The Charlotte News

Thursday, December 13, 1951

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.N. negotiators in Korea had demanded that the Communists guarantee that there would be no "death march" of allied prisoners in Korea, as it was believed that many of the U.N. prisoners were held in camps far to the east of Panmunjom, site of the truce talks, and the allies did not want them to have to walk into freedom from these camps to achieve their release. No progress had been made this date on the issue of exchange of prisoners of war. The allies wanted the list of U.N. prisoners at once because they knew that if they received a certain number of names on the list, they were assured of obtaining that number of prisoners; but if they received a list with substantially fewer names than their own estimates of prisoners in Communist hands, there would be quite a bit of additional discussion required before there could be an agreement on the exchange.

In the air war, U.S. Sabre jets won the largest all-jet victories in history this date, bagging thirteen enemy MIGs, probably shooting down two others and damaging one, in two battles over North Korea. None of the Sabre jets was shot down.

The U.S. Fifth Air Force cautioned, despite the record-breaking victories this date, against wishful thinking that enemy air strength was waning. An allied spokesman said that the U.S. jets had caught the enemy by surprise, but that the Communists' potential air strength remained formidable.

In ground action, a series of minor battles occurred as allied infantrymen took the offensive for the second time in the previous 24 hours.

In Chicago, the village president of suburban Cicero and six other persons, including the chief of police, the chief of the fire department, a police sergeant and police officer, and the village attorney, were indicted by a Federal grand jury after its investigation of the three-day race rioting in that suburb the previous July, which had necessitated the National Guard being called out by Governor Adlai Stevenson. The riot had occurred in response to efforts of a black bus driver to move his family into the all-white suburb of Cicero. The indictments charged that the defendants had conspired to deprive that individual of his constitutional rights and had violated the civil rights statutes.

The Federal Government entered the steel wage talks this date with Federal mediators flying to Pittsburgh for conferences with the United Steelworkers and officials of U.S. Steel.

In New York, Waxey Gordon, one-time prohibition beer baron, was sentenced to two concurrent terms of from 25 years to life in prison following his plea of guilty to the illegal sale of narcotics, the stiff sentence resulting from it being his fourth conviction on a felony, mandating at least 15 years to life imprisonment.

What kind of attorney did he have? What were the alternatives available for sentencing?

Before the House Ways & Means subcommittee investigating the tax prosecution scandals, Bert Naster, testifying for the second day in a row, accused the Chicago attorney, onetime counsel to the late Al Capone, who had claimed that Mr. Naster and gambler Frank Nathan had attempted to shake him down for $500,000 to prevent "tax troubles" through "connections" in Washington, of "concocting" the story. Mr. Naster claimed to have first heard about the story in a long distance telephone call from Mr. Nathan the previous July and had told Mr. Nathan that the story was "silly" and hung up.

The President promised at a press conference drastic action to clean house in the Administration, indicating that he would shortly set up a special agency to fight corruption. He also indicated that he had no plans to fire Attorney General J. Howard McGrath or new DNC chairman Frank McKinney, despite several Republican members of Congress having demanded that Mr. McGrath be replaced. Mr. McKinney had become the subject of criticism for his public disclosure that, a few years earlier, he had made a $68,000 profit on a $1,000 investment in a tractor firm headed by an individual whose wartime Government ordnance contracts had been sharply criticized by Senator Truman when he had chaired the Senate investigating committee. The President said that Lamar Caudle's resignation would have been sought even without the revelations from the House subcommittee hearings.

Tom Fesperman of The News tells of Charlotte police chief Frank Littlejohn having been mentioned again prominently in connection with the original appointment in 1945 of Mr. Caudle as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the criminal division, resulting in many newspapers across the country seeking out the chief for comment and further details, prompting the chief to wonder why he, a "little old country police chief", was suddenly the object of inquiry when the FBI records in Washington contained the whole story. The connection had stemmed from the fact that in 1934, Mr. Caudle, then a lawyer in Wadesboro, had written an unsolicited letter to the then-executive secretary of the DNC recommending Mr. Littlejohn as a good prospect for a job in the Justice Department. The chief therefore knew Mr. Caudle after he became U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, and one day in 1944, Mr. Caudle summoned him for a meeting to discuss an OPA case involving a local businessman, with whom Mr. Caudle admitted having been "indiscreet", including living for short periods in a hotel room in Charlotte reserved by the businessman. Mr. Caudle continued to recommend Mr. Littlejohn when he sought a job with the Federal Bureau of Prisons in early 1945.

