The Charlotte News
Thursday, December 25, 1952
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Forrest Edwards, with the U.S. Fourth Fighter Wing in Korea, that U.S. Sabre jets had engaged enemy MIGs over North Korea this date, with one pilot who was an ace, with at least five kills, having damaged three MIGs the previous day, scheduled to sit out this day, until he talked his way into a mission and obtained the only confirmed kill of the day. Another pilot, flying his 100th and last mission of the war, had a probable kill. The top ace of the Wing, with nine kills, had already flown his full complement of 100 missions and was due to return home, scheduled to depart this night, envious of the other pilots going aloft. Mr. Edwards recounts that it was just another work day for the pilots, but that Christmas had not been forgotten and the pilots who were not flying talked mainly of home, wives and sweethearts. Meanwhile, two base chaplains bent their heads over final plans for a Christmas party during the afternoon for 500 orphans.
Correspondent George McArthur reports from the western front that while it was Christmas on the calendar, it continued in the old deadly routine on the front, as Communist loudspeakers blared Christmas carols somewhere in the hills, saying something about peace on earth. But there was no peace where the two armies were locked in a stalemate. Battle-hardened soldiers were heading out into a frozen no man's land where there were mines and the enemy awaited, more likely to say "good luck" than "Merry Christmas".
Behind the line at command posts and headquarters the previous night, there had been parties, midnight mass, some makeshift eggnog and such happiness as could be found in the ravaged country. Commanders, chaplains and special service officers did what they could to bring Christmas to the front, with religious services, festive decorations, sped mail delivery and the promise of a good Christmas dinner. But as Christmas had arrived on a clear crisp night, with a half moon and stars glowing on the snow-spotted front, the "deadly routine of static war continued." Men stood lonely watches, sighting down the barrels of machine guns and rifles, as the Communist Chinese "huddled ominously and fantastically in burrowed holes to the north", and the North Korean Communists launched an attack on the eastern front, overrunning a U.N. outpost before being repulsed. As Christmas had come, the man in the trenches thought of home, mixed with thoughts of the day's patrol and always-deadly enemy attacks. North of the freezing Imjin River, on the traditional path of Korean invasion, an 18-year old Pfc. from the Bronx stood a lonely vigil in the early hours of Christmas, saying it was "like every other night—they're just too long." Mr. McArthur indicates: "In no man's land, U.N. patrols groped through minefields and barbed wire. The crimson sweeping arc of machine gun tracers flickered at Chinese holes…"
Earlier Communist talk of a four-hour Christmas truce had given way to scattered firing along the front lines, amid temperatures ranging from five to ten degrees. The Communists had announced by loudspeaker that they would hold their fire from 8:00 a.m. until noon, displaying "Merry Christmas" banners, blaring carols over loudspeakers and scattering toys where the patrols would find them, issuing invitations to the allied troops to surrender one by one. The allies, in response, opened up with artillery fire, destroying the loudspeaker and killing two members of the propaganda team, prompting a responsive artillery barrage from the enemy.
The MIG-15s ventured further south in mass than ever before, according to the U.S. Air Force, not indicating how many enemy jets had been aloft or how far south they had come. One Air Force spokesman indicated that they had not gotten below the "bomb line", an imaginary boundary a few miles north of the front behind which allied pilots never attacked for fear of hitting their own troops.
Opera star Helen Traubel
In North Indo-China, the war between the French Union forces and the Communist-led Vietminh rebels flared anew, with a battle erupting 70 miles southeast of Hanoi, resulting in 300 Vietminh reported killed in a French mopping-up operation the previous date.
Premier Joseph Stalin, replying to queries submitted by correspondent James Reston of the New York Times, said the previous night, via Radio Moscow, that he favored a meeting with President-elect Eisenhower, that he did not consider conflict with the West "inevitable" and that Russia was "interested" in ending the Korean War. The Times story commented that the attitude he displayed was "very different from the hostile one recently assumed in the United Nations". The White House announced the previous night that there would be no immediate comment on the story, and an aide to President-elect Eisenhower said that the General had retired for the night and could not be reached for comment. Secretary of State-designate John Foster Dulles said that he would have no comment on the answers until he had a chance to study them, and that he would have to check with the President-elect before issuing any statement, that he would probably not have a chance for such a conference until after Christmas. The Times said that U.N. observers expressed special interest in the part of the Premier's statement in which he had said he favored diplomatic conversations leading to a settlement of the war. The President had repeatedly stated during his entire term that he would be willing to meet with Premier Stalin, but in Washington, and the basic policy of the Administration had been that there had to be proof of Soviet good faith and peaceful intentions on specific matters before any successful general settlement with Russia could take place.
