The Charlotte News
Wednesday, October 3, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Korea, the Communists had held allied infantry to no gains the previous day and this date pressed two battalion-sized probing attacks, as allied artillery bombarded the western front in one of the heaviest barrages thus far in the war. A partial blackout, however, imposed without explanation, prevented full reporting of the news from the front.
In possible explanation for the blackout, the Far East Air Force observed over 4,300 enemy trucks on the highways Tuesday night, the greatest number observed in a single night since the last Communist aborted offensive in mid-May. Allied warships and planes concentrated on breaking up this activity, and it was reported that the enemy trucks suffered very heavy losses.
In the air war, twelve American F-80 Shooting Stars had probably destroyed two enemy MIG-15s in a brief battle with a dozen enemy jets.
In Abadan, Iran, the British withdrew by ship their remaining personnel, about 275, from the world's largest refinery which they had formerly owned prior to the nationalization of it by the Iranian Government. The British had a royalty agreement on the oil with Iran formed at the turn of the century, which would have lasted until 1993. Iran had provided until the following day for the evacuation. Forty other employees had been evacuated by air earlier in the morning. The evacuees complained that it was one of Britain's most humiliating moments. The British employee who had run the refinery said that the Iranian National Oil Company could probably run it, but only the less complicated equipment, producing products such as kerosene, furnace oil and diesel oil. He indicated that the large international companies, which controlled most of the tankers, would not carry the oil from the refinery under present conditions. The company was worth 1.4 billion dollars and had a monthly payroll of three million dollars for the Iranian employees at the refinery and in the outlying oil fields.
Senator Richard Nixon of California told the Senate Investigations subcommittee this date that DNC chairman William Boyle had an employee of the RFC on his payroll in 1949. He allowed that there might be a legitimate explanation, but said that it seemed highly improper. Senator Clyde Hoey of North Carolina, chairman of the subcommittee, promptly ordered an inquiry to determine whether the employee should be called as a witness.
During the hearing this date, a stenographer for the St. Louis printing firm from which Mr. Boyle had received a fee, which he claimed was only a legal fee and not for exerting influence on the RFC to obtain for the firm a loan, testified that she had orders to conceal from other employees the fact that Mr. Boyle was on the firm's payroll. She said that she prepared monthly statements from the firm's ledger card for Mr. Boyle long after he said he had no longer worked for the firm as its attorney, but could not recall whether the entries indicated any money was due him and did not know whether the statements were ever sent to him. She was the last scheduled witness in the inquiry. Senator Hoey said that starting the following day, the subcommittee would focus its attention on RNC Chairman Guy Gabrielson, who would be the opening witness.
Ambassador-at-Large Philip Jessup swore this date in testimony before a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee that a charge made by Senator Joseph McCarthy, that Ambassador Jessup was affiliated with six Communist fronts, was false. The subcommittee was considering his nomination by the President to be a U.N. delegate. The subcommittee released a finding by the Civil Service Loyalty Review Board that there was no reasonable doubt of Mr. Jessup's loyalty. Mr. Jessup said that he would introduce evidence that would positively prove that he held no affinity for the Communists, and would also show Senator McCarthy's alleged proof to be a mixture of "barefaced falsehoods, distortions and misrepresentations". He encouraged the subcommittee or other appropriate government authorities to determine whether this disregard for the truth by the Senator while testifying under oath before the subcommittee was deliberate or not. He said that the Senator had tried to make his case by using claimed connections of Ambassador Jessup to organizations with which he had no active association.
At the governors' conference in
Gatlinburg, Tenn., Florida Governor Fuller Warren criticized Senator
Estes Kefauver of Tennessee for being a "madly ambitious
political shyster" in his handling of the Senate Crime
Investigating Committee, from the summer of 1950 through the spring
of 1951. He said that the Senator was seeking to become
Vice-President. He also referred to him as "that ambition-crazed
Caesar". The Committee had named Florida
Senator Kefauver would become the Democratic nominee for the vice-presidency in 1956 with presidential nominee Governor Adlai Stevenson, defeating Senator John F. Kennedy
In Guam, two surgeons at the Guam Memorial Hospital were reprimanded for failure to sterilize a man who said his wife had been told she should have no more children. The surgeons thought they had been discharged, but chief of the hospital administration said that they had misunderstood, had only been reprimanded, and were excellent surgeons, though in this particular case, had been unethical. Both surgeons had declined to perform the surgery, saying it was illegal, though voluntary by the patient. The head surgeon said that it was up to an individual doctor to refuse to perform surgery but that the reprimand was necessary because the doctors had placed the hospital in an embarrassing position because of the last-minute refusal to perform the operation.
In New York, Lt. General Hugh Drum, chief of staff to General John J. Pershing during World War I, died suddenly this date at age 72 from a heart ailment, while at work at his desk in the Empire State Building during the morning. Since 1944, he had been president of the corporation which operated the building.
