The Charlotte News
Thursday, May 15, 1952
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that General Mark Clark, supreme commander of the U.N. forces in Korea, repudiated the criticized agreement entered by Brig. General Charles Colson, while temporary commander of the Koje Island prison camp, to obtain the release the previous Saturday of Brig. General Francis Dodd, former camp commander, after he had been taken hostage by Communist prisoners the previous Wednesday. General Clark indicated that General Colson had no authority to accept any of the "vicious and false charges" incorporated in the terms set by the Communist prisoners, that the agreement was entered on the basis of duress, with General Dodd's life under threat, and therefore was invalid. He said that the terms were being used for propaganda purposes in the truce negotiations regarding the prisoner of war issue and that the whole incident, based on U.N. investigations, had been carefully prepared for that purpose. The terms contained three statements which had been particularly abhorrent to the Pentagon and to Congress: "Many prisoners of war have been killed or wounded by United Nations forces"; Prisoners "can expect humane treatment in the future"; and, "There will be no more forcible screening." The Pentagon had denied that any of those conditions, expressed or implied, had taken place, or that in the case of killings of prisoners, had only occurred during riots.
The new commandant of the camp, Brig. General Haydon Boatner, said emphatically that there would be changes made in the prison camp, but "no sudden revolutionary change". He said that he thought Communist prisoners had been treated too leniently, in being able to display insulting signs and Communist flags and make demands. He said that they had been given more than was required by the Geneva Convention and that it would be strictly followed. He indicated that punishment would be administered only as a deterrent and that it was unfair to issue punishment without proper warning. The U.N. command was not interested in an eye for an eye. He was the 14th officer to hold the job in the previous 16 months and recognized that it was one of the toughest jobs in the Army.
Remember the old Communist Chinese saying: "When you've got them by the fortune cookies, their hearts and minds will follow."
In Philadelphia, Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota stated this date to the United Steelworkers Union biennial convention that the steel industry had done a greater disservice to the country by undermining the defense stabilization program than any foreign "ism" could ever do. He said, to loud cheers and applause, that the steelworkers were justified in their claims for a wage increase and improved working conditions, and that the steel industry had refused to bargain in good faith and had not told the truth about the present dispute. He reminded that the union had not gotten everything it had sought under the recommendations of the Wage Stabilization Board but had, nevertheless, been willing to accept those recommendations as "good, patriotic citizens". He recommended that the companies also accept the recommendations.
The President, in a speech at a Department of Agriculture ceremony on the Washington Monument grounds, accused opponents of his farm and other programs of spreading "bunk and hokum" in an effort to discredit the Roosevelt and Truman Administration measures as "socialism". He predicted that the Democrats would win the 1952 presidential election on a platform of "Trumanism". He said that his and the previous Administration had shown that a planned economy works in agriculture and in every other aspect of national life. He indicated that he understood that well because he was a farmer and intended to return to the farm when he ended his term as President. He said that 87 percent of the nation's press had sought to discredit the Administration by insisting on calling its program "socialism". He promised to make a whistle-stop tour similar to that of his 1948 campaign.
In Greensboro, the North Carolina leaders of the Textile Workers Union of America were preparing a revolt against the national leadership and considering the formation of another organization, after the state director of the TWUA announced in a letter to members that he had been suspended by the union's Southern director. He noted that seven other North Carolina union leaders, all international representatives, had also been discharged since May 2. He suggested that the discharges were reprisals following the union convention in Cleveland on April 28, when many of those who had been fired had supported the defeated candidacy of George Baldanzi, executive vice-president, to become president of the union. He blamed Emil Rieve, elected as president, for the reprisals, and said that he was a "disgrace to the labor movement". There were reports that Mr. Baldanzi might go to work for the rival AFL United Textile Workers of America within a few days. Mr. Baldanzi stated that there had been some conversation about it but nothing definite.
The House passed and sent to the Senate this date a bill raising the pay of servicemen by nearly half a billion dollars annually.
Decisions on the seating of delegations from states involving 75 delegate votes at the Republican convention might prove decisive in the outcome of the nomination battle between General Eisenhower and Senator Taft, as there were competing delegate slates favoring each candidate in Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Additionally, a state convention on May 27 would determine the 38 delegates to be seated from Texas. The Associated Press tally of committed delegates showed that Senator Taft currently had 364 to 304 for General Eisenhower. The Senator's headquarters claimed 80 additional delegates. The Senator had apparently picked up 15 additional delegates in Tuesday's West Virginia primary, with one going to General Eisenhower. Nomination required 604 votes.
