The Charlotte News
Monday, December 6, 1954
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Senate Investigations subcommittee, chaired until the start of the new Congress by Senator McCarthy, who had just been censured the prior Thursday, indicated it would hold a closed hearing on Communist infiltration of defense plants this date, which Senator McCarthy claimed had been held up for months by the censure proceedings. Several unidentified witnesses were to be called for questioning and acting staff director James Juliana said that he expected Senator McCarthy to be present. The Senator had not appeared in Cincinnati for a scheduled speech on Saturday night, his wife explaining that the Senator's doctor had insisted against his going because his injured elbow had not fully healed. The Senator had said previously that 42 subpoenas had been issued, that a considerable number of plants in the Northeast were involved, and that the hearings would last until the beginning of the new year, with Mr. Juliana indicating that it was likely the public hearings would begin the following day. One witness expected to be called was Herman Thomas of Allentown, Pa., a former FBI undercover agent who had infiltrated the Communist Party. He had testified on October 13 before the Internal Security subcommittee, chaired by Senator William Jenner of Indiana, which had also conducted an investigation of Communists in defense plants, and Mr. Thomas had then named 230 persons, mainly in Pennsylvania, whom he said he had known as Communists.
At the U.N. in New York, the U.S. and its 15 Korean War allies who had fought under the U.N. Command were reported this date close to agreement on details of a resolution calling for the release of the 11 U.S. Air Force crewmen who had been shot down during the Korean War and were currently being held as prisoners by Communist China on purported claims of espionage. Informed quarters said that the U.S. and Britain had resolved some points of difference which had developed during the weekend and had now agreed on the basic points. They expected to have a draft proposal ready for submission to a private meeting of the allies during the afternoon. The 15-nation General Assembly Steering Committee of the U.N. was expected to vote overwhelmingly to add the prisoner question to the Assembly's agenda for the session. The State Department had issued a statement during the weekend indicating that the U.S. was also seeking U.N. action on the two American civilian employees of the Army, who were also being held as supposed espionage agents by the Chinese, after their plane had been shot down in November, 1952.
In New Orleans, following the meeting of the DNC to select a new chairman, the 1952 presidential nominee of the party, Adlai Stevenson, this date was reported to have advised party leaders that he believed the President could be defeated in 1956, provided the Democrats pounded away at what Mr. Stevenson regarded as the unpopularity of the Republican Party. The meeting had selected on Saturday Paul Butler as its new chairman, and the meeting had then concluded. Mr. Butler the previous day had said that the President and the Republicans had demonstrated an "incapacity to govern" and that the Democrats intended to unite the people of the country. Mr. Stevenson's language was not that strong but he made it clear that he believed that the November midterm elections had demonstrated that the people did not have nearly as much faith in the Republicans as they had demonstrated in 1952 for General Eisenhower. He told friends that he believed the other Republicans would, in time, drag the President down to their much lower level of popularity, making the President vulnerable in 1956. Mr. Stevenson, odds-on favorite to be the nominee again, had maintained silence on his own plans for the future. He believed that the President would be forced by the party to accept the nomination in 1956—rumors having circulated that the President was not intending to run again.
In New York, a Bronx resident refused to believe police statements that his wife had schemed to murder him with the assistance of a cab driver and two other women who were sisters. He told reporters that he was making every effort to raise the $50,000 bail for his wife, despite being told by her not to do so, expressing sorrow also that she had caused so much trouble, indicating that she loved him and their children very much. She and the two other women had been charged with conspiring to murder the man through a complex scheme to obtain $3,000 in insurance proceeds plus $100,000 in damages from a trumped-up civil lawsuit for wrongful death. The cab driver, who had tipped police to the plot when he became concerned about his role in the scheme, was not thus far charged. The husband contended that the alleged plot, which required that the victim wear a red jacket to mark him as the target for the taxi driver, was faulty because the only red jacket in their home belonged to his wife, and at night, he said, with slacks on, she might easily be mistaken for him. But the Bronx assistant district attorney handling the case said that the prosecution knew that the three conspirators were planning to buy the husband a red plaid jacket and that there was no question as to who the victim was to be. An attorney hired by the husband to defend his wife had stated that it was an "unfortunate predicament" stemming from the fact that an "unnatural person" had come into the couple's lives and exerted an "undue and baleful influence on the wife."
