Saturday, November 3, 1945

The Charlotte News

Saturday, November 3, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that anti-Zionist riots in Cairo continued to take place but were quickly being brought under control by the police. Six persons had been killed the previous day in Alexandria and hundreds in Cairo wounded. Most shop windows along Soliman Pasha Street in Cairo had been broken; the MGM-owned theater on the street was stoned. Egyptian college students were yelling "down with Zionism".

We are not sure, incidentally, what might have been playing at the Cairo MGM, but it may have been this one. Or, maybe this one.

The Red Chinese responded to a Central Government proposal for peace, based on specified conditions, by saying that when the Kuomintang troops were ordered to stop fighting, the Red Chinese would stop fighting. One proposal by the Nationalists, that the Government troops and Communists troops along railways would be replaced by railway police, was deemed acceptable by the Communists, provided that the Government troops withdrew to a distance of ten kilometers. Otherwise, said the Communist spokesman, Government troops could move into Communist territory at will. Another proposal, ceasefire, was also agreeable, as long as it was general and not merely in selected areas. The Communists also agreed on a third condition, that the Government would consult with the Communists before moving troops along the railroads.

In Java, a new division of British Gurkha troops, the Fifth Indian, had landed, as negotiations between the Dutch and Nationalists were close to dissolving, the Dutch home Government having blocked further attempts at negotiation between the acting Dutch Governor General of Java, Hubertus Van Mook, and President Soekarno of Indonesia. The Hague issued a statement that Governor Van Mook had acted without authorization in attempting to negotiate a peace with Soekarno. There were now two Indian divisions within Java, the other being the 23d.

A British spokesman said that dum-dum bullets had been found on Indonesians, indicative of planning of a savage war.

Overall, the situation was said to be under control, with a temporary truce at Magelang still in effect during negotiations.

The Indonesians in Central Java had 62 Japanese planes at their disposal.

In Brazil, the War Minister, Goes Monteiro, announced that the Brazilian military had been withdrawn following the successful installation of President Jose Linhares, installed, per the Brazilian Constitution, after the coup which had overthrown President Vargas, in office for fifteen years. Sr. Monteiro assured, however, that the military would remain "alert and vigilant", that the Government would undertake the task of "reconstitutionalization of the country".

In Hungary, a people's court sentenced former Premier and Foreign Minister Laszlo Bardossy to be hanged following his conviction for war crimes involving his having allowed the German Wehrmacht to march through Hungary into Yugoslavia, assisting in the advance with Hungarian troops, while issuing unilaterally a declaration of war against Russia and involving Hungary in war with the United States.

Mel Most, A.P. correspondent who had been interned for 15 months in a German camp, reports of his observations of the first German prisoners returned to American control from French custody, that they appeared as walking corpses, similar to the prisoners found in the Nazi concentration camps. The Germans had been provided to the French as laborers but were brought back after the Red Cross charged that they were being treated below acceptable standards set by the Geneva convention. General Eisenhower, in consequence, had stopped further transfers. The French contended that the prisoners were being returned in the same condition in which they had been received. The Americans begged to differ, stating that the men were in fit condition when turned over to the French four months earlier.

In New Orleans, all AFL unions threatened to go on strike for 24 hours in response to the closing of three Higgins Industries plants.

The Greyhound Bus strike, involving 4,000 employees, was expected to become more widespread at midnight.

In the 24th article in the series by General Jonathan Wainwright, he tells of waiting three miserable days in Manila after his broadcast of surrender on May 7. The personnel on Corregidor were informed by the Japanese that if the remaining forces in the Philippines did not withdraw per General Wainwright's instructions, then the Japanese would begin shooting ten American officers per day until surrender occurred.

Maj. General William Sharp, the commander of the forces on Mindanao, had agreed to surrender per the instructions of General Wainwright, after being informed by General MacArthur that he could act as he saw fit.

On May 12, the Japanese began interrogations. General Wainwright heard from two Filipino officers of the Bataan Death March, making the General feel sick. He knew that the Japanese were capable of such acts and so he insured that the other commanders in the Philippines received the written instructions to surrender.

A man in Philadelphia had told his son, age 16, to quit school and go to work, and when he refused, the father took a broomstick and beat him severely, such that he was admitted to the hospital in critical condition. His father was charged with assault and battery. The father stated that his income had been cut in half shortly after V-J Day.

