Thursday, June 3, 1948

The Charlotte News

Thursday, June 3, 1948

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.N. four-week truce proposal had been unconditionally accepted, irrespective of the previously articulated Arab reservations, by both the Arabs and Israelis, with the truce to begin within three to five days. Britain had already shut off arms to Trans-Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq. The arms embargo, part of the truce, applied to all seven Arab nations at war with Israel and to Israel. Britain also stopped the immigration from Cyprus to Israel by the 24,000 Jews detained there after being turned away from immigration to Palestine. About 500 had gone to Israel since the end of the British mandate on May 15.

Sporadic fighting meanwhile continued, with Israelis occupying additional approaches to Jenin, and Egyptians and Jews fighting 25 miles south of Tel Aviv, near Isdud. Arab planes again bombed the area of Tel Aviv.

Hungary became the tenth nation to recognize Israel.

We predict that this truce will be very productive and peace will reign throughout the Middle East, and everyone, Arab, Jew, Muslim and Christian, will be hugs and kisses for centuries to come. Let's sing.

The House passed the 3.7 billion dollar Navy appropriation bill after passing the previous day a 6.5 billion dollar Army and Air Force appropriation bill, both representing the largest U.S. military budgets in peacetime history. Both bills now went to the Senate.

Debate would commence in the House the following day on the six-billion dollar foreign aid bill. A 25 percent cut in appropriations for ERP was being urged by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, though the measure was reported to the floor with only a 7.5 percent reduction of 552 million dollars. It amounted, however, to a quarter because it was intended for 15 months when the amount requested by the Administration was for one year. The amount appropriated equated to expenditure of 311 million dollars monthly, whereas the amount sought was 417 million. The cut included 245 million from the total ERP appropriation.

A racy transcript of an NBC-Voice of America broadcast originally in Spanish to Latin America is set forth, regarding girls, clothing, lack thereof, and skins, not animal skins, as made part of the record of hearings before the War Investigating Committee. An NBC executive said that no advance check had been made of the script and reliance was placed on the script writer, a Venezuelan, to maintain good taste in the programming. Committee counsel William Rogers, future Attorney General under President Eisenhower and Secretary of State under President Nixon, interrupted the testimony of the NBC executive, who took full responsibility, to say that the State Department also had responsibility equal to that of NBC.

A correspondent in Formosa, Argentina, reported that the Paraguayan Government had fallen and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court had been installed as el presidente.

During Senate hearings on the renewal of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, set to expire June 12, Senator Eugene Millikin of Colorado stated that Secretary of State Marshall had taken the attitude toward Congress, in urging that the Act needed to be extended without amendment for three years or scrapped entirely, which he might adopt regarding a soldier who failed to put proper polish on his boots.

In Oregon, the Columbia River began overflowing strained dikes 40 miles from the Pacific, near Clatskanie, Ore., and Skamokawa, Wash., as winds blew the water over the tops of the dikes. The overflow as yet had only put an inch of water on the other side when winds picked it up. But fears were present that the dikes would break and flooding would ensue.

In Pittsburgh, three residents filed damage suits totaling $125,000 against Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey Circus after one woman was permanently crippled by a run-away trailer housing Gargantua the gorilla. Her husband and father had also suffered less serious injuries and joined in the suit.

Senator William B. Umstead, loser to former Governor J. Melville Broughton in the North Carolina Democratic primary the previous Saturday, spent a total of $11,101 in the campaign. Among the big contributors was B. Everett Jordan of Saxapahaw, to be appointed by Governor Luther Hodges in 1958 to fill the seat of deceased Senator Kerr Scott, who had just come in a close second in the gubernatorial primary and would eventually win the June 25 runoff against State Treasurer Charles Johnson. Mr. Jordan had contributed $750 to future Governor Umstead's Senate campaign.

It all, more probably than not, relates back to the Hope Diamond, Evalyn Walsh McLean, and the founding of the University, with Carolina blue eventually becoming the school color, the day before Marie Antoinette lost her head, in 1793.

