The Charlotte News
Friday, February 1, 1952
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Communist negotiators this date proposed that the desires of 600,000 displaced Korean civilians be left to the "good faith" of the allies and the Communists, rejecting a U.N. plan to have neutrals, such as the Red Cross, interview these displaced Koreans and determine where they wanted to live. The Communists also rejected the allied proposal for inspections at 12 points of entry, cutting it to three, and did not reply to the allied selection of Switzerland, Sweden and Norway as neutral observers for supervision of the truce. The allies responded that "good faith" was not enough of a guarantee that displaced civilians would be allowed to live where they chose. Otherwise the negotiations this date were amicable. There was no mention of the issue of voluntary prisoner repatriation, the primary stumbling block on the prisoner exchange issue.
Staff officers working on the process of truce supervision completed a preliminary study of the allied working draft. Most of the remaining issues were minor, such as disagreement over the the number of ports of entry to be inspected by neutral teams.
In the ground war, there was no major action reported amid 11-degree below zero temperatures on the central front.
During the week between January 22 and 28, inclusive, U.N. soldiers had inflicted only 2,091 casualties, the second lowest figure since American soldiers had entered the fighting in Korea. The lowest had been 1,028 enemy casualties during the first week of 1951, and the greatest had been 29,352. The latest figure included 910 killed, 1,150 wounded and 31 captured. Allied losses for the same week had not been announced, but were probably very light.
In the air war, snow and overcast skies grounded most allied planes Friday, with only a few sorties flown.
The allies in January had shot down 31 enemy jets, destroyed two others and damaged 30, and lost 52 of their own planes, according to a report by the Far East Air Forces, the greatest allied air loss in any single month of the Korean War. It was attributed to increasingly accurate Communist anti-aircraft fire, which had destroyed 23 U.N. jets and 21 propeller planes. During the entire war, the allies had lost 479 planes while the enemy had 850 planes destroyed or damaged, including 611 jets. Most of the allied losses recently were from anti-aircraft batteries, which the enemy had concentrated, along with radar detection equipment, at Pyonyang and other key points prone to allied attack. The allies had flown 23,000 sorties in January, most of which had been directed at rail facilities and communications and supply lines. The damage reports did not include the heavy pounding of enemy lines by allied naval planes.
At NATO Supreme Allied Headquarters outside Paris, General Eisenhower stated, in a BBC radio broadcast this date, that solid progress had been made in building up Western defenses, but warned that there was still a lot to do and that sacrifices would have to be made by every nation. He said that NATO was "little more than a skeleton" and that there was a "crying need to supply it with muscles and sinews for efficient readiness to function." He urged that each of the twelve nations involved in NATO would need to make greater total accomplishments than had occurred in 1951. He said that the Western nations were still a long way from building up a defense force which would cause Russia to think twice before undertaking aggression, but indicated confidence that the job could be done if each nation did its best. He said that the cost of rearming had been the greatest roadblock and that undermining national economies would only disserve the effort. He urged, "Collective security will be produced only through energetic cooperation among sturdy, self-confident nations, all bound together into a solid unit by common devotion of freedom and peace."
President of the CIO and the United Steelworkers, Philip Murray, in a prepared statement for the Wage Stabilization Board seeking a resolution of the dispute between the Steelworkers and the steel companies, stated that American industry demanded a guaranteed minimum annual wage. An economist testified that such a guaranteed wage in the steel industry for those employees with three or more years of service could be supported by company contributions of between 6.5 and seven cents per hour. Mr. Murray likened the proposal to a "Point Four" program domestically and said it was not socialistic, but would contribute to the nation's defenses against a repetition of the devastating depression of the early 1930's, return to which could wipe away the economic and social progress of the previous two decades and, along with it, the country's basic freedoms.
