The Charlotte News

Tuesday, January 15, 1952

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Communist negotiators in the Korean truce talks claimed this date that U.S. bombs the previous night had killed ten allied soldiers and wounded 60 in a Communist prison camp, a claim denied by the U.S. Fifth Air Force. The U.N. command was investigating the charge. Neither of the two subcommittees, the one regarding prisoners and the other regarding truce oversight, made any progress this date, but negotiations were said to be more even-tempered than in recent days. At one point, the lead Chinese negotiator on the oversight subcommittee, stuck on the issue of whether airfields could be constructed and repaired during the course of an armistice, stated that repairing airfields would not be a threat to U.N. security, any more than the birth of every Korean baby was a threat, to which a U.N. negotiator responded that he hoped the issue would be limited to Korean airfields the following day, and not regard the Korean birthrate.

The prisoner of war subcommittee was stuck on the issue of the empressment of South Koreans into service in the North Korean army, a claim which the Communists denied. The allies wanted these soldiers returned as part of the prisoner exchange. The Communists claimed that the allies were holding prisoners as "hostages", in demanding a one-for-one exchange of prisoners for civilians.

In the air war, U.S. Sabre jet pilots damaged two enemy jets in the first air battles in the previous four days over northwest Korea. Clearing weather had permitted 150 Communist MIG-15s to fly again.

In the ground war, the major action was in the center of the snow-covered 145-mile front, where in a four-hour battle, U.N. troops repulsed an attack by an enemy company east of the Pukhan River.

In Paris, a British delegate to the U.N. General Assembly meeting warned the political committee not to expect a "sudden or dramatic solution" to East-West tension, but urged further study by the recently created disarmament commission of the Soviet proposal, introduced the previous Saturday by Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky, urging acceptance of international control of atomic energy while the atom bomb would be banned and offering to accept continuing international inspection of atomic facilities in Russia, appearing to be somewhat relaxed from more stringent previous Russian inspection limitations. France and the U.S. had also joined Britain in proposing that the Soviet suggestions be considered by the disarmament commission. The White Russian delegate, however, denounced the effort as a plan to bury the Soviet proposal. The British delegate repeated that the West would never agree to a ban of atomic weaponry until every form of armament was under international control. The Asian-Arab group of nations appeared to support the Western position on the matter.

Secretary of State Acheson and General Omar Bradley were called to testify this date before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee regarding the proposed addition of Greece and Turkey to NATO. Senator Tom Connally of Texas, chairman of the Committee, indicated that he anticipated no difficulty in winning Senate ratification of the proposed addition.

Congress began examining the President's plan for reorganization of the IRB, a plan which required affirmative action by Congress within 60 days or it would become effective. Either chamber could, by a majority vote, defeat the proposal. Members of each chamber indicated that they thought the proposal might meet opposition, as the plan called for reduction in the number of tax collectors from 64 to 25, collectors who were named by the President on the recommendation of Senators. The proposal would also remove the collectors from the political process and place them under Civil Service.

Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee met with the President for a half hour this date but declined afterward to say what they had discussed other than to indicate that it concerned "political matters", adding that he would provide a definite statement around February 1 of his intentions whether to seek the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

The President had asked Stuart Symington to remain temporarily as head of the RFC during the Senate confirmation process of nominee Harry McDonald for that position.

About 25 miles from Colfax, Calif., the City of San Francisco passenger train, with 226 aboard, including 30 crew members, had become stranded in a blizzard in the high Sierras. Two rescue trains were plowing west from Truckee toward the stranded train, carrying supplies and dog sleds. The stranded passengers were to be removed and taken to Sacramento aboard one of the trains. A spokesman for the Southern Pacific Railroad indicated that 25 to 30 of the passengers aboard needed immediate medical attention and there were two doctors with the rescue party. The stranded train had food aboard, carried by a utility company's maintenance crew, along with blankets and medical supplies.

The Red Cross reported that about 120 motorists were also stranded by the blizzard on Highway 395 northwest of Reno. They had found shelter at Stead Air Force Base and a Greyhound bus had taken 42 of the motorists to Reno. Thirty passengers aboard another Greyhound bus had been stranded since Friday near Echo Summit on U.S. Highway 50 and had taken shelter in cabins, but were reported being evacuated as continuing snowdrifts threatened to bury those cabins.

The California Division of Highways reported that it had temporarily suspended efforts to clear the transcontinental U.S. Highways 40 and 50 over the Sierras because of continuing strong winds piling deep drifts behind the snowplows.

In New York, a captain of a freighter was arrested the previous day on a charge of murder on the high seas, alleging that he had shot to death one of his crew members, a black utility cook. The shooting had allegedly occurred while the freighter was between Manila and Japan. The crew indicated that the cook had gone berserk and stated that someone had to kill the captain, but the captain had then fired three bullets into the cook while he was manacled and undergoing an hysterical breakdown. The captain, along with the first mate and crew members, had allegedly beaten the victim on the head with a blackjack before placing handcuffs on his wrists.

