The Charlotte News
Tuesday, October 26, 1948
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Paris, U.S. delegate to the U.N. Warren Austin, acting as chairman of the U.N. Security Council, angrily adjourned debate on the Palestine question because of constant harangues from the Arab nations charging bias, causing Mr. Austin to believe that the Council was being "lashed into action" rather than through proper debate and study of the matter. The Egyptian delegate had pressed for immediate Security Council action after the Security Council had been asked to consider the Egyptian charge that Israel was violating the U.N.-ordered ceasefire agreement in the Negev desert region. The Syrian delegate had said that the Council appeared indifferent to the Egyptian charges.
Also in Paris, John Foster Dulles, soon to become Secretary of State under President Dewey, in one of his first important speeches to the U.N. session, told the 58-member U.N. political committee that Russian action in the U.N. was part of a general effort to extend Soviet power over the world. He asserted that the Greek situation involving the Communist-led guerrillas and the Berlin blockade were of a piece with this general effort. He proposed a resolution to send the U.S. special commission on the Balkans back to work for another year investigating the Greek civil war and order Greece's northern neighbors, Albania, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria, to cease aiding the guerrillas. The resolution was joined by China, Britain, and France.
ERP loaned 310 million dollars to Britain, to be used to purchase industrial machinery and materials necessary for the European recovery effort. It covered the remaining nine months of the fiscal year. The loan carried 2.5 percent interest, to begin accruing in 1952, and Britain was to begin repaying the loan in 1956 in semi-annual installments. The term of the loan would run until 1983. The payments could be deferred if both nations agreed it was necessary. It was the first major credit granted under ERP. In 1946, the U.S. had loaned to Britain 3.75 billion dollars. Negotiations were in progress on loan terms for another 490 million dollars to nine of the other 15 ERP-recipient nations.
In southern France, a coal mine striker was killed and two policemen were wounded seriously after Government forces were met by a blast of gunfire and a hand grenade, wounding several policemen. The Government force was preparing to clear strikers from four coal mines and a power plant near Ales. It was claimed that the strikers fired first. About a hundred strikers were arrested, most of them armed. Two strikers had been killed the previous week in St. Etienne.
In Asuncion, Paraguay, it was officially announced that an attempted coup in the country had failed. Col. Carlos Montanaro, brother of the Paraguayan Foreign Minister attending the U.N. meeting in Paris, had surrendered less than 20 hours after the revolt he led with his military school cadets had begun. It was the second such uprising in a year in the country. The prior El Presidente had been overthrown in June.
In Charlotte, Lee Humber, a Greenville, N.C., attorney, spoke at the local Rotary Club in favor of world federation, suggesting it as the only means to peace. He favored revision of the U.N. Charter to make the organization a world legislative body with authority to license the manufacture of weapons and conduct adequate inspections to enforce the provision. He had authored the "Humber Resolution", adopted by the North Carolina Legislature in 1941, advocating a world community "which requires laws and not treaties for its government".
The President had spoken the previous night in Chicago Stadium, warning of a dictatorial form of government should the Republicans gain control of the White House and Congress. He declared it a "fight for the very soul of the American Government" against the GOP forces of reaction at work. He said that the Republicans were men of little vision who made "soap-bubble promises" which vanished at "the first touch of reality". He would tour this date Indiana and Ohio, concluding the evening with a speech in Cleveland, for the second of six remaining major addresses, to finish the pathetically hopeful campaign in St. Louis on Saturday.
President-elect Dewey would also speak in Chicago Stadium this night, regarding what labor, business and agriculture could expect from their government. He would then go to Cleveland, Boston and back to New York to conclude the campaign in Madison Square Garden on Saturday night.
Governor Strom Thurmond, Dixiecrat candidate, said that a "national police force" was being trained by President Truman to carry out the Fair Employment Practices law. He warned that civil rights legislation would lead to Federal policing by persons who did not know the locals and did not care about their special problems.
Why, they might not even be white honkies who wink at the lynchers and trot out the fire hoses against agitators. It could be awful.
In Reno, Nev., the wife of author John Steinbeck was summoned to a coroner's inquest in the death of a man found in the desert with a bullet wound in his head, after he had lost $86,000 playing blackjack in a casino a few hours earlier and written three checks to cover the losses. Mrs. Steinbeck may have been the last person to see him alive.
It may have to do with the rabbits, or the mice.
In Hopkinsville, Ky., officials reported that a woman traveling with her three-year old son was thrown from a train near the town and severely injured. She suffered from shock and could not provide details of the incident, but said that she was pushed and mentioned two Naval recruits on the train. No foul play was suspected and none of the passengers were detained.
It could have been the cellist
In Ballymena, Northern Ireland, a contemplative man who always chewed on a straw as he drove his cart and pony around the little town, always had a stomach ache, too, and, after examination and surgery, two balls of straw, weighing a pound and 12 ozs., were removed from his stomach.
A News story by Ray Stallings regarding a house-breaking had led to the identification by a deaf mute of the suspect in another house-breaking, occurring August 16.
On the editorial page, "Another Problem for the Legislature" tells of the dilemma facing the 1949 Legislature regarding the plethora of licensing boards in the state, for everything from barbering to embalming, in addition to the traditionally controlled fields of medicine and law. The problem was to balance the need for professionalism against the tendency of established practitioners to try to monopolize a given trade through licensing procedures. A General Licensing Board to oversee everything had been proposed, and the piece thinks it might be a salutary answer.