Private Marion Hargrove, former reporter for The News who had become famous enough during the war for his published observations of Army life that a movie recently had been released based on his work, "See Here, Private Hargrove", publishes an open letter to the Army, indicating his final separation on Governor's Island, N.Y., after four years, three months, eight days, three hours and roughly 57 minutes. It was none too soon, he says. Originally, in July, 1941, when he enlisted, he expected to serve but a year. He was glad finally to be a civilian again.

News reporter Tom Watkins tells of writer Alice McFarland of Charlotte having died and left provision in her will for her three cats, Flossie, Blue Belle, and Fluffball. The balance was left to her three alma maters, Boston University, Vanderbilt, and the University of North Carolina. She also left to the University a finished novel manuscript titled The Master Race or Those Germans and an unfinished biography of President Roosevelt, which she hoped someone might finish.

Caveat, should you've a mind to undertake it: the unfinished biography is of disputed authenticity, as Susie Young claimed to have written the unfinished part.

Ms. McFarland, who, if memory serves, wrote several letters to The News, also directed that letters be sent to three persons, unnamed, asking that they give up their "dishonest ways and prepare their souls for the Heavenly Kingdom".

Whether Ms. Young was one of the dissolute three, we must leave to your higher discernment.

In any event, Ms. McFarland seemed to like to work with trios, trillingly as it were. If, as we suggest, U.N.C. was Blue Belle, as obviously it was, then which was Vanderbilt and which Boston U., Flossie or Fluffball?

On the editorial page, "The Right Court" tells of a fracas between the Moore brothers and a man named Baer in which Mr. Baer lost his teeth, at a cost of repair of $30. The brothers sought civil settlement of the matter from the magistrate, who imposed a five dollar fine plus costs.

Mr. Baer was, however, not informed of the resolution. He complained to the City Solicitor who issued a warrant. The brothers contended rightly double jeopardy, but the Recorder's Court ignored the magistrate's order because Mr. Baer never had notice of the proceeding—a completely erroneous application of the law, mixing civil and criminal penalties together without regard to the Constitution, a problem whenever you have non-lawyers trying to apply the law, as North Carolina maintains in its infinite lack of wisdom in the probate set-up—which is a trap for the unwary, full of bribes and winks by dishonest little clerks of court, when the operative standard ought be criminal prosecution of these clerks, instead of trying to ruin the whistle-blowers who articulate the problem—as these Devils do.

In any event, the idiotic Recorder in this case continued judgment on condition that the brothers pay for Mr. Baer's teeth, in addition to the previous stipulated judgment entered by the magistrate. The magistrate, being likely on the take, refused to provide a refund.

Don't like our take on the matter? Go jump in the lake, or, better, move to Argentina. If that is your take, it, no doubt, is only because, you, too, take bribes.

This is America. We speak our mind. We are not kowtowed by little bribe-taking Fascist Pigs.

And remember, come this Tuesday, vote. Vote out dishonest little self-appointed Princes and Princesses and others of their Stripe, be they Democrat or Republican, including any such who masquerade as judges, especially those who countenance perjury to obtain the results they want in individual cases to occur, unfit as such jurists are to serve even as lawyers, let alone as judges.

Else, don't complain when Murphy's Law strikes you.

Of course, unfortunately, liberals have not got the hang of that very well. It appears always the Neanderthals who seem determined to want to unseat liberal judges, rather than the other way about, as it ought be. Which is why we find ourselves, despite a liberal Executive Branch, still living in semi-Argentina.

We challenge the semi-moronic to utterly moronic portion of the press which regularly challenges the free speech of politicians and celebrities of one stripe or another to stop and think for a change what example you are sending, you, who supposedly enjoy the right of free press. It is a rare day that we do not see a story about someone saying something supposedly offensive to someone and having then to apologize. Stop apologizing. Say it, be proud of it, embrace it, and tell the Morons of the world to go to Hell, in quite impolite terms. That is what keeps the country strong and out of the hands of creepy little Fascist Pigs.

"No Simple Act" reminds again that the Community Chest was running behind in collections.

There were, despite good times, hardships still in the world.

"Starvation in Bulgaria may seem a long way away, but it isn't, for out of that hunger may grow World War III."

