The Charlotte News
Thursday, October 25, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.N. negotiations team, in the first day of continued ceasefire talks since cessation of the talks on August 23, proposed a compromise for setting up a ceasefire buffer zone in Korea, whereby the allies would yield about 200 square miles in the east and the Communists would give up a similar area in the west, with the resulting zone about 2.5 miles wide and following generally the extant battle lines. There was no immediate indication of a Communist response, their previous demand being a buffer zone coterminous with the 38th parallel. A member of the allied subcommittee of negotiators indicated that unless the Communists accepted the proposal, a less favorable one would likely be offered later, pointing out that while the talks had been in recess, the allies had advanced the battle lines many miles northward, implying that the forward advance would continue. Under the proposal, the Communists would give up Kaesong just below the 38th parallel in the western sector.
In air action, allied warplanes hit the crippled North Korean rail system this date in one of the war's most concentrated attacks, catching the enemy by surprise before they could move the trains into tunnels. Three brief jet battles occurred during the day without allied loss while one Russian-made MIG-15 was damaged. One American Corsair had crashed and burned in enemy territory after being hit by ground fire and there was no chance that the pilot had survived.
There was a relative lull in ground action across the front with the resumption of the truce talks, with some sharp action reported southeast of Kumsong, as tank-supported infantry seized an enemy-held hill despite enemy resistance.
In the vicinity of Manila, two Americans were killed in a roadside ambush and U.S. Marines immediately joined in a search for the slayers, believed to be Communist Huks.
In Britain, the general election
Winston Churchill sued this date the London Daily Mirror, a pro-Labor newspaper, for libel on the basis of its stating that Labor was the party "you can really trust" to defend the peace, implying that the Conservatives under the leadership of Mr. Churchill would plunge the nation into war.
In Cairo, Russia's envoy to Egypt met for 90 minutes with the Egyptian Foreign Minister, who said after the meeting that the two had discussed Egypt's support of Russia's demand for appointment of a Russian judge at The Hague and other questions concerning Egypt, but that a reported offer of arms to Egypt by Russia was not discussed.
In Khartoum, the British civil secretary told the legislative assembly that Egypt's unilateral cancellation of the 1899 agreement under which the Sudan was jointly controlled by Britain and Egypt was invalid and that Britain would not be forced out.
In New York, Leonard Finder, former publisher of the Manchester (N.H.) Evening Leader, said in Collier's that General Eisenhower had told him that he would run for President as either a Democrat or Republican "if it were a matter of duty" and a clear expression of the wishes of the American people. He was quoted as saying to Mr. Finder that he had hoped that someone better qualified would have turned up in the years since 1948 and that he did not really desire to run. He said that if the Republicans selected Senator Taft as their nominee, he would be willing to run as a Democrat.
In Pittsburgh, Senator Taft said in a press conference that "a stalemated peace is better than a stalemated war" and urged pressing the Korean War to completion in the ceasefire negotiations, but continued to advocate the strategy of General MacArthur, that the allies take over all of Korea and set up a permanent government.
A former IRB collector for New York testified before a House Ways & Means subcommittee that he did not know why he had been asked the previous Tuesday to quit by IRB commissioner John Dunlap, based on "personal activities outside of the office".
In New York, William Remington, the former Government economist whose perjury conviction had been reversed on appeal, was again indicted on new perjury charges by a Federal grand jury, charging five counts occurring at his trial the previous year. The perjury charges pertained to his claims that he did not pass Government secrets to a Soviet spy courier, that he never knowingly attended Communist Party meetings, never paid party dues, never tried to recruit anyone into the party, and did not know until the previous year that a Young Communist League existed at Dartmouth College where he attended during the late 1930s.
The Army was reported by a North Carolina Congressman to have agreed to help cities in North and South Carolina suffering from drought. The Congressman said that he had been informed that Burlington and Raleigh were the hardest hit towns and might need an additional supply of water.
In a small town in Mississippi, a 15-year- old newsboy, despite having a bullet wound in his cheek, completed his newspaper route the previous day before receiving medical attention. He had been hit by a stray bullet which had struck a stone and been deflected upward as he rode his bicycle along his route, with 19 papers left in his satchel still to deliver. He refused an initial offer for a ride to the hospital until he completed the route. His condition was described as good.
