Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President
named General Omar Bradley chief of staff of the Army to replace
retiring General Eisenhower, about to assume in January the
presidency of Columbia University. Carl Gray, vice-president of the
Chicago & Northwestern Railway Association and formerly a
brigadier general in charge of railway transportation in the
European theater in 1943, would replace General Bradley as head of
the Veterans Administration. The President also appointed General C.
B. Cates to succeed General A. A. Vandegrift as commandant of the
Marine Corps.
The President, in a press conference, urged Congress to fix
margins on speculative stock and securities trading. He was
targeting speculation on wheat, cotton, and similar products.
Representative Clarence Cannon of Missouri reported that the
House Appropriations Committee had learned during a wartime secret
visit in May, 1945 to the atomic energy production plant at Oak
Ridge, Tenn., that there were foreign spies from all enemy nations
working there. They were permitted to remain on the job, however, so
that they could be watched and the spy network traced. The
Congressmen were informed that the spies could not do any damage
because they were insulated in terms of their knowledge, as were all
workers. There was also a blackboard set up to show progress on the
project, which was in fact bogus. He had never determined what the
Government had done with these workers at the end of the war. The
reason for the visit was that several members of the Committee had
begun to complain about funneling millions of dollars into a secret
project which was supposed to end the war, some members thinking it
"foolishness".
Before the Senate War Investigating subcommittee, Maj.
General Bennett Meyers admitted having signed a false affidavit
regarding use of a Cadillac, the affidavit having asserted that it
had been bought by Aviation Electric before a wartime Government
freeze on deliveries of new cars became effective at the beginning
of 1942, when in fact it had not been. General Meyers, embarrassed,
said that it was a routine signature, that anyone would have signed
it, including Committee counsel William Rogers, future Attorney
General and Secretary of State. (Maybe his second boss, more
likely.) He also claimed that he set up the Aviation Electric Corp.
to help his girlfriend, the wife of the designated president of the
company, B. H. Lamarre, whom he elevated from a $35 per week job.
In Paris, Socialist Premier-designate Leon Blum said that the
country was in danger from the declared war on the French people by
the Communists on the left and by the Gaullists on the right. The
latter wanted to revise the Constitution to provide for a strong
chief executive in the manner of the United States. Mr. Blum found
this position to be tantamount to favoring a dictatorship. Premier
Paul Ramadier had resigned Wednesday after half a million workers in
the country had gone on strike, nearly crippling all of France. Mr.
Blum was seeking support in the National Assembly to form a new
Cabinet.
In Romsey, England, Princess Elizabeth and new husband, Lt.
Philip Mountbatten, now Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, partook of
rationed bacon and eggs for breakfast, as they honeymooned at
Broadlands, the estate of Earl Mountbatten. Celebrants in London of
the previous rainy day were no longer in evidence, as street
sweepers swept away the litter left behind. The throngs had remained
past midnight, beckoning, in rolling voices, further royal
appearances on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, shouting, "We
want the King," and "We want Margaret." No one
appeared.
Be that way.
Burke Davis of The News, in the fourth in his series
of articles on former Governor and interim Senator Cameron Morrison,
tells of him not liking the idea of being known as the "Good
Roads Governor", for there was more to his program than that.
Mr. Davis suggests that a good case could be made that Mr. Morrison
was the first progressive Governor in the South, rallying people to
a progressive cause before Al Smith and FDR. And he had done so with
a populace wedded to conservatism.
During his term, 1921-25, ad valorem taxes were
abolished, income taxes raised, and State taxes limited to ten
percent, except for education. The appropriation for the University
was doubled and that for Woman's College in Greensboro, tripled. The
branches of the Greater University nearly were consolidated. The
N.C. College for Negroes, later North Carolina Central, became a
State institution. The Gastonia orthopedic hospital for children
came under State control. In two sessions, the General Assembly
spent 65 million dollars for roads. School funding was greatly
increased through a five million dollar bond approved by voters. The
State's mental hospitals were expanded as was public health. The
poll tax was abolished.
Mr. Morrison said that he was trying during his term to
realize the dreams set forth at the turn of the century by Governor
Charles B. Aycock, known as the "Education Governor".
News reporter Tom Schlesinger, son of renowned
historian Arthur Schlesinger and brother to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.,
interviews a private detective on page 7-A, finds that his life was
not so glamorous and thrilling as the detective novels and movies
would suggest.
On the editorial page, "Princess, Princesses and People"
tells of the fairy tale marriage being celebrated in Britain between
Princess Elizabeth and Lt. Philip Mountbatten. It gleans that the
moral was that Britons were so happy over the affair because it
reminded of their triumph over regal power, caste, and privilege,
that the great remaining throne in the world now reported to a
Socialist Government. The throne was now regulated by the citizens
and so they could look with bright hope on it with the marriage of
its prospective occupiers for the coming generation.
No longer, as in earlier times, were people beheaded by the thousands when they merely voiced opposition to the existence of the crown or suggested that the show of privilege was not worth the expense.
We are constrained to remark that to us Americans who neither believe that we are bastards of royalty nor that even benevolent royalty has any benefit or utility whatsoever other than to oppress the gullible masses and impress them with the notion of blind obeisance to a human power above their wee, little reach, the entire concept of royalty is both strange and demeaning, not something which we endorse, rather something about which, to throw off its yoke, we fought a Revolution. And we remain damned proud of it.
"A Flight into Cuckoo Land" regards the address of
Dr. Gus Dyer to a regional meeting of the Southern States Industrial
Council, suggesting that government intervention in business was a
"repudiation of the divine plan for human society". He
included social security, unemployment compensation, and labor
unions as such ungodly plans.
