Saturday, May 2, 1953

The Charlotte News

Saturday, May 2, 1953

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that at Panmunjom, in the seventh day of the renewed Korean War armistice talks, the Communists asked this date for a one-day recess after naming four alternative Asian neutral nations, India, Pakistan, Burma and Indonesia, any one of which they considered qualified to take custody of the 48,000 U.N. war prisoners who had expressed a desire not to repatriate to the Communist homelands, and the allies agreed to the one-day recess. No reason was stated for the request for the recess. Lead U.N. delegate, Lt. General William Harrison, reiterated the allied position that the neutral country should take custody of the prisoners within Korea until the prisoners' future was decided, saying that whether any of the four named nations would be acceptable was a question to be determined at much higher levels than his. Washington officials stated that it was possible that Pakistan or India would be acceptable to the U.S., but that the only firm policy commitment remained to either Sweden or Switzerland, the latter of which had been rejected by the Communists.

Meanwhile, the U.N. prepared to end its current delivery of disabled North Korean and Chinese Communist prisoners on the following day.

Twenty Americans who had been released by the Communists arrived at the Valley Forge Military Hospital outside Philadelphia early this date to receive further hospital care and treatment. The men were tired and ill, and their trip to the hospital had been shrouded in secrecy to prevent the press from further causing them problems.

A Marine sergeant, one of the released U.N. disabled prisoners, said in Tokyo this date that his treatment had been "passable" in the Communist prison camp where he had spent 6 1/2 months, but he objected to the rice diet, which he said he had associated only with weddings.

At Travis Air Force Base in California, another planeload of released U.S. prisoners arrived this date from Korea, with 40 men aboard. The litter-bound cases appeared not to be in bad shape.

Senators Russell Long of Louisiana and John Stennis of Mississippi this date protested the Administration's decision to abolish the Office of Director of Installations, set up by Congress eight months earlier, questioning whether the President understood the function of the office and urging him to reconsider the action, that the Congress had set up the office as a special watchdog agency, which, according to Senator Long, had saved the taxpayers billions of dollars by placing a "bridle on the most outrageous type of military waste and extravagance". The abolition of the office was part of the Administration's plan to reorganize the Defense Department, which would become effective in 60 days unless either the Senate or House vetoed it by a simple majority.

The Government this date raised interest rates to 4.5 percent on most home loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration and guaranteed by the Veterans Administration, an increase of one-quarter percent on FHA loans on single dwellings and by a half percent on VA loans and larger projects insured by the FHA. The increases would only apply to new loans. The increases were in line with the Administration's new "hard money" policy, permitting the lending industry to resume its activity, as the lack of availability of money at four percent had made it increasingly difficult to secure home loans on that basis.

In Tunis, in Tunisia, unidentified assassins machine-gunned and killed the deputy mayor this date, as he ran for re-election, scheduled for the following day.

In Baghdad, an 18-year old descendant of the Prophet Mohammed was crowned King Feisal II, while his cousin, King Hussein I, became the third reigning monarch of Jordan in Amman, the latter succeeding his father, Talal, who had been dethroned a year earlier by the Parliament because of a nervous ailment.

In Washington, a Federal District Court judge this date dismissed four of seven counts of perjury against Owen Lattimore, Far Eastern specialist formerly advising the State Department, now teaching at John Hopkins University, ordering Mr. Lattimore to stand trial on October 6 on the remaining three counts of the indictment returned the previous December 16. The judge refused a motion for change of venue and for further postponement of the trial until 1954. Among the counts dismissed was the principal one, which alleged that Mr. Lattimore had lied in denying that he was a sympathizer or promoter of Communist interests, the judge holding that the count violated the First and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution, the former protecting freedom of speech and belief, and the the latter, the right to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation against the accused—which also is required under the Fifth Amendment Due Process clause.

Tornadoes and thunderstorms hitting the South had accounted for 28 deaths thus far, the latest occurring in Tennessee where three members of one family had been killed in an early-morning twister. Alabama was hit for the second straight day, leaving seven dead and 12 injured. A twister had left 18 dead and between 250 and 300 injured in Warner Robins, Ga., the previous day.

