The Charlotte News
Tuesday, December 2, 1952
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that a U.S. jet ace, returning to Korea after six weeks in the U.S., had shot down an enemy MIG-15 this date in an air battle over North Korea, during a clash between two Sabre jets and two MIGs.
A foot of snow on the central front peaks, heavy with fighting in recent weeks, as well as 2 to 6 inches of snow along the entire battlefront, with temperatures near zero, kept ground fighting to a minimum. South Korean troops repeatedly repulsed Chinese attacks in the snow-covered "Triangle Hill"-"Sniper Ridge" sector, some of the fighting being hand-to-hand, never involving more than 80 of the enemy at one time.
The New York Herald Tribune stated this date that Army officials had disclosed that relatives of American servicemen presumed to be in North Korean or Chinese prison camps had been deluged with Communist propaganda for months. Some of it had offered to render special services for the prisoners, including transfer to a Communist "rest camp" for a "vacation" for a fee of $65. Pentagon sources said they were unable to confirm the report immediately. The Post Office said this date that it had not discovered any certain method to prevent Chinese Communist propaganda from entering the U.S. mails, but was still trying.
At the U.N. in New York, Western and neutral nations which had approved India's compromise peace plan for repatriation of prisoners, the remaining stumbling block to a truce in Korea, refused this date to accept a Russian demand for an immediate cease-fire in Korea. Forty-one of the General Assembly's 60-nation Political Committee voted down the Russian proposals, which would have also demanded forcible repatriation of all war prisoners. The vote on the Indian proposal was 53 to 5, to form a five-nation special commission to oversee return of the prisoners. Nationalist China had abstained because it did not believe the plan would work. The vote cleared the way for approval of the Indian plan the next day during the plenary session of the General Assembly. While the Chinese Communists and the North Koreans had rejected the Indian proposal in favor of the Russian proposal, it would be put before them as a formality to show that their rejection of it was the roadblock to peace.
President-elect Eisenhower had completed his Cabinet selections, with the appointment of AFL leader Martin Durkin of Chicago, a Democrat who had voted for Governor Stevenson, as the new Secretary of Labor, and Sinclair Weeks of Boston, a businessman and Republican official, as Secretary of Commerce. Mr. Weeks was the chairman of the Republican National Finance Committee and had been a powerful member of the national Republican organization since 1940. Mr. Durkin was the first person ever to be selected directly from a labor union office for the position of Secretary of Labor. He was the general president of the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe-Fitting Industry of the U.S. and Canada—believe it or not.
Senator Taft said that the appointment of Mr. Durkin was "incredible", stating that he was not intending to reflect adversely on his character or ability, but that it had never been indicated to him that anyone would be appointed to the Cabinet who had been a partisan "Truman Democrat, who fought General Eisenhower's election, and advocated the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Law." He found it to be "an affront to millions of union members and officers who had the courage to defy the edict of officials like Mr. Durkin that they vote for Stevenson." He found it to leave those millions of Democrats who had left the party to support General Eisenhower without representation in the Cabinet. A few days earlier, the Senator had griped that no one he had recommended had been included in the appointments to the Cabinet.
In Atlantic City, N.J., Walter Reuther, head of the UAW, appeared virtually assured this date of becoming the CIO's new president after wooing the rubber and oil workers unions, providing the apparent victory over executive vice-president of the CIO, Allan Haywood. The final vote of the convention would be Thursday.
In Miami, members of the flight engineers union and a National Mediation Board met until the early hours of the morning and agreed to meet again, in an effort to resolve the wage dispute which had grounded Eastern Air Lines Constellation flights throughout the Eastern United States. President of Eastern, Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, said that the walkout was illegal and would force the airline to take actions which were "regrettable", indicating that steps were being taken to resume Constellation service as soon as possible.
A late bulletin indicates that a Federal grand jury in New York this date had indicted Joseph Nunan, former head of the IRB, on charges of income tax evasion, involving over $91,000 in alleged taxes during the years 1946 to 1950, during part of which time he had served as IRB commissioner.
