The Charlotte News

Friday, November 28, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the partition of Palestine was expected to be approved in the U.N. General Assembly later this date—as it would be the following day. Secretary-General Dr. Oswaldo Aranha of Brazil predicted that the vote would be at least 31 to 15 in favor of the Soviet-American plan for partition, possibly 33 to 13, in either event enough to surpass the needed two-thirds majority. Pakistan, Cuba, and Iraq contended that high pressure tactics were being employed by "great powers" to obtain the favorable vote, by implication suggesting the U.S. and Russia.

The Senate voted to ban Austria, Italy, and France from purchasing arms with any of the 597 million dollars worth of emergency aid. Final vote on the aid package was expected to occur Monday.

At the London foreign ministers conference, France proposed that Russia receive from Austria 100 million dollars worth of Austrian production, that of the Zisterdorf oil fields and from shipping on the Danube, as reparations under the Austrian treaty. A Russian source said that the Soviets would reject the proposal, designed as a compromise on what constituted true German assets within Austria, the limit of reparations for Russia pursuant to the Potsdam accord.

The foreign ministers of the Big Four meanwhile were consulting anent the German treaty.

France called an additional 80,000 troops to colors to meet the emergency crisis building in the country regarding the nationwide strike involving two million workers, stimulated by the Communist-dominated labor union. The new forces would bring the total to fifteen divisions deployed within the previous week.

In Milan, thousands of workers participated in a one-day general strike, paralyzing the city's transportation. The strike was in protest of the Government's removal of Ettore Troilo, a member of the Leftist Action Party, as prefect of Milan. The Mayor of Milan resigned in sympathy, as had 160 Communist and Socialist mayors throughout the province. In response, the military garrison in Milan was mobilized to take control of the city.

Secretary of Commerce Averell Harriman told the joint Economic Committee of the hope for lower prices on lumber, meat, and steel to come from the President's ten-point anti-inflation program. Senator Robert Taft had expressed his belief that the Administration was not in good faith in asking for limited authority over allocation controls while actually wanting unlimited controls, a claim confuted by Secretary Harriman.

On the Chicago Board of Trade, December wheat hit a 30-year high at $3.16.75 per bushel while December oats hit a record of $1.26.5. May wheat also hit a record-high of $3 per bushel.

The U.S. Embassy in New Delhi was investigating reports that a former Army sergeant was leading a company of northwest frontier tribal raiders against the Indian and Kashmir State Army forces in southern Kashmir. The former sergeant was reported by a British correspondent who had interviewed him to be wearing cowboy regalia and as having left a road construction job in Afghanistan to join the invaders of Kashmir. He claimed to have been part of the Canadian Army when it invaded Dieppe in August, 1942, suffering severe losses.

General LeClerc, the armored warfare leader of France during the war who had distinguished himself in the North African campaign of the U.S. Third Army, was killed in an airplane crash in the Sahara Desert.

In Wayland, Mass., the nude, frozen body of a 22-year old graduate student from Radcliffe College was found with a rifle shot through the head. A Winchester .22 rifle was found ten or fifteen feet from the young woman's body. State detectives believed it would have been possible for her to move the distance after being shot. Her car was found nearby with a bill of sale for the rifle inside.

In Cherryville, N.C., a new Recorder's Court judge shot himself just above the heart while sitting in his car at his home, was in critical condition.

Doris Duke Rubirosa had returned to the United States and would shortly join her new husband, Dominican Ambassador to Argentina, in Buenos Aires.

In Charlotte, at 5:30 a.m., a man fell dead in the street from a cerebral hemorrhage and a car driven by a doctor then passed over the body. A coroner's report showed the man was already dead when struck.

News reporter Tom Lynch reports on the dedication of Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C., on page 19-A.

In Charlotte, "Rededication Week" began with "Labor-Management Day". Industrial plants in the city, equipped with public address systems, would lead workers in the "Freedom Pledge", one line of which went, "Free to speak—without fear."

