The Charlotte News
Thursday, August 20, 1953
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.S. confirmed this date the statement earlier made by Russian Premier Georgi Malenkov that Russia had the hydrogen bomb, stating that on August 12, it had conducted an atomic test which involved both nuclear fission, the traditional atomic bomb, and a thermonuclear reaction, the hydrogen bomb. The announcement was made by Lewis Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, who also indicated officially for the first time that the U.S. had detonated or tested thermonuclear devices in the Pacific in both 1951 and 1952. Mr. Strauss indicated that U.S. scientists had detected a Soviet blast eight days earlier and then subsequently determined that both conventional and hydrogen-type reactions were involved, consistent with the hydrogen bomb which used a fission-bomb trigger. Pressure had been mounting on the new Administration to confirm what had already been generally reported, that there had been a test of an hydrogen device on Eniwetok the prior November 1.
Pravda announced that the Soviet possession of the hydrogen bomb offered no cause for alarm among peoples of other countries, and called for international acceptance of a Russian disarmament plan which would include a ban on atomic weapons and a one-third reduction in conventional arms by the major powers, a plan which the U.S. and other Western nations had found objectionable for not offering sufficient means of international inspection to ensure adherence to such a treaty.
Senator Charles Potter of Michigan said in a written statement, read by Senator Joseph McCarthy, that Russia's progress toward a hydrogen bomb might have been accelerated by espionage conducted in the U.S. through the Government Printing Office, being investigated by Senator McCarthy's Investigations subcommittee, of which Senator Potter was a member. He said that disclosures to the subcommittee demonstrated "lax and inept" security measures at the GPO printing plant. Senator Potter was out of town and so the statement had to be read in his stead by Senator McCarthy.
The Investigations subcommittee released this date testimony which had been taken earlier in executive session from Cleta Guess, formerly an employee of the GPO, presently a storekeeper in New Orleans, who had testified that Edward Rothschild, who had taken the Fifth Amendment earlier in the week against disclosure of whether he had ever taken secrets in the course of his employment as a bookbinder at the GPO, as well as to the question of whether he had ever been a Communist, had taken a code book from the GPO. Another witness, Jack Zucker of Philadelphia, had refused to tell the subcommittee, after being called at the request of Mr. Rothschild and his wife, whether he had ever been a Communist or whether, specifically, he had presided at a hearing before a Communist group, trying Mr. Rothschild on a charge of "white chauvinism" toward blacks, or whether he even knew Mr. Rothschild.
In Panmunjom, the prisoner of war exchange continued this date, with 60 Americans, the most released in one day thus far, 90 British and 300 Koreans freed. Another 150 Americans were scheduled for release the following day. Thus far, the Communists had released 1,315 Americans, less than half of the 3,313 they had said would be released. The total number of allied troops freed had been 6,533, just over half of the 12,763 promised by the Communists. The U.N. Command released no Communist prisoners this date because of a typhoon which had disrupted allied shipping from the Koje Island prison camps off southern Korea.
Tehran radio in Iran reported this date that Premier Mohammed Mossadegh had been captured by the forces of new Premier Fazoliah Zahedi, who had staged a successful coup the previous day. The Shah, who had fled Iran the prior Sunday after an initial unsuccessful coup attempt by Maj. General Zahedi, was invited by the new Premier to return to Iran, and it was reported that the Shah was preparing to leave Rome this night for Tehran. The former Foreign Minister, Hossein Fatemi, who had been reported torn to pieces by mob violence in which 300 persons had died, had still not been located. In addition to the arrest of the former Premier, who had been given 24 hours to surrender by Premier Zahedi, three of his lieutenants were also arrested.
In the Arizona desert near Picacho, a B-50 bomber on a training mission exploded early this date, with probably 11 of the 12-man crew having parachuted to safety, there having been conflicting reports that at least one and possibly two of the men had been killed. The survivors had relatively minor injuries.