Residents of Georgia and South Carolina were officially cautioned this date to watch for threatening funnel clouds which might turn into tornadoes.

In Charlotte, a 61-year old construction worker was beaten to death, and police charged his 17-year old son with murder in the killing. Police said that the son had admitted using a crowbar in the killing, saying that he did so in self-defense, believing that his father was about to strike him after the father had arrived home and began cursing the boy's mother. The boy stated that his father said that if the boy hit him, he had better kill him, at which point he grabbed the heavy crowbar and struck his father on the head. There were no eyewitnesses to the killing. Police said that the victim had been struck several times in the head—a fact which likely led to the the murder charge, tending to dispel the claim of self-defense. A preliminary hearing in City Recorder's Court was scheduled for Monday morning.

News garden editor, Cora A. Harris, had been awarded the Purple Ribbon Certificate for Creative Horticultural Achievement at a luncheon at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, by the National Council of State Garden Clubs meeting in convention. Ms. Harris was also appointed to serve as one of five members on the publicity committee of the Council, representing the South Atlantic region. The state representative of the Council said that Ms. Harris's work with herbs both at home and abroad, her outstanding landscaping projects, her achievement in the continuity of bloom in the borders at the Charles A. Cannon Gardens at "For Pity's Sake" near Kannapolis, her experimental vegetable garden which had attracted national attention, her many horticultural and garden feature articles in national magazines during a period of years, her work as garden editor of The News and her contribution to garden club work by speaking before club gatherings all over the state and the South, had earned her the award.

But the question we have is what will Raymond do with that gun?

Near Greenville, N.C., two brothers reported catching a sturgeon weighing 197 pounds and measuring 8 feet, 7 inches in length, near Yankee Hall in the Tar River. Old-timers of the area could not recall such a large catch, the closest having been 25 years earlier when someone had caught a 100-pound fish. We already know, of course, that they obtained that fish at the local fish market, after having gotten the idea from "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" a week earlier, a subversive program, encouraging of willful dissembling to the corruption and distraction of others. HUAC ought investigate the program's producers and writers for inducing the nation's populace to believe in fish stories, thus making them more ripe for the catch by Commie propaganda.

On the editorial page, "In the Merry Month, a Storm Cloud" indicates that North Carolina Senator Willis Smith had been understandably upset at reports that a bloc of State Senators had wanted to convince him not to run in the 1954 Senate race out of fear that he might lose the Democratic nomination to former Governor Kerr Scott, and thus were planning to back a fellow State Senator as the alternative candidate. Senator Smith's letter to the Burlington Times-News had been rife with indignation, saying that he would be pleased to meet any group of North Carolinians "in open session, with radio and newspaper reporters present," suggesting a slap at the entire General Assembly and its new law passed during the 1953 session which permitted closed sessions regarding budget matters. The piece regards Senator Smith to have been correct in saying that no "small group of men, even if they are state senators" had the right to determine the next U.S. Senator, that the right belonged to the people.

It finds that his unusually early announcement that he would definitely run for re-election the following year suggested that there was something to the report about the State Senators' question of his candidacy and that he had wanted to head off a rebellion. It indicates that it had no opinion at present on the outcome of a potential race between Senator Smith and former Governor Scott, that both men were scrappers and neither fought with "silken gloves", that it would be a "whang-dang battle entertaining to the voters if not particularly enlightening."

But since it was the Merry Month of May, and flowers were exploding all around, it says it does not intend to fret about a political campaign a year away, "especially, as Robert Browning noted: 'What in May escaped detection, August, past surprises, notes and names each blunder.'"

Perhaps unwittingly the piece engages in some bit of augury, as Senator Smith would die less than two months later. Former Governor Scott, who would also die in office in 1958, would win the 1954 election over the appointed interim Senator, Alton Lennon.

