The Charlotte News

Monday, June 21, 1948

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Republican convention had begun this morning in Convention Hall in Philadelphia at 10:27 and after a recess at noon, would reconvene at 8:00 p.m. The Republicans were confident that they would retake the White House for the first time since the 1928 election. There remained uncertainty as to who the party nominee would be. Governor Dewey and Senator Taft were the acknowledged front runners. The balloting would not begin until Wednesday or Thursday.

Former Governor Harold Stassen assured that there would be no combinations, as with Senator Taft, to stop Governor Dewey. He predicted that it would take at least four or five ballots to select a nominee. He had already predicted that he would win on the ninth ballot, presumably in July.

Senator Taft arrived at the Ben Franklin Hotel, driving his own Plymouth. Governor Dewey arrived in a chauffeur-driven black limousine at the Belleveue-Stratford. Senator Taft posed nervously for photographers and shook the trunk of a bored elephant. Governor Earl Warren arrived later and appeared in a press conference, ready to make a genuine fight for the nomination.

North Carolina's 26-member delegation appeared to be predominantly for Mr. Dewey, with four delegates for Senator Taft and a few others scattered among Speaker Joe Martin, Senator Vandenberg, and Governor Stassen. It was believed that Governor Dewey would have nearly a majority of the votes from the South, with Senator Taft running slightly ahead of him, about 73 to 70. If a deadlock occurred, the Southern delegates would likely switch to Senator Vandenberg.

A split appeared to be developing in the platform committee on backing an internationalist plank. Some members wanted to weaken the plank, but backers of it said they could resist such a movement.

The President met at the White House with fifteen top Democrats and briefed them on his cross-country tour. It was believed that he had not discussed a prospective tour in the fall which he had promised at several stops along the way.

The Greek Ninth Division, one of six divisions totaling 70,000 men, advanced four miles into guerrilla territory north of Konitsa in the opening drive of the greatest offensive yet in the Greek civil war. The guerrillas near the Albanian border numbered about 7,000. The 15th Division was reported to be fighting against the guerrillas south of Nestorion. American mission head Dwight Griswold broadcast a radio appeal for the guerrillas to surrender to avoid further bloodshed.

The Yugoslavs had released two American privates who had been AWOL since June 9. There was no word on the release of five other soldiers taken captive by the Yugoslavs the previous week during a pleasure cruise in an Army motorboat along the shore of Istria near Trieste.

In the last two days of the session of Congress, just convened for the conventions, a 6.03 billion dollar foreign aid budget, virtually what the Administration had sought, had been passed in the wee hours of Sunday morning, along with the peacetime draft for men from 19 to 25 and a new system of farm price supports. It failed to pass, however, the long-term housing bill.

Speaker Joe Martin said that the Congress would probably be called into session again in the summer or fall. But Senator Taft stated that he did not think it would be necessary. Governor Dewey said that he thought the existing record of the Congress remarkable and would not urge that it return to session.

In Kenvil, N.J., a powder dynamite plant blew up killing three men and rocking much of northern New Jersey over a 50-mile radius.

The Supreme Court, in the last of its cases for the 1947-48 term, upheld unanimously, in U.S. v. C.I.O., 335 U.S. 106, a decision announced by Justice Stanley Reed, a lower court ruling in a CIO test case which had dismissed an indictment against the CIO for spending union money for political purposes, but did not reach the question of the First Amendment Constitutionality of the provision of Taft-Hartley which forbade expenditure of union funds on behalf of a candidate in a Federal election. The CIO had endorsed in its publication a candidate for Congress in Baltimore County. The Court held that the law did not intend to embrace a statement of endorsement contained in a regular union publication, but expressly did not reach other circumstances.

The Supreme Court, in Taylor v. Alabama, 335 U.S. 252, an opinion announced by Justice Harold Burton, upheld, 5 to 3, an Alabama procedure denying the petitioner, sentenced to death for the rape of a 14-year old girl, a writ of coram nobis to challenge his confession for being coerced by force or violence, the State Court having determined that there was no possible validity to the claim. The High Court upheld the procedure against a charge that it violated Due Process by denying the petitioner a substantive hearing on the issue. Justice Hugo Black, from Alabama, and apparently having had some role in the case or knowledge of the parties at some point, took no part in the decision. Justices Frank Murphy, William O. Douglas, and Wiley Rutledge dissented on the ground that the prisoner had a right to challenge the Constitutional validity of his confession pursuant to Due Process under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and that the State procedure did not afford him that opportunity, but stated that the defendant still had the right to bring a Federal habeas corpus petition to challenge the confession and was not precluded from doing so by the majority opinion.

