The Charlotte News

Thursday, January 3, 1952

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Don Huth, that the Communist negotiators in Korea had turned down this date an allied plan for exchanging war prisoners and civilians as being "no more than a barter of slaves". They reiterated their demand for an all-for-all trade of prisoners rather than the allied-proposed hybrid of one-for-one exchange until one side ran out of prisoners, followed by exchange of the remaining prisoners, first soldiers, then civilians, who wanted to be repatriated. But an allied negotiator rejected the categorical Communist rejection, saying that they apparently had misunderstood the proposal or were deliberately misinterpreting it to obscure the issues, as it was not, as characterized, strictly a one-for-one exchange.

The other subcommittee, working on truce supervision, remained deadlocked. Both subcommittees would meet again the following day.

The Communist prisoner list, which had been exchanged December 18, contained 11,559 names, of whom 3,198 were Americans, while the U.N. list had been pared down from 132,474 to 116,200, after 16,000 Koreans were being reclassified as South Korean civilians.

In ground action, tank-supported allied infantrymen attacked behind an artillery barrage this date and recaptured two strong points on the western front, in fighting which was fierce but brief, lasting only an hour, at which point the enemy retreated, abandoning the points to the allies. Three other small fights started by enemy probes were reported along the front.

In the air war, U.S. Sabre jet pilots reported that Communist jet airmen were getting bolder and more skillful, following a clash this date in which one enemy jet was damaged.

In Paris, Russia, in a surprise move, proposed this date to the U.N. political committee that the Security Council intervene in the Korean armistice negotiations. U.S. sources unofficially indicated that the proposal was unacceptable, as the Soviets had veto power in the Council and therefore it would be useless to try to effect armistice negotiations within that body, that the existing negotiation committees presented the best method by which to achieve an armistice, with the General Assembly deciding later on a political settlement.

Clarence Streit, in the second in a series of articles on his recent visit to the NATO Council meeting in Rome and discussions with military and diplomatic leaders in Europe, indicates that it was only too easy to understand the overriding anxiety of General Eisenhower and the Pentagon regarding the necessity to add to the Atlantic defense forces as many West German divisions as possible, as soon as possible. They had high respect for the Germans as soldiers and had urgent need for more men than they could likely obtain elsewhere to offset the numerical superiority of the Communist forces. Any Soviet aggression would first have to penetrate West Germany and the Germans would fight hard to defend their homeland. If it were defended only by foreign forces, a bad relationship between the inhabitants and those defenders would develop, along with distrust of the allies. On the other hand, to expect the French, Belgians, Dutch, Norwegians, and the British, only a few years after World War II, to fight alongside Germans to save Germany from the Red Army was expecting a lot. But to fight while the Germans remained in shelters was asking even more. The rearmament of West Germany was regarded therefore as the primary task, even more important than NATO, itself, for Western defense.

The President again appealed to the United Steelworkers Union, in a message to their convention in Atlantic City, to cancel their threat of a strike. It was considered probable that the union would postpone their strike further to mid-February, having already postponed it from the original expiration of the current contract at the end of the year. In so doing, the Wage Stabilization Board, considering the matter, could have time to make recommendations.

IRB Commissioner John Dunlap said that he did not anticipate future firings from the Bureau to reach any more high officials and that the firing of subordinates would be fewer than expected.

Harold Stassen announced this date that he would enter the Republican presidential primaries in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Minnesota. He had taken a leave of absence from his duties as president of the University of Pennsylvania to pursue the nomination. He said that he was deferring a decision as to whether to enter the primary races in other states, such as New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Nebraska. He said his decision would turn in part on whether General Eisenhower became a candidate for the nomination and was entered in the New Hampshire primary. He conceded that Senator Taft had a large lead in his bid for the nomination, but pictured himself as the tortoise in the fable of the tortoise and the hare.

Off England, a second large storm in the North Atlantic, packing nearly hurricane force winds, brought doubt to the mind of Captain Kurt Carlsen whether he and his ship, the Flying Enterprise, could remain afloat long enough for it to be towed into port. The U.S. Navy destroyer standing by, awaiting the British tow ship, said that the stricken ship was rolling heavily, at times listing to 80 degrees, in squalls driven by winds gusting to 63 miles per hour. The captain had stood watch over the ship for five straight nights alone. The British tow ship was expected to reach the stranded vessel by this night.

In Waco, Tex., Zack Miller, who with his brothers had once owned the largest ranch in Oklahoma, died this date at the age of 74. He had lost the 101 Ranch by foreclosure in the 1930's. He had been a pioneer in the old wild West and the last of the three brothers who had built the 110,000-acre ranch and the Miller Wild West Show into nationally known attractions.

