The Charlotte News
Thursday, November 22, 1945
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: Because it is Thanksgiving today, as it was in 1945, we will not yet summarize the front page or editorial page for you, poignant though they are. Because this is one of those Thanksgivings which happens to fall on November 22, we insist on contemplation.
We shall get back to the day's prints and provide a summary shortly. For now, we leave you with this
Returning to the front page, it reports that striking workers at G.M. indicated through UAW vice-president Walter Reuther that they were in the strike to the "bitter end" if necessary, until the wage demands would be met. Mr. Reuther stated that the union would study the reply due Friday to their demand that the company participate in arbitration of the wage dispute. Despite a four million dollar strike fund on hand at the UAW, Mr. Reuther indicated that the union could not pay the strikers any compensation, but would fight to prevent evictions of workers and would pay, when necessary, medical bills.
All plants nationwide had come to a standstill with the exception of a ball-bearing plant in Connecticut.
George Romney, general manager of the Automobile Manufacturers Association and future head of American Motors, predicted that all of the other major manufacturers save one, presumed to be Ford, would be idle within a week. He stated that the other manufacturers would struggle to continue production despite their reliance on G.M. parts.
Mr. Romney, of course, who would become Governor of Michigan in 1963 and also ran for the presidency in 1964 and 1968, as well Secretary of HUD during the entirety of President Nixon's first term, was the father of 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts.
The President's health care program, recall, had been submitted to the Congress on Monday.
In Washington, the Federal Government seized the bus and street car facilities following a strike begun Wednesday by the operators, enabling limited resumption of holiday transit.
Nationalist Chinese forces had captured Hingcheng in Manchuria, a railroad town on the Peiping-Mukden line, 60 miles northeast of the Great Wall gateway town of Shanhaikwan, already captured. The forces were approaching Lienshan, fifteen miles further north, and less than eight miles west of the Communist-held seaport of Hulutao. The Nationalists had repulsed new assaults by the Communists at Paotow and Kweisui in Suiyuan Province. A report stated that troops were also massing in Nankow Pass for an assault on Kalgan, the Communist-held capital of Chahar Province.
Negotiations were said to be ongoing with the Soviets, seeking their permission to use air space to move 45,000 Nationalist troops to Mukden.
China, through its Foreign Minister, Wang Shih-Chieh, issued a statement of general support for the plan to turn the atomic bomb over to the United Nations, asserting the hope that it could be done quickly so that the technology would be diverted to peaceful uses only.
After returning to London from his trip to meet with President Truman in Washington, Prime Minister Attlee told Commons that control of the atom bomb was essential to the future peace, that another world war would set civilization back "to an unimaginable extent."
During the third day of the Nuremberg trial, Julius Streicher who had sought to plead insanity was deemed sane to stand trial, and assistant U.S. prosecutor Col. Robert Storey of Dallas began outlining the hundreds of documents which would be submitted into evidence, designed to show that the Nazis on trial had plotted from 1940 to drag the United States into the war. The documents were those seized from salt mines, Hitler's Bavarian redoubt, and Alfred Rosenberg's diary and letters found hidden behind a false wall in an eastern Bavarian castle. Many of the key Nazis were smiling and laughing during the proceedings this date.
A move by Martin Bormann's counsel to delay the trial until Herr Bormann could be present was denied.
The joint Congressional committee investigating Pearl Harbor was in recess for Thanksgiving, had heard on Wednesday Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, then Ambassador to Vichy, stating that he had guessed in late 1941 that a Japanese attack might come in the Philippines but did not foresee it at Pearl Harbor.
Senator Scott Lucas, Democrat of Illinois, sought information as to why long-range air patrols of 300 miles in radius had apparently ceased prior to the attack, having been carried out by former Navy commander at Pearl Harbor, Admiral J. O. Richardson, until late 1940 when he stopped them. They were never resumed under his successor in February, Admiral Husband Kimmel.
The American Legion ended its convention in Chicago and endorsed the plan to unify the armed services and to institute universal military training. It also favored retention of the atomic bomb by the U.S., Great Britain, and Canada.
In the 40th installment of the series by General Jonathan Wainwright, he tells of finally learning on August 19 in Manchuria that the war had ended five days earlier. The men immediately began laughing. The Japanese interpreter rebuked them and reminded that they were still prisoners of war, which only caused them to laugh the harder. They were laughing at the wording he had used, stating that the Emperor had "amicably" settled the war.
