The Charlotte News
Tuesday, October 14, 1947
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that following Russia’s announced support of the Palestine partition plan, the U.S. urged the Palestine special committee to begin drafting a specific plan for future government of the partitioned states. Arabs reacted to the Soviet support by saying it proved that the Arabs were not aligned with Communists.
Russia found the efforts of Secretary of State Marshall to overhaul U.N. machinery to be a "farce", encouraging of warmongers and war propagandists. Andrei Vishinsky personally attacked John Foster Dulles, the American delegate who presented the plan. The plan would allow General Assembly action to override Security Council deadlock.
The "Bermuda Queen", a flying boat carrying 69 passengers, the largest number ever carried on a trans-Atlantic flight, made a forced landing in the mid-Atlantic and taxied through rough waters to a Coast Guard cutter three miles away. Rough seas and strong winds prevented immediate rescue but all were safe and the plane was undamaged.
They might want to trim down to 68 next time and leave fatso at home.
Admiral Chester Nimitz, chief of Naval Operations, announced that he would retire from the Navy in mid-December. He said he intended to live on the West Coast.
The hurricane which had caused millions of dollars worth of damage in Florida hovered off Cape Hatteras with winds up to 50 mph, drenching the coastal region with rain.
Presidential candidate Harold Stassen, former Governor of Minnesota, stated that he was confident of the support of 100 of the 130 delegates from six Midwestern states at the GOP nominating convention the following summer.
Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan claimed that there was fraud in the 1945-46 financial accounting of the Federal Public Housing Authority. One expenditure listed for $26,250, as found by the accounting firm of Price, Waterhouse, was for non-existent housing.
In Havana, the murder trial resumed of the dancer who shot her lover, Chicago lawyer Mr. Mee, aboard his yacht, claiming self-defense. She said she shot him when he reached for a sword which she used in her exotic dances. She also claimed that he was roughly handled while being taken from the yacht and then shuttled between different hospitals, the implication being that he might have survived otherwise, a contention she intended to offer as another defense to murder. Mr. Mee had lived five days after the shooting.
There is some more reportage on the upcoming October 28 referendum on the auditorium in Charlotte, which, should you have an interest, you can read.
Sports editor Ray Howe tells of Wake Forest's victory over UNC, 19-7, the previous Saturday, placing the Demon Deacons in the football limelight in the Southern Conference. It was UNC's second and last loss of the 1947 season, the other having been to Texas, 34-zip, the prior weekend. They were in the heat and the grippe. Wake Forest, winning its first four games, would finish 6-4.
Not yet reported, Chuck Yeager would break the sound barrier this date, taking off under the belly of a B-29 from what would become Edwards Air Force Base in California, piloting the Bell XS-1, with plenty of Beeman's to spare. For Army secrecy, the flight would not become public knowledge until the ensuing June and no pictures of the plane would be released until its last flight in 1950.
On the editorial page, "M. Spaak Takes a Walk from UN" tells of Belgian Prime Minister Paul-Henri Spaak leaving the U.N. and going home, declaring that the session had accomplished nothing and that he would thus not return.
He had a point. Applying pressure to Russia to accord Western views was getting nowhere fast.
Leading editorialists, including Walter Lippmann, Arthur Krock, David Lawrence, Vera Micheles Deane and Frederick J. Libby, had raised questions as to whether the country was spreading more than necessary the idea that war was inevitable with Russia, thereby convincing the Russians of U.S. hate for them and that the intent was to eliminate them unless they abandoned Communism. Walter Lippmann believed that there were ways for multilateral evacuation of Europe, which would have the dual results of ending Soviet fear of encirclement and its need therefore for expansionism.
The piece thinks it worthy of consideration given the lack of results from current diplomatic efforts. At very least, a direct move of the sort would clear up confusion over foreign policy and would enunciate a path. Unless a new approach were undertaken, other European diplomats might decide to desert and leave America on its own to argue with Mr. Vishinsky.
"Labor's Call for Democratic Unity" finds Philip Murray's call for cooperation between labor and management in a democratic effort to speed production and for cooperation likewise between AFL and CIO for exertion of effective political action against Taft-Hartley to be working at cross-purposes. It thinks it would have been more effective had there been evidenced a sounder, more reasonable spirit on the part of labor toward Taft-Hartley. The two labor organizations, because of the fundamental differences between them, also had not developed international cooperation to compete with the Comintern.
"We're All for Conservation, But..." suggests that conserving food had ramifications, as witnessed by the vociferous protest by distillery workers to the shutdown of liquor production for 60 days. The distillers reluctantly were going along with the plan, but the workers were threatening court action and demanded stand-by pay for the duration of the shutdown. It appeared that no one wanted to have to sacrifice to bring about reconstruction of Europe. The workers evidently felt no common cause with starving Europeans or with the inflation-saddled American consumers.
