The Charlotte News
Saturday, August 2, 1952
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Robert B. Tuckman, that U.N. infantrymen atop Old Baldy hill the previous night had withstood tremendous enemy shelling, comprised of more than 3,000 rounds of artillery and mortar shells, and repulsed two 50-man Chinese counterattacks, west of Chorwon on the western front. The U.S. Eighth Army said that subsequently a searchlight picked up about 35 Chinese troops trying to sneak through U.N. lines and U.N. artillery had killed 20 of them while machine gunners killed seven more. Old Baldy, scene of bloody, see-saw fighting for a month, had been recaptured by the allies in a 12-hour battle on Friday morning after the Communists had held its crest for ten days. All of the heavy-duty bridges on the Yokkok River on the Chinese side of Old Baldy had been washed away by floods or knocked down by allied shelling.
Otherwise, ground action the previous day had been relatively light. The enemy had, however, stepped up artillery and mortar shelling of allied positions along the entire 155-mile front, the largest shelling since July 18, firing 8,761 rounds, an increase of more than 5,000 rounds over the previous day.
Rain and heavy clouds again moved in over much of North Korea, bringing the air war to a halt. Only one allied plane had been lost during the week, an F-80 Shooting Star to Communist ground fire. U.N. jets shot down three MIG-15s and damaged two others the previous day in the only jet battle of the week.
The U.S. Army split its Korean command this date, with the creation of a new rear area headquarters paralleling General James Van Fleet's U.S. Eighth Army, the new outfit bearing the title "Korean Communications Zone", to handle all back area support for the Army, prisoners of war and civil assistance. Its commander would be Maj. General Thomas Herren. The importance of the new command was underscored by the fact that it would be parallel to the Eighth Army and not subordinate to it. Both generals would report equally to Far East commander, General Mark Clark. The combination of the enormous port facilities built up in Pusan and elsewhere, the rebuilding of South Korea, and the growing number of Communist prisoners, had raised the supply, housekeeping and civilian functions to a level equal to the fighting war, necessitating the additional command.
In Kansas City, the President this date ratified the agreement setting up a free West German Republic, as the U.S. became the first nation to ratify the documents which abolished the existing three high commissioners of the U.S. and its Allies, Britain and France. The British Parliament had approved the agreement, but Queen Elizabeth had not yet ratified it.
Governor Stevenson and General
Eisenhower had both indicated their plans to maintain a strong grip
on the direction of their respective campaigns for the presidency.
Governor Stevenson announced the previous day that his campaign
headquarters would be moved from Washington to Springfield, Illinois,
and he named Wilson Wyatt of Louisville as his personal campaign
manager. Mr. Wyatt said that all elements of the campaign would be
coordinated with the Governor. Mr. Wyatt had been the former Mayor of
Louisville, former Federal Housing Expediter in 1946-47, and prior
national chairman of the Americans for Democratic Action. The
President stated that he was willing to stump the country for the
Governor, but would await word from the campaign before doing so,
saying that he regarded himself as "just a buck private in the
rear ranks
General Eisenhower told reporters in Denver that only he could be the boss of his presidential campaign, though he would provide top consideration for the advice of his political advisers. He said that he would begin campaigning around September 1 and that he and Senator Nixon would go into "all the nooks and crannies in the United States."
No, Senator Nixon is not coming into our nook or cranny. You just keep him on a tight leash.
Agriculture Department officials this date called the drought in the South and New England one of the most serious economic disasters in the nation's history, as they explored new steps to alleviate the plight of farmers and save livestock. The areas had already been designated drought disaster areas, entitling farmers to easy credit terms from the FHA so that they could continue production. The railroads were expected to announce the following week an emergency reduction in rates for hauling hay into the South, where pastures had been burned up by the sun, causing major problems in livestock feeding. Tobacco production was estimated to be off by as much as 30 percent in some localities and cotton was also suffering.
Much of the South was beginning to get some rain, but it was too little, too late to save the crops. No heavy general rains were in sight.
