The Charlotte News
Thursday, July 31, 1952
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. The front page reports, via Robert B. Tuckman, that 63 American B-29's had returned safely to base in Japan and Okinawa early this date after leveling a huge Communist aluminum plant near the Manchurian border in North Korea, in the largest overnight raid of the war and the largest B-29 raid of the war. The unescorted bombers encountered the heaviest enemy anti-aircraft fire and fighter opposition in months. An Air Force briefing officer said it was part of the continued effort by the allies to force the hand of the Communists at the truce negotiations table. One bombardier reported that eight searchlights had locked on his plane at the start of the bombing raid and continued to follow it for the longest five minutes he had ever spent. The plant had been showered with leaflets for almost two months, warning non-combatants to stay away as it would be bombed.
In ground fighting, allied infantrymen took an outpost from Chinese troops in a two-hour fight during a driving rainstorm northwest of Yonchon on the western front. On the eastern front, U.N. troops twice repulsed 50 enemy troops who had attacked an outpost east of the Nam River.
Donald MacDonald of The News tells of a four-year old Korean girl, whose admission to the United States was being sought, being the chief concern of young bachelor Army 1st Sgt. Paul Snyder, Jr., on home leave in Charlotte for 30 days. Sgt. Snyder had medals and citations from his Korean War experience but did not care to talk about them, or the Koje Island prison riots the previous spring which he had helped to quell. He only wanted to discuss his adopted daughter from Korea. He had adopted a 17-month old German girl two years earlier, from his tour of duty with occupation forces. She was now living with his parents. He had obtained admission to the U.S. for the German infant as a displaced person, but getting the Korean child admitted would be harder. She had been found at Kumhwa in North Korea, and her mother had been located but did not want the child, agreeing to her adoption. Her father had never been found, but was assumed to be Caucasian. The Sergeant hoped to be released from the Army by November. He had been in Korea since January and had received a Purple Heart, a Silver Star, and a Bronze Star with "V" for valor, plus unit citations. He did not yet know what his next assignment would be.
Frank Carey, Associated Press science reporter, indicates that uranium ore for the country's ever-expanding atomic program would soon be coming from two new foreign sources, South Africa and Australia, as revealed in an Atomic Energy Commission semi-annual report to Congress, which had also disclosed substantial progress in developing improved atomic weapons during the previous six months. The report further said that additional sources for uranium might be located Canada. The South African uranium would be recovered from the gold ores of the old "Rand" gold field, and the plants there were nearly ready to start production. The report said that progress was being made in the development of atomic propulsion for aircraft, as well as in the development of an atomic engine for possible use in a submarine. The Nautilus was now under construction as the first atomic submarine. Research had developed powerful new medicine for treatment of persons severely exposed to atomic radiation. Significant advances had also taken place in the improvement of atomic reactors, and there had been increased production of raw uranium ore from existing domestic sources.
According to the report, as part of a nationwide monitoring system designed to protect the public during the Nevada atomic tests, airplanes followed radioactive dust after each explosion. The dust had been carried to all parts of the country, but was not sufficient to harm humans, animals or crops. Some of the airplanes had tracked the dust for as far as 600 miles from the test area and had circled through it to ensure that commercial airplanes could cross through the cloud safely. Other planes flew about 50 feet above the test ground to determine radioactivity in the air and on the ground. C-47's took off several hours after each explosion to collect samples of air in locations between 200 and 500 miles from the test site, taking the samples periodically for 48 hours following the explosion. Jeeps entered the test area within an hour after each explosion to make surveys. Throughout the nation, a network of 121 fixed sample-collecting stations maintained lookouts for dust falling in those areas.
Two U.S. Army Sikorsky helicopters had been the first to fly the Atlantic, arriving in Prestwick, Scotland, this date after a 3,300-mile flight from Westover, Massachusetts. The last leg of the journey had been from Iceland. The experimental flight was launched by the Military Transport Service to test the feasibility of delivering helicopters to Europe by air. Their ultimate destination was Wiesbaden, Germany, another 1,100 miles. The helicopters had a cruising speed of 85 mph and a top speed of more than 100 mph. They had a cruising range of 1,000 miles and the last leg of the journey had been 817 miles, lasting about 40 hours.
