The Charlotte News

Wednesday, July 30, 1952

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that General James Van Fleet, U.S. Eighth Army commander, had informed a press conference this date that there was less chance for an armistice in Korea than ever previously. He said that the Communists had been thinning out their front line strength during the previous several weeks to the point where it was thinner than ever before, based on floods, U.N. close air support of infantry attacks, pressure on the ground by the Eighth Army, lack of supplies in the enemy forward areas, the threat of a U.N. amphibious offensive, and a Communist decision that the U.N. forces would not attack and that there would not be an armistice. This latter decision, he indicated, was why there was less chance than ever of an armistice. He said that once the Communists had gotten through the winter, they had become bold and tough in the armistice talks.

The armistice talks were in recess until Sunday.

General Eisenhower and Senator Nixon and their campaign "brain trust" would hold a series of high-level strategy conferences in Denver starting on Friday. Among those scheduled to attend was Chevy dealer Arthur Summerfield of Michigan, the new RNC Chairman and the manager of the General's campaign. The meeting would regard the coordination of all phases of the campaign. Both Mr. Summerfield and Senator Nixon would address the Ohio state Republican convention in Columbus the following day.

Mr. Summerfield claimed this date that most of the bitterness lingering from the Taft versus Eisenhower fight at the Republican convention had been healed.

In London, Prime Minister Winston Churchill told Commons this date that because of financial difficulties, the Government had decided to alter the pattern of the defense program, freeing part of the engineering industry to produce goods for export. He said that he hoped a balance could be struck between defense and export manufacture. Former Prime Minister Clement Attlee criticized Prime Minister Churchill for proposing to sell arms abroad, depriving Britain of armaments. He recalled when Mr. Churchill opposed the Labor Government's reduction of arms.

In Wiesbaden, Germany, the wife of a U.S. Air Force colonel was convicted this date of five counts of dealing in the black market, and fined nearly $4,000, with the alternative of serving the equivalent in time at $15 per day credit. She was accused of selling coffee and gasoline coupons and making illegal currency exchanges on the German black market. She was found not guilty on the charges of importing coffee for resale and buying military scrip for American dollars.

In Whiteville, N.C., Thomas L. Hamilton, the head of the Carolinas Klan, was sentenced to four years in prison this date for conspiracy to conduct a flogging of a black woman in January, 1951, after he pleaded guilty to the charge the previous week. It was the maximum sentence allowable under the law. He had also been charged in three other floggings, but those cases were consolidated and dismissed pursuant to his guilty plea. Sentence was also imposed on 62 other Klansmen for their involvement in several floggings. The sentences ranged from between one and two years, many of which were suspended on payment of fines. Those defendants had also pleaded guilty. A trial of about 15 additional defendants who had not yet pleaded guilty was scheduled for a later term of court. Several defendants had been convicted in Federal court in a trial in Wilmington the prior June. Nine defendants had been convicted in a state trial in Columbus County in late May.

In Bluefield, W. Va., three families were engaged in a shooting feud, and a man prominent in the community because he had the only telephone, reported the previous night the wounding of a pair of men who had no interest or connection with the feud. Their wounds were minor. Others complained that their sleep had been interrupted by the shooting during the previous three nights. State police indicated that they had tightened their vigil around the area, but lacked manpower to cope with the situation in such an isolated locale. Meanwhile, the three families vowed to proceed with the building of an access road across the property of another family who claimed it as their own, the source of the feud.

In Toledo, O., two hymn-singing spinster sisters, loaded with money, were in jail because they would not stop sitting on railroad tracks, having been arrested the previous night while sitting on tracks in Toledo's Central Union Terminal. One sister had $8,000 in cash and the other a $4,200 cash certificate on them at the time of arrest. They also, according to police, had $16,500 in Atlanta banks. The police quoted them as saying that only God could order them from the tracks. After being charged, they sang hymns the previous night in the city jail.

Air Force experts said that there was nothing to be excited about from the recent radar sightings of unidentified flying objects, as radar was tricky. The report said that it was not unusual for radar to pick up rain squalls, birds, waterspouts and even surf spray. At Wright-Patterson field in Dayton, O., objects seen on radar circled high in such a manner that the Air Force had become concerned, but aircraft sent up to investigate the sighting found that the blips were the result of ice formations in the sky. In another instance, a pilot was sent aloft to follow a suspicious radar blip, but each time he tried to follow it, it led him directly toward the ground. It was concluded that it was a radar wave bent groundward and rebounding from an object on the ground.

Maj. General John Samford, intelligence director of the Air Force, called a special press conference to announce that a fifth of the sightings were from credible observers and so the Air Force continued to be concerned about them, but that there was no cause for alarm as nothing was indicated as a threat to national defense. He said that since 1947, the Air Force had analyzed about 2,000 reports of sightings of strange objects, the bulk of which had been identified as the product of friendly aircraft, hoaxes, or electrical or meteorological phenomena. Every effort was being made, he said, to identify the other fifth of the sightings. A photographic telescope was being used in that effort.

