, finds that the purported time bomb of the Russians at the Japanese peace treaty conference had been a dud, thanks to the rules adopted by the conference and designed by John Foster Dulles and Secretary of State Acheson. The schedule for the conference was not in jeopardy.
Andrei Gromyko had used his hour-long speech primarily for propaganda purposes but what he had said regarding China being a great nation probably had appealed equally to the Nationalists and to the Communist Chinese. The remaining unanswered question was whether Japan would choose to recognize Nationalist China or Communist China or refuse to recognize either, the latter position favored by Britain. Many delegates believed, however, that the Japanese, though having made a private commitment to recognize the Nationalists after the conference was completed, would, perforce, because of the need of raw materials and markets in China, recognize neither.
He finds that in terms of the realities in Asia, the conference may eventually prove to have been too successful. The Asian delegates who were present spoke of the absence of China, India, and Burma, representing a total of 880 million people, thus a large proportion of the peoples of Asia and of the entire world.
He concludes that in light of what had occurred, the statements of bluster and defiance out of Washington during the previous ten days regarding the Soviet threat seemed hardly necessary to whip up the enthusiasm of the other delegations and might well have had the opposite effect.
Framed Edition
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