General MacArthur said this date that he would take no part in the campaign of General Eisenhower. He had backed Senator Taft for the Republican nomination, and had been the keynote speaker at the Republican convention. The General had accepted the chairmanship of Remington Rand, Inc., manufacturer of business machines and electronic equipment. There was no indication of his salary, but it had been previously reported unofficially that he had been offered $100,000 per year. He would continue as a general of the Army without assignment, drawing his annual $19,548. The company employed 36,000 people and operated 22 plants in the United States, and maintained 23 additional factories in 15 foreign countries. The position for General MacArthur had first been discussed in October, 1949, but the General at that time felt that his duties in the Far East were of such importance to the nation that he could not accept the offer, despite his personal desire to do so. The offer had been repeated after he had been relieved by the President of his Far East command 15 months earlier, but at that time, the General had said that he was concerned over the dangerously chaotic conditions the country faced nationally and internationally and that he felt it his responsibility to arouse the people to the peril. Lt. General Leslie Groves, the wartime head of the Manhattan Project, had, in 1948, been named vice-president in charge of research and a director of Remington Rand.
In Columbus, O., Ohio Republicans opened their state convention this date with Senator Taft absent, still on a fishing trip in Canada, while his brother, Charles, continued to run for governor as the Republican nominee. Senator Richard Nixon would provide the convention's principal speech this night. Also present was new RNC chairman, Arthur Summerfield, who predicted that the Republicans would "crack the solid South" in November. Mr. Summerfield was headed to Denver the next day to meet with the General, Senator Nixon and a board of newly named campaign planners.
The Agriculture Department designated the entire states of Georgia, Kentucky and Mississippi as "disaster loan areas", resulting from the severe drought conditions there, making it easier for farmers who had suffered losses to obtain Federal loans. The same designation had previously been applied to Tennessee and parts of Missouri and Arkansas.
In Chattanooga, Tenn., a walkout because of hot weather conditions became a full-scale strike this date at the Southern Bell Telephone offices, hampering service in four cities and idling an estimated 750 workers. Tubs of ice with fans blowing over them had been used to cool workers in one exchange in Chattanooga and in others in Nashville, Memphis and Jackson. Ice had been placed in the St. Elmo exchange on Monday when the inside temperature had reached 102. It had been agreed that ice would be placed in the main exchange if there were more such hot weather, but the office thermometer had not gone above 96 on the day of the walkout. Pickets stood outside the Chattanooga office in relative comfort this date as thundershowers late the previous day and early in the morning had left the atmosphere cool.
But were the lines burning up with heated calls about why service was so lousy?
In Austin, Tex., seven persons, including six children, had been injured this date when part of the ceiling of a downtown theater collapsed. It was not immediately known how seriously the injuries were. A hundred customers had been inside attending a "thriller movie", "Tarzan's Savage Fury", at the time of the collapse.
Oh, those Tarzan movies will bring
down the house
In Linville, N.C., the Country Club had been destroyed by fire early during the morning. The cause of the fire had not been determined. None of the nearby cottages, or the hotel, had been damaged by the flames.
It's them little green men who don't like the golf.
On the editorial page, "Council Meddling Threatens Park Plan" tells of the City Council having meddled so in the Park and Recreation Commission's affairs that some of the members of the Commission were threatening to resign. The current problem had to do with the adoption of a new budget.
It finds that it was a relatively minor issue, not important enough for a showdown, one which could have been avoided had the members of the Council listened to advice given to them during the budget hearings or had they called in representatives of the Commission for informal discussions about proposals. It finds that if it were to become a major issue, it would side with the autonomy of the Commission, and is confident that the people of Charlotte would not allow petty politics to subvert sensible planning and wise execution of its public recreation program.
You may read of the details, should you have a strange and abiding interest in the topic.
