Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Arabs meeting in
conference in Cairo were favoring formation of a "volunteer
people's army" to wage a jihad against partition of
Palestine until the British would vacate in August. After that time,
the regular Arab armies could then take over the duties of jihad.
Until then, the regular armies would guard the borders to prevent
supplies and reinforcements to the Jews.
Chairman Hussein Khalidi of the Arab Higher Education
Executive in Palestine stated that any attempt of displaced persons
to "invade" Palestine would be met by a "counter-invasion"
by Arabs of neighboring countries. He believed that corruption and
bribery had led to the U.N. decision and wanted the U.N. to
disappear.
Sheik Abdel Latif Draz stated in Cairo that whenever Islam is
attacked anywhere in the world, it was the obligation of every
Moslem to wage jihad.
Do you have any idea how utterly stupid that concept is,
negating any hint of religious and spiritual significance to the
religion you claim to be supporting? It is the same nonsense which
leads the religious zealot to murder doctors for "killing
little babies". Or that which led the Klan and its equivalent to lynch. It has nothing to do with religion. It is
psychological disturbance, a pandemic of fears of "the other",
the outsider, the stranger you refuse to admit to your world view
for your limited education, your ignorance, and your stubborn
insistence on clinging to a perverted view of the world based on
some rationalized interpretation of your "religion". It is
mumbo-jumbo.
Molotov cocktails were thrown at four police armored cars in
Tel Aviv by Jewish dissidents, probably of the Stern gang, according
to Jewish sources. Unofficial reports stated that two Jews had been
killed by fire from armored cars.
A night of violence had taken place in the border area of
Palestine, as the "taxicab army" of Jewish volunteers,
summoned by Haganah, counter-attacked a group of Arabs armed with
machineguns and grenades.
A "Palestine Liberation Committee" announced in
Damascus in Syria that Arab volunteers trained in commando tactics
were being sent to Palestine to begin guerrilla fighting.
Abd El Krim, exiled Riff warrior chieftain, who had led
attacks on the Spanish and French in Morocco in the late twenties,
stated in Cairo that North Africa would contribute to the Arab
campaign against partition.
The Arab League also announced its immediate participation in
the fight.
Following two weeks of argument at the London foreign
ministers conference, it appeared to observers that Russia might be
ready to compromise on key issues regarding the future of Germany,
to avoid an East-West split. V. M. Molotov the night before had
submitted a proposal for economic unification and dropped the
condition that agreement first had to be reached on the Soviet
demand for ten billion dollars of reparations from Germany, that it
could be considered simultaneously with the economic unification
plan. He also dropped the previous Soviet demand that zonal economic
deficits be shared under economic unification, at least until such time as
costs could be determined. Western diplomats still were not
optimistic about ultimate agreement.
In Paris, the Communist-dominated General Confederation of
Labor told workers to return to work the next day, following the
strike of 2.1 million workers.
Russia abruptly terminated trade talks with France, which had
sought to negotiate shipments of grain from the Soviet Union for
France, after the Russian Repatriation Commission was ordered on
November 26 expelled from the country by the Government for alleged
subversive activity in stimulating the strikes.
The Administration submitted a plan to Congress for consumer
rationing of meat, gasoline, and other commodities, as well as to
permit the Government to buy the entire crop of wheat and other
commodities. The bill proposed to give the President power to
allocate and fix priorities on scarce items, including livestock and
poultry, steel, grain and grain products, and freight cars, as well
as any other item affecting the cost of living. The authorization
was proposed to extend to the end of March, 1950.
Former Governor of Pennsylvania, George Earle, had made
public a 1945 letter from FDR which he claimed resulted in his
"political exile" to Samoa during the remainder of the
war. The letter came after Mr. Earle, then a Navy commander and
emissary for the President, had requested permission to expose
Russia as a greater threat than Germany.
Mr. Earle made the letter public because he had been
questioned as to its authenticity when he revealed its existence
during a "Meet the Press" radio interview of October 10.
The President had expressed concern that his personal emissary might
state publicly such an opinion, which could do irreparable harm to
the Allied war effort. The President forbade him from publishing any
such opinion regarding an ally, based on information obtained while in Government
service. He then withdrew Mr. Earle's status as
emissary of the President and said that he would instruct the Navy
to make use of him where they saw fit. He then wished him well.
Send a postcard from Samoa and be glad it was not Alaska.
Former Army Colonel Jack Durant entered prison, pursuant to
his conviction by court martial for having, with the assistance of
his WAC captain wife, stolen the Hesse family jewels from a cache in
the cellar of the Army's headquarters at the Hesse estate in Germany
at the end of the war. He was to serve fourteen years. His wife had
already been released from her five-year sentence based on a Federal
Court determination that she could not be convicted by court martial
as it came after her release from the service.