On Tuesday morning, the Civil Aeronautics Administration at Washington National Airport had reported strange blips on its radar screen, normally indicative of airplanes moving through the sky, the blips having continued to appear for almost five hours. Other radar units in the area, however, did not pick up the blips. The two generals at the Air Force press conference indicated that it was possibly related to the heat wave of late.

In Washington, Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett had seen a flying saucer while a passenger on an airliner between New York and Washington the previous Sunday, but explained it away as a searchlight which was roaming around the clear, moonlit sky, at one point picking up a cumulus cloud, creating the impression of a circular body keeping pace with the plane. He said it was how many a flying saucer was born.

In Enid, Okla., a photographic supplies salesman told police that he was almost swept from the highway the previous night by a huge flying saucer which swooped low at terrific speed. A police officer said that the man was still trembling when he walked into the police station to report the incident. He had said that the object was yellow-green, then turned to yellow-brown, and was about 400 feet long. He said that the pressure created by the object had nearly knocked his car off the road.

On the editorial page, "Eisenhower's Task Is a Difficult One" tells of General Eisenhower, during the war, having made his plans and left it up to assistants to implement them, whereas running his campaign would require that he do most of the work, himself.

To show the hard road ahead for the Republicans in the general election, it provides a chart of 23 states, with a total of 219 electoral votes, and their relative percentages of Republican votes versus Democratic votes in 1948, each of the states having voted heavily Democratic, with Republicans receiving 45 percent or less of the popular vote in each. The Democrats would also have the edge in 12 additional states, with a total of 196 electoral votes, a table of which it also supplies. In those latter states, the Republicans received less than half the total vote in 1948, though winning three of those states, New York, Michigan and Maryland, after a split of the vote had occurred from the votes for the Progressive Party.

If the Democrats carried the probable states from 1948, they would need only 47 additional electoral votes from within the second group to achieve election.

It suggests, however, that the Republicans had certain assets in 1952 which they had lacked in 1948, the main one being the popularity of General Eisenhower, cutting across party and regional lines. There was also the perception that the Democrats had been in power too long, leading to graft, corruption and inefficiency. The Democrats, however, also had some positive points, as most of the criticism had centered on the President rather than on the party, itself, and without the President in the race, Governor Stevenson had an opportunity to win. Many of the large blocs, the farmers, labor, small businessmen and minority groups, believed that they had fared better under the Democratic administrations that in previous Republican administrations. The Democrats had superior party organization and had a great deal of political acumen on their side as well.

It finds that while no one could predict the outcome, it was clear by the numbers that General Eisenhower and Senator Nixon had an uphill battle ahead.

"On the Brink of Chaos" indicates that the U.S. had refrained from intervening openly in the dispute over the nationalized oil interests of Great Britain by the Iranian Government, though it was in the interest of the U.S. to have the situation settled amicably.

Premier Mohammed Mossadegh was again in power, more solidly than ever, and there were hints in the nationalist press that the Shah, like King Farouk of Egypt, might be forced to abdicate the throne and sent into exile. The Premier had made gestures toward trying again to settle the oil dispute. Iran was on the verge of bankruptcy because of the British blockade of trade imposed on Iranian oil. Thus, there was pressure on Iran to get the oil flowing again and to reach terms with Britain to do so. If Iran were forced into bankruptcy, it would open the door for a Communist insurgence via the Tudeh Party. A new policy therefore was needed which would allow the Premier and his nationalist followers to save face while providing for recompense to Britain for the confiscated oil properties. It suggests that failure of the U.S. to intervene in the formation of such a policy could mean the loss of Iran to the Communists.

"One Thing at a Time" tells of U.S. News & World Report having already suggested a potential cabinet in a Stevenson administration, including Averell Harriman as Secretary of State, George W. Mitchell as Secretary of Treasury, Jacob Arvey as Postmaster General, Governor Sid McMath of Arkansas as Secretary of Agriculture, Chester Bowles as Secretary of Commerce, Frank Porter Graham as Secretary of Labor, Senator Joseph O'Mahoney of Wyoming as Secretary of Interior, former Senator Scott Lucas as Attorney General, and Robert Lovett, to continue as Secretary of Defense.

The piece suggests that the predictions coincided with what the Republicans would like the public to perceive about Governor Stevenson, that he was the captive of the bosses, liberals and big-spenders.

It suggests that the Democrats would be equally gleeful if the predicted cabinet of General Eisenhower included Governor John Fine of Pennsylvania as Postmaster General, Senator Joseph McCarthy as Attorney General and Senator Bourke Hickenlooper as Secretary of State.

It concludes that it was likely that neither candidate had given much thought to a potential cabinet, but were rather focused on the campaign ahead.

A. M. Secrest of The News tells of the need for a traffic light at Potters Road, at its intersection with the Plaza. There had been four accidents at the location during the year, with four persons injured, one critically.

We agree.

