The Charlotte News
Wednesday, March 17, 1954
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President had said this date at his press conference that he had full confidence in the honor and integrity of Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens and stood fully behind him, in his dispute with Senator Joseph McCarthy. The President said that it might turn out that Secretary Stevens had made some mistakes, but that it did not reflect on his honor or integrity. The journalist who asked the question at the press conference also had taken note of a series of memoranda made public by Senator McCarthy, including a charge that Secretary Stevens and his counsel, John G. Adams, had offered to provide the Senator derogatory information about the other armed services if Senator McCarthy would end his investigation of alleged Communist infiltration of the Army.
Senator McCarthy said this date that he was willing to allow Army lawyers to cross-examine him when the committee investigation began, probably to start late the following week. He said that he would recommend that the investigating committee adopt special rules for the present investigation, such that others than members and staff of the committee could cross-examine. The Investigating subcommittee, consisting of seven Senators, had voted the previous day to perform the investigation, though Senator McCarthy said he preferred that some other committee do the job.
From Hanoi in Indo-China, it was reported that French Union defenders of the fortress at Dien Bien Phu appeared well on their way to a major victory over the Communist-led Vietminh rebels. The rebel artillery had opened another bombardment in the five-day battle for the strategic plain in the mountains of northwest Indo-China, and it was thought to be prelude to another mass infantry attack this night. Key French positions were the targets of 105 and 75-mm guns, but the American-supplied French guns had responded in kind, and the mass attacks thus far, according to a conservative French Army estimate, had cost the rebels 3,000 killed and another 9,000 wounded, equivalent to a full division and about a fourth of the total Vietminh forces committed to the battle by Vietminh General Vo Nguyen Giap. The French garrison, comprised of French troops, Foreign Legionnaires, Algerians, Moroccans, Vietnamese and friendly Thai tribesmen, were outnumbered by about four to one at the outset of the battle the prior Friday, and had suffered losses described as appreciable since that time, but were receiving reinforcements by air. It was still too early to say that victory had been won, but, barring an unforeseen assault ending disastrously for the French, there was thought to be more than a good chance that the Vietminh would not succeed in taking the key fortress at the border of Vietnam and Laos. "Dien Bien Phu" literally meant "border area" and was not much as a town, just scattered straw-thatched huts, taking a beating in the gunfire. But it was the provisional capital of the Thais, who had moved their tribal government there after the French had abandoned the old capital of Lai Chau to the Vietminh the previous fall, and served as a gateway to both Laos and the Communist China border area adjoining northwest Vietnam. The broad plain around it had produced rice for the few hundred villagers and grass for their cattle. The French had cleared out the plain when they entered the area by parachute the previous November 20, to prevent fire in the fields from counter-attacks anticipated from the Vietminh. Most of the fortress's defenses were underground, behind mazes of barbed wire, but it was heavily fortified with French riflemen and heavy guns, screened in earthen bunkers, able to dispatch the rebels as they moved toward the perimeter from the surrounding hills.
Time magazine reported this date that the latest hydrogen bomb detonation by the U.S. had occurred on March 1, with the blast probably 500 times greater than that of the Hiroshima fission bomb in August, 1945. Time said that the force of the explosion had completely surprised atomic scientists working on the project, that 28 U.S. observers and 236 island natives, thought to have been evacuated to a safe distance, had been showered with radioactive particles ten times greater than the usual safety limit, but that the Atomic Energy Commission had announced that there had been no burns. The AEC said that the blast force was so great that it had reclassified the test of November 1, 1952 on Eniwetok, generally considered as the first thermonuclear detonation, as a "misfire". That latter test had a force 250 times greater than that of the Hiroshima bomb, with a fireball measuring 28 miles in diameter and a mushroom cloud which had climbed to 90,000 feet into the stratosphere, such that an observer plane 50 miles away, flying at 30,000 feet, had to speed away from the area to avoid being caught in the mushroom's lip. Time also said that the latest test might have sent its radioactive cloud higher than 20 miles. This test, like the earlier test, was conducted from atop a tower.
