The Charlotte News

Thursday, November 22, 1951

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Robert B. Tuckman, that ceasefire negotiators in Korea had nearly reached agreement this Thanksgiving Day regarding a plan which could potentially end the fighting by Christmas. Only a single point remained to be settled regarding establishment of the buffer zone, that being how a new ceasefire line would be fixed if no agreement could be reached on the remaining issues within 30 days, and a Friday meeting was called to start drawing the line. If that remaining issue were settled, there still remained the issues of determining terms for enforcing the armistice, the terms of exchange of prisoners, and recommendations to governments on withdrawal of foreign troops from Korea. The Communists had agreed that the ceasefire line would be the line of battle from which both sides would withdraw when an armistice was signed and that the line of battle would be determined forthwith. The allies had clarified that there would be no withdrawal of troops until there was a complete armistice agreement.

Nothing had been said by the Communist negotiators regarding Chinese Foreign Minister Chou En-Lai's recent statement that the ceasefire line should be along the 38th parallel or the other recent statement of the North Korean Foreign Minister who had indicated that all foreign troops should withdraw immediately from Korea, statements which had puzzled the U.N. negotiators. One American colonel interpreted the discrepancy to indicate that the Communist negotiators would agree for the time being on the buffer zone but that when all other agenda items were finished, they would start demanding again for withdrawal to the 38th parallel.

In ground fighting, two Communist battalions had overrun an advance allied position on the western front early this date, centering west of Chorwon, surrounding one allied unit during the night, which then repulsed the enemy troops and regained its advance positions. Another attack on two U.N. positions in the same sector had also been repulsed. By dawn, the front was quiet as rain fell during the morning.

In the air war, B-29s dropped bombs on frontline enemy troop concentrations and hit rail yards to the rear the previous night. For the third straight day, allied jets swept North Korea without challenge from enemy jets.

Thanksgiving Day was marked in Korea along most of the front lines. One division on the eastern front had used helicopters to fly in turkeys to an infantry company on "Heartbreak Ridge". It was cold in the foxholes. Vice-President Alben Barkley and his wife arrived at Kimpo Airfield for a visit with the troops, and expressed disappointment that they could not eat turkey at the front lines, as an officer had informed that the weather was too hazardous to fly them there in a light plane.

In Paris, at the U.N. General Assembly meeting, the Western Big Three foreign ministers prepared to meet with West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, in an effort to reach agreement on ending allied occupation of West Germany. American sources in Frankfurt said that agreement had already been reached regarding granting West Germany near-sovereignty so that it could participate as an equal partner in Europe's defense. One of Chancellor Adenauer's close associates, however, said the report was premature and that everything depended on the meeting this date. The Chancellor had met earlier in the day with U.S. High Commissioner to West Germany John J. McCloy and had lunch the previous day with Secretary of State Acheson.

In Rovigo, Italy, workers were placing dynamite on dikes along the still-rising Po River this date, in an effort to allow the flood waters to escape more quickly to the Adriatic Sea. The water was rising at a rate of two inches per hour and one gap had already been blasted in a retaining wall near Rovigo. In the southern half of the Po basin, an unknown assailant shot and killed a rescue worker, the motivation for which, police believed, was that the killer had been fighting to stay in his home.

The President and Mrs. Truman spent Thanksgiving in Key West, Fla., with Chief Justice Fred Vinson and his wife. They had shrimp cocktail, turkey, dressing, gravy, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, peas, and plum pudding.

Television viewers had a wide choice of football games to watch and the weather was generally cold and clear across the country, with snow forecast in some Western areas.

Despite inflation in food prices, there was an abundance of turkey, with a record number of 7.8 million birds raised in 1951.

There are nearly 8 million stories among the naked birds, and if you've ever stuffed one, you have become part of one of them.

