Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Paris, Russia
replied to the joint note of the Western powers anent Berlin but no
immediate indication was released as to the content of the response.
The note was still being translated. The Western powers were
surprised by the speed of the reply, their note having been issued
only on Wednesday.
Andrei Vishinsky, Soviet Deputy Foreign Commissar, made a
speech to the U.N. General Assembly in which he proposed that the
five major powers, including Russia, reduce their armed forces by a
third within a year. He sought establishment by the U.N. of an
international body to supervise the reduction of arms and
prohibition of further development of atomic weapons. He contended
that the expansionists were all west of the Iron Curtain, blaming
the U.S. for failures in the U.N. He also criticized several U.N.
agencies, notably the Atomic Energy Commission, and assailed the
Marshall Plan as undermining of the political and economic
independence of the recipient nations. He blamed America for the
failure to achieve control of atomic energy, that the U.S. wanted to
retain atomic control in the cold war against Russia. He said that
the Americans worshiped the atomic bomb. He also accused the U.S. of
supporting monarchist and Fascist regimes and establishing new
military bases in those countries for expansionist purposes.
U.S. chief delegate Warren Austin regarded the speech as "the
same old stuff", edited in light of Secretary of State
Marshall's speech to the General Assembly. Sir Alexander Cadogan of
Britain and Paul-Henri Spaak of Belgium both echoed the sentiment.
Herbert Evatt, president of the General Assembly session,
believed that the speech, while not conciliatory, was not so
uncompromising as to preclude further negotiations. He said that if
the four powers could not reach agreement on Berlin, the issue
should come before the U.N.
Also in Paris, the French National Assembly voted to hold
elections in March rather than in October as scheduled, providing a
reprieve to the newly installed Government of Henri Queuille. The
Communists and the Gaullists wanted the elections to be held as
scheduled and wanted a full national election. A threat of a strike
in the coal mines and power plants loomed for the following week.
In Buenos Aires, a demonstration following police reports
that a plot had been uncovered to kill Argentinian dictator Juan
Peron and his dictatrix wife Eva, turned into an anti-U.S. parade,
the strongest in more than two years. Sr. Peron blamed the plot on a
former U.S. Embassy cultural attache, transferred to Uruguay. By
nightfall following the police announcement, 17 Argentinians had
been placed under arrest. Both Sr. Peron and Eva delivered fiery
addresses to the marchers, blaming also foreign correspondents, some
newspapers, and political opponents within the country for the plot.
Sr. Peron also charged that "foreign gold" had financed
the plot, interpreted by some of the Peronistas as meaning Wall
Street. Demonstrators then sought to break into La Prensa,
the most outspoken Buenos Aires newspaper against Peron, but were
repulsed by police. They then moved their protest to the American
Embassy.
Senator Raymond Baldwin of Connecticut asked the Senate Armed
Services Committee to investigate why Ilse Koch, the notorious Nazi
who allegedly had made lampshades of prisoners' skin during her time
as a guard at Buchenwald concentration camp, had her sentence
commuted by military occupation authorities in Germany from life to
four years. She had also reportedly given birth to a child while in
custody. General Lucius Clay had ordered the reduction because of
lack of evidence that the woman had selected inmates for
extermination to obtain their tattooed skins for her lampshades. The
General later said that evidence presented at her trial had proved
that the lampshades were actually made from goatskins.
President Truman said the previous day in Oceanside,
California, that the GOP stand against him was "double talk",
saying one thing, doing another. One man yelled, "Give 'em
hell", and the President responded, "Don't think I'm
not."
In Yuma, Ariz., also the day before, he had said that a vote
for the Republicans was a vote for "vested interests".
This date, the President started the day at 7:30 a.m. in Lordsburg, N.M., and ended it at 10:00 p.m. in Sanderson, Texas, after a speech earlier in the day at El Paso.
