The Charlotte News

Wednesday, January 16, 1952

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.N. command in Korea stated this date that allied planes had attacked "lucrative military targets" in the vicinity of a Communist prisoner of war camp at the time the Communists had claimed the previous day that it had been bombed on Monday night, killing 15 prisoners and injuring 65 others, subsequently increasing the number of killed to 20 and indicating that 15 of the remaining 55 injured had been seriously injured. According to the Communists, all of the prisoners at the camp in question, save one American, were South Koreans. Allied commander, General Matthew Ridgway, stated from headquarters in Tokyo that the allies did not know whether the camp had been bombed because they did not know where it was, as the Communists had not provided an exact location and U.N. photo reconnaissance planes had been unable to find it or ten other POW camps in North Korea. The Communists had claimed that the bombing violated the Geneva Convention and the U.N. promised that the issue would be addressed at the earliest opportunity.

Meanwhile, in the subcommittee on prisoner exchange, the Communists again refused permission to Red Cross representatives to visit POW camps in North Korea.

In the subcommittee on supervision of the truce, the Communists presented a counter-proposal prohibiting the importation of warplanes during a truce and therefore, they contended, guaranteeing against a build-up of Communist air strength, the chief concern of the allies in wanting a ban of all airfield construction and repair during an armistice. The Communist representative, however, ducked the question of whether the Communists would agree not to increase their military air capability during an armistice.

In the air war, outnumbered U.S. F-86 Sabre jets damaged two enemy MIG-15s in two air battles over northwest Korea. One fight involved 36 Sabres and 80 MIGs, and the second, 22 Sabres against the same flight of enemy planes, with one MIG damaged in each battle.

In the ground war, infantrymen took refuge in their foxholes in sub-freezing weather along the 145-mile front, with action confined to a few small raiding operations by the allies and probes by enemy troops.

Secretary of State Acheson said at a press conference that the new Soviet disarmament proposal sought only a "paper prohibition" of atomic weapons and offered no assurance of agreement on a control system which would definitely provide for prohibition of such weapons. He said the U.S. would examine the ideas but that international inspection of the type being proposed by the Soviets had never been regarded as adequate to safeguard against illegal possession of atomic weapons. The Russian plan accepted international control of atomic weapons at the same time a ban would go into effect and provided for continuous international inspection rather than periodic inspections, as it had previously favored. Mr. Acheson said that the Russians would, however, bar interference in internal affairs of any state in the process of inspections. The key component favored by a majority of the U.N. members was to have an international control agency which would own all atomic materials and own and operate all atomic facilities using materials in dangerous quantities. Mr. Acheson noted that the Russians had opposed the resolution sponsored by the Western powers which recently had created the disarmament commission, and, right after it had been created, introduced its old proposals on disarmament, couched as "new" ones.

The President sent his annual written economic message to Congress, forecasting the "most difficult" year of the rearmament program, with large federal deficits and triggering some civilian shortages but accompanied by few hardships, along with a "precarious" price situation. He called for a tax increase of five billion dollars, amounting to the remainder of the ten billion increase in taxes he had sought in the previous session when Congress gave him 5.4 billion. He said the increase should be accomplished by increasing some rates and plugging loopholes, not indicating whether the increase should be added to corporate, individual income, or excise tax rates. He asked for a two-year extension of the Defense Production Act and the repeal of weakening price control amendments, improved farm price supports, stronger curbs on consumer and bank credit, plus revision of another dozen laws.

Leaders of both houses of Congress, including Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, had publicly stated that they would not increase taxes in 1952. Chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee, Congressman Robert Doughton of North Carolina, said that his Committee would consider any proposals made by the President, but that he did not believe public sentiment supported another tax increase. Senator Walter George of Georgia, head of the Senate Finance Committee, said that he did not favor a general tax increase but indicated that if the House provided a bill to block loopholes, his Committee would go along with it.

The Senate Agriculture Committee determined to make a full investigation of three separate charges of negligence and wrongdoing in programs administered by the Agriculture Department.

Congressman Hale Boggs of Louisiana, backed by Senator Russell Long, held a slim lead of 4,400 votes over appellate Judge Robert Kennon, in the Democratic gubernatorial primary race in that state. Receiving the Democratic nomination was the equivalent of election in the one-party state, but a runoff in February appeared certain for the top two candidates. Current Governor Earl Long, brother of the late Governor and Senator Huey Long, had supported the candidate running third in the race. Congressman Boggs, who would serve on the Warren Commission in 1964, would ultimately lose the race to Judge Kennon and continue in the House until his death in an airplane accident over Alaska in 1972, serving as Majority Whip for nine years until 1971, when he became Majority Leader, a position he held at his death.

