The Charlotte News
Tuesday, March 11, 1952
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that General Matthew Ridgway had declared this date that the Communist falsehoods were upsetting the Korean truce talks and that negotiations had reached a point at which it was impossible to determine what was going to happen next, blaming the Communist negotiators "who resort to intemperate language and deliberately employ known falsehoods." He indicated that the Communist claims that the allies were using germ warfare were "completely, absolutely and categorically false." He speculated that these accusations were either an attempt to cover up the Communists' inability to prevent and control epidemics or an indication that they were planning to employ those methods, though stressing that he was not certain on either count.
Meanwhile, in the prisoner exchange discussions, the Communists continued not to account for missing allied troops, including 50,000 South Koreans, while the Communists asked for an accounting of 1,036 persons whom they claimed to be held by the allies, according to a list of names which they provided. Both sides accused the other of delaying tactics.
The subcommittee deliberating on supervision of the armistice, seeking to resolve the deadlock over whether the Communists could nominate Russia as a neutral nation for the purpose of inspection of the armistice, met for only five minutes, having met for only 13 minutes during the previous three days.
The most intensive attack with napalm yet during the war, 33,300 gallons of it, had taken place this date, as American jets turned an enemy supply depot camouflaged as a farming village into blazing ruins. Flames were observed over a four square-mile area, making it look "like Hell itself", according to some of the pilots who had flown in the 250 sorties this date. The flights were covered by artillery fire, attacking through anti-aircraft fire. The disguised huts had no sides and the munitions were plainly visible. U.S. Sabre jets shot down three MIGs, probably destroyed one more and damaged another five, among the MIGs trying to protect the depot. During the previous two days, the allies had shot down 19 enemy planes and damaged three the previous day.
In Moscow, Russia proposed an immediate Big Four conference to reunite divided Germany and prepare for a peace treaty, which would bar the Germans from alliances aimed at any of their World War II enemies. After such a Big Four agreement, the proposed draft treaty would then be worked out with the participation of all interested states at an international conference. Such a treaty would reconstruct the borders of Germany to equate to the status agreed by the Big Four at the mid-1945 Potsdam Conference and provide that Germany would have land, naval and air forces essential for its defense and be allowed war industries only sufficient to equip those permitted forces, with occupation forces withdrawn within a year after adoption. Western observers predicted that Britain, France and the U.S. would reject the proposal.
In Rome, Italian General Maurizio Lazzaro De Castiglione reportedly resigned as NATO commander of land forces in Southern Europe, in the face of Greek and Turkish opposition to placing their troops under the leadership of an Italian.
In Cleveland, a Federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the three striking rail unions to end their strike and prevent the walkout from spreading to other lines, and set a hearing for March 19 on the Government's request for a permanent injunction. The Army had nominal control of the railroads since August 27, 1950, to prevent a walkout by the same three unions at that time.
In the New Hampshire primary races this date, General Eisenhower was holding a slight lead over Senator Taft after the first returns from two small towns, Waterville Valley and Millsfield, with a combined population of 26. The General had obtained all of his seven votes from the former, while the Senator had received all of his four votes from the latter. Former Governor Harold Stassen also received one vote in the latter community.
Meager though the votes may be, the names of those two towns might augur things to come…
In the Democratic race, the President was tied with Senator Estes Kefauver at one apiece, based on Millsfield returns. Those, however, might prove deceptive.
The polls in the larger cities did not open until later in the day. Observers expected the vote to exceed 100,000, setting records for many communities. There were 14 Republican convention delegates and eight Democratic delegates at stake.
In Paris, General Eisenhower paid no attention to the New Hampshire results and attended to his usual business.
Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut, on behalf of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, formally asked the General to be called home during the month to testify on the new 7.9 billion dollar foreign aid program. Senator McMahon appeared generally to be supportive of the President and not of any political aspirations of the General.
Newbold Morris testified this date before the Senate investigating committee looking into shipping deals involving war surplus tankers, in this instance having hauled oil to Communist China for two Nationalist China companies. He said that there was no wrongdoing in the transaction by the two companies, for which he, along with his partner, had acted as counsel. He denounced the law under which a group of prominent persons, including Admiral William Halsey, had earned 3.25 million dollars in profit on $101,000 of cash investment plus a large loan, $450,000 of the profits having been for clients of Mr. Morris. He said that he had no intention of resigning his new post, assigned to clean up the executive branch. He had been under criticism, primarily from fellow Republicans, since his appointment on February 1. Senator Joseph McCarthy had stated that a 1947 meeting with U.S. Maritime officials regarding purchase of the surplus tankers had been arranged through the White House, Mr. Morris indicating that he did not recall that being the case. He said that he had gone alone to the Maritime Commission in 1947 to determine whether it was willing to sell the tankers to either of the two Chinese companies.
