The Charlotte News

Saturday, October 3, 1953

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Panmunjom, the U.N. Command this date refused to extend beyond the official December 24 deadline the period during which the allies and Communists could seek to change the minds of the prisoners of war who were resisting repatriation. General Mark Clark, retiring U.N. commander, reaffirmed the allied opposition to any extension of that time period. The Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission had sought an extension because of delays in starting the program, triggered by disputes over facilities in which the interviews would be conducted. The 90-day period was supposed to have begun on September 26.

In Seoul, South Korean President Syngman Rhee said that he was shocked at the bloodshed in the prisoner compounds guarded by the Indian troops in the demilitarized zone, which had resulted in three prisoners having been killed and ten injured in the previous two days by Indian guards, in an effort to quell outbreaks of violence and attempted escape by the prisoners, in defiance of the Communists and the Indian troops. The South Korean acting foreign minister called the deaths of the anti-Communist prisoners "criminal acts of murder". He warned that South Korea would take up arms against the Indian troops if they did not rectify immediately the "evil acts" committed. He said that the Indians were actually Communists, while professing to be neutral.

At the U.N. in New York, increasing differences between the U.S. and its allies regarding Korea threatened their united front on major questions at the General Assembly, with some delegates indicating that the issues had to be ironed out before further U.N. consideration of world problems could take place. The disputes had arisen because the nations had not decided to the satisfaction of all how they should proceed in reaching the goal of peace with honor, though the goal, itself, was not in dispute. Some of the allies wanted the U.S. not to be so stiff and unyielding on all issues, while others were interested in the recurring demands for a personal meeting of the heads of state of the Big Four powers. The consensus was that the opening round of debate in the Assembly had shown weaknesses and divisions on the Western side and that unusual efforts had to be undertaken to repair those divisions.

In London, Britain reportedly was urging a plan aimed at breaking the Korean peace conference deadlock by proposing to allow both sides to invite neutral nations, including India, to join the conference table. Diplomatic informants had said the previous day that the Churchill Cabinet had worked out the new Korean strategy. No details of the proposal had yet been made public but informants said that it was based on the assumption that the Korean peace conference would have to be broadened in terms of its participants. Russia had warned that the conference might not take place at all unless the U.N. adopted its proposal that certain Asian nations, such as India, Burma and Pakistan, were invited. The U.S. had taken the view that the conference, itself, could invite neutral nations, but only after it had begun its deliberations. The U.N. had voted against the Russian proposal, supporting the U.S. view that the initial conference should be limited to the combatant nations, a limitation already approved at the earlier conference to establish participation and ground rules for the conference.

In Rome, Pope Pius XII, speaking before delegates from a score of nations attending the sixth International Congress of Criminal Law, urged the nations of the world to adopt a code of international law which would punish crimes having international consequences, chief among which, he said, was waging of an unjust war. He also said that even in a war of self-defense, not all means of waging war were acceptable, including mass executions of innocent persons for reprisal, the execution of hostages, massacres motivated by hate or race, mass deportations, violence against women and children, and roundups of men for forced labor. He said that at the end of World War II, some perpetrators of major crimes had evaded punishment by flight from the countries in which they had committed the atrocities. He had received the delegates in a special audience at his Castel Grandolfo summer residence.

In West Berlin, some 120,000 residents bade farewell to deceased Mayor Ernst Reuter, as final services were conducted in the open before City Hall this date. Additional hundreds of thousands lined a six-mile route to the cemetery in the U.S. sector of Berlin, near the tiny villa where Mr. Reuter had worked late into the night when he suffered a heart attack the previous Tuesday.

In New York, a fact-finding board appointed by the President to make recommendations by the following Monday regarding the longshoremen's strike on the East Coast, this date heard employer testimony that the strike would cause "tremendous losses". The board said it would first hear from employers and then from the longshoremen. About 75 pickets booed and cheered as American Export Line non-longshoremen employees handled lines to aid the docking at Pier 84 in New York of the Italian passenger liner Andrea Doria, eventually to sink in 1956, but the ship otherwise docked without incident. The waterfront generally was quiet again this date as the strike entered its third day.

