The Charlotte News

Tuesday, November 25, 1952

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Sam Summerlin, that British and Australian night raiders had initiated a clash with Communist Chinese troops for more than eight hours on the Western front in Korea. Meanwhile, on the central front, allied infantrymen recaptured two key outposts near Communist-held "Jackson Heights", captured by the Chinese during the night. Temperatures climbed to give some relief from the chilling cold across the front.

U.N. forces supreme commander General Mark Clark conferred with ground forces commander General James Van Fleet and U.S. Fifth Air Force chief, Lt. General Glenn Barcus, in Korea, before returning to Tokyo. The report speculates that they probably discussed the forthcoming visit of President-elect Eisenhower. General Clark had toured the front in a light plane on Monday.

B-26 Marauders hit Communist supply routes again the previous night and reported destroying 85 enemy trucks, bringing the total to 1,250 destroyed in the previous 10 days. General Barcus told Associated Press correspondent Robert Tuckman that the enemy was making desperate efforts to increase the flow of supplies to the front via trucks.

At the U.N. in New York, South Korea announced this date that it would not accept any truce arranged by the U.N. against its wishes. The Foreign Minister, Y. T. Pyun, announced before the Political Committee that the Government believed Korea's future was nobody else's business. This statement appeared to rule out acceptance of a truce worked out by the General Assembly or the unified command at Panmunjom. The South Korean Government was planning to welcome President-elect Eisenhower when he made his tour of Korea, and would attempt to place its view before him. South Korea was not a member of the U.N. and was not taking part in the truce negotiations at Panmunjom. South Koreans had issued a booklet two weeks earlier denouncing U.N. truce efforts and calling for complete liberation of both North and South Korea and the creation of a U.N. armed force of two million Koreans to police a unified country, with a demilitarized zone established in Manchuria to protect the border. The statement reiterated the position that the prisoners of war who desired to remain in Korea were to be considered citizens of Korea and reiterated the demand that the U.N. conquer North Korea and reject a truce line near the 38th parallel. It also insisted on South Korea's exclusive right to make the final decision.

Someday, this war's gonna end.

Associated Press correspondent Jack MacBeth, with the French Union Forces at Na San in Indo-China, indicates that the French infantrymen dug in deeply this date, preparing for an all-out attack by the Communist-led Vietminh troops on Na San, key to the mountainous Thai Country of northwestern Indo-China. Except for minor patrol clashes, the defense perimeter of the outpost, 170 miles west of Hanoi, had been quiet the previous night. There had been an initial clash Sunday night and both sides appeared to be resting in anticipation of a decisive battle, possibly coming this night, as intelligence officers reported enemy groups pressing ever closer through the surrounding hills. The night battle on Sunday had resulted in the 3,000 rebel troops being repulsed in hand-to-hand combat with the French Legionnaires. French mobile artillery and aircraft had hit the attackers, who were repulsed only after they had succeeded in penetrating the outer defenses. The French reported that 80 Vietminh were found dead in the barbed wire entanglements leading onto the heart of the base. They estimated that the enemy had suffered 300 casualties, while the French had six killed and 19 wounded. The Vietminh appeared prepared to sacrifice thousands of troops in an attempt to force the French from the Thai Country. It was estimated that the guerrilla forces had at least 15,000 men in the area, and French officials said that several thousand Union troops were within the Na San defense perimeter. To counter the superior numbers, the French had heavier firepower and air support. The French high command was staking the future of the Thai Country and its 100,000 tribesmen on holding Na San and Laichau, the Thai capital. Both were isolated pockets dependent on airlifts for men and supplies.

President-elect Eisenhower had three more Cabinet positions to fill, that of Postmaster General and the Secretaries of Commerce and Labor, as well as sub- Cabinet positions of Secretaries of Air, Navy and Army. He had appointed Ezra Taft Benson of Salt Lake City to be the new Secretary of Agriculture, in addition to previously announced appointments. He also announced the appointment of New Hampshire Governor Sherman Adams as his chief of staff. The new selections had generally been received favorably, as Mr. Benson had devoted much of his life to agriculture but was less well-known in that field than as a leader of the Mormon Church. Senator Taft, distantly related to Mr. Benson, praised the appointment, as did other Republican Senators. Mr. Adams, who had served as chief of staff to the General during the campaign, had been anticipated to become the new chief of staff at the White House.

