The Charlotte News
Saturday, February 9, 1952
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Robert B. Tuckman, that, as anticipated, the U.N. this date accepted a Communist proposal to begin negotiations of a Korean settlement at a meeting to be held within three months after an armistice, but rejected the Communists' third point in the three-point proposal that the talks cover Far Eastern questions beyond Korea, such as Formosa and Indo-China. The U.N. would limit discussion in such a meeting to problems directly connected with the Korean War, including the question of unification of Korea after the armistice.
In the air war, nine warplanes of the U.S. Fifth Air Force had been lost during the week which ended Friday, while the enemy had lost none. Seven of the lost U.N. aircraft were shot down by enemy aircraft batteries, one Sabre jet during a jet battle, and another crashed after mechanical failure. The previous week, the Fifth Air Force had lost 14 planes and the weekly average was about 10. Allied pilots had claimed during the week that they had damaged nine enemy jets, but all had limped back to their Manchurian sanctuary. Tokyo headquarters reported that since the beginning of the war, 355 Communist planes of all types had been destroyed, of which 220 were MIG jets, and another 102 listed as probably destroyed, with 403 damaged.
The North Korean Defense Minister, Choi Yong Kun, in a radio broadcast this date, urged Koreans to build up their war potential for possible future air battles and airstrikes on U.N.-held South Korean territory.
Fifty-seven British paratroopers jumped into a Malayan jungle this date in an airborne attack against a suspected Communist stronghold near the border with Thailand. The first radio message, 40 minutes after the jump, reported that they had no opposition and everything was okay. There was no sign of movement from the air, except the paratroopers wading through rice paddies and untangling their parachutes from the trees.
The House Ways & Means subcommittee investigating the tax prosecution scandals agreed to an investigation of tax office mismanagement designed to shield the President from a scandal which could impact future Democratic elections. The deputy tax collector of San Francisco had testified the previous day that such an indication had been the outcome of a meeting with the incoming U.S. Attorney the previous April, who told him that a Democrat could not be elected in California for 20 years if the 15 charges of tax office irregularities were presented for prosecution, though he also said that he would not pull punches if it turned out that the charges were true, as his only allegiance was to the President. The tax collector said that in his view, the new U.S. Attorney believed that if the charges were true and created a scandal or undue publicity, it would reflect on the President and, seemingly contradictory, that only by bringing the charges out in a forthright manner could the President be protected. He stated that his 15 accusations were "allegations, not charges" and that he had not checked them, that they were primarily based on rumors. A special Treasury intelligence agent had testified that he found the charges largely unsubstantiated. The charges had, however, become the bill of particulars for a grand jury investigation after the U.S. Attorney took office in May. That grand jury had discharged the San Francisco tax collector and ousted two of his aides on charges of conspiracy to defraud the Government
Attorney General J. Howard McGrath reported that 34 Federal grand juries in 21 states across the country and the District of Columbia had answered his call for a special grassroots survey of racketeering and organized crime, as he had urged on January 6. They would consult with Federal and local law enforcement officials and with citizens regarding knowledge of illegal activity within the geographical areas of their purview. Two had been called in North Carolina.
A special House committee issued a report this date saying that an excessive number of Veterans Administration employees had accepted bribes, gifts, unusual loans, gratuities, services and ownership in certain unscrupulous schools in connection with educational programs under the G.I. Bill of Rights.
A bill passed by the House which provided that all men inducted under Selective Service would enter a "ready reserve" after they completed their term of two years of active duty, was causing alarm among Government officials on the basis that it was too broad, as it would allow the President, whenever a national emergency was proclaimed, to call this "ready reserve" to active duty, while World War II veterans, consigned to two other classifications of reserves, could only be called up with Congressional approval.
In Sandringham, England, where King George VI had died the prior Wednesday in his sleep, villagers, farmers, carpenters and woodsmen filed past the candle-lit bier of the King to pay their last respects. His plain oaken casket had been wheeled slowly through the village to the little church where it lay in repose, 250 yards from the palace where he had died, with the King's piper preceding the casket, playing on bagpipes a Highland lament, "Flowers of the Forest".
