The Charlotte News
Friday, June 27, 1952
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Stan Carter, that allied fighter-bombers had again attacked Communist hydroelectric plants in North Korea the previous night, the third such attack of the week, this time the targets including two of the plants previously spared, both at Changjin. Other Air Force and Marine fighter-bombers hit a third station at that location and another plant at Fusen, which had been struck in the earlier raids on Monday and Tuesday. The Air Force spokesman said that the five plants hit Monday and Tuesday were all out of action and the time it would take to restore them was not presently known.
In other air action, U.S. Sabre jets reported shooting down one Communist MIG-15 jet, while other allied planes dropped bombs and rockets on enemy front line positions and supply areas.
In ground action, the Eighth Army reported 177 Chinese killed and 107 wounded in a daylong battle for two strategic heights west of T-bone Hill, not far from Chorwon on the western front. U.N. forces were pulled off one hill just before dark but dug in for the night on the other ridge.
In London, the Big Three foreign ministers were putting the finishing touches on the Western reply to Russia's request for talks regarding German unity. It had not been finished when they recessed for lunch, but the work would be resumed later in the day. The foreign ministers were reportedly trying to get the Soviets to show their true hand regarding their sincerity in demanding a four-power discussion of the unification of Germany. There was a strong feeling among Western diplomats that the Russians merely wanted to stall for time and were simply trying to upset the Western schedule for rearming of Germany and its inclusion in the Western sphere. The Soviet note, delivered May 25, had protested the signing by the Western nations of a peace contract with West Germany and the inclusion of West Germany in the projected European army of NATO. The Big Three wanted a neutral commission to determine whether free elections could be held in both East and West Germany.
Senate and House confreres had met this date in an effort to work out a compromise economic controls bill, the current measure set to expire at midnight Monday. They were expected to meet late into the night. The House had passed a bill by a vote of 211 to 185 the previous day, which would eliminate practically all price controls after June 30 and most rent controls starting September 30. It would retain, however, most wage controls. The Senate bill under consideration would keep price and wage controls, as well as rent controls. The two bills therefore differed vastly. Both bills had also indicated that the President should invoke Taft-Hartley to end temporarily for 80 days the 26-day old steel strike. The only other area of agreement in the two bills was that the Government should continue allocation and placing of priorities on scarce materials.
A late bulletin indicates that the Ford Motor Company had announced that it was shutting down all of its assembly plants for Fords and three out of four for its Lincoln-Mercury division after the following Monday, because of the steel shortage.
A late bulletin indicates that Congress had voted the McCarran-Walter immigration bill into law this date, overriding the President's veto of the bill, which in a message accompanying the veto, the President had called "infamous".
In Cherry Point, N.C., a Flying Boxcar plane crashed and burned during a routine training flight, two miles from the Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station, where it was based, killing all five Marines aboard.
In Eddyville, Ky., the second prison riot in 24 hours had occurred at the State prison this date, but the guards had restored order within a half hour. No one had been injured, whereas the previous day's rebellion had resulted in eight prisoners being wounded by gunfire and the injury of one guard. None of the 300 who participated in the previous day's uprising had taken part in this day's disturbance.
General Eisenhower, in a speech the previous night in Denver to 11,000 people, attacked those who had been in power too long, charging the Democrats with internal corruption, fear and indecision in foreign policy, runaway Government, and, generally, "complacency, negligence and cynicism". He said that the exposure of the corruption had been the result of efforts of Republicans in Congress—which surely must have only accidentally failed to include Democratic Senator Estes Kefauver. He said also that the country was too ready to trust the "godless dictatorship", which had brought on the war in Korea and the Communist victory in China, the splitting of Germany, the enslavement of Baltic and Balkan countries and the struggle in Greece. He advocated use of economic, military and spiritual strength against Communism. He called for less big government but also urged not turning back the clock to eliminate the great human gains which had been made.
On page 7-A, a poll taken by the American Institute of Public Opinion had determined that General Eisenhower would win against Senator Kefauver in the fall election, were it held at this time.
The Democratic runoff primary in North Carolina would take place the following day, with a featured race being that between Judges R. Hunt Parker and William Bobbitt for a seat on the State Supreme Court. Three Congressional districts would also select nominees and 14 General Assembly seats would be determined.
In the Northern areas of the country, a massive cool air front brought relief from three-day heat wave, but there was still no relief in sight for the Southern half of the nation. In three days, there had been 82 deaths connected with the heat, and thousands of cases of heat prostration and heat exhaustion.
