The Charlotte News

Friday, January 21, 1949

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Nanking, President Chiang Kai-Shek turned over authority to his Vice-President, Li Tsung-Jen, and flew to Hangchow for a rest and possible retirement. Chiang neither retired nor resigned, simply left, saying that he did so to lessen the hardship on the Chinese people. Li became therefore acting President. Chiang's departure was conducted in secrecy and it was believed that his eventual destination was his hometown of Fenghau. It had also been reliably reported that Premier Sun Fo had visited Li and submitted the resignations of the entire Cabinet. Chiang ordinarily visited his home just before the Chinese New Year on January 29 and so it gave him the opportunity to return if Li was not able to negotiate a peace with the Communists.

Associated Press correspondent John Scali—a voluntary internuncio between the Kennedy Administration and a Russian official during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962—reports that a detailed Administration program for guarding Western Europe against Communist aggression might be presented to Congress within a month, regarding the proposed North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or "North Atlantic Alliance" as it was then being called. The proposal would join the U.S. and Canada with France, Britain, and the Benelux countries in a mutual military assistance pact. It would entail a U.S. contribution of a billion dollars worth of late-model firearms and equipment for the Western European allies. The proposal also might seek authorization for the President to send military missions to any country in the world seeking U.S. advice, a provision sought by Secretary of Defense James Forrestal several months earlier. The Administration might, however, limit such missions to Latin America, Greece, Turkey, and Iran. While the envisioned treaty would provide for mutual assistance in the event of an attack on a member nation by an aggressor, each nation would retain its sovereign ability to declare war. In return for American weapons, each member nation would be expected, as under the Marshall Plan economic aid provisions, to contribute as much as it could of its resources and efforts to the common objective of strength and security. An unanswered question was how long the program should run. It had been estimated that it would take three years to get the Western European military forces back on their feet.

In his inaugural address, the President had said that creating a sufficient armed force in the West might act as a deterrent to any armed attack.

Senator Arthur Vandenberg, in reference to the President's inaugural address proposal for aid to underdeveloped nations of the world, suggested that the Administration should perfect existing aid programs before beginning new ones.

Dean Acheson was sworn in this date as Secretary of State in the Oval Office of the White House. He had been confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 83 to 6 the previous Tuesday.

Back in Columbia, S.C., Governor Strom Thurmond reported that he had received cheers, jeers and boos while riding in the inauguration parade in Washington, but more cheers than jeers. He had waved as he passed the President on the reviewing stand and took off his hat and waved it in the air toward him. News reports stated that there was "barely a smile" from the President in response. The Governor's car was in the tenth position in the parade's second of eight divisions. Governor and Mrs. Thurmond then attended the inaugural reception at the National Art Gallery, where they shook hands with the President and First Lady, as well with Vice-President Barkley, a bachelor.

Whether they viewed any "scrambled eggs" art at the National Gallery was not reported.

In Frankfurt, Germany, U.S. Army headquarters announced that Czechoslovak border guards had fired on American constabulary troops the previous day and that the Americans had returned the fire. No American casualties were reported. The constabulary patrol had gone to investigate an incident in which German border police had wounded a truck driver who had crashed his truck through the border barrier. The truck carried ball bearings and machine tools, apparently in an attempt to smuggle them into Communist-controlled Czechoslovakia.

In New York, the defense began to call witnesses in support of a motion to dismiss the case against the eleven Communists on trial in Federal District Court for conspiracy to overthrow the Government by force. The motion contended that the jury selection process was tainted with discrimination, and to that end, the defense attorneys were calling jurors as witnesses. The defense had sought to call presiding Judge Harold Medina, but he had ruled the request out of order, finding it to be an attempt to disqualify him from continuing to hear the case.

John Daly of The News reports of an interview with Sir Raymond Streat of London, chairman of the British Cotton Board, in which he favored strengthening friendly relations between the U.S. and Britain through textile sharing arrangements, of which you may read more on page 4-A. Mr. Streat was set to speak at the Charlotte Country Club before cotton manufacturing bigwigs this night.

