Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Britain announced that it would end its 25-year Mandate over Palestine should the U.N. General Assembly fail to achieve a solution to the problem. It would stay only if the form of rule would be changed by the U.N., with both Arab and Jewish assent. The latter prospect was not good and so it was likely that the British would end the Mandate. Withdrawal completely was, however, according to a British spokesman, a separate issue. Britain required that the U.N. enforce any unpopular settlement it reached. It offered no plan for settlement of its own.

Sources reported that the Jewish Agency was upset that the British statement took no position on partition of Palestine.

Andrei Vishinsky broadened his attack on U.S. warmongers, saying in a written statement that John Foster Dulles, American chief delegate Warren Austin, and Britain's chief delegate, Hector McNeill, ought be "enchained". Said he: "It is only unknown why, prohibiting and prosecuting pornography and traffic in women and children and imprisoning those who commit such crimes, it is impossible to put into the same prison the warmongers, provocateurs and instigators of slaughter who are the most offensive criminals against freedom, progress and happiness of mankind."

He might want to get together with the lady who kept writing The News with much the same sentiment being expressed, favoring jail or enforced military service for all profiteers, draft dodgers, and shirkers.

Senator Robert Taft, speaking the previous night in Tacoma, Wash., proposed that the U.S. take the lead in forming a U.N. without Russia. He also advocated applying a plan of limited industrial reconstruction for Germany, monitored indefinitely by the U.S., rather than the "Morgenthau Plan", reducing it to an agricultural state. He wanted the Marshall Plan limited to loans for a specific purpose rather than an "international WPA". Republican leaders of both Washington and Oregon said that Senator Taft could only obtain a small number of delegates from either state at the 1948 convention.

In Tel Aviv, Hebrew-speaking gunmen killed three British constables in a gun battle during a daylight robbery of an armoured car, getting away with $180,000, having dropped one bag containing another $420,000. A bomb designed as a distraction had exploded at a building across the street just before a hand grenade was tossed from a jeep at the armoured car. Accomplices were thought to be inside the bank, as a shooting took place when their way was barred from the bank by two constables, one of whom was killed and another seriously wounded in a second shootout.

A Federal Judge set aside the conviction of Navy Chief Signalman Harold Hirshberg for maltreating fellow war prisoners in a Japanese prison camp, based on a finding that the Navy lacked jurisidiction to try the matter. Mr. Hirshberg had re-enlisted after an honorable discharge, and the incident had occurred during his first term of enlistment and while he was under control of the Japanese Government, not the Navy.

A story out of Dobson, N.C., requires some interpretation. A physician of Sparta was convicted of criminal abortion for performing an abortion in August, 1946 on a patient who then died. He was apparently found not guilty of manslaughter. A companion of the woman had pleaded no contest to both charges and was given a suspended sentence. The story says that the companion was acquitted by the jury of manslaughter, making no sense if he had already pleaded no contest, and so apparently that referred to the verdict in the physician's case.

Celebrating students in Holland, Mich., pulled down a lamppost onto the head of a freshman at Hope College, killing him.

Two youths sought to rob a bank in Peachland, N.C., one receiving from a teller $13.94 and then the other hitting another teller with the butt of his gun, which then discharged into his accomplice, wounding him seriously. The hapless robber then fled, leaving his wounded companion with the $13.94 haul. Eventually, the getaway car suffered a flat tire and the robber fled into the woods, into which he was pursued by a posse.

Stay tuned. If you see him, do not approach unless he has another accomplice around to plug.

A letter from the secretary of the Charlotte physician arrested the previous day for selling morphine illegally to undercover narcotics agents and Charlotte police at a hotel, had been received in protest of the story and is re-printed on the page. The secretary alleged that the caller from the hotel claimed not to be an addict, but rather a patient suffering from latter-stage cancer. The secretary said that she had seen the person previously in the office and that he acted his part so well that she thought he might die then and there. She was relieved when the doctor told her that he would only see him elsewhere from that point forward. She was surprised that he was still alive when he called from the hotel the previous day to set up the meeting.

If it turns out that she is correct, it is a clear case of entrapment and the case ought be dismissed, at least under modern conceptions of that defense, which forbid any form of unusual appeal to sympathy to induce the target of the investigation to break the law. We shall see if 1947 justice embraces that concept.

The story adds that the implication that the previous day's story had suggested that the agent claimed to be a narcotics addict was not correct. It had only indicated that the agent had called and asked that morphine be delivered at the hotel by the doctor.

For purposes of full disclosure, we initially had confused the labels of three editorial pages such that the page of this date wound up attached to Wednesday's front page, that attached to Thursday belonged to Wednesday, and that attached to this date belonged to Thursday. Having straightened out the road again, you no longer need pretend that yesterday is tomorrow, or the day before yesterday, as the case may have been.