In Albany, N.Y., political and labor circles in New York and New Jersey responded to an official disclosure that government and union officials had visited with labor racketeer Joseph Fay while he was in prison. The story had developed the previous day after release by the New York State Department of Corrections of a list of Mr. Fay's visitors at Sing Sing. Among the 80 names of visitors, was acting Lt. Governor of New York, Arthur Wicks. The disclosure prompted a demand by Governor Dewey for a "complete and satisfactory explanation". Mr. Wicks responded in a statement that his visits with Mr. Fay had been "a public service" to avoid labor troubles in his state senatorial district, and that he resented any implication of wrongdoing. The Republican gubernatorial candidate in New Jersey said that he had written a letter in 1951 to Governor Dewey, asking for executive clemency for Mr. Fay, but said that he knew him only as a one-time construction laborer and never on a social basis, that there was nothing improper about his letter and that he had not seen him since he entered prison. Mr. Fay had been vice-president of the AFL International Operating Engineers union, and had been convicted in 1945 of extortion and attempting to obtain $386,000 from the Delaware aqueduct project, part of the New York City water system. He had entered prison in February, 1948, sentenced to between 7.5 and 15 years. Some of his listed visitors were connected with Yonkers and Roosevelt raceways, harness tracks near New York City which were currently the focus of a state investigation prompted by stories of labor racketeering at the tracks.

In Everett, Mass., between 30 and 40 men were trapped at noon this date in an underground collapse of a tank at the Esso Standard Oil Co. plant. The first police reports indicated that a heavy top was being installed on the tank when it gave way, trapping the men. It was not yet known how many men were trapped or whether any had been injured. Ropes were being used to rescue the trapped men.

In Kansas City, no word had yet come to parents or police regarding the whereabouts or condition of a six-year old boy who had been kidnapped six days earlier from the French Institute of Notre Dame De Sion, a private Catholic school, by a woman posing as his aunt, offering up to nuns at the school a story that the boy's mother had suddenly been stricken and taken to the hospital. The parents continued to wait and hope for some word, denying published reports that a $500,000 ransom had been demanded and that the parents had been in contact with the kidnappers. The father was a wealthy automobile dealer in Kansas City. The police chief said that he had not been in contact with the family since they had asked on the prior Monday that the police not intervene. They had received only routine tips.

An early fall mild period continued over wide areas of the Eastern half of the nation this date, but it was cool in Western areas.

In North Carolina, voters would decide this date whether to approve bond issues for a total of 72 million dollars, 50 million of which would be devoted to improving school facilities and the remaining 22 million, to improving mental health facilities. Governor William B. Umstead, who had proposed the bond issues to the Legislature and had supported them, said in a statement the previous day that he had faith that the voters would approve them. In Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, voter turnout prior to noon this date was quite light. One precinct reported only having 159 voters by noon, while several others reported even lighter turnout.

In Winston-Salem, three cornerstones were sealed and laid this date at the site of the new Wake Forest College campus, the three cornerstones representing the church, the humanities and the sciences, the educational trinity. The three cornerstones were for the new Wait Chapel, the Z. Smith Reynolds Library and the Chemistry and Research Building. Senator Alton Lennon of North Carolina gave an address, indicating that learning was an absolute essential, necessary for the advancement of both Christianity and democracy, and represented "the hypothesis of true civilization". Dr. Martin Whitaker, president of Lehigh University and one of the nation's top authorities on nuclear physics, said that science had developed to the point where it was properly recognized as a partner with the humanities as an academic discipline, and that college trained men and women who expected to exercise properly their role as leaders in a democratic society had to be able to think in terms of the world in which they lived. Dr. C. Oscar Johnson, pastor of the Third Baptist Church of St. Louis, a former president of the Baptist World Alliance, said that the church needed the Christian college and the Christian college needed the church, that the ultimate goal of education was to know God and to do His will, that the only source for leaders of the church was the Christian college. The ceremonies were preceded by a tour of the new campus and a concert by the 60-piece Wake Forest College band, playing from an elevated spot within the Wait Chapel tower, in front of which the rites and speeches had taken place.