In Chattanooga, Tenn., four men were convicted of murdering a man and sentenced to not more than 25 years in prison, after an incident the previous September 19 on Daisy Mountain in which the defendants allegedly had ambushed and fired 58 times into the vehicle of the dead man, believed to be hauling moonshine for the defendants from Tennessee to Detroit. Another occupant of the dead man's car, who was not injured, identified the defendants as the assailants. The identifying witness, himself, was under indictment for felonious assault in the shooting of one of the defendants shortly after the fatal incident. That defendant was also accused of being an accessory to murder in the slaying of a Chattanooga restaurant owner in November.

In San Mateo, California, a man's family presented him with a new car, but after 15 minutes of driving, it stalled on the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks. After the man and passersby tried unsuccessfully to push it off the tracks, they leaped to safety as a commuter train destroyed the automobile.

In Wilmington, N.C., a fire swept the Orton Hotel, causing a million dollars worth of damage. A Charlotte man, 70, who was registered at the hotel was missing after the fire. No one from the hotel was known to have been injured in the fire, which destroyed a total of seven buildings, starting in the Cinderella Bootery. Four Wilmington firemen entered the core of one of the buildings against orders and suffered injuries as a result of the roof caving in on them. The wind-fanned flames also set fire to a tugboat on the Cape Fear River, as well as woods across from the river.

We think we may know who set that fire.

The All-American Football Conference announced that it would operate in 1949 with seven clubs, the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Yankees slated to merge, and the Chicago Rockets to operate under a new franchise in Chicago.

Furman Bisher, on the sports page, tells of the Central High School Wildcats having one of their better basketball seasons, with a recent defeat of High Point. You won't wish to miss reading all about it.

On the editorial page, "Stretching Our Resources" tells of Charlotte planning to spend 1.2 million dollars on its water system, 1.1 million on paving streets, and a million on improving the sewer system, as well as "luxury" items, $400,000 on the fire alarm system, $200,000 on police precinct stations, a million on recreation facilities, $500,000 for off-street parking, and 1.5 million for a new auditorium, the total running to 3.6 million dollars.

They were all good projects but if all were undertaken, the city's bond indebtedness would be pressed to the legal limit, leaving no provision for emergency expenditures, and requiring a 25-cent property tax rate increase. And so it recommends proceeding with caution on these projects so that the city would not strap itself with debt for years to come.

"Umstead's Butner Plan" remarks that if the reader had ever seen a young person come home from prison after a year or two, an immediate change would have been noticed, a colder eye and a sharper voice with a touch of venom in it. The person may have also learned contempt for the law after being around hardened criminals. Thus it was hoped that Representative John Umstead's bill would pass the Legislature to establish State-owned Camp Butner as a prison camp for young men 16 to 25 who were first-time offenders, so that they did not have to serve their time with hardened criminals. They would be put to work on maintenance and upkeep of the Camp Butner Hospital's Board of Control facilities.

Until the State could afford to do more to rehabilitate all of its prisoners, the proposed bill represented a step in the right direction.

As the front page reports this date, the State Senate approved the bill and it was next to be considered by the House.

"The Klan Goes to Church" finds that people liked to maintain stereotypes, including that Klan members were sinister figures who burned crosses and wore white hoods by night, not churchgoing individuals who were charitable enough to drive to a black couple's farm and donate to them a radio. But both of the latter events had been chronicled in the previous two weeks in the Atlanta Constitution

The piece says that it brought the matter to attention only to point out that there was a movement afoot by the Klan to present itself as a kind of social fraternity comprised of civic-minded individuals "who attend church and do right by old Uncle Mose."

But, it reminds, the 40 automobiles which had driven through Orangeburg, S.C., the previous Saturday night did not contain Girl Scouts, unless the Girl Scouts now wore white sheets and carried flaming crosses. "The Klan hasn't reformed. It has just gotten smart."

