The Charlotte News
Friday, December 3, 1954
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Senate had voted 67 to 22 the previous day to censure Senator McCarthy on two counts of the resolution as amended, involving abuse of his colleagues on the select committee which had recommended censure and for obstructing the constitutional processes of the Elections subcommittee which had investigated his finances in 1951-52, with Republicans dividing evenly, 22 for and 22 against. All 44 Democrats voted for the resolution, as did independent Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon. Senator McCarthy became the first Senator since 1929 to suffer an official rebuke from his colleagues and the fourth in Senate history. Some Republican Senators said they did not believe it would leave lasting scars within the party. Senator Wallace Bennett of Utah, author of the count adopted by the Senate regarding abuse of the select committee, said in an interview that he did not think the apparent rift would be too great or too permanent within the party. Senator Frank Carlson of Kansas, who had been a member of the six-Senator bipartisan select committee which unanimously recommended censure, said that he believed the Republicans would "pull together" once the new Congress started in January, made more necessary by the fact that they would be in the minority. The Senate voted to drop the additional count that Senator McCarthy had abused General Ralph Zwicker during hearings before Senator McCarthy's Investigations subcommittee the prior February, regarding General Zwicker's alleged help in covering up the identity of the person who had approved of the promotion and honorable discharge of the Army Reserve dentist after he had pleaded the Fifth Amendment before the Senate Investigations subcommittee earlier regarding questioning on his subversive associations of the past. They voted to have Senator Bennett's amended count substitute for it. Among other things, the Senator had said that the General was not fit to wear the uniform of the United States, despite the General having been a decorated war hero.
When asked whether the Senate action had amounted to censure, Senator McCarthy had commented, "I wouldn't say it was a vote of confidence." He also denied rumors that he intended to form a new third party.
At the U.N. in New York, the U.S. pressed this date for action to free the 11 American Air Force crewmen, who had been shot down over North Korea during the Korean War while flying colors of the U.N. Command and were being held prisoner by the Communist Chinese on espionage charges. Ambassador to the U.N. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., had gathered together the 15 nations which had been allies under the U.N. Command in the Korean War for an emergency session the previous night to discuss the most expeditious course of action, expressing confidence that the U.N. would support any move the Americans might ultimately favor. The President had stated at his press conference the previous day that he did not see "how the United Nations can possibly disabuse itself of a feeling of responsibility in this matter, and retain its self-respect." Similar views had been expressed by members of Congress. U.N. observers suggested that there were three main avenues of available action, to bring the matter before the Security Council, where undoubtedly the Soviets would exercise their unilateral veto, ask U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold to intercede personally with the Communist Chinese, or seek a General Assembly resolution charging violation of the Korean Armistice and demanding the release of the airmen on grounds that they were illegally imprisoned. If the third course were adopted, the Russians were expected to echo the Communist Chinese claim that the men were not war prisoners but had been shot down over the Chinese mainland. There had also been two U.S. Army civilian employees sentenced for espionage by the Communist Chinese, but Ambassador Lodge had said they were not in the U.N. forces, and so the U.N. action would not pertain to them, even though the State Department was seeking their return along with the 11 airmen.
The Senate confirmed several of the President's noncontroversial nominations the previous night before ending the special session, the last of the 83rd Congress, but Senator William Langer of North Dakota announced that he would fight against the confirmation of U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge John Harlan to the Supreme Court in the new Congress. Senator Langer was presently chairman of the Judiciary Committee and would become the ranking Republican member in the new Senate, to be controlled narrowly by the Democrats. The Senate confirmed several ambassadors, Federal judges, U.S. attorneys and marshals, approved more than 10,000 promotions within the armed services and hundreds of similar upgrades in the public health and foreign services.
