The Charlotte News
Tuesday, March 30, 1948
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that U.S. chief delegate to the U.N. Warren Austin was prepared to ask the Security Council for a resolution declaring a truce in Palestine. He would also ask for a special session on the Palestine problem. There was little hope for the truce proposal, already declined twice, as the Arabs refused to agree to any truce unless partition were first dropped. Jews would refuse a truce in that event.
The previous night, the five-nation Palestine Commission on partition determined to proceed with creation of a provisional Jewish Government and, in so doing, took no heed of the U.S. proposal to substitute a trusteeship for the partition plan.
The U.N. Commission rejected an American proposal for a 15-day delay of the May 9 scheduled election to form a Korean government in the American zone in the South. The Commission said it would delay the election later if it became necessary. A Soviet-sponsored government was being formed in North Korea with the goal of ruling the entire country. Since March 9, the Russians had been directing the Koreans to dig trenches along the border with the South. To U.S. military strategists, the digging appeared imprudent and inefficient, as not occurring in natural terrain and consequently exposing the trenches to U.S. fire.
The 21-nation Pan-American Conference got underway in Bogota, Colombia, with the enunciated goals of molding the inter-American system into a strong regional bloc, creating a program of economic aid for Latin America, and enacting a pact of peaceful solution of differences among the signatories.
Chile, Paraguay, and Cuba were hopeful that the conference would take a stand against Communism in the Americas.
Communist placards greeted the arrival of Secretary of State Marshall, labeling him a Nazi.
Near Milan, two political assassinations of Communists took place following an argument with spectators during a march, prompting a Communist-led Chamber of Labor demonstration of the unemployed and fear of pre-election violence. In Lignano, a rightist and another Communist were mauled.
The House voted 149 to 52 to invite Franco's Spain into the Marshall Plan, despite the State Department being against the move. Spain would have to agree to the ERP conditions before becoming eligible for aid. Representative Jacob Javits of New York opposed the inclusion.
The Russian news agency Tass denied that the reported submarines off the coast of the United States were Russian.
In Washington, John L. Lewis, facing possible contempt for violation of a Federal District Court order issued this date, attended a meeting of the President's fact-finding board on the coal strike.
On Wall Street in New York, police and pickets at the Stock Exchange battled during a strike of clerks, joined by sympathetic AFL seaman's union members. Participants in the strike and some police officers were knocked to the ground in shoving matches. Thirty-eight were arrested for disorderly conduct. Trading for the day nevertheless proceeded according to schedule, with brokers and traders performing clerical duties.
Henry Wallace, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, attacked anew Administration foreign policy, contending that it was creating a "false crisis" to stave off an economic downturn at home and stampede Congress and the people to support a draft and universal military training, while leading the country toward war. He predicted that forced labor of workers would result from remobilization and that military control of every sort would become the way of life.
The statements came after the President had suggested at a Greek-American organization dinner—following his introduction by a speaker who suggested that Mr. Wallace carry his third party campaign to the Rocky Mountains and pose as the Communist-backed Greek guerrillas—, that Mr. Wallace was a demagogue and ought go to Russia and aid them against his own country.
Senator Taft said that he believed the extra money to be spent on military preparedness, two to four billion dollars, would not significantly impact domestic prices.
Tom Schlesinger of The News tells of the report of the first six months of operations of the ABC controlled liquor sales in Mecklenburg County, revealing a net profit of $817,000, with gross sales at 5.6 million dollars, exceeding the largest full-year sales of any other county in the state. Local ABC Board chairman Frank Sims stated to the local Rotary Club that of the amount of net profits, the Library Commission would receive $40,000 and the City and County Governments equal shares of the remaining balance. Of the City's half, $19,000 would go to Parks & Recreation, $92,000 to retirement of debt, and the rest to the general fund. The $479,000 paid in State taxes went to the general fund of the State, with little returning locally.
On the editorial page, "Pepper's Program for Peace" finds Senator Claude Pepper of Florida to be suggesting middle ground between American get-tough policy with Russia and Russia's hard-line toward the West, to avoid a hot war developing out of the cold war.
Two years earlier, he had charged that Great Britain and the U.S. were "ganging up" on Russia. He had recently disavowed any alignment with appeasement policy, with which he was formerly associated, specifically charging that Russia had been guilty of serious aggression. But he also urged the President to meet with Stalin to try to effect a plan for peace.
The editorial thinks it to be as much akin to appeasement as the policy advocated by Henry Wallace, was equally unworkable. First, the President had refused to meet with Stalin other than in Washington. Second, Russia would have a distinct strategic advantage at present in such a conference. Third, the President, being subject to the Republican Congress, could not offer a peace plan which he could back up with assurances it would be passed at home—not to mention the presently appearing likelihood that he would not be elected in November.
It concludes that while Senator Pepper had correctly defined the dilemma and suggested a middle road out of it, practically speaking, neither side could presently participate in peace talks.
"'Power, Being Evil in Itself'" finds Bernard Baruch's advice to the Senate Armed Services Committee to be confused, inviting the pitting of American armed force in support of international law and democratic freedom abroad against armed force of the Communist world.
The editorial favors leadership which recognized that the power struggle was immoral and that the use of power was evil in itself, a policy which would place peace above power.
Presently, the world was not recognizing any common moral law superior to force, causing the extant world crisis and providing the reason to support the President's preparedness program for national defense.
"Small Towns Come into Own" tells of 46 percent of major industrial expansion occurring in cities of less than 50,000 population in 1946, and nearly a third in 1947 in some Southeastern states occurring in towns of less than 5,000. The South and West were getting most of the new industry. Investments in the Houston area, for example, during the previous two years amounted to $108 per capita, whereas in New York, the figure was only $5.40.
