The Charlotte News

Friday, January 11, 1952

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that allied truce negotiators had provided the Communists a virtual ultimatum this date, demanding an explanation for the alleged contradiction in their announced stand on construction of airfields during an armistice, indicating that the negotiations on supervision of the truce could not continue until the Communists explained the discrepancy between their positions stated the previous month that they planned to build and repair airfields during a truce and that stated the previous day, denying that to be their intention. This subcommittee had met for only 34 minutes, while the subcommittee on prisoner exchange met for over four hours, the latter still at loggerheads regarding the Communist insistence on forced repatriation of prisoners after their claim that thousands of South Koreans had joined the Communist armies of their own free will following their capture. Both subcommittees would meet again the following day.

American F-86 Sabre jets had shot down four enemy MIG-15 jets in a series of air battles this date which ranged to within 39 miles of the Panmunjom truce negotiations site, far south of the usual location of jet battles, bringing the total enemy jets shot down during the week to eleven, with twelve damaged.

There was no appreciable ground action this date, with only a series of patrol clashes reported along the frozen front.

The Army estimated that the total enemy casualties in Korea through January 3 were 1,569,069, an increase of 22,201 since December 17 when the last estimate had been provided. The estimate included 1,121,248 battle casualties, 277,822 non-battle casualties, 132,065 prisoners of war and 37,934 civilian internees. The latest count of U.N. casualties, released in early December, had been 109,459, not including the 212,500 casualties reported through the previous June by South Korean forces.

The father of a lieutenant killed in the Korean War had sent a letter to the Defense Department refusing to accept the posthumous award of the Congressional Medal of Honor to his son, as well as the posthumous award of a Silver Star to another of the man's sons, both killed in battle twelve days apart in early 1951. The letter said that accepting the medals "would imply that I think Truman is worthy to confer these honors. And I don't think that fellow is worthy to confer honors on my boys, or anyone's boys." According to a Defense Department spokesman, the refusal was without precedent in military history.

It was announced in Paris that General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, 61-year old French commander-in-chief and high commissioner to Indo-China, had died the previous night after passing into a coma two days earlier, following two operations for a tumor of his prostate gland. A journalist had informed President Truman the previous day at the end of his press conference that the General was near death, a report the President indicated he had not heard and was sorry to hear, as he regarded him as a great man who had done a splendid job in Indo-China.

In Washington, the military heads of the major Pacific powers, France, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, began talks this date with the U.S. Joint Chiefs regarding what could be done in the event of an attack by Communist China against French Indo-China. General de Lattre de Tassigny's warnings of an imminent invasion by the massing of Communist Chinese troops along the border between China and Indo-China had urged the strategy session, prior to his being stricken and flown home to France for treatment. Diplomatic officials in London stated that Britain, France and the U.S. were considering plans to set up a unified military command in Southeast Asia, which would enable pooling of available air, land and sea forces, tied indirectly to NATO. The news of the General's death had cast a pall over the conference.

Senator George Aiken of Vermont, a Republican, indicated that he thought General Eisenhower should ask to be relieved at once from his duties as supreme commander of NATO if he wanted to run for the presidency, and then make his views on domestic issues known to the public. He advocated that he "come out swinging and not be so coy." Senator Aiken had long opposed old guard Republicanism, but had not yet announced his support for the General. Many supporters of Senator Taft had indicated that the General should ask to be relieved of his military duties and enter the primary contests if he intended to run.

In Chicago, a group supporting Senator Estes Kefauver for the Democratic presidential nomination announced that his name would be entered in the Illinois primary.

The Defense Production Administration ordered a sharp cutback in the use of metals for home building and almost all types of civilian construction, beginning April 1, indicating that the order would allow a rate of only 600,000 new home starts per year during the second quarter, 45 percent below the 1.1 million dwellings begun in 1951 and below the rate of 850,000 per year during the first quarter of 1952.

The Army apologized to two Government female workers, one of whom lived in Charlotte, who had been fired as security risks four years earlier and offered to return them to their old jobs along with back pay they had lost as a result of the dismissals. One of the workers, living in Pennsylvania, said that "the police state can happen here unless the people, their representatives and the courts are ever alert to the dangers inherent in the granting of the summary discharge power to several administrators." She hoped that the Army would find a means of punishing those who had been "false witnesses" against her and commended Army Secretary Frank Pace for the thorough manner in which he had investigated the matter. The two had been dismissed from the Army Finance Center in St. Louis in March, 1948, after they had been charged with attending meetings of subversive groups, including one which was allegedly open only to members of the Communist Party, claims which both had denied. Senators Clyde Hoey of North Carolina and Edward Martin of Pennsylvania had entered pleas to the Department of the Army in the two employees' behalf, but no action had been taken by the Army until the Federal courts ordered that it be done. The Army's reversal of the decision said that it had been warranted at the time, based on the information available, but after review was determined to merit reversal.

