Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that members of
Congress reacted to the President's call for 570 million dollars in
additional aid to the Chiang Government in China to rebuild its
economy by calling it too little, too late. Senator Styles Bridges
of New Hampshire, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee,
thought that the civil war between the Communists and Nationalist
forces had advanced too far to be remedied only by economic aid,
favored sending military aid as well.
In Nuremberg, Field Marshal Wilhelm List was sentenced to
life imprisonment for the killings of hostages by German soldiers
under his command. Seven other Nazi generals were also convicted of
similar war crimes and received sentences ranging from seven years to life
in prison. Two other generals were acquitted. The convicted
generals were responsible for the deaths of 63,000 prisoners, some
of whom were murdered. The court ruled that under international law, hostages could be killed by an
occupying force to maintain order, notwithstanding its finding the rule deplorable. In addition to use of that factor, it
mitigated the sentences imposed, despite finding murder in many
cases, based on the partisans in the Balkans who had opposed the
Germans not being entitled to treatment as prisoners of war as they also
had not complied with the rules of war.
DNC chairman Howard McGrath, Senator from Rhode Island,
asked, in a radio speech delivered the previous night, that Henry
Wallace step aside as a third party candidate on the basis that he
could do nothing but cause the defeat of President Truman and the
"practical liberalism" of Democrats in the fall. He
asserted that Communists saw in the candidacy of Mr. Wallace an
opportunity to disrupt the two-party system and create splinter
parties which had brought chaos and collapse to European nations. He
urged that Democrats take a lesson from the Congressional campaign
in the Bronx, which the Wallace-backed candidate had won on Tuesday,
and to get out and vote.
Former Vice-President Wallace announced the previous night in
Miami that he received nearly a half million signatures to place his
name on the primary ballot in California.
In Washington, a group of Southerners canceled their
reservations at a Democratic Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner on the
basis that prominent Democrats intended to rally around the
President and his civil rights program. The wife of Senator Olin
Johnston of South Carolina stated that she would not attend because
she feared that she might be seated beside a black person. Her party
of 45 had dwindled, she said, to 30, as others had expressed the
same concern. She thought that the civil rights program was a ruse
to garner votes from among black folks.
Senator McGrath stated that several black people would attend
the dinner as he could not practice segregation in honoring the $100
per plate reservations.
An investigation by the House Rules Committee into whether
Earl Long, candidate in Louisiana for governor, had been involved in
income tax fraud was delayed until after the Louisiana primary the
following Tuesday, based on a series of maneuvers by House Democrats
on the Committee favoring Mr. Long. Another candidate in the race
was also being investigated by the Rules Committee
The Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corporation raised prices by the
equivalent of $4.89 per ton for forging grades and $4.82 for rolling
grades.
In McCormick, S.C., the decomposed body of a woman was found
by two hunters in a wooded area four miles from the highway. The
Sheriff ruled out suicide in the death based on his certainty that
no woman would commit suicide in such a remote location. A .32
caliber pistol with two empty cartridges and an illegible pawn
ticket were found in a location near where the body was found. No
identification of the body had yet been made.
In Charlotte, probable cause was found in juvenile court
against an eleven-year old boy, binding him over to Superior Court
on the charge of first-degree burglary, a capital offense at the
time, for breaking and entering a residence while the occupants
slept and stealing a wallet containing $64. The boy was arrested in
Lexington. Judge F. M. Redd said that he wanted to review the matter
with Superior Court Judge J. A. Rousseau and Solicitor Basil
Whitener before proceeding further, as the boy did not appear to
Judge Redd to understand the nature of the crime and the legal
consequences potentially coming from it. Psychiatrists were
appointed to examine the boy's mental condition.
Retarded children in Charlotte were to be afforded for the
first time special instruction through a program sponsored by Christ
Episcopal Church at the kindergarten level and by the State, upon
approval of costs, at the grade-school level. The Junior Chamber of
Commerce had been the major force behind the establishment of the
program and was bringing for a speech a doctor from the University of Mississippi,
who had enjoyed great success while in Chicago in raising the I.Q.'s
of 240 such children to normal levels.
Mecklenburg County officials expressed amazement at the move
to consolidate the County and City health services while a study was
ongoing at the Institute of Government in Chapel Hill to determine
the cost effectiveness and efficiency of such a move.
