The Charlotte News
Saturday, June 23, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via William C. Barnard, that the allies this date had won a seesaw battle with enemy troops, utilizing hand grenades and bayonets, to capture a hill in the "iron triangle" in central Korea, as U.N. infantry moved into an area south of Pyonggang at the apex of the triangle to try to throw off balance an expected Communist offensive on the first anniversary of the war on Monday. The allies held the hill by nightfall. In the west, allied troops hit a Communist buildup.
Allied planes scored another victory in the air this date.
Governor Thomas Dewey announced that he would fly to the Korean war front early in July as part of a 25,000-mile tour of the Pacific. He said that he would not engage in any diplomatic forays while there.
Senator Brien McMahon planned to bring up on Monday the possibility of summoning Averell Harriman to testify before the joint Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees. The Senator said that in view of Patrick Hurley's comments on Yalta and several other points, the Committees ought hear from Mr. Harriman as he had attended the Yalta Conference in early 1945 as Ambassador to Russia. General Hurley, former Ambassador to China, had criticized the Yalta agreement as appeasing Russia and said that FDR had commissioned him to try to effect modifications to it or have it set aside.
Maj. General David Barr had testified to the Committees the previous day that Chiang Kai-Shek had been "chagrined" at the agreement and "resented" it.
The World Court in The Hague announced that beginning on Friday it would hold hearings on the oil dispute between Iran and Britain, hearing the British side regarding the seizure of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., 53 percent of which was owned by the British Government and the rest by British and other foreign private interests. Iran said that as far as it was concerned, the Court had no jurisdiction over the matter.
Iran was now willing to accept the 25 million dollar loan from the U.S. Export-Import Bank, to which it had once shown coolness. But in making the loan, there was now a chance of offending the British while aiding a free country to resist Communism.
The President urged Congress again to increase his ability to impose economic controls. The Senate and House Banking Committees had produced bills which he said were troubling, in that they placed additional restrictions on his authority while relaxing controls, the "easy way", according to the President, "an invitation to disaster."
Senate leaders said that they hoped to soften the impact of the record-breaking 7.2 billion dollar tax increase bill passed by the House the previous day. It raised individual taxes by 12.5 percent, raised corporate taxes by 2.8 billion, and placed 1.25 billion additional excise taxes on gasoline, automobiles, cigarettes, liquor, beer and other items.
In Charleston, the three-judge special Federal District Court panel upheld by a vote of 2 to 1 the segregation of Clarendon County, S.C., schools but also ruled that the schools did not comport with the Plessy v. Ferguson separate-but-equal requirement that they be equal and so ordered that the school district "promptly" make available such equal facilities and report in six months on the steps taken to comply. The Court majority held that segregation of the public schools was a matter for the legislatures of the several states to determine pursuant to the Tenth Amendment police powers reserved to the states and with which the Federal courts were powerless to interfere. The Court held that neither the South Carolina Constitution nor a state statute mandating segregation were violative per se of Equal Protection. The majority was comprised of Judge John J. Parker of the Fourth District Court of Appeals and District Court Judge George Bell Timmerman. Judge J. Waites Waring dissented on the basis that segregation did violate the Equal Protection Clause:
"From [the expert witnesses'] testimony, it was clearly apparent, as it should be to any thoughtful person, irrespective of having such expert testimony, that segregation in education can never produce equality and that it is an evil that must be eradicated. This case presents the matter clearly for adjudication and I am of the opinion that all of the legal guideposts, expert testimony, common sense and reason point unerringly to the conclusion that the system of segregation in education adopted and practiced in the State of South Carolina must go and must go now.
"Segregation is per se inequality.
"As heretofore shown, the courts of this land have stricken down discrimination in higher education and have declared unequivocally that segreation is not equality. But these decisions have pruned away only the noxious fruits. Here in this case, we are asked to strike its very root. Or rather, to change the metaphor, we are asked to strike at the cause of infection and not merely at the symptoms of disease. And if the courts of this land are to render justice under the laws without fear or favor, justice for all men and all kinds of men, the time to do it is now and the place is in the elementary schools where our future citizens learn their first lesson to respect the dignity of the individual in a democracy."
As indicated, the decision would ultimately be reversed, insofar as upholding segregation per se, as part of Brown v. Board of Education three years hence, when the Supreme Court overruled Plessy doctrine as not having fulfilled its purpose in 58 years, ruling that segregation per se was violative of Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection, consistent with Judge Waring's dissent.
The President urged striking United Airlines pilots to return to work.
