The Charlotte News

Saturday, November 20, 1948

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Paris, U. S. delegate to the U.N. Dr. Philip Jessup told the political committee that the U.S. disfavored, without consent of Israel, taking the Negev Desert from the Israelis, given to Israel under the U.N. partition plan of a year earlier. If Israel wanted other territory, however, he added, then it should give up some territory granted under the partition plan. The Negev represented 60 percent of Israel's territory. Dr. Jessup said that the U.S. also favored admission of Israel to the U.N. and that the 500,000 Arab refugees in Palestine should be permitted to return to their homes or adequate compensation paid to those who chose not to return.

The General Assembly voted to advance five million dollars for relief of Arab refugees.

Also at the U.N., it was reported that the U.S. and Britain had turned down the French plea for not rebuilding Germany's industrial power, giving back to Germany the Ruhr, rather than internationalizing it as favored by France, and reducing the program of dismantling German industrial plants for war reparations.

A questionnaire submitted by the six "neutral" nations of the Security Council to the Big Four powers regarding the Berlin currency issue, whether the Soviet plan of having Russian marks as the sole currency for Berlin could be arranged so as to resolve the Berlin blockade crisis, had received a response from the Russians. The contents, however, were not yet known as it was still being translated. Previously, the Russians had insisted on agreement on the currency issue prior to lifting the blockade, and the Western powers, to avoid duress, had refused to negotiate on any issue until the blockade was lifted.

In China, fighting was still ongoing in the area of Suchow, notwithstanding the claims by the Nationalist military leaders that the Nationalists had achieved victory in Suchow over the Communist forces.

In view of recent Chinese Government victories, the executive Yuan passed a resolution to donate 10,000,000 gold yuan to front line units at Suchow, Taiyuan, and in Eastern Shensi and Chahar Provinces. As Drew Pearson explains below, however, the yuan was worth about a half cent.

The U.S. was retaining Task Force 38 at Tsingtao in China.

The American Legion awarded its distinguished service medal to President Truman, the first living President to receive the medal. It had been awarded posthumously to FDR in 1945.

In Key West, the President went swimming, as his post-election vacation drew to a close. He would return to Washington the following day. New Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn discussed the legislative agenda with the President this date and told the press afterward that no depression was expected in the United States but that any such economic decline would be "man-made". He said that a lot of people in the country appeared to enjoy being scared.

UAW president Walter Reuther told a group of Portland, Ore., businessmen to prepare for a fourth round of post-war wage demands.

The AFL executive council planned to set up a legislative watchdog committee to seek passage of its legislative proposals to Congress.

Minneapolis Mayor and Senator-elect Hubert Humphrey had told the AFL convention that a civil rights law would not be enough to eliminate discrimination, that it would take getting along with each other.

In Bellefonte, Pa., a four-year old boy, stricken with lung cancer and given only two months to live, was provided an early Christmas party.

The Police Department in Charlotte, in advance of the holiday season, warned that offenders found setting off fireworks in the city in violation of an ordinance would be dealt with according to the law. That included sparklers. Don't get caught with them, kid, or you will be spending Christmas in the lock-up, up the river and without deliverance.

Earl Wilson, Broadway columnist, tells of Charlotte native Georgiana Grimes Bannister, becoming a singing hit in such New York nightclubs as Savoy Plaza and Casino Russe. Richard Grimes, one of Charlotte's founders, was her great-grandfather.

Sports editor Ray Howe reports from Chapel Hill on the day's UNC-Duke football game in Kenan Stadium on the UNC campus, to be won, just as we predicted, 20 to 0 by North Carolina. The weather was clear, cool and sunny, despite rain having been originally forecast.

Bandleader Kay Kyser, a UNC alumnus, and his wife were present for the game. He explained to students that he had been present at Duke-UNC games previously but had never seen the Tar Heels win. He had brought his wife with him to break the jinx. The couple had a word with UNC's star halfback, Charlie "Choo-Choo" Justice, before the game.

Coach Carl Snavely of North Carolina, the man in the fedora, said that the way Mr. Kyser's wife handled passes, he would like to have her on his team. After practice on Thursday, sports reporters had heard Coach Snavely singing in the shower for the first time.

A big party was planned in Durham after the game, to which both Coach Snavely and Coach Wallace Wade of Duke were invited. Each said he would attend only if his team won.

Bowl talk was running rampant among the Carolina supporters, as the team was 7-0-1 prior to the Duke game, with one game remaining against Virginia. UNC would go to the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans on New Year's Day. Duke entered the game, its last of the season, with a record of 4-2-2.

