Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Jewish sources
claimed the all-Arab town of Acre had surrendered to Jewish forces
this date following a three-day battle in the streets of the city,
eight miles north of Haifa. Haganah claimed control of the highway
through Acre, just outside the area designated under the U.N.
partition plan as the Jewish state. To the east, Jewish sources
stated that 500 Arabs had been drowned when Jews opened a dam and
flooded plain lands south of the sea of Galilee.
Haganah reported a massed attack by Arabs on the Jewish
quarter of Jerusalem. The British stated that the Arabs had captured
Barclay's Bank and Darouti's Hotel.
Arab planes raided Tel Aviv for the fourth straight day, the
morning raid lasting 45 minutes, the longest yet. An afternoon raid
followed. Jews claimed to have shot down one plane and damaged
another, had claimed two planes shot down the previous day. The
planes captured this date contained Egyptian pilots. Egypt declared
the existence of a blockade on Israel.
Before the U.N. Security Council, the U.S., in the person of
Ambassador Warren Austin, chastised Syria for challenging the right
of President Truman to recognize Israel. Syrian delegate El Khoury
had issued the challenge. Syria, Britain, and France had suggested
questions regarding Palestine should be addressed to "Jewish
authorities" rather than to the provisional Government of
Israel as a recognized state.
The State Department indicated that the statement on peace by
Prime Minister Stalin was "encouraging" but that the
issues he had listed had been under negotiation for two years or
more in the U.N. and the Council of Foreign Ministers, and that
those he proposed for settlement were not the ones creating division
between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The State Department blamed
Russia for failure to reach accord on such matters as atomic energy
control.
Another issue had arisen when Prime Minister Stalin commented
on the open letter of Henry Wallace, suggesting that the U.S. and
Russia settle their major differences, in atomic energy control,
armaments control, and withdrawal of troops from Korea and Germany.
The Soviet leader stated that he was willing to accept the terms of
the Wallace letter as the foundation for peaceful settlement of the
issues set forth.
The Government moved to dismiss the civil contempt finding
against the UMW and John L. Lewis, and the Federal District Court so
ordered. The Court did not rule on an additional motion to drop the
anti-strike injunction. The strike over the pension dispute had been
settled after six weeks and the mines had returned to full
production, obviating the need, according to Attorney General Tom
Clark, for continuing the 80-day injunction issued April 21.
In Oklahoma City, a woman walked into the neighborhood
bootlegger's house to find her man in the arms of another, drew her
.22 pistol and fired at the interloping woman but missed and hit,
instead, her man in the side, albeit not seriously. But in the end,
only the bootlegger was fined $50 and sentenced to 30 days in jail
for possession of illegal liquor and wine. For the man's part, he
refused to testify against his woman.
Nobody was named Dan.
Martha Azer London of The News tells of Russian expert
Walter Duranty calling war talk with Russia "exaggerated
tension", that the country was not in a condition to wage war.
Mr. Duranty, a New York Times correspondent in Russia from
1921 to 1934, and personal acquaintance of Josef Stalin, was in
Charlotte to address the Executives Club.
He believed that the Marshall Plan should have been
inaugurated two years earlier when there was a power vacuum in
Europe, with no peace plan in play. The Russians had taken advantage
of the vacuum in Central Europe. But he said that he did not believe
that the Russians had a plan for world domination and would not
fight the Western powers. Russia's steel production was but 14
million tons annually at maximum, whereas the U.S. produced 95
million tons. He believed U.S.-Russian relations were much better
than a year earlier, though remained critical.
Nancy Brame Dumbell of The News reports of the "Shout
Freedom!" pageant, set to start in Charlotte the following
Thursday, May 20, with a 130-member cast. A full dress-rehearsal had
taken place the previous night and a preview would occur this night
for members of the press and radio. The pageant centered on the
Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, purportedly signed May 20,
1775, but included as well other events in the history of the
settlement of the county.
Lines ascribed to Royal Governor William Tryon "lace on his
drawers", suggested that Mecklenburgers took both their
Presbyterianism and their liquor "pretty strong", and
predicted that Charlotte would never reach the size of Salisbury.
The pageant would unfold on a 300-yard stage in front of the
Southern States Fairgrounds grandstand. She provides various details
of the scenes.
Don't you miss it, now. It's going to be a whip-roaring
fun-fest, especially when Col. Thomas Polk reads the Declaration,
telling to all that everyone in Mecklenburg henceforth would be free
from John Bull's tyranny.
On the editorial page, "More Music for Charlotte" finds North Carolina at the start of a musical awakening for the
facts of the "Shout Freedom!" pageant, the 1948-49
concert series of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, including two
free concerts and two children's concerts, and the establishment of
a North Carolina Music Foundation in Chapel Hill. Norman Cordon of
the Metropolitan Opera had been engaged by UNC to direct the latter
program.
It urges support of the Symphony to create a better
Charlotte.
"Strikes Raise Inflation Issue" finds the
American people fed up with strikes and labor disputes in which
management and labor excluded the interests of the American consumer
in reaching resolutions. Americans wanted business and labor to
effect inflation control.
Ford Motor Company was refusing a demand for higher wages and
wanted a rollback in wages to a level equal to the other of the Big
Three automakers. The UAW stated that it would agree to the Ford
demand provided that Ford would use its influence to roll back the
cost of living.
Ford could not, however, do that job alone. Government
control was required. As long as the Congress obstructed the
implementation of controls and business lobbied for same, prices
would continue to rise and so would wages in response.
The voluntary control of inflation inaugurated by G.E.,
Westinghouse, and U.S. Steel provided a hopeful development, but it
had not reached the scale to counter the unions' argument that labor
was disproportionately bearing the cost of inflation.
