The Charlotte News
Friday, July 3, 1953
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Milo Farneti, that the Chinese Communists had attacked the previous day behind a heavy artillery barrage, recapturing "Lookout Mountain" on the east-central front, 12 hours after the South Korean troops had taken it back from the Communists. The height was strategic for overlooking a network of roads supplying the U.N. front lines. When the South Korean troops had fought to the summit earlier in the day, they had found the bodies of three Chinese troops lashed together with wire, apparently having vowed not to withdraw under any circumstances. The South Korean troops had been consolidating their positions when the enemy barrage began. Associated Press correspondent John Randolph had reported from the front that U.S. advisers with the South Korean troops believed that the enemy artillery had unleashed two "Time-on-Target" barrages, a technique initially developed by U.S. artillery whereby a devastating barrage of shells, timed to explode at one time, would hit a single target, with the deafening concussion often rupturing the ear drums even of troops in shelters. To the northwest, about 750 enemy troops had attacked the southern slope of "Finger Ridge", without artillery support, on Friday night but had withdrawn after a short skirmish. The retreat from "Lookout" had been a bitter one for the South Korean troops, who had fought up and down the slopes of the height for the previous week. Fighting elsewhere across the rain-soaked front had been light. The Chinese push across about 15 miles of the east-central front during the prior month had appeared to slacken, at least temporarily.
Overcast skies held down air activity to only a few bombers carrying out radar-guided strikes.
The truce talks between the U.S. and the South Korean Government and its President Syngman Rhee continued in stalemate, as the South Koreans continued to insist that they would not support an armistice which left the country divided. In a July 4 address, recorded by CBS, President Rhee called on the American people to support him, promising that the South Koreans would continue to fight and die in the battle against Communism, and would never abandon their original objective of reuniting the country. His statement came after more than an hour of meeting during the morning, the seventh such conference, with Assistant Secretary of State Walter Robertson, President Eisenhower's personal emissary. A high source said that Mr. Robertson had rejected President Rhee's demand for resumption of the war if a post-armistice political conference could not agree within 90 days to unify Korea. The Communists had also balked at signing the truce since President Rhee had ordered about three weeks earlier the release of 27,000 North Korean prisoners of war who had resisted repatriation. There had been no official Communist reply to the U.N. Command's statement issued Monday that it was prepared immediately to sign the armistice, even without South Korea's cooperation, and would undertake every effort to obtain that cooperation.
Senators John McClellan of Arkansas, Stuart Symington of Missouri and Henry Jackson of Washington asked Senator Joseph McCarthy to call a special closed-door meeting of his Senate Investigations subcommittee to consider appropriate action, after an article had appeared in the July issue of The American Mercury, titled "Reds and Our Churches", written by J. B. Matthews of Wisconsin, in which, according to the Senators, he had engaged in "a shocking and unwarranted attack against the American clergy." Mr. Matthews had taken over recently as staff director of the Senate Investigations subcommittee chaired by Senator McCarthy. He had long been a Communist hunter, first having been staff director of HUAC when it had been chaired, prior to the war, by Representative Martin Dies of Texas, and later had been a consultant to various Government agencies. Senator McCarthy responded that the article was not an attack on the Protestant clergy, that it did not need to be said that the majority of such clergymen were loyal to the country. He said that the meeting of the subcommittee would probably occur the following Tuesday. Earlier in the year, HUAC chairman Harold Velde of Illinois had said the Committee might conduct an investigation of subversives among U.S. clergymen, but later clarified it to mean that it would only be an investigation of individuals.
By the tone and tenor of the article, listing a lot of names several times, perhaps Mr. Matthews had been involved in the determination of the Dies Committee, a couple of years prior to 1940, to hear the testimony of a witness, at the behest of Alabama Congressman Joe Starnes, regarding the latter's discovery that Kit Marlowe was a Red.
Senator McCarthy said this date that Attorney General Herbert Brownell had ordered a search of Justice Department files to determine whether former President Truman had ever provided the Department a list of about 150 Americans suspected of spying for Russia. The Senator said that the results of that search would determine whether he would ask the Senate Investigation subcommittee for permission to call the former President as a witness. If the report was true, then the Senator wanted to ask Mr. Truman why the U.S. citizens were not prosecuted. This date, the Senator made public a reply from the Attorney General which said that he had no knowledge of whether Canadian officials in 1945 had turned over the names of about 150 American citizens who were alleged to have been part of an international Communist espionage ring, but would endeavor to seek out information within the Department's files.
