The Charlotte News
Wednesday, February 8, 1950
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State Acheson, speaking at a press conference, ruled out any new overtures to Russia on international control of atomic weapons, including the hydrogen bomb. He said that achieving peace through agreement would be the best result but that four years of trying had proved it not to be possible. He indicated that developing areas of strength in the world, in Germany, Western Europe, and Japan, through both ERP and the President's Point Four program, was the way to peace rather than a world conference on disarmament as advocated by Senator Millard Tydings, or spending 50 billion dollars over five years on a crusade to effect international control of atomic energy, as proposed by Joint Atomic Energy Committee chairman, Senator Brien McMahon. He said that agreements with the Soviets were useful only to record an existing set of facts or situation. Only through strength could come agreement on peace with the Soviets.
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover reportedly told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that there were 540,000 Communists and fellow travelers in the country, of which ten percent were card-carrying members of the party. Mr. Hoover was seeking appropriations for 300 new agents.
Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana, the Wurlitzer king, said that the Mr. Hoover's figures showed that the Truman Administration had been sympathetic to Communists. Senator William Jenner of Indiana echoed the remarks.
Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan said that he was trying to get Attorney General J. Howard McGrath to seek extradition of Dr. Klaus Fuchs from Britain, where he was facing charges of giving atomic secrets to the Russians, to stand trial in the U.S. for espionage. But lawyers of the Atomic Energy Committee expressed doubt that treaties between the U.S. and Britain would allow extradition.
From Prague, the U.S. Embassy reported that it had received reports that two American Mormon missionaries had disappeared without trace in Moravia on January 28. It was believed by reliable Western diplomatic sources that they had been arrested on unspecified charges and were being held incommunicado.
In Paris, the revised Cabinet of Premier Georges Bidault won shaky approval from the National Assembly by a vote of 225 to 185, but the supporters of General Charles De Gaulle abstained, indicating trouble ahead for the Government.
In Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory, a C-47 transport plane, with twelve Canadian and U.S. crewmen aboard, searching for the lost C-54 transport missing since January 26 with 44 persons aboard, was also missing. A distress signal had been picked up the previous night from the C-47 but visibility was too low in the area to search for the plane, equipped with Arctic survival gear for the 22-degree below zero temperature. A C-47 had gone down during the search the week before and all six persons aboard had been rescued.
The coal fact-finding board appointed by the President obtained agreement from John L. Lewis and the operators to try again to form a new coal contract, there having been no contract in effect since the prior July 1. Mr. Lewis, however, claimed that the operators wanted no contract as there would be a court injunction obtained by the Government pursuant to Taft-Hartley to end the strike by the following week.
In Pittsburgh, the United Steelworkers sent a check for $500,000, authorized by the union executive board, to the UMW to assist needy miners during the strike. Support for the Steelworkers from UMW and other unions during their strike the previous fall had been urged by Mr. Lewis but came to naught.
In Charlotte, Duke Power Co. was informed that bus drivers on the Duke buses in Charlotte and five other cities were considering a strike vote in their demand for a raise of 20 cents per hour.
News Editor Pete McKnight, in the second of his three-part series of articles based on a weekend interview with former Senator Robert Rice Reynolds, tells of his being known around Asheville while growing up as a showman and cut-up. He was still at it, holding an audience of Spanish-American War veterans in the palm of his hand the prior Saturday night. Afterward, the old folks gathered around him and shook his hand, some having tears in their eyes. He was still able to work a crowd, just as Governor Kerr Scott had recently warned in admonishing supporters of Senator Graham not to take Mr. Reynolds's entry to the race against the Senator lightly.
On the editorial page, "What Is the Answer?" finds that the President would get his emergency injunction pursuant to Taft-Hartley to end the coal strike and that necessary steps would have to be taken to use other workers to mine the coal if the miners refused to return to work, as they had threatened.
But since resort to Taft-Hartley could only occur in an emergency, it urges that some other remedy was needed before situations reached such a stage. It finds that remedy to be a determination that labor unions were subject to antitrust laws, circumscribing their power accordingly.
