The Charlotte News

Thursday, April 13, 1950

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senator Joseph McCarthy might seek to call another witness, in addition to former Communist Louis Budenz, set to testify to the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on April 20, to buttress his claim that Owen Lattimore was the chief Russian spy in the country.

Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., complained of the decision by subcommittee chairman Millard Tydings to deny the appointment of an aide for the subcommittee, recommended by Senator Lodge, on the ground that the person was a public office seeker at the time.

Senator Robert Taft again complained about the President being unwilling to allow the subcommittee to see the loyalty files of those accused by Senator McCarthy of Communist affiliation.

The President, at his first post-vacation press conference at the White House, asked rhetorically whether it was possible to libel Senator McCarthy, after being asked about Senator Taft's remark that the President had libeled the Wisconsin Senator as the greatest asset the Kremlin had in the United States.

In the third of four lectures at Princeton University, Governor Thomas Dewey urged the President to give the Republicans a chance to shape the cold war policy and chastised his fellow Republicans for not pulling together to form a bipartisan foreign policy. After saying that the Democrats had converted bipartisanship on foreign policy into a shadow rather than a reality, he added that he saw improvement with the appointment of John Foster Dulles, his former campaign adviser in his 1944 and 1948 runs for the presidency, as adviser to Secretary of State Acheson.

The Senate confirmed, without objection, Thomas Finletter as Secretary of the Air Force, replacing Stuart Symington who was returning to the private sector, ultimately to become Senator from Missouri in 1953.

Senator Taft complained of a move to keep Republican Senators Homer Ferguson and Forrest Donnell off a special five-member committee to investigate organized crime and gambling, pursuant to the resolution introduced by Senator Estes Kefauver, and complained of taking the investigation from the Judiciary Committee. Senator Kefauver said that there was nothing partisan about his resolution, and Majority Leader Scott Lucas said the challenge of Senator Taft was "political propaganda".

The President said at his press conference that he had ordered Federal grand jury action on crime rackets nationwide.

He also said that the country was more prosperous than in any postwar period in history and that he intended to take credit for it, notwithstanding the claim by some in the press that even a moron could have achieved prosperity after the war. The President also said again that the Brannan plan was the answer to the farm surplus problem.

The FCC issued a ruling saying that radio stations which took sides in public controversies had to seek out opposing views and provide broadcast time for same.

In Houston, a Federal judge entered an order for the plaintiffs in the 200 million dollar class action suit arising out of the Texas City disaster three years earlier. The trial had lasted a year.

The crew of a German steamer in the Baltic spotted possible wreckage of the B-24, missing since the previous Saturday after apparently being shot down by a Soviet pursuit plane when the American plane, according to the Soviets, strayed into Soviet frontier airspace over Latvia. Planes had been dispatched to the area.

In Huntington, W. Va., an 18-year old high school student knifed and hammered to death three members of his family, including his parents and ten-year old sister, killed the family dog, and then set the home on fire, finally committing suicide with a gun when cornered by police.

In Tokyo, police, newly authorized by General MacArthur to carry firearms, were instructed to use their pistols only in self-defense and against burglars, murderers, rapists, and arsonists, after they had been spraying the bullets around indiscriminately.

Cold weather was headed for the East and Southeast. The coldest April 13 in local weather bureau history was recorded in Cleveland, reaching a low of 30 degrees with an inch of snow. Snow fell in Western North Carolina at Soco Gap near Waynesville, with temperatures in the high twenties. It snowed for five minutes at the Raleigh-Durham airport during the early morning.

A photograph appears of the newest beast of prey spotted in the Adirondacks of New York, the hybrid coydog or doyote, swifter than a dog and more intelligent than a coyote, more vicious than either one.

Wonder what they will call the hybrid of a toy poodle and a coyote?—which might be faster than even a speeding bullet train.

On the editorial page, "Just Another Form of Graft" praises Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois for his proposal to cut allowable Government employee vacation and sick leaves, which it views as being too liberal presently. It suggests the only downside to be that his bill did not go far enough, that 15 days of vacation plus sick leave ought be the maximum, rather than the proposed 20 days or a graduated scale of 10, 15, and 20 days, the latter two increases after three years and ten years, respectively, of Government employment.