Congressman John Taber of New York, the new chairman of the House Appropriations Committee in the 83rd Congress, conferred this date with top assistants of the President-elect, in discussions which might affect the operations of the State Department. Mr. Taber said that he also anticipated meeting Secretary of State-designate John Foster Dulles and Governor Adams. He did not have an appointment to see the President-elect, but said that he had stopped at his headquarters at the Commodore Hotel in New York to talk with Messrs. Dulles and Adams. He declined to provide details of the topic to be discussed.

Senator Richard Russell of Georgia said this date, in an interview with the Atlanta Journal, that Governor Stevenson was the titular head of the Democratic Party, but that policy of the party would be set by Democrats in Congress during the ensuing four years. He said that he hoped that the efforts of Congress could be coordinated with those of Governor Stevenson. Senator Burnet Maybank of South Carolina had recently objected to Governor Stevenson being titular head of the party. Senator Russell defined "titular" as meaning "title without authority". He also said that the sizable vote provided General Eisenhower in the South during the election did not of itself mean establishment of a two-party system in the region, but did afford an opportunity for the Republicans to work there. He said that he had always favored a two-party system but hoped that the Democrats would have at least 51 percent of the votes under such a system.

Senator Maybank stated in a broadcast from Charleston the previous night that he had information that the President was considering ending wage and price controls by executive order prior to the start of the new Congress on January 3. Tighe Woods, meanwhile, resigned as Price Stabilizer, criticizing in his resignation Congress for providing a controls law which favored "special interests". He said that it seemed that all he had done since taking the job was to sign orders for price increases and had not enjoyed the role.

The new social register in New York was produced the previous day, listing President-elect Eisenhower as a General and residing at his New York address, making no mention of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The publishers said that the General was not President yet and therefore could not be listed any other way.

In Washington, the AFL executive committee this date unanimously chose George Meany, secretary-treasurer of the AFL, to become the new president of the organization, replacing William Green, who had died of a heart attack the previous Friday after serving as president of the organization for nearly 30 years. William Schnitzler, president of the Bakery and Confectionery Workers Union, would become the new secretary-treasurer of the AFL. Mr. Meany told the press that the executive council had also reactivated a nine-man committee to study union with the CIO and had empowered it to invite the rival labor organization to join in new discussions on merger. Such discussions had occurred periodically in the past without success. Mr. Meany believed, however, that union of the two organizations could now be effected. Mr. Meany said that the eight million-member organization would work to improve the living standards and working conditions of American workers and expected it to continue to play an important part in fighting Communism at home and abroad. He said that he had met with President-elect Eisenhower the previous Friday in New York and pledged complete cooperation in all of the new President's efforts to "make America a better place to live and to keep America and its allies free." Mr. Meany was a member of the Plumbers Union—and, as such, undoubtedly, was susceptible to close friendship with Vice-President-elect Richard Nixon, an honorary member of that union for his promotion of efforts to fight threats to internal domestic security wherever he found them and by whatever means available to the President, via interpretation of Federal statutes, regardless of whether that interpretation would render those statutes, ipso facto, unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, contemporary statutes, taking into account the tenor of the times, always taking precedence over the outmoded Constitution under the Nixonian view of democracy—prospectively speaking, that is, with considerable prescience in mind based on past performance of the new V.P.

In Durham, N.C., former speaker of the State House during the 1951 biennial session of the General Assembly, W. Frank Taylor of Goldsboro, was named by Governor-elect William B. Umstead to become the new legislative counsel during the 1953 session of the Assembly.

In Elkin, N.C., Fred L. Neaves, 49, general superintendent of the Chatham Manufacturing Company and a member of the company's board of directors, died this date at his home after having been in his office as usual the previous day.

In Charlotte, Elizabeth Blair of The News reports that the United Appeal campaign leaders were preparing for the final push to obtain the additional $55,000 to meet the goal of $738,000, with the extended campaign set to end the following day.

In Ferrara, Italy, a man was graduated from the pharmacy school of the University of Ferrara at age 74.