In London, the British Government announced that it was slashing imports and raising the interest rate for loans to 4 percent in an effort to stem inflation and reduce the money in circulation. The present bank rate was 2.5 percent, having been raised from 2 percent the previous November by the new Conservative Government.
In Charlotte, the local tax collector for State revenue, told a Recorders Court judge that the operator of a grocery store had attacked him with a mop when he had gone there to obtain information about taxes, calling the tax collector a "thief, Communist and crook", ordering him out of the store and then striking him with the mop. The grocer admitted brandishing the mob but said he never struck the tax collector, and had ordered him off the property. The court found the grocer guilty and fined him five dollars and costs of court, the judge indicating that he had a lot of sympathy for the tax collector.
On the editorial page, "Segregation Upheld Again" tells of a three-judge special Federal District Court panel in Virginia having held that the high school for black students in Prince Edward County was not equal to that of white students, and thus ordered school authorities to proceed immediately "with all reasonable diligence and dispatch" to provide equal facilities. The court, like all courts had previously thus far, rejected the NAACP's argument that segregation per se was unconstitutional. The NAACP had indicated that it would seek review in the Supreme Court.
The piece suggests that it was likely that the Supreme Court would hold, as it had in the past, that the administration of public schools was a state responsibility and that the decision to abolish segregation, a state decision, would therefore uphold the 1896 separate-but-equal doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson.
It indicates that the State of Virginia, like North Carolina, had shown good faith in trying to meet the requirements set forth by previous Federal decisions. The Federal Court in this instance had found that Virginia employed as many black teachers in its public schools as were employed in all the 31 non-segregating states. It also found that in 29 of its 100 counties, the schools and facilities for blacks were equal to those for whites, and in 17 others, were superior to the white schools, while yet five more, when improvements were completed, would also be superior. Of the 27 cities in Virginia, five had black schools and facilities equal to the white schools, and eight others had superior black schools.
It concludes that Virginia still had a large job to do before it could equalize the facilities in all of its counties, but there had been such a display of good faith and diligent effort, the attorneys for the NAACP would serve their cause better by urging equalization of facilities instead of trying to have segregation abolished before the people of that state were ready for such action.
Well, when in the devil's name are they going to be ready, in the year 2525?
We observe again that these types of
editorials, especially given the stress at the News on economy
in government, are short-sighted and without perspective, did not
help the inevitable process which was ongoing toward integration,
indeed, retarding that process and allowing the segregationists to
find an ostensible friend within the liberal Southern press, providing the circular rationale that because the people supposedly were not ready for integration, that it would only breed unrest and possibly violence among the rabid, ultimately affording ground for the self-fulfilling prophecy of same, further delay had to occur until "education" of the masses could imbue in them a sense of acceptance of the other of a different racial makeup, all the while such education having to be gleaned through the hazy veil of probable misunderstanding engendered by the walled-off culture of segregation, allowing typically personal interracial contact only via the interface occasioned by subservient employment, domestic or otherwise, where the instant signifiers of disparate socio-economic scales facilitated such immediate recognition of superiority and inferiority between server and served that the smallest child could be easily infected osmotically with the sense of white supremacy, no matter the teachings in the home, Sunday school or civics class to the contrary, that all of God's children are created equal—leading to the convenient rationalization that either all of God's children were white or that the equality thus expressed, being only of opportunity, was simply incapable of being realized by some of the slow ones, some of the white children and, except in some pursuits, notably sports and music, all of the non-white children, poor things, for whom the people therefore ought feel plenty of charity, but not any responsibility for ingratiation to social and educational integration, that being, after all, illegal under state law, until everyone was ready for same through a process of education, whereupon, instanter, those laws, in that joyful day, could then be voluntarily struck from the books with a crescendo of symphonic flourish and clash of cymbals, in an all-white legislature. Halleleujah...
In any event, as with the Clarendon County, S.C., case, Briggs v. Elliott, holding similarly, this case would be subsumed under Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, holding segregation per se unconstitutional as denying Equal Protection of the laws under the 14th Amendment, overruling Plessy as never having accomplished its enunciated separate-but-equal goal in 58 years.
