Thursday, March 14, 1946

The Charlotte News

Thursday, March 14, 1946

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that a column of Russian troops which had departed Tabriz in Azerbaijan Province in Iran was reported moving westward toward the border of Turkey at Khoi, 80 miles south and slightly east of Mr. Ararat. Initially, the column had been moving toward Russia, but then turned in the area of Khoi to the west. Russia claimed that the area just to the north, in Kars and Ardahan, should have been ceded to Russia. Russian tank warfare expert Marshal Ivan Bagramian, commander of the forces, had been in Tabriz for two to three weeks. The troop force had been reported as doubled or tripled since he had arrived, with some 60,000 Russian troops now in Azerbaijan.

This column was in addition to that reported the previous day as being 20 miles north of Tehran at the northern terminus of a rail line to the capital and in Karaj.

Wealthy families in Tehran were said to be leaving for their country estates, and business in the capital was unusually light.

Izvestia accused Iran of having sought during the early years of the Soviet Union to take Russian territories and also of harboring politicians who had, since 1919, maintained imperialistic intentions toward Russia.

Russian troops continued to withdraw north in Manchuria, apparently heading back into Russia, suggesting a full withdrawal from Manchuria after all Russian troops had departed Mukden, now in the hands of Chinese Government troops.

The special commissioner for Chinese economic affairs in Manchuria, Chang Kai-Ngau, told the Kuomintang Party Congress, amid denunciatory shouts, that he had been instructed by Chiang Kai-Shek in December not to recognize Russian claims to Japanese industrial equipment in Manchuria. Russia had contended that because of its heavy losses in the war, it should be entitled to the Japanese industrial equipment. Instead, Chang had told the Russians to safeguard Mukden until Chinese troops could occupy it. But considerable damage to mines and industries had occurred in the interim, including half of the steel plants and textile mills and 70 percent of machine plants.

At Nuremberg, Hermann Goering continued his direct testimony before the war crimes tribunal, stating that he had asked Hitler to send help to Franco in Spain as aid in resisting the spread of Communism. The Spanish Civil War had also provided the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe with experience and enabled the commanders to insure that they had the proper equipment for warfare.

Parenthetically, it was well understood at the time that during the war in the period 1936-39 the Germans were using Spain as a training ground in preparation for broader war, as were the Italians.

Herr Goering stated further that the Luftwaffe had been responsible for the quick conquest of Poland in September, 1939. He confirmed that he had ordered the aircraft industry to develop a bomber capable of flying roundtrip from Germany to the United States in case America entered the war, but the shortage of aluminum and technological planning forced abandonment of the program to build long-range four-engine planes. The Luftwaffe, he further informed, had been developing jets before the start of the war, and he bragged that he was singularly responsible for the rearmament of the Luftwaffe.

He also accepted full responsibility for all anti-Jewish economic decrees bearing his signature. He received many such orders from Hitler but stated that he would not seek to impute his personal responsibility to the Fuehrer.

He contended that Germany's departure from the League of Nations and the Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war was in result of the other powers, Britain, Russia, and France, refusing to disarm as required by the treaties.

British newspapers criticized Josef Stalin's attack on Winston Churchill's speech as having been packed with "lies" and "highly dangerous" to world peace. The newspapers advocated a Big Three conference to attempt to iron out difficulties.

The British Foreign Office, echoing the remarks of Prime Minister Attlee to Commons, stated that there would likely be no response to the speech as Mr. Churchill represented only himself as a private citizen.

It was also reported that another speech of major importance by Mr. Churchill would be broadcast the following evening from New York.

Eddie Gilmore, in the third of his series on Russia, tells of the development of power resources, coal, oil, and water. The major project was reconstruction of the Dneiper Dam destroyed during the war. Work had been ongoing since 1944 after the Germans had been pushed out of Russia. The hydroelectric station would produce its first power by year's end.

Mr. Gilmore had seen the ruins of the dam during the war and found it a mess; now it was looking like a dam again, with greater capacity than in its previous incarnation.

Russians expected their electrical output to double by 1950. But they had to educate the workers to man the various planned dams. In 1940, hydroelectric power accounted for only 10 percent of Russia's power potential, whereas it was a third of it in the United States, 98 percent in Canada, and 54 percent in France.

Mr. Gilmore found that America had become the standard of comparison for Russians, providing the goal to reach and surpass.

Coal production now had its own commissariat and Stalin had set a production goal of 500 million tons per year.

In New York, G.E. and the electrical workers union reached a settlement of the 59-day old strike by agreeing to an 18.5 cents per hour wage increase for the 100,000 G.E. workers. The settlement only needed approval by union locals and the National Wage Stabilization Board in Washington. The strike had held up production of home appliances and would continue until the agreement was finally ratified.

