Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that on the tenth
anniversary of the Munich Pact of 1938, France, Great Britain and
the U.S. charged Russia, in simultaneous and identical notes
delivered to the U.N. General Assembly in Paris, with menacing world
peace with the blockade of Berlin, contending that Russia was intent
on running the Western powers from the city and bringing it under
Soviet control.
Representatives of the three Western powers said that it was
unlikely that the Security Council would consider the matter before
Monday.
A Moscow newspaper charged the three Western powers with causing
the negotiations over Berlin to fail and with having "exploded
the legal basis" which gave them the right of participation in
administration of Berlin.
Nine Soviet fighter planes buzzed two American transport planes
in the Soviet zone air corridor this date, prompting American
officials to transmit a formal protest of the incident for violation
of air safety. The planes had flown to within 100 feet of the
airlift transports. The previous week, a Soviet fighter had flown
dangerously close to an American transport. The Soviets had also
engaged in high altitude anti-aircraft fire over the air corridor with 90 minutes of
advance notice to the Americans and British.
One of the four scientists accused by HUAC of providing atomic
secrets to the Russians, Dr. Clarence Hiskey, professor of
analytical chemistry at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, denied the
claims. HUAC had urged prosecution for espionage of Dr. Hiskey and
three others.
The Government barred workers of unions whose officers refused to
disavow Communism, as required under Taft-Hartley, from working in
atomic bomb plants. Specifically, it banned the United Electrical
Workers and the United Public Workers from the plants. Both unions
were being scrutinized by Congress for Communist influence.
Two officials of the United Electrical Workers Union refused
under the Fifth Amendment to testify to a labor subcommittee of the
House whether they were or ever had been members of the Communist
Party.
In Oklahoma City, a three-judge Federal District Court held that
the the University of Oklahoma's segregation restrictions were
unconstitutional in denying a black applicant admission to the
University's doctoral program. The State, however, was provided a
temporary stay pending the Governor asking the Legislature to amend
the state's segregation laws to conform with the Constitution.
A retired black professor, G. W. McLaurin, had brought the suit to
seek admission to the University to complete his doctoral work. The
application had been denied solely on the basis of race.
Subsequently, the University, following amendment of state laws,
admitted Mr. McLaurin, but provided that his instruction would be on
a segregated basis. He appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme
Court, and in 1950, the Court ruled unanimously, in a decision announced by
Chief Justice Fred Vinson, that Mr. McLaurin was entitled to
admission to the same program to which white students were admitted.
Again, that ruling, as in Sweatt v. Painter in 1950,
providing for admission of a black student to the University of
Texas Law School, undermines the oft repeated contention that had
Chief Justice Vinson not died in 1953, Brown v. Board of
Education, before the Court at the time of his death, might
have had a different and less favorable result than its order to
desegregate public schools "with all deliberate speed".
That is both an unprovable premise and one which, based on the
actual record, is highly unlikely, though making for intriguing
after-the-fact chatter in the always murky realm of the
hypothetical.
The President announced plans to campaign the following week in
New York and Pennsylvania. He was scheduled to return to Washington on Saturday
from his current 16-day tour of the country. This date, he campaigned from Shawnee, Oklahoma, through Muscogee and Tulsa, where he gave a major address in Skelly Stadium, to Marshfield, Missouri, along the way accusing
the Republicans of being afraid to come out into the open on the
campaign issues. He vowed to smoke them out so that the country
would know where they stood.
Governor Dewey promised to lay out his foreign policy views in a
speech at Salt Lake City the next night. He made speeches at
Spokane, Wash., and Missoula, Mont., this date, stressing foreign
policy.
Former Vice-President Henry Wallace urged in a speech in Dallas,
Texas, that a fact-finding commission be established to investigate
the recurrent war scares, contending that Secretary of Defense
Forrestal had built up the war scare and fear of Communists and
Russia to advance the private oil interests operating in the Middle
East.
Governor Strom Thurmond again attacked the President's civil
rights program.
Following four recent crashes of F-84 jet fighters, all were
ordered grounded while an investigation took place into the mishaps.
The planes were produced by Republic Aviation, which joined in the
announcement of the grounding.
