The Charlotte News

Monday, July 23, 1951

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.N. negotiating team gathered at allied headquarters in Korea to confer regarding resumption of talks on Wednesday, after chief negotiator Vice-Admiral C. Turner Joy returned from Tokyo following a series of conferences with U.N. supreme commander General Matthew Ridgway during the weekend and into Monday. It was believed that the meeting on Wednesday might cause an end to the talks before any formal negotiation had begun because of a remaining question in dispute on the agenda, the Communist insistence that the talks consider withdrawal of all foreign troops from Korea, a matter considered by the U.N. to be political, not military, and thus not subject to negotiation until after a ceasefire had been effected.

In Tehran, an Iranian Cabinet member said that a formula had been found for reopening negotiations with the British regarding nationalization of the oil, and a memorandum of agreement would be provided U.S. mediator Averell Harriman this night. The agreement resulted from a week of talks between the Iranians and Mr. Harriman. The specific points of the memorandum were not disclosed. The Iranian Cabinet member hinted that Iran would maintain its position that negotiations would be only with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., and not with the British Government—despite the fact that the Government owned 53 percent of the seized company oil holdings.

Admiral Forrest Sherman, chief of Naval operations, had died suddenly at age 54 of a heart attack in his Naples hotel the previous day after completing his mission to Spain and other European countries, seeking cooperation in establishment of U.S. naval and air bases for mutual defense against Communist aggression. His body would be transported back to the U.S. the following day.

Nine Senators returning from a tour of Europe had found, according to Senator Owen Brewster, progress in forming NATO but that rebuilding armaments was transpiring too slowly. Senator Brewster said that General Eisenhower favored formation of a single, non-national army which would wear the same uniform and fly the same flag, a concept opposed by the British but to which France and West Germany were amenable. He said that the group of Senators was unanimous in their approval of admission to NATO of Greece and Turkey, favored by both Britain and France. Britain and France disfavored admission of Spain, but the Senator said that the group had been impressed in conferences with Generalissimo Francisco Franco that he had a large reserve of manpower ready to fight Communism.

The Office of Price Stabilization this date allowed higher prices on some clothing, especially woolen items, lifting a 23-day freeze on ceiling prices for wearing apparel.

The OPS also authorized soft drink bottlers to raise prices to retailers to a ceiling of 96 cents per case, a 16-cent per case rise, thus probably dooming the five-cent bottle of soda. Coca-Cola was reported to be planning, however, to stick to its current pricing. Other large companies were planning to change prices. A survey had found that two-thirds of the nation's 6,500 soft drink bottlers were losing money or barely breaking even. The regulation did not apply to fountain drinks or drinks in bottles exceeding 12 ounces.

Slow food sales, causing inventories to back up in warehouses and stores, had caused some industry sources in New York to predict lowering of food prices, applicable to other parts of the country as well.

Congressional leaders told the President that they were confident that a workable economic controls bill could emerge from the joint reconciliation conference and be passed before the July 31st 31-day extended deadline for existing controls. Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn said that while neither the Administration nor opponents of controls would get what they wanted, the result would be a "workable" bill.

On the bleak island of Ile D'Yeu in France, Marshal Henri Petain, hero of Verdun during World War I, died at age 95 after having served five years of a life sentence for treason against France by selling it out to the Nazis in June, 1940 during World War II. General Charles De Gaulle, as head of the provisional Government after the war, had commuted the original death sentence to life imprisonment, upon a recommendation for such mercy by the sentencing tribunal in 1945. His sentence had been commuted to time served by the French Government the prior month because of his failing health and he had been moved from a prison cell to a mansion on the island. Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany, who had opposed Marshal Petain at Verdun in 1916, had died the prior Friday at Hechingen, Germany.

In St. Louis, where during the weekend the highest flood waters since 1844 had occurred, scattered storms persisted, but the worst of the rain was in northern Missouri and north-central Illinois. The new rains would not raise flood levels back to the records of the prior week but would possibly slow drainage of accumulated flood waters. As most of St. Louis was on high ground, it was not greatly impacted by flooding.

On the editorial page, "That 'Amusing' City Tax Rate" tells of City Treasurer L. L. Ledbetter engaging in a false comparison to other city tax rates to justify a City tax rate increase from $1.97 to $2.15 per hundred dollars of property valuation. Other cities, the piece points out, might not have a comparable contribution to education by the State as that received by Charlotte. And, likewise, other cities might not receive comparable revenue from other sources, such as ABC-controlled sale of liquor or the new contribution from the State for maintenance and repair of streets. Furthermore, other cities might provide better city services, such as public recreation facilities, libraries, transportation systems, police, and fire services, justifying therefore their higher tax rates.