In London, King George VI, according to doctors, was improving after his serious lung operation.
The tropical storm which had swept across Florida developed into a full hurricane in the Atlantic this date, with winds of 95 mph near its center. Storm warnings were ordered for the area from Cape Hatteras to the Virginia capes and small craft warnings were posted for the entire North Carolina coast. The storm was expected to pass east of Cape Hatteras early this night.
News editor Pete McKnight examines some of the major stakes in the 1952 North Carolina Democratic primary. Former Congressman and interim Senator William B. Umstead appeared to be the favorite among conservative Democrats for the nomination for governor. But the forces of liberalism which had combined to elect Governor Kerr Scott in 1948 should, he suggests, not be counted out. They would support Dr. Henry Jordan in 1952, the State Highway & Public Works Administration chairman, who had not yet decided whether he would run.
Though the Governor lacked veto power and served only for one four-year term, he controlled patronage and greatly influenced the Legislature, especially during his first year in office. He was also director of the budget, headed the Council of State, and had wide latitude over the Highway Commission, with a 100-million dollar per year budget.
Governor Kerr Scott had been obligated to support Capus Waynick, his 1948 campaign manager, but Ambassador Waynick had elected not to run. At that point, support began for Dr. Jordan to be Governor Scott's successor.
Mr. McKnight finds Dr. Jordan able, smart and possessed of great dignity and integrity, a successful dentist and industrialist, who nevertheless did not think himself to be a great campaigner and was embarrassed to ask the people to vote for him. If he did run, Governor Scott could rest assured that his "Go Forward" program would not suffer.
In Hogansburg, N.Y., four residents claimed that they saw a small, propeller-driven, ball-shaped flying machine land in a field the previous day, and then take off and vanish. The craft, they said, had no markings and had a propeller shaft protruding from its top. Authorities on both sides of the Canadian border were skeptical, with the U.S. Air Force spokesman saying that he knew nothing of any such craft and the controller of Canadian civil aviation saying that the story sounded "fantastic".
Well, of course, that is what they
would say. But, friends, as we all know, they are here and have been
here for quite some time
In Los Angeles, comedian Lou
Costello testified in a civil trial that he had once invested over
$27,000 in a machine to make ice cubes for bars, had hired an
engineer to produce the machine, but that it had never worked. The
engineer was suing Mr. Costello for more than $6,000 which he said
was still due for the job and Mr. Costello was counter-suing for the
$27,000 he had invested in the project. When asked afterward by a
reporter why he had sought to invest in ice cubes, he responded:
"Bing Crosby
On the editorial page, "A Matter for the States" agrees with the decision of the governors at their conference to propose passage of the pending House bill, already passed by the Senate, to allow publication of welfare rolls. The piece thinks it should be passed because such was within the rights of the states and because the expenditure of public funds should always be subject to public scrutiny.
Federal Security administrator Oscar Ewing had a point when he warned the governors that prior to passage of the law which banned the publication, several states during the 1938 election cycle had used the publicly available rolls to drum up votes.
But the piece finds that, on balance, such a concern did not outweigh the public's right to know.
"Warning for Americans" tells of Alberto Gainza Paz, the former editor of La Prensa in Buenos Aires before the organ was taken over by the dictatorship of Juan Peron, having spoken at Northwestern University during the week and warned that a people without a free press were blind and destined to suffer all manner of "indignities and tragedies". The dictatorship did not suppress all of the press, he added, but rather reduced it to a single voice, that of the Government.
The piece finds that the recent executive order of the President, allowing agency heads to engage in censorship of inconvenient information which it had under its authority, had the potential for great abuse, leading to the suppression of legitimate news. It suggests that any curtailment of the right of the people to get information about public affairs was a dangerous step toward the state of things in Argentina.
"Gabrielson and Boyle" finds that there was a difference between the charges of impropriety and influence-peddling against DNC chairman William Boyle and RNC Chairman Guy Gabrielson, in that the former was in a position to wield powerful influence by virtue of having patronage to dispense through the majority party machinery, whereas the latter did not. The only potential influence Mr. Gabrielson had was in the prospect that the Republicans might win in 1952. Even so, the activities he had undertaken in seeking to postpone payments on an RFC loan received by his private company had seriously weakened the Republican case against the Democrats for exerting influence on RFC loans. It thus urges the Republicans to let Mr. Gabrielson return to the duties of his business full time.
"Charity Hospitalization" tells of the decision by the City Council and the County Commissioners to provide the Good Samaritan Hospital an additional $8,000 and to advance immediately the $20,000 originally appropriated for the current fiscal year, to enable the hospital to maintain its out-patient clinic while an official study of its finances was conducted.
That funding, however, did not solve the recurring problem every year as to how to meet the responsibility for indigent health care. The Commissioners and the Council had always used a double standard in compensating hospitals for charity care, by haggling over how much of the actual amount expended would be compensated by the County and City. The result was that indigent health care ran a deficit with the hospitals, causing the difference to be passed on to the paying patients.
