The Charlotte News

Monday, November 28, 1949

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the American merchant ship Sir John Franklin reported that a Chinese Nationalist warship had fired on it 12 times the previous Friday off Shanghai while proceeding to Woosung. No one was injured. The Nationalists claimed violation of their blockade at Shanghai and other Communist-held ports, which the U.S. and other maritime nations had not recognized. The incident was similar to that involving another merchant ship, the Flying Cloud, a few days earlier when it was fired upon after being ordered by the Chinese to halt and disregarding the instruction.

Before the U.N. political committee, the U.S. demanded that the U.N. appeal to all nations, including Russia, to stay out of the situation in China and let it resolve its own problems. Nationalist China had charged Russian interference in the internal affairs of the country on behalf of the Communists.

Meanwhile in China, the Nationalists claimed that they had stabilized the front less than twenty miles from the doomed provisional capital at Chungking. Officials were planning to flee the following day.

David Lilienthal, outgoing chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, disclosed that it had developed plans for an atomic breeder reactor to supply atomic materials for peacetime applications, as powering ships and airplanes. The designers were confident that the plan would work. AEC was beginning immediate construction of a test facility. The plans would utilize the isotope U-238, far more plentiful than directly fissionable and scarce U-235, and thorium, even more plentiful than U-238, to produce fissionable materials.

Mr. Lilienthal laughed at the suggestion that Colorado Senator Ed Johnson had engaged in a "nefarious plot" to reveal nuclear secrets when he had spoken on a November 1 television broadcast, as discussed the previous day in a report on the President beefing up national security surrounding nuclear and other secrets. But Mr. Lilienthal also said that Senator Johnson appeared to be talking out of turn when he claimed that the U.S. had developed an atomic bomb six times more powerful than that which fell on Hiroshima in 1945.

In Berlin, the British-licensed newspaper Telegraf reported that 2,000 persons had perished from fire, smoke and gas in a uranium mine fire in the Soviet zone of Germany in the Erz Mountains along the Czech border the previous Thursday. Only 300 miners were reported to have been rescued. About half the full complement of workers, 5,000, were believed to have been in the mine at the time. American-sponsored radio said that it also had received such a report from a reliable source. American intelligence, however, had not heard of the report. The Telegraf also reported that 300 miners had drowned several weeks earlier when a uranium mine flooded.

During his informal visit to the U.S., Field Marshal Viscount Bernard Montgomery visited with General Eisenhower. Afterward, Field Marshal Montgomery said that they had discussed the weather: "When the weather is bad you want an umbrella—a military umbrella." General Eisenhower declined comment.

In the Pacific Northwest, floods were threatening in the wake of violent wind and rain storms, killing fourteen persons across the northern half of the nation, expected to reach the Great Lakes region. Washington state was hardest hit with hundreds of families rendered homeless.

John Scali—prominent player in the Cuban Missile Crisis as an authorized courier of White House information to a Russian back-channel acquaintance—reports that the President said in a report to Congress that the Communist guerrilla threat in Greece had been nearly eliminated by the Greek Government operating with American military and financial aid, totaling 472.3 million dollars. Most of the Communists, said the President, had fled into Albania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia, abandoning most of their equipment as they went. He said that only if the foreign sponsors of the guerrillas gave even more support than earlier could they revive. The President attributed the success primarily to "the courage of the people and fighting men of Greece." The report also disclosed that 152.3 million dollars had been spent in U.S. aid to Turkey's armed forces. Aid to both countries formed the initial thrust of the Truman Doctrine, first enunciated in March, 1947, a year after the "iron curtain" speech of Winston Churchill at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo.

The President arrived in Key West for a three-week vacation.

The cost of living dropped in October to its July level, thanks to lower food costs.

In Washington, a jury was selected in the trial of Congressman J. Parnell Thomas, former HUAC chairman, for allegedly defrauding the Government through a scheme of pocketing the salaries of bogus staff. His former secretary was on trial with him for aiding and abetting the scheme.

In York, S.C., a jury was selected in the second trial of Nathan Corn for murder of his former employer, George Beam. He had been convicted once and sentenced to death only to have the South Carolina Supreme Court reverse. He had been convicted, according to the Court, principally on circumstantial evidence. The prosecution claimed that he killed Mr. Beam to hide shortages in Mr. Corn's accounts.

In Birmingham, England, a Bishop of the Church of England, Dr. E. W. Barnes, recommended, in a speech before the Rotary Club, that Britain undertake to sterilize the mentally unfit, which he estimated to comprise ten percent of the country, and make birth control a national policy. He said that the island otherwise would become dangerously overcrowded. He claimed that the British Labor Government had made the situation worse than ever. Not only was the country overpopulated, he said, immigrants were pouring into England from British possessions, as the West Indies, to enjoy the benefits of the welfare state. He wanted to limit immigration. He favored medically controlled euthanasia for defective babies, claiming that 90 percent of feeble-mindedness was inherited. While he believed in getting rid of the slums and helping the poor, he did not want the welfare state to spoil rather than improve the quality of the population.

Poor man. His parents were a bit daft.

In Raleigh, Governor Kerr Scott, in two addresses, one at N.C. State and the other at a press conference, said, in reference to the recent meeting of the Southern Governors in Biloxi, Miss., where states' rights were a main topic of discussion, that states' rights carried with them states' responsibilities. He said that the Dixiecrats had sought to make the meeting a rally for the states' rights cause. He also said that there was much speculation at the conference regarding the role James Byrnes would play in the states' rights cause, if, as expected, he would run for Governor in 1950. If the Democrats rejected states' rights, then the Dixiecrats would seek to have Mr. Byrnes run on their ticket.

Countess Edda Ciano, daughter of Benito Mussolini, said that she was born out of wedlock by several years. She said that she had known for several years that she had been a bastard. Her father was an SOB who wound up an Esso Duce Benito Finito.

In Hollywood, police arrested actor Dean Hall, who made his living by barking as a dog in movies, on suspicion of public drunkenness. He then kept his fellow prisoners up all night with his 50 varieties of dog howls.

On the editorial page, "When Will Sex Crimes Stop?" recounts three recent front-page stories involving the finding of young children and even an infant as rape-murder victims, two in California, one in Idaho, prompting many parents across the country to keep their children indoors.