The President's dismissal of state presidential primaries as "eyewash" in the previous day's press conference had triggered sharp criticism from Republican contenders for the presidency, as former Governor Harold Stassen said that the President's statement was an example of the "cynical attitude of the Pendergast machine toward the rights of the people", and Governor Earl Warren of California had stated that the election process in the country was never eyewash. Democrats tended to avoid the issue, with Senator George Smathers of Florida indicating his agreement with the President. He and Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois had been pushing for action in Congress to install party primaries in all states. Senator Smathers said that he thought that the President had put his finger on an evil which needed rectification, to allow the people generally to have a voice in selection of the party nominees. Senator Douglas said that he thought presidential primaries should be expanded rather than contracted, and that party nominations presently were controlled by about a thousand party leaders who frequently nominated the man whom the people did not want and ignored the others whom the people desired. Senators Edwin Johnson of Colorado, Clinton Anderson of New Mexico and Robert Kerr of Oklahoma agreed with the President's claim that he could have the nomination without entering any of the primaries.
Newbold Morris, a prominent Republican lawyer, accepted the job of supervision of the clean-up of the Federal Government, to work under the supervision of Attorney General J. Howard McGrath, who said that the President had approved the appointment. Mr. Morris would have the title of special assistant to the Attorney General, but would not require Senate confirmation. He was an ancestor of Lewis Morris, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He had been a charter member of the group which swept Fiorello LaGuardia into power as Mayor in New York in 1933. He was regarded as an opponent to Governor Dewey. He had been defeated in the mayoral race for New York by William O'Dwyer, presently Ambassador to Mexico, in 1949, running on the Republican, Liberal and Fusion party tickets.
Some 20,000 AFL truck drivers in 15 Southern and Midwestern states had struck this date in a wage dispute with operators, virtually paralyzing operations of freight companies in those states. The impact was felt immediately throughout much of the Eastern half of the country. Contracts covering the majority of truckers in those two regions had expired the previous midnight. Five operators' associations representing 500 firms had signed a three-year contract granting drivers an immediate hourly wage increase of 19 cents and providing raises of 7.5 cents in 1953 and 1954, also granting a mileage increase of three-quarters of a cent per mile with further mileage boosts of one-quarter cent in the following year. The average pay for drivers in the Midwest had been a $1.60 per hour, with varying mileage allowances, depending on equipment, loads and distances. The contract included a provision for an additional 15 cents per hour and a half-cent mileage boost for drivers handling explosives.
John Daly of the News tells of the strike of truck drivers having brought to a near standstill motor freight transport in the Charlotte area. Bottlenecks had occurred in Atlanta, the principal cities of Tennessee, and several Alabama and Mississippi cities. Shipments to Kentucky or Illinois centers were, however, moving normally. Embargoes were in effect on shipments extending into an area from St. Louis to Nashville to Atlanta to Birmingham. Charlotte was a center of operations for 61 long-haul trucking companies.
As pictured, Mrs. Robert Patterson, wife of the deceased former Secretary of War, who had been killed in a plane crash the prior week in Elizabeth City, N.J., urged via radio that people stop seeking to blame the deceased pilot for the tragedy, as his wife had been the target of poison-pen letters since the mishap.
In Cincinnati, police rowed for a mile the previous night to rescue a 16-year old boy from a flood-made island where he had been marooned since the previous Tuesday. Flooding from the Ohio and Little Miami Rivers had trapped him on what normally was a knoll on the Ohio River bank. He told police that he had killed a rabbit and eaten it for supper the previous night.
Was the rabbit good? How did you catch it? Did you have carrots? Inquiring minds want to know.
In Charlotte, a cat was acclaimed as a hero this date after an elderly couple narrowly escaped death in their burning home, the cat having awakened them with its cries at 1:20 a.m., after the fire had erupted. The cat was singed but otherwise unharmed. The five-room house, built the previous year, was a complete loss. The origin of the fire was unknown.
It was probably that damned cat turning over a bottle of rubbing alcohol into an open flame.