In San Bernardino, California, an Air Force C-47, with 13 men aboard, had apparently crashed during the night at the 8,000-foot level of the San Bernardino Mountains, west of Big Bear Valley. A deputy sheriff said that he had seen a large fire in that location in the early morning hours. The plane had taken off the previous night from an airbase in Tucson, en route to March Air Force Base, near San Bernardino. There had been a storm during the night and the pilot apparently had sought to avert it by heading north, as the crash site was well off the normal course of the flight.
In Montgomery, Alabama, three prison convicts had died at Kilby prison late the previous day after drinking paint thinner, also making eight other inmates violently ill. One of the dead had been a notorious convict, Troy Blackstock.
In Raleigh, it was announced by proclamation of Governor Kerr Scott that banks would celebrate two days for Christmas, including December 26. Scrooge can take a hike.
The Governor also announced this date the allocation of $1,650,000 in highway surplus funds for five road improvement projects, with one million earmarked for a new link in the modernization of U.S. 70 across the state, that link being in Guilford County. Other modernization on the highway, either completed or under construction, extended from Thomasville to Efland. The Governor said that he was making the money available on the recommendation of the State Highway Commission.
Also in Raleigh, Louis Parker, a former North Carolina American Legion commander, apparently backed down on his charges that there were instructors at Duke University who had made contact with the Communist Party. Mr. Parker had been asked by the chief counsel for the Senate Internal Security Committee in Washington to give all the information he had to substantiate his statement. In a reply letter, he had written that if the Committee thought that one person at Duke having been investigated by the FBI would warrant his appearance before the Committee, then he would do so.
The State Highway Patrol reported this date that the 1,000th traffic fatality had occurred for the year the previous night, after a man who had been injured in a Thanksgiving Day crash died in a Fayetteville hospital. Traffic fatalities for 1951 had totaled 1,071, and the thousandth fatality had not occurred until Christmas Day. To this date the previous year, 954 persons had been killed.
Travel in Asheville and Western North Carolina was nearly back to normal this date after having been slowed considerably by ice, following rain, sleet and snow, the previous night.
In South Bend, Ind., a four-year old girl fell out of the family car as it was passing another car, but her coat caught on a door handle of the other car and when the coat gave way, she had fallen clear of the wheels of both cars. The child suffered head injuries, right arm fractures and a broken collar bone.
Snow spread across the Northern states this date, from Minnesota to the East Coast. About four inches of snow fell in Chicago, and three persons were killed in traffic accidents in that area. Most of the U.S. east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio River was covered by snow. Traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike was slowed to 35 mph, instead of the normal 60 mph speed limit.
In Huntingdon, Pa., a 200-pound, eight-point deer crashed through a picture window the previous day into the home of a doctor and his wife, demolishing three rooms of furniture before it was killed by the game warden. The meat was provided to the county home.
It did not do its own carpentry.
On the editorial page, "Who Controls Teacher Education?" refers to a letter printed this date from the superintendent of the Laurinburg Schools and immediate past president of the North Carolina Education Association, defending the State's teacher certification system. Objection had been made in several editorials in the newspaper regarding the extent of the requirements for elementary school teachers and the consequent curricula of the teacher colleges, causing the number of persons entering that part of the teaching profession to be less than those wanting to become high school teachers, resulting in a shortage in the state of elementary school teachers. The newspaper had printed objections by educators, as Dr. Edward Kidder Graham, chancellor of the Woman's College of Greensboro, and Dr. Edgar Knight, Kenan professor of education at UNC.
It finds the letter "quite eloquent", but also that it missed the point, that education of the school teacher had largely been taken out of the hands of colleges and universities and placed under the control of the State Board of Education, which, ultimately, took its cues from the Division of Professional Service, headed by Dr. James Hillman, essentially, therefore, along with a few colleagues in the schools of education, the sole arbiter of the requirements for certification.
It again reiterates the facts underlying the shortage of elementary school teachers in the state and the need for more teachers, exacerbated by the dramatic increase in the student population since the end of the war. It leaves the finer points of the debate to experts in the field, such as Dr. Knight and Dr. Graham. It reiterates the idea that many able students were shying away from education as a career because of the overly stringent curriculum requirements, with too much stress on methodology leaving too little room for a broad, expansive liberal arts curriculum, especially for prospective elementary school teachers, to obtain State certification. It finds that there was no intention on the part of those who controlled teacher education to provide college presidents, academic deans, or heads of departments of the humanities, social studies and natural sciences an adequate level of participation in policy-making, which, it finds, required objective reappraisal to avoid the prospect of children in the state being relegated to the care of teachers who knew how to teach but not what to teach.
