Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that further violence
was erupting in Palestine, stimulated by Arab resistance to the
partition plan passed by the U.N. the previous Saturday. Wrecking
and burning had taken place throughout Jerusalem and mass
demonstrations were threatened throughout the Middle East. This
date, three Jews were reported killed and 22 injured, along with six
Arabs injured. A curfew was imposed on Arab quarters of Jerusalem.
Thousands of Egyptians demonstrated in Cairo, breaking
windows of foreign-owned shops, and participating in other activity
reminiscent of the pre-war Nazis of Kristallnacht.
At Aleppo in Syria, a mob broke into the Jewish quarter and
began burning and attacking. Violent reaction took place also in
Baghdad, where demonstrators shouted anti-American and anti-Russian
slogans. In Beirut, there were demonstrations but no reports of
violence.
The Secretary-General of the Arab League promised an
abundance of arms to the demonstrators.
A source in Britain stated that it was probable that the
British Government would increase legal Jewish immigration to
Palestine by 50 percent between the present time and August 1.
In Paris, a ten-hour silent filibuster by Communist deputies
in the National Assembly ended early this date when the leading
Communist Deputy was ejected from the chamber and the Assembly
called back into session to enact an anti-strike law which had been
requested by Premier Robert Schuman. The other Communist deputies
had followed the ejected leader out of the Assembly. He had urged
the previous day that Army reservists refuse to comply with
Government orders calling them to colors to abate the strike
activity and maintain order. He had then been censured by his
colleagues.
One work stoppage had been cleared during the morning when
police removed strikers from six power plants in the Paris area.
House Majority Leader Charles Halleck stated that there was
growing sentiment among his fellow House Republicans to cut the
President's proposed 597 million dollar emergency aid package to
Italy, Austria, and France.
Let 'em grow their own food. What is this, some kind o'
charity? If the Commies come in, we'll just drop the atom bomb and
solve all of it at once. We fought for 'em, bled for 'em. What do
they want now but a handout? Merry Christmas.
The Senate approved the aid measure, largely in the form
requested by the President, by a vote of 83 to 6 on Monday.
Secretary of Labor Lewis Schwellenbach warned the House
Banking Committee that another round of wage boosts would be sought
for labor unless Congress took action to control the cost of living.
David Lilienthal, chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy
Commission, stated to the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers that the country was producing both uranium and plutonium
atomic weapons in the laboratories at Los Alamos, N.M.
It had been disclosed the previous day that a new proving
ground for atomic weapons was being developed on Eniwetok atoll in
the Pacific.
It had been exactly five years earlier that Enrico Fermi had
demonstrated on an athletic field at the University of Chicago that
energy could be produced from the nucleus of an atom of naturally
unstable uranium and used in a controlled manner.
The President was planning a six-day vacation in Key West,
Fla., with attendance at the dedication to the Everglades National
Park scheduled for the following Saturday.
In Camp Lee, Va., 35 Army paychecks, totaling nearly $13,000,
which had been missing along with a lieutenant who had agreed to
pick them up for fellow officers the previous day, arrived at the
camp by mail. The lieutenant had been charged by the FBI with
embezzlement and being AWOL.
In Cleveland, a thief somehow made off with a pharmacy's cash
register without detection, despite the fact that it weighed 60
pounds. The pharmacist and his two clerks had seen no one suspicious
in the drug store.
Pete McKnight of the News tells of Word Wood of
Charlotte, director of the American Trust Co. for 46 years, having
announced his intention to retire in mid-January. Mr. Wood was 75.
Tom Fesperman of The News reports that after Santa
Claus asked a child to approach him at the local Toyland to tell him
what he wished to receive for Christmas, the child recoiled,
claiming that Santa would throw ashes in his eyes if he did so.
Santa said that he would not do such a thing. Finally, the little
boy hove to and sat on Santa's knee. He told Santa that the reason
for his belief, formed from fallacious assumptions about the nature
of reality, was that his mother had warned him that if Santa were to
come down the chimney and find him still awake, he would throw ash
in his eyes. The admonition had alarmed him.
Santa convinced the boy, however, that his mother was a
dirty, rotten, slandering liar, spreading vicious, evil rumors about
people of whom she knew nothing. Santa loved children, he convinced
the boy.
He then informed him, in no uncertain phrases, that unless he
stopped those lies from attaching to his reputation, otherwise
sterling, he would insure the throwing in his eyes, administered by
a third-party agency, not of ash, but rather lye. Then he would be
blind for Christmas.
Sports writer Furman Bisher reports on the sports page of his
attendance at the minor league baseball conference in Miami.
Last week, incidentally, our predictions were a little askew. Instead of 58 to 36, 103-80, 75-65, and 63-60, the actual results were, in order of comparison, not chronologically, 35 to 7, 74-66, 78-56, and 75-64. Granted, the penultimate prediction does appear, at first glance, to be indicative of some precognitive awareness. But it was for the wrong game, in proper ordination, and so we must have confused the signals, there being so many in one week upon which to maintain a steady frequency lock.