"Tut, Tut, Mr. Taft" finds Senator Robert Taft's
opposition to pork barrel politics, especially in an election year,
to be quite remarkable, tantamount to political suicide. He did not
place all the blame on the Administration for the appropriation of
what he considered to be too much money for public works, but rather
insisted that the House had added too much to the original
Administration requests.
"He not only calls a spade a spade, a political faux
pas of the direst boorishness; he calls it a gol-danged shovel."
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled
"Confession of Middle-Grounder", tells of the annual
Groves Conference on Conservation and Marriage at Chapel Hill having
ended with the conclusion that laws could not control sexual
behavior, as found by the Kinsey Report.
The piece disagrees with the approach that periodic
discussion was the only way to handle sexual conduct. It finds that
laws against rape, seduction, and even adultery and fornication had
been more effective than discussion and books in keeping down
aberrant behavior. It prefers a middle ground between Forever
Amber and Elsie Dinsmore.
Drew Pearson tells of Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall,
of North Carolina, meeting secretly with the Senate Armed Services
Committee and Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, ultimately
stating to the Southern Senators that he would resign his post
before ordering an end to segregation in the Army. His assertion
followed the Southern Senators' statement that they would oppose the
draft bill unless there were an amendment to assure that inductees
would serve in segregated units.
Senator Richard Russell of Georgia was exercised about the
President's stated intention to have discrimination removed from the
services. Secretary Royall assured him that the President did not,
however, intend to eliminate segregation. Senator Burnet Maybank of
South Carolina joined Senator Russell's inveighing.
The segregation-preservation amendment, however, eventually
was defeated 7 to 4, with Senators Lister Hill of Alabama and Harry
Flood Byrd of Virginia joining the other two opponents.
Senator Kenneth Wherry, preaching fiscal conservatism, had,
at Government expense, sent off 93 telegrams to county Republican
chairmen in his home state of Nebraska. When exposed, he paid the
bill himself, claiming that Western Union had made a mistake.
Joseph Alsop, in Klamath Falls, Ore., tells of the race in
the Oregon primary appearing more as a local contest for sheriff
than a presidential race between Thomas Dewey and Harold Stassen. He
finds Mr. Stassen to be the most remarkable younger leader in
American politics since FDR had entered the national scene in 1932.
Mr. Stassen was a bulky man, setting him apart from the crowds
surrounding him daily. He was agreeably plain, with a cool
disposition and good humor. He delivered the same speech repeatedly,
yet continually with sincerity, one stating his confidence in
America, expressing his disapproval of Communism and that he was for
reclamation. The same jokes, though stiff, induced laughter each
time he repeated them. The questions he received were always the
same, on UMT, Russia, the cost of living, and Taft-Hartley.
Governor Stassen had made a monkey out of Governor Dewey in
the Cascade Locks "battle of the blockade" during the
previous weekend, in which the press truck had partially blocked the
highway into the town wherein Governor Stassen was speaking to a
roadside gathering. Governor Dewey's bus circumvented the blockade
and passed on by the town, leaving the crowd thinking him rude.
Governor Stassen had delayed his bus until the Dewey bus had come
into view and so the maneuver was calculated, with Mr. Stassen
realizing that Governor Dewey would bypass the scheduled stop when
he saw Mr. Stassen already there. That sort of ploy, Mr. Alsop
thinks, must have contributed to Governor Stassen's meteoric rise,
in the Wisconsin and Nebraska primaries.
His staff were men in their thirties, but were very
efficient.
A picture formed from these attributes of a political leader
who had genuine feeling for the country. But his true political
views yet remained unclear.
Marquis Childs tells of anxious days at Democratic National
Headquarters in Washington, as preparations were being made for the
President's tour of the country. His managers wanted him to show
that he had a new outlook. He would be stopping a dozen times per
day in California and the Pacific Northwest, where he would speak on
each occasion extemporaneously.
He unveiled his new style when he addressed the American
Society of Newspaper Editors, speaking in a homespun manner off the
record, after delivering his prepared speech. The technique had
worked well, compared to his flat reading style, communicating
insincerity.
Whether he could make this new style effective in the
campaign against a backdrop of such grave problems in the world and
inspire the idea that he was up to the task of leadership for the
ensuing four years remained to be seen. He had learned a great deal
during his three years in office, even if some of the process had
been painful for both the President and the country.
A letter writer finds the traffic and street light system in
Charlotte to be the worst of any major city in the country. He
reached his office in the morning each day, he says, in a state of
"convulsive shock".
He contends that if the newspaper could not do something
about the problem, he was going to shoot himself, and The News
would have his blood on its hands.
A letter writer finds it useless to have arrested the 18
liquor dealers for selling illegal liquor to undercover ABC agents,
as he thinks the ABC stores had probably sold them the liquor in the
first instance. He favors restrictions on magazine and newspaper
advertising of liquor and the requirement that they tell the truth
about it, that it destroys life itself and fills the jails and
insane asylums. He asserts that liquor consumption had increased
dramatically in Charlotte since the ABC system had gone into effect
the previous September.
He likens liquor to a lion loose in the street, in need of
capture.
A letter writer disagrees with the column of Samuel Grafton
of May 8, in which he had opined that if the veto power were
eliminated from the U.N. Security Council, it would effectively
become a challenge to the Soviets to engage in arms build-up. Mr.
Grafton had suggested patience in allowing the U.N. to perform its
work to establish the peace.
He wants power in the hands of the majority of the U.N. and
an international court established to try countries found in
violation of international law.
He favors, however, Mr. Grafton's suggestion that a peace
conference between the U.S. and Russia would be helpful and, in any
event, could not do any harm.
