Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State
Marshall issued a statement that the U.S. did not contemplate
establishing bases in exchange for aid under ERP. He felt the
statement necessary to allay fears in Europe arising from a misquote
of the Senate testimony of Secretary of Defense James Forrestal the
previous Thursday, which had it that the U.S. did intend to ask for
such bases as a quid pro quo for the aid.
Reports confirmed the belief held for months that Russia was
to receive an Italian battleship, a cruiser, and 37 other vessels,
about one-third of the Italian fleet, in reparations from Italy. The
official report on the subject, however, remained secret.
In response to the national fuel oil shortage, the President
ordered that thermostats be cut back to 68 degrees during working
hours in Government buildings heated by fuel oil. Government
vehicles were not to be driven over 40 mph or any further than
necessary.
In Charlotte, the Weather Bureau was predicting snow this night and into
Sunday morning, as the temperature would dip to 15 from temperatures
this date ranging between 30 and 50 degrees. Bundle up. Memphis had
suffered its worst snow in 56 years, 12 inches. Nashville had seven
inches. One person had died in Tennessee and one in South Carolina
from the cold.
Congressman Robert Doughton of North Carolina, former House
Ways & Means Committee chairman, indicated that he would vote to
sustain a Presidential veto of the 5.6 billion dollar tax reduction
bill proposed by Ways & Means chairman Harold Knutson. But he
did not support the President's contention that there should be no
overall reduction of Federal revenue. He wanted to reduce the number
of Federal employees to cut spending and provide some tax cut.
Secretary of Commerce Averell Harriman testified to the
Senate Banking Subcommittee that to eliminate rent controls when
they expired at the end of February would raise the cost of living
and place pressure on increased wage demands.
Both Mrs. Woodrow Wilson and Eleanor Roosevelt attended the
funeral services for Josephus Daniels in Raleigh this date. Mr.
Daniels had served under both Presidents, as Secretary of the Navy
under President Wilson and as Ambassador to Mexico under FDR.
On Monday morning at 8 o'clock, the North Carolina vehicle
inspection stations across the state would begin operation. The fee
would be a dollar. The inspection would look for mechanical defects
and take about fifteen minutes. Be sure and get there early,
especially if you still have a prewar jalopy on the road.
On the editorial page, "Marshall Plan Up to the People" tells of Herbert Agar of the Louisville Courier-Journal having
suggested at the Pinehurst Forum the previous week at Pinehurst,
N.C., which Secretary of State Marshall had attended, the
circulation and signing of a petition to Congress, supporting
passage of the Marshall Plan as proposed. The action was undertaken.
It was designed to prevent the same sort of thing which
happened in 1919 when, despite popular support for joining the
League of Nations, the isolationists in the Senate banded together
to talk the Treaty of Versailles to death and include so many
reservations as to render American participation meaningless,
causing the League supporters ultimately to reject the sham
resolution of the Senate. It had been out of that atmosphere that
the isolationism developed which led to the country not being
prepared adequately for World War II, thus contributing to its
onset.
It urges more people to do as the Pinehurst Forum and speak
up for the Plan, to encourage the lawmakers not to emasculate it to
the point of rendering it a nullity from its inception. Congress had
already reduced the commitment to one year with annual review
thereafter, rather than the proposed four-year commitment,
recommended to enable full planning by the 16 recipient nations.
Mr. Agar, incidentally, had originally been scheduled to
speak at the Mayflower Literary Society ceremony in Raleigh on
December 5, 1941 at which W. J. Cash was posthumously awarded the
annual prize. He was prevented from attending by a snowstorm in
Louisville and Josephus Daniels spoke in his stead.
"Estes Kefauver of Tennessee" tells of an anonymous
author directing Boss Ed Crump of Memphis the previous week to
deposit $50,000 in an envelope and leave it at a certain street
corner or suffer death at the hands of the writer. "Mr. Ed"
enclosed a note in a briefcase which read: "To the coward
perpetrating this dastardly thing: anyone could take a white mouse
with baby teeth and run you in the Mississippi River." He then
waited at the corner, but no one showed up. Disappointed, he went
home.