Afterward, the students present likely engaged in their favorite chant: "Go to hell, Carolina, go to hell."

In Virginia Water, England, the American Ryder Cup team retained the golfing trophy this date, but only after a bitter struggle with a determined British team, which almost regained the cup after 20 years in American possession. Dave Douglas of Newark, Del., and Bernard Hunt of England, finished tied in their 36-hole match, leaving the final score 6.5 points for the U.S. and 5.5 for Britain.

On the editorial page, "'Professor' Jonas' Class in Government" indicates that Congressman Charles Jonas had addressed the Sardis Community Fellowship Club the prior Thursday night, making complicated budget and tax problems understandable and interesting, as if a professor on the subjects. He would be providing talks throughout the Congressional district during the current month and it hopes that many citizens would attend one of his talks.

It supposes that listeners attending one of the talks left a bit pessimistic in outlook regarding the prospect of substantial tax relief, but suggests that they would also have better insight into the difficult business of government. It provides an example about which he had related, regarding executive departments often scaling down estimated needs drastically when their budgets were sternly scrutinized by executive and legislative leaders, thus causing the Air Force, for instance, which the previous year had said that it needed 22 billion dollars, to state finally during the current year that it could produce a terrific force with only 13.5 billion. He also said that the economy record of the current Congress could not be assessed until the end of the second session in 1954, that a comparison of appropriations and tax levies during any single year was misleading because money authorizations in previous years, which came due a year or two later, required the current Congress to appropriate money for billions in authorizations actually incurred by the prior Administration.

"Will the Legion Pull in Its Horns?" indicates that since the American Legion had been formed at the close of World War I, it had grown into a giant veterans organization, claiming to speak for millions of veterans, and acting as a lobbying group for veterans' rights. Through the years, it had broadened its field of activity far beyond mere protection of the interests of veterans, their dependents and survivors, seeking to proclaim what books ought be banned from public libraries, to have actors fired who were engaging in politics of which the Legion disapproved, and denouncing public officials whose policies it did not support. It sought to discredit magazines and organizations with which it disagreed, setting itself up as the arbiter of culture, literature and government policy. By doing so, it had aroused the indignation and disgust of many veterans for whom it professed to speak.

The new commander of the Legion, Arthur Connell of Connecticut, elected the previous month, had spoken in Greensboro to its local Legion post prior to his election, saying that the organization ought return to its original purpose, paying more attention to the work of the Veterans Administration than any other part of government, that it had become involved in too many programs not related to its original purpose.

It indicates its agreement with his position and believes the Legion would be more effective by sticking to its original purpose.

"To the Newspaperboys, a Bow" tells of it being National Newspaperboy Day, part of National Newspaper Week, and so pays its manners to those who delivered the newspaper through sunshine and rain, bringing it to the customer while the news contained therein was still fresh. It indicates that among them were many who would become constructive leaders in their community, largely because of the excellent experience gained in managing their own affairs in the process of delivering newspapers.

"Correction" indicates that a couple of days earlier, the newspaper had quoted a story from Greensboro which said that a café in Taylorsville, along with 19 other places, had purchased a $250 slot machine license tax, in response to which the Mayor of Taylorsville had called the newspaper to tell them that the café in question was not inside the city limits, rather in Alexander County, beyond his jurisdiction, indicating that they did not allow slot machines in Taylorsville.

"Everything but Foul Home Runs" finds that everyone had their own reasons for being happy or unhappy that the baseball season was ending. It relates of its happiness resulting from it being tired from hearing announcers repeat that a certain player had established or equaled or come close to a record for games won by "four-eyed pitchers" or for the most runners left on base in a 13-inning game, or the highest percentage of games won in a month, etc.

Major League Baseball announcer Mel Allen had observed the previous day that the World Series record book contained about every statistic except "foul home runs", and that when the data in the record books were added to the elephantine memories of announcers, the result was a conglomeration of inconsequential and ever-changing statistics which would paralyze a computer.

