The Charlotte News
Wednesday, September 1, 1954
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the seven-Senator Investigations subcommittee, which had heard the evidence presented in the Army-McCarthy dispute between April 22 and June 17, over the course of 36 days of hearings, had released its report the previous night, splitting on whether Senator McCarthy had been at fault, while all members criticized former subcommittee counsel Roy Cohn, Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens and Army counsel John G. Adams. The four Republicans of the subcommittee, Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota, acting chairman, and Senators Henry Dworshak of Idaho, Charles Potter of Michigan, and Everett Dirksen of Illinois, absolved Senator McCarthy of improper conduct, but said that he had been lax in supervision of his staff, while the three Democrats, Senators John McClellan of Arkansas, Henry Jackson of Washington, and Stuart Symington of Missouri, said that both Senator McCarthy and Mr. Cohn had been guilty of "inexcusable actions". The majority concluded that Senator McCarthy had not sought personally to bring improper pressure on the Army to accord special privileges for Private G. David Schine, a former subcommittee unpaid aide who had been drafted into the Army the previous November, but also indicated that the Senator should have exercised "more vigorous discipline" over his staff. The three Democratic Senators said that Senator McCarthy deserved "severe criticism" and that he had "fully acquiesced in and condoned" the conduct of Mr. Cohn. Both the majority and minority believed that Secretary Stevens had sought to appease Senator McCarthy and Mr. Cohn, failing to stand up for the Army's rights, and likewise criticized Mr. Adams. Mr. Cohn responded that apparently anyone who sought to expose Communism had "to contend not only with the smears of Communists but with partisan politics as well." Mr. Cohn, the story points out, was a Democrat.
To recap briefly, the dispute had gravitated around whether, as the Army claimed in a report prepared by Mr. Adams and sent to the subcommittee the prior March, Senator McCarthy and Mr. Cohn, and certain other members of the subcommittee staff, primarily Mr. Cohn, had sought to put pressure on the Army to acquire special privileges for Private Schine, starting with trying to obtain for him an officer's commission in July, 1953, prior to his being drafted, and thereafter to obtain for him relief from kitchen duty and other undesirable typical weekend chores for privates, on the pretext of enabling him to complete valuable work for the subcommittee, and whether Mr. Cohn, to obtain those privileges for his friend, had threatened otherwise an increase in intensity of the subcommittee's investigation of subversives in the Army, especially at the sensitive radar facility at Fort Monmouth, N.J. Secretary Stevens had also objected to the treatment of Army officers before the subcommittee by Senator McCarthy, especially Brig. General Ralph Zwicker, commanding officer at Camp Kilmer, N.J., regarding his role in the promotion from captain to major and then the honorable discharge of an Army Reserve dentist whom Senator McCarthy claimed was aligned with Communists and who had refused to testify before the subcommittee regarding his past subversive associations, a so-called "Fifth Amendment Communist"—presumably trying to obtain Army radar secrets during tooth extractions and filling of cavities when it was safe, perhaps implanting secret micro-tele-radio transmitters linked directly to the Roosky Embassy, but we must not so digress, as it is not safe. In protest of the rough treatment of the officers, Secretary Stevens issued an order for officers not to respond further to subcommittee subpoenas or requests to appear, receiving the support of the President in that decision, but then came to terms with Senator McCarthy on the matter after the Senator provided assurances that there would be no further disrespectful treatment of officers, while also denying publicly that there ever had been inappropriate treatment of officers, leading to press criticism that Secretary Stevens had unduly compromised with Senator McCarthy at the time in February. Senator McCarthy, upon receipt of the Army report, then countercharged that the Army was seeking to "blackmail" him and the subcommittee staff into relenting in its investigation of subversion in the Army. The hearings had then proceeded, televised daily across the nation, to seek to get at the truth behind the charges and counter-charges. Senator McCarthy, normally chairman of the subcommittee, had stepped aside in favor of Senator Mundt during the course of the hearings, and his place on the panel was temporarily taken by Senator Dworshak. Ray Jenkins of Tennessee was the majority special counsel who handled much of the questioning of witnesses on behalf of the subcommittee and future Attorney General and Senator Robert F. Kennedy was minority counsel for the Democratic Senators, though not questioning any witnesses. Joseph Welch of Boston was the Army special counsel for the hearings, and future counsel to President Nixon during Watergate, James St. Clair, was Army assistant special counsel. Mr. Cohn acted as counsel to Senator McCarthy.
