Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Andrei Vishinsky
argued before the U.N. Security Council that it had no jurisdiction
to hear the Berlin crisis, that the proper body to hear the matter
was the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Big Four. He argued that
the U.N. Charter forbade the hearing of any matter pertaining to
Germany until the Big Four had concluded a peace treaty regarding
Germany, and that the Western currency reform of June had forced
retaliation by Russia in the form of the blockade. The U.S. insisted
that the Council did have ground to hear the matter as a threat to
world peace.
U.S. chief delegate to the U.N. Warren Austin challenged
Russia on whether it was ready to agree to effective control of
nuclear energy. He said that he hoped that the time for throwing
"old tomato cans and dead cats" was over. The challenge
was in response to Mr. Vishinski's proposal that the U.N. agree to
atomic control and establish an international control organization
simultaneously, rather than first the latter and then the former, as
the Atomic Energy Commission of the U.N. recommended and as
supported by the U.S.
In Berlin, the Soviets renewed their protest claiming
numerous violations by British and American airlift planes of the
air corridor into Berlin. Most of the more than 700 claimed
violations were for low altitude flying.
Russia had issued new travel limitations on foreign diplomats
to confine them to the Moscow city limits, supplementing regulations
issued at the end of the war in Europe.
The Western European Union was studying its needs, to lay out
a sort of military Marshall Plan of aid for the WEU to present to
the U.S.
In Lima, Peru, Government troops had control of the Lima port
at Callao after putting down a bloody revolt by sailors and
civilians. Numerous casualties were reported. The revolt was laid to
the party opposing El Presidente Jose Luis Bustamente Rivero. The
revolt was led by Commander Enrique Aguila Pardo from aboard
warships.
Former Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes visited the
President for the first time since quitting the Cabinet in February,
1946 following a dispute over the confirmation of Ed Pauley as
Undersecretary of the Navy. Mr. Ickes had no comment yet for the
press, but said the meeting was entirely friendly. Mr. Ickes had
requested the meeting.
In Miami, a twin-engined charter airliner out of New Jersey
with 21 persons aboard was presumed down at sea after it had given a
distress signal north of Nassau in the Bahamas at 1:44 a.m. It had run out of fuel
somewhere between Charleston and Nassau by 4:45 a.m. It was to have
refueled at Lumberton, N.C., but never made it.
The Federal Reserve Board announced that it would hold public
hearings regarding whether Transamerica Corporation of San Francisco
had violated antitrust provisions. The company had an interest in
over 500 banks and industrial concerns in five Western states.
In Sacramento, California, 39-year old orchestra leader Jan
Savitt died of a cerebral hemorrhage on his way to perform at the
Memorial Auditorium in Sacramento.
In Winston-Salem, N.C., the family of a farmer who had moved
to Baltimore to find better paying work to save the family home,
had obtained a job and was sending home weekly money for the family
of eight, received the news from the Highway Patrol that he had been
killed in an automobile accident in Waterloo, Md.
In Dunn, N.C., the Sheriff and his deputies were trying to
find clues in the theft Saturday night of $45,000 in cash bonds and
securities from an Angier farmer after yeggs entered his home and
made off with a 1,000-lb. iron safe while the family attended
services at the Baptist church. The safe was loaded via the back
porch onto a vehicle and taken away.
Radio personality and host Fred Allen had started a one-man
campaign against the give-away programs of the air for their
negative impact on radio programming. He agreed to give a bond of up
to $5,000 to his listeners against what they might win by listening
to some other program. Mr. Allen said that he would give away such
prizes as two floors of the Empire State Building. Meanwhile, the
previous night, a man from Indiana won $30,000 in prizes on ABC's
"Stop the Music", identifying by telephone "Turkeys
in the Treetops" as the mystery tune—perhaps a song about HUAC.
In Boston, the Cleveland Indians led the Red Sox after four
innings in the American League playoff game by a score of 5 to 1. An
account of each of the first two innings is provided, with more on
page 8-A.
Temperatures fell to 25 degrees in Cadillac, Mich., during
the early morning, and freezing temperatures extended into New York
and Pennsylvania. It was 78 in Miami and 67 in New Orleans. Rain
fell in San Francisco, in eastern Georgia and the Carolinas. Other
weather continued.
On the editorial page, "Mr. Dulles and the Status Quo" tells of John Foster Dulles, likely to replace Secretary of State
Marshall in January after the election of Thomas Dewey as President.
Mr. Dulles, along with Senator Arthur Vandenburg, had arranged the
bipartisan foreign policy. The piece finds him less harsh with
Russia than he had a right to be, having been singled out in 1947 by
Andrei Vishinsky as one of the coterie of supposed American
imperialists and warmongers.
Mr. Dulles had recently penned an article for The
Christian Century, titled "Meeting the Challenge of the
Soviets", in which he had counseled that though the West might
not like the Soviet system, the free world was built on recognition
of differences, and that other societies had the right to experiment.
He urged revision of American policies toward "dynamic peace",
meaning that Americans should not rally to defense of the status quo
of the American system just to spite the Russians, but rather should
seek to make the system better.