"A Footnote on Finances" adds a footnote to its editorial of the previous Saturday on the President's 85.4 billion dollar budget for the coming fiscal year, indicating in the prior editorial that while Senator Harry F. Byrd had proposed a nine billion dollar cut, that would still fall short of curing the deficit by 5.4 billion dollars. Then a reader wrote asking whether the newspaper was still in favor of economy, suggesting that it was a mistake to adopt any part of the President's budgetary attitude, daring Congress to make cuts.
It attempts to clarify by indicating that it was still for economy, still believed that domestic spending could be cut, but, too, that there was a lot of waste in the security program, as it suspects in the aftermath of the inception of the Korean War that excitement in the Government had resulted in excessive calculations of that which was needed for defense.
While it wishes that the President would not seek to spend so much, it again urges that the responsibility lay with Congress to approve or not the budget. Congress had not equipped itself with the expert machinery to counter the President's Budget Bureau experts and had been unwilling to do so because of politics and because it had managed to dodge responsibility for the deficit spending by blaming it on the New Deal and Fair Deal of two Democratic Presidents. In every year except two since 1932, Congress had voted to spend more money than it was willing to levy in taxes. In three of the previous five years, Congress had appropriated more money than the President had sought. The previous year, Congress had voted money for the pork-barrel prone Rivers & Harbors projects which the President's own experts had indicated were economically not feasible.
Thus, it concludes, its primary stress was on the responsibility of Congress to carry out its constitutional mandate of spending and taxation in a sensible and efficient manner.
"James B. Marshall" laments the death of the former City Manager between 1935 and 1940, who it regards as having been a dreamer, but a practical one, envisioning the future from his vantage point in the 1930's, having helped to shape nearly every civic improvement in the community for the previous two decades. In the process, he had also been a good citizen. In personality, he was affable, courteous and considerate of the opinions of others. His death had come just as his long-cherished dream of redevelopment of downtown slums had begun to take shape through the City Planning Board and the County Planning Board.
"One Among Many" tells of thousands of people in the Carolinas having watched Steve Wadiak perform in football for the University of South Carolina during the previous four years, dubbing him "Wadiak the Cadillac".
He had been planning to play professional football after graduation in 1952, but the prior Sunday, the speeding car in which he was riding as a passenger careened from the highway and overturned several times, hurling him from the vehicle and killing him.
It points out that each day, similar accidents occurred all over the two states but received fairly routine treatment in the press because of their number. Then someone was killed such as young Mr. Wadiak and there was swift realization of such needless tragedy. Yet, the shock lasted only for a moment and the mad race to get somewhere in a big hurry quickly resumed.
A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "No Red King?" tells of Radio Free Europe having indicated that some leading chess players in Russia had advocated changing the names of some of the chess pieces because they were too "capitalistic", thus preferring "stakhanovite", or high-production worker, for the knight. It understands why they might wish to change the king, the queen and the bishop, but interjects that they would not need to change the name of the pawn, as that "should fit instantly and naturally in the Stalinist nomenclature."
We might suggest to a future generation of UNC students who might take a mind in 2032 or so to follow in the footsteps of some of their predecessors and seek, for instance, to change the name of the Student Stores, obliterating any trace of Josephus Daniels and all of the accompanying ugly connotations thus evoked of the New Deal, Good Neighbor Policy with Mexico and other such anti-Trumpian notions, surely by 2032 to be outlawed in a tendentious Trumpie society, replacement of the name with Stakhanovite, communicating thereby a nice sense of understanding of ideological history, stimulating of dialectic regarding the materialistic aspects of book ownership accomplished to the great benefit of bourgeois capitalistic profiteering at student expense, versus cooperative lending promoted by the socialistic library, and, in the process, provide a certain alliterative quality which will prove both exhilarating to the enunciator and tell all who visit the campus and do their research into the recondite moniker newly adorning the Student Stores, that the students at the University are industrious in their pursuits and ever mindful of the need to communicate, in changing building names on campus, the fulfillment of earlier branding of the University by Dave Clark, Jesse Helms and others of their persuasion. Or, you could just opt for "Major" instead and still convey the same je ne sais quoi quality, adding a literary touch indicative of the books inside the Student Stores, though not nearly so rhythmic when pronounced.
And, then, you can also go back and change the unexpressive name of Carolina Hall, formerly Saunders, originally, when opened, the history building, to Rook.
Mack Bell of The News tells of having taken a trip to Richmond and observed its cultural institutions in comparison to those of Charlotte, finding that Richmond's Department of Recreation & Parks supported civic drama activity to an extent not possible in Charlotte, that its cultural organizations were as a general rule cooperating to exchange materials and services in a way not occurring in Charlotte, and that its largest department store, Miller & Rhodes, was directly engaging in the city's cultural life in a monetarily supportive manner not happening in Charlotte.