Starting with the death in office of Senator Josiah W. Bailey in late 1946, it became, for awhile, more likely than not that winning an election in the state, especially for the Senate, was something of a death warrant, as, in addition to Senator Bailey, Senators J. Melville Broughton, Smith, Clyde Hoey and Scott all died in office, plus Governor Umstead, who would die in 1954, having originally been named by Governor Gregg Cherry as the interim successor to Senator Bailey. Stability would only be achieved after Senators Sam Ervin and B. Everett Jordan were eventually appointed interim Senators, in 1954 and 1958, respectively, both succeeding men who had died in office and then winning re-election thereafter, and Lt. Governor Luther Hodges would succeed Governor Umstead, also winning re-election in 1956. Since, only the suicide death of Senator John East, in 1986, has marred an otherwise death-free string of officeholders in the Senate and gubernatorial positions of the state, with retirements from office coming either voluntarily, by term limitations or defeat at the polls. We ascribe no sinister plot or purpose, whether voodoo or otherwise, to this string of deaths between 1946 and 1958. Perhaps, it was simply a function of the period being one of high stress at both the domestic and foreign policy levels, notwithstanding the misleading notion of the quiet, innocent, low-key postwar period through the 1950's, a completely mythical concept dreamed up by popular culture and television operating in hindsight and reliant on highly selective memories of that troubled and troublesome era. In reality, it was not "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet", either in individual homes or collectively in the society at large. Such purely escapist entertainment, including the advent of rock 'n' roll, would not have been very much needed as an outlet had all been so hunky-dory in reality. Those who dream, wistfully, of a simpler time, whether equating virtual Nirvana with the 1890s, the 1950s, or some other decade or era, are simply responding to unreality. It was never, upon reflection and reading of actual history, all that great.

Which is why, in part, dumbbells who walk around with little red hats bearing the slogan, "Make America Great Again", grate so badly on the nerves of people who do think and read. Yes, it is their right as Americans to express what they think and believe and emote, within reason, and it is also their right as Americans to appear as dumb as oxen, a great American tradition which necessarily accompanies freedom of the press and freedom of religion and freedom of speech—quite evident in the response of many to the coronavirus during the past two months, which they obviously cannot handle as simply a naturally occurring event, to which the current Administration responded, as a whole, with complete irresponsibility, now, as of May 24, resulting in the deaths of nearly 100,000 Americans, all except about 250, since March 20, and nearly 90,000 since reaching the 10,000 mark on April 5. Had we a true President in the White House, and not an impostor, "elected", by not even a plurality of the vote, because he showed up well, as a no-nonsense manager, to a bunch of idiots watching reality tv, most of those dead would not have died. Voting, and the candidate for whom one votes, does have consequences directly affecting each of our lives. It is not a crap-shoot susceptible to experimentation with someone wholly unfit for political office, with no governmental experience, because one happens to like the feel and look of the person, and how that person so readily irritates Americans one does not like. Hopefully, come November, the voters who have matured politically in the past four years will express themselves in a more serious vein than they did, at least that minority who gave us this crackhead, in 2016.

There is more to being President than issuing cute little tweets multiple times per day on a daily basis. Incidentally, for some time, because these tweets are so erratically crazy, full of misstatements, lies, vituperation and quite a number of misspellings to boot, we have wondered whether or not Donald Trump actually is responsible for all of them or whether he assigns the task, on a rotating basis, to various members of his family, just to be an irritant to the majority of Americans whom he obviously, along with the bulk of his core support, despises. You cannot run a country by running down the majority of its people and expressing disdain of everything which the majority believes, just for the hell of it. No prior President, not even Richard Nixon, did so with such daily zest, vigor and lack of restraint, lack of humanity, lack of empathy, lack of concern for history, lack of concern. It has been said, quite without hyperbole, that the slogan of the Trumpies, reflecting their actual efforts and that of their Fearless Leader, ought be "Make America Hate Again".

"With Inflation Halted, Budget Can Be Cut" indicates the newspaper's support of the President's change of the command set-up and policy in the Defense Department, but finds that the proposed 8.5 billion dollar reduction in appropriations for the ensuing fiscal year would have to await judgment until detailed information was published on what the cuts would impact. The primary policy change from the Truman Administration was that no longer would a "critical year" be established as a goal for which defense production would then be geared, having initially been established as 1954 and then changed to 1955, probably because the U.S. was lagging behind in defense production rather than any interim change in the Soviet timetable of defense buildup. The new policy, rather than trying to predict a time of potential attack, would entail preparing defense at a rate the economy could stand over the long haul, which it regards as more likely to save the nation, with or without war.

