The Charlotte News
Tuesday, September 30, 1952
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Robert B. Tuckman, that a highly placed U.S. Eighth Army officer, not subject to identification, had stated this date that there were several thousand Russian troops or troops of Eastern satellite countries in rear areas of North Korea serving in a support capacity as technicians and advisers, and probably manning modern radar-controlled anti-aircraft guns manufactured by the Russians. The officer had declined to say precisely how many such troops were being used.
The Army unveiled a new 85-ton atomic gun, the world's first atomic artillery weapon, showing that it was mobile across fields and capable of firing barrages within 20 minutes. It had been recently previewed to press photographers at the Aberdeen, Md., Proving Grounds. The 280-mm caliber weapon could use standard ammunition or atomic shells. It was reputed to have about a 20-mile range, enough for placement behind friendly lines and firing of atomic shells at enemy infantry and armor without endangering friendly troops.
In Springfield, Ill., Governor Stevenson declared in a nationwide television and radio broadcast the previous night that when the North Koreans had crossed the 38th parallel in June, 1950, it was the "testing point for freedom throughout the world". He said that the U.N. intervention in the matter had been received with enthusiastic shouts of approval by the overwhelming majority of the American people and even by the Republican leadership. But the Republicans, he suggested, were now attempting to make the people believe that it was nearly an act of "treason". He said that if, however, the U.S. had not become involved in the fight, and Japan were now threatened and East Asia presently falling bit by bit to the enemy, the Republicans would be contending that the President and Joseph Stalin were boyhood friends in Outer Mongolia. He said that the fight would have to continue in Korea as long as it was required. But the Republicans were busy trying to tell the people that the danger was from within and not from without, that the enemy was not Joseph Stalin, but rather the President or even Adlai Stevenson. He also said that the problem of corruption and graft in the Government was one of individuals and praised Senators Estes Kefauver, Paul Douglas and William Fulbright, as well as Representatives Frank Chelf and Cecil King for having distinguished themselves in the effort to root out such corruption.
The President this date, speaking during a whistle stop in Havre, Montana, accused General Eisenhower of having endangered the country as supreme Allied commander in Europe right after the war because of his "blunders" which left America unaware of Russia's threat to world peace. He regarded the General's advice that he saw no reason why Russia and the U.S. would not remain "the closest possible friends" to have carried great weight and done a great deal of harm. He suggested that if the General had not given such advice in 1945, the country would not have had so much trouble with regard to waking up to the dangers of Communist imperialism during the period 1946 through 1948. He said that he did not blame the General for making a mistake, as everyone made them, but that he ought to be honest enough to admit his blunders in that regard. He said that he was tired of Republican speeches and propaganda saying that the party had been out in front against the danger of Communism, when that was not the case. The President praised Congressman Mike Mansfield, running for the Senate from Montana, and Governor Stevenson for having known that Communism was dangerous and that measures had to be taken to stop it. He said that the Republicans had not had any constructive ideas regarding foreign policy since the death of Senator Arthur Vandenberg.
General Eisenhower intended to make a campaign issue out of CIA director General Walter Bedell Smith's assumption that the Communists had penetrated every U.S. security agency, including the CIA. General Smith had made the statement in the context of a deposition as part of the libel suit of Senator Joseph McCarthy against Senator William Benton. General Eisenhower would fly from New York to Columbia, S.C., this date and would then join his train at Cleveland this night.
In Columbia, the General would become the first major-party presidential candidate to appear in the city since antebellum days. The state had not voted for a Republican in a presidential election since Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876. In 1948, it had voted for the Dixiecrat ticket headed by Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. The state Republican organization had indicated that it would back the Democrats for Eisenhower, a slate of electors for which had been placed on the ballot by a petition, the effort behind which having been led by Governor James Byrnes. The Governor was slated to introduce General Eisenhower before his Columbia speech, expected to draw 100,000 people, which would make it the largest such crowd in state history.
Former Congresswoman Clare Boothe
Luce
In East Providence, R. I., a bank robber, five feet in height, had killed one police officer, shot two others and temporarily held two women as hostages when he commandeered a home before surrendering to besieging police.
