The Charlotte News
Wednesday, October 10, 1945
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State James Byrnes announced that the United States had called for a Far Eastern advisory commission to meet October 23 in Washington, with Russia, Britain, Canada, China, France, Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the Philippines included. Britain also wanted India invited. The Big Four had accepted the proposal by early September. Russia wanted a joint control council established for Japan prior to the creation of this commission, requiring some shift in the power presently held by General MacArthur. Mr. Byrnes stated that he did not favor such participation and that there was no intention of altering the role of General MacArthur.
In Tokyo, 600 Japanese Communists with Red banners and Korean independence flags jammed traffic before General MacArthur's headquarters, in celebration of the release of Japanese political prisoners, as ordered by the General by this date. The Communists wanted abolition of the throne and had passed by the Imperial Palace turning their backs to it rather than bowing, in defiance of tradition.
In Buenos Aires, Vice-President Juan Peron was forced to resign by the Army and Navy. The Navy was demanding that the entire Government resign and allow the Supreme Court to govern. General Farrell, Fascist dictator, remained President, but was taking orders from General Eduardo Avalos, commander of the Campo de Mayo garrison and personal enemy of Peron, once his friend.
In Washington, General George C. Marshall, in his biennial report to the Secretary of War, recommended that the United States maintain a sufficient regular Army, National Guard, and reserve such that it could mobilize four million men within a year. He warned that new weaponry could subject major American cities to attack from thousands of miles away. He indicated that the State Department favored adoption of universal military training to accomplish the goal of preparedness.
The number of idle workers fell by 42,000, to 418,000, following settlement of a three-state strike of textile workers at the print and dye plants of New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. The settlement entailed a ten-cent wage increase for men and a five-cent increase for women.
In Paterson, that's just the way things go.
The number of workers idle had risen as a result of the coal strike increasingly impacting the steel industry. There appeared some light at the end of the tunnel, however, in the coal dispute.
In Burbank, 200 sheriff's deputies surrounded and arrested 300 pickets at the entrance to Warner Brothers. No new violence was reported. Thus far, 111 persons had been injured in prior confrontations with police since the previous Friday.
General Jonathan Wainwright continues his series with the third installment regarding his captivity in Japanese prisoner of war camps after the fall of Corregidor in May, 1942. He explains that in September, 1941, he asked General MacArthur for the most dangerous command in the Philippines and so was assigned to command Northern Luzon. He was to wait to assume the command, however, until completion of plans for December maneuvers.
But, on November 25, General MacArthur told him to skip the maneuvers and assume his command forthwith, within a couple of days. (It was then that General MacArthur had been alerted by General Marshall by telephone that an attack on the Philippines could come at anytime, that diplomatic negotiations in Washington were likely to fail.)
General MacArthur wanted to see General Wainwright in Manila before he went north. The General told him at the meeting that he would likely have until April to train his 7,500 Filipino troops in offensive tactics. General Wainwright labored under the assumption, erroneously, that General MacArthur believed that there would not be an invasion before April because he had no contrary information from Washington.
General Wainwright, having been out of touch since May, 1942 until mid-August, obviously had not been brought up to speed on this critical point. All of the command structure in the Army and Navy and in the Administration believed that the attack by Japan, appearing inevitable by the late fall of 1941, would first hit the Philippines because of proximity. Again, no one in their right mind assumed the Japanese at that time would have been so suicidal as to risk virtually their entire Fleet on an operation 4,000 miles from Japan at Pearl Harbor, given the need then to escape and make it back to Japan unscathed. Nor did anyone assume it even possible to accomplish in the first instance. Such an armada had never been floated over such a long distance.
General Wainwright assumed his command at Stotsenburg, 65 miles north of Manila, on November 28. General Wainwright asserted that to train a division properly took a year and so, laboring under the assumption that he would have four months to train the Filipinos, was provided cold comfort at best.
At Wrigley Field
Where the goat was by this point, we could not say.
On the editorial page, "Freedom" comments on the release of the housing price ceiling of $8,000 and the limit on borrowing. It doubted the change would remedy the serious housing shortage in the country, even if many homeowners might seek larger digs now that the war was over, leaving behind older houses, ostensibly for returning servicemen and displaced war workers to occupy. For that housing promised to be at ridiculously inflated prices.
In Charlotte, the bungalow which sold in 1940 for $6,000 now went for $12,000, with the price still increasing. It was simply the result of the law of supply and demand at work, with demand high and supply limited.
Realtors saw the remedy in letting the market blow itself out, until prices fell. But that would adversely impact those who would buy toward the latter stages of the boom at high prices and wind up with depreciated values, below even the principal on the mortgage.
The remedies, Federal low-cost housing or continued price controls, seemed unlikely to occur. And so the country would probably stumble along on a program of prosperity through inflation, just as in the boom times in Florida in the 1920's.