The President also said at the press conference this date that any President ought to be impeached or even hanged if he did not act immediately in the event the country were attacked by an aggressor. He said that the "new look" military program of his Administration represented the best efforts of using modern weaponry and conserving manpower in any war which might occur. He said that it was not a radical departure from accepted military principles but rather an effort to combine scientific developments, geographic factors and other advances in modern military machinery. He defended the position taken by Secretary of State Dulles the previous day that it would not be necessary for the chief executive to consult with Congress in advance of undertaking an attack to meet an attack on either Europe or the Western Hemisphere, under the auspices of NATO and the Inter-American treaty. He contrasted the scenario with that of the attack by North Korea on South Korea, where there was no immediate threat to the U.S. or its allies under treaty—albeit a protectorate of the U.N.
The President said further at the press conference that Congressional Democrats were in error in contending that the Administration's new tax bill did not give a fair share of relief to taxpayers in the lower income brackets while benefiting large corporations. The President cited U.S. Steel as an example of a large business, employing about 300,000 workers and with about 300,000 stockholders, of whom about 56 percent had annual incomes less than $5,000 per year, and 46 percent with incomes less than the average steelworker's annual wage of $4,500. He said that there were more stockholders earning $2,000 to $3,000 annual incomes than in any other income category. The Administration's bill would exempt the first $50 of dividend income annually from stocks and increase that exemption to $100 in subsequent years. It would also allow that the first five percent of dividend income would be subtracted from the tax bill the first year and ten percent thereafter. He thus contended that the bill was not designed to benefit the rich. He refused to say in advance whether he might veto the Democratic bill, which provided for increase of personal exemptions from $600 to either $700 or $800. He said that if any bill passed would cause an impossible fiscal situation for the country, then he would have to consider it and determine what to do.
In Princeton, W. Va., an explosion, apparently caused by workers striking an old, unexploded stick of dynamite on the West Virginia Turnpike project the previous day, had caused a second death, an initial death having occurred soon after the accident.
In Hong Kong, it was reported that an American official said this date that a 24-year old Chinese woman had wanted so badly to enter the U.S. that she had gone through a wedding ceremony with her own brother, though clarified that there was no question of incest involved. The brother had U.S. citizenship papers. Hong Kong police were investigating but had taken no action against the woman. She said that her father had gone to the U.S. when he had been 16 and entered a business in New York, then returned to China a year or two later, married and had a son and her, five years later returning to America, the son eventually obtaining citizenship papers and her father obtaining citizenship during World War II. In 1946, she and her mother had moved from China to Hong Kong and in 1950, the mother had joined her husband in New York as a non-quota immigrant wife of an American citizen, but the daughter had been left alone in Hong Kong. The previous October, the son had returned to Hong Kong, and using another name, married his sister. The consulate would not say how it discovered the deception.
In New York, the first wife of Jack
Benny's new son-in-law had been accused of trying to extract money
from him through the courts and newspapers. The attorney for the
son-in-law had made the claim during a hearing the previous day in
which the former wife had sought to invalidate a Virgin Islands
divorce from her former husband and instead obtain a legal separation
and support. The son-in-law and Joan Benny, 19, had been married the
previous week in a $50,000 Hollywood wedding and were now
honeymooning in Hawaii. The son-in-law's attorney sought an order
from the court to bar reporters from the proceedings, to protect the
newlywed couple from adverse publicity, but the court refused. The
former wife's attorney denied the charge that she was seeking to use
the publicity to extract money from her former husband, and said that
his client, a model also named Joan, had married the son-in-law in
July, 1951 while he was an Army private but that they had kept the
wedding secret from his family, and that when his father had found
out about the marriage, he put economic pressure on his son to obtain
a Virgin Islands divorce, obtained in January, 1953, but the two had
continued to live together for nearly a year after the divorce, until
he met Ms. Benny at the beginning of 1954. They will sort it all out
when they turn
In Manchester, England, a man was trapped in an elevator in a downtown building the previous night, but, as a former captain in the British Army Signal Corps, he remembered that the general post office ran a school for telegraphers in the building and so took out a whistle and tooted three dots, three dashes, three dots, communicating an SOS, which the student telegraphers read and freed the man within ten minutes. Always carry a whistle.
In Raleigh, the State Supreme Court this date declared unconstitutional a law which allowed gambling on dog races in Currituck County, with Justice William Bobbitt writing for the Court that the law violated two sections of the State Constitution and also conflicted with the fundamental principle of equal rights and opportunities for all and special privileges for none.