In Gastonia, Erskine Boyce, a prominent businessman of the town and developer of the Boyce weaver's knotter, a device used in textile plants across the world, had died at the age of 57 after being in declining health for the previous year. He was president of the Charlotte unit of Thomas and Howard, an affiliated group of wholesale grocers operating in four Southern states. He had also been a director of the National Bank of Commerce in Gastonia.
More excerpts are printed from the contest entries sponsored by the News, prizes for which were two $25 bonds, one each to the successful entry from an adult and a student, regarding the subject of why it was important to register and vote. No one yet seems to be expressing anything about Dick, which ought to be the winning entry.
On the editorial page, "The Truman Whistle Stop Formula" tells of the President again dusting off his 1948 successful formula for whistle-stop campaigns, having the previous day in Fargo, North Dakota, given a speech in which he had poked fun, used sarcasm and ridicule with regard to the Republican Party, criticized the "one-party press", charged the Republicans with appealing to emotions through slogans, generalities, scare words, lies and propaganda, while proceeding to do the same thing, defended the Administration's record while glossing over its failures, portrayed himself as a friend of the common man and an enemy of lobbies and special interests, belittled Republican candidates while praising Democrats, criticized Wall Street, invented a new slogan, "Look out, neighbor", and urged voters to vote for the candidates who had their welfare at heart, repeating the performance at every stop.
It indicates that whether that formula would work again in 1952 remained uncertain, but that the crowds appeared to eat it up, further proof that the American people still preferred an old-fashioned slugfest to a calm debate on the issues.
Well, was not the President responding to the very same formula adopted by General Eisenhower in his whistle-stop campaign speeches, designed to arouse the passions of the audience against the Administration and the "mess in Washington", the "blunders" which had led to the Korean War, and other such criticisms? Was the President's irritation not properly exacerbated by the fact that he had given General Eisenhower a leg up the political ladder by appointing him NATO supreme commander in early 1951, thereby keeping in the public eye after he had virtually vanished behind the walls of academia at Columbia, and after having urged him to run for the Democratic nomination in 1952? Perhaps, in your eagerness to provide a one-sided picture to your readers, you forgot about that.
"Will Your Taxes Be Cut Next Year?" indicates that about 85 percent of the Federal budget went to pay for past or future wars, a sizable portion of which, that comprising interest on the national debt and veterans benefits, being fixed by law and not subject therefore to reduction. The remainder went to maintaining the defense establishment, rearmament, and foreign aid to the country's allies. While cuts could be made in military spending based on elimination of waste and duplication, and some additional reduction might be made in the Mutual Security appropriations for foreign aid in the ensuing couple of years from the 6.5 billion dollars approved in 1952, it was unlikely that there would be any significant reduction in Federal taxes in the ensuing year without a decision by Congress and the new Administration to slow down the defense program.
Two leading business publications, Business News and Fortune, had recently polled U.S. business leaders to obtain their opinions on the state of the national economy, and both reports had reached essentially the same conclusion, that defense spending was the dominant factor in the economy, that it would continue at its present level for at least another year, and that no substantial reductions in taxes could be expected in the immediate future. It observes that a truce in the Korean War, a genuine move toward peace by the Soviets, or greater arms production by the allies might alter that situation, but that it had to be kept in mind that the problem of high taxes was not entirely soluble by the Government.
"An Answer" indicates that on the page was a responsive letter by Washington attorney James E. Curry, in response to a recent column by Drew Pearson regarding the Bureau of Indian Affairs, contending that Mr. Pearson had treated him unfairly. It indicates that the newspaper did not have access to all of the facts on the matter, but decided to print the long letter in full to provide "full justice" to Mr. Curry.
"Ike's Surprising Switch on UMT" tells of General Eisenhower on June 27, 1947 having stated unequivocally that he supported universal military training, a position he had reiterated as late as the prior March. Meanwhile, Senator Taft had been advocating that UMT should be delayed as long as the draft was taking young men for two years of active duty. The differences in their stands had been the primary issue in the South Dakota primary of June 3.
