The Charlotte News
Thursday, May 29, 1952
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Jim Becker, that this date U.N. troops, with bayonets and tear gas, had squelched a Communist prisoner uprising without bloodshed at the Koje Island prison camp, although a prisoner was later killed by the accidental discharge of a guard's rifle. The prisoners had been seeking to cut a new gate in an inner barbed wire fence when a flying wedge of about 50 U.S. soldiers, followed by more than 50 British troops, moved in to demolish the Communist command post and a dispensary. The prisoners had jeered the British soldiers but did not attack. The object of the prisoner demonstration apparently had been an attempt to force camp commandant, Brig. General Haydon Boatner, to visit the compound and confer with the prisoners. Two days earlier, he had received a long and abusive letter making demands, but had refused to go to the compound gate during the disturbance and had not answered the letter as it was not "brief, courteous and to the point", per his requirements.
The Communist negotiators' hinted threats of renewed large-scale warfare in Korea had been received in official quarters in Washington with deadly seriousness, on the belief that the build-up managed in the previous 11 months during the truce talks might form the basis for a major new offensive. No one appeared to hold out much hope of resolving the remaining sticking point on the armistice, pertaining to voluntary repatriation of prisoners.
Prime Minister Churchill had told Parliament the previous day that the situation in Korea was "very grave", indicating that American generals commanding the U.N. forces believed that they were capable of holding against a violent offensive in the event of total breakdown of the truce negotiations.
In Berlin, 10,000 to 15,000 young Communists surged into West Berlin late this date and at least a thousand of them clashed with club-swinging West Berlin police. They were apparently seeking to exert pressure against West Germany's agreement to participate in the European army and its formation of a peace contract with the Big Three Western powers. Six arrests were reported.
The President asked Congress this date for 3.3 billion dollars in supplemental funding for a "major further expansion" of atomic production facilities.
The President was planning to speak at New London, Conn., at the keel-laying ceremonies for the country's first atomic-powered submarine, the Nautilus, on June 14.
The President urged the Senate this date to reject the plan to reform the Wage Stabilization Board to include only public members, and urged retention of the labor and industry representatives on the 18-person Board. He also urged passage of emergency provisions for dealing with strikes in vital industries, indicating that the provisions of Taft-Hartley were inadequate for dealing with a defense emergency. He said that the failure to reach resolution of the steel dispute had not been the fault of the Board, as its recommendations had been reasonable.
As anticipated, the President this date vetoed the tidelands oil legislation, which had returned the rights to the tidelands to the states. For the Congress to override his veto would require a two-thirds vote in each house. The House was expected to override, but a close vote was anticipated in the Senate.
Former Communists Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley told a Senate Internal Security subcommittee this date that it had to be assumed that Communist agents were still at work within the Government trying to obtain secrets, but both admitted that they had no personal knowledge of the fact.
The Senate Banking Committee voted 6 to 3 this date to keep the RFC operating, but voted to recommend several reforms in the process.
In Lincolnton, N.C., Dr. Lester Avant Crowell, Sr., 84, owner and founder of the Gordon Crowell Memorial Hospital, formed in 1907, died this date. He had been a pioneer surgeon in the state and was Lincolnton's oldest practitioner, having practiced medicine since 1900.
Tom Fesperman of The News tells of gubernatorial candidate William B. Umstead of Durham speaking in Charlotte, predicting that about 450,000 voters would turn out for the primary the next day and that it would prove a decisive victory for him. The voter turnout in 1948 had been 422,000 in the primary. In 1950, however, when the highly charged contest between incumbent interim Senator Frank Porter Graham and challenger Willis Smith was on the ballot, 618,000 voters had gone to the polls.
Governor Kerr Scott was supporting Mr. Umstead's opponent, Judge Hubert Olive, who was forecasting that he would win the primary by at least 40,000 votes, indicating that there had been a shift of popular support toward him in recent days.
In Rome, the Italian News Agency reported that a woman had given birth to her 27th child. She obviously became pregnant with enthusiasm or was enthusiastic with pregnancy.