In Los Angeles, actor Robert Mitchum and two of his three
co-defendants, charged with possession of marijuana pursuant to
their arrest on September 1, entered pleas of not guilty after a
demurrer to the charges had been overruled. Noted criminal defense
attorney Jerry Geisler represented Mr. Mitchum, contending that a
portion of the indictment was unconstitutional for not being written
in the English language when it said that the defendants were
accused of conspiracy to possess "flowering tops and leaves of
Indian hemp (Cannabis Sativa)." He said that he always thought
that hemp was used to make rope and that the indictment might as
well have been written in Chinese or hieroglyphics, prompting a
laugh from those packing the courtroom. He said that he could not
even pronounce "Cannabis Sativa".
The fourth defendant was granted additional time to enter a plea
pending a motion to dismiss for lack of sufficient evidence. The
trial of the other three was set for November 22.
Also in Los Angeles, Governor Thomas Dewey sent a large bouquet
of chrysanthemums to the family of a woman who had dropped dead of a
heart attack as she was about to enter the Hollywood Bowl the
previous Friday to hear the Governor speak.
In New York, a woman was robbed by three towel-masked thieves of
$40,000 to $50,000 worth of jewels after they invaded her hotel room
and bound and gagged her. The woman was married to a member of the
Loew's Theaters family.
In Asheville, N.C., the Reverend M. George Henry, 37, rector of
Christ Episcopal Church in Charlotte for the previous five years,
was consecrated as Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Western North
Carolina.
In High Point, N.C., Methodist Bishop Costen Harrell of
Charlotte, in an address to the Western North Carolina Methodist
Conference, outlined themes to be emphasized during the ensuing four
years.
Tom Fesperman of The News tells of the start of work in
Charlotte by the Legislative Committee of the Allied Church League
on a statewide referendum anent liquor, wine and beer, and for State
supported medical care for alcoholics. Francis Clarkson chaired the
Committee.
On the editorial page, "Mr. Vishinsky's Hollow Words" finds Andrei Vishinsky's speech before the U.N. General Assembly in
Paris to have been more of the same rhetoric heard from him
previously, laying blame on the West for imperialism through the
Marshall Plan while putting forth a proposal to have the Big Five
reduce by one-third their troops and armament and ban aggressive use
of the atomic bomb.
But the piece finds that this latter proposal only sounded good
superficially, for when broached previously by the Russians, it was
always coupled with hedging regarding any international inspection
to verify the adherence to the limitations. Russia was willing to
have verification as long as there was no interference with its
internal economy.
It concludes that Mr. Vishinsky's proposals were as meaningless
as those he had made the previous year and that the U.S. should
continue its policy of weighing such proposals with great care while
maintaining patience and firmness, as counseled by Secretary of
State Marshall.
"The Wrong Approach" finds the proposal before the
National Security Resources Board to have the big oil companies
limit production and to allow them then to raise prices jointly
without being subject to the anti-trust laws to be nonsensical as a
means to conserve dwindling petroleum resources in the country,
depleted by the war.
It finds that such a move would discourage production and
exploration for new resources. The better avenue would be to
encourage development of new world resources, spend money on
research of synthetic and substitute products, and improve the
design of the internal combustion engine to make it more efficient.
The present proposal, it concludes, would only encourage a
monopoly while raising prices, antithetical to the goals generally
followed by the Government.
"'Our Bob' in Franco Land" tells of former North
Carolina Senator Robert Rice Reynolds and his young daughter heading
for Spain for a year, according to gossip columnist Leonard Lyons.
Mr. Lyons also related that Mr. Reynolds still wanted to return to
the Senate and would run against Senator Hoey in 1950, (the piece
being in error that Senator Hoey's term ended in December, 1949, the
Senator having won the seat for a full term in 1944). In fact, Mr.
Reynolds would run for the Senate in 1950, but for the other seat,
by then to be occupied by Frank Porter Graham after his appointment
in March, 1949 to fill the vacancy left by newly elected former
Governor Melville Broughton upon his death.