"The Troubles of Tony Tolar" finds that the commander of the State Highway Patrol, C. R. Tolar, had destroyed his usefulness by having pleaded guilty to a charge of going 60 mph in a 35 mph zone on the claim that he did not see the city limits sign lowering the speed limit, all the while on private business, coupled with his previous indictment in Beaufort County for reckless driving and illegal use of his siren for not obeying a directive of a patrolman to slow down for a funeral, a charge against which he defended by claiming he was on his way to investigate a reported automobile accident.

The piece recommends to Governor Kerr Scott, considering his dismissal, that he be given a job for which he was better fitted, such as chauffeuring.

"Democracy at Work" finds that persons of wealth and influence were divided in their support of either Senator Frank Graham or Willis Smith for the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat. Some believed Senator Graham's liberalism too risky for business while others viewed it as not risky at all.

Holt McPherson, managing editor of the Shelby Daily Star, had placed the matter in perspective in his column by relating that publisher Lee Weathers of the Star, while appearing supportive of Mr. Smith when he visited Shelby, would nevertheless not have the newspaper endorse any of the three major candidates, including former Senator Robert Rice Reynolds. Mr. McPherson informed that he had been asked to manage the Graham campaign while Mr. Weathers had been asked to manage the Smith campaign, offers both had nevertheless declined for placing the newspaper in the middle of the Senate contest. He said that he believed as earnestly in Senator Graham's liberalism as Mr. Weathers did Mr. Smith's conservatism.

The piece finds the Smith-Graham candidacy a fine example of democracy at work, giving the voters a choice between liberalism and conservatism.

It should be noted that the Smith campaign would not become negative, rife with race-baiting and Red-baiting against Senator Graham, until after the initial primary which Senator Graham would win, albeit only by a plurality, on May 27, triggering a runoff primary four weeks later, during which period the vitriolic bile would flow. But we shall get there soon enough—into Helmsland.

"Culture in Collardland" tells of increasing attendance in Charlotte at such performances as that of the North Carolina State Symphony, which the previous year had drawn only a sparse 200-300 attendees, drawing several thousand to the recent performance. It suggested, according to the editorial, hope for culture in the Queen City.

A piece from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, titled "Larruping Tax Lug", recommends the experiment of the Bussmann Manufacturing Co., manufacturer of fuses, whereunder, rather than deducting taxes from the paychecks of workers, recouping them from their paychecks after payment, impressing on them the amount they paid in taxes. The resultant howls of the employees had made the experiment a success.

Bill Sharpe provides his weekly "Turpentine Drippings", snippets from various newspapers around the state, telling of one from State Magazine, which told of a father chastising his son for not knowing the difference between The Iliad and The Odyssey, the report of which had prompted a friend to ask whether his son had apologized, to which the father responded that his son had instead asked him whether he knew the difference between crystal receptivity and a neutrodyne.

The Sanford Herald told of a black youth, charged in South Carolina with a crime, appearing in court without the assistance of counsel, and being told by the judge that he could have the assistance of one of six attorneys, five of whom were in the courtroom and one downstairs. After looking closely at each of the five in the courtroom, the youth responded that he would take the one downstairs.

The Smithfield Herald reports of a boy whose kite was stuck in a tree, being challenged by another boy on his claim that he was a lamb of God, saying that he was instead a human being. The mother of the latter boy said, in response to the lamb's inquiry, that she believed in prayer as long as one prayed the right way. The boy with the lost kite then prayed for God to return it from the tree, at which point a gust of wind knocked the kite loose, causing it to float into the boy's hands, at which point he exclaimed that he had prayed the right way.

And so, so forth, so on, and so on, and so.

