Tuesday, August 27, 1946

The Charlotte News

Tuesday, August 27, 1946

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Australian delegate J. A. Beasley had a furious exchange with Soviet delegate Andrei Vishinsky at the Paris Peace Conference, in which the former accused Russia of lies, intimidation, and power politics. The fiery speech of the Australian brought the delegations of the 21 nations to their feet. The exchange ended amicably, however, as both men parted smiling at one another.

Acting Secretary of State Dean Acheson told a press conference that the United States might yet file its complaint against Yugoslavia with the U.N. Security Council despite the 48-hour ultimatum of the U.S. having been met, regarding release of the crew and passengers of the downed flight of August 9 and the location of the bodies of four of the five missing crewmen of the August 19 flight, with the search for the fifth body still underway. Yugoslavia had promised to send out a thousand-man force to hunt for the missing body.

In Bad Nauheim, Germany, Major F. Richard Lobuono was convicted of permitting cruel and unusual punishment of American soldiers housed at Lichfield prison in England and was fined $200. The cruelty alleged consisted of permitting the striking of prisoners, forcing them to stand with nose and toes against a wall for long periods and forcing them to march double-time for long stretches. He was acquitted of the charge that he aided and authorized the cruelty by means of permitting other soldiers to strike the prisoners with rifle butts and clubs. In his defense, the Major had claimed that the punishments had occurred after he had left the position of provost marshal of the prison.

The carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt and accompanying ships in its cruise of the Mediterranean intended to make stops the following week at the Greek port of Piraeus at Athens as a gesture of good will to the Greek people who had admired the late President. The way was left open for a possible visit to Turkey.

In Dacca, India, police tightened security after 23 persons had been killed and 65 wounded during the previous week of rioting between Moslems and Hindus, rioting which had resulted in the deaths of 3,000 people in Calcutta the previous week occurring in consequence of the Moslem League's injunction to take "direct action" against the British independence policy. Mobs in the Takurhat area were reported to have resorted to bows and arrows, inflicting injuries on 25 persons.

The Arab Committee stated that the British High Commissioner had misstated as a request their flat statement that they intended the exiled Mufti of Jerusalem to participate in the London conference and that there would be no discussion of partition of Palestine.

In New York, the State Democratic Convention chose Eleanor Roosevelt as its first female keynoter and she accepted. She stated that she would not give in to encouragement to run for the Senate from New York, stating that she long ago had vowed never to run for political office.

In Buffalo, RNC chairman Carroll Reece of Tennessee told an audience of African-American Elks that the nation could not "continue to exist one-half free and one-half Bilbo." He declared that the parts of the nation practicing discrimination were not controlled by the Republicans and that the Democrats would make no "serious attempt to abolish racial persecutions and abuses in the Southern states." For the party had to depend on the South for support. He declared that every bit of permanent legislation ever enacted to protect blacks had been under Republican auspices.

David J. Wilkie reports on Detroit production, 250,000 units for August, 50,000 of which were to be built during the week at hand, and overall production for 1946 of 1.1 million passenger vehicles, 1.65 million vehicles in all. The permitted export quotas of six percent of all passenger vehicles and 22 percent of all commercial vehicles were being met. Production for the full year was expected to reach 2.475 passenger vehicles and another 925,000 commercial vehicles. Truck production would be the highest ever except for 1937.

In New York, the U. S. Emergency Court of Appeals set up to hear OPA cases ruled against a New York City landlord seeking a 15 percent hike in rent, saying that with maximum occupancy rates, landlords were earning more profit than before the war.

The OPA and the Department of Agriculture haggled over the price ceiling to be imposed on meat animals. Packers meanwhile predicted that the stock yards which had been jam packed since July 1 would be empty by Thursday when the new price ceilings would go into effect, producing a "real famine" during the winter. Record sales in the stock yards were reported in advance of the effective date, including animals which were too slender for normal sale.


In York, Me., a four-hour cloudburst isolated a thousand vacationers. There were no injuries.

In Belhaven, N.C., five persons died when the car in which they were riding plunged from an open draw bridge across the Inland Waterway. The car had pulled around another car waiting for the draw bridge to close after allowing a tugboat to pass.

