The Charlotte News

Saturday, November 8, 1952

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Robert B. Tuckman, that the allied big guns this date had continued unleashing artillery barrages at enemy artillery strongholds in the Kumhwa ridges and on Osong Mountain on the central Korean front, while front line fighting had diminished to minor skirmishes after three weeks of steady battle for the hills. The big guns of the allies had fired nearly 1,000 rounds per hour aimed at the strongest enemy artillery concentrations, some of which were protected by deep log and earth bunkers or tunnels. The allied commanders had called a halt to the efforts to obtain "Triangle Hill", after the South Korean troops had sought the crest of the hill numerous times, only to be turned back by Communist artillery fire. The Communists continued to hold "Triangle" while the South Koreans held most of nearby "Sniper Ridge".

In the air war, nine B-29's from Okinawa dropped 90 tons of bombs on a North Korean staff school on the west coast and two enemy night fighters, one of which was a jet, had been shot down in the attack. One of the B-29's had crashed into the water on the return flight. B-26 light bombers reported knocking out 95 enemy supply vehicles on Friday night. The Fifth Air Force reported that enemy ground fire had downed three of its planes during the week ended Friday, and no planes had been lost in air combat.

Assistant Secretary of Defense Anna Rosenberg, in charge of manpower assessment, arrived at U.S. Eighth Army headquarters in Seoul this date from her second tour of the Korean battlefront and visits to military installations and hospitals.

Sources close to the President stated that he would assume the role of an elder statesman in the Democratic Party after leaving office, similar to the role occupied by former President Herbert Hoover after he left office. He would leave the role of party leader to Governor Stevenson. The Governor met with party aides this date in Springfield, Ill., to discuss future operations of the DNC.

Democratic Senators showed no signs of seeking to block the Republicans from organizing the Senate, at the convening of the new Congress on January 3. The Republicans had only a one-seat majority, excluding the defection of Senator Wayne Morse, who had become an "independent Republican". Senator Clyde Hoey of North Carolina told reporters that he did not think there would be any move among Democrats to prevent the organization of committees by the Republicans, absent some "material change" in the present outlook. Similar views were expressed by Democratic Senators Lester Hunt of Wyoming and J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. Should Senator Morse vote with the Democrats to organize the body, Vice-President Alben Barkley could break a tie vote at the beginning of the session, but after January 20, Vice-President-elect Nixon would be able then to reverse that action on behalf of the Republicans. Senator Morse had repeatedly refused to say what he would do. Senators Hoey, Hunt and Fulbright had said that it would be pointless to try to grab control of the committees for a period of a little over two weeks and that it would also represent poor politics in light of the Republican sweep of the country.

President-elect Eisenhower was expected to name a Southerner, and possibly a Democrat, to his Cabinet, in recognition of the unprecedented vote he had received in the South. His three top supporters in the South had been Governors James Byrnes of South Carolina, Robert Kennon of Louisiana and Allan Shivers of Texas, but none of them had indicated any desire for a Cabinet post, though all might be consulted on such an appointment. Mrs. Oveta Culp Hobby, co-publisher of the Houston Post, had been mentioned as a possibility should a woman be chosen. Mrs. Ivy Priest, director of the women's division of the RNC, had said the previous day that General Eisenhower had assured her that he would appoint women to key Government posts, possibly including a Cabinet position.

Senator Eugene Millikin of Colorado was reported headed to Augusta, Ga., to meet with General Eisenhower, and there was a possibility he might be asked to serve as the new Administration's representative in the budget talks with the Truman Administration set to occur within the ensuing two weeks. Senator Millikin had chaired the Senate Finance Committee in the 80th Congress and was in line to become chairman again in the new 83rd Congress, was considered a financial expert. He had supported Senator Taft for the nomination and was one of the Senate's most influential leaders.