Former North Carolina Governor and Senator Cameron Morrison, 83, died this date of a heart attack suffered a few hours earlier while in Québec, Canada. He had been elected Governor in 1920, defeating O. Max Gardner in the initial Democratic primary by 87 votes, and then by 9,000 votes in a runoff primary between the two. Governor Morrison was later appointed by Governor Gardner, elected in 1928, to the Senate seat vacated by the death of Senator Furnifold Simmons in 1930, before being defeated in the 1932 Democratic primary by Robert Rice Reynolds. Following that defeat, he retired to his rural homestead near Charlotte, but maintained an active interest in North Carolina Democratic politics, being elected to Congress in 1942 for one term. He had contributed liberally to the activities of the Covenant Presbyterian Church of Charlotte and had supported Queens College, a Presbyterian institution. He had been the son of a poor farmer and the grandson of a distinguished lawyer and newspaper editor, a Republican by heritage. He had, however, abandoned the Republican Party after attending a Republican convention in Raleigh in 1892. Too poor to attend college, he read law in the office of a judge in Greensboro and was licensed to practice in February, 1892. He became a leader of the Red Shirts, inciting a successful revolt against the Republican regime which had come to power in the state during Reconstruction following the Civil War. He had first held public office as Mayor of Rockingham in 1893 and thereafter was repeatedly urged to run for governor. He managed during his single term as Governor—as North Carolina Governors could not succeed themselves until 1976—, to become known for obtaining 65 million dollars from the General Assembly to produce hard-surfaced roads, his most lasting achievement. He had also gotten the Legislature to abolish ad valorem taxes, raise the income tax, limit estate taxes to 10 percent, except for education, and abolish the poll tax as a prerequisite for voting. The Assembly during his term earmarked 20 million dollars for health and education, including five million dollars for a revolving fund for secondary schools. He was also elected to the DNC in 1928. His last major speech had occurred during the Democratic convention the previous summer in Chicago, heading the North Carolina delegation.
Associated Press science reporter Alton L. Blakeslee provides an analysis of Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey's new book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. A synopsis is provided below. There is really no telling.
The Air Line Pilots Association in Washington said that an unnamed member had reported that a dissatisfied Japanese passenger, after having his luggage lost, had left a note, reading: "Mr. Baggageman, United States of Lax. Gentlemen, Dear Sir: I dam seldom where suitcase are. She no fly. You no more fit to baggage master than for crying out loud. That all I hope. What the matter you?" A time or two, had we the presence of mind to do so, we would have issued similar notes to the baggage masters, notably of Delta and TWA, who usually dam seldom where suitcase are in El Segundo or Tampa.
editorial page, "Iranian Revolt Could Help the West" suggests that Iran may pose a great problem in the future, as it sat next to Russia and had been a source of great concern for the West since the end of World War II, as a potential spark there could set off a third world war.
The recent overthrow of Premier Mohammed Mossadegh by the royalists who supported the Shah remained murky, as the Premier had been forced to flee for his life and the call had gone out from the royalists for the Shah to return from his brief exile in Rome. A day earlier, the U.S. Ambassador to Iran, Loy Henderson, had talked with Premier Mossadegh and reported to Washington that he was in firm control of the situation.
It indicates that by the time the editorial was printed, there might have been other developments, but at the current stage, there appeared to be a good deal of satisfaction for the West in the rebellion against the dictator Mossadegh, showing that his grip on Iran was less firm and that the Shah's supporters were stronger and more spirited than had been believed, setting the stage for a reorientation of Iranian policy in favor of the West, after two years in which Premier Mossadegh had built a wall of resentment against the West in favor of Iranian nationalism, including nationalization of the British oil interests. The unknown factor, it continues, was the Communist Party in Iran, the Tudeh Party, which had supported Premier Mossadegh's efforts to dominate the Shah, and the fanatical Moslem Brotherhood. It was the most effective political force in the nation and it might emerge with full control.
If the Shah regained his throne and was able to govern effectively, the West might hope for a settlement with regard to the Iranian oil dispute with Britain, a program of land reform and social welfare for the peasants, a gradual improvement in Iran's economic situation and firmer resistance to the Communists. At worst, the rebellion might push the Communists to power and turn Iran into a Russian satellite.
It concludes that the rebellion in Iran might make or break the cause of peace in the Middle East, "with untold consequences to all of us."
"N.C. Lags as Region Moves Ahead" indicates that in 1952, for the first time, South Carolina, because of the new atomic plant at Aiken, had overtaken North Carolina in the category of per capita income, moving up to 44th position, with $1,090, while North Carolina, with $1,035 in per capita income, dropped to 45th place. It provides several other such facts, as indicated by the Department of Commerce in its August Survey of Current Business.
North Carolina was exceeded only by Texas in the total number of farms and in the number of persons gainfully employed in agriculture, but had suffered a net loss in farm cash income of 18 million dollars in 1952, because of a loss of some 70 million dollars in cash income from tobacco, not offset by gains from other crops. In a normal tobacco year, the average per capita income would have been much higher. The survey also did not measure the food and produce which farm workers grew and consumed on the farms, providing for a higher standard of living than merely their cash income suggested.
It indicates that no amount of rationalizing, however, could change the fact that the state had not sought vigorously enough to balance its agriculture with high-wage industries, and that within the agricultural economy, too little emphasis had been given to livestock and dairy products.