Dick Young of The News tells of the City Council tentatively approving a property tax rate of $2 per $100, a record increase of 30 cents or 15 percent. It would result in an increased City budget of a million dollars, to 5.25 million.

News sportswriter Furman Bisher tells of the arrest in Winston-Salem of Ed Weingarten, majority stockholder in the Florence Tri-State League baseball team and owner of the Leaksville Blue Ridge team of Roanoke, Va., for allegedly gambling on games. Reidsville manager-pitcher, Barney DeForge, was also arrested after he confessed to throwing the game with Winston Salem on May 14, enabling a group of gamblers to make a large sum of money. Both men were banned the previous Tuesday for life from Minor League baseball by the Minor League president George Trautman. Both were charged with felony bribery. Mr. Weingarten proclaimed his innocence.

On the editorial page, "Order in the Solicitations" thinks it good that the Charlotte solicitations committee had been formed to make recommendations to limit charitable solicitations in the community, as too many were taking place, causing all of the charities to suffer. The concept had proved successful in Oklahoma City and in Winston-Salem, both of which the volunteer Charlotte committee was preparing to study.

"Wasting Hope on Eisenhower" finds that, despite the speculation on the page this date by Marquis Childs, General Eisenhower, having thoroughly nixed in mid-January any determination to be nominated by the Republicans, could not help but suffer grave loss of prestige were he to accept a draft by the Democrats at the convention in Philadelphia a month hence. Moreover, it was by no means clear that he could win as a Democrat after any such loss of respect for his non-partisan stand earlier. The GOP would be outraged by the rebuff. He was also a politically unknown quantity and might be no more able to heal the rifts in the Democratic Party than the President, especially with the left, for the Administration's reversal on partition of Palestine. The General's support of states' rights would not sit well with Northern Democrats.

It concludes that Democrats would be better served by giving up on any effort to nominate General Eisenhower.

"Communist Trap for Americans" supports the statement of former OPA head Leon Henderson, currently head of the Americans for Democratic Action, that the Mundt-Nixon bill was favored by many Communists because it would supply them with desired political martyrdom. ADA had been formed to separate liberals from Communists, who wanted to destroy liberals in the country. The bill provided Communists with a common cause with liberals, something not desired by the latter. For Communists could seize control of liberal groups working for social reform, in turn strengthening rightist reaction by increasing the fear of revolution.

Democracy would be the victim in a struggle between left and right in the country. That would suit both the reactionaries and the Communists. Conservatives were laying a trap for themselves and for advocates of democratic reform in supporting the oppressive bill.

A piece from the Winston-Salem Sentinel, titled "Winston-Salem Wants It", finds The News reporting that the Charlotte Jaycees were seeking to have the proposed dental school of the University located in Charlotte. The piece thinks that unless it were made part of the UNC medical school, Winston-Salem, with a major medical school in Bowman Gray, would be the logical site for the school of dentistry.

Drew Pearson tells of the 300 million dollar education bill being hung up in the House Labor and Education Committee, chaired by Congressman Fred Hartley of New Jersey, retiring. The bill, passed by the Senate, was opposed by both House Speaker Joe Martin and House Majority Leader Charles Halleck, both of whom had presidential aspirations. It was passed to Mr. Hartley because he had no political capital to risk in opposing education. But when Speaker Martin had facilitated settlement the previous month of the coal strike, Mr. Hartley was forestalled in his attempt to get a bill passed strengthening Taft-Hartley, designed to put the brakes on future strikes by John L. Lewis. In retaliation, Mr. Hartley thought he would go ahead and report the bill out to the Education Committee. But Speaker Martin told him to take six weeks off, which he then did. Now, he appeared eager to cooperate in pigeon-holing the bill, while education in the country had sunk to the same level as in Russia. Proportionately, more Japanese were literate than Americans.

Mr. Pearson recommends Star-Spangled Radio by Edward M. Kirby and Jack W. Harris, giving a first-hand account of radio during the war.

Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin was writing a handbook on how to buy a house. He wanted to sell the book for its publication costs, 70 cents.

Rule 1: Always make sure there are no Communists in the basement.

Rule 2: Make sure there are no Communists on the ground floor...

Rule 3: Stock plenty of Heinz 57 in the refrigerator for future reference.

The Senate Small Business Committee was calling ERP administrator Paul Hoffman to explain why all of the ERP contracts were going to big business, as had been the case with war contracts.

The House Ways & Means Committee, having reduced gift and inheritance taxes, now was revising Social Security payroll taxes to aid corporations. It provided that anyone not an employee, i.e., a person so considered at common law, was not subject to Social Security withholding and taxation. It excluded salesmen and others who worked for commissions. The Republicans had pledged changes to Social Security in 1944, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had endorsed broadening the act to include excluded groups of employees, farm labor and domestic workers. The Committee, however, was not heeding this advice.

It was significant that a pro-Arab diplomat, Stanton Griffis, was being switched from Ambassador to Poland to become Ambassador to Egypt. He was a friend of Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, desirous of a pro-Arab ambassador in the country heading the attack on Israel. Prior to Pearl Harbor, Ambassador Griffis had remarked that Hitler was one of the great men of the world.

Russell Brines, in Tokyo, continues the series of portraits of the presidential candidates by examining General MacArthur. The General had made the decision on his own to make himself available for the race, the same way he usually conducted his decision-making process.

Since the announcement, however, he had become visibly depressed at press criticism in its wake. He relied on the advice of numerous experts and other officials, but none exercised a dominant influence over him. He enjoyed the loyalty and respect of the men working under him. He particularly felt loyalty to the veterans of Bataan and Corregidor.

He maintained a heavy personal schedule seven days a week and expected key officers to match his hours. He was in excellent health and, at 68, was pushing himself as if following a restless destiny.

Marquis Childs tells of General Eisenhower sitting in silence at a conference at which the prospects of his being drafted by the Democrats was discussed. An experienced political pundit said that he would not be drafted as the President would be nominated on the first ballot at the convention. Alabama, first on the roll call of states at the convention, was planning to place the General's name in nomination. But party regularity would likely take hold after the first three states were called.

General Eisenhower viewed the prospect with relief.

But Mr. Childs also posits a scenario in which the President would not win on the first ballot, especially if California should bolt in sizable numbers to General Eisenhower. So might Colorado, in which case, the trend might spread then to other states.

If the Republicans, however, nominated Senator Vandenberg, then the General might endorse him during the interim between the Republican and Democratic conventions, ending any chance of a draft.

Many Democrats had sought out the General as he was taking over the presidency of Columbia University, saying that it was his duty to run for President. Some Democrats believed his name on the ticket was the only way to win re-election to Congress.

If he were drafted, it would have a direct influence on the President's civil rights program. General Eisenhower, a strong believer in states' rights, had stated that the police power of the Federal Government could not be used to enforce fair labor standards under FEPC or to compel states to invalidate their voting laws entailing qualification tests.

Many veterans had been writing to the General urging him to run, and those letters made a deep impression on him.

Samuel Grafton discusses the Mundt-Nixon bill in terms of its repression and driving underground of the very group it was targeting, Communists. Presently, Communists were operating out in the open and the country knew from whence Communist propaganda was emanating. But one of the justifications for registration under the proposed bill, still pending before the Senate, was that it would enable transparency and demonstrate the origin of Communist propaganda. In actuality, it would have the opposite effect.

Moreover, the Mundt-Nixon bill discriminated between who could and could not have free thought and speech, allowing some to go forth without the chill of registration, while others, as determined by the Attorney General, would have to conform to the law and register as members of a subversive organization. Yet, such disparate treatment could not coexist, as the repressive law would trump the possibility of an open forum and lead to chilling of all, for fear of offending the bill's strictures and causing the Attorney General to identify a group as "subversive", seeking the overthrow of the Government at the direction of a foreign Government, thus required to register with criminal penalties for failure to do so.

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