Under the new defense command structure, the Joint Chiefs would continue to be military advisers to the President, but would no longer be responsible for implementing policy within their particular services, the latter function instead to be performed through the civilian secretaries at the direction of the President.

The reported proposed reduction in defense expenditures of five billion dollars was a lot, but it indicates that it was not certain whether Soviet plans and industrial capacity had changed enough to permit such a large reduction in U.S. production of military hardware. It nevertheless regards the new long-haul defense policy as enabling the country to get more arms for less money. Many defense bills were paid two years or more after appropriation of the funding, with intervening inflation causing the price of the arms bought with the money to have risen in the meantime, enabling purchase of less materiel for the originally appropriated money, and if the Eisenhower Administration could halt the decrease in the value of the dollar, the nation would be able to have "its guns and the budget cuts, too."

"N.C. Republicans Bury Hatchet" tells of a compromise between North Carolina Republicans meeting in Winston-Salem the prior Thursday, regarding the issue of patronage between the former supporters of Senator Taft for the Republican nomination and those supporting General Eisenhower. As a result, the state Republican chairman, J. M. Baley, had resigned, freeing him to accept the position as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of the state, Thomas Story had been named the new state chairman, and an agreement had been effected whereby local and county political patronage would be handed out by county committees and state-level patronage, by the state chairman and the national Republican committeeman. The healing allowed the Republican Party in the state to join together in a common effort to build a state and local party organization, to challenge in the future Democratic control of state politics.

It indicates that it did not expect immediate increase in Republican Party strength, that the first result would be the filling of 540 Federal jobs in the state which were not covered by Civil Service. It reminds the Republicans that the first step in building a strong, effective party had to entail more than patronage jobs, but also registration of voters at the precinct and county levels and presentation at polling time of respectable candidates who developed a trustworthy party program.

A piece from the Winston-Salem Journal, titled "Tar Heel Indeed!" tells of the State's Department of Conservation & Development having published a new promotional pamphlet, titled "North Carolina—The Tarheel State", suggesting that an organ of State Government was providing nearly official sanction to the misspelling of the nickname of the state, a practice which the piece regards as "dirty work at the intersection", made worse by the pamphlet's suggestion that General Robert E. Lee had developed the "Tarheel" name to describe "the sticking quality" of North Carolina Confederate troops.

It indicates that, notwithstanding whether General Lee actually made such a statement, the origin of the name went back to the time of the American Revolution, when Lord Cornwallis had been marching northward and crossed what was presently the Tar River at a shallow place, near what was presently Rocky Mount, and his troops had encountered a black, sticky substance clinging to their feet, fresh tar dumped in the river by the tar-makers to prevent the tar from being requisitioned by the British. Weeks later, when Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown, his soldiers still had the tar on their feet and they swore that the people of North Carolina must all have tar on their heels. (As we have ventured previously several times, the actual origin of the name appears quite manifest from the map and the fact that the heel of the state's Westward-pointed shoe-shape was, historically, one of the largest tar-producing regions in the world, requiring no cute anecdotal explanation otherwise.)

It indicates, however, that by merging the name into one word, the State pamphlet had committed the worst sin. For instance, at UNC, the student newspaper was the Daily Tar Heel, and the UNC fight song went: "I'm a Tar Heel born,/ I'm a Tar Heel bred,/ And when I die,/ I'm a Tar Heel dead." Thus, it finds outrageous this misspelling—or more accurately conjoing that which properly should enjoy interstitial spacing—, consigning those who had been born Tar Heels to the potential fate of dying as Tarheels.

"Northcarolina has a Generalassembly, recently adjourned, that should have called officials of the Departmentofconservation and development on the carpet and asked them if they had ever heard of the Tarriver, Atlanticocean, and Billumstead."

How about your campus under construction in Winstonsalem, the new Wakeforest of Silascreek?