In Chicago, a Federal District Court Judge dismissed this date the Government's civil antitrust suit against the Du Pont interests, General Motors and the United States Rubber Co., holding that the Government had "failed to prove a conspiracy, monopolization, a restraint of trade, or any reasonable probability of a restraint." He said that the alleged conspiracy was that Du Pont and U.S. Rubber sought to limit G.M.'s ability to deal as it pleased with competitors of Du Pont and U.S. Rubber, which he found was not supported by the evidence adduced.
In Vatican City, the Vatican said that the condition of Pope Pius XII, 78, had improved to satisfactory this date, but still cautioned of having anxiety for his life. He had received treatment for "peritoneal irritation attended by abdominal tension", an irritation of the lining to the abdominal cavity, reflecting the Pope's long struggle against gastric disorder accompanied by spells of hiccuping and nausea. Vatican sources said privately that an ulcer was a complicating factor. There were conflicting reports about the condition of the Pope's heart, but it was emphasized that he had come through the night "relatively tranquilly".
In Cleveland, O., the first-degree murder trial of Dr. Samuel Sheppard for the killing of his wife, Marilyn, the prior July 4, continued this date with further testimony from his brother, Dr. Stephen Sheppard, stating that Dr. Sam's physical condition had deteriorated for several days after being admitted to the hospital following his claimed encounter with the bushy-haired intruder who had killed his wife during the wee hours of Sunday, his brother saying that he was worse on Monday, that the swelling on his face had increased and that he had lost control of his natural functions, indicative of "an injury to the spinal cord", a suspicion shared, he said, by a brain specialist whom he had called on July 4 during the day. He said that the specialist had also found an absence of reflexes in his brother's left arm and abdomen, that a spinal puncture had been made and the specialist's report for that day carried the notation: "Indication of a cervical spinal cord contusion." The previous Monday, during the State's case, Dr. Richard Hexter had testified that he found no serious injury to the defendant, but also stated that he had declined the request of the doctor's brother to review X-rays on the basis that he was not an expert on X-rays and that he did not know how Dr. Sheppard's neck normally looked. The prosecution was attempting to suggest that the injuries had been faked. Dr. Sheppard's brother had testified the previous day that Dr. Sam had burst into tears when a detective first accused him of the murder of his wife, quoting him as saying incredulously, "Those policemen think I killed Marilyn." He said that he was crying, extremely agitated and upset, exhibiting a tremendous change in disposition.
In Phenix City, Ala., a witness who might have seen the killing of A. L. Patterson the prior June 18, just after the latter had won the race for State Attorney General, was knifed to death the previous night after making urgent telephone calls to the sheriff and the newly elected Attorney General, future Governor John Patterson, son of Albert. The man, who was a café employee, had been stabbed in the throat 24 hours or more after he had testified on Wednesday before an emergency grand jury considering murder indictments in the killing of Mr. Patterson, who had run on a platform of cleaning up corruption and vice in Phenix City, beset by graft, gambling and prostitution, catering to neighboring Fort Benning, Ga. Members of the National Guard were still patrolling the city five months after the killing and had arrested a 16-year old black teenager who said that he admitted the stabbing, blaming the man he stabbed, who was white, for provoking the fight. The military chief of police said that there appeared to be no connection between the man's death and his appearance before the grand jury. Attorney General-elect Patterson, however, said that he wanted to look into the slaying thoroughly. He said the death was a "tough break" for the investigation of his father's killing.
In Raleigh, Governor Luther Hodges announced that he had chosen an assistant director of the Institute of Government in Chapel Hill, Paul Johnston, to be his administrative assistant. Mr. Johnston was a 1952 graduate of the UNC Law School and would handle legal matters plus some research for the Governor. The position had been created by former Governor Kerr Scott, but had not been filled by the late Governor William B. Umstead, who had died in early November.
In Charlotte, the President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Clem Johnston, said that 1955 might even surpass the all-time record year of 1953 as a good business year, crediting a growing population and better consumer merchandise as the major spurs to business.