In Coos Bay., Ore., eight of 11 children in a family were believed to have died in a fire at their home this date. No cause is reported.

Noel Yancey of the Associated Press reports that in Whiteville, N.C., during the previous four months, night riders consisting of four white men had lured at least four persons from their homes, blindfolded them, and taken them to lonely places to be flogged, creating an atmosphere of fear and distrust in Columbus County in the southeastern part of the state. In some instances, victims were believed to have failed to report the floggings out of fear of reprisal. In addition to local police and sheriff's deputies, agents of the SBI and the FBI were working on the cases. All of the incidents had taken place since the Klan had first met in Columbus County the previous fall, but investigators had not yet ascribed responsibility to the Klan for the floggings. Many residents believed that the floggings were an outgrowth of similar instances in neighboring Horry County in South Carolina, where a police officer dressed in Klan robes had been killed the previous year. The first victim in Columbus County, reported the previous October, had indicated that he was awakened late at night by some men who claimed to need help with car trouble, instead taking him to South Carolina where he was then flogged, the interstate nature of that abduction leading to the involvement of the FBI. The second victim indicated that during the previous November he had been lured outside by men who said they needed gasoline for their car, after which he was beaten with a piece of automobile tire. A garage mechanic, the third victim, said that he was abducted the previous December. A fourth victim had recently reported similar conduct.

Another harsh winter weather cell, including snow, wind and rain, was set to hit Northern California this date, amid hundreds of marooned travelers, isolated towns and flooded homes, already taking seven lives, untold more, and causing multi-million dollars worth of damage. Floodwaters hit both Southern California, as far south as Santa Barbara, and Northern California, including Sacramento, Santa Clara County, and South San Francisco, plus the northern section of Merced in central California. Hail in San Francisco produced an inch of ice in some places. Reno, Nevada, spent a second day in isolation, with schools closed amid two feet of snow and virtually all transportation snowbound. Only one of three planes departing San Francisco for Reno had reached its destination.

End of the world 's comin'. A-Day, January 1, 1953. Be there.

In the vicinity of Colfax, Calif., rescuers using a snowplow to reach the snow-stranded City of San Francisco Southern Pacific train in the Sierras, where 226 passengers and crewmen were trapped, had reached to within two miles of the train but still had much work to do. A rescue train still had 1.5 miles of track to clear to reach a highway where it would pick up the passengers. Meanwhile, the weather had slackened at least temporarily, which would permit the passengers to walk about half a mile from their location to the highway, where they would be picked up by an automobile and taken 1.5 miles to the relief train which would carry them to Sacramento. A doctor had reached the train by dogsled and reported that all passengers were able to walk to the highway and that those who had been made ill by gas fumes, as reported two days earlier, had recovered. The temperature on Donner Pass was 20 degrees where the train was stranded.

They had better hurry before the people aboard start resorting to cannibalism. Some are, after all, Republican National Committee members.

On the editorial page, "Key Carolina Congressmen" provides a table on an adjoining page of the newspaper, not available, showing the status of unadopted legislation designed to increase the efficiency and economy of the Federal Government, resulting from proposals of the bipartisan Hoover Commission established in 1947. Thus far, about half of the Commission's recommendations had been implemented, but Congress the previous year had sat on most of the bills still pending.

The Congressional delegations of the two Carolinas could, it offers, do a lot on their own to effect passage of those bills. Many in the previous session, however, had continued to hedge on the matter. The piece provides information on the committee assignments of the delegations to show their influence in being able to move along the bills, such as Senator Clyde Hoey, able to influence such legislation more than any other member of the Carolinas delegations, being outranked only by Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, chairman of the Senate Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments, which was deliberating on over half of the 20 bills pending on Government efficiency.

The piece then goes on to provide the other key positions held by members from both North Carolina and South Carolina which could strongly impact the success of the legislation.