On the editorial page, "Our Week of Rededication" tells of the Freedom Train coming to Charlotte on December 4, with its message of new hope and purpose, exampled by the founding documents of the nation aboard. It suggests special meaning for Charlotte and Mecklenburg, where the concept of freedom took early root in the colonies, and, according to legend, had its birth. The visitors to the train would see that freedom and democracy were not merely the result of laws and documents but rather consisted of a concept and a promise.

The week would include, in addition to Labor-Management Day, Agriculture Day, Freedom of Religion Day, School Day, Veterans' Day, and Women's Day, prior to the arrival of the train on Thursday.

"For Harding, Central and Tech" suggests that the three R's had been supplanted by the three F's, football, fandom, and finances, at the city's high schools. The average student knew as much of football plays as the Pythagorean theorem. The students' interests were, however, a function of parental guidance.

Harding High had enjoyed the greatest fan support in its history, with 2,100 having turned out to see its opening game against Mt. Airy. Central had won the Western Class AA championship and was attracting crowds in the range of 13,000. Tech had won seven and lost three, with two ties, having one of its greater seasons.

It provides "the three R's Men of the Season in the three F's" to the coaches of the three high schools—whatever that was supposed to mean.

"Farm Policy in North Carolina" tells of those formulating Government agricultural policy favoring a temporary switch during 1948 from diversification to grain production to allow for foreign consumption, despite the risk of soil depletion for farmers.

North Carolina farmers produced only 2.7 percent of the corn and less than a percent of the winter wheat of the nation and so were less affected by the change than those of other states. The state's agricultural staples were tobacco and cotton and so its agricultural base would have little impact on relief of the European countries under the Marshall Plan. The state's farmers, it suggests, ought be moving toward diversification and soil conservation efforts, notwithstanding the new program urged by the Government, as a two-crop economy was passe and economically limiting.

North Carolina's farm population was exceeded only by Texas and yet its per farm cash income ranked 38th among the states. It was no less patriotic to follow a plan to eradicate farm poverty than to abandon temporarily the diversification program as recommended by the Government.

A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "Politicians Are People", records that a Gallup poll showed that parents did not want their children entering politics as they believed it led to "graft and crookedness". The piece thinks it unhealthy to a democracy to have such a perception prevailing. It shifted blame for the country's own shortcomings to a convenient scapegoat. Politicians, it ventures, were also human beings and there were proportions of bad and good among them equal to the similarly situate of the general population.

Politicians had weighty responsibilities and had to engage in compromise to get things done. It was not to excuse the occasional corruption, but when it occurred, someone had to be responsible for producing the conditions which led to it, such as supplying the inducements of gifts and favors.

Society got the politicians it deserved and when it learned to appreciate the vagaries of being a public servant, as well the achievements when they occurred, encouraged instead young people to seek a life in politics, then the public would be less likely to engage in cynical, self-righteous condemnation.

Drew Pearson tells of the most recent meeting of the Senate Republican Policy Committee having resulted in many new Senators voicing the opinion that the party had to turn from destructive criticism to constructive policies. Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky criticized Senator Taft for his quick reply to the Truman ten-point anti-inflation program prior to any serious study of the points—seeking, as it were, to stop the rising horns of the buck. He believed examination of the program was in order, maintaining in the process an open mind. He cited the loss in the gubernatorial election in Kentucky as a sign of incumbent problems for the GOP unless things were to change.

Senators Ralph Flanders of Vermont and Ray Baldwin of Connecticut agreed that the Senator from Ohio had prematurely jumped on the President. Mr. Pearson notes that the subcommittee on Eastern living costs, of which the two Senators had been members, had delivered a report which supplied the basis for the bulk of the President's recommendations, less that of wage and price controls and rationing. Senator Flanders reminded Senator Taft of this fact and suggested that he should have consulted with other Republican leaders before making his opposition statement.

