The Charlotte News
Tuesday, November 18, 1952
ONE EDITORIAL
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via William C. Barnard, that South Korean infantrymen, in savage hand-to-hand fighting this date, had blasted Chinese Communist troops from "Rocky Point", a vital knob on "Sniper Ridge", which had been lost to 175 enemy troops a few hours earlier. A new enemy buildup, however, had been spotted at the northern end of "Sniper", and allied warplanes, tanks and artillery had struck these enemy concentrations with high explosives and napalm. It was the 36th consecutive day of fighting for the Kumhwa ridges on the central front.
Elsewhere along the frozen front, ground fighting was limited to minor probes and patrol actions.
An Eighth Army staff officer reported that the enemy had suffered 2,627 casualties in ground fighting between November 8 and 14, less than half the prior week's total.
The Navy reported that carrier-based Panther jets had shot down two enemy MIG-15s and damaged one other, 35 miles from Task Force 77, operating off the east coast of Korea, an unusual area for MIGs as it was far from their operations base in Manchuria. One Panther jet had been damaged in the action late the previous day.
The U.S. Fifth Air Force said that F-86 Sabre jets had shot down one enemy MIG-15 and damaged one other in action this date, in a series of dogfights just south of the Yalu River. The fighting produced another ace pilot, Capt. Leonard Lilley of Manchester, N. H. The Air Force also confirmed that a sixth MIG had been destroyed the previous day. U.S. B-29's the previous night had hit Choat, an enemy mining and processing center within sight of the Yalu, setting off a chain of huge fires and explosions, while other B-29's hit an ammunition dump near Pyongyang.
The Defense Department reported 225 more American casualties in the war, of whom 48 had been killed, 138 wounded, 22 missing in action and 17 injured in battle-zone accidents.
At the U.N. in New York, delegates to the General Assembly meeting provided a cool but studious reception to the Indian compromise proposal for settling the deadlock in the truce talks in Korea regarding voluntary repatriation of prisoners. Neither Communist nor non-Communist representatives rejected the proposal outright, but neither side was enthusiastic about it. An American spokesman expressed the belief that the Indian plan, to have prisoners at the time of a truce transferred to a four-nation commission within the demilitarized zone, which would then allow the prisoners either to return home or remain, would not work as such a commission could not handle the gigantic problem of feeding, housing and administering the thousands of Chinese and Korean prisoners who would wish to remain. Both sides intended to study the proposal further and sessions in the Political Committee debating Korea were postponed for lack of speakers this date. The delegates also awaited the outcome of the policy talks in Washington between the President and President-elect Eisenhower, taking place this date.
A spokesman for the President-elect said that the latter looked forward to the meeting with the President, their first since June 2 when the General returned from Western Europe after resigning as supreme commander of NATO, but wanted no strings tied to him, that he would not even suggest to the Truman Administration any course of action on domestic or foreign affairs unless there was some unexpected development of world-shaking proportions.
Correspondent Douglas B. Cornell speculates that the conference would probably be all smiles, handclasps and polite words, despite bitterness between the President and the General during the latter stages of the campaign. He suggests a contrary hypothetical conversation, were they to meet on the same terms of charges and counter-charges hurled back and forth during those last weeks.
Prior to his departure from Augusta, Ga., where he had spent two weeks of vacation following the election on November 4, the President-elect said that his time of departure for Korea was still indefinite and that he would not be able to discuss the trip until his return, for security reasons. It was anticipated that a parade would greet the General on his arrival at National Airport in Washington during the afternoon, from which he would travel by car to the White House. The motorcade was to be televised in its entirety by four networks. The President had directed that all Federal Government workers would be released from their duties long enough to greet the General along the route, decked out with red, white and blue bunting. The entrance to the White House was newly painted for his arrival. Extra security was ordered for the White House.
Mrs. Eisenhower had flown in with her husband, but would not go to the White House as she had not been invited until the previous day. The President's staff explained that Mrs. Truman had not known until Sunday that Mrs. Eisenhower would accompany the General to Washington. When invited the previous day by telephone, Mrs. Eisenhower said that she was sorry but had other plans for the afternoon, but would later visit with Mrs. Truman.