The next day, there would be a primary in Oregon.
Dr. Irving Langmuir, Nobel Prize-winning scientist, stated, in a story printed in the Tucson Daily Citizen the previous day, that he had created a nationwide pattern of weekly rainfall by seeding clouds with silver iodide in the Southwest. He was currently associate director of the G.E. Research Laboratory and his work had been part of a 21-month project sponsored by the Army, Navy and Air Force. He said that, to dispel the notion that it might have rained anyway, the scientists deliberately had set out to create a pattern of rainfall which could be measured across the country against rainfall patterns throughout recorded history.
In Charlotte, as told by News reporters Donald McDonald and Mack Bell, the first-degree murder trial of Albert Raymond Reinhart for the killing of a prominent Wilmington attorney, Emmett Bellamy, and the wounding of his associate on March 31, was in its third day. The judge ordered half the courtroom cleared after it had erupted in applause when the defense attorney had adduced an uncashed $300 check signed by Mr. Reinhart as partial payment for his mother's Wrightsville Beach property, which he had indicated had been the reason for his having shot the victim, for "stealing" the property. The prosecutor had sought to show on cross-examination of Mr. Reinhart that he and his cousin, a local furniture dealer, had made property deals with Mr. Reinhart's mother on the same day on which, according to Mr. Reinhart's earlier testimony, his mother had been unable to recognize him by name. The victim had previously acted as management trustee for two properties belonging to Mr. Reinhart's mother. The prosecutor sought to show that when the victim had tried to intercede on behalf of the defendant's mother regarding the sale, the defendant had killed him. The defendant denied this contention and said he would never cheat his mother, indicating that he had delivered the uncashed $300 check to her personally.
In a "Perry Mason" moment, the check was suddenly produced after the prosecutor had asked repeatedly where it was, suggesting it did not exist.
Old lesson in law: Never ask a question, especially of a hostile witness, unless you are already sure of what the answer will be.
Yet, in this instance, the "Perry Mason" moment does not appear to amount to much, insofar as a defense to alleged murder—save perhaps as an indicator that half the courtroom was watching too many crime dramas.
On page 13-A, appears the seventh in
the eight-part series by Dr. W. C. Alvarez, titled, "How To Live
On the editorial page, "Wiley—Junior Edition of Vandenberg" suggests that Senator Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin might emerge in the next Congress as a more limited version of the late Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, who had led the bipartisan foreign policy in the Senate. Senator Wiley was the ranking minority member of the Foreign Relations Committee and already had a voting record generally supportive of the Administration on foreign policy, having supported the 1946 British loan, the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, Point Four and arms for Europe, while opposing restrictive amendments to some of those programs, which had been supported by many of the Senator's Republican colleagues. He had not supported the Administration's position on some of the trade and tariff proposals, however, and had joined some of his party in making intemperate remarks, suggesting him as akin to Senator Tom Connally, being for Administration foreign policy on the whole but also willing to snipe at certain aspects.
More recently, however, he had favored milder rhetoric reminiscent of Senator Vandenberg, urging the placing of national interest above party interest. The previous week, he had used such language to favor the mutual security program, and in a recent speech had warned against dwelling on past mistakes, while commending Secretary of State Acheson's "many achievements" and urging a "constructive attitude" toward foreign policy.
He was undergoing criticism from within his own party, Senator Harry Cain of Washington having recently panned him. Colonel Robert McCormick's Washington Times-Herald had labeled him another internationalist foreign-aider, a "Truman Republican" in league with Alger Hiss, "another expert in betrayal".
Senators Karl Mundt of South Dakota and Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa, however, though both conservatives, had defended Senator Wiley, suggesting that he might not be, after all, the junior edition of Senator Vandenberg, or might be managing to appeal to conservatives in enlisting their support for bipartisan foreign policy.
"As Others See Us—II", referring to its recent editorial based on an Ottawa Journal editorial, which had reminded its readers that the soundness of the Canadian dollar was not the result of anything wonderful the Canadians had done but rather because of several things Americans had done, now recounts of an editorial in World Review, a British publication, scolding Britons for repeating such anti-American slogans as "dollar imperialism" without examining their meaning or considering their origin. The editorial had stated that the primary reasons why the Russians had not taken over Western Europe, either directly or through agents, were that the U.S. had the atomic bomb and the determination to fight for Europe, plus the fact that the Western European recovery had been enabled by American aid. The piece had remarked that while it was easy to see why the Communists would call that "dollar imperialism", it was not so easy to understand why so many Britons would do so. The editorial had made room for the fact that it was common to be galled by having to accept charity and that many educated Europeans disliked the American way of life, at least as it was presented by commercialism in magazines and films. There was also resentment from the fact that America had gained great advantages from the two wars which had ruined Europe.
