The Charlotte News

Saturday, January 19, 1952

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in the air war, F-86 Sabre jets destroyed one enemy MIG-15 and damaged another in a brief engagement over northwest Korea this date, in a battle between 18 Sabre jets and 90 enemy MIG-15 jets. U.N. pilots hit enemy railways in 160 sorties flown before noon.

According to the U.S. Fifth Air Force, enemy jets and ground fire had knocked out ten allied warplanes during the previous seven days and enemy losses during the same period were three planes destroyed and seven damaged. During the prior week before that, enemy ground fire had destroyed 13 allied planes and enemy jets had knocked out three more, while the enemy had 12 MIGs destroyed and 14 damaged. In all, since the beginning of the Korean War, U.N. air forces had lost 457 warplanes, not including Navy losses, non-U.S. losses prior to June 1, 1951, Marine losses prior to July 1, 1951 or losses of light Army planes. The Air Force and its attached units had hit a total of 826 enemy planes during the war.

In the ground war, the battlefront was quiet amid snow flurries and heavy clouds, preventing air cover.

Early this date, a Korean airlift plane with 43 aboard crashed in the sea near a British Columbia airport about 480 miles northwest of Vancouver on Moresby Island, and after several hours, only seven persons had been rescued. It appeared doubtful that there were any more survivors. The plane had been en route from the Far East to McChord, Wash., Air Force Base. The plane had attempted to land at the B.C. field but missed, kept going and after appearing to be airborne again, suddenly veered sharply to the left and went into the water, where the surface temperature was 33 degrees, with light snow and a 22 mph wind, making it difficult for survivors to reach shore without help. It was believed that the plane might have carried Korean war veterans, military personnel from Japan and possibly civilian military employees.

In Indo-China, French Union forces launched a large attack early this date against the Communist-led Vietminh troops concentrated in the Red River delta around Namdinh, about 70 miles southeast of Hanoi. Army headquarters said that planes, paratroops, infantry, artillery and French naval units joined in the attack. The Vietminh reportedly had 13,000 men in the area. Namdinh was an important textile manufacturing center and a busy port on the river, serving also as a large marketplace for Vietnamese rice growers and farmers. The Vietminh had been infiltrating the area for a long time, attacking villages, kidnapping Vietnamese and trying to seize arms from home guard posts.

Also in Indo-China, 60 miles southwest of Saigon, ten children were killed and ten seriously injured the previous day when a school bus hit a road mine.

In Paris, the U.N. General Assembly, following the pattern set two days earlier by the political committee, rejected new Russian terms for ending the Korean War and directed the latest Soviet atomic proposals to the U.N. disarmament commission for study. The Korean proposals had called for an immediate ceasefire to be followed within ten days by retreat from the 38th parallel by both sides, plus withdrawal of foreign troops from Korea within three months. The proposal was defeated by a vote of 35 to five, with ten abstentions. The referral to the disarmament commission was approved by a vote of 40 to five, with three abstentions. The Assembly also rejected a Soviet demand that membership in NATO be deemed incompatible with membership in the U.N., and rejected a call for a peace pact between the Big Five, including Communist China.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill concluded his visit to Washington this date, having withdrawn his objections to having an American commander of Western naval forces in the Atlantic, but reserving the right to propose modifications later. He had also obtained from the U.S. a pledge of one million tons of steel in exchange for British tin and aluminum. He concluded his visit with an impromptu salute to a group of Korean War veterans at Union Station, where he also shook hands with the group as he boarded his special car attached to a regular train departing for New York in the afternoon. He would spend the weekend with his old friend Bernard Baruch before sailing for England on Tuesday night aboard the Queen Mary.

In San Francisco, at the RNC meeting, Senator William Knowland of California declared his support for General MacArthur's policies, stating that the U.S. had no business fighting in Korea unless it expected to win. He stated that the reason the President had removed the General from his command in Korea was that he had dared to advocate victory. He supported Governor Earl Warren for the Republican nomination for the presidency. Former Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota received cheers the previous night when he declared that, in a Stassen administration, General MacArthur would be restored to the Pacific command from which the President had removed him. He also urged General Eisenhower to come out from behind his "khaki curtain" and openly seek the Republican nomination. He said that he did not believe that the GOP nomination was "already zippered up in a plush lined bag" for Senator Taft.

