“Forces Building Up To Bring Down McCarthy”

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27091, 14 July 1953, Page 9

“Forces Building Up To Bring Down McCarthy”

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, July 12. ; The belief that Senator McCarthy and “McCarthyism” will eventually be decisively beaten, is expressed by the political correspondent of the “News Chronicle,” the New Zealander, Geoffrey Cox, who has been studying the political scene in the United States. He says that virulent as is Senator McCarthy’s influence, “it is facing a mounting counter-attack which I believe will not only be successful but will leave America the stronger for the reaffirmation of its real principles.

“For every American who thinks Senator McCarthy is right—a Gallup Poll puts the figure at one in every five—another equally vehemently thinks he is wrong. This opposition does not capture the headlines in the way the Senator does, but it is a force of considerable power.

“It is headed by an influential section of the press. On the air Elmer Davis, still one of the most effective commentators in the country has been unwavering in his antagonism to the Senator and he has important allies in this fight among other topline radio figures.”

“The most powerful political force, ranged against Senator McCarthy is, however, the President,” says Cox. "There is no doubt that Mr Eisenhower detests Senator McCarthy and the intolerance and injustice he personifies.

“Why, then, does the President not come out against Senator McCarthy? The answer given by the President’s friends is that he is biding his time — he believes that he must get the Senator on an issue in which Senator McCarthy is seen even by his own backers to be entirely in the wrong. “And Senator McCarthy, whose technique is now the half-truth rather than the big lie, has so far avoided any such issue. “Mr Eisenhower is being held bacß by his own desire to avoid rows with Congress and by his party managers, who urge him to avoid a split with Senator McCarthy until after the Congressional elections next year.

“But it is doubtful if the President can go along with Senator McCarthy until 1954.

“For Senator McCarthy is steadily exploiting the present situation to build up dangerous backstairs influence with the Administration and, in particular, within the State Department “Time Running Against Him” “Time is running against Senator McCarthy. He has built his reputation on the cry that the American Government was full of secret Communists. This was a powerful slogan in election year, when the Government belonged to the opposing party. “But now Senator McCarthy’s own Republicans are in office and every shout of ‘Communists in the Government’ is an attack on his own side. “The return of Mr Adlai Stevenson, who has been out of the United States since the Presidential election, will also stiffen the anti-McCarthy forces. Until now these have lacked a leader of national stature. Mr Stevenson is such a figure.

“The chief blow to McCarthyism would be the conclusion of a truce in Korea—which no doubt explains the Senator’s feverish praise for Dr. Rhee. “Small, Cruel Figure” “He is not politically a big man in any way. He has no programme, no policy, no organised following. He is a small, cruel figure who looms large only because he stands on the heapedup passions of the cold war and, above all. the Korean war. “Anything which cuts this ground from under his feet will reduce him to his true stature.

“Meanwhile he is being steadily ringed around by forces which will sooner or later destroy him, and the greatest of all these forces is one which, although slow to move, is very powerful—that basic instinctive decency of the mass of the American people to which Roosevelt in his day appealed again and again on great issues like Lend-Lease—and which never let him down.

“In this struggle it will be decisive,” says Cox.

Holiday Task for Czech Children.— Czech school children have been given a holiday task to collect every single ear of grain left in the fields by harvesters, the Prague Radio announced today, quoting an appeal from the Minister of State Farms, Mr Marek Smida.—London, July 13.