Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Congress had
passed a reconciled bill for 522 million dollars of emergency aid
for Austria, France, and Italy, providing 18 million for China per
the Republican desire. The bill was less than the 597 million
recommended by the President. The bill also provided for 340 million
to the Army for occupation costs in Germany, Japan, and Korea, less
than the 490 million sought, but still more than the 230 million
originally appropriated in the House version. The bill placed a
restriction on the amount of grain to be available to the domestic
market on July 1, setting it at 150 million bushels, that in the
House version, despite protests from the Administration.
A half million dollars of relief for the Navajo and Hopi
Indians was also included in the omnibus appropriations bill, along
with a year's salary for the survivors of deceased Senator Theodore
Bilbo, among other miscellaneous items.
The special session then ended, Congress to reconvene on
January 6.
Secretary of State Marshall, in his address the previous
night to the nation regarding the failure of the London foreign
ministers conference, said that the resistance to the Marshall Plan
in some quarters had contributed to the tactics of Russia in
frustrating the formation of a treaty with Germany on a unified
economic basis. He posited that the Plan would protect the recipient
nations from the terror of governmental tyranny.
He criticized the Russian refusal to provide information to
the West on the Russian zone of occupation in Germany while Mr.
Molotov freely criticized the economic procedures followed in the
Western zones. The Secretary said that no ground was gained or lost
at the meeting and that there was no prospect for a unified Germany
at the present time.
Republican leaders in Congress voiced objection to the 17
billion dollar, four-year Marshall Plan outlined by the President
and appeared to be backing an alternative proposal by Senator Taft
that the formal commitment to aid be limited to one year initially,
with Congress then reviewing the program annually. Democratic
Senator Edwin Johnson of Colorado also appeared to support such an
approach. Other Democrats stated that they would favor such annual
review if it was the only way to obtain approval of the Plan.
Senator Taft stated that the Congress would be willing to
consider limited controls and rationing, as urged by the President,
if the voluntary control measure just passed by the Congress did not
work. The President had not yet approved the bill.
Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson was preparing
release of a list of the names and addresses of 14,000 commodities
speculators, per the demand for same by both houses of Congress,
following passage of a resolution to allow the release, signed by
the President. The list would include the names of any members of
Congress and officials of the Government who had speculated on a
large-scale in the commodities market, lending to inflation.
A county judge from Greensboro, N.C., had been sent to Berlin
to assist the Army in making an investigation of black market
activity by high ranking officers in the Military Government, after
charges by a former employee of the Military Government whose
contract had been terminated. Postal authorities had reported
numerous attempts to smuggle cigarettes on the black market.
Eleanor Roosevelt complimented the Russian cooperation on the
U.N. Commission for Human Rights, even though abstaining in the
votes. She said that she had never witnessed such close cooperation
previously between Russia and the U.S.
In Washington, three AFL unions were threatening to strike
against Western Union, to start at any moment.
Better rush down and send your Christmas telegrams before the
strike.
In Augusta, Ga., the commander of the local American Legion
post urged an Army investigation of complaints by prisoners at the
Camp Gordon prison stockade that prisoners were beaten and forced
into solitary confinement for minor infractions. A pet peeve was
that the prisoners could not kiss their wives and fondle their
children during visits.
The allegations arose in a story printed in the Miami
Herald. The commandant of the disciplinary barracks said that
the prisoners' punishment imbued them with respect for authority and
discipline, and did not constitute the "fear psychosis"
charged by the prisoners.
In Lenoir, N.C., the judge in the case of former high school
principal R. L. Fritz granted the defense motion for non-suit on the
basis that the prosecution had not proved criminal intent in the
misappropriation of funds, used to pay regular teachers for overtime
to keep the school in operation. Defense counsel Sam J. Ervin had
argued only a few words on the motion when the judge directed the
prosecution to give argument as to why the court should not grant
the motion. The ruling came during presentation of the defense
case, after Mr. Fritz had testified, following the judge having
taken the Thursday motion under submission, made at the close of the
prosecution's case.
The decision came on the defendant's 50th birthday and he
greeted it as a wonderful present. The judge found that the State
had proved that Mr. Fritz handled the money in a manner not
authorized by State law, and that the payment of $621 to his wife out of the $1,600
in question provided ground for suspicion. But the
payments had gone toward operation of the school and did not profit
the defendant. He also stated that he did not mean for the decision
to justify the methods used.
State Treasurer Charles Johnson, gubernatorial candidate who
had been endorsed by Mr. Fritz in his role as president of the North
Carolina Education Association, had stated at the outset of the
trial that he would move, as a member of the State Board of
Education, to reinstate Mr. Fritz's teaching certificate if he were
acquitted. The certificate had been withdrawn by the Board earlier
in the year.
Mr. Fritz said that he had not had time to consider whether
he would seek reinstatement.