"The Reluctant Senate" tells of the Senate being torn between reluctant support of the President's plan for reorganization of the IRB in light of the tax prosecution scandals uncovered by Congress, and the Senators' desire to maintain the patronage system under which the 64 tax collectors were appointed to their positions, instead of the proposed replacement system under Civil Service, reducing the number of collectors to 25 in regional offices. Senator Willis Smith of North Carolina had cited the excellent record established by North Carolina's tax collectors and suggested that the fault therefore was not in the system but in the people appointed.

The piece agrees with that point but indicates that too few Senators placed a premium on ability, experience and known honesty in approving Federal appointments, instead opting to repay political debts with Federal jobs. It therefore finds that the President's plan, consistent with the recommendations of the Hoover Commission more than two years earlier, appeared as the best remedy to the problem and that to defeat it, the Senators would need to find better arguments than they had used so far.

"What's Doing with Franco?" tells of the Department of Defense and the State Department planning to conclude political and economic agreements with Spain's Franco within about six weeks, despite silence on the details of the negotiations. It suggests that it was time for the Government to divulge some of the pertinent economic facts about the country's dealings with Spain, as substantial economic aid would have to be provided to that country to bolster the U.S. military position there.

Mildred Adams had written in Fortune that Spanish estimates called for about a billion dollars in U.S. aid and that given the current economic condition of Spain, that did not appear excessive, but led to the question whether it would be enough to provide a modern economy able to support its people, place it in a position to cooperate with other countries of Western Europe, and enable it to become a dependable base in the event of war with Russia.

The piece concludes that, putting aside the issue of Franco being a dictator who had allied himself with Hitler and Mussolini during the war and consequently earned the permanent scorn of most of Western Europe, it was necessary to have facts available to the public regarding the proposed treaty with Spain if the Administration expected public support for it.

"Responsive Government" tells of the French Government often being ridiculed for its instability, with the average duration of each Government since the end of the war being approximately five months. Belgium also had a penchant for high turnover rates in its Cabinets, and during the week had formed a new Cabinet in which the discredited Premier took charge of the Justice Department while the Foreign and Defense Ministers of the old Cabinet remained.

The previous year, when French President Vincent Auriol had visited the U.S., he had admitted the high turnover rate but reminded listeners that the foreign and defense offices, and their policies, had retained stability regardless of the frequent change in governments. He pointed out that during the postwar era, while the U.S. had four Secretaries of State, France had but two foreign secretaries.

It concludes that while both systems had their merits and demerits, with the number of mediocre Cabinet members in the current Administration, it sometimes wished that there was a parliamentary system in place in the country.

Drew Pearson finds that only Attorney General J. Howard McGrath had been able thus far to outsmart the President in his "accustomed technique for axing an unwanted member of the official family". Mr. McGrath had been nearly out a few months earlier, but had managed to get back in the President's good graces by having offered his resignation to the President in the wake of the firing of Lamar Caudle as Justice Department tax division chief, causing the President to declare that he had no intention of firing his friend and so did not accept his resignation.

The President had, however, asked his aide Donald Dawson to search for another job for Mr. McGrath so that he could be eased out of the Justice Department without loss of face. Mr. Dawson had suggested appointment of him as ambassador to Spain, which appeared a natural fit for Mr. McGrath as one of the top-ranking lay Catholics in the country and having been made a Knight of Malta by the Pope. With the retirement of the current Ambassador, Stanford Griffis, it appeared that the appointment would be made and that former Judge Justin Miller would become the new Attorney General. To that end, the White House planted a story in the local press that Mr. McGrath would become the new ambassador to Spain, followed by a press conference at which the President refused to comment on a report that the Attorney General would soon resign. During the ensuing 24 hours, however, Mr. McGrath contacted Francis Cardinal Spellman, who was in Tokyo, and induced him to send a message to the President urging that the Attorney General be retained, and also appealed to his law partner, Senator Francis Green of Rhode Island, who visited the White House to remind the President that the Senator and his home state had always been behind him, that it would be unfair to Mr. McGrath not to give him a hearing and that he had an excellent plan for cleaning up corruption.

Then, Presidential aide Matt Connelly also came to the defense of Mr. McGrath, and so at the next Cabinet meeting, the President suddenly reversed himself and assured that the Attorney General and all other members of the Cabinet would be retained into 1952.

