The Charlotte News

Friday, July 30, 1954

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont had denounced Senator McCarthy by saying that he was scarcely able to "avoid being called a Fifth Amendment Senator", in the process of proposing his censure resolution to the Senate this date over conduct which "tends to bring the Senate into disrepute." He presented a bill of particulars accusing Senator McCarthy of contemptuous refusal to answer questions raised by a Senate Rules subcommittee in 1950 concerning Senator McCarthy's finances, saying that if he continued to refuse to answer, he would be in the same category as the "Fifth Amendment Communists", the label which Senator McCarthy had applied to those who pleaded the Fifth Amendment in the face of questions about whether they had ever been members of the party. The other items he listed as grounds for the resolution were that the Senate's honor and the nation's honor had been "compromised by the Senator's irresponsible staff", that the Senator had an "habitual contempt for people" which included the use of abusive language toward Brig. General Ralph Zwicker, a decorated war hero, which "no one with any human decency would have used". He said that the Army-McCarthy hearings, which had run from April through mid-June, might never have occurred had Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens not tried to appease Senator McCarthy, that there were three persons who could not be appeased, Hitler, the Kremlin and Senator McCarthy. He said that the loss of Senator McCarthy's efforts from hunting of Communists would be "no loss at all to the anti-Communist campaign", that his contributions had been "minor and comparatively unimportant". He believed that the Senate had to hold him responsible for the irresponsible conduct of former chief counsel to the Investigations subcommittee, Roy Cohn, and for that of the non-salaried consultant, G. David Schine, when they had taken a trip together to Europe on behalf of the subcommittee during the spring of the previous year to investigate the U.S. Information Service libraries and Communist influence among the publications contained therein, prior to the drafting of Mr. Schine the prior October. Senator Flanders said of them that "[t]his ineffable pair was frivolous and irresponsible beyond words to describe," that "[t]hey caused amazement [in Europe] that led to serious doubts of the seriousness, responsibility and intelligence of this Government as represented by emissaries of its upper legislative chamber."

Congress had completed action the previous night on the first complete overhaul of the tax laws in 75 years, and Republicans and Democrats claimed that their party would profit more politically from the changes. The President had designated the package the cornerstone of his 1954 legislative program. The bill had passed in the Senate by a vote of 61 to 26, the nays including 22 Democrats, Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, an independent, and three Republicans, Senators Henry Dworshak of Idaho, William Langer of North Dakota, and John Williams of Delaware. The bill provided for 1.3 billion dollars in various tax cuts for individuals and corporations during its first year of operation, with more in later years. It did not change the major tax rates except to maintain the 52 percent levy on corporate income, which had been reduced to 47 percent on April 1 and was extended retroactively. Republicans hailed it as capping a 7.5 billion dollar 1954 tax reduction program, the largest for any single year in history. But Democrats indicated that two big boons to the taxpayer had taken effect automatically under a 1951 law enacted by the 82nd Congress, controlled by the Democrats. Those two big reductions had taken effect on January 1, three billion dollars worth of cuts through a ten percent personal income tax reduction and two billion dollars worth through expiration of the corporate excess profits tax. On April 1, various excise tax cuts, totaling a billion dollars, had taken effect, fought against by the Treasury, but enthusiastically supported by Republican leaders in Congress.

In Washington, a spokesman for the RNC said this date that Ray Jennings, North Carolina Republican chairman, "got what he came here for", that he had obtained a good many jobs for North Carolina Republicans. The RNC spokesman said that there would be 1,433 jobs in the state for the agricultural census which would start soon from offices in five cities across the state.

In London, it was announced in Commons this date that Dr. Joseph Cort, 26, a Boston scientist and former Communist whose permit to live in Britain was being canceled, would go to Czechoslovakia, based on a letter he had written to a Labour M.P. He had taught physiology at Birmingham University and indicated in the letter that he and his wife would seek political asylum in Czechoslovakia. He was wanted in the U.S. for failure to report for military duty, and the British Home Secretary had refused three weeks earlier to extend his permit to remain in Britain. Some Britons who had made an effort to persuade the Government to grant him political asylum in Britain said that they did not know where he was, and some believed he had already departed.