57. We'll bet on 57.
The House upheld the previous day a 1.3 billion dollar cut of the proposed defense budget previously submitted by the President, five billion less than that submitted in the last proposed budget in January by former President Truman. The measure would now go to the Senate for consideration. The primary cut had been five billion dollars from the Air Force budget, reducing the Truman goal of 143 wings by 1955 to 120 wings. The Air Force budget was decided on a roll call vote of 234 for and 161 against, while the overall budget for defense was determined on a roll call vote of 386 to 0.
In Newport, R.I., the Navy and Air Force agreed to join this date in a plan to return an injured Greenwich, Conn., mother from Bennettsville, S.C., to Newport where her Naval officer son was aboard ship. His mother had been critically injured in an automobile accident on June 17 as she was driving from Greenwich to Atlanta to visit her sister.
In New York, an agreement had been reached this date by railroad and union officials to end a sick-out strike which had cut rail service on the Long Island Railroad since the prior midnight.
In Lenoir, N.C., the number of polio cases in Caldwell County had reached 79 this date, as public health officials rushed their plans to administer the temporary gamma globulin inoculation to more than 10,000 children, affording about a one-month period of protection to check the spread of the epidemic which had begun in the middle of April. One 12-year old girl had died from polio in the interim. The Polio Foundation of New York had shipped 800 pounds of the gamma globulin, plus 12,000 needles and 5,000 syringes for administering the inoculation. The county had about 43,000 residents, of whom about 10,800 were children under nine years of age, the most vulnerable to the disease. A similar program had been carried out earlier in the week in Montgomery, Ala., where 31,000 children had received the inoculation after 85 cases of polio had been reported.
Near Sylva, N.C., law enforcement officers and deputized citizens were searching the rugged slopes of Balsam Range this date, seeking a mountaineer accused of using a shotgun to shoot fatally Sheriff Griffin Middleton of Jackson County during an ambush the previous afternoon. Bloodhounds aided the posses in their search through the mist-shrouded rhododendron thickets at altitudes of about 5,000 feet. The Sheriff, who was shot in the chest and neck, had been seeking the suspect to answer charges of assaulting a woman with a half-gallon fruit jar filled with corn liquor.
In Raleigh, a committee of five lawyers from the Rocky Mount-Nash County Bar Association reported to Governor William B. Umstead that they favored the appointment of Congressman Harold Cooley to the Senate seat recently vacated by the death of Senator Willis Smith. There had been a report that the Governor would announce this date his appointee, but the Governor's secretary, Ed Rankin, said that he did not know when the announcement would come. About 70 persons had been endorsed by various groups and individuals for consideration as appointees. The Governor thus far had not indicated anyone under consideration. Of the five persons whom observers had mentioned as likely candidates, including Congressman Cooley, none was former State Senator Alton Lennon, the eventual appointee.
On the editorial page, "Balanced-Budget Boys Do About-Face" indicates that a lot of poppycock had been written about the President's firm stand in seeking an extension of six months on the excess profits tax, to prevent additional deficit spending. It had been said, for instance, that he may have alienated an important part of the Republican Party, but the fact was that the same part had been hostile to the President since before his nomination a year earlier, and would continue to be so unless he pursued a reactionary course.
It had been said that the Administration would make small businessmen unhappy, because the excess profits tax affected them most. But there was no substance to that charge either, as the measure reported out of the House Rules Committee raised the excess profits tax exemption from $25,000 to $100,000, exempting about 30,000 small businesses and lowering the bills for those with net earnings over $100,000.
It goes on enumerating some of the criticisms which had been leveled at the bill, dispelling each one, concluding that it was funny that those complaining about the extension of the tax had spent much of the time during the Truman Administration complaining about deficit spending. Even Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, a fiscal conservative, had said that he saw no way to reduce taxes for at least another year. Now that the President wanted to try to balance the budget before lowering taxes, many appeared to desire an increase of deficit spending by cutting tax revenues first.
"Let in These Deserving Immigrants" indicates that the President had been doing a good job recently in trying to obtain support in Congress for his bill to admit 240,000 European immigrants, over and above the quotas for each nation.