"Byrnes and the Klan" comments on the four-year sentence to jail in Whiteville, N.C., given to the Imperial Wizard of the Carolinas Klan, Thomas L. Hamilton, for conspiring with other Klansmen to flog a black woman in Columbus County in January, 1951. Scores of other Klansmen had been convicted for a series of floggings the previous fall and winter, and all of the arrests which had been made, except for the first raid by the FBI the prior February, had been effected by state and local law enforcement agencies.
Mr. Hamilton was a resident of Leesville, South Carolina, from which he had directed the Klansmen in the two states. He had led a parade in Myrtle Beach which wound up in a raid of a black nightclub, in which a Klansman-police officer had been killed. There had also been other acts of violence in South Carolina.
It asks rhetorically whether it was being unkind to ask why North Carolina authorities had to do the job that should have been done in South Carolina, the state whose Governor, James Byrnes, was a militant spokesman for states' rights.
"It's the Saucer Season" tells of it being the season when the Loch Ness monster usually reappeared and strange and awesome sightings were reported by the citizenry. Thus had come the reports of flying saucers, in varying sizes, from about three feet in diameter to the size of an airliner. In Mexico, one had supposedly discharged a spaceman about a yard high, while an earthling had been observed to enter a larger cylindrical saucer which had descended in a German forest. The flight characteristics of the saucers had also been varied, with one report of a heli-saucer in a Western desert, while in the East, there had been a jet saucer. About two weeks earlier, a sighting had been made of saucers near Washington.
The piece propounds its theory that they were men from outer space who had come to observe the political conventions, preparatory to an invasion. When they did not reappear, the piece assumed that it was because they were so confused by the two conventions that they decided to invade a less complicated planet, such as Jupiter.
But, they had returned and had been spotted on radar and sighted by another pilot near Washington. On the prior Tuesday, a saucer had reconnoitered the Piedmont, hovering over Lilesville for 35 minutes while emitting a bluish light.
The Air Force had disavowed any knowledge of the craft, saying that they were not experimental vehicles of the Government, and, it assumes, with military unification, the Air Force would be aware of any Navy aeronautical creations from the Muroc Dry Lake in California. Thus were left three possibilities, the Russians, interplanetary visitors, or the product of a psychological phenomenon.
It concludes that though a lot of responsible persons had seen the objects, until one flew over Charlotte, the editors would take the position of those from Missouri.
A piece from the Twin City Sentinel in Winston-Salem, titled "What's in a Name?" tells of after reading in the Greensboro Daily News its reference to citizens of its community as Greensburghers, finding the concept of a fried citizen of Greensboro not appetizing. The same, it notes, also might be said of any borough or burg, including Hamburg, Germany, responsible for the popular hamburger sandwich.
It observes that it was difficult to find the right kind of name for a resident of a city, with Winstonians often called Winston-Salemites or Twin Citians. "Charlottan" sounded too much like charlatan and "Charlottite", it ventures, might give aid and comfort to prohibitionists. Thus, they had compromised in the Queen City with Charlottean. Ashevillian was all right for Asheville. Raleighite was about the best which could be achieved for the state capital. Wilmingtonian was natural, as was Gastonian. High Pointer was acceptable, but Durhamer was awkward.
It finds that calling a person a Hiller or Hillite, should they be a resident of Chapel Hill, did not sound good. It settles on Chapel Hill-Billy.
The author of this piece was probably a graduate of Wake Forest, a resident of which should properly be called, not a Wake Forester or Wake Forestite, but rather a Forager.
Drew Pearson tells of U.S. relations with Argentina having reached an all-time low just before the death during the week of Eva Peron, so low that there was consideration of withdrawal of the American Ambassador. The low point had occurred on July 10 at the bombing of the Abraham Lincoln Library in Buenos Aires, an official U.S. library operated by the State Department's cultural division. The American public, with the political conventions ongoing, had heard little about the incident, and the Argentine police appeared to know even less. The explosion had injured two U.S. employees and caused $15,000 in damage, but the Argentine Government simply shrugged its shoulders following the official protest of the American Charge d'Affaires, Lester Mallory, the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs having not even answered his protest for three days.