In the Philippines, the death toll from a typhoon which swept over the central islands the prior Monday rose to 569, as the same storm doubled back this date to hit the islands again. The island of Leyte suffered 457 of the deaths.

In Tucumcari, N.M., a 750,000-gallon water tank collapsed this date, killing four persons and causing damage estimated in the millions. The result appeared to observers as if a small bomb had hit.

In Scranton, Pa., a firebox alarm summoned firemen to a downtown location where they found a man leaning unsteadily against the box, and when asked whether he had sounded the alarm, stated that he was cold and wanted to obtain a nice, warm place to stay. The fireman suggested that the man should have gone into the taproom on the nearby corner, to which the man responded that he never entered such places. He was charged with intoxication and ringing a false alarm.

Whether Marilyn Monroe was in the vicinity, or O. Henry—not O'Henry—lurking in the background, was not told.

On the editorial page, "The Artful Dodger" tells of Attorney General McGrath having reminded, during his testimony before the House Ways & Means subcommittee investigating the tax prosecution scandals, of the "country-clubbing socialite who, brought to the police station and told of her teenage son's misdeed, said, 'Why, I didn't dream the little darling was doing things like that.'" He had attempted to dodge responsibility for the actions of his assistants, claiming no knowledge of them, and repeatedly asserted that there was nothing "wrong" in the Justice Department.

It wonders whether, if neither Mr. McGrath nor his predecessor, now-Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark, was responsible for the "free-and-easy standards" in the practices of employees of the Department, then who was. Mr. Clark had brought Lamar Caudle into the Department in 1945 as his Assistant Attorney General in charge of the criminal division, having been apprised by the FBI before the appointment was finalized that Mr. Caudle had committed "indiscretions" while U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina. Mr. Caudle had demonstrated no particular experience for that position or the subsequent appointment as head of the tax division. Mr. Clark had also traveled around the country on pleasure trips with Mr. Caudle.

It finds that Mr. McGrath had been more discriminating in his personal relations with the people under him than had Mr. Clark, had not fraternized with Mr. Caudle or his former assistant, Turner Smith. But it adds that, even so, for more than two years, Mr. McGrath had been responsible for the activities of his Assistant Attorney General with his "dubious ability and flexible ethics". He could not escape this responsibility so easily as he had sought to do in his testimony.

It concludes that the disturbing thing about Mr. Caudle and his like was that "so colossal a dolt could move in high Washington circles for so many years without someone getting wise to him."

"Atomic Progress" tells of Gordon Dean, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, returning to his alma mater at Duke to make a speech regarding atomic energy and stating therein of his concern over the "mental block" which tended to create "public panic, apathy and fatalistic resignation" on the subject. He lamented that there was unwillingness to think about or attempt to understand atomic energy and suggested that much could be done to correct this situation through the universities.

The piece posits that it was understandable that Americans had become apathetic with respect to the atom when its wartime potential had received the greater emphasis over its peacetime usage. Mr. Dean, as his predecessor David Lilienthal, had repeatedly emphasized this peacetime potential, but as long as the development concentrated on bomb production, the people's enthusiasm would not be great.

Some universities now had nuclear materials in their research laboratories, a good step toward decentralization of atomic science. Electricity, the radio, the telephone and other such common inventions in the home remained as mysterious as did atomic energy to most people, but had been made acceptable to the public by their peaceful uses, not by their wartime applications. It suggests a similar challenge lay ahead for atomic science.

But isn't a partial anagram for nuclear, "unclear"? Maybe the trick lay in pronouncing it "nucle'r", thus making it more avuncular in its appearance.

"More Than a Personal Affront" tells of the Washington Post having turned up an interesting parallel between the late British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the President, that when Hitler had marched into Poland in 1939, Mr. Chamberlain considered it a personal affront, following by a year his "peace for our time" proclamation upon return to London with the signed Munich Pact, whereas the President, according to DNC chairman Frank McKinney, was upset at being "sold down the river by some disloyal employees of the Government." It had been earlier reported from Key West during the President's vacation that he was angry over his friends letting him down.

The piece concludes that cleaning house on that rationale would not impress the people, that the current scandals amounted to more than merely a personal affront to the President, that the whole nation had been "sold down the river". "If the President does not yet realize that, he is indeed a small man of myopic vision."