He faced a more formidable challenge in trying to steer the
Senate race in Tennessee. His hand-picked candidate for the Senate
to contest Congressman Estes Kefauver was an obscure circuit judge.
The incumbent, Senator Tom Stewart, had been abandoned by Boss Crump
and had not decided whether to run.
Mr. Kefauver, a member of the House for eight years, likely
would win regardless of the opponent. He had a good record of
support for TVA, the 1938 Reciprocal Trade Act, veterans, the
Agricultural Adjustment Administration and rural electrification.
Following his participation in developing the Reorganization Act of
1946, he had published a book the previous year, Twentieth
Century Congress, in which he set forth proposals for
streamlining the Congress. The piece provides its endorsement for
his candidacy.
Mr. Kefauver would win, and in 1956, would narrowly be
selected over Senator John F. Kennedy for the vice-presidential spot
on the Democratic ticket with Adlai Stevenson. It was the only time
John Kennedy was ever defeated in a political contest.
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled
"Retreat into Ignorance", tells of a report from the
Elementary Journal out of the University of Chicago stating
that the situation in public schools would be going from bad to worse
by 1955 if no program were undertaken to improve them. The problem,
it said, was low teacher pay. So many qualified teachers had left
the profession that temporary teaching certificates were being
provided unqualified persons to fill the void. The population of
children was rising fast, as 12,000 more teachers were needed in
1947 than in the previous year.
Only two percent of those attending college on the G.I. Bill
were enrolled in colleges for teachers. The dire situation would, it
predicts, if allowed to continue, cause increasingly lower standards
of education and ultimately harm the country and its democracy.
Drew Pearson tells of personnel firings or resignations at
both the Civil Aeronautics Board and the Civil Aeronautics
Administration, leaving it depleted of administrators and lower
personnel shaken. The President had fired the head of CAB, which
allocated routes and made general policy. The CAA investigated
safety issues and its head had resigned recently to go into the
private sector. It left the President with the problem of trying to
persuade qualified personnel to take the jobs.
The new Veterans Administration head, General Carl Gray,
appointed to succeed General Omar Bradley, insisted to the House
Veterans Committee that his ancestors came to the U.S. on the
Mayflower and that he was a loyal American. Congressman Walter Huber
of Ohio said that he was impressed with that fact but hoped that
General Gray would work for the men who came over on cattle ships
and the like much later. The General, flushing, said that he would.
Texas Senator P. the B. Pappy Lee O'Daniel, scheduled to
appear on the new radio program "Meet the Press", at first
balked unless his friends were on the panel. In the end, Walter
Trohan of the Chicago Tribune, Bob Johnson of the Houston
Post, and Sarah McClendon of several small Texas newspapers—to
become longtime White House correspondent in subsequent years,
often addressed by Presidents simply as "Sarah" at press
conferences—, wound up on the panel. Mr. Pearson says that they
"covered Pappy with verbal kisses". Whether there was gravy or molasses involved was not indicated.
Mr. P. the B. would be defeated by a landslide in the coming primary by LBJ, whom Mr. O'D. had defeated by an equivalent landslide in the special election of June 28, 1941, which sent then Governor Pappy to the Senate.
Ailing Senator Robert Wagner of New York had found that nine
out of ten mayors of cities of population greater than 50,000
favored Federal help in remedying the housing shortage.
The State Department was getting ready to recognize the
bloody regime of General Samosa in Nicaragua.
Senator Taft's labor committee was preparing to hold hearings
on two opposing health care bills, one introduced by Senator Taft,
calling for Federal contributions to state agencies, and the other
by Senator James Murray of Montana, providing for extensive national
health insurance. The latter bill was opposed by doctors.
There was backstage talk of selecting former OPA head Chester
Bowles as the Democratic nominee for vice-president.
