Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Rome, police
riot squads descended on crowds in the Piazza Colonna,
demonstrating in support of the general strike. The police wielded
clubs at the demonstrators who were chanting the Communist anthem
"Red Flag". About 50 were arrested. Two Associated Press
reporters, Frank Noel and J. Walter Green, were struck on the head
by the police, but suffered no injury. The police invasion weakened
the ardor of the crowd, but the strike continued into its second
day, albeit less effective. Throughout the city, jeeploads of police
patrolled and walked three and four abreast along thoroughfares as
they brandished truncheons. Twenty-eight persons were arrested when
demonstrators erected a roadblock on one of Rome's bridges in the
Via Nomentana. Near the Vatican, police in jeeps charged
demonstrators, breaking one youth's leg and knocking a woman to the
ground who was selling black market cigarettes.
At least, unlike latter-day conduct of some police officers
in some of our cities and burgs in the United States, no one was
collared by the throat and thrown to the ground, fired upon, or
killed.
In Milan, the stock exchange was invaded by demonstrators and
it had to suspend the trading session.
The Jewish Irgun underground struck against Arabs with bombs
and guns this date in five different parts of Palestine. Twenty-one
persons, at least 18 of whom were Arab, were killed in the violence,
bringing the total killed, in nearly two weeks since the passage by
the U.N. of partition, to 194. Throughout the Middle East, 310
persons had been killed.
Irgun said that the attacks were in retaliation for Arab
attacks at Gaza, Tireh, Haifa, Yazur, and Shafur. The organization
claimed that the casualties were much higher than the reports had
stated. It also said that the retaliatory attacks would continue.
Otherwise, the violence in Palestine appeared to diminish
somewhat after appeals from political and religious leaders, but
some scattered firing went on in the Jewish section of Jerusalem.
After police blocked the Jaffa gate, the Highland Light Brigade
entered the area.
In London, at the foreign ministers conference, V. M. Molotov
was reported to be considering an agreement to defer the Soviet
demand for ten billion dollars from Germany in war reparations from
production until such time as the German economy was balanced,
provided that the other Big Four nations would agree that German
administrative and economic agencies would be governed exclusively
by Germans. The Soviets generally favored a strong central
government in Germany while the other three nations wanted
limited decentralization. It was likely that Secretary of State
Marshall would not approve of reparations coming from current
production, whether deferred or not. No official response by Mr.
Molotov had yet been made, however, to Secretary Marshall's demand
for an outline of Russia's position on reparations.
The Senate-House Conference Committee, in its efforts to
reconcile the House and Senate versions of approval of the emergency
aid program for Austria, Italy, and France to tide them over for the
winter pending passage of the Marshall Plan, initially agreed to
authorize 150 million dollars to be advanced by the Reconstruction
Finance Corporation to start the emergency aid program as soon as
the final interim aid package was approved. The Committee did not
consider yet the differences in the amount of aid authorized by the
two versions of the bill. The Senate approved 597 million and the
House approved 590 million, 60 million of which was earmarked for
China.
The confreres agreed that not more than 10 percent of the aid
could be used to purchase commodities abroad and that none of it
could be employed to buy goods selling at prices higher than the
domestic rate. Both of the passed versions had set a 25 percent limit on such
purchases. The Committee agreed to the amendment requiring the
President to consider the drain on natural resources and the effect
on prices in determining the aid. They also approved an amendment providing
that as much petroleum would be purchased outside the U.S. as
possible. The House confreres agreed to strike their June 30, 1948
deadline and use the Senate's March 31 date as the final date for
use of the appropriated aid.
Former DNC treasurer Ed Pauley, now assistant to Secretary of
the Army Kenneth Royall, testified before the Senate Appropriations
Committee that he had sold 90 percent of his previous commodities
futures since taking over his new post on September 3, and had lost
$100,000 in so doing. He said that the President could not have
known of his speculation on
grain, corn, and other commodities when, on October 5, the President criticized commodities
speculators for precipitating the rise in price of grain and other
foodstuffs needed for Europe.
Mr. Pauley's nomination for the position of Undersecretary of
the Navy had been withdrawn in early 1946, following a controversy
in which Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes accused Mr. Pauley of
stating to him that he could raise $300,000 for Democratic campaign
coffers in 1944 if the Department of Interior would agree to back
off its claims for the right to tidal oil lands. Mr. Ickes bitterly
resigned his post, held for 13 years, after President Truman stated
publicly that Mr. Ickes could have been wrong in his recollection of
the conversation. Fred Vinson, in 1944, the War Mobilizer,
eventually becoming Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in June,
1946, testified in the confirmation hearings that he was present at
the time of the conversation and remembered money being mentioned by
Mr. Pauley and that the tidal oil lands issue had also been
referenced, but could not recall whether the two had been related or
one made contingent on the other, as alleged by Mr. Ickes.