"Good Rules for Employment by the U.N." tells of the three lawyers hired by Secretary-General of the U.N. Trygve Lie to advise on the relationship of the Secretariat staff to the U.S. and its investigators, having determined that the Secretariat employees should be acceptable to their native countries in terms of loyalty. It finds that opinion to establish a realistic policy to keep the Secretariat free of domination by any one group and maintain the faith of the member nations. It would also respect the rights of individuals working for the Secretariat, with one exception, where an American employee was accused of espionage or subversion and then refused to answer questions by responsible investigators. Whereas under the Constitution, that person would not be obliged to talk if he thought his statements might incriminate him, it finds, agreeing with the report, that there was no equivalent Constitutional guarantee giving the person the right to hold a U.N. job under such circumstances.
This latter view, however, neglects due process rights under the Fifth Amendment, employment being a property right, certainly still applicable to U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. Diplomatic immunity should not prevent protections afforded U.S. citizens by the Constitution. Drawing adverse inferences from asserting the Fifth Amendment privilege to remain silent and refrain from making potentially incriminating statements clearly contravenes due process, eviscerating the privilege, effectively compelling such an employee or prospective employee of the Secretariat in this case either to make potentially incriminating statements or forfeit employment by default for refusing to answer based on the Constitutional privilege. While true that no one has a right to specific employment, no U.S. citizen ought be denied employment or fired on the basis of asserting a privilege or right afforded by the Constitution—assuming the posture on the Constitution not to be that popular amid the Red hysteria in the 1950's, that we recognize the full panoply of rights and privileges only to the people we like, who say the things we like, and not to those we deem "subversive" by saying things we don't like or by affiliation with some specific group deemed by the Attorney General to be dedicated to the forcible or violent overthrow of the Government, building, layer by layer through Congressional legislation, chilling roadblocks to exercise of rights and privileges under the Constitution. If the Secretariat found persons qualified for employment at the U.N., there was no reason to question that fitness based on some crazy McCarthyite suspicions about their "loyalty" to the nation of which they were a citizen. "Loyalty" is such a subjective determination as to cause it, as a criterion for employment, to devolve to politics rather than merit in the selection process. It is thus surprising that the newspaper accepts this position, as it was consistently editorializing against employment in government positions based on politics rather than merit, having cited that as one of the primary reasons for supporting General Eisenhower in the 1952 election, to eliminate the corruption which had developed through twenty years of one-party rule of the executive branch, promoting politics over merit. Perhaps the editors had been overly persuaded by the eloquent, if flawed, presentation on the subject by Senator Herbert O'Conor the previous evening on the "Longines Chronoscope" program, as linked below.
The editorial finds the other opinions of the
three lawyers equally sensible, that Communists from other countries
in the U.S. on U.N. business ought be fired if they engaged in
subversive activities, the same also applicable to non-Communists who
traveled to Communist countries on U.N. business. The lawyers had
also opined that the Secretary-General did not have to provide his
confidential files to the McCarran Internal Security subcommittee
It concludes that if the McCarran subcommittee wanted to reassure Americans that it was out to get real subversives, rather than the U.N., itself, it ought promptly find out whether the U.S. Government had ever asked the Secretary-General to clear U.S. employees of the Secretariat with U.S. security agencies prior to their being hired. If not, it finds, the Government was to blame if subversives had been hired by the Secretariat.
"Good Man for a Big Job" praises the selection of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., to become the head of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. His grandfather, for whom he was named, had also been a Senator and, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had led the opposition to the Versailles Treaty and U.S. participation in the League of Nations, as well as to other aspects of President Woodrow Wilson's foreign policy.
The younger Senator Lodge, however, after initially having appeared to follow his grandfather ideologically, had changed his views to become an internationalist and leader of the progressive wing of the Republican Party, concurring in much of the foreign policy of both the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations. The piece finds him particularly well informed on military matters. The President-elect owed Senator Lodge thanks for managing his campaign through the convention, but outside of that appreciation, the Senator merited the appointment.