In Rome, actress Ingrid Bergman and her husband, director Roberto Rossellini, were expecting their second child together in June, Ms. Bergman's third child, her first having been through her first marriage to Dr. Peter Lindstrom.
We predict, in our crystal ball, that the newborn will one day have a connection to Lumberton, N.C., as filmed in Wilmington.
In any event, we hope that no one
takes the baby, aboard the City
On page 11-A, the eleventh installment of the serialization of The Greatest Book Ever Written, by Fulton Oursler, regards the Ten Commandments to the children of Israel.
On the editorial page, "Beyond the Horizon" wonders whether professed internationalists were true to their beliefs, in light of the reaction to the recent speech by former President Herbert Hoover, which had embraced isolationism. For example, Senator Guy Gillette of Iowa, while in Charlotte the previous fall, had advocated a North Atlantic Assembly to consider the common problems of NATO countries, and yet had expressed his opinion that the former President's speech contained "a great deal of merit".
Secretary of State Acheson countered the speech by talking primarily about the tremendous progress in Western European defense.
While the isolationists wanted the country to pull back from its overseas commitments immediately, there were many in the country who supported these commitments at present, but longed for the time when the national emergency would end and these commitments could be reduced. But that attitude, it finds, was misleading, as emergencies would continue until the millennium. Thus, to attribute all of the country's actions overseas to the emergency was to confuse the people and rob them of another challenge, which was to send Americans overseas with the hope of extending new ideas and methods to those eager for democracy and capitalism. In so doing, new markets would be opened and old ones expanded, as production abroad increased. That, it posits, should be the new internationalism. After all, an earlier generation, it reminds, had frowned on ventures to California, Alaska or Hawaii.
It concludes that this new internationalism seldom received lip service from leaders, while it deserved repeated mention to keep up with the times. It urges, "Let's not bring the boys home—let's send them abroad."
"Lest We Forget" refers to a London Times editorial on the page, reviewing the present scandals in the Government, contrasting them with worse past scandals of the Grant and Harding Administrations, and the likelihood that the present scandals would not dominate the 1952 presidential campaign, as most people regarded local and state corruption as more important to their daily lives than corruption on the national level. The piece hopes that the conclusion was wrong, thinks that especially the corruption at the IRB, which touched taxpayers and their pocketbooks, as they saw persons who owed large amounts of tax money getting off the hook with small fines and civil remedies while their own taxes rose considerably, would be recalled by most citizens at election time, as the average taxpayer was paying more in taxes as a consequence.
"We Might Get Hungry Here, Too" praises the efforts of the Soil Conservation Service to make farming in the nation more efficient, to avoid the Malthusian doctrine that population increased faster than means of production. With over 150 million people in the country, which possessed about 350 million acres of arable land, each person was supported by about 2.33 acres, leaving a third of an acre per person to help feed the less fortunate countries abroad. It thus supports the Service and its modest request for 53 million dollars in the ensuing year's budget, an increase of only three million dollars over the previous appropriation, finding it a worthwhile expenditure in time of peace or war, or the half-war, half-peace atmosphere extant at present.
"Turn of Events", reminding that the U.S. press had been jeered since the election of 1940 for having opposed the Democratic nominees whom the public elected, ignoring the advice of the press, finds interesting the two to one advantage of General Eisenhower's press endorsements over those of Senator Taft, suggesting either that the newspapers had caught up with public opinion, which also reflected the same level of favor toward the General, or had, through time, only honestly urged what they thought was best for the country, whether the voters had been paying any attention to them or not.
A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled "Touch Not a Hair", discusses a recent crackdown by State authorities on women fixing the hair of friends and acquaintances in private homes, in violation of the laws regulating cosmetology. Five women in Raleigh were being prosecuted under these regulations, based on the testimony of an investigator who had convinced a 17-year old high school girl to set the investigator's hair into curls as a special favor and then got her arrested. In other such cases, there had been similar types of entrapment being employed, which was no credit to either cosmetology or the justice system within the state. In the cited case, justice would have been worse served, it opines, had the girl been convicted, which was not the case.