Samuel Lubell, who had spent four months during the campaign sampling grassroots opinion on the presidential candidates in 26 major cities and 16 farm counties in 15 states, had predicted on October 27 in his series of articles syndicated to 50 newspapers, including The News, that a large number of the voters who had cast their ballots in 1948 for the President had told him that they intended to vote Republican in 1952 and that if "the pro-Eisenhower trend proves strong enough to crack three or four of the big-city states", then the General would win the election by a landslide. At the time, most of the other political pollsters and prophesiers were taking no position. He said that he had found that most of the pollsters and forecasters had been hedging at the end of the campaign, feathering their nests with two alibis, that there was a large undecided vote and that there was a possibility of a last-minute shift, as there had been in 1948, proving most of the pollsters wrong in having predicted a sweeping victory for Governor Dewey. Mr. Lubell had been convinced by his anecdotal conversations with voters that there was a major swing against the Democrats long before the start of the campaign and that there were few undecided voters by its end, thus prompting him to make his prediction. He was now undertaking a three-week tour to collect information for another post-election piece for the Saturday Evening Post.

The Los Angeles Examiner carried this date a first-hand account of the first hydrogen bomb explosion on Eniwetok, indicating that the blast made the atomic bomb appear as a "runt". The date had not been given for the blast, but it had already been reported, accurately, by CBS the prior Sunday as having occurred on November 1, October 31 on the U.S. side of the date line. The Examiner report stated that it was likely that the bomb had vaporized into gas and dust the atoll, which was a half mile wide and three miles long. The eyewitness account had been furnished by a Los Angeles resident who had received a letter from a friend at the Atomic Energy Commission's Pacific proving grounds describing the event. The letter writer had said that he viewed the detonation through dark glasses and that it appeared as "a huge orange ball, which grew larger and brighter until it appeared as if no dark glasses were there at all". Intense heat had also been felt almost immediately. He said that the ball of fire had started to rise and slowly lose its intensity, whereupon observers removed their glasses and saw water vapor suddenly form around the column, at which point it rushed into the base of the column and rose, "clearing the air so that you could see countless tons of water rushing skyward…" The column continued to rise and finally mushroomed, and about three minutes later, a loud sound, like the shot of a cannon, hit the observers, followed by several seconds of dull rumbling, at which point "the mushroom expanded into a free halo, growing with tornado-like speed and reaching nearly over our ship before it appeared to cease growing" and then appeared to connect itself to the main column by a web of filmy vapor. The observers stood there and gasped in amazement at the size and force of the explosion. A typical comment from the observers was: "Holy cow! That sure makes the A-bomb a runt." The Examiner had withheld the names of both the writer and the recipient of the letter. Meanwhile, the Atomic Energy Commission, which had said in the spring of 1951 that its tests had contributed to "thermonuclear weapons research", had made no comment on the most recent set of tests.

Jeepers.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of supplying atomic secrets to the Russians, had petitioned for a new trial, having left the petition, bearing a reported 50,000 signatures, with the U.S. Supreme Court Clerk the previous day. The Supreme Court had, on October 13, refused to hear their petition for writ of certiorari, thus leaving undisturbed their convictions and resulting death sentences handed down in New York Federal District Court in 1951, subsequently affirmed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

In Cavour, Wisc., a trainman was killed and four were injured in a million-dollar wreck early this date when a Soo Line fast freight, westbound for Minneapolis, crashed into a similar twin-unit diesel fast freight standing at a station.

In Miami, Fla., police reported the arrest of a 16-year old boy on a charge of shooting his parents three weeks earlier in Kearny, N.J. The police reported that a shotgun, two rifles, a pistol, two small hunting knives and a machete had been found in the car being driven by the boy, which had been spotted after an FBI alert had issued regarding it. He had attracted attention by making a bad turn at a busy corner, after which the car was stopped at a train crossing, when police apprehended him.

The forest fires which had burned hundreds of thousands of acres in western North Carolina were reported to be under control this date, with some rain apparently on the way for Monday. The fire which had raged in the Tennessee Gap section on the Transylvania-Jackson County line had been brought under control late the previous day. About 3,000 acres had been burned in the Tellico section of Macon County before an 80-man crew was able to bring the fire under control late the previous night. That fire had been purposely set in at least two places. Governor Herman Talmadge of Georgia had declared a state of emergency and banned everyone from north Georgia forests except those fighting the fires, and also forbade starting of fires in any county of that section of the state. The executive order followed 1,000 new fires breaking out in Georgia's dry forests during the previous week. The tiny town of Helen, Ga., was completely surrounded by flames and some of its 191 residents had been evacuated before the fire there was brought under control. In Virginia and North Carolina, the National Park Service had closed Skyline Drive because of the fires. All state parks in South Carolina were temporarily closed as a precautionary measure by Governor James Byrnes. North Carolina officials were considering whether they would postpone hunting season, but one official again stated that it would be of little use with recreational and industrial activities still permitted in the woodlands. Those who had been actively fighting the fires had christened the efforts "Operation Hellfire".