In Chatsworth, Ga., Taft Isenhower, a Murray County farmer, said that he would vote for Senator Kefauver if he were to become a candidate for the presidency.

In Los Angeles, employees of a packing company, riding in trucks and automobiles, chased and rounded up four steers which had escaped from the company yards, while a fifth steer led radio car policemen around on a chase until the animal was finally caught when an animal shelter inspector climbed atop a truck and threw a lariat around the bull on Main Street—where the bricks fell after the fire which took out Chicago and rocked the City of San Francisco.

On the editorial page, "Olive's Challenge to Umstead" remarks on Judge Hubert Olive of Lexington entering the North Carolina Democratic gubernatorial race and suggests that until his entry, it had appeared that former interim Senator William B. Umstead of Durham had the field pretty much to himself. As the Judge would be a formidable opponent, his entry to the race was a reassuring sign that the Democratic Party in North Carolina was far from being under the control of any one man or any one group.

"Taft's Machine" finds that Senator Taft's statement that he had pledges of permanent support from at least 75 delegates in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Kansas, and pledges from more than half of the convention delegates, despite none having yet been chosen, to be indicative of machine politics within the Republican Party. It implicitly showed that the Senator had made deals with political bosses for delivery of those delegates to him in return for patronage, political plums and pledges of support or non-support of various measures.

Atlanta Constitution editor Ralph McGill had indicated that neither Boss Pendergast of Kansas City nor Mark Hanna at the turn of the century had ever made a statement more revealing of deals with political bosses, the reason why the nomination by the GOP of General Eisenhower was by no means assured.

It finds that if the Senator were to become president, he would bring with him a political machine which would make "Trumanism" seem trivial by comparison. Senator Taft would owe his political debts to the most reactionary wing of the Republican Party. If he were to be nominated, it opines, it would come through delegates under the control of party bosses and, if elected, he would owe more to those party bosses than to the people.

"Strange Justice" tells of a strange verdict in New Bern, N.C., where a jury had acquitted a farmer of murdering his black tenant farmer. The defendant had claimed that he recalled that the murder victim had raped his wife nearly a month earlier, that the two had then quarreled regarding $30 which the victim claimed the farmer owed him, whereupon the farmer went "blank" as the victim approached him with a butcher knife, at which time he shot the man in self-defense. Subsequently, he moved the body in his automobile and hid it on an isolated road. The jury had taken nine hours to reach its verdict.

The piece indicates that it was not explained during the case why the defendant had maintained the secret of the alleged rape of his wife for nearly a month before the shooting, and neither explained anything about the verdict except that "the way of justice is sometimes difficult to comprehend."

The verdict was not necessarily that strange, assuming the jury believed the farmer's claim of self-defense from the alleged knife attack by the victim. He used deadly force to defend against ostensibly deadly force. At that point, the alleged rape becomes only ancillary to the defense, the verdict not being reliant on jury nullification via the "unwritten law".

"Hysteria Comes Home" tells of Grace Patton of Charlotte, who had been dismissed from the Army finance office in 1948 as a bad security risk, but recently reinstated with back pay, with an apology from the Army for making a mistake. At the time, she had not known the specific charges against her, only that she was supposed to have attended Communist meetings, a contention she had denied. Following two years of inquiry, a Circuit Court of Appeals granted her the right to have a bill of particulars specifying the times, places and organizations involved in the alleged meetings.

It regards the incident as indicative of the danger of granting security dismissal power to Federal agencies without proper safeguards. By the same token, it suggests, inadequate dismissal power could also be disastrous, and therefore a careful balance needed to be struck. Others, it counsels, who were accused of being security risks or had been dismissed for same, might also be as innocent as Ms. Patton. The incident, it concludes, suggested that the next time the McCarthys shouted for more police powers against the "bogey of Communism in America", Ms. Patton's case should be remembered.

A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "Agrarian Reform", tells of the Chinese Communists having come to power on a wave of agrarian reform, a fact central to understanding Asia in 1952 and for understanding the Point Four program of the President. Technical aid to agriculture had to be accompanied by social reform or the increased productivity from Point Four would benefit no one except the landowners, leaving the peasant masses still easy prey for Communism.

Recently, Congressman Clifford Hope had pointed out that during the Civil War, Congress had passed the Homestead Act to provide free homesteads for those who would settle on public lands and cultivate that land, while at the same time providing for the land-grant college system from which came the experimental stations and extension services on which the American system of agricultural education was based. One law had recognized the importance of farm ownership and the other, the importance of agricultural education. It posits that the two still had to go hand in hand for underdeveloped regions of the world to prosper under Point Four.

Drew Pearson tells of quarterly tax estimates being due for 1951, plus the payments. While people normally griped about paying taxes, this time, with so much evidence of fraud and favoritism in the IRB collection process having been adduced in Congressional hearings, the grousing appeared justified.

