The Charlotte News
Monday, August 13, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via George A. McArthur, that in Munsan, Lt. General Nam Il, chief Communist ceasefire negotiator, said that the Korean truce talks would not make any progress until the U.N. changed its demands on the position of the ceasefire zone. The statement had been broadcast by Pyongyang radio ten hours after he had again refused to change his position that the 38th parallel had to be the point of establishing the demilitarized zone. He had rejected the repeated U.N. statement demanding that the zone be coterminous with current battle lines, as "not satisfactory" as soon as it was conveyed. This date's session had lasted one hour and twenty minutes and was the thirteenth session devoted to this issue. The Communists had refused to sidestep the ceasefire zone issue and discuss another topic. The two sides would again meet the following day.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee excised from a subcommittee's report on foreign aid, criticism it had injected regarding the Franco regime in Spain. The excised section had stated that while no one questioned that Spain would be a useful ally in the event of a Communist attack on Europe, many did question whether the acquisition of such an ally was worth the price of compromising the moral and spiritual values shared by the free nations of the Atlantic area. It expressed consternation about strengthening Generalissimo Francisco Franco when he was denying basic freedoms to his people.
In Budapest, the Hungarian Government charged in a formal note to Yugoslavia that Marshal Tito's border forces had fired artillery shells deep into Hungarian territory. It said that such border incursions had occurred at more than twice the normal rate since the previous May. The report notes that Hungary and other satellite states bordering Yugoslavia had repeatedly made such charges of border incursions since the Cominform had denounced Tito.
The Congressional Economic Committee had been warned by its staff experts to expect rising prices and three years of Federal deficits.
The House approved a bill already passed by the Senate providing for Gold Star lapel buttons for widows and parents of soldiers and sailors who had lost their lives in war. The buttons would be supplied without cost by the Government. The bill was sent to the President for signature.
Senate Majority Leader Ernest McFarland set October 1 as a target date for adjournment of Congress, but House Speaker Sam Rayburn said that he had no idea when Congress would finish its work. He hoped that the House could take a two-week recess starting the latter part of the following week.
In Alaska, a four-engined Navy patrol bomber with 12 crewmen aboard had been reported missing, the fourth plane to have disappeared along the Alaskan and British Columbian coasts since July 21, all four of which had aboard 60 persons. The Navy plane had last been heard from at 10:14 a. m. the previous day and its fuel supply would have been exhausted by 9:35 p.m. the previous night.
In Madison, Wis., seven men,
including three University of Wisconsin experts, said that they
believed they had heard corn grow. A tape recording of the growth
sounds had been made available to substantiate the claim of a
newspaper reporter that there was basis to support the old saw: "It's
so hot you can almost hear the corn
Striking Staten Island ferryboat operators returned to work after a slowdown during which they reported as "sick"—sick of the job.
Governor Kerr Scott of North Carolina stated in Asheville that the State's road paving and improvement program was ahead of schedule despite material restrictions and shortages imposed by the war effort. He reviewed the accomplishments of his Administration before the North Carolina State Federation of Labor annual convention.
Mary Curry of the News reports from Akron, O., that Betts Huntley of Charlotte had finished seventh in the All-American Soap Box Derby and, in the process, had set the first speed record of the day with a course run of 28 seconds. He also had the best average speed record for the day. The boy to whom he had lost in the third round went on to win the Derby.
Mary Haworth and her personal advice column returns to the Feature Page after she had taken a three-week vacation.
Where did she go? Inquiring minds want to know.
On the editorial page, "From Maryland to Ohio" tells of a subcommittee of the Senate Rules Committee deciding to investigate the 1950 Senate race between Senator Taft and his Democratic opponent, State Auditor Joe Ferguson. They wanted to look at campaign spending by the two candidates, as reports from Senator Taft and six of his committees to the Ohio Secretary of State totaled almost $244,000 while other reports placed the expenditures substantially higher.
National interest in the outcome of the race, given Senator Taft's central role in the GOP, had stimulated the spending, as Senator Taft was met with both a host of opposition Democratic flak and Republican support. Despite Mr. Ferguson being weak, the Democratic coffers had overflowed.
The piece thinks that unless the trend toward these expensive campaigns were stopped, anyone without heavy financial backing could not afford to seek public office. Campaign finance laws were full of loopholes, as there was no limit to the number of committees which could be organized, and wealthy families evaded the individual contribution limits by making donations under several different family names.
It concludes that the election laws needed revision.
"Spendthrift Senate" reports that after the House had voted a budget of 497 million dollars for the Interior Department, the Senate increased it to 518 million. A conference committee then settled the matter at 512 million. Similarly, the House had voted 197 million for the Bureau of Reclamation, but the Senate had raised that to 208.5 million and the conference committee compromised at 203 million.
