Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the three Western
powers sent the Berlin crisis to the U.N. Security Council this
date, premised on the Soviet blockade posing a threat to world
peace. The presentation to the Security Council would likely begin
Thursday.
The move prompted British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin to
express worry that it would wreck the U.N. He said that if such were
to occur and that if it led to war, the fault would be that of
Russia. But he believed it better to have difficulties presently
than to live in a "fool's paradise". He urged the
nations to "open up the world and let light and knowledge come
in", to which the delegates cheered.
The move followed the complete collapse of diplomatic talks
with Russia regarding the crisis. The State Department released a
3,000-word note which accused Russia of negotiating in bad faith and
creating a threat to international peace. The Department also
released the 24,000-word White Paper which was said by diplomatic
sources to prove that the Russians were seeking to force the three
Western powers out of Berlin.
Russia's continued membership in the U.N. was in grave doubt
and concern that a shooting war might erupt was increasing.
Berlin's City Government stated that all four occupying
powers ought leave the city if they could not settle their
differences. It also urged that the four-power administration be
limited to military concerns and allow the Germans to have a free
hand in administration of the city. The resolution also asked that
as long Berlin remained under occupation, it be by all four powers
with no one power having more control than others. The latter was
considered as a slap to the Russians.
Marshal Sokolovosky, military occupation governor of the
Russian occupation zone of Germany, was reported to have been
recalled to Moscow for consultation.
For the second straight day, Russian troops stopped all
American vehicles en route to the air base at Tullin, Austria,
requiring passage through the Russian occupation zone. American
authorities said that they planned no protest of the action, as the
Americans were allowed to proceed after identifying themselves. The
roadblock was aimed at catching Red Army deserters.
Mr. Bevin urged the U.N. to take speedy action on the
posthumous recommendations of Count Folke Bernadotte anent
Palestine, favoring recognition of Israel and leaving the Arab
sections of Palestine controlled by Arabs, subject to the desires of
the people in those areas, with Jerusalem as an international city.
He said that Britain supported the entire recommendation.
Pravda criticized Soviet architects for building
"pseudo Parthenons" with the "excessive use of
pillars", in imitation of American architecture, not
recognizing "Socialist realism" in preference to
"bourgeois formalism".
The new wave of stark Soviet realism in architecture, we
assume, would find expression 13 years hence in the Wall.
President Truman, campaigning through Texas, starting in San
Antonio after a speech the previous day from the Alamo, followed by
a pre-recorded radio broadcast this date celebrating Democratic
Women's Day, again attacked the "mossback" 80th Congress while visiting Austin,
saying that it was trying to "tear up the Bill of Rights".
He said that the reason 80 to 90 percent of the nation's newspapers
opposed his re-election was because they favored the special
interests and were against the people.
It should be noted that Congressman Lyndon Johnson appeared
with the President in San Marcos, Texas, and was endorsed by the
President in the Senate race several times across the state, in
Temple, Waco, and Bonham, though not mentioned in his remarks from
the train in Austin.
Senator Alben Barkley, Democratic vice-presidential nominee,
was campaigning in Asheville, N.C., to deliver an address to be
broadcast across the state by radio at 8:30 p.m. Should you wish to
tune in to catch his remarks, the stations are provided.
Governor Dewey was campaigning in the Pacific Northwest,
saying that the bipartisan U.N. delegation represented a united
America, and urging that everyone who shared the American vision
unite in prayers for peace. His aides said that the Governor
supported the taking of the Berlin crisis before the Security
Council.
Governor Earl Warren, Republican vice-presidential nominee,
was campaigning in New York.
Senator Homer Ferguson wired the President to try to find out
whether FBI director J. Edgar Hoover would be allowed to testify
before Congress as to the number of Communists or other disloyal
persons in the Government. He told the President further that while
he believed the President had no personal sympathy with Communism,
the perception had grown in the country that he was allowing
suspected disloyal persons to remain in the Federal Government to
avoid embarrassing revelations regarding his Administration.
Well, ask Senator McCarthy. He has a ketchup bottle which
tells the tale.
Former OPA head Leon Henderson, chairman of Americans for
Democratic Action, urged the President to name a non-partisan
commission to investigate all phases of the loyalty issue.
Five campaign workers for former Vice-President Henry Wallace
spent the previous night in an Augusta, Ga., hotel under police
protection, after reporting that they were taken outside the city
and beaten by 40 to 50 men in a dozen automobiles after they raided
the Progressive Party headquarters in the city, kicking in a door
and window. They then drove the four women and one man to Grovetown,
slapped and treated them roughly before letting them go. A crowd
gathered in front of the hotel where the police kept the five under
guard. The five had been gathering signatures to get the Wallace
ticket on the Georgia ballot.
