The Charlotte News
Monday, December 22, 1952
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that U.S. Sabre jets had destroyed three Communist MIG-15s over North Korea in a series of air battles near the Yalu River this date. U.S. B-29s and B-26s attacked the previous night Communist supply and transport targets behind the lines.
The frozen front remained quiet except for a few jabs by enemy troops along the central front, as temperatures dropped to five degrees.
At the U.N. in New York, the General Assembly this date turned down, by a vote of 45 to 5, a Russian demand for condemnation of the United States for the alleged mass murder of Communist prisoners in the December 15 uprising on Pongam Island in Korea, after which the Assembly adjourned until February 24. U.S. delegate Ernest Gross characterized the proposed resolution as a "shabby midnight propaganda stunt".
A House special committee reported on its year-long investigation of the murder of 15,000 Polish officers during World War II in Katyn Forest near Smolensk, recommending that Russia be arraigned before the International Court on charges in the massacre and that the new Congress undertake investigation of similar Communist atrocities in Korea against U.N. troops. Both Russia and Nazi Germany had accused one another of responsibility for the Katyn massacre, the mass graves having been discovered by German troops in 1943. The report stated that the tactics used at Katyn by the Russians were being followed by the Communists in Korea. The chairman of the committee stated that Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky, in making accusations of U.S. atrocities in Korea, was seeking to cover up the Communist atrocities.
President-elect Eisenhower said this date, in an address to the annual meeting of the Freedom Foundation at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, that America would win "the ideological war" against Communism, provided the people never forgot the fundamentals of religion. He said that the nation's leadership should never be based on materialism. After the talk, he met separately with a group of black clergymen and with two business executives, the ministers telling the press that the President-elect had told them that he would appoint a commission to obtain all the facts about treatment of minority groups in hotels, jobs, restaurants and other public places, expressing amazement that blacks were barred from certain hotels in the country.
The National Security Resources Board, in a 100-page report to the President, urged that the Government encourage greater participation by private enterprise in the development and use of atomic energy as a source of power. It also urged a mineral leasing system as an optional alternative to claim-staking on public lands, a law prescribing policy to be followed by the Department of the Interior in managing offshore oil lands, laws authorizing U.S. participation with Canada in construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway and power project, providing for other multiple-purpose river development, legislation authorizing reduction or elimination of tariffs on raw materials in which the country was substantially deficient, and greater emphasis on mineral resources and technical assistance programs for underdeveloped areas of the world. The Board urged that 17 of the 78 recommendations made earlier by the President's Materials Policy Commission be given priority by the President. The report was in response to those earlier recommendations, the Commission having been chaired by William Paley, board chairman of CBS.
In New York, 21 persons were
arrested this date pursuant to sealed indictments by the Kings County grand
jury investigating crime on the New York waterfront. Thirty members
of the District Attorney's rackets squad hurried through rain-swept
streets of Brooklyn before dawn
In Sacramento, Governor Earl Warren this date selected the California State Controller, Thomas Kuchel, to succeed Senator Richard Nixon, the Vice-President-elect.
In Beirut, the French passenger liner Champollion, with as many as 469 passengers aboard, ran aground this date during a storm three miles off Beirut. Israeli civil and naval craft were standing by to provide assistance, but the ship being in Lebanese waters prevented immediate assistance since Israel and Lebanon remained technically at war under an armistice.
Noel Yancey reports from Raleigh in the second of a series of articles on the 1953 General Assembly, indicating that there was an excellent chance that the Assembly would favor large appropriations to continue state aid in building public schools, based on answers by House and Senate members to questions from the Associated Press.
Tom Fesperman of The News tells of one of the greatest crowds in Charlotte's history having jammed the midtown area for a final pre-Christmas buying spree, resulting in not many available parking spaces and heavy traffic jams downtown. Merchants reported, however, that people were not buying as much as they had on Saturday, December 13, the largest sales volume day during the season for most stores, because it was too late to buy things for shipment.
In Anchorage, Alaska, a troupe of Hollywood entertainers stepped into Alaskan snow the previous day instead of the sunshine of Honolulu, where they thought they had landed en route to Korea. The movie stars, including Paul Douglas, Jan Sterling, Walter Pidgeon, Carolina Cotton and Keenan Wynn, had apparently not been informed that the flight plan of their C-54 military transport had been changed because of high winds in the Pacific.
