Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that La Voce Libera
in Trieste had quoted Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia as indicating that
the country would use its own atomic bomb in any future conflict for
"the final annihilation of reaction."
If true, he could get together with the letter writer who
quoted Dr. L. Nelson Bell from the Presbyterian Journal to
the same effect, regarding a recommendation that the U.S., after
giving Russia "time to repent", should let fly the
bomb—in a hail Mary sort of operation, we suppose. We stress,
however, our continuing assumption that the correspondent who quoted
the statement was simply drunk or tired when he read the article,
possibly taking the statement out of context, as no one in their
right mind could have such thoughts in context.
The pro-De Gaulle newspaper in Paris, "Dissidence 40",
quoted from a Tito speech: "War against Anglo-Americans is
inevitable. It is perhaps even a question of weeks." He
reportedly went on to claim that Yugoslavia's military strength
exceeded that provided by the atom bomb. The weekly newspaper said
it had delayed publication of the text for a month, until it could
authenticate it.
Oh no. Get underneath the house and get one of them aluminum
nuclear blankets they got down at the hardware store, guaranteed to
protect against the rays. We can survive. Look at your Japanese. Be
sure and have a canary on hand also.
You see how our Government is? They were saying the other day
that we had until 1953. We got weeks, friend. They want us to
believe that we have time so as to lull us into complacency because,
in fact, Harry Truman and George Marshall are Communists who helped
Franklin Roosenfeld to get us into World War II and will be made
co-Commissars of the Republic of Amerika when Russia takes over.
It's coming, friends, within weeks. Prepare yourselves.
In Nuremberg and Cologne, 200,000 German workers had walked
off the job in protest of food shortages. A gathering of 30,000
strikers in Nuremberg Square criticized British and American
administration for the problem.
House Ways & Means chairman Harold Knutson commented that
the GOP-proposed slash of the President's 40-billion dollar budget
by three billion dollars had cleared the way for Mr. Knutson's
proposed 5.6 billion dollar tax cut, while leaving five billion for
reducing the national debt run up during the war.
The GOP ignored the President's $40 individual tax-cut
proposal, to be funded by a 3.2 billion dollar increase in corporate
taxes.
Former Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn said that the Knutson
tax-cut proposal would never become law, even if it passed the
Congress, implying that a Presidential veto would be sustained, for
the third time in a year.
Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snyder told the House
Foreign Affairs Committee that the Administration might have to ask
Congress to appropriate money to support European money, over and
above that provided for ERP. He did not state a dollar figure, but
forecast that it would be required during the current year and into
the following year.
The DNC was happy with the decision of A. F. Whitney, head of
the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, to support President Truman in
the 1948 election. Two years earlier, Mr. Whitney had vowed to
defeat the President after he had threatened to draft labor in the
event of a threatened rail strike.
Bad news came to the Democrats, however, in the form of the
inaugural address of Governor Fielding Wright of Mississippi,
recommending that Democrats defect from the party because of its
"anti-Southern" legislation, such as the proposed FEPC,
anti-lynch law, and anti-poll tax law. Senator James Eastland of
Mississippi, thought progressive when elected a year earlier,
recently had protested the campaign to select Justice William O.
Douglas as the vice-presidential candidate on the ticket.
Democrats, however, appeared not worried as they found the
statements aimed at local audiences of honkies who would have
nowhere else to honk except within the big tent of the Democratic
Party.
The RNC, meanwhile, appeared confident that they would elect
the next President.
James Caesar Petrillo, head of the American Federation of
Musicians—acquitted by a Federal judge the previous week on a
charge brought in Chicago for alleged violation of the Lea Act, the
court finding that the Government had failed to present adequate
proof that he had knowledge of both the lack of need for unnecessary
record turners and the fact that the radio station in question had denied
his demand, on threat of strike, for employment of the unnecessary personnel because they were inessential—, denied to the House Labor Committee that
there was any conspiracy between AFM and the radio networks to
retard the development of FM stations. He said that he had met with
FM stations in the previous month to arrange an agreement on use of
AFM musicians but informed them that first he had to consult with
the AM networks. He had banned live musicians from playing on FM
stations and the duplication of programs between AM and FM networks.
