Monday, November 19, 1945

The Charlotte News

Thursday, November 22, 1945

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that President Truman submitted to Congress a five-point national health program, including a compulsory insurance system which would require prepayment of insurance premiums adjusted to income, with patients remaining free to choose their own doctors and doctors free to accept or reject patients, while hospitals would continue to manage their own services. The proposal included Federal aid to build medical care facilities, expansion of public health, maternal and child care, Federal aid for medical education, with emphasis on cancer and mental illness, and disability insurance. The President stated that it was not socialized medicine but rather expansion of the existing social security program. The concept required pooling of premiums paid by everyone to take care of those who actually became ill, spreading the risk and thus absorbing the cost.

The Chinese Communists stated that they were prepared to seize the capital of Manchuria, Changchun, on December 1, to prevent Nationalist troops from encroaching on the region from the south through Shanhaikwan, taken Friday by the Nationalists. Other forces of the Government were spreading out in three directions 30 miles west of Shanhaikwan, encountering only light resistance, as 5,000 Communist troops were retreating to the northeast in Manchuria to avoid being outflanked.

The Communist spokesman predicted that the first large battle would be fought in the Peiping-Mukden railroad town of Chinhsien, 100 miles northeast of Shanhaikwan. The Communists claimed that their troops were landing in junks along the Manchurian coast, after removing from Shantung Province, ready to seize Mukden as soon as the Russians had withdrawn. Mukden had been the site of the original incident which the Japanese used as a pretext in 1931 for invading Manchuria.

An Indonesian radio station in Java called for war against the British, as new outbreaks of violence had erupted in Semarang in central Java. A British intelligence officer stated that there was no substantiation of earlier reports that the Japanese were providing leadership to the Indonesians in the fighting at Soerabaja.

The Iranian Parliament decided to send two battalions of troops to Russian-occupied Azerbaijan Province, after armed insurgents had occupied some of the major towns. It was not clear whether the Russian troops would permit the entry of the Iranian troops.

At the trial of General Yamashita in Manila, a vivid account was provided of how, on December 15, 1944, 150 American soldiers had been captured, herded into air raid shelters, drenched with gasoline and then burned to death, with the few survivors who sought escape then shot and bayoneted. Nine successfully escaped into the jungle and were saved by guerillas. Col. Masatoshi Fugishige admitted having stated that his troops should kill Americans cruelly and include women and children, although qualifying the admission on his having conditioned the killing of women and children only if they attacked.

In Paris, the Constituent Assembly voted 400 to 163, the Communists providing the nay votes, for General De Gaulle to continue his efforts to form a coalition government, hampered by resistance from the Communists. The votes in favor included the Socialists. The vote forestalled General De Gaulle's effort the previous week to resign as head of the provisional government.

Newly appointed Undersecretary of War Kenneth Royall, of North Carolina, told the American Legion that they should seek to influence national defense to avoid American thinking from slipping again into isolationism. He contended that a majority of the people supported universal training, concerted opposition to the contrary notwithstanding.

Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan, a Republican, challenged the Navy's report of what is a known historical fact, confirmed by the Japanese, that the coded message, "Climb Mt. Niitaka", was the final signal to attack Pearl Harbor. Senator Ferguson may have misunderstood the context of the message, saying that he believed the breakdown in U.S.-Japanese negotiations was the triggering event for the attack. "Climb Mt. Niitaka" was the last order to implement the attack.

The Senator implied that the Japanese pilot who confirmed the import of the message, Lt. Commander Y. Shiga, could not be believed because there was no substantiation found by the FBI on another point he contended, that there was a plan to use want ads on Honolulu radio to provide information on American Fleet movements. Another Japanese pilot captured on Saipan had confirmed the planned use of the "Mt. Niitaka" message—the precise import of the tempest in a teapot surrounding which, Senator Ferguson did not bother to elucidate. The Senator also stated his readiness to prove that the Navy had translated on December 6, 1941 visual signals sent to Tokyo by a Japanese spy in Honolulu regarding movements of the U.S. Fleet.