As another peculiar historical coincidence involving the proceedings, as noted several times, Private Schine's father owned several large hotels, among them the Ambassador in Los Angeles, which Mr. Schine had managed for a time, the Ambassador still being under the Schine family ownership when, on June 5, 1968, Senator Robert Kennedy was mortally wounded in a kitchen pantry in that hotel, shortly after greeting supporters in the ballroom following his victory in the California Democratic presidential primary. The shooting occurred 20 years to the day after Mr. Kennedy, then 22, had published in the Boston Post the first of two reports regarding his Easter, 1948 trip to Palestine. The second was published the following day.
Before the six-Senator special
committee investigating the censure resolution against Senator
McCarthy, sponsored by Senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont, Senator
McCarthy's attorney, Edward Bennett Williams
Strong pressures were reported developing in the U.S. Government to make West Germany and Spain, rather than France, the mainstays of defense strategy for Western Europe, with informed U.S. officials indicating that a major debate was brewing regarding France's continued role in U.S. political-military policy, with more military aid dollars and supplies shifted from France to its two neighbors. Secretary of State Dulles had announced the previous day that the rejection of ratification of the European Defense Community treaty by the French National Assembly would cause a reappraisal of U.S. foreign policy, a result which he had promised previously would follow such action. He had demanded that united action transpire between the U.S., Britain and France to assure sovereignty to West Germany forthwith. He called for an emergency meeting of NATO to consider the situation, to determine whether NATO should undertake rearming of West Germany, which would require getting around French EDC opponents, whose primary objection to EDC was the rearming of West Germany. There was, however, no apparent intent to write off France as a partner in Western European defenses against Communism.
From Boston, it was reported that the Northeastern states were surveying the damage left from Hurricane Carol, as the death count from the hurricane had mounted to 49, with unofficial estimates of property damage reaching between 300 and 500 million dollars, after New England had been the hardest hit region before the hurricane dwindled as it went into Canada the previous day. Forty-two of the deaths had occurred in New England, with 16 of them unidentified or lacking official confirmation. Rhode Island had suffered 17 deaths and Massachusetts, 15. Martial law was declared in Rhode Island to prevent looting, and National Guardsmen patrolled the streets of at least a half-dozen Massachusetts communities for the same purpose. The coastal areas of Rhode Island and Massachusetts received the brunt of the hurricane, and Cape Cod had been littered with splintered cottages after a 20-foot tidal wave had destroyed an estimated 1,000 cottages. Some 500 to 600 cottages had been affected by the water in the Buzzards Bay region. Damage in Newport, R.I., was estimated in the millions and the famed Newport Casino had been wrecked, one of many New England landmarks destroyed. In Boston, the steeple of the Old North Church, from which the lanterns had been hung as signal for Paul Revere's midnight ride, had crashed to the ground, as shown leaning in a photograph on the page. Elms on Boston Common were also blown down. Heavy damage to the Massachusetts and Maine apple crops was sustained, just as the crops were ready to be picked. Half of the Massachusetts peach crop was damaged and the tomato crop suffered heavy losses, with crop damage in Massachusetts estimated at 15 million dollars. Widespread loss of electrical and telephone service in the region continued. It was believed that the damage might be greater than that of the "Long Island Express" hurricane of September, 1938.
Meanwhile, the Miami Weather Bureau reported that a new hurricane, Dolly, was forming this date in the Atlantic, about 725 miles east of Jacksonville, Fla.