Government stabilization heads looked for the overall cost of living to reach another new high later in the month, according to Price Stabilizer Ellis Arnall. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that food prices had risen to a new record, up 1.2 percent for the two-week period ending July 15, and almost 16 percent above June, 1950, when the Korean War had begun. Food comprised about a third of the average urban family's budget. Economic Stabilizer Roger Putnam blamed the increase on Republicans in Congress for curbing the controls program. The Government's increase in ceiling prices on aluminum, scheduled to be ordered the following Monday, would boost national defense costs from 15 to 20 million dollars. Mr. Arnold's previous estimate that the recent increase in steel prices to settle the steel strike would add $100 per year to the average cost of living for an American family had been challenged by Ernest Weir, chairman of the National Steel Corp., the country's fifth largest steel producer, who said that the price increase would amount to about $10 per family per year, provided the industry operated at full capacity during the ensuing year.
The Netherlands Government announced this date that a polio epidemic was occurring, as during the period July 20-26, 107 cases had been reported.
Former Congressman Martin Dies, who had been the original chairman of HUAC, had been elected as the Texas Congressman-at-large by virtue of winning the Democratic nomination for the seat in the one-party state, as declared the previous day by the state Democratic executive committee chairman.
In Springfield, Vt., two convicts who escaped state prison the prior Wednesday and, according to police, had fatally bludgeoned a housewife after midnight, were recaptured this date in woods near the house where the fatal attack had occurred, after a brief manhunt. One of the prisoners was serving a life sentence after conviction for murder. Both had escaped by ramming a ten-ton truck through the prison gates.
In Montréal, police used tear gas and gunfire early this date to quell a riot of hundreds of prisoners at the Bordeaux Jail. It was the third disorder at the prison in the previous three months, all protesting the quality of the food. One prisoner was heard to shout that they could pick the steel wool out of the corn they had for supper. At least 12 prisoners were injured, two of them by gunfire, and the fire chief was also treated at a hospital for injuries he reportedly suffered when a prisoner struck him with an iron bar. The fire department had been called in to assist in quelling the riot. Police officials said that the police had fired over the heads of the rioters and it was not yet clear whether the two victims of gunfire had been accidentally hit or were hurt by ricocheting bullets. An estimated 700 convicts had broken from their cell blocks the previous night and set 17 fires, looted the prison canteen, broke plumbing to flood the floors and then clashed with 200 police in the main prison courtyard.
In Colorado Springs, the nerve
center of the nation's air defense, the Air Force admitted this date
to involvement in the flying saucer
In San Francisco, Police Chief Michael Gaffey, angry at reports of lewdness in some of the city's burlesque houses, issued a directive following two raids on two theaters the prior Thursday, that strippers could strip but could not "bump or grind", that they would face arrest should they do so. Fourteen strippers had been arrested in the raids and pleaded not guilty in Municipal Court to giving lewd performances. The case would come up for trial the following week, and, according to the story, a full house was expected.
On the editorial page, "Storm Signals South of the Border" finds that amid the flurry of speculation about the South Carolina Democratic Party possibly reconvening its state convention during the week, a calm refrain had been heard repeatedly, as stated in most South Carolina newspapers, that both national tickets should appear on the state ballot. It quotes from the Columbia State, the Spartanburg Herald, and the Greenville News to that effect.
There was a dispute between two Republican factions, which, unless resolved in time, might cause the Republican ticket not to appear on the ballot in South Carolina. There was also a possibility that the Democratic ticket might not appear on the ballot, should the Democratic convention the following week provide support to the Republican ticket, causing pro-Stevenson Democrats to have to collect 10,000 signatures on a petition by September 4. Governor James Byrnes might also direct the convention to name unpledged Democratic electors, who would be free to vote as they pleased following the November election, regardless of its outcome.
The piece asserts that the strength of the American political system lay in the competition between the two parties and that the people from every state should have the opportunity to choose between them. It suggests that Governor Byrnes should be called to task were he to frustrate that system.
"Change in Beer Law Needed" supports the effort of ABC chairman Robert Winston to amend the beer law by giving cities and counties the right to refuse a dealer a beer license even though the State might have granted the dealer a sales permit.
