The Charlotte News
Thursday, August 30, 1951
SIX EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Don Huth, that Peiping radio had now charged that American planes had violated the neutrality zone at Kaesong nearly every day, that as many as 43 American planes had flown over the zone in a single day, and accused General Matthew Ridgway of lying, slander and distortion in his denial of the charges relating to the claimed violations by the allies of the neutrality zone, which had prompted the Communists to break off the ceasefire negotiations the previous week. The garbled broadcast said that an American bomber had dropped a flare over Kaesong. It did not mention General Ridgway's offer to resume the negotiations any time the Communists were willing to do so. There had been no reply to the note delivered by the General the previous day to the Communists advising his refusal to reopen the investigation into the alleged napalm attack by an allied plane on Kaesong, which he had laid at the feet of the Communists as a pretext for breaking off the negotiations.
The President stated to a press conference that the effort of Congress to cut a billion dollars from his 8.5 billion dollar foreign aid request was misplaced economy when success of the foreign aid program was in sight. He acknowledged that the chances of restoring the cut appeared now slight, despite his best efforts to the contrary, but would cause a very serious situation. He also said that U.N. forces in Korea were now stronger than when the ceasefire talks had begun, and that the case of Associated Press correspondent William Oatis, imprisoned in Czechoslovakia on bogus espionage charges, would never be closed until he was released from jail.
The U.S. and the Philippines agreed to a new mutual defense pact this date and at the ceremony, the President said that the treaty was a "strong step toward security and peace in the Pacific". It was the first in a series of defense agreements designed to bolster Pacific defenses against Communist aggression, including the prospective treaties with Japan, New Zealand and Australia, all set to be signed within the ensuing two weeks.
In London, the British Foreign Office denied that British secret agents had located the pair of missing diplomats, who had access to high-level military secrets, commonly thought to have disappeared behind the Iron Curtain. The London Daily Herald, the newspaper of the Labor Party, had reported that the Foreign Office had determined the whereabouts of the two men after a search by British agents and the West European police. The Conservative Daily Graphic, in a dispatch from Paris, had repeated the same story, saying that it was current in that city.
Governor Thomas Dewey of New York addressed the V.F.W. convention in New York, stating that during his recent tour of the Far East, he had come to appreciate the U.N. allies and favored creation of a line from the Arctic to New Zealand and Australia in the Pacific, promising a "bloody nose" of the type delivered to the Communists in Korea for transgression of that line. He said that while rearmament was not cheap, it was cheaper than the costs of American lives. He also favored urging resistance within China to the Communist regime, that the Nationalists had been good enough for the country during four years of war, had fought the Communists for eight years and so ought to be good enough presently.
Price Stabilizer Mike DiSalle, testifying before the Senate Banking Committee, stated that some prices might rise even if Congress changed the economic controls law to match the request of the President for elimination of three objectionable provisions to the new law, but would provide a "working program" for the Office of Price Stabilization. Defense Mobilizer Charles E. Wilson urged the Committee to pass the strongest and most effective law it could to ward off threatening inflationary pressures.
In Port Clinton, O., five transient laborers died in a makeshift camp near the New York Central tracks after drinking an alcohol solution of unknown contents, thought by authorities to have been paint thinner. All had been laborers intermittently in the peach orchards during harvest season and had been living in a camp known as "The Jungles".
In Los Angeles, a gunman made his third appearance in four days the previous night, shooting to death the mother of three children as she ate a hot dog in a suburban roadside stand. On the prior Monday night, an unseen rifleman had critically wounded a woman as she made a telephone call in an outside booth close to her home, and the prior Wednesday night, a bullet had entered the living room of a couple in Norwalk. All of the bullets had been fired from a .22-caliber rifle and took place within an area of 20 miles of one another. The condition of the wounded woman had improved slightly.
Also in Los Angeles, John J. Pershing, 19-year-old namesake and fifth cousin of the late General, had decided to join the Navy instead of the Army because he wished to learn a trade and figured that the Navy was the best place to do so.
In Quantico,Va., a derailed freight train blocked traffic at the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad, one of the principal North-South rail links, after 30 cars of the 121-car northbound train were derailed late the previous night near the Marine base. A Sheriff's deputy told newsmen that an acetylene tank found near the wreck indicated that the derailment had been deliberate. No one was injured in the incident.
In Raleigh, the Chief Highway Engineer reported that the state's 12,000-mile secondary road paving program would be completed in about two years but that it would not solve the state's road problems, as thereafter additional maintenance would still be required. It was estimated that it would cost 300 million dollars to modernize the major traffic arteries of the state.
