The Charlotte News
Saturday, April 6, 1946
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that, with the U.N. Security Council in recess, the Polish Embassy in London announced that Poland would raise the issue of severing diplomatic relations with the Franco Government in Spain before the Security Council when it would reconvene Tuesday at Hunter College in the Bronx.
The delegations informally appeared divided on whether they would vote to take up the issue of Spain. The next point of business on the agenda of the Council was a determination of procedures, deemed of utmost immediate importance before addressing additional substantive matters.
Britain's Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin supported the proposal of Secretary of State Byrnes to have a meeting of the Big Four foreign ministers in Paris on April 25 to resolve the differences regarding the five former Axis satellites of Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Italy, and Finland. The French Foreign Secretary, Georges Bidault, also indicated likely assent to the proposal. Mr. Byrnes wanted ultimately to prepare the way for the scheduled 21-nation meeting in France on May 1.
In Chicago, President Truman advocated the right to vote for 18-year olds, something which would not finally take place until 1971, though some individual states had it before that time in state elections. He told a group of high school journalists that if an intelligent boy or girl were old enough for their country to die, they were old enough for voting. He suggested that it be done, however, state by state, rather than at the Federal Constitutional level, as it eventually was.
He also favored extension of the Selective Service Act for another year so that those who had been overseas for extended periods could return home and be discharged. He likewise reiterated his support for universal military training, but that it would not be the equivalent of conscription as no one would be required to serve in the Army or Navy during peacetime.
The President also suggested that a universal language would be useful for intercommunication to improve the chances for a lasting peace, but he did not hold out any realistic hope for such a language.
He advised the students to read the Sermon on the Mount and to obtain all the education they could, to study history and government to prepare for the duties of citizenship, and to be ready to serve the government whenever it might call upon them.
Acting on a tip from a Tokyo geisha girl, the U.S. Army located two truckloads of platinum ingots believed to be worth two billion dollars, buried in the mud of Tokyo Bay. The geisha's story was a planted tip from contacts she made among elderly Japanese small shopkeepers and businessmen. One of this group had stated that Japanese Army officials told him that the money was to be utilized to build a greater Japan "after things ... quieted down". The group had learned of the whereabouts of the ingots through a laborer who had helped to dump them for the Japanese Army. As they trusted the Americans, they then informed the geisha so that she could pass on the tip, to prevent the militarists from being able to use the platinum to re-establish a further incarnation of the militarist regime which had brought on the war.
Ralph McGill, Atlanta Constitution Editor and later friend and occasional adviser to President Kennedy, offers the fifth and last in his series of articles on Palestine, this time from Jerusalem. He asks his reader to consider Palestine "as it is", divorced from the issue of oil and also from "now-is-not-the-time-isms", as well to ignore "the unreality of any Arab military uprising" and the argument that there was no room for more people.
"There remains a sharply-etched, living and breathing, hard-working and productive, deeply-rooted Jewish life all up and down Palestine. It will not be blown away by the gales of power politics. It will not be trampled out by any imagined attack because it is too strong and it has, should the need arise, a core of ex-soldiers who fought for Britain, who remember dead comrades left behind, who will fight for them and themselves if the need should come."
The Jewish settlement was already an agricultural and industrial success which could inspire and lift the standards of the entire Middle East. The Jewish Agency, half Zionist and half non-Zionist, could adequately effect controls to prevent excessive immigration.
The issue did not resolve itself in politics as Zionists were not unified politically, but rather revolved around the need of the homeless for a home.
"The fanatical mobs who marched, hoarse with shouting, against the world, demonstrated that in times of war they will act bloodily and brutally from passions drawn from mythology or from slogans produced by the twisted philosophy of fuehrers. They were by no means all members of the Nazi Party who so marched."
At least eighty percent of the Jews within the displaced persons camps of Europe wished to go to Palestine to try to build a new dream for themselves. The world ought provide the chance.
In answer to the question of whether there was room for them, he states that he had seen it himself in the bare hills and valleys through which he drove for hours without coming upon a single person. Thousands could be sustained by this arable, untilled land in Palestine. No Arab would thus be crowded from his own land.
Also, in the south of Palestine was the Negeb, sufficient to hold three quarters of the Jews presently within the Allied zone in Europe. The Negeb was controlled by the British and could be turned over easily to the Jewish Agency. The land there had already been tested since 1941 by experts in agriculture and climate and deemed suitable to sustain a population.
Former News reporter Tim Pridgen writes from Jonesboro in "the State of Franklin", regarding Tennessee Congressman Carroll Reece being chosen by the RNC to be its new chairman. Mr. Reece had orignally run for Congress as a decorated World War I soldier in 1920, unable effectively to give a speech for his lack of easy verbal articulation. His seasoned incumbent opponent mocked the callow young man for the inability and other inexperience, telling the district's electorate that Mr. Reece was a door-to-door salesman of butter by the pound and asking them whether they wanted to be represented by a butter salesman.
It was, says Mr. Pridgen, the wrong question, as voters streamed from the mountains to vote for him precisely because Mr. Reece was one of them.
