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