Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Tel Aviv, the
State of Israel was born anew after 2,000 years in diaspora. The
proclamation by the National Council would become effective at
midnight this date, when the British mandate officially ended. The
British High Commission had already departed Palestine and the
mandate Government had left Jerusalem. The declaration said that the
Jewish right to a "life of dignity, freedom and labor"
was recognized by the U.N. The provisional Government of Israel
would be headed by David Ben-Gurion.
The Arab League was planning to set up a civic administration
and not a state, to function in conjunction with the Arab forces
when and if they invaded. The Arab League secretariat proclaimed a
state of war to be existing in Palestine with the Jews. Syria had
been declared in a state of emergency as a result.
Sources confirmed that the Arab Legion had won its first
victory by wiping out four Jewish colonies in the Kfar Etzion bloc,
south of Jerusalem and athwart the Arab invasion route from the
south. It was reported that 200 Jews had died in the battle which
had ended the previous night. The Jewish Agency contended that Arabs
had killed prisoners of war and urged the U.N. truce commission to
intervene in the battle.
The battle continued for the Bab al-Wad Gorge, which was the
vital lifeline between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for Jews. The Arab
League claimed that the Arab liberation army had already been
victorious in that battle, but that was not confirmed.
Six airplane accidents on four continents had claimed 55
lives, including that of Kathleen Kennedy Cavendish, daughter of former
Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy and sister to the future President. Ms.
Kennedy, known as Lady Hartington for her marriage to William
Cavendish, Lord Hartington, who had died in combat in 1944 shortly
after their marriage, was planning to marry Lord Fitzwilliam, also
killed in the crash. The plane crashed near Privas in southern
France with four aboard, including two crewmen. Ms. Kennedy was 28.
Only one person had survived in the four accidents and 36
remained missing. The other five planes had crashed in the Belgian
Congo, involving a DC-4, killing 31 people, Saudi Arabia, killing at
least nine with four still missing and one survivor, Switzerland,
involving two Swiss fliers, Alaska, and Massachusetts, the latter
two accidents involving military planes.
Four Democratic Senators, Claude Pepper of Florida, Carl
Hatch of New Mexico, J. Howard McGrath of Rhode Island, and Herbert
O'Conor of Maryland, all of the War Investigating Committee, quickly
withdrew a submitted minority report on Air Force purchases. The
report, they said, had been distributed by office staff prematurely,
before being cleared by Senator Hatch, through a misunderstanding.
It had criticized the majority report of the Committee regarding the
Howard Hughes war contract investigation of the previous August and
November, saying that further investigation of war purchasing
practices, especially at Wright Field in Ohio, should be undertaken.
They also said that the Committee had repeatedly exceeded its
authority in the Hughes matter and that there was no evidence
disclosed of any fraud by Mr. Hughes or his associates, that the
evidence pointed instead to the contrary.
Editorials at the time surmised that the object of the hearings had been to embarrass the memory of FDR by attempting to link Army procurement with nightclub entertainment of Mr. Hughes and his associates provided by Elliott Roosevelt while a Colonel in the Army Air Force.
The President urged Congress to pass long-range farm
legislation to keep farmers prosperous and assure abundant food. He
wanted to use agricultural surpluses to improve the diets of
low-income families and have it ready on standby in case of need. He
recommended flexible price supports for agricultural commodities,
continuance of soil conservation, continuance and strengthening of
programs which assured adequate consumption of agricultural
products, and consideration of farmers' special problems.
In North Korea, power was shut off after an American Army
sergeant was wounded superficially near the border between the
Russian and American zones. There was no apparent connection,
however, between the two incidents.
In the vicinity of St. Paul, Minn., the National Guard was
deployed by the Governor at strikebound packing plants in Newport
and South St. Paul where strike violence had erupted with a mob
raiding a plant in Newport and taking away 30 plant workers as
hostages while damaging the interior of the plant. A hundred and ten
hogs, valued at $6,000, were set free.
It appeared that the nationwide phone strike would be at
least two weeks away.
The U.S. Treasury filed an attachment of a woman shopkeeper's
assets for an amount equal to the withholding taxes she should have
withheld but refused to do, claiming it to be in contravention of
the Constitution.
A North Carolina Republican telephoned Senator William Langer
of North Dakota, opposing the nomination of Judge Wilson Warlick to
the Federal District Court of the Western District of North
Carolina. In response, the Senate Judiciary Committee, which had
promised Judge Warlick that this date's hearing would be the last,
scheduled another hearing for May 17.