Idle seamen refused two wage offers by shippers, sending the shipping tie-up into its sixth day regarding a strike by radio operators, who were required by law to be aboard for ships to sail. Starting on the West Coast, the work stoppage had spread to the East and Gulf coasts. The radio operators sought a pay raise of eight percent over mid-January, 1950 wages, within the parameter set by the Wage Stabilization Board, limiting raises to ten percent of that amount. The unions also sought a 44-hour week while at sea with continuance of the present 40-hour week while in port.
Reports from Morovia, Liberia, said that the missing Pan American Constellation with 40 persons aboard, including 33 passengers, had been spotted crashed at Totota, four hours away. There was no word of casualties. A Pan Am spokesman said that the crashed plane definitely had been located. Rescue operations would have to be transacted by parachute as the crash site was four miles from an accessible location.
In Buenos Aires, five Argentine Army officers were under arrest for allegedly stirring revolt against the Government. The captive press reported that an assassination plot was afoot against El Presidente Juan Peron and his wife, Eva.
In Budapest, Dr. Elajos Pongracz testified that he used an American Legion typewriter where he was employed to type a document in which Archbishop Jozsef Groesz promised to take over as Hungary's chief of state. He said that he had been instructed by the U.S. to obtain information on strained relations between the Hungarian Government and the Roman Catholic Church. The Archbishop had confessed the previous day to plotting to overthrow the Communist Government with the aid of the U.S.
On the editorial page, "The Enemy Takes to the Air" discusses the five days of air battles during the week in which Communist planes appeared in the skies to contest the allies, usually virtually without competition in the air during the year-long war. The previous day, enemy planes had staged their first fire-bomb raid on front-line allied troops, albeit with little impact.
It finds the action significant as the stepped-up tempo of the air war suggested the need for hot pursuit of enemy planes into Manchurian air space to which they routinely took refuge and from which they flew their attacks. The U.N. allies in the war, however, believed such a tactic would quickly escalate the war and result in full-scale aerial bombardment of China and Manchuria.
With the enemy getting strong air reinforcement from Russia, though there was no evidence Russian pilots were flying the planes, and the airmen becoming more proficient in their attacks, the decision could not be delayed much longer.
Once enemy air activity grew to the point that it hampered ground units and supply lines, the MacArthur program, it posits, would be put into a new light, making it harder to convince the American people that the limited war in Korea should be maintained.
"Ickes and Ethics" tells of former Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes the previous day scoring several points before the Senate subcommittee investigating ethics in Government, that the loss of confidence in Congress resulted from acts or omissions of its members and was the most important question before the subcommittee, that most Federal workers were honest, and that there was too much hate and suspicion in the country for which Congress was largely responsible because of its smear campaigns.
But his point which intrigued the editors the most was that Congressmen and Senators voted sometimes on matters in which they had a special interest by dint of personal investment. Mr. Ickes favored recusal.
He had also wondered who paid for the staff of investigators for Senator Joseph McCarthy as he smeared the reputations of many people in the executive branch. The piece suggests that if the subcommittee ferreted out the answer to that question, they would have performed a signal service to the nation.
"Sham Performance in Raleigh" tells of the Highway Commission meeting recently and deciding to turn over to the cities the street-building money accumulated since 1949 when the Legislature passed a law requiring the Commission to increase its annual appropriation to cities and towns from one million to 2.5 million dollars per year. The Commission, therefore, was actually only doing what the law required after dallying for two years.
A piece from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, titled "Dumb in Geography", tells of a New York Times poll of 4,700 college students, half from the upper classes, having found the students woefully deficient in knowledge of geography. Only six percent could name the states bordering the Atlantic Seaboard. Only 25 percent could name the four oceans in order of their size. Only about half could define longitude, latitude, altitude and isthmus. While about 37 percent knew that Belgrade was in Yugoslavia, the latter received variant spellings, "Yangasaviar", "Yugislarba" and "Yougislerva". Naming the countries bordering Yugoslavia proved practically impossible, though admittedly was difficult.
The piece reflects that almost anything was possible in this area as it recalled a Virginia high school senior having inquired the previous year in all seriousness as to which state Florida was in and that nearly ten percent of Virginia-educated college freshmen in 1949 failed to identify George Washington as among the Presidents born in Virginia. A salesgirl in a Richmond store, when asked by a customer to send a package to Montana, inquired, "What's that?"
It's over yonder next to Wyoming, in between Yangaslarva and Tuba City.