Martha Azer of The News reports that a visitor from Kunming, China, president of the Kunming YMCA, asserted confidently that China would not become Communistic as Communism did not fit with the background of the Chinese people.

Unfortunately, the gentleman missed the call.

The 37th installment by General Jonathan Wainwright regarding his captivity by the Japanese discusses his transfer from Formosa on October 7, 1944 to Japan and then to Manchuria. The men were flown to Kyushu, then boarded a train and then busses to a hotel where they linked up with the officers they had last seen at Tamazato, transferred out on June 5, 1943. The other officers told of the harsh conditions they had endured at Shirakawa, already related in the installments of the previous week.

Eventually, all of the men were placed on ships, tightly packed again, and transported to Korea, where they were fed decently for a change. A day later, they were moved by train to Manchuria, the village of Sheng Tai Tun, just over a low mountain range from the Gobi Desert. The 90 men were now in freezing climes with tropical clothing, began literally to shake from a combination of the cold and malnutrition.

The OPA stated that, based on new price ceilings, 1946 General Motors cars would cost 2.5 percent less than the 1942 models, while Fords, Studebakers, and Chrysler Corporation cars would be a little higher. The manufacturers were to be allowed price increases which would be absorbed by the dealers. The head of the National Automobile Dealers Association, W. L. Mallon, said that his organization was not surprised at the new schedule but was disappointed. Congressman Wright Patman of Texas, chair of the Small Business Committee, agreed with Mr. Mallon that soon there would be a revision of the pricing schedule.

The Supreme Court refused to grant certiorari on the murder conviction of former Royal Canadian Air Cadet Wayne T. Lonergan for the second degree murder of his estranged wife, Patricia, found strangled to death October 24, 1943 in the couple's East Side Manhattan apartment, involving a toy elephant to be delivered to his infant son, to whom she had refused to grant him access.

Londergan was serving a sentence of 20 years to life, had asserted that his confession was obtained in violation of the Constitution. As we stated previously, Longergun would be released in 1965 and would live until 1986.

On the editorial page, "An End to Postponement" cites a statement by Dr. W. D. Funkhouser, dean of the Graduate School of the University of Kentucky, made at a seminar with leading black educators, that the racial problems in the country could no longer be side-stepped, that there was no black institution of higher learning which conferred doctoral degrees and few Southern black colleges or universities which offered even master's degrees.

The black educators believed that integration of institutions of higher learning would soon begin as the Supreme Court in Gaines v. Canada, decided unanimously in 1938, had held that either white institutions must make their facilities available to blacks or establish separate, equal facilities, per the 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. Gaines had centered on the University of Missouri law school which was segregated, and the absence of any Missouri law school for blacks. The separate system, said the educators, would be ultimately too burdensome financially to maintain.

The piece finds the statements persuasive and warns that the South had to begin to address this issue, as the old separate but equal doctrine had worn thin.

It cites the cynical response from a few years earlier by the South Carolina Legislature when a black had applied for law school and the Legislature responded, according to one legislator, by providing the State college "a Sears-Roebuck catalog for a law library and enough money to hire an unemployed colored lawyer for a faculty, and we ain't got a thing to worry about."

Now, they did.

We remind again that new Associate Editor Harry Ashmore, undoubtedly the author of the piece, would, in September, 1957, as editor of the Little Rock Gazette, lead the effort in quelling the considerable hostility in Little Rock to the admission of the small number of black students to Central High School. In 1958, he and the newspaper would receive Pulitzers for the effort.

"'The Game Is Afoot!'" reports on the efforts of a group of dedicated fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Baker Street Irregulars", to preserve the original character of Sherlock Holmes, unadulterated by the cinematic version created by Basil Rathbone, fused in the consciousness of the movie-going public such that Mr. Rathbone had become Sherlock Holmes.

