The Charlotte News

Thursday, December 11, 1952

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via George McArthur, that 3,000 Chinese Communist troops had managed to penetrate through 1,000 rounds of their own side's artillery fire and allied artillery fire this date and hurl South Korean defenders from Little Nori Hill on the western front for the second time in 17 hours. In all, an estimated 10,000 rounds of enemy artillery and mortar fire fell on allied positions during the battle. The enemy had suffered an estimated 270 casualties, including 152 killed.

Some 200 allied warplanes inflicted heavy blows on enemy positions on the western front, and for the first time in five days, no enemy MIG-15s had entered the fray.

President-elect Eisenhower, still aboard the U.S.S. Helena after returning to Hawaii from Korea, was relaxing as his arrival in Honolulu was scheduled for this date, where he would be met by Secretary of Defense-designate Charles E. Wilson, and would remain for the weekend, holding conferences which would shape the country's policy in the Far East. He would then fly home to New York, and shortly thereafter, would meet with General MacArthur to discuss the latter's plan for ending the war in Korea. The President-elect did not comment on President Truman's statement that if anyone had a reasonable plan for ending the Korean fighting, it should be presented at once to the President.

The President, in his weekly press conference, said that the President-elect's trip to Korea had been a piece of demagoguery and that General MacArthur should have reported to him after he had returned from Japan in 1951, following his firing, that it was the General's duty to impart to the President any ideas he had for ending the war. He said, however, that the Joint Chiefs believed that they knew what the proposal was and that it was nothing new. The President also said that he expected to replace prior to the end of the week the seven industry members of the Wage Stabilization Board, who had resigned in protest of the President having overruled the WSB decision to reduce by 40 cents the $1.90 agreed wage increase for the UMW coal miners. He said that he believed wage and price controls should be extended beyond their expiration date of April 30. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce had urged all businessmen to refuse appointments to posts on the WSB, and both the Chamber and the National Association of Manufacturers had demanded that the President end wage and price controls. The CIO was also urging an end to controls, but the AFL so far was urging controls to be continued.

The Supreme Court heard the last of three days of oral arguments in the school desegregation cases out of four states plus the District of Columbia, all to be subsumed under Brown v. Board of Education, impacting an additional 17 states which required completely or partially segregated school systems, and four others where segregation was permissive. The Virginia Attorney General had told the Court the previous day that he believed the decision outlawing separate schools in Virginia would "destroy the public school system" in the state. Future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, special counsel for the NAACP, said that he did not believe the people of South Carolina were "lawless" and that the rank-and-file among the people of the South would observe whatever decision the Court handed down. But John W. Davis, former Democratic presidential nominee in 1924, arguing on behalf of South Carolina, said that there was no reason for the Court to overturn the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson from 1896. Other attorneys arguing for the other states' positions made similar arguments. The NAACP attorneys argued that the Constitution did not permit states to impose segregation in public schools, as there could be no equality under the 14th Amendment as long as there was segregation.

After the death the following September of Chief Justice Fred Vinson and the appointment in his stead of Governor Earl Warren, the Court would rehear oral arguments, before issuing its decision in May, 1954.

In Durham, N.C., Duke University had received a 1.5 million dollar fund from the Duke Endowment for distinguished professorships, to be known as the James B. Duke Professorship Fund. The announcement was made by Duke president Hollis Edens during Founders Day exercises this date, celebrating the institution's 28th anniversary.

In Kingsport, Tenn., a great-grandmother was jailed the previous night on charges of fatally shooting her grandson's wife with a .38 caliber revolver. The woman admitted ownership of the gun but said that she had picked it up only after the shooting and put it back in its accustomed place under her pillow. The shooting had taken place on the victim's eighth wedding anniversary.

In Fuquay Springs, N.C., a doctor, about 60 years old, and Mayor of the town, was fatally shot in his office this date, and police arrested a young man as the assailant. The latter had been released from the Goldsboro Hospital for the Insane early in the year after four months as a patient. The town attorney stated that he had been informed by the man several weeks earlier that the doctor had placed a spell on him and his entire family. The doctor had also said that the man had complained of being under a spell and had threatened him. The town attorney had sent him to the welfare department and tried to reason with him. A pistol matching the bullet used in the killing was found near the spot where the man was apprehended, a short distance from the doctor's office, with bullets matching the gun in the man's possession shortly after the shooting, and a man generally matching his description was seen leaving the doctor's office shortly after the shooting by a witness who heard the shot and directed police toward the man. (Republicans nowadays would apparently call that evidence speculation and hearsay and release the man, contending there was simply no proper evidence on which to hold him, that the whole case against him was a sham and a disgrace. Thus, if you know of anyone who is being accused of a crime on such evidence, just cite, henceforth, the "Republican defense" in the Trump case.)