Five students from Fresno State College in California
were killed in a crash of a private plane near Portland, Oregon, on
Sunday, returning from a football game between Fresno State and the
University of Portland.
John Daly of The News reports of support by the City
Government of the natural gas pipeline proposed to run from Texas
and Louisiana into the Piedmont Carolinas. The support was
communicated to the Federal Power Commission, though not binding on the City Council.
Secretary of Agriculture Charles Brannan, visiting the city,
praised the Charlotte soil conservation experiment set for October
14, in which several people would contribute labor and equipment to
replenish the soil of a 120-acre rundown farm owned by two veterans.
Tom Schlesinger of The News reports of Mr. Brannan's
visit and speech in nearby Monroe before 500 persons at a meeting of
the Union County Farm Bureau. He said that the 80th Congress had
engaged in a "sit-down strike" with regard to farm
policy, that the Roosevelt-Truman farm program was the best any
nation had ever enjoyed, and that the Administration was working to
improve the lot of farmers despite the "do-nothingism"
of the Congress.
The sports staff had gone behind the benches and dressing
room doors to provide the details of the weekend collegiate football
games of the Carolinas, emphasizing the UNC versus Texas, N.C. State
versus Duke, and Davidson versus William & Mary contests played
on Saturday.
UNC had won 34 to 7, to open what would be a 9-0-1 regular
season, only tying William & Mary, before losing to Oklahoma on
New Year's Day in the Sugar Bowl, 14-6. By mid-October, UNC would be the
number 1 team in the nation and would finish number 3. Duke and N.C.
State tied 0-0, both on the way to lackluster seasons. William &
Mary, which would finish the season number 17 in the nation, beat
Davidson 14 to 6, on the way to a 7-2-2 season, beating Oklahoma A &
M on New Year's Day in the Delta Bowl.
You can try to outwit the experts by predicting next week's
scores. They will probably do better, however, because they are the
experts.
On the editorial page, "The Wounded Earth" discusses conservation in light of the summer release of William
Vogt's The Road to Survival, one of his theses having been
that corn depleted the soil and actually created hunger by building
populations, with the problem being visited on the tenth generation
down the line and beyond. He advocated educating the public to what
unregulated natural resources would do to subsequent generations.
The piece suggests that evidence of lack of conservation could be found in the
dull-red Yadkin-Great Pee Dee River system, with Appalachian
hillsides running off into its floodwaters. At Britain's Neck, S.C.,
the red water joined with the peat-blacked Little Pee Dee in stark
contrast, running side by side for nearly a mile until the red water
conquered the black.
Because conservation was dull and often got in the way of
business, it did not usually get the enthusiastic support of the average citizen.
In North Carolina, the Governor had appointed the Resource-Use
Education Commission to inform the public of its responsibilities.
Professors Paul Wager and Donald Hayman of UNC had written a book
titled Resource Management in North Carolina to publicize the
needs of the region. They believed that the era of freebooting was
over and that wise farming practices, contour plowing and use of
cover crops, would help to heal the land and restore the
depleted soil.
It finds that there was increasing understanding of Theodore
Roosevelt's words, "To skin and exhaust the earth is to
undermine the days of our children." It remarks that the
"Carolina Farmer" section of the newspaper on each
Monday preached the same gospel graphically.
"Rituals of Autumn '48" finds the campaign trails
of Governor Dewey and President Truman, crisscrossing the country by
rail, to embody largely "old political talk". But it was
necessary for the American people to hear it and weigh it, even if,
according to Gallup and Roper, the results of the election were
already foreordained. No citizen should vote, it urges, without
becoming aware of the candidates and the issues.
The President's "give 'em hell" campaign was
vigorous and demonstrated his zeal. He called the Republicans
"gluttons of privilege" and jousted at real and
imaginary windmills in the process. His tactics, however, showed his
desperation amid a disintegrated Democratic Party, with
factionalization on the right and left. He presented himself, as had
FDR, as the "friend of the little man".
Governor Dewey and Governor Warren were campaigning with a
genteel and mannerly style, in keeping with their top place in the
polls. Governor Dewey had admitted that not all of the Government's
problems were attributable to the President but were beyond the
control of any government. He had, to some extent, ignored the
President, telling of what he intended to do as President. He was
waging a safe campaign, stressing unity and the outlook for peace.
That strategy would likely change only if President Truman
appeared to make a dent in the commanding lead enjoyed by Governor
Dewey in the polls.
A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "A
Primary Myth Comes to Life Again", debunks the myth being
tossed around, first in the Democratic primaries and resurfacing in
the general election campaign, that North Carolina had 171 million
dollars of "surplus and idle funds". W. Tom Bost of the
Greensboro Daily News, "dean of the Raleigh press
corps", had explained in detail that the 171 million dollars
represented the entire amount of money in the State Treasury, was
neither "surplus" nor "idle".
