The Charlotte News
Saturday, December 14, 1946
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U. N. General Assembly gave unanimous final approval to a proposal for arms reduction, but rejected the proposal for immediate troop census, deferring the latter issue to the Security Council. The Assembly also adopted a watered-down version of the amendment to the Security Council veto power, suggesting that it be used more sparingly.
The United States provided its troop census for troops stationed outside the country, less than 550,000. Most were in former Axis territory. About 116,500 troops were in China, the Philippines, and Panama.
The Assembly also set up a Trusteeship Council to supervise the governance of millions of non-self-governing peoples throughout the world. Mexico and Iraq would be allowed to sit on the committee, along with eight nations with automatic membership.
In China, Government forces seized Yencheng after a four-day battle, virtually completing the capture of Kiangsu Province. Heavy casualties had been sustained on both sides.
The death toll in the passenger train wreck at Coulter, Ohio, had risen to twenty, two other soldiers having died since the previous day when the train collided with two wrecked and derailed freight trains. Four of the 50 injured were in critical condition. The train had been en route from Fort Dix, N.J., to Camp Stoneman in Pittsburgh, California.
Senator Theodore Bilbo, being investigated by the War Investigation Committee of the Senate for his dealings in war contracts and allegedly receiving payments for recommendations, stated categorically that he did not receive a "damn dollar" of the $25,000 which had been contributed by a Mississippi war contractor to the 1942 unsuccessful Senate campaign of Wall Doxey, now Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate, and for the purpose of transporting workers to the polling places.
The President continued to meet with Cabinet officials and advisers trying to develop a new housing strategy.
In Hollywood, movie extra John Darby, 53, was found in his apartment murdered, with the back of his head bashed in. A male friend was being sought for questioning after being seen leaving the apartment.
In New York, a three-year old boy was clawed on the face by a leopard at the Central Park Zoo after the animal crawled under a guard rail to reach the child. The boy's condition was said to be good and he went home with his mother.
In Hattiesburg, Miss., a veteran who had been convicted of manslaughter for the automobile accident death of a man, agreed, in lieu of jail time, with the court's suggestion that he provide for the support of the man's ten children. A jury comprised entirely of veterans had convicted him.
In Los Angeles, John Cunningham, a test pilot for De Havilland Aircraft of England, predicted that it would be another decade before man would be able to fly faster than the speed of sound, either by rocket or jet propulsion.
He would turn out to be unduly pessimistic by 9 years and two months—that is, after we had a little help from our friends, the Roswellians of Shangri-La.
A heavy fog
Scotland Yard was also tracking a woman who was said to be a skilled judge of fur, able to mingle in high society amd ingratiate herself, then effect burglaries. A woman's heel print had been found outside a bedroom of a woman robbed of $32,000 worth of jewelry
The Empty Stocking Fund needed contributions to aid a couple who had taken in two young boys who had been crippled from malnourishment and tuberculosis.
The Fund had reached $4,433.25, enough now for each of the 2,000 needy children of the community to receive a toy worth $2.21. There is no limit to what you can afford in the toy department
On the editorial page, "The Sound of the Silent Citizens" comments on a new local organization, "Silent Citizens", whose goal was to take politicians out of politics and give it to businessmen. It had gotten off to a poor start, its name implying silence, when its activities of sending out numerous circulars constituted anything but silence. The organization was anonymous, but not silent.
The members were claimed to be among the City's wealthiest leaders, but they also refused to disclose their names. It invited suspicion of their motives. The surreptitious behavior placed them in the company of the Klan. Yet their statement of principles bore no resemblance to anything sinister or un-American. The organization expressed disgust with the New Deal and a plan for a revolution at the ballot box.
Their vision was essentially that of Alexander Hamilton.
The piece suggests that they try to tap and revitalize the moribund Republican organization in the state. It reminds that North Carolina had voted Republican in 1928, when Herbert Hoover ran against Al Smith—aided considerably by backlash against Mr. Smith for being Catholic.
It wants the organization to stop behaving as Ku Kluxers and blend with the GOP. If so, they would have the blessing of The News, which had been a Democratic newspaper since its founding in 1888.
"He Loves Her in December" remarks on the tenth wedding anniversary of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. They held a celebration at the Waldorf in New York. The couple said that they would do it all again in a "split jiffy", that is renunciation by the Duke of the throne of England to marry a commoner, the former Wallis Simpson.
The Duke, it remarks, had bags under his eyes which resembled two ping-pong balls. The Duchess cooked his meals on Sunday night in their $500-per-week suite at the Waldorf Towers, and the Duke walked his Cairn terriers. So, all in all, they lived a comfortable life.
A piece from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, titled "'A Lovely State of Things...'" comments on the two-part series the previous week by Burke Davis on the clogging of local courts in ostensibly dry Mecklenburg County with 10,000 public drunkenness cases annually, and a crime rate from alcohol-related offenses running twice that of the nearest competitor among ABC counties where liquor was under controlled sale.