Sometimes the old Franklinites were "as serene as sunrise" and then the next day "may blow the lid off with political tumult" which no outsider could properly fathom.
Hal Boyle, still in Athens, tells of a knock on his door by a man who gave him back his childhood. A man greeted him who at first he did not recognize, but slowly came to realize was an old childhood chum from Kansas City. They renewed old acquaintance—on page 10A
In New York, mink shirts were advertised by a men's store, costing $14.50. Don't get your hopes up of converting these too quickly into a stole for the wife, however, to impress mightily of your pocketbook. They were comprised of 20 percent muskrat and the remainder, virgin wool.
On the editorial page, "Some Memories for Army Day" comments on it being Army Day and remembers a year earlier when the final assaults were being conducted against Germany and in the Pacific war. But now the ten million soldiers who had been put into uniform had disappeared. Few combat veterans could be seen wearing their uniforms and those in the occupation zones were partially converted civilians.
Criticism of the Army now was more the order than paying homage to the recent past. The caste system was being attacked with harsh terms, including "fascism", as was Army efficiency. But it could not be called justly, as it was being called, incompetent.
It recalls the situation in 1941 when there was but a skeletal Army in place at the time of Pearl Harbor. It counsels forgetting the petty grievances and focusing on the larger picture of the Army during the war, accomplishing its major objective, destruction of the enemy. A miracle of supply, manpower, and organization of it all had been performed to reach that conclusion.
Were that the perspective, then would come naturally the proper gratitude to be offered to Generals Marshall, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Bradley, Arnold, and Somervell, plus all the nameless millions who had labored and sometimes died to preserve the freedom to criticize them.
"Is the GOP Looking South?" finds the selection of Carroll Reece to be the RNC chairman to signal no Republican attempt to court Southerners in 1946 but rather a continuation of that party's stultification, under the control of the "standpatters".
That Harold Stassen had actively criticized Mr. Reece demonstrated the state of mind at work at the top of the party. While Mr. Stassen was the man who apparently would best be able to achieve victory in 1948, his opinion was cast aside in determining the RNC leadership. And the reason was his slightly liberal domestic program and his internationalist stance on foreign policy.
The selection of Mr. Reece demonstrated that the Republicans placed their stock for achieving victory in the lack of popularity of the Democrats. While, given the state of things, the Republicans might be able to achieve victory in 1948 in such a negative manner, the question then arose as to what the party, if achieving power, would then do
Mr. Stassen believed in progress, not crab-walking. There was the chance that the Republicans, being out of power, might achieve unity, with Mr. Stassen as the focal point, while there appeared little hope of that result among the Democrats. Mr. Stassen might split the Solid South with the Democrats. But if so, it would occur in spite of Mr. Reece, not because of him.
"Editorial Problem in Semantics" finds the journals which had bemoaned the election of Walter Reuther as president of UAW, thought to hearken the takeover of the union by a Communist, needing to check their facts. The Daily Worker had supported incumbent R. J. Thomas and condemned Mr. Reuther, a former Socialist who had become disillusioned with the Soviet system when he worked in a Soviet auto factory for a time to study the system, thus earning the contempt of his supposed fellow travelers.
The fact was, it continues, that because Mr. Reuther was shrewd and intelligent, he drew the ire of his opponents who then sought merely to paint him with a red brush as a smear tactic.
John L. Lewis likewise continually showed himself to be conservative, siding with NAM on removal of price controls and eliminating subsidies and generally repudiating the New Deal program, despite his being hated by all of the conservative organs.
"These are the terrors of the Ivory Tower. Radicals, blast their eyes, simply won't be consistent. We have Democratic radicals and Republican radicals, radicals who are devout churchmen and radicals who are atheists; radicals who beat their wives
"Cocoanuts", from September 17, 1945, by the way, is now here. Give up, Pat. It is so very useless and tiring. Whose money, you greedy slime? Whose loss, you corrupt Boss? Or, isn't it really that you are afraid someone might discover the Truth, Pat, about YOU, and your precious Idols? Just remember as you go your way through life: It's the cover-up that finally gets you.
Drew Pearson reports on a debate among Administration food experts regarding use of horse meat to feed Europe. It was standard in the diets of France and Belgium, and they wanted to purchase horse from the U.S. If 2.5 billion pounds of horse were sold to Europe, it would feed the population. UNRRA had urged the plan, but meatpackers had resisted for fear of damaging their reputations with the American public whiiiiin they got wind of the matter.
The Agriculture Department was buying horse meat from smaller packers. But another problem was the horse lovers of the country. How could you possibly eat Piebald, Stewball, or Flicka? To answer the problem, the Government had reported that hundreds of horses were slaughtered weekly to feed the zoos. There were also three million surplus horses in the country, more than at any other time and those alone would render the 2.5 billion pounds of meat necessary to feed Europe.
Just let them starve. Flicka's got to stay and be petted
He notes that the price of horses had remained stable during the war.
