Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the UAW renewed its charge with the National Labor Relations Board against General Motors that the company was not recognizing the basic right of collective bargaining. The charge came in the wake of a refusal by G.M. to negotiate further as long as the "illegal picketing" prevented office employees from entering the G.M. plants and the demand for increased wages continued.

In China, Government troops drove to within 90 miles of Mukden, to Kowpangtze. The Nationalist troops received word that 700 American planes were being flown from Burma and India into China for use by the Chinese. Eleven of 22 P-51's had already crashed in the operation, costing the lives of several American pilots. The Americans were said to be upset that they were risking their lives three months after the war.

The Soviets had delayed their planned withdrawal from Manchuria from December 3 until January.

Maj. General Patrick Hurley resigned as Ambassador to China, attacking American policy in Asia, proclaiming that a third world war was in the making. He contended that the United States was using its power and prestige to "undermine democracy and bolster Imperialism and Communism" in the Far East.

Richard Cushing reports of the unhappiness of 122 German civilian and diplomatic internees in Shanghai who were being held by the Chinese with an indefinite purpose. There were only a few Nazi leaders among them. The Chinese did not know what to do with the Germans. Eventually, it was believed, all 2,400 Germans in Shanghai would be interned.

Iranian rebels in Azerbaijan Province occupied Zenjan, 174 miles north of Tehran. The rebels wished to separate the province from Iran. They had seized all Government buildings in Zenjan and the telegraph lines. There were only two railroad stations separating the rebels from Tehran, Kazvin, 90 miles south of Zenjan, and Karadj, 25 miles from the capital. The Soviets had prevented Iranian troops who parachuted into Azerbaijan from going beyond Kazvin. The British Ambassador to Iran had urged Foreign Commissar V.M. Molotov to instruct the Russian commander in Iran not to obstruct further the Iranian troops. It was not known from whence the Separatists had obtained their arms.

In Java, fifty Indonesians in Soerabaja launched a counter-attack against British Indian forces. New attacks also began in Ambarawa and Bandoeng. Dutch leaders and Red Cross workers in Batavia petitioned the Dutch East Indies Government to enable the evacuation of 200,000 women, children, aged, and sick, who, it was claimed, were being attacked by the Indonesians in the same way the Japanese had attacked them during the former occupation.

Former Secretary of State Hull told the joint Congressional committee investigating Pearl Harbor that the contention contained in the Army Board report filed in August, 1945, that the ten-point note to the Japanese of November 26, 1941 had touched off the war, was an "infamous charge". He stated that there was no way at the time to prevent the attack, that the Japanese intended to go to war regardless of any concessions which might have been made, short of complete surrender "like cowards". The implication of the report was that peace-minded Hitler and Tojo had been dragged into the war by a belligerent United States. He had not been called to testify before the Army Board. He added that if he stated his true feelings on the Army report, all "religious-minded" people would need depart the hearing room.

In Manila, a private had been demoted from a T-5 temporarily, pending further action and investigation into his allegedly having published a story in an Army Replacement Depot newspaper criticizing the conversion of nine ships to carry Japanese prisoners of war home while American soldiers waiting to return stateside had been given access to only one ship. He claimed to know nothing of the article and was not its author. The post commander stated that he could not allow any member of the Army to "stand up and rock the boat".

Apparently, the post commander had never heard of the First Amendment, even in peacetime.

Secretary of the Treasury Fred Vinson predicted that in 1947, the country would likely have a balanced budget or nearly so, assuming national income would rise.

In Camden, N.J., a Marine war veteran, in need of a home for his family and a job, set up a pup tent in the cold to publicize his plight, receiving in the process two job offers as an auto mechanic. He stated that he had been unable to return to his previous job as a mechanic because of injuries received at Guadalcanal in 1942.

In Chicago, a strike of 16 gravediggers, which had left during a fortnight 20 unburied coffins, ended, the 20 finally laid to rest. Funerals had been stopped until the strike ended.

In New York, a police officer shot and killed one man and injured another during their attempt to rob a bar, their third hold-up of the night. It was the 69th homicide victim in 77 days.

Also in New York, the 61st season of the Metropolitan Opera opened with Bess and Margaret Truman in attendance. New York socialites dressed in the most elaborate finery since before the war, adorned with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and wearing coats of sable, ermine, and chinchilla. The Trumans, by contrast, wore blue cloth coats and strands of pearls.

The compleat report goes on to tell in some detail what was eaten by the Trumans. But no mention was made, as the piece's super-title suggests, of what opera was performed.