On the following Tuesday, the News would distribute copies of a 72-page rotogravure magazine titled "Charlotte: A Good Place To Live, A Good Place To Do Business", designed as a catalog of the best features of the city and intended primarily for distribution across the country rather than for local consumption, with 10,000 copies to be mailed to carefully selected executives of manufacturing concerns, banks and other businesses, with an additional thousand copies to be distributed by the Home Builders Association of Charlotte at its January convention in Chicago of the National Association of Home Builders, the largest convention in the world, and another thousand copies going to the Chamber of Commerce for its own use, plus 500 copies to be sent to national advertising agencies. Not since 1940, when The News had issued a brochure to celebrate Charlotte surpassing the 100,000-population mark, had anything similar been attempted. The new publication would be far more ambitious in concept than the 1940 booklet and would have considerably wider distribution. It would be inserted also in all 70,000 home-delivered copies of the newspaper the following Tuesday, with readers being urged, with an included envelope, to send it on to a business or personal acquaintance elsewhere to publicize the city and its advantages. The brochure had been months in preparation, with a watercolor front cover by artist Kenneth Whitsett, showing the midtown business district, and including an alphabetical list of business and education establishments within the city. A splendid time is guaranteed for all.
On the editorial page, "Political Chills and Fever for North Carolina's 1955 Legislature" indicates that the first matter of importance before the General Assembly in 1955 would be the issue of what to do about the public schools in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, and the second major issue would be the state's financial predicament, requiring some adjustment in taxes together with cost-cutting. It had suggested previously that the Assembly eliminate most of the sales tax exemptions, to enable as much as 36 million dollars in additional annual revenue. Bound up in the financial puzzle was the state's highway and school needs, as discussed in an editorial earlier in the week.
It next lists 16 other important items which required legislative attention, of which you may read on your own. It concludes that those were but a few of the pressing needs for the state, indicating it had already drawn up a proposed program of local legislation for the city and county in an editorial appearing November 22. It suggests that North Carolinians would need vision as well as energy to master the tasks ahead.
"Worse Than Cutting His Tongue Out" indicates that Representative Ray Madden of Indiana had a maddening idea, wanting to cut out oratory at political conventions, limiting speeches to only two and devoting the rest of the time to "forum discussions of the major issues".
It thinks it an attempt to subvert the Democratic Party, especially Southerners who could not speak without orating, "a brazen attempt to drive us po' southerners out of the party of the peepul." It adds that what it had seen of political forum discussions, they were nothing but "cacophonous oratory—presented as discordant duets or trios."
A piece from the Kingsport (Tenn.) Times, titled "Kissing Room", indicates that a news story out of Philadelphia had told of at least one architect in the country who had not been unmoved by romance, urging that what the country needed was a kissing room in every airport where husbands and wives or those betrothed could say their goodbyes before one or the other departed in travel.
It suggests that there was one major objection and one minor objection to the plan, the minor one being that it would cost a considerable amount of money, while the major one was that it was doubtful the kissers would actually use it or that it would decrease the amount of kissing which took place at the gates, as a kissing room would take away all of the spontaneity and romance.
Drew Pearson indicates that the more one studied that which had gone on behind the scenes in the debate on the resolution of censure against Senator McCarthy, the more one reached the unfortunate conclusion that it resembled what took place in prewar Germany. What had fed the controversy over the Senator were ominous undertones of religious prejudice, and though the public phase of the debate had fortunately ended, the seeds of intolerance might continue unless the American people were alert to scotch them. Ludwell Denny, an able foreign editor of the Scripps-Howard newspapers, had cabled from Bonn during the week that "the religious-political strife which helped Hitler is rising again." He pinpointed a Catholic-Protestant rivalry plus anti-Jewish feeling, all playing into Communist hands. Mr. Pearson indicates that to a lesser degree, it had happened during the debate on Senator McCarthy, with the Southern Senators from primarily Protestant states receiving vitriolic letters from Northern Catholic areas berating the Senators' views on Senator McCarthy. Most Catholic Senators had been against Senator McCarthy, such as Senators James Murray and Mike Mansfield, both of Montana, and Thomas Burke of Ohio, each of whom had voted their conscience against the Senator. They had represented the great majority of Catholics, who believed that religion and politics should not mix, following the time-honored Catholic doctrine of brotherly love. But the minority of Catholics, who had bombarded Washington with letters saying that the Senator had been censured because of his religion, had been so vocal that it hurt the cause of religious tolerance.