He said that he would make a deal with the small radio
stations enabling them to play records, provided they showed him
that they could not afford to hire more than a couple or three
musicians for live music. He had banned recorded music by union
musicians from the airwaves. He told the committee that the latter
move was "unsound" but was the only sound move he could
imagine to resolve the problem of breadless musicians—not to
mention heads of unions not receiving the handsome dues to which
they were accustomed from members, to line their pockets in
perpetuity.
Ah, the good old days of radio, when everything was
happy-happy and innocent as it could be. Don't you miss them? Wasn't that a time?
No word has come yet on the fate of the condemned
axe-murderer in Illinois, who had confessed to 44 other murders
across the country in an effort to delay or avoid his execution set
originally for the previous Friday.
In Charlotte, the American Trust Company was permitted by the
State Banking Commission to change its name and divide into two
branches, one to become a Wachovia Bank subsidiary and the other a
subsidiary of the Industrial Loan & Investment Bank.
You will wish to take careful notes.
The eleven-year old girl of whom Tom Fesperman had reported
on the previous Monday, unable, for lack of space, to be committed
by her family to a mental facility despite her violent and
uncontrollable condition from a congenital mental defect, would be
admitted to the Caswell Training School in Kinston, N.C. But,
according to the doctor in charge of the State hospitals, the commitment
might yet be weeks away because of overcrowding.
County Welfare Superintendent Wallace Kuralt, father of
eventual News reporter and CBS newsman Charles Kuralt,
reminded the doctor that the parents of the girl had already waited
for several years to try to obtain a commitment. The matter was
especially urgent because her younger brother's recovery from
rheumatic fever was being delayed by the presence in the home of his
troubled sister.
The Mecklenburg County Sheriff proposed the construction of
padded cells in the County Jail for mental cases confined there
sometimes for weeks at a time. Some of the inmates had caused
injury to themselves during their incarceration, including smashing
their heads against the cell bars or on the concrete floors.
That may imply sanity under the circumstances.
In Los Angeles, the War Assets Administration had surplus
pants for sale, 10,000 pairs of them, for a cheap price. The catch
was that they had permanently emblazoned on the seats, "PW".
Some husbands or even boyfriends, or even sympathetic friends
of husbands and boyfriends, nevertheless, might find the label
entirely appropriate and take advantage of the market to enable them
to wear finally the pants in the social unit.
They go on sale January 29, should you have an interest.
Furman Bisher tells on the sports page of a 20-year old
rookie named Forrest Thompson, set to begin training with the
Charlotte Hornets minor league baseball team. He was considered old.
Mr. Thompson was so good that the parent organization, the
Washington Senators, would take him up from the minors in April. But
he only lasted through the first couple of months of the following
season, apparently passing into retirement age.
That is what they mean, incidentally, by "retired the
side". It means that the pitcher has a side occupation already
dug out of the want ads, such as being a taste-tester for Peter Paul
Mounds.
A photograph appears of General Omar Bradley, shortly to take
over from General Eisenhower as Army chief of staff, taking an
unexpected sled ride on East 76th Street on New York's East Side.
On the editorial page, "Another Blow to Segregation"
comments on the recent Supreme Court case, Sipuel v. Board of Regents, which had held, pursuant
to the 1938 Gaines decision out of Missouri, that a black
female seeking admission to the all-white University of Oklahoma Law
School had to be admitted or the State had to provide an in-state
law school with the same facilities as that afforded white students,
in strict compliance with the 1896 separate-but-equal doctrine of
Plessy v. Ferguson. The piece thinks that it threw a new light
on the Governors' Conference, meeting in Nashville, considering a
regional graduate school concept, pooling resources of several
Southern states to afford such schools for black students.