The last personal conference between Premier Stalin and the heads of Western powers had been at Potsdam in mid-1945, and there was no immediate indication that U.S. experts or officials of the new Administration believed that the condition had yet been achieved in world affairs whereby a new balance of power in the world permitted a successful conference aimed at securing peace. Since 1945, Premier Stalin had indicated once or twice per year a willingness to meet with the President, who had said that he had personally invited the Premier while in Potsdam to come to meet with him in Washington. The President had repeatedly stated that there were adequate forums for taking up cold war issues, such as the U.N., without resorting to direct meetings between the heads of state as during World War II.
Send Nixon...
The world's Christians gathered this date around hearths and on frozen battlefields to celebrate the birth of Christ and take comfort in the hope which the day promised. The year had been the most prosperous since World War II, promoting a tremendous exchange of gifts, while hearts went out to the soldiers in Korea and Indo-China. The President had lit the traditional Christmas tree on the White House lawn while carols were sung and, in a nationwide broadcast, called for the country to remain steadfast behind its fighting soldiers in the "common struggle of many free nations which have joined together to seek a just and lasting peace". He asked for the patience and fortitude of the people in achieving that peace and asked for prayer for the country's enemies, that the "spirit of God shall enter their lives and prevail in their lands". The President and Mrs. Truman joined other members of their family in a quiet, old-fashioned Christmas, with a large dinner and visiting around the Christmas tree.
President-elect Eisenhower had helped trim the Christmas tree in his New York home at Columbia University, surrounded by extended family.
The head of the Church of England, Dr. Geoffrey Fisher, warned Britons that there was a "concerted attack on the Christian religion", and pleaded for a "home defense force" against evil.
During the morning, Queen Elizabeth II had provided to the nation via radio broadcast her first Christmas Day message
Conducting a midnight mass in Seoul, within sound of artillery fire, Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York told the troops that they were not struggling alone, that God was before them, behind them and around them as they slogged "through mud and snow and fatigue, weakness and pain." He exhorted them to carry on the hope of the free peoples of the world and the nations "which groan under the heavy yoke of Communist slavery".
In Arcadia, California, a woman, 52, of nearby Monrovia, had been arrested the previous day attempting to rob a bank with a plastic toy pistol, saying that she was broke and needed money for the holidays. She was booked on suspicion of armed robbery, admitting that she had staged two bank robberies in Los Angeles during the prior two months, saying that she did it all for the need of others, that she had given the money she had stolen, totaling $1,469, to friends and strangers, leaving her with 63 cents. She denied participation in a third holdup which had also been credited to her as "grandma", so dubbed because in each case the woman had been described as an elderly, sweet-faced, grandmotherly type who wore glasses and a shawl. In the Arcadia holdup, she had given the teller a note which said that she was desperate and to give her the money, which the teller then communicated to the bank manager, who detained her as she started to move away, grabbed a paper sack which he thought contained a gun, but in fact had only the toy gun inside. He said that she had offered no resistance when he took her to his desk and called the police. The other two robberies to which she had admitted had occurred on October 17 and November 26. The third robbery, which had occurred on November 12, had netted the robber $2,600. She denied that she was a grandmother, but said she had been married and divorced four times. She said that she had given part of the money to two friends for a trip back to Minnesota for Christmas and police had verified that the two persons had left on such a trip on December 1.
She should have gone to work at a
department store wrapping Christmas gifts. It may not have earned her
nearly $1,500, but she would not be facing jail for her one-woman
benevolent society
Across the country, there was not much snow, only small amounts in upper Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and parts of Illinois and Indiana, with flurries in sections of New England. It had snowed the previous day, however, in northeastern New Mexico and across the Texas-Oklahoma Panhandle, with accumulations up to five inches in Amarillo. (We've been through Amarillo three different times on Christmas Eve, only once encountering a little snow, but it was frosty.) There was also snow in the plains states, the Rockies, and in sections of northern New York. The low temperature was nine below zero in Laramie, Wyo., and four below in North Platte, Neb., with temperatures generally at seasonal levels over most of the country.