The President-elect would meet with Republican leaders the following day and Senator Taft stated the previous day that he would ask the General to "point the way" on a half-dozen pressing legislative issues when he and the prospective new House Speaker Joseph Martin met with the General. The Senator also stated that he did not believe it would be necessary for the General to intervene in the choice of new Senate leaders and that he believed the Republicans would fill all of the major posts without battle, declining to say whether he wanted to be chairman of the Republican policy committee or floor leader in the new Senate. He said that he wanted the new President to confer with the three top Republican leaders in the Senate, the policy chairman, the majority leader and the head of the conference of all Republican Senators, on a weekly basis. He said that the most pressing problems to be discussed with the General would be the budget, taxation, potential renewal of the Government Reorganization Act, which would expire in April, possible extension of price, wage and rent controls which would expire between April 30 and June 30, amendments to Taft-Hartley, possible creation of a commission to study the Federal Government's place in handling social welfare, health, housing and Social Security problems, possible extension of the reciprocal trade agreements, and new authorizations and appropriations for foreign aid.
Senator Herman Welker of Idaho told reporters that Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire was the only man who could unify the party and that he should remain as the floor leader, as he had been the Minority Leader in the 82nd Congress.
The President sent a report to Congress this date saying that American arms shipments to Western Europe had slumped considerably behind schedule during the first six months of the year, but that progress was being made in strengthening the free world. He said that there would be some delay before NATO nations could boost their armies to 50 divisions. Regarding the Pacific, he said that there had been a marked upswing in delivery of warplanes, artillery, vehicles and other supplies to the Nationalist Chinese forces on Formosa.
Representative John Taber of New York, a Republican, stated that there were stories going around that Government files were being burned during the closing weeks of the Truman Administration.
Yeah, that's to protect all the Commies...
In Bonn, West Germany, the West German Parliament this date refused an appeal by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to speed ratification of treaties which would rearm the country in alliance with the West under NATO.
At the Southern governors' conference in New Orleans, Governor Johnston Murray of Oklahoma suggested that a system of toll roads be developed throughout the nation, that Oklahoma's experience with a toll road 88 miles long between Oklahoma City and Tulsa had been good, financing roads by means of those who used them.
Former New Jersey Governor A. Harry Moore, 73, the state's only three-time Governor, had died of a stroke this date while driving his automobile near Somerville.
In Chicago, the Du Pont Company of Wilmington, Del., three Du Pont holding companies and 117 individual members of the Du Pont family, including 58 minors, were defendants, along with G.M. and the U.S. Rubber Company, in a suit brought in 1949 by the Government, alleging monopolistic practices in violation of the antitrust laws, through restraint on trade by secret rebates and dividing several fields of manufacturing among themselves to eliminate competition. The Government charged that the holding companies controlled Du Pont, which in turn controlled G.M., and had a major block of stock in U.S. Rubber. The Government was seeking an order directing Du Pont to sell its G.M. stock.
In Hong Kong, the ferry Lee Hong came out of dry dock this date and a man, who had been refused entry to Hong Kong by immigration officers, after having boarded the Lee Hong in Macau on September 18 and then having returned to Macau, only to be refused re-entry there, then having logged 41 round trips of 80 miles each plus 19 days in dry dock since that time, was on the move again. The man said he was an American but the State Department said that he was not, while friends sought to have him cleared for entry to a South American port.
He had not even been able to vote on election day for George O'Brien—possibly his uncle.
In Las Vegas, actor Mickey Rooney was married for the fourth time in a surprise elopement to a 22-year old model who was quite a bit taller than Mr. Rooney. She had been married once before. They had informed the press that they would be wed at the Flamingo Hotel but then escaped to the Heather Chapel for the quick ceremony, then registering at the El Rancho Vegas Hotel as Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Yule, Mr. Rooney's actual name. The operator of the wedding chapel said that Mr. Rooney appeared nervous and had trouble locating the wedding ring, as the ceremony took place at about 2:00 a.m.
Last we heard, he was happily playing table tennis with his last newlywed bride. What happened?