The State Department was maintaining that the Peron regime had tried to divert domestic attention away from the bad Argentine economy by taking it out on the U.S. And after the bombing, and the arrival of a new U.S. Ambassador, a stiffer policy was being adopted. The new Ambassador would be provided three months to work out a more reasonable attitude toward the U.S. by Argentina, and if he did not succeed, it was more than likely that he would be recalled.
Mr. Pearson notes that the death of Eva Peron might change the Argentine situation radically, as there was likely to be a clash between labor and the military, as Sra. Peron was no longer on the scene to exert power over labor.
Senator John Williams of Delaware, who had been responsible for the investigation of the IRB tax collectors, was preparing to probe further into the fact that an IRB collector in the President's hometown, Harold Lockhart, who was also a former attorney for the President, had, the prior November, suddenly turned up with $39,400 in small bills, just before he was going to fill out a Treasury questionnaire regarding his assets and income. He explained to the vice-president of the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City that he had been keeping the money in a safe deposit box for several years, and explained to Senator Williams in early January that he had accumulated the money over a period of 35 years because he had suffered a loss in a bank failure and did not trust banks. Some of the banknotes had been out of circulation since 1935 and the money appeared to have been bundled for quite some time. Mr. Pearson explores further detail of the matter, including several inconsistencies which had arisen in Mr. Lockhart's story. The IRB had been asked for an explanation but had made no reply.
Marquis Childs tells of the medium of television revolutionizing politics, as the public had seen for the first time in the recently televised national political conventions the circus and drama surrounding such conventions, which pretty much had followed the pattern of the past and not been tailored for television. Television was also reshaping the cost of politics, the televised speech of General Eisenhower in Detroit shortly after his return from Europe in early June having cost $130,000 to produce and broadcast. DNC chairman Frank McKinney indicated that the Democrats would spend up to two million dollars for radio and television, and it was likely that the Republicans would spend at least that much as well. That cost would be in addition to the whistle-stop campaign of both parties, which President Truman had made so effective in 1948.
Sometimes, he remarks, the drama of politics was not captured by the television camera. One of the most moving episodes of the Democratic convention had been the speech by Senator William Benton of Connecticut lionizing his colleague, Senator Brien McMahon, who was dying of cancer, and then finally passed away the Monday after the convention at age 48. Senator Benton had said that the Connecticut state delegation had planned to place Senator McMahon's name in nomination for the presidency, but the Senator had sent instructions not to do so. After the speech, Senator Benton called the hospital and spoke with Senator McMahon, who expressed his gratification for the speech, with his family already knowing that he only had a few days to live.
Senator Benton had stressed the tremendous contribution that Senator McMahon had made to place control of atomic energy under a civil commission, with the Atomic Energy Commission being a monument to the Senator. The Senator had made good use of television, late the preceding year having done a "devastating job" on Senator Taft in the course of a foreign policy discussion. The last television program on which he had appeared was Mr. Childs's "Washington Spotlight", in which, during a discussion with Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan, he had shown the "forcefulness and the incisiveness" which had made him so effective.
"As the convention demonstrated once again, television is a cruel medium. It is cruel, above all, because it reveals so completely and often so devastatingly what is behind the oratory and the orator."
Joseph & Stewart Alsop tell of the political trouble brewing in Iran, where the Shah had lost his power to Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and his extreme nationalist followers. The Prime Minister was also in grave danger of losing his power to the religious fanatic and violent nationalist, the Ayatollah Kashani, who had made an open alliance with the Communist underground.
The process had occurred in two stages, first with the arrest the prior week of Ahmed Qavam, who, in his brief four days as Prime Minister, had promised to reach an oil settlement with the British, destroying the power of the Shah in the process. The second stage occurred the previous week when Prime Minister Mossadegh again took power and called in the British and American ambassadors to talk more sense than he had previously demonstrated, proposing reasonable compensation for the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in an effort to break the British blockade of Iranian oil exports, strangling the country's economy. The offer prompted discussions in Washington and London, with the British initially resisting resumption of negotiations. But just as the British were about to agree with the Americans to accept the offer of the Prime Minister rather than risk losing Iran to the Communists, the Prime Minister suddenly did an about-face and reverted to his familiar lack of reason, refusing to discuss a settlement.