In Lillington, N.C., a black man who allegedly asked a white woman to kiss him was charged with attempted assault "on a white lady of good character by sticking his face near hers and asking her to kiss him." Police said that he made the request after purchasing a soft drink from a meat market which the woman operated near Angier. She had said the man fled after she rebuked him and waved a knife at him. He was under a $500 bond, pending a hearing in Recorders Court.

That's another one which, if resulting in conviction, won't stand up on review, unless he touched her cheek or forced her to withdraw her cheek before he was able to do so. The question, however, in this quaint little charge, is what difference it made whether the alleged victim was of "good character" or a lowdown, dirty slut. An assault is an assault, if it is at all. One also might wonder whether it was the woman who was in fact quilty of an assault for excessive force used in response, provided it was in reaction to a mere verbal request.

In Taipei, Formosa, the watchdog agency of the Chinese Nationalist Government this date censured the weatherman for having lost a typhoon, which the weatherman had failed to chart properly when it had struck Formosa on November 14 without warning, leaving 161 persons dead or missing, 392 injured, and 9,720 houses destroyed and 14,020 damaged.

The Civil Aeronautics Administration said Wednesday that wind eddies could bend radar beams downward so that they picked up an object on the ground and made it appear as something floating high in the heavens, explaining the radar blips which had created rumors of flying saucers during the previous summer. It indicated agreement with the Air Force, in its report of the previous July, that a temperature inversion could deflect radar waves and cause false readings. The Air Force, since 1947, had studied more than 2,000 reports of visual sightings of strange objects in the air, and most had been determined to be misidentifications of aircraft, balloons, or electrical or meteorological phenomena, while some remained unexplained.

The unexplained. Those are the ones...

On the editorial page"M'Arthur's Plan for Korean Victory" recaps what General MacArthur had said recently to the National Association of Manufacturers regarding his plan to end the Korean War, that there was a "clear and definite solution" to it. He believed that there had been a "material change in conditions" from those existing twenty months earlier when he had left after being fired as supreme commander of U.N. forces by the President, and that those changed conditions had made the "solution then available and capable of success" no longer entirely applicable. He then said it would be improper to disclose or discuss publicly such plans.

The piece indicates that if the General were confident that there was such a solution, he was quite ahead of the other major Western experts on the Far East. It assumes that he was offering a solution which ultimately might require the U.S. to go it alone, should U.N. allies choose not to follow such a new strategy, which might include use of atomic guns.

When General MacArthur had spoken to a joint session of Congress on April 19, 1951, after his return home, he spoke of the necessity of total victory by neutralizing the "sanctuary protection given the enemy north of the Yalu" in Manchuria, by destroying enemy bases there and intensifying the economic blockade against China, imposing a naval blockade on the Chinese coast, and removing all restrictions on air reconnaissance of China's coastal area and of Manchuria. He also favored support of Nationalist Chinese troops to enable them to participate in operations on the Chinese mainland. The piece assumes that the greater U.N. ground, naval and air strength in the Far East in the meantime would make each of those steps more applicable than they had been 20 months earlier, but apparently the General did not see it that way.

President-elect Eisenhower had chosen not to ignore General MacArthur's suggestion and had offered to meet with him to discuss it, but the piece believes that the General ought also to discuss his plan with Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett, so that it might be implemented as soon as possible. It suggests, however, that the delay of a few days or weeks would not cause irreparable damage.

Tell that to the parents of the troops who might die during those additional few days or weeks, assuming, of course, that General MacArthur actually had any novel plan to present, which apparently he did not, only engaging in his usual veiled expression of public bitterness in an effort to expose the outgoing Administration to more ridicule. He obviously never cared much for President Truman, or, for that matter, anyone who did not regard him as the substitute Emperor of Japan, if not the Almighty incarnate.