In Pittsburgh, a City Councilman was seeking to eliminate calendars with semi-nude women from City Hall. He tore up a pair of such calendars in the police communications center, saying that he intended to complain to the Mayor. He said that one of the girls on the calendars had nothing on but a rosette at her midriff, with a caption below the picture which, he said, said,"What is home without a mother?" He intended to go office by office to check to see what types of similar pictures were on display, had already told the Traffic Engineer that such pictures in his office had to be removed by Friday or he would not attend the meeting there. The clean-minded Councilman said that he had engaged in a "lifelong fight against obscenity and filth".

There are 8 million calendar girls...

In Joliet, Ill., a 17-year old bellboy saved his newly purchased used car from damage the previous day but broke his leg in the process after discovering that the brakes did not work. As the car careered toward a parked car 30 feet away, with the only apparent way to avoid hitting it being to turn the vehicle into two concrete posts, he jumped out and threw himself in front of the car.

That was pretty stupid.

In Beaufort County, N.C., a farmer had been shot to death in his home the previous night and his wife kidnapped and stuffed into the trunk of a car. An hour and a half later, officers arrested a man and charged him with murder, after he admitted the killing, saying that he wanted an automobile. The man had been convicted of first-degree burglary and sentenced to 15 to 20 years in 1944, but had been paroled the previous year, over the objections of Beaufort County officers.

Perhaps, that was part of the problem, trying to punish a man indefinitely for a past mistake not involving violence.

Whereas the previous Thanksgiving, more than 80 persons had been killed in violent accidents in the first few hours of the holiday period on Wednesday, only 18 had been killed in the same period this year, all in traffic accidents. The previous year's death toll had included 78 persons killed in the crash of two Long Island railroad commuter trains in New York. The previous year's total for the 30-hour holiday period had been a record 201.

On the editorial page, "Duke's Rate Request" finds the request of Duke Power Company to the North Carolina and South Carolina Utilities Commissions for an increase in its electrical rates to customers to appear justified on the basis that no rate increase had occurred since the current rate structure had been established in 1939, despite substantial increases in the interim in costs of operation.

The piece expresses trust, however, that the utility commissions, charged with the responsibility of being the guardian of the people's interests, would, nevertheless, consider carefully the request for three million dollars in additional revenue and impose the burden of proof upon Duke to show its necessity, not merely act as a rubber stamp.

"Preview of 1952" finds that the President had revived his 1948 "give 'em hell" style in his speech two days earlier at the Woman's National Democratic Club in Washington, complaining of the smear tactics employed by opponents of the Administration, "old guard" Republicans and rich "special interests".

It finds that such invective might bring cheers from the "party hacks" and obtain votes from the "thoughtless" but did not appeal to the more serious-minded voter who regarded soberly the responsibilities facing the nation and wished to hear them discussed calmly and rationally. Nothing in the President's address, except the defense of his foreign policy, supported the hope that the 1952 campaign would be more than an "oratorical slugfest". It concludes that it was to be hoped that voters would "see through the sham, the bombast, and the spleen of the upcoming campaign."

"The Storm That Subsided", in reminding of the furor which erupted when FDR changed the date of Thanksgiving by a week in 1939 in deference to requests by merchants who wanted an extra week for pre-Christmas shopping, has its facts a bit askew after reliance on Editorial Research Reports. FDR moved the holiday from the fourth Thursday to the third Thursday, not from the last Thursday to the fourth Thursday, which, in most years, would be the same day. He returned the day to the traditional fourth Thursday in 1941 after an outcry against the move, causing some states to celebrate two Thanksgivings while others ignored the third Thursday holiday completely, derisively dubbing it "Franksgiving".

Editorial Research Reports had pointed out that the first declared Thanksgiving holiday was selected by President Washington at the behest of Congress in 1789, set on the last Thursday in November, but that President Jefferson had allowed the holiday to lapse, calling it a "monarchical practice". It was revived by President Lincoln in 1863, not as the quoted passage from ERR stated, 1864, and took place on November 26, the fourth Thursday, exactly a week after the President had delivered the Gettysburg Address.