So for Mr. Ledbetter to compare the Charlotte tax rate to that of Detroit and finding it favorable was meaningless, as much so as comparing oranges to bananas.

"Admiral Forrest Sherman" finds that the sudden death the previous day of Admiral Sherman, chief of Naval operations since October, 1949, had cost the country an able leader. He had taken a leading role in unification of the armed services, having become the chief when morale in the Navy was low because of unification, downsizing and competition with the Air Force. He eventually won the respect of sailors, soldiers, airmen, and civilians alike.

The previous week, he had accomplished a difficult exploratory negotiation with Sr. Franco in Spain regarding use of naval and air bases by the U.S. in Spain and potential aid for Spain in exchange for governmental reforms there.

His talents as a negotiator and administrator would likely be the skills missed most.

"Sensible Foreign Investment" tells of Paul Hoffman, former ERP administrator, and Nelson Rockefeller, chairman of the International Development Advisory Board, having concerned themselves with how the country could ever reduce the defense mobilization now in motion without bringing on a depression. Mr. Rockefeller was concerned about production increasing at a greater pace than raw materials could support, requiring seeking of raw materials from the underdeveloped nations, which could also become future markets for U.S. goods.

Mr. Hoffman believed that systematic investment of two billion dollars per year could avert a world war costing a billion dollars per day. The results would inure to the benefit of American farmers, businessmen and craftsmen for the stimulus to new markets overseas.

Cuba was an example, having the prior year bought from the U.S. 460 million dollars worth of goods and sold the U.S. 406 million dollars worth of goods. Trade with other Caribbean countries, however, was negligible, leaving an untapped reservoir of potential trade.

Messrs. Hoffman and Rockefeller favored a combination of Government aid and private risk capital, administered by an international development authority, to create a better atmosphere for private enterprise. The piece finds the proposal sensible.

"Capitalistic Reds at Kaesong" tells of three collisions having occurred between nine Communist-driven jeeps in Kaesong as they rushed about to get to the site of the ceasefire negotiations. It regards the fact as showing the Communists coming close to the capitalistic principle of competition, which they claimed to despise. But it concludes that it was perhaps only that to which the Communists referred as "socialist competition".

A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "No Train Snatching, Please", tells of North Carolina tourism raking in 300 million dollars per year, second only to tobacco and textiles in bringing income to the state. It had resulted from a succession of good press agents hired by the State, of which the latest was Charles Parker. They had sold the state to the nation without having to stop trains, go aboard and convince passengers to stop and see the state, as advocated by Irvin S. Cobb in 1924.

Drew Pearson tells of the 82nd Congress being widely viewed as the least accomplished in its first six months of any within memory, including the "do-nothing" 80th Republican-controlled Congress against which the President had railed in 1948 to get re-elected. They had been dubbed the "horse-meat" Congress for their lack of accomplishment, but appeared not to care. Mr. Pearson says that he could not recall a time when leadership, idealism and patriotism were so lacking in Congress. Some members were present in the city only one day per week. The reasons appeared to be threefold.

First, it was the end of a "tired, uninspired" Administration, which few expected to be re-elected and so to whom no loyalty was deemed necessary politically.

Second, there was no firm hand on the reins, either at the White House or in the Congress, with the President vacillating, such as calling the Alger Hiss matter before HUAC in 1948 a "red herring" and then recently rewarding the successful prosecutor in the subsequent perjury case with a Federal judgeship, and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn now, contrary to earlier days, not appearing to care whether he kept the members in line or not, while Majority Leader Ernest McFarland was a hard-working but scared Senator, worried that he would not be re-elected in Arizona, and his assistant, Senator Lyndon Johnson, having won victory in 1948 by a margin of only 87 votes, adopting the policy of antagonizing no one, earning him the nickname, "Lying Down" Lyndon. In consequence, the two Congressional leaders, Speaker Rayburn and Senator McFarland, were unhappily working against many of the policies they were supposed to be pushing.

Third, there was a lurking fear of the Administration's civil rights program dominating the Senate, leading to the coalition between Republicans and Southern Democrats. Two years earlier, the coalition had formed to defeat the civil rights program, with the Republicans receiving support in return from the Southerners for blocking the President's economic program.

Bipartisan foreign policy had been largely cast aside since the death of Senator Arthur Vandenberg, the chief GOP exponent of it. But a much firmer bipartisan negative domestic policy, not much discussed, had taken its place, engineered by Senator Richard Russell of Georgia and Senator Taft of Ohio. That had led to stultification of Congress such that nothing much had been accomplished.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss the Yalta Agreement of February, 1945, but in terms far different from "the idiotically misleading manner" which had of late become the norm among anti-Administration partisans.