Congratulations are in order to the 2015 UNC football team, which today beat Virginia Tech in one overtime, 30 to 27, after losing a 14-point lead in the last four minutes of regulation, following two fumbles. The present edition is therefore 10-1, with the school's first single season ten-game winning streak in football since 1914—a season we recall very well because of the Great War—, and won UNC's first Coastal Division title in the ACC. Virginia Tech fans were paying their devoirs to departing Coach Frank Beamer after 29 years as the institution's successful head coach.

Tempus fugit.

The number one UNC basketball team... Eh...

Well, we recall the game against Santa Clara, which we attended, at the beginning of the 2004-05 season...

Perhaps the loss explains the power of fans, as the two games, football and basketball, were ongoing simultaneously and were concluding but a couple of minutes of playing time apart, with the basketball game being the latter, fan power thus considerably diluted by the last second victory of the football team and the resulting celebration. The basketball team also blew a 16-point lead in the second half. Never misunderestimate fan power, especially when the fans are alumnuses of the Universitat Carol Septent.

So, again, we remember the Santa Clara game, during which there was no lead at all.

Anyway, get out on the track tomorrow, maybe somewhere in the cold, cold of Kansas, and get in a few laps before Monday, and everything will work out.

On the editorial page, "Duke's New President" comments favorably on the selection of Dr. Arthur Hollis Edens as the new president of Duke, the third president since the institution was moved to Durham by James B. Duke in 1924 from its original locale, as Trinity College, in Randolph County. Dr. Edens, at 47, brought youthful vigor to the position.

"Lacking: A Man of Peace" tells of the Nobel Prize Committee having not found a worthy candidate for its annual peace prize in 1948. Count Folke Bernadotte, assassinated U.N. mediator for Palestine, and Mahatma Gandhi, assassinated in late January, 1948, were both lacking, as each had been used for political purposes, and though they had each desired peace, none had been achieved in either India or Palestine.

The piece begins with a quote from James Russell Lowell's Biglow Papers, in which he had suggested humorously that if peace were desired, the thing "tu du is jes' to show you're up to fightin', tu." It finds the truth embedded therein as good as any definition and one which needed to be followed presently on the world stage, a necessity which the Government and the people had come to realize.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, it offers, may have defined its source best by suggesting, "Nothing can bring you peace but yourself."

"'Something Steady'" discusses the symbol of continuity for Britons being the throne, and so it was with that spirit that so many in Britain had welcomed the birth of the new Prince Charles—not George, as the piece states, though that is one of his four names, perhaps making it easier to travel in and out of foreign lands unseen at times convenient, and, of course, for the time, to avoid the welcome of the "bonny prince" under the name of Charles.

In any event, it finds that the British notion of the crown as "something steady" through the centuries, as so expressed by a British subject, a linotype operator, standing outside Westminster Abbey at the marriage of Princess Elizabeth a year earlier, to be salutary to Britain. It was not, as crowns were perceived in many other places, a symbol of despotism.

But, after all this time, the question remains: Who posed for the "What—Me Worry?" pictures?

A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "Vis-a-Vis the Visa", tells of Americans being given the free right to enter and leave Britain without a visa. Italy, Belgium, Switzerland and several other countries also permitted entry by Americans without a visa.

The piece likes the British sentiment behind the move, a return to basic freedom of movement of individuals, a traditional tenet of democracy.

Now it was up to the U.S. to reciprocate, but with so many people desiring entry to the country, it was unlikely that it would occur absent political necessity, such as in furtherance of balance of trade.

Drew Pearson examines the inside picture in China, telling of Chiang Kai-Shek being finished, having lost the support of the majority of the Chinese people, the military and the Government. Intimates had said that he was of late flying into Hitleresque rages without provocation, as when he responded with bitter anger toward an aide who agreed with his own assessment that he should have resigned after the war to avoid what was presently taking place. The people deeply resented his great wealth and imperious manner amid widespread poverty and starvation, attributed much of the graft and inflation to his incompetence. Just a month earlier, the people had followed Chiang's advice to place their confidence in the new gold yuan, pegged at 38 cents in nominal value. A month later, it was worth but five cents, a half cent on the black market, its actual value, causing the Chinese people to have lost their savings in reliance on Chiang's advice.

If Chiang should depart, a coalition Government would likely be established by Vice-President Li Tsung Yen and successful Army commander Fu Tso Yi, but its appeal would be too narrow to enable it to last long. The question posed by many observers was whether Russia would then fill the vacuum.