It indicates that the senselessness of the quota system made passage of the legislation logical and desirable, as many of the aliens seeking admission to the U.S. were refugees from Communist countries. The quota system presently in effect allowed more than 65,000 persons to come from Great Britain and Northern Ireland each year, though immigration had been nowhere near that figure from those countries. But those coming from the satellite countries were very limited under the quotas, Hungarians being limited to 865, Rumanians, to 289, and with regard to other European countries, Greeks, limited to 308, and Italians, to 5,645.
The failure thus far of Congress to act on the bill had undoubtedly weakened the pro-Western Government of Premier Alcide De Gasperi in the recent Italian elections, in which his coalition Government earned only a spare majority in the lower house of the parliament. East Germans, despite their recent revolt against their Communist masters, were receiving little encouragement from the West, and might be more encouraged were they to believe that escape to the West might eventuate in U.S. citizenship instead of being placed in a dreary displaced persons camp in West Germany.
It indicates that immigrants generally were among the nation's greatest assets, creating the diversity and strength which had always characterized the nation as the melting-pot.
"Give the Cops a Hand" urges residents, especially during the July 4 weekend, to aid the police in catching reckless drivers in the community, as had the Western Union superintendent, spotting a teenager going around the left side of a traffic island to pass a car, reporting the matter to the police, who were able to catch the young violator and cite him.
It indicates that helping the police did not make the person an "informer" in any pejorative sense of that word. Rather it helped all drivers and traffic officials to make the roads safer.
"A Pat on the Fuselage" toasts the Sabre jets of the war as having enabled the top-gun pilots to accomplish their feats against the less maneuverable MIG-15 jets of the enemy, producing U.N. air superiority throughout the war in Korea. The kill ratio for the war thus far was 11 enemy planes for every allied plane lost in combat. The prior Tuesday, U.N. pilots had set a single day record for the war, shooting down 15 enemy planes, without a single lost U.N. plane.
A piece from the Atlanta Journal, titled "The Deadly Female", warns of it being the season for mosquitoes, one variety of which, the anopheles, spread malaria from one person to another. That variety was easy to identify as it stood on its head when it bit. The sedes variety transmitted yellow fever. The culex variety, small and black, inflicted a harsh sting. The salt marsh mosquito traveled far on the ocean winds and packed a real wallop with its bite.
The lifespan of the mosquito was short, only about one month, half of which was spent underwater as a wiggle-tail. Twelve to 15 generations were produced each summer, making control difficult. The male mosquito never bit and lived only a few days. The female lived as long as ten days and fed on blood, preferring that of men and other warm-blooded animals, but would also feed on cold-blooded reptiles as well.
The latest technique of disposing of mosquitoes was DDT, which kept them in abeyance for awhile, but against which the mosquitoes had developed immunity.
Around Atlanta, the mosquito bred in stagnant pools and backwaters, and clogged gutters or tin cans provided enough water for a new generation to breed. Mosquitoes, except for the salt marsh variety, remained close to home.
It urges readers, if they were bothered by mosquitoes during the summer, to check their gutters and backyard for possible breeding areas.
Drew Pearson indicates that Assistant Secretary of State Walter Robertson, the President's personal emissary in seeking to obtain cooperation in the truce from President Syngman Rhee of South Korea, had been General Marshall's envoy to the Chinese Communists when General Marshall was trying to effect rapprochement between the Communists and the Nationalists in China during the year between early 1946 and early 1947. The two diplomats who believed it was possible at that time to effect such a coalition, John Carter Vincent and General Marshall, had been hounded out of the Government by Senator McCarthy. Mr. Robertson had said at the time that it was easier to get along with the Communists than with the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek, and eventually became discouraged about any possibility of an agreement, so reporting the fact to General Marshall. In 1947, Mr. Robertson picked Mr. Vincent to go to Korea as a civilian administrator to put Korea in order, at a time when the State Department planned to spend half a billion dollars to protect Korea from Communist invasion and thereby demonstrate to the Russians that the U.S. would not abandon it. At the same time, however, the President initiated the Truman Doctrine of military aid to Greece and Turkey, overruling Mr. Vincent, saying that he could not afford to spare the money to support Korea also.
Mr. Pearson indicates that if Mr. Vincent's recommendation had been followed, Korea might never have been invaded by the North Koreans in June, 1950. Yet, Senator McCarthy accused him of being pro-Communist. And Mr. Robertson, who had proposed Mr. Vincent go to Korea in 1947, was now trying to settle the armistice with President Rhee.
