The Charlotte News
Wednesday, October 29, 1952
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that South Korean infantrymen, in close-quarters fighting this date, had forced a battalion of Communist Chinese troops from the crest of "Sniper Ridge" for the seventh time in the previous 16 days. The South Koreans had been driven from the highest peak, "Pinpoint Hill", late the previous night and had begun their counter-attack at dawn. Associated Press correspondent John Randolph said that the crest of the ridge was accomplished at 10:00 a.m., and then the South Koreans advanced northward along the ridge, scene of the longest continuous battle since the battle for "Heartbreak Ridge" the prior November. Artillery barrages pounded the retreating enemy troops. General Mark Clark, supreme commander of the allied forces in Korea, during a tour of the front, congratulated Lt. General Chung Il Kwon, the South Korean commander, for the "magnificent fighting" of his men.
The enemy troops hit the U.S. Seventh Division troops on nearby "Triangle Hill" with artillery and mortar fire during the night, but there was no contact between the ground forces. Allied soldiers seized one hill this date near "Iron Horse Mountain" without a fight, after Chinese troops had battled all the previous day for it. Fighting flared briskly elsewhere along the front as temperatures dropped to 35 degrees.
Allied warplanes hit Communist positions at the front and deep in North Korea, and the fledgling South Korean Air Force launched its first close support strikes of the war with all Korean pilots. Ten B-29's early this date dropped 80 tons of 500-pound bombs on an enemy military headquarters near Sopo, on the outskirts of Pyongyang, and pilots reported large explosions.
A report from the U.S. Seventh Fleet off Korea indicated that a helicopter was hovering over the narrow fantail of the destroyer U.S.S. Orleck when its engine sputtered and a passenger, dangling ten feet below, scrambled out of his harness, hit the deck and started running. The helicopter then dropped down on a loaded rack of depth charges, bounced and came to rest with one wheel astride a 400-pound can of TNT. Three enlisted men jumped forward and disarmed the depth charges and no one was hurt. The helicopter was transporting an ensign from the cruiser Los Angeles when its engine shut down.
The fighting during October, measured by casualties of the enemy, was the heaviest since the previous November. The U.S. Eighth Army reported that 27,096 enemy troops had been killed, wounded or captured during the first three weeks of the month, whereas the toll the previous November had been 44,729.
The Defense Department this date announced that the largest weekly increase in American casualties in Korea had occurred in nearly a year, with 1,278 killed, missing or wounded, bringing total casualties for the war to 123,395. The weekly record, established on October 5, 1950, had been 3,536 casualties, and the low had been 123, reported the previous March 26. The weekly casualty toll had been relatively high since early in September, reflecting the intense localized fighting for hill positions all along the line.
General Eisenhower, in New York City, said, in a nationally broadcast radio and television program the previous night, that a "top secret document" on Korea was being used against him by his political enemies, not identifying the document other than to describe it as from the Defense Department. He said that there had been a military estimate made in September, 1947, producing the conclusion that the military occupation of South Korea was not essential to the security of the United States. He suggested that many Americans would like to know how a top secret document was released.
On Monday, in Minneapolis, Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon had read a Government memorandum to an audience at the University of Minnesota, signed by the late Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, dated September 26, 1947, in which was stated that the Joint Chiefs "consider that from a standpoint of military security, the U.S. has little strategic interest in maintaining the present troops and bases in Korea…" At the time, General Eisenhower was Army chief of staff and thus a member of the Joint Chiefs.
General Eisenhower had emphasized in his argument on the campaign trail that there was a vast difference between military estimates and political decisions, accusing Secretary of State Acheson of making a major "blunder" in announcing subsequently that the "defense perimeter" of the U.S. in the Far East did not include Korea or Formosa.