"DiMaggio Steps Down" tells of the retirement of Joe DiMaggio from baseball, something from which it did not expect him to later withdraw. He was a perfectionist and nothing angered him more than a less than perfect performance, no longer possible from persistently troubling old injuries and his aging eyesight. He had said in response to a question that Mel Harder had been the toughest pitcher he ever faced when he first stepped into the big leagues, but that the previous season they all had been tough. He had batted .263 the previous season, against his lifetime average of .325.

In 1941, he established a record 56-game hitting streak and in the 1949 World Series had hit two homeruns after missing the first 65 games of the season because of a heel operation. He had 361 lifetime homeruns, more than any other active player in the Majors and had been named most valuable player in the American League three times, twice leading the league in homeruns.

It predicts that he would be remembered especially for his reserved graciousness, eschewing glamour, a demeanor which had won the hearts of the fans. He could rightfully take his place, it concludes, "alongside, or a little above," his fellow players in the Hall of Fame.

"The Mink Market" remarks on the previously reported ban on import of certain furs from some Communist countries, hoping that the scarcity of foreign furs would put an end to the infatuation by American women with kolinski, marten, mink and Persian lamb, making them appreciate 'possum, muskrat and sheep hides. (Sounds like two law firms, one catering to the silk-stocking district and the other, to the fishmongers, the wives of whose partners wore cloth coats.)

But the New York Journal of Commerce had reported the development of "a distemper-preventing vaccine" which would put hundreds of additional mink coats into the marketplace, to supplement the considerable stock on hand among New York furriers and the several loopholes in the law which permitted circumvention of the import restrictions through intermediary nations.

In addition, it had been reported that Mrs. Herman Talmadge, wife of the Georgia Governor, was now raising minks. It suggests that the Governor probably realized his dilemma, that it would be a social faux pas at home not to buy his wife a mink, but would also expose him to charges from his wool-hat supporters of becoming uppity should he purchase one. By raising minks, he could counter such charges, while satisfying his wife's urges and assuring himself of support among female voters in the state, who might coerce their husbands to allow them to raise minks.

It concludes that its only hope was that the minks might make themselves scarce.

But then, being chintzy, someone would think of raising rabbits as chinchillas.

Bill Sharpe, in his "Turpentine Drippings", snippets from newspapers around the state, provides one from the Waynesville Mountaineer which records that many of the craft shops at Cherokee sold small figures of Indian warriors posed in traditional fighting stance, which, if one looked at the bottom of the figurines, were made in Germany.

The Winston-Salem Journal tells of folk ways to predict the weather, through such things as an ache in the bones, the latter actually having basis in scientific fact, as the marrow in the bones would swell and cause pain in the joints when there was a sudden drop in the barometric pressure. It suggests that birds and little pigs knew when bad weather was coming, as the birds began flitting about with sudden celerity to catch worms, and little pigs, just before dark, suddenly became busy piling up leaves for a warm bed.

The Sanford Herald asks rhetorically whether the notorious slowpoke driver caused just as many accidents on the roads as the speeder.

The Daily Tar Heel, the UNC student newspaper, observes that as the ROTC units paraded around campus, onlookers were offering fewer quips and derogatory remarks than a couple of years earlier, when people had laughed as they passed, whereas now, as draft boards were again active, students reacted somewhat differently to the military mien.

That certainly rings true, echoing into the next major war in which U.S. troops would be involved, when ROTC was always welcome on campus, everywhere in the country.

The Pinehurst Outlook tells of the wife of a preacher and the president of a legal society attempting to bribe the village editor to keep their Chapman Memorial golf scores out of the newspaper, laments that it was indicative of the ethical laxity in the nation.

But would Chapman's Homer include a walrus's oysters bopped on the head by DiMaggio after a creature from the black lagoon saw too much in the holy sea above his home upon the Yuletide, and where, but in a time of ethical and moral laxity, could such be found?

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

Drew Pearson tells of Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn having warned the President to clean house in the Administration or be prepared to have his legislative program wrecked, recommending in the process that he appoint a new Attorney General who would begin active prosecutions. He warned that even a majority of Democrats would cease to support the legislative agenda otherwise. Mr. Rayburn had stated in private that the President was a "dead duck politically right now", adding that the party would be just as dead unless it could show to the American people that it was cleaning out the black sheep.

Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett had told the State Department that he would never agree to swap a steel mill for release of Associated Press correspondent William Oatis from prison in Czechoslovakia. The Czech Government had told the U.S. that it would release Mr. Oatis upon delivery of a 22 million dollar steel mill ordered from the U.S. in 1946. The mill had been completed and paid for by Czechoslovakia but the State Department had held up its delivery, and the Defense Department now contended that the offer by the Czechs amounted to blackmail.