Mr. Pearson notes that Mr. Robertson, a lifelong Democrat, had supported General Eisenhower during the fall, 1952 presidential campaign, and was thus rewarded with the post of Assistant Secretary of State in charge of Far Eastern affairs. His wife was the owner of the Universal Leaf Tobacco Co.
For the first time, the President was employing Federal patronage to keep certain Senators in line, such as Senator John Butler of Maryland, whom the White House recently had informed that his vote on the immigration measure to allow into the country 240,000 European refugees, over and above standard quotas, might determine whether he received patronage appointments in his home state, regarding U.S marshals, U.S. attorneys and Federal judges. The White House had used the same tactic on Senator Arthur Watkins of Utah when he had hesitated about introducing the immigration bill, having then been promised for his compliance the appointment of Tom Lyon as director of the Bureau of Mines—an appointment, as the column had indicated two days earlier, Senator Watkins then came to oppose because Mr. Lyons continued to receive a pension from the Anaconda Copper Co. and his unsympathetic attitude toward Federal mine safety regulations.
Vice-President Nixon had turned out to be an excellent source for journalists to find out what was going on inside the White House. (Maybe, he had a special pocket tape recorder, not available to the general public.)
A White House dinner had been held for Cardinal Spellman, former President Hoover and General MacArthur, to placate the General, as it was feared that he might sound off in support of his old friend, President Rhee, in his resistance to the truce.
Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire was often invited to dine at the White House, almost as much as "Assistant President" Sherman Adams, former Governor of New Hampshire, who might run against Senator Bridges in 1954.
Mr. Pearson corrects a previous report regarding his column about the Key West Navy base "smoker", or stag party, in which the showing of lewd movies and a stripper wrestling with sailors had been reported as part of an effort by the smoker to raise $70,000 in charity donations, stating that contrary to the witness accounts, the mayor of Key West indicated that he had not been present at either of the two smokers.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop remark on the President's tendency to be handled by his advisers to the extent of adulterating his stronger extemporaneous messages, such as on McCarthyism and book-burning, turning them to milquetoast.
In his Dartmouth commencement address the previous month, the President had told the graduating class that they should refrain from book-burning and instead try to read every book in the library. But then, after his advisers had talked to him, he stated at his press conference a few days later that he did not mean to insinuate that books advocating Communism should not be removed from Information Service library shelves abroad by the State Department. The Alsops relate of the background of the Dartmouth statement on book-burning, having been extemporized after a conversation transpired on the dais between former High Commissioner of West Germany John J. McCloy, Foreign Minister of Canada Lester Pearson, and a New York judge regarding the book burning, with Mr. McCloy remarking that 15 million Germans had dropped by the libraries of the "American House" in Germany the previous year to read their books, but had been writing to Mr. McCloy since the initiation of the book-burning and elimination policy, including many leaders of German thought, wondering whether America had changed and freedom of thought was no longer in fashion, even whether the country was taking the same road Germany had 20 years earlier. Foreign Minister Pearson assured that the book-burning had done America's prestige untold damage in many other countries besides Germany. The President, overhearing the conversation, asked what they were discussing, and after being informed, began denying that such was taking place, to which Mr. McCloy responded by assuring the President that it was. The President visibly became indignant, blanched, and when he took the podium for his commencement address, inserted spontaneously the comments about the book burning.
Similarly, the President, in private, not only detested the methods of Senator McCarthy, but did not like him personally. His handlers, however, had convinced him not to make open public statements against the Senator, for the sake of party unity. The President, in his Mount Rushmore speech of the prior month, had made an oblique remark regarding the Senator's tactics, warning against those who would "guard freedom with weapons from the arsenal of the tyrant." While more than one of the President's advisers claimed this was a reference to Senator McCarthy, the remark received little publicity as it did not openly specify anyone in particular.
The Alsops suggest that the difference between the "real Eisenhower and the public Eisenhower" was represented by those incidents, where the extemporaneous President was reeled in by the "political mice" around him who were "trying to nibble the President to death, or at least into meaninglessness".