Easy on the beer and other
substances, lest more flying saucer reports result, including the
emission of yard-high spacemen
"No 'Loyalty Oath' Was Involved" quotes from Humpty Dumpty that when he used the word, it meant just what he chose it to mean—"neither more nor less". When politicians now spoke of the "loyalty oath" at the Democratic convention, they took the same approach, treating it as they wanted to interpret it. One Virginia Democratic leader had claimed that the oath required all Virginia Democrats to support both the nominees and the platform of the party.
It quotes the resolution which formed the pledge, the first part of it indicating that the convention supported the concept of majority rule, and the second part indicating that "no delegate shall be seated unless he shall give assurance to the Credentials Committee that he will exert every honorable means available to him, in any official capacity he may have, to provide that the nominees of the convention for President and Vice-President, through their names of those electors pledged to them, appear on the election ballot under the heading, name or designation of the Democratic Party."
In 1948, it points out, the Democratic ticket had been kept off the ballot in Alabama, and prior to the convention in 1952, five Southern state conventions had been recessed in order that they might be reconvened after the Chicago convention, with the threat hanging of a potential revolt if the party leaders in those states did not support the nominee or the platform.
The loyalty pledge had sought to forestall a repetition of the 1948 Alabama "fraud" and did not seek to have the delegates vote for the nominees or ask them to subscribe to the platform, and was in no sense therefore, a "loyalty oath". Its sole purpose was to permit every citizen to vote for the party nominees and have them placed on the ballot.
A piece from the Tallahassee Democrat, titled "Baby Sitters' Pledge", tells of babysitters having stolen money and jewels for a fling in the big city, abandoned their charges and even committed murder, and suggests therefore that it was high time something was done about the problem. The Sisters of Charity in South Boston had created a ten-week training course open to girls between the ages of 13 and 18 from parochial and public high schools to teach them their babysitting duties and the care of young children. It recites a pledge which they were required to take at graduation from the course, concluding with the statement, "I will do all in my power to protect that [child's] life."
Drew Pearson tells of Price Stabilizer Ellis Arnall getting ready to quit because of the grant of a price increase to the steel industry in an effort to settle the steel strike. Mr. Arnall had threatened to quit earlier in the crisis if steel prices were substantially raised. He believed that the increase would wreck the economy. He did not blame the President for caving in to the steel companies, given the desperate situation, and he did not want to embarrass anyone, and so would step aside quietly. He was tired of caving in as a result of pressure from above to relax or remove price controls. His resignation would come toward the end of the summer.
It appeared that the President might repeat his propensity for picking the wrong candidate in Missouri, where, so far, he had not picked a winner. He had backed Congressman Roger Slaughter of Kansas City in 1946 and lost, and later had backed former Congressman Tom Hennings for the Senate and also lost. Now, he was betting against his old assistant, Stuart Symington, who was running in the Missouri primary against the President's choice, State Attorney General J. E. Taylor. The President's failure to back Mr. Symington had a lot of people puzzled, as Mr. Symington had served the Administration well, first as Secretary of the Air Force, later as chairman of the National Security Resources Board, and finally as head of the RFC. Mr. Symington's difficulties with the White House dated back to the days when he brought Charles E. Wilson into the Administration as Defense Mobilizer. Mr. Symington then found himself working under Mr. Wilson, the man he had appointed, and Mr. Wilson had gotten the White House to issue an executive order making Mr. Symington his subordinate. The President probably had not realized that he had undercut his own man, as the deal was put across by subordinates. The President then later shifted Mr. Symington to the RFC for the purpose of cleaning up the agency in the wake of the scandals, where he then had made his political career.
But when the investigation turned toward former RFC official Donald Dawson, who was by then working at the White House, and on the President's private stenographer, Mrs. Merl Young, for her receipt of mink coats in alleged influence peddling, Mr. Symington earned the ire of those at the White House. Mr. Pearson ventures that it would be interesting if Mr. Symington returned to Washington after the fall election as a Senator from Missouri.
The President would support
Senator Estes Kefauver had returned home to his Tennessee farm to swim, relax and try to read books. He had not been able to sleep for thinking of how he might have handled his campaign differently and won the nomination.