It indicates that it was unhappy because on one of the coming Saturday afternoons, someone would probably say excitedly that a fullback had recovered more fumbles than any other sophomore who parted his hair in the middle.

The World Series, incidentally, would end the next day with the New York Yankees beating the Brooklyn Dodgers 4 to 3 in the sixth game, to take the Series four games to two, the fifth straight Series victory for the Yankees. The Yankees had taken the lead in the tied Series this date with an 11 to 7 slugfest win, probably shattering many records for a Saturday afternoon in October at Ebbets Field, excluding nighttime and morning games.

Speaking of sports and Yankee Stadium, we trust that history will not seek revivification the day after Thanksgiving, 2020, when UNC hosts Notre Dame, for the first time in Irish football history participating in conference play, as a temporary Covid-19 season addition to the ACC, which had begun its inaugural season a week earlier here in 1953, as the unimpressive Tar Heels would lose their third to last game of the year, 34 to 14, to the then-number one and 6-0 Irish, also in Kenan Stadium, UNC's last home game of 1953, on its way to a 4 and 6 season, its first under coach George Barclay, succeeding Carl Snavely, the Irish that year finishing number two to national champion Maryland, coached by Jim Tatum, to become UNC coach in 1956, before his untimely death during the summer of 1959 from Rocky Mountain spotted fever. This year, Notre Dame is ranked number two in the country, with an 8-0 record, having narrowly beaten then-number one Clemson in double overtime three weeks ago in South Bend, albeit Clemson then being without its star quarterback, Trevor Lawrence, out after a positive coronavirus test, the Irish entering the game as a 4.5-6 point favorite over the 6-2 Tar Heels, the game promising many broken records, within and without skipping into the inner groove, which in fact was the case in the UNC run-passfest win over the Demon Deacons of Reynolda Gardens, 59 to 53, in the last outing two weeks ago for the Tar Heels, UNC registering 742 yards of total offense, 550 of which were from passing. The temperature is expected to be mild, the skies clear and blue over Chapel Hill, with an anticipated crowd of 3,535 grandstand-rocking fans jamming into the hallowed and storied stadium, in which the first game was played toward the end of 1927 against Davidson, nine years after the last such pandemic to sweep our nation, in 1918, when the Tar Heels fielded no team, as in the previous year, because of depletion in the ranks of students serving their country in the Army during World War I, the flu of that year claiming 675,000 deaths in the U.S., nearly six times the 116,000 deaths of Americans in 19 months of U.S. participation in World War I, which in turn were fewer than half the deaths thus far occasioned by the 2020 pandemic, now reaching 267,000 in eight months, equalling or surpassing the initial official number of deaths of Americans in 44 months of participation in World War II, as provided by the U.S. Government in 1945, about 260,000. If you are to be among those screaming, screeching, bewitching, clawing, rabid fans cramming into Kenan for the game, be mindful of your neighbors and friends and stay masked and socially distanced, so that you do not wind up in the ICU or otherwise sidelined, or communicate the disease to others whom you know or don't. For the Irish, we suggest that it could be the worst post-Thanksgiving since the potato famine. But we shall see. To the UNC players, bear in mind Shakespeare's admonition: "...And by that destiny to perform an act, whereof what's past is prologue, what to come in yours and my discharge."

A piece from the Greenville (S.C.) Piedmont, titled "Three Classes of Men", indicates that recent weather had divided all men into three divisions, as in Gaul under Caesar, those who went out without coats or possibly ties, those compromisers who carried their coats on their arms or over their shoulders, and those who wore dress shirts and ties and coats, the "imperviously resolute". "Let them perspire."