The Court also upheld, 6 to 3, in Ludecke v. Watkins, 335 U.S. 160, an opinion announced by Justice Felix Frankfurter, an order postwar for Kurt Ludecke, former Nazi Party member, to leave the country. Justices Douglas, Murphy, and Rutledge dissented also in that case.

A case not mentioned, Ahrens v. Clark, 335 U.S. 188, holding 6 to 3 that a Federal District Court could grant a habeas corpus petition only when a petitioner was within the territorial jurisdiction of the Court, was, for pedagogical purposes, the most significant and enduring of the cases announced this date, if a bit arcane to all save students of the law. In any event, it wound up in the law school casebook. Justice Douglas announced the decision of the Court and Justices Rutledge, Black, and Murphy dissented.

In Rock Hill, S.C., an attorney for the principal suspect, still being held without charges in the murder of the local businessman, shot once through the back during the weekend of June 6 and whose body had been discovered the previous week, stated that he was not sure that he would seek a habeas corpus petition for the release of his client, provided the coroner's jury hearing was convened promptly. Apparently, he did not want to hasten the filing of a murder charge against his client, an employee of the deceased's fuel oil company. No new evidence had been discovered in the dragging of the creek where the body was found inside a wooden crate.

Paul Robeson and Dr. Clark Foreman came to North Carolina to support the third-party candidacy of former Vice-President Henry Wallace. They would appear this date at the Windsor Community Center in Greensboro and at the Pepper Tobacco Warehouse in Winston-Salem.

We think they call that the Peppa Buildin'.

On the editorial page, "Wanted: Community Leaders" tells of Charlotte having grown to 120,000 population, to become 140,000 after the 1949 annexation, the 95th largest city in the nation and the center of the 24th largest market. But, it finds, the civic leadership had not been spread among enough people. A recent survey had found that most civic organizations and projects had only a total of a hundred men and women active in them. It urges more participation.

"Congress and Mr. Vandenberg" finds that the 80th Congress had not conclusively disproved the President's charge that it was either the worst or "second worst" Congress in U.S. history. Congress itself left open the door to the charge by calling for the Congress to be reconvened between the conventions to complete unfinished business, especially on the housing bill.

The result was that the President's chances for re-election had been improved and that the chances for Senator Vandenberg's nomination also had been improved. He had been the Republican to fire back at the President by charging that he engaged in "political sniping" during his 15-day cross-country tour, completed the previous week, while the Congress remained on the job.

Election year politics had complicated the task during this second session, leading to delays in the draft legislation. But that factor had also given the impetus to complete the ERP legislation. The desire finally to make a legislative showing in an election year, it suggests, may have saved the Congress from the fate of being the second worst in the country's history.

"'Times Have Changed' for GOP?" finds the announcement by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., that the platform of the GOP would have the "most international program" in history to recognize that the times had changed. His grandfather, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, had directed the fight against joinder of the League of Nations in 1920. Thus, it was fitting that the grandson was leading the platform committee in this new direction, befitting the positions of all of the leading candidates of the party, each of whom favored aid to Europe and participation in international affairs.

The piece wonders, however, notwithstanding these enunciated positions, whether the Republicans had abandoned fully narrow nationalism, as Senator Taft and Representative John Taber, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, had pursued that line during the year, with the House cutting ERP in the name of economy to the point of risking the success of the critical recovery program, and both the House and Senate weakening the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act by allowing for only a one-year extension rather than the Administration's sought three-year extension to encourage foreign confidence in continued open trade policy.

It concludes that the spirit of 1920 was still unfortunately strong in the GOP platform committee headed by Senator Lodge.

A piece from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, titled "'Devil Anse,'—a Symbol", finds feuding to have quieted down in the previous thirty-five to fifty years in Virginia, as well as in West Virginia and Kentucky.

Virgil Carrington Jones told the story of the notorious feud at Tug Fork, along the border between Kentucky and West Virginia, in his book, The Hatfields and the McCoys. Over the period of about fifteen years, ending in 1888 at the Battle of Grapevine Creek, it was estimated that from 20 to 200 persons had been killed in the feud. But in 1912, a Hatfield was elected the Republican Governor of West Virginia, and another Hatfield had shaken the hand of a McCoy in 1928, officially ending the feud.

The most famous of the feuding clans was "Devil Anse" Hatfield, formerly of the Confederate Army. He had been commemorated by a $3,000 marble statue near Highway 119. It remarks that he was typical of an era that thankfully was gone forever.