Governor Stevenson toured Pennsylvania this date, defending the Democratic record for promoting social progress and accusing the Old Guard Republicans of opposing progressive legislation, reminding of the depression which had begun in the previous Republican Administration, saying, "If there are any young people here who don't remember it, they should ask their parents." He left his special train at Wilkes-Barre and rode by automobile across the Pocono Mountains to Hazleton, a textile and anthracite coal center, where a shivering crowd of 7,500 came out to see him. He said that the weather seemed "as cold as an Old Guard Republican's heart." Scranton was a Democratic stronghold in the state, while Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton generally voted Republican. Coal miners were off work this date, observing the birthday of the late John Mitchell, regarded as the patron saint of the UMW. UMW leaders, including the vice-president, Thomas Kennedy, toured the region with the Governor. UMW president John L. Lewis had endorsed the Governor, whereas he had endorsed Governor Dewey in 1948, had not endorsed anyone in 1940 and 1944. Governor Dewey had won the state in 1948 and FDR had carried it in each of the years 1936, 1940 and 1944. The previous night in Madison Square Garden in New York, the Governor had stated to a capacity crowd of 22,000 that General Eisenhower was the standard-bearer of a "sordid triumph of expediency over principle" and had capitulated to those who championed a "dear-departed quiet past that is all so dead." Thousands were turned away from the Garden. He had also been given rousing welcomes in Jersey City, Paterson, Garfield and Newark, N.J., despite cold and disagreeable weather.
An Associated Press survey showed this date that more than 80 percent of the top officeholders in the South were supporting Governor Stevenson, including governors, Senators and members of the House. Those Democrats who had bolted to General Eisenhower, however, stated that much of the support for the Governor was "for the record", to preserve the claim of party regularity, and amounted only to token support. The most prominent bolters were Governors Allan Shivers of Texas, Robert Kennon of Louisiana and James Byrnes of South Carolina, whose states represented a total of 42 electoral votes, and Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, who had indicated his lack of support for the Governor but had not said he would vote for General Eisenhower. Governor Herman Talmadge of Georgia had said that he would vote for the Governor "reluctantly". The other eight Southern governors had expressed their support for the Governor, as had the other 25 Southern Senators, and only one of the Southern Democratic members of the House, Representative L. Mendel Rivers of South Carolina, had announced support for General Eisenhower. About 95 House Democrats were supporting the Governor actively or passively, and the remaining number were uncommitted, while all of the few Republicans in the South supported the General. State and party officials in Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kentucky were solidly for the Governor and all were engaged in actively campaigning for him.
The President said this date in
Waterloo, Ia., that the trend in Iowa had been "strongly
Democratic" since the appearance in that state of Senator Nixon
and that he would be happy to have the Senator continue to help the
Democrats through his speeches but that he was afraid there wasn't
time before the election "for all the people to see what he's
like
In Los Angeles, Senator Nixon this date angrily branded a statement by the DNC that he and his relatives owned real estate valued at a quarter of a million dollars to be "a lie". He said, "The extent of the desperation of the Stevenson candidacy is shown by this last-minute desperate move. After Mr. Mitchell [referring to the DNC chairman], and Mr. Stevenson failed in their attempt to besmirch my honor and integrity, they are now attempting, through the Democratic National Committee, to attack the honor and integrity of my 75-year old father, my mother, and my brother." He had told a San Francisco audience the previous night that Governor Stevenson's campaign proposals would mean suicide for the country. Mr. Nixon would give a major nationally televised and radio broadcast speech this night on "the forgotten man". The vice-presidential nominee's press secretary James Bassett refused to identify who the mystery man was or give any hint of what the Senator would discuss. The Senator had not revealed any further itemization of his income in his statement during the morning.
In Paris, the Mystere II jet fighter had become the first French-built plane to break the sound barrier, according to an announcement of the Air Ministry the previous day, which stated that U.S. Maj. John Davis of Wright Field in Ohio had piloted the craft in its flight over Melun, near Paris.
Ah, Juicy Fruit...