In Richmond, Va., a 49-year old man from San Francisco was being tried before a Federal jury on a charge of deserting his 68-year old bride of one day the previous March 10 and taking $243,500 in money and about $60,000 worth of jewels belonging to her, leaving her in a Fredericksburg, Va., motel. The previous day, a cashier from Richmond, Calif., across the Bay from San Francisco, came forward to tell a similar story, indicating that she had a romantic fling with the man five years earlier following her husband's death, that he had promised her trips to Mexico and Hawaii, and had induced her to convert her husband's estate to cash, just as he had with the more recent bride. She said that at that point, he had taken his leave, along with $85,000 of her money. After her testimony, the man passed her in the hall outside the courtroom and smilingly told her that she should be ashamed of herself, at which point she responded with heated comments which reporters could not discern. Meanwhile, a San Francisco bartender had been jailed the previous night on a complaint from the FBI charging him with perjury in his testimony after he had told the court the previous day that FBI agents, who had questioned him about his relationship with the defendant, had threatened his family, after which an FBI agent from San Francisco testified that the claim was false. The agent said that the bartender had told another agent that he had seen a large sum of money in a suitcase in the defendant's hotel room in New York the previous March, but during his testimony, he had denied ever having told the agents of viewing the money, though he admitted having seen the suitcase. The defendant had contended to police in March that he wound up in New York with his wife's money and jewels in a suitcase after having transported them part of the way in the trunk of his cream-colored Cadillac with tangerine interior, after he had left the motel and his bride to buy new windshield wipers, that he believed he was then being followed by persons who wanted to steal the money and jewels, and so sought to shake them by driving to Paterson, N.J., where he caught a train to New York, wound up in a hotel room, where he slept 48 hours straight, awakened unable to remember where he had left his bride, until having his his memory jogged by reading in the newspaper that she had reported that he had absconded with the money and jewels, then turned himself in to police to try to set the record straight. The money remained unspent and in a safe deposit box. Nothing wrong with that story. He was protecting his wife's goods from thieves and simply forgot about her as a result of all of the stress occasioned by the chase to New York.

The North Carolina State Highway Patrol had set up roadblocks in the region of Orange, Durham and Alamance Counties this date after receiving a report that two men answering the description of a pair who had robbed a bank at Carrboro on Wednesday had been spotted in the area. The two reportedly had stopped to obtain gasoline at a service station in Efland, had acted suspiciously and displayed a large sum of money—perhaps thinking they could bribe the service station attendant to engage in forgery of their University undergraduate transcripts after they had flunked out, that they then might attend law school and finish the whole she-bang, undergraduate and law school, 205 required academic hours, miraculously in just five years, never before accomplished in the history of the University, then get rich as lying shysters in leopard-skin floppy hats, like good little Trumpies. Two men had entered the Carrboro branch of the Bank of Chapel Hill just before closing time on Wednesday, when the streets of the mill village were virtually deserted because on Wednesday afternoons, merchants closed. They had held two bank employees at gunpoint and taken more than $9,000 from a cash drawer and the bank vault, making their getaway without being observed by anyone other than the two bank employees. No description of the vehicle is provided. But if you see two men acting suspiciously, report it to the Highway Patrol immediately, even if they have on "Make America Great Agin" hats.

In Pittsburgh, a 25-year old woman had given birth to quadruplets early this date, but the only male infant had died, while the three remaining female infants were in fair condition. The births had been premature, and the male had been the second born, with each infant weighing probably less than two pounds each. The mother, in fair condition, also had an 18-month old child.

In Glasgow, Scotland, it was reported that the chief officer of a 7,000-ton steamer, which had gone aground in a gale a year earlier, had met the postmaster's daughter in a village on Scotland's west coast, and they were married the previous day with a wedding cake having a model ship on top.

Dick Young of The News tells of the proposed incorporation of Amity Town on Charlotte's eastern border, about which a Charlotte attorney and the first mayor of the former incorporated town of Myers Park had warned that, based on their experience, such a town would not last long. Myers Park had become a town in 1920. The man who had been its first mayor indicated that it was too big of a job and the expenses were too large to offset any services which might be rendered by the municipality. The town of Myers Park had been dissolved by an election called by an ordinance adopted by the town's governing body in 1924.

On the editorial page, "Suggestion: A Look Before a Leap" tells of a plan to form the new municipality of Amity in an eight square mile area on Charlotte's southern boundary to prevent Charlotte from gobbling up a slice of Mecklenburg County which was said to contain 10,000 people and a 20 million dollar property valuation.

It goes through many problems encountered by small towns, such as the absence of very many professional administrators and the problem of finding part-time officials beyond the reach of pettiness and personal profit, advises that those problems should not be taken lightly by the residents of the proposed community, suggests that they be viewed and reviewed before the following Tuesday meeting of the City Council, as once the step was taken, it might be too late for anything but "leisurely repentance".

Another problem of which they need to be wary are the probable land sharks in the area.