In Chicago, a 16-year old girl who worked as a cashier for a grocery store lifted $13,000 in cash and made off with her boyfriend on a shopping spree in which they spent the entire amount. Both were being detained and are pictured on the page.

On the editorial page, "On Regularity and Responsibility" tells of the Raleigh News & Observer, a heavily Democratic organ, having become reluctantly convinced that the North Carolina Congressional delegation was voting in a coalition with Republicans against Truman Administration programs. Its offered rationale was that the members had been duped by the conservatives to believe that the people opposed the New Deal when they really favored it.

The editorial thinks otherwise, believes that the majority of North Carolinians probably disliked the New Deal but could not express that adequately at the polls in a one-party state, forced ultimately to choose based on personality rather than on issues.

To continue with such a system would mean drift when the country could least afford it.

"Baptists Behind the Iron Curtain" comments on Dr. Louie D. Newton, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, having gone to Russia to examine the condition of the two million Baptists of the country, found them thriving as the Soviet Government had encouraged the Baptists, to offset the Russian Orthodox Church, disfavored for its having been an instrument of oppression under the czars. He found the Baptists able to practice their religion freely.

The piece finds it not surprising as the days of encouraging atheism and vigorous opposition to the church had been been in the initial stages of Communism, and freedom of religion, not dissimilar in concept to that of the United States, had eventually been written into the Soviet Constitution.

Yet, when Dr. Newton had spoken in Atlanta recently, there were pickets outside the auditorium favoring "100 per cent white democracy" and opposing Communism.

Dr. O. K. Armstrong, a Baptist leader from Missouri, attacked the Newton report on the basis that Russian Baptists had no freedom of worship as implied by the report. Time had concluded that Dr. Newton had been duped.

The editorial finds the reaction symptomatic of the growing distrust of anything Russian. Instead of celebration in the religious community over the fact of freedom of worship being evidenced in Russia, there was suspicion and denial because the notion conflicted with long-held prejudices, prejudices which did not serve the goal of world peace, the foundation presumably for all religious faiths.

"The Illogic of Censorship" looks at the criticism by British Professor Cyril Joad regarding the Will Hays-Eric Johnston voluntary censorship code of Hollywood movies. Professor Joad found the code hypocritical, banning low-neck dresses for too much revelation of the female bosom while generally permitting the portrayal of loose morals in its characters, banning use of the word "damn" while allowing the portrayal of all manner of human brutality.

He wondered whether anyone in America swore, and who Americans thought themselves to be to set up as arbiters of manners and morals.

The editorial concludes that no one really understood the Hays code, but that it was possible for movie producers to follow it while also inciting various forms of corrupt and criminal behavior in the society. During the previous year, Hollywood had produced all manner of movies "except, of course, a good one."

We posit two reasons for the code: 1) Crackers go to movies, and in great numbers because Crackers, by definition, do not, often cannot, read; and 2) Crackers migrate to California from cracker-lands and become self-anointed plastic-Jesus worshippers and other Fascists, because they do not quite understand how it all works, that the other guy has the same freedom of speech and belief that you and your Cracker-daddy do.

A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Boston's Claim on Morality", wonders at the suggestion by an American officer in Germany that the behavior of G.I.'s would be improved were they to follow the "morals of Boston". It suggests that censorship was not a test of morals but a refusal to test morals. Morals require temptation resisted.

St. Louisans had been able to build a strong resistance by the absence of censorship and so it refuses to take a backseat to Boston in the morality department. It concludes that it was likely that Boston's morals were viewed as special only because no one knew anything about them.

Drew Pearson, interrupting his vacation, writes of Marshal Tito. After World War I, Mr. Pearson had for two years directed relief work in Yugoslavia. He was so revered in the country, remarks the editors, that the town of Pearsonavatz was named for him.

At Tehran in November, 1943, Churchill had been convinced by Stalin to divide the Balkans, with Russia getting Bulgaria and Rumania and the British to control Yugoslavia and Greece. FDR had acquiesced in the bargain, agreeing to provide millions of dollars in lend-lease aid to Yugoslavia to build up resistance forces. Stalin had further obtained agreement that Marshal Tito would be the best person to lead Yugoslavia because he was a Croat and his opponent, Mihailovich, was a Serbian. Most of the territory desirable to the British was in Serbia. But Tito was also Stalin's puppet.