We note that the 35-7 score was nearly, but for the last couple of minutes of the game, 35-0, which, had it been, would have equaled the same score of the Gator Bowl of December 28, 1963, albeit in reverse, with the Air Force Falcons on the losing end of that one, in Jacksonville, Florida, home of Jax Beer. We thus are constrained to conclude, given our derogatory remarks last year on the opponent of this past Saturday, with regard to that school and its opponent of November 22, 1963 not having postponed their scheduled nighttime contest for the fact of inconvenience to their fans, after consultation in the afternoon between the respective presidents of the institutions at the time, and our feeling still that it was disgraceful conduct by the administrations of the two schools to carry on thus, that the present edition of the football team representing that school must have within their ranks substantial numbers of Nixon-lovers.
On the editorial page, "A Blow to Downtown Planning"
tells of the City Council in Charlotte once again being faced with
the setback ordinance to widen streets and afford more parking
downtown into the future. The Council had passed a zoning ordinance
the previous year providing for setbacks in outlying areas, but not
in downtown. The Council opted to approach the issue on an ad hoc
basis. The piece finds it troublesome.
"Arab Threat to the World" expresses little doubt
that the seven-nation Arab League would make good its threat to
resist with violence the partition of Palestine, passed by a
two-thirds majority of the U.N. the previous Saturday.
It proposes as a solution the creation of an international
police force, backed by Russia and the U.S., prime proponents of the
plan, to force the retreat of the Arab nations.
The Arab League was positing its defiance on that of Russia
and its satellites and their similar reaction with respect to the
U.N. approved Balkans watch commission regarding border incursions
in Greece and the Korean independence commission.
The U.N. had committed itself to the partition plan and it
had to be enforced or the U.N. would lose all authority and prestige
in this crucial test. The reward for successful implementation of
the plan was worth all the hazards it entailed.
"E.B. Dudley, Sr., Good Citizen" eulogizes Mr.
Dudley who had passed away the previous day at age 61. He had
contributed on the home front greatly in business and civic affairs
during the war, serving as Chief Air Raid Warden for the community
and as chairman of the War Price and Rationing Board. He had also
been a member of the Board of Realtors and the Board of Adjustment,
the latter responsible for enforcing the zoning ordinance.
A piece from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, titled
"Progress in the South", tells of the Southern Regional
Council, at its annual meeting in Atlanta, having set forth an
agenda for the South whereby civil rights would be respected,
veterans would enjoy equal services under the G.I. Bill, and
vocational training would be provided along with intercultural
education in Southern schools.
It urges the program as an alternative to the Truman Civil
Rights Committee recommendation to end segregation forthwith in the
South. It favors the community-action basis for elimination of
prejudice, as proposed by the Council, rather than the Federal force
bills suggested by the Committee.
Sure, and we can wait until 2065 to have some semblance of an
integrated society. All well and good. But when some joker from
Alabama counters with "segregation now, segregation tomorra,
segregation faweva", then you will encounter the reality that
your slow-poke program produces in the society. Dr. Graham and his
fellows on the Committee had the better idea. Had they been taken
more seriously and the proposals implemented then, in 1947, all of
the violence of the fifties and sixties might have been averted.
But we shall never know, because of the moderate slow-pokes,
the crowd who gave us "with all deliberate speed",
translated by the thus coddled segregationists to mean "neva".
Drew Pearson tells of Secretary of the Air Force Stuart
Symington wanting protection for Air Force brass hats from
revelations about wartime operations which went awry, such as the
reported loss of 44 planes loaded with 800 paratroopers, most shot
down by U.S. Navy friendly fire, mistaken for enemy planes, on July
11 and 14, 1943 over Gela and Catania, Sicily. Part of the latter story had been
censored during the war. The brass hats whom Secretary Symington
wished to protect were some of his own friends.
Lieut. Colonel David Laux had sought to prevent future
friendly-fire episodes of the kind and was exiled to Nome, Alaska, for the duration for his efforts. Another such officer,
Brig. General Ray Aloysius Dunn, was demoted to Colonel and sent to
the Pacific. They had sought armor plating and self-sealing gas
tanks for the transport planes to prevent such tragedies in the
future. It was anticipated that more such incidents would take lives
of American troops without such improvements, especially the
self-sealing tanks to prevent explosion upon penetration by a
bullet. Colonel Laux had brought the matter directly to the
attention of Secretary of War Henry Stimson shortly before D-Day,
after which he was transferred to Nome.
Mr. Pearson prints a copy of the Laux letter, dated June 1,
1944. He told of being required to prepare a document presenting
reasons against the self-sealing tanks, to protect General Hap
Arnold from criticism for not having them installed. Col. Laux told
Mr. Stimson that he refused to present such an argument. He called
the absence of such tanks to protect troops sent into battle the
equivalent of murder. The tanks had been sought for 18 months and
could have been utilized during the impending D-Day invasion had
action been taken sooner. Mr. Stimson referred the letter to General
Barney Giles, who had opposed installation of the tanks.
