Saturday, April 10, 1948

The Charlotte News

Saturday, April 10, 1948

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Notes: The front page reports that the Government of Colombia proclaimed martial law following a revolution in the streets touched off by the slaying of Liberal Party leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan the previous day in Bogota, with crowds afterward dragging the body of the lynched assassin through the streets. A hundred persons were said to have been killed and the Pan-American Conference ongoing in the city had been forced to recess as mobs invaded the halls where the Conference was being held.

The U.S. Embassy personnel had been evacuated to other areas of the city via tanks and trucks. Parts of the Capitol, in which Conference delegates had taken refuge, were set on fire. The Liberal Party leaders told the U.S. Ambassador that the Conference could not continue as long as the Conservative Government remained in power in Colombia. They assured, however, that foreign citizens would not be harmed during the uprising. It remained unclear whether the Conference would continue or have to be postponed or moved to another site.

A first-hand account of the street scenes in Bogota is provided by the Associated Press from a Pan American Union employee, a Brazilian. He describes seeing at least nine bloody corpses in the streets and several buildings, including private residences, on fire. He was threatened twice with being fired upon by soldiers if he proceeded at the given locations.

Areas outside Jerusalem were bombarded by artillery fire at sunset from Arab positions in the Judean hills, firing down upon Givat-Shaul, a Jewish suburb. Arabs claimed to have captured Kastel, a key point on the road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The village had changed hands several times and had been a nest from which Arabs had fired on Jewish supply convoys going to Jerusalem, leading to food shortages in the city's Jewish neighborhoods. Kastel had been recaptured by Jews the previous day.

At the U.N., Russia vetoed Italy's bid for membership to the organization, the petition having been supported by the United States. The Security Council vote was 9 to 2, the other dissent coming from the Ukraine. Soviet delegate Andrei Gromyko charged that the U.S. was seeking to force a Russian veto to influence the coming Italian elections scheduled for April 18. He said that Russia generally favored admission of Italy but that the membership had to occur at the same time as admission of the other former enemy countries, including Finland, Rumania, Hungary, and Bulgaria, the latter three opposed by the U.S. The Russians had twice vetoed Italy's bid for membership the previous year.

At Nuremberg, following a seven-month trial before an American military court, fourteen officers of the Nazi SS and SD were sentenced to hang for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and membership in a criminal organization, involving the murder of at least a million people. Known as the "Einsatz Kommandos", the group was sent into Russia as a special extermination squad to kill persons who were racially undesirable, Jews, gypsies, and others. Two others were sentenced to life imprisonment and five received lesser terms, down to ten years. One was acquitted. The punishments were the worst yet handed down by the international military tribunal.

One of the condemned was Maj. Heinz Schubert, who claimed distant relationship to composer Franz Schubert. The leader, also condemned to death, was Maj. General Otto Ohlendorf, who led the 2,000 troops of the Kommandos.

Speaker of the House Joe Martin proposed that Senator Styles Bridges become the third trustee of the UMW welfare and retirement fund, a position which had been vacant and had caused an impasse in reaching agreement on the pension plan demanded by John L. Lewis. Mr. Lewis agreed to the appointment as did Senator Bridges, and a meeting with the third member of the board, representing the operators, also in agreement, was scheduled for Sunday morning. Everyone appeared to agree that a settlement of the coal strike could be concluded by Tuesday.

Maine Democrats pledged their ten convention delegates to the President.

After concluding a half-hour talk with the President at the White House, General Eisenhower reiterated to the press his firm intention not to enter the presidential race, as stated January 23. He refused further comment and referred questions to his aides. He said that he and the President and Secretary of Defense James Forrestal were in general agreement on the defense plans and problems.

Governor Dewey continued his campaign in Nebraska in advance of the Tuesday primary, while Harold Stassen, winner in the Wisconsin primary the previous Tuesday, attended the Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, an event which Governor Dewey chose not to attend in favor of last minute campaigning in Nebraska.

Tom Schlesinger of The News tells of juvenile delinquency decreasing in Detroit by 35 percent in 1944-45, despite a trend in the country of rising rates. Since Detroit was one of the most explosive cities in the country, the reduction begged the question as to how it had reduced its delinquency. The answer appeared to be in the fact that the City had hired an expert, Dr. Howard Lane of NYU, to advise of methods to ameliorate the problem. He then spent two years making a study of Detroit and thereafter made recommendations, finding most of the problems stemming from parental neglect.