Drew Pearson looks at Governor Earl Warren of California, finds him the candidate who would most likely win the pro-labor and independent vote in November. But Governor Warren, who had not made any effort to attract delegates outside the committed California delegation, would likely not get the nod.

He had won both party nominations for Governor in 1946. And he received almost as many votes as President Truman in the recent California primary, despite there being a million more registered Democrats than Republicans.

Mr. Pearson thinks that he could beat anyone in the Democratic field, even General Eisenhower.

Unlike Governor Dewey, Governor Warren had tremendous sympathy for human beings. Governor Dewey's stand for minorities appeared triggered by a sense of fairness and political expediency rather than sympathy. He cites an example in which Governor Dewey, at the recent Governors Conference, had suggested off the record that the teachers' lobby had put forth propaganda equal to that of Hitler and that the Governors ought respond with a counter-offensive. When it was suggested that he bring up the matter before the conference, he balked, saying that he would not do so with the press present, only in executive session without the press. He then made his proposal in such a session, suggesting that the Governors hire a couple of publicity experts at $50,000 per year to lead the campaign against the teachers.

Governor Tom Mabry of New Mexico and Governor Warren both protested that the teachers, receiving low pay and in shortage, should not be singled out when the other lobbies used propaganda also. Mr. Dewey had no problem, however, with the other lobbies.

After a second meeting in closed session, the other Governors still refused to agree with Governor Dewey's proposal.

Mr. Pearson tells of Governor Warren's growing up years in Bakersfield and the death of his father caused by a burglar who was never apprehended. As District Attorney of Alameda County, he had purged racketeers and the stranglehold of the Klan on the paving business in Oakland, seeking to defraud the City on road contracts. He had also served as California's Attorney General for four years before becoming Governor in 1943. He was a good speaker and understood well the workings of government.

But he would not engage in the backstage operations necessary to attract delegates.

Mr. Warren would, of course, be nominated to the second spot on the ticket.

James Marlow discusses the Republican convention, indicates that there were 1,094 delegates and thus 548 required to nominate. He explains the mechanics of the voting and that the first ballot, with favorite son candidacies still intact, would mean nothing. Ultimately, it would boil down to which of the three major candidates, Governor Dewey, former Governor Stassen, or Senator Taft, grabbed the decisive lead and attracted uncommitted or favorite son delegates, in which case also attracting the delegates of the other major candidates. The psychology was that everyone wanted ultimately to be with the winner. If no clear front runner emerged after numerous ballots, then a deal would have to be worked out.

James D. White of the Associated Press discusses U.S. aid to China. Chiang Kai-Shek had gotten his one-time enemy, General Pai Chung-Hai, to take command in central China of the forces fighting the Communists. General Pai had twice refused the command but this time agreed after being given the new American-trained troops from Formosa.

Most Chinese regarded the American aid as being too little, too late to determine the course of the civil war. The Chinese Nationalists were abandoning their efforts to keep foreign ships off the Yangtze and allowing American ships to carry aid directly to the people.

Students were opposed to American aid, some having burned their ration cards the previous week in protest. They believed that American aid was rebuilding Japan into a potential menace anew to China. The Government approved of rebuilding Japan but disapproved of the manner in which it was taking place.

The Government feared that Communist strength growing in French Indo-China, Siam, Malaya, and Burma might create a second front to the south, frustrating a plan to build strength in the south to fight the Communists in the north.

The Chinese dollar on the Shanghai black market had weakened to the point where it took 2.3 million yuan to purchase a single U.S. dollar. In Chungking, rice rose to twice its controlled price. In consequence, thousands had rioted and looted rice shops and 23 rioters had been condemned to death. The violators of price control appeared, however, not to have been sanctioned.

A legislator in Shanghai said that if such economic conditions continued, the Government, as predicted by the Communists, would be dismembered long before a military defeat would occur.

A letter from the fashion editor of Esquire Magazine finds much truth in the May 25 Louisville Courier-Journal editorial "That Bold Look Is a Flop", critical of the new designer hats and berets for males. But he also assures that the Bold Look was thoroughly masculine and was why many American men had accepted the fashion and run with it. He points out that, as Jimmy Durante always said, "Everybody wants to get into the act." There was no need to worry about taffeta hats.

As he addressed the matter to The News, he appears to have confused the May 25 reprinted editorial with "Save Our Hats from Zip", which appeared April 22.

The "emaciated anteater" look is now here. Really.

A Quote of the Day: "In Utopia the strawberry shortcake is never short of strawberries." —Louisville Times

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