Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Foreign Secretary
Ernest Bevin of Britain blamed Russia's hostile propaganda for the
failure of the London foreign ministers conference, which had sought
to obtain agreement on treaties for Germany and Austria. Rather than
for its intended purpose of writing treaties, the Council of Foreign
Ministers, he said, was being used by Russia as a platform for
dissemination of false statements about the West. But he also
indicated that some further negotiation with Russia was ongoing with
respect to Austria and that Russia was expected soon to submit a
proposal for final agreement.
The House approved the previous day the set aside of the 88
million dollar reserve fund for China out of the emergency aid bill
and the 260 million dollar cut to the 490 million sought by the Army
for occupation costs. The Senate was now considering the bill. The
Administration urged that the money be restored to the emergency
fund.
The Senate defeated Senator Alben Barkley's amendments to the
Republican voluntary inflation control bill. One amendment would
have authorized the President to allocate scarce commodities
affecting the cost of living, and another amendment would have given
Congress authority to veto any exercise of that power. Senator Taft
contended that the amendments would have changed the entire
complexion of the bill.
The national commander of the American Legion pleaded in a
written statement submitted to the House Veterans Committee for an
end to pork-barrel politics in construction of veterans housing. The
statement was accompanied by a proposed bill introduced by 20
members of Congress to provide for low-cost housing. Non-profit
organizations would build and purchase homes under the bill's
provisions.
Lt. General John C. H. Lee, who had been the controversial
commander in Italy, exposed in the press for living luxuriously
while his men suffered, both during and after the war, was being
retired by the Army for physical disability, pursuant to his
request, effective December 31.
House Ways & Means Committee chairman Harold Knutson
introduced a third tax reduction bill of the year, the first two
having been vetoed by the President during the summer. This one
provided for a 5.6 million dollar tax reduction with up to 58
percent tax savings for lower income brackets and up to ten percent
for upper brackets, eliminating 7.4 million people from the tax
roles. He expected the House to take up the measure when it convened
in regular session again in January. The piece explains the various
provisions of the bill. Mr. Knutson described it as "veto-proof".
Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson promised to provide
the Senate with a list of heavy traders in commodities to assist
their investigation into grain and other food speculation, which was
a major factor contributing to inflated prices.
In Lenoir, N.C., the prosecution rested in the trial of former high
school principal R. L. Fritz, accused of misappropriating $1,600 of
school funds, paying it to teachers for overtime work to keep the
school functioning during a personnel shortage. The last of the
prosecution's witnesses was the State Board of Education comptroller
who had first reported the irregularities in the school's books the
previous summer.
Mr. Fritz appears to have operated quite above board and did
not feel compelled to shred any hundred-dollar bills or other
documents after being caught.
One of the defense lawyers, not Sam J. Ervin, made a motion
for non-suit and argued admissibility of evidence, primarily a
letter from Mr. Fritz, accompanying the refund of the money he had
used, in which he had denied wrongdoing and explained that the money
was used to keep the school open. The judge ruled it admissible
during the defense case, having earlier ruled it out of order for
rebuttal purposes during the prosecution's case.
The defense successfully prohibited evidence from going
before the jury from a teacher who was going to testify that she had
heard from an office worker that things were "financially
loose" at the school while Mr. Fritz was principal.
The evidence was barred by the prohibition of hearsay, not
within any exception. The jury never heard it and so news readers
ought also to disregard it as inherently unreliable. We only mention
it because the compleat reporter saw fit to tell everyone about it
during the trial of a case in which the jury was not sequestered.
Thank ye. Thank ye very much.
Martha Azer London of The News reports of a woman
thanking the Lord for her delivery of fuel oil in a time of shortage
in Charlotte prior to the first of the year. She was the first
recipient under an emergency allocation program initiated by Mayor
Herbert Baxter. She provided housing for six veterans in an
oil-heated cottage behind her home, which was heated by coal. The
Mayor was present for the filling of the tank.
Dick Young warns residents against use of substitutes, as
gasoline, for heating during the fuel oil shortage. Don't get burned
up at Christmas. For that is not good.
In Tokyo, a Japanese farmer had a growing rice shoot removed
from his eye. Watch out for those, too. You can no more harvest rice
from your eyes than you can roller skate in a buffalo herd.
The Empty Stocking Fund, for supplying Christmas to needy
families in the community, an annual charity sponsored by The
News, was falling short, according to the banner along the bottom of
the page. We venture that absence of the usual front page daily running tally and identification of donors may have been the fault.
Cough it up.
