Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.S., Britain,
and France had taken a "preliminary step" in renewing
their demand for an end to the Berlin blockade. The ambassadors to
Moscow from the three countries had called separately on Deputy
Foreign Commissar Valerian Zorin—representative of Moscow at
the U.N. during the Cuban Missile Crisis 14 years later, part of the
possible reason for which, as perceived at the time by President
Kennedy and his advisers, including Dean Acheson, the next Secretary
of State within a few months, was to effect a quid pro quo of
missiles in Cuba for evacuation or limiting of Western forces in
West Berlin. The ambassadors had already been informed that Foreign
Commissar Molotov was on vacation. There was no indication as to
what the "preliminary step" was.
A Berlin non-Communist newspaper, The Social Demokrat,
opined that the absence of Mr. Molotov was suspect and that it was
likely simply a ploy to delay resolution of the crisis.
President Truman and Governor Thomas Dewey met to dedicate
the opening of the New York International Airport, commonly known as
Idlewild until shortly after the death of President Kennedy when it
was officially named in his honor. The President, as did Governor
Dewey, declared the airport to be a symbol of American faith in
lasting peace. About 100,000 spectators showed up for the
ceremonies. A contingent of military aircraft, including the new
B-36 bomber, flew above the crowd.
Before HUAC, admitted former Soviet spy Elizabeth Bentley
accused Lauchlin Currie, former aide to FDR, and Harry Dexter White,
former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, among others, of having
provided secret wartime information to the Soviets, U.S. allies,
during the war. She said that Mr. Currie was not a Communist but
provided information, including the incipient breaking of the
Russian codes to their diplomatic representatives, causing the codes
to be changed. She identified Nathan
Silvermaster as a Communist spy ring leader and Russian secret
police agent who had worked for the Farm Security Administration of
the U.S. Government at the time. Information, she contended, was
provided to Mr. Silvermaster by Mr. White and others and then given by Mr. Silvermaster to Ms. Bentley who claimed to pass it to
the Soviet Government. Committee members said that they would seek a special
grand jury to look into the charges.
The Senate Investigating Committee chaired by Homer Ferguson of Michigan, which had heard Ms. Bentley the previous
day, questioned William Remington of the Commerce Department, whom
Ms. Bentley also identified as a leading Communist in the
Government, allegedly providing secret information on American plane
production to the Soviets during the war. Mr. Remington denied the
charges. When the FBI began investigating his association with Ms
Bentley, he testified, he was being offered a job with the Atomic
Energy Commission.
Bob Sain of The News reports that Mary Price of
Greensboro, chairman of the North Carolina Progressive Party, had
threatened to sue Ms. Bentley for having said before the Senate
Investigating Committee the previous day that she believed Ms. Price was a
Communist, claiming that Ms. Price had helped Ms. Bentley obtain
information for Russia from the files of columnist Walter Lippmann, for whom Ms. Price was secretary in 1943.
Before HUAC, Ms. Bentley testified that she also received a referral from Ms. Price anent OSS employee Duncan Lee, who Ms. Price believed would be helpful in acquiring secret information, that he had given information to her previously. Ms. Bentley testified that Mr. Lee, legal adviser to OSS director General "Wild Bill" Donovan, provided valuable information, including whether the Government had become aware of Communists working within the OSS. Mr. Lee denied being a Communist or ever providing Government information to either Ms. Price or Ms. Bentley, that his acquaintance with both was strictly social, that he and his wife broke off the relationship with Ms. Bentley because she was a pest. He described her story regarding his provision of information as the product of a "vivid imagination". He did not think that Ms. Price was a Communist.
Ms. Bentley also contended that she met Ms. Price at her apartment in New York and therein collected information and Communist Party dues from Victor Perlo, a leader, she claimed, of a second spy ring within the Government, similar to the "Silvermaster group". On two other occasions, Ms. Bentley contended, she collected the information from Mr. Perlo at the apartment of attorney John Abt, current counsel of the Progressive Party.
Louisiana Congressman Edward Hebert of the Committee was on the hush-hush and qui vive.
When phoned by The News for a response to the allegations made by Ms. Bentley to the Senate Investigating Committee, Ms. Price, originally from Madison, N.C., quoted from
"Freedom Train" by Langston Hughes, (which Mr. Sain ascribes to Paul Robeson for his recording of the poem), saying, "I'm gonna
check up, I'm gonna check up." The poem refers to the Freedom Train touring the country during the previous year with the nation's founding documents aboard. Ms. Price, says Mr. Sain, did not want to discuss
whether she had ever met Ms. Bentley.