"Spies Fool Honest Patriots" indicates that the previous summer, Congress had set up a committee to determine if any educational and philanthropic foundations were using their resources for "un-American and subversive purposes or for purposes not in the interests of the United States". By the previous month, the committee chairman, Representative Eugene Cox of Georgia, said that he was "less inclined to point the accusing finger at these foundations". The Congressmen had heard much about worthwhile activities of the foundations from their respected officials and there had been little indication of subversion.

The previous day, former Democratic presidential nominee in 1924, John W. Davis, who was also arguing the case for segregation in the public schools of Clarendon County, South Carolina, before the Supreme Court in the group of cases subsumed under Brown v. Board of Education, had told the Cox committee that Secretary of State-designate John Foster Dulles had recommended Alger Hiss to become president of the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace, of which Mr. Davis was a board member, that numerous other people had also recommended him, and that he had therefore complete faith in Mr. Hiss, that he knew of no way to avoid such situations in the future.

It observes that most of the criticism about the Hiss episode had been aimed at the State Department, but those who had vouched for Mr. Hiss, including Governor Stevenson, at the time of his deposition in Mr. Hiss's perjury case, were not running the State Department, though both Governor Stevenson and Mr. Dulles had worked there for a time.

It finds convincing Mr. Davis's statement that there was no "magic formula" to prevent recurrences of the Hiss episode in the future. Any Communist operative would be hard to catch if shrewd. Spies could fool honest patriots.

"Keeping Up with the World" indicates that every spring, speakers at high school and college commencement exercises told seniors why the occasion was called a "commencement", that they were on the threshold of commencement of learning in life. The young adult, upon graduation, soon learned much which was not found in books and, more often than not, the books were soon forgotten, with adult education consisting primarily of practical experience, punctuated by incidental information gained from newspaper headlines, the radio, and occasional books. The contexts of history and perspective were lacking. Emphasis was placed on making a living.

It indicates that there were avenues for genuine adult education, such as a project in Charlotte, dubbed the "World Politics" course, sponsored by the American Foundation for Political Education. About 25 adults gathered at the library every Monday night to discuss history and political philosophies, based on the writings of such men as Jefferson, Lincoln, Lenin, Locke, Mussolini, Wilson, Churchill and Plato. Documents, such as the Atlantic Charter and the Monroe Doctrine, were also studied. A three-volume set of books accompanied the course, costing $12 per person or $18 per couple. Two discussion leaders kept the participants focused on the subject.

Because of interest demonstrated in the city, the course would be offered again in the spring, along with another course on U.S. foreign policy. Participants in the course which had just been completed on politics believed that they were better able to exercise their duty as citizens as a result. It recommends such programs to readers.

A piece from the Detroit News, titled "Mothers Understand", indicates that a pollster who asked a foolish question was apt to obtain a foolish answer. For instance, a manufacturer of appliances had gone about asking housewives how they spent their time, and one had replied with a straight face that she spent about six hours per day "entertaining" her children, recorded verbatim by the pollsters. The piece indicates that anyone who had ever had any experience with small children would question use of the term "entertainment" and would believe it would take more than a mere six hours worth in any event. "Relations with a child can only be described in terms of war—attack and counterattack, double envelopment, psychological warfare, saturation bombing, armistice and losing the peace." It concludes that if pollsters wanted to know what went on in the home, they should stay in one.

Drew Pearson indicates that the reason General Eisenhower had expressed apologies to the U.S. troops who were standing for inspection in the Korean cold weather was because an overzealous brasshat had ordered the men to wear dress uniforms rather than winter uniforms. Dress uniforms had no ear flaps and the men had to wait two and a quarter hours in bitter cold, causing a lot of ears and noses to become frozen. The official visitors, however, wore non-dress uniforms with ear flaps, producing resentment among the troops. The fact had made General Eisenhower quite angry, resulting in his apologies.

Secretary of Defense-designate Charles E. Wilson had observed at the front South Korean troops shooting tracer bullets into the side of a hill, inquiring as to what were the "little red balls".

When General Eisenhower had met with his son, Maj. John Eisenhower, in Korea, the General had told him that he had celebrated his election as President by buying his daughter-in-law a new fur coat.