In Winston-Salem, James A. Gray, 63, chairman of the board of directors of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, and a philanthropist and civic leader in the city, died this date of a heart attack. He had recovered apparently from an attack of viral pneumonia three weeks earlier and had made a business trip the previous week to New York, returning Saturday, but became ill that night, his condition having grown worse, causing him to have to be admitted to Baptist Hospital on Tuesday. He had attended Winston-Salem public schools and UNC, receiving his A.B. degree in 1908, at which point he joined Wachovia National Bank as a clerk, serving as assistant treasurer of the bank from 1911 through 1915, and then treasurer for the ensuing three years, becoming vice-president in 1918 and leaving the bank for Reynolds in 1920, where he became a vice-president, serving as president of the company from 1934 until 1946 and chairman of the executive committee from 1946 until early 1949, at which point he was elected chairman of the board.
Fresh forest fires were spreading widely across scattered sections of the Carolinas this date, threatening thousands of acres of valuable woodland. Cold winds, reaching freezing temperatures, had fanned the blazes and there was no rain in the forecast. The fires were heaviest in the mountains of North Carolina but most of those were reported this date to be under control. A new fire had spread across Currituck and Camden Counties in the northeastern coastal region, heavily damaging 10,000 acres of timber land, and other fires were reported in southeastern North Carolina and central South Carolina. Smoke from the fire spread over large areas of the state, limiting visibility the previous day in Charlotte to two miles and to about 1.5 miles in Lumberton, far to the east. Visibility had also been sharply reduced in the mountain areas where the threat of the fire was greatest. Mount Mitchell recorded a 9 degree temperature, with Greensboro having a low of 29, Charlotte, 31, Asheville, 28, Raleigh, 34, Columbia, S.C., 35, and Charleston, 42.
In Beverly Hills, Dixie Lee Crosby, 40, wife of Bing, lay in a coma near death this date. Mr. Crosby was at his wife's bedside as were their four sons. She had been in ill health for several years and had undergone serious abdominal surgery the previous July, with her condition having become critical several weeks earlier. She had rallied enough to allow Mr. Crosby to go to France recently to make the movie "Little Boy Lost". She had left her bed against doctors' orders the previous Saturday to greet her husband at the railroad station upon his return, then suffered a relapse on Sunday and entered a coma the previous day. She had given up film stardom to become a wife and mother, was born Wilma Wyatt in Harriman, Tenn., on November 4, 1911.
On the editorial page, "Yet Another McCarthy Smear" suggests that for Governor Stevenson, the enthusiastic assistance of the President had been a dubious asset during the campaign, whereas for General Eisenhower, the heaviest burden had been Senator Joseph McCarthy.
The General had made it plain that he disapproved of the Senator's methods and just a few hours before the Senator had begun his television and radio broadcast Monday night regarding Governor Stevenson, the General had repeated that in cleaning subversives out of the Government, "we have to destroy the reputation of no innocent man. We can do it, and must do it the American way". The piece indicates that it was intended to refer to Senator McCarthy, without naming him.
The Senator's speech had been a "dud", not worth the $85,000 it was reported to have cost a group of right-wing Midwestern Republicans who paid for it. The material was stale, the random quotes having been taken out of context, "heavily daubed with innuendo and insinuation, and further distorted by the cynical, sneering tone of the McCarthy voice." It finds that it was just another "wearisome repetition of the 'Big Lie' technique, first perfected by Hitler and Stalin, the secret of which is to spread as many lies and distortions as fast as possible and make them just as big as possible so that denials and explanations will never quite catch up with them."
It indicates that those, such as the newspaper, who were supporting the General because he represented "the best in America" resented the unsolicited help of Senator McCarthy, who represented "the worst in America". His presence in the campaign had undoubtedly cost the General the support of some independent voters early in the campaign and his speech the prior Monday had probably caused others to desert the General. The Senator would have to answer to the people of Wisconsin and to the Senate. "The rest of us will profitably follow the example of General Eisenhower and refuse to condone or emulate the unprincipled tactics of Senator McCarthy."
It rather appears that the General was straddling the fence, seeking to have it both ways, allowing Senator McCarthy to appear with him in Wisconsin while he campaigned, never openly decrying Senator McCarthy and his tactics, rather stating it in a back-handed way, so that the Stupidisms who listened to the Senator could go on rationalizing that Ike was really on their side and was simply winking to please the lib'rals up 'ere in the Nor'east. Tell 'em what they want to hear...
