Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that military sources reported from Greece that Greek Army planes were hammering 2,500 trapped guerrillas on the slopes of Mount Gamila, north of Ioannina, the capital of the province of Epirus, as three Government brigades, comprised of 4,500 men, closed in for a showdown battle. The fighting took place near the Albanian border. The U.N. Balkans Subcommittee was convinced that the guerrilla offensive originated in Albania. Intelligence reports had disclosed that there were six guerrilla centers, three each in Yugoslavia and Albania, from which new attacks might be launched. The prospective offensive out of Yugoslavia threatened Florina.

"Govenment officials", unclear as to whether American, British, or Greek, believed that it might become necessary for the U.S. Government mission in Greece to sanction an increase in the Greek Army from 120,000 to 300,000, which would take a substantial chunk of the 300 million dollars in U.S. aid allocated for Greece.

At the U.N., delegates were said to be considering setting up a Greek border watch external to the U.N., should the Soviets block the Balkans Subcommittee recommendation for same with a veto in the Security Council. The watch committee would have no power but could gather information. The U.S. or Britain might also bring the Balkans complaint, which accused Yugoslavia, Albania, and Bulgaria of aiding the guerrillas in northern Greece, before the General Assembly should the veto take place. Or, they might bring a new complaint before the Security Council, pursuant to Chapter VII of the Charter.

Secretary of State Marshall, testifying before a House Judiciary subcommittee, urged that the Congress adopt legislation to admit 400,000 displaced persons from Europe during a four-year period. Secretary of War Robert Patterson and Secretary of Commerce Averell Harriman both joined in urging the legislation.

Secretary Patterson denied reports that he intended to resign when the merger of the Army and Navy would take effect. Speculation was that Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal would become the new Secretary of Common Defense. Speculation proved correct on both counts.

The State Department announced that it was proposing an eleven-nation conference, to begin August 19, to formulate a Japanese peace treaty, to be held in either Washington or San Francisco. No veto power would be allowed under the plan, as at the European peace treaty conferences. The invited nations included Britain, China, and Russia, as well as the other members of the Far Eastern Commission established in 1945 to supervise occupation of Japan. Soviet Foreign Commissar V. M. Molotov was said to oppose the non-veto plan, but was considering the proposal.

Secretary Marshall stated that the U.S. would sell to Turkey ten merchant ships as a first step in the new aid program recently authorized by Congress, for 100 million dollars worth of aid. Payment for six of the vessels, for both cargo and passengers, would be remitted in cash, without costing the U.S. any money. The other four vessels were described as war surplus.

Former OPA administrator Leon Henderson told the Joint Committee on the Economic Report that price hikes had outrun wage boosts, threatening a price collapse such as followed World War I. Senator Robert Taft rejoined that he saw no such threat on the horizon.

Cotton futures on the New Orleans Exchange were $1.35 to $2.80 per bale higher than at the previous close, having reached as high as $3.65 to $4.75 per bale higher. On the New York market, prices rose from $3.20 to $5.25 per bale higher.

In Honolulu, the ILWU strike in the pineapple industry ended after six days, with agreement to renew negotiations.

In Hastings, Neb., 100 guests showed up for a wedding ceremony, only to be told by the minister that the bride and groom had been married earlier, that the groom could be rushed to the hospital for an appendectomy.

It could have been worse.

A Charlotte architect and his wife returned from a vacation to find their home having been entered, apparently by youngsters who had left hand prints on the walls and generally ransacked the place. Nothing was missing.

In Ahoskie, N.C., a 23-year old black war veteran of Hertford County was being awarded a new Cadillac by the Kiwanis International Club of the town, after his winning ticket in a lottery for the car had been initially denied on the basis that he was not white. The white winner had already received a Cadillac.

The Club acted in response to complaints over its first action, including a threat from Senator Carl Hatch of New Mexico that he would denounce the Club on the floor of the Senate.

The Club president stated that the members were of the "highest integrity"—as long as "integrity" did not imply integration. He also stated that Club policy frowned on all forms of games of chance to raise money, including lotteries. Apparently, they had made exception, but he did not explain, from within the framework of his carefully segregated integrity.

Whether one car was white and the other, black, or blue and red, with green and yellow stripes down the middle, purple or pink pipes running along the side, was not stated.

What price segregation?

They could have saved some money and simply had the black man and white man share the car during alternating months.

There were also no accommodations for black people at the festival dance held the previous month to benefit the Club's underprivileged children's fund. Whether any of the funds were provided to black children was not indicated. Perhaps they could buy little white and black Cadillacs and provide them to each underprivileged child according to color.

Princess Elizabeth and her fiance, Lt. Philip Mountbatten, danced until 3:00 a.m. in Edinburgh, Scotland, at a benefit for the National Association of Girls' Clubs.

In Santa Monica, Calif., Walter Donaldson, composer of "My Blue Heaven", "Yes Sir, That's My Baby", "My Mammy", and "Little White Lies", died of a long-standing liver ailment at age 54.