When Prime Minister Churchill placed his son Randolph and Brigadier Fitzroy McLean in charge as liaison officers to Tito, they ineptly played into Stalin's plan to steal Yugoslavia from the British.

During the war, Tito's headquarters was raided by the Germans and Tito barely escaped. It had so happened that it was the first night in two months that Randolph Churchill and the other British had been absent from the headquarters. Thereafter, Tito was suspicious of the British and began snuggling up to the Russians.

Tito was unpopular within Yugoslavia since the end of the war, with the Croats because he was a Communist and not a Catholic, with the Serbs because he was a Croat. Only the Montenegrins revered him, as they were the natural-born fighters of the country, making up the backbone of Tito's army.

Mr. Pearson relates that during his days directing relief in the country, the Montenegrins had left the American relief trucks alone even when loaded with money and goods, stuck in the mud on mountain roads and left unguarded.

Now, they shot down U.S. planes.

Tito, he concludes, posed as a mountain man when in fact he held a doctorate from the University of Vienna and spoke fluent German with a Viennese accent. What was needed in Belgrade was a U.S. representative who could outcuss him in his own language.

An abstract from a bulletin published by The Progressive Farmer, titled "Rural Industries for North Carolina", suggests development of small industries which would service the farm and enable it to develop under the agricultural sciences.

It uses cotton as an example, which had made possible warehouse businesses and mills.

Farmers were now finding themselves without adequate storage facilities for their crops. The South needed freezer lockers which were in short supply compared to other regions.

Such industries would provide jobs, add to the total earnings of the South and thereby maintain wartime prosperity and lower farm production costs with mechanization, while improving overall living conditions. The South would need sell fewer raw materials to other regions for manufacture of products as the entire stream of production could flow within the South itself.

Peter Edson discusses the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation, first begun in 1938, stating that it would lose money again in 1946, with losses on the poor cotton crop offsetting profits on the bumper wheat and corn crops. It had a net loss of twelve million dollars in 1945. At its inception, it was admitted that it might take 25 years to find a workable formula for crop control. If it were working correctly, it should offset its losses in bad crop years with profits in good years.

In 1920, private companies had tried crop insurance and lost 14 million dollars. The problem was that the policies were written on the basis of dollar-yield per acre. The Government program instead had written its policies for half or three-fourths the average bushel-yield per acre, depending on premium, due at harvest, paid in kind in the crop being raised, usually about ten percent of the yield. Insurance coverage diminished if the crop was abandoned by the farmer.

Crop insurance was dropped between 1943 and 1945, but then reinstated with experimental programs in tobacco, which had lost only nine percent of the premiums, and corn, which had cost 166 percent of the premium.

Marquis Childs comments again on economic relations between Russia and the United States, this time focusing on the type of trade which would not work for the United States, that being continued buying of coal, copper, and iron by Russia through gold which had been mined from Siberia. Such trade had been ongoing since the 1920's through the war.

When lend-lease goods in the manufacturing pipeline at the end of the war would finally run out, Russia would seek to re-establish such trade. It would be fine for Russia, which had learned through U.S. engineers how to use mining techniques to their best advantage in finding and extracting gold. But for the United States it would be disadvantageous to continue to deplete its natural resources already depleted by two world wars, having spent oil, copper, iron, and coal at the rate of six times that of Russia during the war.

Russia meanwhile possessed resources, such as manganese, which the United States needed. A future trade treaty with Russia ought specify trade of U.S. machines for certain Russian raw materials. A reasonable treaty might bridge the developing gulf between the two countries.

During the first quarter, when America had provided Russia with goods valued at 115 million dollars either on credit or by gift through UNRRA, the U.S. had received from Russia but 31 million dollars in goods, most of it furs, only 3.4 million dollars worth of manganese and chrome.

Just before the Congressional recess for the elections, Congressman Jerry Voorhis of California had placed in the Congressional Record a document prepared by Russian expert of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Charles Prince, outlining the benefits from such a treaty. It was needed to adjust the trade imbalance.

Framed Edition
[Return to Links
Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News<i><i><i>--</i></i></i>Framed Edition]
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.