The Charlotte News
Saturday, August 10, 1946
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that an authoritative source at Whitehall stated that Britain would warn the world the following week that any ship caught with illegal immigrants bound for Palestine would be searched and subject to arrest by the Royal Navy.
The French and Italian Governments had already agreed not to transport illegal immigrants to Palestine.
In Jerusalem, an authority predicted that if the British interdicted immigration, then the Jews of Palestine would cause problems; but if they allowed the flow to continue, the Arabs would create disturbances.
British troops and Palestinian police continued a house-to-house search in Jerusalem for members of the Irgun organization, arresting five Jews, in the wake of the July 22 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
In Nanking, General George C. Marshall and U.S. Ambassador John Leighton Stuart declared that peaceful settlement of the growing crisis between the Chinese Government forces and the Communists appeared unlikely. Efforts to bring about a workable democratic form of government through continuance of months-long talks with Communist General Chou En-Lai and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek were deemed hopeless.
U. S. Marines guarding a coal train in North China exchanged fire with 50 Chinese dressed as Communists who had blown up the train, derailing the locomotive and eight cars. No Marines were hurt in the incident and they were rescued.
An UNRRA agricultural expert reported that he and his Chinese interpreter were fired upon on Thursday, ten miles from Tientsin, by 40 Chinese troops dressed as Communists. Their jeep had bullet holes though neither of the men were hit.
The Premier of Italy, Alcide de Gasperi, urged the Paris Peace Conference to ease the terms of the proposed treaty with Italy and delay for a year the imposition of a solution of the Trieste issue. He predicted that the proposed internationalization of Trieste would only bring problems, severing 646,000 Italians from Italy. He also wanted reparations to Russia lightened and the Italian Fleet not treated as war booty. His speech received a cold reception by all the nations except for the United States.
Secretary Byrnes shook Premier Gaspari's hand at the end. V. M. Molotov had already angrily walked out during an earlier debate on whether Albania could become a member of the U.N., to which Greece had raised strong opposition, contending that Albania had provoked 21 incidents on the frontier with Greece during 1946, constituting a state of war.
The United States protested against Rumanian Government detention of Rumanian citizens employed by the U.S. military in the country. On May 26, the Government had arrested three such employees and held two of them incommunicado, accusing them of belonging to secret terrorist organizations and participating in espionage. The fate of the third person was unknown.
Russia reserved its right to invalidate four-power control over Austria after Austria had declared nationalization of its industry, impacting of several Eastern Austrian assets in the Soviet zone. General Mark Clark, in charge of the American zone, refused to agree to veto the plan. It would become effective in a month unless all four occupying nations agreed to nix it. General Clark stated that, as long as accomplished by democratic processes and with just compensation to owners, Austria had the right to nationalize its industries, including that of foreigners. Should Russia refuse to allow the nationalization to take place in the Russian zone, they likely would be charged by the Allied Control Council with violating the Control Agreement.
In recent months, Russia had cut in half the number of troops in Austria, presently at 70,000.
In the Dominican Republic, following the earthquakes and tidal waves of the previous six days, which had killed 73 and left about 20,000 homeless, panic was beginning to take hold of the population as an acute food shortage threatened starvation. Tremors continued to be felt. False rumors of imminent quakes and waves added to the panic, causing the Government to impose punitive sanctions against anyone spreading the rumors.
In Youngstown, O., a 60-year old woman, distraught over the death of her husband four years earlier, committed suicide by toppling a tombstone down upon her head at her husband's grave. She had tried twice, before the successful third attempt.
In Dearborn, Mich., a mother had given birth to her infant son in a doctor's office and then fled, so that the baby would have "a better chance at life". Authorities subsequently located the mother, a waitress who lived in a trailer with her three other children. She said that she could barely support her three children as it was.
In Little Rock, Ark., veterans warned that they intended to have clean elections or else come November, and would get rid of political machines. They were preparing to run their own slate of candidates. In Hot Spring County, an ex-G.I. candidate for Sheriff warned that if there were irregularities in the electoral process, that which had occurred in Athens, Tennessee, would be mild by comparison.
In other counties, recounts of primary voting were being demanded by the former G.I.'s.
In Yell County, known for decades as "The Free State of Yell", former G.I.'s vowed to oust the machine
Jose Zardon of the Charlotte Hornets had been "really pounding the apple
On the editorial page, "Platform for Industrial Peace" comments that the 79th Congress had spent more time debating labor issues than any other before it, but, in the end, delivered no significant labor bill with the exception of the Hobbs Anti-Racketeering Bill. It had taken up the Case bill, killed by a sustained veto, and the Truman anti-strike bill, but only after a labor crisis had developed. Within that atmosphere, it had found the going tough.