In Rising Fawn, Ga., an 11-year old mountain bride contended that if she lost her 23-year old husband, whom she had wed on the prior December 26, it would ruin her life forever. But the county attorney, nevertheless, said that the law stated that a female under the age of 14 was not competent to be married in the state of Georgia, and that the matter would be turned over to the grand jury when it met in March. The marriage license had stated her age as 15, but her mother contended that she was only 11.

Auh, don't that make you sad?

As pictured, two soldiers on leave in Boston celebrated the New Year by attempting to drive their car into the subway, making it for a half-mile until getting caught in a switch.

Whether one was named Charlie is not indicated.

On the editorial page, "Eisenhower vs. Kefauver?" finds that while many people were resigned to a race between Senator Taft and the President in 1952, it would not be surprised if the race wound up between Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver and General Eisenhower. The Senator had indicated that he was doing nothing to attract the nomination but that if it were handed to him, he would accept it. The Senator's former administrative assistant had announced that he would open a headquarters in Washington the following week, to launch a presidential campaign for the Senator and convince him that he should become a candidate.

Drew Pearson had predicted that Senator Kefauver would be the Democratic nominee, either at the top of the ticket or in the vice presidential slot. The piece finds that his opposition to the President's civil rights program would bring him many Southern votes which would never go to the President. Labor also liked him. But of greatest importance was that he had proven himself to be a foe of corruption in the televised hearings of the organized crime investigating committee the previous spring.

Alistair Cooke, writing in the Manchester Guardian Weekly, had said that the President had the difficult task of proving that Sir Galahad and the dragon were both good Democrats. The piece suggests that some delegates would be inclined to nominate Sir Galahad, in the person of Senator Kefauver, and forget the dragon.

Both the Senator and the General generally agreed on foreign policy, accepting the U.S. policy of containment by limited war when necessary and the primacy of Europe over the Far East. But the Senator wanted to replace the NATO military structure with a more binding federal union, rather than the rule presently by all 12 member governments, each acting with effective vetoes. The General had not publicly endorsed that proposal but favored European union more than did either the President or Secretary of State Acheson. Observers believed that the General would endorse the Kefauver Atlantic Union concept once he became a candidate.

Those who believed that Asia ought to come before Europe in precedence would not like the choice between the Senator and the General were they to become the nominees, while many who presently agreed with U.S. foreign policy would find it hard to choose between them. Unless the General proved to be more conservative on domestic issues than was generally believed, there might not be much difference between their viewpoints in that regard. It concludes that perhaps another "Era of Good Feeling" might be coming.

"Rhode Island 'Raids'—(No Pun)" tells of Governor Dennis Roberts addressing the Rhode Island General Assembly, accusing the South of carrying out "raids" on Rhode Island industry. He asked the Legislature to appropriate a million dollars as a fund for construction of new plants of modern design for leasing to responsible companies as an economic counter-attack to these "raids", whereby states had been luring manufacturing plants away from New England.

The piece indicates that a recent issue of America's Textile Reporter had indicated that the textile industry would go where goods could be manufactured the cheapest. It said that the fact that no new mills had been built in New England in recent years proved that capital did not consider the possible return adequate to justify the risks involved, whereas the reverse had been true in the South.

The piece concludes therefore that the South, far from conducting raids, presented an environment more conducive to textile profits than did New England.

"An Instrument for Tax Favoritism" tells of Chester Davis of the Twin City Sentinel in Winston-Salem abstracting three big tax cases, one involving Lamar Caudle's refusal, as former Assistant Attorney General in charge of the tax division, to prosecute a Waynesboro lumber manufacturer on the ground that he was too old to be tried in a criminal action, a second being a refusal by Charles Oliphant, former general counsel of the IRB, to recommend prosecution of a Charlotte businessman for alleged willful tax evasion, on the ground that he had a bad heart, and the third being the lack of prosecution of a Greensboro manufacturer for income tax evasion because Government attorneys believed he was mentally ill. Mr. Davis had indicated that it was not his intention to question the decisions made in those cases but rather the propriety of prosecuting attorneys making such decisions, that rather they should be left to the courts.

The piece agrees with that assessment and believes Congress ought re-examine internal revenue laws in light of the recently uncovered scandals. It suggests that prosecutors ought compile and evaluate evidence of income tax fraud and present it in accordance with the laws, with the only ground for declining prosecution being lack of evidence, rather than determinations made on the basis of a person's health or personal circumstances. It concludes that if the Sentinel's standard were adopted, there would be fewer opportunities for Government political favors.