Because we got a couple of weeks behind earlier in the year, we are going to make an effort to catch up by Christmas, five days away, and so intend to skip any summaries of local matter on the front page, reports of bank robberies, traffic accidents, fires, the weather and murder cases and the like which had already not been reported on the front page previously, as well as redundant matter appearing on the editorial page. Thus, we shall have to post three dates per day for the next five days to do so, with The News not publishing on Saturday, December 25, 1954. For the most part, we shall also skip the summaries of the two intervening Saturdays, December 11 and 18, while, of course, posting each front page and editorial page in the normal course as originally published. Wish us luck…
On the editorial page, "Accent on Attitudes: The Problem of Traffic Safety in North Carolina" begins with a quote from George Orwell's 1984: "There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment… It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time." It finds that what was conceivable in the novel about the future was, fortunately, inconceivable at present in North Carolina, that no thought police were lurking in the shadows to pick the brains of unwary "wrong thinkers". But on the highways, the Motor Vehicles Department director Ed Scheidt, through the Highway Patrol, had nearly turned the Orwellian myth into a law-enforcement principle, by watching as many motorists as time, manpower and machines would permit, having adopted the electric "whammies", saturation patrolling and placement of troopers by the side of the road where they could see and be seen by passing motorists. There had also been an increase in enforcement of the traffic laws, all of which had combined to form an effective campaign with the result that the highway accident death toll had declined in 1954.
Notwithstanding those facts, North Carolina remained 13th among the 48 states in fatalities suffered in automobile accidents, and for eight consecutive years, more than 1,000 traffic fatalities per year had occurred in the state.
The previous Friday in Raleigh, the Governor's Traffic Safety Council had held its first meeting, designed as a mass indoctrination program anent the elements of traffic safety, the largest ever attempted in the country. It urges that the program deserved the attention and support of every North Carolinian who could walk or drive a car or expected to do so.
Hollywood stars, radio and television personalities, major sports figures, circus performers and the man in the street would help bring the message to North Carolinians on traffic safety, with much of the direction being organized by retired entertainer Kay Kyser. UNC's Communications Center was filming 57 films, running between 30 seconds and 30 minutes in duration, to be shown in North Carolina movie houses, on television stations and in the schools, churches and civic clubs. Scores of radio transcriptions would also bring spot announcements or full-length programs.
It lists several prominent people, including evangelist Billy Graham, actors Randolph Scott, James Stewart, Dick Powell, Debbie Reynolds, Mickey Rooney, Jack Webb, Amos and Andy, Ringling Brothers clown Emmett Kelly, Charlotte composer John Scott Trotter, Durham golfer Mike Souchak, UNC quarterback Albert Long, and Major League baseball players Jackie Robinson and Hoyt Wilhelm, who would be participating in the promotional program.
It asserts the belief that the Governor, Mr. Scheidt and the Traffic Safety Council had hit upon the formula for success in the difficult field of public highway safety and expresses pride to be a member of the safety program's advisory body, as part of which, it pledges to do everything in its power to make the movement a success. It urges that residents of Charlotte could begin by re-dedicating themselves to safety on December 15, Safe-Driving Day, proclaimed by both the President and Governor Luther Hodges.
"Is It Wrong To Hurry Christmas?" indicates that Christmas was already present, having arrived when the tinsel and colored lights had appeared above midtown streets and the stores had filled their display windows with holly wreaths and papier-mâché Santa Clauses.
It finds it neither irreverent
nor materialistically profane to begin the Christmas season so early,
that it merely expressed a great love which most Americans had for
the happiest holiday season of the year. The spirit of Christmas was
so great that it could not be truncated into one day and so began in
November. Shoppers were making their rounds and the town rocked with
adolescent merriment, and yet beneath it all, the true spirit of
Christmas burned with everlasting brilliance. "No matter how
much we paint the season with false symbols and commercialism
It indicates that if the Christmas
season were to begin earlier every year, it was because man had
increasingly greater need for the hope and joy
"Ike's Score" indicates that Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma had quipped that the President's golf score was 108, in in 52, out in 56.
A piece from the Rocky Mountain Telegram, titled "The Persimmon Issue", indicates that an issue came up every year about the time persimmons became ripe, with an owner of property complaining about the ripened fruit littering his front yard and the editor starting a defense of the man's persimmon tree as a noble work of nature which should be allowed to remain and grow. The property owner believed that he should cut down the persimmon tree and the editor insisted that if he did not like persimmons, he should get some opossums and plant them in the yard to take care of the surplus.
The property owner had started the debate again by sending the editor a huge box of persimmons, but the editor was not in a position to eat them until after the frost had nipped them. He was also opposed by Pete Ivey of the Twin City Sentinel of Winston-Salem, who maintained that persimmons could be eaten at any time, before or after the frost. Mr. Ivey's mother had challenged the editor over the telephone to come to her house and taste some of her persimmons, which she maintained were as good as anybody could want, without any frost having first nipped them.