Emery Wister of The News tells of residents of Charlotte having to endure 100-degree weather for the third day in succession, with a predicted high of 102, potentially breaking records for June and all-time. The previous high for this date had been 98.5 degrees in 1950. The high for June had been 102.7 and the all-time high, 103.2. It had been 90 at 8:30 a.m. this date, and 98 by 12:30. It was the 18th day of the month on which the temperature had exceeded 90 degrees. The record for the month was 20 days above that indicator. The average for the month was about six degrees over normal, and potentially it would become the hottest June on record for Charlotte, the previous average having been 81.3 in 1943.
Donald McDonald of The News tells of the telephone number for the U.S. Weather Bureau at Douglas Municipal Airport having been busy for the previous three days, with the phone ringing an average of 75 times per hour. Nine out of ten of the phone calls had been from women, and one of those assigned to answer the calls ventured that maybe the callers had nothing else to do. Invariably, the question was regarding the present temperature. Sometimes they would ask whether it was going to rain. Sometimes they asked for the coolest place to go, and the response had been the nearest beer parlor or Mt. Mitchell, where, the previous day, it had been 72. Some people stated, in slow, Southern drawls, that the Weather Bureau ought do something about the hot weather.
"Y'all gon' do som'un abite it? It's hot as hell down heya. We just burnin' dine."
On the editorial page, "Will There Be War in '52?" finds that for the prior several months, the Communist press had been preaching a new form of propaganda, not aimed at the "capitalistic war-mongers" and "Wall Street imperialists", but rather at ordinary Americans, engendering hatred among the Communist peoples for the American people, and accusing American soldiers of cannibalism and gross atrocities in the Korean War, seemingly a prelude to a major move which could lead to total war. Russia and China were also trying to establish that the U.S. had used germ warfare in Korea, possibly a pretext for their own use of biological weapons.
Germany appeared to be the likely target for any fresh aggression, as it was at the center of NATO and the Schuman plan for pooling of iron and steel resources in Western Europe. The recent efforts by the East Germans and Soviets to make travel difficult between West Berlin and West Germany bespoke such possible intentions. The shooting down of at least one Swedish plane off the coast of Estonia also suggested that secret military preparations were in progress in that region.
The fact that the U.S. was undertaking preparation for defense of its ports and the Panama Canal Zone, as well as the institution of a 24-hour watch on the skies suggested that the Government was preparing for defense against potential aggression. Also, major air maneuvers by the Soviets in the Pacific had been underway to test U.S. radar and ground-observer defenses, proving that they were currently inadequate.
It wonders whether it was Soviet bluff and admits it lacks sufficient information to evaluate those events in terms of the likelihood of war, but suggests that some explanation was overdue from the President to the American people regarding this possibility of war and how realistic it was.
"Let's Finish the Job Tomorrow" urges voters to vote in the runoff primary the next day, and urges voting for Superior Judge William Bobbitt for the State Supreme Court, who had wound up second in the first primary to Judge R. Hunt Parker.
"Lattimore Deserves an Apology" tells of the State Department having seriously injured the reputation of Owen Lattimore, after the Baltimore Sun had broken the story that the State Department had ordered the Customs Bureau to prevent Mr. Lattimore from leaving the country, after an informant had told the CIA that he was planning a trip to either Russia or one of the satellite countries. Mr. Lattimore had not applied for a passport and said he had no intention of traveling abroad any time soon. It turned out that the informant had lied, and it hopes that a Seattle grand jury, impaneled to investigate the informant's misrepresentation, would deal with him appropriately. It concludes that, meanwhile, the State Department owed Mr. Lattimore, object of scrutiny by Senators Joseph McCarthy and Pat McCarran, but who in fact had not done anything wrong, an apology.
"We Shed a Tear of Sympathy" remarks on Neils Downe's piece on the page regarding the paving of a stretch of road on the Outer Banks, from Nags Head to Hatteras, and his friend's lamentation of the fact. Once the tourists would arrive, Hatteras would never be the same.
It indicates that it was thus the more imperative for the State to work with the Federal Government in the creation of a national park on the Outer Banks. The previous week, the Council of State had appropriated $618,000 toward the purchase of the land for such a park, after being assured that it would be matched by a private donation. Some 8,000 acres had already been acquired and it was hoped that a total preserve of 25,000 acres would eventually be created.
The residents of Dare County protested that they wanted to develop the area and enjoy its fruits. But it finds that the Outer Banks were too important to all of the state and its early history and too unique in its isolation to permit commercial exploitation. The character of the area would be destroyed unless it were protected. There was a state park at the tip of Hatteras, but a national park was necessary to keep intact and unspoiled the bulk of the area.
