The Charlotte News
Monday, November 10, 1952
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that allied infantrymen, after 11 hours of close-quarters fighting this date, had driven 1,300 North Korean troops from two strategic hills on the eastern front in Korea, after the Communists had attacked in waves the previous night behind a curtain of 4,000 rounds of artillery and mortar fire, capturing "Anchor Hill" and getting to the top of another hill to the south less than a half hour later in the early morning. The U.N. troops had counterattacked almost immediately and within 15 minutes had recaptured the top of the second hill, and regained the top of "Anchor" within about three hours. Allied warplanes flew low, hitting the enemy with bombs and napalm. Elsewhere along the front, little action was reported.
Associated Press correspondent Robert B. Tuckman reported this date that General James Van Fleet, commander of the U.S. Eighth Army, would depart that position within 60 days and that his new assignment would probably depend on conversations with President-elect Eisenhower when the latter visited Korea.
The Defense Department identified 235 additional U.S. battle casualties in Korea, of whom 61 had been killed, 162 wounded, three were missing and nine injured in non-battle incidents.
At the U.N. in New York, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky warned the 60-member Political Committee of the General Assembly this date that U.N. adoption of an American resolution backing up the U.N. negotiators in Korea would inevitably lead to collapse of the truce talks and protraction of the war. The resolution was sponsored by the U.S., Britain and France plus 18 other countries and noted with approval the U.N.'s refusal to give in on the issue of voluntary repatriation of prisoners, and also issued an appeal to the Chinese Communists and North Koreans to agree to those terms. Mr. Vishinsky claimed that the U.S. was not interested in ending the war but wanted to maintain and expand it in order to gain control of the world and increase the profits of "American billionaires". He contended that the American command had resorted to bayonets to extract from the prisoners a refusal to be repatriated, such that the issue of voluntary repatriation did not actually exist.
The President told President-elect Eisenhower this date that his choice of liaison representatives, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., and Joseph Dodge of Detroit, to observe government activities until the inauguration were "eminently satisfactory". Senator Lodge would be the representative in all government departments except the Budget Bureau, where Mr. Dodge would be stationed. It was likely that both men would have prominent posts in the new administration. Both said at a news conference that they hoped to have preliminary reports ready for General Eisenhower when he conferred with the President at the White House the following week, at the invitation of the President.
Former Congressman Maury Maverick of Texas had developed a new slogan for the Democrats: "It's time for a change—the Republicans have been in long enough." He gave the slogan to reporters after meeting with the President at the White House, saying that all the Democrats could do was to "lie down and bleed awhile, then rise and fight again."
In local elections the previous day in three West German states within the British zone, North Rhine Westphalia, Rhineland Palatinate, and Lower Saxony, rightist and fascist forces made sharp gains and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's moderate Christian Democrat Party lost ground. Two former Nazi officials had been elected to office in Lower Saxony. The chief opposition to Chancellor Adenauer, the Socialists, held their own and gained slightly in some areas. The radical rightwing elements had distributed swastika-stamped leaflets the day before the election, asking voters to boycott it and await the return of Nazism, but the vote had been heavy, with election officials estimating a 75 percent turnout of the 15 million eligible voters.
Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the 77-year old father of Israel, had died from a heart attack early the previous day and would be buried the next day near his home in the Promised Land, of which he had been the first President. Messages of sympathy poured in from world leaders, including President Truman, Queen Elizabeth and U.N. Secretary-General Trygve Lie. Before becoming Israel's first President, he had won renown as president of the World Zionist Organization and as a chemist and scholar. Premier David Ben-Gurion called his Cabinet together the previous day for a memorial session for Dr. Weizmann.
In South Africa, a new clash between blacks and police and a one-day strike threatened more violence this date in the race-divided country, where 23 persons had died during weekend riots in two major cities, Durban and Kimberley. The African National Congress, which was leading the native opposition to Prime Minister Daniel Malan's white supremacy laws, called on all natives to be calm and avoid further violent outbreaks at all cost. Two white persons, one of whom was a Catholic nun, and at least eight blacks had been killed the previous day in shooting between police and black demonstrators in East London, a suburb of Durban. The nun who was killed had been in her car and rioters had overturned it and then burned it with her still inside. She had worked in a mission clinic. Police rifles and automatic weapons had killed 13 blacks and wounded 78 in Kimberley on Saturday. The riots in both cities had started when police tried to break up a black demonstration against the apartheid laws. Police claimed to have the situation under control this date in Durban.
