The Charlotte News
Thursday, March 13, 1947
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, pledged his full support of the President's proposed plan for aid to Greece and Turkey. The Senate Policy Committee recommended daily sessions to consider the bill to authorize the aid, necessary for Greece by the March 31 date by which Britain planned to withdraw its aid. Senator Vandenberg wanted open hearings on the matter.
The United States was planning to equip the Greek Army, according to an anonymous informant who spoke with Francis Carpenter of the Associated Press. He said that there were no plans to send American soldiers but only a military mission. He believed that with proper equipment, the Greek Government could probably form the cordon sanitaire which the U.S. desired for the country to protect its borders.
There was still no response from the Soviets on the President's speech of the previous day proposing the aid.
The Army and Navy were studying the proposals to determine whether they necessitated a greater troop strength than previously determined, about 1.5 million men total. They also considered whether the Congress would now approve the President's previous request of March 3 to end the draft on March 31.
Representative Harold Knutson of Minnesota, chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee, told reporters that the President's new proposals on foreign policy would not alter the Republican plan to seek a 20 percent tax cut across the board.
Secretary of State Marshall read a statement to the Foreign Ministers Council meeting in Moscow, questioning the Russian practice in Germany of clearing former Nazis in the de-Nazification program, provided they would join the Communist Party. In response to Soviet criticism that America had not de-Nazified its zone enough, he cited statistics that twelve million persons had been registered for investigation, 200,000 tried, and 370,000 removed from office in the zone. He also stated that the State Department had not received full information on the program from the Russian zone.
In Texas, telephone workers went on strike regarding the actions of one night supervisor in Odessa. Whether the supervisor was the subject of a union complaint for distributing inequitably candy among employees at a Christmas party was not clear. The union denied the truth of the rumor. The supervisor claimed it to be true.
Everybody has to have equal candy. So, if that is the issue, more power to them. It's within the penumbral rights of the Constitution, you know, right beside where it says you have the right to carry a weapon around with you strapped to your shoulder and hind parts where your brain is, in case somebody tries to knock your candy off it, and so you can look like a person with whom no one wishes to mess.
Don't you mess with Tex-a-as.
South Louisiana received torrential rains, eight inches in 24 hours, most of it the previous night, around Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Franklin, and New Iberia.
Don't you go out in that. The gators might get you. You'll need your gun.
In Dayton, O., a man who had suffered from the hiccoughs for two years, died the previous night of pneumonia. Medicine and surgery had failed to stop what death finally did. The man had attracted national attention for his disorder in August, 1946. He then received telegrams and phone calls from every state and England, France, and Australia.
In South Carolina, a State Senator blew his top in the Senate chamber, said he did not give a damn whether he was re-elected, that if the members did not like the way he voted, they could go to hell, and that he was tired of putting up with the underworld of South Carolina politics. He was going to vote on matters based on what was right. He had received a telegram from Winthrop College asking for more funds, and he said he was not going to vote for it. He condemned those who opposed the bill to provide for safety inspections of motor vehicles. He assured that no pressure groups would influence his votes.
The State Senate passed, on voice vote, a bill already passed by the House to ban the closed shop in the North Carolina, as well as mandatory union dues deductions from wages, the check-off system. The vote had attracted the largest crowd of spectators of the biennial session, with too many people crowding into the chamber galleries, necessitating firemen being called to the scene. Many cigarette butts were tossed from the gallery to the carpeted floor below in the chamber, and it was not clear whether the crowd was trying to start a fire. Generally, however, the crowd was well-behaved.
Tom Fesperman tells of a patient in a local hospital who was strong in body but weak in mind, becoming violent Tuesday night. The police were called and the man resisted restraint. They did not have any basis on which to arrest him in the first instance and so let him go, whereupon he stuck out a foot to slow down one of the officers, then hit the officer in the face. They then arrested him.
He next imparts of a man who lived outside Rock Hill, S.C., and worked for Hollywood as a public relations agent for MGM, had been around for many years. When he saw a good review by Emery Wister of The News regarding the film "Undercurrent" with Van Heflin, he sent the clipping to MGM, who then, thinking the clipping had come directly from the newspaper, sent The News a thank you note, with a notation that they would supply any material needed at any time. The publicity agent took them up on the offer.
