The Charlotte News
Friday, October 4, 1946
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President had issued a Yom Kippur statement to British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, urging that the British allow immediate immigration of 100,000 displaced Jews in Europe to Palestine and support creation of an independent Jewish state in Palestine. He also rejected the British-supported plan for Arab-Jewish division of Palestine. The President exhorted the British to allow this migration to occur at once, before winter when hardship again would be visited upon the displaced and wandering mendicants of Europe, not susceptible of delay therefore awaiting action by the London Conference on Palestine. He promised American transportation of the immigrants and other economic aid.
The President also urged a liberalization of American immigration policy to permit admission of some of the displaced persons of Europe.
A spokesman for Prime Minister Attlee stated that President Truman's statement was "unfortunate" and could jeopardize settlement of the question by stimulating expectations of the Jewish Agency representatives that a quota be established of 100,000 immigrants. The spokesman stated that America would have to supply 500,000 troops to enforce the immediate immigration plan of the President. The Prime Minister had asked that the President delay release of the statement until more study of it could be had, especially as consultation between Arab and Jewish leaders at the London Conference was ongoing. The 10 Downing Street spokesman unusually delivered his statement from a prepared text, indicative of the importance attached to it.
In Paris, Russia charged the U.S. and Britain with violating their Big Four agreements by voting for an Australian amendment to the Italian treaty, to set up an international commission, controlled by the Big Four and affected countries, to supervise Italian reparations to countries other than Russia, including Poland, Albania, Ethiopia, Yugoslavia, and Greece.
*In Nuremberg, the U.S. Army stated that the British would not permit acquitted War Crimes Tribunal defendants Hjalmar Schacht, Franz von Papen, and Hans Fritsche to enter Hamburg in the British zone. The Army had previously indicated an intent to transport the three to Hamburg the previous night. The French had also rejected a request that Von Papen be admitted to the French zone. The three remained in the Nuremberg Palace of Justice.
*Appeals to the Allied Control Council had been filed by six of the nineteen defendants either condemned to death or imprisonment. Included in the six was Martin Bormann, tried in absentia and believed dead.
Henry Wallace blamed Bernard Baruch and his inflexible approach to relations with Russia for the grave danger extant to the ability of the U.N. to set up effective atomic controls. Mr. Baruch agreed that there was grave danger but blamed Mr. Wallace for causing public concern with his criticism of U.S. policy with regard to atomic control. Mr. Wallace stated that there were two primary issues to be resolved, the continued stockpiling of atomic bombs by the U.S. while trying to negotiate control and Russia's refusal to cooperate in international inspections. He also criticized the U.S. policy which insisted on the Soviets giving up their veto power on atomic energy control and asserted that Mr. Baruch was too preoccupied with procedure.
Mr. Wallace and Mr. Baruch had met on September 27 and Mr. Wallace admitted that his previous criticism was in error regarding the Baruch proposal's supposed lack of assurances to other nations of conditions under which the atomic bomb secret would be shared, that there was a specific plan proposed by Mr. Baruch in that regard.
President Truman stated that the matter was largely a personal dispute between the two men and was dismissive of the controversy.
In Marcus Hook, Pa., a fire and explosion at the Sun Oil Co. plant took seven lives and injured 140 others, leaving nineteen in critical condition, and causing $300,000 worth of property damage to the plant which produced aviation fuel.
The Civil Aeronautics Administration had not yet determined a cause of the worst aviation disaster to date, which claimed 39 lives when a Berlin-bound DC-4 crashed shortly after take-off in Newfoundland the day before.
Harold Ickes discusses the inherent unfairness of Georgia's county-unit voting law which weighted less populated counties as roughly equivalent to the larger counties of the state, and the denial nevertheless of injunctive relief by a three-judge Federal Court in Atlanta, ruling that the plaintiffs had not come to court in time, while the controversy was live, as the gubernatorial primary election had been held, with Eugene Talmadge declared the winner despite obtaining only a minority of the vote. The Court had reasoned that because states only had two Senators regardless of population and that under the electoral system it was possible for a President to be elected with less than a plurality of the vote, the Georgia system did not do violence to the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or to voting rights accorded under the Fifteenth Amendment.
As we have previously noted, however, those analogies were not well taken. Mr. Ickes agrees. He asks what either the Senate or the electoral college had do with the Georgia gubernatorial race. He concludes that "minority rule by crooked means in Georgia seems to be more precious in the eyes of the law than the right of the citizens of that state to enjoy a republican form of government."
