The Charlotte News
Monday, February 4, 1952
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Robert B. Tuckman, that the U.N. command spokesman, Brig. General William Nuckols, indicated this date that the allies and Communists had moved closer to an armistice in Korea and that the Communists might have hopes for an armistice. Both the agreements reached thus far by staff officers working on truce supervision and the subcommittee negotiating prisoner exchange had provided a basis for optimism. On the latter, it was believed it would be ready to proceed to the staff officer level to work out details within a day or two. In addition, the Communists had accepted a proposal to start immediate negotiations on the final part of the armistice, instructions to governments, to begin by a full five-man committee on Tuesday.
The staff officers working on truce supervision reported no measurable progress this date, that they still had to work out differences regarding troop rotation, neutral inspection, and definitions of coastal waters, those differences having, however, been stated by U.N. spokesmen as minor.
Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett testified this date before the joint committee evaluating the budget that the U.S. now had better fighter aircraft, specifically the F-86, than the Russian MIG jets, but that it might take some time to equal or surpass the volume of Soviet aircraft production. The statement was in the context of a hearing on the proposed 52.1 billion dollar military budget for the coming fiscal year. He also stated that the country had not just immobilized but "disintegrated" prior to the Korean War and that it would therefore take some time to catch up in terms of the aircraft deficit. He also stated that the currently proposed military budget was cut back from earlier estimates by the military chiefs.
At one point, Mr. Lovett offered to show a chart of one contract for a new type of plane, which was classified, to which Senator Joseph O'Mahoney, chairman of the joint committee, warned that there was a representative of the Russian News Agency Tass in the room.
Newbold Morris, newly appointed lead investigator to clean up the Administration under the direction of Attorney General J. Howard McGrath, began this date setting up his machinery for undertaking the task. He was already facing criticism from Republicans, as detailed further in an editorial below.
Benjamin Fairless, head of U.S. Steel, stated to the Wage Stabilization Board this date that the company could meet wage demands by the United Steelworkers Union and hold its present prices, but that it would result in a 60 percent reduction in its contribution to Federal income tax revenue, and if allowed to spread throughout industry, could result in a net loss to the Government of around eleven billion dollars. At that point, he continued, the Government would be forced to lift controls on prices to protect its tax revenue. The Steelworkers had presented their arguments for an 18.5 cents per hour wage increase and other benefits the previous week. On the previous Friday, Union and CIO president Philip Murray had added the demand for a guaranteed minimum annual wage of about $3,000, an idea which Mr. Fairless described as inflationary and requiring payment for no work at all. The latter said that the total demands for each worker would amount to about $1,000 per year, while wages and benefits had already risen five times during the previous five years, far in excess of increases in both productivity and the cost of living.
Federal mediators sought to settle the truck drivers' strike which had crippled transport across a ten-state area. Meetings were called between leaders of the Teamsters Union and Southwest and Southeastern Motor Carrier Associations. Both sides entered the conference stating that they would stand on their final contract offers. Nine contracts had been signed, but, according to one operator spokesman, they were by companies who shipped from the Central States south.
Senator Estes Kefauver, speaking on a radio program Sunday, predicted that he could win the Democratic presidential nomination even if the President sought re-election, but added that he believed the President did not want the job again. He said that if the President decided to run again and offered him the vice-presidential nomination, he would not be interested.
Meanwhile, Senator George Aiken of Vermont said that he thought that the President had withdrawn from the New Hampshire primary because Senator Kefauver would have "beaten the tar out of him." On a television show, Senator Burnet Maybank of South Carolina declined to say whether he would support the President as the Democratic nominee, having recently said that he would support Senator Richard Russell of Georgia for the nomination.
Congressman Jacob Javits of New York said that he would introduce a bill this date requiring state officials to ensure that servicemen would receive data on the candidates and what they stood for, in accordance with information provided by the candidates.
In Tennessee, Congressman Albert Gore announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate, against incumbent Senator Kenneth McKellar.
On page 11-A, another Gallup poll appears in which respondents had favored former Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen over the President by a considerable margin.