At the same time, Richmond could not boast of a symphony orchestra, as could Charlotte, or a Little Theater, as was present in Charlotte. But Richmond did have a series of outdoor dramas. He also praises the Richmond Opera Group and its production of "The Mikado", which he had seen recently. These productions were supported by Miller & Rhodes, whereas an effort in the past to obtain business support for the arts in Charlotte had failed.
He suggests that the Charlotte Park & Recreation Commission could follow the example of Richmond, and was already putting on some plays and sponsoring other activities, such as the Children's Nature Museum and the Mint Museum of Art.
He hopes for improved support from local department stores and better coordination among Charlotte's cultural organizations.
Drew Pearson answers the question why the Navy air arm was not taking on the job of combating the Communist jets, instead leaving it all to the Air Force. He finds that the Navy had been unable to develop a jet capable of keeping pace with the Russian MIGs, and, because of Army-Navy rivalry, had been unwilling to accept an Air Force-type engine which could do the job. He stresses that it was not a reflection on the Navy airmen, who wanted to become involved in the fight, but rather on the brass hats at the top, who had been unwilling to accept the spirit of the Unification Act passed in 1947. The result of this rivalry had led to shocking waste, extravagance and inefficiency, an example of which he provides regarding jet engines and their cost, resulting in an extra 48 million dollars paid by the taxpayers for an engine for the Navy inferior to that of the Air Force. The reason provided by the younger Naval officers and pilots was that the Pratt-Whitney plant was under Navy "cognizance", whereas the Allison plant was under Air Force "cognizance", and so the Navy preferred the Pratt-Whitney slower and more expensive engine, which also had design flaws. The Allison engine, as the Navy pilots pointed out, had none of these troubles.
Stewart Alsop recaps his impressions of his visit to New Hampshire in the lead-up to the state's primary this date, finding troubling attributes present, such as "vicious pamphlets" attacking General Eisenhower, reeking of "neurotic hatreds". John Chappel, the leading supporter of General MacArthur, had attacked General Eisenhower as "the dummy me-too candidate of the pro-Soviet crowd behind Truman." William Loeb, publisher of the conservative Manchester Union Leader, carried a loaded pistol and often published copies of his birth certificate to prove that he was not Jewish. That newspaper had led the attack on the General.
The Republican Party in the state had been transformed into a private cult, from which the unorthodox were excluded, and which had its own special passwords, such as "Yalta betrayal", "Commie-coddling" and "creeping socialism". Anyone who did not utter those passwords at regular intervals would be cast out of the party.
The Democratic Party, on the other hand, showed the opposite tendency, exclusively interested in votes and not issues or ideas. Aside from large voting blocs, the Democrats were interested in who, between the President and Senator Kefauver, had control of dispensing jobs.
As a result of these trends, the Republican contest would reflect the choice of a minority of New Hampshire's orthodox Republicans, and the Democratic primary would demonstrate the will of the professional Democrats. But at least, in contrast to most other states, voters had the opportunity to state their preference.
Mr. Alsop suggests the need for a national primary day, but observes that, despite the clumsy political process evident in New Hampshire, it had worked thus far to provide the nation with Presidents who were needed in time of great crisis, and he expresses confidence that it would so work again.
Robert C. Ruark tells of the Navy drawing criticism for having wasted $23,000 worth of meat at its supply depot and for having ordered an abundance of oyster forks. But he comes to the defense of the branch in which he had served during World War II, indicating that the Navy had also been practicing economy. When the late James Forrestal had been the Secretary between Spring, 1945 and mid-1947 when he was appointed Secretary of Defense, he had instituted an Industrial Survey Division, headed by Rear Admiral Jack Pearson, a task force comprised of experts from private industry, who conducted surveys of Naval installations, techniques and physical properties, with the aim of cutting the fat from manpower and matériel. This Division had found fault and waste and made recommendations which had largely been adopted, saving millions in the process.
He observes that it was popular in the country to criticize the military as being profligate in its spending, and that in some instances, it was warranted. The military needed heavy criticism to keep it in its place and ensure that it was the people's servant and not their master. Yet, it was generally overlooked that the services performed a hopelessly intricate task pretty well. Some wanted to consolidate all of the purchasing power within the military, but such a system would have flaws, as demonstrated by the fact that the Navy bought all of the paint for the services, which led to added expense because of the need to ship that paint to various bases all over the country.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.