On the editorial page, "For Voters: Men and Women" provides statistics on the voter participation in the U.S. versus other democracies, finding that in 1950, the U.S. had 41 percent voter participation, by far lower than in the most recent elections in Italy, Holland, Great Britain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, France, Finland and Canada, ranging, respectively, between 92 percent and 74 percent.
It also provides the voting percentages within the Southern states and their relative rank among the states in voter participation, finding that Florida ranked 38th with 39 percent, North Carolina, 39th with 38 percent, followed by the other nine Southern states in descending order, between 30 percent for Tennessee down to 14 percent for South Carolina, the lowest state in the nation for voter participation. Meanwhile, Utah, Delaware, Colorado and Montana all had 70 percent or more participation.
It suggests that the figures ought to shame and anger Southern voters and make the reader determined to vote the following day in the primary.
It concludes:
"Your democratic government is
one of the few fixed values left in this uncertain world. It is the
guarantor of your liberty in the framework within which you find
maximum opportunity.
"If you let it go by default, by not voting, you have only yourself to blame."
"Folies de Brassiere" indicates that in 1951, when the French showgirls staged a television show in London, the BBC had made them cover their bare breasts before airing the program. The show was to be held in 1952 in Paris and televised from that location for British audiences, prompting the BBC to reverse its ruling of the previous year, based on the notion that since bare-breasted showgirls were allowed in Paris, there was no reason to alter the Parisian atmosphere for British audiences.
It suggests that the ruling would promote good relations between France and Britain while injecting "a bit of spice into Britain's austerity program", and would also provide a long-needed update to the old saw about doing what the Romans did when one was in Rome: "When showgirls in Paris say a bas with the bra,/ We can't be too prudish in London, n'est-ce-pas?"
Things, however, had not changed by late 1967...
"Sound Judgment on Movies" finds the Supreme Court's unanimous ruling, striking down as unconstitutional the New York statute, which had sought to ban the exhibition of Roberto Rossellini's "The Miracle" on the basis that it was "sacrilegious", to have been well counseled. The Court expressly had not reached the issue of whether a proper statute could allow the censorship of obscene films and did not find that there was absolute freedom to exhibit every motion picture of every type at all times and places. But it had upheld the basic First Amendment protection of freedom of speech and press for movies, just as with television, radio and the press. It finds that the Court had not widened the opportunity for the showing of obscene material, but had indicated that censorship, if applied, had to be undertaken rationally and not by subjective whim. The piece commends the Court for its reasonable ruling.
"Are Nuclear Weapons All-Powerful?" tells of a statement to the U.S. Conference of Mayors by William L. Laurence of the New York Times, who had been the only journalist to witness the first atomic bomb explosion at Los Alamos in mid-July, 1945, and had won his second Pulitzer Prize for his eyewitness account of the bombing of Nagasaki, August 9, 1945, indicating that it was an incontrovertible fact that Russia could not catch up with the U.S., let alone surpass it, in the development of atomic weapons or other weapons, provided that the country remained on track in its present rearmament and did not allow its enormous advantage to wither based on "unreasoned fear" or "loss of confidence in our destiny, or of faith in our future". He indicated that the development of strategic atomic weapons made it possible to destroy a nation's industrial capacity to produce weapons of war and to prevent an army of any size from marching in the field.
The piece asserts that if he was correct and the supreme deterrent had been found, then the great advantage of the Communists, in manpower and their disregard for human life, was nullified, with most conventional weapons outdated. It suggests that if the new strategic atomic weapons were as powerful as he suggested, then the entire military planning of the nation ought be based on them. It wonders what would happen if a nation disagreed violently with the U.S., whether it would be a choice between agreement and annihilation.
It finds it frustrating to hear such a pronouncement from such a recognized writer on atomic science while other informed persons indicated that U.S. military superiority was being overcome by the Soviets. It takes no solace in the fact that the supreme weapon was presently at hand, as its use would be ultimate devastation, necessitating that the object had to be to prevent its use, dependent the while, however, on the world's shaky political machinery.