On the editorial page, "The West Is Not Yet Split Asunder" indicates that diplomacy was a strange business even when conducted in the open, but when it occurred behind the scenes, those on the sidelines became completely befuddled. It finds that reading the headlines, one would get the impression that the U.S. and Britain were at complete odds with one another on the Korean prisoner of war issue, when in fact it was not that bad. There had been disagreement on the British support of the Indian proposal, with minor modifications, whereas the U.S. believed the Indian proposal had left too much to chance and so refused to back it.

The entire matter was presently moot, as the Russians had refused to accept the compromise. But, in fact, the British and the Americans had agreed in principle on the basic idea of not having forcible repatriation of prisoners, as favored by the Communists. As long as that adherence to principle remained cooperative and intact, there was no irreparable damage done to the traditional alliance of the two countries. It concludes, therefore, that Russia had not yet succeeded in dividing the West, as it was seeking to do.

"Credit Where It Is Due" tells of the late J. B. Marshall of Charlotte having drawn up a master plan for the development of new traffic arteries in the city right after World War II, giving top priority to the new Independence Boulevard, which would eventually connect with Wilkinson Boulevard. High on the priority list had been opening up Stonewall Street from the new Boulevard, and the previous day, Mayor Victor Shaw and members of the City Council, plus other dignitaries, had opened that new section of Stonewall and traffic had begun to move.

He not only got the traffic moving, but unwittingly predicted the Nixon Administration's entire domestic policy of 21 years hence—now that of the current wild bunch in the White House.

"Brownell Tackles a Big Assignment" tells of the Justice Department being a small-scale replica of the larger responsibility of President-elect Eisenhower. Mr. Brownell, as the Attorney General-designate, would need to weed out incompetent members of the staff and replace them with proper officials and restore thereby the Department's lost prestige under predecessors Tom Clark and Howard McGrath.

It ventures that Mr. Brownell appeared well-equipped for the job, as a man of integrity, a skillful organizer, a student of government and a learned lawyer. His only drawback was that he had been RNC chairman and might have to resist pressure from past political allies. The Department had become a political football under Messrs. Clark and McGrath. It concludes therefore that Mr. Brownell had a great opportunity to restore the Department to fair, impartial and nonpartisan administration of justice.

"Now the Jews" finds that the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia had turned from the "bourgeois imperialists" and the "capitalistic warmongers" to using Jews as a scapegoat in trials for supposed treason and espionage. The piece ventures that perhaps it was an effort to build up support in the Arab world, or that the Communists were afraid that Jews in their government, when called upon to choose between God and Stalin, would choose the former. Another possibility was that the Communist rulers had decided, as had the Nazis, that their people could best be controlled by being taught to hate a particular group in their midst. It was difficult to hate "imperialists" and "warmongers" when Americans were seldom admitted to the country.

Thus far, there had been few reported instances of discrimination against Jews in Communist countries, but the trials in Prague had established a policy which might be adopted at the lower levels of the Communist hierarchy, and so, once again, Jews might become the subject of oppression.

A piece from the Monroe Journal, titled "Winnie the Gallant", tells of Queen Elizabeth having ridden through the streets of London on her way to open the Parliament recently, and the following morning, the newspapers had published pleasant pictures of her smiling, prompting Prime Minister Churchill to order two enlargements and send his congratulations to the photographer for making such a wonderful picture.

The piece suggests that the picture showed why the British had such an affection for the royal family. "The beautiful young Queen is a figure that everyone from the highest to the lowest can love and that is a great deal in this time of dissensions, dispute and disappointments."

It suggests that the country attributed the virtues of a national idol to General Eisenhower, but no one talked of making him King. Nevertheless, it ventures, if wife Mamie "were as young and beautiful and radiant as Queen Elizabeth, we would all be in favor of making her Queen."

There would be those sycophants, however, who would have King Richard, down the way a little.

Drew Pearson tells of President-elect Eisenhower's top advisers having developed a smart strategy for dealing with Democrats in the Senate, through which they expected to control a majority of the Southern Democrats for at least two years and possibly longer. The strategy was to play ball with the Southerners and not attempt to build up the Republican Party in the Deep South. The advisers believed that if they buttered up such Senators as Walter George and Richard Russell of Georgia, and James Eastland and John Stennis of Mississippi, they would cooperate with the legislative program of the new Administration. The Republican strategists would take a different stance with respect to the border states and Florida, where General Eisenhower had won by sizable margins in the election. In those states, the strategy would be to organize locally as diligently as possible, with the hope of making those states definitely Republican in the following election. But in Virginia, where the General would seek to maintain the favor of friends of Senator Harry F. Byrd, as well as in the Deep South, the Republican strategists believed that the Democratic Senators thought and voted very much like Republicans anyway, such that the best strategy would be to court their favor.