Actually, the film
The only film from MGM in which Mr. Heflin had recently appeared, though not receiving top billing therein, was "Till the Clouds Roll By". Let us get all of the information correct, because it becomes extremely confusing when some of the information is wrong. It causes people to believe that the Roswellians were already present on Earth, trying deliberately to confuse the poor earthlings.
Not mentiuoned on the page, the 19th annual Academy Awards ceremony took place at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, hosted by Jack Benny. The Best Picture Award went to "The Best Years of Our Lives", beating out Laurence Olivier's "Henry V", Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life", Sidney Franklin's "The Yearling", and Darry F. Zanuck's "The Razor's Edge".
"The Best Years of Our Lives" received six other awards in seven other nominated categories, including William Wyler for Best Director, beating Mr. Capra, Clarence Brown for "The Yearling", David Lean for "A Brief Encounter", and Robert Siodmak for "The Killers".
Fredric March won for Best Actor for "The Best Years of Our Lives", beating Mr. Olivier, James Stewart for "It's a Wonderful Life", Larry Parks for "The Jolson Story", and Gregory Peck for "The Yearling".
Olivia de Havilland won the Best Actress Award for "To Each His Own", beating out Jennifer Jones for "Duel in the Sun", Rosalind Russell for "Sister Kenny", Jane Wyman for "The Yearling", and Celia Johnson for "Brief Encounter".
Harold Russell, a veteran who actually lost both hands on D-Day while an Army instructor at Camp Mackall, N.C., when a fuse detonated prematurely during production of a training film, won Best Supporting Actor for his role in "The Best Years of Our Lives". He won over Charles Coburn for "The Green Years", William Demarest for "The Al Jolson Story", Claude Rains for Alfred Hitchcock's "Notorious", and Clifton Webb for "The Razor's Edge".
Anne Baxter won the Best Supporting Actress Award for "The Razor's Edge", beating Ethel Barrymore for "The Spiral Staircase", Lillian Gish for "Duel in the Sun", Gale Sondergaard for "Anna and the King of Siam", and Flora Robson for "Saratoga Trunk".
Muriel Box and Sydney Box won the Best Original Screenplay Award for "The Seventh Veil". Robert Sherwood won the Best Adapted Screenplay Award for "The Best Years of Our Lives". Clemence Dane won the Best Story Award for "Vacation from Marriage".
"Seeds of Destiny" won the Best Documentary Award.
The Best Original Song was "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe" from "The Harvey Girls".
On the editorial page, "Mr. Truman States the Issue" discusses the President's speech of the previous day, urging Congress to approve a 400-million dollar aid package to Greece and Turkey to enable those countries to ward off aggressors, in light of the British no longer being able to afford to undertake its role in Greece, affecting thereby also Turkey.
If the aid was not provided, the countries would likely pass into the Soviet sphere of influence. It established a new American policy of resisting Soviet expansion anywhere in the world. The President was resolved to preserve the "status quo" established by the U.N. Charter.
He wanted to accomplish the goal through financial aid, but in the case of Greece and Turkey, also sought approval of sending American civilian and military personnel to assist in reconstruction, as well as seeking authority to train Greek and Turkish personnel.
The first reactions from Congress appeared favorable. The speech had been timed to coincide with the Moscow Foreign Ministers Council meeting.
The speech also appeared tacitly to admit the failure of the U.N., as it hearkened a return to the days of power politics characterized by unilateral action on the international front.
The previous eighteen months of maneuvering with the Russians had damaged American prestige abroad and the speech was in reaction to that situation. Once, there had been a choice between world order based on cooperation and force. Now, the choice, as the President saw it, was order by force or destruction.
"Protest Against the Gag Rule" discusses the initial effort by a State Representative from Cleveland County to have a liquor referendum in that county, then seeking to force floor consideration of the bill, which had been delayed, by introducing an amendment which would have allowed Cleveland County to ban the sale of beer without a referendum, adding it to a 184 million dollar revenue measure. Initially, the amendment was approved and the Representative agreed that it was inappropriate to be attached to the statewide appropriations measure. So he then withdrew it.