Tom Watkins of The News reports of the Mecklenburg ABC
Board having undertaken a major bust of bootleggers during the
morning hours, by noon having arrested 50, with more to come. State
undercover agents had been working to ferret out the bootleggers
since the previous September, when the ABC system became effective. It was thought to be the largest
single bootlegging arrest in the state's history. Forty-two of the
arrestees were white; eight were black.
Tom Fesperman of The News reports of reputed
bootlegging kingpin Jim Massey having been caught in the round-up of
bootleggers. At 76, he had been arrested more times than he could
recall. He smiled a "toothless" grin for photographers,
the result of which appears on the page. (He appears to have teeth
in the picture.) Former Judge Marion Sims, now chairman of the ABC Board, told Mr. Massey that he had been expecting him.
A list of the 50 suspects is on the page. We hope
your relatives are not among them.
Presumably, the remaining eleven of the fifteen new G.M. buses of the Duke Power Company, to supplement the city's bus transportation service, arrived on schedule, equipped with the promised thermostatically controlled heaters and their green coroseal seats—the real deal—to provide smooth riding comfort for 32happy passengers. But that Saturday story was not reprised on the page this date, bumped for the fact of the bootlegging bust.
On the editorial page, "Sky's the Limit for the GOP"
tells of the Republican Congress ready to proceed in 1948 with a
bill to cut taxes by 5.3 billion dollars or more, within 200 million
dollars of the peak estimates for the budget surplus for the year.
If the country would run into a slump, then such a tax cut would be
a major problem, causing a deficit of several billion dollars.
In the struggle forming, the Democrats were assuming the role
of conservatives and the Republicans, radicals. The Administration
wanted tax reduction only after substantial payment toward reduction
of the national debt from the war and after fulfillment of current foreign
commitments. The Republicans were taking the position that tax
reduction would be a panacea for economic ills, curbing inflation by
giving more money to the consumer to purchase, easing demand for
wage hikes and increasing demand for product. But as a general rule,
economists saw tax reduction as inflationary.
While a tax reduction of a more measured size might be
possible in the coming year while meeting the concerns of the
Administration, the GOP plan was otherwise. But the Republicans were
taking the risk for purposes of the election year to achieve
popularity with the electorate, regardless of the consequences to
inflation at home and recovery abroad.
"Passing the Buck for Control" tells of Senator A.
Willis Robertson of Virginia—father of evangelist and former
Republican presidential candidate Pat Robertson—counseling that the
cure for inflation was exercise of self-control by Americans,
voluntary reduction of steel prices and reduction of profits by
manufacturers generally, as well as a voluntary end to price
supports for farmers. He was against any renewal of price and wage
control or rationing, as urged by the President.
The piece finds the argument specious, a bit of "amiable
poppycock" characteristic of Washington. For he had stated that
the Government could not control "selfishness, greed and group
rivalry." But the same dynamic would serve to defeat
volunteerism.
The Senator offered no remedy for the working man who had
seen his standard of living diminished considerably in an
inflationary economy. And the only hope for that person was the
Government and control.
"A Rich Life in the Faith" laments the passing of
Dr. L. R. Pruette of the Ninth Avenue Baptist Church in Charlotte
after 53 three years of service to the community, having organized
several other Baptist churches. He had also been a trustee of Wake
Forest College and of Wingate Junior College. While he had retired
as a pastor twenty years earlier, he had continued to preach
regularly at the Pritchard Memorial Church.
A piece from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, titled
"Nationalized Poetry", finds British poet laureate John
Masefield to have delivered a less than par performance in his lines
penned for the occasion of the marriage of Princess Elizabeth to Lt.
Philip Mountbatten on November 20. The piece, however, finds the
failing commonplace, as Alfred Lord Tennyson had muffed a royal
wedding hymn and William Wordsworth had declined to write one.
In the old days, British poet laureates were hired as public
servants and subject to dismissal with the change of
administrations. John Dryden had been axed, as had Rudyard Kipling,
the latter for a reference to Queen Victoria as the "Widow at
Windsor".
While Messrs. Masefield, Tennyson, and Wordsworth had lent
prestige to the position, by and large, the effort at nationalized
poetry had been a flop in Britain. It suggests therefore that it was
rather amazing to see the Attlee Government trying to nationalize
such a complicated industry as steel.