China was too vast, however, and its problems too entrenched for any outside nation to rectify the problems, and even the Russians could get into trouble trying. The people of the North did not even speak the same dialect as the people of the South.

He next supplies a list of the few big donors to the President's campaign, who included August Busch of the St. Louis brewery, Averell Harriman, roving Ambassador for the Marshall Plan, and former Attorneys General Homer Cummings and Francis Biddle, each of the latter of whom gave only small sums.

There was a drive on to make Congressman Mike Mansfield of Montana majority whip in the new House, to replace John McCormack of Massachusetts, to provide Congressional leadership for a change from the West.

Russell Davenport, former editor of Life, was calling a meeting of New York liberal Republicans to map plans for a liberal revolt within the party.

And, indeed, we were lucky enough to run into him down there, at the museum.

Editor V. Y. Dallman of the Illinois State Register thought that "GOP" should stand for "Grand Old Pollsters".

The meeting November 22 between the President and Secretary of State Marshall would determine whether he would remain as Secretary or resign, as he had previously stated his desire to do.

The S.S. Smolna, now docked off China, being used to send agents into the Chinese Army, had been used by Soviet Foreign Commissar V. M. Molotov during the U.N. Charter conference in San Francisco in spring, 1945 to entertain foreign diplomats.

Marquis Childs discusses the failed campaign of former Vice-President Henry Wallace and the Progressive Party, Mr. Wallace polling only 1.1 million votes in the final tally. He attributes the poor performance with the electorate, not to the "Red smear", as claimed by Mr. Wallace, or the "capitalist press", as claimed by some of his supporters, but rather to a lackluster candidacy following the Moscow line, seeking to convince the American people that the Marshall Plan was a Wall Street design to encourage war with Russia. The press had predominantly favored Governor Dewey, as it had the FDR opponents from 1936 onward, and so obviously had little influence on the mass of voters.

Mr. Wallace, 60, was finished as a candidate for high office. The major claim of the Wallace supporters was that they had forced the President to the left, probably a claim with some merit, as the President had moved decidedly to the left during the campaign. But it was also true that he had to do so to win, to appeal to labor and farmers.

Those on the extreme right were attempting to thwart democracy by suggesting a coalition of Southern Democrats with Republicans to block the President's domestic program. Such an effort would give ground to Mr. Wallace to make a political comeback, one which he could not otherwise achieve.

James Marlow asks whether the new members of Congress should vote their conscience, the way their constituents wanted, or the way the party leaders desired. At one time or another, he suggests, most Congressmen voted in a manner consistent with each of those ways.

Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas had suggested that the average legislator early on discovered that some of the interests or prejudices of the electorate could not easily be dismissed, but where the prejudice concerned the national welfare presented a difficult case. As examples, he cited isolationism and the poll tax, the latter legal in Arkansas. Senator Fulbright said that he had to follow the views of his state, therefore, on the poll tax issue. But, as far as isolationism was concerned, the U.N. was of paramount interest even though the people of Arkansas disfavored it.

A summary of a piece from the Congressional Quarterly suggests that farmers had voted in the election for continued high food production in a way which would not adversely impact their personal finances in times of glut, that is favoring the price support and grain storage system of the Government and the participation of the United States in the International Wheat Agreement, to guarantee a five-year market. Soil conservation was another major issue for farmers.

A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "The Rights of a Citizen", suggests that they were not "civil rights" but were "pretty civil", and proceeds to list the statistically certain consumption habits of the average American individual and family, as found by Harold Helter in The New York Magazine.

It asks, in conclusion, whether the reader found any gray hairs this date.

A piece from the Charleston, W. Va., Daily Mail, titled "Good Driver, Eh?", comments on the finding of a noted psychologist that the best drivers were morons, for if the intelligence level was higher, the mind tended to drift while driving, making the driver more prone to accidents.

Thus, we conclude, the next time you have an accident which is plainly your own fault, you should simply complain to the investigating officer and the other driver that you were not dumb enough to keep your mind solely on the task of minding the wheel and pedals while maintaining a coign of vantage on the surrounding environs.

The piece concludes that no one would feel superior mentally until he or she had wrapped the car around an unyielding post at least once.

A letter writer finds the letter of November 18 from the man who had lived in Connecticut for 30 years and Charlotte for 50 years, and had provided a letter he had sent to the Waterford, Conn., American, to be praiseworthy.

We found it to be a little on the paternalistic side.

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