Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Berlin, the
Russians fired practice rounds from anti-aircraft guns into the
crowded air corridor being served by the British and American
airlift, but it did not slow the airlift or inflict any damage, the
Russians having warned the British and Americans of the intended
practice 90 minutes before it began. The firing lasted three and a
half hours.
An American officer commented that the Russians were firing
up to 10,000 feet, the highest the airlift transports flew, and that
the notice was insufficient.
Nevertheless, the airlift delivered 3,600 tons of food and
coal during the previous 24 hours, and had delivered over 194,000
tons since the beginning of the blockade on June 26.
The U.S. banned all Soviet-sponsored newspapers in the
American zone of Germany, responsive to a similar ban by the Soviets
of Western newspapers, nullifying a 1947 four-power agreement to
permit free flow of news and information between the zones.
Tass described Secretary of State Marshall's address of the
previous day to the U.N. General Assembly as a political maneuver
connected with the presidential campaign, to portray American
foreign policy in rosy colors for the American voter.
In Paris, the U.N. General Assembly gave Russia seven quick
defeats in its effort to eliminate certain matters from the agenda.
Only the Slav-bloc nations voted with Russia to block the issues. In
all, the agenda carried 69 items. The issues to which Russia
objected dealt with Korean independence, proposals to limit the
Security Council veto, establishment of the Little Assembly on a
permanent basis, the Balkan Commission report which had found
Communist rebels in Greece being aided by the Communist border
countries, the Argentine proposal to admit nations to the U.N. on a
seven-member vote of the Security Council regardless of veto, and
proposals to promote international political cooperation.
The State Department delivered a note to the Communist
Government of Bulgaria accusing it of maintaining "involuntary
servitude, banishment, concentration camps, imprisonment, torture
and execution."
In Amman, Trans-Jordan, the Arab Legion announced that Jews
had shot down an Arab airlines transport plane killing two British
correspondents and an Arab.
In Shanghai, a prominent Chinese businessman was executed
with one shot to the back of the head for black market activities,
the first civilian so executed in China's campaign to halt
inflation.
The Justice Department filed a court action to force Alcoa to
reduce its power and size, an effort to carry out a judgment against
it for antitrust violations found in 1945. The president of the
company called it "election year politics".
A Federal grand jury was set to probe the DuPont industrial
empire for possible anti-trust violations.
Not reported on the front page, the President began this date his return swing across the country by train, speaking in San Diego, Phoenix, and points in between.
Tom Schlesinger of The News reports again on 44-year
old Governor Strom Thurmond, this time focusing on his personal life
and recent marriage to a 23-year old, whom he had once patted on the
head when she was 9 after he spoke as a circuit judge to her class
in school. She had made up her mind then and there to marry him one
day. He had also been a judge of the Miss South Carolina Beauty
Pageant in which she was selected the winner. Later, she became his
secretary and he used to dictate to her, until one day he asked via
letter to marry her. They took their honeymoon in Cuba. She had
taken to her job as first lady of South Carolina "like a cool
mint julep to a summery day".
She gon' be First Lady of the whole country come Januar'. You
watch. Get it in the House and the rest'll be there.
The hurricane which had hit Cuba and Florida and then skirted
Bermuda was headed north along the Eastern Seaboard, 320 miles
northwest of Bermuda, still packing 75 mph winds over a 50-mile
radius, moving at 35 mph, a substantial increase from its 8 mph
speed through Florida.
In Nashua, N.H., Textron president Royal Little promised in
an emotion-choked statement to try to keep open the two textile
mills, employing 3,500 persons, which had previously been set for
closure. He said that one sheeting mill employing a thousand would
remain open if Textron could turn a ten percent profit. But 2,000
layoffs by the end of the year would still likely have to take
place. Senator Charles Tobey of the state applauded the remedial
action.
In Shelby, N.C., the woman who had originally admitted
shooting to death her husband's 15-year old lover, an unwed mother,
and then recanted the story saying that her husband made her give
the statement under threat of harm, again made the claim anew. She
asserted that when she appeared in the bedroom of the house where
her husband was in bed with the girl, the girl jumped from the bed
and grabbed a pistol, which the woman then took from her and shot
her with it. She and her husband remained charged with murder, along
with the owner of the house.