On the editorial page, "Time for Another Change" indicates that some editorial colleagues were disturbed by recurring reports that President-elect Eisenhower would abandon the present format of Presidential press conferences, substituting a system of written questions submitted in advance for spontaneous answers. It urges journalists to put aside those fears, indicating that as long as he answered the questions, the press would not suffer, that giving the President time to consider the questions would avoid the prospect of press secretaries and other members of staff having to backfill and clarify statements made by the President off the cuff, as had been the case several times during the Truman Administration.
It suggests that it was nearly impossible to answer judiciously and correctly, on the spur of the moment, the complex questions presented to a President, but that any time a President uttered a word, and sometimes when he only said nothing and smiled or frowned, his reaction was broadcast across the world, interpreted and misinterpreted. It finds that it was better, therefore, for the President to check his facts and phraseology in advance. FDR had handled the press deftly, but President Truman had kept his foot in his mouth. He had once left the impression that field commanders in Korea were authorized to use atom bombs, resulting in then-Prime Minister Clement Attlee of Britain catching a flight to Washington to obtain clarification of the statement. Another time, earlier in 1952, his statement regarding seizing the press had caused a major problem. The President was game but lacked the gift of FDR for repartee with the press. (It does not mention the controversial statement the President had made early in his Administration, in October, 1945, at Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee, stating in response to a question that the nation did not intend to share the atomic secret with allies, insofar as the know-how of making the bomb, touching off concern among the allies who had assisted in the production of the bomb.)
President-elect Eisenhower, like President Truman, had a temper and did not yet know much about a lot of the things on which he would be questioned, and so the piece would rather accept his answers as read to the press, if it would diminish the distortion and increase the authority of the press conference.
But, is it not the case that the confidence of the people is better assured, in an era of potential atomic warfare or domestic insurrection, by the ability, as was weekly demonstrated, for instance, by President Kennedy, of the President regularly to demonstrate complete familiarity with major issues and therefore instill a sense of readiness to make immediate, informed decisions in case of national emergency, whether of domestic or foreign origin?
"Memo to Automobile Drivers" indicates that a fellow, waiting for his wife to do some shopping, had circled the block eight or ten times, during which he decided to conduct an experiment by waving and smiling at pedestrians and waiting until all had crossed before proceeding at lights. One woman had been so astounded that she had almost dropped her packages and many had smiled in return and thrown up their hands in appreciation. Some of the drivers to the rear did not like the fact and honked their horns, but it made the driver feel good to extend good will to men as part of the Yuletide Christmas. He said that he was going to keep up the practice in the New Year. The piece suggests it as a good addition to a list of resolutions.
"Trouble Abroad??–Pass a Law" indicates that some members of Congress were seeking to legislate answers to European and U.N. problems in Congress. Senator Homer Ferguson and Assistant Secretary of State Hickerson had discussed recently the attitude of the Government toward American security risks hired by the U.N., with Mr. Hickerson indicating that the U.S. had told the U.N. that some of the Americans had been poor security risks, adding, however, that strong criticism of their employment by the Secretariat might be a violation of the U.N. Charter, Article 100, which indicated that the Secretary-General and the staffs should not seek or receive instructions from any government or from any other authority external to the organization, in the performance of their duties. But Senator Ferguson had replied that he believed that the problem should be cured through legislation.
It indicates that the U.N. had no legislative powers, that its affairs were handled through diplomacy, that while Congress should and did advise diplomats, U.S. laws governed neither the countries receiving foreign aid nor the U.N. To place such faith in the power of legislation to control groups over which the law had no control could do nothing, it opines, but weaken faith in law itself, and suggests that members of Congress ought to know that.
"Industrial Progress, U.S.A." tells of an exhibition at Duke Power recently attracting the attention of schoolchildren, looking incredulously at the decades-old machines which sewed and the irons which pressed the pants of two young men who said they felt old by viewing the exhibition. The younger generation did not recognize some of the gadgets that had been standard equipment just a few decades earlier. The story causes it to wonder whether the current youngsters, who warmed their toes with electric heating pads instead of soapstone heated on the coal stove, who had never blown a bulb-horn or lit the lamps on automobiles, who played their records automatically at three speeds instead of struggling with the old record player and its "gold moulded records", would become reliant on the push button and repair man rather than themselves. It finds a definite trend in that direction, but indicates that it would not wish to beat out a couple of columns of type on an old Franklin typewriter, as that displayed at the exhibition, or pound a beat in the pointed shoes which grandpa had worn when he dressed up.
