The Charlotte News

Friday, July 10, 1953

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Sam Summerlin, that well-informed sources in Panmunjom stated that South Korean President Syngman Rhee and President Eisenhower's personal envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Walter Robertson, might reach agreement finally on support of the truce with the Communists at any minute. South Korean sources in Seoul were more cautious, but one said that the talks had made progress. Mr. Robertson had given no indication of any change during the two-week talks following the meeting the prior day, saying only that matters were the same as the previous day. Peiping Radio had said the previous day that the 29-minute session involved conference between the two sides and that they would meet again this date. It blasted President Rhee, demanding that the U.S. force him into line

The principal truce negotiators met this date for the first time in 20 days, but there was no indication as to whether they had made progress toward signing the armistice, with, however, the scheduling of an additional session indicative that no serious disagreement had arisen. Informed sources indicated that much of the session was comprised of Communist demands that the U.N. Command guarantee South Korean compliance with the truce.

L. P. Beria had been expelled from the Communist Party and the Soviet Government in Russia and, as interpreted by Associated Press correspondent Eddie Gilmore, who until 10 days earlier had been in Moscow continuously since 1941, the fact meant that Premier Georgi Malenkov and perhaps others felt strong enough and desperate enough to doom the head of the secret police to complete disgrace. It was part of the post-Stalin struggle for power which appeared still to be ongoing. There was some question whether the event had just occurred or had taken place earlier. Mr. Gilmore indicates that just before he left Moscow, high members of the party and Government on June 27 had watched the premiere of a new opera at the Bolshoi Theater and Mr. Beria's name was not on the list of those present, prompting one Western diplomat to inquire as to whether he had already been dumped from power. He had been declared an enemy of the party and the people and branded an international imperialist agent, and appeared headed for death at the hands of the Supreme Court.

Another report, by Thomas Whitney, indicates that Pravda had denounced Mr. Beria this date in the way Mr. Gilmore describes. Premier Malenkov, himself, had outlined the case against Mr. Beria at a recent meeting of the party central committee, which had removed the latter's party membership and office. A communiqué said that the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, which was the parliament, had removed Mr. Beria from his posts as first deputy premier and minister of internal affairs. The Presidium had also decided to turn the criminal actions against him over to the Supreme Court. Pravda had claimed that Mr. Beria had secretly planned to "seize the leadership of the party and the country" to restore capitalism. It was speculated in Western capitals that Mr. Beria was being made the scapegoat for the recent East German uprisings and other unrest in the Soviet satellites. The charge that he had acted in the interests of foreign imperialism was viewed as a reference to the recent riots in Berlin and the release on June 17 by President Rhee of 27,000 North Korean prisoners of war who had defied repatriation. The Russian press had charged that those events were related parts of a Western plan to prevent peace. The Government announced that Sergei Kruglov would replace Mr. Beria as internal affairs chief.

Secretary of State Dulles ordered U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Charles Bohlen to return home for consultation regarding the dismissal of Mr. Beria. Meanwhile, Secretary Dulles was meeting in the afternoon this date for the first time with acting British Foreign Secretary Lord Salisbury and French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, as part of the Big Three foreign ministers conference in Washington, in advance of the planned Big Three meeting of the heads of state in Bermuda. The Secretary wanted to tap Mr. Bohlen's views while the foreign ministers conference was transpiring. The State Department press officer reported that Ambassador Bohlen had foreseen and reported the probable elimination of Mr. Beria, and therefore State Department officials had not been surprised at the announcement the previous night.

Senate and House confreres this date agreed on a foreign aid authorization bill for 5.157 billion dollars, less than the 5.474 billion sought by the Administration, and between the 5.318 billion previously approved by the Senate and the 4.998 billion approved by the House. The appropriations measure would have to be approved later.

A new wave of scattered strikes and work slowdowns spread across East Germany, though there was still no sign of a general strike. The slowdowns were in protest, seeking the release of those arrested in the June 17 riots against the Communist Government.