The piece finds it to suggest a warning to Virginians who would want to vote dry to try to achieve a liquor-less condition.
Drew Pearson tells of banker James Warburg, who had been a part of the New Deal during FDR's first term, then turned against him for re-election, and turned back to him in 1940. Mr. Warburg represented a growing number of State Department-Wall Street thinkers determined to rebuild Germany into a bulwark against Russia.
In 1932, Mr. Warburg had dined with a group of Jewish tycoons secretly financing Hitler for the same purpose, to be a bulwark against Communism.
British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin had a similar approach to Germany. He saw France going Communist and so hastened the need for a strong Germany.
After World War I, American bankers, led by Wall Street adviser John Foster Dulles, invested millions of dollars in Germany, Mr. Dulles urging that Germany was a sound financial risk. They recouped most of their short-term credits, but the long-term loans held by American investment companies were never recovered. This money had helped not only to rebuild Germany but had also aided it in building up its war machine under Hitler.
A new plan was being worked out whereby the Government would directly loan the money through the RFC, headed by George Allen, and so would come from the taxpayers and not private companies and banks.
These advisers within the State Department were forgetting that the more Germany was rebuilt, the more France would be alienated. Their concern that France might turn Communist should have been held much earlier, before and during the war when they sneered at General De Gaulle. And the policy they were now following would only hasten the time when France would become Communist.
The Navy had been reported to have dumped 82,000 pounds of meat and fish the previous June, at a time when the country was suffering from a meat shortage, with producers awaiting release of price controls. The food had spoiled and so had to be thrown away. The Navy literally buried it near Camden, Arkansas. The food had been condemned by a medical officer as unfit for human consumption. But, to the consternation of Mr. Pearson, he also included canned goods and such items as paper napkins in his declaration of spoliation.
Marquis Childs reports that the men around the President were trying to anticipate the fancies of the incoming Republican Congress. A timid budget proposal had been one result, with executive departments being informed that they had to cut expenditures. The President's advisers were suggesting this strategy as one to take the wind out of the sails of the Republicans. Another result had been the dismissal of Housing Expediter Wilson Wyatt.
But it was also likely that the Republicans would perform budget cutting regardless of the Democratic attempt to anticipate it, and the subsequent tendency might wind up cutting the executive department to the bone. To order arbitrary cuts was dangerously short-sighted, as it would deprive the Administration of its ability to build a record of standing up to the Republican proposals during the ensuing two years. The cautious anticipatory policy appeared to come from the advisers rather than the President.
The Budget Bureau, at White House insistence, was putting a no-strike pledge in every appropriation bill to pacify the Republican Congress. But such a move could cause labor troubles where there were none.
For the two-party system to have meaning, the Democrats should not take on too much of the Republican clothing.
He concludes by relating that FDR, as Governor of New York, faced a hostile Republican Legislature. But nevertheless he never relented in sending his own proposals to that Legislature. When the Legislature cut his budget, he fought them in the state courts and won. At the end of his first four years as Governor, FDR was elected President. He recommends the notion to President Truman.
Samuel Grafton writes from Mexico City of interviewing Ramon Beteta, the Secretary of the Treasury of Mexico, and being informed by him that Mexico wanted to industrialize by raising output in certain industries and thereby raising the standard of living. It preferred, for instance, to manufacture airplanes rather than automobiles or other mass-produced items. An airplane required a lot of concerted handiwork, similar to the handcrafting which had gone into Mexican production traditionally. Some of the corporations being formed were private, but others had a majority of Government stock investing them.
The promoters believed that industry was starting to take off in Mexico, and with it would come rapid social and political change. There were signs of it already in the modern apartment buildings within the suburbs of Mexico City. It did not, as one native suggested, however, resemble the Bronx, but it was not traditional Mexico either.
Americans usually did not understand the Mexican attitude of serendipity, that starting on a journey did not require a map or plan, as God would provide the way. It was an optimistic attitude. Americans did not appreciate the plethora of benefits to be derived from reliance on providence
Mexicans had little attachment to property. Sr. Beteta answered Mr. Grafton's inquiry as to how he could be sure that industrialization would not bring more change than desired, by saying that there was always the Indian, who was stubbornly independent.
A letter from an adviser to the National Park Service offers a letter sent to Hugh Morton
It was hoped that the Federal Government might purchase the mountain, but no effort had been made toward that end, the purchase needing approval from the Congress before it could be effected by the Park Service.
Whether it included Grandmother
Whoever, whatever, they were in uncultivated motivation, they were and are but unmotivated crustaceans.
A letter writer remembers a piece appearing eight years earlier by Tom Jimison, deceased since September, 1945, regarding his father. Extra editions had been printed at the time by public demand. He requests a copy.
The editors thank the reader for the memory and request, but regretfully inform that the reprints had long ago been exhausted.
A piece by Mr. Jimison regarding his father had, however, appeared on June 16, 1945, Father's Day.
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