Simultaneously, Gerald L. K. Smith, from a secret hiding place in Washington, had begun spewing poisonous propaganda. Mr. Pearson notes that it had not been his intention, in recently reporting that Rabbi Benjamin Schultz had joined forces with Mr. Smith in defending Senator McCarthy, to insinuate that he had physically and personally joined Mr. Smith, but rather that he had joined the political forces and groups defending the Senator. He says that he was certain that Rabbi Schultz, though coming to Washington while Mr. Smith was present, would never associate himself with the vicious anti-Semitism of Mr. Smith.
Mr. Pearson provides an example of how Mr. Smith had used Senator McCarthy to attack Jews, that in a clever appeal for money, dated November 23, and captioned, "Still in Washington Tough Battle", Mr. Smith had stated, "Five million dollars are available to the forces that are determined to destroy Senator McCarthy by murder, character assassination, removal from the Senate—anything to make sure that the treason committed against our nation never will be uncovered." He went on to say that because of Congress and a few courageous men in both houses, "the conspirators who originally designed this Fabian bureaucratic alien-minded, Jew-financed dictatorship—yes, because of a handful of fighting patriots, they have been unable to set up the complete controls over your life and mine as they originally planned." He also had said that the second Sunday he had been in Washington, having registered under an assumed name, Mr. Pearson had announced where he was, including his room number.
Marquis Childs tells of growing concern among reporters in Washington that there appeared to be a concerted effort to suppress legitimate news and to have a system of rewards and punishments to see to it that only news which was favorable or reported in a favorable light was provided to the public. It was partly a carryover from the big and little wars of the previous 15 years, when propaganda was an instrument of warfare, and it partially reflected the tensions of the cold war and the continuing struggle with Communist imperialism. It also reflected a general climate of caution and conformity, evidenced by the orders issued at West Point and Annapolis forbidding debate teams from the academies to consider the subject of U.S. recognition of Communist China.
Recently, in testimony before the Senate Internal Security subcommittee investigating "interlocking subversion in government", General James Van Fleet attacked the integrity of an able reporter, Homer Bigart of the New York Herald Tribune, who had a reputation as a Washington and war correspondent for digging to get the story behind official handouts. The subcommittee, chaired by Senator William Jenner of Indiana, had just released the printed text of the General's testimony. Mr. Bigart had been covering the struggle in Greece to suppress Communist guerrillas when the General was head of the American aid mission there, and the General had said that Mr. Bigart appeared "to sympathize greatly with the Communist cause in Greece, the guerrilla cause, perhaps thinking they were the underdog or were helping the underdog." He added that they were actually the "dirty dog rather than the underdog", but that perhaps Mr. Bigart's views had been honest. Mr. Childs provides a verbatim exchange taking place between Senator Jenner and General Van Fleet, with the only other member of the Committee present having been Senator Olin Johnston of South Carolina, with the General saying that the criticism by Mr. Bigart had been harmful, that he had entered guerrilla territory through Yugoslavia and spent some time with the Communist guerrillas in Northern Greece, eventually coming through the lines and surrendering to an American advisory group with a Greek national unit. Senator Johnston asked whether Mr. Bigart was ever tried, to which the General said he was not, that he had written "quite a story about his experiences." The General said that he believed no one had the authority to try him, except perhaps the Committee, with new legislation.