Three members of the Senate Investigations subcommittee, chaired by Senator Joseph McCarthy, talked with CIA director Allen Dulles, telling him, according to Senator McCarthy, that the Agency was neither "sacrosanct" nor immune from investigation. The Senator quoted Mr. Dulles as asking for time to think over what had been said and that he would report back on Tuesday. In addition to Senator McCarthy, Senators Karl Mundt of South Dakota and Charles Potter of Michigan were present at the meeting. Senator McCarthy said that they had told Mr. Dulles that if he or members of his staff were summoned before the subcommittee, their secrets and classified operations would not be exposed, but that they had the right to subpoena the members of any Government bureau, including the CIA. Senator McCarthy called the subcommittee into session this date to consider issuing subpoenas to Mr. Dulles, William Bundy and Walter Pforzheimer of the Agency. Mr. Bundy, son-in-law of former Secretary of State Acheson, was described by Senator McCarthy in a speech as "one of the top" officials in the agency. He said that Mr. Bundy had contributed $400 to the Alger Hiss defense fund and was now being considered for the job of liaison officer between the National Security Council and the Atomic Energy Commission. Mr. Pforzheimer was the liaison official between the CIA and Congress. The latter had consulted with Mr. Dulles and told the subcommittee that it was the policy of the CIA to refuse to allow any of its employees to appear before Congressional committees, and so Mr. Bundy, who had been scheduled to testify the previous day, had not appeared. Senator McCarthy said that he could not believe that the head of one of the important executive agencies would take such a position. He called it "the most blatant attempt to flout the authority of a Congressional committee" which he had ever encountered.

Oh, Senator McCarthy, wait until you get a load of the guy in the White House in 2019 and 2020. Try to wrap your heads around that paradoxical conundrum, Fox News.

In the vicinity of Willows, Calif., a flash fire driven by wind killed 15 firefighters in Mendocino National Forest the previous night. Thirteen of the dead were members of the New Tribes Mission, a religious organization with its Pacific Coast headquarters nearby. They had been training for their missionary assignments in overseas jungles and mountains. The fire had erupted on Powder House Point, 28 miles northwest of Willows, halfway between San Francisco and the Oregon border. The missionaries had gone to work on the fire-lines, thought that they had the fire under control, then sat down to eat their rations, but within a few minutes, the forest ranger arrived and warned them to leave at once.

In Raleigh, Governor William B. Umstead had named this date 13 of 15 members of the State Board of Conservation and Development, with Ben Douglas of Charlotte named as director. The new Board included Robert Hanes of Winston-Salem. The Governor had still not made his appointment to the Senate seat of deceased Senator Willis Smith, and political observers wondered whether he might do so before beginning a brief vacation the following Monday.

Catawba County officials in Hickory, N.C., stated this date that there was a polio epidemic in the county, after three new cases raised the total to 34. In nearby Lenoir, three additional cases had occurred in Caldwell County, where gamma globulin had been administered by shot earlier in the week to all children under age ten, providing inoculation against polio for about a month in the hope of interrupting the epidemic. Caldwell's 100th case was that of a 17-year old Lenoir High School football player who had played in the high school All-Star Shrine Bowl in Charlotte the previous December. The two other victims were ages two and seven. Catawba County also had requested the inoculation from the Federal Office of Defense Mobilization for all of its 15,000 children under 10, but was not sure that the scarce gamma globulin would be available. Doctors to administer the inoculations were being sought by the State Board of Epidemiology from the medical schools at Duke, UNC and Bowman Gray in Winston-Salem.

In Carnoustie, Scotland, golfer Ben Hogan had virtually cinched a victory in the British Open this date, after setting a new course record of 68 on the final round, for a 72-hole total of 282. It was Mr. Hogan's first attempt at the British Open title, registering scores of 73, 71, and 70 in the first three rounds.

On the editorial page, "End of the 'Foreign Aid Era'?" indicates that while Mutual Security Administration head Harold Stassen had said that some sort of foreign aid would need to continue for perhaps another decade, until the Soviet threat had diminished, there were other indicators suggesting that the U.S. was approaching the end of the foreign aid era. The Senate had recently approved the authorization of five billion dollars in economic and military aid for the following fiscal year, but had also served notice to the world that it expected to end the MSA in 1955, tapering off economic aid in 1956, and military aid in 1957.