Later in the day an American doctor visited the camp, he and the other rescuers being the first free Americans the General had seen since May 6, 1942.
Getting to Sian to reach the men had been difficult because the Russians had cut communications. They were informed that General Wedemeyer was ready to send planes from Chungking to Mukden to transport the men to freedom, but had first to be given the signal by radio. The radio, however, had been damaged in the parachute jump by the rescuers and so they were unable to get the message to General Wedemeyer that they had reached the camp. Eventually, the rescuers had to leave and the men then began packing their belongings in preparation for departure. They waited for five more days, anxious to be on the road.
General Wainwright in the meantime completed his 8,632nd game of solitaire, having won 6.8 percent of the time.
The Japanese did disburse all of the remaining Red Cross packages and the men were able to eat well-cooked meals for the first time since the outbreak of the war.
Finally, on August 24, the Russians arrived with 30 men and several jeeps. The commanding officer agreed to give the men an armed escort to Mukden if they could provide their own transportation and be ready in three hours. General Wainwright ordered the securing of two buses and a truck, and they were on their way home.
General Wainwright offered a prayer for the nation from Seattle where he was spending his first Thanksgiving stateside in five years and the first in freedom in four. The prayer is printed on the page.
Chaplains in Tokyo also extended their prayers for Thanksgiving, as more than a million pounds of turkey graced the tables of American occupation troops.
In New Orleans, spot cotton closed steady, 25 cents a bale higher than the previous day.
"Time for Decision", from July 29, 1944, is now here
A man from County Wexford, Ireland, a flour miller, had come home from England after obtaining a spare artificial leg, his leg having been lost in 1918. He was stopped in Dublin and told he would have to pay extra for the extra leg as it was not classified as personal baggage. He refused to pay the additional fare
On the editorial page, "A Time to Be Thankful" decides to take the opposite tack from that of Marquis Childs, exploring an imaginary conversation with Mr. Scrooge about Christmas Future, and look instead at Christmas Past, in which case, it suggests, summoning the ghost of Marley would have proved more instructive.
For the country, after all, was no longer at war, even if the peace remained uncertain. Even if destruction had been postponed for a decade or two, at least no bombs were falling in the Pacific, no men were dying in the fields of Europe.
While all the old evils lived on despite the victories, at least Americans realized that they were not immune to these problems. While there might be only a thin hope for peace in the world into the future, with the atom bomb at center stage, there had been no hope at all in the isolationist world of the past.
There was in the end, while understanding Mr. Childs's gloom, reason also to be thankful.
"Postponement Is Not a Policy" states that the strike against G.M. by UAW had been made inevitable when young Henry Ford II, the grandson of the founder, had addressed his long list of complaints to UAW, breaking expectations that the new Ford attitude would prevail to meet the demands of the workers, obtaining thereby competitive advantage which would have driven the other manufacturers to follow suit. The Ford letter made it clear that the industry instead would present a united front against granting the 30 percent demanded increase in wages.
Until the strike, the union had the upper hand in public support for their restraint. Now, many would see their demands as unreasonable even if the union had remained willing to enter arbitration while the company had refused to open its books to show profits. And the longer the strike would continue, the more would erode support for the union's stance.
Management, with some probity, would charge that the reason for delay in renewed production was not their own dilatory response, waiting for the excess profits tax to expire on January 1, but rather the impetuosity of the union in insisting on its wage hike at a bad time.
The workers might emerge from the strike with a wage increase, but public prestige would be severely diminished.
The Government shared in responsibility for the strike for the fact that there had not been enough pressure exerted to reach an agreement, the Labor-Management Conference only having worked as a postponement of Government action.
"End of a Pleasant Life" remarks on the death of Robert Benchley at 56, always an entertaining voice who mocked only the habits of the average fellow, positing himself in that persona, never picking on individuals. His genius was generalized satire without bitterness, without the cynicism which sold so well in the bookshops.
It says that the entertainer and author would be missed, his "Treasurer's Report" and his attempt to get a night's sleep along with him.
"It was good to have Benchley around, and we shall miss him. He was one of the few literary men who could, without reading a sermon, remind us that a tall feather on a woman's hat can be a more pressing problem than the fission of the atom."
Mr. Benchley was the father of Peter Benchley, author of Jaws.