The Catawba County Board of Elections had received affidavits
from persons saying that their names were forged by the Progressive
Party on its petition for inclusion on the North Carolina ballot.
Ms. Price said that there was basis for requesting the removal of
the chairman of the Board of Elections in Catawba County.
In Nuremberg, Alfred Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, head of
the Krupp Works, was convicted of two war crimes and sentenced this
date to twelve years in prison for exploiting slave labor and
plundering Nazi-occupied lands during the war. The three-man
military tribunal convicted ten other Krupp executives on the slave
labor charge and five of them on the plundering charge. One of
the twelve defendants was acquitted. The judgment said that the
convicted defendants exceeded even the orders of Hitler.
In Budapest, the Parliament was expected to name a
pro-Communist Socialist, Arpad Szakasits, as the new president of
Hungary on Monday following the resignation of Zoltan Tildy, after
his son-in-law, the minister to Egypt, was arrested on charges of
spying and treason. Mr. Tildy was the first President of the
Hungarian republic founded in 1946.
If Mr. Szakasits failed to win, he could start his own acne
medication company and be assured of success. If he failed at that,
he could change his name to Zasu Pitts.
House Speaker Joe Martin claimed that the President's
inflation control program, if enacted in its entirety, would double
income taxes, referring to the call for renewal of the wartime
excess profits tax. The Republicans appeared receptive to the
President's call for bank credit and installment buying limits, but
not wage or price controls, rationing or the Taft-Ellender-Wagner
housing bill. GOP leaders met with Governor Dewey's campaign
manager, Herbert Brownell, future Eisenhower Administration Attorney
General, to discuss strategy on the special session.
In Birmingham, Ala., a gas explosion in a large coal mine the
previous day had so far resulted in eight deaths, with another of
the injured in critical condition.
In Rockingham, N.C., a 13-year old white girl who gave birth
to a brown-skinned baby, had told her step-parents that the father
was a black farmhand of Hamlet. He was then arrested on charges of
rape and carnal knowledge of a white girl, an offense punishable by
death.
A series of photographs show two white boys in Daytona Beach,
Fla., saving an elderly black man from drowning after he had fallen
from his crabbing boat in a channel.
In Charlotte, a real estate agent who went out to look at
some property for an hour had been missing since the previous
afternoon, until he phoned home to his son early in the morning to
inform that he had run out of gas on a remote side road and could
not find a pay phone to call for help, so spent the night in the
backseat of his car. City and County Police had been searching for
him since the previous night.
Emery Wister of The News reports that July was about
to end in a dead heat with 1942 as the hottest on record in
Charlotte since 1931. The monthly average temperature had been 81.1
degrees, the same as in 1942. It was the hottest month since June,
1943, at an average of 81.4. In 1931, the average had been 82.5
degrees, with 26 days of at least 90 degree temperatures. This month
had recorded 17 days at 90 or above. The norm for July was 78.4. The
month was also on track to be the second driest July in city
history, only wetter than the .62 inches which had fallen in 1925.
Heavy rains and cooler temperatures were predicted for August. This
date, the high was 84 and the low, 68.
But what was the humidity?
On the editorial page, "Truman Needs Some Control" tells of the vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Marriner
Eccles, former chairman until recent months, having testified before
the Senate Banking Committee against the President's inflation
control program, perhaps motivated in part by his having been
demoted by the President after Mr. Eccles promoted a deflationary
device disfavored by the President. He said that it was too late to
control inflation by the means urged by the President, indeed that
the program might cause worse inflation.
The President, in his mid-year economic report just sent to
Congress, admitted that the program might reduce profits and thus
depress production. He had pointed out that government spending for
defense and foreign aid plus another round of wage boosts had been
among the causes of inflation. But his program did not address these
issues, lending credence to the charges of his opponents that the
program would not work and was more of a campaign maneuver than a
panacea.
The overall picture of the economy as one of production
racing to keep pace with unprecedented peacetime demand, was one of
more hope than alarm. The President's program, it concludes, was not
only wrong but Mr. Eccles was selling the country short by
predicting, as he had, certain bust.