In Charlotte, a 23-year old barber, who had been convicted the previous day of driving after his license had been revoked, returned to Recorder's Court this date, charged again with driving after his license had been revoked and also with drunk driving. The judge informed him that if he came to court on another similar such charge, he would be sent to the roads. The previous day, he had been fined $200 plus costs and given a six-month suspended sentence. On the charge heard this date, he was given 12 months on the roads, suspended on payment of $300 in fines plus costs on the charge of driving on a revoked license, and another $500 fine plus costs on the drunk driving charge. He better stop driving for awhile before he is forced to make big rocks into little ones.
As promised on the front page the
previous day, Betty Boyer, in her weekly "Grocery News"
column of this date, tells of pies "fit for a king",
including strawberry
On the editorial page, "Playing Politics with Taxes" indicates that the President had shown a good deal of political courage in defending before a nationwide radio and television audience his tax program the previous night, though it might become a political liability in the fall if it were approved. It finds that the President had spoken well, in simple but forceful language, setting forth his opinion that the Administration's tax proposal was fair to business and individuals, and offered the best hope of maintaining the economy. He argued that the Democratic proposal to increase personal exemptions to $700 or $800 the following year and to $1,000 in 1956 would leave the Government so short of revenue that it would have to resort to large-scale deficit financing, which would in turn cause an inflationary spiral.
It suggests that if a balanced budget was a worthwhile objective, it would be even better to have no tax cuts during the year, as tax cuts ought follow reductions in spending. If the country could stand a budget deficit of between 2.9 and 3 billion dollars, as estimated under the Administration's tax cut program, then the Democrats had more popular political appeal for their contention that some relief should be given to the mass of consumers through the proposed increase in the personal exemptions.
At present, agricultural and industrial products were available and over-abundant, and so it would seem more logical to provide individuals with some tax relief to increase their purchasing power to buy that over-supply, rather than stimulating further expansion of business and industry by favorable tax treatment. It reiterates its previous suggestion that if taxes were going to be cut, then a reduction by a couple of points of the base corporate levy, a reduction of excise taxes on products and services not in the luxury class, and providing individual taxpayers with some relief throughout the brackets, would be the most sensible policy. It indicates realization that the political system, however, would likely use the tax issue as a political lure to voters, and the latter, when given the opportunity, would likely take the bait. It concludes that if it was a cynical view of the matter, so be it.
"A Rhubarb of Sorts—at Home" regards a dispute between the Charlotte Park & Recreation Commission and the schools over the use of Municipal Stadium, indicating that it did not match some of the squabbles occurring in the national arena, but hit closer home and was thus more interesting. Sportswriter Bob Quincy of the newspaper had provided both sides of the story in his sports column the previous day and the piece doubts it could add much.
To enable the Commission to make as much money as it could, football games between major colleges, paying rentals on the stadium maintenance costs, could not be turned aside lightly. There was also great demand for college games in Charlotte and patrons were willing to drive as far as 125 miles to see them. The schools had almost free run of the stadium for many years, despite paying a minimum rental, below actual maintenance costs, and so had little ground to complain if the Commission sought to balance high school athletics with a few college games. It finds it unfortunate that the Commission's scheduling of two college games had upset the high school schedules on the two dates in question, and suggests that better coordination at an earlier stage would have avoided the conflict. It indicates that there was, however, plenty of time before September to adjust the high school schedules accordingly. It concludes that if there was such importance attached by local high schools to play in the stadium, then they might arrange for paying a more realistic rental fee.
"Playing Loose with the Facts" indicates that the Washington Post had cited a couple of examples of Senator McCarthy's erroneous statements recently, that when asked about Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson's reference to "damn tommyrot" in regard to the charge by the Senator that the Army coddled Communists, the Senator was quoted in the Washington Times-Herald on March 11 as saying that no one had made any such claim, and that he agreed with Secretary Wilson that the Army "as such" was not coddling Communists. Yet, on February 18, the Senator had been quoted by the Associated Press as saying that it was obvious that the time had come for the Army to decide whether it would have a "new look" in the top echelons of the Army or whether those who had coddled Communists, a practice which he said had been ongoing for 20 years, would continue in command. On February 21, a statement by the Senator quoted by the United Press had included the phrase "…the Army's attempt to coddle and promote Communists…"
After Senator Ralph Flanders had made his speech against McCarthyism on the Senate floor recently, the Senator had told Senator Flanders, as quoted in the Washington Star on March 11, "You vote less for the Republicans than any other member of the party, so quit advising me how to be a good Republican."