It had leaked out that the only man who could talk to General MacArthur was General George Kenny, who, three days before the election, had made a plea to let bygones be bygones and endorse his former military aide, General Eisenhower, for the presidency. But the stubborn General MacArthur had refused until after the last election returns were in. General Kenny was urged to make the appeal by Governor Dewey, who had already sought to win over General MacArthur to the Eisenhower camp, having enlisted in the cause former President Herbert Hoover and House Minority Leader Joe Martin, to no avail.

Mr. Pearson indicates that the rift between General Eisenhower and General MacArthur would thus likely never be healed.

Attorney General-designate Herbert Brownell, writing as a guest columnist for Mr. Pearson's column on August 23, 1945, had said: "The inside story from Republican leaders is that the Republican Party will win control of Congress in 1946. Put that down as one of this column's 'predictions of things to come'." At the time, Mr. Brownell had been RNC Chairman, and his prediction had come true. He had begun in politics as Governor Dewey's gubernatorial campaign manager in 1942 and had been close to the Governor ever since. He was very close to General Eisenhower and would fly with him to Korea. The General, at the time of the Republican convention, had relied heavily on Mr. Brownell to guide him through the politics, with which he was not at all familiar.

The new Secretary of the Treasury, George Humphrey, was the nearest thing to Andrew Mellon since the latter had been Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. He had headed the Mark Hanna Co., a Great Lakes ore business, and the Mellon-dominated Pittsburgh Consolidated Coal Co., among others. He had once given John L. Lewis a record 45-cents per hour wage increase, plus a welfare fund for the UMW, shortly before the 1948 campaign year. Critics believed that he had been trying at the time to sway miners to the Republican Party.

He notes that one of the first things the new Attorney General would have to do involved an antitrust suit against Charles E. Wilson, also to become a member of the new Cabinet as Secretary of Defense. The suit was against the du Ponts and also involved G.M., of which Mr. Wilson was president, and U.S. Rubber.

Organized labor gave praise to Mr. Wilson because of the contract the UAW had negotiated with G.M. after the war to provide for increases in wages commensurate with increases in the cost of living.

Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., was not unhappy about not being tapped as Secretary of Defense, as he and General Eisenhower both believed he lacked executive experience and would be better suited as a roving ambassador or as general adviser to the administration.

Secretary of State-designate John Foster Dulles would not change many officials in the Department. Despite the charges of subversives in the Department, made by Senator Joseph McCarthy, most of the personnel had long been Republicans or were career men.

Joseph Alsop, in Paris, finds that the city showed glimmers of hope for the future, after a period of bleak hopelessness following the war. He suggests that without the initiatives of the American postwar policy, that hopelessness would likely have ended in final catastrophe in Europe. Yet, there was still poison in the French atmosphere, expressing itself in venomous criticism of the U.S. and all of its works.

He regards the pursuit of love among foreigners to be a cardinal error of foreign policy. The richest nation in the world could not expect to be held in affection by partner nations acknowledging the U.S. as the new leader. But it was also very dangerous should dislike and distrust reach such a level that calm discussion of common problems nearly became impossible, a condition which was close to occurring between France and the U.S. presently.

The superficial causes of this enmity were that the French thought that American foreign policy initiatives, which had saved France, were also designed to serve U.S. interests, a perception which had truth in it. The French were also depressed by the U.S. habit of sending larger missions to administer foreign policy than even the Germans had used to control their satellites during the Nazi reign. They were angered by such illogical policies as the attempt "to hunt with the French hounds and run with the Moslem hares in the Tunisian controversy." The French economy was badly overstrained by the effort to rearm and they could not see why, in dealing with such problems as Indo-China, the Americans gave them just enough to keep their noses above water while they always felt like they were drowning.

Added to those issues were the current tactics of the Kremlin among the Communists in France, promoting anti-Americanism. Two leading French Communists were about to be expelled from the party, one for promoting an anti-Fascist front against the followers of General De Gaulle, who were also anti-American and therefore could not be considered Fascist any longer in the eyes of the Communists.