Build a Murphy-to-Manteo super-train system, cheaper and more environmentally friendly in the long-run. Help to reduce the number of major storms and floods besetting us now each year, with costs in the billions of dollars.
On the editorial page, "A Parking Survey—At Last" tells of the City Council having finally approved of a complete survey of the city's parking problems, increasing since the end of World War II, producing congestion downtown and forcing businesses to flee to the suburbs, leaving downtown property to deteriorate. The extent of the problem heretofore, however, had been left to opinion rather than fact, and now fact could be placed in the record to bolster opinion or confute it.
Charlotte was behind some of the other cities in the state, such as Asheville, Winston-Salem and Greensboro, as shown by the three-part series of articles on municipally-owned parking facilities, two of which had been on the front page, during the week. Now, with the new Council action, Charlotte would be able to find out "where it has failed to meet the problem of the Motor Vehicle Era."
Build a subway. That way, one day, in 50 or 100 years, your grandchildren or great-grandchildren will look back and applaud your perspicacity, especially if you use the gauge of track and proper engineering adaptable later to high-speed bullet trains. And, meanwhile, the NASCAR museum downtown might give way to a subway car museum—unless, that is, the children want to be able, as in larger cities where there is a natural history museum, to see what one of those old dinosaurs with the internal combustion engines really looked like.
Be sure and record the sound of the engine, as, by then, they probably, rightfully so, will not know or recall what the auditory sensation was. Or you can just say, gutturally, "Vrooooom," while reminding them that the noise and its concomitant hydro-fluorocarbon emissions was the principal reason for the decade-long Big Flood of the 2040's, which nearly resulted in Charlotte becoming beachfront property, leading, along with similar floods which compromised the entire Eastern Seaboard, to Planet Day in 2070, when the whole world celebrated its Planet Treaty, eliminating for all time and outlawing the internal combustion engine and all atomic weapons, making manufacture or distribution of either an international felony.
Oh sure, the nuts out in Texas, the Flim-Flam Men and Women, still at it on the radio, protested roundly and with animus for the twenty years leading up to this new treaty, inveighing that the proposal was "globalism" at its worst, while they were forced to broadcast from a sixth-story studio, which they had to access via rowboat because the first five stories were permanently under water, as the temperatures climbed to a cool 100 degrees on an early February afternoon in 2071.
"The Strange Story of Jim Poplin" tells of Mr. Poplin's decision to resign his State job before his appointment had become known generally, forestalling the public outcry which otherwise was bound to have occurred, but did not answer some relevant questions, such as why Paroles Commissioner T. C. Johnson had not studied Mr. Poplin's court record of former bootlegging 20 years earlier before appointing him. It wonders whether it was customary in the state to make "temporary" appointments to field parole offices and who had recommended him for the position in the first place.
When Dr. Johnson had spoken in Charlotte recently, he had suggested the creation of a three-man paroles commission which would free the Commissioner from some of the terrific pressures brought to bear on him, and enable guarding against mistakes in granting paroles and pardons. Suggests the piece, such a commission also should approve appointments to the parole field force, preventing another such error as in the appointment of Mr. Poplin.
"Dr. Oren Moore" tells of the recent death at age 65 of the well-known Charlotte physician, an acclaimed gynecologist and obstetrician, who had been in ill health for some time but whose death nevertheless came sooner than expected by friends and those close to him. His acclaim, however, was exceeded by the personal affection which is patients and friends felt for him. He had been friendly, jovial, gregarious and enjoyed life to the fullest. He also had driven himself hard while being a professional and applied himself enthusiastically to his many other interests. He was a dedicated fan and booster of his alma mater's sports endeavors at Davidson College, where he sat on the bench at football games. Davidson, the city and the state had lost an "excellent citizen".
"Klansmen and Communists" finds that while Governor Kerr Scott's comparison of Communism and the Ku Klux Klan might not have been completely accurate, it had made a valid point, that the Communists were seeking to overthrow the government while the Klan was seeking to superimpose itself on the government, and that either group was equally "obnoxious" to the people of the state.
When the Klan had staged its rally near Whiteville recently, 97 Klansmen were present, but were outnumbered by a hundred law enforcement officials sent to preserve order, lending substance to the Governor's comment that the State was not going to take any "foolishness" from the Klan. In contrast, Klansmen, led by Grand Dragon Thomas L. Hamilton, had blocked traffic on Highway 29 near Camden, S. C., beat up a white man and threatened two Anderson newspapermen, with, according to news reports, no law enforcement officials present.