Philip Murray, head of the CIO and United Steelworkers, died suddenly during his sleep on Sunday of a heart attack at age 66 in the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco. He had worked in labor organizing for a half-century. Mr. Murray had not been in good health but his death came as a shock to friends and associates. Telegrams of condolence poured in from all sections of the country, as the President and high-ranking government officials, as well as other labor leaders, expressed their sympathies. Senator Taft, who had co-authored the Taft-Hartley labor law, described Mr. Murray as "a great labor leader" and said he did not believe that his death would alter the CIO's opposition to Taft-Hartley. Speculation on Mr. Murray's successor centered on UAW president Walter Reuther and CIO executive vice-president Allan Haywood. There would be no interim successor because the upcoming convention would elect the new president.
In Augusta, Ga., a walkout of technical engineers following the firing of five of their members at the Savannah River Atomic Energy plant caused the worst work disruption since construction had begun two years earlier on the project, designed to develop the hydrogen bomb. It took place as General Eisenhower was vacationing at the Augusta National Golf Course, only a few miles away. Mile-long traffic jams had resulted when the members of the American Federation of Technical Engineers erected picket lines and roadblocks across routes over which 37,000 workers were coursing to work at the facility. A union representative said that about half of the workforce had reached their jobs through detours, but had thrown down their tools and left when they learned of the strike. By mid-morning, the streets of Augusta, Aiken and Barnwell, S.C., were jammed with idle workers and their vehicles.
The Supreme Court denied a petition for writ of certiorari to New York gambling kingpin Frank Castello this date on his conviction for contempt of the Senate.
The Court granted certiorari to the Times-Picayune Publishing Co. of New Orleans from a lower court decision that the company had violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in its advertising sales policy by requiring advertisers to buy space in both the morning and afternoon newspapers owned by the company.
The Court also accepted review of the dismissal of claims totaling 240 million dollars in damages resulting from the Texas City, Tex., refinery fire disaster of 1947, following a lower court decision that the suits could not be filed against the Government under provisions of the Federal tort claims act.
The Court refused certiorari from a lower court order striking down segregation in coaches of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. A black man had been ordered from a train in Emporia, Va., in June, 1948, after refusing to move to one of three coaches reserved for black passengers. The man was traveling from Philadelphia to Parmele, N.C., at the time.
The Census Bureau estimated this date that on September 1, the population of the country, including armed forces overseas, had grown to 157,505,000, an increase of 6,373,000 or 4.2 percent since April, 1950 when the general census had been tabulated, indicating an annual growth of 1.7 percent, higher than the 1.4 percent average yearly growth between 1940 and 1950. About 1.2 million Americans were living abroad, including armed forces stationed overseas.
In Cincinnati, a 17-year old boy was spared serious injury from a .32-caliber pistol shot fired from two feet away by an older man who had been drinking, when the clothing the youth had been holding in his arms at the time shielded him from the bullet, which had hit a wire coat hanger and knocked the hanger out of a suit without damaging the suit, causing the hanger to be twisted into a corkscrew, puncturing the boy's clothing and burning the skin of his stomach, with the bullet winding up in his right trouser pocket.
He must have been watching studiously the new televised version of "Superman".
On the editorial page, "What Ike Will Find Out in Korea" suggests that the forthcoming trip of President-elect Eisenhower to Korea had potential for more decisive action to end the shooting, and might also succeed in reorienting the Republican Party and informing the American people on some of the hard facts of the war.
Prior to the visit some months earlier of Field Marshal Lord Alexander of Britain, the British had believed that continuation of the war had been the result of either American diplomatic incompetence or lack of any real American desire to end it. But Field Marshall Alexander had reported back to London that the U.N. military authorities were competent and the conduct of the war praiseworthy, saying that U.N. truce negotiators had been patient and thorough in trying to find a workable truce formula. Subsequently, the atmosphere in Britain changed, and, the piece suggests, the same might occur in the Republican Party after a visit by the President-elect to Korea.