On the editorial page, "An Orderly Transfer of Authority" tells of former President Herbert Hoover, in his recently published memoirs, having been bitterly critical of President Roosevelt for refusing to participate in White House planning between the election in November, 1932 and FDR's inauguration in March, contending that the economic panic would not have become so acute had FDR used his influence on behalf of emergency government actions during that interim. (See Vol. III of The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Great Depression, 1929-1941, pp. 176-195, (the extended dates in the title giving away much of his biased slant on the matter))

The piece suggests that history would likely sustain Mr. Hoover's contentions, and that, fortunately, the error was not occurring on this occasion, as President-elect Eisenhower had accepted President Truman's invitation to appoint a representative to consult on the new budget for the following fiscal year, as well as the President's invitation for a White House conference on peace. It finds the spirit of cooperation to bode well for a smooth transition of responsibility from the Democrats to the Republicans, suggesting that the world crisis was too serious and the problems on the domestic front too important to risk abrupt changes.

Some students of government had argued that the period of transition between inauguration and election ought be shortened, so that the expressed wishes of the people could be fulfilled immediately—analogizing to the British Parliamentary system, wherein the new Prime Minister took office immediately following the elections.

It finds drawbacks to such a proposal, as a candidate needed rest after a prolonged campaign and needed time to survey the list of assistants and advisers to enable selection of those best qualified to administer the powers of the executive branch, as well as needing to think about new legislation to propose to Congress. It concludes that the present gap of two and a half months was not too long and that shortcomings of the present system could be minimized by the type of cooperation being shown between the President and President-elect.

As to Mr. Hoover's dubious contention, his Administration had three years prior to the 1932 election to do something about the Depression and had done little or nothing, it having only grown steadily more severe under the laissez-faire policies of the Republicans which had predominated throughout the 1920's as its precipitant cause. Why would four months have made any great difference? Why could not President Hoover have done something on his own via executive orders, without reliance on President-elect Roosevelt? It appears as more of the time-honored ritual of Republican sour grapes, or, in the case of Mr. Hoover, sour apples, seeking to blame the Democrats for everything since the Garden, while everything the Republicans do is for the "good of the country". That which Mr. Hoover could never do was to admit that his policies—wallowing in unimaginative minutiae and tables of this and that, indicative of his engineering past, seeking to prove with numbers that the Leaning Tower of Pisa was really an optical illusion because of the tilt of the ground—, were inept and inadequate to the economic emergency, seeking to lay off some or even most of the blame on his successor for not being able fully to clean up the economic mess in the country left by three successive Republican Administrations without the adventitious event of war—itself, brought on through that same Republican ineptitude in foreign policy, refusing to lead the country into the League of Nations in 1921 and insisting on punitive policies toward defeated Germany, exacerbating the world economic depression brought on, in part, by the trickle-down Republican stance of the U.S. Administrations in the 1920's. Moreover, why would FDR want to be seen as cooperating with an unpopular one-term Administration which had led the country into the worst economic depression in its history, callously so, thereby undermining from the start his own ability to lead the country out of its economic and psychological valley or risking perhaps its deliberate sabotage by the outgoing Administration?

One might caution a guess as to why the former President waited fully 18 years, until 1951, after the end of his Administration, to begin publishing his memoirs. Was it not more advantageous to acceptance of his views to wait a full generation, to give time for the young to be sufficiently unaware of the past and those old enough perhaps to have dimmed memories, some embittered, over the slippage of time and intervening war, to be thereby more generous to their former President?—old sour apples, with a car in every garage and a chicken in every pot, as long as you did not lose the garage to foreclosure and have to sell the pot to eat.