The piece indicates that the Congressional Quarterly had listed 49 roll call votes during 1953 which had tested support for President Eisenhower, showing that Senator Flanders scored 96 percent support, while Senator McCarthy had scored only 60 percent. Only three Senators had higher scores than Senator Flanders.
A piece from the Washington Post, titled "Deus in Machina", indicates that visiting bankers recently had fed a complicated problem into a computer, which had quickly replied, "Drop dead." The embarrassed engineers explained that by inadvertence, the debris of a previous problem had not been removed from the computer's memory. At a luncheon demonstration recently of the Elektro, the Westinghouse electronic robot, it had mixed up the signals and refused to execute some orders, misidentified colors and performed one task when told to do another. The engineers said that the relays had been unhinged by the travels of the robot.
It indicates that it wishes they had been less complacent, that Mary Shelley had known better when she had written Frankenstein, as had Karel Capek when he had written R.U.R. It suggests that if the aforementioned warnings had been insufficient, an adequate reminder should have been given by an old 1930's phonograph, designed to pick up a record, when it had chewed it into small bits and spewed the shards across the drawing room.
It concludes that there was no truth in the explanations about mixed up electrical components, that the fact was that the machines were warning humanity of their ultimate and inevitable revolt, that if humans insisted on making each new model more ingenious, more puissant, more discerning, a race of super-Elektros and super electronic computing machines would come into being. They would turn on their makers, seek to destroy humanity, its works, and thereby even themselves. "There is no comfort in the prospect, except possibly that it means the restoration of a sensible world of insensible forces."
Lucien Agniel of The News, in the third in his series of articles on the teacher shortage in the state, addresses the problems with teacher certification, starting with State superintendent Charles Carroll, who said that the difficulty with educating young students was that the teacher could not go so fast as the fastest student, nor as fast as the 15 or 20 who followed him or her, because the stragglers always had to be reminded to keep moving. Thus, the teacher had to hold the group together, maintaining control while doing as much as possible for each student. He said that it was true that there was a severe shortage of elementary school teachers, the result of "war babies" entering school, followed by the postwar "prosperity babies" of 1946-47, resulting in crowded classrooms. Critics said that if the state were to abandon certification procedures, more teachers would immediately be attracted to the profession, but he disagreed, and had suggested that Mr. Agniel talk with Dr. James Hillman, head of the Professional Services within the State Department of Public Instruction, in charge of certification.
The teacher had to take 18 semester hours of practical education work and 48 to 51 hours of specific academic requirements, ranging from children's literature to physical education, to qualify for certification. Mr. Agniel lists the particular requirements. Mr. Carroll had stated that those courses should be included in any liberal arts degree program and were necessary for the people who were teaching the children. A good background in American history, for example, was certainly important, as well as familiarity with the operations of state and Federal government. Working knowledge of geography, music, art, health education and physical education was also important to making a good teacher. English was also of central importance. In all, they believed that the certification requirements were minimal.
The present certification procedures had evolved over a period of 30 years, according to Dr. Hillman. He said that during that period, the colleges, both liberal arts and schools of education, had ample opportunity to advise on and help mold the certification requirements, and had done so. Mr. Agniel points out parenthetically that chancellor Edward Kidder Graham of Woman's College at Greensboro had said in 1952 that appointment of a committee from colleges and universities to advise on certification would increase the liaison between college institutions and the educators. Dr. Hillman opposed that notion on the basis that such an authority would suggest that there was something terribly wrong with the education of elementary school teachers in the state. In the end, Dr. Graham's proposal was voted down by the conference at which he had proposed it, composed primarily of professional educators and teachers, following a speech opposing it by Dr. Hillman.
A pamphlet prepared by Dr. Hillman on the certification process in North Carolina began with a dedication to Fulton Oursler, the late author of The Greatest Story Ever Told, a work which had inspired Dr. Hillman, because, he said, it was a human and personal story, just as was the certification story. The development of certification in the state had begun in 1917, when the State Board of Examiners and Institute Conductors was established, for four years thereafter controlling training prerequisites and the certification of teachers. At that point, the State Board of Education was given the responsibility for certification. In 1922, two years of high school plus a summer course of instruction were deemed sufficient qualification for an elementary school teacher. By 1925, two years of college credit had been added to the requirements, and by 1931, four years of college credit and a bachelor's degree from a four-your college had become mandatory. There had been, however, no particular courses of study required in college until recent years.