In Concord, N.H., the City Treasurer reported that the police had provided the City with 60,000 pennies and 8,000 nickels, the booty from one week of collection from the parking meters, necessitating use of every wastebasket at City Hall until it was accurately counted for deposit in the bank.
On the editorial page, "Congress Will Get Its Chance" finds that the decision of the President to withdraw his appointment of General Mark Clark as Ambassador to the Vatican likely would quiet much of the Protestant criticism which the appointment had precipitated, primarily for it coming during the recess of Congress and thus avoiding debate on whether to have an ambassador to the Vatican, implicit in which would be recognition of the Vatican as a sovereign government, to which many Protestants objected as violative of the Founding principle of the country embodied in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, separation of church and state.
The President had said that General Clark had determined that he could not serve as an ambassador while continuing to serve in the Army without a special dispensation from Congress, and so wanted to obtain that before accepting the post, necessitating Congressional debate and action on the matter after the first of the year.
It concludes that while it would be impossible to keep the issue free of politics, it was to be hoped that in an ensuing Senate debate on the matter politics would be kept to a minimum, and the debate centered around the principle of separation of church and state.
"Non-Conformist British Politicians" tells of British politics being dominated, just as in America, by two primary parties, Labor and Conservative. And, also as in America, the tendency was for the out-party to say that it would do things very much like the in-party, only better.
It posits that while a two-party system had great merit in forming the ability to govern—as opposed to the factionalization inherent in the Italian system leading at times to aberrant plurality parties such as the Fascists taking power—, the dominance of two parties also virtually barred many independent spirits who were non-conformists from effective use of the hustings to promote their cause. The Liberal Party in Britain was the chief minor party, followed by the Communists, who had failed in the previous election in 1950 to win any seats in Parliament, plus five Labor Independents, 12 nationalist parties, and 13 independent parties. In addition to those, 24 candidates represented either minor or their own individual parties.
It finds one such individual party, the "Independent Millionaire" Party of one A. E. Pickard, to be most interesting, wishes to know more about it, would like to apply for membership, and wishes Mr. Pickard success.
"Trends in the U.N." tells of the two main developments in the six years since the U.N. had been founded being based on two relatively minor provisions of the original Charter. Those were that the General Assembly, not bound by the Security Council's unilateral veto power by any one of the Big Five members, could act on the basis of a two-thirds majority vote when the Council failed to consider an issue, and, second, the authority to make regional agreements, the most significant of which to date had been the creation of NATO. While the U.N. had failed as a whole to create an international police force, NATO had created such an organization for Western Europe, making peace more likely.
"Mutual Education" praises the Chamber of Commerce and school officials for their observance of Business-Education Day, which included a tour for 200 teachers of local business establishments, enabling teachers a better understanding of business and businessmen a better understanding of the teaching profession.
A piece from the Louisville
Courier-Journal, titled "Wilderness Is Paradise Enow",
comments on the small island of Sark
It concludes: "There is, we
hope, no Sark prohibition on a book of verses underneath a bough, a
loaf of bread, a jug of wine. We think of moments when the smoke
settles down and the hot rods screech forth, and fain would be in
Sark
Bill Sharpe, in his weekly "Turpentine Drippings", snippets from newspapers around the state, presents one from Penn Gray of the Robesonian in Lumberton, in which he comments on the purchase of a drugstore in Pembroke by the Pembroke Fire Department, which was to be known as the Fireman's Drug Store, with a non-pharmacist acting as "pharmacist", drawing the ire of the State Pharmaceutical Association, requiring the correction that the Fireman's Drug Store was not that at all, but rather a soda shop, which it would be renamed, and, lest another State board be drawn into the mix, not a club for the exclusive use of firemen.
The Monroe Journal wants another outbreak of hookworm, symptoms of which included listlessness, to keep people off the highways and at home, where they could be safe from auto accidents.
The Rocky Mount Telegram tells of the State Treasurer in 1898 giving the total assets of national and state banks in North Carolina, along with the single savings bank in Wilmington, as 21 million dollars, whereas there were probably 50 banks in the state in 1951 which had greater assets, and a half dozen banking systems with ten times that amount.