A piece from the Washington Post, titled "'Politics' and Health", tells of a medical member of the President's new 15-man Commission on Health Needs of the Nation having resigned angrily regarding his charge that the Commission was a creature of "politics", a charge echoed by the head of the AMA. The AMA's position was ambiguous and that had helped to kill the plan of Federal Security Agency head Oscar Ewing for compulsory health insurance. But the Commission was persisting, and, it finds, did not appear as a political creation in any sense, was charged with making a broad inquiry into the field of medical care, was headed by a foe of "socialized medicine", Dr. Paul Magnuson, and had among its membership such capable lay members as Clarence Poe of North Carolina, long-time editor of the Progressive Farmer.

It indicates that it was regrettable that the AMA would not go along with such a reasonable proposition, and that its implied boycott of the Commission might encourage more politics in medicine rather than less. It finds that opposition without alternatives was negative and in the end self-defeating.

Bill Sharpe, in his weekly "Turpentine Drippings", snippets from newspapers around the state, provides one from Roy Thompson of the Winston-Salem Journal, in which he recounts of a woman at Wachovia Bank & Trust Company having been at her desk recently when someone walked in and told her of a sign which had been written with chalk on the outside of the building, saying, "Jesus Saves", whereupon the employee suggested that someone go out and add the word, "HERE".

Oh, you better not do that, as one of those fanatical evangelicals might come along, find the sign heretical and burn down the bank, emulating Jesus chasing the moneychangers from the temple, claim religious fervor as a defense to arson.

Holt McPherson of the Shelby Star tells of a Shelby citizen having gone to Georgia recently to visit his sick mother, along the way seeing a sign on a service station which read something to the effect that if the passerby didn't trade with him, he would vote for Truman. Since the motorist did not care for the President, he pulled into the station and asked that his tank be filled, his oil changed and his joints greased, asking the operator in the process whether Truman supporters resented the sign, to which the operator replied that he did not want to deal with anybody who favored the President and that his volume of business had increased so much since he put out the sign that he had to hire an additional man to help him.

We have a feeling we know who that man was.

Mrs. Theo Davis of the Zebulon Record tells of garbage disposals being wonderful things but that if she were ever to have one for free, she believed she could never use it out of a sense of guilt, as she was brought up to save all of the greasy water from washing dishes, that it might be fed to the pigs, to save all the bones for the dogs and cats, and all the shucks, hulls, peelings and cores for the cows.

Shucks, you can't put the shucks down there anyway unless you want to have an expensive bill from the plumber to clear out the drain.

And then when you call in the plumbers, there is no telling who might show up, given who was pumping gas.

Beatrice Cobb of the Morganton News-Herald indicates that not so long earlier, she had heard a woman use an expression which she had not heard in years—"store boughten". She believes that, while probably not correct grammatically, it was very expressive as distinguishing the articles made on the farm and at home from those purchased in stores.

Sounds like a bunch o' hicks, if you ask us.

And so more, more on, more on, more so, and so more, so much more.

We thought that maybe, since the News did not provide either Christmas or New Year's Day off for its employees, that at least one edition would be content to say on the front page simply, "That's the way it was," and on the editorial page, "This is the way it will be," leaving it blank otherwise. We vote for more pictures or just plain white space in newspapers around the holidays, maybe all through the Twelve Days of Christmas. The world would not miss the news for a few days. It would be wonderful. Most days, let's face it, there is no news in the newspaper, on the tv or on the radio or wherever else you might obtain your news, rather just a lot of babble about the same old stuff they've been babbling about for weeks, even months and years, decades. If the continuity of events were broken for a few days in that manner, who knows, maybe world peace would break out finally. For by the end of those few days, attention spans and memories being what they are, most people in the public would not remember what in the world they were so exercised about before the cessation of the news.

Drew Pearson indicates that the President's relations with reporters at the White House was at an all-time low. Though usually friendly with the President, reporters resented his frequent cracks about the press and did not appreciate the bawling out which he gave reporters asking simple questions at White House press conferences. He had returned from his Key West vacation tired and crotchety and wanted to lecture reporters for not emphasizing that the list of prisoners of war released by the Chinese Communists had been unverified and was thus probably inaccurate—something, notes Mr. Pearson, which reporters had already stressed. He also wanted to berate them for leaking the story that Judge Thomas Murphy of New York had turned down his offer of the job of chief investigator of Government corruption. But press secretary Joseph Short had talked him out of lectures on both issues.