"The Bomb in Our Bosom" is not about the Broadway revival of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes", but rather refers to a statement made by Senator Frank Graham before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as it considered a proposal to call a convention to work out an agreement for atomic control and inspection, and amendment of the U.N. Charter to strengthen the organization and make it into a limited federal world government to outlaw war and establish international law as the basis for peace: "Human society with the uranium bomb in its bosom and a hydrogen bomb in its womb cannot lag in adjustments to and controls of their potential powers."
It appeared unlikely to Americans an atomic war would ensue for its suicidal implications to both America and Russia. Yet, there was no assurance that some trivial incident might not set events in motion which could lead to nuclear war. Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson in his "lick hell out of Russia" speech at the University of Virginia the previous week spoke for many Americans and, it posits, he likely had his counterparts in Russia.
It suggests that for common survival, both Russians and Americans had to become fully aware of the dangers of atomic warfare and that there could be no winner. It agrees with the proposals urged by Senator Graham.
"A Waif's Burden" tells of the positive and negative public reaction to Ingrid Bergman's out-of-wedlock birth of a son with Italian director Roberto Rossellini. The couple were overwhelmed with well-wishers regarding the birth while many also tittered about the affair which led to it.
The new film, "Stromboli", which would shortly debut with Ms. Bergman in the lead role and Mr. Rossellini as director, was assured success around the world from attendance by the curious.
But it wonders what was in store for the infant son, unaware of the notoriety surrounding him and those who cried "for shame" as they snickered.
A piece from the Manchester (England) Guardian, titled "Alger Hiss", finds that after the conviction of Alger Hiss for perjury in the retrial of the case, there was still much doubt on the part of many as to what had actually occurred. Nevertheless, it finds, given the conviction, the court had been right in sentencing Mr. Hiss to prison. The evidence regarding Whittaker Chambers and Henry Wadleigh, the latter of the State Department, had shown "clearly the shamelessness and duplicity into which a convert to Communism, however well-meaning at the start, can be induced to fall."
It hopes that the trial would not lead to Red-baiting "such as some American politicians are always ready to set on foot." It suggests that perhaps Secretary of State Acheson's "beautifully generous statement", expressing continued support of his old friend Mr. Hiss, would shame them out of the "ugly hunt".
It would not. Senator Joseph McCarthy was about to make his first public statement the following day in Wheeling, W. Va., claiming numerous Communists in the State Department, ranging between 57 and 205, depending on which time the Senator set the number, claims which would eventually stretch to the Army and embrace finally all Democrats, all without basis, ultimately leading to coinage of the term "McCarthyism", and finally to his own ignominious downfall, Senate censure, and death in 1957 while suffering from delirium tremens.
The Hiss case would also supply the notoriety which would pave the path for Congressman Richard Nixon's victory in the California Senate race the following fall—and the rest, as they say, is history.
Drew Pearson tells of J. Edgar Hoover having informed the Senate Appropriations Committee the previous week—not to be confused with his testimony on the Fuchs matter during this week to the Atomic Energy Committee—that subversive activities in the U.S. were at an all-time high and that Communist Party members were throwing away their membership cards to avoid detection. Communists were seeking, he said, to infiltrate various key industries, such as telephone and telegraph companies and manufacturers of electrical equipment. He said, however, that there was no spy ring inside the Government. He indicated that the testimony of Elizabeth Bentley during the summer of 1948 before a Senate committee and HUAC, asserting the existence of a Communist spy ring in the Government during the Thirties, had been premature, causing numerous FBI sources planted for a decade inside the Communist Party to be lost.
He was seeking more FBI agents from Congress and told of crime generally increasing since 1941, especially among aggravated assaults, rapes, burglaries, robberies and larceny, while murders and other homicides had decreased along with auto thefts. The rate of conviction had reached an all-time high of 97.2 percent.