In London, following the accession ceremony the previous day, new Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, had hurried back to their official residence at Clarence House to watch the entire 54-minute delayed telecast of the proclamation ceremony. When the Queen heard a man's voice order, "Garter, put your hat on," at the end of the proclamation, she asked her secretary to find out what had happened—contingent upon which investigation, the offending party might be placed in the Tower forever and ever. It was explained that the Duke of Norfolk had been talking in an aside to Sir George Bello, the garter king of arms, who read the proclamation.
Seems just about anybody can bellow forth any old thing they want at these occasions, 'ey? Off with the heads of the hatless one and his remonstrator... Intolerable breach of protocol.
The President had a new air-conditioned railroad car equipped with a ship-to-shore radio telephone, recording equipment, as well as equipment for radio transmission of pictures. The car had two diesel power units which could supply electric power for an entire train in an emergency. The green car would replace a 1914 baggage car used for Presidential communications and would save the Government about $4,000 per year, as the old car had been rented for $7,000 per year.
In New York, 15,000 persons had
turned out at Madison Square Garden the previous night for the
Eisenhower-for-President rally, though falling short of an expected
capacity crowd of 18,500. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., of
Massachusetts, manager of the General's campaign, smiled broadly and
said it was an unprecedented success for a political rally at the
Garden. The delegations had come from Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana,
Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire and chanted, "We want
Ike"
Elvis was there, driving his truck.
On the editorial page, "The Default of Local Responsibility" tells of Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois being inclined to believe, as stated in an article in the current issue of The Atlantic, titled "Who Runs the Gambling Machines?", that the trend toward centralization in government was the result of local governments defaulting on their responsibility rather than state and Federal officials and agencies seeking more power.
Governor Stevenson, after he took office in early 1949, had, with his attorney general, tried through pressure and persuasion of local officials to stop the wide open gambling within Illinois, but when results were unsatisfactory, employed the State Police to make periodic raids in local communities throughout the state, with the result that 8,400 slot machines, registered for Federal taxation in 1948-49, had been reduced to only 1,783, seven percent of which were in public places, whereas previously 75 percent had been in roadside taverns and the like. While pleased with the result, the Governor bemoaned the fact that the effort had reduced the availability of the State Police for patrolling the highways, had cost the taxpayer more money for enforcement in paying for both ineffective local police and State Police, and had not resulted from any inherent inability on the part of local officials to cope with these conditions.
The Governor indicated that the "conspiracy" against liberties in the country supposedly transacted from above was all too often "only a device to excuse our own inaction." He hoped that the State Police could withdraw from enforcement of gambling laws, but he assured that it would not as long as he was Governor if by doing so it meant that the hoodlums would have the green light "to exact their grim toll of our purses, our morals, and our public life."
He pointed out an inconsistency occurring at the ABA convention recently whereby the retiring president received applause for stating that there was a serious problem in the trend toward centralization of governmental authority, after which the membership approved recommendations that state governments assume greater responsibility in the area of law enforcement. The Governor believed that such was not local self-government in its most basic form of law enforcement. He did not want to see the State of Illinois take over control and direction of law enforcement throughout the state and so encouraged local law enforcement to enforce the laws which were on the books.
The piece questions how many defenders of states' rights were willing to shoulder state responsibilities and how many of those who guarded local rights understood the burden which was inherent in such home rule, finds that Governor Stevenson had pointed out a moral which should not be forgotten when people proclaimed states' rights.
"Good Man for Tough Job" praises the selection of former Georgia Governor Ellis Arnall as the
new head of the Office of Price Stabilization, finds that he would be
fortunate to emerge from the job with no more political scars than
his predecessor, Mike DiSalle, who was resigning. The task of
controlling prices in the face of cumbersome regulations was
difficult, but, as with Mr. DiSalle, Mr. Arnall could rely on his wit
It suggests that he would not give up his lucrative law practice in Georgia and the presidency of a motion picture association to take such a thankless job unless he counted on being in the good graces of a post-election Administration, lending weight to the speculation that the President, or another liberal Democrat, such as Governor Stevenson, would be the Democratic nominee.
