The Charlotte News
Tuesday, June 10, 1952
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President had addressed a hastily assembled joint session of Congress this date, asking for the power to seize and operate the steel industry, indicating that the choice was between Federal seizure and use of the Taft-Hartley Act to obtain an 80-day injunction against the strike, which he regarded as the worst of the two approaches, as the United Steelworkers had already postponed their strike for 99 days prior to the Government seizure on April 8, held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court a week earlier, prompting the present strike. He indicated that to invoke Taft-Hartley would effectively require the workers to continue working for another period of time without any change in wages and working conditions. He asked the Congress to act quickly, as the issue of peace or war hung in the balance, with steel a vital element of the outcome. He urged that the power of seizure should include the ability of the Government to change the wages and working conditions of the steelworkers and provide for a method of determining just compensation for the mill owners. The President recommended setting up special boards, within the framework of the economic stabilization program, to make those determinations.
On Koje Island, off Korea, U.S. paratroopers ended a prisoner of war rebellion in the camp after a 2 1/2 hour battle which made a shambles of the compound and uncovered a prisoner plot to seize the island. Thirty-one prisoners had been killed and 139 wounded in the fighting. Autopsies indicated that 12 of the prisoners had been killed by their fellow prisoners, using crude spears. One American had been killed and 14 wounded, only one of whom seriously. The fight erupted when the prisoners disobeyed orders to move peaceably into new, smaller enclosures containing about 500 prisoners each. No shots had been fired by the paratroopers, using instead concussion grenades, bayonets, teargas and fists to subdue the prisoners, armed with spears, knives, rocks and firebombs. Brig. General Haydon Boatner, commander of the facility, had given the prisoners an opportunity to move to the new quarters peaceably, but the Communist leaders had chosen to fight. Following the fight in one of the compounds, the prisoners in a second compound meekly obeyed the order to move.
Also in Korea, the top U.N. air commander, Maj. General Glen Barcus, told a press conference that his air spotters had found no sign of an enemy build-up for a new offensive, and if they had, they would seek to abate it. He said that they knew that the Communists had a lot of men in North Korea but that in its rough terrain it was easy to conceal people. He indicated that the spotters had not been able to see enough from the air to suggest a build-up. He was responding to a statement recently made by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and by U.N. headquarters in Tokyo that the Communists had built up their forces in North Korea during the period of truce talks.
In Berlin, British troops removed the barbed wire barricade from Russia's Radio Berlin headquarters early this date, ending a seven-day siege which had won several concessions from the Soviets. The radio station was located in the British sector. The 40 Russian and German Communists inside the building for the previous week refused to exit after the barricade was removed, saying that they would not emerge until relieved by a fresh staff. Under the pressure of the siege, the Russians had loosened their squeeze on West Berlin, yielding several of the border areas which they had seized in recent weeks. Allied officials determined that if they maintained the siege too long, it could boomerang and result in retaliation. The Communists had cut all except four of Berlin's highways to West Germany and Allied military patrols were still barred from the single Allied roadway through the Russian zone to Berlin.
In Chicago, the Republican national convention arrangements committee this date selected General MacArthur as the keynote speaker for the convention, perceived as a victory for Senator Taft, as the General had indicated his support for the Senator. There had been no opposition speeches to the selection. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., campaign manager for General Eisenhower, indicated that they would have preferred an impartial keynoter, but expressed admiration for General MacArthur. Walter S. Hallanan of West Virginia, a solid Taft supporter, was chosen temporary chairman of the convention. House Minority Leader Joseph Martin of Massachusetts, who had praised General MacArthur as a possible nominee, was selected to be the permanent chairman. Senator Eugene Millikin of Colorado, also a Taft supporter, was named by RNC chairman Guy Gabrielson as chairman of the convention platform committee.
There was an issue as to whether Army regulations would forbid the General from speaking, as they banned "activity at political conventions" and "the making of political speeches". General Eisenhower had applied for retirement and received approval for it from the Army, and unless General MacArthur did likewise, his ability to make the keynote address was in question. General MacArthur remained a salaried officer on active duty but without any command. Some military lawyers indicated that even in retirement, both generals would need to pull their punches directed at the Democrats, or potentially run afoul of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which applied to both active and retired officers. The Code stated in Article 88 that an officer who used "contemptuous words" against the President, Vice-President, Cabinet members, members of Congress, governors or state or territorial legislators, would be punished as a court-martial would direct. General Eisenhower had stated that he did not intend to deal in personalities, and if he stuck to that limitation, he would likely not violate Article 88. But legal authorities thought that limitation might be difficult for General MacArthur to maintain during a keynote address at the convention, traditionally expected to carp at the opposing party. Resignation from the Army would avoid the problem.