It urges that the City and County ought compensate the hospitals fully for charity care, subject to scrutiny of each hospital's operating costs and the need of applicants for indigent care.
A piece from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, titled "The Eisenhower Charm", tells of the New York Times having attributed General Eisenhower's charm to his upbringing in Kansas. The Times found that the state had produced in him a "Kansas language which could be understood in foreign lands and diverse tongues." That language, it opined, had made him an effective commander both during World War II and now in the postwar world as head of NATO.
The piece begs to differ regarding Kansas having an earthy language. But if what the Times had meant was that the General had the ability to be a "two-fisted leader who doesn't believe in double-dealing", it agreed.
Coleman Roberts, president of the Carolina Motor Club, writing in The State Magazine, informs that traffic accidents, should they continue through the rest of the year at the incidence rate for the first half of 1951, would account for injuries to over 15,000 persons and the deaths of nearly 1,100 in 36,726 accidents, costing 70.6 million dollars in damage. The economic losses alone could pave about 2,500 miles of highways in the state each year.
He finds that there would be no reduction in accidents until public opinion supported intensification of enforcement or until there were so many accidents and resultant congestion that it became unbearable. The public had to be willing to invest more in traffic safety and sacrifice some degree of liberty for more security from accidents.
He provides statistics showing that the record was already unbearable and counsels stronger laws, stricter enforcement, and driver education courses, the latter having demonstrated that graduates had 75 percent fewer accidents than those drivers without such a course of education.
Drew Pearson tells of the attempt to indict Charles O'Gara, assistant U.S. Attorney in San Francisco, for having tried to clean up the San Francisco IRB office. Mr. O'Gara had been accused of intimidating a Government witness, but the grand jury, seeing through the ruse, refused to indict.
In August, 1950, Federal Judge J. Waties Waring of South Carolina, temporarily assigned to San Francisco, detected something wrong with a narcotics case and suggested to Mr. O'Gara that he investigate, which he did, seeking before a grand jury to indict several IRB employees for collecting funds from brewers, liquor dealers, bookies, prostitutes and delinquent taxpayers to avoid prosecution for tax evasion. Eventually, the grand jury indicted the attorney in the narcotics case presided over by Judge Waring. Mr. O'Gara's probe became sidetracked, however, through political influence, and he, himself, came under scrutiny, leading to the grand jury investigation, albeit without an indictment. But it had been clear that his attempts to clean up the San Francisco IRB office had been justified.
Marquis Childs discusses the lack of progress on the Japanese peace settlement, following the 51-nation conference at San Francisco which had adopted the treaty subject to ratification by the individual signatory nations. Prior to the conference, the Japanese had agreed through Premier Yoshida that they would not enter into treaty negotiations with the Communist Chinese and, in effect, would pledge to negotiate with the Nationalists regarding Formosa. Following the conference, a formula was developed by John Foster Dulles to make recognition of Nationalist China as easy as possible for the Japanese, by adopting language which would enable Japan to recognize the Nationalists "with respect to the Chinese people over whom they exercise sovereignty." And the Nationalists were to utilize similar limiting language with respect to Japan.
The Nationalist Chinese Ambassador to the U.S., Wellington Koo, told Mr. Dulles, chief architect of the Japanese treaty, that he believed the Government in Formosa would accept the terms. Subsequently, however, the Ambassador discovered that Chiang Kai-shek had sharply rejected the wording, insisting that the Nationalists had proper sovereignty over all of China, not just Formosa. The problem might provide the Japanese, who had not been anxious to recognize the Nationalists in the first instance, an excuse for stepping away from the agreement with Mr. Dulles. The latter would travel to Formosa in November and likely would have some harsh words for Chiang regarding the realities of the Asian picture.
Mr. Childs thinks that Mr. Dulles would likely succeed in overcoming this obstacle. The Senate would hold hearings on the Japanese treaty in January and it would likely be ratified in February.
At that point, Mr. Dulles might depart from the State Department and thus cease to be a shield to some of the attacks by Republicans on the Department, as he was unlikely to make a "futile sacrifice" just to propagate bipartisan foreign policy.
Robert C. Ruark hopes that the President would withdraw his latest executive order allowing department heads to censor documents and information under their control if they determined that it was necessary for "national security".
As he had acted as a Navy censor during the war, Mr. Ruark says that he understood well the dictatorial power which went along with the ability to engage in censorship, and the fact that it eventually became addictive, regardless of any true concerns about security.
As he found it difficult to keep the Administration honest, he believes censorship in its hands would eventuate in the concentration camp. As with the government seizure of the major independent organ of the press in Argentina, La Prensa, the result would be that newspapers would be virtually expropriated by the Government. He urges the President therefore to withdraw the order, as he had made no friends in the press and election time was nigh.
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