It was well not to make a large financial commitment to such
schools until it was determined whether they would pass muster in
the Federal courts, a doubtful proposition as the regional schools would not,
by design, afford each state an in-state facility. Moreover, the
dynamics of the Supreme Court decisions in the area appeared headed
increasingly toward elimination of segregation—an astute
observation.
It suggests therefore that the best way to assure compliance
was to abolish completely the Jim Crow system and to admit blacks to
the white schools, consistent with the view voiced by the majority
of students at the University of Oklahoma and by the Tulsa
Tribune, the latter limiting its opinion to the University's
graduate school.
"Baruch Charts 'Global Strategy'" finds Bernard
Baruch's proposed plan for assuring the peace, stated the previous
Monday to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to be the soundest yet put forth.
The former national adviser to FDR, chair and member of the U.N.
Atomic Energy Commission, and head of war production in World War I,
had urged as an imperative that Congress pass the Marshall Plan as
proposed and to provide the President with authorization to put the brakes on
inflation until production could match demand, as well to avoid any tax cuts for two years.
During the interim when it was not feasible for both the U.S.
and Russia to prepare for a major war, emphasis had to be shifted
from war preparation to economic stabilization of those countries
ravaged by the war, including approval of the recent Geneva tariff
accord and renewal of the 1938 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, set to
expire at the end of June.
The third recommendation was for a union, economically and
militarily, of all European countries who would join. It would mean
more military participation by the U.S., but that was necessary as
long as Russia remained armed and belligerent, forming its own union
in Eastern Europe.
The question was whether the country would use its military
and imperialistic power for good or ill. "That is the only
choice we have."
"Soviet and American Imperialism" suggests that
Henry Wallace was so busy denouncing American imperialism that he
would likely overlook the imperialistic implications of Soviet
expansion into the Balkans, with the intent to establish a union
therein.
But, it opines, imperialism was inescapable in a world
divided into two or more economically and militarily powerful
countries.
Senator Taft appeared also confused on the same point when he
railed against the international economic, political, and military
interests of the country breaking down its isolation.
As Russia moved toward its Balkans union, the U.S. sought a
union in Western Europe. Each power thus recognized that such
imperialism had to be mutually beneficial to the states involved.
Both powers had to undertake these moves for their protection.
Sumner Welles, former Undersecretary of State until August,
1943, suggests that the Nobel Peace Prize for the year ought be
awarded to Dr. Oswaldo Aranha of Brazil for his efforts, in his role
as president of the U.N. General Assembly, to effect the Palestine
partition plan, approved November 29, 1947. He had also played a
major role in effecting Pan-American union, and had previously had a
decisive hand in ending two wars in Latin America, the Chaco War
between Paraguay and Bolivia, and, in 1942, the violent boundary
dispute between Ecuador and Peru.
Mr. Welles suggests that the Nobel Committee could do much
for humanity during the year were they to select Dr. Aranha for the
prize.
The Committee would not take the advice, choosing not to
award a peace prize in 1948, as it had not from 1939 through 1943.
Drew Pearson tells of Secretary of Interior J. A. Krug being
forced to consider selling his five percent interest in the Los
Angeles Rams professional football team, which he had purchased for
$7,500. The reason was that Ed Pauley was negotiating to purchase a
37.5 percent interest in the team. It would then create an
ostensible conflict of interest as Mr. Krug would have to sit in
judgment of the substantial tidewater oil lands interests of his
business partner, Mr. Pauley, the totality of those oil lands having
recently been ruled by the Supreme Court to be under Federal
jurisdiction. Mr. Krug would have to sell his interest at a loss, as
the Rams had not been doing very well.
He next provides detail of six new Friend Ships being
organized in six different parts of the nation, to collect and
deliver more food and other necessities to Europe. There was a train in New England, one going through
Nebraska and Illinois, the latter organized by Carl Sandburg, one
in the Northwest, one in Michigan, a milk ship to sail from
California, organized by Governor Earl Warren, and a Friend Ship in
North Carolina, organized by the state Council of Churches, to
collect clothing.