General Eisenhower would meet this date with Republican delegates of Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina, after meeting the previous day with delegates from New Hampshire, Connecticut and Massachusetts, as well as with a doubtful Delaware delegation. The Associated Press indicated that in Alabama, nine of the delegates were supporting Senator Taft, four, General Eisenhower, with one uncommitted. In Georgia, all 17 delegates were in dispute, and in North Carolina, 13 were for Senator Taft, seven for General Eisenhower, and six were uncommitted.
Clare Boothe Luce had visited with the General the previous day and said that he had answered General MacArthur's charge that no military man should be President by indicating that modern war caused its leaders to be complete administrators, economists and diplomats. She also indicated, without suggesting that General Eisenhower had said so, that General MacArthur had his name placed in nomination at the 1948 Republican convention and that she did not recall him at that time stating that a military man should not be President.
Senator Taft indicated this date that Republicans could avoid a possible fight over the platform at the convention by adopting the 1950 "statement of principles and objectives", to which General Eisenhower had indicated his assent during his Abilene speech the previous Thursday. The 1950 statement had indicated that the party wanted "to win lasting peace, to build a country in which every citizen may make the most of his skill, initiative and enterprise, to hold aloft the inspiring torch of American freedom, opportunity and justice, assuring better and happier life for all our people."
Well, how can anyone negate any of that? Count us in!
In Durham, N.C., the 34th annual American Legion state convention was coming to a close this date, and had elected C. Leroy Shuping of Greensboro, running unopposed, as the new state commander. William B. Umstead, who had won the Democratic gubernatorial primary ten days earlier and so, essentially, was slated to become the next Governor, addressed the convention the previous day. Washington commentator H. R. Baukhage, in a speech to the convention the previous night, predicted that the Republicans would nominate Senator Taft and the Democrats, Governor Adlai Stevenson, for the presidency at the conventions.
In Glasgow, Scotland, a wife
indicated that her husband had slept away from home for eleven years,
but that she had never suspected the truth, which turned out to be
that her mailman husband had set up a second home, with a second
wife, supporting both on about $20 per week earnings. Initially, he
had told his legal wife that he was staying with friends for the
weekend, until eventually it stretched into the entire week. Yet,
every morning at around 10:00 he would arrive home to prepare
breakfast. His wife said that he was a very good man in the house and
when she complained about him not coming home at night, he had
threatened to leave, and so she said nothing more about it. He
provided his legal wife the equivalent of $8.40 while giving his
other wife $11.20, keeping the leftover 40 cents for himself. The
husband had been charged with and convicted of theft and bigamy. His
attorney stated that he might never have been caught had it not been
for the fact that he began robbing the mail which he was supposed to
deliver, to provide both women with some extra benefits. He was
sentenced to six months in jail for bigamy
On page 10-B appears a piece by Emery Wister of The
News, who was in Hollywood and had interviewed the "scrumptious"
Maureen O'Hara
On the editorial page, "A 'Re-examination' of Segregation" considers the Supreme Court decision announced the previous day to accept for review the lower Federal District Court rulings in Brown v. Board of Education, out of Topeka, Kansas, and Briggs v. Elliott, out of Clarendon County, South Carolina, on the question of whether racial segregation of the public schools was unconstitutional per se as a denial of Equal Protection under the 14th Amendment, despite the Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine of 1896, holding that separate-but-equal facilities passed muster under the Equal Protection clause. The lower courts had held, in both cases, that segregation was not per se unconstitutional, while also holding that the public schools had to be substantially equal.
The piece, after reviewing some of the recent Federal Court decisions, indicates that, in its opinion, the Supreme Court could not logically abandon the separate-but-equal doctrine. It suggests that the states had the right to run their public institutions in accordance with the wishes of the majority of their citizens, as long as equal facilities were afforded to the segregated races. It finds wisdom in the reasoning of U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge John Parker, writing in Briggs, that there was a distinction to be made between public secondary and primary schools, where attendance was compulsory, and public university and graduate schools, where attendance was voluntary. Judge Parker had written that the law had to take into account in the public school context the wishes of the parents regarding the upbringing of their children and their children's associates during the formative period of childhood and adolescence. He had indicated that if public education was to have the support of the people through their legislatures, it could not be contrary to the parents' wishes.