John L. Lewis read an indictment from UMW against bituminous coal mine operators, that they had effectively killed 28,000 mine workers during the previous 14 years, and during the same time had "violently mangled, crushed, and shattered the bodies of 1,004,000 mine workers."

In Thomasville, N.C., a group organized the North Carolina Good Health Association, dedicated to providing more and better health care for the citizens of the state. The organization was headed by Dr. I. G. Greer, superintendent of the Thomasville Baptist Orphange, and the vice-president was future Congressman Charles R. Jonas of Lincolnton.

Hal Boyle, still in Cairo, tells of it being the world capital for the "go getter" street vendor, selling odds and ends, horsetail fly swatters, braided leather blackjacks or a 1937 issue of "Paris Nights". Hanging around the major hotels, they were "the most passionately verbal peddlers on the face of the globe". The only escape from them was inside the tomb of Cheops at Gizeb and even there tourist guides were vigorously hawking postcards.

He tells of being accosted by a peddler, about age 15, while riding in a two-horse gharry, seeking to sell him a riding crop and a swagger stick. The boy wanted to know how much he would give for the items. Mr. Boyle told him that he owned no horse and was too tired to swagger, had insufficient funds as it was.

On the editorial page, "Dear Ed Finally Saw the Light" comments that though President Truman apparently had been impressed with Ed Pauley's integrity during the six weeks of hearings on his now withdrawn nomination, almost no one else appeared to have shared the sentiment. The nomination had been one born of cronyism as back in Kansas City.

Regardless of the truth or falsity of the charges against him, the fact that Mr. Pauley owned considerable oil interests and as Undersecretary of the Navy, would have had control over public oil resources should have prompted the President not to appoint him. The President had compounded his error by referring to the "misrepresentations" against Mr. Pauley, which clearly implied Harold Ickes as the misrepresenting party.

The piece says it would be more at ease had the President given some indication that he understood the contrast between Mr. Pauley's nomination and the easy confirmations of O. Max Gardner as Undersecretary of the Treasury and Julius Krug as the new Secretary of Interior.

"Making a Strike Crusade" comments on the seven-month old strike of the Industrial Mill which had reopened on March 5. Seventeen veterans who had signed a contract with the company under which they promised to go to work when the textile mill reopened had refused to cross the picket line and so were being fired and evicted from company housing. The company was probably on sound footing legally, but as a practical matter, it did not appear to be good business to evict veterans from housing which would then remain empty and had no immediate useful purpose to the mill owners.

The strikers had converted the strike into a crusade against strike-breaking by the mill, which had refused to go along with the check-off system, deducting union dues from the payroll, as demanded by the workers. The failure of resolution of the dispute by management appeared unsound business practice.

"A Footnote for Mr. Kipling" comments on a story from Lake View, S.C., regarding two persons who, during the course of an argument at a service station on March 7, wound up chopping off the arm of a friend. The only reason the story made the A.P. wire, however, was that the implement used for the purpose was a Japanese sword.

The piece realizes that there was only so much space for wire reports of mutilation and mayhem on a daily basis but wished for more than the 50 words transmitted on the story, such as whether the sword was a replica fashioned by a Marine from an old jeep spring or was a true Bushido implement "borne by a feudal aristocrat at the head of a banzai charge and wrested from his falling hands by a lean, red-necked South Carolinian with a cud of chewing tobacco in his cheek and the Stars and Bars tattooed on his forearm."

It was peculiarly significant as a symbol of the times that such an implement might have made its way through the centuries to be thus employed in a service station lot, when an ordinary jack handle would have sufficed for the confrontation.

It was, concludes the piece, "marvelous".

A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "Confession of an Editor", finds at once refreshing and startling the confession of editor and publisher Weimar Jones of The Franklin Press out of Macon, N.C., that he had nothing to say editorially and so was saying it.

It liked the candor, but hoped that he would see the light through the tunnel and finally swing his lantern with the rest of the editorialists who had a job to do, to fill space, even if with words signifying little or nothing.

Drew Pearson reports that the U.S.S. Missouri, to be accompanied by a destroyer, the U.S.S. Power, were going to be sent to the Eastern Mediterranean as a good will gesture to Turkey, ostensibly to carry home the remains of the Turkish Ambassador. He had been dead, however, for two years, and the real reason for the trip was to provide a show of force to the Russians to prevent aggressive moves against Turkey. The Russians presently had arrayed 300,000 men in Bulgaria, with other attack forces in Iran and on the Black Sea, on three sides therefore of Turkey.

Among his Capital Chaff items, he reports that Senator Robert Wagner of New York, ill for some time, was expected to resign the Senate later in the month. Governor Dewey would likely appoint in his stead a Republican who would probably be opposed in the fall by former Governor Herbert Lehman, the head of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.