"U.S. Respects but Disagrees with Rhee" indicates that South Korean President Syngman Rhee was a great patriot, an admirable ally, and a man who had suffered great physical torture at the hands of his enemies and mental anguish at the hands of his friends. It suggests that before anyone dismissed as unrealistic or irrational his plea to Congress for an invasion of Communist China by South Korean and Nationalist Chinese troops, supported by U.S. air and sea forces, the Asian situation ought be evaluated from his point of view, rather than the American viewpoint. President Rhee saw the Communists solidifying their hold on China, now that they were freed from participation in the Korean War, and as further encroaching into Southeast Asia. He saw his country inevitably collapsing if the Communists were able to advance through Asia.

It suggests that if the situation were reversed and the U.S. had endured a bloody war, with Americans pushed toward the sea or to serfdom by a designing enemy occupying all surrounding territory, Americans would appeal to rich and powerful friends with at least as much fervor.

The American view, however, took into consideration U.S. commitments in other parts of the world, as well as at home, and the prospect that undertaking such a venture as President Rhee had proposed would inevitably involve the entire nation in a land war, unsupported by other nations and unsupported at home. The U.S. official analysis of South Korean and Chinese Nationalist strength was not nearly as optimistic as President Rhee had suggested, nor was the claimed weakness of Communist China as he had characterized it.

It finds the U.S. view sounder and that it was reassuring that President Rhee's proposal to Congress had received practically no endorsement in the country, even from those who previously had advocated recklessly gigantic military ventures in Asia. Disagreement was considerable, as was the deserved admiration and respect for President Rhee.

"Coincidence? Dept." provides an item date-lined from Washington on July 29 which indicated that Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks had disclosed that the Administration was giving a deliberate nudge to the economy by speeding up planned Federal spending, the piece adding that after all, it was only a little more than three months until the midterm elections.

"Men Must Retaliate, Massively" finds that the Roaring Twenties were going again, as Christian Dior, who had probably cost American males more than had been spent on the Marshall Plan, the Indo-China War, and a year of advertising of filter-tip cigarettes and anti-knock gasoline, had laid down the law again in his fashion show during the week in Paris. The mannequins were wearing their waists on their hips, flat-chested, just as in the pictures of three decades earlier in the family album.

It was useless for men to complain, as M. Dior had declared the fashion statement. If women decided to return to the flapper days and wear outrageous garb along with the new type of hats, of which it presents a picture, looking a bit standard mid-Sixtyish, massive retaliation had to be meted out, by American men donning Bermuda walking shorts.

"About Those Visitors from Outer Space" comments on the piece on the page by John Borchert of The News regarding flying saucers, commenting that he had never seen one but had read a lot about them, that according to his saucer sources, those who scoffed at the stories of sightings could be classified with those who gave the bird to Christopher Columbus. It suggests that it made the editors "sort of reactionary", and that their attitude was best summed up by Pogo's friend, Porky, on the prior Wednesday's comic page, whose comments are reprinted below the flying saucer article with two of the cartoon's panels. It concludes that if "those fools from outer space are looking for trouble, brother, they came to the right planet."

Drew Pearson indicates that only two members of the current Senate had been members in 1929 when the last vote of censure against a Senator had occurred, those two being Senators Walter George of Georgia and Carl Hayden of Arizona. Both had voted to censure Senator Hiram Bingham of Connecticut for bringing "dishonor and disrepute on the Senate", for having placed a representative of the Connecticut Manufacturers Association on his staff and allowing him to sit in a meeting of the Senate Finance Committee. The vote had wound up 54 to 22 in favor of the censure, on the basis that Senator Bingham's action was "contrary to good morals and Senatorial ethics and tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute, and such conduct is hereby condemned."

Mr. Pearson remarks that the standards of the Senate appeared considerably higher in those earlier times than during the current debate over Senator McCarthy. The year before, in 1928, the Senate had voted not to seat Senators-elect William Vare of Pennsylvania and Frank Smith of Illinois for spending too much money in their election campaigns.

Mr. Pearson notes that 20 years after the Bingham censure, President Truman had appointed him as chairman of the top loyalty board, and the former Senator had acquitted himself well.

Senator Knowland's buttonholing of Republican Senators to try to stifle the resolution of Senator Ralph Flanders regarding Senator McCarthy's censure had placed Senator Knowland on a hot spot, as many Senators remembered how he had announced that the Senate should abandon its present system under which senior members of committees became chairmen, that he favored choosing them in accord with the policies of the majority party. Mr. Pearson indicates that no one had bucked the majority party more than Senator McCarthy, pillorying Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens, criticizing Secretary of State Dulles, and setting himself above the President. Nevertheless, Senator Knowland had reversed his position of February 24 and did not wish the Senate even to vote on the censure resolution being proposed by a fellow Republican.

