Tuesday, February 12, 1946

The Charlotte News

Tuesday, February 12, 1946

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that New York City stood virtually empty this date after Mayor William O'Dwyer had declared all non-essential businesses closed in the wake of the nine-day old tugboat operators strike which had left the city without fuel. Subways were not operating as police guarded entrances. Many commuters arriving in the city had not received the news of the closures and so stood around frustrated and irritated. Wall Street was closed for Lincoln's Birthday anyway, but if the shutdown were to continue into Wednesday, worldwide financial markets would be impacted.

Philadelphia also stood at a standstill from the transit strike declared the previous day.

Pittsburgh power company employees had also struck, though the city still had electrical power.

In all, fifteen million people in the three cities, ten percent of the nation's population, were impacted by 16,800 striking workers, only 3,500 of whom were tugboat operators of New York.

Britain and the United States signed a pact in Bermuda allowing free flow of air traffic between the two countries and commercial flights to land on many of the military bases which the U.S. had leased from Britain and maintained during the war, in Newfoundland, Bermuda, Trinidad, Jamaica, Antigua, St. Lucia, and British Guiana. The U.S. would have "most favored nation status" on these fields and would continue to maintain them.

Admiral Royal Ingersoll told the joint Congressional committee investigating Pearl Harbor that the United States and Britain had discussed in secret conversations, in which he had participated, the possibility of a war with Japan in early 1938—which should not have been a remarkable disclosure as it came in the wake of the Panay incident of December, 1937, the prospect of war with Japan having been at the time publicly and actively discussed in the press, hardly "secret".

Congressman Bertrand Gearhart of California, however, apparently was too busy surfing at the time to pay much heed to the news that far back in time and so actively questioned the Admiral over this startling revelation, one of the many such startling revelations from these election year hearings.

The Admiral stated that the discussions did not result in any commitments by either country but merely reviewed plans for preparedness. Those discussions, however, became a "dead cat", he said, when the American-Dutch-British plan, the so-called "Rainbow Plan", went into effect in the Pacific.

And?

The War Department issued a statement defending the decision of officers to undertake the Rapido River crossing in Italy in 1944. Veterans of the 36th Division out of Texas had sought an inquiry because of the high number of casualties suffered in the operation, 2,128, 155 of whom had been killed.

Democratic National Committee chairman Robert Hannegan denied a rumor published by the Chicago Sun that several weeks earlier, President Truman had stated to close associates that he did not intend to run for the presidency in 1948.

Of course, it was true, as Governor Dewey would win in Chicago.

Hal Boyle, writing from Calcutta, on his way to Europe for a review of the old battlefields, then home, remarks of the beggars of India. Cows, which were sacred, led an easier life, wandering about, being fed by store proprietors. Mr. Boyle was informed that if the cow came to an establishment run by a Muslim, it would either be milked or kicked in the rear end and sent on its way. But, even so, it would never wind up a steak, a fate reserved for the water buffalo.

He observed that India was a country suffering from poverty, disease, and caste.

He had arrived at Dumdum Airfield, home of the dumdum bullet. The cost of cars was high, an Austin running $2,000 American, with a good American car costing ten times that amount. It was, however, he was assured, nothing to a wealthy Indian.

"Calcutta looks like the Arabian nights and any British city shaken up in a single civic cocktail, with squalor sleeping on every marble doorstep."

It was a runner-up in filth only to Naples during the war. It stood as the backdoor to India, in contrast to Bombay, the country's titular gateway.

In Los Angeles, in different parts of the city, it rained, snowed, and was sunny, as an icy wind blew across the landscape.

In Sarasota, Fla., a robber, seeking to rob a savings and loan, wound up with only $46 from the take when a clerk stashed $1,305 underneath her sweater. The robber fled on foot. A passerby saw him, ducked into a sporting goods store, grabbed a shotgun and gave chase. Others saw the chase taking place and thought the man with the shotgun was the robber, started chasing the chaser, allowing the robber to make his escape.

Another case of the interdiction of crime in progress via the simple expedient of a freely available gun. Add it to your list, N.R.A. Brandish it about.