The vote appeared to be a registration of protest against the gag rule which conferred to committees of the House the authority to determine whether a bill would ever reach the floor for a vote.
A bill had to have a two-thirds majority for passage if the Governor opposed it and no committee reported it to the floor. The editorial hopes that the incident might provoke repeal of the irksome gag rule.
A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "No Tariff on This, Please", comments on the rule of the House of Commons banning chewing of gum, cracking of nuts, and eating of chocolate, now also including within the ban's embrace the peeling of oranges.
It applauds the action and hopes the Congress would do likewise and apply the ban to other places as well, such as public transportation facilities. Day coaches smelled of bananas and crackerjacks; movie theaters, of heavy butter from "warm juvenile breath", not improving an Ingrid Bergman movie or a B-Western.
At the ballpark, however, there was no problem, as the breeze mixed the odors of the oiled gloves with the peanuts to make it all smell right.
"Long live the peanut, the orange, and the pungent banana—out in the open air."
We have a question? Since when do bananas have a pungent odor? Somebody's olfactory mechanism appeared confused. Or perhaps, in those days, the bananas were being delivered late to market and so were a little ripeward by the time the consumer got them. We would like to know because it is exceedingly troubling when these sorts of things crop up which run contrary to the ordinary experiential data to which we are accustomed in our usual environs.
Drew Pearson discusses the various bills pending in Congress to increase teacher salaries via Federal aid to public schools. But the Republican leadership appeared to believe that the labor situation, though there were no major pending strikes, was more emergent than assuring quality education for the nation's students.
The Senate committee which handled labor, chaired by Senator Taft, also handled education; likewise, the House committee, chaired by Representative Fred Hartley of New Jersey. Their focus was on a labor bill, though Senator Taft was co-sponsoring two of the several education bills. Senator Taft had just appointed Senator George Aiken of Vermont to chair the subcommittee on education, but it was unlikely hearings could begin prior to April. In the House, no hearings were scheduled.
The Congress had never passed a Federal aid to education bill on a regular basis. Senator Aiken had pointed out that the transient nature of the population had caused education to become an interstate matter, as most of the country was no longer living where it had been educated. Furthermore, there was a gross disparity between the states in the amounts paid per pupil on education, $42.25 in 1944 in Mississippi, $185.12 in New York. His bill would assure that at least $100 per pupil would be spent per year in every state. The chief opposition was from Southern Senators who believed the bill would become a basis to force equality of educational opportunity for black students.
During the month, the Aiken Committee would begin consideration of a bill sponsored by Senators Taft and Fulbright to establish a new Cabinet level position of Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. Mr. Aiken was more anxious, however, to pursue the aid to education bill.
He next tells of a memo received through a friend at the White House, telling of concern by the President and press secretary Charles G. Ross that the column of Mr. Pearson was receiving private information through leaks. One area of concern was former House Speaker and current Democratic Minority Leader Sam Rayburn, who, after a couple of belts of bourbon, would become unduly free with his speech after a White House conference.
The memo continued that Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal had complained that information was leaking to Mr. Pearson as through a sieve, and that then Mr. Pearson had labeled Mr. Forrestal the "King Sieve", for deliberately allowing indirectly information to leak regarding policies he wished to be implemented.
The memo added that White House reporters viewed Mr. Ross as a bust.
New York Congressman John Taber, a fiscal miser, wanted to contact General Robert Littlejohn, head of the War Assets Administration, but found the line busy. About that time, he looked out the window to see a large balloon with the letters "WAA" printed on it. It turned out that the balloon was merely being floated for a few minutes as a test, and was intended for an advertising campaign for a WAA customer service center selling surplus war goods. But Mr. Taber was irate and wanted General Littlejohn to report to the Appropriations Committee forthwith and bring the balloon with him.
Marquis Childs comments on the pillow fight between ten Senators and ten Representatives on whether to cut the President's proposed budget by six billion dollars or 4.5 billion, finding that the ultimate compromise figure would be arbitrary, without relation to any real obligations at home or abroad. Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut had suggested to his colleagues that they ought take out fortune-telling licenses before voting, D.C. being one of the few jurisdictions in the country which licensed the craft.