In Falmouth, England, Captain Kurt Carlsen, who had finally been forced to abandon his sinking freighter, the Flying Enterprise, the previous day, after trying to save it and its cargo from the sea for the prior two weeks since it had been nearly capsized by a huge storm on December 28, some 300 miles south of England, said that he knew he had to abandon the ship finally when the wheelhouse door had exploded from the pressure of the water. He said it really hurt him when the freighter finally disappeared below the surface. The ship had been lost to the sea after being towed to within about 50 miles from Falmouth where a new storm the previous day finally swept it under. Captain Carlsen had ordered the crew of 40 and 10 passengers aboard to abandon ship on December 29. He said in Falmouth that it had been a very well-built ship, partly welded and partly riveted, by the Consolidated Steel Corp. of Wilmington, Del., in 1944. It had originally been known as the Cape Kumukaki until 1947. The captain had commanded it for three years and made 44 crossings of the Atlantic. During the first week of his ordeal, he had survived on a single pound cake which he had found in the ship's storeroom.

Lloyd's of London, which was one of the insurers of the ship, awarded Captain Carlsen a silver medal for his endurance, one of only 416 which had been bestowed in 58 years of giving out the award for "meritorious service".

In Copenhagen, Prime Minister Erik Eriksen sent Captain Carlsen a congratulatory telegram, praising him for his courage and "competent seamanship".

In the North Pacific area, the sea-air search for the freighter Pennsylvania and its 45-man crew, who had abandoned the split ship in high seas and high wind, was widened in its second day. No sign of the ship or the men in their four lifeboats had yet been sighted. A storm was still raging and surface swells were too great for a Coast Guard flying boat to land on the water without being ripped to pieces, according to the pilot. The airmen said that they held out little hope that the ship was still afloat in the extremely high waves, with troughs estimated at 60 feet deep, amid numerous snow squalls, sometimes reducing air visibility to virtually zero.

In New Ulm, Minn., an 18-day old baby boy was found unharmed after he had been kidnaped for 17 hours from his home in Mankato, 28 miles distant. A childless woman in her mid-30's had admitted taking the baby at gunpoint to replace one she had lost four months earlier by miscarriage. The baby had been found in her apartment over a tavern. A neighbor had tipped police and then the woman, herself, had called police, sobbing, asking that someone be sent over.

In Rogers, Ark., a farmer, arrested under Federal laws, had been accused of holding two men in peonage to chop wood for his illegal whiskey still. The two men accused the farmer of threatening them with a pistol if they did not cut wood for the still on his farm at $10 per day, after they had initially refused to cut the wood once they learned of its purpose. The farmer accused the men of stealing his whiskey and threatened them with his pistol. They were then held for several days against their will until they finally managed to escape and report the matter to authorities.

Another Gallup poll appears on page 3-A, showing that a majority of respondents favored Universal Military Training.

Members of Congress were receiving thousands of letters on a variety of subjects. One such piece of mail had been addressed to "Honorable John Doe (substitute name)" and began with the salutation, "Dear Mr. Doe", sent to the Senate Office Building in Washington, bearing a Pennsylvania postmark, and so was routed to Senator Martin of Pennsylvania.

On the editorial page, "Eisenhower and the Congress" recounts the suggestion of Illinois Democratic Senator Paul Douglas that General Eisenhower, were he to be nominated by the Republicans, ought also to be nominated by the Democrats so that the voters would elect a Congress which could work more readily with General Eisenhower as President. It was improbable that the Democrats would accept such a proposal, but, the piece posits, there was a need for replacing the isolationists within the Republican Party in Congress so that their foreign policy would be more closely aligned to that of General Eisenhower, closely resembling that of the Truman Administration.

It recounts the Senate and House Republican voting records on key foreign policy issues, finding that most Republicans running for re-election in 1952, including 19 in the Senate, had voted against the Administration most of the time on foreign policy issues, including reciprocal trade, limitations on troops to Europe, the requirement that India pay in strategic materials for the grain it received from the U.S. to avert starvation, and the reduction of foreign aid. But, it finds, if General Eisenhower were to be the Republican nominee and then win, these same Republicans might change their positions after becoming the majority party and thus not be thorns in foreign policy implementation by such a new administration. Moreover, it finds, that whatever punishment such a foreign policy might suffer at the hands of a GOP-isolationist Congress, it would be far worse under a Taft presidency, as Senator Taft basically agreed with these isolationists.

