Tuesday, September 18, 1945

The Charlotte News

Tuesday, September 18, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that President Truman had appointed Undersecretary of War Robert Patterson to succeed resigning Henry L. Stimson, who had been Secretary since 1940. Mr. Stimson, a Republican who had been Secretary of State during the term of President Herbert Hoover and had been Secretary of War also to President William Howard Taft, was 78 years old.

Many in Congress had believed that Mr. Patterson, a former Judge of the Court of Appeals, would be appointed to the vacancy on the Supreme Court. The Senate Investigating Committee which Mr. Truman had chaired while in the Senate had encountered sharp differences with Mr. Patterson on Army policy with regard to the Canol Oil Development project in Canada and so it was believed that he would not be the successor to head the War Department.

Director of the Office of Reconversion John W. Snyder announced that all building restrictions were being lifted as of October 15. He did not seek to impose ceiling restrictions on prices of new homes, as OPA had sought, ultimately up to the Congress. But he did include ceilings on building materials as a counter to inflation and included a plan by which the National Housing Association would provide an advisory service on home values.

The lifting of the ban applied to private homes, apartment houses, public works, and business buildings.

Japanese newspapers condemned their war leaders for the "barbarism" of Japanese soldiers and inefficiency of the Japanese Government. The Japanese troops themselves had admitted the acts of which they had been accused. The newspapers complimented the efficiency of the American occupation troops.

Asahi stated: "Proudness, ignorance, vanity and selfishness caused the Greater East Asia War."

The newspapers were now under the effective oversight of the Americans and subject to American censorship.

General MacArthur had just imposed a two-day suspension on Asahi for inflammatory articles which had included charges that the United States had violated international law by dropping the atomic bombs and that the stories of Japanese atrocities might be attempts by Americans to overshadow the atrocities committed by American soldiers in Japan.

In London at the Foreign Ministers Conference, Russian Foreign Commissar V. M. Molotov stated that it was true that Russia had interest in establishing a trusteeship over the Italian colonies of Tripolitania in Libya, and Eritrea in North Africa. He indicated a willingness to compromise on Italian territory in Yugoslavia.

A Paris periodical speculated that Premier Stalin would step down as Premier of the Soviet Union during the winter because of a liver ailment and fatigue, impacting Stalin's energy since 1942.

The story would prove mere speculation. Stalin would remain as Premier until his death in 1953.

The remnants of the hurricane, now a tropical storm, had caused flooding of four rivers in Eastern North Carolina, resulting in virtually no road traffic east of Raleigh. The flood waters, it was reported, might rise to produce some of the worst flooding in state history.

A photograph no doubt taunted the public, as brand new Fords, the first since early 1942, were poised unfinished on the halted assembly lines of the Ford plant in Detroit, the result of 40,000 idle Ford workers in consequence of the Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Co. strike by 4,000 workers, based on the discharge of three workers.

Three workers out. No wheels, no work, no cars.

Best maintain the old jalopy for a bit longer.

On the editorial page, "Nick of Time" asserts that the automobile strike, though slowing reconversion, had the ameliorative result of forcing the Labor Department to become more effective immediately, its powers having been cast off to other agencies, the Employment Service, the War Manpower Commission, and the War Labor Board, during the war. 

Labor Secretary Lewis Schwellenbach had fought for reorganization of the department to centralize authority again, to combat the certainties of increased strikes at war's end, now becoming a reality.

But he had run into red tape thus far in trying to effect the reorganization as men behind the war-created agencies fought against the revisions and stripping of their powers.

So, the President had finally stepped in and provided most of the revisions, though not everything, for which Secretary Schwellenbach had asked. According to the Secretary, he now had enough power to resolve the situation in Detroit.

"Hot Water" comments on the Foreign Ministers Conference in London, that Secretary of State Byrnes had successfully convinced the other foreign ministers that they should stay away from the issues involving the Balkans. The trouble spot had come when discussing the boundaries of Italy and its border with Yugoslavia.

Inevitably, that discussion had drawn in questions regarding the Balkans. And at that point, conflict began to arise as there was no jointly acceptable plan with regard to the Balkans, divided into six countries, each with its own language and predominant race, each having been involved in wars with the other Balkan countries since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.

Each of the countries had its own protector among the powers, Russia, for instance, overseeing Bulgaria while Britain looked after the interests of Greece.

The editorial indicates that there was simply no way to untangle this morass of interests and reach a satisfactory result.

"A Little Cut" discusses the intent of Congress to scale back taxes only by a small amount so that the war debt, which had run the yearly debt service to three billion dollars, a sum almost the equivalent of the entire Government budget prior to the New Deal, could be paid down.

Present revenues were 32 billion dollars and the estimated cost of the Government for the ensuing year was 25 billion, leaving enough to cover four billion dollars of principal on the debt. It was therefore not realistic for the taxpayers to expect taxes to drop to 1939 levels anytime in the near future.

While taxes had been cut consistently in the ten years following World War I, they never returned to the levels at the start of American involvement in 1917.

"Going Up" points out that during the war, incomes in the South had increased more than any other region except for the West. North Carolina income had increased by 115 percent between 1940 and 1944. The increase in the District of Columbia was 23 percent during the same period and, in New York, 76 percent.