It is not surprising, incidentally, that The News would find Mr. Hoover's revisionist view acceptable to history without challenge for its inherent deficit in logic, as the self-proclaimed "independent newspaper" had endorsed every Republican candidate for the presidency for as far back as the eye could see, although giving lip-service usually to the Democratic candidates as acceptably credible and worthy of election.

We feel compelled, by the way, to call attention to a portion of FDR's December 23, 1932 post-election public statement, in response to President Hoover's invitation that he participate in the negotiation of European loan repayments, as quoted in the Hoover memoir at page 183, saying: "No action by the Congress has limited or can limit the constitutional power of the President to carry on diplomatic contacts or conversations with foreign governments. The advantage of this method of maintaining contacts with foreign governments is that any one of the debtor nations may at any time bring to the attention of the Government of the United States new conditions and facts affecting any phase of its indebtedness." We stress it to provide appropriate context, lest some Fox Trumpie extract it and try to use it to justify the Ukraine "diplomacy" of the current "President" . In 1932, there was no discussion or attempt to solicit a bribe from a foreign government with deferral of the loan payments to obtain in response the favor of investigating a political opponent, a U.S. citizen. That aspect of the negotiation in 2019 causes the currently controversial July conversation between the heads of state of the U.S. and the Ukraine to become a bribe in the legal sense, not a mere negotiated exchange of policy inducement for aid or trade or other benefits or for not undertaking certain negative sanctions. The latter is acceptable diplomacy, to shape policy of foreign governments in the interests of the country. The use of such tools to prompt investigation of a particular political opponent and public announcement of same by a foreign government is not proper diplomacy, but merely an illicit solicitation of a bribe, that is seeking to induce by withholding or granting aid money an investigation designed to benefit politically the official soliciting the bribe, put another way, soliciting the foreign government to shape U.S. policy regarding the dispensation of the aid money by providing in return a personal favor to the public official, announcing publicly an investigation of the official's political opponent. Please note the considerable distinction.

And to those who try to justify such conduct by claiming that "they all do it", please name one instance from U.S. history where anything of the type has ever previously been undertaken by a sitting U.S. President. The simple answer, so that you do not have to waste your precious time looking it up, is that there is no such instance in our history. Had the present occupant of the White House said to the president of the Ukraine that he was going to withhold the 400 million in Congressionally-approved aid until such time as a general policy was publicly enunciated to clean up corruption in that country, then that would have been appropriate diplomacy. But when made specific to a political opponent, not in any sense a notorious person or terrorist or international criminal or the like, not an individual inimical to the interests and security of the country, then it becomes an entirely different matter, outside acceptable diplomacy.

How many diehard Trumpies would not be up in arms, ready to wage revolution unless a full-scale investigation were undertaken and impeachment proceedings initiated, were it to come to light that a Democratic President had withheld a substantial amount of foreign aid pending a public announcement by a foreign government that it was investigating Donald Trump for possible corruption, say, in the lead-up to the 2016 election? And, by the way, Trumpie, that question is what we call a Socratic-method hypothetical, to get you to think. It did not actually occur—not even in the alternative-facts universe.

"They Also Serve" tells of the Nobel Prize for physics having been awarded to two Americans, Dr. Felix Bloch of Stanford and Dr. Edward Mills Purcell of Harvard, awarded for their development of a new method for measuring magnetic fields in atomic nuclei. The previous month, another American, Dr. Selman Waksman of Rutgers, had won the Nobel Prize in medicine for his work in the discovery of streptomycin.

It suggests that Americans could take pride in those honors, while realizing, as Dr. Vannevar Bush had recently stated, "Scientific ability of a high caliber is rare, and it does not appear in one race or at any one time." Drs. Bloch and Waksman had both been immigrants to the country, the former born in Switzerland and having taught and studied at the University of Leipzig until Hitler had come to power in 1932, and the latter having been born in Russia. Dr. Bush had been speaking in favor of a more enlightened immigration policy than that afforded by the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act, pointing out that many scientists had been excluded from the country, even for short visits, harming the progress of science.

It indicates that the same day that the Nobel Prize was being awarded to Drs. Bloch and Purcell, a tribute was being paid to Representative Adolph Sabath of Illinois, "dean of the House", who had died after 46 consecutive years of service. Mr. Sabath had been born in Bohemia, that which was now part of Czechoslovakia, and immigrated as a youth to the country.

