The Charlotte News
Monday, August 26, 1946
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that four of the five bodies of the crewmen of the Army C-47 transport plane shot down August 19 by Yugoslavian forces were brought to American representatives under honor guard provided by the Yugoslav Fourth Army. The body of the fifth airmen was still missing.
Moscow Radio charged the United States with putting pressure on Yugoslavia by sending the carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Mediterranean, and that the incident involving the shooting down of two U. S. transport planes had been inflated, that the transgressing country, the United States, should have issued an apology for an incursion on Yugoslavian airspace.
Pravda also gave praise to Yugoslavia for standing up for its rights.
The first American flight to fly the same route, from Vienna to Udine, Italy, since the shooting incidents, landed safely. This flight was by armed Flying Fortress. The pilot stated that he was careful to avoid flying over Yugoslav territory.
In Palestine, 200 Jews were rounded up by British troops and Palestine police in a tiny fishing village, searching for frogmen who had the week before nearly sunk the ship used to transport illegal Jewish immigrants from Haifa Harbor to Cyprus.
Future Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir, known at the time as Golda Meyerson, was named temporary head of the Jewish Agency's political department while Moshe Shertok was under British detention.
The Arab Committee requested that Great Britain allow the exiled Mufti of Jerusalem, who had supported Hitler during the war, to participate in the forthcoming London talks on Palestine. It was thought improbable that the British would acquiesce.
A pro-Zionist accused the Jewish Agency of secretly agreeing to the British partition plan of Palestine and urged that the Agency not be included in discussions at the conference on the partition proposal.
The Russian news agency Tass had reported that the British had sent radar equipment to Turkey and had established airfields on the Dardanelles. The British Foreign Office stated that it had sent radar equipment to be used probably for civilian purposes, that it had done so for several countries, and that there was no truth to the report that Britain had set up any military bases in Turkey.
At the Paris Peace Conference, Australia raised objection to Russia's 300-million dollar reparations demand from Rumania and the additional 600-million from the other four treaty nations as being excessive, urged that Russia be made to justify its demands. The Russians countered that Australia had not had its industries devastated by the war.
It took a half day of debate to settle 25 words of the Italian treaty, the first of the five treaties to be in conference. There were over 55,000 words to all five treaties. About 1.3 percent of the Italian treaty had thus far been resolved.
Edward Bomar reports that the draft, shut down for two months, was now back in operation and set to begin call ups again as of September 1. The Selective Service Board had set as a goal drafting 25,000 men between ages 19 and 29 during September. That compared to 6,400 in June, none of whom had been teenagers. Men between 18 and 44 were being examined and classified during July and August.
Harold Ickes discusses the danger of viewing war with Russia as an inevitability. War with the late ally would, he posits, result only from inept diplomacy and mutual provocation. During the war, Americans were encouraged to overlook the systemic differences in the economic and governmental structures of the two societies and view Russia as an ally. A third of all lend-lease had been sent to Russia.
But since the peace, that feeling of good will had dissipated.
Both countries talked of support for the U.N. but then also espoused nationalistic principles incompatible with international cooperation. Russia's plan for sharing the atomic secret could not be adequately policed, was therefore impracticable, whereas the U.S. plan for international control under the U.N. and sharing at the point when adequate security measures were in place to insure that the secret could only be used for peaceful purposes, would work.
Much discussion had taken place with regard to the unilateral veto on the Security Council, but the United States had been a proponent of it at San Francisco in 1945 and had exercised it, such as the refusal to accept the plan to withdraw diplomatic recognition of the Franco Government in Spain. It was not only Russia which clung to the veto power and utilized it.
Some Americans who were hypercritical of Russia pointed to its influence of border nations in Eastern Europe, but the United States was also seeking military bases in Iceland and the Azores, and was maintaining troops in China, the Philippines, and Italy, as well as Germany.
In Texas during the weekend, Beauford Jester beat Dr. Homer P. Rainey, former president of the University of Texas, in a runoff primary for the Democratic nomination for Governor.