We have zero tolerance for many things in society, but not guns. Why? The Second Amendment? No. Ask James Madison about that. That was for maintenance of militias, over 200 years ago.

For instance, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, in 1833, in a statement sometimes taken up by gun nuts seeking to sound erudite as suggestive of support for the gun-nut theory, when the gun nuts have obviously not bothered to read what they cite, offered the following:

"The importance of this [second] article [of the Bill of Rights] will scarcely be doubted by any persons, who have duly reflected upon the subject. The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them. And yet, though this truth would seem so clear, and the importance of a well regulated militia would seem so undeniable, it cannot be disguised, that among the American people there is a growing indifference to any system of militia discipline, and a strong disposition, from a sense of its burthens, to be rid of all regulations. How it is practicable to keep the people duly armed without some organization, it is difficult to see. There is certainly no small danger, that indifference may lead to disgust, and disgust to contempt; and thus gradually undermine all the protection intended by this clause of our national bill of rights." [Emphasis supplied.]

—from Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States by Joseph L. Story, 1833, sec. 1890

Since World War II, and for the first time in the country's history prior to that time, it has had a standing army. You cannot have it both ways. We must abolish the National Guard, the Army, the Navy, and Air Force or take away your privately owned guns. Which one do you want, gun nut? The standing army, you see, is clearly outside what the Founders, including President Washington, intended for the country. But modernity and its atomic bomb, jet planes and missiles to deliver the warheads and bombs, have made it necessary, just as modernity makes it necessary to take away your firearms as not being necessary any longer for that "well-regulated militia" which has instead been institutionalized in the form of the National Guard and the standing army.

If the First Amendment were worded similarly to the Second Amendment, that is, "A well-regulated press being necessary to the security of a free state, Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press," then a similar argument would exist that the Founders clearly intended freedom of the press and speech to be confined to the arena of a "well-regulated press", implying the necessity of licensure and registration to be afforded the right to publish and speak. That the First Amendment has no such limiting clause is significant in light of that of the Second Amendment regarding militias, meaning that the First Amendment's proscriptions are only limited by the common law notions of defamation, communications of actual threats of physical harm or extortion, and sedition against the Government, meaning actual incitement of a "clear and present danger" to overthrow the Government—limits which the gun nuts routinely trample with impunity and quite publicly, only to be the first to yell "threat" when someone dares even to contest their point of view or threaten properly to sue them or have them arrested for their actually threatening statements. Threats, incidentally, of legal action, civil or criminal, are not actionable civilly and are certainly not criminal, even if based on mistaken understanding of the other person's intent. They are often useful tools, in fact, to stand down an out of line individual who might otherwise wind up shooting you or at least depriving you of some legal or Constitutional right lest the situation be defused with such an innocent "threat" of legal action as a consequence. It is part of our freedom of speech.

We therefore have questions: Why are you gun nuts so dumb? We deserve to know if it is going continually to cost American lives daily. Tell us. Why are you so dumb that you cannot read the English language? Especially, since you claim to have been around at the time of the Revolution, doubtful though that is, and claim also to have inside knowledge on the meaning of the Second Amendment, obtained inevitably, not through reading primary sources of the time of the Founding, but rather through your lucky-mood watch and parroting of stupid radio talk-show hosts who simply wish to sell you products, such as your lucky-mood watch.

We do not care of your family tradition for hunting with your daddy or granddaddy. Establish a new family tradition. Watch college basketball or roller derby or wrestling or something. Or, just go out hiking in the woods without guns to protect your scared little pansy selves from the big, bad bears.

Some families had a tradition of organized crime. Does that mean that we ought tolerate organized crime for the sake of preservation of those families' precious traditions?

On the editorial page, "Post-Mortem on FEPC" reports of the victory by the Southern Senators in the filibuster of the bill to establish as permanent the Fair Employment Practices Commission to insure equal opportunity in hiring and wages without discrimination based on race, religion, ethnicity or national origin.

The editorial finds the filibuster to have deepened the divide in the Democratic Party and demonstrated before the world that racial prejudice still existed, deeply rooted in tradition, in the South.

