Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Berlin City
Council appealed to the U.N. for intervention in the Berlin blockade
crisis caused by Russia. The State Department agreed that the U.N.
might take an active role if the situation deteriorated. The
Communist-controlled Socialist Unity Party told the City Council
that it would oppose any appeal to the U.N. as "useless and
without results", favoring settlement in the four-power Allied
Control Council.
The RAF joined the U.S. Air Force in the airlift to supply
food to the blockaded city, with four to five weeks of food stores
on hand.
Governor Dewey, by acclamation virtually the president-elect,
consulted with his foreign policy adviser, Secretary of
State-designate John Foster Dulles, regarding the Berlin crisis and
told a press conference that the situation was grave but that there
were more serious matters during the war, that the possibilities of
war over the matter should not even be considered. He also stated
that he wanted to see more details before commenting on the
Cominform split with Yugoslavia and Marshal Tito, saying he was
dubious of the actual dissension any time such reports arose out of
the Communist bloc nations. The press conference was held on Mr.
Dewey's 300-acre farm with Governor Warren, both coatless.
An American diplomatic source in Rome stated that Russia
might be building a case for sending troops into Yugoslavia, based
on the Cominform announcement of the previous day. Yugoslavia denied
that martial law had been imposed. A statement from Marshal Tito was
expected this afternoon in reply to the Cominform denunciation of
his Government as having become anti-Soviet.
Syria claimed that a U.S. ship on truce patrol intervened in
an Arab-Israeli battle at Al Birwa in Palestine. An American embassy
representative countered with proofs that the ship could not have
shelled the Arab positions. Captains of the observation vessels were
said to be under strict orders not to fire on, board or search
vessels. A high Arab source said that if peace was not effected by
the end of the four-week truce on July 9, the Arabs would resume war
while continuing to participate in the peace talks on Rhodes in
Greece with U.N. mediator Count Folke Bernadotte. Certain peace
proposals submitted by Count Bernadotte the previous day, said the
source, might lead to extension of the talks beyond July 9.
In Haifa, it was reported that as the British prepared for
final departure from Palestine, three tanks were driven away in full
view of British guards, the tanks believed to be operated by British
deserters bound for joining the Israeli Army. One tank was later
found abandoned with a damaged gearshift. The British were
destroying the munitions to be left behind. The exact time of their
final departure was maintained in secret.
A strike of dock workers in London ended after 2,000 soldiers
were ordered in by the Government to break up the strike, pursuant
to an emergency provision of a 1920 law used only once previously,
to break up a general strike in 1926. The strike had left unloaded
232 ships with food and vital supplies for London.
In Fukui, Japan, as many as 2,500 persons were expected to be
found dead or injured from the earthquake of the previous day,
believed epicentered in the city. It was estimated by an American
commander that there were probably 300 dead. Two hundred children
had been crushed when a theater collapsed. The city of 85,000
appeared to some observers as if it had been leveled by an atom
bomb. It had been heavily damaged by B-29's during the war.
The President signed a bill setting up a retirement system
for military reservists, allowing retirement at age 60 if membership
in the reserve had been maintained for twenty years, with those
presently in the reserve required to have active duty in one of the
world wars to qualify. The limit of pay was 75 percent of active
duty pay drawn by the recipient.
Elliott Roosevelt and other prominent Democrats again urged
the drafting of General Eisenhower as the Democratic nominee for the
presidency.
In Kentucky, the UMW urged support of Senate Minority Leader
Alben Barkley of Kentucky for the presidency. He would become the
vice-presidential nominee.
DNC chairman Senator Howard McGrath stated that he expected no
trouble at the convention from the Southern delegates. Fifteen
Southern governors had already announced that they would meet the day
before the convention for an anti-Truman caucus.
In York, S.C., a coroner's jury found that an employee of a
South Carolina businessman, killed during the weekend of June 6 by
one gunshot wound to the back and whose body was found in a creek
inside a wooden crate, was the responsible agent for the death. The
employee was then arrested on the morning of this date and charged
with the murder. The primary evidence thus far presented appeared to
be that the shooting occurred at the businessman's warehouse, that
the crate had come from the warehouse, and that, according to a
witness, two days prior to the killing, the deceased had been
checking on the sales receipts of the accused. The accused had been
in custody for several days pending the coroner's jury
determination. A grand jury would consider the matter on July 12.
