Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Nationalist Central Government troops in China were being rushed from Chungking to Kweisui, capital of the Inner Mongolian Province of Suiyuan, to support the fighting against the Communist forces of Mao Tse Tung in Northern China. General Fu Tso-Yi, commander of the Government troops in the area, had accused Mao of sending his troops to invade Suiyuan. The Communists accused the United States of interfering in the struggle by providing aid to Chiang's Government.

Some observers speculated that the Communists might deliberately provoke an incident with U.S. Marines in the area, ordered not to participate in the conflict. A Marine officer described the situation as "walking a tightrope."

A conference between President Truman, Prime Minister Attlee, and Canadian Prime Minister MacKenzie King, to begin around November 11 in Washington, had been set to discuss the future of atomic energy. The three-power meeting was determined by the President as necessarily prefatory to any other discussions involving other Allies, such as Russia, France, and China. Canada and Britain necessarily had shared in the secret of the atomic bomb by virtue of having contributed several of the scientists and affording some of the groundwork in atomic theory.

Meanwhile, the House Military Committee approved the creation of a nine-man commission to control nuclear energy. The proposed bill would enable scientists freely to experiment with nuclear power, provided they did not do so on a scale which would constitute a national hazard.

In Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian President Getulio Vargas had been forced by the military the previous night to resign after fifteen years in office, and was now under guard at the presidential palace. A new President, Jose Linhares, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, had been installed per the Constitution after a President was removed—whether allowing for forcible military removal being not indicated.

Sr. Vargas, educated as a doctor and a lawyer, had been consistently friendly to the United States and had led Brazil into a declaration of war against the Axis, an important step, with Brazil potentially accessible to the Germans early in the war from Dakar in West Africa. He also afforded air and naval bases for the United States during the war. Brazil sent a division to fight in the war in Europe.

Brazil now joined Venezuela and Argentina in the parade of South American coups of the past fortnight. Juan Peron, in Argentina, however, had been deposed and then re-emerged as an even stronger Superman—with powers greater than even the rich Corinthian leather on which he sat.

Sr. Linhares declared at 2:30 a.m., no doubt before throngs of anxious Brazilians, that he hoped to fulfill the peoples' wishes. He was on record as favoring the previously announced December elections—which, for some reason, could not first take place before a coup.

The opponent in the election, Maj. General Eduardo Gomes, greeted with pleasure the ouster of Sr. Vargas.

The House overwhelmingly approved the tax cut of 5.92 billion dollars reached by the joint confreres earlier in the week; the proposal would now need to clear the Senate before being signed into law by the President, expected to occur by week's end.

The President was scheduled to make a speech this night to the nation via radio, in which it was believed he would propose that industry maintain prices and pay the equivalent of 48 hours of work for a 40-hour week, in other words that industry compromise the demand of labor for a 30 percent wage increase, to keep pace with the wartime 48-hour week which included overtime pay, by granting a 20 percent increase. Exceptions on price controls would be recognized in cases of hardship.

The House Military Committee voted to take away collective bargaining rights from any union violating a no-strike pledge contained in a contract, relieving the company from the contract and imposing civil liability on the union for the breach.

Ford workers informally appeared to be in support of a strike vote, to be taken formally on November 7, to join fellow auto workers at G.M. and Chrysler, who had already voted overwhelmingly to support a strike, not yet called by the UAW, pending negotiations.

It was announced that the three discharged workers at Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Co., resulting directly in 4,500 workers at the company walking off the job in late August, and in turn impacting Ford as the supplier of its wheels, causing some 40,000 Ford workers to remain idle, had been rehired after a settlement of the matter. The three men had been terminated after accusation that they had ejected a foreman from company property.

Ford had just rolled out its new 1946 models the previous week, without price tags for OPA not yet having established the price. The 1946 models were, of course, virtually identical to the 1942 models which had ceased production mid-year, in February, 1942. Chevrolet was expected very soon to follow, also without price tags. The other major competitor in the low-price field, Plymouth, the three of which accounted for 85 percent of the automobiles produced in the country, had not yet completed reconversion.

OPA had announced lifting of all rationing on automobiles but the manufacturers stated that it would not hasten production or delivery of new models to consumers. A backlog of perhaps 15 million old vehicles had piled up during the war, and thus consumer demand would outpace production for perhaps four or five years.

In Statesville, disappointment was being expressed at the decision of the President to cancel his scheduled Friday visit, the city having spent $30,000 in preparation for a parade and other events. Secretary of the Treasury Fred Vinson, within a few months to become Chief Justice, was still scheduled to appear, but his attendance was also in question, as was that of Secretary of War Robert Patterson. Members of Congress, most of whom had suddenly determined that they would not be able to attend the functions in Statesville, were attempting to prevail on the President to change his mind.

The twentieth installment in the series of articles by General Jonathan Wainwright, continued the story of the fall of Corregidor on May 6, 1942 at noon, by previously arranged surrender broadcast by the General ninety minutes earlier. The Japanese, however, despite the hoisting at noon of the white flag of surrender, continued to bombard the fortress until shortly before 1:00, even after the notice of surrender had been repeated at 12:30.