Marquis Childs, in a front-page piece, tells of the President having now confirmed to some of his closest associates his long-time inclination not to seek re-election and that he would actively support Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois for the Democratic nomination. Mr. Childs indicates that his source was someone in a position to know the President's intentions firsthand. He indicates that a canvas of Democrats on Capitol Hill showed positive reaction to a possible Stevenson nomination among both Northerners and Southerners. Governor Stevenson had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the war, and after the war had served as a U.S. delegate to the U.N. General Assembly in 1946 and 1947, after which he was elected Governor in 1948.

In San Francisco, an Army private from Buffalo, N.Y., on leave from Korea, with $197 in his pocket walked into Fook's grocery store the previous day and began eating some grapes, then ate a banana and walked out, followed by the grocer who demanded money, whereupon the private re-entered the store and reached for a bottle of whiskey, prompting the store owner to call his son and alert him that there was a robbery taking place, whereupon his son emerged with a gun, fired three times, the first missing, the second hitting the soldier in the leg and the third entering his spine, crippling him for life. The soldier told police that the whole thing had been a gag and he had intended to pay for the fruit and whiskey. The grocer said that he was edgy because his store had recently been held up twice. His son was charged with assault with a deadly weapon.

In Prestonburg, Ky., a middle-aged farmer who had supplied a home for an 18-year old girl was being sought on charges that he abused the girl and held her prisoner in a damp, underground pit in his barn. He was charged with assault and battery and contributing to juvenile delinquency. The girl had been found Thursday by the sheriff as he was investigating rumors that the farmer was mistreating her. He entered the barn and called out, whereupon the girl answered. He found her with her feet wrapped in rags and badly swollen from frostbite. Officials at a local hospital said that her legs might have to be amputated to halt the spread of gangrene. She said that she had been forced into the board-lined pit several days earlier by the farmer who then nailed boards across the top and covered them with fodder, leaving her without food or water. She said that he had also forced her to remain in an abandoned, unheated house for three days and nights and had forced her to do all types of work and repeatedly forced her to submit to his "attentions" during the previous four months. Before she had gone to live with the farmer and his family, she had been given refuge in the county jail.

In Denver, a 12-year old girl from New York City was being housed at the Juvenile Home pending the arrival of her parents to escort her home, after she told police that she had taken $150 from a desk drawer in her parents' home and then journeyed to St. Louis where she bought a bus ticket to Denver, with the intention of making her way to Hollywood to become a movie star. She wore high heels and nylon stockings and appeared older than her 12 years. By the time she reached Denver, she was down to only one dollar.

In West New Annan, Nova Scotia, three men in a car were chased half a mile down a mountain by an enraged moose the previous day, forcing the men to take refuge in a store until they were rescued by the game warden who shot the moose as it waited patiently outside.

Pollster Dr. George Gallup, director of the Institute of Public Relations, poses five questions for readers to answer: how many Senators each state had; the population of the U.S.; the position of Anthony Eden; the location of the Suez Canal; and the number of three-cent stamps which one could purchase for 75 cents. He indicates that only 37 percent of the people polled nationwide who had been to college could answer all of those questions correctly. In one instance, a postal clerk could not answer the question regarding stamps. He indicates that if the respondent had been through the eighth grade and no further, that person should be able to answer at least two of the questions, based on the majority of respondents in the survey. If the respondent had a high school education, that person should be able to answer at least three of the questions.

On the editorial page, "Toward Equal Negro School Facilities" tells of a progress report on improvements in Mecklenburg County black school facilities, provided by the County School Board superintendent, having shown some encouraging news on the state of black schools in the community, that after completion of $700,000 worth of construction at five of the black schools, bids for which would be open later in the current month, remedy would be effected to most of the deficiencies revealed in a survey conducted by a special commission appointed by the State Board of Education the previous spring.

It indicates that, according to the Supreme Court, to maintain segregated public facilities, they had to be truly equal, and therefore the County had the responsibility to make the schools equal. It finds that the County School Board had moved ahead on its own initiative toward this end and deserved commendation from the whole community for the effort.

What would have been more salutary and cost-effective, in keeping with your constant refrain about government economy, would have been to spend some of that money, say about $10,000, on educating the Neanderthalic people of the community who insisted on segregation in the first instance, enabling Mecklenburg thus to become the first county in the South voluntarily to integrate its schools—saving the next 20 years of grief and untold dollars contesting various plans for integration through the courts, unto the Swann decision of 1971.

But, we suppose, they did not wish to be ridden out of town on a rail.

"First Things First" finds that special investigating commissions were being used to push aside ticklish subjects until after the 1952 elections. A case in point was the Federal medical commission appointed by the President, headed by Dr. Paul Magnuson, to study the nation's health needs. It finds that there was no coordinated Federal medical system in place, however, to implement any recommendations the commission might make. It had been reported that there were 35 competing Federal medical systems which had fostered the maldistribution and stockpiling of doctors, and the wasteful and confused practices between Government medical organizations.