The piece recalls that in 1930, Mr. Reynolds had taken a trip
abroad in advance of his successful run for the Senate against
former Governor Cam Morrison, appointed to the Senate to fill the vacancy left by the death of Lee Overman. He had mailed picture postcards back
to voters from exotic locales, such as Singapore and New
Delhi. But, remarks the piece, such gestures meant less to people
who had seen the world during the war. It also reminds that Mr.
Reynolds had taken a trip to Nazi Germany in the late thirties while
in the Senate and received approbation from Herr Hitler in the
process, returned praising Nazism.
It concludes that he may simply be traveling with his young
daughter, following the suicide two years earlier of his young wife, Hope Diamond heir-presumptive Evalyn Walsh McLean, and that it was best to leave him in peace.
It also provides a quote from Senator Reynolds from the
Congressional Record, saying that Hitler and Mussolini were
looking after the people of their countries, whereas Uncle Sam was
wandering over the world trying to "police the earth".
He wanted the U.S. to come home.
Drew Pearson tells of the President asking Admiral Lou Denham to
ask Admiral William Leahy, 73, to retire as the President's chief of
staff. He hated to ask anyone directly to do so. He believed Admiral
Leahy had "outgrown his usefulness". The President said
that he had asked Admiral Leahy to stay on twice when he had offered
to retire and that was making it all the more awkward now to ask
him. He felt Admiral Leahy had become too reactionary and was at
odds with Secretary of State Marshall. Admiral Denham, however,
balked at the task because Admiral Leahy was his superior. The
President asked him to find a big job for Admiral Leahy so that he
could retire in a blaze of glory. Admiral Denham, a few days later,
suggested that he be made Ambassador to Spain—which the
President thought a good idea until reminded by the State Department
that the country had no diplomatic relations with Franco's Spain and
could not send an Ambassador.
HUAC was trying to make contact with Igor Gouzenko, the Russian
code clerk who had revealed the Canadian spy ring, to determine what
if any information he might have on an American spy ring in the
Government. The Committee had a tip that he knew of two American
spies not mentioned in the Canadian report. The Canadian Government,
however, kept him under close wraps and he was living under an
assumed name. At one point, the Committee got close to making an
arrangement with the Government of Canada to provide access to Mr.
Gouzenko. Congressmen Richard Nixon, Edward Hebert and John McDowell
of the Committee arranged to meet in Ottawa with Prime Minister
MacKenzie King, each taking separate trains to New York to avoid
drawing attention to themselves. But when they reached New York,
they were met with press questions about the matter, someone on the
Committee having tipped off the press regarding the purpose of the
trip.
Judge Sam Rosenman, former adviser to FDR and speechwriter for
both FDR and President Truman, said that he believed that the
President was stressing too much Wall Street versus the farmer on
his cross-country tour, that such rhetoric no longer played well
with the farmers as they were enjoying prosperity. He said that he
had helped to prepare the President's acceptance speech at the
convention and his message to the special session of Congress in
July, but had not been called upon since. Mr. Pearson indicates that
Secretary of the Treasury John Snyder had gotten Judge Rosenman off
the President's train.
A recent intelligence report had stated that Russia would ask for
withdrawal of all troops from Germany and if accomplished, would
then send troops back into Germany in a year on a pretext. Russia
had stripped from Germany all it wanted from the predominantly
agricultural Eastern zone. Part of the plan would be to disrupt
American transportation by stimulating wildcat strikes, to prevent
transport of troops to Germany to restore order.
Marquis Childs tells of Sir Stafford Cripps, Britain's Chancellor
of the Exchequer, visiting the U.S. for the annual meeting of the
governing board of the World Bank, of which he was vice-chairman.
Britain's worst enemy since the war, its trade deficit, had been
reduced by 55 percent. Belt tightening had continued after the war.
As of the previous June, trade was at 138 percent that of 1938, up
from 120 percent the previous December. The Marshall Plan had aided
the recovery. But Britain had also made net contributions of 282
million dollars to other European countries during the previous
fiscal year.
With the meat shortage in Britain, Norwegian beaver, suspected to
be rat meat, was being marketed. Horse meat was selling for 50 to 60
cents per pound.