But the previous Thursday night in Baltimore, in a prepared speech, General Eisenhower had, without explanation, suddenly changed his position to indicate that as long as the draft continued, the military could not establish a form of training for young men, essentially the same stance as had been adopted by Senator Taft.
The piece finds it disturbing for the fact that the newspaper had long supported UMT as an integral part of defense preparedness, preparedness which the General had recently stated in Baltimore had to be undertaken. It was also disturbing because the reversal of the General's stance on the issue appeared to be a submission to Senator Taft, one not involving domestic policy, on which the General had already deferred in many instances to the Taft viewpoint. It suggests that Old Guard Republicans might be happy with this reversal of position, but many independent voters would be concerned by such an apparent concession to the Old Guard, wondering what the battle at the convention had been about.
Does this mean you are going to endorse Governor Stevenson? Somehow, we have our doubts.
"How To Spot Ghosts" tells of ghost-writing having been established as a course at a Washington university, thus elevating the practice to a science. Ghost-writing was not new, it having been said that the French novelist, Alexandre Dumas, had once asked his son whether or not he had read his latest book, to which the son reportedly replied in the negative and then asked whether his father had. Governor Stevenson had said that if General Eisenhower had written what he said, he had not read what the Governor said.
Cosmopolitan had suggested that one way to detect a ghost-writer was to determine how the speeches were read. In one instance, a New York mayor, who had never looked at his ghost-written speeches prior to delivering them, laughed so hard at a story in the speech that he was barely able to finish it. Immediate retractions after delivery of speeches also indicated the presence of a ghost-writer. Another was when the candidate reversed himself in succeeding sentences, such as the candidate in the 1948 campaign who had just read a particularly bombastic sentence, at which point he stopped and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I completely disagree with my last statement." It imagines that the candidate had given up the ghost.
James E. Curry, as indicated above, responds, in a letter to the editor, to Drew Pearson's uncomplimentary remarks about him printed in The News on August 14, which he regards as a part of a campaign to destroy the developing movement among American Indians for genuine "home rule" under which not only their tribal attorneys but all of their tribal officials and tribal business would be removed from Federal control. Mr. Pearson—actually his staff substituting for him while he was on vacation—had claimed that it was merely a lawyer's "technique" to claim that the Indians were "abused, downtrodden, and unfairly dealt with by Uncle Sam", a sentiment voiced by most Indian leaders. The Sioux and Asiniboine Indians had called upon Mr. Pearson to look into the Department of Interior's mistreatment of Indians in Montana, but he had failed to acknowledge their telegram. He indicates that there might be lawyers who had made fortunes out of representing Indian tribes, but that he was not one of those, that he had provided his service to a persecuted minority at considerable personal sacrifice. He also indicates that the Pearson column's claim that he had a "near monopoly" on the Indian law business was "ridiculous". He had handled some important Indian cases, examples of which he sets forth, the fees for which could not be unreasonable as they were controlled by Government officials and by the courts.
He indicates that he had tried to defend people who could not defend themselves and who could not pay adequately for their defense, that the Government, charged with the responsibility of their protection, had not been a faithful guardian. He concludes that he expected that he, as a single mouthpiece for the Indians, could and would be destroyed, but that the voice of the national conscience would not thereby be permanently stilled.
Drew Pearson tells of the talk in Wheeling, W. Va., between General Eisenhower and Senator Nixon having been an extremely healthy thing from the point of view of Republican harmony, as indications of bad blood between the two candidates had been developing. Aides to Senator Nixon had been angry with General Eisenhower for even entertaining the thought that the Senator be dropped from the ticket, the reason why the Senator deliberately ignored the General's telegram requesting that the Senator see him at once, following the Senator's speech explaining and justifying the expense fund raised by wealthy Californians for the Senator in the wake of his Senate victory in 1950, instead traveling to Montana to resume his campaign itinerary. The Senator's first intention was to show that he was not a boy candidate to be pushed around and second, to let public sentiment have an opportunity to build up in favor of keeping him on the ticket. The Senator, in his speech the prior Tuesday night, had asked listeners to send telegrams to the RNC, not to the General, as he knew that the professional politicians of the RNC would be more sympathetic to his plight. The Senator's staff also was quite incensed by the General's telegram from Cleveland that his personal decision on the matter of retaining the Senator on the ticket would be "based on a personal conclusion".