Joseph C. Harsh had written recently in the Christian Science Monitor that to visit Korea was to learn that total military victory was beyond the military capacity of the Western powers, that the Chinese Communists, with Russian help, had become a modern military power, and that the Chinese Communists were not interested in ending the war on terms which had been offered so far.
The editorial suggests that the alternatives in Korea had been clear for some time, that all U.N. forces could be withdrawn, leaving the way open for complete Communist conquest of South Korea, giving the Communists a foothold from which they could potentially attack Japan, or the fight might be extended to China, taking the calculated risk of enlarging the war, or there could be surrender on the issue of voluntary repatriation of prisoners, or military pressure could be continued as during the previous year, hoping that the Chinese would thereby become more receptive to a settlement. None of those alternatives was completely satisfactory and it was unknown how General Eisenhower would navigate the dilemma.
It suggests that the Communists, knowing that General Eisenhower had promised during the campaign to end the war, might now stiffen their terms, and that the American people, who had largely rejected the Korean War, might not welcome future moves involving collective security against aggression. Most such possibilities bode ill for a quick conclusion to the Korean truce negotiations, as well for any prompt retaliation should Russia send Chinese troops into French Indo-China or its own troops into Iran.
It counsels that as the President-elect contemplated his forthcoming journey, he should be mindful that collective security against aggression was mankind's best hope for preserving world peace, despite its shortcomings in Korea. It was to be hoped that the new President could make it work rather than finding a quick way to abandon that effort.
"'Best Minds' Already at Work" indicates that some of the "best minds" whom General Eisenhower was planning to recruit into the Government were already working on how he could effectively handle the executive branch. The National Planning Association, one of the nation's top bipartisan study groups, had begun the job before the election, picking up where the Hoover Commission and the Citizens Committee for the Hoover Report had left off. Sumner Pike, former member of the Atomic Energy Commission and the Securities & Exchange Commission, would head the 19-member special committee, which would examine the functions, activities and staffing of the executive office organizations and examine management experience in other areas, including business, the military staff, and governments of other countries, making suggestions based thereon which could be applied to the executive branch. It provides the names of other members of the committee and finds the membership to bode well for its success.
"Saving Dough at the Old P.O." indicates that it had always believed it would be a good idea to take the Post Office out of politics and place it under the Civil Service system, but was surprised when the Council of State Chambers of Commerce suggested removing the Post Office completely from government. U.S. News & World Report, calling the Post Office "the country's oldest and most extensive socialized enterprise", had joined that idea. The magazine, however, did not comment on what might happen to postal rates were the Post Office to become a private business. It also did not comment on Article I, Section 8, paragraph five of the Constitution, which states that the Congress has power "to establish post-offices and post-roads".
It finds that it would be interesting to see what the 83rd Congress would do about the Post Office, the proposal of Charles E. Wilson to sell TVA, Hoover Dam and other Federal power projects to private investors, and other such similar proposals.
It suggests that some government savings might be made in the Post Office, such as elimination of the two percent postal savings program, which had become anachronistic since its adoption in 1910. Its proponents had claimed that private enterprise was not providing adequate savings facilities and could not do so because of the expense of operating savings banks in small communities. During the Depression and World War II, postal savings had gone upward, reaching a record high in 1948 of 3.4 billion dollars, but had since declined, according to the Wall Street Journal, to 2.6 billion because there were now plenty of private savings facilities in most communities, some now paying more than two percent interest, along with Federally insured savings.
It indicates, however, that it preferred the Post Office to remain under the direction of the Government generally, but were some of its operations to be returned to the private sector, and thereby save some money, then such an effort ought start with the postal savings program.
It adds that it hopes that the Republicans could do something about the "scratchy old Post Office pens".