At least the majority of voters in North Carolina were not so gullible and stupid, not just once but twice, and if you include 1960, thrice. By 1968, however, enough persons had become infected with the Stupids that the result was decidedly different.
"Constitutional Amendment—II" regards the second of three State constitutional amendments on the ballot on November 4, again urging its passage. This one would provide a new method of filling vacancies when they occurred in the General Assembly, allowing the governor to appoint the new member, upon the recommendation of the executive committee of the county in which the deceased or resigned member was a resident.
"State Machinery out of Date" indicates that much of the dwindling states' rights resulted from abandonment of state and local responsibility and a refusal on the part of the citizens to finance and modernize state, county and city legislative bodies, rather than wholly from encroachment by the Federal Government. Washington merely moved into the vacuum to fill this abdication of responsibility. Most states operated under constitutions framed and fitted for the Nineteenth Century. In only ten states were legislatures authorized to meet annually and when they did meet, usually remained in session for short periods, such as the 36 days for Alabama's sessions. During those brief sessions, a flood of bills were passed without adequate consideration, many of them dealing with relative trivialities which should have been handled by the municipalities. The larger bills often failed because the arbitrary time limits of the session precluded them or they were passed without adequate consideration in an ill-advised form.
To compound the evils inherent in the system, some legislatures, such as the 1951 session of the North Carolina General Assembly, refused to carry out the clear and just constitutional mandate to re-district following a decennial census.
In addition, the pay scale for state legislators was low, about the same as that for a babysitter or caddie, and so the incentive to serve was also low.
An Oregon legislator, Richard Neuberger, had written a thoughtful piece in the New York Times Magazine recently, suggesting that legislatures ought be in session whenever important issues arose and not at sporadic intervals, that the legislators' pay should be at least $6,000 per year in all states, that states should call constitutional conventions to draft new charters and free legislative bodies from picayune restrictions dating from 100 years earlier, that the size of legislatures should be reduced to provide for orderly procedures and enable familiarization of voters with the qualifications of the candidates, and that legislatures should have permanent staffs, protected by the civil service system, holding over between sessions to assure continuity and experience in the legislative process.
The editorial indicates that those types of reforms were badly needed presently in the North Carolina Legislature and should be initiated by the legislators, suggests that people concerned about the loss of states' rights should apply pressure and provide advice and moral support to the legislators who would attend the 1953 session.
A piece from the London Evening News, titled "What Britain Wants from Us", tells of many trade markets, such as China, being virtually closed to Britain for political reasons, while some, such as Australia, had temporarily to block trade with Britain because its own economic troubles prevented it. In other areas, potential traders had to face fiercer competition from Germany and Japan. Moreover, the U.S. was erecting trade barriers which made it difficult for Britain to obtain vitally needed dollars.
In the years since the war, the American people "generously and wholeheartedly" had allowed themselves to be taxed to the hilt to provide dollar assistance whenever it was needed, but every so often, they understandably complained that they could not go on forever spoon-feeding Britain or the other countries of Europe. The piece agrees, indicates that such charity was bad for both the provider and the recipient, as in time it was bound to poison relations between the two countries.
But there was an alternative, for Americans to buy more British goods and lower the barriers which prevented their entry, so that the British could earn the required dollars.
It adds that the aid received was not in raw dollars but in the form of goods and only in kind could it be repaid. It remarks that it was too readily assumed, perhaps, after the war that prewar conditions would return to trade so that the British could pay for dollar purchases with earnings made elsewhere from exports and investments abroad. Now, those were no more.
Drew Pearson tells of recently waiting in the Minnesota Club in St. Paul for some friends and noticing a portrait of Frank Kellogg on the wall. It caused him to reflect on former Secretary of State Kellogg's attempt with the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 to outlaw war. Mr. Pearson had been, at the time, a young newspaper reporter covering the State Department, had thought that the Secretary had done rather a bad job in Nicaragua and Mexico but had gained great stature when he negotiated the Pact. Mr. Pearson went with him to Paris to cover the story of the signing of the Pact for the New York Times.