In Durham, a prominent Charlotte businessman and Mecklenburg County Senator in the Legislature, was indicted this date in Federal District Court on two counts of alleged failure to file income tax returns for the years 1948 and 1949.
In Morehead City, N.C., all 26 crewmen of a freighter reached shore safely in a single lifeboat this date after hurricane-force winds broke the 2,600-ton Panamanian ship in two. The ship was carrying wheat from Baltimore to Brazil and had drifted to within 100 yards of shore when it split.
In Newark, a bus driver who, on his 25th birthday the following October 24, was set to inherit $90,000 from his grandfather, a local wholesale butcher, stated that he would keep his job because it got into his blood, "like wanting to fly". He said that he would use the money to set up a trust fund for his three-month old son and that he might go into partnership with his boss while continuing to drive buses.
On the editorial page, "Let the Chips Start Flying" indicates that it was not surprising in an election year to find contradictory remarks regarding the appointment of Republican Newbold Morris as the person to clean up the Administration, starting with the Justice Department. Representative Ernest Bramblett of California had stated that he hoped the appointment of a Republican was not a plan on the part of the Administration for using it as "window dressing" while it sabotaged his efforts to clean house. Congressman Kenneth Keating of New York, also a Republican, stated that the appointment of Mr. Morris was an admission that no one in the Attorney General's office was qualified by ability and character to fight corruption.
The piece warns against being fooled by either statement, that these two Representatives would have complained about a supposed "whitewash" regardless of the President's appointment, whether a good Democrat or a person from within the Justice Department. Even a respectable Republican did not satisfy them that this was not merely "window dressing". Neither had addressed the basic weakness of the appointment, that Mr. Morris would have to work under the supervision of Attorney General J. Howard McGrath, who was not above criticism, and thus Mr. Morris would not be completely free to let the chips fall where they might, as the President had insisted the investigation would be conducted.
The piece indicates that it would have preferred a person with more drive and force of personality than Mr. Morris had shown during his political career, but that sometimes the challenge of a job, true especially of this particular job, would cause a person to rise to the occasion.
"The Senate Is on the Spot" finds that since the House had approved the President's plan to reorganize the IRB, it now fell upon the Senate to provide its approval or not within 45 days of submission of the plan or the plan would become law. If the Senate vetoed the plan, it would not go into effect. The Senators who were speaking out against the proposal had two main objections, one being the reduction of collection offices from 64 to 25, meaning that some states would lose those offices and the patronage for the Federal jobs which went along with them, and the other being the placement of the collectors under Civil Service, taking them out of the political process of patronage.
It suggests that while the North Carolina collectors had been honest and efficient under the patronage system, as pointed out by Senator Willis Smith, it would take more than a few such examples to convince the American people that the political appointment system was better than Civil Service.
Senator Clyde Hoey had expressed a third objection, that the 25 district collectors ought be selected from the district covered by the office, something for which the plan did not expressly provide. The piece suggests, however, that given the matters exposed by Congress regarding the friendship of collectors to taxpayers whose cases were settled and substantially reduced on a civil basis, it might not be such a bad idea to have strangers handling the job of tax collection.
It concludes that the President's plan might not be the final answer to improvement of the system, but that the Senate would have to find better reasons than those thus far advanced to veto the plan if it expected popular support for that action.
Incidentally, it was the Government reorganization act passed by Congress which had reversed the normal process of veto, leaving it up to each chamber to veto a Presidential reorganization plan within 45 days of its submission or the plan would become law.
"Honest Harold" relates of the death on Sunday of former Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes and his historical legacy. Most people had thought of him as a mean old man, but others, including the editorial writer, regarded him as a "great guy". He had come to Washington at the beginning of the Roosevelt Administration in 1933 and stayed on until February, 1946, when he quit over the dispute with the President regarding the nomination of Ed Pauley as Undersecretary of the Navy in relation to the tidelands oil issue—as we related again in some detail on Saturday.
Mr. Ickes was always criticizing overly ambitious oilmen, as well as Nevada's Senator Pat McCarran.
In retirement, he had remained active, writing letters to the editor of the Washington Post, pricking the egos of official Washington, and writing a column for the New Republic, in which he carried on several crusades.