At Flat Rock, N.C., Senator Burnet Maybank of South Carolina died at his summer home early this date of a heart attack. Members of his household said that he had been feeling fine the previous day and that death had come during his sleep just after midnight. His death reduced the number of Democrats in the Senate to 46, compared to 48 Republicans and independent Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon. There was no doubt that a Democrat would be named as his successor, possibly by Governor James Byrnes prior to the November election. Senator Maybank had first been elected to the Senate to succeed Mr. Byrnes when the latter had resigned from the Senate in 1941 to accept appointment by FDR to the Supreme Court. Senator Maybank had been re-elected in 1942 and again in 1948, and had been assured re-election in 1954 after having run unopposed in the Democratic primary. He had served as Governor of South Carolina between 1939 and 1941 before going to the Senate. In private life, the native of Charleston was a cotton exporter. He had been a member of the Senate Banking and Appropriations Committees and was particularly active in housing legislation. He had been a strong supporter of President Roosevelt, but had broken with the Truman Administration over civil rights, and had voted to override President Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, but had voted consistently for the Truman farm policy and the Marshall Plan. He continued to support the nomination of Governor Adlai Stevenson for the presidency in 1952, when Governor Byrnes and other Southern Democrats had bolted to support General Eisenhower. Senator Maybank however did resign as Democratic National committeeman from South Carolina in 1952. He was never defeated for public office. He was the eighth Senator to die during the 83rd Congress, with four others having died during 1954, Senators Hugh Butler of Nebraska, Clyde Hoey of North Carolina, Lester Hunt of Wyoming and Dwight Griswold of Nebraska. In 1953, Senators Willis Smith of North Carolina, Charles Tobey of New Hampshire and Robert Taft of Ohio had died.
In Washington, the Navy cleared a veteran cartographer of security charges and ordered him returned to duty, after he had been suspended from his civilian job at the Navy hydrographer's office a year earlier. He had been told after being cleared by a security board that he could no longer remain employed, but a second review board had found that linking him with subversives had done him a "grave injustice".
In New York, John Jacob Astor, Jr., currently honeymooning in Europe with his third wife, was being sued for separation by his second wife, seeking a declaration that she was in fact his lawful wife and that a Mexican divorce decree obtained the previous July was void.
On the editorial page, "Common Ground for Atlantic Allies" tells of a noble dream having been shattered with the rejection by the French National Assembly of ratification of the European Defense Community unified army. The piece indicates that it had been a radical proposal, the end of national armies for the six member nations, France, Italy, West Germany and the Benelux countries, all having ratified except France and Italy, the latter to have followed France's lead.
Because the U.S. foreign policy for Europe with respect to potential Soviet aggression had depended on EDC, it would take a better international structure to supplant the concept, while its failure would provide new ammunition for the foes of international cooperation.
It finds, however, that the foreign policy of French Premier Pierre Mendes-France, while refusing to compromise with the other five nations' foreign ministers at Brussels recently on EDC, had spoken with unusual clarity for a head of state and appeared to represent the mainstream of French political thought, unequivocally championing two fundamentals of logical policy for Atlantic countries, that German rearmament was not an issue among the allies as neither was the basic idea of Atlantic alliance under NATO.
It indicates that NATO had never been fully utilized and now, with EDC abandoned, it could achieve a measure of unity among its 14 member nations, which included the U.S., Canada, Britain, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Portugal, Greece and Turkey, in addition to five of the six EDC signatory nations, excluding West Germany. NATO was inclusive by nature and French fears of resurgent German militarism would be diminished were German rearmament accomplished through NATO rather than EDC. Thus, it finds, that which Secretary of State Dulles had called the necessity of an "agonizing reappraisal" of U.S. foreign policy in Europe with the defeat of EDC, could now commence and should result in a stronger Atlantic alliance, that if NATO were to be made stronger or a new group formed, a basic flaw in NATO structure should be corrected. For it was difficult, as the President had observed while NATO supreme commander in 1951-52, to run an Army with 14 bosses provided by 14 sovereign nations supplying men and matériel. If there would be a unified army, there had to be some unified political control, which included some surrender of sovereignty by all member nations to the international organization, and, it urges, that fact had to be faced so that the free world would not dally for several more years talking about unity without becoming prepared for the sharing of sovereignty which unity implied.