John Foster Dulles had made a quick trip to Japan to try to head off the Japanese effort to oust U.S. troops from the large cities. Now that they had a peace treaty, the Japanese had served notice that they would decide where U.S. troops would be stationed, and proposed moving them to smaller towns, out of sight of a majority of the Japanese people. U.S. military officials contended it would disturb the proper defense of the country, and so Mr. Dulles would try to persuade the Japanese leaders to change their minds.

Joseph Stalin had reportedly ordered Russia's top atomic scientists to produce atomic artillery by June or else, as apparently Stalin and the Politburo were in shock over the reports that America had succeeded in perfecting a small, tactical atomic weapon useful in the battlefield against troops. Until recently, Stalin's advisers had reportedly told him that the U.S. was bluffing and did not have such tactical atomic weapons, but the latest tests in Nevada had proved that advice false. The Russians had made substantial progress toward developing their own atomic artillery and U.S. experts feared that they would be ready to test their first one the ensuing March.

Friends of Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee were urging him to cast his hat into the presidential ring for the Democratic nomination, and the more the President's reputation was diminished by the tax scandals, the more eager they were for the Senator to get into the race. Jim Farley had been sought as a possible campaign manager for the Senator, as well as Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois—the eventual Democratic nominee in 1952, after the President announced his intention not to run again.

Mike DiSalle had ordered his Price Stabilizers to refrain from accepting any gifts at Christmas other than things which could be eaten or drunk within 24 hours.

Former Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, presently a delegate to the U.N., would seek a Senate seat again, this time running against incumbent Senator Tom Underwood.

The IRB was slow to provide the Senate Crime Committee with requested tax returns of certain gamblers and police officials.

Mr. Pearson congratulates the Santa Cruz Sentinel-News in California for making 39 foreign students feel like it was Christmas time in the San Francisco Bay Area, as a Chinese café had treated the students to dinner, a black caterer had treated them to lunch, and the YWCA had given them a reception. The newspaper had sought to show them a cross-section of American life.

Well, then, hey, where's our free lunch?

Stewart Alsop, in Tehran, tells of one way through which the U.S. could easily gain internal influence in Iran and eliminate the immediate danger therefore of the Soviets gaining control there, that being to embrace Premier Mohammed Mossadegh by giving him substantial aid money, that which the Premier was expecting. He had repeatedly refused to negotiate a compromise with the British regarding the lost oil revenues from the nationalized Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. When informed by American officials that the refusal to reach a compromise would inevitably mean dealing with the Soviet sphere, thus ushering in Communist control, he would typically respond that while such would be bad for Iran, it would also be bad for the West. This approach, in short, was his "suicide" form of blackmail to obtain U.S. aid.

With American support, the National Front might in time become an effective counterweight to the well-organized and potent Communist Tudeh Party in Iran. But to subsidize the country would likely have disastrous consequences in the long run, as it would be an affront to the British, hated in Iran for their past imperialist policies, creating the potential for retaliation by the British elsewhere, in countries where the United States was hated, resulting in dissolving any hope for saving the Middle East through a joint Anglo-American policy.

Moreover, this "suicide" policy would affect not only the Premier but also the powerful Iranian ruling class, who did not want to be overthrown by the Communists. If, therefore, the Premier were overthrown, the U.S. would need to enter immediately with aid to support any replacement government, being reliant on the young Shah to prevent a Communist takeover in the meantime. Such a policy of watchful waiting, however, involved a substantial risk, but was better than succumbing to the Premier's blackmail, which, if successful, would likely then be emulated in such places as Iraq and Egypt, where the technique was already afoot, and then throughout the Middle East.

Robert C. Ruark tells of Bernard Baruch refusing to purchase meat at the current high prices and so had refused to allow it to be served in his home, despite being a millionaire.

Recently, twenty barrels of sour mash whiskey were discovered by local law enforcement at his South Carolina estate. His nurse indicated that the gendarmes had impounded the moonshine. It suggested that Mr. Baruch also could not afford whiskey at the current high excise tax rate.

Mr. Ruark says that Mr. Baruch was one of the loud advocates of Prohibition when it came into effect, a morality which only formed because he had nearly died once from drinking sparkling wine. But now he had gone to the other extreme and become a bootlegger.

Mr. Ruark had known Mr. Baruch for many years and knew him to be a "veritable devil with the girls", without probity when he described his ability at shooting quail, and also a cheater at canasta, a bettor on horses and a speculator in the market.

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