Mr. Childs indicates that Mr. Bigart's stories had been an effort to present the true picture behind the Communist line, that he had obtained his factual material at considerable risk and at great hardship personally. Other able American correspondents had consistently sought to report the facts, even when cautious diplomats and generals with extraordinary authority were putting out an official line which was different from those facts. One such reporter had been Keyes Beech of the Chicago Daily News, whose recently published book, Tokyo and Points East, told of the remarkable propaganda machine which functioned for General MacArthur both during the Pacific war and later during the occupation of Japan. The whole tenor of the releases from General MacArthur's headquarters during the occupation, according to Mr. Beech, had been to show that Japan had been transformed into a successful and flourishing democracy. He wrote that any correspondent who dared criticize General MacArthur or his works, the correspondents being the only people in Japan free to criticize, had been called a "petty carper" or something worse, that he, himself, had been called something worse.
As working reporters in Washington saw it, the attitude was to withhold news except for what was put out in official handouts, not a new practice, but the effort appeared to clamp a tighter lid than ever before during peacetime. Whenever it was cracked, as in a story by Chalmers Roberts in the Washington Post and Times Herald, telling of President Eisenhower, overruling the majority of the National Security Council decision, to forbid bombing of the Chinese mainland, there was widespread consternation and an effort to clamp the lid the more tightly.
Doris Fleeson indicates that the Monday pro-McCarthy rally in Madison Square Garden had laid an egg, as the hall had been barely two-thirds full and the program bereft of drama. New Yorkers would often crowd the Garden to watch a cause being promoted in which they had no actual interests because they expected it to be good theater. But the show, in this instance, put on for free and which was well advertised, could not come close to filling the 20,000 seats. The retired admirals and generals who had staged the rally had announced that all 20,000 tickets had been taken, a bad strategy for a free event.
Moreover, similar rallies announced for Chicago and Los Angeles had been canceled, suggesting a significant pattern, supporting the belief of many Washington correspondents, including Ms. Fleeson, that Senator McCarthy was well on his way to becoming "the nation's No. 1 bore."
The Senator had shunned the rally and instead was seeking to cut his losses in the Senate on Monday morning, knowing that he would, in the end, be censured in some form and wanted to get it over with quickly so that he could play the role of a prejudged martyr. He had wanted a quick vote on the original resolution put forward by Senator Ralph Flanders the prior summer, a move which the Senate leadership had foiled in obedience to their excellent political instincts.
She indicates that the Senator's major problem was that he was now out of fellow travelers to accuse, absolutely essential to the success of his operations. After his break with the President, his conduct during the Army-McCarthy hearings of the prior spring, and the unanimous bipartisan report of the Senate select committee which had studied the censure resolution and recommended censure, his respectable façade had faded away. There had been Republicans supporting him who believed that any method of defeating former President Truman was fair, as well as Democrats who had been almost as angry with the former President. The group had once even included President Eisenhower and certainly included Vice-President Nixon, who had done his best to achieve a modus vivendi between Senator McCarthy and the White House. The Senator had also attracted many decent people who were fearful of Communist infiltration of the Government after the case of Alger Hiss. Those persons had to be shown that the Senator was conducting a self-serving battle devoid of constructive results. The television broadcast of the Army-McCarthy hearings the previous spring had probably been the best convincer of that group.
She indicates that the McCarthy following presently consisted primarily of malcontents and people once in power who no longer had anyone to order around, plus the inevitable lunatic fringe. Those who sincerely followed him as an important anti-Communist force would now shift their allegiance to other leaders.
Robert C. Ruark opines that the late William Remington, who had been beaten to death with a brick by three fellow inmates at Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania on November 22, had experienced a kinder fate than the one which would await Alger Hiss, who had also been convicted of perjury in a completely separate matter, and had also served his sentence at Lewisburg and been released early the prior Saturday after serving three and a half years of a five-year sentence. He suggests that at least Mr. Remington's troubles were over, whereas Mr. Hiss's were just beginning.
