Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that U.S. chief
delegate to the U.N. Warren Austin reaffirmed America's willingness
to place its atomic arsenal under international control provided
there would be adequate safeguards and inspections. He said Russia
was to blame for lack of international control. The U.N. political
committee was considering the atomic control question, placed on the
agenda by General A.G.L. McNaughton of Canada.
A British Government source indicated that the five-nation
Western European Union had selected Field Marshal Viscount Bernard
Montgomery, chief of Britain's imperial staff, to be commander of
its armed forces and that formal announcement would take place in
Paris within two days. Apparently, he would resign as head of
Britain's armed forces.
Russian propaganda radio broadcasts were criticizing
conditions in Iran, suggesting a possible aggressive move in that
country in the near future, as a means to divert attention from
Berlin. One of the criticisms was that Iran had failed to carry out
an amnesty program promised for pro-Soviet leaders rounded up after
the evacuation of the Russians in 1946. Another was that Iran was
preparing to enter an Arab bloc which would serve the interests of
the Anglo-American "monopolists of the Middle East".
Russian soldiers who entered the American sector of Berlin
had shot two German civilians and the matter was under investigation
by U.S. authorities.
Chaim Weizmann, President of Israel, arrived from Switzerland
for the first time in Tel Aviv to take up residence.
Representative John McDowell of Pennsylvania, a member of
HUAC, accused the Justice Department of "window-dressing"
by bringing charges against the twelve Communist Party leaders in a
such a deliberately incompetent manner that the charges would not
pass constitutional muster.
The President, speaking the previous day in Oklahoma City,
charged that the Congress was impeding the Government's efforts
against subversive activities.
HUAC chairman J. Parnell Thomas countered that the President
and the Justice Department were obstructing and thwarting the
Committee's investigations. He said that the President had accused
HUAC of making confidential information available to foreign
countries and injuring the reputations of innocent persons. He asked
in a letter to the President for specificity on the claims.
This date, the President traveled through Southern Illinois
by automobile, telling voters in Carbondale that he had tried to get
Congress to fight inflation but that they were not interested. His train also passed through Indiana and into Kentucky.
Governor Dewey would make a foreign policy speech at Salt
Lake City this night. In advance of the speech, he said that he
wanted to set up a foreign policy such that no dictator could any
longer regard the country as "weak or wobbly". He said
that his administration would also reject the defeatist attitude
that the country had to swing wildly between boom and bust.
The Progressive Party headquarters announced that thirteen
candidates for Congress were withdrawing because the Democrats had
shown a more constructive liberal approach. Included among them were
the opponents of Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas and Congressman
Chet Holifield in California.
Governor Strom Thurmond said that he expected to win 100
electoral votes in the election.
Pollster Elmo Roper examines public opinion regarding
Taft-Hartley, finding most of the public to support it generally,
with 30 percent wanting stronger checks on unions, 11 percent
wanting the law more favorable to unions, and 24 percent wanting the
Act left as is. Only 12.5 percent favored repeal, somewhat higher
among Truman supporters at 19 percent, and at 41 percent of those
favoring Henry Wallace. When isolated for labor union members, over
35 percent favored repeal outright.
Mr. Roper found that therefore the President stood to gain
fewer votes by opposing the measure than Governor Dewey would gain
by supporting it. But in the ten states where labor was a strong
political component of the electorate, labor opposition might work
to provide President Dewey with a Democratic Senate in January.
In September, Mr. Roper had vowed that, absent a major event
such as war, he would not do any more polling analysis of the
presidential election, with it a foregone conclusion.
In Edmonton, Alberta, RCAF fliers praised the courage of a
seriously injured 12-year old boy who had been rescued from a
wrecked plane after hanging upside down for 42 hours beside the dead
body of his mother. He was being flown by his mother from their home
in Anchorage, Alaska, to school when the plane crashed 65 miles
northwest of Fort Nelson, British Columbia. RCAF fliers believed
that the plane had been caught in a downdraft.
In Oyster Bay, N.Y., the 87-year old widow of former
President Theodore Roosevelt died after being in ill health for some
time. They had been married in 1886. Three of her four sons had
perished in either the First or Second World War, two in the latter.