The Christian Science Monitor had proposed to the 80th Congress—that which would pass the Taft-Hartley Act over the President's veto in 1947—certain measures anent labor. It urged that a commission be created to effect continuing good relations between labor and management, to place the public welfare uppermost as a consideration in collective bargaining and to give the President specific powers to effect that policy, expand the Federal Conciliation Service, outlaw jurisdictional strikes, mass picketing, recruitment by management of strike breakers, curb secondary boycotts, provide compulsory arbitration of jurisdictional disputes, bar unions and management from unfair labor practices, discourage violations of contracts by suspending collective bargaining rights if breached, outlaw the closed shop except where a majority of all workers affected approved it, and make honesty in union elections and accountability in handling funds a top priority by placing it within the purview of the NLRB.
The piece finds it a good starting point for revision of the labor laws and urges Congressional candidates to adopt it in principle.
"Conversion and Consolidation" discusses outgoing City Manager Robert Flack's proposals to consolidate certain city and county departments, such as the Health Department, to promote efficiency, lower costs, and end duplication of services.
"Negative Criteria Are Not Enough" finds disturbing an editorial in the Savannah Morning News, setting forth its rationale for having supported the election of Eugene Talmadge in the Democratic primary in July. It did not find him the best candidate, but rather the "safest" because of his consistent prior opposition to New Deal policies and support for allowing Georgians to work out their own problems. It further asserted that the issues he raised in the late campaign regarding race had been forced on him by the "busybodies among the white and black extremists in the North", which included, in its estimate, Eleanor Roosevelt.
The editorial finds this viewpoint to stress issues which most Georgians must have considered irrelevant and ignoring of honest, efficient government as a primary consideration. Eugene Talmadge had a record which suggested otherwise. Fear and hatred had apparently blinded the Morning News to reality. Aligning itself with the likes of Mr. Talmadge appeared to cross the line of journalistic ethics, just to spite the New Deal.
The Morning News had opposed the primary opponent of Mr. Talmadge, James Carmichael, winner in the end of the popular vote in Georgia but loser in the unit-voting system; but, the editorial asserts, it should have also, with equal tenacity, opposed Mr. Talmadge.
Josef Stalin had opposed New Deal type programs as dangerous and, in time, suggests the piece, the Morning News might therefore find itself in alliance with Moscow in its quest to defeat what it deemed socialistic policy.
A piece from the Atlanta Constitution, titled "Will They Lower the Tail, Too?" regards the 11 percent increase in the price of shirts announced by OPA. The editorial accepted it as reasonable, but wants also there to be an increase in the length of the shirttail in compensation.
For during the war, the shirttail had been curtailed such that there was hardly any tail left. If a man took a breath, he feared that his shirttail might pop right out of his trousers.
Drew Pearson discusses outspoken Australian External Affairs Minister Herbert Evatt, that while often serving as a gadfly to other delegates, including Secretary of State Byrnes, he also would likely prove historically, as spokesman for the smaller nations, to be the most influential delegate, both presently and previously during the U. N. Charter Conference of spring, 1945, toward achieving a permanent peace. He also spoke for the less powerful within the bigger nations. By being so outspoken, he had lifted relatively obscure Australia to a prominent position among the nations.
Mr. Evatt had lost his brother in World War I, possibly explaining in part his great dedication to peace. His books communicated rebellious ideals. At 36, he had been the youngest person ever appointed to the Australian Supreme Court but had quit during the course of the war to run as a member of Parliament on the Labor ticket. Since that time, he had been Attorney General and served in his present position.
Before Mr. Evatt came to that post, external affairs were handled by London. Conservatives, therefore, were bitterly opposed to Mr. Evatt, both in Australia and England.
In Paris, he had become the leader of the anti-Soviet bloc with the consequence that V. M. Molotov regarded him with contempt.
Were Secretary Byrnes and Mr. Evatt to get along and cooperate better, they could prove an insuperable force. They had done so with success in opposing Poland sitting on the commission to write the treaty with Hungary, despite Hungary not objecting. Poland's position was not in keeping with the rule, for which Poland had voted, that nations which had not declared war on one of the treaty nations should not be on the commission determining that treaty. Poland withdrew its request after Mr. Byrnes supported Mr. Evatt's initial objection.