"Enemy Within" suggests that a false impression could be gleaned from the labor movement that all unions teamed together, rather than the reality that they were teeming within with dispute.

Example given was the defection of the Musicians Union head, James Caesar Petrillo, from the united front for higher wages demanded by AFL, CIO, and the UMW, Mr. Petrillo's union having little or nothing to do with the former. He was now demanding, per his usual schemes, that radio stations broadcasting simultaneously on the AM and FM bands hire two orchestras, both comprised of union musicians, one for each band, though only one of them would actually be playing as a band on both bands.

While his consistent stand along these lines had, years earlier, made some sense when it appeared that radio's canned music might replace live bands, it no longer did. (Not unlike the notion that YouTube might replace the purchase of those ridiculously priced little pieces of plastic, which make people filthy rich, and often just plain filthy. Just look at it this way, when people "steal" copyrighted material only for the purpose of sharing the music or other material and not for profit: they are just protecting you "Artists" from yourselves in many cases, the "Artists", in most such cases, being not the producers or creators of the work, but rather the Caesar Petrillos of the world, the parasitic middle men, and the parasitic middle men between the consumer and the parasitic middle men, who police the consumer, who get rich, stinking rich, off the work of others. Police it enough, stupid, and you will alienate the public from buying any of the trash which passes for "Art". There are ways around you. But, as with all such Fascists, you who are such parasites are much too dumb to understand that, or you would seek to earn a living from an occupation other than being a parasite, which, in the end, is only tantamount to Death, which is why also you have no sense of humor and take everything very seriously.)

In any event, the piece counsels that Mr. Petrillo was doing the labor movement a lot more harm, by seeking something for nothing for his members, royalties for no work and the like, than the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and Westbrook Pegler combined.

"New Reform" comments on an article in Harper's by John Fischer re the Civil Service Commission, established in 1883 to end the practice of political patronage in appointments to government bureaucracy. Mr. Fischer advocated a return to the spoils system as civil service violated the basic concept of sound management, the executive's right to hire and fire based on competence and efficient implementation of policy.

The piece finds the overall criticism warranted and refreshing in its candor, given the lack of efficiency in government. But Congress, despite the observation by Mr. Fischer that the real demonic force behind expansion of bureaucracy was not spoils but the "pure in heart", would likely not be moved, as it posed only a reminder that they were damned if they did and damned if they didn't.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Representative Edward Cox of Georgia discussing Communism, proclaiming that in the wake of the war, men and women of the country were eager to serve Josef Stalin, stabbing in the back those who had fought the war by seeking to destroy the free nation for which they had fought.

Communism, he proclaimed, was rampant through the nation. Most of these people had, through tricks, escaped service, now plotted the overthrow of the Government.

He wanted a revival of Americanism, and the prevention of alien, arrogant minorities coming into the country and taking over.

The Communists wanted to replace General MacArthur's command of occupation in Japan with that of Josef Stalin.

Representative John Sheridan of Pennsylvania interrupted to ask for adjournment, to which Mr. Cox took offense and proceeded onward in his diatribe: "Mr. Speaker, man has at last dared to lay his hand upon the primal force of the universe..."

Drew Pearson, writing from Swarthmore, Pa., where he grew up, indicates that he had experienced a "glorious time" returning to his old haunts, even if a sure sign of age.

"I have been re-examining every tree where I ever carved my initials, every bush where I found a bird-nest, the old grapevine where we swung out over Crum Creek, the little stream where we used to catch garter snakes to bring out of shoe boxes during dull moments in Sunday school."

Much of that landscape, he remarks, had changed and been replaced by modernity, including Doggie Stream, where they caught the snakes, now a backdrop for houses of the affluent. Once, the former guardians of this place of childhood respite from the unremitting pace having been so thick that it permitted a hiding place inside a log for some silver plate some brigand had apparently pilfered and reposited there pending retrieval, which never came, it now no longer was.

The dirt road beside the spring was now macadamized, all the carriage houses turned to garages or modern apartments.

He returned to a spot where he and his mates had once, on a February date, caught a mink in a trap, within eleven miles of Philadelphia. Usually, their traps only served to catch skunks, the skins of which were sold to Funsten Brothers in St. Louis—presumably to make those fine skunk-skin coats.