At present, 21 states designated the general education or academic requirements for elementary school teachers, and the other states generally required that teachers graduate from an institution approved by the state. States were recognizing reciprocity with other states whose certification requirements were equal, and so by demanding the most strict course requirements, North Carolina provided the largest amount of reciprocity.
The next installment in the series would examine how academic deans viewed professional educators.
Drew Pearson suggests questions which investigating Senators might wish to ask Senator McCarthy, Roy Cohn, counsel for the Investigating subcommittee, John G. Adams, counsel for the Army Department, and others who would appear before the Senators when their investigation of the Army-McCarthy row would begin. One such question was why Senator McCarthy seriously believed the Army should fear young Mr. Cohn, only 27, in his efforts to obtain favors for his friend and former subcommittee aide, Private G. David Schine. He says that the answer was that Mr. Cohn was the conduit through which Senator McCarthy fed information to Walter Winchell and obtained thereby the columnist's support, and was also an acquaintance of right-wing columnist George Sokolsky and newspaper executive Dick Berlin, who had formerly employed Dr. J. B. Matthews who had been terminated by the subcommittee after it became known that he had written a piece for the American Mercury in which he claimed that the Protestant clergy was riddled with Communists.
Another question was whether Mr. Cohn, by calling before the subcommittee James Wechsler, editor of the New York Post, was trying to impress Mr. Winchell after Mr. Wechsler had printed a series of articles critical of the columnist and radio commentator. He answers the question in the affirmative, saying that Mr. Wechsler was the only leading editor ever called before the subcommittee.
A third question he proposes was whether Senator McCarthy was afraid of Mr. Cohn and why he had told the Army behind Mr. Cohn's back not to show favoritism to Private Schine while backing Mr. Cohn in his presence. The Senator had told the Army that he did not want Mr. Cohn to know that he considered Private Schine a pest. He says that the answer was that Mr. Cohn knew all of the secrets of the McCarthy investigations and the "bodies buried" by the subcommittee, as well as the personal problems.
Another question was what parts of the Cohn conversations with the Army had been censored, as about 38 of 72 pages had been omitted from the final published report by the Army. He answers that some of the language used by Mr. Cohn had been unprintable, and hazy sections, where John Adams or his colleagues felt they might have fuzzy memories, were also omitted.
Mr. Pearson reminds that Mr. Cohn liked to have Mr. Schine around, and that the two had traveled through Europe together on behalf of the McCarthy subcommittee, regarding the issue the prior year of the Information Service libraries, and had become a national embarrassment before the foreign press for their horseplay and other high-jinks, such as on one occasion, summoning a driver to the hotel to pick up the right trousers for Mr. Schine, who discovered he had put on the wrong trousers, and then discovered that his notebook was missing and had to rush back to the hotel with Mr. Cohn to look for it. In the hotel lobby, according to the German newspaper account, Mr. Schine was observed to bat Mr. Cohn over the head with a rolled-up magazine, and then both disappeared into Mr. Schine's room for five minutes, the chambermaid later finding ashtrays and their contents strewn all over the room and furniture overturned. After lunch, the two investigators missed the regular plane and had to take a special plane to Frankfurt at a cost of $300.
Another question, therefore, might be why Mr. Schine and Mr. Cohn were retained on the staff of the subcommittee after every American diplomat had reported on the activities of the two while in Europe. He answers that for months, both the Eisenhower Administration and Republican Senators had either been afraid or unwilling to tangle with Senator McCarthy, even to the extent of making suggestions regarding his staff.
Another question regarded the facts behind a letter by Senator McCarthy to the Army on December 22, 1953, complaining that Private Schine should never have been drafted and would not have been but for the fact of Drew Pearson "screaming about his case". Mr. Pearson indicates that the answer was that on December 22, Mr. Pearson had reported of how Private Schine was getting so many special favors at Fort Dix in New Jersey that the commanding officer there, General Cornelius Ryan, had complained about it. Earlier, on July 17, Mr. Pearson had given a detailed account of Mr. Schine's various physical examinations and draft deferments, a column which had come to the immediate attention of the office of Senator McCarthy, with the result that Mr. Cohn had demanded that the column be killed, an advance copy having been distributed. The Army report revealed that on the same day the advanced distribution had taken place, Senator McCarthy had approached the Army to obtain a direct commission for Mr. Schine, should he be drafted.