"Agreement to Disagree" discusses the outcome of the conference between Prime Minister Churchill and the President during the week, intended as little more than a meeting of reacquaintance with one another. They had agreed to disagree on the issue of diplomatic relations with Communist China and had left unsettled questions of naming either an American or British admiral to command the NATO Atlantic navy, and whether to adopt a British or American rifle as the standard issue equipment to NATO ground forces, reserving judgment until such time as development of a suitable rifle for standardization would be achieved. They agreed that American use of atomic bomber bases in England in time of emergency would be subject to joint decision and approved of the efforts of the European nations to form a united defense force.

The question arose whether the U.S. would now need to agree with each of the other NATO nations regarding use of airfields, such as those in French Morocco, in time of emergency.

Regarding the Middle East, the two had agreed on an "identity of the aims", which the piece finds laudable but also excepts that the region required more than mere statements of agreement if mutual interests were to be advanced.

There had been no mention of Japan in the joint communique released on the conference. (Indirectly, the statement did touch on Japan, however, regarding the issue of whether Japan should be urged, as apparently Britain had been doing, to trade with Communist China: "We have discussed the many grave problems affecting our two countries in the Far East. A broad harmony of view has emerged from these discussions; for we recognize that the overriding need to counter the Communist threat in that area transcends such divergencies as there are in our policies toward China.")

It finds that the issues were of such complexity that they could not be solved by personal diplomacy or diplomatic committee meetings alone, but rather needed more of a community attitude which discounted the nationality of an admiral, the country of manufacture of a particular gun, etc.

"One Way to De-Emphasize" tells of coach Paul "Bear" Bryant of the University of Kentucky having decided to recruit only players from Kentucky, and coach Bobby Dodd of Georgia Tech having eliminated all outside grants to athletes by classifying them as "bribes", in an effort to comply with the move among college presidents and the NCAA to halt the professionalization of college football. The college presidents wanted to abolish bowl games and spring practice, and the NCAA wanted to limit grants-in-aid and standardize them.

The piece suggests that the schools could control their own admissions, and if done honestly, admitting only athletes who could qualify educationally and on the basis of character while insisting upon a reasonable student workload with reasonable grades obtained honestly, paying no more attention to who was paying the way of the athlete than schools did to those paying the way of other students, and then go ahead and play football freely, the sport would tend to rectify itself.

It concludes that perhaps there was too much reliance being placed on college academic authorities, but finds that if they were not competent to manage their own institutions, then no one was.

Following in the fine tradition of intercollegiate athletic sportsmanship and conference loyalty, we take this opportunity to congratulate the Clemson Tigers on their 2019 record-breaking 15-0 season and the National Championship won convincingly this past Monday against the University of Alabama, also undefeated entering the contest.

Enjoy it while you can, young men, as y'all boys gon' have to come on up heya to Chapel Hill next fall, for the first time in several yeahs, where you can expect the UNC Tar Heels to educate you-all on how to play the game of football, ratha 'an all 'at patty-cake you been doin'. You go ahead and laugh, now, and look at respective records for this season, and have good fun with us. We'll be waitin' with our can o' whoop. We still well recall the officials calling back that successfully recovered onsides kick for an offsides penalty which was not in fact that at all, as the video clearly showed, which may have resulted in the outcome of the ACC Championship game in 2015. We'll be waitin'. We'll even supply the postgame pizzas this time.

"Commission Government" notes that as the election of 1952 drew closer, there was an increasing trend to appoint bipartisan commissions to study controversies. The Magnuson Commission was looking at national health needs, while another commission was studying the proposed Missouri Valley Authority project, and the President, during the previous week, had appointed a committee to investigate discrimination. Senator Guy Gillette had proposed a commission to study the Atlantic Pact relations.

Yet, the President had decided to reverse himself and not appoint a commission to investigate Government corruption, leaving it to the Justice Department and Attorney General J. Howard McGrath. It therefore concludes that "some issues are too big to be salted away for the duration of the campaign."

Drew Pearson tells of the inside reason for the departure of Stuart Symington from the Government being the all-consuming jealousy of the White House staff for his excellent service, the same reason why former Presidential adviser Clark Clifford had departed. The "little band of mediocrities around the President" did not want smarter men than they close to the President. These mediocrities included Matt Connelly, John Steelman, Donald Dawson, and General Harry Vaughan. He recaps the career of Mr. Symington as chairman of the National Security Resources Board and then as chairman of the RFC, and how in those roles he had irritated these men around the President.

Recently, a Senate friend of the President had stated that there was no use going to him to urge reform because, since the departure of Mr. Clifford, there was no one on the White House staff capable of following up and carrying through with it.

