The Charlotte News
Friday, November 9, 1945
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Chinese Government troops had moved into battle positions against the Chinese Communists at Shanhaikwan, along the eastern end of the Great Wall, the boundary between Northern China and Manchuria, ten miles north of Chinwangtao. The Government troops had been transported to the area by the Americans.
Associated Press correspondent Richard Bergholz reports that he had toured the disputed areas for a week and was convinced that civil war had not yet erupted only because neither side felt the timing or circumstances yet right. The crucial test, however, appeared to be building at Shanhaikwan. It was believed that one reason for the continued lack of conflict was the presence of U.S. Marines.
The British dropped leaflets at Soerabaja in Java, demanding that the Indonesian Nationalists lay down their arms by 6:00 a.m. the following day or force would be used to effectuate the order. Indonesian leaders were urging their people not to lay down arms and instead to fight the Dutch. President Soekarno appealed to the United States, Britain, and the U.N. Security Council to intercede to prevent a war and remove the Dutch forces from Indonesia while the British continued the disarming of the Japanese. It was believed that the Dutch could be persuaded to accept arbitration by the United States, something the British also would welcome. As tensions rose, a mystery existed as to the whereabouts of 20,000 Japanese troops who had been at Soerabaja.
As Prime Minister Attlee left London for Washington to meet with President Truman, the London press was abuzz with rumors that another Big Three meeting with Premier Stalin would soon occur, perhaps might even occur in conjunction with Mr. Attlee's visit. The two leaders were scheduled to take a yacht tour of Chesapeake Bay, fueling London speculation that it had to do with the desire for high level security, possibly to accommodate a visit by Stalin.
Across the nation, strikes continued, with 275,000 workers standing idle and U.S. Steel stating it would cooperate in a strike vote by 500,000 employees on November 28.
At the Labor-Management Conference, G.M. and the UAW remained at odds in their dispute over the union demand for a 30 percent hike in wages and G.M.'s adamant position that it would not consider a wage hike without a commensurate price hike being allowed by OPA.
Members of the House Military Committee sought to derail the President's proposed universal military service bill until after the first of the year.
President Truman signed the first tax reduction bill in 16 years, allowing 5.92 billion dollars in tax cuts. The last tax reduction measure had been at Christmas of 1929, President Hoover's Christmas gift to the nation, in fulfillment of his campaign promise the previous year to afford a car in every garage and a chicken in every pot.
The 29th installment of General Jonathan Wainwright's series of articles tells of the trip via ship from Manila, departing August 11, 1942. He and General Edward P. King were afforded a cabin while the rest of the men were herded onboard as cattle, forced to sleep on narrow shelves without bedding. General Wainwright was not permitted to visit the men. They arrived at Takao on the west coast of Formosa on August 14.
From there, the two Generals were herded with 30 others into a steamer bound for Karenko, forced below decks, where temperatures rose to over 100 degrees. At night they were forced to close all portholes. All through the night, bedbugs crawled over the men, making the already intolerable, suffocating conditions worse. Finally, at 8:00 a.m., they were allowed to open the portholes again to let in some air and light.
That morning, General Wainwright was forced to pose for a portrait, to be presented to the Emperor, depicting the surrender to General Homma. As he sat for the portrait, he thought to himself that General MacArthur would one day have the painting.
In New York, songwriter Jerome Kern had collapsed on Monday and was listed in critical condition. He would pass away at age 60 on November 11. Mr. Kern wrote such timeless pieces as
Speaking of recent 1945 losses to the world of art, on October 19, painter N.C. Wyeth had been killed at age 62 by a train hitting his car, stalled on the tracks near his home at Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania. His young grandson, in the car at the time, was also killed in the
On the editorial page, "The Homeless Veterans" comments that the housing shortage in Charlotte which had developed during the war from building restrictions would, in time, be remedied. But those returning from service unable to find a place to live would in the meantime be frustrated and embittered. The veterans deserved better.
The City Council was considering establishment of a trailer camp for veterans and their families, as the Mayor insisted that such inadequate provision would do little to ameliorate the situation.
The veteran would remember that the British took better care of him than his own country.