"That Awful Moment Is Almost Here" begins by quoting from the obvious one of the "seven ages of man" from Shakespeare's As You Like It, indicating that 26,000 Charlotte children would line up mentally this night for what would be "that awful moment on the calendar of youth when school bells will chime again after months of brooding, rusty silence."
It insists that junior never had it so good, as school would be a breeze after all of the toil and trouble, aches and pains, knocks and bumps of vacation time. Summer had been hard work, after stealing second base a dozen times per week, shinning up knotty branches to dangerous heights, fishing for catfish under a blistering sun, etc. School would give junior a chance to relax again and recover from the multiple trials and tribulations of the three months of vacation.
"American Industry Must Be Ready" indicates that the Administration's plan to keep American industrial equipment at readiness for a sudden wartime emergency was a realistic answer to the exigencies of the hydrogen age, recognizing that the nation could not measure its preparedness in military manpower alone, that an essential production base had to be maintained also, as there would be no time for a lengthy conversion process at the point of the next major war. Spokesmen for the Office of Defense Mobilization had said that hundreds of millions of dollars per year would be spent by the Government to maintain key production personnel and production techniques up to date with defense requirements, along with the maintenance of vital machinery and tools, but, concludes the piece, it appeared to be a necessary expense to maintain peacetime industry readiness for wartime, an essential for national security.
A piece from the Carolina Israelite, titled "'I'll Take Care of the Tip'", indicates that when someone suggested the favor of taking care of the tip, they were actually stating that the other could pay the cashier for the bill, and so for the 20 cents the tipper would pay, he took the edge off the person's pleasure in treating for the meal and also took himself off the hook "spiritually, mentally, psychologically", as well as financially, for the overall cost, while the treater paid the $1.68. (You must not be eating in the same places Robert C. Ruark is feasting.)
It indicates that the next time such a person said that he would take care of the tip, the treater should do one of two things, "either smile sweetly and say, 'No, let's split the whole thing down the middle,' or pick up a sugar bowl and knock him on the hay-ed."
Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota substitutes this date for Drew Pearson, still on vacation, says he wants to use the opportunity as a guest columnist to discuss the phase of the Administration, both in the executive and legislative branches, which, in his opinion, had failed to attract the attention it should have received, that it was his belief that a new a form of American liberalism, or a re-dedication to the traditional form of liberalism, was being evolved in 1954, getting away from what he considered to be the most vicious type of monopolistic activity, that of centralized government.
He regards the central theme of the Administration to be the ordinary, individual, private citizen and improving that person's status and opportunities. Thus, the Office of Price Stabilization had been eliminated soon after President Eisenhower had been inaugurated, and no unnecessary governmental controls had been retained since that time. The Administration, he says, had taken many steps to eliminate Government competition with private enterprise, returning Federal barge lines and the synthetic rubber plants to private enterprise, for example. The reduction of Federal expenditures and taxes was also a case in point. He suggests that "greedy government", as the President had termed it, was being transformed into incentive government, encouraging citizens to get ahead and succeed, enabling them to enjoy more individual freedom and utilize a greater portion of their earnings for their own desires.
He indicates that not since the time of President Woodrow Wilson had there been such a clear-cut demonstration of the American concept that the government which was best was that which governed least. He says that the country was entering a new era of freedom, that "kinetic Americanism" was reasserting itself, and that the "frayed remnants of New Dealism and Fair Dealism" were touring the country with predictions of "doom and gloom" because they lacked confidence in the people's ability to earn and spend their own money or to run their own enterprise, and had selected "give-away government" as their "slurring designation and their smear definition of the Eisenhower concept of crusading freedom." He says he believes that the "give-away government" of President Eisenhower was better than the "take-away government" of the New Deal and Fair Deal. He believes that the people would opt for the former in the midterm elections of 1954.
Think again, Senator. Apparently, the people did not quite view it the same way you did. Of course, your concern for the people was such that when you were a member of HUAC back in 1948 and a person implicated in executive session before that Committee as a Communist had shortly thereafter fallen or jumped or was pushed out of an office window in Manhattan, your people-oriented comment was that your Committee would continue to name such persons implicated as Communists as "they jump out of windows".