The piece finds his injection of theology into business from
his point of view as an economic expert to be misplaced. As if that
were not enough, he had gone on to provide an analogy which
suggested that part of his economic training had come from the
neighborhood of the Bronx Zoo. He had described the process by which
a mockingbird cares for its young, stopping its feeding and
protection at a certain point in development, finding that behavior
to be good example for the human.
The piece suggests that if human beings were as birds, then
the simple plan put forth by the doctor might be valid. But birds
were equipped to fly south for winter and did not have to contend
with depressions, the next meal being as close as the nearest worm.
Nor did the bird have to worry about loss of employment or invasion
of his home by predators.
Ants, it says, live under a communistic system. But neither
the bird system nor the ant system has anything to do with human
systems.
"Indeed, if we humans do not begin to realize that the
law of the jungle is not the plan envisioned by the Creator for the
operation of our affairs, the birds may soon have it all for
themselves."
"Nebulous Politics and Psychiatry" finds Governor
Gregg Cherry to have done the right thing in allowing a death
sentence to go forward against a convicted rapist despite six of ten
psychiatrists having found that he was insane while four found him
sane enough to know right from wrong. The Governor had personally
interviewed the condemned prisoner before reaching his decision.
That meeting had been criticized by a psychiatrist at Bowman Gray
School of Medicine in Winston-Salem as usurping the role of
psychiatry. The Governor responded that psychiatry was as nebulous
as being Governor.
The piece thinks that the doctor would have been on sound
footing had he criticized the death penalty law or the law which
placed the heavy final responsibility for determining clemency on
the Governor, but not for the Governor having undertaken a personal
assessment to better inform his judgment.
It suggests that the emphasis ought be on research to try to
diminish the tendencies to rape, as well as determining whether rape
ought be subject to the death penalty.
A short piece from the Asheville Citizen wonders
whether everyone in Raleigh had left town when Henry Wallace spoke
there, based on the depopulation figure in the Louisville
Courier-Journal, which told of 2,700 of the 6,000 people of
Raleigh having turned out for the speech.
Drew Pearson tells of the special Southwest wheat section of
the Friendship Train having departed Wichita with 102 cars, carrying
wheat from Texas, Colorado, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.
Mr. Pearson, after having conceptualized the train and ridden
on it for eleven days from Los Angeles to New York, deemed it a
success, with 270 boxcar loads of food delivered to New York Harbor
for the trip to France and Italy. The Italian newspapers and radio
broadcasts were already promoting the train, and Italian Premier de
Gasperi had expressed thanks.
He suggests that the effort of Americans to give food
directly could continue through American Overseas Aid in New York as
well as through CARE and the Christian Rural Overseas Program in
Chicago.
He also suggests that some of the aid to go to Europe under
the Marshall Plan in the form of long-term financial assistance be
furnished by American business firms by way of loans from the RFC to
these firms, further to underscore the collective effort of
Americans in providing the aid.
Marquis Childs posits that to carry out ERP would require the
best brains of the country, economic and political specialists. The
U.S. had that responsibility for its world leadership industrially
and technologically.
Given that status, the country could not afford the kind of
witch-hunt beginning within the Government. Such would deter the
best people from entering Government service. Eleven employees of
the State Department had been dismissed during the previous several
months, without any proper basis, labeled "bad security risks".
The Department needed able personnel to administer the Marshall
Plan.
Bert Andrews of the New York Herald-Tribune had
presented one of the cases in detail, showing that the man had been
shadowed by the FBI for eight months without revelation of anything
other than vague suggestions regarding his associates, whom he had
seen at infrequent intervals.
In July, 1945, the FBI took into custody during a raid five
men and a woman, two of the men being State Department employees.
They were stripped and treated as common criminals before being
cleared of any wrongdoing.
The State Department was taking steps to insure that employees who were dismissed in the future for disloyalty could appeal to
the twenty-person Loyalty Board. But getting prospective employees
cleared through the maze of loyalty tests was no easy task for
agencies of the Government.
Recently, a man who sought employment as an economist at one
agency was considered doubtful because five years before the war, he
had been associated with the "Communist-dominated"
American Civil Rights Union. His sterling combat record did not
offset the association.
If such continued, then the country would be unable to
recruit the proper personnel to perform the job under the Marshall
Plan.
Samuel Grafton wonders why Senator Taft, in recommending five
billion dollars per year in aid under ERP rather than the required
seven billion, was being such a spendthrift, as under-funding the
Plan would not accomplish the goal of rebuilding Europe. It reduced
the program to a handout. Mr. Taft, however, did not like price
control and rationing, believed that the job could be accomplished
without such economic controls at five billion dollars.
The Republicans were in trouble with the country because
their theories about the economy being better off under an
unfettered system and that the country would not need to aid Europe
after the war were blowing up. They had even mocked the President
when he tried voluntary rationing, their own pet alternative to
price control. If they were going to reform, they had to face
reality.
A letter writer provides a poem for the newspaper carriers.
Sample:
He's just somebody's little boy,
Trying hard to make the grade;
Let's show him we appreciate
The effort he has made.
She advocates tipping.
A letter from A. W. Black takes to task the "do-gooder"
Ellis Arnall, former Governor of Georgia, for his suggestion that
Communism was not the bogey it was being made out to be by many
Americans. Mr. Black thinks it a definite and growing threat.
He urges that Mr. Arnall ought "hie away to the environs
of Acheron"—apparently making some vague allusion to Macbeth,
making no sense, as Mr. Arnall could hardly be classified as a
politically greedy figure bent on power at any cost. Rather, the
Nixons and McCarthys and Rankins and Thomases fit that mold quite
well.
But Mr. Black was never one for making any sense except by
viewing him as being entirely ironic in his various diatribes.
Unfortunately, it would appear that he was not intentionally being
ironic.
A letter writer suggests that there was no scientific
solution to be found to bring about world peace.