The Charlotte News
Wednesday, March 29, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State Acheson and roving Ambassador Philip Jessup, both under attack by the McCarthy forces, appeared in a closed-door session before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to outline their plan for checking Communism in Asia. Dr. Jessup had just returned from a tour of the Far East and would be giving his assessment of the situation.
Secretary Acheson, in an effort to strengthen his position with Republicans, had just appointed former Republican Senator John Sherman Cooper, popular in Congress, to be one of his principal advisers, along with Dr. Jessup, at the scheduled early May meeting of the Big Three foreign ministers in London. Separately, the foreign ministers of the twelve NATO nations were also now scheduled to meet in London on May 8, to chart a course for defense in the cold war.
The Senate served the first of three subpoenas for loyalty board records, which the President the previous day decided not to provide to the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee investigating the charges of Senator Joseph McCarthy that there were Communists in the State Department. The subpoenas, related to some 90 persons regarding FBI, Civil Service Commission, and State Department investigations conducted since the beginning of 1940, were made returnable by the following Tuesday. The President was instructing the three officials involved not to comply with the subpoenas. He had asked the Civil Service Commission to review the cases, however, and report to him their findings and that he would then advise the Committee on the results. Republicans objected that the President was thus taking the investigation from the Senate and handing it to clerks of the three agencies.
Republicans in the House succeeded in getting 250 million dollars trimmed from the 1950-51 appropriation for foreign economic aid, on a vote of 165 to 163, reducing the overall appropriation for the Marshall Plan from 2.95 billion dollars to 2.7 billion. Another 422 million dollars was being proposed for aid to Korea, China, and the "Point Four" program for technical assistance to underdeveloped nations, and reductions of that amount were also set to be debated.
In Ottawa, Ontario, the lone survivor of the crash of a U.S. Embassy C-47 transport plane the previous day, killing the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, Laurence Steinhardt, and four others, said that he was able to bail out and advised the others to do likewise but that flames had overtaken the plane so quickly after the right wing fuel tank blew up that they did not have a chance. The Air Force master sergeant of North Carolina said that he did not believe the explosion was the result of sabotage, but that the plane had been checked thoroughly before takeoff and was working properly.
In Sarasota, Fla., Dolly the circus
elephant, part of the Ringling Brothers Circus, was executed at
dawn with cyanide after killing a five-year old boy who was feeding
it peanuts the prior Sunday. The elephant had suddenly grabbed the
boy with its trunk and stepped on his head. What had caused the animal's anomalous behavior was a mystery
News Editor Pete McKnight
provides the third in his three-part series of reports on an
interview with Senatorial candidate Willis Smith, telling of Mr.
Smith's view that there was a welling of tremendous resentment
against the liberal views of Senator Frank Graham on the one hand and
the arch-conservative views of former Senator Robert Rice Reynolds,
also a candidate in the May 27 Democratic primary race. Thus, he
believed that there was room for a middle-of-the-road candidacy. But
that philosophy would be hard to define
Emery Wister of The News
tells of the 1950 Census and what to expect as questions, assuring
that the takers were not going to show the information collected to
anyone other than the Census Bureau, that no tax consequences would
follow
Parts of chapters 61 and 62 of The Greatest Story Ever Told by Fulton Oursler appear on the page as part of the abridged serialization of the 1949 book.
On the editorial page, "Double Deception" tells of ERP planning to purchase 1.4 billion dollars worth of surplus farm products, less than the amount stored by the Government, for export under the Marshall Plan during the ensuing year. Congressman John Vorys of Ohio wanted to use the surplus amount as a credit against the appropriation for ERP and thus shortcut the process. The House Foreign Affairs Committee included this concept in the new ERP bill.
But several farm organizations then rose up against the bill because it would reduce by a billion dollars the regular purchase of surplus farm products through regular channels, meaning that wholesalers and commission merchants would lose their share. And if ERP did not purchase the products in the open market, there would be an even larger surplus, leading to a billion dollar greater cost for the farm price support program. The farm groups contended also that it would work to the advantage of the Russians who claimed the Marshall Plan was a means by which America was dumping its surpluses.
The farm bloc in the House had just succeeded in eliminating the Vorys amendment from the bill but it might rise again. The piece finds, however, that there was little chance for it to be adopted as it would reveal the shortcomings of both the farm support program and the Marshall Plan by linking the two programs together.
There you go again.
"An Easy Choice" reviews the arguments made by J. Edgar Hoover and Attorney General J. Howard McGrath to the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee investigating the charges of Senator McCarthy, against providing the loyalty files of those individuals he had accused of Communist sympathies. They said the files would smear innocent persons for the remainder of their lives, using rumors and suspicions rather than facts, aid foreign agents by revealing personal details about leaders in the society, place in jeopardy the lives of FBI informants and ruin their future effectiveness, cripple the FBI by damaging its reputation as a fair and impartial investigative agency, and impair the Government loyalty program.