This issue, counsels the piece, took priority over such community needs as the new auditorium, traffic, and sewers.
"Invitation to the Colors" points out that Uncle Sam's familiar poster, insisting on the need for new cannon fodder, had given way to a polite entreaty: "Join the Army and see the world." The lure now presented the opportunity for travel to exotic lands and doing exotic things, such as boating on the Rhine or chatting with Chinese children.
The campaign was attended with a good deal of unreality, as the men in service who had fought the war would readily understand that the places to which the new men were to be assigned were not pleasure resorts of the type depicted.
But patriotism had now gone out of fashion and so the need for the campaign was understandable.
"This is one of those moments in history when we are more concerned with our own prospects than we are with the fate of the world, and we have not yet come to see any relationship between the two."
"Punishment for Commentators" points out that while the investigations haplessly undertaken on occasion by HUAC could be comical, the attempt to discredit seven radio commentators, including Raymond Gram Swing and Cecil Brown, was not at all humorous. They were being called before the committee to determine the validity of complaints that they were Communist sympathizers, indicative of the same inquisitorial tactics followed by Martin Dies of Texas when he had chaired HUAC.
The editorial finds no legal basis for the Congress to act, even should the committee find the seven to be card-carrying members of the Communist Party. The committee was aiming at the commercial sponsorship of these men, making the procedure particularly vicious in its indirect manner of depriving individuals of freedom of speech.
"If the UnAmerican Committee succeeds in smearing these seven men, it will have forged a weapon it can hold over the head of every broadcaster. Only the brave or the foolhardy will dare breathe a kind word for Russia into a microphone, with unemployment guaranteed as a result.
"Surely the time has come for the Congress to do a little investigating of the UnAmerican affairs taking place in its own hall. The end of the war has removed the last thin pretext for such a calculated assault on civil liberties."
The committee was, of course, just getting started, the class of 1946 to give a fresh jump-start to the committee's hunt for Un-Americans, with the perspective of youth, California youth, Southern California youth, being brought to bear on the matter of takeover of the country, by those Northern Liberal Communists.
A piece from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, titled, "It Depends on Whose Ox", comments on the Labor-Management Conference in Washington being closed to the press, finding it sensible that the confreres would accomplish more, with likely less disharmony, if allowed to discuss matters freely among themselves.
At the same time, it was to be recalled, remarks the piece, that when other conferences had barred the press, such as the World Food Conference at Hot Springs, Va., held in May-June, 1943, the management and labor groups now being represented at the Washington conference had been among those making the loudest complaints.
Drew Pearson reports that friends of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer were trying to persuade him to run for Congress from California, following his appearance before the Senate Military Committee where he made a decisive impact in convincing the members that the atomic bomb should be used henceforth only for peaceful purposes. His scientist friends pointed to the recent French election in which 30 learned men were elected to the Chamber of Deputies, and that 70 scientists had been voted into the Supreme Soviet.
The House Military Affairs Committee the previous week had taken up the subject of the atom bomb in a particularly heated session, following an amendment proposed by Representatives Chet Holifield of California and John Sparkman of Alabama, to be the 1952 vice-presidential candidate with Adlai Stevenson. The amendment would have placed the bomb under the control of a civilian commission, composed of full-time members, rather than a single administrator controlled by the Army and a commission comprised of dollar-per-year men from industry.
Other members had opposed the amendment based on the argument that dollar-per-year men attracted more qualified personnel, one Congressman citing the ability of Frank Porter Graham to serve on the War Labor Board during the war despite his being president of the University of North Carolina. Mr. Sparkman countered that the University had called Dr. Graham back to his duties, forcing him to choose. The opponents argued that having $15,000 per year salaried positions would attract political appointees to the posts. Mr. Sparkman insisted that the dollar-per-year arrangement would hand the administrative role to men who were representing large companies, ultimately to be simply rubber stamps for whatever the Army wanted.
Notwithstanding, the amendment was finally defeated 12 to 6.