Such decentralization of industry was good both economically and in terms of security in the event of attack.
The Carolinas were reaping the benefits of this trend, with profits encouraging further expansion and diversification.
A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "Memo on Youth", comments on the story out of Charlotte two weeks earlier regarding the juveniles who had been arrested for using a hammer and chisel to knock off the chain guarding the water valve at the lake in Freedom Park and then drain nearly all of its water, killing most of the fresh stock of bream fingerlings worth $5,000. The two youths had been fined $75 plus court costs and placed on probation.
The piece repeats the lecture from Police Chief Frank Littlejohn regarding the father of one of the two boys being so negligent that he had not come to police headquarters to stand by his son, and that as long as such parental neglect persisted, there would continue to be such acts of vandalism. He blamed the parents more than the youths involved.
It finds the advice apropos and commends it to Asheville as well.
Drew Pearson tells of the President having nixed former Senator James Mead of New York for several Government posts because he had not liked the way the Senator had handled the War Investigating Committee which President Truman chaired as Senator during the first three years of the war. He especially did not like the fact that the Committee targeted Representative Andrew May of Kentucky in the Garsson brothers war contracts influence peddling scandal, which resulted in Mr. May being sentenced to jail. But when the President finally offered a position to Mr. Mead as a commissioner of the Federal Power Commission, the latter declined based on what he had heard.
A fellow diplomat at the U.N. had elicited laughter from Andrei Gromyko when he told him the story of the 1945 Big Three meeting at Yalta, at which supposedly Prime Minister Churchill offered Premier Stalin and President Roosevelt a cigarette from his cigarette case, which evoked great admiration as it bore an inscription denoting it as a gift from the House of Commons. FDR then offered a cigarette to each of the others from his cigarette case which had an inscription from "The Boys on Capitol Hill". Then Premier Stalin offered one to each of the other two from his cigarette case which bore the inscription, "To Count Szecheny from his friends at the Jockey Club".
Siberia gets very cold in winter, comrade.
He next tells of the letter-writing program of Americans to friends and relatives in Italy, which he had urged from Milan in December, going well, with mail to Italy having increased by 100,000 items per day in the previous two weeks. The hope was to help sway the Italian elections of April 18.
General Claire Chennault, who had led the Flying Tigers force of Americans in China during the war, was urging not only aid to China but also that a military mission be sent to aid Chiang Kai-Shek's Government forces, replete with 10,000 officers, to stop Communism in China and Asia generally. Word had gotten around Congress that he was the personal emissary for Chiang and Madame Chiang. With the cooperation of China, General Chennault had created a commercial airline in China from aid supplied by UNRRA. It gave him a personal stake in the future therefore of the Nationalist Government of Chiang.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss the move by FDR, Jr., and Elliott Roosevelt to woo General Eisenhower to head the Democratic ticket in replacement of President Truman, and the offer of resignation of Eleanor Roosevelt as a delegate to the U.N. based on her differences with the Administration regarding the change in policy on the Palestine partition plan. They find these occurrences to have drawn into sharp focus the differences now apparent between President Truman and the Northern leaders of the party, in addition to the rift with the South over civil rights.
The loss of Mrs. Roosevelt as an ally to the Administration would be as much a blow as that of the two Roosevelt sons coming out for General Eisenhower. Her opposition to Henry Wallace had caused the latter's campaign to suffer loss of prestige. And she had said to a New York leader that as of the present, she could not support the President any longer.
The Americans for Democratic Action, progressive non-Communists aligned against Henry Wallace, were preparing to take an opinion poll assessing preferences among voters between General Eisenhower and President Truman. The outcome was a foregone conclusion, with sentiment for the General and opposition to the President growing everywhere, with Democratic leaders in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Chicago all showing signs of disaffection.
Marquis Childs finds that the decision of whether the President would be the party nominee would be taken from his hands by the professional politicians, with talks among them occurring in New York and Chicago. Some Democrats on Capitol Hill favored Senator Scott Lucas of Illinois for president and House Minority Leader Sam Rayburn for the vice-presidency, or the reverse.
Two events had provided the final death knell to the President's likely nomination: the reversal of the Palestine partition policy, and the defection of progressive Alabama Senators Lister Hill and John Sparkman from the Truman camp. Twenty-two of 28 Alabama candidates for presidential electors had stated that they would not cast their votes for the President.
Some Democratic leaders believed the defeat of the President might be as great as that of Alf Landon to FDR in 1936. He could likely only carry Florida and North Carolina in the South. And Governor Millard Caldwell of Florida had vowed to try to prevent first the nomination of the President, and, failing that, the state from delivering its electoral votes to him.
The Southern states would accept the Lucas-Rayburn ticket or almost any other combination which did not include the President.
A letter from the chairman of the Executive Committee of Howard University presents the case for the United Negro College Fund and its annual drive starting in mid-April. The Fund was chaired by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
The editors note that locally, Johnson C. Smith University benefited from the Fund.
A letter writer addresses an open letter to Senator J. Howard McGrath, DNC chairman, stating that General Eisenhower would make the best candidate for the Democrats in November and that therefore President Truman should step aside for the good of the party and the country.
Had he done so, we would not have been saddled with President Dewey and Vice-President Warren, and that terrible four-year period in which nuclear war with Russia came to be for fifteen minutes, regarding Quemoy and Matsu. They actually wanted to impeach Mr. Warren at one point.
A letter from the chairman of the Red Cross campaign thanks the newspaper for its coverage and support in making the recent drive a success. They collected locally $107,000.
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