Subsequently, the Supreme Court, in the previous term, had upheld
the Federal Government's claim to the oil lands over that of the
states, who had been receiving royalties from private companies on leases of the tidal lands,
including the oil interests in California of Mr. Pauley.
The President was quoted for the first time as speaking of
re-election possibilities, after a conference with the Ambassador
from Panama, who informed reporters that Mr. Truman had stated to
him that he would like to visit Panama "if [he was] re-elected."
Tom Schlesinger, son of renowned historian Arthur Schlesinger
and brother of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., reports for The News from
Belmont, N.C., of 200 anxious mill families of the town awaiting
word from a man who had disappeared with their Christmas Savings
Fund, estimated to be between $6,000 and $12,000, to provide
Christmas presents for the mill families. They collected the fund
weekly on Thursdays and turned over the proceeds to the trusted
missing man for deposit in a bank. He had left the previous Friday
with the money, leaving behind a note on the banks of the Catawba
River that he was going to drown himself. The police dragged the
river for three days before the man's wife had received a phone call
from her husband saying he would return shortly to "straighten
up things". It was believed he had been in New York. Thus far,
no one had drawn charges against him as he was a respected member of
the community.
In a poll taken by The News from among newcomers to
Charlotte, 105 answered affirmatively the question whether it was
properly labeled the "Friendly City", while only 13
answered in the negative, with three failing to answer. The
newspaper had mailed 275 postcards to elicit the opinions. News
publisher Thomas L. Robinson, who had arrived from the New York
Times the previous January to take over the reins of the
newspaper, conceived the survey and obtained a list of the newcomers
from the Chamber of Commerce. Most of the respondents had signed
their names. Some provided comments, a few of which are reprinted.
Lack of parking, discourteous police officers, lack of housing, and
need for street improvements appeared to be the primary complaints
about the city. Of the police, one writer suggested more Irish cops.
Former Mayor Ben Douglas had inaugurated a friendliness
campaign in the city in 1935, doing so because when he came to the
city from Gastonia in 1926, he had received the cold shoulder.
On the editorial page, "Substitute for Inflation
Control" discusses the Republican substitute four-point
voluntary program for the President's ten-point plan for inflation control, the Republican approach allowing businesses to cut
or increase prices at will and labor to refrain or not from seeking
raises. The bill allowed the President to regulate exports and to
allocate transportation facilities, but both provisions constituted authority
he already possessed. The credit controls provided in the bill,
increasing the minimum gold reserve required to back up currency,
were actually lower percentages than those already being used by the
Federal Reserve.
In sum, the Republican plan provided no new authority for
compulsory Government control. It was an invitation to control by
private monopoly, enabling price-fixing with impunity under the provision excepting the
anti-trust laws. Senator Taft and his colleagues were kidding
themselves to call such a plan inflation control.
"Gains and Losses in Europe" comments on the end of
the general strike in France having resulted in apparent gains for
the West, as France had broken diplomatic relations with Russia
after expelling Russian citizens thought to be stimulating the
strikes, initiated by the Communist-dominated General Confederation
of Labor. But it was not clear how permanent these gains would be,
and the labor trouble was only now beginning in Italy, where a
general strike had just been called.
The Communist effort was overtly intended to diminish the
effectiveness of the Marshall Plan. Thus, it was likely that the
French strikes were only the first round and more would follow. The
Communists might have better success, it suggests, in Italy, as the
leftist forces were better armed and organized than in France and
were challenging a less entrenched Government.
With this situation extant and continuing hunger and want
being the best friends for facilitating Communist infiltration of the labor
movement, it was all the more reason that the Marshall Plan had to
be enacted as quickly as possible, as each day lost was a day gained
for the Communists.
"Crime Wave Ends on Screen" tells of the Communist
paper L'Humanite providing an explanation for the death of a
little girl in Montreuil, France, by blaming it on American films, as the
perpetrator had been a devotee of the fare.
The MPAA had recently chosen to withdraw from distribution
"Dillinger", "Roger Touhy, Gangster", "The
Racket Man", "This Gun for Hire", "The Murder
Ring", "The Killers", "They Made Me a Killer",
"Born to Kill", "Shoot to Kill", "Me,
Gangster", and "Ladies of the Mob", among the 25
films banned, some not yet released.