The Senator's press secretary, James Bassett, had been one of the most zealous of his aides and had told Senator Fred Seaton of Nebraska during a phone call to the Senator that the General's advisers should get some backbone, and so when the two candidates met at Wheeling, Mr. Bassett was along. They talked for an hour aboard the special train of the General, but did not discuss the expense fund, rather concentrating on the campaigns and the three major issues, Korea, Communism and corruption, responsive to Republican surveys which had shown that those issues had the largest impact on voters, with Korea being of greatest concern.
Eventually, Senator Seaton insisted that the General go to bed, as he had an early whistle stop appearance, after the General had insisted on closer press cooperation between the two campaigns, expressing his irritation at Senator Nixon for not having cleared his initial statements on the expense fund prior to releasing them, regarding the claim of the Senator that its revelation had resulted from a "smear" by his political opponents of the left based on his continued crusade to ferret out Communists in the Government, such as Alger Hiss. At that point, Mr. Bassett and the General's press secretary, James Hagerty, joined the conference, and Mr. Bassett began puffing on a cigar, after which the Senator asked for one and smoked his first cigar of the campaign, indicative of his more relaxed mien at that point.
Mr. Pearson notes that there had been other cases where the presidential and vice-presidential nominees or Presidents and Vice-Presidents had clashed, the most famous of which having been President Calvin Coolidge and Vice-President Charles Dawes, the latter having been suspected of arriving late for an important tie vote in the Senate in order to defy the President.
Eight years later, after
Vice-President Nixon announced his run for the presidency in 1960, President Eisenhower had been asked by a reporter at
one point to name one important idea of the Vice-President which had been adopted, to which he responded
Parenthetically, returning to the issue raised by the editorial of the previous day on whether Senator Nixon admitted that he was wrong in accepting the fund, his own quote of that particular segment of the speech in the above-linked first installment of Six Crises, anent the fund, omits the stumbling part of the statement, "Now, was that wrong? And let me say that it was wrong—I'm saying, incidentally, that it was wrong, not just illegal, because it isn't a question of whether..." and proceeds to quote only: "Now, was that wrong? It isn't a question of whether it was legal or illegal, that isn't enough. The question is, was it morally wrong?" followed by the three contingencies to determine his own answer. Thus, we have the better of the argument, straight from the horse's mouth, that his supposed admission of wrongdoing was not ever meant as such. The News editorial of the previous week, reiterated again the previous day while acknowledging the problem raised by readers, was simply in error in so assuming, giving the Senator, it said, the benefit of the doubt. There remains, of course, the question as to whether the stumble was merely the result of lack of rest in a tumultuous time or was a deliberate ploy to suggest to the hopeful, unsteady ear, listening for the mea culpa, that which it wanted to hear, that he admitted the wrong, while he maintained the ability to say to others, when it suited, that he had not so admitted wrongdoing in the matter, had said
Stewart Alsop, in Springfield, Ill., finds the Stevenson campaign headquarters to be absent the usual personnel within a Democratic organization, the cigar-smoking, "infinitely knowledgeable" citizens of Irish descent, the minority representatives, the labor advisers, the farm specialists, the glossy public relations experts, and the professional politicians. Instead, there was a small coterie of energetic, hard-working people who, for the most part, had never had any experience with practical politics, lending the atmosphere of a "congenial house party" comprised of pleasant people who had known each other for a long time.
By locating his headquarters in Springfield, the Governor had made a conscious decision to divorce his campaign from "the mess in Washington" and to provide it with a character of being unbossed and unpolitical.
The relationship between the Springfield headquarters and the DNC in Washington, however, was tenuous and strained, with many of the staffers for the Governor's campaign muttering that DNC chairman Stephen Mitchell had been one of the Governor's most serious mistakes, a mutual friction which was inevitable when authority was divided geographically and in other ways.