The Senator had lost his seat to Congressman John F. Kennedy in the election, and since the election, had served as one of two principal liaison men between the outgoing and incoming Administrations. He would replace former Vermont Senator Warren Austin as head of the delegation, the latter having served with distinction, but having voiced an intention to retire. It indicates that the public could expect competence and even more vigor from Senator Lodge in the role and that out of the dozen or so key appointments thus far made by the President-elect, it stood as one of the more fitting.
A piece of from the New York Herald Tribune, titled "The New Man and the Sea", tells of a man in England having gone fishing and caught what he had thought to be a whale, turning out to be only a 14-foot basking shark, harmless as sharks go. The man proceeded to collect 10 pounds promised by an animal dealer, but when he returned to the beach, found that onlookers had carved up the shark to feed their dogs and cats, leaving him with no shark and no money for his day of labor.
It indicates that readers of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea would notice the similarity of stories. The old man had caught a monstrous fish, a marlin, the largest he had ever seen in his life, but on the way back to shore, sharks had devoured the fish, leaving the fisherman empty-handed. It suggests that the man in England had, in some ways, taken revenge on sharks. It also observes that it was wise to aim an anchor before dropping it. It concludes that a day of fishing could be a pretty complicated business and wonders whether Mr. Hemingway might make the adventure into a story.
Drew Pearson tells of the odds being heavy against President-elect Eisenhower to effect a solution to the Korean war. The reasons were that the war gave the Chinese excuses for both demanding military equipment from Russia and for consolidating their military power in Manchuria where they had long been in competition with the Russians, gave the Chinese Communist leaders a war against the hated foreigners to use as an excuse to arouse the people and make them forget their low living standards, unimproved under Communism, and, for Russia, provided a cause for dissension within the U.N., a basis for waging hate propaganda against the U.S., and kept a large portion of the U.S. Army and Navy pinned down in a remote and uncomfortable part of the world.
The Pentagon intelligence summaries sent to the President-elect showed that the Chinese had been encouraged by the demands during the recent U.S. political campaign for withdrawal of U.S. troops, resulting in the likelihood that the Chinese would stiffen their truce terms to include complete withdrawal. Mr. Pearson thus cautions that the American public should be prepared for the probability that the President-elect would not succeed in his mission, his speeches in October regarding the desire for withdrawal of U.S. troops having probably made the mission more difficult. The saving grace might come from a change of policy inside the Kremlin, which he promises to discuss later.
As possible solutions to the Korean War problem, the President-elect might consider use of two or three divisions of Nationalist Chinese troops presently in Formosa, or equipping of two more divisions of South Korean troops, or a definite policy for the following spring involving a heavy U.N. offensive. He indicates that General Mark Clark, supreme commander of the U.N. forces, had been urging since shortly after his arrival that the Nationalist troops be allowed to fight in Korea. He remarks that it was one reason the President-elect was certain to stop on Formosa, to review the Nationalist troops and confer with Chiang Kai-shek. General Clark's recommendations had been opposed by ground commander, General James Van Fleet, who favored that the South Koreans be equipped instead. Mr. Pearson indicates that most people did not realize that the South Koreans and Chinese Nationalists could not be placed in battle at the same time because of equipment shortages.
Joseph Alsop, in London, tells of President-elect Eisenhower's coming trip to Korea, regardless of what his decision might be, unless he did nothing, likely to raise considerable criticism in Britain and on the Continent. The loss of confidence in American good sense and intentions had gone very far and bad trouble could only be avoided if the President-elect explained what he meant to do in frank detail and before doing it. He would have to inform the major allies in private, for taking unilateral American action in Korea without advance consultation could destroy the Western alliance.
On the other hand, a program of intelligent and bold action in Korea, wisely presented, would be welcomed and supported in Britain. Among the small number of British Government leaders who knew the facts, the feeling was growing, reluctantly, that it would be dangerous to prolong the Korean stalemate indefinitely. During the period of the armistice negotiations for the prior 17 months, the Chinese and North Korean armies had been brought to full strength and had deeply dug in, accumulating huge forward stocks of supplies and great quantities of armor and artillery, which they had previously lacked. In Manchuria, the Chinese armies in position to enter the fight had been increased to at least half a million men, that by the always conservative British estimate. In addition, the Soviet-Chinese air forces had been increased by at least 200 of the new Russian twin-jet medium bombers, among other aircraft. Meanwhile, the U.N. forces had largely remained status quo, with the result that the enemy appeared to be gaining power much faster than the allies. At some point, the enemy power would reach the dangerous point at which they would believe they could throw the Western forces out of Korea.