Drew Pearson tells of the President discussing daughter Margaret's trip to Europe with Harold Russell, the wartime amputee actor from "Best Years of Our Lives" who was head of the Amvets. Mr. Russell said that Margaret was the best goodwill ambassador the country had in Europe. The President agreed and said he could not believe she had grown up so fast, that he still called her "baby" at times, but added that he had warned her not to let the guys in Europe call her that.
The Kuomintang from Nationalist China was being organized in the U.S., with headquarters on Stockton Street in Chinatown in San Francisco, seeking to enlist Chinese-Americans in the hope of stimulating a war with Communist China. Thus far, however, only 3,825 persons had signed up as members in 45 American cities where there were Chinatowns. The Kuomintang had five regions, San Francisco, San Antonio, New York, Chicago, and Portland. Several influential Chinese politicians and businessmen were involved in the U.S. lobby. To help finance its activities, it operated several apartment houses and a language school in San Francisco.
While Senator Paul Douglas could not find office space for his staff of the committee investigating ethics in government, Senators Ed Johnson and Eugene Millikin of Colorado had set up a special office staffed by persons at taxpayer expense, with the designated function of attracting war contracts to Colorado.
Joseph Alsop, in Belgrade, describes one of the unnamed men who was part of the small bastion of leaders who maintained Yugoslavia against the threat of Soviet aggression. He had obtained his religious training from the Communist Party as a boy, then participated as a member of Tito's partisans during the war, losing his beloved wife in battle and being badly wounded, himself. After the war came the break with the Kremlin, following ruthless purges during which he had not tried to save his old friends. But when he had seen Moscow seek to enslave Yugoslavia, he began to doubt. The break with Moscow produced a deep emotional crisis as his religion had been unsettled at its foundations.
He loved his new wife and children and was possessed of a sarcastic humor, but was predominated by politics. He was quite conversant in history but it meant far less to him than the country's problems and future course. And he was now seeking a different pattern from the one set by Moscow.
No one could tell where the groping might lead as the country remained essentially a police state ruled by one party. But nothing would stop this man and others like him from fighting for Yugoslavia's independence and integrity. Mr. Alsop concludes that such men were not bad friends to have in a tight spot.
James Marlow discusses the President's new Psychological Strategy Board of which UNC president Gordon Gray had been appointed director, though he was not a member of the Board, itself. The three members were CIA director Walter Bedell Smith, Undersecretary of Defense Robert Lovett and Undersecretary of State James Webb. Since the three were, or practically were, heads of their agencies, they were empowered to make decisions fast on important matters.
The country had for years engaged in psychological warfare, with various agencies, including the military branches, the CIA, the State Department and ERP, having a role in its development. The Board would coordinate this effort, supplanting the former committee which had done so but without top men in its membership.
The object was to meet the active psychological warfare ongoing in the Soviet bloc. Whether the new Board would seek to widen that effort remained to be seen.
Tom Schlesinger of The News, in his weekly "Capital Roundup", tells of the House having voted to change the name of Buggs Island Reservoir in Virginia and North Carolina to the John H. Kerr Dam and Reservoir, in honor of the 75-year old North Carolina Congressman who had been in public service for 50 years, including 20 years as a judge in North Carolina. Mr. Kerr received commendation from Majority Leader John McCormick of Massachusetts, saying that Congressman Kerr had been his first chairman when he arrived in Congress in 1928. Other North Carolina Congressmen also praised him.
Gordon Gray's appointment as director of the Psychological Strategy Board had caused scuttlebutt that he would become the next Secretary of State. (He would become National Security Adviser under President Eisenhower in 1958.)
Senator Clyde Hoey was one of the few Senators who defended Secretary of Defense Marshall against the attack on him by Senator McCarthy.
Former Senator Frank Graham was leaving on his U.N. mission to Kashmir to try to effect a compromise between Pakistan and India, both of which had troops in Kashmir, whereby both would withdraw their troops before the population voted in Kashmir on whether to align themselves with India or Pakistan. Mr. Graham would have to overcome the deep-seated religious prejudices within the populations as well as dealing with the Oriental mind. His efforts were expected to benefit from the loan of surplus grain to starving India but most State Department sources still believed the mission "impossible".
Nothing's impossible
Representative Carl Durham, vice-chairman of the joint Atomic Energy Committee, who was taking two weeks off for health reasons, had introduced a bill to disallow any Atomic Energy Commission construction over $500,000 without Congressional approval.
House Ways & Means chairman Robert Doughton had approved a tax bill which included a one-cent increase in the tax on cigarettes, from 7 to 8 cents, among other things, but the bill would likely be substantially revised when it reached the Senate.
It better be, because you have to be able to smoke yourself to death before the atom bomb hits. And how you gonna do it with all this inflation?
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