Senator McCarthy, says the piece, had not backed up his bald claims and there was thus no overriding reason to provide these files based on innuendo and suspicion.
"The Stimson Letter" finds the letter below from former Secretary of State and Secretary of War Henry Stimson to the New York Times, critical of Senator McCarthy's tactics and methods, to be apt and dignified in approach. He was a Republican but one of a different type from Senator McCarthy. That he viewed negatively the effort to discredit Secretary of State Acheson should send a signal to responsible Republicans that the McCarthy approach was not the way to preserve the democratic processes and extend them throughout the world.
The Times had said editorially that it thought the Senator and his supporters would have difficulty responding to the statement as they would need address the arguments, not the personal character, of such an impeccable source as Mr. Stimson.
"Public Health Note" warns that with spring sunshine and winds came the temptation to
obtain a tan
A piece from the State Magazine, titled "Reverse Interest", tells of the ostensible good deal from cashing in a billion dollars worth of war bonds maturing after ten years, earning 2.5 percent per annum in interest, being actually not such a good deal when it was realized that the dollar was worth only 61 percent in buying power of that of 1940. On top of that reduction in value, the purchaser was charged taxes on the 25 percent profit, meaning that he paid the Government the net equivalent of two percent interest for use of his money for ten years.
It concludes therefore that unselfish patriotism had to be the real motivating force behind purchase of war bonds but that such, in itself, was good enough motivation.
Henry Stimson, former Secretary of State under President Hoover and Secretary of War under FDR, as indicated in the above editorial, has a letter sent to the New York Times reprinted on the page, finding unfounded and reprehensible the attack by Senator McCarthy on the reputations of good, loyal individuals in an effort to cast a cloud of suspicion over the State Department and get Secretary Acheson ousted from the post.
Throughout, he refers to the Senator only as "the accuser", calling him "stupid" and "little" along the way.
The accuser had gone outside the normal method of bringing such charges within the established mechanisms of the executive branch and made them public, indicating his real intent to have been political rather than a sincere effort to root out disloyalty. The charges had already harmed the individuals against whom they were leveled, damaging the innocent and protecting the guilty.
If "the accuser" was
so "stupid" as to point an accusatory finger against someone
with the anti-Communist record of Ambassador Philip Jessup
The method endangered the foreign policy of the country by diverting attention of many diplomats away from their theaters of diplomacy and suggesting abroad that the country was divided and rife with internecine suspicion.
To attack the Secretary of State, the prime representative of the country abroad, was to seek political advantage from damage done to the country, especially in the currently tense situation with respect to the Soviet Union.
He finds it to be a time to offer "stern rebuke of such antics and outspoken support of distinguished public servants against whom they are directed."
Drew Pearson discusses the heavy lobbying effort of freshman Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma on behalf of his bill to end Federal regulation of the natural gas industry, in which he was heavily invested. His tactics included soft-talking Senators on the floor, often whispering to them at their desks, getting on the nerves of some, to the point where he had been remonstrated for being out of his seat by Majority Leader Scott Lucas. Senator Lyndon Johnson of Texas was assisting him in the effort of pressing for the bill.
Mr. Pearson notes that Senator Kerr had attacked him by suggesting that ABC had to use Airwick to freshen up the air after his weekly broadcasts.
The Republican Party and the conservative lumber interests of the Northwest were supporting actively Democratic Congressman George Smathers in his bid for the Senate seat of Claude Pepper of Florida.
An uncle of Congressman Hugo Sims
claimed to have viewed a flying saucer
Northern Democrats were angry at Southern Democrats for wrecking the middle-income housing bill, planning as retribution to form a coalition with Republicans to impact the Southern farm bill.
More than 25 Congressmen were planning to protest to the State Department against British arms sales to Arab tribes warring against Israel. Secretary of State Acheson was intervening in the matter and it appeared the arms shipments would cease.
Marquis Childs discusses Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois using facts and logic to argue against the natural gas deregulation bill of Senator Kerr. Senator Douglas had pointed out that the states had sought to regulate natural gas but the Federal Power Commission had to be created in 1938 to enable regulation across state lines. Such was an effort to preserve private enterprise while protecting consumers, not to have public power. The independent producers who Senator Kerr claimed would be deregulated by the bill would actually be, for the most part, the major producers who were already making record profits.
Mr. Childs finds Senator Douglas's effort to be the best of public service, not engaging in personalities but marshaling facts, and, in so doing, the best way to run for President if that, as had been suggested, was his intention.
A letter writer inveighs against the "me-tooism" adopted by some of the Republican leaders and urges that they represent all of the people, not just certain sections or classes.
A letter from the director of organization of the North Carolina March of Dimes thanks the newspapers of the state for their help in making its campaign a success, realizing between $850,000 and $900,000, with 75 percent of the county campaigns reporting.
A letter from a physician thanks the newspaper on behalf of the Association of Civic Clubs for publishing several stories on their reception for the public school teachers of the city.
Framed Edition
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