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "No Quick Miracles", reminds of the statement by AEC chairman David Lilienthal, that peaceful uses of atomic energy were still a decade or more away in any practical, non-experimental application, and that the country should therefore not stop progress in water and steam power in the expectation of atomic power right around the bend.
The piece finds it appropriate advice but reminds that the release of atomic energy had created a revolution which would be as fundamental to future growth as steam or even the discovery of uses of iron.
Progress. It's glowingly wonderful.
Drew Pearson tells of Andrei Vishinsky discussing strategy with the other Soviet-bloc delegates, ironically at the former estate of J. P. Morgan, owned by the Soviet Government. The meeting had been requested by Jan Masaryk of Czechoslovakia because of common concern shared by the Polish and Yugoslav delegates that Mr. Vishinsky's anti-American attitude could impede ongoing negotiations with the Americans regarding economic aid. Mr. Vishinsky was furious and let the three delegates know it, said that they were engaged in appeasing Wall Street. The working class movement in Europe was at stake, imperiled by the fear shown by the Socialists and Social Democrats.
Mr. Vishinsky was evasive on Palestine and when asked by one of the delegates how they should vote, he responded that they should think for themselves. The delegates believed that he had not yet received instructions from Moscow on the matter.
The big four distillers, Seagram's, Hiram Walker, Schenley, and National Distillers, were the least receptive to the Citizens Food Committee plan for ending liquor production for 60 days to conserve grain for Europe. Chairman Charles Luckman, however, managed to counter all of their arguments, including the desire to spread the reduction over a longer period at half production. Mr. Luckman stated that it would not suffice because of the emergent nature of the need. The big four wanted until October 31 to comply rather than October 15 as they could not make the commitment without consulting their home offices. Several independent distillers, however, were readily cooperative.
Samuel
Grafton finds the concept of meatless Tuesdays and eggless Thursdays being
greeted by the public with both respect and ridicule, often ignored or
circumvented during the first week. He thinks it could hardly be otherwise
given the trend in the country for the previous 15 years to kid and josh
government, with conservatives training the population to consider the Government
"a
With
an emergency having arisen, the food, coal, and dollar crisis in Europe, the American
people appeared confused about following the Government lead. The general
reaction was that the people did not want anyone in Washington telling them
what to do. Collective action
Asking Americans to conserve food in an atmosphere in which business had been told that they could charge whatever they pleased for goods, as when dresses were lengthened when much of the world went without clothes, sowed the seeds of confusion.
Hearts were in the right place, but the Pavlovian response was to tell the Government to go to hell.
Government
suffered also from the malady, asking, for instance, housewives to conserve
bread but refraining from asking farmers to cut down on feeding of grain to
livestock. Asking for any conservation in the atmosphere of liberation from
control, which had pervaded since the end of the war, was out of synchronization
with the expected stimuli and responses. Selfishness
A
continent was rotting and needed America, just as America needed Europe. And Americans
needed the Government, which they had conditioned themselves to ignore and
mock. The question was whether the world could endure until the soliloquies required
to straighten out
Stewart Alsop tells of Foreign Minister Georges Bidault showing a curious optimism during his recent visit in Washington, despite the plight of France and the absence thus far of emergency aid for the winter.
The Government was giving serious consideration to using the property seized during the war from enemy aliens, cash assets totaling about 125 million dollars, and property assets which were estimated to be worth as much as half a billion dollars. Added to that were perhaps three billion dollars of assets belonging to foreign nationals. While the first two categories were the property of the U.S. Government, the third was not. But it had not been claimed for the most part because of the nearly worthless foreign currencies into which it would have been converted. And the U.S. had a case for claiming the money "in the national interest" and using it for the recovery of Europe, along with the other assets.
Mr. Alsop expresses the hope that the President would exercise his authority over at least part of these funds and devote them to emergency aid.
A letter writer finds exception in the notion espoused by the World Federalists, favoring world government, if necessary without inclusion of Russia, as stated in a piece by Tom Lynch on October 9. The writer thinks it an oxymoronic concept, being in favor of world government and achieving it by eliminating Communism. It was to say world government against Russia.
A letter writer warns that future enemies would never again give America time to prepare for war as after Pearl Harbor. It had to be at the ready. The future peace and security depended on it. Russia had already declared political, economic, and ideological warfare against the United States, and so it would be a terrible mistake to share the atomic secret with the Russians. He hopes the world would learn to live in peace before it destroyed itself.
A letter writer presents her poem, "Under the Hammer and the Sickle". It concludes: "Oh, I wish there was a Russian Markham/ To write of his woe,/ This Communist Clod, this modern 'Man With The Hoe.'"
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