The era had begun in March, 1941 with the Lend-Lease program, and after the war, beginning in 1947-48, had continued with the Marshall Plan, followed by the MSA. About 87 billion dollars had been spent by the U.S on foreign aid, with about 11 billion received in return, making the net outlay 76 billion dollars, about half of which had been spent since the end of World War II. There was strong evidence that the aid had materially aided in the defeat of Germany during the war and in rehabilitating Europe afterward. It had also helped to stop the expansion of Communism. The long-term results were yet to be calculated.

Some of the foreign aid programs had not been entirely unselfish, having "buy American" provisions in them and providing the U.S. economy a needed shot in the arm. As long as there was a dollar shortage elsewhere in the world, there was no other way for other nations to buy U.S. exports than with the dollars provided them by the U.S. There was already concern among U.S. exporters at the tapering off of foreign aid. Recently, a survey of tobacco-growing production in Southern Rhodesia by the Wall Street Journal had shown that Britain, short on dollars, was looking elsewhere for its tobacco imports.

That would impact North Carolina tobacco growers, with the executive vice-president of the North Carolina Farm Bureau having warned that a loss of exports would bring about a further decline in farm income.

There would also be political pressure for larger subsidies to American producers to enable them to export goods to foreign markets at prices far below actual cost. That also would have disturbing results, forcing the taxpayers to pay increasing domestic subsidies while having an effect on world markets and creating new problems in foreign relations.

Thus, the tapering off of foreign aid would have manifold effects which would tax the ingenuity of the U.S. and its free allies. Many of the critics of foreign aid had suggested it as a large give-away program, but until there was worldwide currency convertibility, a dollar gap would exist, as it had since the end of World War I. Without dollars, other nations could not buy American goods and the foreign aid program provided those dollars to foreign nations. The only other way to get dollars to those nations would be to lower tariff barriers so that they could sell their products in the U.S. market, which would also require substantial readjustment in many fields of activity.

"Once Again the Courts Stand Firm" indicates that when the U.S. Court of Appeals had recently freed Charles Nelson, convicted as head of a major Washington gambling syndicate, Senator Lester Hunt of Wyoming had charged that the Court had acted on a "technicality" and that its action was "discouraging and disconcerting".

It finds, to the contrary, that the Court had reaffirmed one of the basic Constitutional guarantees, especially encouraging when many individual freedoms were under assault. Mr. Nelson had appeared before the Senate Crime Committee in 1951, when Senator Hunt was acting chairman, and had testified guardedly until he was threatened with a citation for contempt or perjury, then opening up his financial records, with a staff member accompanying him to his home to obtain them, whereupon the staff member saw other documents and took those as well, the entirety of which were then turned over to the U.S. Attorney by the Committee. Mr. Nelson was then prosecuted on the basis of the records seized. The Court of Appeals, in ordering a new trial, ruled that the Committee had threatened Mr. Nelson with contempt if he refused to answer, perjury if he lied, and prosecution for gambling activities if he told the truth, while at no time allowing him the right to counsel or to refuse to testify or provide papers which might incriminate him. His home was then invaded and searched and the papers seized, without due process. The Court thus held that the Committee had violated Mr. Nelson's Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. The piece finds the decision quite appropriate.

"Weathervane?" indicates that in November, 1952, the Republican candidate for Congress from the 7th Illinois District received 30 percent of the vote against the popular "dean of the House", Representative Adolph Sabath, who had died two days after the election. The prior Tuesday, the Republican candidate in the election for the seat received only 16.5 percent of the vote, without the coattails of the President on which to ride. The Republican candidate had not been well known, running against an old Chicago alderman. But it wonders whether the shift signaled something beyond merely Illinois.

"A Suggestion for Mr. Scheidt" indicates that the new State Motor Vehicles Commissioner, Ed Scheidt, former FBI special agent, had come up with a new method of avoiding problems in automobile inspection and driver's license renewals with a suggestion that any driver who had received his 60-day notice of renewal could call the Commission by phone and set up a definite appointment, thus avoiding lines. It finds the suggestion so simple and good that it was amazing no one had ever thought of it before. Had such a system been applied to automobile inspections six years earlier, when the inspections law first went into effect, the exasperation over long lines, which finally killed the program, would not have been.

It suggests that he also consider changing the hours of operation from Monday through Friday during normal business hours to Tuesday through Saturday, to allow those people who were employed during the normal weekday hours to have an opportunity to take care of business on Saturday. It says it made no charge for the suggestion.