The moral may be that if you are going to break the law, always have a salutary purpose in mind, never profit from the infringement, make sure that any relatives who do, work for the money, and, most of all, have Sam J. Ervin as your defense counsel and not your prosecutor or judge. And, whatever else you may do, don't break into the opposing party's campaign headquarters in the middle of the night with surveillance equipment in your possession, in the midst of an election campaign in which an incumbent for whom you work is running for re-election.
Moreover, when caught, don't make furtive gestures in the presence of the police toward an inner breast pocket containing a key marked "311".
Also, never lend your imprimatur to a memorandum written by someone named Huston, which suggests all sorts of covert activity, based on relaxed legal standards, against various political enemies, and use of the CIA, FBI, and other Government agencies to realize it, approved for your constant fear of having your role revealed in the Bay of Pigs thing. And never, ever get involved in the Bay of Pigs thing to begin with, such that activity in the covert is necessary in the first instance to erase that involvement, a persistent hound dog on your tracks, leading back to the book store from which you pilfered and profited immeasurably that time, at least until time finds your trail up along the river and nabs you. Enoughsaid.
On the editorial page, "Prices, Taxes and Recovery"
tells of the success of the Marshall Plan, as outlined by the
President, requiring 17 billion dollars spread over 51 months, with
6.8 billion to be expended in the first year, to be dependent on
keeping inflation under control, as the figures made no room for
higher prices. The program gave added significance to the
President's urging of paying down the national debt with the surplus
rather than granting a large tax cut, as sought by the Republicans.
Prices had risen 7.5 percent just since July, when talks had
begun in Paris with the 16 nations seeking aid under the Plan. Wheat
had gone up 20 percent and oil, 30 percent.
The total shipments from the U.S. over the four-year period
were estimated to run to 19.3 billion, already a strain on the
economy, which could become oppressive under inflation.
A means to put the brakes on the rise in the cost of living
without Government controls had thus far not found daylight.
The program was not just ERP, but rather the world's program
for survival in the cold war against Communism and to prevent
worldwide economic breakdown.
The President's message was a call to meet a national crisis
with the country's full measure of dedication.
"Tobacco to Fight for America" suggests the
cigarette as one of the most potent weapons in the U.S. arsenal in
the battle for Germany between the West and Russia.
We take that to mean that sending many cigarettes to the
Eastern zone would result in such diseased condition of the people
that death or revolt would be the ultimate result, blaming the
Communists for not forewarning of the associated hazards of cancer.
Maybe not.
Senator William B. Umstead of North Carolina had proposed
making available to Germany 100 million pounds of tobacco, about a
year's supply, presently held by the Commodity Credit Corporation.
It would break up the black market in Germany, contributing to
inflation, and would dispose of most of America's surplus, relieving
pressure on prices at home. It would also revive the tobacco
industry in Germany, contributing to its economy. And it would
improve the morale of the German people—while secretly killing them
off one by one, with plausible denial in the bargain.
Hey, we didn't know. Nine out of ten doctors here in
America...
Sold American.
"'Marshall Plan' for South?" discusses the
recommendations made to the House Agriculture Committee by a group
of economists to appropriate 27.4 billion dollars for an economic
stimulus package for the South, as explained two days earlier by
Drew Pearson.
While its recommendation to eliminate monopoly in the South
could be accomplished through the Anti-Trust Division of the Justice
Department and its advice of promoting equitable transportation
policy could be effected through the ICC, the wisdom of its
investment recommendations might be questioned for the burden to
taxpayers and centralization of control in the Federal Government,
already too great.
The South had an economic problem but not on par with that of
Europe, and if the South would take the lead in resolving its own
issues, there would be little need to seek relief from Washington.
A piece from the Carolina Israelite, by Rabbi Philip
Frankel of Temple Bethel in Charlotte, titled "Days of
December", extols the virtues of the season in promotion of
brotherhood. He urges outlawing evil from the heart of mankind and
the ugly thoughts from the mind. He states that neither a police
force nor punishment enabled goodness and beauty. Rather, the
virtues originated out of the conscience and the spiritual joy in
the heart. He hopes that the spirit of December could be made
perpetual throughout the year.
Drew Pearson, in Paris, writes an open letter to President
Vincent Auriol of France regarding the food collected by the
Friendship Train, which Mr. Pearson had originally conceived in
October and which came to fruition in November, the food from which
being in transit, soon to arrive in France, the rest bound soon for
Italy.
He explains to President Auriol the process of collection
from average Americans. The purpose of the train was to counteract
the Russian propaganda regarding their paltry wheat contribution to
France in 1946, when the U.S. Government had sent far more aid to
France without nearly the recognition and fanfare given to it by the
people. Mr. Pearson believed that rectifying the lack of information
on the source of the food would have an ameliorative effect, to
weaken Soviet propaganda with irrefutable fact made known to the
recipients.
He relates of the special messages on some of the food, as
that stamped on bags of flour from Jackson County, Missouri,
explaining that it came from the home county of President Truman and
was conveyed in the spirit of brotherhood.
In Grand Rapids, Mich., the newspapers had criticized the
train. But Mayor George Welsh had urged the people to give to it,
and they had been responsible for hitching three boxcars of food to
the train.
