The piece takes issue with the claim by citing the example of the Lion's Club drive to raise $400,000 for Freedom Park, dedicated to the veterans. When all the pledges were in, only half the money had been raised. Charlotte generally responded that parks throughout the city were instead needed.

But in Winston-Salem, when a drive was conducted to raise funds for a new Memorial Coliseum, $850,000 was collected. The argument that Winston-Salem's millionaires had contributed the bulk of the money was untrue. Over half came from individual small donations.

It recommends that Charlotte should see an eye doctor to have that "vision" it claimed checked.

Their effort, it suggests, embodied the spirit of the vision which could pervade Charlotte.

The charge against the Army, inefficiency and waste, was, it turned out, wrong. The Army had purchased only 20,000 passenger cars during the entire war. The depot was a collection point for surplus vehicles to be assembled and repaired, then transferred to another Government agency or sold to the public.

When the Time story was written, there were only 525 cars present and only 48 of them were operable.

The magazine had, per its custom, offered no apology, but admitted its error.

But the legend created, it suggests, would haunt the Army for a generation, that it let shiny, new sedans rust away in the Georgia sun while Americans were forced to walk or ride busses and trains to work.

It suggests that an apology would have been proper.

The public was being asked to buy a pig in a poke and the times required more than that.

It suggested the good relations between the American and Russian armies of occupation in Germany. But little was being done to bring the people of the two countries together, such as foreign exchange programs for students.

He next tells of the National Science bill proposed by Senator Harley Kilgore of West Virginia to stimulate scientific research and enable free access to patents from the research. Representative Wilbur Mills of Arkansas had introduced a counter-measure, favored by the National Association of Manufacturers, led by Dr. Vannevar Bush, which would enable the patents to be distributed primarily to large corporations, as they would be allowed to have dollar-per-year men on the board.

President Truman supported the Kilgore measure and vowed to veto the Mills bill if it should be passed. The President, from his Senate days as head of the Truman Committee with oversight of Government and military waste, detested the concept of dollar-per-year men from private industry, who inevitably swayed Government programs only to corporate interests at the expense of the public.

He next comments on the Maryland Comptroller General, Millard Tawes, running for Governor with the support of Senator Millard Tydings. Mr. Tawes, during the wartime gas rationing program, had driven a state-owned V-12 Cadillac to Georgia for a wedding, causing a stir. Mr. Pearson wonders whether the controversy would still haunt Mr. Tawes in his bid to be Governor.

Governor Herbert O'Conor of Maryland, however, running for the Senate, had a similar problem in that his wife had driven a state-owned car to Charleston, S.C., for her health during the war.

The whole machinery of price control had been messed up by the delay in the bill until the last minute before the July 1 expiration date for OPA. Manufacturers were waiting to see what would occur before releasing goods into the marketplace.

A no-strike pledge from labor, which Chester Bowles had announced was in the works, had been fouled up by the claim reported in the press that President Truman opposed it, when, according to Mr. Bowles, it was not so. Nevertheless, it made the chances of obtaining such a pledge very slim and thus left the Congress without any pressure from labor to leave price controls in place.

Readers had often asked Mr. Childs why he stuck by OPA. His response had been that he believed that Mr. Bowles was a reasonable man and that price controls were genuinely necessary to prevent the runaway inflation which he predicted would occur without them. But it was likely, he believed, that Mr. Bowles had held his last press conference as a member of the Truman Administration.

Politics after Roosevelt, he believes, would be increasingly professionalized and that, unless another depression would come, the people would leave the business of governance to the professional politicians and pay little attention, resembling the Twenties when the citizenry looked upon Government as it did its car: as long as it got fair mileage, there was not any point in looking under the hood.

No other country was so passive toward its Government as was the United States. American life was basically apolitical, especially in lush times as in 1946. The national credo was that there were two sides to every question.

Ahead, therefore, he saw a gray period in which there would be a prolonged snooze. And in that there was the danger of such complacency that a sharp bump might have to serve to awaken the populace. Whether the leadership would be as astute as President Roosevelt had been regarding the possibility of war remained an open question.

The Roosevelt era had left behind a large labor movement and many veterans who would be active on many issues. The press might devote more space to politics simply because "there was once a Roosevelt".

The writer wonders, however, what had happened to Dorothy Thompson, that some of the feminists, as the author, missed her.

The writer was pleased at the return of Dorothy Knox to the newspaper after months of ill health.

The last paragraph read: "While it has been impossible for me to see all the voters, I will state that it has been a God-send to me and I will appreciate your vote and three bottles of this wonderful tonic, which I hope will help me in my fight."

Mr. Beasley adds that he won the election.