It concludes that the immigrant served his country and fellow man as well as did those of the country whose forefathers came from "the old countries".

"Pat McCarran Cut Off His Nose" tells of Senator McCarran of Nevada having loved his jobs as chairman of the Judiciary Committee and as chairman of the Internal Security subcommittee, over both of which he had ruled with an iron hand. During the course of his chairmanships, he had obtained secret files from the Justice Department, not obtainable by other members of Congress, and could usually intimidate officials who tried to cross him by threatening to investigate them. But with the Republicans now in control of the Senate, he would become just another member.

It suggests that, ironically, Republican control by a single seat could have resulted from Senator McCarran's support of Republican Senator George Malone against his Democratic opponent, Tom Mechling, for the fact that the latter had defeated in the Democratic primary the hand-picked candidate of Senator McCarran.

Senator William Langer of North Dakota, who had been the only Republican who opposed Senator McCarran's immigration bill, would likely become the new chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Senator Langer, it notes, had not voted to sustain the President's veto of the act only because he had collapsed after a five-hour filibuster against the measure.

It suggests that perhaps the Republicans might make Senator McCarran an honorary member of their party, and that, if so, the 15 Democratic Senators, including eight from the South, who had lost their chairmanships, thanks very possibly to the defection of Senator McCarran, would not mourn his loss.

"McCarthy Gets a Slap on the Wrist" indicates that one of the more interesting sidelights of the election had been the rebuke given Senator McCarthy by the people of his home state. He had bragged during the course of the campaign that his support of General Eisenhower would be a key factor in swinging the Midwest toward the Republican column, and his speech in Chicago vilifying Governor Stevenson, attempting to loop him in with Communist sympathies for the fact of his deposition testimony of good character given to Alger Hiss during the course of his perjury trial, had been calculated to perpetuate that myth. But as it turned out, the Senator had beaten his opponent in Wisconsin by only 142,000 votes, while General Eisenhower had won the state by 327,000 votes over Governor Stevenson. The Senator had also run behind Republican Governor Walter Kohler, who had defeated future Senator William Proxmire by 400,000 votes. Senator McCarthy had also run behind five other Republicans who won top state offices, thus making him low man on the totem pole within his home state. It was possible that he might have lost had there been a weaker Republican presidential candidate.

It concludes that the people of Wisconsin were owed thanks by the nation for administering such a stinging rebuke to the Senator, that short of defeating him, it was the best thing they could have done.

A piece from the Richmond News Leader, titled "Back to Normalcy's Engaging Trifles", tells of being ready to return to pre-campaign news stories which had been squeezed into a paragraph stuck at the bottom of the page or completely pushed out of the newspaper by the pressure of political oratory. It finds that it would be good to read again of centenarians who attributed their longevity to vegetarianism, regular consumption of blackstrap molasses or smoking of ten cigars daily, about flagpole sitters, people going over falls in barrels, letters mailed in 1917 which had only just arrived at their destinations, high-spirited youngsters who ate goldfish, dogs which followed their masters 2,000 miles across the country and arrived at the doorstep with tails wagging, little boys who swallowed a dozen or so marbles and had to be rushed to the hospital to have them removed, etc.

It concludes: "Three cheers for the trivia of normalcy!"

Drew Pearson tells of some of the problems facing President-elect Eisenhower and indicates the way he was likely to deal with those issues. Despite campaign charges that he would lead the country into war, he finds it less likely to be the case than with the average President. The General's mother had been a Jehovah's Witness, a sect which hated war. The campaign accusations would cause him to lean over backwards to avoid war. And, being a military man, he should be able to crack down on the irresponsible statements by generals and admirals suggesting a preventive war, statements which had given the country's allies jitters and supplied Moscow Radio with a tremendous load of propaganda.

Insofar as Europe was concerned, the General would tend to put less emphasis there, without changing plans for NATO, but arms to Europe might be slowed and transferred to Korea instead. That would be especially necessary if South Korean troops were to be supplied at a faster rate for front line duty. Previously, the General, as supreme commander of NATO, had favored more arms for Europe, , while General James Van Fleet, ground commander in Korea, and former U.N. supreme commander General Matthew Ridgway had desired more arms for Korea. But as the new commander-in-chief, President Eisenhower could make the final decision, and Mr. Pearson indicates it would be toward Korea for the reasons that he had made campaign pledges to bring about an honorable peace and because he had become fed up with the French and Europeans while supreme commander of NATO.

