The Charlotte News

Friday, September 10, 1954

TWO EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that at the U.N. in New York, the Security Council had overridden Soviet objections this date and agreed to permit full discussion of a U.S. complaint that Soviet fighter planes had shot down the U.S. Navy Neptune bomber off Siberia the previous Friday, voting 10 to 1 to hear the matter, requested by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., contending that the Russians had violated international law in the incident, which had occurred over international waters. Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinski, who had cast the lone dissenting vote, said that a discussion of the incident might intensify international feelings rather than lessen them and insisted that the U.S. plane had violated Soviet territory and had opened fire on two Soviet MIG-15 jet fighters attempting to warn it away, that they then returned fire, shooting down the plane. All save one of the ten-man American crew had survived the incident. Ambassador Lodge indicated that it was not the first time such an attack had occurred by Soviet aircraft, compounding the problem through repeated violations of international law. He urged Russia to enter direct negotiations for damages claimed by the U.S. or to consent to impartial adjudication of the matter before the International Court of Justice at The Hague, as the U.S. was prepared to do so regarding similar claims against it.

Before the six-Senator special committee hearing the resolution of censure against Senator McCarthy, the Senator finished his testimony in his own behalf this date and won agreement from the committee to examine the "hot document" of the McCarthy-Army hearings, the 2 1/4-page distillation of a longer 15-page FBI memo which had been submitted to Senator McCarthy, he contended, by an Army officer whose identity he had refused to reveal. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had stated to the subcommittee special assistant counsel at the earlier hearings that he did not author either the memo or the 2 1/4-page distillation, made up of quotes from the longer document, but that the longer memo had been prepared by the FBI and was classified. During the afternoon, the start of cross-examination of Senator McCarthy would begin. His counsel, Edward Bennett Williams, had asked him only a couple of questions before the public session was halted, and he then announced that the Senator was prepared for cross-examination. At an executive session just ahead of the public hearing, the committee had decided to inspect the document in question, which Senator McCarthy had sought to introduce into the case. Attorney General Herbert Brownell had ruled that it should not go into the public record during the Army-McCarthy hearings, and the seven members of the Senate Investigations subcommittee hearing that matter had refused even to examine it. Senator McCarthy had offered the document to support his contention that the investigation of alleged Communist infiltration at the secret radar laboratory at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey was justified. The Senator claimed that it contained names of persons involved in a spy ring at the facility, allegedly formed by executed atomic spy Julius Rosenberg. One of the charges against Senator McCarthy, in support of the general resolution of Senator Flanders that he had, through his conduct, brought the Senate into disrepute, was that he had received the classified information contained in the document in question and then had publicly stated, during the time of the earlier hearings, that any employee of the Government who had any documentary information on corruption or subversion within the Government, regardless of its classified nature, should provide it to Senator McCarthy, violating and inducing thereby further violation of the Espionage Act.

Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss told reporters this date that the U.S. had many more atomic weapons in its arsenal than it had a year earlier, but would not comment on any new weapons or any detection of Soviet atomic blasts since the U.S. had announced detection of a Russian hydrogen device test about a year earlier. He said that there would likely be continuing U.S. tests of new weapons at the Marshall Islands proving grounds in the future, and that he was unaware of any intention to move the testing area after the hydrogen bomb test of the previous March, which had produced an extensive radioactive cloud causing radiation sickness among Japanese fishermen located about 80 miles from the blast site, outside the AEC's stated perimeter of danger, which had led some Japanese to demand that the testing be halted or the location moved.

In Algiers, it was reported that the earthquake which had hit Orleansville, 100 miles west of Algiers, the previous day, with aftershocks experienced this date, had produced a death toll estimated at more than 1,000 Europeans and Algerians, with another 2,000 estimated to have been injured. Death tolls among the Moslem population were difficult to estimate because they were burying their own dead without sending in reports. The French Interior Ministry said the previous night that 590 deaths had been confirmed officially, but that most of those had been European residents of the area and that it would take many days to establish an accurate account. The aftershocks were less powerful than the original shocks, but had brought down several unsteady houses and large pieces of shattered walls. Some 2,000 rescue workers and as many more troops were on the scene. The Mayor of Orleansville said that they had evacuated 95 percent of the houses but would not evacuate the town and would house everyone in tents. Some officials estimated that 90 percent of the houses in the town would have to be razed. A major dam had collapsed in the quake.

In Jacksonville, Fla., hurricane warnings were put in place this date from Morehead City, N.C., to the Virginia capes, as Hurricane Edna, packing 115 mph winds, headed toward Cape Hatteras, N.C. The chief storm forecaster for the Miami Weather Bureau said that the center of the tropical storm ought pass near, but slightly outside, Cape Hatteras by or before midnight this date, and urged precautions for very high tides and dangerous winds along the North Carolina and Virginia capes during the afternoon and night. The storm was centered about 225 miles south of Hatteras and moving at about ten mph on a course slightly east of north by late morning. Hurricane-force winds extended 100 miles from the center of Edna's eastern half and about 50 miles to the west. Gale-force winds extended outward 150 to 200 miles from the center in all directions. Residents of New York and New England coastal areas were nervous, as the hurricane headed in a northerly direction, with its forward speed predicted to increase during the day, previously impeded by a high pressure system which had now moved out to sea, clearing the path for the hurricane. A Norwegian ship had passed through the eye of the storm on Wednesday and had gained safe anchor in Miami.

A late bulletin indicates that the New York Weather Bureau said that it would be a miracle if the storm did not hit New York City head-on the following day, and that it appeared that it would be one of the worst storms to hit the area in its history.

In Los Angeles, striking garment workers the previous day had made their statement with four women and two men wearing impromptu fashions on the sidewalk outside the picketed office, wherein there was a real fashion show ongoing, the pickets wearing gay 90's outfits and adaptations of the latest Parisian styles. The picketing had begun in July when the employer declined to renew a contract and hired other workers, obtaining a court order the previous month reducing the number of pickets from a high of 150.

In Pittsburgh, the former husband of actress Ingrid Bergman was honeymooning this date with his second wife, marrying her only two hours after securing their license. The neurosurgeon groom married a second year resident pediatrician from Czechoslovakia.

In Gaffney, S.C., State Senator Edgar Brown, who had been nominated by the Democratic executive committee to succeed deceased Senator Burnet Maybank, was asked by the chairman of the Gaffney sesquicentennial celebration committee not to attend its event, after having previously been invited. The chairman of the division responsible for the event sent a wire to Mr. Brown asking him not to attend because his presence would not be of help to the sesquicentennial, as they had tried to let politics die down in the community, and his name had been used frequently by at least half of the population of Cherokee County. As Mr. Brown had not indicated that he would pay any attention to the request not to attend, the Gaffney merchant who sent the wire said that he was making other plans for his visit, that he would purchase a big brass bell and ring it continuously while he was speaking.

On the editorial page, "Enslavement by the Russian Bear", a by-lined piece by News publisher Thomas L. Robinson, writing from Munich, the first of two such articles on U.S. broadcasts into Communist countries, tells of having come to Munich to visit the operations of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, two separate organizations performing different types of jobs, the first piece to be devoted to the Voice and the following day's piece to Radio Free Europe.