He was able to skin a skunk before breakfast, utilizing the cook's perfume to mask the stimulus to the olfactory organ. His mother did not like it, but he was not sure which she disliked more, the skunk or the cook.

Once, he had removed the vital organs of a skunk with his father's razor, placed them in a shaving-soap box which he put behind the radiator in the classroom of his unpopular English teacher. The class got a good jolt from his joke.

See there. That's not... No.

Her name, he imparts, was Truman, though no relation to the President.

We had three or four such "Trumans", even skunks, as teachers through the years, but we never, ever did any such thing as that, passive malingering being our favorite form of revolt before such idiots. You cannot take out a skunk's organs and put them behind the radiator just because you dislike a teacher. Mock him or her ruefully behind their backs, or even online especially, which, in certain contexts, gives you the right to contend expectation of privacy, regardless of what the Fascist idiots who don't believe in free speech try to say you cannot say online, and if they are so foolish as to attempt to suggest it is libel, just explain that either truth is a defense or it was a joke which they were too stupid to understand, being fools as they are.

Mr. Pearson goes on to blame Ms. Truman for his "man-handling of the King's English".

He adds that his ex-mother-in-law, Mrs. Eleanor Patterson, believed that he ought be hunted, whether as a skunk or by skunks, not being entirely clear.

He continues on a bit in his recounting of memory lane, including playing at age twelve Little John in a Robin-Hood band near Swarthmore College, in a grey-stone castle which now served as the college president's residence—something with which we do have quite in common with him, at least up to a point, the limit being that we never tried to enter the castle, and by age twelve, had surpassed considerably this stage of infantile paralysis.

Within the clarity of the moment, he suggests that his memories had imparted to him the sapient observation that progress had come to these hallows by virtue of science and technology, and trying to stop it, as he had futilely as a young boy by pulling wires and surveyors' stakes when the college bought the castle and began modernizing it for the residence, was without purpose.

Trying to maintain large armies and a Navy under such modern conditions of the atom bomb and rocket was an exercise in the same futility, that development of science and research to understand international problems was the better path to peace, that peace must now become a task at which the peoples of the world worked quite as hard as waging of war.

"We may not want to admit the need and benefits of progress, but if we are to save the world it has got to come."

Marquis Childs finds it to bespeak the practice of burying heads in the sand to take the labels off weaponry supplied under Lend-Lease to the British and Dutch in their forays into Indo-China and Indonesia, the label removal policy recently having been enunciated by Secretary of State James Byrnes.

Mr. Childs points out that no Lend-Lease weapons, save those few which had gotten through via the underground, had been delivered to the Dutch in the East Indies since their fall to the Japanese in early 1942. And, in Indo-China, the conflict which now raged between the French and the Vietminh, the Annamese, had raged between these interests for decades before the war—the French occupation having begun in the 1880's.

"This passionate desire of yellow and brown people for independence is no new thing."

The Japanese had managed to exploit the inherent desires of these indigenous peoples during the period of occupation, and should the United States "give them a chance, they will exploit it again".

Recently, in Collier's, Brig. General Carlos Romulo, Resident Commissioner of the Philippines, had written:

"Essentially, the problem of the Pacific represents the race problem of the world. Ignore it, side-step it, neglect it, and the next war will be a race war. But to work out a new pattern for the Pacific we need, not the Dutch approach, not the British approach, or any other approach except the human approach: and certainly we Filipinos have ample evidence to convince us the United States employs that approach."

While admitting that the United States had made mistakes with respect to the Philippines, Mr. Childs quite correctly asserts that a date for ending its protectorate status had been set and was being kept.

To its great credit, the State Department, for more than a year, had anticipated the problems within Indo-China and the East Indies upon their liberation from the Japanese. State had wanted to bring together the colonial governments and the nationalist leaders in both areas to try to effect rapprochement.

In Java, confidential information, amid the distorted news reports, suggested that Soekarno had a genuine popular following. Since the Dutch had no forces available, it had fallen to the British to try to maintain order through use of Indian troops, causing backlash in the press of India against Britain. With the killing by the Indonesian Nationalists of a British general, the situation had become complicated.

In Indo-China, fierce guerilla warfare was taking place, aimed, not at the British, but at the French, "and if the latter return in force, there is likely to be the kind of resistance that cannot be ignored in the world's headlines."

That would prove, of course, considerable understatement within less than 20 years, even within a decade.