Jean-Paul Sartre, the existentialist philosopher who had loomed large on the postwar intellectual scene, was planning to attend the next Moscow-sponsored "peace congress" in Vienna. Until recently, he had condemned totalitarianism in all its forms, but now had prevented the Viennese from presenting his satiric anti-totalitarian play, Les Mains Sales, in anticipation of his visit during the congress.

There were other signs of trouble in France, such as the widespread conviction that President-elect Eisenhower would be a mere surrogate for Senator Taft and his isolationist policies. There was also a nonsensical belief that Secretary of State-designate Dulles was a warmonger who would obliterate Europe with hydrogen bombs in order to free Poland.

The sources of the anti-Americanism included the fact that Europe, although returning to normalcy, was still tired, preferring self-delusion to further effort, a mentality encouraged by Soviet quiescence of late, causing the French to forget about the warnings issued against Communist aggression by the Americans.

Mr. Alsop finds another source of the problem to be lack of leadership in the U.S. and a type of paralysis which encompassed U.S. policy shortly after the Korean War began. Every kind of problem, from the war in Indo-China to the recruitment of West German divisions, had become more difficult of solution from that lack of leadership.

He concludes therefore that President-elect Eisenhower would need to exert that leadership, failing which could lead to catastrophe, as evidenced by the current atmosphere in Paris. But if he were to succeed, "the air will clear soon enough, and we may hope for a really better world as well as a happier Franco-American understanding."

Pierre Streit, in Paris, tells of a group of prominent U.S. professors and constitutional experts working in cooperation with European jurists and legislators to prepare the first detailed plan for a European Constitution, submitted recently to members of the European Constitutional Committee. The result was a set of revolutionary proposals aimed at welding together the six Schuman Plan countries, the Plan providing for sharing of coal and iron ore resources, into a sovereign state having the basic powers of a United States of Europe, in virtually the same form as the United States of America.

This "Federalist Plan" provided for the establishment of a complete federal government in Europe, with a popularly elected House of 311 members and an 87-person Senate representing all six of the countries, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg. Those countries would relinquish to a common government the power to raise armed forces, conduct international affairs and collect taxes. They would open their frontiers to the forces of the common government to maintain law and order. The resulting "Community" would be responsible for the security and defense of the peoples and territories of the member states "against any aggression or threat of aggression". The common government would undertake to recruit, train, equip, arm, supply and employ the armed forces. It would have the right to demand that citizens of the member countries serve in the armed forces. The member countries would be prohibited from having anything to do with war production and research unless specifically authorized by the federal government, with each member able, until the federal government would be established, to maintain sufficient national armed forces to fulfill present international obligations in NATO and to provide for the security of their respective foreign territories.

The federal government would have the power to make treaties, declare war, conclude peace, be a party to international agreements and enter into international organizations having defensive aims, and to send and receive diplomatic representatives. It would permit the member countries, however, to conduct their own foreign policy in fields where the federal government had no jurisdiction.

The Constitutional Committee was charged with the task of starting work on creation of a common political authority for Europe by March 10, 1953.

Robert C. Ruark wants President-elect Eisenhower to look into the problems of the higher echelons of officers in the armed services, whose lack of discipline he regards as having trickled down into the ranks. There had been fliers who refused to fly, prisoners of war engaged in uprisings in Korea, and recently, some G.I.s at Camp Kilmer, N. J., who were on the verge of mutiny because they were dissatisfied with the way they were being processed for discharge. He blames these problems on the brass, high and low. He warns that when a country lost control of its military, revolution was just around the corner.

He contends that the country had pampered the military since the war, and suggests that such pampering was not healthy in the military. "War and the preparation for war is a stern, harsh business. It is not healthy to kiss the recruit-ies into slumber and make every man equal to his sergeant." He suggests that the reader might not admire the memory of General George Patton, Admiral Ernest King or their predecessor in World War I, General John Pershing. But they had instilled respect and obedience from the top and would not tolerate backsassing, demanding discipline for the officers, working down to the ranks.

He indicates that since the "All-American mother lobby wrecked our forces by pressure on a craven Congress", the country had been "in the business of babying our boys". "We forced the kind sergeant to tuck them in bed, and we gave them equality of a sort that is really too rich for their young blood."

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