Drew Pearson tells of why the investigation had abruptly
ended, having been started by Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan,
into the conduct of Senator Elmer Thomas of Oklahoma, regarding the
latter's influence over the price of cotton from the floor while
having surrogates speculate for him in the cotton market, as
revealed by Mr. Pearson on May 6, 1946—printed in The NewsMay 9. Senator Thomas had
discovered that Senator Ferguson and his son-in-law had questionable
connections with Chrysler and had written Senator Ferguson a letter
on February 14 regarding the matter, at which point the
investigation of Senator Thomas was suddenly dropped. Mr. Pearson
publishes the contents of the letter.
Senator Thomas accused Senator Ferguson and his colleagues of
going on a "fishing expedition" with regard to Senator
Thomas's commodities speculation, and threatened to expose Senator
Ferguson's shady dealings with Chrysler, which allegedly included
gifts to the Senator's family, "swanky parties", and
paid vacations to influence legislation.
Marquis Childs discusses the politicization of the Government
loyalty tests. Congressman Edward Hebert of Louisiana, a member of
HUAC, had charged that the Committee only wanted to make a case and
was not so interested in getting at the facts. At the same time, the
President's "red herring" remark anent the committee hearings on espionage within the Government, he believed, was
another form of playing politics.
The Administration's loyalty tests, remarks Mr. Childs, while
conducted in private, not as public smearing campaigns as with HUAC,
nevertheless had engaged in strange findings at times. Of over two
million Government workers, 5,421 were determined to be in need of
full investigation by the loyalty review board. Of those, 883 had
resigned during the investigation. Of the remainder, only 54 cases
had been deemed disloyal and 21 of those had appealed the finding.
In one case of alleged disloyalty, the individual had only
provided a contribution to an old college classmate accused in the
Canadian espionage case, eventually acquitted, that he might be able
to afford counsel. The same individual had given to the United
Jewish Appeal, prompting a comment from a board member that he was
showing too much zeal for the underdog, a comment stricken from the
record by the board.
Responsible citizens disturbed over these tendencies of the
loyalty tests and the public smears occasioned by the HUAC hearings,
one example of the latter cited by Congressman Hebert having been
the case of Dr. Edward Condon, head of the Bureau of Standards, had
recommended that an impartial body be established led by someone of
impeccable credentials, such as former Supreme Court Justice Owen
Roberts, to review the loyalty cases and the cases brought before
the public by HUAC, and hold hearings in private. Something along
the lines, he posits, needed to be done, as the political campaign
would only cause these problems to fester.
Stewart Alsop comments on Josef Stalin, vacationing in the
Crimea, receiving visits from satellite Communist leaders, as
Rumania's Foreign Minister Ana Pauker, Bulgaria's Dimitrov,
Hungary's Rakosi, and Czechoslovakia's Gottwald and Klementis. Only
Poland had thus far remained absent. It was assumed that discussions
centered on the fate of rebellious Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia, as
well as paying attention to Berlin and who would be the successor to
Andre Zhdanov, recently deceased former head of the Cominform.
A few weeks earlier, the Kremlin had directed that General
Arso Yovanovitch, Tito's wartime comrade-in-arms, would succeed Tito,
and preparations were made for him to lead a putsch on Belgrade. But
the Yugoslav secret police discovered the plot and shot General
Yovanovitch before it could develop. Moscow was presumed now to be
looking for a substitute to fill the role. There was also afoot a
plot orchestrated by Moscow to assassinate Tito if the opportunity
arose. The economic squeeze on Yugoslavia by Russia also continued, with Russia, Albania, and Rumania having cut off supplies,
including oil, to Yugoslavia. The blockade undoubtedly would be
extended to include the other satellites as well.
The putsch against Tito would take place when the replacement
for General Yovanovitch was found, and the plans were likely being
discussed in the Crimea between Stalin and the satellite leaders.
The broad scope of the plans suggested how serious the Kremlin
regarded the rebellion of Tito.
Albert Coates, director of the Institute of Government in
Chapel Hill, discusses a proposed amendment to the North Carolina
Constitution, on the November 2 ballot, to allow the raising of salaries of the General
Assembly from $600 during each regular biennial session and $8 per
diem for special sessions to $1,200 for the regular session and $250
for special sessions, with higher salaries for presiding officers,
as allowed under the existing provision. He explores the arguments
against and in favor of the amendment.
You may read his arguments and exegesis for yourself, so that
you will not suffer that malady which Professor Coates once termed,
quoting G. K. Chesterton, "the ignorance of the educated".