On the editorial page, "Education, Research, Progress"
tells of a meeting to be held in Charlotte the next day of the
Business Foundation of North Carolina, to be addressed by its
president, Robert Hanes, president of Wachovia Bank in
Winston-Salem. His view was that the state's most precious asset was
its people and that educational progress was necessary to advance
that resource.
"Campus Reds Meet Competition" tells of Dickson
Hartwell having reported in Collier's his findings following
a study of political activity on six of America's largest
"educational factory" campuses. He found rampant Communism
alongside sufficiently mature political ideology of other students
to maintain the Reds in check.
The Young Democrats and Young Republicans were keeping the
Communist Clubs down on the collective farm, preoccupied with
raising pigs and pumpkins for next Halloween and Thanksgiving.
The piece asserts that the report supported the view that the
college generation of the day would "fashion a better world
than that which it inherited from the mustachioed collegians of the
1900's and the raccoon-coated playboys of the Roaring Twenties."
"Aachoo! Who Let That Draft In?" tells of the
Footwear Division of the Rubber Manufacturers Association, Inc.,
having come to the conclusion that the cure for the common cold lay
in dry footwear. Some 23 million persons in the country would suffer
a cold during the holiday season and the odds, according to a Gallup
poll, were two to one during the winter in favor of the cold.
Only humans and monkeys got the cold. Women were twice as
likely as men to have it. Children in their first two years in
school were more susceptible than adults. Female college student
smokers had more colds than college female non-smokers. It would be
impolitic to engage here in too much ratiocinational extrapolation
on these points, and so we move on, for the betterment of mankind.
It recommends that which we already recommended a few days
ago and so you can go back and read that, the piece adding properly
and topically to keep the feet dry. One might also stress that the
top of the head should be maintained in dry condition.
A piece from the Winston-Salem Journal, titled
"Elizabeth City's Example", tells of civic, religious, and
women's organizations in the North Carolina town having donated the
money which ordinarily they would spend at their meetings for food
to CARE for provision of Europe.
In New England, a woman had founded the "Share-a-Shawl"
Club to produce knitted shawls for Europe.
They were but two examples, among many, of American
generosity, perhaps motivated by the awareness that preservation of
Europe was necessary to preservation of the economy of America, but
nevertheless provided in the spirit of compassion.
Drew Pearson tells of a group of Southern economists having
prepared a report for the House Agriculture Committee, recommending
that 27.4 billion dollars be appropriated to get the South on par
economically. It posited that the underlying cause of Southern
poverty was its rutted agrarian system, with too many people seeking
to make a living off mediocre soil, exhausted by over-cultivation
and one-crop systems. Southern farm families reproduced at 80
percent beyond replication, that is to say ten-person families on
average, including the non-rabbit farms.
The new mechanical tools of the farm, especially the cotton
picker and flame weeder, would send many off the farm, probably most
to Nashville or Los Angeles, by 1965, displacing by then an
estimated 2.1 million.
The problem, according to the report, was that interest rates
were higher in the South, where rates before the war averaged
between 6.5 and 11.5 percent, than in the North, where rates had
averaged 5.7 percent.
If Southern industrialization was victimized by monopoly, it
would wither on the vine.
The South had a third of the nation's school children but
only a sixth of the school revenue. It had one doctor for every
1,280 persons, compared to a nationwide rate of one for every 876.
Per capita income was much lower, albeit partially offset by a lower
cost of living. But the fact had limited business expansion.
The report found, however, that the South had great potential
for development through diversified economies producing higher
standards of living.
He provides the report's eight-point recommendation. It
advocated that 13.4 billion dollars be appropriated for long-term
technological development over the ensuing twenty years, and 14
billion more for normal investment.
Samuel Grafton tells of the U.S. and Russia embarking on a
period in which there would, in effect, be no further negotiations
between them. The principle of peace through agreement had died at
the conclusion of the foreign ministers conference in London. The
Foreign Ministers Council, itself, had collapsed with the end of
that nugatory conference. With the principle of unanimity gone, the
Security Council was also a nullity, as much so as the void of
space.
Columnist Walter Lippmann had suggested that diplomacy return
to the form of old, in which ambassadors engaged in private talks
and exchange of written proposals. But, remarks Mr. Grafton, no
Western diplomat could now participate in such tête-à-tête
without being immediately recalled home. Such conduct would arouse
so much suspicion within the hysterical environment created over
Communism that fear would spread quickly of the country being sold
out. Any final agreement would then have to overcome both that
suspicion and the fear by Russia of the U.S. as "imperialist
dogs".