The Republican opponent of Senator Harley Kilgore of West Virginia claimed that he had been informed that the Senator met the previous day with the President and worked out a secret deal to divert the Senate Investigating Committee which he now headed, formerly the Truman Committee, from further proceedings anent the relationship between the war contracts of the Garsson brothers combine and Representative Andrew May of Kentucky until after the election.
In Beverly Hills, race car driver Barney Oldfield
In Honolulu, the B-29 Pacusan Dreamboat, at long last, after being delayed in takeoff for 34 days because of bad weather, began its nonstop 10,300-mile journey over the North Pole to Cairo, set to last approximately 41 hours. What would have been the longest nonstop flight had already been eclipsed by the Perth, Australia, to Columbus, Ohio, run of the "Truculent Turtle", a Navy bomber which earlier in the week had flown 11,200 miles nonstop. The B-29 was carrying 148,400 pounds, the heaviest cargo ever loaded aboard an aircraft. With Lt. Col. Beverly Warren as pilot, the plane carried a crew of ten, and enough fuel to last 43 hours.
Keep your fingers crossed.
On the editorial page, "The Season of Changed Minds" comments on the reported agreement of Henry Wallace, following his meeting with Bernard Baruch on September 27, to confess publicly that he had erred in his criticism of the proposal on atomic energy control as lacking assurances to other nations of the conditions required before sharing would take place. Mr. Baruch's aides had drafted a statement for Mr. Wallace to deliver, but Mr. Wallace rejected it, drafted his own, which Mr. Baruch then rejected.
Mr. Wallace denied that he ever agreed to provide unqualified public support for the Baruch proposal and restated his original objections regarding continued stockpiling of weapons during negotiation for control. He also disagreed with the Baruch opposition to the unilateral veto, the heart of the Baruch proposal. As the U.S. was willing to yield its veto power if Russia would do so, it was a fair offer and one which should have been acceptable to any internationalist such as Mr. Wallace.
That Mr. Wallace supported the veto suggested that he had given up on effective cooperation between the West and Russia and had adopted the position that peace had to be based on spheres of influence.
Regardless of who had the better of the argument, the nation's foreign policy, it appeared, could not be criticized without spawning a major debate. No one had been served by this public argument, neither Mr. Wallace nor Mr. Baruch; and the piece also doubts whether peace had been served.
"There Are Also Union Monopolies" discusses the cooperation going on between CIO and AFL unions on several fronts to achieve mutual ends. The sympathy strike would inevitably lead the 80th Congress to enact legislation to limit it for the public good.
The piece suggests that labor leaders ought consider these ramifications and abandon sympathy strikes.
"Oh, Those Big Blue Eyes...." tells the story appearing two days earlier on the front page of the draft dodger who succumbed to his wife's blue eyes in pleading for him not to respond to his draft induction and stay at home with her. He did and she supported him for two years until she decided to divorce him. He then received support from his girlfriend, all the while writing, painting, and learning to play the saxophone, clarinet, and accordion.
Neither turned him in because of his utility to humanity and its future as an artist
The piece suggests that, while justice had to be served and he would thus be doing a stretch for his avoidance of service, the two women had actually performed a service for the Army, as it could not think of anyone who the Army was better off without.
That's not nice. He could've played clarinet or accordion for the men and been quite entertaining perhaps, while painting abstract pictures
A piece from the Columbia Record, titled "The Mitigating Circumstances", comments on the South Carolina residents in hot water for claiming falsely North Carolina residence to obtain divorces, and thus had been ordered to have the divorces declared null and void or face indictment for perjury.
The piece comments acerbically that there were mitigating circumstances in that the South Carolinians believed that Mecklenburg County would enforce its divorce laws no more stringently than its prohibition laws.
Drew Pearson tells of the threat of the State Department to publish a report of Soviet collaboration with the Nazis prior to June 22, 1941 when the Germans invaded Russia. But in response, Russia had threatened to publish reports of British collaboration with the Nazis, which included sums paid by the Germans to certain British subjects. It was being reported that the British Foreign Office therefore wanted the State Department to withhold publication of its report.
He next tells of many people being worried that Philip Murray, because of age and failing health, would resign as president of the CIO. The fear was that CIO would then splinter.
According to Argentine President Juan Peron, lamppost hangings were becoming a too familiar sight in Latin America. A sign in front of his residence had proclaimed a lamppost being reserved for the Fascist leader, prompting Sr. Peron to shoot at the sign.