The Hoover Commission, in 1947, had made a study of this administrative morass and recommended legislation, ultimately embodied in a Senate bill and two House bills, designed to bring order to the situation. But none of those bills had yet been reported out of committee. It hopes that the committee, headed by Senator John McClellan of Arkansas and including Senator Clyde Hoey of North Carolina, which had responsibility for the bills, would conduct hearings on the matter early in the current session of Congress, suggesting that any delay would increase the suspicion that the committee intended only to pigeonhole such important measures.

"Kudos to the Shrine" congratulates the Shrine Bowl high school all-star football game in Charlotte for having raised $100,000 for the Shrine's Crippled Children's Hospital in Greenville, S.C., $90,000 of which had come from gate receipts and the remainder from special contributions.

"Black Gold for Red Men?" begins with a quoted ditty from Richard Hovey, popular at Dartmouth College, anent Eleazar Wheelock and the Indians, then relates of the Assiniboine Indians in western North Dakota and eastern Montana seeking to recover their rights to lands on which a big oil boom was taking place. They were relying on the Fort Laramie Treaty of September 17, 1851, which had given the tribe part of that land. The Treaty, according to the tribe's complaint, had been violated by the Government in 1868, in 1875 and again in 1880, by an executive order originally signed by President Ulysses S. Grant—presumably in 1875, as he was not in office in either of the other two years of alleged treaty violations—, whereby almost six million acres of the tribe's lands were set aside for use by other Indians or restored to the public domain without their consent or knowledge, to satisfy railroad grants and for public entry or sale as public lands.

The piece does not expect the claim to be upheld as it had twice been thrown out of court, but thinks it would be interesting to follow the "tortuous reasoning" of the judges charged with the task of explaining away the U.S. abrogation of that Treaty. It believes it would be nice, if the Indians won, to witness their reaction to "percentage depletion" tax laws for oilmen, and suggests that a "Petroleum Club of Wolf Point" or some other reservation town, could be established which would dwarf the luxurious Petroleum Club of Houston. "And if the Indians posted a 'Red Men Only' sign on the door we wouldn't blame them."

Don't say that. Two wrongs don't make a right. And then you would inevitably have some Klansman bringing a test case, claiming that he was barred from access based on his race, and that if the courts sought to enforce the discrimination in the private club, it would violate the principles established in Shelley v. Kramer, that "state action", importing the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause, included action by courts. You are just going to stir up trouble for the Indians with those outside agitators.

Anyway, we would like to buy .8 acres, as we've got 64 cents.

A piece from the Wall Street Journal, titled "St. George Carries On!" tells of a British newspaper relating of a performance of "St. George and the Dragon", wherein, while normally St. George was supposed to slay the dragon with his lance, the dragon's lance in this instance hit the lance of St. George at an inopportune time, causing St. George's lance to fly off the stage, grazing the nose of a flute player in the orchestra section. St. George, without hesitation, tackled the dragon with his bare hands, taking away his lance and slaying him with it. Meanwhile, the flute player continued to play, hardly missing a note.

It concludes that you could not lick people like that.

Drew Pearson tells of a meeting at the Pentagon, arranged as part of Prime Minister Churchill's visit, between Joint Chiefs chairman General Omar Bradley, Inspector General Alphonse Juin of the French armed forces, and British Field Marshal Sir William Joseph Slim, chief of the Imperial General Staff, in which agreement was reached to provide a unified warning to the Communist Chinese that there would be U.N. resistance to any full-scale Communist attack and allied unity against any Communist invasion of French Indo-China. General Juin wondered at the meeting whether a truce in Indo-China might be worked out with the Chinese as part of the truce negotiations in Korea, to which General Bradley stated that it was out of the question as the negotiators in Korea already had their hands full without adding an attempt to effect a truce in Indo-China. General Juin then called upon the U.S. to bomb China from the Philippines in case of any full-scale Communist attack on Indo-China, a proposal also rejected by General Bradley, except under circumstances where the talks in Korea broke down. He added that there would be no U.S. objection to the French bombing South China with their own bombers based in Indo-China. In the end, it was agreed that in the case of a full-scale attack on Indo-China by the Communists, not including guerrilla action, the U.N. would be called upon to resist, as in Korea.

He notes that Field Marshal Slim indicated that the Chinese Communists were capable of invading Burma but that there was no immediate threat of such an invasion, and added that he believed it was possible for the Chinese to fight on two fronts at once, in Korea and in Indo-China.