Drew Pearson discusses the reluctance of former Governor Earl Warren to have campaigned in either 1948 or 1952 for the Republican presidential nomination, despite being urged by party leaders to do so in 1952. He had responded that he did not take well to getting out on the hustings and campaigning, that if the people wanted him as a presidential nominee they would indicate it by their votes. Mr. Pearson had talked to him in Chicago during the Republican convention in 1952, when it was obvious he would not be nominated. He was a bit sad but philosophic, saying that it took too much money to line up delegates, causing the candidate to be in hock for the rest of his life, and he did not think it paid. When he had announced a few weeks earlier that he would not again seek the gubernatorial nomination in 1954, after 12 years as Governor, he could not have known that he would be appointed to become Chief Justice following the September 8 death of Chief Justice Fred Vinson.

His father had been murdered by a burglar one night when Mr. Warren was young, leaving him to support his mother, possibly accounting for his great sympathy for the workingman and his support of New Deal-type projects. His family had suffered considerable illness during his youth and he knew what it was like to have to struggle to pay doctor's bills, contributing to his support of a healthcare program in California, which had met with great criticism from doctors. Mr. Pearson posits that it was also possibly the genesis of his support for low-cost public housing, for rent control, and his fight against the big landowners regarding the 160-acre limitation on irrigation under Federal reclamation.

He had never joined the fringe movements in California, either those emanating from the left or the right, even though it would have been politically beneficial to do so. He had refused to go along with requiring loyalty oaths for State employees of California, saying that the State had never hired Communists in the first place. That stand was unpopular, especially among Republicans on the Board of Regents of the University of California, prompting luncheon remarks in San Francisco in 1952 by General Eisenhower, critical of the Governor's stance, saying that he did not know of any loyalty oath he would not take. Governor Warren had responded that as president of Columbia, General Eisenhower, along with James B. Conant, president of Harvard, had been the first college presidents to take a public stand against loyalty oaths. The Governor also said that Columbia had more Communists than any other university in the country.

While Governor, there had been frequent speculation among the judiciary that he had appointed more Democratic judges than Republicans.

The way he would vote on cases on the Court would probably follow the way he had conducted policy as Governor. In the latter role, he had recommended that the California Legislature pass a fair employment practices law and had appointed Walter Gordon, a black man with whom he had played football at the University of California, to be chairman of the California Parole Board. He had moved to end segregation among Mexican schoolchildren in the San Bernardino area, after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had delivered a decision against segregation. He had written that he did not know how they could carry out the spirit of the U.N. while denying fundamental rights to Latin American neighbors.

Regarding housing, rent control, and education, Governor Warren had gone about as far as the Roosevelt-Truman Administrations, and had frequently drawn the ire of reactionary Republicans in the California Legislature regarding those policies.

Joseph Alsop, in Hong Kong, indicates that the end of the fighting in Korea probably came just in time for the Communist Chinese to avoid paying heavy penalties for having entered the war. It was evident from the vantage point in Hong Kong that there had been a severe strain imposed on the Chinese Communists by their effort in Korea, losing some of their best officers and soldiers and having to pay heavily to the Russians for Russian equipment, which the Chinese economy could not afford.

During the previous year, China's exports of rice and other grains had surpassed 750,000 tons per year, in a country which, in better times, normally imported around a million tons of rice per year. Those Chinese exports were being paid for by the Russians at prices 50 percent under the world market price. The evidence was overwhelming that the Chinese wanted desperately to end the fighting by the previous fall, as manifested in the Indian formula for settling the two-year sticking point in the truce negotiations begun in June, 1951, how to handle the issue of prisoners who did not desire repatriation, the Communists contending that the allies were not telling the truth about the large numbers of prisoners who had so expressed such a desire. The previous December, the Indian Government had put forward the proposal, eventually adopted, after the Chinese had already approved it but Russia had not. After a few days of Russian attacks on the proposal in the U.N., the Chinese followed suit and likewise condemned the proposal, even though Chinese Foreign Minister Chou En-Lai had helped to develop it.

At that point, the following winter, Secretary of State Dulles visited New Delhi, warning Prime Minister Nehru that the U.S. would have to take the offensive in Korea even at the cost of spreading the war into China, with full knowledge that the Prime Minister would relay the information to China, as he had. The death of Stalin on March 5 had no doubt impacted the willingness of the Russians to accept the proposal. In any event, they eventually did accept it, in part through the efforts of Chou, who had attended Stalin's funeral and remained in Moscow about two weeks to urge support of the Indian proposal.