In Seoul, the President-elect slept in General James Van Fleet's own bedroom, while General Van Fleet slept on a cot in the laundry, and General Omar Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, slept in the guestroom, which faced the street, a room which the Secret Service considered unsafe for the President-elect, but voiced no objection regarding General Bradley. The General was pushed around more than any other VIP in the party, primarily because of his own modesty and partly because some officers in Korea did not recognize him, resulting in his having to peer over the shoulders of photographers on numerous occasions.

Jim Rowley, head of the President-elect's Secret Service detail, vetoed the proposal for a parade through Seoul, believing that despite the fact that President Syngman Rhee of South Korea had arrested 20,000 people as security risks, information had been gathered that the Communists had smuggled about 200 agents into Seoul.

On the last day of the President-elect's visit, President Rhee called on the President-elect, but the latter had not returned the visit or posed for a photo with Dr. Rhee. Finally, after being urged by the head of the Korean Army, the President-elect called on the South Korean President and posed for pictures with him. While Dr. Rhee was strong with the people, he was not so strong with the politicians, and for President-elect Eisenhower to have departed without posing for a picture with him would have meant his loss of face. (The President-elect, presumably, did not condition the visit and the photographs on digging up potential dirt on his political opponents in 1956. Else, had that come to light, undoubtedly, his Presidency would have been a brief one, and subsequent history might have been quite different.)

Senator Taft had decided to control his outbursts about the new President and try to cooperate with him in the future. Mr. Pearson indicates that the inside reason why he had become so upset after the appointment of Martin Durkin, who had opposed Taft-Hartley, as Secretary of Labor, was because he had believed that Attorney General-designate Herbert Brownell was stringing him along about conferring with him regarding the selection of a new Secretary of Labor, believing that the Secretary-designate had been secretly selected a week before the statement. Friends of Senator Taft were convinced that the Dewey forces around the new President were deliberately trying to goad the Senator into a fight with the new President in order to crowd the Senator out of the Senate leadership. As Senate majority leader, he would be invited to the White House automatically every Monday for strategy conferences, and many Dewey leaders believed that friction could be avoided by not having to invite him. After realizing those issues, the Senator had decided to cool his heels.

J. A. Mayo, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Charlotte and Mecklenburg County Public Library, explains plans for a new main library and branch libraries in the suburbs as well in the five other towns of the county, to be built from the bond issue on the ballot in the following Saturday's election. The plan was to construct a "University of the People", in furtherance of the modern library's purpose "to sell, promote and merchandise the idea of good reading and sound thinking."

Joseph Alsop, in Luxembourg, tells of the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community, headed by Jean Monnet, pooling the coal and steel resources of France, Germany, Italy, and the Benelux countries, setting up a "European Government in miniature", with a High Authority to administer it, plus an Assembly composed of members elected by the six parliaments from the member nations as the legislative branch, and a High Court, as the judicial branch. That government had broad powers, including the ability to levy taxes on European coal and steel output, and, by treaty, could not be impeded in the exercise of its powers by the individual governments of the six nations. Those who became officials of any branch of the government had to act as Europeans rather than as nationals of their native countries.

The coal and steel industries of Europe were organized primarily to supply limited and highly protected national markets. The Community would be able to become more efficient in mass productivity, just as the United States had done, the latter producing over 110 million tons of steel per year for 156 million people. The six European nations of the Community had almost exactly the same population, but were producing under 40 million tons of steel per year.

A letter writer finds it amazing how the facilities in the community, including the schools, had fallen apart all of a sudden, at least according to newspaper reports and proponents of the bond issues on the ballot for the following Saturday. He indicates that it was the third bond issue within the previous few months and he believes brakes had to be applied somewhere before the City and County found themselves hopelessly in debt.

A letter writer, writing on behalf of residents of the Wilmount Road area, tells of the hot weather the prior summer having brought a "nauseating stench" to the neighborhood, found to be emanating from the Irwin Creek disposal plant. The City Council had called for a bond election to provide funds to correct the situation and she urges voters to support the bond issue.

A letter writer from Kings Mountain indicates that for the previous two years, he had been making trips to Charlotte to receive treatment for an eye problem, and it had become necessary to remove his eye recently, causing him to spend Thanksgiving in the Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital. He indicates that as the Carolinas Carrousel parade had passed by, he had not been in pain and enjoyed hearing the happy voices and music. He had also received courteous treatment at the hospital from the doctor and the nurses and attendants.

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