"Truman Policy Approved" tells of the Senate having come a long way during the previous five years in foreign policy matters. In 1947, the President had developed the Truman Doctrine of military aid to Greece and Turkey, which 23 Senators from both sides of the political spectrum had opposed, some wanting instead for the country to work through the U.N., while others did not like the idea of overseas commitments. Then, in 1949, the Senate had ratified NATO, with only 13 Senators opposing, and the previous Thursday, the Senate had endorsed inclusion of Greece and Turkey within NATO by a vote of 72 to 2.
The Administration had supported in 1947 a policy, embraced by a majority of the Senate, which recognized that reliance on the U.N. alone was insufficient and that a return to isolation would be deadly. That sentiment had only grown in the meantime.
While there would be considerable derision of that foreign policy from some Senators during the ensuing months of the presidential campaign, it had to be remembered that it was these same Senators who had cast votes in support of the most important parts of that policy.
"Prompt Response" tells of Senator Zales Ecton of Montana having introduced into the Congressional Record and commended to his colleagues a message which ended with the exhortation to get together for decency and let personal power be felt through citizens running for office and backing others who were worthy. The next day, Representative Mike Mansfield of Montana announced that he was going to run for the Senator's seat. It concludes, "Darn it, Senator, some people just take things too literally, don't they?"
A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "An Innocent Gift", tells of Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois, in a lecture at Harvard, having stated that distinguishing between "bribes" and harmless presents, he had developed a rule that the former constituted anything worth more than $2.50.
The piece indicates that as a constant admirer of the Senator for his having produced an informed economic report as chairman of one committee and made a penetrating study of ethics in government as chairman of another, it had long wondered what it could do for him to express appreciation for his efforts, concluding that it would just offer a simple "thank you", which should not embarrass him or the Monitor.
A piece from the Congressional Quarterly provides the record of Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, the first announced Democratic candidate for the presidency. Because most of the Senator's stands have already been elucidated within the pages since he had announced his candidacy, such as his forthright stand against organized crime and his lack of support for FEPC, combined, however, with favoring a limit on Senate debate to frustrate the filibuster most usually aimed at civil rights legislation, and because of the fact that he would not win the nomination and would only come into true national prominence in 1956, when at the Democratic convention he would defeat Senator John F. Kennedy for the vice-presidential nomination to run with Governor Stevenson, nominated by the Democrats for the second time as the presidential nominee, we shall let you peruse the piece for yourself.
Drew Pearson tells of the President's continued entry in the New Hampshire primary likely to force a showdown with Senator Kefauver regarding the issue of whether there should be an ambassador to the Vatican. In New Hampshire, the Catholic population was largely Democratic while Protestants were largely Republican. Thus, Senator Kefauver's advisers thought that he would have to take a firm stand in favor of such an ambassador to hope to woo votes away from the President, who had already expressed his desire to appoint such an ambassador. But he faced the dilemma that within the Senator's home state of Tennessee and throughout most of the South, from which he would have to win delegates to hope to win the nomination, there was a strong sentiment against appointment of such an ambassador. It was reported that one reason for the President reversing himself and remaining on the New Hampshire ballot was to smoke Senator Kefauver out on this critical political issue.
Patrick Hurley, who had run for the Senate in New Mexico nearly as many times as people could remember, was campaigning vigorously and still talking of his pet issue, oil and the Near East, to which he had visited when he was a special envoy for FDR, producing a report on the oil situation, of which he enjoyed relating to audiences. The wife of the former Governor of New Mexico, Gladys Dempsey, had told of her Republican maid having gone to a Hurley rally and reported the next morning that it was all right, but finally having asked Mrs. Dempsey where Iraq and Iran were located, whether they were in the eastern part of the state.
One of the oldest systems of printing weekly newspapers, the "ready print" service, which printed 4 to 8 inside pages for weekly newspapers, thus saving heavy printing costs, was being discontinued by the Western Newspaper Union partly because of high costs resulting from a Justice Department antitrust suit. That service had been established in 1865 and supplied 1,500 weeklies.
Former President Herbert Hoover's twelve-mile limit off the coast of the United States, established during the rum-running days of Prohibition, had backfired in the Korean truce negotiations, as U.N. negotiators wanted to fix a three-mile limit off the Korean coast into which warships could not cruise, but the Chinese had responded with the old twelve-mile limit.
Averell Harriman was urging the President to criticize the Belgian Government for its refusal to carry its share of the all-European Army.