It concludes that it was glad that the exhibition had come to Charlotte from its home base at the Henry Ford Museum, affording hundreds of thousands of persons perspective on the country's technological gains. About 5,000 Mecklenburg County schoolchildren had observed the display and it thinks it a fine complement to their schoolroom education, commends the businessmen and teachers who had given the students a better understanding of industrial progress in the country.
A piece from the Richmond News-Leader, titled "Sweet-Smelling Cars", tells of an Ohio manufacturer coming up with a perfume kit for the car to eliminate "Motor Odor", which caused people not to want to ride in some cars. The kit provided by Dell Roy Products Co. contained a germicide, with chlorophyll added, said to kill bacteria and leave the car without odor for 24 to 36 hours. A pleasant smelling scent was then added, all for 69 cents.
The piece desires vanilla, mixed in with a touch of New Car Smell, as the editorial writer had not sniffed that latter aroma in quite some time.
Drew Pearson finds the manner in which Senator Taft had managed to talk himself back into the good graces of the Eisenhower forces to have underscored the desire of both wings of the Republican Party to avoid disagreement. Until a week earlier, the Senator had no longer been "Mr. Big" in the Senate, but rather had become "Mr. Little". He had then managed, however, to talk himself back into the preeminent position through Senator Frank Carlson of Kansas, the top Congressional mediator for President-elect Eisenhower, who became convinced that Senator Taft would play ball with the Eisenhower team, then sold that idea to the President-elect. He provides the inside story of what had taken place to bring about this renascence on the part of Senator Taft and that which it possibly portended for the new Administration in its relationship with Congress.
We won't belabor it, as Senator Taft would suddenly die the following July, making the matter moot.
Joseph Alsop remarks on the cases of Owen Lattimore, indicted the previous week for perjury before the Senate Internal Security Committee the previous February and March, and John Carter Vincent, who had been suspended from the State Department the previous week on a finding by the loyalty review board of "reasonable doubt" regarding his loyalty. He indicates that though both had essentially been accused of being traitors to the U.S., they were both entitled to fair hearings of the charges, though Mr. Alsop regards them as "two of the silliest fellows" he had ever had the "misfortune to know".
As to Mr. Vincent, he had been effectively tried on one set of charges and found guilty on another, with the same thing being true of Mr. Lattimore. Both had been deprived of any chance to answer the main accusation brought against them.
In late 1945, Louis Budenz had left the Communist Party and become a professional ex-Communist, had, between 1946 and 1949, according to his own testimony, spent more than 3,000 hours tracing for the FBI the ramifications of the Communist conspiracy. During those same years, Mr. Lattimore held an honored academic appointment, while Mr. Vincent occupied positions of highest trust in the State Department. Both were far more important figures than the many others whom Mr. Budenz was accusing to the FBI. But during his 3,000 hours, he had never once mentioned either man being a secret Communist. Not until the winter of 1950, after Senator Joseph McCarthy had begun his attack on Communists supposedly in the State Department, did Mr. Budenz, in sworn testimony before Congress, implicate both men as members of the Communist Party, later becoming the star witness for the Internal Security Committee. He informed the Committee that the two men had been "relied on" to guide then-Vice-President Henry Wallace "along the paths" of the Communist Party line during his trip to China in 1944. But the facts had refuted that first attempt to document those charges, as the person who had primarily guided the Vice-President was in fact Mr. Alsop, himself.
He indicates that Mr. Vincent had given some guidance, but that Mr. Lattimore had not, that the only thing he was aware of Mr. Vincent recommending was that the Vice-President urge President Roosevelt to remove from command in China General Joseph Stilwell, who had strongly favored the Chinese Communists, in favor of anti-Communist General Albert Wedemeyer. When that change of command took place a few months later, it had the effect of deferring the Chinese Communist triumph on the mainland for a period of years, until 1949. But when Mr. Budenz was asked to explain this problem, he only further entangled himself in contradictions. Mr. Alsop had been called before the Committee and had recommended that the testimony of Mr. Budenz be referred to the Justice Department for investigation of perjury. Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada, chairman of the Committee, and his investigators, predictably ignored all of the evidence against Mr. Budenz and instead recommended investigations of Messrs. Lattimore and Vincent.
