The Charlotte News

Thursday, June 10, 1954

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Hanoi that according to the French high command this date, infiltrating Vietminh troops had won two more small defense posts in the Red River Delta southeast of Hanoi, as the rebels had stepped up their harassing attacks northwest and southwest of the city. One garrison of about 160 men at one of the villages had blown up its little red brick fortress 30 miles southeast of Hanoi and withdrawn after a long assault by the Vietminh, the French reporting appreciable losses on both sides. Vietnamese militiamen in another sector near the Gulf of Tonkin had been overwhelmed by a Vietminh attack in which they were reported heavily outnumbered. Posts garrisoned by Vietnamese troops fighting under French command were singled out in other attacks and the Vietminh were reported to have been repulsed in each such case.

In Geneva at the peace conference, British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden wanted the conference to narrow the differences between the East and the West without delay or admit failure in regard to the efforts to bring about an acceptable peace in Indo-China. There had been no progress the previous day in the talks, according to a British spokesman. The fragile French Government of Premier Joseph Laniel faced another key parliamentary vote of confidence the following Saturday, and thus there was concern as to what the effect might be if the Government were to fall. The previous day, Communist China's Premier and Foreign Minister Chou En-lai stated that the "war faction in France" was still in "feverish pursuit of American intervention and enlarged aid" in the war, and had adopted a dilatory policy in relation to the Geneva conference. Most of his remarks, as were the remarks of Soviet Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov the previous day, had been aimed at the U.S., with Chou indicating that U.S. policy was "designed to extend the war in Indo-China and to prevent the Geneva conference from reaching agreement." Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith replied that he was disappointed by the "unconstructive" statements of both Chou and Mr. Molotov. He said that the Soviet, Chinese Communist and Vietminh delegations to the conference had thus far shown no signs of willingness to resolve the issues regarding Indo-China on any reasonable basis which could be acceptable to the conference or ensure the return of peace.

In Paris, the Government faced the Saturday vote of confidence before the National Assembly, the third such vote in five weeks, with little hope that it would succeed. The demand for it came after the refusal of the deputies to consider an innocuous Government-backed resolution on the Indo-China crisis, with many speakers during the debate accusing the Cabinet and Foreign Minister Georges Bidault of not working hard enough to effect peace in Indo-China. The Saturday vote would be on the Government's refusal to provide priority to three other resolutions sharply critical of its Indo-China policies. The Assembly's decision might also turn on the question of the proposed European Defense Community pact to form a united Western European army. The Gaullists were firmly opposed to EDC and wanted to delay its consideration while the Popular Republican Movement insisted that the treaty be called up for ratification as quickly as possible, Premier Laniel needing the support of both groups to have a majority, as long as the Socialists remained in opposition.

In the 31st day of the hearings before the Senate Investigations subcommittee regarding the dispute between the Army and Senator McCarthy, the Senator, having begun testifying the prior afternoon for the first time during the proceedings, swore this date that Army general counsel John G. Adams had tried to blackmail him out of calling Army loyalty board members before the subcommittee for questioning about "Communism, graft and corruption." The Senator said that Mr. Adams had used "a combination of salesmanship and threats" in a three-hour talk at the Senator's Washington apartment on the night of January 22. He said Mr. Adams had made it clear that if the investigation were not called off, an unfavorable report about Roy Cohn, usual chief counsel to the subcommittee, would be made public. The Senator said that at that time they had not "thought up" the charges subsequently included in the Army's report, submitted to the subcommittee in early March, regarding the claims that the Senator, Mr. Cohn and subcommittee staff director Francis Carr had sought preferential treatment for Private G. David Schine, failing which Mr. Cohn had threatened to intensify the investigation transpiring during the previous fall of Fort Monmouth for suspected subversion. The Senator claimed that he told Mr. Adams that they would not be blackmailed. He claimed that Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens and Mr. Adams had sought to divert the subcommittee from its investigation of Communists in the Army and had suggested to him at a November 6 Pentagon luncheon that "there must be" Communist infiltration of the Air Force and the Navy which the subcommittee could investigate, confirming a claim by Mr. Cohn during his testimony. He stated that as early as the previous September, he had urged Secretary Stevens to "lean over backwards" against giving any special consideration to Private Schine, who had been an unpaid aide of the subcommittee, then facing impending draft by the Army. He said that Secretary Stevens, in his presence, had asked Private Schine to pose with him for a photograph at McGuire Air Force Base the previous fall. Secretary Stevens had testified earlier in the proceedings that he did not believe he had asked for the picture to be made, that he had no recollection of having done so. There is no transcript available online of this date's proceedings and likewise for the following day and Monday.