Well, we hope they get that there worked out 'cause you got
some Federal people up 'ere that needs attention, and they might fly
off the handle.
Governor Gregg Cherry wanted to await a preliminary report of
the State Education Commission before taking any action on school
teacher salaries. He had been urged to call a special session of the
Legislature to deal with the subject.
All of the North Carolina gubernatorial candidates had
answered a questionnaire by favoring a minimum certified teacher's
salary of $2,400 per year and a range up to $3,600, against the
current minimum of $1,620. Each also favored reducing classrooms to
30 students.
The Democratic and Republican primaries in the state were to
occur May 29, with registration cutoff the following day. Vote early
and often, come rain or shine.
In Whiteville, N.C., the City Council approved the
installation of new storm sewers, with 576 feet of 36-inch
corrugated pipe to be installed under Walter Street from Thompson to
Canal.
Get that done, and quickly.
On the editorial page, "Shout for 'Shout Freedom'" tells of encouraging progress reports on the outdoor pageant
celebrating the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, purported
to have originated May 20, 1775, to be presented in Charlotte May
20 through June 3. The remaining question was public support for the
pageant, as subscriptions were slower than hoped, though the project
was assured of financial success.
It again provides the personnel involved in developing the
pageant, author LeGette Blythe, set designer Kenneth Whitsett,
composer of the musical score Lamar Stringfield, director Thomas
Humble, narrator Norman Cordon of the Metropolitan Opera, and Doris
McGuinn, playing the principal female role. The cast consisted of
160 people from the county.
"Molotov's Trick in Peace Talk" finds V. M.
Molotov's "misinterpretation" of the intent of the
message from Ambassador Walter Bedell Smith to be a Soviet
stratagem, not, as some posited, to portray the U.S. as an appeaser
seeking such a conference, but rather to build up sympathy for
peace, in opposition to America's armament drive.
The maneuver appeared as the beginning of an elaborate peace
offensive by the Russians, designed to force the West to call off
the cold war. The Molotov statement, it opines, did not mean that
Russia wanted peace but that it needed peace to retain its present
gains in Eastern Europe. The proposed conference appeared as a means
to do so at the bargaining table.
"Cry Wolf, Cry Illusion" tells of the head of the
Missing Persons Bureau in New York City finding that women who
sought missing husbands were usually doing so for financial reasons,
whereas men who sought missing wives appeared genuinely concerned
about the welfare of their spouse.
Most advertising appealed to women as they usually controlled
the purse strings of the household. The average lifespan of women,
according to the U.S. Office of Vital Statistics, had increased from
59.2 to 66.3 between 1933 and 1946, while men's average lifespan had
risen only from 57.5 to 62.7 in the same period.
While drama and fiction portrayed women as soft and in need
of protection by men, it appeared as a myth which women fostered so
that both sexes could have fun. It invites the charade to continue.
A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled
"Madam Chairman", tells of British anthropologist
Geoffrey Gorer finding in his book, The American People, that
the civic club women caricatured by Helen Hokinson in the New
Yorker were the saving grace to America. He found them giving of
their time, money and energy without stint when they believed in a
cause.
Philip Wylie and others took issue with this view, found such
women to be the source of the nation's problems. The goodwill
demonstrated needed, according to this school, to be harnessed for
more intellectual pursuits.
In the May issue of the Woman's Home Companion, Dr.
James Madison Wood, president emeritus of Stephens College, told of
his plans for a new type of college for women of mature years, whose
lives might seem aimless and useless after rearing families. He
found that the club experience often burned out women's energies
before gains were realized.
The piece concludes that women needed to learn patience and
persistence while men needed to learn of the open-mindedness and
idealism which women could bring to societal problems.
Drew Pearson examines the temporary draft pending before
Congress. America could not compete with Russia in building an army
because of the latter's greater reservoir of manpower. No land army,
neither Napoleon's nor Hitler's, had ever been able to penetrate
Russia successfully. Thus, the U.S. had to develop air and atomic
superiority for adequate defense. American troops were needed to
maintain bases abroad and to constitute a police force at home to
guard the country in case of nuclear attack. The veterans could
supply the latter force. Domestic defense, therefore, should not
need rely on the draft.
He thinks that the defense planners had overlooked the
National Guard and the reserves as a source of manpower, if built
up, for overseas activities.