Marquis Childs indicates that Senator Herman Welker of Idaho had come to view himself as a branch of the Republican Party unto himself, combined with a few conservative Democrats, considering the Eisenhower wing of the party to be wrongheaded and left wing, producing at least three factions within the party. He had been shocked to find Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois opposing him on his opposition to the President's proposed bill to admit an additional 240,000 immigrants above the regular quotas, about half of whom would be refugees from Communist lands. The bill had been tabled through the maneuvering of the former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada. Senator Arthur Watkins of Utah, sponsor of the President's bill, had moved to unfreeze the measure so that it would not die. Senator Dirksen, chairman of the Republican Senate committee, supported that motion, prompting Senator Welker to become enraged, saying that he would never again support the campaign committee, that the move was intended to re-elect Senators Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts, Homer Ferguson of Michigan and Robert Hendrickson of New Jersey in 1954, as each had urban populations within their constituencies where sensitivity to immigration was acute. Senator Hendrickson had challenged the statement, pointing out that he had sought to liberalize immigration quotas for years to make them less discriminatory.
But Senator Welker did not want to hear explanations and paid a glowing tribute to Senator McCarran, urging the Committee not to vote against the wishes of the Senator who had presided over it for years. When the vote was finally taken, however, Senator Welker was the only Republican voting with three Democrats, Senators McCarran, John Eastland of Mississippi, and Olin Johnston of South Carolina, prompting Senator Welker to remark later that it left him in a third Republican Party, all alone.
A letter writer suggests that those who were writing about the Bible in the public schools ought devote their Christian attitudes and ethics to obtaining a new hospital for black patients in the community.
A letter writer from Newton addresses the issue of Bible instruction in the public schools of Charlotte, saying that it was illegal, indicates that in any country in the world where the church had taken over the state and educational systems, there was ignorance, fear, poor health, and lack of progress of the people. He indicates that he would always defend those who wanted the Bible as a guide for their lives and conduct, but would also be the first to prevent it from use in public school systems, for the sake of preservation of the principle of separation of church and state. He thanks the 26 Baptist ministers of the city who had signed a resolution, urging the City and County School Boards to abandon the instruction program.
A letter from the president of the Charlotte Jaycees responds to a woman's letter of June 30, complaining that she had seen no pretty girls in the Miss Charlotte beauty pageant, sponsored by the Jaycees. He indicates that the pageant minimized the "ancient classic standards of height and other physical measurements in favor of a generally well-proportioned figure", plus, facial beauty, voice and diction, intellect, wholesomeness, disposition and general culture, special talents and personality. He indicates that it was obvious that the Miss America pageant had evolved from the "leg show" of the 1920's and 1930's to a much higher plane, that in the current year, $25,000 worth of scholarships would be awarded in the national pageant at Atlantic City to the finalists. A Hollywood screen test was no longer considered the acme of awards for the entrants. He agrees with the previous writer that there were many girls in the city and county who might have greater beauty than those who were contestants for the Miss Charlotte title, but he believes the winner of the title would be a wonderful representative of the city. He indicates that the previous writer and other interested persons and organizations should join in encouraging other eligible young women to enter the pageants in the future.
A letter from a female minister in Panama City indicates having read of the issue of teaching the Bible in the Charlotte schools, says that she had been a missionary in Panama for seven years, maintained by the Garr Auditorium of Charlotte, and that it had grieved her heart to find that there were many seeking the end of the Bible classes. She says that if people could see the thousands in Panama who had never owned a Bible or seen one, and the improvement to their lives from having been exposed to a book which they had been forbidden from reading, they might think differently about the matter. She wishes that the Baptist ministers who had signed the resolution to remove the program from the schools, would take a trip through Latin America and see what the absence of the word of God had done in those countries. She was aware of the argument of leaving Bible teaching to the home and church, but wonders what would occur to those who had no Bible in the home. She wonders whether a teacher in the Sunday School could be expected to provide a child with the instruction needed in only 20 minutes on Sunday morning.
Well, do what many churches did, and expand Sunday School to an hour. Moreover, the U.S. is not Latin America, where there is scant recognition of freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion, as there is in the U.S. To treat the Establishment Clause as mere window dressing is to ignore the fact that there are many religions represented in the country other than Protestant Christianity, which was that being taught in the Charlotte and Mecklenburg County schools at the time, in contravention of the Establishment Clause as interpreted by the Supreme Court. If you do not like that system, prefer State-sanctioned official prayer in the schools, move to Argentina...
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