It is bitterly ironic that this change came to mind again on Thanksgiving Day of 1951, celebrated as it was on November 22, 12 years before that dark Friday in Dallas, now 55 years ago. As we suggested in 2003, had FDR not succumbed to political pressure to reset the holiday in 1941 to the fourth Thursday, the assassination of President Kennedy would likely not have had the opportunity to occur at that time, as Thursday, November 21, 1963 would have been Thanksgiving and the President would not have scheduled the Texas trip during that week. Whether things would have transpired exactly as they did, however, the following week or the prior week, no one, of course, may say. The only thing we know is that the track of history was forever changed by that singularly horrible event.

"Yackety-Yak Dept." tells of Senators in the most recent session of Congress having talked 966 hours and filled up 8,000 three-column pages in the Congressional Record, amounting to more than 12 million words, or an average of 125,000 words per Senator. Members of the House had talked a bit less, taking up 705 hours and filling 6,051 pages, or a total of 9 million words, an average of 20,700 per member. The entire record weighed 100 pounds and was six times longer than the Bible, with a printing cost of $6,638 per Senator. And that had been just the speeches on the floor, not including committee hearings.

It suggests some literary references which might come to mind, such as Shakespeare's "Words without thoughts never to heaven go" or Thomas Hobbes's "Words … are the money of fools", among others it references. But, bearing in mind that the editors themselves had been prolix and verbose on occasion, they were content to rest on the words of Horace Greeley, when asked why he wrote such long editorials, responding that he did not have time to write short ones, and so it had been, it concludes, with the members of Congress regarding their speeches.

A piece from the Philadelphia Inquirer, titled "Because One Driver Drank", tells of seven passengers aboard a bus having been killed on a ramp leading to the San Francisco Bay Bridge in Oakland after a drunk driver had hit an abutment, dislodging a chunk of concrete which fell into the path of the bus, causing the bus to careen off the ramp, falling 40 feet. An additional 22 people had been injured in the accident which, but for the drunk driver, would not have occurred.

Bill Sharpe, in his weekly "Turpentine Drippings", snippets from newspapers across the state, provides one from the Sanford Herald, which told of Joe talking over his social problems with his friend John, indicating that he had walked to school with a girl three times, had carried her books, too, bought her chocolate shakes twice, and wondered if he ought kiss her. "Naw," said Mortimer, "you've done enough for that woman already."

We are wondering where Mortimer came from, but in any event, we think Joe ought slow down.

Billy Arthur, former UNC head cheerleader, in News & Views, tells of a Marine, commenting on the sub-standard rental joints near Tent Camp, indicating that if they ever cleaned the place, they would find two more rooms.

Or you could use a sextant to plot the location.

Harry Snook, of the Daily Tar Heel, tells of the UNC campus being a squirrel's paradise as the furry critters scurried about hoarding nuts and whatever else they could find for the winter. A coed had asked the boy with her how the squirrel could ever remember where it placed its nuts, to which he replied that if they saw a squirrel tearing up the ground during the winter, they would know he had forgotten the location, to which the coed replied that she could not understand why the smart squirrels would not sit in a tree and observe where the others buried their nuts.

Carl Goersh, in The State, says: "The Commissioner won out, but it was a close contest. As a matter of fact, for a minute or so it was tit for tat. After that, Stag pulled away, and the Governor was left holding the bag. Maybe one of these days they'll stage an-udder contest."

But where did they hide their nuts and would they remember, come spring?

The Harnett County News imparts of a widow who wrote to an insurance company that they had required her to fill out so many proofs of claim to obtain her beneficiary proceeds that she sometimes almost wished that her husband had not died.

And so more, and so on, more on, more, etc.

Drew Pearson writes from the area of Plymouth Rock, comparing the exodus of the Pilgrims from England for the New World in search of freedom of religion to the refugees from behind the Iron Curtain currently fleeing political thought-control in Russia. In 17th century England, the people were expected to follow the religion of the monarch, which could change from one day to the next between Catholicism and Protestantism. Eventually, they had rebelled and sought to establish a new nation across the ocean.