In Charlotte, a section of ceiling at the American Trust Co.
fell and injured eleven persons, including two seriously, with
fractured spines from the falling plaster. No cause was given for
the collapse.
In Jerseyville, Ill., a man selling practically new
automobiles at list price from an alfalfa field two miles south of
the town had a lot of people wondering how he did it. His 1948
Chevrolets were selling for $1,740, promising delivery after payment
of cash, 60 to 90 days hence. He had been doing business on that
basis since the previous April. Normal retail was $2,550. Other
dealers were demanding that the State revoke his dealer's license,
contending that he was violating some regulations.
Sure. He was violating the stick-it-to-'em-whenever-you-can
law of auto economics.
The sports writers were predicting the outcome of the weekend
football games on the sports page. You won't wish to miss it.
On the editorial page, "United States World Policy" tells of Secretary of State Marshall having outlined before the U.N.
General Assembly meeting in Paris the U.S. foreign policy the
previous day, with an elementary requirement, for cooperation
between nations, that relations be based on mutual confidence,
respect, and tolerance. He pledged that the U.S. would do everything
it could to reach peaceful settlements to political controversies.
Of Berlin, he said that it would be a mistake to equate U.S.
patience with weakness. He favored early settlements on Germany and
Japan so that they might, in due course, prove themselves worthy of
membership in the U.N. He favored restoration of the political and
economic freedom of Austria within its 1937 frontiers and immediate
admission of it to the U.N. He also favored immediate admission for
Trans-Jordan and Israel, and that the posthumous recommendations of
Count Folke Bernadotte be adopted for Palestine, recognition of
Israel and leaving the Arab sectors to be controlled by Arabs. For
Korea, he proposed unification and independence with membership in
the U.N. For Greece, he recommended that it be made secure from
aggressive and unlawful interference. For East India, he proposed a
negotiated settlement without further bloodshed in Indonesia.
And he favored international atomic control and progressive
reduction of armaments under an adequate and dependable check
against violations.
He did not discuss the recent invasion by India of the
princely state of Hyderabad, resolved by Hyderabad's surrender. And
he did not discuss China, where he had been the President's envoy in
1946.
Reaction from the Soviet bloc, against which he made
complaint as resisting positive accomplishments in world relations,
was, from the Polish Foreign Minister, to attack the Marshall Plan
and Western efforts to unite their occupation zones in Germany.
Secretary Marshall's primary point was that the U.S. would
not compromise or barter rights and freedoms of other peoples. The
piece thinks that a succinct statement of that for which the country
stood and undercutting of Henry Wallace's policy of appeasement with
Russia.
"Myrtle Beach Deserves Air Service" favors the
campaign to establish a regular air shuttle between Charlotte and
the South Carolina resort, plus establishing trunk lines with the
seaboard to the north and south of it. One of the main reasons for
success of Miami Beach was its ease of access by air from New York.
The Civil Aeronautics Board had agreed to hear the request of
Myrtle Beach, and Piedmont Aviation of Winston-Salem had expressed an
interest in supplying the service. Eastern and National Air Lines
also would likely join the service.
A piece from the Shelby Star, titled "Sharp
Words for New England", discusses the decision of Textron to
close its two Nashua, N.H., textile mills based on the findings that
Southern labor was more productive than Northern labor by 25 to 100
percent, at 10 percent lower take-home pay. The piece thinks it
rational that the textile manufacturers were seeking a good day's
work for a day's pay. The Textron finding and conclusion served as a
warning to New England manufacturers to increase productivity if
they wished to hold on to their industries.
It expresses pride in Southern productivity.
Drew Pearson tells of the Blue & Gray Association of
Montgomery, Ala., which sponsored the annual college football
all-star game between the North and South, having sponsored a
meeting between Southern and Northern civic leaders in Montgomery to
address the issues of health, education, segregation and
opportunities for black citizens. The Southerners asked questions
and the Northern participants, chosen by local civic organizations,
tried to answer them. The hottest debate, however, was between two
Northerners, the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Earl Shreve of
Schenectady, N.Y., and Kiwanian Ben Dean of Grand Rapids, Mich., the
former opposed to Federal aid to education and the latter espousing the
belief that if the Government could fund highways, it ought fund
education.