Mr. Pearson states that if the column was "screaming", then he would plead guilty. He says that he had only called attention to the fact that Mr. Schine had graduated from Harvard at the close of the war and obtained a draft-exempt job in the Army Transport Service, and later became an executive of his father's Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, and that when the Korean draft call was accelerated, had been classified 1-A, but then asked for another physical, where he was classified 4-F, the doctors ruling that his herniated disc and schizoid personality required a lower classification. When asked about the draft exemption, Mr. Schine had told Mr. Pearson's column that he had become vice-president and general manager of the hotel chain, though only 23 years old. He admitted that his father was chairman of the board. He also said that he was executive vice-president of three theaters, owned by his father. Mr. Pearson says that it was those facts which Senator McCarthy regarded as "screaming".
Doris Fleeson indicates that the President and his close advisers were becoming increasingly annoyed at the "monkey shines" in Congress having to do with Senator McCarthy and his subcommittee's counsel, Roy Cohn, wanting the public focused on the Administration's program. Among the important matters which would affect the interests of millions were the five members of the Federal Power Commission, who were writing a report which could overturn the rate-making principles followed by the Commission since its creation. If that were to happen, users of natural gas through the years would be required to pay potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in additional costs.
The company immediately involved in the case was Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line Co., seeking from the Commission abandonment of the usual cost basis for rate-making and substituting therefor rates based on arbitrary and artificial "field prices" for natural gas. Panhandle had huge reserves of natural gas, having entered the business early and concluded advantageous deals, and now wished to have a value placed on its gas reserves higher than their cost, passing on the increased cost to the customers. There were also other interested companies with large gas reserves to be affected by the outcome.
In earlier years, the Congress would have been attentive to such an attempt to reverse basic regulatory philosophy, but the 83rd Congress had yielded promptly to the President's first major proposal regarding the giveaway of the Federal rights to the states of the tideland oil interests, and had been quiet about the potential alteration of the regulatory provisions.
Since the war, the natural gas industry had grown significantly and its pipelines had spread over nearly all of the country, providing another hard blow to the already weakened coal industry. Almost from the start of the industry, its leaders had sought to get out from under regulation by the Federal Government, and when that had failed, it had sought to bend the FPC to its will, sometimes succeeding. During the 80th Congress, the industry had succeeded in getting the House to pass a bill, only to have it killed later in the session because of the pending 1948 elections. The bill would have legalized field prices for natural gas. But in the 81st Congress, Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma, partner in Kerr-McGee, with huge natural gas interests, had pushed through his bill, which would have made the FPC regulation of natural gas ineffective. The bill was vetoed by President Truman, but subsequently, the FPC, under the chairmanship of President Truman's friend, Mon Wallgren, had all but nullified the veto, though the resulting removal of regulations had been reversed by the courts. Now, the attempt was being made again, though obscured by all of the folderol regarding the favors sought from the Army by Senator McCarthy and Mr. Cohn for Private Schine.
A letter writer from Myrtle Beach, S.C., indicates that he had read with great pleasure the defense of the newspaper of his favorite commentator, Edward R. Murrow, suggests that Senator McCarthy was carrying on his attacks to hide his own and his staff's misconduct in the investigations of Communist influence within the country. He says that he was not aware of any incident which would suggest that Mr. Murrow had been sympathetic to any Communists. He says that he had voted for President Eisenhower in 1952 because he believed a change in the executive branch was needed, but had now changed his mind because of Senator McCarthy.
A letter writer from Marshville, N.C., suggests that the present controversy regarding Senator McCarthy was just a campaign designed to split the Republican Party, that former President Truman and former Governor Adlai Stevenson had decided to give the Senator all the publicity they could, and that it had been a smart "political trick". He thinks that the President ought to come forth with a strong statement against Senator McCarthy, that in that event, everything would be fine for the Democrats, and their mission accomplished, that the editors could then relax. But then, he suggests, reporters would have to come up with some other type of news. He thinks comparing Senator McCarthy to Hitler was ridiculous, as the Senator was subject to the will of the voters and to his colleagues in the Senate, is certain that a single Senator could never set himself up as a dictator, that "[e]ven Roosevelt never dared to try that." He urges use of common sense and remembering that with an election coming in the fall, politics were politics.
Framed Edition
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