The editorial had taken issue with the British Government for allowing control of European affairs to be surrendered by default to the U.S., whereas Britain and France should have exercised a more positive and vigorous role after the war. The piece indicates its concurrence in that view.
The piece wishes to stress that these editorials showed that in the countries which had been aided since the war by the U.S., there were influential people who understood Americans and appreciated what the nation had done for Europe since the war, notwithstanding some of the statements by U.S. political leaders that there was a lack of appreciation.
"Query" indicates that some Congressmen were going to investigate immoral and obscene matter in radio, television, books, magazines and comics because they feared that the morals of the people were being corrupted. It suggests that to investigate properly, they would have to read a lot of obscene matter and view a lot of immoral television shows, leading to the question whether the Congressmen themselves would thereby be corrupted.
"A Lesson for the Present" finds that a passage from the May issue of Harper's appeared to describe the current national problems accurately when it said that there had never been such a "hollowness at heart" than at present in the U.S., as "genuine belief" appeared to have left the people, with the underlying principles of the States no longer believed and humanity, itself, no longer believed in, amid an atmosphere of "hypocrisy". There was "great depravity" within the business classes of the country and the official services at every level of government were permeated with corruption, bribery, falsehood, and maladministration, with the judiciary also tainted. The country appeared to be marching in vain toward unprecedented empire, "as if we were somehow being endow'd with a vast and more and more thoroughly appointed body, and then left with little or no soul."
It had been written by Walt Whitman in September, 1870, three years before one of the worst financial panics in American history. Harper's had stated that the Dictionary of American History had said that the panic and ensuing depression had been caused by wars, speculation, over-expansion and extravagance, currency inflation and credit inflation, plus governmental waste.
Drew Pearson tells of the Reverend Billy Graham having stated a few weeks earlier that he would never get involved in a political campaign, but having attended a dinner with Alabama Congressman Frank Boykin in Mobile, having an impact on the revival-minded populace of that city. Congressman Boykin, meanwhile, was under investigation regarding his exertion of influence to obtain RFC loans which had benefited his family. He announced publicly in Mobile that he was providing to Reverend Graham a blooded Brahmin bull, leading other ministers in Mobile to wonder what the difference was between a bull and a mink coat.
The Army future was not bright for Brig. General Francis Dodd, former commandant of the Koje Island U.N. prison camp in Korea, who had been taken hostage the previous week for three days. He might be shipped to Okinawa, as the Pentagon was quite angry about his carelessness in allowing the prisoners to take him hostage at the point when the U.N. had placed on the table a package plan to end the deadlock in the truce talks, with emphasis on the voluntary repatriation issue, the remaining sticking point in the negotiations. The President had announced to the Communists that no further concessions would be made on prisoners of war, a statement with which the French and British had publicly concurred. At that point, General Dodd was captured, making the country the laughing stock of the Asiatic world, where saving face counted for everything. Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett was upset, as General Dodd and every other American general in Korea had known that it was an extremely important point in the truce talks and had been warned to be especially careful.
A significant test of the "Buy American Act" was now before the Army Corps of Engineers, and the entire diplomatic corps was watching. It involved the purchase of nine transformers by the Engineers for Garrison Dam in North Dakota. Secretary of State Acheson had repeatedly stated that the country could not expect the European allies to become self-supporting if the U.S. were not willing to buy their goods. Congress was working at cross-purposes to that policy with the Act, requiring the Government to purchase American products unless there was an "unreasonable" difference in cost, interpreted to mean 25 percent less than the American goods. As a test of the Act, the Engineers had received a bid from a London company on the nine transformers at $887,000, considerably less than the more than a million dollars to be charged by Allis-Chalmers.
Marquis Childs tells of tension growing within the Eisenhower and Taft camps, the nearer the approach of the Republican convention, with observers believing that the delegates in a half dozen states, to be decided before July 1, would determine who between the two candidates would get the nomination.