Another former OPA head, Paul Porter, when asked what he
thought of the prospects of price control legislation in the
Congress, stated that the only thing he could say about it was a
four-letter word. It was unprintable, he said, but he was willing to
spell it out: "T-A-F-T".
Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss the new American air
transport base at Tripoli in Libya, having been described by
Secretary of Defense Forrestal as a link in the line to Athens. Its
actual purpose, they posit, was to strengthen American power in the
Mediterranean. It germinated as an alternative to sending American
troops to Greece, in response to the Soviet-sponsored effort to
seize Konitsa.
A minority in the Administration, mainly in the State
Department, had favored sending troops. The majority, primarily in
the military, advocated the base at Tripoli.
The original withdrawal date from Italy was December 3, 1947,
ninety days after the treaty with Italy was ratified, as determined
at Potsdam in July, 1945. That date was deferred temporarily because
of the Communist offensive in Italy, via the national strike, having
been timed to coincide with the American withdrawal. The American
troops left behind were small in number, mainly supply sergeants,
but it threw the Communist strike plan and propaganda out of kilter.
At the same time, the Russians complied with their commitment
to leave Bulgaria. The 100,000 Russian troops were transferred to
Rumania. To achieve that end was the ultimate purpose of the delay
in having all American troops leave Italy. It had also been a source
of dispute within the Government, with many in the military wanting to
stick to the schedule while others saw the practical wisdom of a
delay.
James Marlow of the Associated Press tells of veteran
Congressman Homer Ramey of Ohio having gone home during the recess
and made a speech, saying that some believed Congress to be doing
too much, some, not enough. He said that it took a thick skin to be
in Congress. He observed that Mark Twain had once said that he might
become that "lowest form of human creatures".
Some members had broken into tears when praised, as it was
simply too much to bear.
Mr. Marlow concludes by asking how the reader now felt.
A letter writer wants the Government to give an atomic
ultimatum to Russia to cease its expansionist policies or face
nuclear annihilation.
Gee, that would be smart. Let's just do that and see what
happens. Be sure, though, to get your duck-and-cover Mr. Terrific
tin-hat to guard you at Zero Hour on A-Day.
He had read a piece in the Presbyterian Journal by Dr.
L. Nelson Bell, for years a missionary in Japan, saying: "Give
due warning to Russia and time to repent. If the warning goes
unheeded, let fly the devastating bomb."
Amen, brother. That is sure a Christian way to view it. If L.
Nelson Bell, by golly, advocates it, it has to be done.
We think the writer may have been drinking or tired and
instead read a cartoon representation of a character named Hell
Knellsome Bell, but maybe not.
The editors suggest that while such a course might enhance
the nation's material security, it would not do much for its
spiritual security.
Who cares about that? We're out to conquer the world. We got
atomic bombs. Don't quote that Matthew 16:26 "what
propheteth a man" stuff. Who do you think you are, Jesus or
somebody? God gave us the atomic bomb and he meant for us obviously
to use it whenever we see fit or see Red. And who the hell is
Disraeli, some Jew? Marshall Plan and U.N. That is the path to the
Deil's nether lands, mister. You had better read your Good Book
better. There's lots o' killing in there.
A letter from failed GOP Congressional candidate P. C.
Burkholder comments on the editorial of January 9, "Turning
Point for the Grand Old Party?" anent Secretary of State
Marshall telling Congress that a crucial time had been reached,
either to support the Marshall Plan as proposed or retreat into the
isolationism of the past and its attendant dangers.
He agrees that a turning point had been reached but believes
that it was the New Deal which had caused all the problems, not
isolationism. He contends that America had built the Russian war
machine which now threatened a "New Deal war". He doesn't
like the Marshall Plan at all.
Obviously. Never mind that, had Russia either made a
separate peace with Germany or joined the Axis, it might have taken three million
Americans killed in the war to have won it. Certainly, it would
have been far more than 300,000. But what's the difference as long
as you get your country buttermilk and run again for Congress?
