Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Jerusalem, an explosion wrecked a British officers' club in the heart of the city, killing at least 16 and injuring 17 others, with 24 still missing. Just before the blast, a number of armed men had surrounded the club and exchanged gunfire with guards. Apparently, a group of men drove by the building under cover of the barrage and tossed the explosive into the club. It was the deadliest incident of violence since the bombing at the King David Hotel the previous July.

China's Supreme Defense Council approved the resignation of Premier T. V. Soong and named Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek as President of the Executive Yuan pending appointment of a new Premier. Mr. Soong had been criticized for his handling of the financial crisis in China and resigned amid a council meeting seeking his defense of the fiscal policies. He had blamed the Communists for destroying communications in the country, leading to a chaotic state of the economy.

Two liberals of Chiang's Kuomintang had declined the offer to become Premier.

In Trinidad, Bolivia, residents awaited rescue from flood waters which, according to predictions, would destroy half the town. No deaths had yet occurred as the residents had taken refuge in trees, on rooftops, and other high places. Crocodiles were observed in the streets of the town.

England received new snowfall to add to its woes in the worst winter in over half a century. The industrial shutdown in the country had been scheduled to end on the following Monday.

Thirty-four cannibalistic Japanese had been captured in Mindanao in the Philippines. Whether they were only cabalistic until they became enamoured of the Ming vases found hidden in the jungle, to which they ascribed magic curative powers, was not reported.

House military expenditures subcommittee chairman Albert Engel of Michigan expressed opposition to the British suggestion that the United States foot the bill for most of Britain's obligations in Greece. Such an obligation might amount to 250 million dollars in 1947. The U.S. had already provided 400 million dollars worth of aid to Greece, including the country's contribution to UNRRA aid.

Over 140,000 telephone workers in 35 states served 30-day notices of a strike. But a spokesman for the union had already stated to the Senate Labor Committee that there might not be a strike, that preferred arbitration might supplant the need.

In Buffalo, a settlement was being sought with 2,400 teachers who had struck for a week.

The President proclaimed Sunday, May 18, to be "I Am an American Day".

Captain Frank Elliott of Charlotte parachuted to safety from a flaming B-29 over the Alaskan Peninsula the previous day and was shortly thereafter rescued. He was a part of the 28th Bomb Group stationed at Anchorage. It was the third B-29 lost within a week by the Group. Captain Elliott had been in the Air Forces since 1943, stationed in Italy for fifteen months during the war.

In Mt. Clemens, Mich., students at the local high school decided to go forward with a planned strike of classes, in protest of the decision of the school board not to rehire the principal of the high school for fifteen years.

They may have been high on the pottery.

In Philadelphia, searchers found a naked seven-year old boy who had fled home in the snow in that status and hid on a neighbor's porch to escape a spanking to be administered by his father for his playing hooky. He had hidden among porch furniture cushions and a laundry bag to stay warm.

He may have been high on the pottery.

On the editorial page, "The Era of the Dollar Chop" suggests that when the price of hogs, including head, hooves, and chitterlings, rose to 29 cents per pound, that is $29 per hundred for those a little slow on the math, the price of pork chops could easily be predicted soon to reach a dollar per pound. Since grain and other commodities had also reached an all-time high in price, the price of pork chops would remain at that level for some time to come.

"Herman Heads Down a Blind Alley" tells of a lawsuit having been filed in Federal Court in South Carolina by a black man claiming that he had been denied the right to vote in the South Carolina Democratic primary. It would serve as a test case of the all-white primary system, to which Georgia was now also reverting, divorcing the primary election from the state machinery, making it a party-sponsored function as a private club, thus, they thought, immune from the Supreme Court ruling prohibiting discrimination in state-sponsored primaries.

It would mean that Herman Talmadge and his followers were headed down a blind alley, splitting the Georgia Democratic Party down the middle. It comments that it would be funny if it were not further evidence of the tragic state of one-party politics in the South.

"The Solon's 'Trade or Business'" tells of the thankless job of being a North Carolina legislator, paying only $600 for the session, not enough even to cover expenses. The voters the previous fall had turned down a move to increase compensation. But one State Senator had gone to the IRB and obtained a ruling that expenses incurred during the course of the session could be deducted as business expenses from Federal tax returns. The piece is glad that some benefit could be obtained to relieve the financial burden of the public servants.

A piece from the Durham Herald, titled "Charlotte's Choice of Evils", tells of the choice which would be put to the voters of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County were the proposed bill before the Legislature passed to permit a referendum in the county on controlled sale of liquor via the ABC system, that between the lesser of two evils.

Drew Pearson tells of the supporters of Robert Taft for the 1948 Republican nomination having already spent over $49,000 to back specific Congressional candidates the previous fall in states outside Ohio, hoping they would be sympathetic to Mr. Taft's nomination. Governor Thomas Dewey's organization, by contrast, had spent far more money on the election, but did not try to handpick candidates, rather giving $250,000 to Republican headquarters to spend at will.