It concludes that while strict surveillance of the Klan's activities would keep them in check, it was not enough, that the organization needed to be eliminated, and that the best way to do that was to pass a State law forbidding the wearing of masks in public, that once unmasked, "with their silly countenances exposed to full public view", the members of the current Klan would "slink away to the oblivion which well befits them."
"Caucasian Complex" remarks on the refusal of a Sioux City, Iowa, cemetery's refusal to bury a Winnebago Indian for the fact that he was not Caucasian, despite the fact that he had been a hero in the Korean war, and the President's consequent intervention to enable him to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery, preventing the episode from becoming a remarkable piece of propaganda for the Communists.
It reminds that war had proven many times that patriotic sacrifice was not limited to white men. "Red blood flows amply beneath red, black and yellow skins." Soldiers who had served alongside one another in combat had come to appreciate men for what they were, not for their color. Discrimination based on a person's character was a more solid ground than discrimination based on color.
It concludes that the "Caucasian complex" was as dangerous as any other master-race theory and that the President was to be commended for his forthright rejection of it.
We have a feeling that under a like scenario, our present "President" would be dismissive of the whole matter and assert, via Tweets, that "good people" were present in Sioux City on both sides, would suggest that any proposal to bury the fallen soldier in Arlington was the product of "fake news" organizations, and that he would have to defer to the good sense of the local cemetery plot owners, that there was always Potter's Field for anyone without a proper burial ground.
"Inflation and Politics" tells of three Republican Senators, Richard Nixon, Homer Ferguson, and Herman Welker, indicating, through their bill to remove the three provisions of the new economic controls law to which the President objected, that the President was playing politics with inflation. Senator Welker had said that the President had used the offending provisions as an excuse to blame Congress for inflation instead of blaming himself, the appropriate repository, and that if the provisions were removed, the country would know who to blame.
The piece suggests that perhaps these Senators knew what they were doing, but that there was an old political adage which went: "Never get into a braying contest with a jackass." It offers that the three Senators might be doing just that, that the President was an astute politician, recalling that the Republicans and conservative Democrats had argued convincingly that the stronger controls advocated by the President were autocratic and unneeded, and able to reason in advance that if the Republicans now abandoned that position and provided the President with the powers they had previously denied him, he could plausibly claim that they had been playing politics all along, could no longer claim that the controls were not needed in the first instance.
While the full Congress might not go along with the plan of these three Senators, it was plain enough that both major parties were more concerned over the 1952 election than the "deadly inroads of inflation".
The piece might also have observed
that Senators Nixon, Ferguson and Welker, being Republicans all, were
only following their party training, grabbing each other's tails
while parading around the ring
Bill Sharpe, in his weekly "Turpentine Drippings", snippets from newspapers around the state, provides one from V. C. Marley of the Asheboro Courier-Tribune, in which was recounted his plowing in bare feet the previous week, recalling that as a boy, he had hated to wear shoes while plowing because the loose dirt felt so good on a hot afternoon, advising his reader to wait until he picked the late beans at which point they would wish they had done likewise.
Blanche Manor of the Raleigh News & Observer relates of a hostess in town who had decided to entertain her friends with a well-known literary reviewer, sending out invitations which stated "Dessert at one—Literary discussion", leading to a call the next day by a woman to her favorite bookshop, stating that she would like to buy a copy of Dessert at One.
It might have been an aperitif
Roy Thompson of the Winston-Salem Journal tells of receiving a letter from a dentist who used to practice in the city, saying that in Korea, where he now practiced, the boys were glad to take time out to visit the dentist, to get off the line, that most of the work was in extractions.
The Pinehurst Outlook finds that impatience, negligence and incompetence, the three cardinal sins of the "gasoline wastrel", were costing North Carolina motorists more than 83 million dollars annually or about $92 per vehicle owner, according to a recently published study by one of the leading automotive engineers in the country, Delmar G. Ross, former president of the Society of Automotive Engineers. He had concluded that the average motorist obtained about half the available mileage from a gallon of gas, the primary problems being speed, mechanical negligence and sloppy driving habits, speed alone accounting for nearly half the wasted mileage.
Who cares? We have plenty of oil. Drive to your heart's content. Step on it, man. Got business to transact, here, down the long, winding rood.
John Bragaw of the Washington News finds that a riddle which used to conclude by providing the answer, "I am a nickel," now resolved itself as 25 cents.
The Rocky Mount Telegram finds that a democracy was a land where you could find artist drawings of the country's secret missiles in one of the illustrated magazines.
And so on, and on so forth
Gordon Dean, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, substituting for Drew Pearson, returning from Europe, begins by quoting a letter he had received from a woman in his former hometown, who complained about the country developing atomic energy, and thus stimulating the Soviets to do likewise, concluding that Mr. Dean's father had been a "courageous and fine sermonizer" and that it was too bad that his son was concentrating on the "murderous aspects of atomic energy".