Irving Geist and Louis Nizer of the National Conference of
Jews and Christians met with the President the previous week to
discuss Palestine. The President said that he favored an
international police force made up of token armies from each member
of the U.N.
Mr. Nizer thought it to sound as the dilemma of whether cold
water or hot water should be used as a suitable remedy for neuritis.
The President quipped that perhaps it was why the country got into
so much hot water.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss the ongoing debate between
air power advocates and naval strength advocates within the Joint
Chiefs of staff, preventing their planning of a coordinated strategy
for defense.
The Navy advocates admitted that the atomic bomb and airborne
weaponry were the heart of the modern offensive. But they argued
that such weapons could not be delivered directly by air over long
distance, required therefore Navy carrier forces. They also argued
that since there were few places suitable for air bases on the
periphery of Russia, such floating airbases of the Navy were made
all the more necessary into the future. They proposed new carriers
of 80,000 tons, costing 200 million dollars apiece.
The Air Force advocates argued that the Navy was made
vulnerable to both air attack and the new Russian high-speed
submarines, not detectable by radar, as obtained from the German war
machine in the Eastern sector. The Russians had also developed the
German high speed jet fighter, which could travel faster and over a
greater range than anything extant in the American Air Force.
The debate had practical meaning for the Congress debating
ERP, as it was necessary to rebuild Europe to forestall any Soviet
aggression in the West and into the Mediterranean, if accomplished,
affording access to the Middle and Near East and the consequent
capacity to trouble the transportation routes of oil to the West. It
was futile to suggest that the U.S. would be alright as long as it
uniquely possessed the atomic bomb. For the means of delivery of the
device had been compromised, at least for the nonce, by the Soviet
advances in technology culled from the Germans.
A qualified expert had calculated that the annual defense
budget in a world without ERP would have to be 40 to 50 billion
dollars to assure security. ERP was estimated to cost 17 billion
dollars over a period of 51 months. The relative cost was therefore
cheap.
Yet, the Congress appeared still to debate finer points of
cost, and the new rallying cry appeared to turn on its head the old
saw attributed to Charles Pinckney in the XYZ Affair, such that it
was now "'billions for defense, but not one cent to save
ourselves.'"
Marquis Childs again advises that the present lull in Soviet
activity, following the defeats of the strikes in Italy and France
the previous month, was a deliberate attempt to delude the Congress
and lead it down the primrose path, in the hope that it would cause
emasculation of the Marshall Plan.
French Premier Robert Schumann had done a remarkable job in
his first weeks in office, passing the anti-strike legislation with
heavy penalties which, along with a show of force, had broken the
strikes, and having also gotten his inflation-control package
narrowly through the National Assembly. But the anti-Communist
campaign had cost the Government a billion dollars and so had
depleted much of the emergency aid appropriated by the U.S. for
France to see it through the winter. A recent estimate by the
Finance Minister indicated that there would be a two billion dollar
trade deficit facing the country in its attempt to obtain adequate
imports of food, fuel and other necessities.
The Communists still controlled the miners and dock workers
of France and could thus tie up the country with strikes in those
unions.
From the right, General De Gaulle recently had suggested
nationalization of workers and employers, lending credence to the
notion that he stood for a form of fascism.
The middle ground was fast disappearing in the country and it
was questionable whether another Communist assault on the economy
could be withstood.
The London Economist had suggested that Americans had
learned their lessons well enough but that the requirements
continued to change rapidly through time, faster than the
acquisition of the knowledge necessary to meet the vicissitudinous
contingencies.
A Quote of the Day: "'Kansas State Has Hot Cage Outfit
Without Flock of Goons'—headline. Is it any wonder puzzled
foreigners throw up their hands in despair, convinced they will
never succeed in mastering the English language?" —Roanoke Times
It referred to the Wildcats and, presumably, their acquired
erudition as borne out by their good academic standing.