The column next tells of Dr. Klaus Fuchs, the British physicist accused of giving atomic secrets to the Russians, having worked in the U.S. during the war on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. Unlike other atomic research facilities, Los Alamos was not compartmentalized and scientists knew of the work of each other. He had previously worked on the atomic project in Canada and at Oak Ridge. According to the British, he had come to Britain from Germany as an anti-Nazi refugee in 1932, with instructions from Moscow to infiltrate British scientific circles. He eventually came to know all about the atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb, all of which information, the British alleged, he had given to the Russians.
Congress was considering a measure to issue new currency to smoke out underworld cash but could not agree on a color, the Southern sponsor of the measure favoring gray and a Northern supporter favoring blue, leading to a compromise of having it be blue and gray.
Which is why all currency today is blue and gray.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss Russia in terms of the timetable for aggression used by Hitler, starting with the occupation of the Rhineland and moving on to annexation of Austria in 1938, finding that Russia was in that second phase, as exhibited by the recognition of the regime of Ho Chi Minh in Indochina. The French had given independence to Indochina under the Emperor Bao Dai, and the Americans and British were about to recognize the latter regime.
The Soviet recognition of Ho meant that the Communist Chinese would likely actively support that regime, as Albania and Bulgaria had supported the Greek guerrillas. Meanwhile, the French Communists were striking on the docks of France to prevent shipments from going to Bao Dai.
The Soviets also were seeking increasingly to isolate the satellite countries, forcing on them Soviet-backed administrations.
The Far East would be to the Russians as Austria was to Hitler. If Indochina were to fall to the Communists, then the rest of Asia would fall in line without much effort. Western Europe was as Czechoslovakia to Hitler. When the Soviets exerted domination in the Far East, they would shift attention again to Western Europe, probably between 1952, at the point when the Soviets were expected to accumulate a stockpile of atomic bombs, and 1955, the target date for all Soviet armament plans.
They find that the future would be more encouraging were the Truman Administration not behaving much as former British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin had during the 1930's at his worst.
Marquis Childs tells of the President seemingly becoming more isolated from the press and the public since his announcement the previous week of his intention to have the Atomic Energy Commission proceed with development of the hydrogen bomb. The decision to research the theoretical basis for such a bomb had been made some time earlier. John J. McCloy, former Assistant Secretary of War, had made that clear in 1946, as had Senator Edwin Johnson of Colorado on a radio program the previous November 1. The latter disclosure had caused distress at the White House, that such early research should not be tipped to the Russians.
That feeling had led to the deterioration of relations between the Government and the press as rumors flew and debate in the press began on the subject, culminating in the President's statement the previous week to end speculation.
Mr. Childs suggests that secrecy only kept vital knowledge from the public preventing an informed debate on such an important topic as atomic weaponry. He offers that the suggestion of the Washington Post that a council of leaders be formed to report to the public on the hydrogen bomb project might be a good idea.
It had to be kept in mind, however, that the President was caught between the horns of a dilemma regarding how much to disclose without compromising security.
A letter writer likes the newspaper but finds its criticism of former Senator Robert Rice Reynolds to be off point. The writer says that he had known Mr. Reynolds since grammar school and that he was a great man and tremendous orator who would defeat Senator Graham in the primary in the spring.
A letter writer thanks the newspaper for reprinting the editorial from Huntington, W. Va., on February 1, critical of the adverse impact of John L. Lewis on the livelihood of coal miners, finds the editorial illuminating.
A letter writer praises "That Parking Meter Contract" of February 2 and sets forth a letter which the writer had sent to Mayor Victor Shaw regarding the need for curbs and gutters to protect from excess surface drainage along streets near the writer's home, wonders whether the excess money spent on parking meters would deprive them of the promised project.
A letter writer wants to advise the public that the Playboy automobile which had visited recently the New China restaurant in Charlotte and appeared in The News had never been sold in the country as the company, out of Buffalo, N.Y., was declared bankrupt in 1948-49 after making only 120 of the small cars.
They were probably ahead of their
time
Framed Edition
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