A piece from the Boston Herald, titled "The Passing of the Store Porch", indicates that the old-fashioned general store had disappeared, along with its quaintness and position as a center for gathering to discuss issues of the day. Psychologists indicated that people needed a break during the day, and it had not been long since a man could go to the general store for half an hour before the afternoon train was due and, while the mail was being sorted, settle vital questions within a group of men who gathered on the store porch and were capable of considering problems calmly and rationally. But the store porch and the lines of chairs on them had disappeared, replaced by the expedient of men listening to the pronouncements of radio commentators and watching the pictures on the television as they sat in their living rooms. "A return of porches and wicker chairs would engender a wholesome and needed slowing down of the current tempo."
But even the general store appeared beset by its problems
Drew Pearson tells of progress having reached the point where success was assured in development of the hydrogen bomb, but that the scientists remained skeptical as to what would happen after the explosion. If it were to misfire, the scientists hypothesized that it could create a ring of fire around the globe causing the atmosphere to glow brighter than the sun and the ground to become melted glass. The scientists were confident that would not occur but were still uncertain as to the bomb's effect.
They were more worried, however, about the reported rapid progress of the Russians in building various types of atomic weapons, the reason why the President was preparing a supplemental budget of about five billion dollars for the Atomic Energy Commission. (The front page indicates this date that he requested 3.3 billion.)
Senator Tom Connally was the only Senator who might have the gall to ask a member of the Supreme Court how they intended to rule on the steel case, as he had once inquired of Justice Tom Clark at a dinner party how they intended to rule in Sweatt v. Painter, the mid-1950 case involving whether qualified black applicants would be admitted to the University of Texas Law School on the basis that there was no substantially equal black law school extant within the state. He had phrased the question to Justice Clark by asking, "What's the Court going to do about letting niggers into our colleges?" He reminded the Justice, who also hailed from Texas, that he had been instrumental in getting him his appointment to the Justice Department, where he had risen to become Attorney General. Justice Clark uncomfortably avoided the question. Mr. Pearson notes that the Court had subsequently ruled unanimously in favor of the admission of the qualified black applicant.
Many people had been wondering, he notes, why Senator Herman Welker of Idaho, sometimes called the Senate's "Junior McCarthy", had suddenly become a champion for the confirmation of Attorney General James McGranery, along with Senator Styles Bridges, who usually voted against Administration policies. He offers no explanation, other than pending investigations against both Senators.
He lists several House members who had been absent at the time of the crucial vote on the foreign aid bill for Europe the previous week.
John S. Knight, owner of Knight Newspapers, Inc., which would acquire the Charlotte Observer in 1955 and eventually merge to become Knight-Ridder in 1974, writing from Paris, tells of interviewing General Eisenhower, imparting his impressions and the views espoused by the General on various issues of foreign and domestic policy. He finds him first and foremost a dedicated moderate on domestic policy and a firm believer in building a European alliance with substantial American aid, as the primary component of contesting the Soviets in the cold war.
He found the General "almost naïve when the discussion turned to politics", that his "unfamiliarity with the conniving of political leaders" could, however, be a protective device when dealing with visitors from the U.S. He notes that rumors that the General's health was poor appeared, from what he could ascertain, without basis.
The General was convinced that the best hope of the country's security lay in arming Europe against aggression and strengthening its economy, believed that the concept of former President Hoover, making the American hemisphere a "bastion of defense", represented Nineteenth Century thinking. He believed that NATO was making good progress. He did not underrate the strategic importance of other threatened areas of the world but was convinced that keeping Russia out of Western Europe was of greatest importance.
He believed in European federation to break down tariff walls between the European countries, albeit not including Britain because of its primary responsibilities to the British Commonwealth. He also opposed American participation in any European or world federation because it would dilute rather than strengthen the leadership he believed the U.S. had to provide.
Anent domestic issues, he would likely disappoint both Democratic liberals and Republican and Democratic reactionaries in his moderate stances. He believed in a balanced budget and opposed waste and inefficiency in government, but did not see any point in Congress cutting a few departmental appropriations just to look good for constituents. He believed in long-range planning to reach goals without bankrupting the country. He had not commented upon the issues of labor legislation, the Fair Employment Practices Commission, corporate and individual tax rates, farm subsidies or public housing, but Mr. Knight believes that his views on these subjects would be "reasonable and fair".