In the fall of 1941, just prior to Pearl Harbor, a group of isolationist Senators led by North Dakota's Gerald Nye had attacked Hollywood. But it was without effect because of the attack at Pearl Harbor and the late Wendell Willkie's defense of Hollywood. Eric Johnston, now head of Hollywood censorship, had taken Senator Nye's former secretary under his wing and he was now accompanying Mr. Johnston on a good will tour of Europe.
**President Truman had, the previous Christmas, ordered 40,000 visas for displaced persons in Europe, but the State Department had thus far only issued 4,000, angering the President, who might fire the obstructionists.
Congresswoman Edith Rogers of Massachusetts had been unable to convince the President to call a special session of Congress to deal with the meat shortage, so bad that hospitals in Massachusetts had resorted to horse meat, or to get him to rescind price controls on meat. The President had responded that he was aware of the acute meat shortage in Massachusetts and elsewhere, but could do little if farmers refused to send livestock to market. Furthermore, he supported completely the decision of Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson to stand firm on price controls on meat.
**Denotes portion of column not in the version printed by The News, supplemented by the "Capital Chaff" and "Merry-Go-Round" snippets, the former section including the little noticed fact that Henry A. Wallace carried the reverse intials of W. Averell Harriman, the former's replacement as Secretary of Commerce, just in case you wanted to know.
comments that the word "liberal" was one of the more abused terms in the world, especially in the United States. It was stretched to embrace those who wanted to remove all controls from the economy to allow a "free market", but was also appropriated by near-Communists and fellow travelers.In Sweden, the term was used more precisely, to mean either a member of the Liberal Party or the cooperative movement. The former was headed by Professor Bertil Ohlin, a progressive social reformer who wanted expansion of social security and low-cost medical care, but disfavored nationalization of industry.
The cooperative movement was headed by Albin Johansson, believing that competition in a free economy was the most effective means of stemming inflation and assuring the impetus for high quality production. He also was aware that if consumers did not act in their own interests, state control or private monopoly would be inevitable.
The Social Democratic Party, led by social scientist Gunnar Myrdal, led the Government. It had recently proposed nationalization of the oil industry and shoe manufacturing. Mr. Johansson had headed off the movement to nationalize the oil industry by persuading organizations of motorists, fishermen, and other primary users of petroleum to join in a league with the cooperative movement, the sum of which comprised a majority of the voters, to fight against it.
The Government might eventually construct a new refinery, but that would not be opposed by the cooperative movement, as it would provide competition for both the cooperative and private enterprise, thereby helping to keep the economy relatively free in the face of monopoly interests.
Mr. Johansson advocated the world trade organization favored by the United States. He believed that unless the West acted quickly to lower customs barriers and eliminate trade restrictions, they could never compete with the Soviet Union. Soviet absorption of the economies of the countries along its border by means of treaties had kept other nations out.
He concludes that while liberalism seemed at times outmoded in an age of increasing centralization of power, at least in Sweden there was an effort to provide it with a reality which it lacked elsewhere.
Peter Edson tells of a crazy deal made to sell surplus war property of the United States, consisting of 1.5 million tons of civilian goods, to China. Scattered throughout the Pacific, the goods were without inventory. Payment was made with worthless Yuan dollars, with the U.S. saying that it owed the debt to China. But no one understood how much it represented, the Office of Foreign Liquidation estimating between 150 and 250 million dollars worth of goods. The U.S. furthermore set up a thirty-million dollar fund to pay for charters of boats so that the Chinese could pick up the goods scattered among the islands.
Five hundred Yuan dollars were worth 12.5 American cents. America had borrowed a third to a half trillion Yuan during the war to pay Chinese labor for building airfields and the like. Now the debt, though based on worthless paper, was being repaid in the civilian goods. The Chinese agreed to accept the deal though not having seen the goods.
A letter from Rabbi Philip Frankel of Temple Beth El in Charlotte takes the occasion of Yom Kippur to express man's dream of being at one with God, a God not, as he, of dust
A letter takes issue with a reported statement of Chester Bowles that the Republicans, being unable to attract enough votes to achieve power, were seeking to starve the nation into submission. The letter writer thinks Mr. Bowles trying to shift blame from his own party onto the Republicans for the meat crisis. He suggests that the Democrats had done the same with respect to President Hoover, who had done everything he could to get the country out of the Depression.
He urges citizens not to sell their vote.
A letter from the Classroom Teachers of the South Piedmont thanks the newspaper for the service it had rendered to the cause of education.
*Denotes story not on front page of The News, as culled from other front pages of the date.
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