Guess we got outside the diplomacy loop, as orchestrated by the no-tell hoteliers.
On page 16-B, a new serial story by Ann Allison, titled The Lady Goes West, begins this date. It is a love story with a Western flavor about an Eastern girl who inherited a ranch, jilted her girlhood sweetheart and then found that men were men in the West.
Men were men? What does that mean? Men were men, ho-hum, or men were men? You'll have to read the excitement of every titillating chapter to find out.
On the editorial page, "A Strong Dixie Two-Party System, Like Rome, Can't Be Built in a Day" finds that the presidential election had shown surprising strength for General Eisenhower in the South, prompting a large amount of wishful thinking and loose writing about the prospects of a two-party region. It suggests that while the climate was more favorable for that occurrence than at any time during the previous 50 years, with traditional voting habits having been broken and the social and economic fabric of the region rapidly changing, it would still take quite a bit of time for that transition to occur.
General Eisenhower had carried Virginia, Florida, Texas, Tennessee and Oklahoma, and had received large numbers of votes in other Southern states, suggesting that voters were no longer blindly adherent to the Democratic Party in presidential elections. Yet, a political party had to grow from the grassroots and votes in a presidential election were far from developing a true two-party system at the state, county, and precinct levels.
Between the presidential election years of 1876 through 1948, the 11 original Confederate states had voted for a Republican only twice, the last time having been in 1928, when Herbert Hoover faced New York Governor Al Smith, a Catholic whose religion, along with his stance against Prohibition, became a central focus of the campaign in the South. During the prior 30 years, only one of those states, on one occasion, had failed to elect the Democratic candidate for governor. In North Carolina, Republicans had captured only one House seat in 1952, the first in the state since 1928, when the winning candidate's father, Charles R. Jonas, Sr., had been elected, along with one other Republican Congressman and 40 members of the General Assembly.
One reason for the Democratic Party's ascendancy in the South had been its traditional success in preserving local determination of the race question. Another was the common heritage of secession, war and Reconstruction shared by the Southern states, a third being the development of mutual social and economic bonds in the region over the years, and a fourth, the failure of the Republican Party to offer good candidates for local and state public offices.
Republican presidential candidates had sought support from Southern Republican leaders, because Southern Republicans held a large bloc of votes at the national conventions, and so promised patronage and often dispensed cash freely in the lead-up to the presidential elections. When Republicans were victorious, patronage could be dispensed over a smaller group if the Republican Party were maintained small in the region. The best way to do that was not to put up strong candidates for local and state office. Similarly, the presidential candidates found it more convenient to bargain for convention delegates with a small number of trusted, faithful leaders. Thus, there had been no pressure from the top to build up from the bottom.
Also, generally, until 1952, Republican presidential candidates had ignored the South in their campaigns. Between 1868 and 1952, none of the 10 successful Republican candidates for the Presidency had needed the electoral votes of the South to win. Only on four of the nine occasions when a Democrat won the Presidency would a shift in the Southern electoral votes to the Republican column have changed the outcome.
Until President Truman had taken his stand for a compulsory FEPC and the remaining portions of his civil rights program, the national Democratic Party had catered to the racial sensibilities of the region, and the South in return provided its loyalty to the party. Republicans had little chance of breaking through that implicit understanding until the President's program had outraged Southerners.
Another problem with developing the Republican Party in the South was the winner-take-all formulation of electoral votes, providing little incentive to increase Republican voting in the South, when it would go for naught in terms of adding electoral votes.
The migration of blacks from the South to other sections of the country was "shrinking the dimensions of the race problem". President-elect Eisenhower's enunciated belief in state responsibility for civil rights and black voting as a bloc for the Democrats had placed the race question in a new perspective. Industrialization and agricultural diversification had changed the economic bases and created a large, conservative middle class, who, in many areas considered it fashionable to vote the national Republican ticket. General Eisenhower's open bid for Southern votes and his promise to include the South in future political and governmental calculations, indicated that the new national Republican leadership was alert to the possibilities in the South and was determined to take advantage of them. There was also talk of electoral college reform.