In Fort Lewis, Wash., the owner of a mink farm would likely receive $2,079 in damages from the Government because all except 48 of his 279 mink kittens had died from being smothered by their mothers when planes flew low above his farm from the nearby Army Air Force Field during maneuvers in 1939. The House had approved the claim and sent it to the Senate.

Cannot you train the mother minks to use better judgment than that? It would be better to have a few furs trimmed by the props than to have practically the whole litter smothered by the mother minks. Don't you think?

Such is what happens when you have over-protective mothers. Remember the lesson of the minks.

On the editorial page, "A Time for Economic Planning" tells of the country having reached the goal set by Henry Wallace when he became Secretary of Commerce, though it opines that he had little to do with the achievement.

"The Medical College Again" tells of Governor Gregg Cherry having appointed a nine-member committee of the University of North Carolina board to study whether the four-year medical school, previously approved for the University in Chapel Hill, would be better established in Greensboro, with the aid of the Moses Cone Memorial Hospital Fund.

"Is the Campaign Already Over?" tells of North Carolina Democratic leaders finding that Charles Johnson, State Treasurer, was so far ahead in the gubernatorial race that his lead was practically insurmountable.

A piece from the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, titled "Notes on a Cousinly Match", finds interest in the engagement of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip of Greece, both being great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria and also of King Christian IX of Denmark, "double-barreled cousinship".

Southern imagination tends to bend kneeward to admit of great linkages in the propinquities, until everyone is related back to Adam, at least Antipodally. As Cash once remarked, many Southerners hold title to being heir to Bruce of Scotland, if not to the "quickening breath of God." Certainly at least to one or two kings, somewhere at some time.

Drew Pearson recounts rare rancor within the GOP Policy Committee occasioned by the reaction to Senator William Langer of North Dakota having blocked the Senate investigation of the Kansas City voting scandal involving the Democratic primary of the previous year, in which Enos Axtell, the President's candidate, backed by the James Pendergast machine at the behest of the President, defeated the incumbent Congressman Roger Slaughter, who consistently had held up the President's program in committee. Senator Langer was not ashamed to tell of his own political misfortunes in the past coming in the face of investigations which he found unfair, once having been nearly barred by his colleagues from taking his seat in the Senate, and having been arrested for having challenged a judge for prejudice.

Samuel Grafton suggests that the country was living in a new age where an unguarded file cabinet could become a national disaster for revealing atomic secrets. No longer were the yeomen farmers or "'honest artisans'" the warders of the republic's safety. The fate of the land was now in the hands of the FBI agent. It was a remake of "Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back".

The age had become one of futility, for working at tasks seemed useless in the face of continually imminent atomic destruction. Civilians were regarded as unfit to control atomic energy as the public increasingly favored that it be returned to the Army, taken away from the AEC.

"We are, for the first time, more afraid of the shadows than we are proud of our lamps."

As the world continued to live daily inside a melodrama, a desire for crisis might become the norm just to be rid of the tension and achieve the climax to reveal who the villain of the piece really was.

For Russia and the West not to reach agreement in such an atmosphere was one of the great absurdities of history. Mumbling about preservation of "national sovereignty", as had become the mantra in Russia, only added to the absurdity. The mere prospect of atomic war would as surely destroy the quality of life in the civilized world as the war itself. America had become afraid of the unseen hand and the unguarded alley.

"What a way to live! If tragedy must be the human lot, at least it should be on the scale of Lear, and not of Edgar Wallace."

Joseph & Stewart Alsop advocate an affirmative answer to the abiding question of whether the country could afford the Marshall Plan. The country could afford it. Current revenue was 43 billion dollars against a proposed budget by the President of 37 billion dollars, leaving six billion in surplus even without cutting of the budget by the Congress.

A letter writer, an Air Force sergeant stationed at Pope Field in North Carolina, tells of his opinion of the South, before his incipient discharge that he might return to "God's country" in the North. He had changed his impressions of the South in the year he had been stationed at Pope. Originally, he thought the land "lousy, backward, barbaric", but now found it more open-minded, as The News had proved in its coverage of the acquittal in late May of the 28 men in Greenville, S.C., in the lynching of Willie Earle. It showed that some Southerners were thinking even as justice was being "kicked in the pants".

A letter writer responds to the previous letter writer who had offered $100 to anyone who could show where the Bible promised an immortal soul, elevating humans above the beasts. She recommends Hebrews 10, especially verses 3 and 39. She then commends to him, as we did, John 3:16, (the citation which they flash at the ball games), tells the previous writer to take a razor blade and clip it, then burn his Bible, and he would still have the promise. She urges that the previous writer bow and pray.

She advises that the writer donate the $100 to something good and cites Matthew 6:3.

We got there before she did. Where's the dough? We're still waiting.

No? You may need that razor blade.

Framed Edition

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