Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Jewish Agency
appealed to the U.N. for intervention to halt the Trans-Jordan Arab
Legion from entering Palestine, saying that if the organization
failed to act, Jews would meet any invading Arab force with armed
force.
The U.S. ignored the plea and pressed anew for the formation
of a temporary trusteeship over Palestine. Russia objected to
discussion of a trusteeship until formal abandonment of the
previously passed plan for partition. The U.N. Trusteeship Council
began deliberating on a French proposal to create a 1,000-man elite
volunteer police force to safeguard the holy places of Jerusalem.
An Arab source said that troops of an Egyptian armored
division entered southern Palestine at dawn this date. But Egyptian
Government sources denied the rumor from Cairo.
A light vote was being recorded in the Pennsylvania primary,
with only a thirty percent turnout expected among Republicans, as
none of the candidates had campaigned actively in the state.
The president of the CIO Textile Workers Union, Emil Rieve,
urged the President to bow out of the race, favored drafting of
either General Eisenhower or nomination of Supreme Court Justice
William O. Douglas. He rejected each of the Republican candidates
and Henry Wallace with one-line dismissals.
In Detroit, William Knudsen, former president of G.M. and
coordinator of industrial mobilization during the war, died at age
69.
In Charlotte, "America's Town Meeting of the Air"
went forward at the Armory this night, before which participant
Dorothy Thompson, syndicated columnist whose column had been carried
by The News during the Thirties and through the war, answered
questions of the press and swapped barbs with fellow panelists, said
she was in town to do some red-baiting and perform a witch-hunt,
added, in apparent non sequitur, that Henry Morgenthau, former
Secretary of the Treasury, was an "ineffable ass".
Senator Glen Taylor arrived for the program, said that there
was no real third party as the two principal parties had merged into
one. Senator Taylor would become the running mate to Henry
Wallace.
In Akron, O., a year-old infant was deemed insensible to
pain. Pin pricks caused her to laugh, did not react to bumps and
bruises, did not cry when injected with a needle for anemia. Doctors
said her condition was rare but not unique and congenital in origin.
She might even be able to withstand the 1948 election year,
nay, even HUAC and the investigation into Mr. Hiss yet to come.
On the editorial page, "America's Town Meeting"
discusses the "Town Meeting of the Air" to be broadcast
this evening from Charlotte regarding whether a third party could
bring peace and prosperity. It thinks it unlikely that a third party
would provide the solution to an issue which had vexed politicians
for centuries.
But the hope for peace and prosperity was kept alive by such
programs as this one, on the air for eleven years, and as long as
the people debated the issue, there was a chance for the lofty goals
to be realized.
"How to Stop Harold Stassen?" recaps the history
of primary winners who failed to achieve party nomination, Theodore
Roosevelt in 1912, losing the Republican nomination to incumbent
President Taft, Senator Hiram Johnson of California and General
Leonard Wood in 1920, both losing the nomination to Warren G.
Harding. In 1940, Wendell Willkie had not figured in the primaries
at all but captured the nomination away from the young contender
Thomas Dewey. It was the rule then, at a time when there were few
primaries, generally regarded as "beauty contests", that
"primaries indicate; conventions nominate."
Mr. Stassen was the exponent of Republican liberalism and was
more formidable than either T.R. in 1912, Senator Johnson in 1920,
or Wendell Willkie in 1940. He would be a strong pre-convention
candidate against the Old Guard, possibly the strongest ever.
"The Proper Study of Antkind" points to a
scientific study conducted by the National Geographic Society in
Panama anent ants, finding 40 percent doing nothing, forty percent
working, and the remaining 20 percent vacillating. While some stored
grain for harsh times, as Solomon found, others appeared profligate,
bursting another long-held illusion. It concludes that if the ants
could fool Solomon, perhaps man could also fool someone.
A piece from the Louisville Courier-Journal, titled
"Perils Beset the Middle Way", tells of the moderates
disappearing when Communism either gained control of a country or
when it lost, as in Italy, the opposition usually swinging too far
to the right to defeat Communism. The phenomenon had to be
recognized in the opposition leadership in France with Charles De
Gaulle and in China with Chiang Kai-Shek.