The Federal District Court in Atlanta denied injunctive relief sought to void the election of Eugene Talmadge in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, challenged on the basis that the county-unit voting system denied voters equal protection by giving smaller counties the same weight as much larger counties. The Court analogized to the electoral college in Federal elections, sometimes denying the winner of the popular vote the presidency.
Yet that analogy is not strictly valid as electors are apportioned to each state based on the previous decennial census and thus the disproportionality argument of the plaintiffs in this case is not subsumed implicitly under the concept of the electoral college. The other argument of the Court, however, that each state, regardless of population, has two Senators, is somewhat apropos, but that idea of course is also weakened by the fact that the number of Representatives from each state in the House is based on population.
In Hollywood, actress Virginia Bruce
On the editorial page, "What Goes Up Must Come Down" finds that the Decontrol Board's actions appeared to be speeding the process of removal of price controls. They had retained price controls on meat and meat subsidies, but it was because prices were deemed "unreasonable" during the period in which price controls had lapsed, leaving 65-cent per pound hamburger at the market.
It would be up to the meat industry to prevent a return to the black market, as had thrived earlier, usually coexisting in the best meatpacking houses. But more likely would be a production strike, awaiting higher prices, especially after the nearly two months of unencumbered inflation.
The new OPA, it ventures, would keep inflation from occurring in one spurt, would rather have it occur in increments. OPA officials appeared to be doing a good job under a bad bill. Regardless, the cost of living was going to rise.
"Preview of Things to Come" suggests that the Yugoslav incident foreshadowed the future in the brave new world, one in which such border incidents would come to define international relations of nations, such as Yugoslavia, seeking to survive within power politics of the major powers. It offered excuse for both sides to proclaim loudly their national interests.
In this instance, the show of force by the U.S., marshalling a division on the Italian border with Yugoslavia and bringing ships into the Mediterranean, had caused Marshal Tito to back down and release the captive crew and allow inspectors to locate the bodies of the dead crew of the other C-47.
The State Department deserved ultimate credit for taking a middle ground between saber rattling and appeasement.
In the end, however, despite the victory, the real loss was that the nations were no longer trying to effect peace on any basis than military might. The vague concepts of justice and national honor which characterized the rhetoric of the diplomats had become largely academic.
"Pause for Station Identification"
A twenty-year radio advertising man found the rule to be best reduced to a kind of partial acronym: "Yessir, R.L. S.T.S.", meaning "Radio Listening Sells The Suckers".
After trying a bit to practice the art of advertising copy, the piece reminds of the ABC's of radio listening: Always as repetitious as a stuck phonograph record; Between plugs, there will likely be hillbilly music; and Corny as "Minnesota in July."
Someday, we shall inform you of the radio contest we entered in the winter of 1966, requiring designation of the best hidey-hole for $1,380 in cash, the winner to take home the booty. Our idea was to place it within one of the blocks of ice inside an Eskimo igloo fashioned by a person in our neighborhood, Mr. Green. We lost, however, because the radio people did not like our idea to put the cash inside the ice of the Eskimo igloo fashioned by a person in our neighborhood, thought it not so hot because the igloo would melt. Huh. Little did those Jokers know. We put a spell on it and it's still there
A piece from the Winston-Salem Journal, titled "New Empire of the South", quotes from findings of correspondent Harold Martin of The Atlanta Constitution after touring North Carolina. Mr. Martin thought North Carolina had achieved more than Georgia because of its stress for 50 years on improvement of education. Once Georgia had been known as The Empire State of the South and had deserved the moniker, but it had been a long time.
The piece underscores the conclusion, that education had saved North Carolina from the likes of Eugene Talmadge as Governor and that state government in North Carolina had created much progress in the state since the turn of the century.
By reverse inference, we have to conclude therefore that, by 1972, a bunch of Georgians had migrated north and were participating in droves in North Carolina's Senatorial elections.
Drew Pearson, on his annual vacation leave, turns his column over to guest writers, this date's author being Attorney General Tom Clark, who writes the column as a letter to Mr. Pearson anent juvenile crime in the country and the appalling conditions of juvenile facilities to house the offenders.