Drew Pearson tells of parlor politics appearing to enter into
the promotion of the top hundred of the Army brass to permanent
positions as generals. It had been Army practice not to promote to
the permanent rank of general unless the candidate had been overseas
during the late war. But high on the list of promotions was Maj.
General Wilton B. Persons, who had not been overseas during the war
but rather had been the chief lobbyist for the Army in Congress. He
lists other such examples.
He tells of the findings by Congressman George Bender of Ohio, from a report of Comptroller General Lindsay Warren,
that several Army officers in charge of negotiating war contracts or
adjusting contracts as the war wound down had been hired in the
private sector by the very firms they had assisted during the war.
He provides four examples.
Finally, he relates of Corn, Oklahoma, a town of 500 located
along Route 66, the farmers of which had collected 8,000 bushels of
wheat for the Friendship Train to help feed Europe during the
winter. The wheat had been ground into flour free of charge in
another town. He had been informed of the acts of generosity by a
letter writer associated with the mill, who sought no publicity and
suggested that while some called the people "Oakies", he
believed them "God's people."
Joseph Alsop, in London, discusses the ongoing foreign
ministers conference with its goal to try to effect treaties with
Austria and Germany. The London newspapers were discussing the loss
of strength in the world of Britain as the end of the Mandate in
Palestine approached, following the passage of the U.N. partition
resolution on November 29. The effect would be to place the burden
of world leadership on the United States.
In Britain, rations were less than a year earlier while lines
were longer and people appeared more shabby and less optimistic. But
the postwar slump in production was coming to an end, as workers,
overworked by the war, were gradually recovering. The production in
coal in 1938 had been 1.14 tons per man shift. At the beginning of
1947, it was 1.03 tons, and by November had risen back to 1.12 tons,
was expected to rise further by spring.
The Government was busy cutting spending to a bare minimum to
preserve dollars. Some of the worst of the wasters in Government,
Dr. Hugh Dalton, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Emmanuel Shinwell,
were gone. Sir Stafford Cripps now headed the Exchequer, promising
more economic stability.
The Marshall Plan would provide an infusion of capital which
Britain so desperately needed, enabling a way out from the morass
which would otherwise be a dead end street.
Samuel Grafton tells of the Council of the Authors' League of
America indicating that the recent ten Hollywood dismissals
constituted a dramatic new form of censorship, censoring the whole
person, not just a portion of the author's work. The term
"blacklist" would come to characterize that censorship.
The Council pointed out that those who purchased as little as ten
lines of prose from these banned writers even by 1954 would risk the
end of their Hollywood welcome.
While Mr. Grafton agrees with those who said that the country
must protect itself against peril, he also believes that the peril
must first be proved to exist. And in the case of movie scripts and
finished movies, that peril was ephemeral and not subject to proof.
One could not proceed from what one suspected was the case, that
which one believed a film might induce another to think. No one had
been able to prove the existence of subversive content in Hollywood
fare.
So the Council was correct in its criticism. Indeed, it might
have gone further to point out that creating categories of wholesome
and unwholesome fare was a prominent characteristic of totalitarian
states. Totalitarianism should be resisted through diplomacy and the
country's economic strength, and by proving the overt act. It could
not be done by interrogations and purges of industries selected more
or less at random.
"For that is a decline in order, and order is the
skeleton of freedom."
A letter writer from Polkton, N.C., says that time had
slipped by and here it was another Christmas, wonders whether the
people were as thankful as they ought be. The writer praises The
News, especially for its sponsorship of the annual Empty
Stocking Fund to provide Christmas presents for needy children of
the community. The anonymous author encloses a $20 check for the
Fund.
The editors note that there was no overhead associated with
the Fund, as the letter writer assumed, and that all proceeds went
directly to the beneficial purpose.
A letter writer urges maintenance of the atomic secret, that
sharing it with the Soviets, even with adequate assurance of
international inspections to police adherence to peaceful uses of
atomic energy, would not be trustworthy.
He cites an article by Cord Meyer in the October Atlantic, urging that the U.S. give up the bomb, provided there would be
swift and certain punishment for violators of the international
agreement. The Baruch plan called for equal atomic facilities across
the nations. The writer wonders whether such a plan was realistic.
No, why don't we wait around until Russia builds their own
bomb, as all of the physicists said would definitely occur within a
couple of years or so, and then plan to have a twenty-minute World
War III somewhere down the line?
The writer engages in the common mistake of assuming a static
and perfect world according insulation to the plan which he favored.
It was the type of thinking, on both sides of the divide, which
helped to encourage rather than discourage the East-West split and
the Cold War of the ensuing forty-two years.
In point of fact, the plausible argument can be made
historically that the world has never really recovered fully from
World War II.
