The Charlotte News
Saturday, November 22, 1952
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Robert B. Tuckman, that allied warplanes flying low over the highways and byways of Korea during the week had achieved the heaviest toll of destruction of enemy trucks in nearly a year, according to the U.S. Fifth Air Force, reporting that 785 trucks had been destroyed, the highest total in one week since the prior January. U.S. Sabre jets, for the sixth straight day, clashed with enemy MIG-15s over North Korea, and pilots claimed that one enemy jet was destroyed and another probably destroyed. In all during the week, the Sabres had run up a score of at least 14 to 1 against the MIGs, with one more enemy jet probably destroyed and four damaged. In addition to the one lost Sabre jet, two allied propeller-driven aircraft were shot down by ground fire and two Sabres had been lost to causes other than combat, probably the result of mechanical failure. The total MIGs destroyed by the Far East Air Forces so far during the war reached 503.
Ground fighting diminished to minor enemy probes across the cold front, all of which had been repulsed without loss of ground by the allied troops. Associated Press correspondent John Randolph, on the central front, reported that the recent harassing tactics by the Chinese Communists could be a prelude to a major enemy drive on "Sniper Ridge", but allied officers could not state with certainty what the move meant.
At the U.N. in New York, Poland, following the lead of the Soviet Union, had decided suddenly not to speak on India's proposed compromise peace plan regarding exchange of prisoners of war to effect a truce in Korea, after having been expected to set forth the Communist response. A decision was made overnight, imputed to the Kremlin, that Poland was not yet prepared to endorse or condemn the Indian proposal. Poland was among four nations proposed by the initiative to sit on a commission to oversee determination of where prisoners would be sent after their release. The Communist Daily Worker took an ambiguous position regarding the plan, praising its "peaceful intent" but also suggesting a "Washington-inspired maneuver" to take it over and use it to block a truce in Korea. A dispatch from Moscow the previous day had quoted Soviet newspapers as saying that the plan was not the correct way to settle the deadlock regarding prisoners. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky had declined comment. The Western nations had accepted the proposal, while favoring an amendment offered by the British regarding certain procedures to be followed by the commission, as outlined in reports the prior day.
President-elect Eisenhower and wife Mamie returned to their home in New York from Washington, after attending a reunion of members of the West Point class of 1915, to which the General belonged. He was expected to spend the day at his residence near Columbia University.
Attorney General-designate Herbert Brownell stated that he would re-examine all criminal and civil cases pending before the Department of Justice when he would assume office following the inauguration and confirmation by the Senate. Criminal prosecutions were pending against some key figures in the Truman Administration, accused of dereliction of duty, and other cases under investigation could result in more charges. On the civil side, it was assumed that Mr. Brownell would undertake a review of the antitrust cases pending. He vowed to carry out the President-elect's orders to conduct his office "without partiality to any group or section, in fairness and justice to all the people." He said that as of December 31, he would withdraw from the law firm of Lord, Day and Lord, where he had been employed for 20 years. The previous day, Mr. Brownell asked FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to remain on the job, saying that he looked forward to expanded cooperation between the Bureau and all the other law enforcement agencies of the office of Attorney General. Mr. Hoover had been director since 1924.
New speculation had arisen, in light of the President-elect having appointed several former aides of Governor Dewey to Cabinet posts, including Mr. Brownell, Secretary of State-designate John Foster Dulles, as well as Secretary of Interior-designate, Governor Douglas McKay of Oregon, that Senator Taft might seek the role of Majority Leader in the new Senate. The Senator had made no comment publicly, but friends stated that he was irritated by the attention in appointments paid to Governor Dewey, who had a lot to do at the Republican convention with Senator Taft's defeat for the nomination.