"Red vs. White" suggests that there was now an editorial tendency to regard the London Foreign Ministers Conference as something other than the failure it had obviously been. Secretary Byrnes was being applauded for taking a tough stand against the Russian demands, based on the belief that all of those demands were unjustified, in turn originating from the anti-Russian prejudice in the country, evil versus good,
Much of the citizenry believed that armed conflict with the Russians was inevitable, and the Government appeared quietly to be preparing for such an eventuality. Such a policy had underlain the President's decision not to share the atomic bomb secret with any of the Allies, save Great Britain.
At the same time, Dr. Irving Langmuir of General Electric chillingly told a Senate committee that, unless controls were placed on atomic energy, by 1965 or 1975, it would be possible to push a button in Russia and kill everyone in the United States.
Of course, his time curve was overly optimistic, as the first Russian ICBM was successfully tested in 1957
President Truman was sincerely working for better relations with the Soviets as he believed that civilization could not survive without such rapprochement. But he was being resisted on all sides by those committed to the belief that the world could not for long contain both the Soviet Union and the United States. In stating that there was no conflict with Russia, only miunderstanding, the President had contradicted everything Secretary Byrnes had reported to the Senate.
The effort to minimize the differences might smooth some ruffled feathers but did nothing to ameliorate the problem, that Americans fundamentally distrusted Russia and the Russians fundamentally distrusted America. That left two choices, either dispel that mutual distrust through the U.N. or make an armed truce through the U.N.
It would take 17 more years from this month in 1945, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, for that mutual mistrust to begin to dissipate. But it was only a beginning, a close shave against what might have been the end, had it not been for an astute President and Cabinet, unwilling to accept as easy alternatives the military's recommended plans for invasion of Cuba, an operation which almost inevitably would have led to nuclear exchange, the World War II cowboys of the Joint Chiefs notwithstanding.
Not letting the military any longer boss the White House, however, we posit, also led, at least in part, to the President's assassination in Dallas 13 months later. The other part was in the realm of Civil Rights. Those parts conjoined in certain parties, and those are the most probable ultimate culprits.
"No Help" discusses the effort of the American Cotton Manufacturers Association to use the Japanese occupation to get rid of a chief ompetitor in Japan. The Association advocated elimination of the panese cotton industry, contending that the Japanese historically had stolen textile designs, reproducing them with cheap labor, enabling unfair competition on the world market. The Association recommended that any such industry should therefore be confined to the home islands.
The only problem with the argument was that shutting down Japanese exports could lead to another starved nation, dependent for sustenance on the United States. Both Germany and Japan needed to be led back into the community of nations to avoid such consequences, and developing sound economies was a required step in that process.
So the cotton manufacturers' idea was not one conducive to economic independence of Japan for the future.
"Cheerful Note" finds solace in the perceived signal that the war really was over by the announcement of the spring fashion colors for women: Gay Chartreuse (like Clock
"This is the sort of news that makes us feel better. Leaves us, in fact, with a sort of festive fuchsia glow."
Well, if memory serves, there was some comment along these lines, perhaps on skirt lengths and the shortage of material, deriving from the unspoken signal of fashions near the start of the war. So, it comes now full circle.
As we know from the latter half of the 1960's, those of us who were of age to be in the know, there are benefits to warfare and consequent shortages.
And you probably thought, from listening to him discuss matters in 1958 with Mike Wallace, that Harry Ashmore would be, if intelligent and informative, also dry and matter of fact.
The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Representative Robert Rich of Pennsylvania speaking in favor of the reorganization bill, with Clare Hoffman of Michigan standing opposed. Mr. Rich argued that Congress would not undertake the necessary cutting of Government waste and so the President should be given the free hand.
Congressman Bob LaFollette of Wisconsin stated that he was not willing to admit that Congress could not be trusted to undertake the task.
Mr. Rich was convinced by the fact of the lobbying efforts during the previous ten years that no such extensive revision could succeed with Congress as its overseer, that the present attempt at reorganization was the last chance for the Government to save itself from policies of spending to bring about prosperity.
Congressman Walter Judd of Minnesota suggested that when the Reichstag had lost faith in itself, it had given its powers over to Hitler in 1933.
Drew Pearson discusses the UAW and its internal division between president R. J. Thomas and vice-president Walter Reuther, the latter eager to replace the former, even if it would take strikes to accomplish it. Mr. Reuther headed the G.M. section of the union and thus wielded substantial power with the threat of a strike. Mr. Reuther realized that he did not yet have the backing of enough of the 22-man board of the union to make a successful bid for the presidency.
The men differed fundamentally on strike strategy, Mr. Thomas favoring postponement of strikes until the following spring when the Big Three manufacturers would have their assembly lines fully operational, thus affording the opportunity to strike at each one in seriatim and thereby play one off the other in competition for continued production. But Mr. Reuther wanted a G.M. strike at once.