The cities and towns included Long Beach, Calif., Monroe,
Mich., Louisville and Hazard, Ky., Atlantic City, N.J., Pottsville,
Allentown, and Bellefonte, Pa., to name but a few out on the mainline.
The contributors believed, he says, that Christmas was not
just a time for exchange of gifts between families and neighbors but
also was one for exchange between nations and all mankind.
Barnet Nover, substituting for vacationing Marquis Childs,
discusses the failure of the London foreign ministers conference,
which he posits might prove to be the last meeting of the Council of
Foreign Ministers, as such. Aside from the predominating issue of
handling reparations from Germany to Russia, the Western powers and
Russia were at odds on the disposition of the industrial Saar, on
the demarcation of the eastern boundary of Germany, and the sharing
of occupation costs.
While initially prepared to engage in reasonable
negotiations, the Western powers, after three weeks, became tired of
the consistent harangues from Mr. Molotov and called off the
conference. The mystery lay in why Mr. Molotov persisted in the
course he took, widening the gulf between the West and Russia. He
did not succeed in splitting the Western powers if that was the
goal. If it was to intimidate the West into accepting concessions,
it also failed.
There were signs of resistance to the Russian will in Poland
and Czechoslovakia, and the failure of the Soviet Union to obtain
any agreement in London would not alleviate the economic stress
under which the country labored. Devaluation of the ruble
demonstrated both political strength of the Government at home and
also economic weakness, exposing the fact of a large gap between
production and demand, more than in any Western country. The demand
for reparations was designed to help eliminate that gap.
But to the Kremlin, the alternative of collaboration with the
West politically and economically in Germany was obviously a worse
result than continuing to suffer economically at home. Lifting the
iron curtain would have meant exposition of the problems in the
country to the Russian people, the failure to provide even basic
necessities after "promising them the moon".
He concludes that the men of the Kremlin appeared willing to
continue the cold war even though it made it "hotter and
hotter" for the Russian people.
Of course, this argument by Mr. Nover, and most of the other
columnists of the day, has to be supplemented by the fact, which he
and the others of the opinion omit from consideration, that Russia
was recovering from a direct invasion of the country by the Nazis,
enduring more internal destruction than any other of the Allies, save perhaps the portion of China invaded by the Japanese.
Since its alliance with the West had been sine qua non for
winning the European war, at least without substantially higher
losses for the other Allies, especially the U.S., having the
greatest available reservoir of manpower, it had a right to seek
substantial reparations from Germany and to feel repulsed at the
notion of Western insistence that Germany be allowed to re-unite and
restore itself economically, a baneful threat to the well-being and
vulnerability of Russia, especially as it sought to recover from the
war. Thus, was it not quite right in its stance? Was the insistence
of the Western powers, especially the United States, driven by the
Red scare at home and thus mindful politically of the controversy
attendant any extension of more than a token olive branch to the
U.S.S.R.? Was this fact not a failure of leadership, to remind
consistently the American people, as FDR had done, of the invaluable
role played by the Soviets in the war?
Samuel Grafton tells of the lost generation forming after
World War II, as surely as it had in 1920 after the prior war. The
lost generation always traveled, to Paris in the Twenties, as with
Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. He wondered where it would go
this time, posits that it might be Paris again or Mexico City, or
one of the Scandinavian capitals, as Copenhagen. All that had to be
done to attract the college boys would be to have promotion by a
tourist ministry, a lower exchange rate, and passing by word of
mouth the attractiveness of the object of pursuit.
The object of interest could not be sex, already done, or
telescoping words, likewise of Ulysses. It might be that the
next lost generation would not be primarily writers but rather
possibly scientists, bespeaking the atomic age, as with the renegade
scientists of earlier times.
One could see them in the cafes singing their songs and
working differential equations, with blonde technicians of the
quarter at their sides.
"What if yon red-bearded character in the corner wears
broken shoes, and has no money for uranium? He can knock the
neutrons out of a dish of crepes suzettes, and be quite as happy."
James Marlow of the Associated Press discusses adult
education as covered in the report by the President's Commission on
Higher Education, released during the week. The report had urged
more adult education and criticized the present resources, for
utilizing moonlighting college instructors who were found to make
the extra work as easy on themselves as they could, lowering the
quality of the educational experience.
It recommended as a remedy that the colleges and universities
make it their duty to teach to all citizens within their bailiwick
who were desirous of higher education, not just those attending the
institution, allowing extension teaching to become thus a regular
part of the workload.
A letter writer complains of newspapers accepting the
misleading advertisements of the National Association of
Manufacturers, calling for cuts in taxes to curb inflation. Their
last campaign had sought to blame "labor monopoly" for
inflation, but inflation had run rampant despite passage of
Taft-Hartley and removal of wage and price controls.
The writer finds the most serious problem to be monopolies in
big business, not in the labor unions.
The Quote of the Day: "Note how many professional
fighters have curly hair. They probably learned to fight when mamma
made them wear the curls long." —Richmond News-Leader