Secretary of State Byrnes had the names of 1,500 Argentinians who had been former members of the Nazi Party.

The column next reports that Secretary Byrnes might not after all be replaced by General Marshall, as previously rumored, at least at the present time. The trial balloon on the matter released to the newspapers had not been well received. But insiders at the State Department, displeased with the Secretary's too soft stand on Russia, still remained resolute in replacing him. Secretary Byrnes, he says, had not been pleased with the President having been on the rostrum at Fulton with Winston Churchill during his tough speech regarding the Soviets.

Marquis Childs discusses the intention of the coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats to add amendments to OPA to such a degree as to render it meaningless without taking it out of existence, the latter being not viable politically as the public realized the importance of wage and price controls.

John L. Lewis was intent on destroying the wage and price controls and with it the Truman Administration, planning to work for its defeat in 1948.

The UAW had indicated at the outset of the G.M. strike, now settled, that if G.M. could show that its profits would not support a wage increase without a price increase, then the workers would withdraw their demands. But other CIO unions had taken the position that prices were not their responsibility.

The National Association of Manufacturers had taken the position that all price controls should be eliminated to encourage production as a means to curb inflation.

The Committee of Economic Development, by contrast, had been willing to allow for some Government control during reconversion.

The test of how much the extremists would be allowed to intrude on price controls would challenge not only the Administration but also the people. At stake were the futures of the children and their children.

Samuel Grafton suggests that it was hard to believe that there would be war with the Soviet Union, positing three reasons: the demobilization of the U.S. military; the broken financial status of Britain; and the lack of will of the Russians to fight, in combination with the absence of anything to be gained from such a war. The Russians also believed that the world was turning leftward, especially in colonial and backward countries, providing the Russians with fertile ground for expansion of Communism without a fight. If they were to start a war, it would fly in the face of their own propaganda, that capitalism was the cause of wars.

The British might in coming years move toward exporting socialism to India, Burma, and Western Europe as an alternative to communism, in which case, the U.N. would be split into three camps, socialist, communist, and conservative capitalist, the latter represented by the U.S. Moderate socialism at home in Britain and imperialism abroad would be unlikely to stimulate the U.S.-British alliance which Mr. Churchill had advocated.

Russia might depart the U.N., with the intention of hoping to stimulate a backfire movement for compromise and peace.

But whatever happened, the coming time would be one, he predicts, not of war or peace, but rather of multilateral struggle, neither peace nor war. The U.S. would be best served by offering up the best possible alternative to the world for a democratic way of life.

A letter writer chides the newspaper for printing the letter of February 21 which had called the Catholic Church a hater of democracy and totalitarian, finds it tantamount to yelling fire in a crowded theater, and then proceeds to try to refute the letter's claims, finding the two previous responsive letters to be inadequate.

It starts with the notion that the elevation of Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli to become Pope Pius XII was a deliberate slap in the face to the Nazi Government in Germany and the Fascist Government in Italy. Before becoming Pope, the Cardinal had gained a reputation for opposition to all anti-democratic and war-mongering governments.

The writer suggests that he did form the concordats of 1929 and 1933 with Italy and Germany, respectively, but in so doing freed the Catholic Church from interference by either government. (This letter makes the same mistake as the letter to which it responds: Pope Pius XI formed the concordats, not Pope Pius XII, who was installed in 1939.)

The letter finds the support of Franco by the Vatican to be a necessary evil of the times, as Franco had supported the Catholic Church, whereas the Nationalists had been opposed to all religions and were backed, claims the writer, by Russian Communists.

The author had never seen a letter from a Catholic in any publication which similarly attacked Protestantism. The writer, who does not provide a name, indicates his or her own Protestantism and asks that Christians pray for tolerance.

The editors respond that the degree of fire which the letter might have set was a matter of opinion, but the author was as entitled to express that opinion, however bigoted it appeared, equally with the likes of Father Coughlin and with the Baptists who had during the fall publicly condemned continued American diplomatic recognition after the war of the Vatican, as being an intrusion on the doctrine of separation of Church and State.

Another letter objects to the 3.75 billion dollar loan to Britain without a showing of proper collateral to secure it. He further believes that since business was the intended beneficiary, business ought fund the loan.

A "Wet Dry" letter writer says he intends to vote Dry but that being dry could do a lot of harm as with the individual, according to the letter from his wife, who would not be seen buying from a bootlegger. This writer had seen this person "over at Joe's" a dozen times and the "bird" did not seem one bit ashamed, but rather proud to be there.

He wanted his name withheld because his wife thought him a "Dry Wet".

Go figure, or figure go, down at Joe's?

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