The Irregulars had for years regularly gathered to discuss such issues as the morphine content of the needle used by Dr. Watson to inject Mr. Holmes. Now, they had come out with a publication of limited circulation, The Baker Street Journal, An Irregular Quarterly of Sherlockiana, with such noted writers and editors as Ellery Queen, Ben Abramson, and Christopher Morley on its editorial board.

The piece comments that they would not cringe when some realist would accuse them of fleeing the reality of the moment, into a world where change was little existent, as they embraced the notion openly, "...a world," they said, "we would give our hearts to capture and know again."

"Those of us who are bound hand and foot to reality, quaking before the onrushing horrors of the Atomic Age, can only regard them with ill-concealed envy as they disappear into the inky shadows of Baker Street. And only the narrowest among us will rise to damn them as they cry:

"'Quick, Watson! The needle!'"

"The Strange Sound of Reason" finds concern in the Congressional reaction to Prime Minister Attlee's speech to the joint session the previous week, that it was lacking in the salesmanship of Prime Minister Churchill, the right finding the most fault and the left generally accepting. But the fact that the most general response had been to Mr. Attlee's lack of elocution skill displayed by his predecessor was disappointing, as the speech had been sound and rational, conveying of information rather than any sales pitch. That it appeared to take a sales pitch to impress Congress was problematic.

A piece from The Richmond Times-Dispatch, titled "Phantasmagoric Nonsense", comments on a book, The Philosophy of American History, by Morris Zucker, which gave the South a good working over, disregarding along the way, it says, the facts. It provides an extract which examines lynching, stating it as an outlet for all classes, involving all in the hunt for the quarry, "[o]ne of the most damning consequences of the dominant ideology in the Christian South."

The piece finds the charge grossly unfair as lynching had declined to nearly nothing in the South of 1945, and had done so through pressure from Southern public opinion, determined to break up "these savage orgies". Since the start of 1939, no more than five per year had been reported.

But Mr. Zucker had used statistics of lynchings occurring between 1899 and 1929, as if they represented the extant condition, albeit noting in a single sentence that there had been a lull for a period.

The editorial assumes that Mr. Zucker had never visited the South, presumed all Southerners to be ignorant bigots.

"The South has its sins to answer for, but it can answer them on the basis of facts, rather than on Mr. Zucker's phantasmagoric nonsense."

Unfortunately, to change the South to any great degree, it did take, sometimes still takes, some of that overstated "phantasmagoric nonsense", for the fact was that some editors, perceived as liberal, such as Virginius Dabney of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, believed, even into the 1960's, that, if left alone, the South would cure its own sins, unable to see beyond the borders of Dixie and perceive it from without, full of its glaring omissions and commissions, so ingrained as not to be too noticeable from the inside looking out, even when examining closely the mirror, unless the mirror first was inverted.

In a hundred years, by the 1960's, it had failed to do so. There was no real effort on the part of many, a lot of nice words, a lot of nice, friendly meetings, but little action, little integration, a few exceptions, notable as they were, being the exception, not the rule.

The South, the country, even with an African-American President, has a long way still to go before it can be said that we have true integration among all races. The true test is in the neighborhoods, slow to give up the boundaries between black and white. And that is where the boundaries must inevitably crumble, neighbor to neighbor, in realization of common humanity. Perhaps in another fifty years.

Before that time, should the Flood come, from those too stupid to recognize the global warming warning of the last fifty years and more, and alter their driving habits or vehicles accordingly, it won't matter a hang anyway. We shall all drown together or perish in the tropical heat or freeze to death in areas formerly temperate. It is happening.

Drew Pearson reports on the House Judiciary Committee's inclination to put forth bills harming of the public interest, cites its latest bill, which limited to one year the statute of limitations on several Federal offenses, including defrauding the Government in surplus property disposal, violations of banking laws by bank officers, violations of civil rights statutes and the wage-hours act, and copyright infringement.

It should be noted that, in the case of fraud, statutes usually run from the time of discovery of the fraud, not from the act itself.

