Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that President Truman called for all executive departments, and especially the Army, Navy, and Maritime Commission, to cut down on spending. Both General Eisenhower, chief of staff of the Army, and Admiral Nimitz, chief of the Navy, had stated that their budgets had been cut to the bone. Faced with a substantial deficit in the coming fiscal year, the President stated that the cuts were imperative to prevent inflation. He asked that departments limit purchase of lumber, automobiles, and office equipment so as not to compete with items in short supply.

In Paris, the Yugoslav Government told the 21-nation peace conference that it would not accept the Trieste compromise made between the four powers at the foreign ministers conference. Under that agreement, Trieste was to be internationalized under U.N. authority. The Yugoslavs did not like the line of demarcation between Italy and Yugoslavia, taking away large areas of Istria, ignoring in the process distribution of ethnic populations.

A freighter, the American Farmer, carrying 8,500 tons of food to Great Britain, collided with a cattle ship, the Riddle, and sank. All aboard were rescued and none was injured.

Mr. Hoffa was not listed on the passenger manifest.

Hal Boyle, writing from Nuremberg, describes the eight months of the war crimes trial since November 20, without respite except during the Christmas recess. None of the judges had missed a single day of the proceedings against 21 men and a ghost, Martin Bormann, believed to be dead. Not all of the defendants had appeared during the entire trial. Sometimes the judges appeared nodding off but then came up with a question demonstrating alertness. The transcript of the trial now ran to 14,000 pages as final arguments were taking place, with an expected verdict in September.

The press corps had shrunk from 300 at the start, representing 23 countries, to 75 from eight countries. Britain had the largest contingent. A quarter million words of press copy were filed the day Justice Robert Jackson made his opening statement. On July 1, the output was only 1,200 words, typical of a given day by that point, averaging 65,000 words per day for the entire trial.

A court interpreter and a Polish journalist had died during the trial; a public relations officer suffered a heart attack; and a Russian prosecutor killed himself while cleaning his revolver.

A German kitchen employee was caught trying to smuggle coffee in his coat lining and a correspondent's jeep had its gas siphoned in broad daylight under courtroom windows 50 feet from the military police post. Mr. Boyle quips that these two matters had yet to be referred to the tribunal.

The NLRB designated August 20-22 for 20,000 Oak Ridge employees to choose the union they wanted to represent them.

OPA's new three-man board was considering whether price controls should be reinstituted on August 20 on meat, dairy products, grains, cotton seed, and soybeans; then, once determined, on eggs, poultry, tobacco, and petroleum. The new OPA extension bill provided for automatic renewal of controls on those items on August 20 unless the board, the OPA director, and the Secretary of Agriculture concurred that they ought be removed.

Flue-cured tobacco was selling in seventeen markets of the Carolinas Border Belt for an early average of 46 to 55 cents per pound and farmers were reported generally happy with the result. But some were not so happy. Others were downright sad.

In Moscow, seven men and two women were sentenced to a total of 62 years in prison for accepting bribes for apartment space and sale of railroad and boat tickets.

On page 4-A, Dick Young of The News looks back at a visit to Charlotte by President William Howard Taft and the unforgettable rain which accompanied the visit.

We remember it well. There were portents in the sky. Dogs barked wildly and cats spun in circles. The sun fell suddenly and earthquakes and tidal waves came in many parts of the land. The earth rotated twenty degrees off its normal axis. A polar reversal occurred in the magnetic field. T-Models refused to start, their magnetos being strangely on the blink.

On the editorial page, "The Paris Peace Conference" suggests that the conference would at best explore the "outer rim of the central disagreement between Russia and the West".

"The Baptists Reach a Wise Decision" reports that the State Baptist Convention had decided to accept the Smith Reynolds Foundation annual endowment and move the campus from the Raleigh suburb to Winston-Salem, renaming it Reynolda-on-Coliseum by the Sea. There was said to be some debate, however, remaining on this proposed name change.

We quote so that you will not think us unduly exaggerating in our bit of hyperbole, coming from long and close experience.

The piece thinks the decision to accept the proposal was wise, opening up new possibilities for Wake Forest. Some Baptist leaders had proposed consolidation of all denominational colleges and universities in the state into a single university system, with Wake Forest as the new cornerstone.

"Many problems will arise before the physical removal of the fine old institution to Reynoldia [sic] can be completed." We quote again.