Drew Pearson states that "Washington
cliff-dwellers are twittering, twerking, and titillating." (You
have no idea how bad it has become
One of the first things President-elect Eisenhower and Congress would have to decide after the inauguration was whether to allow private industry in on atomic research and practical application of the knowledge. The Atomic Energy Commission had taken a secret vote prior to the election, deciding that the Government's monopoly on atomic research should be abandoned and its information shared with private industry. That would mean sharing such knowledge with private utilities to enable them to develop atomic energy in place of coal, gas, oil and water power. There was no intention to open up the secrets of the atomic bomb, though with the Russians and British having detonated their own bombs, it had ceased to be much of a secret. Commissioner Henry Smyth had raised the most objections to such sharing of knowledge with industry, arguing that the AEC could pay its own way by developing its own atomic power and indicating the hazards of atomic experimentation, but in the end, had gone along with the Commission's recommendation. Chairman Gordon Dean was the most insistent on sharing the knowledge. Mr. Pearson notes that some of General Eisenhower's strongest supporters, such as Senator Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa, had repeatedly contended that the country was already too loose with atomic information, and thus might oppose such sharing.
General MacArthur had never relented on his refusal to give open support to General Eisenhower during the campaign, despite the repeated urging by former President Hoover for him to do so. The two men had served together in Washington when General MacArthur was Army chief of staff, including the booting out of the veterans' Bonus Army from Washington in 1932, utilizing Army troops to do so. They also served together in the Philippines, and General MacArthur had denied sending General Eisenhower home from that assignment, after Mr. Pearson had reported in the column that it had occurred. He concludes that blood between the two men was not good. At the last minute, friends had proposed a compromise under which General Eisenhower would send General MacArthur back to Korea on a survey trip or else take him along when the General visited Korea, but the suggestion had fallen through.
Marquis Childs tells of an accumulation of troubles in the country held back until the end of the campaign, that the President's grave statement after the victory of General Eisenhower, that there was a threat to the very survival America as a free nation, was a reflection of the President's concern over those imminent problems. The seriousness of the crisis compared to that of 1947 when Britain informed the U.S. that it could no longer sustain the cost in money and manpower of holding back the Communists in northern Greece, leading to the inception of the Truman Doctrine for military aid to Greece and Turkey.
The new threat, beyond Korea, was in Indo-China, where the French were expected to inform shortly the U.S. and Britain that they could not sustain the war there while also living up to their commitments to NATO regarding the European army. They were expected to suggest that the war in Indo-China was every bit as much the concern of the U.N. as had been Korea, and that if it were not undertaken by the U.N., then the NATO nations ought bear its burden jointly.
Presently, military supplies were moving into Indo-China in substantial volume, distributed by the American military mission in Saigon. But the French wanted troops of the other nations, not just supplies. That was especially a problem in light of the campaign promises by General Eisenhower to withdraw American troops from Korea. "Where fighting men could be found to stand up to the green hell of the jungle fighting in Indo-China is a question no one can answer."
Top-secret intelligence reports indicated that should the U.N. or NATO intervene with forces to help the French, Communist Chinese troops stationed across the border from Indo-China, numbering three million, would be mobilized for full-scale intervention in response. But doing so would risk a third world war. French forces in Indo-China presently numbered 173,000, and including North Africans and foreign legionnaires, about 200,000. The Vietnamese force trained by the French and equipped mainly with American weapons was estimated to be 106,000. French casualties since the start of the war in 1948 had been 78,000, including only the gravely wounded, and with inclusion of those with less severe wounds, greater than the 124,500 American casualties thus far in Korea. Many of the French losses were of young officers who had received the highest training in French military schools.
Mr. Childs concludes that if Indo-China were to fall to the Communists, the rest of Southeast Asia would follow and that if the French could not live up to their NATO commitments, the European security structure would be perilously weakened. He regards the situation as a dilemma which faced President-elect Eisenhower as soon as he would take office.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop assess the trouble that President-elect Eisenhower would face from the conservative wing of the Republican Party. The General had once confided to reporters that he had become a candidate only because he was convinced that the election of Senator Taft would be "disastrous". But the type of conservative Republicans who followed the lead of Senator Taft in the Congress made up the majority of Congressional Republicans. In the Senate, there were 22 Republican Senators who identified with the Taft wing of the party. In addition, Senators Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa and Styles Bridges of New Hampshire tended in that direction, especially after the death in 1951 of Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan. Two of the just elected Senators, Charles Potter of Michigan and James Beall of Maryland, had leanings toward Senator Taft's positions. Two others, Senators-elect Barry Goldwater of Arizona and Frank Barrett of Wyoming, were question marks. Senator William Langer of South Dakota, while unpredictable on domestic issues, did not side with General Eisenhower on foreign policy.