A piece from The New York Times, titled "Negroes in Organized Baseball", advocates providing blacks a chance to participate in the major leagues. The Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees were seeking to correct this deficiency, having promoted the appointment of ten men, appointed by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, to study racial discrimination in professional baseball. That committee had rendered a report recommending that the major leagues treat all persons equally based on ability.
Baseball, it comments, had become a symbol of America. "It is a democratic game, where the boy from a back lot can rise from rags to comparative riches through skill and stamina. If we are willing to let Negroes as soldiers fight wars on our team, we should not ask questions about color in the great American game."
Jackie Robinson, of course, having been a multi-sport athlete at UCLA, would become the first African-American to play in the major leagues, joining the Dodgers in 1947.
Another notable early African-American player was Satchel Paige who joined the Cleveland Indians in 1948 at age 42 and remained active as a pitcher in the majors for over another decade.
Drew Pearson tells of a book being written by former Ambassador to Russia Joseph E. Davies which would stir some controversy around the State Department, as Mr. Davies was nonplussed by the Truman-Byrnes policy toward Russia. He contended that the anti-Russian forces in the State Department were out to stir trouble.
He was, of course, entirely correct.
Mr. Davies wished for President Truman to meet with Premier Stalin and place their cards on the table. Such a meeting would help dispel the pressure placed on the President by certain military men and diplomats.
Mr. Pearson notes that the President had recently offered Mr. Davies the position of Ambassador to Great Britain but he had refused the appointment.
Congressman Andrew May of Kentucky was urging the Mead Committee not to investigate the 36 million dollars worth of war contracts held by the Erie Basin Co. of Chicago, a company which operated on a shoestring and initially had refused to show its books. Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky had also joined Mr. May in the effort to deflect the investigation away from the company.
Mr. Pearson then relates a series of Merry-Go-Round tidbits: bad seating arrangement by Chip Robert, placing Congresswoman Claire Boothe Luce on his left and wife of South Carolina Senator Burnet Maybank on his right, when the opposite protocol should have prevailed; former Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles was actively still seeing important people, both foreign and domestic; and 22 percent of all goods shipped to the Philippines wound up on the black market.
He relates of another Eddie Cantor joke told at the expense of the President at the National Press Club gathering recently: the President had been visiting the Supreme Court, not on official business but to drum up sales of some black robes that his former haberdashery in Kansas City had recently acquired.
Alright, already. Enough with the haberdashery
The column then relates several Capital Chaff items, including that Swedish Prince Karl Johan was moving to Washington because his father, King Gustav, had nixed the son's planned marriage and he had to escape to enable connubial bliss.
Actor Melvyn Douglas, husband to Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas of California, to become known in 1950, thanks to Mr. Nixon
Marquis Childs, as stated in the column, recounts his imaginary encounter with Ebenezer Scrooge regarding the end of the war and the beginning of peace.
Mr. Scrooge was full of pessimism and sardonism, found the U.N. to be a great hoax, throttled aborning at San Francisco.
"The last thing Scrooge said was that he was getting ready for Christmas, meaning to fill it with as much ill-will as possible. Not a thousand Tiny Tims, he boasted, not a million starving children would shake him today. And the old gentleman stalked off looking rather pleased with himself."
Bah, humbug
Harry Golden discusses the first Thanksgiving, not at Plymouth in 1620
"David," says Mr. Golden, "had heard his good news. Tomorrow he would face the Philistines, and the day after tomorrow he would found a nation and a people destined to carry his name through all eternity."
Samuel Grafton continues to examine the Truman-Attlee-King agreement on atomic power, finding it to have been a meeting which ended with little more than huddling, but not much in the way of policy.
Likewise on the issue of Palestine, the United States had only entered an agreement with Britain not to increase Jewish immigration
On both issues, the agreement called for subsequent action but postponed it for the present. The policy of drift therefore was now in place by mutual assent between Britain and the United States.
There was some talk in Congress of not granting a loan to Britain, that Britain should rely instead on liquidation of its investments within the U.S., that the country was not to be trusted because of its turn toward socialism. Thus having used the Anglo-American bloc to turn opinion against Russia, the former isolationists were about trying to dissolve even the Anglo-American bloc. The alternative was a return to nationalism.
Unless the national drift in foreign policy could be arrested, the inevitable result of a return to the past would take place.
"On a street that is dark enough all men are enemies, and every doorway a danger, and no hand reaches out
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