The Charlotte News
Tuesday, November 20, 1945
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the primary twenty defendants, the first to be indicted for war crimes before the Nuremberg tribunal, had appeared before the bar to answer the four charges against each of them, crimes against the peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to commit those crimes. The indictments
The indictments for crimes against the peace were based on the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, outlawing war.
In Java, the British bombed six Indonesian-held roadways into embattled Semarang, having provided 90 minutes notice to people via leaflets dropped on the town. Violence between the British Indian troops and the Indonesian Nationalists also continued in Soerabaja and Bandoeng.
In China, 4,000 Communist troops were invading Manchuria's capital at Changchun. The report was silent as to whether the Russians had yet vacated. Unofficial reports stated that the Russians were insisting on twenty conditions before the Government could fly troops into Manchuria, requiring otherwise overland travel. The Nationalists were already proceeding by land into Manchuria, having penetrated 23 miles without opposition, 190 miles from Mukden. They had occupied Suichung, 25 miles northeast of occupied Shanhaikwan. The Communist press charged that the Americans were converting China into an American colony, calling the actions aiding and training the Nationalist troops imperialistic.
The Army Air Force claimed a world's flying distance record by a B-29 which had flown from Guam to Washington non-stop, 8,000 miles in 35 hours. The previous distance record had been a bit over 7,100 miles set by the British in 1938, flying from Egypt to Australia.
General Eisenhower received a rousing welcome in Chicago where he attended the American Legion Convention and received an award.
The joint Congressional committee inquiring into the attack on Pearl Harbor presented a letter in which the late Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox had, in January, 1941, predicted that if war came in the Pacific, it would be "easily possible" that it would be initiated by an attack on the Pacific Fleet or on Pearl Harbor. Admiral J. O. Richardson, commander of the Pacific Fleet until February, 1941, stated that FDR had been "rather loath" to increase the manpower of the Fleet in midsummer 1940. The admiral had left Washington at that time with the opinion that the Administration believed the Japanese could be bluffed.
In point of fact, Admiral Richardson had in 1940 favored return of all but a skeletal force of the Fleet from Hawaii to San Pedro—you know, where Ida Sessions lives. Or, maybe it's Curly.
The Navy unveiled three radio-controlled buzz bombs which could travel 500 miles per hour, developed late in the war, capable of being directed to targets, unlike the V-1 and V-2. The American rocket bombs were known as Gorgon, Cargoyle, and Glomb—apparently able to form a law firm if not successful as rockets.
In the 38th installment of General Jonathan Wainwright's account of his internment by the Japanese, he tells of his leaving Shen Tai Tun for his final camp where he spent a miserable winter of 1944-45, with temperatures plummeting to 45 below zero. On the day they departed, Red Cross packages arrived which helped restore the men. The Japanese punched holes in much of it to insure quick consumption. After their departure, the men left behind gained weight, to within 20 to 25 pounds of their norm.
The men suffered severe dental problems until the Japanese could be convinced to allow a local dentist to treat them, at least insofar as he could without filling cavities.
At one point during the winter, the men were ordered to dig foxholes in frozen ground and they complied to continue to receive food. The officers, however, balked toward the end of the winter when ordered to work on the farm. Food was cut to those refusing to work.
The men were able to make a deal with a sentry to obtain three Japanese newspapers for a wristwatch. They had two translators and thus could read, to some degree, of the happenings in the world. The news had to be maintained, however, in secret to prevent discovery by the Japanese officers of the theft of the newspapers. They continued the barter through the remainder of their captivity and began to learn of the bombing of Japan by hordes of B-29's, an airplane of which they knew nothing. They had also heard that MacArthur had landed in the Philippines on January 9 and that FDR had died on April 12.
General Motors indicated that it intended to respond by Friday to the UAW demand for a 30 percent wage increase. The final demand had been issued by UAW vice-president Walter Reuther on November 19, insisting on response by November 20. The union wanted the appointment of a three-man board with the right to examine G.M.'s books to determine profits, and those of the union as well.
The J. N. Pease Co., engineers, predicted that Charlotte would begin consuming enough water by 1947 to exceed its safe levels for the filtration facility. Additions to the plant, costing $380,000, would be needed to upgrade the system. Moreover, Sugaw Creek's sewer outfall was leaking raw sewage into the water course, requiring reconstruction of the line and a new sewage disposal plant as well.