Marquis Childs tells of the CIO prohibiting any executive officer or union of the organization from becoming part of the two liberal organizations recently formed, Americans for Democratic Action and the Progressive Citizens of America, an important victory for the extreme left of the CIO. It would be interpreted as a Communist victory.

Part of the reason for the ruling was CIO jealousy of AFL, which had important membership in ADA in the form of the ILWGU, rival to the CIO Amalgamated Clothing Workers.

The decision, which still awaited final approval within CIO, would delight conservatives and reactionaries who opposed the ADA, and would welcome it being weakened among labor.

Mr. Childs finds it the kind of quarrel which opened the way for the Nazis in Germany, as the German Communists believed the Hitler dictatorship would be a necessary step on the road to a proletarian revolution and eventual Communist dictatorship. They thus fought the Social Democrats, who believed in change through democratic processes.

Philip Murray, president of CIO, had the same feeling about Communism, but he appeared, as in the past, to be compromising with the executive leadership of the organization to prohibit ADA membership.

The ADA had among its members Eleanor Roosevelt, Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey, former Congressman Jerry Voorhis of California, and Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas of California. The PCA was formed generally by Henry Wallace.

Incidentally, in examining the latest Palindromalaprop, that President Obama is somehow responsible for Russia's aggression toward the Ukraine, ergo proving her to be a divinely inspired Cassandra of 2008 when she stated that because of then Senator Obama's "moral equivalence", he would invite Russian aggression against the Ukraine, we only suggest that Ms. Malaprop study the word "equivalence".

We assume that she meant "equivocation" or "ambivalence", combining the two perhaps for shorthand effect, knowing that her very educated listeners would catch the cleverly implied portmanteau. Yet even that suggested substitute combination form appears dubious in context.

It was not just a slip of the tongue, as the original statement came in a prepared speech in 2008 and she recently referred back to it verbatim, unable to resist contending thereby her powers as a prophetess of doom, standing proud that she could be four-square against the United States and place blame on the President for something occurring in the Ukraine, thus lending credence to the Russian aggression, standing in its turn four-square for the Prophetess and her Powers, ergo for Baked Alaska.

It comes to mind from the piece by Mr. Childs.

Come to think of it, perhaps in 2008 she was hedging her bets, hoping, for her perspicacity, to garner an appointment as Secretary of State in an Obama Administration, and actually meant the import conveyed by "moral equivalence" to be equanimity, that is, in the vernacular, being cool and magnanimous under pressure. We thus understand better the drift. She was, then and now, actually paying high compliment to the President, obviously meaning the while to decry Russian aggression.

After all, Ms. Malaprop would never stand against the nation which called forth Paul Revere to set forth the lanterns in the Old North Church to warn of the approach of the Patriots. She is much too morally equivalent for that.

Harold Ickes remarks on the charge by Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin of Britain that President Truman was responsible for the breakdown of negotiations the previous fall between the Arabs and Jews in resolving the Palestine dilemma, whether to have an independent state for Jews or to establish Jewish and Arab sectors of Palestine under the control of Britain and the U.S., the latter favored by Britain, the former favored by the U.S. along with permitted immigration of 100,000 Jews—the advocation of which on Yom Kippur by the President being that which supposedly interfered with the negotiations by increasing expectations of the Jewish negotiators in London.

The Balfour Declaration, issued in 1917 by Britain, had guaranteed a homeland for Jews in Palestine, thus raising the hopes of same. Then the British issued the white paper which had prohibited Jewish immigration during the war. But when the war was won, the Jews naturally began demanding that the Balfour promise be kept.

The President had appointed a "Cabinet Committee" which went to London and succumbed to British charm by acquiescing to the British partition plan, prompting such protest in the U.S. that the President had to recall the Committee. But the British continued to adhere to the partition plan, rather than accepting the Anglo-American Committee recommendation.

The American policy on the issue, he believes, would hold up to scrutiny for its fairness, whereas the British approach would fail the test, complicated even further by Mr. Bevin's recent statement of criticism months after the fact of the President's October statement.

A letter from a representative of the Air Reserve Association tells of the reasons the 471st Army Air Force Reserve unit, training at Morris Field since the previous August, had been terminated. The City of Charlotte had refused to lease the buildings at a nominal fee despite the fact that the City had acquired the base from the Federal Government the previous year at no cost. The letter writer urges the citizens to place pressure on the City to permit the re-establishment of the 471st.

A letter writer thanks the newspaper for supporting higher salaries for school teachers, the vital link to the future.

A letter commends the editorial "Notes on the Closed Shop Issue". Most newspapers, he finds, were tools of business interests, and presented one-sided views on the issue of the closed shop, supporting the "right to work" as supposedly beneficial to workers. Some newspapers had suggested a "mob performance" by those who attended the hearings in the Legislature on the recent bill to ban the closed shop in North Carolina.

A letter writer responds to another writer who was against the liquor referendum on the basis that most voters in the county opposed controlled sale. This writer asks why not have the referendum to prove the point.

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