It posits that those factors, however, would not, of themselves, be enough to effect change to a two-party system in the region. The first job for Southern Republicans would be to eliminate apathetic local and state leadership where it still remained and install new, aggressive leaders who would be willing to open the party rolls and enlarge the membership. The second was to abolish the convention system for nominating state and local Republican candidates and to initiate direct primaries. The third would be to enlist competent, respected candidates for local, state and Congressional offices. Finally, emphasis had to be placed on eliminating legal devices adopted by Democratic legislatures which hampered the growth of the Republican Party, such as the gerrymander, rigged election laws, and control of the election machinery. In addition, the attitude of the national party had to change vis-à-vis the South.
If the Eisenhower administration continued its interest in the South, followed a progressive domestic policy and an enlightened foreign policy, it suggests, it could help the Republicans of the region immeasurably.
In this seemingly rosy picture, it neglects the old time-honored subject of plain race prejudice, which had motivated many of those Southern Democrats to vote for General Eisenhower on the belief that he would be more in line with the traditional Southern Democrats than would have been Governor Stevenson, setting aside the polite euphemism of "states' rights". When viewed objectively, they would normally have been expected to have been disappointed in the outcome, especially the appointment of liberal Governor Earl Warren to replace deceased Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred Vinson in fall, 1953. But it is human nature to be more resistant to admission that one's ballot had been cast on a false premise involving rank prejudice, than to rationalize the situation and conclude that, after all, at least it was better than under that "liberal socialist" Truman or than it would have been under that "liberal socialist" Governor Stevenson.
Drew Pearson tells of an embittered former President Herbert Hoover having met with President-elect Roosevelt 20 years earlier, FDR accompanied by Raymond Moley, his top brain-truster who later fell out with FDR and had been against the Democrats ever since. Also present was Ogden Mills, the outgoing Secretary of the Treasury. President Hoover had spoken in a monotone, at times plaintively, reviewing the slide in British finances and the dangerous economic state of the world, while FDR listened and talked little. After awhile, the President asked to speak to Governor Roosevelt alone, and the two men spoke regarding Britain's desperate financial condition. As they were exiting the White House, FDR told Mr. Moley that he did not intend to return for another conference, that he did not wish to become mixed up in the situation.
Similarly, President-elect Eisenhower had declined to share responsibilities for decisions of the Truman Administration prior to inauguration day.
Mr. Pearson regards it as nearly certain that Joseph Dodge, the Eisenhower adviser on budget issues during the interregnum, serving as the liaison with the Budget Bureau, would not become Secretary of the Treasury or director of the Budget, as some had speculated. The reason was that some of General Eisenhower's advisers had discovered that Mr. Dodge had borrowed money from the RFC for his Detroit bank in 1933 and had not paid it back until 1952, having made only sporadic payments in the interim. They believed that the revelation would undermine the Republican campaign assurance that they would balance the budget.
Senator Harry Cain of Washington, who had been defeated in the elections, was pulling strings to try to obtain the relatively unimportant job of Senate sergeant-at-arms. But Congressman Dan Reed, the rising chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee, was trying to obtain the post for his son, who was presently deputy sergeant-at-arms. As the Senate was known to be sympathetic to former members, Senatorial courtesy would probably supply the job to Senator Cain, who was also close to Senator McCarthy, who had always been able to rely on Senator Cain as a proxy when he could not speak for himself on the Senate floor.
Madame Pandit, head of the U.N. Indian delegation, believed that there was no chance of arranging a truce in Korea even under President Eisenhower, after talking secretly with Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky of Russia. She had reported that each time, Mr. Vishinsky had refused to listen to any concessions regarding the remaining roadblock in the truce efforts, the question of voluntary repatriation of prisoners.
The Shah of Iran was making emergency plans to flee the country to Switzerland and eventually to the U.S., concerned that the Communist Tudeh Party in the country would seize the Government. He had an Iranian Air Force plane on 24-hour alert to evacuate him from the country on short notice.
Joseph Alsop, in Paris, indicates that in 1948, the President had determined that the rearmament program by Secretary of Defense James Forrestal should be transformed into a disarmament program of new Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson. A year and a half later, North Korea advanced on South Korea to start the Korean War. That had begun a Western world rearmament program, placing a heavy strain on the U.S. and an even heavier strain on its allies.