Our diligent research has shown that it was Lohengrin by Wagner, the orchestra having been conducted by Fritz Busch.

Thank ye very much.

Kinston's main boiler stopped working for want of repair parts, causing a power shortage. Light a candle, then curse the dark, but not around gasoline.

On the editorial page, "Council Faces the Future" discusses the determination to be made the following week by the City Council as to the blueprint for the future, how to spend the Planning Board's proposed bond of five million dollars.

"Calling Mr. Truman's Hand" indicates that management had written off the Labor-Management Conference in Washington as a complete failure. Labor, or at least CIO, had sought to establish higher wages based on profits gleaned from an examination of company books. Management, or at least G.M., had generally refused to do so.

"Normalcy on the Campus" greets with dismay the end of college football season. The sudden improvement of the teams after the war, with the return of former collegians of the gridiron from the various theaters of war, had been one great sign of a return to normalcy in the country. The entire atmosphere on college campuses had changed, the martial mien and grimness of the war having disappeared. No longer loomed the threat of a letter from the draft board over the heads of students to compromise their ability to smile and engage in the frivolity which students sometimes were wont to do.

The editorial neglects to note that Louis Graves of The Weekly had complained of this artisanship in graffiti in mid-March, or at least as published in The News at that time, a month and a half before the end of the war, just as the Americans were crossing the River Rhine at Remagen, with apparently a long fight still ahead to Berlin. And Mr. Graves had been referring to previous football seasons, during the thick of the war.

So much for a return to normalcy, we suppose.

Sorry.

"Jasper Lamar Crabbe", incidentally, has had to undergo partial reconstructive surgery, the latter portion only more or less having been successfully restored to its former appearance, out of the graveyard and into the Albacore, along with the other lobbyists' lists, having been censored and uncensored all at the same time, the Jolly Roger having been sent to Davy Jones's Locker with the Fishes for losing her doo-dah in the oom-pah. "Lamar", however, remains intact. We thank Santa for that.

"Night", also from that date, is now here, at least in some degree.

A piece from the Louisville Courier-Journal, titled "Mr. Gallagher's Broom", comments on Representative William Gallagher of Minnesota, formerly a street sweeper, elected to Congress a year earlier. Mr. Gallagher was urging action on the part of his colleagues, complaining of all the talk and criticism. He wanted action on full employment, the minimum wage, and other such progressive programs urged by the President. The piece finds him a refreshing change for Washington.

Drew Pearson discusses Chester Bowles, head of OPA, being the most maligned person in Washington, with pressure groups seeking higher prices and release of controls. He had also been deserted by the Administration out of fear that if he were to lose his fight against inflation, the chances of President Truman's re-election in 1948 would be nil.

Marquis Childs also discusses the pressure being brought to bear by lobbyists on Mr. Bowles, to obtain higher prices and fewer restrictions. Mr. Bowles had responded that pressure should not be the goad by which policy was made, but rather the suitability of policy to the particular contingencies to be addressed. Mr. Bowles had warned that OPA needed public support to continue its fight, that the public would be appalled at the results of abolition of price controls.

A letter from an Army private stationed on Leyte in the Philippines urges the public to write their representatives in Congress regarding the sloth with which discharges were taking place and men being sent home.

Samuel Grafton discusses the speeches given in Commons by Prime Minister Attlee, former Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, and current Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, each alike in expressing consternation with regard to troubled relations between the West and the Soviet Union. Mr. Attlee proposed a U.N. commission be set up to handle atomic energy, which, in stages, would work to share the secret at a point when world confidence would reach a sufficient level that the technology would be devoted only to peaceful ends.

Mr. Bevin urged building confidence through frankness, a semantic dilemma as it set up a nearly truistic notion, instilling confidence through confidence. Mr. Grafton concludes that more confidence was necessary.

Mr. Eden had suggested that the world powers surrender the veto power on the Security Council to instill confidence, but it was lack of confidence which had brought about the desire for the unilateral veto. It would be questionable whether confidence was enhanced for the majority members of the West by their urging a minority member, Russia, to give up the veto power.

Mr. Eden also proposed that Russia permit access freely to Western journalists without censorship. But Russia's pride in having deceived Germany into believing it was not strong enough to withstand attack—a fact which also caused it to be attacked in June, 1941—would likely impel it to maintain secrecy until such time that the perceived threat from the West to its security would pass.

Semantics were being employed to replace the old Big Three.

"It is impossible to say whether we can return to that system; but it used to work; and it is hard to believe that we will get very far with our present effort to cure an aspirin with a headache."