The Charlotte News
Tuesday, January 1, 1952
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the stalemate in negotiations continued regarding how to supervise an armistice in Korea, while the Communists agreed to supply more information on the 50,000 missing allied prisoners of war, most of whom were South Koreans. The Communists also agreed in principle on repatriation of civilians. South Korea had charged that the Communists had "kidnapped" 113,000 civilians. For the first time this date, the Communists charged that the allies "took away" 500,000 North Korean civilians. The Communists had flatly rejected the most recent offer by the allies regarding enforcement of the truce, in particular rejecting the allied demand that there would be no construction of military airfields during the armistice. The allies had watered down or withdrawn most of their demands regarding truce supervision and indicated on Saturday that they would make no more compromises. That led to a statement by an allied spokesman that they were in "dead stalemate" on the issue. The two subcommittees would meet again the following day.
In a New Year's Day broadcast to the U.S., Vice-Admiral C. Turner Joy, chief U.N. negotiator, said that it would take a lot of time yet to negotiate "an honorable, equitable and stable armistice."
President Syngman Rhee of South Korea criticized the allies for not trying to unite the country by force of arms and questioned effecting an armistice prior to unification. He said that 1952 might be "grim … not only because of our enemies but also because of our friends."
In air action, U.S. Sabre jets damaged two enemy jets in a 30-minute battle over northwest Korea, with no U.S. jets harmed in the action between 31 American planes and 60 Communist jets, although two American propeller-driven planes had been shot down by enemy anti-aircraft guns.
U.N. forces launched an artillery barrage along the entire length of the 145-mile front as a rare enemy bombing raid hit two allied airfields near Seoul. No planes or runways were struck, according to Lt. D. C. Hamer of Winston-Salem. Pyongyang radio had reported the destruction of 24 U.N. aircraft as well as direct hits against ships and munitions warehouses.
In ground action, only a 40-minute fight against a single enemy squad attacking northwest of Yonchon was reported prior to noon.
Eighth Army headquarters said that the Communists had lost 3,866 men the previous week, including 2,305 killed, 1,502 wounded, and 41 taken prisoner.
Maj. General William Chase, head of the American military advisory group on Formosa, stated this date that there was the possibility of a U.S.-trained Nationalist military "team" going into action outside Formosa. This statement brought a restatement of U.S. policy on Formosa from the State Department, that there was no present plan to use Chiang Kai-Shek's 600,000-man army on Formosa in any attack on the Chinese mainland, until such time as there was a break in the Korean War or a change in American policy.
The supporters of General Eisenhower for the presidency appeared confident that soon there would be a major development to support their belief that he would be available for the Republican nomination in 1952. They anticipated an announcement of that type by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., the following Sunday. Senator Lodge stated that he would have some good news for those who wanted to see the General as the Republican nominee, but declined to elaborate. There was speculation that the Senator would be announcing that the General's name would be placed on the ballot in New Hampshire for the primary set for March 11. Governor Sherman Adams of that state, chairman of the state Eisenhower-for-President committee and future Eisenhower chief of staff, stated the previous day that there would be news of great interest in the coming days. An unnamed source said that the coming announcement should resolve doubts as to whether the General would be available for the GOP nomination.
Norfolk, one of the busiest ports in the world, was at a virtual standstill because of a strike by employees of the two largest towing companies in the area, stopping nearly all coal exports and preventing a number of general cargo vessels from docking. The Longshoremen's Association was demanding an undisclosed pay increase and a reduction of the 48-hour work week to 40 hours.
In the Superstition Mountains of central Arizona, a search continued for a missing Air Force transport with 28 persons aboard, including 19 West Point cadets. Wreckage of an aircraft had been sighted late the previous day on the slopes of Iron Mountain, 55 to 60 miles east of Phoenix. Heavy cloud cover, however, obscured a clear view of the wreckage and only one man on the plane had caught a glimpse of it.
In Little Valley, N.Y., 14 survivors of the crash of a non-scheduled airliner were resting in a hospital this date as rescue workers completed the task of recovering the bodies of 26 persons killed in the mishap. None of the survivors was reported to be in critical condition. The wreckage had been discovered the previous day on a wooded ridge of the Allegheny Mountain foothills. It marked the third crash in three weeks of a C-46. According to a surviving stewardess, the right engine of the plane had stuttered just prior to the crash and it began to lose altitude.