But now, eminent thinkers were again suggesting that the U.S. did not really need to worry very much about the Soviets. Following the 1952 election, the President-elect would need to decide whether to follow the Forrestal model or the Johnson model.
Western European NATO supreme commander General Matthew Ridgway was having to confront three groups of hard facts, first the disappearance of the warning time for signs of Soviet aggression, formerly thought to be two months, until the aggression in Korea in June, 1950. In 1951, the estimated advance warning time had been reduced to one month, and presently, it was no warning at all, as the Russian divisions in East Germany were at full strength. Second, the Soviets were unlikely to attack westward with their present strength of 26 Russian divisions in East Germany, 1,500 aircraft and the assorted satellite divisions. The Soviets had deployed MIG-15 regiments from East Germany to Manchuria and replacement of those units was just short of completion. Moreover, air units which had formerly been equipped with obsolete aircraft had now received jets. Third, everything had been done by the Soviets to sustain a westward attack by much larger Soviet forces than those presently in position in Eastern Europe, with extensive rail loading and unloading facilities of military capacity having been constructed, along with some double tracking and construction of forward repair shops for aircraft, tanks and other military machinery, all indicative of that build-up in potential strength. The Soviets had prepared for an attack on Western Europe by 100 divisions, supported by from 6,000 to 8,000 aircraft.
Mr. Alsop cautions that none of those facts should be taken to mean that the Soviets were necessarily going to launch an offensive against Western Europe, either at present or in the immediate or remote future, but that the Soviets were ready for war.
The new President would also have to confront the notions that the Soviets were increasing their atomic stockpile, that there was a build-up of Soviet-Chinese air power in Manchuria, and the Chinese-North Korean forces in Korea. The fact that the Soviets could stage the Far Eastern build-up with hardly any interruption of the build-up in Eastern Europe was testimony to Russia's military productivity.
Mr. Alsop concludes that the hard facts suggested why abandonment of the effort to strengthen the West would make it likely that the Soviets would undertake new aggression somewhere, just as the Soviets had been tempted to attack in Korea in 1950 after the disarmament efforts had begun in 1948.
Robert C. Ruark reviews The Wonderful Country by his friend, Tom Lea, finds that while he was still a bit of a stumbling writer, he had nevertheless managed to capture the essence of the Rio Grande hill country, from which he hailed, with realism, without the characteristic cowboy legends of the typical Western genre. He notes that Mr. Lea illustrated his own books and suggests that he was beginning to slip as an artist, an observation he makes, he says, only because he was planning to illustrate his own next book, and artists were typically jealous of one another.
A letter writer wonders how the addition of more one-way streets to Charlotte would improve the flow of traffic.
A letter writer responds to another letter writer who had suggested a new factory to build Hoover carts, as they would soon be coming back into fashion. He suggests that every "informed citizen" knew that during the last two years of the Hoover Administration, the Democrats were in control of Congress, and that three wars had occurred under Democrats, Woodrow Wilson, FDR and President Truman. He suggests that if there were a depression during the ensuing four years, it would be the result of the "great waste and foolish spending" of the Democrats for the previous 20 years.
A letter writer from Pittsboro finds it a mistake to attempt to have General Eisenhower commit himself on the Korean situation and the U.N. attitude with respect to Korea, that there should be no commitment until a re-evaluation could be made on the subject, along with a careful study of the attempt to check Russian aggression. He finds that the size of the Eisenhower victory suggested a large degree of dissatisfaction in the country, but that it did not point the way out of Korea or that which should be done in the case of other Communist aggression. Even if American soldiers were brought home from Korea, there was still the question of the next step, whether Japan would need to be re-armed to take over protection of South Korea. There were also questions to be resolved regarding Western Europe and the Middle East. He urges the reader to think them over.
The Congressional Quiz from the Congressional Quarterly answers the question whether all of the business of Congress had always been public, stating that prior to 1799, the Senate held only secret sessions, but that publication of the proceedings was then required, except in the case of executive sessions.