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, entitled "Just Before Takowdering", tells of the Atlantic Monthly having invented a new word, "advertorial", a portmanteau of "advertising" and "editorial", an editorial which had the object of inducing the reader to purchase something. It suggests that the editor of such an advertorial would be engaged in either aditing or editizing, and the piece desires to know which.
The reader, in turn, would either be thinchasing or purking, and, again, the piece would like to know which.
It concludes that its own reaction was to takowder, that is "take a powder".
Chet Huntley, presumably in a transcript from an ABC radio program, later to become half of the Huntley-Brinkley NBC nightly news, seeks to define what a liberal was to him. He indicates that a liberal had a firm belief in the Constitution, a wide and consistent application of the Bill of Rights, a belief in the free enterprise system and the due processes of law. He also believed that a liberal was a person who had to pick one's way between two sometimes incompatible convictions, such as a belief in small government on the one hand, while on the other, a belief that sometimes government was the best means to handle such matters as social security programs and to act as referee over interstate commerce and conservation of natural resources.
A liberal was a person who could listen to opinions which differed from his own and believed that the greatest asset of the country was its people. He subscribes to a definition provided by Ruth Suckow in Some Others and Myself, that "… liberalism is an approach to the truth, and is not the truth itself. It is not any particular set of beliefs, be they ever so modern; it is a way of coming to the truth one's self, and the essence of this way is freedom. It is a faith that we can and must come to our belief in perfect freedom, and it is a willingness to grant to others just such a freedom as they and we have already received from God…"
He also indicates that there were some things which a liberal was not, including a belief that all talent and virtue centered in Washington, being impressed by big government, favoring automatically Federal projects over local ones, or automatically growling at every mention of big business, the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, or Senator Homer Capehart.
He finds that the true liberal as well as the phony liberal were under fire by people who might once in awhile bring down a true Communist, while along the way wounding a lot of good citizens. Some of that had been accidental but not all of it, and those who were just plain stupid were often being employed by those who knew better, who were professing to wage a fight for democracy but in fact were not true liberals themselves, as they could not tolerate an honest difference of opinion or an unorthodox conviction.
Drew Pearson tells of Col. Jake Arvey, the Democratic boss of Chicago, quietly passing around the word that Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois had consented to become a candidate for the Democratic nomination at the convention. If true, it was the most important development in the Democratic race since the President's withdrawal on March 29. With the backing of the President and other big city bosses among the Democrats, the Governor could undoubtedly obtain the nomination. Yet, the Governor knew that it would be political suicide for him to be regarded as the nominee of the big city machines and he understood that a number of independent Democrats would vote for the Republicans in 1952 on the basis of a need for change, should the Democrats field a nominee too close to the Administration.
Senator Kefauver presented that kind of independence, from both the Administration and from the big city bosses, whom his crime investigating committee of 1950 and 1951 had exposed in their graft and corruption. But the Senator, who could win in November more easily than any other Democrat, could not be nominated without the support of the President.
Governor Stevenson, by contrast, had the support of the President, but could not win in November if he did not oppose the very men who would hand him the nomination.
Senator Russell Long of Louisiana had made a significant deal on tidelands oil with the economy bloc in the Senate, a deal negotiated with Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, to cut a billion dollars from the military construction program in return for enough votes from the economy bloc to override the President's veto on tidelands oil. Among the cuts to be made was 84 million dollars in military construction for Louisiana, and most Senators were reluctant to cut funds for their home state. So his colleagues, who generally respected him, were wondering why his interest in tidelands oil was being placed ahead of military construction for Louisiana. Mr. Pearson posits that the interest derived from the fact that the Long family owned royalty rights on oil lands off the Louisiana coast, and when questioned about the fact, the Senator had stated that his father, former Governor and Senator Huey Long, had left him six shares in the "Win or Lose Oil Co.", with each share valued at $25,000, including royalty rights on 40 acres of offshore oil. His mother owned additional shares. Senator Long, however, claimed that no oil had been discovered on the land and that he had notified the Senate Interior Committee of his holdings so that the Senate would know of his personal interest in the matter.
Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee was presently trying to get Congress to reconvene for a summer session on August 4, right after the conventions, and his colleagues contended that it was because he wanted an excuse not to show up in Tennessee for his re-election campaign. Senator McKellar was 85 and knew that he could not mount an active campaign and feared that many constituents would not vote for him if they saw his current condition. He was holding up several appropriations bills to force Congress to reconvene. But under the Senate's seniority system, it was difficult for the Appropriations Committee, of which he was chairman, to function if he did not want it to do so.