When the case of Mr. Vincent came before the loyalty review board, it had avoided any confrontation between Mr. Vincent and his chief accuser, had made no attempt whatever to parse the contradiction in Mr. Budenz's testimony, finding Mr. Vincent of questionable loyalty based on bad judgment and bad association, setting a bad precedent.
If Mr. Lattimore had perjured himself at all, he had done so by denying flatly the claim that he was a member of the Communist Party. But if, in denying that charge, he did not commit perjury, then Mr. Budenz had committed perjury in asserting it. A leading China lobbyist, Albert Kohlberg, had recently testified that he did not believe that Mr. Lattimore was a member of the Communist Party. The indictment of the grand jury omitted accusation on this point against Mr. Lattimore, thus refusing him the right to confront his chief accuser, with the counts of perjury being based on subsidiary matters.
Mr. Alsop concludes that he would not put up any bail for either Mr. Vincent or Mr. Lattimore and would provide no testimony concerning them, except regarding the matter of guidance of former Vice-President Wallace in 1944. Yet, he finds that the handling of their cases was a "gross travesty of justice" and that if that kind of "shifty, squalid truckling to public hysteria continues much longer, the sacred rights of American citizens will soon cease to be worth very much."
Roscoe Drummond of the Christian Science Monitor tells of many Americans holding the view that the U.N. was a failure and that it ought fold its tent, and that the U.S. was holding the bag in Korea. He had found, in interviewing many persons across the country recently, that argument against those views found resistance because so much talk, though short on facts, had created such opinions.
He sets forth the facts that the U.N. Security Council, with Russia absent because of a boycott from early 1950 over refusal of the organization to seat the Chinese Communists instead of the Nationalists, had, following the North Korean attack on South Korea, unanimously labeled the North Koreans the aggressors in late June, 1950, that the Council had called on all members of the U.N. who felt that they were able to do so, to contribute forces to the common defense against the Communist aggression, that presently there were 15 members of the U.N., plus South Korea, taking part in the U.N. action, that the U.S. was not bearing the principal burden of the fighting, but rather South Korea, that of the 15 divisions in the Korean line, only five were American and 60 percent of the positions along the front were South Korean, with another 15 percent occupied by other U.N. countries, leaving 25 percent of the troops, American. He lists the other U.N. nations participating, which had produced the first international army dedicated to securing the peace of the world against aggression, with Korea as a testing ground. Ground commander General James Van Fleet had indicated that there had been no dissatisfaction or disagreements among the U.N. team during the 29 months of fighting.
One Congressman visiting Korea had expressed surprise to General Van Fleet when informed of those facts, stating that he was of the belief that the U.S. had been doing all of the fighting with only token help. The General had pointed out that the South Koreans, in addition to their own divisions in the line, were helping with 2,500 katusas per U.S. division, integrated into rifle squads and accepted as equal soldiers. They slept beside American soldiers, eight chow with them and fought alongside them. He reminded that whenever anyone read that an American outfit had been smashed by a Communist attack, they should remember that three or four out of every twelve were South Koreans. He said that the U.S. had to have allies, a maximum number of free nations fighting in any great effort.
Mr. Drummond concludes that facts, more than opinions, would answer the questions of whether the U.N. had failed and whether allies had failed the U.S. in Korea.
Marquis Childs tells of President-elect Eisenhower receiving advice in abundance, from every side, from friend and foe, and from ordinary citizens. Some of the advice might be very helpful, but when it came to the principal problem, resolving the Korean War, he deserved to reach his own independent judgment, apart from preconceived ideas. The General's military statesmanship entitled him to a period in which he could seek a fresh solution without the intervention of experts.
That included the opinions of General MacArthur, as well as the schemes of ordinary citizens who had ideas about how to end the war. Mr. Childs allows that General MacArthur, based on his 15 years of experience in Asia, both in war and peace, certainly had every qualification for giving advice, but sometimes he had permitted his preconceptions to determine that advice. Often those preconceptions had been brilliant, as in the September, 1950 Inchon landing in Korea, but at other times, they had become problematic, such as his determination the following November to undertake an offensive to the Yalu River, believing that the Chinese Communists would not intervene in the war in response, a mistaken belief nearly resulting in the U.N. forces being driven off the peninsula. At the time, General MacArthur had already received repeated warnings of Chinese buildup in Manchuria and, eventually that the Chinese forces had already invaded Korea before the allied advance to the Yalu.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.