Senate Republicans were keeping a close eye on the post-election Senatorial battle in Michigan between Congressman Charles Potter, the Republican, and Senator Blair Moody, who had ostensibly lost the election by nearly 46,000 votes. The Senate Elections subcommittee the previous day had been asked by the state Democratic chairman to investigate irregularities in the count and that official notice of Mr. Potter's election be withheld pending completion of the probe. At Lansing, the acting chairman of the Senate Board of Canvass turned down the committee's request and said that the Board saw no reason to hold up certification of Mr. Potter as the winner. Whether Mr. Potter, a legless World War II veteran, would be seated when the new Congress would meet on January 3 could be determinative of whether the Republicans could organize the Senate committees. Counting Mr. Potter, the Republicans had 48 Senate seats, plus the tie-breaking vote of Vice-President-elect Richard Nixon following January 20, and Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, who presently was planning to vote as an "independent Republican". The Democrats, theoretically, without either Senator Morse or Mr. Potter's vote, would have a one-seat majority and thus have the ability to organize the chamber.
The White House had announced the previous night that President-elect Eisenhower had been provided three volumes of top-secret information on major U.S. policy, handbooks prepared for the use of the President and revised as necessary, one volume dealing with problems relating to individual countries and geographical areas and the policies in force there, another containing similar data about problems such as export-import control, manpower and petroleum supplies, and a third described as dealing with high-level government organization and precautions against subversion or sabotage.
Former Vice-President John Nance Garner turned 84 this date in his hometown of Uvalde, Texas. For the 34th straight year, he went hunting for deer with a local garage owner to celebrate his birthday.
The AFL 14-member executive council was set to meet the following Tuesday to elect a new president, following the death of longtime president William Green, who had died of a heart attack the previous day in Ohio. It was believed that George Meany, the secretary-treasurer of the labor organization, would be elected the next president.
In New York, the U.S. Marshal reported that many persons had expressed in letters and telephone calls from all over the country the macabre desire to witness the scheduled execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted March 29, 1951 of passing atomic secrets to a Russian spy ring. The previous day, Federal District Court Judge Irving Kaufman had set their execution date for the week of January 12, and, following rejection of their petitions for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court, their only reprieve could come by way of pardon or commutation of their sentences from President Truman. The U.S. Marshal said that he would ask the Rosenbergs whom they wished to be present at their executions, and that only a small number of spectators would be permitted in the death chamber.
A rolling earthquake collapsed a
house at Oceano, California, and rocked the coastal mountains for 500
miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles for about 45 minutes before
and after midnight this date, most of the temblors occurring along
the San Andreas Fault. No deaths or injuries were reported. The
earthquake was epicentered at Parkfield in a desolate area of the
mountains of Monterey County, 120 miles south of San Francisco. A
seismologist indicated that damage would have been significant had
the epicenter been in a populated area. Only the initial shock was
felt from the San Francisco Bay Area through Monterey, Carmel,
Salinas, Paso Robles, Santa Barbara, Bakersfield and Los Angeles. In
the East Bay, around Oakland, the earthquake was reportedly very light.
At radio station KPRL in Paso Robles, the quake was reported to have
shaken the arm of a record player turntable
Shifting air masses had dumped up to 22 inches of snow the previous day in mountain areas of Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia and Kentucky, paralyzing communications and transportation for many hours. The snow had developed instead of expected rain. Despite rapid melting caused by relatively high ground temperatures, the unexpected storm had left a large area of the landscape appearing as a polar outpost. In Knoxville, Tenn., snow was measured at 10 inches, the deepest ever recorded there to that date, and had reached 18 to 22 inches of accumulation within a period of 24 hours ending early in the morning. The disruption of daily life, however, did not match the intensity of the three-day ice storm which had struck Tennessee and other Southern states early in 1951. There were indications that automobiles might be utilized to obtain news and pictures from the Kentucky-Tennessee football game after it became apparent that live broadcasts of the game were unlikely. An estimated 4,000 persons had been stranded at London and Corbin, Ky., as they tried to make their way to the game.