Mr. Cripps also wanted to discuss what would be happening to
Britain's trade deficit in light of the re-armament program and
re-mobilization. He would likely tell U.S. policy-makers that
Britain could not afford to pay for re-armament without wrecking the
plans for reconstruction of the economy. He would likely thus
propose a form of lend-lease.
In recent months, many Americans had expressed bitterness toward
Britain, for its policy toward Palestine and its domestic experiment
in democratic socialism under the Labour Government.
But, he ventures, in spite of the disagreements, the partnership
with Britain was of paramount importance at present as the British
believed in the same things Americans did and would stand up for
them
James Marlow discusses the Berlin crisis, explaining that Russia
had been able to cut off Western supply routes by land to the city,
necessitating the airlift because Berlin was deep inside the Eastern
occupation zone of Germany.
In 1945, the Big Four had agreed to divide Germany and Berlin
into four occupation zones, each to be ruled by a military governor
from each respective nation until such time as Germany could be
placed on a self-governing basis. The Western three nations had to
send supplies to Western Berliners via truck and train through the
Soviet occupation zone.
Everything went according to plan until earlier in the year when
the Russians began placing restrictions on travel through the Soviet
territory, starting in March with inspections of rail and vehicular
traffic, escalating in late June to the blockade of all rail and
vehicular traffic, premised initially on the need for bridge repairs
but later based on the dual currency issue, with Western marks and
Soviet marks competing in Berlin as the official currency. The
Russians wanted only Soviet marks in the city.
There was no written agreement regarding rail and truck
transportation, but American officials insisted that it was an
understood part of the agreement. The Russians denied the fact. The
only written agreement pertained to the air lanes to be used into
Berlin from the Western zones. Thus, Russia had not tried to
interfere directly with air traffic, though of late it had announced
on short notice military exercises, including shooting anti-aircraft
weaponry to 10,000 feet, the highest altitude flown by the airlift,
on a mere 90 minutes notice to the British and Americans conducting
the airlift.
There remained a question whether the airlift could supply
Berlin's needs through the winter.
Sumner Welles, former Undersecretary of State until August, 1943,
finds the Alsops to have written an apt and informative column
recently indicating that the National Security Council had taken
over conduct of the country's foreign policy.
He finds specious the argument that the civilian point of view
would not be subordinated to the military in the Council because the
members were the civilian heads of the executive departments, each
of the three military branch Secretaries, the Defense Secretary, and
Secretary of State, along with the chairman of the Security
Resources Board.
He asserts that no President since General Grant had possessed
such childlike faith in the oversight of the high brass as had
President Truman. He invariably approved every decision of the
Council. Secretary Marshall had spent his entire previous career as
a professional military man. Secretary of Defense Forrestal had to
place military considerations first, as did the heads of each of the
military branches. Thus the military point of view was really the
only one being heard in the current makeup of the Council. While it
would serve well in time of an emergency such as Pearl Harbor, it
would not serve generally to have only the military viewpoint
represented in reaching foreign policy decisions, indeed, not even
in an emergency.
The military viewpoint did not take into account emotion and
ideas, diplomacy and economy. A type of new isolationism based on
the notion that America should run the world singlehandedly was
likely to be the product of a military point of view, that world
cooperation was fantastical.
President Roosevelt had prevented disaster in the wake of Pearl
Harbor by not allowing the military to dictate policy. For instance,
the military had wanted to seize bases in Latin America by force to
facilitate the projected invasion of North Africa. Had that occurred,
Latin American neighbors would have been outraged and unity in the
Hemisphere compromised.
But under the current setup, he finds, the military point of view
would prevail. It had already done harm in such places as Palestine,
Panama, the Pacific trusteeships, the Italian colonies, Germany and
with respect to reparations.
The military would not allow for liberalism and if liberalism
disappeared from national policy, the battle for Western
civilization would be lost in an ever-increasingly totalitarian
world.
The Alsops had concluded that if elected President, Governor
Dewey would make use of the Council as an effective instrument of
Government. Mr. Welles asserts that, to the contrary, it should be
hoped that Governor Dewey, if elected, would restore control of
foreign policy to the civilian side of the Government as required by
the Constitution and limit the Council to coordinating functions of
the military, for which it alone was qualified.