He would be long remembered as a friend to conservationists, had run the Interior Department and the Works Progress Administration with skill, vigor and, of greatest importance, unimpeachable honesty.
"So long, Old Curmudgeon. It's a shame your wonderful philosophy of life and government didn't take better roots in Washington."
It is perhaps somewhat ironic that by the time of the manifold Nixon Administration scandals which were revealed in the wake of the break-in of Democratic national headquarters at the Watergate in June, 1972, it would be President Truman who would be remembered as the modern exponent of honesty and integrity in the Oval Office, which, despite all the Administration scandals that he was facing at this point in time, were attributes never doubted by even his severest critics, though most newspapers never found much about which to sing his praises for leadership ability, which suffered greatly from his lack of speech-making skills, especially as contrasted with the dynamic style of FDR. That was so, even though, in many respects, notably the civil rights area, President Truman outshone FDR in terms of submitting to the Congress progressive legislation, though, in fairness to FDR, the latter's domestic program was cut short by the war and then, of course, his death in April, 1945, just as the war in Europe was drawing to a close.
Both President Truman and President Nixon would be found by many contemporaneous observers in the press wanting in the area of excessive loyalty to subordinates. The primary difference between them was that President Truman, while verbally reproaching many who disagreed with him on various matters or in one of his famous occasional letters of personal rebuke, never used the power of his office to try to ruin people who disagreed with him politically, as did Mr. Nixon ruefully, using "thugs" and "dirty tricks" against his political opponents with little, if any, restraint, a pattern which was set in motion and only became worse after he had successfully pushed for the conviction of Alger Hiss on perjury charges before the 1948 New York grand jury investigating the differences in testimony of Mr. Hiss and Whittaker Chambers before HUAC in August of that year, after referral of the matter by that Committee to the Justice Department and Mr. Nixon's own testimony before the grand jury.
Once he had gotten the taste of political fruit from the politics of personal destruction, elected to the Senate in 1950 largely from the notoriety achieved from his anti-Communist hunts on HUAC, he was never able thereafter to exercise any form of effective self-restraint, even when there was no apparent threat to his re-election presented by the 1972 putative Democratic nominee, Senator George McGovern. The quest was for absolute power, and a seemingly compulsive drive, for the apparent purpose of making a statement worthy of Machiavelli, to achieve it through either extra-legal or patently illegal means, in the end that which led to his downfall. Mr. Truman never had that problem, stayed within at least arguable Constitutional restraints at all times.
For Mr. Nixon, the Constitution was but an inconvenience to be circumvented when possible—not unlike the present occupant of the White House, who, unlike Mr. Nixon, does not have any apparent depth of understanding of the Constitution and the laws, even if Mr. Nixon often left his outside the White House.
"Hamilton Showed the Way" tells of West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer having sought to resolve the Franco-German disagreement over what to do about the Saar by having suggested making it into a kind of "District of Columbia" capital zone for a European Union.
When the U.S. federal union was formed, Northerners, led by Alexander Hamilton, wanted the capital in the North and Southerners, led by Thomas Jefferson, wanted it in the South, just as Chancellor Adenauer now wanted the capital near his country. Mr. Hamilton said that he and his supporters would vote for placing the capital between Virginia and Maryland in return for enough votes from Virginia to pass the debt funding and assumption bill, which was then passed by Congress by a three-vote margin, giving foreign creditors confidence in the new Government and serving to establish the nation's capital in the District.
French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman wanted a strong Federal Government for Europe, and so it hopes that he would make the most of the German desire to make the Saar, rather than Strasbourg, the capital of the union. It urges such compromise for truly welding the allied nations together.
"Hooray for History" tells of Dr. Edwin McNeill Poteat of Raleigh, in his address to the North Carolina Press Association, as reprinted in the News the previous week, having stated that he would place in a prominent position in the newsroom of any newspaper he might run a sign which read, "Remember History". The piece agrees that it was necessary to keep in historical perspective the events of the day as they transpired.
The President, according to reports, was acutely aware of his role in history and was confident that his forthright decisions on major issues would be remembered long after his pettiness had been forgotten. Some said that he was reluctant to run again for the presidency out of concern that it might jeopardize his place in history.