He founded a Crime Prevention Bureau which made sure that there was no other means for curing the delinquency before placing the juvenile in the criminal justice system. They proceeded by neighborhoods to instill pride in maintaining control of the youths. Recreation needed to start at the age of two, not only when the youth was a teenager. Race issues, he said, never produced fights. Sometimes, for instance, blacks would join Northern whites against Southern whites for the racial prejudice of the latter group.

Dr. Lane was in Charlotte lecturing before the Association of Childhood Education.

On the editorial page, "Time for World Government" tells of the President at a press conference having bluntly stated that the Administration was not the least interested in holding any conference to entertain the possibility of establishing a world government. It was further confirmation that the Administration was set on a military solution as a means to peace rather than a diplomatic one.

It advocates not neglecting the planning and discussing of a world government while also preparing defenses in case of a war. For war was the chief evil to be resisted, creating a system of slavery. Thus, war itself was the chief enemy to be countered while also properly defending against the expansion of Communism.

"America's No. 1 Racket Grows" tells of Undersecretary of the Treasury A.L.M. Wiggins testifying before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that tax evasion had become the number one racket in the country. One of the problems was that the Government allowed major tax evaders to buy their way out of potential prosecution. Congress had shown inadequate response by refusing to increase appropriations to place more IRB agents in the field. The piece favors a more vigorous approach.

"Mature Women in Style Revolt" tells of Margaret Harris Blair, associate professor of clothing and textiles at the University of Georgia, contending that women between 45 and 65 were angry about clothing because they could not easily find apparel which fit them. As a result, some remained in drab dress while others decorated themselves as Christmas trees. She based her findings on answers to submitted questionnaires.

The mannequins in shop windows and the fashion ads always portrayed slender women wearing the fashion-plate editions of the day. But if worn directly off the racks without substantial alterations, these dresses would not favor most middle-aged women, lacking the narrow waists to go along with the cuts.

Conclusion seems to have been that what was needed were fatter dummies.

Drew Pearson continues his look at the feud between the Navy and the Air Force as represented by the Navy memo, part of which he reprinted the previous day, circulated recently among Congressmen to convince them that Navy carriers were more suited than the Air Force long-range bombers to delivering the atomic bomb to the area of distant targets.

The remainder of the memo, which he provides, claimed that the Air Force was better equipped to defend the United States, itself, that the offensive war was better left to the Navy. It concludes that the primary mission of the Navy was to deliver the atomic bomb to the capital and industrial centers of the enemy while the secondary mission was control of the seas, that the Air Force was to defend the U.S. against enemy air attack and, only secondarily, deliver atomic attacks from overseas bases.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop examine the implications of the victory of Harold Stassen in the Wisconsin Republican primary, finds the former Governor of Minnesota suddenly having become a contender for the nomination. General MacArthur had just as quickly become a non-factor in the race, damaging his principal backers' reputations, Col. Bertie McCormick of the Chicago Tribune and William Randolph Hearst. Governor Dewey had suffered the worst damage, coming in third.

The Stassen forces would have to work very hard, however, to capitalize on the success. They had spent lavishly in Wisconsin and surprised themselves in the victory, being content formerly to be considered as a running mate to Senator Vandenberg. They were planning to try to come in first in the upcoming Nebraska primary the following Tuesday and then to undercut Senator Taft in his home state of Ohio, the Stassen people hoping for ten delegates. Then, they hoped to achieve victory in Oregon. Should they accomplish those three goals, they hoped Mr. Stassen would enter the June convention as the front-runner.

But should any one of those goals fail of achievement, then the laurels of Mr. Stassen's victory in Wisconsin would redound more to others, first to Senator Taft by the fact of the Stassen victory harming Governor Dewey and General MacArthur. Ironically, the Taft backers had promoted the General to harm the chances of Mr. Dewey, as they knew Senator Taft could not win in Wisconsin and so kept his name off the ballot. But then the apparent popularity of the General spread into Illinois, a Taft stronghold, and the Taft people began to believe that the strategy had backfired, until the weak showing by the General in Wisconsin.