Drew Pearson reports of the groups and individuals providing ammunition to Senator McCarthy, including: the Kuomintang lobby of Nationalist China; William J. Goodwin, former Coughlinite and Christian Fronter, who received $25,000 annually from the Kuomintang lobby; former Congressman Charles Kersten of Wisconsin, chief backstage sleuth for the Senator; former newsman George Watters, previously of the Chicago Tribune group; the Scripps-Howard chain; Alfred Kohlberg, importer of lace handkerchiefs, doing 1.5 million dollars worth of business annually with China, admittedly helping to finance his American China Policy Association, and who believed anyone not an anti-Communist was a Communist, hated Owen Lattimore; and old-line career diplomats, sore at Secretary of State Acheson for bringing new blood into the State Department, who had sent exaggerated reports to the Senator.

The Kuomintang lobby was the most powerful and received its financing, as much as 200 to 400 million dollars, from American aid supposed to go to Nationalist China. Working in cooperation with it were former Ambassador William Bullitt, General Claire Chennault, former Senator Worth Clark, Mr. Kohlberg, and Senators Styles Bridges of New Hampshire and William Knowland of California.

The Chinese Communists had done much of their fighting with U.S. munitions given them by surrendering Nationalist warlords, part of the group now backing Senator McCarthy.

Among the Coughlinites, extremist Catholics, was Robert Harris, under indictment for violation of the Lobbying Act, and William Goodwin, a paid Kuomintang lobbyist. Shortly before Pearl Harbor, the latter wrote a letter not unfavorable to the Japanese and critical of the Chinese, and on October 25, 1941, had written a letter to Senator Tom Connally defending Hitler on the basis that the U.S., not Germany, was breaking international law.

Marquis Childs discusses the charges of Senator McCarthy in terms of his immunity from defamation claims while making his statements on the floor of the Senate. He had been challenged repeatedly by his victims to make the charges in the public forum, so that he could then be sued for his contentions. He had thus far evaded that responsibility by making the specific charges only in the Senate chamber, not naming names otherwise.

Mr. Childs quotes from Justice Joseph Story in his Commentaries on the Constitution, saying that the immunity of a member of Congress should only be enjoyed insofar as the exercise of official duties and public responsibility, and that there was no right to defame others in that process; thus, such statements should be without immunity.

While that had not become the law, it had been assumed that members of Congress would exercise responsibility in making such charges on the floor and that, failing which, the Congress would undertake to discipline the member. The Senate and House could expel a member by a vote of two-thirds of the membership of either body. The Senate had expelled members before, but usually only for acts of criminality involving moral turpitude, as fraud.

He stresses that the connection of Senator McCarthy to the Nationalist China lobby, the alleged source of the material on Owen Lattimore, ought be investigated as it represented a foreign source interfering with American foreign policy, seeking to weaken the position of the State Department and Secretary of State Acheson, harming in the process the institutions of free government.

Senator McCarthy would eventually be censured by the Senate in late 1954 by a vote of 67 to 22, substantially more than the simple majority of the 96 Senators necessary for the action. That, however, would not prevent the damage he had already set in motion to many innocent persons who had never had a thought of Communism, after being painted with the Red brush in a time when it was the taint of untouchability, of implication in traitorous, treasonous conduct, and thus extremely hard to repair even in the minds and perception of the ordinarily fair-minded among the public.

For, wasn't that guy or woman a Communist at one time, or something like that? Can't go along with supporting anything they might say. Somebody might think we're Communists.

Robert C. Ruark describes individualists doing extraordinary things, such as the illiterate Portuguese man who had built his own 300-ton sailing ship to provide food to Bermuda at far less than competition prices, producing a profitable enterprise for the American commissioner-broker who paid for the freight and shipping charges.

Dr. Clyde Cornog of the University of Pennsylvania had invented a gadget which would turn off the volume of commercials on the radio, a device which Mr. Ruark thinks was one of the more salubrious to come along in awhile. It gave silence, instead of chatter about the latest, greatest product without which the listener was to be deemed necessitous, while listening to "Arson Wells, Boy Firebug".

Yet, it might also lead to sponsors going out of business, programs being canceled and radios eventually consigned to the trash bins. What it might do to television taxed the imagination. Arthur Godfrey, being nearly all of television and nearly all of his program being commercials, might be canceled entirely by an ad blocker.

So, he includes that this device had to be taken off the market, as, otherwise, someone surely would then invent a derivative device which could silence all radios for all time. He questions, however, on third thought, whether that would really be so bad.

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.