The piece suggests that by pointing that out, it was not defending segregation as a moral or ethical principle but was simply re-emphasizing that the Constitution, by omission, had left public education to the individual states, and that segregation should not be abolished either by Congressional act or by judicial decree. Rather, if it was to be abolished, the individual states should do so, "when the minds and hearts of their people have been freed of ancient prejudices and emotions."
And, how are you supposed to do that under a persisting segregated system, without, typically, any contact between the races except in a master-servant status, reminiscent of old great-grandpa a-fitin' the good fit up yonda at Gettysbu'g for all glory and the ways we do things down heya?
It also fails to recognize in its Constitutional analysis that state action in any area was circumscribed by the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process, Equal Protection and privileges and immunities clauses, as Plessy, itself, had recognized 56 years earlier. No one was proposing that the Federal Government run the public schools, only that judicial oversight ensure that the state and local public school systems were not engaged in violation of Equal Protection through maintaining unequal facilities for segregated black schools, a practice found to be so prevalent in the South and so invidiously discriminatory to black students and their ability to integrate into society under the stigma of segregated status, that, ultimately, the Supreme Court deemed the entire system of public school segregation unconstitutional.
"Kefauver—The 'Little' Democrats' Choice" tells of Senator Estes Kefauver's visit to the state, including Charlotte, the following day, and the increased favor with which Democratic and independent voters now viewed his candidacy. He had won all of the primaries he had entered except that in Florida, won by Senator Richard Russell. In February, he had been the choice as the nominee of only 21 percent of Democratic voters, while in April, the Gallup poll placed him as the choice of 33 percent, and in May, 41 percent. During the current week's poll, he had risen to 45 percent. That equaled the combination of the five leading competitors for the nomination, with Governor Adlai Stevenson tied with Senator Russell, at 10 percent each, and Vice-President Alben Barkley, receiving 17 percent. Senator Kefauver was also the favorite Democratic candidate among independent voters, receiving 42 percent support.
It had been speculated that his success resulted from the facts that many Democrats and independents agreed with his stands, that he had vigorously opposed machine politics and corruption in government while also supporting many policies of the Administration, and had a straightforward, unassuming manner which inspired public confidence. He had been in the Administration doghouse, inspiring sympathy for the underdog as well.
His critics claimed that he was exploiting his television fame from a year earlier during the televised hearings of the Senate crime committee which he had chaired, but his record was also filled with constructive work during his 13 years in the House and Senate. He had been a leader in the Congressional reorganization effort in 1946, having written Twentieth Century Congress, remaining a blueprint for needed changes for updating and strengthening the legislative branch. He had supported most Administration foreign policy measures and was the leader of a group of Congressmen who had sought to set up the political machinery for the North Atlantic military alliance. He had worked as a Congressman to ban the poll tax and had never joined his fellow Southerners in filibuster of civil rights measures, proposing to the contrary to limit filibuster, but had voted against taking up the compulsory FEPC bill in the Senate.
North Carolina Democrats had endorsed Senator Russell, but there had been considerable support for Senator Kefauver at the recent Raleigh state convention in May. It suggests that the delegation might swing to Senator Kefauver at the convention in Chicago.
It indicates that it would not be surprised, as it had stated on January 3, if the opposing candidates for the presidency would turn out to be General Eisenhower and Senator Kefauver. It thinks that such a campaign would be conducted on a "relatively high plane", as presidential elections went, with both candidates in considerable agreement on foreign policy, the campaign therefore centering on domestic philosophy and personalities.
"New Messenger Boy" tells of Soviet Ambassador Alexander Panyushkhin being replaced by Georgi Zarubin, but finds that there was probably no significance in the change. Professor Philip Mosely of Columbia University's Russian Institute had recently stated that the present-day Soviet representative could hardly be called a "negotiator" in the customary sense, that he was rather to be treated as a mechanical mouthpiece for the views and demands formulated by the Kremlin. So, it concludes, Moscow would be the place to watch for Soviet policy shifts, as well in Communist propaganda circulated around the world. It concludes that Soviet policy would now have a new parrot within the Embassy in Washington.
Drew Pearson tells of President Truman, while not prepared for the hit given him by General Eisenhower during his Abilene speech the prior week, had, nevertheless, not shown any sign of being upset, stating the next morning, however, that "Mister" Eisenhower had quite a bit to learn about politics.
He had told Stanley Andrews, head of the Point Four program, that after his term as President ended, he wanted to associate with the work of Point Four. He added that General Eisenhower believed that the problems in underdeveloped countries could be solved with birth control, and that he had told the General that if he made that statement in a speech in Boston, the Democrats would carry Massachusetts by 200,000 votes.