In Greenville, S.C., a man heard a horn blowing outside his rural home and upon investigation, found his brother-in-law slumped over the steering wheel after suffering a fatal bullet wound to the head. Beside him was a woman, also fatally shot in the head. The coroner stated that he believed that the brother-in-law, a former policeman, had shot the woman elsewhere, driven to the dwelling and then shot himself after blowing the car's horn to attract attention. The woman was a widow and the man was married with eight children.
In Chicago, a couple seeking to effect a reconciliation agreement to end the wife's divorce action, encountered a snag when the husband refused to agree to his wife's demand that there be no drinks consumed on New Year's Eve or on New Year's Day. The husband said that the reconciliation was therefore off. The judge then ordered the husband to pay $30 per week in support of the wife and their two children. The basis for the divorce had been the wife's contention that her husband was habitually intoxicated.
In Washington, a 15-year old boy celebrated New Year's by firing his .22-caliber rifle out his bedroom window, inadvertently striking and killing the mother of three a block away while she sat in her living room. The rifle had been a Christmas gift a year earlier.
The New Year was welcomed with
toasts, prayers and cannonades across the world, including behind the
Iron Curtain. In New York's Times Square, one of the biggest
celebrations since the end of World War II had taken place, with a
crowd estimated by police at a million, 150,000 more than that of the
previous year. Boston, however, saw a comparatively modest reception,
with only 75,000 "kids" tooting horns in the streets, as
most Bostonians stayed at nightclubs or at house parties. In London,
some 6,000 attended the traditional Chelsea Arts Ball
The President worked quietly in Washington while the First Lady and daughter Margaret remained in Missouri.
Premier Josef Stalin sent a New Year's greeting to the Japanese, expressing sympathy for their "serious situation under foreign occupation."
In Mt. Airy, N.C., a young high school agriculture teacher was fatally injured the previous day when his pickup truck exploded as he started to crank it. No motive was yet in evidence for the attack and the teacher, himself, who had lingered for 13 hours before dying, said that he had no enemies.
They did not tell you about such occurrences in Mayberry, did they? You thought everything there was hunky-dory, set bucolically in a nice, quiet valley of peaceful contemplation and stoic acceptance of exigent conditions as they arose, meeting each set of a new day's circumstances with equanimity and resourceful humanity such that happy and just endings always occurred for all, with bows tied in nice, neat knots before the final fade-out and rolling of the credits.
But, life is more often than not a
hard row to hoe, as there is at least always one person
On the editorial page, "The Year in Korea" tells of the year having begun with the U.N. forces still reeling from the ill-fated offensive to the Yalu River in November, followed by the Communist counter-offensive and entry of the Chinese to the war in force. Now, in Panmunjom, the two sides were negotiating a ceasefire, as they had been for the previous six months. Casualties had dwindled while the negotiations transpired, but still the casualties mounted.
During the first nine months of the war, 54,000 Americans were either killed, wounded or reported missing in action, and a similar number of casualties had occurred in the second nine months of the war, through the present time. Thus, it concludes, the U.N. forces had not achieved any victory in 1951 while losing many men. The 30-day deadline for expiration of the provisional agreement on a ceasefire buffer zone had occurred December 27 without the necessary signing of an armistice to keep it intact. That fact, however, was thus far moot, as the battle lines had not significantly changed since the buffer zone was created based on those lines. Thus, if agreement was ultimately reached on the other points, unless one side or the other undertook a significant offensive in the meantime, it would still remain easy to reach agreement on the buffer zone.
There remained the issues of resolving the accounting of prisoners, even after the release two weeks earlier by both sides of lists of prisoners held, as well as reaching acceptable terms for policing the truce.
It suggests that it was possible that a full-scale war could again erupt, but suggests that as the Communists had to realize now that the conquest of Korea was futile, that prospect appeared unlikely. Some form of armistice, therefore, was probable in the near future. It makes room for the possibility that the Communists would enter a new area, such as Indo-China or the Middle East, to disperse and dilute Western forces and distract attention from Korea.
It concludes that while things were not good in the war, it could be much worse, and that at least Communist aggression had been stopped without a world war. Historians, it finds, would dispute the military decisions of 1951, but it appeared at present that the U.N. had not failed in that theater.
"Scandals Galore" tells of new scandals on the horizon, as the Senate Agriculture Committee was investigating two get-rich schemes involving employees of the Agriculture Department, schemes which it proceeds to describe. The Wall Street Journal had assigned 14 reporters to investigate "The Mystery of the Vanishing Commodities", which reportedly had cost the Government two billion dollars after commodities had disappeared from their storage facilities in grain elevators, old airplane hangars, quonset huts and the like. The preliminary stages for an investigation into the Office of Alien Property were also taking place, amid accusations that persons who had the favor of the Democratic Party had been rewarded with lucrative jobs and contracts with alien corporations under the supervision of the Alien Property custodian.