It was not clear who was running the show in Springfield, with Wilson Wyatt being the official campaign manager, but concerning himself primarily with the mechanics of the campaign, finance, scheduling and the like. Carl MacGowan, the Governor's administrative assistant and alter ego, had the most influence within the campaign, and would be the Governor's primary political adviser should he win the election. Others in the inner circle were Pulitzer Prize-winning Clayton Fritchey, formally of the White House, David Bell, also formerly of the White House, George Ball, a Washington lawyer and old friend who had done much to calm the Governor's troubled spirit during the pre-convention period, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the Harvard historian who had been attacked as a "dangerous radical", although recognizing the danger of Communist imperialism long before it had been fashionable to do so—the latter two later joining the Kennedy Administration, Mr. Ball initially as Undersecretary of State, and later, under President Johnson, as U.N. Ambassador, and Mr. Schlesinger as an adviser and speechwriter.
Besides their official functions, this group was primarily concerned with ideas, serving as sounding-boards for the Governor after each of his campaign trips and preparing first drafts of speeches for him to read, although the Governor wrote all of the final drafts and made all the important decisions, according to the staff. The latter fact did not mean that the staff had no influence on the Governor's strategy, having induced the Governor to change his mind on at least three important points, repeal of Taft-Hartley, civil rights, and, more recently, the disclosure of the Illinois fund to supplement the public incomes of certain State appointees taken from the private sector at considerable pay cuts. But the Governor was very much the mastery of his own house.
A second problem arising from location of the campaign headquarters in Springfield and staffing it with amateurs had remained unsolved, that being the absence of the professional politician, with no one in the headquarters, or in Washington, who could speak with the prestige, authority, or political background necessary to reach professional politicians and give them a sense of personal participation in the campaign and thereby reassure them of their own future.
Marquis Childs tells of the political fog which usually began to surround the campaigns at this time of the fall, but out of it coming a particularly honest statement by Governor Stevenson during his brief speech before the graduating officers class at the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, where his son was graduating, that there had been failures and mistakes in Korea, and things which had been done which should not have been done and things not done which should have been done, but that it was for the graduates "not to make good the errors of the past", rather "to make good the promise of the future". He had indicated that the fighting in Korea had been undertaken in the name of common collective security of the great majority of the nations of the world against brutal aggression, that it was fighting which might conceivably have been avoided, a matter on which no one could say, but which must have occurred somewhere else if not in Korea, as long as the Soviets continued to subjugate the free peoples of the world and the U.S. and the free peoples continued in their purpose to resist.
Mr. Childs, whose family had a member who was shortly going to Korea to fight as a young Marine officer, regarded those words as having special meaning, but possessed of a "strange sound" during the campaign, in striking contrast to other campaign rhetoric designed to sell the "purest political soap" which could wash clean the wicked world and wipe away its dangers, "the beautiful sparkle never to be dimmed again."
A letter writer compliments the newspaper for doing a superb job in covering the visit the prior Friday by General Eisenhower in Charlotte.
A letter writer responds to the editorial, "Insurance for the Taxpayer", in which it had suggested that the superintendent of the County schools retain outside consultants for a survey of the needs of the County schools. The writer questions whether it was necessary to hire outside consultants when there was an able group of planners at the City and Regional Planning School at UNC, well-qualified to prepare such a survey.
A letter from James Baley, Jr., chairman of the state Republican Party, expresses appreciation to those who had contributed to promotion of the General's visit to Charlotte the previous week.
A letter writer, who indicates that he had attended quite a few football games in Memorial Stadium in Charlotte, had noticed something missing a week earlier when the national anthem had not been played before a high school football game. He wonders whether the fault was in the lack of technical skill of the bands to play it and hopes that someone would clear up the issue, as he deems it inappropriate to omit the national anthem.
We should say so. Is it not written in the Constitution that the national anthem should be played before all sporting events? That is Amendment 2A, subparagraph 3(c)(iii). It is also mandated therein that it should never be sung off key, on penalty of the offender being shot for being a traitor.
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