Walter Spearman, writing in State magazine, tells of new books, plays and movies coming out from North Carolina writers. Scheduled for August publication was James Street's Goodbye, My Lady, a boy and dog story reminiscent of his The Biscuit Eater. His new account of the Revolutionary War, which had appeared in part in Holiday magazine, would also become a new book during the fall. The first of his short stories to be made into a movie, "Nothing Sacred", starring Fredric March and Carol Lombard, and then into the New York musical, "Hazel Flagg", had been remade again for comedians Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin in the new movie "Living It Up".
The first novel by Durham's Frances Gray Patton, to be called Good Morning, Miss Dove, about a school teacher, who had also appeared in an early short story of Ms. Patton, would be condensed in the November Ladies' Home Journal, distributed by the Book-of-the-Month Club and would be made into a movie. No Time for Sergeants, a novel by Mac Hyman, former Duke University student, would be a joint monthly selection with that book for the Club.
Two of the state's preeminent historical novelists, Inglis Fletcher and Burke Davis, the latter former associate editor and editor of The News between mid-1942 and September, 1945, would also have new books published in the fall, the former's entry to be titled The Scotswoman, a story of Flora MacDonald and her American adventures along the Cape Fear, and the latter's to be a biography of Stonewall Jackson, titled They Called Him Stonewall.
David Stick, who had written Graveyard of the Atlantic, was now working on a history of the Outer Banks, to be published by the UNC Press, and Wilma Dykeman Stokeley of Asheville, had produced a new volume in the "Rivers of America" series on the French Broad, as well as an article on North Carolina and Tennessee mountain craftsmen, to be published by the Reader's Digest.
In celebration of the American Jewish Tercentenary in September, Harry Golden, editor of the Carolina Israelite in Charlotte, who had spoken at the recent Cape Hatteras Writers' Conference on "The Writer—and His Conscience", had written Jewish Roots in the Carolinas, in collaboration with Joseph L. Morrison of the UNC School of Journalism—eventual first biographer of W. J. Cash in 1967.
Phillips Russell of the University had completed Thomas Jefferson—Champion of the Free Mind.
Carl Sandburg, who had moved from Illinois to Flat Rock, N.C., a few years earlier, would publish in October a new one-volume edition of Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years.
Paul Green, Pulitzer Prize winning author and playwright, had just had three of his one-act plays produced in New York, as well as his version of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt produced by the actors who were also putting on his outdoor symphonic drama, "The Lost Colony", at Manteo.
Tar Heel Ghosts, a collection of North Carolina's ghost stories by John Harden, who had also written The Devil's Tramping Ground, would be produced by the UNC Press in September. The Press, later in the year, would also publish Manly Wade Wellman's collection of famous North Carolina murder stories, titled Dead and Gone. The Press had recently published Selected Addresses of a Southern Lawyer by Aubrey Lee Brooks.
Dale Kramer would publish a new biography titled The Heart of O. Henry. And Don Tracy would produce Roanoke Renegade, the story of the lost colony of Sir Walter Raleigh.
Tom Wicker, who had described North Carolina politics in The Kingpin, and had just returned from two years of Navy duty in the Pacific, intended to write two books, one set in Japan and the other to be based on two North Carolina mysteries.
He also mentions several other books.
Marion
Hargrove, former News
writer who had produced See Here, Private Hargrove,
starting as a column written while serving in the Army during World
War II and eventually becoming a novel and a film, and who had since
turned to script writing
The man who had stopped smoking begged his friend to be serious. The other man insisted that he was very serious, that non-smoking did something to the taste buds, which he discovered for the first time when he had quit smoking and began tasting his wife's cooking, leading nearly to his divorce. He believed that if he had given up one more pack, it would have meant the ruination of his marriage. When the man who had stopped smoking brought up the financial aspect of quitting, the other said that the actual cost of non-smoking was worse because rather than spending roughly $165 a year on Federal and state taxes attached to cigarettes, the governments would be forced to gouge him for additional income tax to make up for the lost revenue.