On the editorial page, "Research Promotes the South" tells of an address in Charlotte by the head of the Alabama Power
Company, in which he said that industrial growth in the South would
largely depend on greater investment by Southern business in
scientific and technical research. He also headed the Southern
Research Institute which was performing under contract scientific
and technical research beneficial to the whole South. The advisers
to the Institute included many prominent businessmen of North and
South Carolina. One of its projects was to investigate wood waste
utilization. Another was developing new food products from Southern
crops, extending the use of the peanut and the like.
"Churchill Fans Flames" finds Winston Churchill's
statement on Sunday that a third world war was not likely
preventable to be inappropriate, that the American people were not
going to be scared into such a war by the British, any more than the
U.S. would be scared out of Berlin by the threat of war with the
Russians. Mr. Churchill's exhortation that Americans show more spunk
would be seen as urging America into a war with Russia.
The Russians did not want war. The U.S. had to face the
situation coolly with that thought uppermost in mind, being careful
not to undertake actions which would initiate war. The threat of
German starvation as a pawn to force the West from Berlin was idle
bluff as the Russians knew that the Germans would turn on them in such a
campaign. Their best hope was to panic the Americans and force a
misstep.
Such a tactic appeared to be working in high conservative
circles in Britain and Mr. Churchill appeared to forget that his
urging of a get-tough attitude toward Russia in 1946 had been
supposed to keep the West out of war, not cause one.
"Revolt Confronts Dixiecrats" finds opposition to
the President among Southerners weakening, with the Dixiecrats
beating a hasty retreat. The main effect of the party revolt would
be that a GOP administration would be elected and then enact the
civil rights program promulgated by the President and vehemently
opposed by the Dixiecrats. But the Republican plank on civil rights
was not as strong or explicit as the 1944 plank and so some
Dixeicrats might take solace in that fact.
As Governor of New York, however, Thomas Dewey had introduced a State
Fair Employment Practices Commission which had stimulated agitation
for a Federal FEPC. So Ralph McGill of the Atlanta Constitution
had written astutely that a civil rights program would likely be put forward
under a Dewey administration.
Even if the Dixiecrats eventually adhered to party fealty,
their attacks on the President had weakened his chances for success
in the election. They appeared therefore to have pulled the
bonehead play of the year insofar as forwarding their agenda of
states rights.
Drew Pearson writes an open letter to his daughter regarding
the Republican convention of the previous week and how it might
affect his grandson one day, as much as had the signing of the
Declaration of Independence nearby in 1776. The convention, he says,
had nominated two good men amid free and open competition, in
contrast to the Democrats and the dog-in-the-manger President.
Mrs. Pearson was disappointed that Senator Taft was not the
nominee, and he agrees that the Senator had spunk, courage, and
honesty. But Mr. Taft, along with most of the convention speakers,
had forgotten that the country had entered the atomic age, that the
Russians were trying to push the West out of Berlin, and that the
President had just signed into law the first peacetime draft in the
history of the country. Thus, the country faced the prospect of war
yet again, something the Republicans generally had overlooked for
the fact of the isolationists in the party.
Bertie McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune and
a Taft supporter, had walked out of the convention rather than vote for
Governor Dewey. Though the convention defeated the isolationists,
the tenor of the convention was not forward-looking. Most of the
speakers spent their time criticizing FDR and the New Deal. It
appeared that they believed the American people would agree to
repeal of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Wage-Hours
Act, the AAA, soil erosion legislation, the Holding Corporation Act,
the Social Security Act, rural electrification or the TVA. They
behaved as if Mr. Dewey had not supported these programs himself as
Governor of New York, that Governor Warren had not done likewise in California.
He ventures that Americans were after security, from war
abroad and from inflation at home. They wanted the freedom to send
their children to good schools, have a living wage, and freedom from
want in old age. But the GOP in Congress had made those goals
difficult to achieve either through legislation helping the wealthy
as with the tax break or frustrating passage of legislation such as
Federal aid to education, raising the minimum wage, and construction
of public housing.