The professional politicians believed, however, that Governor Dewey could rebound with a victory in Nebraska and that the defeat of General MacArthur represented a sound rejection of the conservative-isolationist wing of the party, which had planned to use the General as a stalking horse to achieve popular support and power. They continued to believe, therefore, that Senator Taft could not gain enough support to establish a majority at the convention.

Marquis Childs likewise looks at Mr. Stassen's victory, finds first that the primary had eliminated General MacArthur, predicted to win in Wisconsin, as even a dark horse candidate for the nomination. Mr. Hearst had hurt the General's absentee campaign by bringing forth such "political giants" as Shirley Temple to promote the General's candidacy. Second, Mr. Stassen had become a contender for the nomination, regardless of what might occur in Nebraska.

Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Republican state organization had both supported Mr. Stassen, but observers believed that the former Minnesota Governor, himself, did more during the campaign to contribute to his victory by offering a positive challenge at the grassroots to overcome Communism without resort to war. Mr. Childs opines that the approach appealed more to voters than the war-scare tactics used by the MacArthur forces.

Opponents of Governor Dewey were suggesting that he was out of the race, but Mr. Childs thinks it a premature contention. While Mr. Dewey's setback was serious, he had campaigned little in Wisconsin and was likewise only campaigning in Nebraska at the last minute.

Mr. Childs predicts that the Stassen victory would carry over to the convention to affect the outcome.

So, reading the tea leaves, it begins to look like it might be a fall campaign between Governor Stassen and an as yet unknown candidate for the Democrats.

A letter writer responds to the editorial of April 7, "Race Issue at Chapel Hill", anent the consideration by the University Board of Trustees whether to admit black applicants to the graduate school. The author first maintains that the matter was not a "race issue" but rather one of society generally. He also criticizes the prejudgment of the editorial in suggesting that the applications had to be denied, favoring leaving it to the Board to determine. He finds also that the editorial's stance that there was room for improvement but that matters of race relations were steadily progressing through time, to be merely an echo of Southern sermons preached between 1840 and 1850, rationalizing the continued existence of slavery.

While disagreeing with the basic opinions expressed in the piece, believing that maintenance of the separate-but-equal system was no basis for progress, the writer concludes by thanking the editors for at least keeping the subject before the citizens.

The letter writer, incidentally, may have been reading the justification of slavery advanced in 1841 by the Reverend Thornton Stringfellow, such as the following passage:

4th. [In querulous response to my previously published Scriptural justification for slavery, a New York Abolitionist's] fourth Scripture reference is, to the intention of Abraham to give his estate to a servant, in order to prove that servant was not a slave. "What" he says, "property inherit property?" I answer, yes. Two years ago, in my county, William Hansbrough gave to his slaves his estate, worth forty or fifty thousand dollars. In the last five or six years, over two hundred slaves, within a few miles of me, belonging to various masters, have inherited portions of their masters' estates.
To render slaves valuable, the Romans qualified them for the learned professions, and all the various arts. They were teachers, doctors, authors, mechanics, &c. So with us, tradesmen of every kind are to be found among our slaves. Some of them are undertakers—some farmers—some overseers, or stewards—some housekeepers—some merchants—some teamsters, and some money-lenders; who give their masters a portion of their income, and keep the balance. Nearly all of them have an income of their own—and was it not for the seditious spirit of the North, we would educate our slaves generally, and so fit them earlier for a more improved condition, and higher moral elevation.
But will all this, when duly certified, prove they are not slaves? No. Neither will Abraham's intention to give one of his servants his estate, prove that he was not a slave. Who had higher claims upon Abraham, before he had a child, than this faithful slave, born in his house, reared by his hand, devoted to his interest, and faithful in every trust?
A letter writer wants to know for what the G.I. loan was if not to help the veterans obtain homes, finding it in practice to be otherwise. He had spent four months at Anzio during the war and 13 months at the front, and no one had asked him how much money he made. Now, the banks told him that to qualify for a G.I. loan, he had to earn more. While overseas, he had received a piece of campaign literature in 1944 claiming that Gregg Cherry would work for the veterans as Governor, but finds that Governor Cherry had not done so.

He adds that he never missed a day of work and did not drink.

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