Tuesday, June 26, 1945

The Charlotte News

Tuesday, June 26, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the 50 nations of the United Nations formally had signed the U. N. Charter this date in the San Francisco Veterans Building and then heard an address in person from President Truman at the Opera House. The final draft had been approved the previous night by unanimous vote. Calling the conference formally to a close after two months, British Ambassador Lord Halifax stated, "I think we all agree we have taken part in a historic moment in world history."

Indeed, they had. Find fault with the organization on occasion as one might, still, with all the tools of mass destruction at the disposal of the great powers, no world war has taken place since 1945. The only time world war came close to occurring, in October, 1962, it was averted in large part by President Kennedy's deft use of U. N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson and Mr. Stevenson's skill in presenting to the world the case against the Soviet Union's build-up of offensive missile capability in Cuba, 90 miles from the shores of the United States, missiles which carried with them greater threat for bargaining chips on West Berlin and other areas of Western Europe than immediate use as weapons, but nevertheless dangerous to freedom.

A medium-sized force of B-29's struck Yokkaichai near Nagoya in Japan, following a large raid fourteen hours earlier by 450 to 500 B-29's against ten aircraft and munitions factories on Honshu, at Kagamigahara, near Gifu, at Osaka, and at Akashi, near Kobe. The number of targets hit in the raids were second only to the number of targets struck in the raid of April 26 on Kyushu.

An unconfirmed report from Japanese radio stated that there had been an attempted American landing on islands between Okinawa and the Japanese mainland. Other broadcasts phrased it as only an "expected" invasion. In fact, there was no such landing.

On Luzon, the Fifth Air Force strafed the remaining Japanese in the northern Cagayan Valley as the 130th Regiment of the 33rd Infantry Division pushed east along the Balud River, northeast of Baguio. Dozens of the enemy's Toyota and Nissan trucks were blown sky high.

Boy, that felt good, didn't it? Haven't you ever wanted just to blow some of those little nauseating things right off the road? A few howitzers and aerial bombers will do the trick nicely.

Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery told a group of American officers assembled in Wiesbaden, Germany, that Britain was finished in 1941 and could not have possibly survived without the help of the Americans provided under Lend-Lease. He further stated that Germany made a great mistake in attacking Russia in June, 1941 and Japan made a great mistake in attacking America the following December.

Leo Crowley, the Foreign Economic Administrator, told Congress that the Allies must maintain a vigil on Germany's economic and political structure for a generation to prevent another war.

The tropical storm which had whipped the coast of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina with wind and heavy rain had moved northward, expected to reach southern New Jersey by the afternoon and pass through Nantucket during the night. The storm had veered around Cape Hatteras and only minor damage was reported.

In Matoon, Ill., the restaurants which remained opened served only peanuts and candy bars because there was a shortage of meat and potatoes. Ten of the twelve restaurants were closed in protest of what the restaurateurs contended were too stringent OPA regulations on the slaughtering of cattle and hogs and for the fact that three packing plants which supplied the restaurants had been forced to close.

And, if you should fail to receive your copy of The News, then please dial 3-0303, but before 8:00 p.m., for the switchboard closes down at that hour and no one therefore will answer your call after that time, or give a good hang whether your paper arrived or not. By then, it would be old news anyway. Might as well tune in to the radio or go to the theater at 9:00 and watch the newsreel.

On the editorial page, "Man of War" reports that General Patton had been called on the carpet in Stars and Stripes by a veteran of the Third Army for having talked of the next war before a group of Sunday school children, telling them that they would be the soldiers and nurses of the next war. The editorial had taken him to task, asking him why he spoke of a next war when the machinery of the United Nations Organization had not yet had a chance to work.

General Patton responded that he loathed war but believed in preparedness, that "the only excuses for the horrors of wars are glories". In that latter statement, says the piece, he had sounded as one of the old warriors who reveled in warfare, as the author of the poem "God of Battle".

But, in the end, he was only behaving, finds the editorial, in the same way he had in North Africa, Sicily, and on the Western Front in Europe. It was so even if the veterans of the Third Army did not like it.

"A Boss Man" again gives praise to the choice of Dr. David Young to head the new State Hospital Board, overseeing the state's four institutions. He was to take his post in September. It reminds again that the Board was created in response to the expose by Tom Jimison of the Morganton facility, published first in The News and then in other newspapers around the state in January and February, 1942.

"Building Fund" comments on the Nazi loot found in the hidden vaults of Regensburg in Germany, valued at four billion dollars worth of gold, stocks and bonds, and jewels. Among the gold had been teeth, bridgework, and wedding rings taken from Jews interned in concentration camps.