And so it went, as the Senate routinely increased appropriations recommended by the House. Congressman Foster Furcolo of Massachusetts had found that the Senate had increased House appropriations by a total of more than 18 billion dollars during the previous eleven years.
It wonders why the House should be more frugal than the Senate, as the House had 435 members, each seeking Federal funds for their home districts.
It concludes that the Senate was not meeting its responsibility to exercise restraint over the Federal purse.
"High-Powered Politics" tells of the mountain residents of troubled Polk County, Tennessee, having just gone through another election. One of the vacancies was a post on the County Court, the governing body, its chairman having been killed with buckshot the previous May. In 1948, three men had died by the time the Good Government League, a group of veterans, had ousted the entrenched Democratic machine. In 1951, the G.G.L. chairman had said that he did not expect any trouble unless the Ducktown "mob" came down "intimidating".
It concludes that while bullets and ballots did not mix well and Polk County's previous excesses were not to be condoned, the county's residents' vigorous interest in government was to be commended, suggests that other communities could profit by being equally interested, without the gunplay.
"Abuse of Congressional Record" tells of enjoying reading the Record, and especially its Appendix which abounded with poetry and literature, from Shakespeare to Tennyson to Longfellow, eulogies, political material intended for home consumption, statistics, reprints of speeches and newspaper articles. By reading the Appendix it had garnered knowledge on how to get sand out of spinach and had discovered several good recipes. But it was still duller than it had once been.
In earlier times, Congressmen could
insert material such as quotes attached to their speeches, "prolonged
applause on the Democratic side and consternation among Republicans",
positioned in an apropos place within a speech which was undelivered.
But such extravagance was no longer tolerated. Artwork also was
frowned upon ever since, about 40 years earlier, Senator Ben
"Pitchfork" Tillman of South Carolina had made quite a
stir by inserting a cartoon of an allegorical cow which was depicted
as being fed by farmers and milked by Wall Street
It thinks that economy ought be exerted on the longer dissertations placed within the Appendix, such as that by Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee, who spent two and a half pages at $80 each in publication costs, to provide a reprint from Fortune on "Rare Jack Daniel", a sour mash bourbon distilled within Tennessee. A column was devoted to his lifelong abstinence while asserting the esteem with which his constituents regarded Jack Daniel's descendants.
It favors charging individual Congressmen with the printing of free advertising and political propaganda which they placed in the Appendix at the expense of the taxpayer.
A piece from Editor & Publisher, titled "Two Victories", tells of the Providence Journal and Bulletin having won a freedom of press victory by gaining the right to inspect tax abatement records for the city of Pawtucket, R. I. The U.S. Court of Appeals had ruled that municipal officials did not have the power to withhold fiscal records and that the "existence of such power would be quite at variance with democratic principles as developed in this country."
In New Bedford, Mass., the Standard-Times had won an 18-month fight for the right to report school board meetings in the town of Fairhaven.
The piece concludes that it was alarming that such restrictions on access to the press had occurred in the first place, that public officials wished to hide their actions from public scrutiny.
Drew Pearson, reporting from Central Europe, states that if there ever had been a time when propaganda was needed to encourage and stimulate the people behind the Iron Curtain, it was the present. People within the satellite countries and even in Russia were divided by doubt, dissension and distrust. Both intelligence reports and the underground had informed him that the Russians had taken on too much responsibility among the satellites and needed to get rid of some of it. The Voice of America and every other possible means of dissemination of information about the West could help accelerate that process. Messages of friendship and encouragement to the people could precipitate a Tito-like revolt from Moscow in Poland, Czechoslovakia or Hungary.
No nation would make war when its civilian population was certain to rise up against the Government, and so it was important to nurture unrest behind the Iron Curtain.
He proceeds to review the situation in the Russian satellites.
In Czechoslovakia, the population had recovered from the apathy which followed the initial seizure of the country by the Soviets and were beginning to recover their courage. A serious food shortage, blamed on the Soviets, was partly the cause. The Voice of America, which had predicted the arrest of Foreign Minister Vladimir Clementis and four other Czechs, had also had an effect. Moreover, Radio Free Europe had disseminated such devastating propaganda that the Czech Government had demanded that it be taken off the air.
In Poland, resentment against Moscow was so strong that V. M. Molotov, second in command in Moscow behind Stalin, had made a special trip to Warsaw to warn the Poles against following the example of Tito. The railroad between Berlin and Moscow was sabotaged so frequently that the repair crews were kept busy night and day. Production was dropping. The Catholic Church was leading a potent underground and nine top Polish generals had been tried.
In Bulgaria, a peasant revolt had held up the delivery of wheat to Russia and brought a battery of Soviet officials to Sofia. About 15,000 persons had been committed to concentration camps, adding to the 30,000 already there, while treason trials had shown that the Agrarian Party, once the strongest in Bulgaria, now operated a powerful underground. Agrarian leaders had encouraged the peasants to withhold crops and join guerrilla units in the mountains, and the operation was so successful that the Cominform newspaper called Bulgaria an "ulcer" and criticized Premier Chervenkov for allowing the unrest to spread.