There were signs of rebellion within the Soviet Union, comprised of only 45 percent Russians. Peasants among these other nationalities had revolted in some cases and it was reported that 15 million political prisoners were in concentration camps, that students at the University of Moscow had refused to go along with the Soviet program, and that refugees were streaming out of the Iron Curtain at the rate of about a thousand per month. If these refugees could be guided to redeveloped areas of Africa and South America under the Point Four program, they might become pioneers for political and religious freedom, serving to attract others, thus breaking down the Iron Curtain.

He tells of descendants of the Pilgrims in New England this Thanksgiving, along with more recent pilgrims from Eastern Europe, seeking to raise money to operate Radio Free Europe and send Freedom Balloons again across the Iron Curtain, carrying messages of hope and friendship to the people on the other side. He suggests that these efforts, encouraging people-to-people friendship, constituted the best method of breaking down the barrier to the West interposed by the Iron Curtain and thereby lessening the danger of war.

Stewart Alsop, in Tel Aviv, tells of his encounter with a kibbutz founded by 90 or so American Zionists a couple of years earlier, some from Minnesota, on land which once had been an Arab village. The Arabs had fled during the Arab-Israeli war and the old Arab villages had been razed to deter the former inhabitants from returning. A boy he met from Minnesota said that the fact had troubled the settlers greatly at first, but that hardly anyone considered the fact any longer. It served to illustrate both the strength and weakness of the new Israeli state, on the one hand possessed of a fierce idealism which had led Jews from all over the world to found the new nation on inhospitable soil, reclaiming the arid land to make it arable for production of food, while on the other, occupying land once inhabited by 900,000 Arabs who owned homes and shops, now occupied by the Israelis.

He finds it somewhat shocking that four years earlier when he visited the same area, the city of Jaffa had been a noisy, bustling Arab domicile, whereas by 1951, every house and shop was occupied by Israelis. The dynamited Arab villages in the north, in an area designated by the U.N. as an Arab zone under the partition plan, were now dead and empty.

The Arabs had started the war, however, and would have eliminated all of the Jews in Palestine had they been able to do so. Most of the Arabs had evacuated the area. And the Jews needed a land of refuge. But the founding of Israel had entailed taking over the property and livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Arabs, and so Israel had "to live for a very long time as an island in a sea of hate and fear." That hate and fear was deep and long-lasting.

He assures that it was not to imply that the U.S. should abandon support of Israel, and, to the contrary, there were many reasons why the experiment should not fail.

Marquis Childs, in Paris, tells of France once again facing a major financial and political crisis, with the world's worst inflation, double that of the U.S. since the start of the Korean War. And once again, American policymakers were seeking to construct a remedy to prevent its financial collapse. The situation was not as bad as in 1946 or 1947, and definite gains in the interim had occurred to bring the economy above the prewar level, not, however, resulting in a significant improvement of living standards for most of the French people. In consequence, the position of the Government under Premier Rene Pleven was increasingly difficult. As in Britain, there was a serious imbalance of trade impacting the French dollar reserves and the means to correct that imbalance was limited.

The French wanted assurances in writing of some 50 million dollars in economic aid from the U.S., but the assistance act passed the previous summer by Congress had cut economic aid to the bone and provided that for part of the military aid to be converted into economic aid, there had to be a showing of urgent necessity.

Aside from economic aid, the U.S. could build airbases and other installations to be used by all of the NATO nations and thereby spend American dollars. Another method was to purchase all available military supplies and equipment in Western Europe. It would take all of the available ingenuity on both sides to prevent a collapse and a resulting political crisis. The French Government was seeking to cut imports by $250,000, accomplished fairly easily by cutting down on the use of gasoline and other such non-necessities.

The French were very unhappy at the 25 percent rate of inflation, jeopardizing both the coalition Government and the policy of containment of Communism through reconstruction of military defenses under NATO.

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