It explains that Congressmen-at-large are Representatives elected by an entire state rather than from a particular Congressional district.
It explains that to check on how a particular Congressman voted on particular legislation, the reader should look up the matter in the Congressional Record, and notes that the Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report carried the highlights of legislative debate.
While on the subject of Congress and answering educational questions, here, incidentally, in our continuing resolve to educate you Trumpies away from the loonyverse of "alternative facts" back to some semblance of reality, is what Alexis de Tocqueville, the peripatetic observer of American democracy in action, actually said in 1835 with regard to impeachment under the American system of laws, both at the Federal and state levels. In the last sentence of that brief exposition, that which is today being mangled by a Trumpie, for apparent reliance on right-wing meteor presentations rather than bothering to waste two or three minutes to consult the actual source of an ascribed quote relayed via the tweety-bird, he said: "When the American republics [referring, presumably, to both the Federal system and the states] begin to degenerate, it will be easy to verify the truth of this observation, by remarking whether the number of political impeachments augments,"—the "observation" being: "By preventing political tribunals from inflicting judicial punishments, the Americans seem to have eluded the worst consequences of legislative tyranny, rather than tyranny itself; and I am not sure that political jurisidiction, as it is constituted in the United States, is not the most formidable which has ever been placed in the rude grasp of a popular majority." In that he was comparing the French system, under which, at the time, the impeachment process prescribed criminal penalties including death of the political opponent, equating the process therefore to a political assassination, and saying that because of the extreme consequences, the remedy of impeachment was one to which resort was rarely made, contrasting the American system, wherein impeachment results only in removal from office and no further civil or criminal penalty or punishment, that reserved to the judicial branch, thus finding the American system the more formidable by enabling resort to less drastic remedies than under the French system. He said nothing about "the decline of public morals" indicating a rise in the use of impeachment for political means, as said Trumpie's mangled "quotation".
Parenthetically, M. de Tocqueville makes reference to the North Carolina Constitution in his Appendix N, stating that Article 23 thereof provided for a judicial process for impeachment, initiated by a grand jury or by the General Assembly. That provision of the 1776 Constitution stated: "That the Governor, and other officers, offending against the State, by violating any part of this Constitution, mal-administration, or corruption, may be prosecuted, on the impeachment of the General Assembly, or presentment of the Grand Jury of any court of supreme jurisdiction in this State." It was amended in Article III, Section 1 of the 1835 Constitution to reflect the U.S. Constitution's procedures for impeachment of the chief executive officers of the government, to be initiated in the lower chamber of the Assembly and tried in the State Senate with a two-thirds vote required for conviction, and was carried over to the 1868 and 1971 State Constitutions largely unchanged, as found in the latter version in Article IV, Section 4. Whether the 1835 amendment of the procedures occurred in response to M. de Tocqueville's singling out of the state as being the only one with the option of a judicial process for initiating impeachment, or whether that presumed fact had been given currency in the journals of the time, drawing the attention of M. de Tocqueville, is not known. It may be, however, as the impeachment process had not actually arisen to that point in the state's history, that M. de Tocqueville, or some barely literate lawyer or legislator on whom he relied, misinterpreted the effect of Article 23 and that it actually only stated the availability of the option of initiating criminal proceedings by presentment of a grand jury, in addition to the impeachment process in the Assembly, as opposed to stating an alternative means of initiating impeachment. We leave that to the scholars of 1776 for resolution.
It is a tiresome task, at times, to feel at all obligated to educate people who seem quite uneducable, that is, the Trumpies, whose chief exponent, by the way, on the just concluded House Intelligence Committee impeachment hearings, said at one point during the hearings this week, in the midst of all of his sideshow collateral references to irrelevant matter, having nothing at all to do with the case at hand, trumpeting long-debunked conspiracy theories about this and that, which none of the witnesses before the Committee corroborated or even provided lip-service as having any probable cause basis, a source of one of the theories having been none other than Vlad, himself—which trumpeting of such nonsensical theories, obviously, is how he got elected down 'ere—, that someone "should have went" somewhere—not mattering to whom he was referring and where the individual should have gone. The lack of appropriate English
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