In Rumania, the Minister of National Defense had been arrested and there had been massive evacuations of those suspected of disloyalty to the Soviets.
The Hungarian Government's deportation of thousands of peasants to concentration camps, where they faced slavery and death, had been recently denounced by Secretary of State Acheson. The leader of the mass arrests, Bela Szanto, was a Moscow-trained Hungarian and ruthless butcher specially sent to do the job. He had already jailed 70,000 peasants because they had held back their grain or refused to collectivize their farms.
Marquis Childs discusses the attempts in Congress to cut the $8.5 billion economic and military foreign aid program for Europe, the Middle East and Asia. It was likely that the House Foreign Affairs Committee would cut out about $700 million of the program, not enough to harm the overall efficacy of it. But if the amount were drastically slashed, the effect would be serious. Similarly, an effort to put a permanent ceiling on the number of troops to be sent to Europe could hamstring General Eisenhower's efforts to organize NATO.
The chances were good that both the Senate and House would approve five billion dollars for military aid to Western Europe, based on the excellent presentation by General Eisenhower's deputy, Lt. General Alfred Gruenther.
If the economic aid portion of the bill were cut substantially, the effect would be the opposite, as it would tend to confirm the suspicion promoted by Communist propaganda that America's interest in Europe was solely military.
There was no clear dividing line in reality between military and economic aid, however, as no military force could function efficiently in an economy enervated by inflation.
He warns, in conclusion, that the Communists intended that the U.S. would falter, slacken and then gradually abandon the effort in foreign aid, and that any such inclination would be a signal for the Communists to switch their strategy again and enter on another stage of world conquest.
"Pitchmen of the Press", in the seventh article from the Peabody Award winning series which had appeared in June in the Providence (R. I.) Journal, for the third edition in a row examines the radio show of Drew Pearson, broadcast every Sunday evening at 6:10. On February 5, during the period of study from January through April, 1951, Mr. Pearson had said that the GOP leaders were meeting all day the previous day to form a new "Magna Carta", sealed, according to Senator Owen Brewster, under a pledge of secrecy. But Mr. Pearson had managed to get the scoop and reported accurately on the policy committee's agenda.
On March 5, he had annoyed General Eisenhower by revealing that the General had a one-third interest in a restaurant in Washington, with partners Ed Pauley and George Allen, both formerly associates of the President.
On April 12, he reported that Senator McCarthy was so afraid of being sued for libel for his charges that Owen Lattimore had sympathy for the Communist Chinese that he had conferred with legal experts to make sure he would not suffer financial loss. Mr. Pearson had also wondered aloud in April who had paid for Senator McCarthy's secret headquarters in room 316 of the Congressional Hotel, who had paid for 200 long distance telephone calls from that room, who had paid for former FBI agents who worked for the Senator until they quit in disgust, and how much Alfred Kohlberg, leader of the China lobby, had contributed to Senator McCarthy's campaign funds.
Mr. Pearson had revealed previously that it was Owen Lattimore who Senator McCarthy had revealed without naming him as the "top espionage agent for Russia" in the United States, and that when this unnamed espionage agent had supposedly brought three "Communist agents" into the country, Mr. Pearson announced that they were the "living Buddha" and two Mongolian princes, all with Communist prices on their heads.
He revealed that another unnamed commentator, who was in fact Walter Winchell, had been mistaken when he had reported that Secretary of State Acheson had contributed $25,000 to the defense of Alger Hiss, notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Pearson had an ongoing 12-year feud with Secretary Acheson, once his friend.
Mr. Pearson did score high marks on his inside tips, several of which it presents. By using his judgment, he could use items he had overheard at cocktail parties, which most correspondents would not dare publicize. He also violated confidences from time to time and thereby beat other reporters to a story. Many of his items were simply based on shrewd guesses, such as when he had bet a hat for Congressman George Smathers that during the 1950 Democratic primary race against Senator Claude Pepper he could shake hands with the President during the latter's visit to Key West, not a likely prospect for the fact that the President wanted Senator Pepper to win the race after Congressman Smathers had taken inimical positions to the Administration. Mr. Pearson did not lose the bet.
But not all of his guesses were correct. On April 30, he had said that the President would, while visiting Madison, Wis., comment upon Senator McCarthy's attacks. The President did not refer to him in the speech.
It concludes that Mr. Pearson, while impressive in his news beats, was also not infallible, as the listening public appeared to believe him to be, along with the rest of his similarly situated colleagues.
A letter writer from Pittsboro comments on the editorial of July 30 regarding North Carolina's income tax, complementary to an article printed on the page from U.S. News & World Report on state income taxes. The writer thinks the editorial correct. He thinks too much money was being spent on defense, that the country would soon be tapping the bottom of the till.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.