Senator Guy Gillette of Iowa had been pulling strings backstage in the Senate Elections Committee either to kill or tone down the probe of Senator Joseph McCarthy pursuant to the expulsion resolution introduced by Senator William Benton of Connecticut. Senator Gillette had been the only member of the Committee to oppose investigation of the charges brought by Senator Benton, arguing that Senator McCarthy was so powerful that he would retaliate against any Senators voting against him. Senator Gillette, however, reversed himself when he saw the voting trend in the Committee going against his position. Since that time, however, he had sought to diminish the Committee's effectiveness by quietly firing the three investigators who were looking into the resolution.

Marquis Childs discusses the need for American aid by Japan to bolster its sagging economy. Since 1945, the U.S. had contributed to Japan 1.8 million dollars in aid, but that direct assistance had ended the prior July 1. Premier Shigeru Yoshida reportedly had written a letter to the President stating that without direct dollar assistance in a substantial amount, the Japanese economy would face a serious crisis. But in an election year, when economy was of utmost importance to the Congress, that could prove a hard sell.

The differences between Britain and the U.S. regarding the Far East might be the greatest obstacle to renewal of the closeness of the Anglo-American alliance, as Britain appeared to be channeling Japanese trade toward Communist China and thereby inviting Japan "to follow China down the Communist sewer". But to many Britons, the American position on China appeared unrealistic, as they believed recognition of the Communist Government was the only rational course to follow.

In addition to direct aid, American aid was being indirectly funneled to the Japanese economy through the Korean War at the rate of about 150 million dollars per year in goods, services and communications. Also, the U.N. civil assistance command was spending about 200 million dollars for relief and rehabilitation in South Korea, most of which came from the U.S., a considerable part of which was being spent in Japan. If an armistice occurred, the U.N. would spend 200 million dollars in rehabilitation, of which the U.S. had pledged 162 million, all of which would mean further spending in Japan. There were also other ways in which American dollars were enabling Japan to buy the iron ore and other raw materials it needed for its industrial base. But as long as Japan was forced to accept pounds sterling in exchange for trade with Southeast Asia, which it then could not convert into dollars, and was also prevented from trading with China, its economy would be strained.

Robert C. Ruark comments on the statement of Governor Herman Talmadge of Georgia, objecting to interracial interaction on television, finding the Governor's attitude deplorable and humiliating to the South. He had objected to the appearance of the Mariners, comprised of two white and two black singers, on the Arthur Godfrey Show, to black and white children dancing together on the Ken Murray Show, and to a white woman talking to a black man on the Clifton Fadiman Show. The Governor, finding that such programs were the equivalent of visiting the viewers in their homes, had suggested that the people boycott the sponsors of these programs.

Mr. Ruark ruefully mocks "Hummon" for his expression of prejudice on the basis of color, and wonders whether, to satisfy the Governor, the television stations ought produce only "Uncle Tom's Cabin", "with emphasis on the Simon Legree-blacksnake whip scene".

He finds it unfortunate for these "few remaining troglodytes", who apparently preferred to dwell in caves, that so many people had become accustomed to the appearance in all forms of media of such persons as Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson, Lena Horne, Marian Anderson, Louis Armstrong and Dr. Ralph Bunche, that it would not be possible to reshape television programming to fit the Governor's delicate feelings.

He indicates that he realized that there was still progress to be made in the South, and that it would take some time before a satisfactory solution could be formed to ameliorate such traditionally ingrained attitudes on race. There would still be the "Herman Talmadges to match against the self-serving firebrands who unscrupulously endeavor to reshape a status quo in five minutes, to the general detriment of both sides."

He suggests that in the meantime, he should apologize, as a Southerner, for the Governor, who had to be tolerated as the "abnormal child, with the few remaining vestiges of an ancient and barbaric culture" which still existed in some parts of the land. He ventures that if they were ignored, they would eventually go away "and make faces at each other".

Mr. Ruark's reference to "the self-serving firebrands who unscrupulously endeavor to reshape a status quo in five minutes" betrays a good bit of hypocrisy on the subject and does not suggest him as any exponent of integration but rather only as someone embarrassed by the "Hummons" of the South who could not tolerate even the good 'uns on the tv and in the sports world. He, inevitably, was attacking implicitly, in the same sweep, the efforts of the NAACP to integrate the schools of the country, as well as the President for his civil rights program, including the Fair Employment Practices Commission, originally implemented during the war by FDR pursuant to executive order under the war powers act, regarding firms operating under Government war contracts. In prior editorials, he had expressly said as much. So, all is not what it seems, sometimes.