Another indicator of the Chinese desire for the truce was that in August, 1952, they had sent to Moscow a high-powered mission to seek more liberal Russian aid, apparently blocked by Stalin's rigidity, as nothing was accomplished until after his death. New Premier Georgi Malenkov announced a preliminary agreement to increase Russian aid to China, as Chou departed from Stalin's funeral.

China now urgently needed aid as its food grains had been exhausted by the export program, complicated by farmers leaving their fields fallow in protest of the heavy taxation, resulting in the current year's harvest of wheat and rice having been far below normal. There were reports of famine in Szechuan, China's richest agricultural province, and the coming winter would likely produce nationwide famine, forcing the population to resort to eating roots, bark and even dirt.

Industrialization would be an agony if it were to be paid for out of the land. Their five-year plan for development had been repeatedly revised since its announcement the prior January, and if the war had continued, there could have been no national development. The truce had eased the strain at a critical time, while allowing the Chinese leadership to garner the benefits of war, both in terms of increased prestige in Asia and in strengthening its military power.

Marquis Childs indicates that one of the momentous issues which confronted the Supreme Court in its coming term, to start the following Monday, was the right of Florida, Louisiana, Texas and California to the offshore oil lands along their borders. The Supreme Court had previously held twice that the Federal Government had the rights to that oil, and twice, Congress had passed measures providing it to the states, President Truman having vetoed the first bill, but President Eisenhower having signed the second bill the prior May.

At the same time Attorney General Herbert Brownell had requisitioned an Air Force plane to transport him to California for his secret conference with Governor Earl Warren, in advance of the announcement of his appointment as Chief Justice, Alabama had filed suit against the Federal Government and the governors of the four states in question, alleging that the money from the oil ought go to all of the states and not just those four, and therefore that the rights of Alabama would be jeopardized unless the Court overruled the action of Congress, which had granted to three of the states, Florida, Louisiana and Texas, the mineral rights to their historic boundaries, nine nautical miles into the sea. Alabama argued that it would penalize its fishing industry, that if the legislation were upheld, then Florida or Louisiana could demand a license from Alabama fishermen, traditionally allowed to fish to within three miles of the shoreline of the other states.

It was likely that Chief Justice Warren would recuse himself from the case, as he would have been a defendant in the case as Governor of California, and he had vigorously advocated ownership by the four states of the oil. It was anticipated that West Virginia would join Alabama in the case.

It was unlikely that the Court would determine prior to January whether it would consider the case.

Robert C. Ruark, in the fifth in a series of seven columns on declining morale on the part of officers and soldiers in the occupation army in Germany, commanded by General Kenneth Cramer, indicates that one of their chief gripes was the extra amount of work they had to do and the decreasing amount of contribution to that work by the Germans. Recently, the General's forces had been reduced, triggering his reforms involving increased discipline. There had also been a reduction in the German "flunky personnel, maids, janitors and the like", with such menial chores returned to the Army. Mr. Ruark had found that to be the chief complaint.

General Cramer spent a large part of his time working on his doctorate in history at the University of Munich, and otherwise hunting and fishing, insisting that four hours per week had to be devoted to drill, marksmanship and other soldierly pursuits, which peacetime troops did not relish.

It was not the first time he had suffered a problem in loss of morale by his troops. In June, 1951, he had made headlines at Camp Pickett in Virginia, where his 43rd Division of the National Guard had been training. Time had said that the morale of the men was being ruined, that they were being denied ordinary privileges, that no wives could be quartered on the post, while the General's wife lived and ate there. Other complaints included that food and equipment was in short supply and that the regiment's fighting spirit was lacking. It had been a good regiment, with four Presidential Unit Citations, 987 Silver Stars, 75 Distinguished Service Crosses and two Congressional Medals of Honor, awarded in the Pacific fighting during World War II, but had become known at the Pentagon as the "cry-baby" division in more recent times. Nevertheless, General Cramer's explanation had apparently satisfied his superiors.

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