Mr. Pearson provides excerpts of reports written on the
meeting after it had concluded: from the Philadelphia Rotary Club,
finding it sincere and mutually respectful between blacks and whites
attending, finding also no discrimination between white and black
teachers in Alabama; from the director of Lions International,
Richard Bell, finding black education in the South an eye-opener to
the Northerners, that segregation was expected by both races, though
blacks and whites mingled while the attendees were on their feet;
from the past president of Kiwanis International, that the North
needed to tidy up its own backyard before casting aspersions on the
South, a stimulus of further discord.
The Association was collecting $1 from each of its members to
establish a memorial to the end of North-South misunderstanding.
General Lucius Clay had two books in his office in Frankfurt.
One was Missouri Compromise by Tris Coffin, re the Truman
Administration, and the other was Lost Illusion by Freda
Utley, a story of life behind the Iron Curtain. The General had
considerable difficulty getting the Administration to set policy for
Germany and in getting Marshal Sokolovsky, Russian military
occupation governor in the Soviet zone, to keep his word. Marshal
Sokolovsky was under constant watch by the Russian secret police. In
all negotiations, a Russian political commissar, assigned from
Moscow, was present making the real decisions. Throughout his
tenure, at least part of Marshal Sokolovsky's family continued to
reside in Russia, as a hedge against him developing ideas of
switching sides in the cold war.
Within 500 miles of Berlin, there were 500,000 Red Army
combat troops of the first rank, including scores of tank and heavy
artillery divisions. A thousand new Soviet jets were within the same
radius of Berlin, plus another thousand inferior two-engine medium
bombers. Within Russia, there were two million Red Army troops ready
for action. And on the Czech-German border, there were 25,000 German
slave laborers mining uranium ore for the Russian atomic
experiments. Recently, all work on the atomic bomb was turned over
to the head of the secret police. The ore was being flown from the
mines to a location behind the Ural Mountains, albeit ore which was
inferior to that in the Belgian Congo and Canada, which supplied the
U.S.
Despite warlike preparations in Russia, they had not
double-tracked the railroads to Berlin, which would be a sure sign
of impending war. Nor had the number of divisions around Germany
been increased in the previous year.
Marquis Childs again, as the day before, addresses the spring
Supreme Court decision striking down the basing-point pricing system
of the cement industry and the effort by the subcommittee chaired by
Senator Homer Capehart to make the system legal at the behest of
large industry.
Governor Dewey was promising to curb monopoly in the country
while preserving the free enterprise system. To do so, he would have
to overcome powerful interests as President, the same interests
pressing the Capehart subcommittee to recommend legalizing the
base-point pricing system.
The excess profits tax of the war had produced appeals for
refunds of 5.5 billion dollars, expected to rise to eight billion by
the filing deadline of 1950. The IRB had developed a council of five
tax specialists to handle the appeals, which were based on the
theory that the companies had not exceeded their 1936-39 average
profits, the base period for determining the excess profits. The tax
council was trying to limit the amount of refunds by taking out the
profits from the base period which had been generated through
monopolistic practices.
Many asked why not allow monopoly as big business was
efficient in production. But the problem was that if only a couple
of large businesses dominated an industry, it would make it easier
for the Government ultimately to take over that industry. That was
the real danger, he concludes, which could not be ignored.
James Marlow reviews Education in International
Understanding in American Schools, recently published by the
National Education Association, the result of two years of work by
top educators trying to understand the part which schools, primary
and secondary, could play in educating children regarding the world
in which they lived. The book was aimed at teachers and cost $1.
He recommends it also to parents, as they could also do the
things it recommends for the classroom. It had a long chapter on
working together to assume responsibility and develop understanding
of others' problems and desires, and learning that others are
brothers.
It also had a long list of recommended reading on the topics.
A letter writer who had previously related of her experience
as a longtime resident of the North not having heard criticism of
the South, finds her letter to have prompted several comments, at least some of which
suggested misunderstanding of her points. She says that the civil
rights issue had prompted bitterness between the regions. But the
bitterness was fanned by politicians and it did individuals no good
to take up the cry. She believes that segregation would not be
maintained in Heaven. She concludes that those who sought to divide
group from group struck at the heart of the nation.
A letter writer finds the realization of Biblical prophecy
coming from the East-West conflict. Communists were the avowed
enemies of God and had discarded, he asserts, the Ten Commandments
and the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. Clouds appeared darker
than ever before in human history.