The Associated Press had reported that Josef Stalin had asserted that history would remember him as the man who built Russia into a powerful nation supported by satellites and did not wish to risk this position by engaging in war with the West, so cautioning the Politburo not to start one.
It stresses that it had no way of knowing whether either report was correct but passes them along for what they were worth, and would proclaim, "Hooray for History," should both turn out to be true.
Drew Pearson tells of 83 percent of the newly proposed budget being devoted to the military, including the primarily military mutual security aid for Europe and care for veterans. The remaining 17 percent included the semi-military Coast Guard, the FBI, the Secret Service and other domestic policing agencies. There was some room for paring domestic expenditures in such areas as the pork-barrel rivers and harbors bill, but which, by its nature, most Congressmen did not want to cut, suggesting that most of the available cuts had to come from within the 83 percent.
But the military had not been cooperative in adopting even the most rudimentary of principles regarding efficient spending. The branches had, for instance, not unified in terms of competitive bidding against one another for contracts for such things as towels, blankets, rope, pulleys, wrenches and other such items which were virtually identical between the Navy and the Army. Most of the Air Force buying in these areas was done by the Army, but still there was no unification.
Congressman Edward Hebert of Louisiana, who was studying efficiency within the armed services, estimated that millions of dollars could be saved by revising this system of competitive bidding. The column provides specific examples, such as a carpenter's square, which cost the Quartermaster Corps 65 cents, whereas it cost the Navy two dollars, the Army, $1.90, the Signal Corps, $2.10, the Army Engineers, $1.48, the Air Force, $1.40 and the Army Transportation Corps, originally $4.35, revised the previous week to $2.19. All of the squares in question were exactly the same size and virtually identical. Even the paperwork involved in ordering these various squares amounted to quite a bit of wasted money and time.
The Senate Interior Committee had held a secret meeting a few days earlier and voted to stop printing secret transcripts in an effort to prevent Mr. Pearson from finding out what was going on behind closed doors. As a test, no transcript was maintained of the meeting, but, nevertheless, the column had found out about it. Senators Clinton Anderson of New Mexico and Eugene Millikin of Colorado had voiced great concern about the column's verbatim accounts of these secret meetings. The Committee chairman, Senator Joseph O'Mahoney of Wyoming, had agreed that it was outrageous, but said that he had interviewed every member of the staff and was certain that none had leaked. Senator Anderson then accused the official reporters, who prepared the record for the committee sessions, of the leaking. Mr. Pearson assures, however, that the Senator was not "even warm".
Marquis Childs tells of General Eisenhower needing an overwhelming victory over Senator Taft in the March 11 New Hampshire primary, as it would be one of the few primaries in which the General would be entered. General MacArthur, who had withdrawn from the New Hampshire primary, had made it clear that he was supporting Senator Taft for the nomination, and had disclosed to confidantes that he might even go so far as to provide an anti-Eisenhower speech at the convention.
The seeds of the bad feelings between the two generals had apparently originated when General Eisenhower, then a major, was assigned as an adjutant to General MacArthur in the Philippines in 1935. The two men had been close since Major Eisenhower had served as General MacArthur's aide in Washington, including during the ill-fated veterans' Bonus March of 1932. In late 1937, the President of the Philippines, Manuel Quezon, appointed General MacArthur Field Marshal of the Philippine Army, whereupon the General retired from the U.S. Army. By then a Lieutenant-Colonel, Dwight Eisenhower remained as the General's assistant, retaining his rank in the Army. In late 1939, General MacArthur asked Colonel Eisenhower to draft a memorandum for the War Department, indicating that the Philippines could not be attacked by Japan, because of its invincibility based on Chinese coastal defenses available for launching a retaliatory strike and because of the build-up in defenses of the Philippines. After reviewing the matter, Colonel Eisenhower indicated that he could not, in good conscience, draft the memorandum, as he did not accept the General's theory of invincibility of the Philippines from Japanese attack. From that point forward, relations between the two men were strained and in February, 1940, Colonel Eisenhower returned to Washington for a new assignment from the War Department.