Yet, with all of the increased percentage, the raw figures did not show substantial gains in relation to the Northern states. Average income for residents of New York was $1,519 and for North Carolina, $689. It was still a substantial jump for the state from its low of $205 in 1933.

The increases were accomplished in the South with relatively little war industry and so there was hope for narrowing this inter-regional gap in the future.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Senator Clyde R. Hoey of North Carolina commenting on the reduction of the Army and Navy to peacetime strength. He indicates that the Army had eight million men and the Navy three million. The Army had stated that it need no more than 2.5 million for occupation and service in the United States. The Navy only needed a half million.

The point system for discharge acted unfairly to keep men in service unnecessarily who had never gone abroad or served in combat. He cites the case of the National Guard, many of whom had served for five years but had insufficient points for discharge because they had remained stateside. He favored greater speed be used by both the Army and Navy to pare its strength only to necessary numbers.

Drew Pearson comments on the long list of charges to be made against the Surplus War Property Board by state and local government purchasers, contending that the Board had ignored the legal preferences to which these entities were entitled under law, receiving priority in purchases immediately after the Federal Government. The state and local governments complained that they were being bypassed by the Army in its sale of trucks, that these vehicles were being dispensed instead directly to dealers. Tires also had not found their way into state hands. A case was reported from Fort Bragg, in which North Carolina had sought to buy used tires at the established rate of $30 per ton for use on state vehicles. Instead, they had been sold to U.S. Rubber and other rubber companies who were then reselling them at $40 per ton to tire repair companies who would then repair them and sell directly to consumers.

Mr. Pearson next comments on Congressman Lyndon Johnson of Texas getting ready to criticize the Army on its discharge point system insofar as its recent announcement that men with between 45 and 79 points would not be sent to the Pacific, but with less than the minimum 80 points, neither would be discharged. Another complaint was the tendency of officers to retain most of their complement of subordinate officers so that they would not lose rank. A general, for instance, had refused to let 23 of his 28 officers be discharged, for it would have meant his reduction to his permanent rank as captain.

With 1,600 generals in the Army, the most ever, it was an apparent reason why discharge of officers and men was occurring slowly.

Foreign Economic Administrator Leo Crowley, usually in favor of open government, was reportedly suppressing information regarding how much electricity and utilities equipment should be removed from Germany. A joint committee of U.S. business and Government leaders had studied the issue and made recommendations as to how much equipment ought be removed. The report had been readied for public dissemination when Mr. Crowley ordered it not be released.

Officials could not understand why Mr. Crowley had so behaved. He was chairman of Standard Gas & Electric, but that did not explain his suppression of the report.

The report had recommended that two-thirds of the power-generating equipment of Germany be removed.

Finally, he reports of the criticism in Washington of General MacArthur for letting the Japanese continue in command in southern Korea, Russia having control of the northern section, and his policy of allowing the Japanese, until the previous week following American journalists' protests, to continue to disseminate propaganda.

This ill feeling had been complicated in the Navy by the snubbing of Admiral Nimitz in favor of General MacArthur to accept formal surrender of the Japanese. Admiral Ernest King, chief of staff of the Navy, had made a careful distinction to the press that General MacArthur was supreme commander "for" the Allied powers, not "of" the Allied powers, meaning to suggest that his role was limited and that he was not commander also of the American Navy in the Pacific.

Samuel Grafton suggests that General MacArthur's assertion that occupation of Japan might be completed within a year was frightening, implicitly indicating that occupation was meaningless, implementing a few changes and then departing with a dangerously poor Japan left behind.

The statement itself lacked wisdom for it told any ambitious democrat that leading a democratic movement against the Zaibatsu, the industrialists, the Gumbatsu, the militarists, the Mombatsu and the Kambatsu, the latter two groups being part of the aristocracy, would be unwise, for the Americans might not be around in a year to continue to offer protection.

Instead, the length of occupation should be made dependent on reform and changes to Japanese society to make it safe to the world. The announcement had made it plain that the Americans planned to oversee no major revisions of Japan.

Essentially, it appeared that the occupation was going to amount to no more than providing endurance to the Emperor and allowing the old bureaucracy to remain in place.

Charlotte City Attorney C. W. Tillett writes a letter commenting favorably on the appointment of Federal Appeals Court Judge John J. Parker to become the alternate to the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal.

Another letter expresses sadness at the death of Tom Jimison the previous week. Says the writer, "He helped me when I really needed help and scoffed at thanks."

Marquis Childs comments on the post-war financial pressures being placed on the country by European governments wishing aid to rebuild. Secretary of State Byrnes, before he had left for London, stated that a total of 15 billion dollars of aid was being sought by foreign governments.

Juxtaposed to those requests was an increasing climate among Democrats and Republicans in Congress, as a campaign year neared, to cut taxes, end rationing, and cut spending to haul in the enormously expanded budget created during the war.

Some of the "lunatic fringe", as Mr. Childs dubs them, were calling for exclusive retention of the secret of the atomic bomb so that America could go about the world doing as it pleased.

As to the Dorman Smith, we did not read ahead. Perhaps, however, some of them drip.

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