As to Korea, the General had been given the same secret Korean intelligence summary which had gone to the President every week, and so understood the terrific difficulties of accomplishing a truce. The Chinese might stiffen their demands when President-elect Eisenhower arrived in Korea, as they would know that he had to go home with some kind of result. His alternatives would be to yield on the issue of voluntary repatriation of prisoners or order a naval-air war against the Chinese mainland, knowing that the latter could touch off a general war, which the General was unlikely to risk. Mr. Pearson notes that the General had once told him that he refused to think of having American boys "get bogged down in the human morass of the Chinese mainland." (He neglects the third alternative, which ultimately would be the one to resolve the impasse the following July, relenting on the formerly steadfast U.N. position, agreed to by the Communists, that the battle line at the time of truce would be the final division point between North and South Korea, instead reverting to the original 38th parallel, established hastily at the end of World War II and lacking any strategic significance.)

Economic controls would be allowed to end when they expired in June, and possibly before that time, as a conservative Congress would demand it and slackening defense production would render controls no longer necessary. That would also eliminate the controversial Wage Stabilization Board, chaired by Archibald Cox, which both industry and labor had flouted.

The Wall Street Journal had echoed the views of some business leaders that the economic problems of the President-elect would not be so much in the realm of inflation, but rather in deflation, because the mobilization program had reached top speed and was bound to taper off, and any slowing of foreign aid would also slow down production at home.

Cuts to the budget would have to come from eliminating waste in the armed services, as defense represented the bulk of the national budget. The new President could eliminate waste chiefly by cutting out duplication of the services, such as big battleships and airplane carriers which were considered too expensive for the firepower which they carried. But that would likely cause a feud between the Army, Navy, and the Air Force.

The search for Communists in the Government would not change much, as the new President would continue to rely on the FBI and the Loyalty Boards to ferret out Communists. But Senator McCarthy would be in a difficult position, as his continued clamor for exposition of Communists in the Government would reflect on a Republican Administration. As a result, Democratic Congressman Martin Dies of Texas, who had just been re-elected, and who had originally chaired HUAC before the war, and, says Mr. Pearson, had done a fairer job than Senator McCarthy, would likely take the limelight.

The new President's chief contribution to the Government would be in bringing in new blood at the top, though 93 percent of the 2.6 million civilian employees of the Government were under the Civil Service system and could not be fired, while another six percent were under the merit system, such as scientists at the Atomic Energy Commission, whom the new President would not wish to fire. That left only about one percent of the employees who could be replaced, but since that one percent would be at the top, it could bring new energy to the executive branch. One of the new President's problems would be obtaining good personnel dedicated to government service.

Harland Manchester, writing in Harpers Magazine, tells of two young chemists, at a press conference of the winter meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science the previous December, having passed out jars of dirt and bottles of water, directing reporters to make mud pies, then having them stir in a pinch of creamy powder, transforming the pasty mud into little crumbs which had sucked up all the water like small sponges. The creamy powder was Krilium, developed by Monsanto Chemical Co.

The demonstration was the beginning of a publicity campaign which had swept the civilized world, branding the substance a "soil conditioner" to increase the yields of land. Other chemicals had been developed along the same lines. These chemicals had enabled plants to grow in soils which had once been unproductive and caused large increases in crop yields. The soil conditioner was not a fertilizer, contained no food for plants, but achieved results solely by its physical action on the soil, converting soils lacking in organic materials into crumbly, easily workable dirt which quickly absorbed water, making it easy for air to get to the roots and for the roots to search for food. It also prevented surface crust formations, inhibiting growth.

He indicates that there was nothing new about soil conditioning, that organic materials such as manure, compost and peat moss and the plowing of grain crops had been used to soften tight soils and improve their friability. But those methods could take years to improve soil structure, whereas the new synthetic conditioners resisted bacteria and would last much longer than the natural methods.