He says that he was certain, however, that Governor Dewey and
Governor Warren would not neglect those vital programs. But their
greatest handicap would be the GOP Congress.
He adds the P.S. that on page 115 of the Life issue of
this week, a picture had appeared of Cinder, the kitten his daughter
once had at school, which had since adopted Mr. Pearson.
James Marlow looks at the Berlin crisis, explaining the
background leading to it and its importance to the future of all
Europe given the centrality of the German economy and its recovery to the welfare of
Europe. The Russian strategy of cutting off food supplies to
Berliners was aimed at forcing the Western powers out of the city
and enticing Germans to turn toward Russia for help and away from the
West.
France reportedly was willing to talk to Russia about
settlement of the crisis, but the British and Americans had firmly
indicated that they would not leave Berlin. If the Russians could
use the crisis to drive a wedge between France and the other two
Western powers, they would accomplish great damage.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss the Berlin crisis, find
that within three weeks the population would begin starving,
prompting then the Western powers to have to decide whether to leave
Berlin or find a way to force the Soviets to lift the blockade. The
Soviets were determined to push the Western powers out. No final
decision had been made by the three Western powers on a contingency
plan in the event the blockade continued.
The deficit to the Russian plan was that they were relying on
appeals to nationalism among the German people, when starving
peoples normally did not respond well to those responsible for the
starvation. The Western powers thus wanted to exploit this weakness
as much as possible.
Railway cars and trucks filled with food would be brought to
the borders of the Russian sector, a few hours out of Berlin. Every
effort would be made to get the supplies to the Berliners, but if
they could not be delivered, then at least the residents of the city
would know that it was exclusively the fault of the Russians.
If the decision were made to leave Berlin to save the
population from starvation, then Russia might be forced out of the
U.N. for breach of the treaties formed at Potsdam in July, 1945
regarding the four-power arrangement in Berlin. The Germans who had
fought the Communists might be flown out of Berlin to the Western
sectors in the event of evacuation of the West. But that plan would still appear as appeasement. The
alternative would be utilization of force. Yet the question remained
as to how force could be applied to re-open the supply routes,
mindful of the attendant risk of starting a war.
The answer to these questions would require sober thought on
the part of the Western powers.
Marquis Childs, in Philadelphia, believes that Thomas Dewey
would conduct his campaign without mentioning President Truman, that
if he did so at all, it would be with a tone of sorrow rather than
anger. His selection of Governor Warren as the vice-presidential
candidate had telegraphed his approach to the campaign.
To have selected as his running mate House Majority Leader Charles Halleck, who
claimed that he was promised the nomination, would have been
disastrous to Mr. Dewey's chances. Mr. Halleck had been responsible
for blocking much legislation in Congress vital to the people, such
as farm and housing legislation.
Senator John W. Bricker, the 1944 vice-presidential nominee,
would likewise have been disastrous for similar reasons. Mr. Bricker
had devoted most of his nominating speech of Senator Taft to the
fear of Communism, which included anyone slightly to the left of
Senator Bricker.
Governor Warren was a different type of politician, meeting
the rural and urban problems of California with energy and
progressive programs. His nomination was a reminder that the
Republican Party had in it progressives as Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon,
in contradistinction to the backward-looking Senators Harry Cain of
Washington, George Malone of Nevada, and Henry Dvorshak of Idaho.
Governor Warren was a shrewd politician as well, having declined the
1944 nomination for the second spot because of the war and the
presence of FDR virtually assuring defeat of the ticket.
A Quote of the Day from Dr. John W. Corbett, veteran
physician of Camden, S.C., who favored any Republican candidate other
than Governor Dewey, advocates a return to the code duello in
lieu of campaigns: "We ought to have duels now. You would not
hear of candidates for office calling each other liars. We did not
have it years ago. The duel would make gentlemen out of hoosiers."
—Columbia (S.C.) Record
The Franklin (N.C.) Press, in contrast, favors a
return to the concept of "We, the people", extended to
the world population.