Drew Pearson indicates that the group in the Pentagon favoring a preventive war with Communist China had focused the attention of the President on two possible opportunities for a showdown, the first regarding the Nationalist-held island of Quemoy three miles off the mainland coast, which the majority of the Joint Chiefs had wanted to make the dividing line between peace and war, nixed by the President, and the second, regarding tough measures to obtain the release of the 11 American fliers held as spies by Communist China, such tough measures having also been vetoed by the President. His decisions thus far had been for so-called coexistence with the Communists, but the pressure from some of his old comrades at the Pentagon was becoming stronger, with increasing talk of belligerence over appeasement, with Senate Republicans increasingly suggesting that the President and Secretary of State Dulles were following the same strategy followed by former President Truman and former Secretary of State Acheson—that of containment. The Republicans who had voted against censure of Senator McCarthy had been the same Senators who were strongly supportive of the China lobby and had received large campaign contributions from it. Thus, the split in the party was along the same lines as the split within the Pentagon, regarding whether to engage in hard-line tactics or not.
He proceeds to provide the "play-by-play story" of what had occurred, concluding that trouble between the White House and the group in the Pentagon, led by Joint Chiefs chairman Admiral Arthur Radford, was by no means new, just as the liaison between that same Pentagon group and the McCarthyite Senators was not new. The major difference was that the Republicans, rather than the Democrats, now confronted the problem, and it came at a time when the nation faced a difficult showdown with the Communist forces of China and Russia, and when the President, opposing the Pentagon faction favoring the hard-line strategy, was trying to effect a possible end to the cold war.
Stewart Alsop tells of the Democrats having decided that the strategy they would adopt as to Senator McCarthy after his censure the prior Thursday would be to "leave him lie where they flang him."
Logically, the Senator should be forced to answer the questions for which he had been censured for refusing to answer, and those Democrats who believed that he should be expelled favored making that attempt. But the great majority wanted to avoid a revival of the McCarthy issue at the start of the next Congress, when the Democrats would take control.
The Republicans had a more difficult task ahead with the censure vote of 22 Republicans for and 22 against having revealed a deep split in the party. Moreover, Senate Republican Leader William Knowland had seemingly gone over to the anti-Eisenhower wing with his votes against censure, and his joinder with the fury of the radical right-wing made it difficult to see how the party could operate in the Senate with an agreed central strategy. The battle over Senator McCarthy had also badly damaged the grassroots party organization, especially in the Midwest. Most Democratic workers were professionals with city hall jobs or useful city hall connections, while most Republicans were amateurs, and in the Midwest, many of those amateurs were fanatics for Senator McCarthy. Thus, there was a cleavage within the party from top to bottom, plus increasing talk of a pro-McCarthy third-party movement, which appeared serious, as the irreconcilable Republicans had nowhere else to go.
The talk of forming a third party had caused gleeful anticipation among Democrats, just as the Communist-run Progressive Party movement under former Vice-President Henry Wallace in 1948 had caused much delight in Republican circles. But there were genuine reasons for believing that, even if a third-party movement centered around Senator McCarthy developed, Democrats might be just as unduly optimistic as had been the Republicans in 1948.
He cites as example the midterm election voting in New Jersey, in which a tavern keeper and perennial candidate had gotten onto the ballot, running as a pro-McCarthy candidate and obtaining close to 30,000 votes, almost ten times the margin by which the Republican Senate nominee Clifford Case had beaten his Democratic opponent, Charles Howell. The bulk of the votes for the tavern keeper had come from normally overwhelmingly Democratic precincts in Jersey City, leading to the conclusion that the tavern keeper had beaten Mr. Howell, or put another way, that Senator McCarthy had elected Senator-elect Case, despite the latter having eschewed McCarthy politics, his sister having been attacked by McCarthyites during the campaign for some past tangential connection with a so-called subversive organization.
Mr. Alsop concludes that a defection of the right-wing radicals from the Republican Party would not only end the long internal agony but might actually help the Republicans at the polls. For in many areas where Senator McCarthy was strongest, a third-party centered around him would split the Democratic vote more than the Republican vote, and, as shown in 1948, a party gained rather than lost by shedding itself of its radical extremes.
The Washington Post & Times-Herald indicates in an editorial that by his vote against censure of Senator McCarthy, Senator Knowland had virtually ended his usefulness as the Senate Republican leader. It finds that there should be respect for his sincerity of conviction, but that in taking the stand, he had elected not to become any longer the spokesman for the Republicans in the Senate, but rather an accomplice of a negative-minded right-wing minority. Whether he had intended to do so or not, he had split the party, and it suggests that he should, out of courtesy, resign his post as Senate Leader of the Republicans.