But despite all the bombast from the likes of Senators Theodore Bilbo and John Eastland, both of Mississippi, the voices of reason in the South had prevailed. It asserts that the Raleigh News & Observer had summed the situation best in stating that the South had put an end to lynching without Federal legislation, and that it must put an end to discrimination in employment and compensation likewise without Federal legislation.

Implicit in the argument was that blacks were second-class citizens economically and that the situation had to be addressed and ameliorated.

Unfortunately, the ghost of Bilbo would persist after his death and would undertake every effort it could muster to prevent economic progress among blacks in the South until the Federal Government finally had to intervene.

"The Kuriles Deal" comments on the agreement made at Yalta a year earlier to obtain Russian participation in the Pacific war two or three months after the end of the war in Europe in exchange, among other things, for possession of the Kurile Islands.

The deal itself was understandable, and the public reaction on and after August 8, that the Russians were entering the war only to capitalize late on acquisition of territory following the dropping of the Hiroshima bomb, was also understandable as the public had not been informed of the fact of the pre-determination of the timetable for Russia's entry.

While the secrecy made sense a year earlier, once the Russians entered the war, the timetable should have been declared so that the American public would not jump to harsh conclusions, hampering American-Soviet relations since. Secretary of State Byrnes had not made reference to the Yalta agreement until September 4, and by then, the damage had been done.

It advocates in the future open agreements, a maxim followed by President Wilson.

"Welcome, Comrade" finds the exchange of comments on the press between Vice Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vishinsky of Russia and Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin of Britain to have suggested polar opposite opinions to those of their respective systems, Mr. Bevin sounding as Karl Marx and Mr. Vishinsky sounding as Voltaire.

Mr. Bevin, finding it hard to defend British action in Indonesia based on press reports, wound up attacking the accuracy of the reports. Mr. Vishinsky resorted to defense of freedom of the press as a retort.

The piece responds that it was good to have Mr. Vishinsky in the corner of an American free press, even if he was only engaging in rhetoric of the moment to win the argument. It was in the record and could be raised the next time the Soviets, as was their habit, blocked the free flow of information.

It stood as one of the initial achievements of the U.N. Public debate between the nations was producing an atmosphere in which admissions and concessions were being made, ultimately conducive to the development of democracy.

A piece from the Louisville Courier-Journal, titled "A Lesson for Editors", comments on the rule followed by most newspapers that the comic strip was a necessary part of the daily print to draw readers to the more serious news. As strikes had closed newspapers and Mayor LaGuardia had once read the comics during such a strike over the radio, the fallacy had been strengthened.

But the Cleveland Press took a poll of readers after all newspapers in the city had been on strike for 32 days. It found that 63 percent missed most the local news, 26 percent world news, and 21.75 percent the comics. The results were made the more significant by the fact that radio delivered both local and national news during the strike.

It concludes that it was a good lesson for both readers and editors.

Drew Pearson indicates that with General Marshall in China, the man on whom the President relied most for military advice was Admiral William Leahy, White House chief of staff. He also relied on the Admiral for advice on foreign affairs. Recently, Admiral Leahy had told President Truman that he had informed President Roosevelt in 1937 that if Japan were not stopped then, there would be a two-front war to face later. President Roosevelt had agreed but men around him in the State Department stayed his hand, favoring the appeasement of Japan.

Mr. Pearson notes that when the Japanese sunk the American gunboat Panay and the British gunboat Ladybird, Admiral Leahy had urged Secretary of State Hull to surround Japan with the American and British Navies and blockade shipments to them of cotton, oil, copper, and scrap iron. He believed that it would cause Japan to cease its aggression in China within three months. Mr. Hull's advisers, however, overruled Admiral Leahy.

He now advised President Truman that if appeasement of Russia continued, it would lead to war within five years. They had to be dealt with firmly or they would walk over the U.S.

Mr. Pearson next tells of Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes withholding from the public market a virulent rat poison developed during the war. Called "1080", it was so strong that if a cat or dog gnawed on a rat poisoned with it, the cat or dog would also die. Thus, it was not being put on the commercial market. But grain farmers, who were losing millions per year in crops because of rats, were upset at the Secretary's decision.