Sumner Welles, former Undersecretary of State until August, 1943, had recently ventured the opinion that the problem lay in the fact that the United Nations Organization had not been able to hit the ground running after its creation and deal with these issues of colonialism by establishing the intended trusteeships with an eye toward eventual democracy and independence—envisioned much earlier by President Roosevelt for all of the disputed Pacific territories. Partly on the insistence of the American delegation at San Francisco in the spring, the trusteeship provisions of the U.N. Charter had been diluted.

"All indications are, however, that American prestige in the Pacific is still high. We should be able to help negotiate an orderly transition between colonialism and independence."

Samuel Grafton discusses the first phase of German organization, attacks by roaming bands of youths and returning German soldiers on individual American occupation troops, jealous of American soldiers living with German women. It appeared that the period of German passivity was ending or that there were several groups of Germans vying for leadership of the rest.

To repress the activity, however, would only add fuel to the flames of resistance. To bring in food and clothing to the problematic areas would appear to Germans as simply a victory for the resisters.

In a recent series appearing in Nation, Sani Padover had reported that American Military Government officials had used Nazis in the early stages of the occupation, had avoided the anti-Fascists, believing the latter to be Communists and "bandits". They did not steer clear of anti-Russians, however, on the fear that they might be Fascists.

Some of the Germans had informed correspondents that they looked forward to a war between the United States and Russia by spring.

So, while being attacked by Fascists on the one hand, the Americans also were being tender to Fascists on the other. "That is a hard way to run a railroad."

It was a situation impossible of improvement until relations with Russia were improved. "And here we have just one more illustration of the infuriatingly sticky quality of the problems of our age: they are all meshed together in one undigested lump: and it is our sad fate that we have to solve them all to solve any of them."

A letter writer, who had written earlier of the wisdom of the WCTU, concludes that a recent response to her by a letter writer had adopted fallacious reasoning by asserting that the "T" stood for "Temperance" or moderation and not abstinence.

Actually, we believe that, based on our reading of the English language, he said exactly the opposite, that it was more properly WCAU.

In any event, Ms. Flow—who, incidentally, had some sensible things to impart about isolationsts back in August, 1941—goes on to say that the implication was that abstinence and temperance were synonymous. She quotes Webster's as supposedly suggesting the two words were often used as "controvertible" terms, and so concludes the two in fact to be synonymous.

Her adversary, "from his association with some Florida bootleggers", had concluded that bootleggers were simply small businessmen who would prefer to sell "legal liquor to supply their consumers' wants, though they feel no moral compunction against their trade because liquor is legal in other parts of the country." That, she believed, was a "queer concept for law violation", that the product was legal in the next county.

Maybe so, in Greek city-states.

She cites statistics from South Carolina, where every county had a liquor store, showing the destruction of 2,400 illegal stills to counter the letter writer's contention that if Mecklenburg adopted local option, there would be no further bootlegging. She also states that 1,268 stills had been destroyed in the 27 North Carolina wet counties, the wet quarter of the state.

She suggests that use of alcohol taxes for curing alcoholism, as the letter writer had suggested, was not sober judgment, that abstinence was the only cure. And so the WCTU counseled abstinence.

Just as plainly prevailed during the Great Experiment between 1919 and 1933.

She wonders of many things, one of which was whether the letter writer had, while traveling, "been kept awake in hotels (where they sober up) by drunken walking and talking over his head or next door."

Madame, you need to try to stay in better hotels, with thicker walls or stop eavesdropping on others having pleasant conversations with themselves. Besides, how do you know that those you hear are not quite more sober than you, just without all the simple answers which you seem to have for yourself, that they are merely working through philosophical dilemmas which you do not even seem to reckon as extant, your fundamental problem in being so quick to judge others, quite against the principles of the "C" in your favorite organization's name—or that they might simply be students lecturing to themselves in preparation for exams, so that they would not wind up like you, with a big C.

The best thing you can do, as we have suggested, is to go home and mind your own damn business. Stay out of the bars, all three types. They are not for you.

One of the quotes of the day, from Democratic National Committee chair Robert Hannegan: "The Democratic Party is prepared to wage its 1946 congressional election campaign as a clear-cut, straight-forward battle against reaction."

Unfortunately, they would blow the job a bit, not quite up to dick anyway.

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