A City Council meeting on this night was being held to seek to reduce the estimated 4.3 million dollar expenditure allotted by the Planning Board for water and sewage so that more money could be appropriated for building a new auditorium and library. Whether any goats would be at the meeting was not yet known.
It was probably time to call in Mr. Gitts and his Florsheims, to insure that Pease was on its toes, not paid to render the alarum by someone nefariously motivated to disgorge from the common treasury lots of mazuma. But, that's
On the editorial page, "The Plaint of the Elders" tells of a speech at Winthrop College near Charlotte by John Temple Graves of the Birmingham Age-Herald, stating that the nation, prior to Pearl Harbor, had glorified youth to its own detriment and to the harm of the nation, that universal military training would offset this tendency in the future.
The piece states that such rhetoric had not been floated in the society since 1929, when John Held, Jr., disappeared from the scene. It had been thought that the war would have silenced such elders in their criticism of youth as libertine and dissolute, lazy and undisciplined. They had, after all, just beaten rigorously disciplined Japs and Krauts in nearly four years of active warfare.
Despite the unkind cut, however, the Winthrop College students apparently greeted the statement of Mr. Graves with approbation. But when he might make such remarks before a group which had among its listeners recipients of Purple Hearts from action in the Pacific or along the Siegfried Line, he would likely find a different reception.
"Modest, But Most Worthy" urges contributions to the Mecklenburg County Tuberculosis Association in their Christmas Seals drive to raise $25,000. The Association had been instrumental in bringing tuberculosis in the country under control.
"Are You Ready, Yale?" comments on the presidents of the eight Ivy League schools having formed a compact to prevent financial assistance to football players, limit distance of travel for games, establish high scholastic standards for participation, and bar post-season bowl appearances.
The piece praises the effort but, recalling Frank Porter Graham's frustrated attempt in a similar vain with regard to the Southern Conference, it ventured that it would likely run aground in the face of alumni who courted the game as a lover.
It ventures that financial compensation to players, in any event, was not so far-fetched, given that editors of college newspapers, for instance, were compensated. The football player drew throngs of fans to the campus stadium and thus earned money for the institution.
Now, the Ivy League agreement would only insure that deals, which had been transacted in plain view, would be consigned to the covert.
A piece from The New York World-Telegram, titled "There Is a Reason", comments on the newspaper's sympathy with a young reporter's exasperation with women since returning from service. He had found women to have lost their flair for glamour, hair, shoes, dresses, all gone to seed, torched in the offing, while hats were as mad as ever.
The elder counsels no fear, for nothing could be done about it anyway; past styles had gone through such trends earlier and then passed from the scene. Whereas red lacquered fingernails had once proved shocking, now the absence of polish provided the surprise.
It all revolved around the desire of the lady to be noticed, and would likely never change, whether the eye was drawn by omission or commission, admiration, fascination, adumbration, or frustration.
President Nixon, being a keen observer of women's fashion, and well-known for that talent during his day, in fact, his metier, such that everyone used to say, "There goes fashion-keen Richard, our President, God bless him," had performed his own ratiocination of the matter, believing that the fashion designers had it in for women, wished to render gender as homogenized as possible for their own personal reasons.
Actually, the late President had once contemplated his own line of dress wear for the lady, but decided that he would instead concentrate on writing his memoirs after his presidency. The fall line of dresses, we understand, was to have been called the "No-crooks-will-look" look, to be followed in the spring by the impressive "Tuck and Nip" line, and the summer "Those-who-hate-you-destroy-themselves" fashion. Of course, winter was the "Cover-up of Our Discontent".
Ah, but, alas, we shall not
Drew Pearson discusses, as does Dorothy Thompson, the Truman-Attlee-King statement on proposed disposition of the atomic bomb, to have the U.N. oversee it to insure use for peaceful purposes. Public approval of the approach had been generated by the testimony of scientists before Congress, urging the simple dilemma that control had to be exerted or the world would cease to be.
The scientists had even convinced Senator Chan Gurney of South Dakota, sworn supporter of the Army brass hats who believed in absolute control by the U.S. of the bomb. He had been won over by a scientist who warned that the nitrogen chain could be set off in the atmosphere should enough atomic bombs be detonated, causing the entire planet to explode in a ball of flame. Said the scientist: "We would simply be another flaming star in the heavens, later a barren desert. People from other planets would look out and say, 'Aha. Nova! A new star!'"