Topping all of those investigations was a Senate subcommittee looking at "inexcusable and indefensible waste" by the armed forces.
The New York Times had reported that the President had named two members of his three-person investigating committee to clean up the Government, but was awaiting announcement until he found his chairman, after Judge Thomas Murphy had turned him down. The piece suggests that if the scandals continued to mount, he would need to appoint a whole commission to investigate corruption, similar to the Hoover Commission of 1947, which had made recommendations on effecting economy and efficiency in the Government.
"Delinquents or Criminals?" tells of a local man, following a dance recently, having taken his date home, while being followed by two teenagers in another car the last few blocks before their destination. Some remarks were shouted at the man and his date, and as he pulled into her driveway, the teenagers followed and parked closely behind. The man asked them to leave and he began taking down their license number, but they remained, got out of their car, whereupon a fight ensued, in which the man was badly beaten about the head with a blackjack. A few minutes later, police picked up the two teenagers.
The previous Thursday, the teenager accused in the assault was found guilty and provided a sentence of 12 months, four of which were for carrying a concealed weapon and the remainder for assault with a deadly weapon, with that sentence suspended on condition that he serve two years on probation and pay a fine of $50 plus costs. No charges were filed against the other teenager.
The charged teenager had come from a broken family, his parents having been divorced when he was very young, and his stepfather having been killed in World War II. His mother worked to support the two of them and had little time to supervise her son's needs. He had been convicted of reckless driving the prior August and his license had been revoked, but his mother, nevertheless, had bought a car for him, in which his friends drove him around. The piece posits that perhaps these factors had influenced the decision of the Recorder's Court to place him on probation, in that placing him on the roads would only have led to his association with hardened criminals, possibly leading him into criminality as an adult. It therefore concludes that though the offense appeared to justify a harsher punitive sanction, it did not question the judge's decision.
It finds the continuing exhibition of "hoodlumism", however, in some of the better residential areas of the city to be disturbing and thinks it the result of parents not living up to their responsibilities. The police were seeking to curb the activities but progress was slow.
In the instant case, the victim's friends had indicated to the newspaper that they were going to carry blunt instruments under their front seats or in their glove compartments as a means of dealing with future such attacks. It suggests that, while understanding the motivation, such was not a wise policy. It adds, however, that persons who engaged in self-defense of that type were not likely to take into account the assailant's background in administering like force to fend off the application of force—always being mindful that in such self-help situations, the attack must be clear and continuing, with any intent of retreat, by words or conduct, communicated by the assailant terminating the right of self-defense, and moreover, that the level of force can never exceed that which is reasonably necessary to fend off the force being applied, the reasonableness thereof being a jury question should the person who purports to exercise self-defense be charged with a crime for an excessive counter-attack.
A piece from the Congressional Quarterly looks at the Congressional session ahead, with the most highly controversial issues being foreign aid, defense spending and, possibly, alterations to the tax bill which had passed in the previous session. It provides details. We shall get there in due course. Since Congress tends to move with all deliberate speed, so, too, shall we. For rushing to one's destination, as the newspaper has been fond to point out all year, can lead to serious accidents.
Drew Pearson provides his New Year's resolutions to those in high places, for instance, to the President, suggesting application of the rule of George Washington to all of his staff, that those bearing gifts to public officials should deposit them with the State Department until after they left office, to Senator Joseph McCarthy, that he should quit pinning the Communist label on rural telephone users who listened in on the party line, to UMW leader John L. Lewis, that he should cut his eyebrows more and the public less, to General Eisenhower, that he should not keep Senator James Duff of Pennsylvania and the American public waiting any longer to announce his candidacy.
And he goes on, with similar New Year's resolutions suggested for White House physician, General Wallace Graham, Presidential military aide, General Harry Vaughan, Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, fired Assistant Attorney General in charge of the tax division, Lamar Caudle, Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee, DNC chairman Frank McKinney, Congressman Cecil King of California, Senator Richard Russell and Congressman Carl Vinson of Georgia, and Attorney General J. Howard McGrath.
And he concludes with a resolution
for the Alfa
He predicts that 1952 would bring no world war, but neither would bring complete peace. Intermittent hostilities would continue in Indo-China, perhaps in Iran, possibly in the Egyptian-Palestinian-Syrian region.