Spanish Professor Fred Fleagle of Davidson College, near
Charlotte, died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Memorial Hospital this
date after falling ill the previous night. He had been at Davidson
since 1921, was originally from Michigan and received his education
at the University of Michigan. He was 63 years old.
In Los Angeles, the wife of screenwriter St. Clair McKelway
obtained a divorce on grounds of cruelty. She contended that he had
spent much of the day in bed, demanding absolute quiet in the house,
while she contributed $30,000 to family expenses. The couple had
been married since the previous April.
On the editorial page, "Wallace Jolts the Old Parties" discusses the surprising political upset in the special election in
the Bronx Congressional district where the Henry Wallace-backed
candidate, Leo Isacson, a member of the American Labor Party, had
won on Tuesday. The regular Democratic nominee, backed by Bronx boss
Ed Flynn and the Truman Administration and supported by Mayor
William O'Dwyer and Eleanor Roosevelt, had been expected to win.
Mr. Flynn, as did Mayor O'Dwyer, blamed the overwhelming victory by
Mr. Isacson on the Communists and voter apathy displayed by those
opposing Communism.
The piece interprets the results as suggesting a repudiation
by the voters of both major political parties rather than an
endorsement of the politics of Henry Wallace. It did, however, show
that support for Mr. Wallace, at least in New York, was greater than
anticipated. But that was to be blamed on the lack of interest being
stimulated by either of the two major parties rather than the appeal
per se of Mr. Wallace and the Progressive Party.
The Bronx results plus the national opinion polls of Gallup
and Fortune appeared to forecast an election in November in
which the Republicans would fare worse than the Democrats in the
political upheaval taking place.
It would prove an astute observation.
"We Don't Need Thought Control" takes issue, as
does the following piece, with the proposal of Dr. John Studebaker,
U.S. Commissioner of Education, to promote a program in the public
schools to teach of the perils of Fascism and Communism. The program
suggested, along with other programs afoot of the stripe in the
country, a form of thought control usually associated with
totalitarian police states.
More schools and more teachers were needed, not a regimented
instruction program to indoctrinate students to "the American
way".
The loyalty tests and hearings before HUAC were not salutary.
They had only served to show that most of America was free from any
Communist taint. Out of 150,0000 Government employees tested in one
round, only eleven were failed as being suspect for disloyalty. HUAC
had produced only a handful of such suspects. No threat to the
country had been uncovered.
The Reds and fellow-travelers had already been ostracized
completely in American society and there was no need to conduct
surveillance on the American people or effect propaganda campaigns
and tests of loyalty to maintain democratic faith. More leaders who
shared that faith and saw the danger of turning the Red scare into
restrictions on freedom of speech were instead to be sought.
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled
"Public-School Witch Hunt", expresses dismay at the
proposal by Dr. Studebaker to teach in the schools the impact
internationally of Communism and Fascism, with emphasis on the
former, and to push the "American way of life".
The piece thinks that it would serve to encourage teen
psychoses and neuroses, as it would potentially promote searching
out the neighborhood Communist and pointing the finger at him or
her. The young people would then initiate the greatest witch-hunt
since the Salem trials.
Part of Dr. Studebaker's strategy was to teach how these two
totalitarian approaches had served to put business in
"straitjackets". The piece points out that the power
trusts during the 1930's had adopted the same strategy to oppose the
New Deal.
It favors stopping the program before it was able to start
the following fall in the public schools.
Drew Pearson tells of reporter Douglass M. Allen, Jr., of the
Cincinnati Times-Star, owned by the Taft family, heading to
Australia to recapitulate the northward advance to the Philippines
by General MacArthur during the war. Special attention was to be
paid to the mansion built by the Seabees for the General at
Hollandia and the resentment he had aroused from the Navy during the
advance. Those incidents might provide good fodder for Senator Taft
in case the General decided finally to throw his hat into the
presidential ring.
A dispute had arisen as to whether the diary of Josef
Goebbels belonged to the Hoover Presidential Library or the
Government. Friends of the former President had discovered the diary
while Mr. Hoover was touring Germany on behalf of the Administration
to report on financial conditions. After editing by Louis Lochner of
the A.P., the diary was about to be published by Doubleday. But the
Government claimed rights as it came from the American occupation
zone, and urged also that the original belonged in the Library of
Congress, not the Hoover Library.
The diary, he remarks, showed that its author was insane.