Well, you wouldn't know it. As we have suggested, maybe it did.
Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee, at first skeptical of the danger, had also become convinced by the scientific testimony of the need for abolishing the technology as weaponry.
The primary criticism on Capitol Hill of the plan was that it should vest authority in the heads of state, not in the U.N., proving a vacuous disappointment since its creation on June 26. Moreover, since the Security Council allowed any of the Big Five to exert unilateral veto power, another forum should be utilized for control of nuclear energy.
Mr. Pearson next reports that the deck boards of the U.S.S. Missouri on which the surrender documents had been signed with Japan had been ripped out, sent to the woodworking shop and converted to paperweights for the officers. Not a single enlisted man had received one and they were hot under the collar about it.
He follows up on a story from the column of a couple of weeks earlier in which he related that General MacArthur's portrait had strangely been omitted from an exhibit by the Navy of great war leaders. The explanation had come that General MacArthur had refused to pose for the portrait to have been included in the exhibit.
Finally, he enters several Capital Chaff items, including Walter Winchell's on-the-air offer of a billion dollars for a 12.5% share of ownership in the ABC radio network. He had the bills with him, he said. Perhaps, being guarded by Elliott Ness.
Marquis Childs comments on the Navy getting ready to present testimony to Congress through Admiral Nimitz, in opposition to the unification of the armed services, responsive to the advocacy by General Eisenhower of the change.
He proceeds to explain the confusion surrounding a contention made by Assistant Secretary of the Navy Hensel to Congress that there had been consent by the Joint Chiefs to the Navy recommendation of creation of a civilian board to study unification, something which the War Department denied, but which was clearly implied in a prior letter to the War Department to which a reply had been provided in agreement, intending, however, to agree only to a commission to study atomic energy.
Such was the confusion at present surrounding unification.
Dorothy Thompson comments on the joint statement of President Truman and Prime Ministers Attlee and Mackenzie King with regard to disposition of the atom bomb, recommending that it be turned over to the U.N. for use for peaceful purposes only.
With the war having reduced most of the world to states dependent on the primary victors, only the latter could generate serious tensions, and any such tensions would become struggles between life and death.
"Thus, with the atomic bomb, the struggle for power becomes, inevitably, a struggle for world mastery. The existence of a few great powers, each sovereign, can only precipitate further tests—and eliminations. Only one authority, with world control, ultimately can have the atomic bomb, because only a world of one authority can abandon its use."
She asks whether the final, definitive war would have to be fought to establish a victor or whether world unity could be established by transferring power to the U.N. Only the second option, she counsels, was sane. But it required turning over the atom bomb to that world organization. With sole possession of the bomb presently in the hands of the Western powers, they alone, for the moment, had the ability to force the issue.
"Therefore, the Anglo-American world must not only offer the world, but be prepared to impose upon the world a world authority offering no nations, including our own, any advantage not enjoyed by others, nor any obligation not undertaken by all: 'To each according to its needs, from each according to its abilities.'"
She asserted that the atom bomb would enable salvation of the world only if the nations could derive from it its full implications.
Occasional letter writer Robert Taylor, writing from the Veterans' Hospital in Columbia, S.C., tells of seeing on November 8 that the Community Chest drive had come up short by $40,000, a few hours before its scheduled end. He believed that some embarrassment might have been saved by tucking the item on an inside page— apparently either obtaining an earlier edition or mistaking the local news front page for the front page of the newspaper, actually devoid of the story.
He suggests that the thing speaks for itself, given the tight moral code of Charlotte, that Oliver Goldsmith might have written a tavern tune with lyrics, which Mr. Taylor provides, suggestive of a city to which "Dixie's Tightest Wads" had strayed.
Whether it was pertinent to the Dixie-Dame Pickle packers, packers of pickles not intended for plebeians, neither Philistines, of the previous day's "People's Platform", is not clear.
A gentleman, 76, writes a letter from Gaffney, S.C., of having his pocket picked while boarding a bus in Charlotte the previous night, probably on Providence. The thief appeared to have been a man of about 60 years of age, certainly at least beyond puberty, who had pushed a woman ahead of him, pressing the letter writer back upon the platform, and then apparently reaching for his purse, in pilfer of same, the reprobate then taking a powder, absconding into the night with a plethora of formerly protected plenty, against which conduct the author now counseled prophylactic intercession with concomitant restraint of pool
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