With the reduction of the Shah's power, the power of the Ayatollah Kashani had risen higher than ever, as he and his "murderous band of Moslem fanatics, in open alliance for the first time with the Communists", had been chiefly responsible for the fall of Ahmed Qavam. If there were no settlement, Iran would soon be engulfed in total chaos, in which case, with the help of the Communists, Kashani could take power, either personally or through a stooge. He thus had everything to lose and nothing to gain from a settlement with the British. The Prime Minister's sudden reversal was interpreted, therefore, as having been a response to violent pressure from Kashani and his allies in the National Front.
Iran was key to the Middle East and if a reasonable settlement could be negotiated with the Prime Minister, the situation in the country and throughout the region could be maintained. Otherwise, it might go the way of China, at least without Western intervention supporting any anti-Communist forces, however reactionary and blindly nationalist they might be. Washington was of the belief that a Communist takeover in Iran had to be averted at any cost, including breaking with Britain on Middle Eastern policies.
The Alsops suggest the crisis in Iran as the measure of the danger to the Western alliance.
A letter writer finds that both parties, having met in their conventions in Chicago, had come away making the "same old promises". "The Republicans gave a mortgage on the earth, the moon and stars, with a hunk of the planet Venus and all of the planet Mars." He finds that the Democrats did somewhat better, firing their "biggest guns", promising "the universe, and that includes the sun." He thinks that after the election ended and one party had won, it would be the taxpayer who had lost his shirt. In any event, he finds in it all rhyme, if not reason.
A letter writer from Rock Hill, S.C., comments on the July 26 editorial, "A Worthy Opponent for Eisenhower", disagreeing with the notion that the campaign would be fought vigorously but cleanly over basic issues rather than personalities. The writer finds that Governor Dewey's 1948 campaign had been conducted on the "lowest level in recent history", and with him conducting General Eisenhower's campaign, it could be expected that there would be "deep, unreasoning hatred with racial, religious and unrelenting political maneuvering to gain advantage at any cost". The person believes that the General would not take part in any activity which resorted to bigotry, but the same could not be expected of Republicans generally.
The writer was greatly disturbed to hear on the radio in Charlotte local broadcaster Grady Cole refer to Governor Stevenson as being a member of a church which had a "peculiar" religion.
The writer does not want the country to go through the kind of tactics which had pervaded the Cleveland-Blaine election of 1884, wherein the slogan had been "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion". The person recalls the 1928 campaign between Herbert Hoover and Governor Al Smith, in which the Catholicism of the latter had been raised as an issue, especially in the South. The writer had heard a delegate from Boston at the Democratic convention cast a vote for Senator Richard Russell, with the remark that he had carried the State of Georgia for Al Smith. The 1940 and 1944 campaigns had seen charges of sinister influence over FDR by powerful minority groups, and hatemongers had damned the New Deal as Communist-inspired. The person hopes that the coming campaign would resolve itself on fair play instead of hate.
It is signed, "Democrat".
A letter writer from Pinehurst thanks the newspaper for having printed the acceptance speech of Governor Stevenson from the convention, given after 2:00 a.m. the prior Saturday morning. He says that he was approaching age 70 and had been listening to or reading similar speeches since he had been very young, but that this one contained no meaningless platitudes and had been "the finest, most refined and most honest speech of its kind" that he had ever heard or read. A large number of radio commentators and newspaper columnists had expressed the same belief, and even H. V. Kaltenborn, who had never admired either the New or Fair Deals, had stated that it had been the greatest acceptance speech he had ever heard. The writer had stayed awake to hear the speech, in fairness to the Governor, having heard General Eisenhower's acceptance speech, and found the Governor's speech to be "like a draught of cool water to a parched throat" after listening to the "typical mumbo-jumbo political speech" given by the President, preceding the Governor's speech. He was convinced by Governor Stevenson that he would in fact try "to do justly and to love mercy and walk humbly with my God", and believes that he was truly an humble man. The writer believes that every paragraph of the speech contained something which would cause a sincere person to think, whether or not they intended to vote for the Governor.
Framed Edition
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