More than 80 persons had been killed
in violent accidents during the first 12 hours of the Christmas
holiday, starting at 6:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve, with no Christmas
tree fire deaths reported, and 68 of the deaths occurring on the
highways, the high for an individual state having been 18 in Ohio.
The toll over the four-day Christmas holiday in 1951 had been a
record-breaking 789 accident fatalities, including 535 in traffic
accidents. The current holiday period would end at midnight the
following Sunday, and the National Safety Council estimated that 590
persons would be killed during that four-day period. At the current
rate, you are not quite going to make the tally. Better speed things
up...
In Heidelberg, Germany, the U.S. Army Post Office delivered to each G.I. in Europe an average of 30 pounds of packages, letters and cards from home during the Christmas season, and the average soldier had sent home less than one pound of mail. Since the Christmas season had started on November 1, postal officials in Germany had handled 13 million pounds of Christmas mail, more than double that in 1950 and 20 percent more than in 1951.
In Blytheville, Ark., a slight five-second long earthquake was felt, shaking sections of eastern Arkansas and western Tennessee the previous night, alarming thousands of residents, but no damage was reported. Switchboards, however, in Blytheville and neighboring towns lit up.
It was just Santa and his eight tiny reindeer hitting some rooftops a little too hard. Rudolph forgot his braking hooves.
On the editorial page, "On Earth Peace, Good Will Toward Men" quotes the Christmas story from Luke 2:1-14 in the Bible, concluding, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."
"The Bright Promise of Christmas", a by-lined piece by News publisher Thomas L. Robinson, provides a personal expression of Christmas, mentioning those who were bleeding on the battlefields of Korea, while Communists apparently found "sanctuary" in Washington and in the U.N., while "corruption, laxness, wastefulness and rank incompetence" characterized the way many of the public servants behaved, finding hope, however, that a new day was dawning with a new leader and a new spirit aroused in the American people.
"The very essence of the
Christmas message is encompassed in faith, optimism and high resolve.
If our minds and hearts and souls possess the stamina to carry us up
the highest mountain
You had better send that along to the new Vice-President, Mr. Robinson, before he blows the whole thing. Sorry to inject politics into Christmas, but you started it.
"To You Who Gave…" gives thanks to the hundreds of generous persons in Mecklenburg County who had contributed to the News Empty Stocking Fund, and to the volunteers who staffed the Christmas Bureau. They had provided Christmas to the less fortunate of the community.
It indicates that one of the basic principles of the Christmas Bureau was to respect the dignity of those who shared in the Empty Stocking Fund and to permit them to plan their own Christmas festivity without having it thrust upon them that they were recipients of charity.
It indicates that elsewhere in the newspaper there was a tabulation of the donations received through the morning of Christmas, and that behind those cold figures were hundreds of "radiant faces and happy hearts".
"Charles W. Tillett" tells of the apparent suicide of the well-known Charlotte attorney the prior Tuesday, having fallen or jumped from the eighth floor of the Law Building, where he had his offices on the sixth floor. (The story on Tuesday's front page had not yet determined the death to be suicide, though the reports of witnesses appear to suggest strongly that indication, and the editorial does not reference the cause of death.)
The piece says that Mr. Tillett had been a brilliant lawyer, a worthy public official and civic leader, with a wide range of interests in public affairs and a broad conception of the duties and responsibilities of citizenship. His interest had begun at the local level and extended through state government to the national level. It had its most challenging opportunity in the slow progress of the nation to its destiny of enlightened world leadership.
Mr. Tillett had written from the United Nations Charter Conference in San Francisco in the spring of 1945 several articles for The News, explaining the structure of the new organization, therein displaying a fervent conviction that the free nations of the world had to remain together or fall separately. Thereafter, in lectures, magazine articles, letters to the newspapers and appearances before Congressional committees, he had continued his campaign for support of the U.N.
He had served on the City School Board and on the UNC Board of Trustees, and in all of his pursuits had championed what he believed was right.