Marquis Childs, in Bonn, addresses the recent defection to East Germany of Dr. Otto John, the chief of the West German anti-subversive unit, their equivalent of the FBI, causing great shock among West Germans. Yet, unlike J. Edgar Hoover, Dr. John had not enjoyed any great popular reputation. He had a checkered career which led many high public officials, including Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, to doubt him.

He had been a figure manipulated by forces beyond his control. When he been made head of the Office of the Protection of the Constitution in the Ministry of Interior four years earlier, he had far from unanimous support in the position, considered by many Germans to owe his primary allegiance to the British, resulting from his escape from liability for the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler by virtue of his escape to London, where he worked as an evaluator of intelligence and propaganda. Many believed he was doing the bidding of British intelligence insofar as high policy. He was said to have furnished the material for a series of articles for the London Daily Express on how Nazism was having a rebirth in Germany.

Dr. John had been a guest in America with all expenses paid the prior May, touring the principal cities and staying in Washington for ten days, meeting with Mr. Hoover, CIA director Allen Dulles, and top military intelligence officers at the Pentagon, though reportedly ceremonial visits in the main, without having obtained any secrets. German newspapers, however, had carried sensational stories to the contrary, indicating that dozens or even hundreds of agents in East Germany had been seized. One of the principal Adenauer Government officials told Mr. Childs that a minimum of six and probably twelve West German informants in East Germany would lose their lives because of the defection.

But, he suggests, the political and moral consequences of the defection would likely outweigh any compromise of secret information, as the defection of one dedicated anti-Nazi would likely weaken the position of those with like tendencies, refusing to compromise with Germany's Nazi past, causing others to distrust such people and side with the nationalists. That would most likely be the lasting damage, a blow to the faith of the West in itself. Thus the resultant doubt caused by the case extended far beyond one instance, as Dr. John's betrayal was "first a betrayal of self and in this personal tragedy was the seed of the larger treason."

John Borchert of The News, as indicated in the above editorial, discusses flying saucers, first recapping some of the sightings since June, 1947, when a pilot saw nine gleaming discs in the vicinity of Mount Rainier, Wash., indicating that Desmond Leslie, in his recently published book, Flying Saucers Have Landed, posited that the saucers had been around for thousands of years and that the present civilization may have been the third or fourth to inhabit the planet, with one of them having been able to travel to the stars before destroying itself in the same manner which the current civilization feared would occur.

Astronomers had reported for years seeing strange lights in some of the craters of the moon, with some theorizing that space travelers were using the moon as a way station in their interplanetary travels. Mr. Borchert suggests that by the year 2000, earthlings should know the truth of that observation, as the Government rocket scientists promised a landing by then.

Many skeptics claimed that there was no other life in the universe except on earth. But one New England astronomer had calculated that based on probabilities, there should be life on about 100 million planets.

Some believed that the sun caused earth to be too warm to support life forms from other universes with stronger suns.

He concludes that the disbelievers would have their way over the believers until a ship landed.

That happened years ago. You just missed it. Every weird occurrence in the news is from them space aliens messing with us. Take Fox News, for instance... Most of the weirdest stuff done started in 2000, anyway, just right after the moon landing.

A letter writer from Myrtle Beach, S.C., indicates that on the way into Charlotte via airplane the previous day, it had been necessary to transfer at Fayetteville, and after the plane was some 15 minutes late in taking off, it had been announced that the airline had oversold the flight by one ticket and wondered whether someone would consent to take a later plane. Receiving no response, a uniformed attendant reviewed the situation and announced that unless someone surrendered their seat, the whole flight would have to be canceled, shortly after which, a young lady had quietly left her seat and soon the flight was underway. After the writer had transacted his business in Charlotte and returned on the round-trip, requiring that he again transfer in Fayetteville, he was surprised to see the same young lady sitting in the terminal lobby there. He ascertained her name and that she was from Charlotte, indicates that she was due commendation for her thoughtfulness and consideration of others. He was informed that she would proceed homeward on a late afternoon flight.

Unfortunately, he does not identify the shoddy airline.

A letter writer indicates that in a recent issue of the newspaper, an article had appeared regarding a "leading Negro-doctor-citizen" having presented a complaint to the City Council regarding eating facilities provided for blacks at the airport, threatening court action if the Council did not take immediate steps to remedy the situation. He says that he had been a resident of Charlotte for more than 50 years and had never heard of a black person dying because of public eating conditions, but did know that blacks had died and were still dying in Charlotte because of lack of adequate medical care and modern hospitalization. His suggestion is less agitation about eating facilities and more talk and action about saving the lives of blacks in Charlotte by providing adequate medical care and modern hospitalization.

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