Two gaunt, young servicemen, one a Naval airman apprentice, 17, and the other a Marine Pfc., 21, were relaxing this date after being lost for six weeks in the Okefenokee Swamp of south Georgia. The 17-year old credited "thoughts of mother and God" with bringing him out. The Marine said that his previous good training in the Marine Corps and his determination to be reunited with his family had saved him. The 17-year old had become lost on October 10 and happened upon the Marine accidentally two days later, both on furlough from the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Fla. They rented a boat the following day at a fishing camp and set out, at one point, on October 13, hearing a nearby growl in the underbrush as they stopped to cook some fish, prompting them to run and climb a tree, at which point their troubles had begun, as they were unable to find their way back to their boat when they descended from the tree, then wandering aimlessly since that time. The Marine dropped in weight from 168 pounds to 124, while the younger man drop from 189 to 130. A farmer encountered the pair on Thursday night and gave them their first good meal in six weeks, then directed them to Homerville, Ga., where they were briefly hospitalized before a Navy plane returned them to Jacksonville.
On the editorial page, "More Able Men for Ike's Team" tells of the three additional appointees to the Cabinet of President-elect Eisenhower the prior day, Herbert Brownell, as Attorney General, Harold Stassen, as the Mutual Security administrator, and George Humphrey as Secretary of the Treasury, having been well qualified for the positions, though Mr. Humphrey was not so well known, having been the chairman of the industrial advisory commission of the administrative arm of the Marshall Plan and served on the boards of several corporations and as president of the M. A. Hanna Co. of Cleveland. Mr. Brownell had been the campaign manager for Governor Dewey in 1948 and prior to that time, had been RNC chairman until resigning in 1946. Mr. Stassen, the former Governor of Minnesota, was presently president of the University of Pennsylvania, and had run for the Republican nomination in 1952, transferring his slate of committed delegates to General Eisenhower, permitting the General to win on the first ballot over Senator Taft. He had also been a delegate to the Charter Conference of the U.N. in 1945 and was a dedicated internationalist in outlook.
It again, as with the first three appointments to the Cabinet, assessed with approval the previous day, asserts that General Eisenhower appeared to have firm control of his appointments and was naming "an able, forward-looking team".
"Enter Spain" tells of Spain's acceptance to UNESCO the prior Wednesday, believed to be a forerunner for acceptance to the U.N., membership to which had been denied in 1946. It finds that because the U.N. was designed as a community of nations and a world organization, there should be no ban on the entry of Spain, any more than there was with respect to the Communist countries, that having an acceptable government was not a criterion for admission. It indicates that it had no brief for the Franco Government and that it would be inappropriate to admit Spain to an organization such as NATO, which was a vehicle for free world action and regional defense, requiring mutual trust and faith among the members. But those considerations did not also bar membership to the U.N.
"What Christmas Seals Buy" indicates that the purchase of Christmas Seals locally helped to provide for the X-ray survey of all persons over 15 to detect early the presence of tuberculosis, and helped to promote rehabilitation services for patients, occupational therapy supplies, recreational supplies, and rehabilitation workers. It was also used for scholarships for teachers and social workers, and for education of groups and individuals regarding tuberculosis. The Tuberculosis Association, established in 1935, conducted a program which made the community a healthier place in which to live. It thus urges that buying Christmas Seals was one of the best investments in health insurance one could make.
"'Pedagogical Monopolists'" quotes from the letter to the editor of the Chapel Hill Weekly reprinted on the page, from Dr. Edgar Knight of UNC's Education Department, criticizing the "inflation and proliferation of courses" within the teacher education system, which he described as "pedagogical indulgences that are so costly to the taxpayers as to become almost public immoralities". He believed that the certification requirements for teachers, especially elementary school teachers, were suffocating the teaching profession in methodology while not preparing young teachers properly for understanding students, explaining, in addition to the lack of financial reward, the dearth of good teachers available to the profession. He stated that the certification requirements only encouraged "weak people, who can almost roll their own diplomas and certificates without intellectual effort" by learning the "mysterious passwords and how to pronounce the proper and prescribed pedagogical shibboleths" while discouraging the able. He indicated that if physicians, lawyers, and engineers were trained in the same "casual and cavalier method" being used in the training of teachers, "everybody would probably die, nobody would know his rights, and the bridges would collapse."