Neils Downe, as indicated above, writing in the Richmond News-Leader, tells of his friend, Cuthbert Whoosis, lamenting the opening on July 4 of the link of paved road from Nags Head to Hatteras, making the last relatively untrammeled stretch of North Carolina's Outer Banks accessible by tourists and automobiles on a regular basis. Mr. Whoosis, who is liberally quoted throughout the piece, finds that cause for beating of breasts rather than celebration, a sadder day than that in 1589 when the Lost Colony was discovered to be lost.
He imagines the earlier time, before civilization came to the area.
"'If you are one of earth's lucky ones, one of those who was shown a leprechaun in your cradle, you can see, from Hatteras on a cloudless eve, light gleaming in the minarets of Tangier on the Moroccan Coast. A man's fancy, you know, is more powerful than the H-bomb. Faster than a jet plane, it is, and keener than all the telescopes on Mount Palomar...'"
"'In those days, if the tide was out we rode the beach. The beach was wide, and hard, and clean, and would have shamed the builders of the Merritt Parkway.
"'If the tide was in we beat our way, foot by foot, through the deep, reluctant sands. Each winding rut was a challenge. Some would let you through. Others might clutch you like a drowning man. In that case you got out and walked five, six, seven miles to the nearest Coast Guard station...'"
"'But now, I daresay, they will soon abandon these picturesque stations of the sea whose chief business, for years, has been the hauling of adventurous motorists from out the un-shifting sands. The run to Hatteras will be as adventurous as Main Street on a rainy Sunday morn—though probably a bit more dangerous—and shiny new wrecking trucks and siren-bedecked ambulances will take over this new, more deadly business...'"
"'In Memoriam,' said friend Cuthbert Whoosis."
To Mr. Whoosis, we say, there is
still some spirit of adventure left, if one, as we did a few years
ago, suddenly takes a mind to cut off the main road onto one of the
many uncharted, short sandy side roads leading down to the water. We
made it about four hundred yards before getting stuck in the sand on
a Sunday morning, hot as blazes. While only a quarter mile from the
main road, it might as well have been 500 on a Sunday morning, with
no tow trucks available for hours. We were there, using driftwood to
try to form skids for the wheels, futilely, for about four hours
until, by good fortune, someone else, in a four-wheel drive pickup,
better suited to the unshifting sand than a station wagon, decided
also to turn down this particular
Marquis Childs tells of Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett, in a closed session of the Senate Armed Services Committee, having said that the Defense Department considered the ensuing weeks to be a period of great peril. He finds it particularly impressive coming from Secretary Lovett, as he spoke normally with moderation and precision.
The propaganda campaign against the U.S. by the Russian press had reached a nearly hysterical crescendo, including charges of atrocities perpetrated against North Korean and Chinese prisoners of the U.N. forces, as well as against Puerto Ricans and others alleged to be enslaved by the U.S. It was believed by top policymakers that the effort was prelude to a sudden move by the Soviets, very likely to come in East Germany, and centering on Berlin.
That threat was one reason for Secretary of State Acheson visiting both Berlin and Vienna, flying to Berlin through the air corridor in which so many incidents had occurred involving Soviet military aircraft buzzing or firing on planes of the Western powers. The Secretary would fly in the President's plane and with an escort of jet fighters provided by NATO.
Mr. Childs indicates that while a significant step, it was being wholly ignored at home, as the American public was no longer following with great interest the moves by the President or the Secretary of State.
A letter writer indicates that he was a Democrat and held elective office in Mecklenburg County as a Democrat, that of justice of the peace of the Long Creek Township. But he had come to the conclusion that the national Democratic Party was the party of war and that to blame the depression of the 1930's on the Republicans was wrong, as it had actually come about when the Democrats were in power and that it had actually continued, but for its replacement by a false war prosperity. He says that he, therefore, would vote Republican on the national level, while continuing to be a Democrat at the local and state levels.
We certainly hope, in the meantime, while you can vote any way the hell you want to vote, that you don't decide to teach history at any point. For you are a know-nothing, one of those who refuses the intervention of any dateline and facts associated therewith to disturb your preconceived vision of how things were and are going to be. The Crash of October, 1929, for instance, and the failure of the Hoover Administration to address the ensuing failure of the banks across the country, routine bankruptcies of farmers, and the general collapse of the economy, were all, we take it, the fault of the Democratic minorities at the time in both houses of Congress, not the Republican Congress or the Republican President. And the fact that the economic collapse in Europe, which led to the development of Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany, both left unchecked militarily, had nothing at all to do with the Harding Administration's determination not to have the U.S. participate in the League of Nations, reversing the Wilson Administration's effort to have the League as a preventative body to the recurrence of world war, and also had nothing to do at all with the laissez-faire economic patterns of the three successive Republican Administrations between 1921 and 1933. And, of course, for people like you, history actually began in 1914.
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