The column next reports of a resolution being put forth in the House by Representative Frank Hook of Michigan to end the House Un-American Activities Committee. The Judiciary Committee had refused to act on it.
An amendment to the bill increasing the price of oil tankers which the Government was selling to oil companies, sponsored by Representative, and future Senator, Henry Jackson of Washington, had passed the House, saving an estimated 100 to 150 million dollars by charging the oil companies 25 percent more for the tankers. Congressman Ellsworth Buck of New York had sought defeat of the amendment without disclosing to his colleagues that he owned considerable oil stock.
Finally, he reports that Assistant Secretary of State Bill Benton had finished his plan for the first peacetime propaganda agency in the country, about to be presented to Secretary Byrnes. It contemplated about a thousand employees and a budget of 20 to 25 million dollars. It would work with the major news agencies to pacify them, to make its acceptance more palatable.
Marquis Childs discusses President Truman's rigorous daily work habits, beginning at 8:00 and pacing interviews on clockwork schedule, unlike FDR who took his time with each person he saw. In further contrast, President Truman openly met with those seeking his attention and had been able to capitalize on the refreshed atmosphere in Washington following the death of the President and the end with it of much of the animosity directed toward him. But that honeymoon was now past. President Truman now had to make tough decisions which inevitably would prove divisive.
As the President spoke upon the completion of the last TVA dam at Gilbertsville, Ky., the Congress remained at odds over the authority of the TVA, whether independent, as the bill had designed it, or subject to Congressional oversight as sought by Senator Kennneth McKellar of Tennessee, Senate president pro tem and, informally, acting vice-president.
The Chattanooga Times had editorialized against oversight, challenging that 550,000 customers now were buying cheap electricity and using twice as much as they had prior to TVA. The number of manufacturing jobs between 1933 and 1940 in the valley had increased by 53.5 percent, whereas there had been in the same period only a 30 percent increase nationally. The increase in wholesale and retail trade also substantially outpaced the national average.
Mr. Childs suggests that TVA might prove a bridge between the opposing sides of the political divide, as many of Mr. Truman's friends, as Senator McKellar, were opposed to its independence, while many others knew firsthand of its great benefits to the people.
Dorothy Thompson suggests that the rift between General Eisenhower and General Patton regarding General Patton's flouting of the de-Nazification policy on the premise of maintaining local efficiency through Nazi burgomeisters, leading to Patton's relief from command of the Third Army and transfer to command of the Fifteenth Army, engaged solely in research, was emblematic of the entire problem with the occupation of Germany thus far.
General Walter Bedell Smith had objected on the basis of inclusion of ultra-conservatives in the posts, presumably on the assumption that Nazism was a conservative dogma.
Ms. Thompson differs, stating that there were a number of German conservatives who opposed the Nazis, Karl Goerdeler, leader of the German underground, being one. Thousands of German Catholics and Protestants likewise had opposed the Nazis on the ground that it broke with tradition, negated religion, was a menace to the family, constituted but a revolution of nihilism.
She posits therefore that eliminating conservatives from posts was going too far, that it embroiled the military occupation government in politics. In Berlin, there was an effort to support private enterprise against socialism and that, too, involved the occupation forces in politics. Many conservative Germans believed in socialism, as capitalism was criticized by the Catholic hierarchy, and Hitler had hung those in sympathy with the Catholic conservative views.
Ms. Thompson stresses that she was not advocating a conservative government for Bavaria, just pointing out that it should not be confused with de-Nazification and that Germans should be left to determine their government otherwise. For the present, the local administrator simply implemented the military government orders. Thus, the natural tendency was to find those who were the most efficient administrators, regardless of politics. (Of course, she misses here a practical point in reality, that, while on paper it may be so, a local administrator, as anyone knows who has ever dealt with a Nazi in such a role—and the woods are full of them as we know from our personal experiences, don't we?—can manage to get away with a lot of informal policy-making of their own, even in a democracy, before being seriously challenged or fired.)
She points out that 90 percent of Germans claimed never to have been Nazis, a ridiculous assertion, the fact being, she further informs, that most Germans had been Nazis and fervent Nazis at one time or another. But most had also been enthusiastic supporters of the Kaiser or the Republic at other times.
Germans were also aware of the divisions among the Allies.
She concludes that General Eisenhower could not really de-Nazify Germany because only other ideas could supplant the old ideas and democracy could only flourish in freedom of thought and expression, not through impressed will and subservience. Force could render Germany harmless, but could not re-educate or reform the indoctrination of the previous twelve years and more.
"German reformation can only come from within, and through its competence to offer life and hope, within the realities of the world as it is—not degradation
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