He next informs of the careful attention paid to Winston Churchill when he visited Congress for the President's State of the Union message, with one aide given the sole job of directing Mr. Churchill to the private men's room just off the floor of the House. The reticient aide experienced consternation regarding how to ask Mr. Churchill delicately whether he wished to use the facilities, and when he finally mustered the courage to do so, the Prime Minister replied: "No, thank you, I may be getting old, but not that old."

Despite Senate crime investigators having descended on Biloxi, Miss., the previous summer regarding illegal gambling operations which had capitalized on young Air Force men in training at Keesler Field, even resulting in two young officers committing suicide, the slot machines and gambling tables were reported now to be running again, as related in a letter by Secretary of the Air Force Thomas Finletter to Senator Lester Hunt of Wyoming, who had headed the Biloxi investigation. Secretary Finletter therefore indicated that the Air Force would place those areas off-limits to airmen.

Marquis Childs discusses the tidelands oil dispute, whether the tidelands would revert to the states, principally, California, Texas and Louisiana, or be controlled by the Federal Government, per prior Supreme Court rulings. A bill had been passed by the House in the previous session to return them to the states, and would likely pass the Senate in the current session. Whether the President would sign it, he concludes, or veto it, as he had a similar measure in 1946, would go a long way in revealing his intentions to run again or not.

At stake were oil leases on which the states had collected large royalties prior to the Supreme Court rulings. Former Senator Burton Wheeler and former FDR brain-truster Tommy Corcoran were representing the oil men, who insisted that they had rights which could not be abrogated. Clark Clifford, former adviser to President Truman, was representing the Standard Oil Company, but only with respect to its claims to the Elk Hills Naval Oil Reserve in California, not the tidal lands. Edwin Pauley, whose controversial nomination by President Truman in 1946 to become Undersecretary of the Navy had led to a dispute with Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes regarding Mr. Pauley's statements as DNC treasurer in 1944 anent raising money for the DNC from oilmen provided the tidal oil issue would be abandoned, eventually resulting in the resignation of the long-time Interior Secretary, stood to gain most from the outcome, no matter how the controversy resolved, as he had positioned himself to profit either way.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop find that the visit to Washington by Prime Minister Churchill had worked to clear the air between the U.S. and Britain, the success of which they attribute to the broadminded approach of Mr. Churchill and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, especially regarding the Far East. The British had refused to withdraw their recognition of Communist China but also refrained from blaming Chinese aggression on hurt feelings caused by the U.S. refusal to grant recognition. In that way, the issue of recognition ceased to matter a great deal and it became possible to examine the practical problems confronting the West in the Far East. The British, after some friction, had accepted, in part, the American view of Japan's proper relations to Nationalist China. The confreres then considered the more important question of what to do about the new Chinese aggression, a significant move forward in Anglo-American relations.

The result was that the Chinese could no longer hope to attack Indo-China or to undertake other similar moves in Korea or elsewhere while anticipating paralysis on the part of the West.

There was also an agreement to work more closely together in the Middle East, but neither side had proposed any clear program to halt decay in that region, and there was no discussion of Britain's economic problems in that regard, such as the loss of oil and oil revenue from Iran.

The Alsops conclude that given the small amount of aid needed by Britain, as contrasted with the gigantic defense outlays of the U.S., it did not appear economical or sensible to take the risk of losing the British contribution to the partnership by not providing such aid.

A letter writer tells of having attended the Eisenhower-for-President rally at the Courthouse the previous Tuesday night and being disappointed by the lack of turnout by young people, as she was the only teenager present. She urges young Republicans in the county and all other young people too young to vote to encourage more participation by way of development of a strong two-party system within the state.

Why, we can think of nothing that a teenager would wish to do more on a Tuesday night in 1952 than to go downtown to an Eisenhower-for-President rally. That sounds like a gala no one would wish to miss.

A letter writer from Huntersville responds to a previous letter which had complained of the cowardice of the Republican Party leadership, indicating that the prior letter writer was living in a dream world, that the GOP had not been craven but rather dumb in the higher levels of the party organization. She thinks that Senator Joseph McCarthy had courage, "plenty of it", and that Senator Taft likewise had plenty of it, but that they lacked insight into the lessons of history, that favor went to those who could provide the greatest good to the greatest number of people.

A letter from the director of Mecklenburg County Sanitation indicates that the annual report of sanitary activities for the Health Department had been misrepresented in the January 11 edition of the newspaper. He corrects that he was not the only person doing work in rural sanitation, and provides the names of the others on the staff.

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