A visitor to General Eisenhower at his NATO headquarters in Paris recently had indicated dismay at his detached attitude, having repeated to the visitor that he did not want the nomination. He preferred to return to his farm near Gettysburg and retire, but had been convinced by the procession of politicians who had visited him that it was his duty to be President, and he would follow that duty. He continued to assert, however, that he would not work for the nomination. His primary supporters, however, were urging him to make two or three preconvention speeches in key states, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, to bring key delegates into line and put himself on record on the major issues. He was scheduled to make a speech in Abilene, Kansas, his hometown, where he would also field questions from several hundred reporters. If he were then forced to evade or equivocate and state that he would provide an extended talk on certain topics in a full speech later, that would be so much the better.
William K. Wyant, of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, tells of discussion of the circumstances under which the President might seize newspaper and radio stations having brought to mind the fact that President Lincoln, on numerous occasions during the Civil War, had taken disciplinary action against newspapers and their editors, primarily the so-called "Copperhead" press, Democratic newspapers in the North which favored the South. In instances where they were considered seditious, the Government generally shut them down, either by the Postmaster General refusing to afford them mailing privileges or by the local military commander proceeding against them under military law.
Despite being heaped with venomous attacks from the press, President Lincoln displayed restraint in his reluctance to interfere with the First Amendment, often intervening to soften measures undertaken by his commanders in the field.
Mr. Wyant suggests that Carl Sandburg's War Years and Robert S. Harper's Lincoln and the Press impressed on the reader that the Government, while embroiled in civil war, had allowed hostile editors to challenge the basic tenets of the North's position without reprisal for the most part. A Federal grand jury had named five offending newspapers and asked whether indictments could be brought against them, after New York newspapers, following the defeat at Bull Run in 1861, had called for an end to the war and even recognition, in some editorials, of the Confederacy. The grand jury never received an answer, but a few days later, the Postmaster General had ordered that the mailing privileges of the five newspapers be suspended. Shortly afterward, the War Department had published a general order setting up court-martial procedures for newspapers "holding correspondence with or giving intelligence to the enemy." The editor of one of the five newspapers was arrested by order of Secretary of State Seward on a charge of treason, and was imprisoned for eleven weeks without trial before finally being released. An editor in Newark, who had been indicted in the summer of 1864, was convicted and fined for publishing an editorial damaging to the draft.
Maj. General John C. Fremont, who had been the Republican presidential nominee in 1856, and was commander of the Department of the West after mid-1861, placed divided Missouri under martial law. He suppressed two St. Louis newspapers for publishing false statements regarding military movements in Missouri and shut down another St. Louis newspaper. He had the editor and his assistant of a fourth St. Louis newspaper arrested after they had criticized General Fremont's tactics in the Union defeat at Lexington, Mo. When General George McClellan had succeeded General Winfield Scott as commander-in-chief of the Army, General Fremont was promptly removed.
A Chicago newspaper had called the Emancipation Proclamation "the most wicked, atrocious and revolting deed in the annals of civilization." It demanded an end to the war. Union troops then were ordered to seize the newspaper in June, 1863, causing violent reaction in Chicago, where mobs threatened to sack the pro-Administration Tribune in response.
He concludes that President Lincoln had deeply resented some of the press criticism but had conducted himself with restraint.
A letter writer from Seneca, S.C., comments on an earlier letter from a minister in Matthews condemning segregation, and some of the positive and negative responses to that letter, especially as it related to the subject of interracial marriage. He indicates that in 1870, a "student of humanity" had traveled the world to make a close study of the races and in his subsequent book, he stated that on an island in the Atlantic he had found the people made up of one-eighth black ancestry, with the most beautiful women in the world. A French authority some 50 years earlier had stated that most Europeans had a trace of black blood. James Bryce, an English statesman-scholar and authority on matters of government and history, had stated in a pamphlet published in 1910 that when the two races mixed, the result was usually a stronger race and never a weaker one. John Randolph of Virginia had not been far removed from half-breed Indian ancestry. Thomas Jefferson was accused of having mulatto children. And Senator Richard Russell claimed to be a Jeffersonian Democrat.
He concludes: "So what?
A letter writer questions why the reappraisal of property in the county had been high for residential and farm property while low for business and industrial property.
A letter writer hopes that the country would not become so carried away with replacing the President that it forgot also to replace Senators and Congressmen. The average person in the country, he posits, knew that the President was not to blame for everything which had gone wrong in Washington. He wants a new Congress who would complement the new President.
A letter writer from Gaffney, S.C., indicates that he had enjoyed the articles by Dr. W. C. Alvarez regarding human nerves, heart, and blood pressure, believes that they would do much good.
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