He next tells of President Truman appearing somewhat taken aback by the National Press Club ribbing he received for having been a haberdashery partner earlier in his life. Eddie Cantor had led the antics. He told of dropping in to see the President and finding a statue of George Washington dressed in a pair of long underwear marked down to $1.98. Mr. Cantor reported that the President's secretary had told him that the President would see him in the bargain basement. He went down to the basement where, after he removed his coat, the President began taking his measurements. When he stuck out his hand to shake, the President had sought to sell him a pair of gloves. He had wound up with several nice items nevertheless, but did not know what he would do with the Supreme Court robes.

Mr. Pearson next reports on this and that, including his response to an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle finding unfair his own criticism of the plane ride on a commercial plane provided a race horse from Los Angeles to San Mateo. He defends it again on the basis of the horse having taken up space in a mode of transportation needed for carrying soldiers and sailors from somewhere downrange to another place.

How could Mr. Pearson have known?

Did we ever tell you that we once taught driving at Sears?

Marquis Childs discusses the press conference at the White House in which President Truman, Prime Ministers Attlee and Mackenzie King had put forth their plan for disposition of the atomic secret, to turn it over to a special commission of the United Nations Organization to limit its use to peaceful applications. The joint statement of the three heads of state had also recommended not only complete elimination of atomic armaments but elimination of all other armaments "adaptable to mass destruction", presumably including the B-29 and incendiary bombs.

Meanwhile, Russia had just released a story of a discovery of cosmic rays by Russian physicist Peter Kapitza, who had examined the sun. The sooner such conventional scientific discoveries were freely exchanged, the more quickly suspicions would break down between the West and the Soviet Union. Mr. Childs then tells of Mr. Kapitza's biography which included time spent during the Twenties at Cambridge in England, where, after he had returned to Russia and was thereafter refused permission to return to England, he had been sorely missed. His former colleagues at Cambridge had seen him during 1945 in Moscow and found him a converted Communist.

Mr. Childs advocates an exchange program of scientists, Russian scientists coming to Britain and America, and British and American scientists going to Russia.

Two letters to the editor set forth in parallel the perpendicularity of the case regarding Dixie-Dame Pickle Plant of Statesville, forced to close because of the failure by OPA to acknowledge its request for an advance on the 1946 sugar quota. The case had become something of a cause celebre across the country, providing a rallying cry for those who disfavored OPA policies.

The company, employing 45 non-unionized persons, claims in one letter discrimination by OPA. It believed that were it an employer of ten times as many persons, especially if unionized, and if it were located in a state which was politically uncertain rather than in the Solid South, it would have received immediate response from the Government. It demanded that rationing of sugar be released, especially in light of an apparent abundance of sugar being sold on the black market throughout the country. It points out that contributory to the shortage of sugar had been the sending in July of 160,000 tons to Franco's Spain.

The responding letter from OPA's local office in Charlotte states that the pickles packed by the Dixie-Dame Pickle Plant packers were fancy hors d'oeuvre pickles, not the average-person pickles, not for the proletarians, being too expensive for the poor to partake, probably too slippery even to pilfer, of unnecessary prettification for a palliated palate. Moreover, the pickle packers knew of their sugar allotment for the year, used it all up in ten months. Their request therefore for an advance was unreasonable and unfair to the other sugar users of the district. Nor was there excess available in the district. The OPA, it says, was undertaking all efforts it could to abolish the black market. When supply would equal demand, rationing on sugar would be ended. It denies that the Government sent any sugar to Spain, where it was plain it had not rained. The Dixie-Dames were trying to expand their pickling for the profligately prodigious at a time when no business dependent on scarce product should have been putting pelvis to the plough. The Dames admitted that they had done as much business in the first ten months of 1945 as in all of 1944 and so they were simply all sugared-out, without any further ability therefore to pack any more pickles.

The letter concludes with the passage, to the Dixie-Dame pickle packers, from Edna St. Louis-Vincent Millay:

My candle burns at both ends,
It will not last the night.
But, Oh, my foes, and, Ah, my friends,
It makes a lovely sight.

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