Many of the transgressions of Senator McCarthy had been against the Eisenhower Administration, despite efforts by Vice-President Nixon to form a liaison between the White House and Senator McCarthy. The editorial indicates that Senator McCarthy's "disgraceful conduct" in the case of Brig. General Ralph Zwicker had presented a challenge to the President.
It suggests that no one should expect a legislative leader to be merely a rubber-stamp for the President of the same party, but at least the criterion for that leadership ought be a basic like-mindedness and a willingness to cooperate in working for agreed objectives. The President had indicated his appreciation of that need in his press conference the prior Thursday, and yet Senator Knowland appeared content to pull in the opposite direction, aligning himself with a group who appeared out to frustrate and destroy the President. It showed a lack of good sense regarding intraparty cooperation.
It suggests that if Senator Knowland would not resign, it would be a grave mistake for the White House to jeopardize relations with the Senate by any direct intervention, but it certainly could devise ways of working with moderate Republicans in the Senate who agreed with the general philosophy of the Administration. It would require, effectively, that the President become his own majority leader in building coalitions in the Senate for his program, potentially a good thing all around. It finds that the worst thing which the Administration could do, for both its own success and the national welfare, would be to compromise and align with Senator Knowland.
Roland Sawyer, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, indicates that evidence was accumulating that the experts on the spaceships in the country who were sworn to secrecy believed that they soon could be built, within 10 to 15 years, with a question as to whether the U.S. or Russia would be the first to build them. The first actually to achieve the feat had been the Germans during World War II, with the V-2 rocket near the close of the war, and either the German-American or German-Russian scientists after the war. The idea of a man-made orbital spacecraft was more a German idea than any other nationality.
There were projects underway in both the Soviet Union and the U.S. to build a device which could be launched from earth into outer space and then orbit the earth. One evening recently before the Women's National Press Club in Washington, Dr. Werner von Braun, leader of the group of German scientists who had developed the V-2 in 1944, spoke to the group, saying that such a spaceship could be developed within 10 to 15 years, especially if the U.S. were willing to attempt it on a crash basis by spending several billion dollars.
Of the German scientists who had gone over to the Russian side after the war, Herr Grottrop, a friend of Dr. Von Braun and one of the inner circle at the German experimental rocket-building facility on the Baltic, Pennemunde, had voluntarily gone to Russia and was very likely also developing such a rocket-powered spaceship for orbital purposes.
William Lear, a California airplane parts manufacturer whose firm, Lear, Inc., worked closely with the Air Force on classified projects, had said recently that it was known that the Russians were engaged in such development, and Lt. General D. L. Putt, chief of the Air Force Research and Development Command, had warned that circumstances made it apparent that the Russians were attempting to develop such a spaceship ahead of the U.S., with the help of the German scientists and large amounts of captured scientific documents at the end of the war. (But was Lear, having given away everything to his three daughters, mad, and was Putt green?)
The spaceship in question would have to be heavy enough to withstand enormous heat and pressures while being powerful enough to climb 600 miles, beyond the earth's gravitational pull, requiring two, three or more stages of rocketry. Dr. Von Braun had said that one of the biggest problems facing the scientists would be how men carried into space would ever return to earth, a problem which he said was not insurmountable.
He also said that a space station could become a stopping point for exploration of Mars or the moon, and he preferred Mars.
Failure is not an option, gentlemen.
Get to work on an infallible
A letter writer comments on the Saturday editorial, "Toyland Revisited or Santa's Sorrow", indicating uncertainty as to whether it was kidding the reader or kidding department store Santas, that he was all in favor of it if it had been the latter and did not mind if it had been the former. He had always suspected that department store Santas really hated kids, but primarily objected to the fact that they rarely looked like Santa Claus, appearing in ridiculous, ill-fitting costumes with heavily rouged faces and cotton beards, or some cheap mask. He finds that they were more likely to frighten children than enchant them, that one had scared him when he had been five years old and he had never quite recovered from it, that Santa having been attempting to produce a jolly laugh while not appearing at all kindly as St. Nick. He thinks there should be a code of standards for such seasonal actors and that they should all have to meet certain specifications, that if they did not, the kids would revolt.
But then you would have to start paying them wages commensurate with members of the Screen Actors Guild, and department stores would not like that.
A letter writer from San Antonio, Tex., chairman of the American Heritage Protective Committee, says that he had read the editorial the previous week favoring censure of Senator McCarthy, saying it was the happiest day that the "Communist left-wingers, left-wing commentators, the Daily Worker and Communists living abroad have ever enjoyed—all due to the censuring of a great man fighting communism."
A letter writer indicates that 67 Senate "Communist sympathizers" had voted "to uphold communism and censure McCarthy", and he urges voters back home to get busy and see to it that those Senators would be defeated at the polls when next they were up for re-election, "the only way we can uphold Americanism against its enemies."
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