And so forth onward
Drew Pearson tells of British Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Gaitskell, during his recent visit in Washington, having held a conference with high U.S. officials in which he discussed the declining sterling reserves in England threatening the stability of the economy. He did not seek a loan but rather an advance of 800,000 tons of steel to be paid back at a later time. He attributed the drop in reserves to the competition of German and Japanese trade, as goods from both countries had flowed into the international market during the previous year or so, reducing British markets.
After the British elections this date, it was likely that the new government, regardless of party, would have to take drastic monetary steps and U.S. experts predicted that one of them would be a U.S. loan of about two billion dollars and that another would be devaluation of the pound, cut in 1949 from $4.03 to $2.80, while a third alternative would be curtailment of British rearmament.
The column tells of a deputy tax collector in western Massachusetts, whom Mr. Pearson urges be investigated, as he had conducted an insurance service on the side while also giving tax advice, as he performed his official duties as a tax collector. He claimed that there was no relationship between his side businesses and tax collection, but his secretary said that during a period of 11 years, she had given tax advice to about 50 to 100 customers per year and admitted that most of those customers also had insurance with the company, but claimed that none of the taxpayers were relieved of their tax obligations after purchasing insurance.
Mr. Pearson notes that in the winter of 1949, the column had first begun calling attention to the then little-known income tax scandals, while pointing out that most revenue agents were honest. He deems the most important move in cleaning up the Bureau to be taking the IRB out of politics.
Stewart Alsop, in London, tells of Winston Churchill, should the Conservatives win the election this date, likely soon to visit the United States. While the difference between a Labor and Conservative victory would be de minimis in terms of actual policies, there was a great difference in personalities, which such a U.S. visit would underscore.
When, the prior December, Prime Minister Clement Attlee had visited with the President, primarily to ensure that the President would not begin dropping atom bombs in Korea or China, never a real prospect, Mr. Attlee had, during his discussion with the President regarding the shortage of raw materials threatening the British economy and the need in consequence to control the rise in raw material prices, mumbled a large number of facts, to which the President had solicitously responded with a smile and inconsequential phrases such as, "That's fine." In fact, the President had not understood a word of the Prime Minister's presentation.
By contrast, Mr. Churchill would not mumble and would be clearly audible to the President. Nor would Mr. Churchill waste time on inessential matters, whereas Labor Cabinet meetings, according to one individual who had participated in them, tended to deal for an hour on matters such as Iran and then another hour on pensions for war widows or the like. Under Mr. Churchill, a Conservative Government would consider it paramount to bring the Anglo-American alliance into a close working relationship based on mutual understanding, and delegate to others peripheral matters.
A Conservative Government would also consider its first goal to be an understanding with the U.S. on a joint strategy regarding the Far East and Middle East, and the Conservative "shadow cabinet" had considered withdrawing Labor's recognition of Communist China. Mr. Churchill would also likely insist on a larger share in forming joint strategy than Britain had possessed since the war.
Robert C. Ruark tells of an ensign he knew who was now in the Coast Guard involuntarily after having volunteered for the Navy in 1942 and served honorably through the end of the war, then discharged, started a family and a business, only to be called back into service after the Korean War began, now finding it impossible to support his family, including two daughters in junior high school, on the roughly $260 per month in base pay which he received. He also found it undignified to be an ensign at his age.
His resentment was deepened by the fact that many young men attending college were avoiding the draft through exemption while he, a college graduate, who had served his duty previously, had to fill their shoes.
General Lewis Hershey, head of Selective Service, said that after the war the colleges had built up tremendous enrollments and consequently had expanded faculties and facilities, thus wanted to maintain their student bodies at the inflated peak and so had placed pressure on the draft system to keep their students out of it during the course of their education.
Mr. Ruark thinks that it was "little short of criminal to use the college boy as a selfish gimmick at the expense of men like the old ensign; men who lucked out a war, came back alive, and worked hard to reform his life and prepare a future for his family." Yet such men, not willful members of an organized reserve or National Guard, had earned the right to some peace and prosperity unless the country embarked on total war. He urges that such men should not be subject to arbitrary call-up after having completed their service, while young men in college were cloaked with the immunity from service at the expense of the "weary old retread".
Framed Edition
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