The Charlotte News
Thursday, February 7, 1952
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Communists and the allies made concessions this date regarding the issue of troop rotation and the future of displaced civilians, but remained at loggerheads regarding other issues. The allies abandoned the demand that the Communists trade displaced civilians for U.N. war prisoners, but reiterated the requirement that all prisoners have the right to choose whether they wanted to be repatriated and that impartial teams would interview civilians to determine that fact. It was later indicated, however, by a U.N. spokesman that the latter demand had been dropped, even though the official record of the conference showed otherwise. The Communists had assured the allies that displaced civilians would be allowed to live wherever they wanted.
The allies, in response to the Communists giving ground on the troop rotation issue, allowing rotation of 25,000 over and above the troops leaving Korea for brief periods, said that they would discuss the Communists' definition of coastal waters and consider dropping two demands relating to troop dispositions during a truce. The allies still maintained that a minimum rotation of 40,000 troops was required for agreement. They were considering agreeing to a boundary of coastal waters 12 miles offshore, which all naval vessels would respect, rather than the three-mile limit proposed by the U.N. The key issue, however, regarding the allied demand that the Communists not be allowed to build and repair North Korean airfields during an armistice was not at present being considered further.
The U.N. command was still considering the Communist proposal of two days earlier, in the committee studying final instructions to belligerent governments, that a high-level political conference be held within 90 days after an armistice to consider all Asian problems. That proposal was under study in Washington, where sources indicated that the U.S. was prepared to agree to such a conference to consider withdrawal of foreign troops from Korea and peaceful settlement of the Korean question, but would not support discussion of the broader issues, such as Formosa and Indo-China.
The Veterans Administration urged that the House Veterans Committee tighten safeguards against abuses of the G.I. schooling program approved by Congress for veterans of the Korean War. The Committee was expected to eliminate the World War II "52-20" provision, which gave veterans unemployment benefits of $20 per week for 52 weeks, denounced by Committee chairman John Rankin of Mississippi as "rocking chair money".
The President nominated George Kennan, former State Department planner who had formulated the policy of containment of Communism, to become the new Ambassador to Russia, replacing Admiral Alan Kirk whose resignation had become effective the previous day after two and a half years in the post. The President had announced the previous December 26 that Mr. Kennan would be the new Ambassador.
In Bonn, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer told the Parliament this date that West Germany had been promised eventual membership in NATO and called for French cooperation in settling the Franco-German quarrel over the industrial Saar. He opened parliamentary debate on the issue of arming 300,000 to 400,000 German soldiers to join the projected European army. Communist deputies of the lower house of Parliament booed and heckled the Chancellor as he put forward the plan. Outside the building, 500 anti-rearmament demonstrators protested, attempting to march on the Parliament building, but were repelled by police using water hoses.
In London, the new Queen Elizabeth II returned from her interrupted trip in Kenya to attend the funeral of her father, King George VI, and to assume the throne. She had departed London just one week earlier to begin the round-the-world tour with her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, which was to have taken five months. George's funeral was probably to be scheduled on February 18. The scene at the airport was gloomy and her arrival was greeted by Prime Minister Churchill. She would be formally proclaimed Queen the following day.
Harold Stassen stated to a press conference that he did not believe that General Eisenhower would return from Europe to campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Senator Owen Brewster of Maine, a supporter of Senator Taft for the nomination, predicted that if present political trends continued, the Senator would have the nomination "sewed up" within a few weeks. But Mr. Stassen indicated that he believed that about half of the Republican leaders who influenced the choice of the nominee had not made up their minds, and of those who had, about 30 percent supported Senator Taft and 20 percent, General Eisenhower.
In Raleigh, the North Carolina Secretary of State, Thad Eure, announced receipt from DNC chairman Frank McKinney an official apportionment of 32 delegate votes at the Democratic national convention, set to start July 21 in Chicago. The total number of convention delegates would be 1,230. The state would be allowed to send as many as 40 delegates, 24 with full votes and 16 with half votes each.
What kind of a deal is that, to be a half-delegate? How is that going to sound on a future resume? Will it not prompt ridicule, given the symbol of the Democratic Party?
On the editorial page, "Why Not Subpoena Lamar Caudle?" reminds of the statements by the former head of the Justice Department's tax division, as told to the subcommittee investigating the tax prosecution scandals the prior November, that he was afraid for his life when visiting Charlotte and that the rackets in Charlotte were protected by the police chief, advice which he claimed to have received from the head of the SBI, Walter Anderson. He had also heard that the police chief had the IRB agents under surveillance, with their wires tapped.
The following Monday, law enforcement officers, newspaper editors and other individuals would appear before a special Federal grand jury in Asheville to tell what they knew about crime, rackets, corrupt Federal government employees, or anything else which might aid the U.S. Attorney in the Western District in his "war on crime". The piece suggests to the U.S. Attorney that he subpoena Mr. Caudle regarding his information on Charlotte.