"Our New Mission to Moscow" tells of ambassador
to Moscow Walter Bedell Smith now seeking a conference with V. M.
Molotov to discuss a settlement of the Berlin crisis and possibly a
general settlement of the European situation, whereas only three
months earlier Mr. Molotov had sought diplomatic talks and was
receiving the cold shoulder from the West. In May, Mr. Smith had
addressed a note to Mr. Molotov which was interpreted by the Kremlin
to be an invitation to talks. Then, London and Paris expressed
concern as to why they had not been alerted of the supposed
invitation, at which point Washington said that the note was not so
intended and that the Soviet reaction was merely a propaganda trick.
Secretary of State Marshall had said that the U.S. could not discuss
the European situation bilaterally with Russia, that any such
discussion had to occur before the U.N.
The piece suggests that if the diplomatic route was worthy
now, it had been worthy in May, but that the Western allies were in
a weaker bargaining position presently because of Berlin, causing a
breakdown in the plan to establish a separate government for Western
Germany. The Western allies' problems in Germany had caused concern
elsewhere in Europe among friendly governments. In May, the setback
had just occurred to the Communists in the Italian elections of
April 18.
It hopes that, to avoid war, Ambassador Smith and the other
diplomats would not discard the opportunity this time to conduct
settlement discussions.
"To the Defense of Mt. Mitchell" tells of a man
who was gathering stones to build 42 more feet onto the height of
Tennessee's Clingman's Dome, that it might tower above North
Carolina's Mt. Mitchell by one foot, thus making it the highest
point in the Appalachians and the East. It reminded of the plan of
the Aloadae to pile Mt. Ossa on Mt. Pelion on Mt. Olympus, to reach
the promised land.
It counsels retaliation by adding another couple of feet to
Mt. Mitchell.
Drew Pearson tells of Cissy Patterson, his former
mother-in-law who had died at age 64 recently, publisher of the
Washington Times-Herald. He imparts that she used to write of
her former son-in-law in such scathing terms that even Time
Magazine had to interpret the billingsgate in ellipses. Her
brother Joe published the New York Daily News. Both had been
heirs to their grandfather's Chicago Tribune, published in
1948 by first cousin Bertie McCormick.
Her family had brought a new vigor to Washington, along with
neighbors Evalyn Walsh McLean and Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the
latter of whom was one of Ms. Patterson's close friends. But just as
her mansion on Dupont Circle, built by her mother, her journalism
stood as a monument to the past, a form of personal journalism on
which she maintained a close watch daily.
Frequently, the first page had headlines about her "headache
boy", Mr. Pearson, helping Senators draft speeches attacking
him on the Senate floor to supply those headlines. Senator Owen
Brewster of Maine had made 75,000 copies of a speech on Mr. Pearson,
largely culled from Ms. Patterson's previous diatribes against him,
which the Senator was sending to constituents at taxpayer expense.
Mr. Pearson refrained from suing her for defamation because, he
says, they had been through a lot together and he concluded that the
public would determine what a man was, not what someone said he was.
She failed to understand that great wealth and power in pursuit of
journalism defeated its own ends.
More publishers had come to realize their obligation to
provide fair and dispassionate news. Editorial opinion belonged on
the editorial page. The Washington Post was an example of
this new realization of public duty. The Akron Beacon-Journal,
published by John Knight, was another. Philadelphia's two newspapers
had shown more breadth of news coverage since the demise of the
Record.
The Chicago Tribune, another example of personal
journalism, would continue to make money but it would not influence
its readers. It had not won an election for which it campaigned in
years.
He says that, nevertheless, he would miss the personal
journalism of Ms. Patterson, even though he did not agree with it.
He would even miss the diatribes against himself.
She had been tired at the end of her life, having alienated
some of her old friends and part of her family. He concludes that
she would be troubled by headaches no more.
Marquis Childs tells of the Congress being in an angry mood
for being called away from their summer vacations to wrangle over
legislation which they had thought was laid to rest for the session.
For some, it gave opponents a chance to campaign at home while the
incumbent was stuck in Washington.
He cites Congressman Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, running for
the Senate against incumbent Tom Stewart and a circuit judge, as one
who would suffer a handicap as a result. He was a liberal who had
fought consistently for the New Deal. He faced an advertising
campaign from Boss Ed Crump of Memphis, trying hard to defeat him,
smearing him as a Red, seeking to show that he had voted on some
measures consistently with Congressman Vito Marcantonio of New York,
a supporter of Henry Wallace. Mr. Kefauver was doing well prior to
the special session.