It showed that commercialism and not Communism were the
primary motivating forces driving production of American film. Not
one film had been identified by HUAC as subversive, even based on
chairman J. Parnell Thomas's narrow standard gauging such content.
But the crime melodramas had been churned out by the handful over
the years because of their commercial success, despite the police
and social workers warning of their negative effect on some juvenile
minds.
It concludes that while the end of the gangster era in films
would cost the Hollywood producers a lot of money, both Hollywood
and the country would benefit. At least the Communists could no
longer blame crime in foreign lands on American film.
A piece from the Louisville Courier-Journal, titled
"Our Wasted Resources", tells of the President, as he
dedicated the previous week the Everglades National Park in Florida,
having remarked on the importance of conservation of the country's
natural resources. The piece wholeheartedly agrees and states that
it could be worse than the President suggested should the country
fail to do so, that ruin could result. The war had depleted natural resources considerably. Only nine minerals remained
in the country in sufficient quantity to last a century into the
future. Known domestic petroleum reserves would last from 14 to 20
years at current rates of usage, though there were prospects of new
sources.
But there was also the resource of the people of the country
being wasted. Only two million of the ten million men inducted into
the military during World War II had no physical defects. Of the
rest, 1.5 million had major defects before entry, requiring
correction before they could serve. Four and a half million were
rejected, including 40 percent of those 28 years old and fifty
percent who were 34. Fully 40 percent of the men between 18 and 37
were found to be physically defective.
About 30 inductees per thousand were illiterate, nearly ten
percent in the states with the highest rates of
illiteracy.
It concludes that though the country remained rich in
resources, especially relative to Europe, depleted by two world
wars, it had nevertheless been profligate in its waste and could no
longer afford to do so.
Drew Pearson tells of freshman GOP Senators Ralph Flanders,
Joseph McCarthy, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Harry Cain having agreed
that RNC chairman Carroll Reece had been the best asset the
Democrats had, for his failure to sell the public on Republican
accomplishments. A tacit understanding nevertheless was reached
between Mr. Reece and his critics that he would remain on the job,
but would leave national policy to the Republican leadership in
Congress.
He next tells of the second ship bound for Europe with food
from the Friendship Train. The first had gone to France, slated to
arrive December 17, the second bound for Italy, due to arrive
December 23. Two more ships were also set to sail within the ensuing
eight days. The fast shipment was the result of the Commodity Credit
Corporation, whose personnel worked on holidays to get the shipments
transferred to the ships and disembarked. The steamship lines were
carrying the food for free. Goodyear had donated material to
waterproof the packages and several listed freight handlers had
loaded the ships.
When the shipments reached their destinations, the food would
be distributed in France and Italy by four Friendship Trains, with
posters depicting how the food was gathered from American citizens.
As an old slapstick routine went, Republicans became so absorbed
recently in discussion of price control, while sipping coffee and
soup at the House restaurant, that one Congressman, John Jennings of
Tennessee, poured sugar in his soup, while another, Howard Buffett
of Nebraska, poured syrup in his coffee, intending to hit his
waffles. Congressman Earl Michener of Michigan urged the two not to
allow Drew Pearson to hear of it.
Marquis Childs, in New Orleans, tells of the city conveying
the new look of the new South, that the old magnolias and crinolines
were merely tourist attractions reminiscent of a bygone era. The
boosters of the city wanted to make it the hub of commerce for the
whole lower Mississippi Valley. Several floors of a downtown office
building were devoted to a center for trade with Latin America.
Special emphasis was on linking the city with Central America.
Representatives of the city, including Mayor De Lesseps
Morrison, had made trips to Central America to stimulate trade.
International House, a source of pride for the city, had 1,500
members and served as headquarters for Central American visitors.
The changes had been accelerated by the late war. The rural
South lost population to the North and to new industry in the South.
As a result, Southern agriculture was being mechanized at an
increasing, record rate. Rice in Louisiana and Arkansas was being
harvested by combines and dried artificially. Sharecroppers were
wooed to the cities by better employment. The standard of living was
thus rising. The Jeeter Lesters of Erskine Caldwell were not skilled
enough in any event to operate the complex farm machinery.
Significantly, industry was locating plants in small
communities throughout the South, close to raw materials.