When the man who had given up smoking said that it was not the tobacco which made the habit, the other agreed, saying that it was the whole mechanical process of non-smoking, giving the person something to do with one's hands, leading to trembling, as was the man who had given up smoking. He said, however, that his non-smoking friend looked well and had put on a lot of weight, to which the man who had given up smoking said that he was going to start exercising to get himself really trim. At that point, the man who had not stopped smoking asked for another round of drinks from Mr. Clancy and again offered a cigarette to his non-smoking friend.
The man who had given up smoking then relented, saying: "I don't mind if I do. It might help me with this awful craving for peanuts."
That is not a very healthful story.
Nor, for that matter, is the editorial page very much given this date to very much food for thought, and the letters do not help much.
A letter writer says that recently he had heard a lot on the radio about segregation and had some questions for the white clergy "who so religiously accept the colored race as their equal, and who cannot see that a mixing of the races on any level means amalgamation." He believes that Adam was the first man created by God, created in His own image, and questions whether Adam was white and made ruler over everything on earth, whether Jesus was white, whether all of the artists had been wrong in painting white all of the prophets and saints named in the Bible, and why Cain had killed Abel, resulting in Cain being banished to Ethiopia. He also wants to know whether one of the writers of the Bible had said, "The color of an Ethiopian and a leopard's spots could not be changed." He also wonders where in the Bible it said that "the Negro race is God's chosen race, or even equal to the white, or Caucasian, race" and who was it who could say that "the total mixing of the Negro race and the white race mean a better race for America". He indicates that the reader might say that he was prejudiced, but insists that he is not prejudiced, that he was a white Southerner who believed in the traditions and customs of the South, and in the laws made by the country's duly elected representatives, that he also believed in the Bible and all of its teachings, but did not believe that the Supreme Court had any right "to order, dictate, or otherwise to the effect that we admit a foreign race into our families and try to make whites out of our Negro race."
A letter writer from Lincolnton finds that some young Republicans were upset about some of the newspaper's editorials regarding Senator McCarthy, says that he would like to have read the opinion of former editor and current general manager of the newspaper, J. E. Dowd, on the subject, were he still writing for the newspaper. He says that his opinion of Senator McCarthy was that he was "just a cheap, common jay who got a lot of publicity," who probably thought the Republican Party would be foolish enough to nominate him for the presidency at some point. He finds that President Eisenhower would not slap him down, had only so far pussyfooted around, that maybe it was better that way until the country could get another Democratic President.
A letter writer from Marshville comments on the Herblock cartoon appearing on August 28, depicting the Republican elephant shivering for Governor Allan Shivers of Texas, says that the elephant no longer shivered, that the newspaper could shiver for Shivers, concludes: "Hurrah for Shivers; may The News have many more shivers."
You perhaps need to realize, along with other readers, that the newspaper does not produce the syndicated cartoons or the syndicated columns, but only publishes them, and may not, therefore, necessarily agree with every point made therein. Furthermore, Herblock was only expressing what had been stated in several recent nationally published columns, that the Eisenhower Democrats were concerned in Texas about the fate of their leader, Democratic Governor Shivers, who was facing a stiff primary challenge from relatively liberal Ralph Yarborough, future Senator. You have difficulty separating reporting of the news and the facts from your own wishful thinking and emotional cheering. A newspaper should not be a forum for political cheering, except through equal access for letter writers like you, of all stripes, and those willing to pay for political advertising. Once an editorial page becomes a single voice as a cheering section for one political group or another, it is not worth the paper on which it is printed.
Or, in the case of Fox News, and other such organs in current times, not worth the time it takes to listen to it, as one already knows what it is going to say 95 percent of the time. As soon as you see the "Fox News" label on any story, you know what the odds are, and so you can choose either to be massaged in your misinformed point of view, to receive party talking points as your basis for proceeding through the troublesome world, or to go somewhere else where you might obtain at least some form of fact-based objectivity at least once in awhile, or, better, seek out a variety of print stories from reliable organs from which to distill the facts available on a given subject of particular interest, largely skipping the tv and radio media. One thing is certain, you won't find any semblance of fairness or objectivity, or any sensible respect for any rational view of the world, at any Trump throwing-knives sales-pitch rally, of which most of Fox "News" talky talk-talk is simply a toadying extension.
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