"Kinsey Report" briefly
says: "As we get it, the Kinsey report on Page 1 today proves
that sex has been here for a long time, that it is here to stay
"We have suspected as much all along."
"A Thought on a Rainy Afternoon" tells of a young reporter who covered Paris by night for the New York Herald Tribune having asked Ernest Hemingway in a Paris bar, after the author's return from Pamplona and the bullfights, what he would do next, and Mr. Hemingway having replied that he was going to Africa for a vacation. He had written three new books but had not yet named any of them, and would not publish them for awhile, until he had time to go back over them.
It indicates that the young reporter went to his typewriter in the city room and produced a column for the next day, while the editorial writer who read the column sat down at his old typewriter and produced another editorial for the next day, thinking how nice it would be if he could put his editorials away for a year and then revise them before publication, especially if the intervening year could be spent on vacation.
A piece from the New York Times, titled "The Better Raincoat", wonders why raincoats did not protect the lower limbs, were made so that water poured from the shoulders into the cuffs and soaked the shoes and socks. After going through the dry cleaners, raincoats lost their ability to repel water, while neither the rubber, plastic nor cloth versions shielded the wearer from the rain. It asks questions otherwise about the ineffectiveness of rain wear and advises anyone who wanted a key to success to concentrate on development of a better raincoat.
Drew Pearson indicates that a confidential report on cancer had been sent to the desk of Senator John W. Bricker of Ohio, criticizing the AMA for attempting to suppress a new drug which helped to relieve the disease. The report had been prepared under the direction of the late Senator Charles Tobey of New Hampshire, who had been chairman of the Interstate & Foreign Commerce Committee, now chaired by Senator Bricker. The report charged that the AMA had been hasty, arbitrary, and dishonest in its opposition to the cancer drug, krebiozen, that the treasurer of the AMA had sought to obtain the distribution rights for the drug for two Chicago businessmen, and after failing to do so, had embarked on a course to ruin the drug, that public and private funds had been thrown around liberally to close down clinics, hospitals and scientific research laboratories which did not conform to the viewpoint of medical associations. The report found that the AMA's treasurer, the AMA and others might be involved in an interstate conspiracy of "alarming proportions". Senator Tobey had hired an agent to undertake a secret probe of the AMA's blocking of the cancer research, maintained in secret to avoid opposition from the powerful medical lobby, the number two lobbying organization in Washington. But after Senator Bricker became chairman of the Committee, he stopped the investigation and refused to meet with the investigator, who was told to cease in his efforts and not speak with the press. The investigator, however, wrote a sharp letter to Senator Bricker, saying that he was surprised and shocked at the runaround, sending copies of the letter to every member of the Committee.
Mr. Pearson indicates that the irony was that cancer had killed Senator Taft, a partner in the Senate of Senator Bricker. While Senator Tobey had been on his deathbed, he sent the Committee investigator to New York with some of the krebiozen for Senator Taft, but the latter's doctors refused to use it because of opposition to it by the AMA.
The report had not claimed that the
drug was a cure for cancer. Dr. Andrew Ivy of the University of
Illinois Medical School, who was highly respected in the field of
medical research for several discoveries, found that the drug
Dr. Ivy had concluded his report with the advice that Senators Brien McMahon, Kenneth Wherry, Arthur Vandenburg and Robert Taft had all been killed by cancer, and that there was a compelling moral obligation to the memory of those public servants and to the untold millions of cancer sufferers throughout the world to carry on the investigation of potentially beneficial drugs.
Mr. Pearson notes that Senator Bricker's office had stated that the Senator had not intended to do anything about the cancer report and had not read it. He adds that many doctors disagreed with the AMA and believed it had gone too far in engaging in politics.
We note that medical science has become far more sophisticated in the intervening 67 years since 1953 in cancer treatment and treatments of other troubling diseases. Take the current coronavirus pandemic, for example, led by the White House miracle-worker, who came up with his genius nostrum for the disease a few months back: Just inject the bleach and who knows? What have you to lose?
Stewart Alsop, in Paris, suggests that a great crisis, capable of shaking the Western alliance to its roots, appeared to be shaping up in Paris, with a clash between France and the U.S. regarding the united European army and the war in Indo-China, the latter probably being the more dangerous of the two, despite the fact that the French Government had communicated to the U.S. its most hopeful program yet for bringing that war to a successful conclusion. The plan had been jointly conceived by the new Prime Minister, Joseph Laniel, and General Henri Navarre, the commander in Indo-China. It consisted of the French promising to send nine fresh battalions from metropolitan France to strengthen the existing French forces. General Navarre had originally sought 12 battalions, but the Prime Minister determined that the country could only spare nine, which the General accepted as a minimum number. The new Government was also ready to offer genuine independence to the three associated states of Indo-China, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. In addition, the French promised to make a serious effort in building an independent Vietnamese nationalist, anti-Communist army in Indo-China, modeled on the South Korean Army in the Korean War. The theory was that such a strengthened French Army, plus the native army, would be able to defeat the Communist guerrillas within two years or less, provided that the Chinese Communists did not directly intervene, permitting thereafter the evacuation of the French Army. Premier Laniel had made the proposal to U.S. Ambassador to France Douglas Dillon, who then relayed it to Secretary of State Dulles and the President.