Mr. Pearson concludes that if Secretary Symington wanted to
prevent blunders of the type by brass hats into the future, then he
should obtain the full story from Colonel Laux. He indicates that if
not, he would provide the full story soon in his column.
Sumner Welles, former Undersecretary of State until August,
1943, describes the advantages which the dictatorships had over
democracies in being able to have efficient, controlled economies.
The Western democratic countries would need unite to prevent
disaster from the systemic advantage enjoyed by the dictatorships.
The Soviets wanted the Communists in France to push General
De Gaulle into power to eliminate the moderate Socialists and speed
the turn of the citizenry to Communism as an alternative to the
oppressive right.
In Italy, appeal to the rightist authoritarianism was less
pronounced. The Communists were trying to portray Premier De Gasperi
as another Mussolini, despite the comparison being without basis.
His viability would depend on the success of the Marshall Plan to
raise the standard of living in the country and the ability of the
Government to withstand the Communist rebellion. The Communists were
not well organized in Italy but were well armed and could obtain
support and munitions readily through Yugoslavia. The Allied treaty
limited Italy to a force of 200,000 men under arms.
Mr. Welles posits that World War II might have been averted
had the U.S. been in a position in 1939 to announce that any Axis
aggression would be regarded as aggression against the U.S. He urges
the Congress therefore to declare, through a joint resolution, that
any overthrow by aggression of a Western European Government would
be considered aggression against the U.S.
The notion would become the basis for establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949, in contraposition to which, in 1955, the Warsaw Pact would be formed by Russia and its satellites. And the East-West conflict, which was, by incremental stages, developing from 1946 onward into the Cold War, thus would be fully birthed.
Samuel Grafton discusses the ramifications to society of the
Hollywood Ten case and ignoring the violation of civil liberties
which it represented. Six weeks earlier, he posits, no one would
have thought that the civil liberties of Americans to believe as
they wished and to associate with whom they chose would have been
infringed by a Congressional investigation. HUAC, in the latter half
of October when it conducted the investigation into Communist
influence in Hollywood and cited the ten producers, directors and
screenwriters for refusing to declare whether they had ever been
associated with the Communist Party, had knocked that notion of
security into a cocked hat.
The citing of the ten for contempt of Congress and their
impending prosecution by the Justice Department for same was
chilling of association, belief, and speech. And all of it had been
done without legislation.
He asks how one could defend the other 30,000 employees in
Hollywood without defending the ten. It might be regrettable that
the battle lines had been established in borderline behavior, but
that would always be the case initially when civil liberties were
threatened. Ultimately, however, the threat was to everyone. One
could not shrink from the battle for want of a more comfortable
issue about which to fight.
"If you believe in human liberty, you do not choose
civil liberties issues; they choose you, as this one does."
Charles W. Duke, continuing his series on the "Freedom
Train", tells of the documents aboard relating to Abraham
Lincoln, starting with a letter to Horace Greeley, editor of the The
New York Tribune, dated August 22, 1862, stating that Mr.
Lincoln's paramount interest in the Civil War was to preserve the
Union, regardless of the effect on slavery.
In a message to Congress in March, 1862, he had advocated
compensation to the states which would abolish slavery, and a
resolution was so passed. But there were no takers among the
Confederate states. In April, Congress had abolished slavery in the
nation's capital, providing for compensation to slave-owners. In
July, the peculiar institution was abolished in U.S. Western
territories.
President Lincoln then indited his first draft of the
Emancipation Proclamation on July 22, 1862, a document aboard the
train. The final Proclamation was then issued on September 23, to
become effective January 1 regarding slaves in states then still in
rebellion against the Union.
The President's original proposal to the Congress for the
13th Amendment to abolish slavery, dated January 11, 1864, was also
aboard. It was passed and sent to the states for ratification in
January, 1865 and was ratified December 18 of that year, eight
months after the assassination of the President.
The Freedom Train had a photograph of the joint resolution of
Congress, dated June 16, 1866, which sent the 14th Amendment to the
states, promising equal protection under the law to all citizens and
extending Fifth Amendment due process, hence the Bill of Rights, to
the states, making assurance and protection of the rights no longer
binding only on the Federal Government. That Amendment was ratified
July 23, 1868.
A copy of the 15th Amendment, guaranteeing the vote to all
citizens, was also aboard.
A copy of the manuscript of the Gettysburg Address, delivered
November 19, 1863, was aboard, the second draft which he delivered
at the dedication of the National Cemetery on the edge of the
battlefield. John Hay, the President's secretary, had preserved both
drafts and his children had presented them to the Library of Congress in 1916.
A letter from the co-chairmen of the Queen City Classic
thanks the newspaper for its support of the football game between
the Second Ward and West Charlotte High Schools, raising over $3,000
for the schools.