Former FBI agent Melvin Purvis, who had helped to capture notorious criminal John Dillinger, had been investigating Government hiring and would soon report to the Senate Civil Service Committee that the Civil Service hiring system had been abandoned during the defense emergency and that getting a Government job now depended on political pull. Top Government officials were padding the public payrolls with their friends and relatives.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop tell of a professional study having been undertaken to assess whether Senator Taft could win the November election if nominated by the Republicans. The source of the study were men friendly to General Eisenhower and his run for the presidency. The study found that the Senator might reasonably hope to carry every state in the country except for those of the Solid South and the small group of industrial seaboard states where defeat for the Senator had already been predicted by local Republican leaders. The "South" included such unlikely geographical candidates as Arizona and New Mexico, plus the old Confederacy. No Republican had carried any one of the states since 1928 when the Catholicism of Al Smith as the Democratic nominee became an issue in the South.
The Dixiecrat leaders who wanted to see the Republicans break the Solid South as a lesson to Northern Democrats, stated that the Senator could not overcome the local Democratic prejudices. If correct, those states would bring in 146 electoral votes for a Democratic competitor. The additional seaboard states, including California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, accounted for another 137 electoral votes. Thus, a total of 283 electoral votes were tallied against Senator Taft, which would give the opposing Democrat an electoral victory by 17 votes. If some of the Southern votes were subtracted for a potential Dixiecrat candidate, the election would then be thrown into the House, controlled by the Democrats.
The Alsops conclude that while the analysis might be disputed, certain of its concessions to the Senator, for instance, Illinois, which the President had carried in 1948, the Rocky Mountain states, which see-sawed between Republicans and Democrats, the usually Democratic Washington and Oklahoma, the disputable border states of Maryland, Missouri and West Virginia, and the seaboard state of New Jersey, were perhaps overly generous. Fourteen of the states tallied in the Taft column, totaling 147 electoral votes, had voted for the President in 1948.
For the Senator to win, he would have to break the Solid South, which even his closest friends conceded could not be done unless he could attract an extremely high number of independent voters. The Alsops then posit the question whether orthodox ultra-Republicanism had any great potential for appeal to independents.
Marquis Childs tells of former President Herbert Hoover having stated in his recent radio broadcast that if the U.S. economy were to collapse, Stalin's victory over the world would be complete, and that the country could not take that risk. That summed up the position of many who wanted to cut the military budget and curtail the vast spending for arms, set in the proposed budget to hit a rate of four billion dollars per month.
For many, that course was a convenient justification to avoid higher taxes in an election year in an effort to reduce the deficit which was not "quite so embarrassingly and threateningly large." Mr. Hoover had called for the withdrawal of American forces from Europe and reliance instead on air and naval power. Senator Taft had increasingly stated during his campaign speeches that air power was central to defense, relying for the proposition on General MacArthur, who had wanted to bomb enemy supply centers in Manchuria in the belief that it would have brought a quick end to the Korean War, disfavored by the Administration on the belief that it could also have led to a third world war with both China and Russia.
The Joint Chiefs, chaired by General Omar Bradley, favored a balanced defensive effort and opposed extension of the war in Korea.
With politics and military policy so intertwined in 1952, it might become the case that the voters would be choosing between two sets of military planners with diametrically opposed viewpoints. The belief was that as President, Senator Taft would replace the Joint Chiefs with such men as Lt. General Albert Wedemeyer and Brig. General Bonner Fellers, the latter having served on General MacArthur's staff in the Pacific during World War II and was now on the RNC staff. General Wedemeyer also echoed the advice of General MacArthur regarding air power.
He indicates that while some civilians saw the Chiefs as seeking to expand the power of the military, General Bradley was not seeking to grab power. Rather it was the able technical staff at the level of colonels who were seeking to broaden military assertiveness, usually because of the default of civilian authority over the military. He believes that this phenomenon had to be closely watched in a country which could not afford to dismantle the military establishment as it had done between World Wars I and II. It would be unhealthy to have an instrumentality of independent power fought over by rival politicians promoted by rival generals and admirals.
He concludes that the present time was a transition period, in which unification of the services had, to some degree, come to fruition, while still within the Pentagon, there was strong support for air power over the balanced military approach.
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