Incidentally, for further clarification, despite viewing the Ervin Watergate Select Committee hearings thoroughly, though not in their entirety, during the summer of 1973, we recall no mention of any segregationist past of Senator Talmadge, something which we would have recalled vividly had it been mentioned. The only negative statement which we recall aimed at a particular Senator on the Committee was that of Jack Paar, who one night stated that he believed Senator Joseph Montoya of New Mexico was "not very bright". Any mention of Senator Talmadge's past positions, considered quite inapposite in any event to the proceedings at hand, was certainly never stressed, if mentioned at all in the news narrative on the subject that summer, in either its copious print or television coverage. The atmosphere of news coverage then, without 24-hour news and so much opinion talkie-talk to "educate" the public into utter confusion, was such that it tended to stick to the subject matter far more than it does today and for the last 35 years or so, without dredging up extraneous personal matter only tending to distract from the substantive issues at stake.

That which viewers missed in the gavel-to-gavel coverage during the day on the major networks could be caught late at night in summer, 1973, in replays of the hearings, and so it was not unlike 24-hour news or C-Span in its coverage, unprecedented at the time since the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954. It was those widely viewed hearings in summer, 1973 which turned the tide of opinion in the nation firmly against President Nixon and his Administration generally, coupled with the televised hearings of July, 1974 before the House Judiciary Committee, considering articles of impeachment based on the evidence adduced the previous summer and in grand jury proceedings in the matter. The hearings were models of bipartisanship for the most part, with no attempt to stifle the few Republican voices on either the Senate or House committees, Senator Edward Gurney of Florida on the Senate side, and most notably Congressmen Charles Wiggins of California and Charles Sandman of New Jersey on the House side, steadfastly remaining in the President's corner despite all the evidence militating to the contrary, a model of bipartisanship from which the Republicans in Congress could take salutary cues today, rather than insisting on obscurantism, a grand cover-up of the present Administration's "comedy of errors", driving the country off the road into the proverbial ditch of international and domestic disdain, while everything falls apart.

Is the insistent imperative, Republicans, that you continue in this charade, pretending the while that the overwhelming majority of the country is not steadfastly opposed to your will on most of the issues with which your party is presently identified in the public mind, really worth the destruction of the country and respect for its institutions? Or would it not be better to concede the matter, that the 2016 election was an anomaly, stolen by Russian interference, in carefully identified precincts in at least three key states electorally, end this charade, and start your party anew on a fresh basis, much as was done in the wake of Watergate? Otherwise, you may find yourselves out of power after 2020 until about 2040, much as was the case between 1933 and 1953.

A letter writer responds to a letter of January 9, which, itself, had been a response to the present letter writer, indicating that, contrary to the responsive letter, he had voted in every county, state and national election since he had been in Charlotte, and had voted in his home precinct on the occasion when the prior letter writer claimed he had not changed his voting precinct in time to vote after changing his residence. He also protests that the letter writer, while GOP county chairman, had not done an effective job of organizing precincts, and had driven good men out of the party.

A letter from a Democrat who was going to vote for General Eisenhower comments on the editorial of January 8, regarding the General's candidacy for the presidency, and commends the newspaper for supporting him for the Republican nomination—although mistakenly reading into the editorial an endorsement for the general election as well. He provides his reasons for supporting the General and indicates that he would be a president of all of the people, regardless of party, and advises Democrats to forget their party, as President Truman had wrecked it.

A letter writer commends the newspaper for the same editorial, as well as finding praiseworthy many other editorials.

A letter writer responds to the letter from the Fort Bragg captain who had written of his and his wife's umbrage taken to a column by Hal Boyle, regarding the fewer males than females in the country and the consequent need for females to seek out the fractional male rather than the whole, ideal male, out of the 48.3 percent of the population who were male. This writer suggests that if the shoe did not fit, then males and females should forget it, and that if spouses were true to one another, there would be no cause for divorce. She questions how many homes were broken up by whiskey.

Well, now, that is not being fair to the humorless captain and his wife, as no one said anything about alcohol. Just because someone lacks a sense of humor does not mean that they're drunks. They may well be morons, but not necessarily drunks, as many drunks sometimes have too much sense of humor, laugh at all the wrong things and at inopportune times.

Perhaps, incidentally, we misunderstood the objections of the captain and his wife, that in fact maybe they were indignant about Mr. Boyle's suggestion of a .6-man. But, as this writer says, if the shoe does not fit, forget about it. Then again, maybe the captain wore a small shoe.

Framed Edition
[Return to Links
Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News<i><i><i>—</i></i></i>Framed Edition]
Links-Date Links-Subj.