In the fall race, the victor in the primary would likely face
former Congressman Carroll Reece, who had recently resigned as
chairman of the RNC. Boss Crump would likely support him.
Thus, he concludes, were the cards stacked against liberalism
in 1948.
Francis Lemay looks at what the President's inflation program
meant to the average citizen. The President claimed that it would
cap food prices and prevent the Communists from being able to
exploit the collapse of American prosperity. The GOP countered that
the President sought to invoke "police state methods"
which would discourage production and thus hamper the stability of
the economy.
Paul Porter, who was the last director of OPA, told the House
Banking Committee that retail prices on food had jumped 47 percent
in the previous two years since the end of OPA.
The President wanted limits on installment credit, requiring
a large down payment to prevent bidding up prices of consumer goods
normally so purchased, such as cars. Some of the GOP claimed that
the plan would give the person with cash an advantage in the
marketplace. Some Republicans, however, did not disagree with the
President on this point.
On rents, the President urged more controls while the GOP
claimed that taking controls off rents to a degree had encouraged
building.
On the housing shortage, the President urged passage of the
Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill which would provide public housing, slum
clearance, and rent subsidies. The GOP contended that private
enterprise could solve the shortage.
The President wanted authority to establish wage ceilings
only after a maximum price had been set on a given product and the
manufacturer expected to use a wage increase as a basis for raising
the price.
The average person would not have anything to do with the
President's other proposals, such as regulation of bank credit,
speculation on the commodity exchanges, allocation and inventory
control of scarce commodities, and restoration of the wartime excess
profits tax. But the President contended that these things caused
inflation, driving the rise in costs of food and clothing.
The Editor's Roundtable, compiled by James Galloway of
Asheville, surveys editorial opinion regarding the Government's case
against the twelve American Communist Party leaders just indicted.
The majority opined that the timing of the indictments on the eve of
the Progressive Party convention and while the Berlin crisis was
ongoing was not mere coincidence. Only a small minority believed
that the Government was treading on thin legal ice in making a
gesture against Russia and Communism.
The Manchester Morning Union finds that since the
Government had been preparing its case for a year, there was no
guesswork involved, that ample evidence existed of a conspiracy to
overthrow the Government by force.
The Greensboro Daily News explains that the two counts
against the defendants charged both conspiracy to overthrow by force
and violence and belonging to an organization which so advocated. It
believes that if they were convicted only for membership, the
Supreme Court would be reluctant to uphold the convictions based
solely on beliefs and association.
The Canton (Ohio) Depository says that the Government
contended it would use the defendant's own words to show conspiracy
to overthrow the Government, plus would adduce evidence to show
overt acts toward accomplishing the object of the conspiracy. It says that
according to "old Commie" Benjamin Gitlow, the party had
received grants from Moscow when it was still known as the Workers'
Party.
The Philadelphia Bulletin finds that no acts of
sabotage were being alleged against the twelve defendants, not
required for conviction under the 1940 Smith Act. The party doctrine
included advocacy of violence to achieve its ends.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch wants treasonable acts of the twelve defendants shown before it accepts that the
indictments were correct. It suggests that the grand jury's action
might encroach on and embarrass American foreign policy as Moscow
would exploit the prosecution as representative of American policy.
The Denver Post finds the indictments to suggest how
serious the Berlin crisis had become in the view of the Government.
Russia, convinced by its American Communists of the preponderant
view in America being simpatico with the Wallace party position, was
not understanding of the fact that it was gambling on atomic war by
bringing about the Berlin blockade.
A letter from David Lilienthal, chairman of the Atomic Energy
Commission, thanks the newspaper for its editorial of July 6
regarding his commencement address at the University of Virginia. He
was impressed, as the editorial suggested things beyond the speech
itself. He was thankful that someone had taken the time to read his
speech and finds that other positive response as well had caused him
to consider that he had been wrong in assuming that regard for
public service, which he had encouraged to the graduates, was on the
wane. It appeared that the public did care about having persons of
integrity and ability serve them.
Get a load of HUAC this date and wait 20 years, and you
may be singing a different tune.