"A Dictator Cracks Down on the Press" tells of Juan Peron in Argentina having cracked down on the press of that country on October 8, ironically the last day of National Newspaper Week in the U.S. The decree had cut the number of pages which the two major newspapers could print while exempting from that limitation all news favorable to the Government, effectively reducing the voice of the opposition. Dictatrix Eva Peron, Juan's esposa, was the country's largest publisher.
Not much had been said about the matter in the United States, though the act was a long stride toward complete domination of Argentina by the dictator. Sr. Peron's politics were cast in the totalitarian mold of Franco in Spain, Hitler and Mussolini, and if the U.S. continued to condone his machinations, his future in Argentina would be unassailably solidified in concrete.
"A Romantic Departs" tells of the death of Franz Lehar, whose "nice" music
included "The Merry Widow"
A piece from the Greenville (S.C.) News, titled "Smaller Turkeys", tells of the "Beltsville Bird", weighing less than ten pounds, having been developed about twenty years earlier because traditional turkeys of 20 pounds were too much for the average household.
Still, it suggests, ten pounds was a lot for a couple, and so frozen turkey steaks might be the answer.
Why, sure, there is nothing better
to consider for Thanksgiving dinner than having a nice frozen turkey
steak to throw under the kitchen radar. If you've got some canned pork
'n' beans, vinegar to pour in there, and apple sauce to go with it,
along with a slice of bread and some cranberry juice
Drew Pearson urges realization that without an intelligent Congress, the election of a President was superfluous in terms of getting things done. He provides a list of Congressmen who did not deserve re-election, to be supplemented later in the week by a list of those who did.
The list, with the reasons why each did not deserve re-election, includes the following Republicans: Charles Fletcher of California; Robert Rockwell of Colorado; Howard Buffett of Nebraska; Edwin Hall of New York; Wat Arnold of Missouri; Harold Youngblood of Michigan; John Sanborn of Idaho; Frank Barrett of Wyoming; Wint Smith of Kansas; Bert Gearhart of California; Horace Seely-Brown of Connecticut; P. W. Griffith of Ohio; Fred Smith of Ohio; Raymond Burke of Ohio; Robert McGarvey of Pennsylvania; C. W. Bishop of Illinois; and Fred Crawford of Michigan.
Added to these was Laborite Leo Isacson of New York.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop indicate that a question sooner or later had to be answered: whether Western Europe could be placed in a defensive posture vis-à-vis the Soviets, despite the vast manpower resources available to the latter. The experts were giving attention to the radioactive by-products of nuclear fission as a means of helping to answer this question, as this process had enabled mass production of radioactive material which could neutralize or kill soldiers within a few hours after exposure to it.
Some had called for a radioactive Maginot Line across Western Europe, an impractical concept for its safety implications. But other, less spectacular uses of the by-products were being considered as a means of defense. One plan was to place such radioactive material in key transport facilities to deny access to an invading army, especially disruptive of the Soviet Army acting inevitably far from its supply lines. But the process of placing such material still had to be developed, to avoid exposure to the crew of the plane dropping it or the soldiers putting it in place.
Even if that issue could be solved, other problems still limited its usefulness. Heavy rains would dissipate the radioactivity, which would weaken over time in any event. Moreover, lead-shielded vehicles moving at high rates of speed could probably withstand the radioactivity. The radioactive material might also be removed by specially protected squads.
James Marlow tells of the AFL blaming employers for raising prices and having suggested that management consult with unions to cut costs to allow for higher wages without price boosts. The latter, historically opposed by management, would constitute a revolution in labor relations with management. Management was jealously protective of its managerial role and did not want invasion of it by the unions, essentially implied by the AFL plan. Management was not required by law to bargain with the union regarding its methods of management, costs of production and the like.
He points out that in the clothing industry, there had been union-management cooperation in this regard, but that was a special case.
A letter writer says that he will pray for The News, that it might receive forgiveness from the ghosts of past Democrats for its having broken with its longstanding 60-year tradition of being a Democratic newspaper to endorse Thomas Dewey for the presidency in its October 21 editorial. He believes the reasoning expressed for doing so to be flawed.
A letter writer thinks that twice-failed GOP Congressional candidate P. C. Burkholder's Saturday announcement renouncing his membership in the Republican Party and joining the Democrats should have included the names of the men in the county GOP hierarchy to whom he referred as the elites with whom he could no longer get along. The writer says that they were Erve Presser and his political associates.
A letter writer thanks the newspaper for endorsing the Dewey-Warren ticket.
A letter writer informs that North Carolina statutory law provided that an elector could write-in a name not appearing on the ballot.
It is not clear who he has in mind, as all four principal parties in the race were on the North Carolina presidential ballot. Only the Communists and the Socialists, neither of whom had tried to get on the ballot, were not listed. The Dixiecrats, originally barred by the State Board of Elections for not timely satisfying certification requirements, were permitted by the State Supreme Court to be on the ballot.
A letter from the chairman of the Newspaper Committee thanks the newspaper for its promotion of the "Employ the Physically Handicapped Year-Round Program", during the period October 3-9. He pays special tribute to News reporters Dick Young and Donald MacDonald for their efforts.
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