Senator Edward Moore of Oklahoma, a tool of the oil and gas
lobby, had summoned Federal Power Commission appointee, Edward
Behling, to his office whereupon two lobbyists set upon him to try
to obtain an advance commitment to a position on a bill which would
permit gas companies to raise prices. When Mr. Behling refused to
state his position, finding it unethical to do so, Senator Moore retaliated by
blocking his appointment to the FPC. A Commissioner of the FPC then
wrote a letter of protest of the action. But, meanwhile, Mr. Behling
was now promoting the price boost sought by the gas companies and
Senator Moore had switched his position to support of the
appointment.
HUAC had received a secret report on the formation of
international brigades out of the Soviet bloc, known as the Soviet Foreign Legion, infiltrating Greece,
France, and Italy. Its first
mission a year earlier had been to support the guerrillas in
Northern Greece. The fighting of the brigades in Italy and France
was expected initially to consist of nuisance raids.
Marquis Childs discusses the work of the Atomic Energy
Commission during its first year after troubled Senate confirmation
of chairman David Lilienthal and the other four Commission members.
Having talked with the members, with military men, scientists,
members of Congress on the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and
others, Mr. Childs had found that progress had been made by the
Commission and that no other form of control of atomic energy able
to win approval in Congress and from the public would have been so
effective.
There had been no conflicts with the Military Liaison
Committee, with appeal to the President in the event of being
overruled by the Commission. The chairman of the Committee, General
L. H. Brereton, had worked in harmony with the Commission.
The commissioners were of varying political stripes, but had
not allowed politics to enter the Commission deliberations. Even as
some members of Congress grumbled, they understood why politics
could not be allowed to affect the process.
The Commission would direct during the year about a half
billion dollars of appropriations.
The members of the Commission had to be reappointed and
confirmed each year.
He concludes that good news rarely made the front page and
the first year of AEC had been good news.
Samuel Grafton defines more terms, as he had begun to do a
week earlier.
"Aplomb" meant that anti-price control Senators
were able to declare that prices were stabilized.
"Old Tory" referred to one one who could face up to
the danger of unemployment in the cities or a $2.27 Government
support level for wheat in the country.
"Split Personality" referred to an Administration
which declared itself in favor of peaceful settlement of Palestine
but had to wait until the U.N. determined what it would do, despite
the U.S. being its most influential member.
"Sincerity" referred to anti-price control
Congressmen who blamed exports when wheat rose above $3 per bushel
and then supported sending more exports when wheat dropped below $3.
"Freedom" referred to a system in which people
discussed everything but changed nothing. It had a big enough tent
to be inclusive of the notions of the closed shop and the
discriminatory neighborhood covenant, barring those unlike the
covenantors.
"Public Scandal" referenced anyone in Government
who had committed a sexual indiscretion in the past, been involved
in any financial irregularity, had written a book or used an
unusually polysyllabic word unfamiliar to cub reporters in need of a
comic squib for the day.
"Dangerous Thoughts" were hard to detect and those
best equipped to do so usually believed that slight unemployment
would help in reducing the inflationary spiral, that rent controls
ought be abolished, and that atomic bombs ought be dropped on any
country in disagreement with the U.S. Troublemakers, on the other
hand, were those who believed in housing and medical care for
everyone.
A letter writer remarks that Dr. Daniel Poling, a leading
Baptist minister, who favored compulsory universal military
training, was an example of someone who allowed men of another
profession to convince him to be their tool. The writer says that he
was not a pacifist but he could not understand how a preacher could
convince himself that killing was consistent with Biblical teaching.
The author believes that UMT could only be used for one
purpose, to facilitate establishment of a military dictatorship in
the United States.
A letter writer expresses upset with the City for not
connecting six houses on his block, built fifteen years or more
earlier, with the sewer system, on the stated basis of not having
funds for the project. If his children were to ever contract an
illness from the resulting ground contamination consequent of
overflowing septic tanks, he intended to sue the City.
A Quote of the Day: "The number of ku klux klans
operating under aliases is probably greater in Palestine at this
time than in any other part of the world." —Charleston News
& Courier
Another Quote of the Day: "A laughing hyena escaped from
a circus Winter quarters. We'd suggest looking for it in movie
houses." —Tallahassee Democrat
Another Quote of the Day: "Henpecked hubby wants to see
that plane that can beat the speed of sound." —Dallas
Morning News