They suggest that there were three facts about the agreement which everyone seemed to have forgotten: that FDR offered Stalin concessions in Manchuria because his chief military advisers wanted to extract a Russian promise in return to aid in the conquest of Japan, at the time estimated to require two years and as many as a half million American lives to effect; that the offer was made with the understanding that the Russians, via their armies in Siberia, could and would seize the Manchurian positions in any case; and third, that Stalin, as part of the agreement, would recognize the Nationalist Government in China as predominant and support the Chiang regime by every means in his power. The latter commitment was contained in a subsequent treaty between Russia and Nationalist China, after which Stalin ordered the Communist Chinese to enter a coalition government with the Nationalists.

Maj. General Patrick Hurley, the President's representative in Nationalist China, found the agreement wholly acceptable and approved the terms of the coalition government, assuming it would be controlled by Chiang Kai-Shek.

But then Mao Tse-Tung, as leader of the Communist Chinese, refused Stalin's command and declared that his forces would win control of China, thus not disposed to accept a subordinate position in a coalition government.

This episode had followed the same pattern as in Yugoslavia, where Stalin had ordered Marshal Tito to restore King Peter to the throne and carry out a bargain struck between Stalin and Prime Minister Churchill to make Yugoslavia an equally joint Anglo-Soviet sphere of influence. Then Tito defied Stalin's order as well, even after the Russian Premier warned that the British and Americans would enforce the bargain with military force.

After Mao had defied Stalin, he continued to press the Chinese Communist leader to comply but was confronted with the American postwar demobilization, brought about by the same forces in Congress now denouncing the Yalta accord as having been a sellout of American interests to the Communists. At that point, realizing that America would not enforce these agreements, Stalin submitted and began supporting the Chinese Communists in the civil war.

They pose this past skein of events as a lesson for the negotiations ongoing at Kaesong to effect a ceasefire in the Korean war, that the Russians were seeking to lull back to sleep Americans and the West generally anent mobilization on the false promise of peace. For the West to do so, they posit, would be suicide. If on the other hand the West learned the post-Yalta lesson that it was necessary to maintain military strength as a deterrent to aggression, there were reasons to be hopeful about the future.

Robert C. Ruark, in Tanganyika, tells of the game laws of Africa preventing hunters from shooting from a car any animal except vermin, such as hyenas and wild dogs, and requiring the shooter to be 500 yards from the vehicle when he fired. His white hunter, Harry Selby, advocated being as close as possible to the beast to increase the chance of an outright kill, eliminating the necessity of seeking out a wounded and thus retaliatory animal in the bush.

Mr. Ruark had recently killed two lions during the first three days of the safari, each with a single shot to the head. The first one, ten feet in length, had been sleeping under a tree when they spotted him from "Jessica", the Land Rover. They passed by the position of the lion and moved behind some brush 200 yards from the animal. He and Mr. Selby then exited and began crawling on the ground until, finally, Mr. Selby told Mr. Ruark to shoot the lion behind the ear. Mr. Ruark looked up and saw the lion staring coldly at him from a mere 25 yards away, then, almost involuntarily, fired and the animal rolled over dead like a big dog. Later, he began to shake and much later, began to brag of his feat. He dubbed the lion "Russell Nype" because of its crewcut, having made it appear the more menacing while alive.

Russell Nype, he learned, had been a local scourge, a couple of years past his prime and gobbling up an occasional cow and even mauling some of the natives who sought to kill him.

He concludes that there was nothing more insufferable than a man who had killed his first lion, except maybe a man who had killed his second, as he then proceeded to do two days later.

Mr. Nype, incidentally, a Tony award-winning Broadway actor, passed away at age 98 in May, 2018, a couple of months ago, of natural causes, not from being shot in the head by Mr. Ruark in Africa in 1951.

A letter from City Councilman Basil Boyd responds to the criticism leveled at him in an editorial of the previous Friday, saying that it was misleading and prejudicial, regarding his proposal to raise City salaries while cutting other needed services, such as support for the Community Chest. He proceeds, with considerable prolixity, to explain his reasoning, stating, among many other things, that the City did not need to spend $10,000 for a home for stray dogs. He concludes that in fighting for a salary increase for workers earning $200 per month or less and trying to support a family on those earnings, he had a clear conscience.

How about a home for stray lions?

A letter writer from Morganton comments on the editorial, "Last Chance for the GOP", first reviewing the history of the two parties, finding the Democrats completely divorced from the founding principles of the party handed down from Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, and the Republicans standing for the economic producers and free enterprise without bureaucracy, "prosperity by law and not by war". He views the Republicans as the potential savior of the country in 1952.

You can believe anything you want to believe in America.

A letter from parents in Lincolnton seeks to clear the name of their son, who happened to have the same name as a person accused in Burke and Cleveland Counties of criminal charges. That person lived in Lincoln County, not Lincolnton.

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