The surviving son had served in both wars. The former First Lady was
also survived by a stepdaughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth.
The Western North Carolina Methodist Conference, meeting in
High Point, continued.
The FCC announced that it would suspend temporarily the
granting of television licenses pending the improvement of the
service already authorized. There were 302 pending applications thus
frozen, after authorization of 123 stations, with but 37
operational. The suspension of grants would last about six months.
We wanted to see that "Howdy Doody" program. When
is it coming on?
On the editorial page, "The World Crisis" tells
of Soviet Deputy Premier Nikolai Voznesensky writing in his recently
published book that the threat of a third world war could not be
attenuated until the aggressor nations of the West were completely
disarmed militarily and economically. The Soviet Union was embarked
on an undeclared war against the democracies which could only end,
in the eyes of the Politburo, in total victory.
The book summarized well the Soviet position vis-à-vis
the West and why negotiations had finally broken down in Moscow and
Berlin, why Stalin's seemingly cooperative and ameliorative attitude
in late August suddenly evaporated during talks between the military
governors in Berlin.
The decision finally by the three Western powers to present
the matter of the blockade to the U.N. Security Council was
momentous, raising significantly the chances for a shooting war.
Only if the Politburo recognized the danger and chose a way to save
face would such prospects be diminished.
"What Are the Dixiecrats?" finds the dissension
between Democrats and Dixiecrats in the South confusing, as the
Dixiecrats of North Carolina considered it a victory to get the
Thurmond-Wright ticket on the ballot, whereas Louisiana had dropped
the Truman-Barkley ticket off the ballot completely in favor of
Thurmond-Wright, placed under a traditional Democratic rooster
emblem. The "regular" Democrats had to wage a battle to
get the Truman-Barkley ticket back on the Louisiana ballot. While
succeeding, the ticket would not be listed on the ballot as
Democratic while the Thurmond-Wright ticket would be.
The Dixiecrats, by behaving in that manner, were sacrificing
any hope of gaining national recognition. They could not appear as
Democrats on one ballot and "States' Rights Democrats"
on another. They could not run from the party in one state and away
with it in another.
"How to Stop Worrying" tells of the historical
novel boom of a year or so earlier having now waned, supplanted by public worry of high prices, war, and politics. Most
of all, the public worried about worrying, as evidenced by the best
seller lists.
The non-fiction best-seller in the country was Dale
Carnegie's How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, followed by
Joshua Liebman's Peace of Mind. Such hearkened back to the
what-me-worry works which became popular in the Great Depression
years, such as Life Begins at Forty.
Perhaps the spiritual depression of 1948 had beaten an
economic depression to the punch, creating this new culture of
worry.
It finds the chapter headings in Mr. Carnegie's work
indicative of the worries being harbored by the public, business
worries, housewife worries, fatigue, retention of youth, etc.
Drew Pearson tells of Eleanor Roosevelt relating to friends
that she would not speak in support of re-election of President
Truman, that she would remain in Europe through December 1 for the
U.N. General Assembly meeting and would take no part in the election
campaign. The President, in appointing her as a U.N. delegate, had
hoped to garner her support. In recent months, she had indicated her
displeasure with the President's about-face on Palestine, first
supporting the U.S.-proposed partition plan in the fall, and then,
after the eruption of trouble, withdrawing his support in favor of a
trusteeship in Palestine, albeit having since mid-May informally
recognized Israel.
Mr. Pearson notes that she had privately opposed the President's
nomination.
Hugh Hanson, an engineer for the Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics
and a civilian, turned out a one-man letter-writing campaign for the
Navy, opposing the Air Force. He had written Senators opposing
appropriations for the B-36 bomber. He had even written to the
President. Some question had arisen whether the campaign was really
a one-man hobby, as he claimed, or that of a full-fledged lobby.
The Chicago Tribune had reported that the President
had directed Governor Earl Long of Louisiana to get his name back on
the ballot or face prosecution for income tax evasion. Actually, the
Governor already had a tax case which was insubstantial and not
subject to criminal prosecution. And the President never threatened
him.