Finally, he tells of disagreement on the Senate Military Affairs Committee between Senator Warren Austin of Vermont and Senator W. Chapman Revercomb of West Virginia, the latter having introduced a bill to discharge fathers forthwith from the military. When it failed to receive action in the committee, Senator Revercomb wanted the committee to discharge it from consideration so that it could be considered by the entire Senate. Senator Austin condemned the notion as doing violence to procedure.

Marquis Childs suggests that the rift within the Democratic Party would be widened by the President's insistence on backing the controversial nomination of Ed Pauley to become Undersecretary of the Navy, problematic for his oil interests and the fact that Secretary of Interior Ickes had accused him of essentially offering a $300,000 bribe, in the form of a campaign contribution, as a quid pro quo for the Government relinquishing its claims on the offshore oil lands in which Mr. Pauley had an interest. Mr. Pauley denied the charge. The President had said that Mr. Ickes could be mistaken.

It presented an intolerable picture of Mr. Ickes and Mr. Pauley within the same Cabinet. Henry Wallace, the only other remaining holdover from the FDR Cabinet, also disapproved of the appointment. If both Mr. Ickes and Mr. Wallace were to leave, representing as they did the left and labor, two groups which had helped elect FDR four times, then President Truman would likely lose two valuable constituencies.

Many Democrats in the Senate were prepared to vote against confirmation of Mr. Pauley, but hoped the while that the nomination would be withdrawn.

Mr. Childs favors further hearings anent the charges of Mr. Ickes.

Samuel Grafton explains that the vote in the House in favor of the Case bill, to limit the strike capability of labor, was based on sectionalism, with the rural Congressmen voting in favor of it and the urban Representatives voting against. The bloc was bipartisan, but virtually all of the 109 Democrats voting for it were from the South. The very regional bias of the vote demonstrated that it could not have been based on reason. The Republican vote in favor of it had come largely from the rural Midwest and East.

Republican Clare Boothe Luce, for instance, from Stamford, Conn., in which there had been a brief general strike, voted against the bill. Most of the Democrats voting against it were from industrial areas.

The best contribution to the labor snafu was being made by those honestly seeking to effect resolution of the strikes. The remedy was not to be found in the Case bill.

Dorothy Thompson suggests that if President Truman's controls imposed on wheat and informal rationing had come as a surprise, it was only because the facts had not been properly told to the American people regarding the food situation in Europe. The Truman executive order did not shed light on it. Nebraska Senator Kenneth Wherry's resolution to have a fact-finding Congressional group go to Germany had been more informative. She quotes from the resolution.

The situation had been aired in the House of Commons in October, but the Truman Administration had made no effort to get the facts out. She believed the President ought assert leadership in the area, and calls Potsdam "the blindest, most stupid peace program ever enunciated," because of its tendency toward vindictiveness and award to Poland of vast parts of Germany to compensate for its loss of eastern territory.

She had been over this ground many times.

One gets the distinct impression that Ms. Thompson did not care for President Truman. She had been on the warpath against just about every American policy since war's end, backtracking to second-guess every decision of the Administration since the death of FDR.

A letter writer thinks the filibuster was "a real atomic" and should have been used more often in the country's history, and then there would have been no FEPC—never minding that the original FEPC was set up by President Roosevelt in June, 1941 as an executive committee to eliminate hiring and wage discrimination in defense industries under Government contract.

The letter expresses the belief that if, as another letter writer had asserted, Senator Clyde Hoey was guilty of treason for his part in the filibuster, then all of the Confederates in the Civil War were also—the latter condition being completely independent logically of the first clause and, itself, being an indisputable fact.

He predicts that the FEPC would bring about a situation where equality would lead to replacement.

"So now, if you don't like our Senator Hoey, then go back to the place from which you came. You can associate with the rest the kind that you like best. Then you will not have to be ashamed, you can take into your home your neighbors washing—you can even go as far as to shine their shoes. Then with a lot of persuading you may get them to do the same for YOU."

The editors ask whether the author of the "American-Type Smile" letter of January 19 is "in the house". Or, did they mean "House"?

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.