The piece thinks that this category of Americans, including
the Republican Old Guard, might extend to those who clamored
loudly for states' rights while compiling a record of negative
action on the world stage, demanding a return to "normalcy".
Failing to change the American system to meet current challenges
would tend to enervate the system's ability to deal with Russia and
make inevitable the revolution which the Soviet leaders insisted was
necessary for world progress.
This notion of "dynamism", incidentally, was not new with Mr. Dulles. He had championed the idea in 1944, as elucidated by Marquis Childs, and, in 1939, had regarded the Nazis and Fascists as the "dynamic" forces in Europe against the stolid, "static" forces of the status quo in the West.
"A Feeling in the Air" tells of the changing of
the season to fall through the Carolinas, including the coming of
the season of nuts at Raleigh's Capitol Square, where squirrels were
gathering their acorns for the coming winter.
There was no frost yet in the air, but preparations had to be
made for the flora to endure it. The dove and quail hid in the
underbrush from the hunter's prying eyes.
Far to the north, Arctic blasts of cold air swept down during
the week, pushing cool air masses on their journey toward the South,
to bring the late October chill across the rolling hills.
It was October again.
"Freedom to Read" tells of the
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library having amassed an impressive
audio-visual collection to complement its book collection. The
director, Hoyt Galvin, had recently stated that neither he nor his
staff would engage in any form of political censorship of books
chosen for the library. But he would hold back books based on
inferior quality, even if they happened to endorse unpopular
ideologies.
The reading room had all manner of books and publication, The
Nation, for instance, alongside The National Defense News,
a very conservative organ published by the DAR.
Mr. Galvin recently reported to the newspaper that the
Progressive Party had asked him not to include in the collection Red Sepulchre,
an anti-Russian work, but he had resolved not to
ban it. He told of the incident being the first time any such ban had been
requested during his time as director.
The piece regards Charlotte as fortunate to have such a
director for its public library.
Drew Pearson tells of the case of the American Bosch Company
of Springfield, Mass., operating under ostensible Swedish ownership
during the war pursuant to an arrangement with the company's German
directors whereby the company would be given back to Germany after
the war and the Swedish company provided $650,000 for acting as the
front to hide German ownership. The entire scheme was arranged by
John Foster Dulles as a partner of Sullivan & Cromwell in New
York, with Mr. Dulles drawing up the agreement with the Enskilda
Bank of Stockholm, incorporating the company in Delaware and having
the power to appoint a successor trustee in the event the named
trustee should cease to be able to perform his duties. Now the
matter was in Federal District Court in Washington and the
Government had asked the head of the bank to testify regarding the
scheme, a move which Sullivan & Cromwell actively was opposing.
It was being suggested that Mr. Dulles wanted to block the move
until such time as a Dewey administration could take power, at which
point it was believed he would be appointed Secretary of State. The
entire deal had transpired without Mr. Dulles ever alerting the
Government, despite his being a delegate to the U.N. Charter
conference in 1945 and having been Mr. Dewey's foreign affairs
adviser during the 1944 presidential campaign as well.
Mr. Pearson notes that Senator Styles Bridges opposed the
appointment of Mr. Dulles and warned that the Senate might not
confirm him.
Mr. Dulles would eventually become Secretary of State under
President Eisenhower in 1953 and remain in the position until his
death in 1959.
Congressman Jasper Bell of the President's home district in
Missouri was retiring from Congress. Earlier in the year, it had
come to light that he carried his daughter on the payroll of his
staff. He then quickly removed her, until he decided not to run
again, at which point he reinstated her.
Congressman Cliff Clevenger of Ohio had his wife on his paid
staff and she did little or nothing in the position.
Congressman John McDowell of HUAC had fifteen dollars worth
of new underwear stolen before he could try it on.
Former court jester George Allen had contributed $200 to the
Truman campaign. Mr. Pearson suggests that he may have figured that
he had done enough by getting his friend General Eisenhower to
withdraw from consideration as the GOP or Democratic nominee.
ERP administrator Paul Hoffman had vowed to keep the books
open to the public, disappointing many companies who hoped to deal
with ERP in private.
Joseph Alsop discusses whether the U.S. would make the effort
necessary to fill the military vacuum in Europe, possibly the
greatest issue facing the next President and the next Congress.
The WEU had responded to the Berlin crisis by underscoring
the urgency of the problem, agreeing on a common strategy and
pooling of their forces under a unified command. But it would remain
a paper agreement unless and until the U.S. actively backed it, as
the five WEU nations, Britain, France and the Benelux countries, did
not have the military capacity to stop the Red Army.
Yet, the Russians, with 350,000 troops scattered throughout
Eastern Europe, could not sweep to the Atlantic in a short time as
commonly supposed. Not all of them were combat troops and before
they could form an attack force, supply lines and stockpiles had to
be established, a task requiring weeks or months, during which time
such action would be apparent to the West. The preparations could be
undertaken but it would thus supply warning to the West.