Under the plan, the U.S. would cover the cost of creating the nationalist Vietnamese army, probably between 300 and 400 million dollars, over and above the 400 million dollars recently appropriated by Congress for aid to the French in Indo-China, the latter amount considered only sufficient to maintain the status quo. Mr. Alsop indicates that the plan, while being the first serious proposal for ending that war, was a last chance, and not a very good one.
Prime Minister Laniel had to be given credit for proposing the plan, as sending additional troops to Indo-China would be very unpopular in France, and colonial and economic interests of the French had successfully opposed for years a grant of genuine independence to the three constituent states. The war was very unpopular and the tide of French public opinion wanted the country's role to cease, including members of the new Cabinet, provided a face-saving formula could be found, or relegating the Indo-Chinese problem to the U.S. if such a formula could not be found.
The President and other American leaders were convinced, with good reason, that Indo-China could not be allowed to fall to the Communists, but the U.S. Government was also determined not to send American troops there.
"In such circumstances, one does not have to be a Cassandra to foresee the possibility of a head-on clash between France and the United States."
Marquis Childs assesses the impact of the Korean War on the U.N., finds that while it had been a successful effort in obtaining the truce while maintaining the territorial integrity of South Korea, it had come at such a high cost that it had put a great strain on the institution. The U.S. had supplied 90 percent of the material and most of the non-Korean manpower for the war, creating deep resentments within the country, something which the other delegates to the present General Assembly meeting did not fully comprehend. They understood that the U.S. had borne the greatest burden in the war among the other U.N. allies, but also believed that with the fighting ended, the matter of the peace became a thing for the U.N. to consider as a whole, as the U.N. had originally passed the resolution against the Communist aggression in June, 1950. That view of the matter was firmly rejected by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., who insisted on maintaining the reality that the war had largely been fought by the U.S. and South Korea, so that the only peace acceptable was that determined by the combatant nations. The position had not made Ambassador Lodge popular with the other delegates, as they suspected him of promoting his own future U.S. political career. His view, however, was likely to prevail, partly because of the weight of U.S. military and economic power in the world and in another part because of the fear of the Soviets.
The ineptitude of principal Soviet delegate Andrei Vishinsky was actually helping to solidify Western opinion, such as in the case of his resolution regarding the composition of the upcoming political conference.
Some influential Americans wanted the peace conference held in the neutral zone in Korea, so that the delegates would not waste time in nightclubs and luxury hotels. It illustrated the American desire to get down to business quickly, establish the peace and leave extraneous issues out of the conference.
It was likely that unification of Korea would be impossible to achieve at the conference, as the U.S. would insist on unification being achieved only through the South Korean Government. The idea of membership in the U.N. for Communist China could not be reasonably urged by U.S. allies, since Communist China was the principal party on the Communist side. Thus, the U.S. view, that Communist China must be kept out of the U.N., would prevail.
Mr. Childs concludes that if the U.S. victory were achieved in this way, it would be at great cost to the prestige and influence of the U.N.
Robert C. Ruark, in Rome, finds it untrue that one could live abroad on the cheap, that one had to have plenty of loot, as prices had risen in response to American tourism. Mr. Ruark finds that it was cheaper to live in New York than in Paris and also to obtain more for the same money. Rome was cheaper than Paris, but not by much. Switzerland and Germany, too, had high prices, as did London and Madrid, though Spain was the cheapest of the European countries. He says that Paris was the greatest swindle of all, that the hotels sometimes placed a 30 percent tax on guests, before the 15 percent service charge for having dinner downstairs, plus the tip. And there was no soap in the bathrooms.
He indicates that the tourists had done it to themselves by insisting on staying in the large cities and in the best hotels, while dining in the better restaurants. But a good time could still be had for a little money by going to the non-Americanized restaurants, the quiet town and staying in the second-best hotel. He was staying in a little town in Spain where a liter of good local wine cost a dime and a good meal, 50 cents. But if one went to a nearby hotel and ordered Scotch for all, the tab would be on par with the Ritz in Paris or the Excelsior in Rome.
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