The piece indicates that its interest in reprinting the letter and agreeing with its thrust, was not intended to sanction a witch-hunt of teachers in the public schools but rather as persuasion of educators in the state to take another look at the certification requirements, to eliminate the heavy emphasis on methodology which was producing, in the words of Dr. Knight, "mere automatons who know all the tricks of child psychology but who may not understand what the total development of the youngster's personality and his future role as a contributing member of society involve."
A piece from the Greensboro
Daily News, titled "'Diamonds
Dr. Edgar Knight of the UNC
Education Department, as indicated above, has his letter to the
editor of the Chapel Hill Weekly reprinted, in which he
criticizes openly the structured curricula of the teacher colleges,
pointing out that the Christian Science Monitor had said in an
editorial that a million more American children would be crowding
into the elementary schools than the previous year and asked where
were the buildings, the teachers and the funds to take care of the
need. He suggests that, aside from the economic issues, many students
who would otherwise be qualified to become teachers, were being
deterred from doing so by these overly structured curricula to meet
the too rigid state certification requirements
Drew Pearson indicates that President-elect Eisenhower's recent conference with the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon had not engendered much hope of ending the Korean war during his forthcoming trip. The picture he had been provided was gloomy, and it was suggested that more casualties might be necessary before the war could be concluded. He was informed that the Communists had built up their strength to a peak of 1.2 million men, taking advantage of the prior 17 months of truce talks. The Chinese had been weak when the truce talks began and were apparently stalling for time. The Pentagon therefore had concluded that agreeing to the truce talks had been one of the crucial mistakes of the war. General Eisenhower had also been told that there were signs of a new Communist offensive, with the forward placement of enemy artillery along the battle front appearing to be in forecast of a large-scale attack. There was also a buildup of light bombers on the other side of the Yalu River in Manchuria, another bad sign, as light bombers were usually used for offense.
Mr. Pearson indicates that there was no indication reported of an offensive timed for the visit of General Eisenhower, but that it could be the case. He was told that if an offensive did occur, the U.N. troops were sufficiently strong to hold the line. He had been informed by each of the representatives of the services present that they were in good shape. He did not discuss the trip to Korea with the Joint Chiefs, but told Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett that he would let him know about the trip within 2 to 3 days.
Mr. Pearson next relates of several persons about to move out of their current positions in Washington, including Leslie Biffle, secretary to the Senate, who would not become the Minority secretary as he was tired of politics and would go into business. The popular Chilean envoy to the U.S., Ambassador Felix Nieto Rio, was leaving because Carlos Ibanez, a military general, had won the Presidency in Chile. Ernest Gruening, Governor of Alaska for 13 years, longer than any other man in history, was planning to retire at the end of his term the following April. Mike Strauss, commissioner of Reclamation, and old personal friend of the late former Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes, was resigning, though proposing a long list of dams and power projects in the last Truman budget to be submitted in January. The Eisenhower Administration budget cuts would likely eliminate those projects, though they were desirable to all of the Republican Senators from the Western states. Carlos Reyes, press secretary of the Chilean embassy, was leaving because he had once refused to shake hands with the new Chilean Ambassador to the U.S., who had once edited a Chilean magazine in New York and had written the anti-American speeches for President Ibanez, which had helped him win the election.
Among those moving in were Col. Gordon Moore, brother-in-law of General Eisenhower and a retired Army officer in the public relations business, who would get some big accounts once given to Democrats; Tom Stevens, probably the new appointments secretary to President-elect Eisenhower, having been the former assistant to campaign manager Herbert Brownell during the campaign of Governor Dewey in 1948; and Senator William Langer of North Dakota, who had often voted with Democrats, especially on domestic issues, and would become the new chairman of the Judiciary Committee, despite the Republicans having tried to dissuade him from assuming the post, but in vain, as all he needed to do was to vote with the Democrats and they could organize the Senate committees, with the slender one-vote majority held by the Republicans plus Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, who was voting now as an "independent Republican", necessary for the purpose.