Mr. Knight came away with the impression that the General would make "a sincere, honest effort to discharge his responsibilities with the public welfare in mind" and would not give in to pressure groups or to importuning of selfish or partisan interests.
His immediate plans were to return to Washington on June 1 and first pay his respects to the President before doffing his Army uniform. He would then make his first public address in his hometown of Abilene, Kansas, on June 4, which would not be a political speech in the usual sense, as would not the following talks. He continued to maintain that he would not seek the presidency or campaign for it, and had no intention of going to the Republican convention to round up delegates. He believed that if enough Republican delegates wanted him as the nominee, he would be available.
He was of the opinion that the Democrats had been in power too long, but was determined to wage his campaign on principles and not personalities or engage in gutter politics. He was not a table-pounder in making his points but listened to all sides of a given question before making decisions which had the ring of finality.
Mr. Knight concludes that those qualities might win or lose him the nomination at the Republican convention but one had to respect the moral code which first determined what was right and then stood by that judgment.
A piece from the Richmond News-Leader, titled "The Sucker South", wonders whether it was too much to ask for the Southern states to stop being suckers for a meaningless party label, that is voting Democratic and receiving nothing for the party loyalty on the national level. It indicates that, but for five Southern states which had voted for Herbert Hoover in 1928 and four for Dixiecrat candidate Strom Thurmond in 1948, the South had voted solidly Democratic since the time of Andrew Jackson. And the national Democratic leadership was counting on having all 128 electoral votes from the South in 1952.
The piece suggests that such loyalty invited being kicked in the pants by the national party. The South's fealty meant that the Democratic Party started with a base of 128 electoral votes, with only 138 additional electoral votes needed to elect. With additional states which had been in the Democratic column since 1932, including Oklahoma, West Virginia and Kentucky, the number increased to 154 electoral votes. Adding Arizona, Missouri, New Mexico and Rhode Island, each of which had Democratic legislatures, and three of which had solidly Democratic Congressional delegations, with all four also having voted Democratic in presidential elections since 1932, yet another 25 votes were added, leaving only 87 necessary to reach 266. Massachusetts had a Democratic Legislature and Illinois probably could be won with strenuous campaigning, leaving only 44 electoral votes necessary for election. California would provide 32, with Minnesota possibly giving another eleven, and Washington, nine. The Democrats also had excellent chances of picking up another 20 votes in Colorado, Montana, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming.
By contrast, the Republicans started with only 30 assured electoral votes, from Kansas, Maine, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Vermont. New Hampshire and Oregon would likely vote Republican, adding 10 more, and Pennsylvania and Indiana appeared likely in the Republican column, giving them an additional 45 votes; yet still in need of another 181 for election. Thus, the GOP would have to capture New York, Michigan, New Jersey and Ohio, picking up an additional 106 votes, with other possibilities including Iowa, Wisconsin and Idaho, still leaving another 49 electoral votes necessary for election.
Twenty-one of the states had voted Republican at least once in the previous five presidential elections and if all of those were won the following November, the Republican candidate would still only have 242 electoral votes, 24 short of the necessary number to win.
It suggests that the only thing the South's "dumb, doglike devotion" had won it was the strong civil rights plank introduced by then-Mayor Hubert Humphrey at the 1948 convention and the President's "surrender" to the CIO. It urges that if the South remained as politically alert and independent as, for instance, Colorado, which had voted Democratic eight times and Republican six times, plus voting for a Populist once in the previous 15 elections, the South's voice might once again be heard with respect in the national party.
Don't you worry. The new
Vice-President next year will figure all that out, with the help of a
few political operatives in his stable, by 1968. Tell them what they
want to hear in the spring, and then run like hell
And, it might be noted, Congressman John F. Kennedy, having recently announced for the Democratic Senate nomination in Massachusetts, contesting the seat held by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., turned 35 this date, the legal age for becoming President.