Marquis Childs tells of the President having said that he would make a cross-country tour and it had been assumed that it would be in the form of a whistle-stop tour reminiscent of 1948. The President, however, intended to follow a different form during the fall, establishing his record, as he saw it, on foreign and military policy during his time in office. He would be looking toward his place in history as much as toward the victory of the Democratic ticket in the fall. The record would begin with the Potsdam Conference of July, 1945, and extend through the Truman Doctrine, developed in early 1947, comprising military aid for Greece and Turkey, the Marshall Plan, conceived in spring, 1947 and implemented in 1948, and the Korean War. The President was confident that the record would overcome doubts cast by partisan attacks. He would also be stressing peaceful uses of atomic energy and the Point Four program for technical assistance to underdeveloped nations.
His intention to refute attacks on the Administration's foreign policy would risk bringing that policy into the campaign as an issue.
The Republican platform had been tailored more nearly to the Taft-MacArthur viewpoint than the Eisenhower view, indicating that the Administration had "traded our overwhelming victory for a new enemy and for new oppressions and new wars which were quick to come." The critics of the Administration's foreign policy had said, in effect, that if the right agreements had been made at Yalta in early 1945, then everything would be all right presently.
But as objective observers had pointed out, that viewpoint ignored the fundamental nature of Communist imperialism, which was to treat all agreements as scraps of paper to be broken or not as convenience suited.
The critics also talked of China having been lost or deliberately thrown away by a group of experts, ignoring the forces at work in Asia as their masses had moved out of feudalism, only to be lured by the promises of Communism. That kind of oversimplification, however, was "close to the level of primitive people who explain everything by charms or the evil eye." Mr. Childs regards it as the "devil theory of history" for which a corrective was needed, but whether it could be provided in the midst of a passionate partisan political campaign was open to doubt.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop indicate that the existence of a Soviet stockpile of atomic bombs had become almost an unmentionable subject, that there been no serious discussion of it at the two political conventions. Yet, Soviet atomic production might overshadow every other problem which the next President would have to face.
Previous estimates of Soviet atomic stockpiling had been increased by 20 percent, meaning that the Soviet stockpile would begin to approach the number of bombs required for an attempted knockout blow of the U.S. before the end of the next President's term. Previous estimates had assumed that Soviet production was about 50 bombs up to the beginning of 1952, and thereafter, resulting from the completion of a new atomic plant in central Russia, would continue with monthly production at the rate of five to seven bombs. But with the increase, it was now to be estimated that there would be 130 to 150 bombs by the end of 1952, 200 to 250 by the end of 1953, 275 to 370 by the end of 1954, 350 to 450 by the end of 1955, and 420 to 550 bombs by the end of 1956.
The experts had calculated that it would take between 450 and 660 medium atomic bombs delivered on target to destroy the country's military potential. The Alsops quickly point out that there was a difference between stockpiled bombs and bombs delivered on target. No country could afford to expend its whole stockpile on a single attack and some targets were sure to be missed. The defenses of the country attacked would also affect the success or failure of such an attack. The U.S. air defense specialists were beginning to believe that the effectiveness of the country's defense against air-delivered attack could be increased sharply, given an all-out national effort. So, they conclude, that it would be wrong simply to equate the estimated stockpile of the Soviets with the number of bombs required for a knockout blow.
They conclude, however, that with all of that said, the harsh facts remained that the Soviet stockpile was formidable enough even at the present, and that by the end of the ensuing four-year period, a "very bad time" might be near, in which the Soviets could launch a surprise saturation attack against the U.S., in the rational hope of destroying American military power.
A letter writer from Rockingham indicates that he had heard a lot of controversy about the 1947 Taft-Hartley law and wishes enlightenment as to its contents.
The editors suggest that he write the clerk of the Senate Committee on Labor & Public Welfare, providing the address.
A letter writer from Pinehurst provides the lineage of several distant North Carolina relatives of Governor Adlai Stevenson. Recently, it had been indicated that the Governor's sister lived in North Carolina.
A letter writer from Atlanta, J. E. Ivey, Jr., head of the Southern Regional Education Board, laments the death of Dr. Clyde Erwin, State Superintendent of Education, listing his many achievements.
Framed Edition
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