Governor Dewey, speaking at the Hollywood Bowl in Los
Angeles, said: "Some people jeer at this [Communist] problem,
calling it a 'red herring'. Some people get panicky about it. I
don't belong to either group." The President had been calling
the HUAC hearings and those before the Senate Investigating
Committee into alleged Communist espionage by Government
functionaries a "red herring" of the GOP, to distract
from the primary substantive issues facing the country, such as
inflation.
Former Vice-President Henry Wallace, campaigning in
Youngstown, O., said that while Russia may stifle freedom and
encourage dictatorship, so, too, did the policies of President
Truman and those favored by Governor Dewey. Mr. Wallace said that
the President was as much a servant of international big business as
Governor Dewey.
In London, a family wanted to sell the 157-year old, 33-mile
long Basingstoke Canal which linked Hampshire with the port of
London. The Government had excluded it from its transportation
nationalization program.
Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington disclosed that the
experimental plane, X-1, had flown several hundred miles per hour
faster than the speed of sound, assumed to be at least 860 mph. Some
unofficial estimates placed the potential speed of the plane as
exceeding 1,000 mph.
The Bureau of Agricultural Economics predicted that 1949
incomes would be equal to the record incomes of 1948. It found 10
percent fewer persons working on farms in 1948 than before the war,
while non-farm population rose 20 percent since 1938.
In Youngstown, O., a man accused of reckless driving was told
by the judge that his possible sentence was six months in jail or a
$500 fine, at which point the man fainted. When revived, he learned
that he had been fined $50 and sentenced to 15 days in jail.
Whether he fainted again was not told.
In Kannapolis, N.C., a man arrested for breaking and entering
was also served with a warrant issued several weeks earlier for
bigamy.
Tom Schlesinger of The News reports of the ongoing
vehicle inspections under the new law in North Carolina requiring
same. September 30 was the deadline for inspection for owners of
vehicles built between 1937 and 1946, and people were putting it off
until the last minute, with 17,000 or more cars in Mecklenburg County still not approved.
You better get on down 'ere and get that old jalopy looked at
'cause it ain't got no lights or rubber on it near as we can tell.
If you don't, you're goin' to the hoosegoose come a' end o' next
week.
Snow fell in parts of the Western mountain and coastal
states, at Great Falls and Butte, Mont., at Reno and Austin, Nev.,
and at Burns, Ore. Temperatures dropped to around freezing in parts
of New England and the Midwest. Temperatures remained high in the
Gulf Coast and Southwestern states.
On the editorial page, "Law Enforcement at Work" comments on the bank robbery during the week in Columbia, N.C., in
which six black men and one white, with a "yellow-faced"
man doing all the talking, got away with more than $68,000 and made
their escape in a high-powered automobile which they then ditched in
a swamp and proceeded from there on foot. It was one of the major
bank robberies in the history of the state.
The Highway Patrol swung into action, with bloodhounds and a
helicopter being used in pursuit. The helicopter spotted the men and
the bloodhounds and posse moved in slowly over the course of seven
hours to effect capture of all except one of the men, who escaped
from the swamp and entered a nearby small town, where he was
immediately spotted and arrested by an alert officer.
In all, it took 47 hours to arrest all of the suspects. Most
of the money had been returned to the bank.
It expresses appreciation to efficient law enforcement.
"Paul Haywood Efird" laments the passing of a
local business leader, one of the brothers who had founded Efird's
Department Store and who had been a key figure in the development of
Charlotte as a mercantile trade center. He had been a pioneer in
modern merchandising and left an imprint on the community.
"Control of The Senate" tells of the presidential
race and continued Republican control of the House being pretty much
foregone conclusions, but that the Senate remained up for grabs. The
Democrats might gain marginal control. The present makeup was 51
Republicans and 45 Democrats. Of the 33 contested seats, 18 were in
the GOP column and 15, Democratic.
The GOP, it was believed, would hold or gain seats in Kansas,
Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oregon, and
South Dakota, the piece telling of the probable victors, Kansas,
Maine, and South Dakota being open seats held by Republicans.