Those who knew the facts in London would therefore not be shocked should the President-elect propose a preventive offensive, limited to Korea, intended to bring the enemy to terms before the buildup went too far.
The same inner group hoped that the President-elect would take into account the same dangerous pattern in other areas, particularly in Indo-China, where the situation was even more threatening than in Korea. The French and Vietnamese forces had a hard job of containing the Vietminh even while the latter force was comprised solely of guerrillas. It had now, however, become more formidable by the addition of five organized divisions, trained and equipped across the Chinese border. Those additional troops explained why the French were having such difficulties at present.
Robert C. Ruark, in Kingstree, S.C., begins by remarking on the black farmer in Yanceyville, N.C., who had recently been convicted by an all-white jury for assault by leering at a 17-year old white girl, from a distance of about 75 feet. He proposes to ignore the racism involved and look at the "purely scientific aspects of when a smile deserves a slap, and when an ogle becomes an insult."
He says that if anyone was potentially guilty of assault by leering, he was that person because, as a child, he developed "a knack of raising the left eyebrow on short-order demand, which is a more potent approach to implied disrespect than wiggling the ears or standing on the head." He says that he wiggled a pretty good ear, too.
"Any God-fearing girl will tell you that an eyebrow raiser is up to no good, because the raised eyebrow implies a skepticism which is a direct insult to the purity of the person involved. An eyebrow raiser never looks reverent enough to flatter the imaginative magnificence of the Southern female. He looks like he knows a secret, having to do with the absence of pantalettes or something equally lurid." He indicates that such was not true of the person who "walls both eyes and rounds his mouth into a great 'O' of astonishment." That person was naïvely impressed by the girl and was potential marriage material. Even the whistle was acceptable.
He notes that in America, the "true
ogle" was not practiced at the corner drugstores or in front of
pool halls, that the European was the far superior ogler to the
average American. In Europe, the ogle was the "breath of
existence", with the Frenchman, the Italian, and the Spaniard
having made a spectator sport
He indicates that the male ogler nearly always started in the middle, looked down a foot or so and then up a foot or so, while the female ogler started at the top and proceeded to the shoes. A mustachioed subject for females always drew ogles, as did someone with a beard. "The true rule of ogling is that the starer just wishes to appraise."
He concludes that in the interest of justice, "no ogle, leer, frown, or stare is deadly unless the subject has an over-developed sensibility to public appearance. Not even on a clear day at 75 feet."
As earlier noted, the following March, the North Carolina Supreme Court would reverse the conviction for assault by leering, holding that without being accompanied by an action reasonably apprehended by the subject as constituting an imminent threat of physical harm, a mere leer was insufficient evidence to support a conviction for assault. But less than three years later, in August, 1955, in Money, Mississippi, 14-year old Emmett Till would pay with his life at the hands of racist goons for having whistled or, in some other way, shown lack of proper respect to a white woman who was the proprietor of a small grocery store, wife of one of the two brothers who subsequently entered the home of Emmett's uncle, kidnaped the young boy, brutally beat and fatally shot him, then threw his body into the river. Both men, despite overwhelming evidence of their guilt, were acquitted by an all-white jury after an hour of deliberation. Although the Justice Department could have prosecuted the case thereafter, without doing violence to double jeopardy, for violations of civil rights under the post-Civil War statutes, as had the Truman Administration Justice Department, for instance, in the 1946 case of the blinding of the soldier in Batesburg, S.C., Isaac Woodard, by the local police chief, it chose not to do so.
A letter writer from Laurinburg, the superintendent of the Laurinburg Schools and former president of the North Carolina Education Association, as indicated in the above editorial, writes a lengthy letter justifying the current teacher certification requirements by the State, and listing ten reasons for the shortage of elementary school teachers.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.