Senator Edward Thye of Minnesota expressed the belief that farmers were upset because of the perceived indifference of the GOP to their plight and believed the Republicans had tried to scuttle some of the Government program beneficial to them. With the exception of wheat producers, farmers were not pleased with current prices. With feed prices and labor costs high, dairy farmers were netting less against the high cost of living than during the days of OPA. Gross receipts were up, but net was down.

Generally, Senator Taft did not fare well in the behind-closed-doors meeting.

Mr. Pearson notes that many of the freshman Senators so making statements had been governors and had long experience in public affairs.

Marquis Childs, in Ames Iowa at Iowa State College, tells of the school being a leader in agricultural sciences and the advancements derived from them for adequate crop systems to feed the growing population of the country through the ensuing decades and through the next century. By continuing current soil conservation techniques which the Government had taught during the New Deal and by developing new methods of conservation and development of 80 million acres of undeveloped good-crop land, in need of irrigation and clearing, the food supply for the country could be sustained indefinitely, without depleting the soil from bumper crops as were currently being produced.

It was predicted that given the estimated population increase by 1960, there would be an arable soil deficit absent development of the unused land and application of soil conservation techniques to that quarter or so of the arable acreage to which they had not yet been applied.

Meanwhile, the soil conservation service budget had been slashed by Congress from 1.4 million dollars to a little over a million, when ten times that amount was needed.

It was evident in any event that the Midwest was abandoning its isolationist tradition, a fact of great political significance to the country.

Samuel Grafton tells of Governor Thomas Dewey recently having made a speech at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York in which he plaintively sought aid for Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist Government in China in their fight against the Communists of the North. He expressed amazement that the President had said nothing about China as part of the Marshall Plan.

Mr. Dewey needed to oppose parts of the foreign policy while generally lending his approval to it. Sometimes he did so by taking credit for much of it; other times, as on this occasion, he claimed to support it while saying it was not very good.

But despite the Governor's carping regarding supposed ignoring of China, the Administration had in fact considered the plight of the civil war beset country in depth. Chiang's Government had been found to be full of corruption, with U.S. aid to the country misused for ends other than its intended purpose. The result was to encourage more Chinese to convert to Communism.

Secretary Marshall had been in China in 1946 as the President's special emissary and knew the country's problems far better than Governor Dewey. Secretary Marshall believed that only the liberals could save China, that the reactionaries in power in the Chiang Government were worthy of condemnation.

To "preserve democracy" in China, as demanded by Governor Dewey, was to blink the fact that there was no democratic freedom in the first instance in the country to be revitalized and preserved. Mr. Dewey wanted preservation of any anti-Communist organization, no matter its character, whether democratic or reactionary.

The New York Governor and GOP candidate for the 1948 presidential nomination appeared to be fulfilling the prophecy made by General Marshall the previous January, that the reactionaries of the Government of Chiang counted on substantial American support for their cause.

A piece regarding the Freedom Train, absent a by-line, presumably continuing the series of Charles W. Duke from Editor & Publisher, discusses religious freedom in the country from its earliest days, as characterized by the First Amendment freedom of religion and establishment clauses of the Constitution, amply represented on the train. The train carried the 1644 Statement of Religious Freedom by Roger Williams, founder of the Rhode Island Colony.

A 1644 edition of the Bay Psalm Book, first printed in 1640 by Stephen Daye, was also included.

The Maryland Toleration Act of 1649 was aboard.

A copy of the Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia, composed by Thomas Jefferson, was also among the documents in the exhibit. First introduced in 1779 in the Virginia House of Delegates but, for conservative opposition, not being passed until 1786, Mr. Jefferson had asked that he be credited with its authorship on his tombstone. The exemplar aboard the train was from 1784. It set the standard for guarantee of religious freedom embodied in the First Amendment.

Herblock.

There is no edition of The News available for Saturday on the microfilm and so we shall see you Monday.

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