During the voyage aboard the S.S. Leviathan, Mr. Kellogg's aides cooked up a scheme whereby Mr. Pearson would send to the Times a radiogram asking the editor to query him as to whether the treaty would be claimed as a triumph for the Republican Party or would be considered bipartisan. After that had occurred, Mr. Pearson showed Secretary Kellogg the inquiry and he had growled that he was certainly not going to allow the treaty to become a political football. Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce under President Coolidge, was preparing for his fall presidential campaign against Governor Al Smith and was looking for political ammunition, decided to use the treaty.
Two days after they landed, Mr. Kellogg summoned Mr. Pearson and asked him what he had said in his article which he had written on the treaty, and upon Mr. Pearson showing it to him, stated that Mr. Hoover had chewed him out during a Cabinet meeting, but he was glad that Mr. Pearson had written the article, suggesting that he needed the bipartisan support for the treaty, which it received the following January, ratified by a nearly unanimous Senate vote, with no Democrats and only one Republican having dissented.
Mr. Kellogg had died a few years later, brokenhearted over the fact that he knew that his peace treaty was about to be smashed by the Axis, each of which had been signatories to the Pact. Before his death, he came to Washington several times to assist his successor, Henry Stimson, Secretary of State under President Hoover. Mr. Pearson lauds both men as being of principle and developing a bipartisan foreign policy.
Subsequently, Mr. Pearson traveled with Mr. Stimson to London where he sought to limit the arms race and persuade Europe to sign a consultative pact. The pact pledged the U.S. to consult with other nations in case war was threatened and imposed no other obligation. Mr. Pearson sent a cable to the Baltimore Sun that such a pact was to be signed, and when President Hoover got wind of it, he issued a special denial. At the same time, however, Secretary of State Stimson was holding a press conference in London, stating that the treaty would be signed. The two conflicting points of view on foreign policy remained a cleavage in the Republican Party through the present time. It plagued Mr. Stimson all through the Hoover Administration, as he saw the true goal of the Japanese warlords in Manchuria in 1931 and did his best to stop the conquest of China, utilizing the peace machinery of the League of Nations and the Nine-Power Pact of 1922. But Republican isolationists and President Hoover, privately, objected to the effort. Eventually, Mr. Stimson gave up, but when he left the State Department at the beginning of the Roosevelt Administration, he came to Washington for several conferences with President Roosevelt and his successor at State, Cordell Hull, seeking to preserve bipartisan foreign policy. (Mr. Stimson served from 1940, throughout the war, as Secretary of War under FDR.)
That had been the policy of President Wilson, Secretaries Kellogg and Stimson, and President Roosevelt, and had been followed up to the time of the death 18 months earlier of Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan. Since that time, foreign policy had been made a political football, which, Mr. Pearson believes, could only end in one result, serious and perhaps irreparable harm to the goal of peace.
He regards this schism in the Republican Party to be the primary danger which General Eisenhower faced in leading the party, and it was a danger which could hurt the U.S. more than any domestic policy, tax law or taint of corruption. He states that above all, the people of the country wanted peace and it was the most important issue in the campaign. He indicates that he would discuss it further in another column.
A letter writer surnamed Barkley remarks on the visit of "Cousin Alben", the Vice-President, the previous Friday in Charlotte, finds that it was the second time within the week that the county had been blanketed with "'a big frost'".
Are you the bastard cousin?
A letter writer from Lincolnton finds the newspaper completely correct in its editorial regarding presidential campaigns being too long. He thinks that never in the history of the nation had there been so much "lying, smearing, slander and mud-throwing" as was being heard presently. Never had they heard so much about the "low-down Republicans and the goody-goody Democrats", so much about the Hoover depression and the Democratic prosperity. He believes that anyone who believed that the country had never had it so good was living in a "fool's paradise" and needed to open their eyes to the facts of life.