Joseph Alsop, in Paris, again addresses the new Western strategy involving heavier reliance on strategic air power, the atomic bomb and the newly detonated hydrogen bomb to make up for the fact that the NATO target of 98 divisions, either active or on reserve, in Western Europe by the end of 1954, would fall woefully short, with no more than 65 divisions available, to meet the assumed strength of 100 divisions capable of being mounted by the Soviets in northern Europe and another 75 against Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece to the south. And even that figure of 65 divisions was dependent on appeasing France by providing substantial aid in men and materiel for the fight in French Indo-China, to free up French divisions for use in Western Europe and to encourage the French to vote in favor of rearming West Germany, vital to the complete defense picture in Europe.
Thus, the primary deterrents to Soviet aggression would be the U.S. strategic air power and its stock of atomic weapons, reinforced prospectively by the hydrogen bomb, the British atomic bomb and the small but growing British strategic air power. There also had to be a tough, effective covering force in Western Europe to discourage any attack which would compromise the forward airbases, the cornerstone of the strategic air power effectiveness. Better plans had to be laid to help the covering force be in a position to cut the enemy down to size with the right uses of the new weapons. On the surface, it appeared as a plan which would allow the Allies to stabilize their rearmament at approximately the present levels and allow the U.S. to stabilize its aid to Europe, while affording a secure defense of the free world. But to do that would require a substantial temporary increase in U.S. military investment, while simultaneously testing the Eisenhower Administration's political and diplomatic skill.
The President-elect would, as soon as he took office, find alarming studies of the air picture by the most capable of U.S. scientists and experts, showing that there were improved Russian air defenses which were beginning to neutralize the U.S. strategic air strength, potentially compromising the whole defense of Western Europe and exposing the U.S. to a crippling surprise attack within about two years. Mr. Alsop posits that those trends had to be stanched at whatever cost, through a crash program, with recognition that a cut in military contributions to Europe would deprive it of its essential covering force. A program also needed to be launched to relieve the French in Indo-China.
Marquis Childs indicates that the Democrats were predicting gloom and doom with the incoming Republican Administration after being 20 years in power, but that the Republicans, also, were not rejoicing, as they knew they faced a grim reality ahead with respect to the outlook abroad. There would be immediate pressure on the new President to end the Korean War. There was "stormy weather" ahead domestically as well, as economic forecasters predicted a business turn-down sometime in 1953 and, with it, a crisis in Government revenue against the backdrop of a huge Federal debt.
He reminds that President Hoover had been in office in 1929 for less than a year when the stock market crashed in October and, with it, the bubble of installment buying. As sales of durable goods had decreased, the pressure had grown to protect American home markets with higher tariffs, and in 1930, Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, raising tariffs on most imports. Many economists and business experts had signed a petition urging President Hoover to veto the Act, predicting that it would add to America's own economic troubles and bring ruin to the structure of world trade. The President, nevertheless, signed the bill, prompting the British Commonwealth countries to follow suit and establish their own system of preferential trade. In 1933, FDR sabotaged the London Economic Conference and in the years which followed, Secretary of State Cordell Hull patiently and persistently made the case throughout the world for reciprocal trade agreements, passed by the Congress in June, 1934.
Those agreements would expire the following June and there would be pressure in the new 83rd Congress either not to renew them or to weaken them. Powerful lobbying interests had worked relentlessly to protect individual industries from foreign imports. But the foreign countries which had been dependent on U.S. aid needed dollars from sales of their goods in the U.S., to supplant the aid dollars.
He cites an example from the previous year when Congress authorized a limit on imports of cheese, prompting a protest from Italy, Switzerland, Holland and Canada, among other countries, who were importers of cheese and needed the dollars.
The President had the power to accept or reject the recommendations of the U.S. Tariff Commission and, he indicates, President Truman had turned down many recommended increases in the tariffs for the very reasons set forth.
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