It finds that there were silly aspects to all of the laws regulating the trades and so-called professions, and the addition of self-interest to law enforcement under those laws was not only of dubious propriety, but also led to combinations of malice and foolishness in the resulting trials. Those who wished to preserve those laws, it indicates, would be wise not to make them even sillier by rounding up all women engaged in the mutual activity of sprucing each other up, as it involved most of the women of the state and would require for enforcement all of its cops.
An editorial from the London Times Weekly Review, as indicated above, examines the scandals which had been uncovered in the U.S. Government, at the RFC, the IRB and the Justice Department, resulting in multiple firings of officials, highlighted by the firing of the Justice Department tax division chief, Lamar Caudle.
After reviewing these scandals, it finds that nothing had been uncovered which met the extent of corruption present in either of the Administrations of Presidents U. S. Grant or Warren Harding. The Democrats had been in power for nearly 20 years and so there had been none of the usual house-cleaning which took place in between Administrations when one party took over from the other.
It finds that the Democrats had not been indifferent to the low state of public morals and had led the investigations into Government corruption. The President believed that he had been betrayed by those he had trusted, and it suggests that he had been slow to open his eyes to the corrosive dangers of the corruption. He had first refused to believe that there was anything wrong at the RFC, blinded by his loyalty to friends, a trait which was cherished by Americans.
The Republicans were naturally eager to exploit these scandals and believed that they would be the primary issue in the 1952 presidential campaign. Some observers, however, wondered if that would be the case, with much of it depending on how dedicated the Democrats would be to cleaning their house and whether additional incidents of wrongdoing would emerge. But neither of the major parties were really in any position to cast stones at the other, as shown by the traditional Republican stronghold of Philadelphia falling into the hands of the Democrats for the first time in more than 60 years, as voters rebelled against the local Republican machine.
For more than a century, reformers in both parties had sought to purify party politics, with only temporary success, under Democrats Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson and Republican Theodore Roosevelt. But in spite of those efforts, the Harding Administration Teapot Dome scandal had taken place during the early 1920's. Disillusion had set in after the Republicans, nevertheless, retained the White House through the Coolidge and Hoover Administrations. American voters had never demonstrated the same revulsion to corruption on a national scale which they had on a state and local level.
It finds it unfortunate that FDR had not tackled the issue of corruption with the same tenacity as Presidents Cleveland and Wilson, as political exigencies had forced him to court the big city bosses and their machines.
It concludes that unless there were other sensations to come or that the cumulative effect of the mink coats and deep freezes and televised exposes of big city corruption produced a major effect on the average voter, it would be unlikely that corruption would receive any greater emphasis in the campaign than the greater issues of foreign and domestic policy, especially, in the latter category, the civil rights of black citizens. The corruptibility of a small number of public servants could not be eradicated by making it a partisan issue. To do so would require the honest members of both parties working together, as they had already begun to do in a small way.
Drew Pearson tells of having dropped in on a reception at the Cuban Embassy recently in Washington and while in the receiving line, had come across General "Lightnin' Joe" Collins, the Army chief of staff, who, only the previous night, Mr. Pearson had told his several million radio listeners, had used four able-bodied soldiers as personal servants. General Collins greeted him warmly, and Mr. Pearson complimented him on his youthful appearance, after which he proceeded down the line, then running across Rear Admiral Robert Lee Denison, Naval aide to the President, who, Mr. Pearson had informed his audience just the previous night, had accumulated enough anchors to last 50 years, had 132,000 oyster forks, was hoarding machine tools and had spent 215 million dollars on 91 planes for "administrative purposes", usually meaning rides for brass hats. Regardless, the Admiral was cordial and possibly even amused at Mr. Pearson's discomfort.