The recent insurrection in Bogota could not be wholly laid at
the doorstep of the Communists when depressed economic conditions
gave rise to it.
The editorial reminds that all the efforts of the United
States on behalf of Italy would not keep Communism at bay forever
unless the abject poverty in the country were eliminated.
Sumner Welles, former Undersecretary of State until August,
1943, discusses the outcome of the Italian elections, with
two-thirds of the electorate rejecting Communism. But the elections,
he cautions, marked only a first step in the process as the
Communist Party remained strong in Italy, would continue to seek to undermine
ERP. The U.S. would have to eliminate the poverty on which Communism
fed.
It was likely that Russia would be content for the nonce to
seek to consolidate its gains in Czechoslovakia, Finland, Hungary
and the Balkans, looking for soft spots in Asia and the Near East.
In consequence, the world would be divided indefinitely between
Eastern and Western spheres.
Russia was consistent and ruthless in its dictatorship,
something which the U.S. could not do in a democracy.
He thinks that the surest path to war would occur from
reversal of the present policy of increasing armament or forming a
premature settlement with Russia. When the Kremlin became convinced
that Russia's power was met by a united West, the danger of war
would be eliminated. Only then could the U.S. afford to negotiate a
settlement to form a one-world order from the two-world order.
Drew Pearson tells of Russia having sought a conference
between President Truman and Premier Stalin and the President having
turned it down as he was not going to lick anyone's boots. Mr.
Pearson believed, however, that in light of the outcome of the
Italian elections, such acquiescence to a meeting could not be
perceived as boot-licking as it would reopen the dialogue which had
ceased since the failure of the last foreign ministers conference in
December, a dangerous situation of mutual silence to maintain. For
the longer war could be postponed, the better would be the chance to
build a friendly Western Europe.
Averell Harriman had remained mum to the end with his close
associates regarding his appointment as roving ambassador for ERP.
The Duke of Windsor had lunch recently with Senator Alben
Barkley, talked of the coal strike, the Italian elections and
British coal production.
The only convert on the Senate Armed Services Committee won
over by
Secretary of Defense Forrestal to the 66-group Air Force, favored instead of 70 groups, was Senator Burnet Maybank of South
Carolina.
Joseph Alsop tells of the stop-Stassen movement in the
Republican Party not having gelled yet between the forces supporting
Senator Taft and those of Governor Dewey, both still fighting
separately and at odds with one another, each believing their man to
be the better to lead the effort.
The previous week, Governor Dewey had sought to line up
delegates from Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, the results
having been disappointing. None of the Republican leaders of the
three states had committed to Mr. Dewey. If he were to fail in the
Oregon primary, his support could begin to fall apart in advance of
the June convention.
Senator Taft, even if he proved successful in his home state
of Ohio against the Stassen effort there, was deemed by observers as
excluded as a potential nominee, having fared poorly in Wisconsin
and Nebraska.
If both Senator Taft and Governor Dewey were ruled out as the
nominee, then the next most favored candidate was Senator Arthur
Vandenberg, who had insisted he was not interested. So the problem
with a disintegrated support base for Senator Taft and Governor
Dewey was that their supporters would have no alternative candidate
to whom to turn.
If former Governor Stassen failed or only made a modest
showing in both Oregon and Ohio, he was finished as the dark horse
candidate, despite having won the Wisconsin and Nebraska primaries.
Samuel Grafton assesses the Italian election, suggests that
while the results were in and democracy had won against Communism,
the battle would never be over. What had been won by the U.S. was
the right to rebuild Italy into a self-sustaining economy, in a
country with the largest landless peasant class in Europe and huge
inflation. That sustained, slow effort would develop without so much
publicity as the election horse-race.
A Quote of the Day: "Up in Maine a baby sixteen days
old is walking. There seems to be no limit to infantile precocity.
Next thing you hear boy babies will be born with cigarettes in their
mouths and pink flasks on their hips while girl babies will come
into the world fully equipped with lipstick, rouge and the New
Look." —Jackson (Miss.) News
Another Pome from the Atlanta Journal, this one
"reflecting feeling of frustrated versifier when the muse is
being coy and he can't think up a suitable jingle which to conclude
his col'm:
I can't squeeze a pome,
Out of my dome."
But can you get
The red, red loam
From out your comb?