A piece from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, titled "Smoke and Realty Values", remarks of New England's and New York's buildings looking ever more "grimy and slatternly" every year. Thus, the effort to restore Richmond's Gamble Hill section was a worthy cause so that Richmond did not also succumb to the aging process. But as long as such neighborhoods were close to industrial plants and railroad yards, there was little incentive to clean them up. The success of the program was therefore directly related to the success of the smoke abatement program for the city. The latter was conducive not only to aesthetics and real estate values but moreover to health.

Drew Pearson tells of Congressman Henderson Lanham of Georgia, interested in fostering cooperation between the races but without Federal laws forcing same, having sought out Congressman William Dawson of Chicago, the leading black Congressman, to serve under him on the Executive Expenditures Committee, of which Mr Dawson was chairman, the first black member of Congress ever to serve as a committee chairman. It turned out that both men had been raised in Georgia a few miles apart from one another, agreed that they could work with one another. Congressman Dawson recalled that he and his fellows used to play with white children in Georgia and that there was no racial tension between them. Another Southern Congressman, Porter Hardy of Virginia, had also announced his intention to stay on the Dawson-chaired Committee.

An honorary dinner was being held this night for Congressman Dawson, a dinner which he had tried to discourage for his belief that it would put Southern members on the spot. The dinner was going forward nevertheless. His Southern colleagues had thus far declined to attend, though some, as Congressman Albert Thomas of Texas, had paid tribute to him, the latter having sent, with a note of personal admiration for Mr. Dawson, $25 to the dinner's testimonial fund to be used for college loans for black students. (A testimonial dinner in Houston on November 21, 1963 for Congressman Thomas was the reason for the timing of President Kennedy's ill-fated trip to Texas.) Other Southern Congressmen had also written kind notes. Congressman Dawson was appreciated for his even temperament, never clashing with the likes of Congressman John Rankin of Mississippi, an overt racist.

Members of the President's Council of Economic Advisers were at odds with Department of Interior Undersecretary Oscar Chapman and the Assistant Secretary, as well as some Truman supporters on Capitol Hill as Senator Joseph O'Mahoney of Wyoming, regarding expansion of the steel industry by force if necessary. Dr. Edwin Nourse, chairman of the Council, was staunchly opposed to the move, had made a speech in New York recently denouncing it as unwise. The President had made the proposal in the State of the Union message only because he believed that there was unanimous consent in the Cabinet and on the Council, and so was upset over the row.

Labor Secretary Maurice Tobin had set aside his prepared speech in which he was going to tell the Academy of American Arbitrators of his demand for new powers for the Department and that he expected the U.S. Mediation and Conciliation Service soon to be under his authority. But Conciliation Service director Cyrus Ching, also on the dais, received an advance copy of the speech, as had the press, and demanded time from the Academy to rebut the remarks. The Academy agreed, but Mr. Tobin instead made a short talk of no consequence and departed. Meanwhile, the press carried his original speech, and Mr. Ching was left without his chance for rebuttal.

Joseph Alsop, in Paris, remarks on Charles De Gaulle in France and his being favored by many French as a strong man leader desirable to replace the centrist present coalition Government, largely without strong men. The chief concerns were French nationalism, not allowing renascence of a strong Germany, and mustering strength to withstand Soviet aggression. The latter was of greatest interest to Americans.

General De Gaulle wanted France to lead a European Union, probably without a place at the table for Britain, and with the financing provided by the U.S. He was a throwback to the age of royalty, was intensely nationalist and his supporters were rightists. President Roosevelt had not trusted De Gaulle during the war, personally did not like him for his nationalism and lack of respect for humanity generally. As a consequence, De Gaulle's natural suspicion of other nations had only increased during the war years. He thus remained a question mark in terms of dealing with him as a leader of France, should the Gaullists win the majority in the national elections in the spring.

Mr. Alsop finds the important point on De Gaulle to be that he spoke on foreign affairs for the average Frenchman. He spoke chiefly about Germany, desiring internationalization of the Ruhr, a decentralized Germany composed of small states, to be then included in a European Union dominated by France. He did not, however, favor a quasi-colonial status for Germany, rather allowed that it could have its own military within the projected European Union.