There were such items as the quick passage of the bill to prevent the spread of hoof-and-mouth disease from Mexican cattle, a bill which had an undetermined price tag. Another example were the 150 bills introduced for the benefit of veterans. No one yet knew the cost of those proposals. Other such items made the budget cut an exercise in complete guesswork.
What would ultimately be passed would be a budget ceiling which, by the next session of Congress, likely would go by the boards, as the members would depend on the short memories of the American people.
Nevertheless, the victors in the "battle of the windmills" could be counted on to make political hay of the pyrrhic victory they would achieve.
Harold Ickes opines that the recent victory over John L. Lewis and the UMW, with the Supreme Court decision upholding the District Court's issuance of the contempt citations regarding violation of its order to desist from calling the November 21 coal strike, would be a temporary one.
He was distressed to read the partial dissent of Justices Douglas and Black, concurring in the result but disagreeing on the Court's tailoring of the lower Court's fines, reducing the UMW fine to $700,000 in order to gain leverage to prevent a March 31 strike, in which case, if occurring, the fine would revert to the lower Court's figure of 3.5 million dollars. If the March 31 strike were canceled by Mr. Lewis within five days of the decision, the remission of the bulk of the original fine would become permanent.
Justice Frankfurter had also concurred in the result but disagreed that the miners were Federal employees under the Norris-LaGuardia Act, thus not subject to the proscriptions of the law outlawing injunctions against strikes.
Chief Justice Fred Vinson had justified the Government takeover of the mines pursuant to the Smith-Connally Act.
Mr. Ickes thinks that another President might use the precedent of the case to assert an emergency, take over an industry, and then prevent any form of strike by use of the injunction.
He finds the decision overall to be one which caused the Court to look as if it was bargaining with UMW rather than asserting a firm, decisive position.
A letter writer complains of use of such compound phrases on the radio as "get-together" rather than "meeting" or "assembly". He uses it as a springboard for urging the citizenry to vote dry, as the term "get-together" was used in the whiskey culture, as were other such slang terms.
Whiskey leads to slang and slang leads to the Devil. Once you sip the whiskey, you can no longer remember complicated words like "meeting".
It is like that little sticker on the car windows which obnoxiously instruct you, "Get It Together", rather than sensibly saying, "Fasten your safety belt, please." You know those abounding little stupid signs are produced by alcoholics, or even drug addicts.
Why do we have to control our visceral emotions in reaction to such lunacy? Break a window when you see one of those stupid signs. Rip down a billboard or two when faced with dumb advertising slogans which adopt corruptions of the English language to stick a product label in your mind. Express yourself. And then tell the officer it was your form of protest against the liquor and drugs which inspired those inane statements insulting your intelligence in condescendingly childish phrases written out by alcoholics and drug addicts.
We're with him. We hate those statements. Rip them down. Shred them.
A letter from A. W. Black responds to B. U. Grantham's rant against Mr. Black's view opposed to "racial tolerance".
He again defends himself and his right to be free to be intolerant. He concludes:
"And regardless of how infinitesimal the loquacious Mr. Grantham may deem the import of the attitude, compared with the sacredotal sophistry, the conclussions established are not sustained by any misapprehensions. For national analysis, investigation, and experience, provides no fertility for either assumption, uncertainty, or misapprehension."
The editors again note that the spelling of Mr. Black was all his own, as it is in the above quote.
This time, however, he appears to be striving for double-talk, also known as duplicitous loquacity, rather than so much deliberate orthographical misrepresentation. But we still do not know whether he was trying to be facetious or whether Mr. Grantham was actually an alter-ego of his own creation or a truly separate dupe.
Anyway, so much for creative writing class.
A letter quotes from a March 10 article in the newspaper reporting on an anti-ABC store meeting at the First Baptist Church, in which a minister was quoted as saying that when he was in Canada, he told his congregation to purchase bootleg applejack for 80 cents per gallon, rather than the going price of $20 per gallon on the legal market, and place the other $19.20 in the collection plate.
The letter writer thinks the bootleggers in that instance must have been philanthropists.
A letter writer expresses support of the South Piedmont teachers' efforts to receive a pay hike of 40 percent.
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