You had better watch your smart mouth, or he may forward a file on you to J. Edgar.

Drew Pearson indicates that the Cabinet was split over encouraging dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. John Foster Dulles, who had campaigned the previous fall on the idea of encouraging such revolt, wanted to do something about it, but the President remained cautious.

The most likely person to replace Voice of America head Dr. Robert Johnson was C. D. Jackson, the former publisher of Fortune, presently the White House psychological warfare adviser.

He indicates that the Administration might have made a mistake on another appointment, that of Leonard Walsh to be chief judge of the D.C. Municipal Court—subsequently, in 1959, to be appointed by President Eisenhower as Judge of the U.S. District Court in D.C. Mr. Pearson indicates that someone had forgotten that Mr. Walsh had become involved in a hit-and-run accident case in which a jury had awarded the plaintiff $10,000 and the U.S. Court of Appeals had made a decision seriously impugning his credibility, Chief Judge D. Lawrence Groner having written that Mr. Walsh had "falsely charged the act to another", and that so doing had permitted the jury to reject the whole of his evidence.

The President was bringing into the Administration more military men, the latest being Col. Paul Carroll, assistant to chief of staff Sherman Adams.

The first wife of General MacArthur had called the White House recently and advised that her brother, James Cromwell, should be sent to Korea to calm down President Rhee, as Mr. Cromwell had been friendly with the President during his years in exile at the time of the Japanese occupation before and during the war. Mr. Cromwell, who had once been married to tobacco heiress Doris Duke, had served under FDR as Minister to Canada.

The resignation of Dr. Johnson as head of Information Services in the State Department was a serious loss to the Administration, as he had been doing a good job. He decided to return to Temple University out of disgust with Secretary of State Dulles regarding the book-burning issue and also because of high blood pressure, for which his doctor had advised an hour of rest after meals, but Dr. Johnson had nevertheless insisted on working from 7:00 a.m. to midnight. The inside fact was that Secretary Dulles had written the first two directives regarding the Information Service library book bans, causing librarians abroad to begin dumping books wholesale. Other Department officials since that time had written another half dozen directives, each compounding the confusion. Dr. Johnson felt it made the U.S. look ridiculous abroad. Reports that he had become cozy with Senator McCarthy were exaggerated, based on his having invited certain Senators to meet with him on Monday nights, and on one occasion, another Senator had invited Senator McCarthy. Roy Cohn and David Schine, the investigators for Senator McCarthy's Investigations subcommittee, who had gone to Europe to investigate the library books and wound up in embarrassing, sophomoric situations, had visited with Dr. Johnson at times but there had been no "snuggling".

Clendenin Ryan, amateur detective and playboy grandson of Thomas Fortune Ryan, who had once owned the streetcar lines of New York and Chicago, had been giving gay dinner parties in Washington and talking about his campaign to become governor of New Jersey. He had thrown an ornate wedding anniversary party for television producer Martha Rountree, who had featured him on "Meet the Press". He talked about using wiretappers against his political opponents and once had employed wiretappers against Mayor William O'Dwyer of New York. It might be, suggests Mr. Pearson, that he could wind up winning the gubernatorial race in New Jersey because of the way gamblers and gangsters had been able to throw their weight around during the Republican Administration of Alfred Driscoll. The late Willie Moretti had contributed $118,000 to the Driscoll Administration, though the Governor claimed to know nothing about it. His assistant, however, Harold Adonis, had received part of the money and was presently hiding in Holland. Thus, a good many New Jersey voters were anxious to vote for anyone except the Republican in the coming election.

Marquis Childs provides a look at a recent Eisenhower Cabinet breakfast meeting, starting with a discussion by Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson regarding the drought conditions in Texas and the Southwest, where cattle prices had dropped, then turning to the situation in Korea and the opposition to the truce by South Korean President Rhee, which was brief.