The WEU estimate of required strength was 40 to 45 first
class divisions, sufficient, with superior air power, to hold back the
Russians long enough to enable organization for counterattack. The
men were available in Western Europe but not the equipment. The U.S.
would have to supply it and the air power.
Secretary of Defense James Forrestal had recently warned that
some form of economic controls would be necessary in the country if
the military budget much exceeded the 15 billion dollars currently
being sought. Thus, some of the unpleasant wartime restrictions
would have to recur for there to be security in Europe.
Mr. Alsop ventures that Andrei Vishinsky's claims that arming
of the WEU would be a prelude to aggression against the Soviets
would be echoed by Henry Wallace and his Communist supporters, a
charge which was a lie. It would be sheer idiocy to throw only 40
divisions at the the Red Army, as it would only constitute a holding
operation for a narrow front.
James Marlow tells of the four-power arrangement in Berlin
having given the Western powers a foothold deep inside the Russian
occupation zone of Germany, much to the consternation of the
Russians, prompting their abiding determination to make life so difficult
for the West that the three powers would evacuate. About 2.5 million
of the 3.5 million Berliners lived within the Western sectors of the
city.
In 1946, a four-power agreement allowed Berliners to elect
their own city council. The Soviet-backed Socialist Unity Party won
about 20 percent of the vote, giving the non-Communists a
super-majority on the Council. Thus, during the previous summer, the
Russians had encouraged Communist-led Germans to try to destroy the
Council with riots and mob violence, preventing it from meeting for
a short time. Most of the Council members had to flee to the Western
sectors.
On August 2, Premier Stalin had said that the Western powers no longer
belonged in Berlin, but also insisted that the Russians were not
trying to force them to leave.
Since June 26, the blockade had been in place, requiring all
supplies to come via the air lanes from the West into Berlin. Rail,
boat, and vehicular traffic was prevented from entering from the
West. Thus far, the airlift was able to meet minimal needs of the
Berliners dependent on these supplies of both food and coal. But
supplying the greater needs through the winter remained problematic.
Were the Western powers to quit Berlin, they would leave the
2.5 million West Berliners to the Russians, but it would not
necessarily mean that they would have to quit all of Germany.
Samuel Grafton, no longer carried by The News, finds
the issue to be decided by the U.N. Security Council during the week
not just to be whether the West or Russia was right in the Berlin
crisis, but, ultimately, whether men of different minds could live
in peace. The current week, he suggests, would therefore be
remembered into the future by the world with gratitude, provided the
Council would seek to discover not who had started the fight but
whether peace was possible.
Man, himself, was being judged, not Russia or the West. The
people were tired of demonstrations that one side was right and the
other wrong. The people had died in such demonstrations over the
course of the previous five millenia. Instead, they wanted to know
how to live. For, if someone were proved right and someone else,
wrong, the people were afraid that men would die as a result.
The Security Council thus had to call upon Russia and the
West to make peace. It would be entitled to invoke righteous
indignation to make its points.
"And if, by some miracle, the United Nations does this,
then we may feel that while we may not yet have the answer as to
whether mankind is right, we have at least a voice in which to ask
the question, and one in which, perhaps, some day to say the
answer."
Ed Sullivan, incidentally, of the same page per otre vie, tells of a 1942 vote on the poll tax ban legislation by then Senator Truman and Senator Barkley recording negative responses, "despite Truman's present exploitation of the civil rights issue." He also records that Georgia begged to differ with Governor Thurmond that he would amass 127 electoral votes in the election, as Governor-nominate Herman Talmadge had endorsed the President, as had the Georgia Democratic Party.
He further tells of Joe E. Brown, at an honorary dinner, giving one of the most moving accounts of what show business meant to him that Mr. Sullivan had ever heard as a reporter.
A letter from twice-failed Republican candidate for Congress
P. C. Burkholder remarks negatively on the statement of Secretary of
Agriculture Charles Brannan that the New Deal had been a boon to
agriculture and the farmer. Mr Burkholder thinks it the opposite.
Have some buttermilk and go to bed.
A letter from an attendant at Morganton State Hospital finds
it objectionable that every story printed regarding a man who had
assaulted a ten-year old girl had included his employment as being
at the Morganton facility. He thinks that the man's entire
employment record should have been provided so as not to reflect
unduly on the facility for the mentally ill.
A letter writer thinks that the President had not been
specific in saying to whom he was going to give hell. The writer
thinks that he meant the Democrats who had walked out on him at the
convention.
The President had not a chance to win, he says, because of
his "race legislation", and the President knew it. The
writer says that he was a loyal Democrat but would not vote for
Truman. Governors Thurmond and Wright were going to get all the
"good Democrats back in line". He urges all people to
vote or the "other crowd" would win.
We think that the President meant that he was going to give
hell to the Republican Congress as that theme dominated his recent
speaking tour. But you are free to believe whatever you want in this
country and, obviously, you will.
A letter writer briefly responds to the editorial of
September 30, "What Are the Dixiecrats?" with the simple
reply, "They are Mugwumps, sir."