Drew Pearson indicates that Henry Grunewald appeared to think that Mr. Pearson owed him an apology, as he had complained during his testimony recently to the House Tax Fraud Committee about the column referring to him consistently as a "mystery man" with regard to his mysterious connections with high Government officials. He was asked about the reference by California Congressman Cecil King, to which Mr. Grunewald had indicated that Mr. Pearson had invented the reference, stating that he was upset by it because he did not understand why the column had undertaken to refer to him that way, as he lived in the Washington Hotel in plain view. But Congressman Hale Boggs of Louisiana added that the Committee had been looking for him for some time before locating him, and that it had been kind of mysterious. Committee chief counsel John Tobin had added that Mr. Grunewald's testimony had also created considerable mystery regarding both the services he had performed for people and the sources of a great deal of money which had wound up in his safe deposit box. Mr. King asked him about his own nickname for Mr. Pearson, "Druly Drew".

Mr. Pearson indicates that he did not blame Mr. Grunewald for being sore at him, that he was "a nice little guy" and that if he had not pulled wires in connection with so many important people, he would not merit public comment, but in light of that wire-pulling to peddle influence, he had subjected himself to public scrutiny.

He explains how Mr. Grunewald had first come to his attention, during his probe of the wire-tapping of Howard Hughes by a Washington police lieutenant operating on behalf of Senator Owen Brewster and Pan American Airways, during the time when TWA was vying with Pan Am for Congressional approval of overseas routes. Mr. Pearson had discovered that the police lieutenant had reported on his wire-tapping to a man known as "The Dutchman", who turned out to be Mr. Grunewald. As soon as that bit of information was discovered by his staff person, Jack Anderson, the attorney who rented office space to Mr. Grunewald had called Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire and informed him that Mr. Anderson had been looking for Mr. Grunewald. That provided the first link between Mr. Grunewald and Senator Bridges. Later the same day, the attorney, who had initially said he did not know Mr. Grunewald, loaned him his car, and Mr. Grunewald took off for The Plains, Va., to hide for a month, while a Senate committee was looking for him, thus causing him to be "mysterious". He was then discovered by the column's research to be using a suite registered in the name of former Secretary of War Harry Woodring in the Washington Hotel. One night, as Mr. Anderson sought to knock on the door in the wee hours, after failing to find Mr. Grunewald at home otherwise, another attorney, the attorney for Mr. Grunewald, and an old friend of Mr. Pearson, answered the door. On yet another occasion, Max Halperin was discovered in the hotel suite, claiming not to know of Mr. Grunewald or his whereabouts. And recently, Mr. Grunewald had refused to answer questions about tax-fixing on the ground of self-incrimination. Eventually, after Mr. Grunewald was discovered in Virginia, he was returned to Washington to answer questions before the Senate wiretap investigating committee, but volunteered so little and claimed the Fifth Amendment privilege so often, that the majority of the Senators on the committee voted to cite him for contempt. Mr. Grunewald's friends, however, notably Senator Joseph McCarthy, then came to his defense and pulled wires with Republican Senators so that they developed a minority report, and Mr. Grunewald was never cited.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss the changes in the goals established for NATO planning during the recent Foreign Ministers Council meeting in Paris, with the President's goals, established when he was supreme commander of NATO from early 1951 through the end of May, 1952, tossed, substituting more economy-minded goals, more reconcilable with the attitudes being expressed in Congress regarding cuts in foreign aid.

The Alsops indicate that perhaps the British, the French and the other NATO nations had been foolish to suppose that the President would wish to complete the NATO structure that he had put in motion, but were surprised and shocked by the American delegation's program put forward in Paris, virtually ignoring the dollar gap and eliminating most of the support types of military aid, providing for only a reduced level of direct military aid. When the British were so apprised, they named Chancellor of the Exchequer R. A. Butler and Sir Edwin Plowden, chief planner, plus a representative of their chiefs of staff to tell their story to Secretary of State Dulles, Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson and Foreign Security Agency administrator Harold Stassen, the U.S. contingent to the conference. The British imparted, as did the French later, that they would be forced to renege on their most vital NATO commitments were the U.S. to renege on its previous policy. A threatened crisis by this division was averted through goodwill, ingenuity and sacrificing of the Eisenhower design for NATO.