Next came a meeting of the National Security Council at which Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith substituted for Secretary of State Dulles, who had gone to his retreat on the St. Lawrence River for a long weekend, with Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson, also on a brief vacation, represented by Deputy Secretary Roger Kyes. The Council met for nearly four hours with the President regarding the truce in Korea, with the conclusions being top-secret. Two decisions could be disclosed, however, which were determined adversely, that some of the thinking on Korea which had influenced the Truman Administration was ruled out, that a continuation of the stalemate, with Americans holding at least part of the line, might be the lesser of many evils with regard to the U.S. responsibility on the world stage, the new determination being that men and matériel were so costly in modern warfare that such a stalemate could not be prolonged. The second conclusion was that the U.S. could never allow President Rhee to dictate its foreign and military policy and that if the fight were ever to be renewed in Korea, the U.S. would not be fighting for the Rhee Government.

Retiring chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Omar Bradley, was also present at the NSC meeting and his statements of March 2 regarding alternatives for Korea, the most drastic of which having been air and naval war against the Chinese mainland, were considered.

Mr. Childs indicates that no one in the Administration had ever seriously considered agreeing to President Rhee's demand that the U.S. automatically resume the war should a post-armistice conference fail to reunify Korea within 90 days, and there was great hesitation about making any commitment that might so hint.

He concludes that there was no single decision which was right beyond all other possibilities, that there were only choices which were less perilous than others.

Robert C. Ruark finds that the "Titans" in sports during the 1920's and early 1930's did not have latter-day counterparts presently in abundance, that in golf, for instance, after Bobby Jones had retired, there appeared no one on the horizon who was his equal. But he finds Ben Hogan to be worthy of a seat in the pantheon of athletic stars with Mr. Jones or Babe Ruth. He also finds that Mickey Mantle might be such a young star and might "crowd the Messrs. Ruth and Cobb in the records someday", finding him to be the greatest switch-hitter of all time in baseball

In horse racing, he thinks that jockey Eddie Arcaro was another worthy. And Joe DiMaggio had "made a right good stab at enduring fame as a center fielder". In boxing, Sugar Ray Robinson deserved a permanent place in the sun, along with Joe Lewis, but with respect to Jack Dempsey, there had never been any real reservation expressed by sportswriters, just as with Messrs. Ruth and Jones in their respective sports. One also did not need utilize reservation when talking of Mr. Hogan, though he never had the dash of Sam Snead or the distance of some of the other golfers, or the color of Walter Hagen, but was "coldly competent and brave as a competitor beyond belief."

Mr. Ruark indicates that there was no way at present to know what Mr. Hogan might do in the British Open, but that his confidence in his "brave perfection" was sufficient for him to gamble some on the prospect that he would finish high in the money, even if by some fluke he did not win it all.

A letter writer says that, after much difficulty, he had succeeded in persuading Duke Power Co. to run a bus line through his neighborhood, in the vicinity of Central Avenue, enhancing the value of the area property, but that the bus line was not being patronized as much as it ought, to maintain the regular bus schedules, and so he urges cooperation in utilizing the service as often as possible.

A letter writer from Newton says that he was intrigued by the letter which had posed the 1799 rhyming math problem of Benjamin Banneker seeking the volume of the barrel. He claims to have solved the problem to within a number of thousandths of a cubic inch, namely that the volume of the barrel was 9,009.061. He provides his formula for reaching that conclusion.

His surname is Lumber, and so we cannot resist posing, in his honor, the riddle: How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? You have ten minutes to provide the answer. Begin.

A letter writer from Marion indicates that he was 18, in high school, and disagreed with a prior writer who had suggested taking the issue of Bible instruction in the public schools of Charlotte to the courts. He says that he had received very little teaching in the Bible and had come up against things which required spiritual guidance, believes that the Bible ought be taught in the schools but not in a manner by which the church would take over the schools and education, rather by a method which would impart the essential education to guide and help the students. He did not believe any single denomination or group ought rule the schools.

A letter from the president of the Monroe Chamber of Commerce expresses his appreciation for the newspaper's coverage of their July 4 activities, which had been attended by 20,000 people, in large part because of the publicity provided by the newspaper.

A letter from the pastor of the Sharon Presbyterian Church provides a resolution sent to the Charlotte Board of Education, signed by the church deacons, the clerk of session and the pastor, supporting the teaching of the Bible in the public schools of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.

We still have not heard from the Devil, plenty of deacons and diaconates, but no Devil nor Demons, not even from Daniel Webster.

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