Pentagon observers were watching General Eisenhower's speech at Abilene closely, not only because they were supportive of the General personally but also because they were somewhat worried over the idea of a military man entering politics. They recalled an incident during World War II when General Marshall had called General Eisenhower into his office to review plans drafted by General Marshall regarding the North African campaign, General Marshall asking General Eisenhower what he thought of the plans, to which the General responded that he thought they were fine, to which General Marshall replied that he had better think so because he was going to be in command. That had been the biggest break of General Eisenhower's military life, putting him on the road to becoming a national hero and now the presidency. Yet, in Abilene, the General had criticized U.S. policy toward China, blaming the Truman Administration for its loss to the Communists, knowing full well that General Marshall, as Ambassador to China in 1946, had first set that policy in motion, and that as Secretary of State, from 1947 to 1949, had carried that policy into being. Finally, as Secretary of Defense for a year, beginning in September, 1950, he had opposed the MacArthur policy of arming the Chinese Nationalists, building up Formosa, and providing total support for Chiang Kai-shek.
Old military friends of General Eisenhower and of General Marshall recalled that there were bitter feelings between General MacArthur and General Marshall, and that General Marshall, along with the Joint Chiefs, had supported the President in firing General MacArthur in March, 1951. Yet, in the Abilene speech, General Eisenhower had said that he would consult General MacArthur if he were elected President.
Senator Joseph McCarthy, during a speech on the floor of the Senate, had bitterly attacked General Marshall regarding the Far East policy, and the Senator later had collected enough money to have the speech printed and it was now being circulated throughout Wisconsin. Yet, when General Eisenhower was asked to comment about this fact, he demurred, saying that he would not "engage in personalities".
Mr. Pearson indicates that those who had sat in on the strategy meetings during World War II knew well what was chiefly to blame for the loss of China, that being the natural tug-of-war between different theater commanders for guns, men, and matériel. General Eisenhower, as supreme commander in the European theater, was constantly wiring Washington for more men, more guns, and more gasoline, with the support of Prime Minister Churchill, while in the Pacific, General MacArthur was asking for the same, and in the China-Burma-India theater, Chiang was also seeking the same, with General Joseph Stilwell supporting him. The American failure to support Chiang adequately during that period had begun the loss of China. Winston Churchill had done more than almost anyone to set back U.S. policy in China, when he had balked whenever General Marshall urged more support for Chiang and more supplies for the Burma Road. The Prime Minister wanted to concentrate on the European campaign.
General Marshall had done more than anyone else, with the exception of General Albert Wedemeyer, in urging support for Chiang. Prime Minister Churchill had urged FDR to appoint General Marshall as supreme commander of the Allied forces during the cross-channel invasion at Normandy, to get his mind on the European theater and off the campaign in China. Mr. Pearson notes that had that occurred, General Marshall, rather than General Eisenhower, would have been the hero of Europe and there would have been no speech the previous week in Abilene.
Raymond Moley, in the eighth of his series of 12 articles abstracted from his 1952 book, How To Keep Our Liberty: A Program for Political Action, indicates that the ideal of a viable two-party system in the country had gone a long way to preserve liberty, but that the ideal also needed to become a workable reality.
In the South, the two-party system was practically extinct. Only in Virginia was there a single, disciplined hierarchical party, and in some other states, there were partially formed parties. Generally, however, high offices went to the leader who could sway the voters in a sufficient number of counties beyond his own. Republicanism in the South was largely a "hungry dream". There had been some increase in the Republican vote in sections to which Northerners had moved for industrial opportunity or the more favorable climate, but a party had to grow from the bottom, at the county and local levels, where the Democrats were firmly entrenched.
The possibility of developing a vital Republican Party in the South was limited by the character of the official Republican organizations in several of the states, led by persons who lived off the expectation of a Republican as President, elected by Northern votes. As long as the national Republican Party adhered to the issue of civil rights enforced by Federal law, no Republican candidate could hope to make much progress in the South.
He suggests that since about seven million Northerners had voted for John W. Davis in the 1924 presidential election, running as a Democratic conservative, when they had the choice of Robert LaFollette as another alternative to incumbent President Calvin Coolidge, and that these millions had also voted for Al Smith in 1928 and FDR in 1932, "both running on conservative platforms", it could be assumed that several million traditional Democrats were antagonistic to the "socialistic implications" of the Fair Deal. Those Democrats were "politically homeless".