He suggests that after a three-month training program for 18
and 19-year olds, they would be permitted to join the Guard. Guard
training should then be under the best of the Army. The Guard would
be subject to periodic examination. In addition to the 70-group
expanded Air Force, such a program, he believes, should supply an
adequate defense and avoid a militaristic system.
The three railroad brotherhoods who had threatened a strike
had, just after the seizure of the railroads by the President, urged
the President to obtain an injunction to forbid the strike.
A captured secret telegram, dated July 28, 1942, from
Ambassador Karl Ritter to L. R. von Neurath of the Wehrmacht Afrika
Korps, showed how the Egyptian Government conspired to provide
secret information to the Germans just when it hurt the most. He
provides the text. The British had been willing to make the telegram
and all other such captured documents public, but the State
Department had balked, reportedly for pressure from the Defense
Department. He notes again that Secretary of Defense Forrestal, during his time as a partner at Dillon, Read on Wall Street, had
once been a banker for the Arabian-American oil combine.
Samuel Grafton tells of the diplomatic note conveyed by
Ambassador to Moscow Walter Bedell Smith having been both tough and
gentle. The Russians had seized on the gentle aspects and sought to
have discussions, at which point the U.S. reverted to the tough
stance. The hot and cold aspects of the note were baffling.
The news of prospects of such discussions had caused the
stock market to jump in New York and the Russians to greet the news
with glee.
It would be wise, he posits, for Americans to remember
Russia's strong stance during the war against Germany and for the
Russians to remember America's strong international reputation. In
such a conference, the Russians would likely discover that America
was not going to succumb to economic depression and America might discover
that Russia's interest in security was not just a grim whim.
Such possibilities, however, had been foreclosed by the
President's outright rejection of the overture by the Russians.
Joseph Alsop wonders why President Truman and Premier Stalin
could not clear up the problems between Russia and the U.S. through
discussion. The State Department had thrown cold water on the
Russian invitation to discussions because of the bad previous
experiences in such conferences. For the most part, the Russians
wanted the world split into two spheres of influence, with the U.S.
controlling the Western Hemisphere and possibly the Pacific Islands,
and Russia controlling the Eurasian continent and the African
dependencies. The Russians would not likely be content to accept the
current division, as it would leave the non-Soviet sector stronger
than the Soviet sector.
The Soviet sector, on the Soviet plan, would be organized as
an empire, whereas the West would remain an aggregation of
independent states cooperating only loosely and sporadically with
one another. Moreover, the President possessed no authority to divide
the world on this model, lest he also become dictatorial.
Consequently, American foreign policy favored division on a
natural basis rather than an artificial one. The makers of American
foreign policy believed that the present situation had derived from
the weakness of the non-Soviet sphere, inviting Soviet expansionism.
But if the West could be restored through ERP, further imperial
adventures would become too risky. The Kremlin would begin to accept
the status quo as natural and enduring.
A letter writer is not in favor of State Treasurer Charles
Johnson for Governor, recently endorsed by The News. He was a
banker and bankers were interested in balanced budgets, but not
human welfare.
He likes the eventual winner, Kerr Scott, as he had built a
dairy farm and thus knew how to spend the public money wisely.
A letter writer responds to an editorial of May 3, comparing
the attributes of Senate candidates, incumbent William B. Umstead
and challenger J. Melville Broughton, former Governor. The editorial
had found both men qualified, but Governor Broughton better
qualified. The writer finds Senator Umstead, having established a
record in his year and half since the interim gubernatorial
appointment following the death of Senator Josiah William Bailey in
December, 1946, with which tenure the editorial had found no fault, to have
proved himself worthy of the seat.
A letter writer from Fort Worth, Texas, wants the country to
withstand the war debt from World War II by installing a single-unit
monetary system. He explains.
The editors respond: "Wouldn't it be easier to abolish
war?"
A letter writer finds fault with the "How's Your I.Q.?"
column appearing May 11 in the newspaper, addressing a query on correction of the sentence, "There was no one there but him."
The answer given was that "him" should have been "he".
He finds that correction incorrect and sounding awkward, thinks that
"but" for "except" was the actual error.
But you cannot say, "Him was the only one there." Do you
see, finally, once and for all? You have to think backwards, as an
Englishman.
He thinks "All went but I" equally awkward. But
"Me did go to the exclusion of all else" would not be sonorouslysimpatico to the
ear's reverberation unit in Echo.