It was better to face the situation than to engage further in
false hope of a permanent peace.
Each side circumnavigated into that dark area of the moon
with a theory. The West believed it would recover economically and
avoid Communism, that the Balkan satellites would wish to resume
trade with the West and become discontented with Russian rule, and
that Russia, itself, might weaken under that strain. The Russians
believed that with enough propaganda, Western Europe could be
convinced to distrust the U.S. as imperialists and that the U.S.
would become mired in domestic crisis. The two theories would now
vie head to head into the future.
If the world were lucky, the passing years in the condition
would only harden the status quo and, as the theories gathered dust,
a foreign minister at some time in the future might be able to
resume negotiations across the divide. But that was to whistle up a
good deal of luck.
He asks rhetorically whether there was any other way. "Must
we be the generation which lives in the powder mill?"
He concludes: "When terror does the work of hope, then
hope is really ill."
Joseph Alsop, still in London, suggests that it was folly for
the U.S. to take Britain for granted, and would be likewise to take
Italy and France for granted, now that Communism in the latter two
countries had, for the nonce, been defeated. The passage of the
emergency aid bill by Congress had provided new hope in all three
countries. Otherwise, even some in Britain, given its desperate
economic plight, had toyed with throwing the country into the Communist
camp, fully knowing the result. And those feelings could recur with
greater currency if the Congress did not pass the Marshall Plan in a
manner which enabled it to succeed. With the Anglo-Soviet trade
agreement signed with Britain, the result was the more likely in the
event of an emasculated ERP.
The American Government during the war became accustomed to
Winston Churchill giving it what it wanted in terms of British
cooperation. And Mr. Churchill had no compunction about haggling for
greater American participation in the war, commensurate with its
greater production capacity and population than that of Britain. But
since the war, the Labor Government had more things to think about
at home than cooperation with America, disabusing the U.S. of that
former great and abiding expectation. And whereas lend-lease did not
bother the pride of Mr. Churchill, it did Ernest Bevin and the Labor
Government of Mr. Attlee, populated primarily by men brought up the
hard way, instilled with a deep appreciation for the value of money,
believing that America might play a reverse tune on the penny
whistle and take away effectively Britain's independence under an
aid program.
That important hidden dynamic underlying Anglo-American
relations had the potential, he warns, to produce serious rifts
between the two nations.
A letter writer informs of interest in the article on the
"Friendly City" poll conducted by The News at the
instance of new publisher Thomas L. Robinson, formerly of the New
York Times, who had taken over the newspaper a year earlier.
This anonymous writer had not been among those polled and so
ventures an opinion, siding with the 13 negative votes, following
six months of residence in the Queen City.
The person says that the few people met during that time had
been most unfriendly, busy in their self-centered social cliques,
not interested in newcomers.
The writer says that life had been very unhappy in Charlotte
thus far and consideration was being given to moving elsewhere.
Well then move, Yankee.
A letter from the chief barker of the Variety Club of
Charlotte thanks the newspaper for its support of the First Charity
All-Star Football Game on December 13 at Memorial Stadium, even if
attendance had been disappointing.
A letter from failed Republican Congressional candidate P. C.
Burkholder responds unfavorably to the December 10 editorial on
former Pennsylvania Governor George Earle, who had claimed exile by
FDR to Samoa for writing the President in early 1945 that he had
determined that the Russians were a greater threat than the Germans,
wished to publicize the fact, drawing in response the President's
veto and transfer from being his personal emissary to Turkey to the
disfavored position in remote Samoa. The piece had found the
"punishment" proper, as the intended action showed a lack
of judgment vis-à-vis
an indispensable ally.
The usually spot-on acuity of
Mr. Burkholder is again in evidence, as he suggests that Secretary
of State Marshall was practicing the role of Neville Chamberlain in
Munich in 1938 and that FDR had given Stalin "his great seat"
at the table. He then echoes the warning of his true hero, Adolf
Hitler, who he says admonished, when he was stopped on the Eastern
Front, that the world now understood the power of Russia. Mr.
Burkholder concludes that Russia had more power over the world than
Hitler ever dared to have.
But Russia, Mr. Burkholder, had
not rolled over France and then sent bombs into London. There is a
profound difference. Why don't you stick to farming?
A letter writer from Seattle
compliments the newspaper for an editorial appearing November 19,
"Man in a Turban Tours South", reprinted in the Tacoma
Times of December 9, says
that it was true that those outside the South had a long row to hoe
also in smoothing race relations before being too quick to criticize
and damn the South for its racial problems.