Feeling a bit like an unsettled pledge in a fraternity, he then came across Maj. General Wallace Graham, the President's personal physician, about whom he had written recently of his commodity speculation and his intervention to keep the famous Rumanian, Malaxa, in the U.S. despite the latter's collaboration with both the Nazis and the Communists to earn his business fortune. General Graham nevertheless was amiable and shook hands.
Next, he greeted Maj. General Harry Vaughan, the President's chief military aide, whom he had criticized a year earlier for receiving a decoration from Argentine dictator Juan Peron, which had earned Mr. Pearson a public censure from the President as an "S.O.B." He had even stood in front of the Argentine Embassy in protest of the decoration when it was being pinned. General Vaughan was now receiving a medal from the Cuban Embassy and appreciated the humor of the occasion when Mr. Pearson congratulated him on this new decoration. Cuba, at least, was a friend to the U.S. and a democracy. He was afraid to admit that if he met the General on a few more occasions, he actually might come to like him.
He concludes that he would not wish to do it again, but had confessed to his wife that he was glad he had gone. She had responded that it served him right, as he should not be so mean to the military men, as they deserved a few perquisites such as servants to help their wives cook. But, her father had been a general.
Marquis Childs relates of reports from behind the Iron Curtain from foreign diplomats to the State Department that there had been a decline in production and a rise in passive revolt within the satellite states. Official Communist publications had publicized the lack of food available within East Germany. One result would be that German Communists would be purged, but that would not remedy the production failures. A more concealed situation existed in Czechoslovakia, where forced production, following on a Westernized industry and democratic tradition, was not working, with the Czechs not producing the goods necessary for Russia's war machine. Absenteeism had become a problem, resulting in radio and press scolding, which had only resulted in passive sabotage. The people of Czechoslovakia were tired of hearing the typical Communist propaganda line regarding the virtues of work. The Voice of America was popular within Prague and was worrisome to Czech officials.
Similar reports emanated from both Hungary and Rumania, but the Russians had expected less production from those two countries, which had a decreased level of industrialization vis-à-vis Czechoslovakia.
Regardless of these reports, total subjugation in the satellites remained the norm. But the extent to which Russia could rely on these countries' armed forces remained a question mark. From Hungary, it was reported that Russia had moved Hungarian forces into the Soviet Union for "training" while Soviet troops had taken over in Hungary. Such a process of Sovietization was already reportedly well advanced in Bulgaria.
Yet, Western problems within Egypt and Tunisia, where mass revolt was evident, appeared much greater than the revolts brewing in the satellites. The West could not restrain these uprisings with forcible repression, even if there were sufficient forces to do so, which there were not. Mr. Childs observes that it was a lesson the West appeared reluctant to learn, that while the Russians could apply barbarous force to hold the satellites in reluctant subjugation, the West could not do so for its democratic traditions.
Robert C. Ruark says that, even though, at age 36, he viewed old age as being just over the hill, he would not wish to be a youth again with the "lowering threat of an atomic Humpty Dumpty perched precariously on the wall." He had never quite understood why H, when doubled and introduced to O, became liquid instead of solid. His science teacher had decided that, chemically, he was a moron, and had thus ceased trying to stuff him with "acids and elements and things." The only thing he had ever mixed in a test tube had blown up and burned a hole in the marble laboratory slab, causing his teacher, even then, to worry about the atom falling into the wrong hands.
He had been the same way in
mathematics, unable to make any sense of a plus b equalling the cube
root of z if magnified to the nth power. He regarded it as "idiot
talk". Fractions
Thus, he concludes that if he could not dig those things then, he could not dig them presently, were he a young student. He had read in the newspapers that high school students in New York were going to receive small samples of radioactive elements from Oak Ridge with which to experiment in the laboratories, which he regarded as a substitute for spitballs. While school officials assured that none of it was combustible, he was certain that with his talents, he could find a way to blow up all of Manhattan.
He concludes that while the younger
set were busy exploring how to bake an H-bomb from a mathematical
formula and the sun
Framed Edition
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