Drew Pearson discusses some of the wounds that had to be healed after the Democratic convention. The Southern wounds were likely to heal more easily than the convention, itself, had indicated. DNC chairman Frank McKinney had called upon the leaders in the three states which had refused to take the loyalty oath, Virginia, South Carolina and Louisiana, a day before the blowup on the convention floor and offered to seat them without argument. Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, however, declined, indicating that 70 million people had seen Virginia humiliated on television and that he would accept no compromise unless the governors of the three states made speeches before the convention that they were remaining in the convention without yielding. Mr. McKinney refused to grant that request. The following day, Mr. McKinney's compromise was accepted, but only after hours of balloting, speeches and flaring of tempers. All of it could have been avoided if Senator Byrd had not objected to the proposal the previous day by Mr. McKinney. Senators Burnet Maybank and Olin Johnston of South Carolina and Russell Long of Louisiana prevented what might have been a bad blowup. The nomination of Senator John Sparkman of Alabama as the vice-presidential candidate also would help to heal the wounds.

He finds that the public's wounds among the television viewers might be a little harder to heal. The rough-and-tumble of the convention, though resembling the House, was not the usual fare to which the audience was accustomed, with no television cameras permitted in the House.

Personal wounds, those of the President toward Senator Kefauver, based primarily on the fact that the latter had beaten the President in the New Hampshire primary, would be the hardest to heal.

Averell Harriman had told the Kefauver supporters that he would not throw his support to the Senator because of his loyalty to the President and the President's negative attitude toward Senator Kefauver. The Harriman and Kefauver forces had been working together during the convention to stop Governor Stevenson, despite Senator Kefauver being aware that he would alienate the South and prevent receiving from Senator Richard Russell his delegates. Those wounds would not be easily healed.

At one point, Senators Hubert Humphrey and Blair Moody and Governor Mennen Williams contacted Governor Stevenson to ask if he would accept Senator Kefauver for the vice-presidential nomination, to which he said that he was not the Governor's personal choice, though he might deserve it given the fight which he had made in the campaign. Eventually, former Senator Scott Lucas of Illinois and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn loudly objected to having Senator Kefauver in the second spot, and, together with the objections by the President, the idea was dropped.

Marquis Childs looks forward to a clean campaign in the fall between General Eisenhower and Governor Adlai Stevenson, both likely to stress American ideals and U.S. responsibility in a world threatened by Communism. Four months earlier, the prospect had been a "savage and divisive" campaign between the President and Senator Taft. A "small and fanatical following" on each side might have looked forward to such a fight, but, he posits, the times were so serious that there was no time for such self-destruction.

He finds Governor Stevenson's acceptance speech at the convention to have had "a kind of nobility" which had attracted an instant positive response. The Democrats, as had the Republicans, suffered self-inflicted wounds at their convention. The liberals in the "stop Stevenson" movement had given the opposition ammunition by alleging that Governor Stevenson was the candidate of "the bosses" and "the Dixiecrats". Only a few weeks earlier, the same individuals had embraced Governor Stevenson as their own. The Governor could now honestly say, however, that he belonged to no one.

Many of those who had worked hard at the convention to nominate Senator Kefauver, including union leaders, had left Chicago disgruntled, comparable in their feeling to those who had supported Senator Taft for the Republican nomination. So it was yet to be shown whether those people would work for the Democratic ticket. The gulf between the Northern labor-liberal wing of the party and the Southern wing was widened, but the Southerners came away with a sense of victory and a Southern split was likely averted. The Governor's greatest handicap in the campaign ahead was the record of failures and mistakes of a party which had been in power for 20 years.

A letter writer objects to the Health Department spraying the DDT fog at 3:00 a.m., causing a great deal of noise while people were trying to sleep and filling up the air with noxious fumes.

If you do it later in the day, however, the children will go out and play in it, it being an attractive nuisance, making a mundane landscape suddenly resemble 19th Century London.

A letter writer believes that the "Trumanites" were bound and determined to shove their civil rights program down the throats of the country. He suggests that the Constitution gave each state the right to govern itself and that any interference in that right by the Federal Government was unconstitutional and a step toward dictatorship. He indicates that 23 years earlier he had worked for $3.50 per week and lived on that wage, that eight years later he had joined the Army because he could not find a job even for $3.50 per week. And after being discharged from the Army in 1940, he returned to civilian life to find the same conditions extant, and those conditions persisted until U.S. involvement in World War II in 1941. He concludes that it was the war which provided prosperity to the country. He suggests that the Democrats were trying to suggest that General Eisenhower did not know what was going on, and he reminds that Hitler and Mussolini had the same idea. He was determined to vote for General Eisenhower, "not Truman's Shadow".

Someday, you actually ought to sit down and read that Constitution and realize that it has a supremacy clause, an equal protection clause and a commerce clause. It does not say that the states can govern themselves apart from oversight to enforce the Federal laws made within the ambit of the powers of Congress and insure equal protection of state laws and due process in their application under the Constitution. The view you adopt seems to render the Federal Government little more than a figurehead, emasculated of any real power—the very kind of state Germany had, which enabled Hitler and his minions to seize power in 1933.

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