As indicated yesterday, the newspaper on page two this date recaps the exchange transpiring the previous day between Army special counsel Joseph Welch and Senator McCarthy, after the latter had brought up that a lawyer at the law firm of Mr. Welch, Fred Fisher, had, for a brief time, previously been a member of the Lawyers Guild, which the Senator claimed was a "communist-front" organization, so named years earlier by several Congressional committees and the Attorney General. Other than a picture of Mr. Fisher on the front page and one of Mr. Welch with a brief quote from the confrontation with the Senator as its caption, the newspaper gives that exchange no widespread special recognition or treatment, and, as indicated, it would receive no special treatment generally until years after the death of Senator McCarthy in 1957. It was simply, in retrospect, a particularly dramatic, short and symbolic representation of the kind of attack which Senator McCarthy had undertaken during his four-year scheme to achieve political recognition by publicly seeking to ruin reputations, and so was elevated beyond its actual importance to the overall proceedings and the eventual fall from public grace of Senator McCarthy, which had been transpiring, openly in the press and sub rosa in the arts, in steady decline for the prior four years. Elevating that exchange beyond its due import tends to distract from the more salient testimony of Mr. Cohn which he provided at another point during examination by Mr. Welch, in which he stated that the subcommittee investigative staff had determined that there were approximately 130 suspected Communists in 16 defense plants, and that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was aware of the situation—tending thereby to undermine the entire claim of Senator McCarthy that the defense establishment, including the armed forces, was infiltrated with a network of Communist spies threatening to the country's security and that the Army was trying to dissuade him by "blackmail" from undertaking his inquiry, but for which the country was imperiled with a Communist takeover of its military.

Parenthetically, indicative of the lack of special attention paid to the June 9 colloquy nationally, in perusing, via the modern magic of a search engine, several hundred newspapers during the entirety of 1954, we find only two instances of editorials on the subject of the exchange regarding Mr. Fisher, both favorable to his position, both in small town newspapers, in Okemah, Okla., and Ridgewood, N.J., and only two other instances of treatment beyond the general wire service summary of the testimony as in the News, occasionally extended to provide verbatim excerpts, one being in the Baltimore Sun and the other, quite brief, in the Boston Globe, both local treatments, all within a few days after its occurrence. In addition, there was a personal statement by someone who was a friend of Mr. Fisher and had also been a member of the Lawyers Guild, made in support of his own candidacy for Congress, out of Coos Bays, Ore., later serving two terms in Congress between 1957 and 1961. We have not attempted to compare it with similar extended treatment of other aspects of the hearings. We, of course, have no way of gauging the prattle which was broadcast over the airwaves, radio and tv, though, by the nature of the beast at the time, without cable and 24-hour news, it had to be limited to brief comment. Mr. Fisher, by the way, went on to have a successful career in the law. Had, however, he been a Democrat...

The President intended to make a new appeal for public support for his legislative program in a major address this night to be broadcast on radio and television. He would direct his remarks primarily to the Citizens for Eisenhower. ABC would carry the speech on television and radio, while NBC would broadcast it live on radio and then provide a delayed broadcast on television, while the Mutual Broadcasting System would rebroadcast it on radio later in the evening.