Make no mistake, it's all obskein...

On the editorial page, "More Delay in Washington" tells of two disappointing announcements coming from the President's press conference, that he encouraged Americans to waste less food and that a group was being established to set up plans for conservation of food.

"A Film Censor Goes Blind" tells of movie censor Lloyd T. Binford of Memphis having banned a film, "Curley", in which white and black children were seen playing together. Producer Hal Roach had described Mr. Binford as "still fighting the Civil War."

"Crossfire" was the first Hollywood film bold enough to treat of anti-Semitism—"Gentleman's Agreement", to win the Academy Award for 1947 for Best Picture, still being a month and a half from release. It predicts it would be many years before the movies had the courage to dispense with racial stereotypes and depict blacks in any but servile or entertainer roles.

Mr. Binford recently had deleted a scene from a film depicting Lena Horne singing.

He admitted that his bans were based on his subjective opinions of social equality. But he should have known that black and white children had been playing together for years in the South without problem. "Our Gang" enjoyed wide popularity within the region.

Mr. Binford had overstepped his bounds as a censor and ventured into the realm of the absurd, in exercising his blind prejudices.

"Faith in Private Enterprise" tells of a tire company representative from Akron speaking at the Charlotte Kiwanis Club in support of optimism and faith as a means to combat high prices. It was an attitude showing in the housewives who were demonstrating little interest in buyers' strikes. Apparently, all were so convinced, save for the two percent, according to a Gallup poll, who laid blame for the inflation on the GOP majority in Congress.

A piece from the Atlanta Journal, titled "No to the Lottery", inveighs against the notion advanced by Congressman Adolph Sabath of Illinois, that a lottery would be a means of supporting the Government. The piece finds that it would instead sap the moral strength of the nation and thus not be worth it, even should it raise many billions of dollars. It was simply a form of legalized gambling, emblematic of the underworld. The Congressman's argument that it would divert illegal gambling to serve the Government was wrong-headed, as it neglected the notion of feeding the gambling urge by giving it Government sanction.

A squib from the Atlanta Journal suggests that hanging was too good for the excessive noise-makers of the world. It was "too quick and too silent."

Drew Pearson tells of threatened press censorship anent two stories aboard the U.S.S. Missouri during the President's return voyage from Brazil. The first was the Navy rough-housing in hazing of "Pollywogs", those crossing the equator for the first time. Windsor Booth of Time reported that 18 men were injured in the melee. White House press secretary Charles G. Ross was upset by the story for its adverse reflection on the Navy.

The Navy may have simply confused the Missouri with Mrs. Murphy's.

At the recent Cabinet food conference, the President had expressed confidence that the American people would participate in voluntary rationing to support the aid effort, citing support of the Red Cross as example. He asserted that it would only take a little cooperation to get the job done.

The meeting discussed elimination of the ten percent of waste in food as a means of curbing the potential for rationing. Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson proposed sending to Europe food other than grains, especially fruit, of which there was a surplus on the Pacific Coast. It was also suggested that the American people be encouraged to eat more potatoes and less grain, as potatoes could not be easily exported. Potatoes served as a ready substitute for grain foods.

Fiscal officials in the Administration had a contingency plan whereby the American people would subscribe to the Marshall Plan should Congress balk at fully funding it. It would amount to issuance of peace bonds.

Marquis Childs, in Athens, discusses the volatile monetary situation in Europe as various currencies fluctuated in relative value with the vicissitudes of politics. The Greek drachma was a barometer for that change.

Samuel Grafton discusses the power of the word over reality and substance among new-style conservatives in the country, as in "subsidies", which provoked invariably negative comment as having increased the cost of Government. But actually, elimination of subsidies had increased Government expenditure, as it increased the cost of foreign aid and the cost of support for veterans, as food prices steadily rose.

A Fortune public opinion poll conducted by Elmo Roper had shown that at least half the people in the country held a bias against some group in the population, with the greatest amount of hostility being directed at Jews. Of those queried, 36 percent believed that Jews had too much economic power, while 21 percent thought Jews had too much say in the Government. In some areas, more than a sixth of the respondents believed Catholics held too much political power. In the Southwest, 10 percent thought Protestants had too much power.

A letter appears, reprinted from the Hartford (Conn.) Times, from a Holiday on Ice skater who had fallen in Charlotte during the show and broken her leg. She had spent ten days in a Charlotte hospital and had been greatly impressed by the people of Charlotte and the sympathy toward her which they had demonstrated.

Framed Edition

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