Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that President Truman, addressing a joint session of Congress for the first time since the end of the war with Japan, recommended establishing a year of mandatory military training for every male who was either over 18 or through high school, whichever event occurred later, or who was 17 and out of high school, with parental permission. Only those physically unfit for training would be exempt. The training would be carried out independently from the established services and men would be drafted only as needed after training. The plan met with mixed reaction.

He also assured that the United States would live up to its pledges with respect to the United Nations but could not rely at present on the organization to preserve the peace, that it had to rely on superior military strength. The President warned that the next time the country would be attacked by surprise, it would not have time to prepare itself as after Pearl Harbor. For the blow would come at the heart of the country, with atomic technology and rocketry now on the world scene. Thus, a strong military preparedness had to be maintained.

He further stated, "If at some later time conditions change, then the program can be re-examined and revalued."

Observers saw the speech as harbinger of an arms race with the Soviet Union, that both nations were pursuing dual policies, peace through cooperation and peace through individual strength.

The President wore a bluish-gray suit.

In the eighth day of the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 23, 1962, as set forth in conjunction with The News of October 23, 1937, the Kennedy Administration sought approval from the Organization of American States, pursuant to Articles I and III of the 1947 Rio Treaty, for the intended quarantine of Cuba, subjecting to search for weapons all incoming shipments from all nations. The vote would be unanimous, as the President had stressed was desirable, to send a message that no Latin American state dissented from the use of the quarantine.

As he had informed President Eisenhower the previous day, he was prepared to go forward with the quarantine even without OAS approval, based on the concept of defense of the nation against threat of armed force.

The quarantine would be implemented the following day at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. It was the first bold action in the crisis which could have led to war.

General Curtis LeMay, chief of the Air Force, believed, however, on October 19 that the blockade would be perceived by other nations and some of the American people as a "pretty weak response". He had favored an air strike to take out the missile sites with a follow-on invasion, a course of action, had it been adopted by the President, which, as history has demonstrated, would have led to immediate nuclear war.

Admiral Ernest King urged to the Senate Military Affairs Committee that the Army and Navy not be joined in a single Department of Defense. Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal had given the same advice the previous day. Admiral King, as had Secretary Forrestal, warned that unified forces had been tried by other nations with disastrous results. Admiral King did not register objection to establishment of a separate Air Force, dividing the War Department into two branches. He did not specifically comment, however, on whether he also favored combining the Navy and Army air forces, part of the argument in favor of joinder.

The President nominated Brig. General Kenneth C. Royall of Goldsboro, N.C., to become Undersecretary of War, a post vacated by the elevation to Secretary of Robert Patterson. General Royall had unsuccessfully represented the eight Nazi saboteurs in 1942, employing the highly questionable defense strategy of contending that the defendants were escaping Germany when they landed in stealth by U-boat in Florida and on Long Island, in possession of detonators, timers and explosives.

Talks continued in Detroit between the UAW and management to try to avert a strike regarding labor's demanded 30 percent wage increase, to keep pace on return to the peacetime 40-hour work week with wartime wages based on a 48-hour week. The UAW's 300,000 members were about to take a vote the following day on whether to strike, expected to vote in favor of it.

Walter Reuther, vice-president of the UAW, assured G.M. management that the workers did not want a wage increase if it meant a price increase on cars. But one G.M. official told him that it was none of labor's "damn business" what OPA did with the price of "our" cars.

In Pittsburgh, U.S. Steel turned down a demand by the United Steel Workers for a general wage increase of $2 per day, saying that ceiling prices would not allow the wage increase at that time. The dispute appeared headed for strike.

In the fourteenth installment in the series of articles by General Jonathan Wainwright on the fall of Bataan and Corregidor in April and May, 1942, he tells of the beginning of the 27-day battle for Corregidor following the fall of Bataan on April 9. He had 11,000 men under his command opposing an enemy force of a quarter million, the forward parts of which were two miles to the north on Bataan, across the Mariveles Strait, and six miles to the south on Cavite.

About 2,000 evacuees from Bataan had made it to Corregidor on the night of April 8-9, most being non-combat personnel and most of the combat personnel being in such bad physical condition as to be unable to perform even light work.

General Wainwright was considerably frustrated by the fact that the bombers he had requested to escort the supply ships from the south had not arrived at Mindanao until April 9, too late to save Bataan, then raided Davao and Nichols Field near Manila the next day and returned to Australia, reporting good bombing results. He had hoped that they would return but they never did.