An alumnus had suggested that the school colors, gold and black, would have to be changed along with the school song which referred to those colors. Why that was supposed when the colors represent the cleric's raiment and the old tobacco plantation on which the old campus was situated, is not stated. Whether it was flue-cured or some other kind is not clear.

It concludes that higher education took a long step forward Tuesday in Greensboro.

As indicated previously, President Truman would be on hand for the ground-breaking ceremonies of the new Wake Forest campus in 1951.

In any event, in 1970, as we have recounted before, the president of Wake Forest took the time to stop and inquire of our apparent car trouble and then called a service truck for us when we were stranded at the entrance, out of gas.

"An Award for a Useful Citizen" suggests that Charlotte Patrolman E. E. Pressley probably disagreed with Gilbert & Sullivan, that the lot of a police officer was an unhappy one. He spent his days unsnarling traffic and his evenings taking his dogs, Laddie, Lassie, and the rest, around to schools to demonstrate traffic safety.

The dogs demonstrated how to cross streets by looking both ways—not "up and down", as the piece confusingly suggests, forgetting for the moment that children think in spatial terms, sometimes spacily, taking direction explicitly and often robotically, and telling a child to look up and down before crossing the street might lead to untoward results. It certainly would have caused problems for us.

In any event, Patrolman Pressley possessed a "skillful patter" and the old hound dogs added to the riveting of attention to his lecture about street-crossing safety.

He was the recipient of the 1946 Safety Award presented by the Lion's Club that week and was a good choice.

Just remember: Look both ways, not up and down.

Thank ye very much.

A piece from the Louisville Courier-Journal, titled "It's a Joke, Senator", reports that Senator Theodore Bilbo had found Senator Beauregard Claghorn to be an offense to "Southern statesmen", holding them up to "ridicule, contempt, and scorn" and sullying "the honor of Southern manhood".

Perhaps, Senator Bilbo had seen, in his caricatured Confederate counterfeit, a particularly moving, floundered portrait of Ghosts, or the future, read from the oolong tea leaves of the past's boasts of Divers Bells and Hoopskirts, as they loitered in the mind, dancing on the lawn of a Biloxi summer home, bestruck by the lightning of horses' hooves, shooing the blind hanging on, mired in the muddied dust of a sum, near impenetrable quotient, the layed sound of a strumpet's intruding groom's drum, a bounder's strayed thump, 13 and 2 tuppence a pound parlayed, nonplussed, to alimentary roast rump.

Drew Pearson, in transit to the Paris Peace Conference, receives a letter from his secretary regarding developments in Washington, substituting for his column. Among the items related was that Atlanta had reacted well to his anti-Klan broadcast from the steps of the Capitol on Sunday, July 21, and that mail regarding the broadcast, including a lot from the South, was generally positive.

Marquis Childs reflects on the world situation in view of the Paris Peace Conference, finds the latter only a sideshow to the broader world picture of increasing conflict. In China, the Government forces were locked in battle with the Communists, with both sides exhibiting cruelty and terror. In Indonesia, the Dutch had not come to grips with the desire for independence and freedom from empire interests and a new round of violence was anticipated. In the Middle East, Iran and Palestine were trouble spots. It was evident that change was on the way.

Samuel Grafton, still in Los Angeles, states that he had been away from New York for two months and felt the need to begin to summarize the political impressions he had gleaned from his travels. Overall, the feeling communicated was that of pessimism. People were often reluctant to talk about politics.

A letter from a recent high school graduate tells of the death recently of a Boy Scout at a camp near her home. Had there been a pulmotor available to resuscitate the boy, he might have lived, but the closest one was at Morris Field and it took a half hour for it to be summoned.

A letter from the woman who had criticized veterans for goldbricking on $20 per week rather than taking a good job, tells her critics that they had misread her previous correspondence and if they wanted to discuss it, they could come to her house.

A letter from a Georgia resident passing through on the train compliments the newspaper and its editorials, especially appreciating Dr. Herbert Spaugh's column.

A letter from Cyril Clemens of the International Mark Twain Society of Webster Groves, Mo., states that he was editing the official collection of Mark Twain anecdotes and wonders if News readers could share any.

We have one, told to us by Mr. Twain, himself, a tale of woe, picked, leaving eyes without a tear not to be told or typed, sure to cure the sugar shortage shortly in your sheets so fine in chiffon and satin as brandywine in latin.