Then, nine hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the Japanese caught the core of the defense of the Philippines, the B-17 bombers, on the ground lined up wingtip to wingtip on Clark Field and proceeded to decimate them. General MacArthur, following his stand on Corregidor, was forced to abandon the Philippines in March, 1942, vowing to return, as he would in 1944.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop continue their look at the disparity between Soviet and U.S. armament, especially in air power and jets in particular, as they had begun the previous Saturday. This disparity extended also to tanks and virtually all major weaponry, except atomic bombs. It was not for lack of ability of the public servants in charge of the military, such as Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett, Secretary of the Air Force Thomas Finletter, and Undersecretary of the Army Archibald Alexander. Nor was it for lack of money, as the Pentagon had at its disposal all the money it could spend. That said, of the 68 billion dollars appropriated since the start of the Korean War in June, 1950 for defense, including mutual security, only 17 billion was actually devoted to defense hardware.
Part of the disparity was the result of the cumbersome process of appropriation, allocation, and the design and procurement systems. It took two years from the design stage to bring to fruition new airplanes. Thus, the paring down of defenses undertaken during the tenure of Defense Secretary Louis Johnson, replaced by General Marshall in September, 1950, was still being felt a year and a half later. The disparity in defenses between the U.S. and the Soviets would therefore continue for perhaps up to four years after the Korean War.
By contrast, Josef Stalin had called in his military designers and ordered them to produce the best tank in the world, resulting in the M-34. By contrast, the American system had to abide by Congressional debate and the Air Force did not begin to obtain important money until six months after the start of the Korean War, that is to say in late 1950. Then in terms of design, Air Force procurement officers were perfectionists such that the design process was almost endless, resulting in delays or even stoppages of production. The Army's Ordinance officers were even worse. On the civilian side, the procurement problem was complicated by the national mood regarding loyalty, resulting in able personnel being interested only in the very top jobs.
A letter writer responds to the February 1 editorial, "We Might Get Hungry, Here, Too", applauding the Soil Conservation Service and indicating its support for a modest increase in its budget on the premise that it had increased arability of the land of the nation, making that land sufficient to provide for the needs of everyone in the country and, to some degree, for foreign nations, and, consistent with the need of such programs as Point Four, needed to go even further to ensure that there would be no starving countries, made the more ripe for takeover by Communism.
He thinks that the acceptance by the piece without question of the Malthusian theory that, generally, populations increased faster than the means to increase their subsistence, provided an excuse to do nothing about the problem. He regards Senator Taft as an exponent of this philosophy, stating in 1950 that the problem was insoluble hunger because the birthrate was too high. The obvious remedy, he suggests, was either to impose compulsory birth control or kill the first-born. Most modern philosophers had suggested that the problem was not overpopulation but rather antiquated means of production. He concludes: "Get out from under that banana tree; on Taft it looks good."
Unfortunately, he appears to miss the whole point of the piece.
A letter writer comments on the one-party South, with the exception of southwest Virginia, eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina, where people voted their convictions. The Democrats of the South had not produced a national leader and had not initiated an issue which had challenged the national party position since the days of President Andrew Jackson. Although about half of the Democrats in the South opposed the national Administration and its policies, they had refused to vote against the national party for fear of losing Government patronage positions.
A letter from the chairman of the Greenville Missionary Club indicates that when a white man became a candidate for an office in the city, county or state, his race was not identified in the newspaper, but when a black man announced as a candidate for such an office, he was so labeled. He believes that such a candidate was not given a fair chance to succeed when his color was mentioned, thinks that only the name and address of the candidate should be revealed. He indicates that the Club of which he was chairman voiced the opinion of all of the politically minded "colored people" of Mecklenburg County.
A letter from Dr. Herbert Spaugh, pastor of the Moravian Little Church on the Lane, who wrote a column for the newspaper, commends the newspaper for its serialized presentation of The Greatest Book Ever Written, by Fulton Oursler, and finds it an excellent sequel to its previous pre-Easter serialization in 1950 of his prior work, The Greatest Story Ever Told, and compliments the wisdom of the newspaper for the selection.
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