It indicates that the community, the nation and the world had benefited from his service, and that he had superbly fulfilled his purpose in the finest traditions of American citizenship.
Drew Pearson tells of many things he did not know about Christmas, for instance that the first Christmas trees had been brought to the U.S. by German immigrants, that the first lighting of Christmas trees had been practiced by Hessian soldiers, that Christmas cards had come from Holland, that the idea of Santa Claus had come from the same country, that the practice of hanging stockings had come from France, Belgium and Holland, though they had originally been wooden shoes, that the Yule log had come from Scandinavia, that mistletoe had come from the ancient Druids, and that Christmas carols had come from almost every country. He indicates that the institutions of American Christmas, for the most part, were thus all transplanted from foreign lands, and that though there was still a struggle to meet Christ's goal of "peace on earth", the manner of observing his birthday was international.
The early Christians had opposed birthday demonstrations for Christ and for a time, the exact date of Christ's birthday could not be determined. The first English Christmas celebration was held by King Arthur in York in 521, and at about the same time, the celebration of Christmas on December 25 was established in other countries as well. Christmas flourished under Queen Elizabeth I, was abolished by the Puritans but returned under the Restoration.
In America, a law was passed in New England in 1659 fining anyone by five shillings who was found observing in any manner Christmas. That law reflected the Puritans' opposition to ostentatious displays regarding the birthday of Christ. In 1722, however, the Governor of Massachusetts reversed the policy and publicly recognized Christmas as a holiday, while many Puritans continued to oppose it, and when President John Adams of Boston first entered the Presidency in 1797, Christmas remained an unimportant occasion among New Englanders.
Santa Claus had first been brought to the country from Holland by early Dutch settlers, a tradition probably handed down from St. Nicholas, the patron saint of children, who in the fourth century was supposed to have been wealthy and given much to the poor, throwing gold purses through cottage windows and running away. In Germany, St. Nicholas came to the door rather than down the chimney. In New England, the custom of sweeping the chimney to bring good luck may have started the custom of Santa coming down the chimney.
There were many legends regarding the origin of Christmas trees, some believing that Martin Luther inspired the idea because he wanted his wife and children to see the beauty of the snow-covered forest. In France, there was a romance about a knight who found a gigantic tree, with branches covered in lighted candles, crowned by a child with a halo, and when the knight asked for an explanation, the Pope said that the tree represented mankind, the candles, human beings, and the child, the Saviour. The tree had long been a religious symbol in many countries and to various religions; for instance, in Egypt, the custom had been to decorate homes with green palm branches at the time of the winter solstice, the palm being a symbol of life over death. The Druids regarded green boughs as symbols of eternal life, and the Romans, on the feast of Saturnalia, had raised an evergreen bough. In the Sixth Century, Pope Gregory I had instructed his missionaries not to destroy innocent pagan customs regarding trees but to adopt them as part of Christian customs.
Christmas cards had been started by an English artist in 1846, who designed colored lithographs for Christmas, and by 1862, the custom was in vogue in England, where it had been the tradition to shout "Merry Christmas" from windows on Christmas morning, transferring that sentiment to cards.
Christmas carols had begun as folk
music
Stewart Alsop, writing from Eisenhower headquarters in New York, tells of four of the key members of the new Cabinet having an aggregate annual income of more than 1.1 million dollars, while other appointees of the President-elect were not far behind, causing one critic to describe the future Administration as consisting of "70 millionaires and one plumber", the latter referencing Secretary of Labor-designate Martin Durkin, head of the plumbers union. (No, it was, presumably, not intended as double entendre, to embrace the Vice-President-elect.)
The wealth in the new Administration raised the question of how conservative the President-elect was, regarding which Mr. Alsop recalls an episode in the campaign in which General Eisenhower was inclined to make a major issue of the steel strike before being advised as to the reasons for the needed pay increases of the steelworkers, at which point, seeing the issues on a human level, the General remarked that maybe the steelworkers were entitled to even more of an increase. As a result, he did not make the steel strike an issue in the campaign. It suggested, observes Mr. Alsop, that the new President's genuine interest in people would make it hard to classify him as either a conservative or a liberal, that his appointments, while heavily weighted toward the business world, also showed his admiration for people who had achieved success in business, first as human beings. His principal advisers indicated that he had no intention of favoring big business at the expense of other segments of the community, and that he intended to obtain the best brains he could get.