All of this treasure was going to be returned to its owners, but the piece questions how such a task could be effected. Among the loot were the entire treasuries of Austria and Bavaria. What it could do was to lighten the burden of rebuilding and rehabilitating these lands and likely serve a better purpose than trying to find the original individual owners.

"Down on Paper" finds it likely that the United Nations Charter, unlike the League in 1919-21, would not be voted down by the Senate. The recent Associated Press poll of the previous week had found 51 Senators firmly committed to it and five more stating that they would likely vote for it, with eighteen expressing no decision. Senator Burton Wheeler was unlikely to be able to upset a two-thirds majority vote, even with his stories from his trip to Europe relating of atrocities by the French and Russians.

So there was no real question of ratification, but rather how effectively the organization could be put into practice. The real test would come in the years ahead.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska telling Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky, the Democratic Majority Leader, that he would rather yield to him upon his request for the floor than anyone else in the Senate but he was determined at the moment only to yield to the Senator from Vermont.

Drew Pearson reports on the lobby in Washington to avert the effort of the Justice Department to assert the Federal rights to offshore oil lands to the three-mile international limit, in the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico, where presently states leased oil drilling rights to oil companies in exchange for royalties. The oil companies were more effective at lobbying the representatives of the states than they were the Department of Interior and so wanted to preserve the status quo. They wanted Congress therefore to pass a law providing the leasing rights to the states. The attorneys general of the states were backing the oil companies.

Attorney General Francis Biddle, who had waged this fight to protect Federal rights in these lands, had already been replaced by Tom Clark. Now, the oil interests wanted to replace Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes, another chief proponent of the protection of the offshore lands. The politicians in Washington and the big city bosses also wanted to oust Mr. Ickes. President Truman had already given his imprimatur to the Federal lawsuit going forward.

Mr. Pearson next informs of Maria Martins, wife of the Brazilian Ambassador, who had first campaigned to get rid of Nelson Rockefeller as Assistant Secretary of State for supposedly backing Argentina and turning his back on Brazil at the San Francisco Conference, but, more lately, had gone out of her way to support Mr. Rockefeller, going so far as cornering Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn at a party and pleading with him to speak to President Truman so that Mr. Rockefeller would not be fired.

Finally, he reports, along with other items, that the training films which the Army had been destroying at will were now going to be turned over to the War Surplus Property Board for sale along with other surplus property.

He also tells of the soybean soup which the War Food Administration prepared for the Russians, and which was promptly given a bad review by its recipients.

Marquis Childs discusses the attempt to find in Germany non-Communist leftists to reform labor unions in the American occupation zone. Joseph Keenan, former deputy War Mobilizer to James Byrnes, had been chosen for the task by General Lucius Clay, assigned as the head officer of the American zone of occupation. Mr. Keenan was secretary of the AFL Council in Chicago, and Philip Murray, head of CIO, had complained that Mr. Keenan was selecting only AFL executives to go to Germany. Mr. Murray was informed that a similar position to that of Mr. Keenan had been offered to one of CIO's associates but he had declined to accept it. Now, CIO would nominate its own men to go to Germany.

In all, the policy was confusing, and it only underscored the general confusion of policy, or lack of any policy, with respect to the German occupation. The country's own factionalism, as exemplified by the split between the AFL and CIO, was now showing up in the policy with respect to occupation.

A professional barber who had gone to Camp Lejeune to cut the hair of men in service sends a letter he had mailed to Governor Gregg Cherry anent the fact that he had let his license lapse while he cut the hair of Marines because a license was not required. When he returned to his old barber shop, he was informed that he would have to take an examination to continue being a barber. He then flunked the examination and was thus deprived of his only means of making a living. He believed that his failing grade was based on his race and the fact that he had worked as a black barber in a white barber shop. He called for an investigation.

A piece by Bob Harlow of the Pinehurst Outlook in North Carolina comments on the Supreme Court decision of a week earlier, holding 5 to 3 that the Associated Press constituted an illegal restraint on trade by its by-laws disallowing the sale of news to non-member newspapers and allowing member newspapers to restrict other papers from joining the A. P. The editorial supports the Supreme Court's decision and states that it was likely that most working newspapermen likewise supported it.

The A. P., it avers, had a lock on state and regional news in North Carolina, amounting to monopolistic control. Now, many journalists would be free after the war to open their own newspapers and compete with the established giants who had previously enjoyed exclusive rights to obtain news from the Associated Press. Many soldier journalists, he predicts, would be among the new entrants to the newspaper business.

Framed Edition
[Return to Links
Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News<i><i><i>--</i></i></i>Framed Edition]
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.