The most important test of the year would be whether the American people would, at last, succumb to the growing tendencies toward bitterness, internal strife, lack of confidence in leadership, isolation, and disillusionment, those things on which Moscow had depended since the war to undermine the American economy to the point where Communism would only need pick up the pieces of a divided and confused land. The debate the previous spring regarding the President's firing of General MacArthur as supreme commander of the U.N. forces in Korea and the rebuilding effort in Japan had created bitter factions in the country, as had the debate over whether the President should appoint an ambassador to the Vatican, and the scandals regarding the failure to prosecute persons committing tax fraud because of influence within the Administration.
Next would come the election of 1952, which could lead to further venting of passions, and a period in which American leadership in the rest of the world would be slowed while the country was too busy with its own problems. Thus, diplomatic observers were worried about the coming year, and it was reported that the Kremlin was watching the U.S. more intently than ever. He suggests that it might become the most crucial year since 1941.
He says that the trial of the four American fliers in Hungary for espionage had come from orders issued in Moscow.
Averell Harriman still held out hope that General Eisenhower could be persuaded to run as a Democrat if Senator Taft were to be nominated by the Republicans. He notes that Mr. Harriman had recently talked to the General in Paris.
Robert C. Ruark finds no reason to lament the passing of 1951, that it had been the "first time mink was successfully crossed with skunk, and not even chlorophyll could kill the odor." The people had suddenly been awakened from their complacent belief that destiny was over the hill, "when all the time it was crouching on the doorstep."
"Our complacency has been bounced and battered pretty good in 1951. We have had a sudden, shocked peek at ourselves—at the corruption of officials, the cynicism of government, at the weakening of moral fiber among most of us. We have stood aghast before a collapse of ancient values, and in the waning months it seems to me we have suddenly realized that this is happening to US. Not to him or her. To me, John Citizen.
"We have staggered through the age of the fix, the bribe, the collusion of politics and crime. We have wept somewhat over the downfall of ideals among the young, and observed apathy in all quarters. We have despaired over any sound, eventual solution to a global nastiness that seems intent on reducing the world to a smoking slag heap on one hand, or else a vast poorhouse of bare necessity, where only the keepers live like men."
He goes on in like mode, finding nothing to cheer about the passing year, observing that he had never heard so much complaining as he had heard during 1951.
He concludes: "It was a mean year, a sad year, a puzzled year, but it was not a wasted year. It was a year of coming to closer grips with unpleasant reality. On that score, alone, I think it was a good year, if only because it argues that we might be able to do a better job on 1952."
Well, Mr. Ruark, by the end of 1952, it might, indeed, appear to some that way, but the reality may prove, in time, to be quite different from initial appearances. We shall have to await October, however, to see how you react to the game of checkers, cloth coats and 1950 Oldsmobiles.
Bertram Benedict, in Editorial Research Reports, tells of the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 1952 depending on the decision of the President to run or not for renomination. He could have the nomination if he wanted it, and even if he pushed it aside, could impose his choice on the party for the nominee, likely Chief Justice Fred Vinson—even if he had already said he would not jump from the Supreme Court directly into politics without some interim key appointment, such as Secretary of State, now too late to afford a suitable interim period. Several months earlier, John Knight of the Knight newspapers, who was not a fan of the President, had conceded that as things then stood, the President would be "tough to beat".
Supporters of Senator Taft, General Eisenhower, and the President were all making optimistic predictions. General Eisenhower's name would be entered in the New Hampshire Republican primary on March 11, and Congressman Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, former RNC Chairman, had predicted overwhelming victory.
But former RNC chairman, Congressman Carroll Reece of Tennessee, had asserted that Senator Taft would have a minimum of 200 votes on the first convention ballot from the Southern and border states, more than a third necessary for the nomination, said further that the sentiment was growing in his favor every day.
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., of Massachusetts predicted that General Eisenhower could very well win on the first convention ballot, and could beat anybody who the Democrats put up against him.
Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon predicted that General Eisenhower would win the nomination in the first three ballots.
Democratic House floor leader, Congressman John McCormack of Massachusetts, had stated categorically that the President would run for re-election and certainly would win, no matter who the Republican candidate would be. Likewise, said Secretary of Labor Maurice Tobin.
Senator Taft, himself, had stated in mid-October, when he announced his candidacy, that he would be nominated and elected.
And so on, and so forth…
He concludes: "Well, if the
Truman and the Eisenhower camps seem to be giving out just now with
most of the victory predictions, the Taft camp can reflect that the
more uneasy a man feels while passing a graveyard on a dark night,
the more he whistles
Framed Edition
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