The decision to pay the $120,000 fines to gain the release of the four U.S. airmen from Hungary to avoid their having to spend 90 days in custody, had been made only after significant debate, which he indicates went to the very root of American policy toward Russian satellites. The Defense Department, rather than the State Department, made the decision based on the facts that the four airmen were official U.S. representatives, specifically of the armed forces, and because the Joint Chiefs disfavored any threat of retaliation out of fear that Hungary might call the bluff. Mr. Pearson indicates that repeatedly, the Joint Chiefs and the State Department shied away from showdowns, such as the issue of bombing Manchurian territory beyond the Yalu River.

He next informs of the Crusade for Freedom balloons having been successful the previous spring in both Czechoslovakia and Poland, so much so in Czechoslovakia that the Communists began to look for ways to free Associated Press correspondent William Oatis. Yet, Pentagon officials, and to some degree State Department officials, had discouraged similar projects for Hungary and other satellites.

Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky had rejected an appeal by Egypt for Soviet arms after a meeting between Egypt's Prime Minister Sala El Din and Mr. Vishinski the previous week, in which the latter indicated that Russia only had arms for its friends and not its enemies.

The Chilean Government had discovered a deposit of uranium in the hometown of its President.

High Commissioner John J. McCloy indicated that the Russian Air Force in East Germany was now completely equipped with jet fighters, and the obsolete propeller-driven fighters had been flown to Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria, to build up those countries' air forces.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop tell of French General de Lattre Tassigny being convinced that the Communist Chinese were planning a major invasion of Indo-China between mid-January and the end of February, a view shared by the French Government, which had inquired of American intentions in case of such an attack. The British Government so far disputed this notion, while American official opinions varied.

This belief was based on the fact that the Communist Chinese armies above the Indo-Chinese border had recently been increased in strength to about 225,000 men, had received important additional heavy equipment, and had undertaken repairs of the routes into Indo-China. Of greatest importance was the fact that large numbers of Chinese combat units had already moved from their old garrison positions into staging areas along the border. The presence of 60,000 native Indo-Chinese Communist troops, trained and re-equipped behind the Chinese border, had altered the balance within Indo-China. These troops had come close to victory in the recent fighting at Hua-Binh against French and anti-Communist Indo-Chinese forces, inflicting serious losses, the battle having been turned only by the fact of French superiority in armor and air power. Were the Communist Chinese to join the effort, power would be tipped decisively in favor of the Communists.

If Indo-China were to fall to the Communists, Siam would be next on the list, almost certainly followed by Burma. The British might be able to hold on at the narrow neck of the Kra peninsula in Malaya, at least for awhile, thus protecting Indonesia. But the loss of the essential trading area in Southeast Asia would certainly cause India and Japan shock, and the contagion would surely spread into the threatened Middle East. Western Europe would also be significantly affected.

The most common prediction was that such an invasion would only come after a truce in Korea and the removal of U.N. forces, with the anticipated relaxation on the part of the U.S. The decision whether to join the French in resistance to any such attack would rest on whether it was deemed better to risk general war now, when the West was still unprepared, or to risk a terrible reverse and return later with more guns, tanks and planes.

Colonel William Hyatt, writing in VFW Magazine, finds that the Korean War, whatever the outcome of the ongoing truce negotiations would be, had turned into a "blind alley" for the Soviets. Initially, while most Americans supported the President's decision to join the U.N. forces in Korea in July, 1950, there was also considerable concern that it was a lure into fighting in the worst possible place. But as things had turned out, a trap could be constructed for Stalin, provided the U.S. played its cards correctly.

The move into Korea had provoked the U.S. into mobilization at a time when its defenses were being cut away by economy. The country would never again be as weak as it had been in June, 1950, just prior to the outbreak of the war. The war had also enabled the U.S. to have a testing ground for its military machine, ironing out the kinks in the unified military structure formed in 1947. American troops had also been trained in actual combat, helping to form the kind of fighting forces which Stalin respected and feared. It also had given the free world the opportunity to form its first international police force and test it in battle. Because Korea's geography as a narrow peninsula, the allies were able to take advantage of their air and sea superiority and overcome the enemy's advantage in manpower.

Colonel Hyatt indicates that had Stalin foreseen those results, he might not have launched the campaign. The best Chinese divisions had been badly decimated, with thousands of officers lost among the total 700,000 casualties. The Chinese were aware that the Russians would not come to their rescue and that the only way out of the trap would be to construct a peace on U.N. terms. That would likely eventuate in a split between the Soviet and Chinese Communists. He concludes that intelligent maneuvering would keep Stalin in this trap, which he had created for himself.

Tenth Day of Christmas: Ten guns jumped.

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