That De Gaulle rejected most of what the other Western powers had done in Europe since the war arose from the sense of lack of security in France—as Mr. Alsop discussed in a previous column. Such fear prevented not only economic recovery but also obstructed objective consideration of political settlements.

The only cure for this malady was for the U.S. to restore that sense of security, and that had to come from rebuilding the strength of the West economically and militarily "at whatever cost". That did not include, however, rearming Germany, but rather rearming, first and foremost, the U.S.

Marquis Childs compares the present inaugural of President Truman with that of Andrew Jackson in 1829, finds the two similar in that the people believed they had elected a man of the people in spite of the contrary wishes of the powers that be. But the times had changed markedly from that earlier occasion, when President Jackson moved through a throng of people, shaking hands at every step of the way, to get from his hotel to the White House, then on reaching the mansion, was rushed by the crowd, who broke through windows to enter, standing on the furniture with muddied feet to catch a glimpse of the man they had elected. Eventually, President Jackson had to return to the hotel for his own safety.

In 1949, the Secret Service paled in horror at the prospect of the President mingling at such close range with a crowd. The motorcade in the inaugural parade—the President, incidentally, riding in the tudor version of the shiny, new black 1949 Lincoln, the fordor version of which from Mr. Truman's stable of Lincolns being that in which President Kennedy would ride in his 1961 inaugural parade with Mrs. Kennedy and former President Eisenhower and Mrs. Eisenhower—was led by a motorcycle escort. The gala, ball, and reception moved with clockwork precision, and the Truman family moved likewise before the people and the cameras during the entire week.

So, the similarities between 1829 and 1949 were present, but the contrasts manifested by the passage of time and modern invention were also striking.

Samuel Grafton, no longer carried by The News, finds the postwar era only beginning with the inauguration of President Truman for his second term, that the first term was more concerned with the war than with peace. He expects the second term to be the reverse.

Everyone's life had changed in the previous six months. At that time, everyone was concerned with possible war with Russia; now, almost no one was. Then, many believed that the world would blow itself up within a year or two; now, it appeared it had a lifespan left of perhaps a dozen years, maybe a million. Then, American liberals saw the end of their road in sight; now, they had enough work to remain busy for a generation. Then, the country appeared ready to return to conservative Republicanism; now, as a Saturday Evening Post writer had commented, the country had to be considered "normally Democratic". Then, American life resembled a cartoon in its simplifications; now, there was "something of the comparative richness and complexity of the novel; there is detail again, and dimension."

The country had emerged from the period which was a "strange dream", the period of excitements, "the easy, cosmic speculations" more appropriate to wartime. The period was marked by "single, simple things", such as the atomic bomb and its ability at a stroke to solve problems or forever muddle them. The two major political parties had been considered merely reflective images of one another, through which similar people of either party could accomplish the same things.

Now, things were more real. There was hope of settling the country's difficulties with Russia, even if slowly by trial and error. The attitudes which were current during the previous summer now seemed "as old-fashioned as the short skirt". No one claimed that labor loved Taft-Hartley; only six votes were mustered against confirmation of Dean Acheson for Secretary of State on the opposing premise that he was an appeaser of Russia.

Life was settling down to a job of work again, duller than it had been since the war, but a "pleasant dullness". "And we can always comfort ourselves with the thought that reality isn't so bad, once you get a taste for it."

A letter writer addresses an open letter to the leaders of the General Assembly, in which he states his opposition to the program proposed by Governor Kerr Scott for rural road improvement and construction and other expenditures for their tax burden, to be paid in part by an added penny per gallon to the gasoline tax. He also opposes the proposed statewide referendum on liquor supported by the Governor.

Let the farmers stay out there in the winter mud and drink themselves to death. Who cares?

Framed Edition
[Return to Links
Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News<i><i><i>—</i></i></i>Framed Edition]
Links-Date Links-Subj.