He had the good sense to realize that, despite a fast-paced world and regardless of chronological age, one had to gain seasoning as an experienced, knowledgeable statesman and politician, both with respect to foreign policy and domestic issues, before having the temerity to enter a race for the presidency.
Joseph Alsop, in Mineral Wells, Texas, tells of the split in the Republican delegation between the party leaders in the state and the rank-and-file. The Old Guard, represented by national committeeman Henry Zweifel, was strongly for Senator Taft, while the people appeared to be for General Eisenhower. Mr. Zweifel was of the belief that he would rather lose with Senator Taft than compromise with Republican principles by nominating General Eisenhower. He had run the Texas Republican Party as a small private club.
Many of the people supporting General Eisenhower in the state were former Democrats, independents or younger men and women who had never voted previously. They wanted to be rid of the Democratic Administration and believed that General Eisenhower would be a Republican candidate they could vote for enthusiastically, ending the one-party rule in the state. In the majority of the counties, they had overwhelmed the Zweifel organization in sheer numbers. In Dallas County, for example, attendance at the Republican precinct meetings ran higher than attendance at the Democratic meetings, and the Eisenhower supporters polled close to 80 percent of the Dallas County Republican votes.
Meanwhile, the Zweifel organization was ignoring the majority of Republican voters and the state executive committee had seated the pro-Taft delegations from the counties, despite the fact that they would represent only about a third of the Republican voters in the state. Senator Taft's personal representatives in the state had approved of these tactics, suggesting that the pro-Eisenhower people were not real Republicans and could thus be ignored.
Mr. Alsop suggests that it was hard to understand how the Republican Party was ever going to amount to anything in Texas or carry the country in a national election if that kind of exclusivity was to be practiced. It appeared to be nothing more than "a genuinely desperate political act".
Marquis Childs finds that one of the weaknesses frequently charged against the Truman Administration was personal government and that the current steel crisis manifested that problem. The President had appointed four of the nine sitting members of the Supreme Court who were considering the steel case, and he and First Lady Bess Truman had recently had dinner with Chief Justice Fred Vinson. Each of the four appointments had been based on prior friendship with the President, especially that of Mr. Vinson, who had been the President's right-hand man during the first year he was President, appointing him first Secretary of Treasury early in his Administration, and then Chief Justice upon the death of Harlan Fiske Stone in spring, 1946. While the Chief Justice had not discussed the steel case with the President, as being improper while the case was pending, he was reported to have made clear the implications of whatever decision the Court might make.
Mr. Childs suggests that one salutary result of the matter might be to increase the awareness of the dangers of personal government and of authority above and beyond the law and the Constitution. Senator Wayne Morse had introduced an amendment to the Taft-Hartley Act which would give the President the right of seizure of vital industries under certain circumstances and within certain limitations. But, he posits, seizure, whether with or without legal sanction, was a "dangerous expedient". Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, who strongly supported the steelworkers in the matter, had told their convention recently in Philadelphia that while, in the public interest, there might be a necessity of seizure of an industry, the practice, if it were to become a habit, could doom and end the free collective bargaining process and the free economy.
He indicates that the balance between law and the authority of the President had always been delicate within the system of divided powers. Theodore Roosevelt had been a strong President who had been repeatedly challenged for acting outside the law. The same was true of Franklin Roosevelt. He concludes that the balance had swung too far in the direction of personal government and that a reasonable law was essential to remedy this drift.
The eventual outcome of the steel case, to be announced the following week, would be adverse to the President's position but would find Chief Justice Vinson writing a dissent, joined by Justice Stanley Reed and Truman-appointee, Justice Sherman Minton. The other two Truman-appointees, Justice Tom Clark and Justice Harold Burton, would be in the majority, although both indicating, in separate concurring opinions, certain circumstances in which emergencies would allow for the exercise by the President of inherent power to effect seizure of a vital industry, absent a governing statute. They found, however, that the fact of the existence of remedies under Taft-Hartley and under the Defense Mobilization Act, which went into effect after the start of the Korean War, precluded the President from acting on his own in this situation, without specific approval from Congress.
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