But, if you suddenly increased the demand thusly, would not the price suddenly be let loose from the corral? Or from the coral
He next discusses the report of Josephus Daniels that in addition to Congressional salaries of $10,000, Senators and Representatives received substantially more in expenses for office staff, up to $16,000 for Senators, $38,000 for the president pro tem of the Senate, Kenneth McKellar. Mr. Pearson adds that, with relatives employed on staff, their salaries were added to the family coffers. But still, he is quick to point out, the salaries were inadequate to survive in Washington without outside income. The solution, he suggests, might be a pension plan for long-serving members.
Clare Boothe Luce, having announced, in the wake of her conversion to Catholicism, that she would not run for re-election in the fall, was now working on two plays
He reports that two members of Congress had, three days apart, placed the identical, verbatim material in the Congressional Record, costing the taxpayer that much more.
The Russian Purchasing Agency had renewed its lease on a Washington apartment house. When it had been reported they would not do so, 6,300 people called to try to obtain an apartment.
Samuel Grafton again asks one of his favorite questions: "Ah, truth
Former RNC chairman and future Attorney General under President Eisenhower, Herbert Brownell, had stated that the President's reconversion program was a failure.
"At this, Truth, who is a tender girl, with a good heart, hides behind the potted asphodel and cries gently; she cannot get it through her blonde head how any Republican can say that Mr. Truman's reconversion program is a failure, when it is the Republicans, helped by Southern Democrats, who have kept it from being adopted."
Mr. Grafton states that all twenty of the President's reconversion programs had been delayed in Congress, with the exception of the full employment bill, which the Conservative Bloc of Republicans and Southern Democrats had so emasculated as to render it pointless.
Truth wanted to know how more Republicans would alter the picture. Truth wanted fewer Republicans, not more.
According to new RNC chairman Carroll Reece, the President listened to Communists. But Truth read the Daily Worker, a copy of which she culled from HUAC, and found the Communists regularly uttering invective at the President.
Truth also wondered why NAM would claim that production was off because of price controls when the facts showed that production was at its highest in the country's history, with a gross national product in civilian goods standing at 150 billion dollars per year.
Truth had become so distraught that she merely wandered about Washington in her holy toga
Marquis Childs finds it unfortunate that the first test of the Security Council had come regarding a small nation, Iran, which was feudal and torn by internal problems. But the basic principle which had enabled the situation to be considered was sound: that small nations have the right to independence and sovereignty.
Recently, the Russians had moved into Bornholm in the Baltic, a Danish island commanding the approaches to Denmark and Sweden, causing worry as to how long they intended to remain and whether the Baltic would be converted thereby to Soviet control. But after the Danish Government addressed a tactful inquiry to Russia, it began withdrawing its troops from Bornholm.
He posits hypothetically that had this situation come before the Security Council, the course of resolution would have been much more clearly defined, as Denmark was an advanced democracy.
If the U.N. was to survive, it had to be more than merely a world policeman preserving the status quo. It had to become proactive to establish the rights of oppressed peoples. He advocates creative thinking beyond the rigidity of rules to bring about such an organization, the sort of thinking which formed the basis for the State Department's recent report on atomic energy, favoring international control after due safeguards were in place to protect against military use of the secret.
A U.P. report from London stated that the British Foreign Office had asserted that it would like to see Iran's unexploited oil reserves internationalized. Mr. Childs asks whether they would include the undeveloped reserves held by the Anglo-American interests. This issue, however troublesome, would have to be faced soon or late by the U.N. and so it would be best to address forthwith, to avoid future troubles in the Middle East.
"The U.S. State Department and the British Foreign Office have drifted into the current crisis as one drifts in a becalmed sailboat. What is needed in the skipper's cabin is a good chart of action."
A letter writer, executive secretary of the Society for the Prevention of World War III, Inc., wonders whether the German war criminal industrialists were going to escape punishment for their misdeeds. She quotes Justice Robert Jackson, lead American prosecutor at Nuremberg, as saying that he had believed the industrialists ought be prosecuted at the current trial. But the prosecutors for the other three major powers had disagreed and favored a separate trial to keep the number of defendants lower.
She favors immediate prosecution of all German war criminals, including the industrialists who had been chiefly responsible for Germany's ability to wage war.
A letter finds the Iran situation with Shell and Standard Oil fighting with Stalin for Iran's oil to be the potential flashpoint for another war, and favors Iran expropriating, as had Mexico in 1938, its own oil reserves.
A letter from the chief of the information division of the Rural Electrification Administration thanks Burke Davis for his excellent article of March 21 on the Pee Dee Electric Membership Corporation and wishes permission to reprint it in its newsletter.
That, having appeared on an inside page, we do not have.
A letter from a major in the Army wants Bill Mauldin's cartoon continued in the newspaper.
A letter suggests that the "South Carolina boll weevils", apparently specifically referring to the letter of the previous Monday from the Dubitante, were squeaking
A letter weighs in on the issue of controlled sale of liquor, quoting Ecclesiastes 8:15 and 9:7, and Matthew 11:18-19. His advice is, therefore, to eat, drink, and be merry
Take heart, winos, you have verses to commend your ways unto yourselves, as much so as do the Drys. Jesus was a wino, too, apparently, at least in his spare time when he did not fall in with the hoodlums and stayed instead with the nice church people uptown.
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