Mr. Dean says that, while he found the letter disturbing, it did represent an honest, patriotic opinion shared by many Americans, that the country was not justified in seeking to maintain its current world leadership in atomic energy production, albeit a misguided approach. He proceeds to explain that the U.S. was not provoking the Soviet Union into its atomic energy program, that the Soviets were determined, in their quest for world leadership, to develop their atomic program regardless of whether the U.S. did so or not. The U.S. had done nothing to provoke the 1948-49 blockade of Berlin by the Soviets, had done nothing to force them to take over Czechoslovakia, had not forced them to send the North Koreans to invade South Korea, and had not thwarted the effort in the U.N. to bring peace to the world, including the American-supported plan to place atomic energy under effective international control with reasonable inspections to ensure compliance. He was convinced that if the country abandoned its entire nuclear program, the Soviets would not reciprocate.
Thus, the nuclear program stood as an important deterrent to a third world war. It was not designed for the purpose of aggressive war against anyone. While the bombs which had fallen on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945 had taken many lives, they had also saved hundreds of thousands of lives of both Americans and Japanese in what would have inevitably been the necessity for a ground invasion of the Japanese islands to end the war, preceded by more saturation bombing with conventional bombs. He advises that it was the way atomic weapons were used which was bad, not the bombs themselves. The testing of atomic weapons was necessary to continue the development program technologically, not with the intention of scaring anyone. And the tests provided the evidence of progress in the program, not just in weaponry but also in the manufacture of materials for peaceful use, the production of power and the manufacture of radioactive substances for the benefit of health and welfare.
He concludes that atomic energy held a tremendous promise for a better life for all in the future, while also providing "the means by which we can preserve our lives, our freedom and our way of life until this promise is fulfilled."
He adds, for the benefit of the woman who had written to him, that his father, indeed, had been a great "sermonizer", but had also been a veteran of the Spanish-American War and World War I, was buried in Arlington Cemetery. He had known that aggressors would not be deterred by weakness, but only through strength, and that in so doing, there might be fewer new graves in Arlington in the future.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop again discuss the prospect of the Soviets holding up ceasefire negotiations in Korea at least until after the San Francisco conference to ratify the Japanese peace treaty, set to begin September 4. The question remained, however, whether, after the conference, the Kremlin would allow the ceasefire talks to resume or would order a resumption of the war. The U.S. would not barter a Korean truce by abandonment of the Japanese treaty, nor acquiesce in the face of Russian blackmail.
General Matthew Ridgway had of late suggested from Tokyo that the entire ceasefire negotiations had been a ruse so that the Communists could buy time to renew their strength. During the interim since the talks had begun July 10, the Communists had renewed their strength considerably, but so had the U.N. forces, who now had a firm hold on the "iron triangle", including Chorwon and Kumhwa, a better defensive position than they had thus far enjoyed in the entire war.
A question hanging in the air was whether, if the fighting resumed, the Soviets would enter into the air war, in turn provoking the MacArthur policy of air attacks on enemy bases in Manchuria. Even if that result did not follow, a renewal of the fighting after a false ceasefire negotiation would result in great pressures to widen the war, which could not go on indefinitely as a limited war.
The Alsops posit that such pessimistic scenarios also provided the best arguments for optimism concerning an eventual ceasefire agreement. If the enemy understood those points and was not desirous of a wider war, then they also would desire the ceasefire. But, they warn, the country was "traveling a narrow ledge, skirting a clangorous abyss, and we had better realize that this is our situation, in order to avoid missteps."
Robert C. Ruark discusses the apprehension for drug trafficking of former principal bootlegger Waxey Gordon, now facing, under New York's Baume's law, life imprisonment for a fourth felony conviction. He suggests that life imprisonment was too light a sentence for such a grave crime as introducing young people to hard drugs, Mr. Gordon having been caught with a pound of heroin. He had tried to convince police to let him run so that they could shoot him, but even that was too quick a death for such a loathsome character. While the country was enlightened regarding crime and punishment, did not engage, as did the Arab countries, in cutting off hands for theft, or other forms of corporal punishment, or administer the death penalty for lesser crimes, he thinks the rack or Chinese water torture might be a more just form of retribution for such a heinous act.
He understood that emphasis on marijuana smoking was being utilized by organized crime as a means to start young people in the direction of more profitable drugs, such as heroin, that drug trafficking had assumed the proportions of bootlegging during Prohibition days as a moneymaker for the mob.
He suggests that public exhibition
of drug peddlers in a kind of zoo
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