As a convicted felon, he could no longer practice law or hold a government job, and he had been a career government employee. He also could not vote or leave the country to start over elsewhere, for he could not receive a passport. His Government pension which he would have received at age 62 had been canceled. It was likely that he would receive rebukes from the public whenever he ventured outside, that if he stopped in a bar for a beer, there would always be some drunk to challenge him. He can think of no worse punishment for a man of sensitivity and high intelligence.
Unlike the freshly freed hood, who was typically given a party by his buddies in crime, along with plenty of food, drink, dames and dough if he needed it, Mr. Hiss had no such resort, that his only "companions-in-crime" would be his "Communist friends", and Mr. Ruark believes they would disallow any aid or comfort as a liability to their own status. His so-called liberal friends might remember what had happened to former Secretary of State Acheson and the Democratic Party when Mr. Acheson had refused to turn his back on Mr. Hiss when he had first been accused by admitted former Communist courier Whittaker Chambers in 1948, and later after his 1950 conviction in the second trial after the first jury had hung. Thus, Mr. Hiss would not be welcome, in all likelihood, back into his former circle of friends.
He concludes that it was the real punishment for him and that he feels a little sorry for Mr. Hiss entering the world as an ex-convict, having been an adviser to Presidents, now reduced to a man without a country, so again reiterates his belief that Mr. Remington had been lucky.
The Carolina Israelite asks what had happened to free enterprise and moral fiber, indicating that some of the Southern states were going all out in their handouts for the welfare state, creeping socialism, "and all that stuff." The result would be that there would be a whole generation of Southern manufacturers without moral fiber. Some of the states were spending fortunes to bring in new industry, while handing out free land sites, new roads, sewers, free wiring and promising no taxes. The writer, presumably editor Harry Golden, could see the manufacturers shivering for the lack of moral fiber every time they went out to make a bank deposit. It asks where were the men who chopped down the trees and carved a civilization out of the wilderness, again asks what had happened to free enterprise.
A letter writer from Monroe indicates that on the previous July 2, the newspaper had printed an editorial falsehood by claiming that the Atomic Energy Commission had agreed that Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer was a "completely loyal" American, when the actual facts were that one member of the AEC had declared him disloyal, another had declared him loyal, while the majority had said in their report that they made no judgment on his loyalty. He also indicates that on November 30, Drew Pearson had presented a falsehood, that on the "Ten Million Americans" petition for Senator McCarthy, there had appeared a warning to obtain bona fide signatures only, a warning which appeared in much smaller print than anything else on the petition, when he says the actual fact was that the warning was printed in larger and heavier print. He says that in view of the fact that the newspaper had lied in coming to the defense of a man who admitted he lied to the security agencies of the Government, and in view of the fact that they featured Drew Pearson, who lied, it appeared they were on "very shaky ground in accusing Senator McCarthy of lying."
The editors respond that the correspondent's facts were correct, except as to the time of Dr. Oppenheimer's alleged disloyalty, that the newspaper had erroneously stated that "both the (Gray) security board and the (Atomic Energy) Commission agreed that Dr. Oppenheimer was a 'completely loyal' American." The board chaired by UNC president Gordon Gray had voted unanimously that he was a loyal citizen of unusual discretion, while the AEC majority did not commit themselves on the issue, with commissioner Henry Smyth saying that he had no doubts regarding "the loyalty of Dr. Oppenheimer, or his ability to hold his tongue." But commissioner Thomas Murray had concluded: "It was reasonable to expect that he would be particularly scrupulous in his fidelity to security regulations. These regulations are the special test of the loyalty of the American citizen who serves his government and the sensitive area of the atomic energy program. Dr. Oppenheimer did not meet this decisive test. He was disloyal." They also indicate that the warning on the petition to which Mr. Pearson had referred was one or two points larger in print than the smallest type on the petition.
Framed Edition
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