The Republican Party in the West and in the North also had grave infirmities. In about 32 states, it frequently elected governors, Senators, and some Congressmen, and in 20 of those, it was fairly dominant. It had the majority of the Congressional delegations of 24 states, but also had handicaps within the 32 states, where there was cross-party voting allowed, diluting party responsibility. Thus, he concludes, the Republican Party was not a true national party.
It had a "vitally important, almost malignant internal weakness." In foreign affairs, it had serious divisions which endangered its very existence and in domestic policies, its extremists, radical and conservative, had almost pulled it apart at the seams. It had a successful past, but a part of that past had prevented it from winning the marginal vote which might have meant so much for its future. It clung to the principles of the 1870's, when it sought by Federal force bills to establish civil rights in the South. As a party of Federalism, it had failed to make a strong issue of the "stolen" powers and responsibilities of the states.
In foreign affairs, it had permitted three Democratic Administrations, Wilson, Roosevelt and Truman, to "steal its laurels". It had permitted its enemies to convince millions of people that it was a party of isolationism. In the four previous presidential elections, it had not shown itself to be a party around which citizens could rally for the preservation of liberty and of conservative principles.
Among Democrats, Federal officeholders now controlled conventions, wrote party declarations, shaped party policy, and made dubious alliances with groups who were neither authentically aligned with the Democrats nor with any other party. That perversion of the Democratic Party, he suggests, had begun with FDR, and President Truman had continued the trend, as he was "trained in the craft of machine rule". He suggests, therefore, that the present ruling regime resembled the traditional Democratic Party only in name. It was instead a machine.
Party government, he concludes, had ceased to function. He suggests that the decline had become apparent in recent election results, as between 1940 and 1948, the total number of eligible voters had risen from approximately 80 million to 91 million, whereas, in 1940, about 50 million people had cast their ballots for the presidency, in 1944, 48 million, and in 1948, 48.8 million. Wendell Willkie, running as a Republican in 1940, received 22.3 million votes, Governor Dewey, the nominee in 1944, 22 million votes, and about the same number when he was again the nominee in 1948. The votes during the same period for FDR and President Truman had fallen off even more, with FDR having received 27.2 million in 1940, 25.6 million in 1944, and President Truman, 24.1 million in 1948. He finds that these figures showed that the voters had indicated lack of confidence in the party system, having "drifted into a tragic state of indifference."
James Marlow discusses the bitter campaign between the supporters of Senator Taft and those of General Eisenhower, which could become a struggle at the national convention the following month. The contest was focused on the disputed delegations of Texas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. Senator Taft had offered to compromise on some disputed Southern delegations, but had not indicated how it would be effected. The General's supporters had declined the offer.
He suggests that if the fight became too fierce, it could split the party into such hostile camps that it could cost the Republicans the election in November. That had occurred in 1912, when President William Howard Taft, Senator Taft's father, had run for re-election, with former President Theodore Roosevelt, also a Republican, interposing himself eventually as a third-party candidate under the Bull Moose label. The result was a plurality election for Woodrow Wilson. While no one was suggesting a duplication of 1912 in 1952, as General Eisenhower had stated he would support the candidate chosen by the convention, the rift could still do substantial damage. The TR-Taft split had occurred at the 1912 convention, when TR became disgusted with the control exerted over the convention by the Taft people. He was then persuaded after the convention to run as a third-party candidate.
In 1952, he indicates, the national committee and the credentials committee, just as 40 years earlier, would be the key groups to determine whether Taft or Eisenhower delegations would be seated at the convention, and, just as in 1912, the big fight would be over the delegations from the South, where the Eisenhower supporters claimed that the Taft supporters had pushed them out.
The "Congressional Quiz", from the Congressional Quarterly, provides the question whether Congress had decided on any get-tough legislation to discourage future tax irregularities, and answers the query by stating that Congressman Cecil King of California, chairman of the House committee investigating the tax scandals, had offered a bill in mid-May to stiffen record-keeping requirements, extend Government enforcement powers and penalize influence peddlers, tax "fixers" and taxpayers who did not reveal enough about the sources of their income on their tax returns. In late May, the bill had won the support of Treasury Department officials.
Another inquiry asked whether WACs could remain in service when they became mothers, to which it responds that they could not, but that there was a move afoot to change the law, with Senator Russell Long of Louisiana empathizing with a WAC major appearing before a Senate Armed Services subcommittee in late May, testifying that she had lost her commission when she had a baby.
Another question asked how U.S. production of warplanes was coming along, to which it answers that it was far behind Soviet production, especially in jets. Production, however, was increasing.
A final question asked whether government was going to subsidize American production of jet airliners, to which it answers that a Senate committee was studying the problem.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.