Life photographer Margaret Bourke-White came to Charlotte as part of a nationwide speaking tour regarding her wartime experience as a photographer, as contained in her recent book, They Called It Purple Heart Valley. Her hair was "French Blue", a light lavender shade, complementing her "brown traveling costume", as she left the train at the Southern Railway station.

On the editorial page, "It Isn't Easy" discusses the critics of President Truman's inaction in not setting a precise across-the-board wage formula for the Government to follow in negotiations between labor and management. But the fact was that no such formula could be used as industries too much differed in their percentage of labor costs and profits. Each industry had to be taken on its own.

"The Direct Approach" suggests that all outgoing business mail in Charlotte contain a "P.S." suggesting the location of a branch office or business in Charlotte, a cheap way to advertise the community.

"Pink, Not Red" comments on the election in France, the first in six years, having proved the pundits wrong who suggested that France would turn Communist because of the predominance of Communists in the underground during the war and their vital role in helping to defeat the Nazis from within.

"Due Process" comments on the whipping inflicted by the Sheriff of Prince Georges County, Md., as the punishment of a man for having been convicted of assaulting his wife.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Representative Pat Cannon of Missouri, chair of the Appropriations Committee, remarking on the fact that there were 82 House members now voting as a bloc for economy, rather than simply advocating it.

Drew Pearson discusses pleasure flights by Navy brass hats, as that of Captain J. W. Slattery, who the previous month had issued orders against RON's, flights of officers where they Remained Overnight. But then, he, himself, had violated the directive when he and two other officers flew to Cat Cay, a British island, with fishing tackle and seven quarts of whisky aboard, costing 575 gallons of fuel and 3.8 hours of flight time by a crew of six plus two pilots.

Marquis Childs remarks on Senator Arthur Stewart of Tennessee having taken Mr. Childs to task for his having labeled Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee an enemy of TVA. Mr. Childs does not dispute the facts put forth by Senator Stewart, showing a long record of support by Senator McKellar of TVA in terms of its enabling legislation.

What he had found objectionable was Senator McKellar's war with the board of directors of TVA, demanding that they be subject to Congressional oversight regardless of the consistently efficient and profit-making record they had turned in. He wanted all of their profits turned over to the Treasury with the Congress then deciding how to direct that money, the implication being resurrection of patronage.

The concept of TVA had worked well, as an autonomous regional cooperative effort between state and local governments to bring cheap electric power to the region. President Truman wanted to adopt the model for other regional developments, especially in the Missouri Valley.

But a Senate subcommittee had just rejected the proposed MVA. Instead, the Senators appeared to favor a return to pork barrel politics, voting for one dam at a time in favored areas rather than allowing the tried and true autonomy of regional authorities determine the needs of the region and fit the proposed construction to those needs.

A letter writer pays compliment to Burke Davis for a special article on the State Hospitals as well as the editorial column for its sensitive editorial titled "The Lost Old Ladies", anent the elderly women who had been transferred to Camp Sutton from other institutions in which each had been housed for many years.

Another letter writer offers the belief that more small farms rather than high industrial wages would be a path to prosperity and better quality of life socially in the post-war world.

A letter on behalf of Charlotte teachers expresses gratitude to The News for publishing the facts about low teacher salaries and the need for increases.

Samuel Grafton remarks on the gradual shift since the end of the war in the country with regard to policy being laid forth by the President, as had been the case during the war, to peacetime when the President relied more on what the country was telling him. Thus far, the country had not adjusted from its role as passive spectator to that of an active participant again in the policy-making process, inevitably shaped from public opinion.

President Truman made no pretense of having a plan for the future of the world. Nor were there any longer Big Three agreements upon which reliance could be predicated, as the structure of the Big Three had now markedly changed with the introduction of tension between the West and Russia since V-E Day, accelerated arithmetically since V-J Day, manifested in the failure of the London Foreign Ministers Conference of the previous month.

"We are grasping in this icy bath of freedom to make up our own minds: the feeling is, indeed, naked and cold, and one to which we have grown rather accustomed."

Yet, he finds signs of re-emergence of public opinion as with the revolt of the nuclear scientists in testifying before Congress the previous week that the atomic technology should be turned over to an international commission for control and not retained solely by the United States as recommended by the President.

It would be incumbent upon the people now to register their attitudes and desires with the President, as he was a "sensitive recorder of democratic pressures".

"One must believe that there is no fog which democratic discussion cannot, in the end, pierce; and it is not so sad to find ourselves compelled to return to this basic principle of our life for refreshment, now that a phase has ended, and a new one has begun."