A letter writer indicates that incumbent Congressman Hamilton Jones had reportedly refused all invitations to speak on the same platform with his Republican opponent Charles Jonas and had reportedly refused invitations from the League of Women Voters, Davidson College, and a local radio station to do so. He thinks that Mr. Jones was being smart for once because he could not find anything in the record of his party about which to brag. He plans to vote for Mr. Jonas.
A letter writer from Lincolnton congratulates the newspaper for endorsing General Eisenhower and indicates his agreement with everything a previous writer had said on October 25 regarding Mr. Jonas. He indicates that he had known the Jonas family for 30 years and that Mr. Jonas was one of the "finest and cleanest young men, in every respect" whom he had ever known.
A letter writer from Morganton indicates that if Taft-Hartley was a slave labor law, as union leaders and some politicians claimed, then a law to compel a man to join a union before he could earn his living at his selected trade had to be likewise. He indicates that he had worked at Oak Ridge in 1944 and 1945 and had to clear it with the union before he could enter the hiring hall, finds it to have been slavery. He thinks that the Democrats, in claiming that the country had never had it so good, failed to point out that the country owed much more than 20 years earlier.
Obviously, you are part of the crew of letter writers who would prefer to have President Hitler, Vice-President Robert R. Reynolds, and Secretary of Defense Tojo.
A letter writer says that he had heard often that it was impossible to vote Republican and still claim to be a true Democrat, notes again, as had another writer, that Jonathan Daniels, in The Man of Independence, had recounted at page 117 that in 1920, Harry Truman had voted Republican—for his friend, a fellow veteran of World War I in France who was running for a local office—suggests therefore that it was perfectly appropriate to vote for General Eisenhower while still claiming to be "patriotic North Carolina Democrats".
You don't have to justify to us that you're a dirty little turncoat.
A letter writer says that the current Administration, which wanted to stay in power at any cost, was taking from the country, that "crooks in government robbed the taxpayer". They were taking tax dollars and sons away to be "slaughtered in an undeclared war 8,000 miles away".
And so, no doubt, you are planning to vote for the General, who was the supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, and his tricky little sidekick.
A letter writer from Cheraw, S.C., urges voting on November 4, reminds that people had homes, cars, food, clothing, etc., and that Democrats in South Carolina were going to vote for the party which had helped the South and the whole country, that no real Democrat would follow Governor James Byrnes, whom the writer thinks should resign from office, as many who had voted for him were "sadly disappointed".
A letter writer provides a letter sent out to doctors inviting them to attend the Seawell-for-Governor dinner and warning of socialized medicine, finds it to imply that the Democrats were for "Federal invasion of states' rights" and socialized medicine, while the Republicans supposedly were opposed to the things listed in the letter. He indicates that Governor Stevenson was not for socialized medicine nor any of the other things in the letter and believes the effort to organize doctors was "nothing more than an attempt to create class distrust". He asks that his name be withheld as he had some very good friends who were doctors and were sensitive to implied criticism. He thanks the newspaper for its fairness, though they were on different sides of the political fence. He says that he particularly liked an editorial by R. F. Beasley of the Monroe Journal and the newspaper's condemning of "the hollowness of the Hiss herring".