"The Hand of Welcome" tells of the Duplan Corporation, which operated nine weaving and throwing plants in the U.S., and two in Canada, planning to move its central operations office from Pennsylvania to Charlotte, providing employment for about 80 persons for the 30 million dollar concern. That move, following the plans announced the prior November to locate a Celanese Corporation management and sales center in Mecklenburg County, was not enough to establish a trend, but would establish Charlotte and the Piedmont as a central control point for the postwar textile industry in the South. The executives and employees would add to the community and, the piece suggests, would find the community pleasant and profitable.
"Let's Try It, Senators" discusses the President's pending plan for reorganization of the IRB, having been approved by the House and awaiting approval by the Senate. Senators John McClellan of Arkansas and Clyde Hoey of North Carolina appeared undecided on the merits of the plan, and the piece seeks to answer their arguments in opposition. They were afraid that non-local tax collectors would pose a problem, a matter for which the plan did not expressly provide. But the plan could not be amended, either having to be approved or rejected or simply not acted upon for 45 days after submission, in the latter case, then becoming law. The piece suggests that tax collectors should not be old friends of the persons they investigated.
The Senators also indicated that 90 percent of the IRB collectors who had been fired were under Civil Service appointment, but the other four percent had been the top political employees who set the pattern. Also, many of the 96 percent had not taken qualification tests, to be required under the reorganization plan.
The Senators also argued that the plan would not save any money, but, posits the piece, the plan primarily was to clean up the collection of taxes and restore confidence in the IRB.
It concludes that the plan should receive the support of the Senators.
"The Other Side of the Story" tells of Fortune having stated recently that Abraham Lincoln had sufficed with two secretaries, that FDR had only 50 persons on his office staff, but that President Truman had 1,470 persons on the White House staff, and that the number was still growing. It finds the fact to be indicative of current spendthriftiness. It then quotes at length from the Fortune piece, which had posited that the necessity for the larger staff was "partly from the inadequacy of [the President's] own administrative experience and talents", causing him to attempt to put government back into the offices of the Cabinet. It found that it was unlikely that any President would ever be able to put high policy in the hands of the Cabinet, as the executive departments had become so large that efficient administration demanded the full energies of a qualified executive.
The piece concludes with the presumption that there was a necessity of this larger staff, questioning whether it was a waste of taxpayer money or a help to future Presidents.
A piece from the Richmond News-Leader, titled "It's Sweeping the Comics", tells of a trend toward love sweeping the comics, and proceeds to provide detailed citations, suggesting that psychiatrists could probably interpret some deep meaning from the fact, perhaps that the country was searching for affection in the face of such things as Pakistan sneering at the offer of aid and Chile rejecting Point Four assistance.
"Anyhow, we are knee-deep in woo on the comic page today and by Valentine's Day the paper is likely to be too sticky to pick up."
Drew Pearson discusses former Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes in his last days, spending time at his farm in Maryland at age 77. He had appeared tired and worn out and had been racked with pain for three months, even spending Christmas in bed. He had said that he would like to live to see one more election, as he viewed it as a vitally important one. He wanted to talk to some of the men in the Democratic Party who were the new leaders, such as Governor Adlai Stevenson and Senator Estes Kefauver. He indicated that it was important to have young men and new leaders in the party and he wanted to try to help them.
Mr. Pearson indicates that he had known Mr. Ickes for about 20 years and it was the first time that the former Secretary, dubbed "the Old Curmudgeon", had ever suggested that he was no longer youthful and vigorous.
During the Depression, in 1933, when Mr. Ickes first became Secretary of Interior and was also heading the new Works Progress Administration, many people had berated him for wanting every Government contract scrutinized with a microscope. He had stood almost alone against Secretary of State Cordell Hull and nearly every other Cabinet official in refusing to sell helium to Germany, supported only by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, going so far as to issue a virtual ultimatum that he would not sell helium to Hitler. FDR had laughed and let him have his way. Again Mr. Ickes had joined with Mr. Morgenthau and with then-Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace in opposing scrap-iron shipments to Japan in 1939, but was overruled by Secretary Hull. When Mr. Ickes became administrator of petroleum, he cut off oil to Japan.
The public berated him when he rationed gasoline and a Senate committee claimed that there was a plentiful supply, but Mr. Ickes indicated the contrary and he was given his way. Afterward, the public realized, after German U-boats had been sinking American tankers on a regular basis, that the Secretary had been correct in establishing rationing.
He had also been correct in opposing the provision of RFC money to Canada to build an aluminum plant during the war, aluminum which only the prior month Prime Minister Churchill had traded to the U.S.
He had battled against the confirmation of Ed Pauley to become Undersecretary of the Navy in early 1946, ultimately leading to his resignation as Secretary of Interior following his dispute with the President for questioning the memory of Mr. Ickes regarding alleged conversations he had recounted from September, 1944 regarding Mr. Pauley allegedly having stated, as treasurer of the DNC, that he could raise funds from West Coast oilmen for the Democrats, provided the Administration would back off its position of Federal ownership of the tidelands oil. At the time, Mr. Ickes had foreseen "a cloud no bigger than a man's hand", a cloud of corruption creeping over Washington. Mr. Pauley eventually withdrew his nomination and stepped aside, but Mr. Ickes had also left the Cabinet, of which he had been a part since 1933.