Of the remaining Republican Senators, 18 sided with General Eisenhower's positions, and a 19th would be added when Governor Earl Warren would appoint a replacement for Senator Richard Nixon.
Thus, of the 48 Republican Senators in the new 83rd Congress, the majority could be considered Taft Republicans, and the same would be true in the new narrowly Republican-controlled House. Committee chairmanships, most of which would go to followers of Senator Taft, would reinforce the majority. Such a situation would suggest a showdown eventually between President-elect Eisenhower and the conservative wing of the party, especially in light of views expressed by the General on domestic and foreign policies during the latter weeks of the campaign, decidedly against the positions of Senator Taft.
The Alsops, however, reflect back to the 1930's, and FDR's plan to pack the Supreme Court, a plan which then-Senate Majority Leader James Byrnes had sought to push through Congress, as he had done with all of the New Deal legislation to that point in 1938. Senator Byrnes and his fellow conservative Democrats could hardly do otherwise, given the size of the victories of FDR in 1932 and 1936, when he ran well ahead of his party. Those who defied FDR, such as Senator Carter Glass of Virginia, were isolated and rendered virtually powerless.
The triumph in 1952 of General Eisenhower had been even more personal in nature than had FDR's early victories. And among the Taft Republicans, there were several who were coattail riders, such as Senator William Jenner of Indiana and perhaps even Senator McCarthy. They would not be eager to challenge President-elect Eisenhower, any more than the Democrats had FDR during the Thirties. Likewise, Southern Democrats, who had a dominating position within their party, tended more toward General Eisenhower then did Taft Republicans. They thus could be expected to join the Eisenhower Republicans to crush any serious challenge to the new President's leadership, particularly in the areas of foreign policy and defense.
The Alsops conclude that the new President therefore found himself in a position of nearly unique power and could indelibly stamp the Republican Party with his policy positions, just as FDR had with the Democrats. In order to use that power wisely, the new President had quickly to master what he had once called the "serious, complicated, and in its true sense noble" profession of politics. They find that he had learned very quickly by doing and that it was therefore reasonable to expect that in the end, he could remold the Republicans into his own image, one of "broad tolerance, rational conservatism at home and enlightened self-interest abroad, qualities which have not always marked the Republican Party in its long bitter years of defeat."
Robert C. Ruark comments further on the election, finds the determination of women during the campaign to have been instrumental in the election of General Eisenhower, and that the biggest single mistake the Democrats had made was underestimating "female power". He believes that Mamie Eisenhower and the divorced former Mrs. Adlai Stevenson had more direct influence on the election "than did the discovery south of Mason-Dixon that there was more than one party. Dick Nixon's pretty bride, Pat, swung more voting registrations and ballot accomplishments than all of Harry Truman's strident accusations and the mutual protestations of innocence by everybody." He believes that it was undeniable that "nobody ever won an argument with Mama, either in the house or at the polls."
He has been hitting the bottle again, is blurry-eyed.
The Congressional Quiz of the Congressional Quarterly answers the question of how large the Government's payroll was, stating that at the end of the 1951-52 fiscal year, the executive branch employees were paid 9.5 billion dollars, a 24 percent increase over the prior fiscal year, including pay increases voted by Congress.
It answers the question of how many states had only one Congressman, stating that only four were in that category, Delaware, Nevada, Vermont, and Wyoming, with nine states having two Representatives, which it also lists.
In answer to why Maine had its general election two months before the rest of the nation, it says that it was a holdover from 1845 when Congress passed a law standardizing the date for electing the President. All states since that time, with the exception of Maine, had made local election dates conform to the national election date, but Maine still elected its state and Congressional officials in September.
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