The Census Bureau indicated that the nation's population, including armed forces overseas, had reached 161,969,000 on May 1, an increase of about 2.8 million or 1.7 percent over the estimated population one year earlier.

In Richmond, a meeting of governors and representatives of 15 states where schools were segregated met at the invitation of Virginia Governor Thomas Stanley, voting to meet in closed session this date to consider the impact of the Brown v. Board of Education decision of May 17, holding that continued segregation of public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Acting Governor Charley Johns of Florida stated that as long as he was Governor, complete segregation of the public schools would be maintained, that the citizens of the state believed in social progress but not through "coercive judicial mandates". Governor Robert Kennon of Louisiana said that his state had maintained and would continue to maintain a good system of "dual education", but did not say how it would be accomplished. Governors Herman Talmadge of Georgia, James Byrnes of South Carolina and Hugh White of Mississippi had said previously that they would abolish the public school systems of their states if necessary to maintain segregation. Governors Stanley and William B. Umstead of North Carolina had indicated their desire to formulate a plan which would legally circumvent the Court's ruling—which, ultimately, would take the form of delay, taking advantage of the 1955 implementing decision in Brown and its language of effecting desegregation "with all deliberate speed". Governor William Marland of West Virginia said that he was not attending the conference with any idea of finding a way to evade the Court's decision, but wanted to learn something which might help West Virginia solve the administrative problem of integration more easily.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court, which had originally set oral argument on implementation of the decision for October 12 at the start of the new term, with briefs on implementation due by October 1, had decided to wait until the start of the term on October 4 before setting a date for oral arguments. The Court had invited all 17 states impacted by the decision to submit briefs.

In California, Democrats and Republicans were pleased with the outcomes of their respective primaries two days earlier, the Democrats having achieved the greatest primary vote in modern times, claiming that the result was because of political affiliations listed on the ballot, an innovation for the direct primary, and a newly revived Democratic organization, plus an anti-Republican trend. Republicans had outpolled the Democrats, however, in the combined tally for all major races, with one exception, that being that Democratic incumbent Attorney General Pat Brown had amassed the highest overall vote, more than 1.6 million, to become the only two-party victor among the state officers on the ballots. Incumbent Governor Goodwin Knight had a cumulative vote total of more than 1.5 million in the cross-filing system, which allowed candidates to file in both the Democratic and Republican primaries, compared to just short of 800,000 for Richard Graves, the winner of the Democratic nomination, both of whom had cross-filed.

In Pittsburgh, top negotiators for U.S. Steel and the United Steelworkers gathered this date for a meeting at which big steel was expected to answer the union's contract demands, seeking an unspecified wage increase for workers who were averaging between $2.14 and $2.24 per hour at present. The union was also asking for a guaranteed annual wage, improved pension and hospitalization programs, as well as other contract changes. U.S. Steel generally set the pace for all steel companies in union negotiations, with 600,000 United Steelworkers employed in the industry. The current steel contracts were set to expire at the end of the month.

In Charlotte, the National Guard, having lost its headquarters in the Armory-Auditorium fire which destroyed the building two days earlier, was searching for a new home. It had been offered one of the Air National Guard's Morris Field buildings for drill sessions and had accepted, and its 25 vehicles were being stored in a building elsewhere. One spokesman for the Guard said it was possible that the Federal Government would make available funding in the new fiscal year for construction of a new armory and that if that was not done, the Charlotte Park & Recreation Commission had indicated it would include the Guard in its plans for reconstruction.

On the editorial page, "Some Questions for the Park Board" indicates that in calling for a thorough study of all of the factors before initiating any move to rebuild an armory to replace the old Armory-Auditorium, the Park & Recreation Commission had taken the logical course. It sets out three questions which it believes needed to be answered in performing its study, and that in answering them, the Commission members should remember that the city's recreation program was already hard-pressed for funding and that Charlotte taxpayers were not in the mood to authorize large new capital expenditures until the present indebtedness was trimmed substantially.