He served as a thorn in the side to the Big Four, consistently reminding them that the Paris Conference had not been convened merely as a rubber stamp for the Foreign Ministers Council. He was a firm believer that the future of world peace lay in the smaller nations being able to express their view and have it incorporated into the structure of the post-war world.
Marquis Childs discusses the primary race in Missouri of Congressman Roger Slaughter, which he had just lost, and the President having risked face in placing all of his stock on this one race, seeking to purge Mr. Slaughter for his consistent blocking of Administration programs from his powerful position in the House Rules Committee.
Mr. Childs relates, by rumor at least, of Mr. Slaughter having obtained the position through the aid of Speaker Sam Rayburn in 1944, interested in acquiring for himself the vice-presidential spot on the ticket with FDR, thus to please Kansas City Democrats, had made certain that Mr. Slaughter received a powerful committee position.
Several magazines had promoted Mr. Slaughter's obstructionism as emblematic of conservatism, suggesting a misapplication of the term, as conservatism in the abstract stood for preservation of the best traditional ideals, not obstructionism.
Mr. Slaughter's defeat had come as a surprise even to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It demonstrated the inherent power of the Pendergast machine as operating under its heir, James Pendergast, apparently recovering its loss of prestige after deceased Boss Tom Pendergast had gone to prison.
How much the President's opposition to Mr. Slaughter and support of Enos Axtell, his unknown opponent, influenced the result could not be discerned, but it made it plain that James Pendergast wielded power.
As indicated, Mr. Axtell would lose the general election to the GOP candidate in the fall.
Peter Edson continues to assess the Potsdam agreement a year after it had been formed, stressing reparations, a source of substantial dispute. The Big Four now appeared further apart on the issue than at Potsdam. Part of the problem lay in Russian seizure of what it considered war booty and how it was distinguishing the spoils of war from reparations. Potsdam had declared that reparations for the Western Allies would come from the Western zones of Germany and German assets in foreign countries. Russia would obtain reparations from its occupation zone and German assets in Eastern Europe, plus a fourth of those in the Western zones. The only limitation was that the equipment seized not be necessary to maintenance of Germany's domestic economy.
Three-fourths of the assets going to Russia from the Western zones would be exchanged for food, coal, lumber, oil, and other raw materials in the Eastern zone and then distributed among the three Western zones. The other forty percent was to be turned over to the Russians without remuneration to the West. The equipment to go to Russia from the West was to be determined within six months of the end of the war, i.e., by March 2. Delivery would be completed within two years, with the exchange commodities delivered by Russia to the West within five years.
But the exchange had not begun because of France's demand for the heavily industrialized German Ruhr in the Western zone, impeding therefore any reparations to Russia from the French zone until that issue could be settled.
Further impedance came from the fact that Potsdam assumed Germany would be one economic unit, which had failed to occur. Moreover, reparations were to come from capital assets already extant and not fresh production.
It could take 50 years, he remarks, for Russia to collect the ten billion dollars it was demanding from Germany. It was believed to be one reason Russia did not want to establish a central German government or sign a German peace treaty at present.
A letter from a former Midwesterner living in Hamlet, in the South for three and a half years, finds the one-party system in the South antithetical to democracy. It favors better education in the schools to eliminate the ignorance producing race and religion-based discrimination and hate.
It compliments The News as a champion of righteousness in this regard.
A letter writer from Shelby finds the courthouse rings in North Carolina to be more entrenched and of greater influence than those of Tennessee, that they were harder to eliminate, their leaders being Sunday school teachers and preachers.
He finds the editorial view of The News and other newspapers urging investigation of corruption to be unavailing of results, that the Tennessee direct method of revolt had obtained results in Athens and thus appeared to be a viable means. He ventures that the senatorial race involving Shelby native Clyde Hoey in 1944 had been stolen by the courthouse ring and nothing had been done about it. The capital of North Carolina was actually, he suggests, Shelby, not Raleigh.
President Roosevelt had sought to guide the country in the right direction, but the Missouri machine had now taken over to establish a dictatorship worse than that of Hitler.
The editors respond: "The Lord helps those..."
A letter from an "African boy" in Lagos, Nigeria, seeks exchange of stamps and articles, and establishing correspondence with pen-pals among News readers. He had two friends also who wanted to do the same.
He lived at 1 Oreofero Street in Lagos and so you can write and see if he is still looking for those stamps, articles, and pen-pals.
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