He suggests five methods to prevent fraud in the future, starting with reform at the top to avoid cues being given by the White House to the Justice Department tax division regarding political friends. He also favors publishing of tax returns, increasing tax division personnel, registration of influence peddlers, similar to that required of lobbyists, providing for review by a group of retired judges of fixed tax cases, and taking the tax collection system out of politics, as already proposed by the President, and placing it under the Civil Service system.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop tell of British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden having firmly told the Communist Chinese that any move against Indo-China or elsewhere in Southeast Asia would be treated as aggression and dealt with accordingly. While the announcement had not stirred much excitement, it meant that the British and American governments had decided to go to war, or at least come very close to doing so, with Communist China in the event of such aggression. The warning was the result of the conference between Prime Minister Churchill and the President.

The British and American governments had been informed several weeks earlier that the French Government expected a Communist Chinese invasion of Indo-China, as between 220,000 and 270,000 Chinese troops were deployed along the border in staging positions. If they were to attack, the French and loyal Indo-Chinese forces, already having to fight the Communist guerrillas, would be unable to withstand, causing Indo-China to fall to the Communists, setting off a chain reaction which would spread through Siam, Malaya and Burma to Indonesia, India and the Middle East—not the first time the Alsops have referred to this chain reaction, which later became commonly known as the "domino theory", the primary justification for the country's entry to Vietnam, first with military advisers in 1958 and onward through the Gulf of Tonkin incidents of August, 1964, after which, pursuant to broad presidential authority provided by the immediately ensuing Gulf of Tonkin resolution overwhelmingly passed by Congress, unanimously in the House and with only Senators Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska opposing in the Senate, the first substantial numbers of American combat troops were introduced in early 1965.

The British and American staffs had determined that Soviet capture of almost all of Asia would amount to total defeat in the Cold War. Plans to counter such a chain reaction were therefore carefully reviewed and any commitment to Indo-China of American and other U.N. forces, on the Korean pattern of "limited" war, was rejected. The final decision was to meet any new Chinese Communist aggression instead with strict naval blockade of the Chinese coast, air attacks on Chinese coastal cities and inland communication, and such other reprisals as might be deemed practicable—adopting part of the MacArthur plan.

It could not be foreseen whether these latter actions would lead to war with Communist China or might induce the Soviets also to enter the conflict. Such were the risks to be taken to stop such a chain reaction, which ultimately would engulf the whole Western alliance.

They regard the warning as prudent to avoid the prospect in Indo-China of another Korea, where the Soviets had in 1950 underestimated the willingness of the U.S., in the wake of its post-World War II disarmament, and other U.N. countries to respond.

They add that there had been friction in the conference between the President and the Prime Minister regarding whether the Japanese should recognize Chiang Kai-shek, since John Foster Dulles had promised that the Japanese would be left free to choose between the Nationalists and the Communist Chinese. The British had accepted American policy in this regard but had refused to rescind their recognition of Communist China, while hinting that they wished they had never granted recognition in the first instance. There had been, however, full agreement on the dangers looming in the Far East and that, the Alsops conclude, was all that mattered.

Robert C. Ruark tells of Jerry Coleman, a second baseman for the New York Yankees who had flown 56 specific missions in dive bombers and received two Distinguished Flying Crosses and several medals during World War II, along with Ted Williams and some other baseball players who had served during the war, being called up for service yet again. He finds it wholly unwarranted, given the availability of young men to serve in the military. Such professional baseball players only had a relatively short time in their lives to make their livings and to interrupt that process for a second time could end those careers.

Mr. Ruark finds it contradictory for the country to be arguing the advisability of universal military training on the one hand while sending "retreads" back into service after they had already served in the prior war. Moreover, the Navy and the Marines, in many cases, took men off active duty and placed them in inactive status without giving them the chance to resign, a chance later withdrawn. Mr. Ruark, in the Navy during the war, regards that as "sneaky" and reflecting no credit on the services, to reactivate "old" men when there were so many "young 'uns" available.

A letter writer explains why the Republican Party had failed the American people in their hour of greatest need during the previous 20 years, hoping that it would not lead to a repetition in the future. He indicates that the Republicans had been guilty of moral cowardice during those two decades for lacking the courage to say what the rank-and-file Republicans believed, that the New Deal was of "infinite menace", as the state was taking control and ownership of the people and using the power to tax to destroy their independence and self-reliance.

He had first voted in 1908, casting then his first presidential ballot for William Howard Taft, and proudly would vote for his son in 1952.

A letter writer, finding that the Republicans were seeking to attract the votes of women in the coming election, asks women to consider the chances they had in the business world between 1920 and 1932 during three successive Republican Administrations, then consider their opportunities in the previous 20 years under two Democratic Administrations, and then vote their convictions.

A letter writer from Buffalo, N.Y., indicates that he was writing a biography of General Tom Thumb, the American midget whose real name was Charles S. Stratton, who lived from 1838 until 1883 and was associated with P. T. Barnum in show business. He wishes readers to send him any information or material they might possess on his subject and the man's wife, provides his address. So, if you knew Tom Thumb or have pictures or newspaper or magazine clippings regarding him, be sure and write the gentleman, as no one will wish to miss his biography, due in a bookstore near you very soon, located in the Blues section.

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