"But he was still fighting. Even near death's door he was still fighting."
Harold Ickes, in his last piece for the New Republic, written January 29, prior to his death on February 3, discusses, without providing specific cases or individuals, the mutual accusations of corruption and wrongdoing by both Democrats and Republicans during the previous session of Congress, in the belief that it would supply a good campaign issue for the following fall election. But then "[m]any an 'honorable' man became aware of the dangers of indiscriminate hunting. Many a 'lover of civil liberty' cried out that crooks and dope peddlers should be given protections and privileges in investigations previously denied to men suspected of unpopular political convictions. 'Save himself who can' became the generous and gallant war cry on the hills where guardians of our liberties hold forth."
He indicates that this time, however, the American people were not going to be satisfied in permitting Congress to make a report on itself, that they were "too sophisticated to be gulled by the innocent-looking committees on both sides of the House which are clamorously engaged in the wholesale dissemination of red herrings, frantic in their efforts to lose themselves in the crowd. Let Republicans and Democrats alike cauterize their noisome sores lest each be overcome by the stench of its own corruption. For, however soiled and shabby may be the upper crusts, the core of the people is yet sound and good."
Joseph & Stewart Alsop again discuss the investigation of State Department official John Carter Vincent by the Internal Security subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, chaired by Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada. In the entire hearings on the matter, nothing had been said regarding Mr. Vincent's primary accuser, former Communist Louis Budenz. Yet as a witness before the committee chaired by former Senator Millard Tydings in 1950 and before the McCarran subcommittee, Mr. Budenz had charged many Americans, including Mr. Vincent, with being Communist Party members.
Mr. Budenz had left the Communist Party in October, 1945 and not long afterward began working with the FBI, estimating, himself, that he gave in the five-year period through spring, 1950 a total of 3,000 hours of his time as a voluntary informer for the Bureau. Yet, in that time, he forgot about Mr. Vincent and the other men he was currently accusing of being Communists, until March, 1950, shortly after Senator Joseph McCarthy began his first charges regarding either 57, 81, or 205, depending on the number chosen in the moment, "card-carrying Communists" and sympathizers within the Government, to begin making his more recent charges. He had started with Owen Lattimore, the same week when Senator McCarthy declared that Mr. Lattimore was the "top Communist agent" in the country. Mr. Budenz had already twice denied that Mr. Lattimore was a Communist, once to a State Department investigator in 1947, and again, to an editor of Collier's, Leonard Paris, in 1949. When he appeared before the Tydings investigating committee in 1950, he refused to accuse Mr. Vincent of being a Communist, but a short time later, told the FBI that Mr. Vincent was a Communist.
Neither Mr. Budenz nor the McCarran subcommittee could produce any evidence to prove Mr. Vincent's pro-Communist influence on former Vice-President Wallace during the latter's mission to China in 1944 or to show that Mr. Vincent was a member of the Communist Party. All of the evidence had now been adduced before the McCarran subcommittee on the matter, and, in result, the Alsops urge, Mr. Budenz "would seem to be the man to investigate."
A letter writer indicates that she thinks exceptions ought be made to the law in cases such as the one just adjudicated the prior Monday, with Judge Susie Sharp ruling that the law required deference to the Welfare Department's determination that a child who had been with foster parents temporarily for two years, pending adoption, would be better off in another home and so had determined to place the child with the adoptive parents. The writer urges against breaking the hearts of the foster parents.
A letter writer from McBee, S.C., finds that the "pirate" Winston Churchill had managed to convince the Government to allocate to Britain steel and credits with which to purchase it, without having received anything in return. He suggests that Mr. Churchill needed watching, that he was a "clever fellow" who would "shake your hand and steal your purse". He suggests that it would be simpler just to make England the 49th state rather than support it "like a wayward orphan".
That "wayward orphan", under the steady leadership of Mr. Churchill after May, 1940, withstood the Battle of Britain, thereby keeping the war with Hitler over there and not directly threatening the shores of the United States—just as had Russia, from mid-1941 into 1944.
A letter from Ralph Dornfield Owen of Philadelphia, president of the Simpler Spelling Association, thanks the newspaper for its January 25 editorial, in which it underwrote his proposal for simpler phonetic spelling of words. He proposes a bargain, that if the newspaper would consistently use "f" instead of "ph" in such words as "telephone" and "photograph", he would spell his first name with an "f".
You will also have to convince the City of Brotherly Love to change its spelling to "Filadelfia", inevitably, while two letters shorter, a rather expensive proposition in terms of changes of street signs, the names of municipal buildings, etc.
Each to his own, you nuht.
A letter, speaking of whom, from A.W. Black provides a series of aphoristic thoughts, concluding with Rudyard Kipling's "If", to what end, we cannot fathom, yet entirely consistent with most of what Mr. Black has written to the newspaper previously.
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