The Democrats would likely obtain or hold seats in Alabama,
Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Rhode
Island, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia, all incumbents except
for the open Democratic seats in North Carolina, Louisiana, and
Texas—the latter where Congressman Lyndon Johnson was the apparent
nominee, subject to court action of former Governor Coke Stevenson
challenging the election results based on the late returns out of
the mysteriousBox 13.
Democrats appeared to have the edge in Colorado and
Tennessee. Republicans were leading in Illinois, Idaho, Delaware,
Iowa, New Jersey, and Minnesota—the latter where Mayor Hubert
Humphrey was in a close race with incumbent Senator Joseph Ball.
The outcome in six other states would determine control of
the Senate, in the other contest in Colorado, in New Mexico,
Kentucky, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Oklahoma.
Thus, it concludes, the possibility existed for a split body
of 48 each or bare control by one party or the other.
The actual result would be a Senate comprised of 53
Democrats and 43 Republicans.
Drew Pearson tells of the President continuing to be opposed
to the return of the North African colonies to Italy even though it
might cost him a half million Italian votes in the Northeast in the
election. Italian-American publisher Generoso Pope, always a
Democrat, was now considering support of Governor Dewey, who
supported the return of the colonies. After a conference between Mr.
Pope and the President, in which the President re-asserted his
position that he would leave the matter to the U.N., it appeared
clear that Mr. Pope would give his support to the Governor, possibly
carrying with it New York City.
Mr. Pearson notes that the U.S. had signed an agreement with
Britain and France to establish a B-29 base in Libya and that
Britain had sent much of its military equipment from Palestine and
India to Libya, as a base for control of the Mediterranean. The
State Department, therefore, was willing to return Eritrea and
Somaliland to Italy, but not Libya, which Mussolini had always
considered the prime colony.
A GOP candidate for Congress from Reading, Pa., had asked
HUAC to hold up until after the election a report on the Institute
of Pacific Relations of which he was a member, the report contending
that it was dominated by a New York Communist leader.
Representative John Sanborn of Idaho was in trouble in the
election because he had cooperated with the lobbies, for whose
interests he consistently voted during his two years in Congress. He
had inserted one speech in the Congressional Record which
had been written for him by a lobbyist and which was an
anti-British, anti-liberal diatribe on silver. A veteran and hero of
the Battle of the Bulge, Asael Lyman, 27, was waging a serious
contest for the seat.
Mr. Lyman, incidentally, would lose the race by 2,700 votes.
In one case of housing fraud, a veteran was not a victim. A
veteran had leased a Manhattan home, then sublet it to an
ex-convict. The two men then installed $1,650 worth of plumbing and
operated an illegal whiskey still from the home.
Marquis Childs discusses the years of planning behind the
campaign of Governor Thomas Dewey for the presidency, begun when he
had lost the 1944 election to FDR. Nothing which could be planned
was left to chance. Master card index files were present at his
Albany and Washington headquarters, containing everything he had
ever said on a given topic.
After the 1944 defeat, everything was reviewed regarding the
campaign, as it, too, had been carefully planned, yet with the
realistic understanding that the country was at war and that voters
would be reluctant to change horses midstream.
He had said in 1944 that the National Labor Relations Act was
a good law but was working badly in practice, failing to secure
industrial harmony. He had also outlined his plans for revising
Social Security.
President Roosevelt then made his famous speech before the
Teamsters in Washington, which contained the comment about
Republicans picking on Fala, arousing his Scotch temper. The Dewey
team realized that it had been a brilliant political speech but
initially decided to ignore it. But then when contributions dropped
off, the Dewey campaign decided that the candidate would have to go
on the attack. In the post mortem, they realized that the change of
strategy had been a mistake, ending any chance of victory.
Eighteen months earlier, Mr. Childs had interviewed the Dewey
team and they were very confident of victory in 1948. The principal
appeal would be to independent voters, with a progressive message.
That was the campaign which was developing. This time, it was
unlikely that the Governor would depart from the original plan. He would not
resort to the President's "give 'em hell" tactics.