He states that FBI statistics showed that the largest percentage of arrestees were 17. Fifteen percent of all murders, 51 percent of burglaries, and 30 percent of rapes were committed by persons under 21. Arrests of females under 21 had increased by nearly 200 percent since 1939.
The Department of Justice had, earlier in the year, invited a group of 28 experts in the field to report and make recommendations on the problem, which they had, finding it to begin in the home. A national conference to prevent juvenile delinquency, to be held in October, was being planned to try to coordinate Federal, state, and local programs. The confreres would issue preliminary reports and then discuss them at the conference, with each panel producing a final report, to be published and disseminated. It would then be up to local communities to develop their own conferences and implement recommendations.
Ultimately, the people would have to be responsible for lowering juvenile delinquency rates.
Marquis Childs discusses the economic relationship between the United States and Russia, reporting that Russia had received in the first quarter of 1946 about 115 million dollars worth of U.S. goods, about half of it through Lend-Lease, and most of the rest through UNRRA.
The Lend-Lease material had been in the pipeline at the end of the war and had been manufactured to Russian standards, thus of little utility to American industry. Much of it was in machinery and vehicles, a large portion of which were steam locomotives. About half the goods were paid by a credit.
The State Department was trying to resolve the credit. The Russians wanted a million-dollar loan but it could never be approved by Congress in the current atmosphere of strained East-West relations.
Russia had believed that their peacetime purchases in America would occur in a buyers' market with large-scale unemployment as predicted by economic experts. As that condition had not materialized, leaving a sellers' market, the Russians were forced to buy at higher than anticipated prices.
Mr. Childs states that he would address in another column the basis for sound trade which could benefit both countries.
Peter Edson reports a series of anecdotes about government officials. Reparations Ambassador Ed Pauley had learned that Russia had removed machinery from Manchuria as war booty by trying to take a shower on arrival at his hotel in Mukden, finding the power shut down as the Russians had removed the pumping equipment for both the electrical and water systems.
He next tells of Treasury Secretary John W. Snyder becoming a teetotaler, at least as to his consumption of highballs, now resting on double bourbons and soda.
Departing director of the Bureau of the Budget Harold Smith had, at a going away party, official forms given him from Budget officials listing their qualifications for farm work, a reminder that the director had often invited employees to his farm for the weekend and then put them to work.
Rear Admiral Joel T. Boone, personal physician to three Presidents, was conducting a tour of the nation's mines, finding that many miners were former sailors. He asked them to gather round at one point for a group shot, at which time one looked at him and said it was the closest he had ever come to an admiral, despite having spent four years in the Navy.
Senator Harley Kilgore of West Virginia found that his UMW support had waned in the recent primary and, given his pro-labor record, could not understand why. He was finally informed that the miners thought that John L. Lewis was a Republican and wanted them to vote for Republican candidates.
A letter writer finds the column of Harold Ickes to be especially informative, remarking on his good reasoning in justification of "outside interference" in Congressional elections, as Congressional elections ultimately affected everyone in the country.
She misses, however, Dorothy Thompson.
The editors respond that when they began carrying Mr. Ickes earlier in the year, in the interest of balancing news and editorial writing, they decided to stop carrying Ms. Thompson's column. They remark that this writer was the only one who had missed her.
A letter finds instruction of current events in Revelations, believing that the leopard with two stripes and the feet of a bear was Russia—(could be California)—, England was the lion, and the United States, the lamb.
Next he moves to interpretation of the number 666. Russia covered one-sixth of the earth and Stalin was 66.
Simple.
So, that meant, naturally, that when Stalin, the Beast, died, everything turned peaceful and rosy.
A letter from the president of the Junior Chamber of Commerce thanks the newspaper for its support in helping to make the Charlotte Horse Show a success.
A letter from "Dubitante" says briefly:
I am not in favor of cleaning up the town; but I am in favor of pulling down the shades. If we liquidate the "Morality Stunted" the "Pure in Heart" will starve to death.
Take it easy.
Framed Edition
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