Finally, the column points out that as the need for doctors was critical in many areas stateside after the war, doctors were nevertheless being continued in military service long after their utility had ended. He cites the example of an evacuation hospital of the Seventh Army in Germany which had 276 doctors, nurses, and enlisted men to take care of only 64 patients at an average cost per patient per day of over $23. The situation was even worse in some parts of the Pacific.
Marquis Childs discusses the coming visit of Prime Minister Attlee to Washington and why he should not have come at the time. At home, he faced domestic problems, including a recently concluded strike of dock workers which had threatened to cut into the food shortage.
The announced reason for the visit, to discuss atomic energy, likely had a good deal more urgency in England than in the United States because of the fact that the British had suffered through the V-1 and V-2 attacks. Had Hitler been able to place a nuclear warhead on the V-2, London would have quickly been destroyed and Germany would have won the war.
Americans could not yet comprehend, however, the enormous potential of the bomb when linked to rocketry, were not yet fully embracing the fact that it could one day soon be used to span oceans.
Inevitably, the discussion would also encompass the needed loan from the U.S. to Great Britain. It was not a matter of deficit spending for the U.S., but rather repairing of Britain's economy torn by the war and hence insuring of a sound future for Europe and its trade, critical to the economic well-being of the United States. Active world trade would nurture the ability to maintain a strong defense in peacetime. Trading blocs, cartels, and tariffs could lead to commercial battles and eventually war.
"Americans who look about at the rest of the world with a holier-than-thou attitude are victims of the old isolationism. If the world does not exist in our image, then we will have none of it. That kind of thinking can nullify all the fine words about peace and co-operation."
Samuel Grafton discusses the importance of success of the Labor-Management Conference. While the President had been fair in apportioning blame on both industry and labor for failure to find thus far a meeting point on the price-wage impasse, members of Congress and parts of the press had been pushing the idea that labor would either give up its right to strike during the conference or have it removed by Congress afterward, irritating an already tender situation. Mr. Grafton reminds that the purpose of the conference was to find a solution, not to permit one side to knock out the other.
Washington was becoming fearful that other industrialists might follow the example of Andrew Higgins, who had closed his three boat-building factories in New Orleans rather than accede to union demands. Such a result could harm reconversion significantly and potentially cause Congress to pass laws placing strictures on unions.
Some speculated that industry would deliberately provoke showdowns with labor prior to the beginning of the year, in the hope that Congress would enact punitive laws against labor. Industry had nothing to lose by waiting to begin production until after the new year, with excess profits taxes set to expire on January 1.
The President had been commended for his attitude that the Executive Branch would stand back and allow the conference to proceed without interference; there was no reason to believe that Congress should not do likewise. If pressure was going to be brought to bear on the labor confreres, then the voluntary nature of the conference would be compromised, making success unlikely.
A letter writer, seeing the WCTU letter of a few days earlier seeking to abolish Sunday movies now that the war was over, finds this campaign most worthy, surely taking precedence over the problems of unemployment, strikes, housing shortages, and reconversion. All was so well in the world, such complete bliss abounding, that Sunday movies remained the only problem to be resolved to render life in approximation of perfection, nearer art than art's counterfeit, itself.
Don't worry, ladies. Mr. DeMille, Sam Zimbalist, and Frank Ross, among others, will provide you with plenty of edifying fare for Sundays in the coming decade and a half. We have been assured of it by the major studios. You will be fine.
Another letter writer asks the questions: "Is this pay-day at the mills of the gods? And if so, what sort of currency may the human race expect to find in its pay envelope?"
He wanted the questions discussed at the University of Chicago Round Table, and by all law-makers and Government personnel, in England, France, Russia, China, and in Latin America.
"Tell them to stop—look—listen—for a better and saner world."
The editors note that they were glad to pass on this good question, but that their international circulation was not what it ought to be.
Well, now we can remedy that exiguity, 67 years on. Pay heed, world: Is this pay-day at the mills of the gods?
Incidentally, we see that several people of several states which voted Republican in the late election have prepared, in light of the result—surely in error by the Unskewed Poll, which takes out all the bias in the polling samples toward Democrats, not accepting, apparently, that there are 42 million registered Democrats compared to 30 million registered Republicans in the country, surely an unfair result which needs unskewing—a petition of secession
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