Senator Owen Brewster of Maine had spent over $1,750 of
taxpayer money to reprint and circulate his speech attacking Howard
Hughes.
New Jersey lawyers had petitioned the Justice Department to
investigate the charges made by Mr. Pearson against HUAC chairman J.
Parnell Thomas of New Jersey.
The President had received a grand reception at San Antonio.
But a few weeks earlier, things might have been different, as the
Texas delegation had split between support and bitter opposition
until finally rallying around the President rather than the
Dixiecrats. Even Wright Morrow, who had been his worst opponent,
greeted the President with open arms.
Representative George Bender of Ohio charged that black
veterans of the war were forced to live in "filth and neglect"
at the veterans hospital at Tuskegee, Ala., with mental and general
patients forced to live together on the same wards and only ten
psychiatrists to care for 1,500 mental patients.
Mr. Pearson adds that white veterans were forced to live in
bad conditions at the V.A. Hospital in Perry Point, Md., which also
should be investigated.
Joseph Alsop, in St. Paul, Minn., tells of the Republican
Party in Minnesota being controlled by Roy Dunn, State Legislator,
who had wrested the grip back from the Farmer-Labor Party in the
1930's after the latter had taken over the state. He catered to the
whims of the farmers and the businessmen, causing labor therefore to
dislike him.
The group of young people brought into GOP politics by Harold
Stassen when he had been Governor were losing strength in the party
as Mr. Stassen had left Minnesota to become president of the
University of Pennsylvania following his defeat for the Republican
nomination in 1948. Mr. Dunn and the businessmen in consequence were
recapturing control of the party in the Legislature.
Mr. Dunn expected to carry Minnesota for Governor Dewey,
despite polls showing the President slightly ahead. He also expected
Senator Joseph Ball to beat Mayor Hubert Humphrey despite trailing
by an eleven point margin.
Mr. Dunn's favoring of the farmers and opposition to labor
and power placed him in a nearly opposite position to many Eastern
Republicans who favored labor and were conservative with farmers and
power, as Northwestern Republicans were favorable to power and
reclamation and the farmers while opposing labor.
The Congress had caused many farmers to have to sell their
large corn crop at less than parity by doing away with the
Government grain storage program which secured the parity price,
done at the behest of lobbyists.
Mr. Dunn had expressed that if the next Congress behaved as
had the 80th Congress with respect to the farmers and labor, then
the Republicans would lose the Congress in 1950 and the White House
in 1952.
James Marlow finds the strained relations with Russia
climaxing in Berlin for the simple reason that Russia was out to
spread Communism abroad the world and the U.S. was attempting to
block it. Russia's job would be easier if the West abandoned Berlin
and Germany.
The Achilles heel of the original four-power plan was that
the four military governors of each occupation zone would meet as
part of the Allied Control Council from time to time to try to work
out joint agreements on the four zones. But each commander had a
veto on any joint action. The result was that Russia proceeded to
handle the Eastern zone differently from the Western allies' administration of their respective zones.
Russia had used the veto power more than the other three commanders
combined.
DeWitt MacKenzie discusses the Berlin crisis and the referral
of it to the Security Council. The situation was grave, creating the
danger of war or at least the possible disintegration of the U.N.
The Moscow press had said that such a parting might occur,
notwithstanding the statement by Soviet Deputy Foreign Commissar
Andrei Vishinsky that Russia would not abandon the organization.
Mr. MacKenzie posits that there never had been a truly
"United" Nations. The Communists had used the
organization for propaganda and obstruction. There would be no great
concern expressed therefore if Russia and its satellites were to
depart. He says that such a schism would not necessarily create more
distance from the notion of "one world". Presently, the
idea was having a hard time anyway, as Communism and democracy did
not amalgamate any better than oil and water.
A letter writer from Fort Worth, Texas, says that Communism
could be summed up in the phrase, "Abolish all private
property." Communism created a state of perpetual fear, not
the Utopia which American Communists visualized. Communism brought
the highest to the lowest, while Christ brought the lowest to the
highest.
He urges therefore keeping America free and on God's side.