We think you may have misread some of the editorials regarding the Hiss matter, as the newspaper appears to have stood foursquare in support of Mr. Hiss's conviction for perjury, perhaps confusing it with the newspaper's uniform condemnation of Senator McCarthy and his tactics—as paradoxical as those two points of view are in juxtaposition, as the overriding fact which detracted from Mr. Hiss's conviction was the methodology which led to it, utilized by Congressman Nixon & Co. on HUAC, whereby Mr. Hiss, one of the few witnesses who sought to cooperate with that Committee and appeared voluntarily to testify in response to the claims of admitted former Communist Whittaker Chambers that he knew Mr. Hiss and that they had attended Communist meetings together in the Thirties, Mr. Hiss's eventually contended sin of perjury having arisen from his assertions before the December, 1948 grand jury that he did not supply Mr. Chambers secret documents or even have association with him during the time period Mr. Chambers only later contended, after the original August HUAC testimony, in response to the defamation suit filed against him by Mr. Hiss in September, that Mr. Hiss had supplied him with secret State Department documents, documents which all agreed were at the time innocuous in their content, and which Mr. Chambers had admitted passing or intending to pass on to Russia in early 1938, before the war, eight years before the Cold War. That matter, in digging up the past out of context, during an entirely different contextual set of circumstances postwar, indeed, was a "red herring", as the President had called it in fall, 1948, intended to gather votes for the Republicans from those infected, early in the carefully planned process of subtle indoctrination, with the Stupidisms, while enabling Mr. Nixon to feather his own political nest of cuckoo birds as a tenacious fighter against Communism, in preparation for his 1950 Senate run. In short, Mr. Hiss was set up for a fall and Mr. Chambers, the admitted Communist and spy, got away scot free, having ruined a decent man's life with the help of his new buddies, Mr. Nixon and his adjutant, Robert Stripling, all based on matters occurring more than a decade earlier in a different time, all part of the Republican scheme to associate the Roosevelt-Truman years with redness and pinkness through employment of that old specious axiom, post hoc, ergo propter hoc, all of which coalesced and reached its hysterical peak in that which became known subsequent to Senator McCarthy's 1950 Lincoln Day speech in Wheeling as McCarthyism.
Moreover, you may have missed some of the other commentary by Mr. Beasley.
We need, incidentally, to apologize to the letter writer of June 6, as, indeed, there did surface subsequently in the post-convention campaign some discussion in the prints of the church to which General Eisenhower belonged and the fact that Governor Stevenson was a Unitarian. Perhaps, there had been in June or earlier some hash about the fact that the General did not belong to a church, perhaps on the radio or in one of the gossip columns, before it gained currency.
A letter writer finds that a circular which said that a one-party press was dangerous had missed the point, that a one-party policy was dangerous. He supports Governor Byrnes in voting for principle and not a party label, says the "New-Fair Dealers are not truly Democrats, they are masquerading only under that label."
Who are they really, Commies or Socialists? maybe both, but surely reddish, pink traitors? Better be careful, though, in casting your vote this time as General Ike, they say, has a healthy, pinkish complexion. And we know you like that pure white
A letter writer from Cuba, N.Y., indicates that the Democrats had been raving for the previous 20 years about the Republican depression but had failed to say that it was caused by trying to pay for the Democratic war debts, asks whether the President could consider himself right "when he must depend on the most ignorant class for votes".
You obviously belong to the class of people who would have liked the Kaiser Wilhelm to be President.
A letter writer supports General Eisenhower, finds him to be the man "to lead us out of the confusion, the chaos and the depressing conditions into which we have fallen." He believes that he loved his God and his fellow man with all his heart and the writer is taking this stand for him "and shall cast my vote for him on election day."
A letter writer from Portsmouth, Va., suggests that the President ought to "engage in prayerful meditation over the results of his prosperity-making (?) war in Korea which he and his Communist-sympathizers of the State Department bungled us into. Casualties in one recent week amounted to more than 900, of which 133 were killed." He doubts whether the President had taken time out from "gay clowning" to read the reports or share in the heartaches of those who had lost soldiers in the war. He finds him to be engaged in "a most disgraceful campaign of vilifying our great fighting men whose valiant achievements have brought acclaim from the peoples of the world."
The President was one of those men who fought in World War I in the trenches, and so your points appear a little bit off base—somewhere through the fence, in right field, out in the streets, over the canyons, through the valleys, and into the ocean, into Europe and the Fatherland.
If you are wondering why there are no syndicated editorial columns this date from anyone except Drew Pearson, it is because the entire rest of the page is comprised of letters to the editor, thus breaking the record again, for the second time in a couple of weeks, for numbers of letters on the editorial page, following the newspaper's pre-election policy enunciated in a recent editorial of allowing voters to sound off on the issues and concerns they had. We suppose that's better than having people go out and shoot up the place after getting a drunk on down at the Long Branch or while watching the Fox News spew.
Framed Edition
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