Yeah, see, now, that was smart. Stay above the fray.
Joseph Alsop finds the safest prediction to be that the
Moscow talks would not lead to a final solution of the Berlin crisis
and the issue would have to be placed before the U.N. General
Assembly in Paris. The U.N. would likely support the right of the
Western powers to remain in Berlin and, meanwhile, Governor Dewey
would have won the election, rendering the President a lameduck.
That much appeared certain. But then the question arose as to what
would occur after the election.
President-elect Dewey would confront a decision which could
be the most onerous ever faced by a newly elected President. The
time of decision might be postponed until spring. But the Politburo
strategy, according to the National Security Council, had been
premised on the presidential election paralyzing the country and
presenting the best opportunity for taking control of Berlin. Thus,
after the election, with that goal not having been realized, the
Soviets might relax their pressure. But such a result remained only
a hope.
The wrangling in Paris would further harden the Soviet
stance. President Dewey would be faced immediately with the decision
of whether to go to war or evacuate Berlin.
A small minority of the military held the view that the West
was not ready for war and Berlin was considered not militarily
tenable as a battleground. And the airlift put in jeopardy the bulk
of the British and American air transport planes which would then be
subject to immediate destruction by bombing, parachutists, or
fighter planes.
It was likely that Mr. Dewey and his advisers would view the
situation as the Administration had, that it would be appeasement
leading to more appeasement to back down in Berlin. Such implied
that very soon after the election, Mr. Dewey and his team would have
to consult with the British and French and form a way "to
lance the Berlin boil".
But would there be a cancer growing then on the presidency?
DeWitt MacKenzie tells of the diplomacy being used by
America, Britain, and France in calling on Moscow for a showdown in
the Berlin crisis to have been calculated to serve three purposes,
that appeasement was obsolete, that the three democracies would not
be bullied into abandoning their positions, and to put the Russians
on the spot before world opinion as "malingerers in the cause
of peace and rehabilitation" should they fail to cooperate.
If the purposes were served, it would be a notable
achievement. But even so, it would not bring settlement of the cold
war any closer to realization. Even if Moscow made some concessions,
it would not abandon its goal of world revolution until it either
succeeded or it blew up in their faces.
The Western powers were willing to accept the Soviet mark as
sole currency for Berlin in exchange for lifting the blockade,
provided the currency were placed under four-power authority.
Both America and Britain were mobilizing their forces to meet
contingencies, should negotiations finally fail. Yet the openness of
these preparations showed that they were precautionary only and not
invitations to war.
Moscow would likely take heed of these warnings, as Russia
appeared not to want war. But it did not mean that Russia would end
the cold war. It had already opened a new offensive in Southeast
Asia, and thus the world revolution would continue even though
slowing down of necessity in Europe.
Two letter writers, 18 and 20, both with "charming
faces", from 12 Bread Fruit Lane in Lagos, Nigeria, seek pen
pals. They are interested in collecting old and new stamps,
magazines, coins, and exchanging goods of other countries for
African goods.
They note that they accept letters from "male, female,
young and old." If you fit one of those categories, then you
can write them.
A letter writer takes issue with the "How's Your I.Q.?"
column in the newspaper on September 15, which had asked in which
sea were the islands of Cyprus, Sicily, and Sardinia, giving the
answer as the Mediterranean. The letter writer's map placed Sardinia
between the Mediterranean and the Tyrrhenian Seas and Sicily as
being bordered by the Mediterranean, Tyrrhenian and Ionian Seas. He
concludes that the islands were no more in the Mediterranean than
Africa.
The editors respond that the reader's letter was referred to
the Education Research Bureau which prepared the column, and the
response is included, saying that the Encyclopaedia Britannica
listed the three islands as being in the Mediterranean and that the
other bodies of water mentioned by the reader were considered local.
Take that, smarty pants. You put your thigh pads in backwards
before you sat down to write that letter, didn't you?