Other manufacturers had disregarded Monsanto's patent claims and entered the field with different names associated with their products. Leading experts disagreed with claims made by some firms that the preparation would improve sandy soil.

Marquis Childs tells of General Eisenhower's personal popularity having swept with him into the Senate and House Republicans who would make it exceedingly difficult for him to carry out his promises of peace and prosperity without war or preparation for war. But, in consequence of the sweeping victory, he also owed no favors to any particular group or bloc or region of the country, and thus could be his own master.

Mr. Childs had traveled some 20,000 miles of the country during the course of the campaign, most of it apart from the campaign trains, and he regards one of the few confident private predictions made to him having been that of Eisenhower press secretary James Hagerty, who had said the Republicans would carry New York by an overwhelming majority and with it most of the other states in a landslide. Governor Dewey, by contrast, had been pessimistic. James Farley, former FDR kingmaker in 1932, had sought to do everything he could to ensure Governor Stevenson's election, in the last days of the campaign telling inquirers that he believed that Catholic voters in the large cities were no longer as loyal as they once had been to the Democrats. The defection of Catholics in the Eastern states with large population centers appeared to have been a factor in the election, especially significant in Massachusetts, where a large number of voters crossed party lines to vote for the General, while also casting ballots for Congressman John Kennedy in the Senate race against Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. Meanwhile, Taft Republicans had sought the defeat of Senator Lodge, accusing him of having brought about General Eisenhower's nomination, that he was guilty of "Trumanism, socialism and other high crimes and misdemeanors".

The top bosses of labor had never been so united as they had been behind Governor Stevenson, with the CIO, AFL and UMW leaders all supporting the Governor and providing time and money to the campaign. Yet, the rank-and-file labor vote did not follow their leaders' endorsements.

The revolt in the South had little or nothing to do with blocs. Not even the most optimistic Republicans had predicted carrying more than Virginia and perhaps Florida. But long pent-up frustrations, resentment at having been taken for granted, plus the tidelands oil issue, combined with the cavalier spirit of the South and the prestige of a great military figure, as well as other intangibles, caused an unprecedented break in the so-called "Solid South", with Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, Florida and Tennessee all being carried by the General. Southern Democrats were now saying that the President's denunciation of the General, and in particular his reference to his supposed Nazi-like beliefs, had done more harm than good in the latter two weeks of the campaign. Meanwhile, Northern politicians were asking for a repeat performance by the President.

Robert C. Ruark indicates pride in his country, that it looked more like what the founding fathers had in mind when they took it away from the Indians, prompting him to hoist "a few horns out of sheer jubilation". He was proud of a friend who had messed up his absentee ballot and so had to fly to San Antonio from New York to vote, then flew back to New York. He indicates that it was a lot of trouble just to cast one vote, but cautions that one vote "magnified comes to mean the eventual life or death of a beloved land."

He views the results of the election as being indicative of the country having been "sick at heart and mind weary of small men fumbling and cheating and occasionally stealing their way through big issues. We had seen an originally humble and rather untalented little counter jumper become swollen with vanity and arrogant in his job as President to where he and his party had come to sneer at the people whom politicians are elected to serve. The arrogance and the cynical disdain for these people had become so tangible that it possessed an actual odor of corruption and decay."

He views the Democrats as having bought the votes of labor and farmers through "more inflated and worthless money than was ever circulated by a flock of carpetbaggers anywhere", with "war and threats of war" and with fear and bribes, connections and lobbies, pressure, cronies, and "what they couldn't buy, they borrowed", "what they couldn't borrow, they stole". "They screamed. They promised. They smeared. They lied. They made jokes. They assaulted character. The incumbent President of the United States carried gutter tactics against an honorable man who once had been promised by Truman that he could be President if he wore a donkey as his party emblem." Mr. Ruark indicates that he had never seen so much vilification so freely used in a campaign, and that even within the parties, the warfare had been bitter and the tactics low, with General Eisenhower having first been required to defeat General MacArthur and Senator Taft for the nomination before taking on Governor Stevenson, himself hampered by the President's record and his "strident support".

He concludes that the people, at the end of the day, had liked Ike.

But, again, the real question, as you will not live long enough, for your barroom habituating, completely to find out, is whether, in the end, they really will like Dick.

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