Typical of the handling of the dollar-gap problem was a solution found for the British, whereby they would be allowed to earn, to save, or to receive about 390 million dollars through a combination of devices, ranging between offshore purchasing to a donation of 100 million dollars worth of lard, wheat and other agricultural products by the U.S. Even those concessions to the British and the other nations had defeated the American delegation's primary intention, to cut aid to Europe sharply enough so that Far Eastern aid could be substantially increased without interfering with the overall aid budget. These compromises, in turn, made it necessary to junk the Eisenhower design for NATO, which had originally specified no less than 120 divisions for Western Europe, cut, over General Eisenhower's protest, to the 100 divisions agreed at the Lisbon meeting, considered a bare minimum at the time. But now, NATO was to have 56 divisions by the end of the year, and additional strength of an indefinite magnitude at some indefinite time in the future.

The U.S. High Commissioner to Germany, Dr. James B. Conant, and David Bruce, the U.S. special negotiator in France, had been called to make a report on the outlook for the European Defense Community, essentially regarding the additional 12 German divisions which were considered to be the keystone of the NATO arch in forming the unified army. Dr. Conant, in his report, was reasonably hopeful regarding the German attitude toward the EDC, but Mr. Bruce was darkly pessimistic, indicating, according to a source, that only a miracle could induce the French Parliament to take the needed favorable action regarding ratification of the EDC. At the time he made that statement, the French had only been exposed to the new Moscow peace offensive, initiated in the wake of the death of Stalin, but were presently also reacting to the American retreat from original NATO commitments.

The Alsops conclude, therefore, that a miracle would be needed to salvage this key component of NATO, the EDC unified army. Were that to fail to come to fruition, it would provide Congress the excuse it was looking for to cut foreign aid to a minimum. Thus, optimism was not justified and, they suggest, an explanation was perhaps in order for the sudden transformation of the NATO minimum, specified by General Eisenhower while NATO supreme commander, into a "visionary, redundant and impractical goal", which the President's representatives at Paris had joined to denounce.

Robert C. Ruark tells of the giveaway television programs having reached a new level, as CBS now was sponsoring a contest in which Durward Kirby would be given to a household for a weekend of service, in exchange for the best 25-word letter explaining why Mr. Kirby should be so provided. Thus far, 15,000 women had sent letters to the network, one of which had offered Sunday crow-shooting from an upstairs window in Pennsylvania as an inducement, which Mr. Ruark imagines Mr. Kirby would as soon pass.

He suggests that the giveaway programs had started out with box tops from breakfast food, providing toys for children, and had graduated into giveaways of minks, ice boxes, trips to Europe, yachts, automobiles and all kinds of other such items. Some people, "with enough non-sensitivity", got married on television. The quiz programs started giving away large amounts of cash and and now had graduated to giving away people, an idea which radio comedian Fred Allen would embrace, as he had predicted such a course eventuating.

Mr. Ruark hopes that the next such giveaway of weekend services would involve Marilyn Monroe, in which case, "then, bud, is when I really pour the oil on the old typewriter and start to pound away."

Come December, and the advent of a certain publication out of Chicago, dedicated especially to artistic representations of unfettered female charm and persuasion, Mr. Ruark, no doubt, will be stocking up on the typewriter oil, double-time, with military precision, offering up reams and reams of editorials on the subject, appropriately cleansed for mass-audience consumption, consistent with his Navy training as a censor during the war.

A letter from State Representative Richard Speight of Bertie County applauds the newspaper's editorial objecting to the General Assembly's passage of a bill earlier in the 1953 session authorizing executive-session hearings on budget matters, prevented under prior law. He indicates that he had been anxious to hear the newspaper's side of the matter.

A letter writer from New York responds to a letter of April 15 regarding increased dividends for small shareholders of corporations, says he disagrees with the previous writer's conclusion that reduction of executive compensation would lead to higher dividends for common shareholders. He cites examples of several major companies, the per share earnings of which would have only slightly increased by pennies were their executives paid only half of their current pay, not justifying any increase therefore in the dividends. He suggests that high executive pay leads to better management and increased earnings, to the benefit of all shareholders.

A letter writer also compliments the newspaper on its stance against the change in the law to permit executive-session hearings on budget matters, thinks it the worst piece of legislation he had ever seen.

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