Marquis Childs discusses the planning for the upcoming political conventions, which would be the first to be widely televised. In 1948, there had been only about one million television sets in use in the country when the first televised political conventions occurred. In 1952, there were an estimated 15 million sets. With multiple viewers per set, many millions of potential voters would be able to see the conventions. Not all television stations of the 108 operating in 64 cities were linked with the networks, but efforts were ongoing to link them prior to the conventions. Moreover, the FCC was considering removing sometime in February its freeze on granting licenses to new stations. About half the population was within reception range of a television signal and within another five years, presumably the entire nation would be able to receive a signal.

The concern among convention planners was that viewers would not accept the traditional national convention, replete with its lengthy demonstrations of two or three hours at a time and long nominating speeches, resulting inevitably in lost viewers. They were therefore seeking to tailor the conventions to the new medium. The result could be both good and evil. More people would be watching and observing politics in action than ever before, and that was good. But on the other hand, there would be a temptation to cater to the audience by over-dramatizing certain aspects of the convention, which could become demagogic. "Mature and extended deliberation will give way to the hasty exchange jazzed up for the television cameras."

That latter statement, incidentally, could become the mantra for the television age, extending to today, and not just regarding political conventions, but with respect to virtually every aspect of life, from the profoundly serious to the trivial, to the point where the society has completely mislaid its values, exchanging free speech, free exchange of ideas, and, finally, freedom of thought, for some cheap form of "activism" controlled by demagogic reactionaries of the worst stripe. If someone is engaged in squelching speech, they are, by definition, fascists, no matter how they may frame their claimed substantive issue.

Two networks had determined the sponsor for the convention coverage which had been billed as the greatest show on earth.

Senator Robert Taft had been judged by many as having a poor television personality, seeming to condescend to his audience, with the strong implications by his manner that anyone who disagreed with him had to be stupid. Mr. Childs questions whether that kind of prejudice meant that "glib actors and slick performers are to get the nod from the mass audience".

While this large television audience could be engaged in free exchange of ideas in politics, entertainment and other fields, there was also the danger that it could be "monopolized by greed, over-caution and narrow stupidity", resulting in it being far more a curse than a blessing. He adds that such had been true of all man's inventions since fire and the wheel.

Robert C. Ruark finds that the consignment by the President of the investigation and clean-up of corruption in the Administration to Attorney General J. Howard McGrath to be akin to sending a mouse to bell the cat or nominating a prisoner to try the judge.

Recently, the President had sought to hire Judge Thomas Murphy as the head of the investigation, but he had eventually declined the appointment. It now appeared a peculiar switch in an election year to turn the matter over to the Attorney General. The President had made a reputation as a practical politician, acting for the general interest of his party, sometimes at the expense of the state. He regards the retention of the Attorney General, however, in the face of the recent tax prosecution scandals unveiled in the Justice Department, leading to the firing of Lamar Caudle as head of the tax division, as the result more of "semi-senile loyalty than as gem-hard political thinking". Thus, he wonders whether the President had been overrated as a smart politician and underrated as merely a "machine hack".

He concludes that the President was appearing more as a skit from "Allen's Alley" of the Fred Allen Show on radio, with emphasis on Senator Claghorn, and thinks that the reappearance of Henry Wallace would be the only thing left to make the revival of burlesque complete.

Again, Mr. Ruark, we shall await with bated breath your opinionated approach to Senator Nixon and his wife's cloth coat, the contribution by a supporter of the family's little black and white cocker spaniel, his 1950 Oldsmobile, and a few other things, such as the game of cubolo in Havana's Sans Souci.

But, after reading you almost daily for a few years now, and given your penchant for big game hunting in Africa, we have a feeling we know how you're going to come out on all of that.

It is too bad that we share an alma mater.

But, maybe we wax overly sarcastic. Alma always moderates our thinking, just as when we found some level of commonality with our President at Christmas, 1969, as he was shown on the tv playing beneath the Christmas tree with his Irish setter. We thought to ourselves: "See? He really is human, after all, probably a nice man underneath all that other stuff. There was nothing to cry about last year after the election." Within about three years, however, we had become thoroughly disabused of our momentary lapse into Alma's moderating influence. Alma tended to agree by then also.

A letter from City Councilman Basil Boyd, at length defending his position in response to an editorial of December 21, "Accentuating the Negative", draws parenthetical response from the editors on each point he raises which they deem completely to misquote the original piece or in some instances, misrepresenting it, on various local issues on which he seeks to clarify his stands. You may read it for yourself, should you have an abiding interest in Councilman Boyd's positions in 1952 and the disagreements with his statements by The News.

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