The changes were reflected in politics in the South, with the
Bilbos gradually disappearing from the landscape. He cites newly
elected Senator John Stennis, who had recently won the seat of the
deceased Theodore Bilbo, as an example of the new breed of able
Southern politician. He could become an agent of change, though he
was by no means a radical.
Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee, who voted against
emergency aid to Europe, was now out of place in this new South. The
new breed understood that the South, as the rest of the nation,
depended on the rest of the world.
There was potential, he suggests, for greatness in the future
to come from the South.
James Marlowe tells of labor acting to get what it wanted by
combining forces economically and politically. The CIO, AFL, and
trainmen's brotherhoods were going to take an active role in the
1948 campaign. The CIO was planning to demand higher wages to meet
the higher cost of living, a third round of wage demands since the
end of the war.
The CIO PAC had a major, though not decisive, role in the
1944 election in which FDR defeated Governor Dewey. The PAC,
however, had little impact in the 1946 mid-term elections in which
the Republicans were swept back into power in both houses of
Congress for the first time in 16 years.
But when the Republican Congress enacted Taft-Hartley the
previous June, the labor leaders vowed vengeance, stating that they
would elect a new Congress in 1948. AFL set up its own PAC as a
result and joined CIO in the effort. Nineteen of the 21 railroad
brotherhoods set up their own political action committee as well.
At the end of the war, wage and price controls were ended
over a period of a year, giving both management and labor what they
wanted. But with that, prices rose, causing inflation, producing in
turn more demands for higher wages, and the cycle continued. The
third round of wage increases would likewise be canceled out if
followed by more price increases. The people most hurt in the
country were non-organized workers, especially white collar workers,
who did not benefit from the wage increases.
The remedy was for Congress to return to a moderate version
of price control and perhaps also cut taxes. Wage controls would
also have to be enacted to make the program work, something labor
did not want. So CIO, in its latest threat to make new wage demands,
was placing pressure on Congress and business.
A letter writer finds Matthew 23:24 coming to mind
while reading an article in The News by reporter Tom Watkins,
titled "Police Alert for Violation of NC's Fireworks Laws".
The verse reads: "Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and
swallow a camel."
He relates that possession of a cap for a cap pistol by a
child ten years old was prima facie evidence of a misdemeanor
under the new law. He suggests, however, that the law was
hypocritical for the fact that the statistics would bear out fewer
people killed or injured annually by fireworks than by consumption
of legal alcohol.
He thinks it nonsensical to deprive children of the joy of
shooting off fireworks at Christmas.
At least in 1947 North Carolina, the possession of a cap
pistol was not prima facie ground for using lethal force
against the child two seconds after a police car drives
up astride the child's position, shooting fatal shots first, asking
dumb questions later.
A letter writer approves of the editorial by Samuel Grafton
of December 9, regarding censorship of the person rather than the
work being the new guiding principle after the Hollywood Ten
citations for contempt issued in latter October by HUAC and about to
be prosecuted by the Justice Department.
The writer finds it "intellectual lynching" to
accuse someone, based on surmise, of harboring subversive ideas and
injecting them subliminally into movie scripts. It was, the writer
says, the essence of Fascist totalitarianism to govern by
defamation.
Ditto for governance by a gun and unnecessary application of
force generally.
By the same token, the public needs to be educated to the notion that one does not touch a police officer, move aggressively toward their position, make sudden and unexpected movements if being detained, and should certainly not reach in one's waist area or otherwise where a firearm might be secreted. And toy guns which look real should not be pointed at passersby in a park. Also, citizen, there is no such thing as "verbal assault". Assault requires a touching or attempted touching of the person. Police officers, as every other citizen, enjoy the right of freedom of speech, which includes, if one damn well pleases, cussing, as long as it is not unduly loud under the circumstances of utterance or communicating of actual threats of bodily harm. Threats of a lawsuit or punitive action are protected speech by the Constitution, not "threats".
As we have said many times, more stress on freedom of expression in this country and far less on guns, "Second Amendment Rights", and some of this misconduct by the citizenry and by police officers, through misjudgment or otherwise, would diminish rather quickly. There is no such thing as a perfect society and we surely will not have one in an armed camp.
A letter from A. W. Black responds to "Foes of
Democracy", appearing November 29—not on the microfilm—, suggests it being
representative of the "sentiments espoused by the Muscovite
pawns who sing hosannas to the Fuehrer of the Kremlin and veil
themselves with the label of 'liberal'." He finds such people
to approve even Henry Wallace, Claude Pepper, and Ellis
Arnall—well-known Commies, "too 'red'" for him.