To the contrary of any big business orientation, there was great talk at the headquarters about the new Administration challenging the Democratic hold on the mass voting groups which had given the Democrats victory for the previous 20 years, including labor, minorities, and those favoring social programs. Most of the President-elect's advisers were from the Dewey wing of the party and believed that as Governor Dewey had done in New York, the new President could do in the nation, using a combination of patronage and mildly progressive legislation to break the hold of the Democrats, just as had Governor Dewey in New York, making the Republican Party dominant there. The appointment of Mr. Durkin was the most conspicuous outgrowth of the Dewey formula, representing a promise to labor that the new President would not sponsor punitive labor legislation. The advisers predicted that he would extend the New Deal Social Security legislation, as he had promised in the campaign, and would make appointments of blacks to appeal to minorities, with the appointment of Ralph Bunche being considered as Ambassador to India.
Yet, the conservative coalition in Congress was stronger than ever, and the administrative agencies in combination with Congress could bring a halt to an effort toward a progressive agenda. Business interests were already lining up to populate the powerful agencies, such as the Federal Power Commission. There was also a danger of another Republican depression, which scared the more astute Eisenhower advisers, as it would destroy the Dewey formula.
Mr. Alsop concludes that the President-elect had the intention apparently to give the nation the same sort of efficient, moderately progressive government which Governor Dewey had in New York, and if he were to succeed, it would be possible for the Republican Party to enter upon a long period of national power.
Marquis Childs finds that in nearly every spot on the globe "the formula is trouble, trouble, boil and bubble", but from the perspective of the change soon to take place, there were glimmerings of hope. He finds that President Truman's policies had been "fairly impressive" in containing Communism. Deputy Secretary of Defense William Foster—later to serve as the first director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson—, recently had completed an inspection trip of trouble centers around the globe, two years after he had made an earlier such trip, providing a basis for comparison. His report noted improvement in many areas, in Indo-China, where there had been training of sizable numbers of loyal Vietnamese, providing hope that, with greater political independence, self-defense against the Communist guerrillas was not impossible; in Burma, where the principal rebel bands had been put down, though law and order was still tenuous; and in Formosa, where the most improvement had been made. Both militarily and politically, the regime of Chiang Kai-shek had moved toward greater strength, stability and popular acceptance, with export surpluses helping to make the island self-sustaining.
Partly as a result of Mr. Foster's report, there would be a recommendation for the new Administration to provide one or two divisions of Nationalist Chinese troops for Korea, to begin in a rotation with those divisions which had been sent initially, with the U.S. supplying all food, clothing and arms for those divisions.
Secretary of State-designate John Foster Dulles was preparing for a new approach to Korea, Formosa and Indo-China. The plan was to coordinate the struggle in Korea and Indo-China, with the use of the Nationalist Chinese as an asset, to place pressure in a variety of ways: on the Chinese mainland; to revise the neutrality policy toward Formosa, making it possible to launch attacks against the mainland and thereby further occupy the 400,000 Communist Chinese troops which were stationed in the area to ward off the danger of such attacks, possibly triggering an increase in the number of those troops, draining Chinese manpower from elsewhere, should the threat be increased; and finally a naval blockade of China's principal ports, stopping the flow of tin, rubber, petroleum and other products carried chiefly by British, Greek and Panamanian ships, the latter owned for the most part by Americans.
He concludes that there was still much to be done in the Far East to build on the progress, and cutting off the aid would cause the small gains presently made to go down the drain.
Robert C. Ruark, in Rome, tells of Joe Bushkin playing as his theme an old song called "I Love a Piano", which he would find handy in Rome, as the word "piano" appeared to suffice for about everything. If one threw in "ecco" every few minutes and "ciaou" for hello, and from time to time commented that everything e bello, one could get by with little more knowledge of Italian.
He indicates that he had spent the
previous week trying to get his shipment of guns for his safari and
his photographer's camera equipment, both caches of which appeared to
the authorities to be the plot for a revolution, sent on to Africa by
steamship. His photographer
First Day of Christmas: King Timahoe had a fight with Checkers over who got the bone.
Framed Edition
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