Occasional shelling continued for yet another hour as General Wainwright awaited a Japanese officer to come to Malinta Tunnel. A Marine sent to summon the officer returned with the message that the Japanese officer in charge would not come to the tunnel, insisted instead that General Wainwright come to him. The General and his aides then rode in a Chevrolet, enduring some enemy fire, to the post of the Japanese officer. As they alighted from the car, Japanese bombers hit Fort Hughes, over two hours after the time of surrender.

When the American entourage met with junior officers, the Japanese insisted that surrender would only be acceptable of all forces in the Philippines. General Wainwright then demanded to speak directly with General Homma. He was obliged and with some difficulty was able to proceed by boat across the strait to Bataan to meet with the opposing commander, albeit without a Japanese colonel accompanying him, the colonel having balked at the sight of continued shelling of the road to the dock, fearful that he would be hit by the shells of his own troops.

Gale force winds of 50 to 80 mph whipped Nome, Alaska, causing military police to declare martial law after flooding of Nome streets with a foot of water. The village of Unalakleet, north of Nome, was leveled by the storm.

It was reported from Atlanta that the weather for Halloween appeared partly cloudy, with no moon and mild temperatures, no rain in sight, all along the Eastern seaboard.

Apparently, in 2012, thanks to global warming which does not really exist, of course, if you happen to be a Nut or illiterate, the weather patterns of Nome have been transported, via Trans-Love Airways, to the bulk of the East Coast for this Halloween.

In Orange, Va., a bull named Ferdinand escaped from a truck headed for a stock market, took off in the direction of a department store china shop, and, after the door was shut barring his access, careered down the street, pranced into a hardware store, bought a couple of hoes and spades, and was generally headed for a flower bed when captured.

The October 30, 1937 News editorial page is now available for your perusal—hush-hush and on the QT.

On the editorial page, "Wrestling With the Demon" comments on the County Commissioners' concern about widespread arrests for drunkenness in the wake of the fair, circus, and auto races, producing record dockets in the courthouse. Many of the arrests had been for bottle-hurling assaults. It finds the concern appropriate but the method of control being considered, shutting off beer consumption, to be of questionable merit.

"The Differential" comments on the low wages in North Carolina relative to the rest of the nation, 46th in 1944, with an average weekly wage of $28.87, half of that in Michigan.

"Avoiding Trouble" finds anachronistic Senator Josiah W. Bailey's opposition to a plan favored by President Truman, the allowance of immigration of 100,000 Jews into Palestine, as deemed acceptable by the British as long as the United States would back up the commitment with force should there be an Arab uprising against it. Senator Bailey objected on the basis of keeping the country out of war.

"New Word" remarks on the use of the word genocide in Count 3 of the Nuremberg indictment of war criminals, a word now and for the decades since 1945 quite commonplace in parlance, but not in usage until that time. It had been coined by Duke law professor Rafael Lemkin, set forth in his book in 1944, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, defining it as "destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group".

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi responding to Senator James Mead of New York, the latter having condemned the action by the D.A.R. in banning from Constitution Hall in Washington the performance of Hazel Scott, pianist and singer, wife of Congressman Adam Clayton Powell of New York, based on her race.

Drew Pearson tells of a recent conference between Secretary of Labor Lewis Schwellenbach and Henry Ford II, in which the grandson of the auto magnate laid forth his liberal views on labor-management relations, assuring that the company was eager to put in place new policies with respect to labor to insure the sustenance of collective bargaining, a solid departure from its labor-baiting past. He was also amenable to a 23 percent wage increase for employees, up from the previously announced 15 percent compromise, rejected by the UAW at G.M. Mr. Ford had stated that he would not seek a price hike from OPA if the UAW were to accept the compromise arrangement.

A re-printed piece from Stars and Stripes, the Army newspaper, signed by 38 of the editorial staff of the publication, seeks the reasons for the shipping shortage to bring home troops from Europe, asking initially whether the strike in New York by longshoremen, now resolved, had been the primary source, along with Atlantic storms in combination with the transfer to the British of the Queen Elizabeth and the Aquitania, the three causes contended by the Army.

A letter writer compliments former Associate Editor Burke Davis for his series of articles recently on land in Mecklenburg County. The author suggests a study be made to achieve maximum productivity of farm land in the county.

Dorothy Thompson points out the irony of juxtaposition of two events, the speech to Congress by the President the previous week proposing universal military training and the signing by Secretary of State Byrnes of the formal protocol of deposit of the U.N. Charter, bringing the organization formally into being the previous Wednesday.

Yes, yes, yes. We could harmonize in song about that, we suppose.

But—Ms. Thompson appears to forget that the "peace-loving nations" of the earth had just fought a world war on two vastly different fronts against a massive set of enemies with the largest war machine to that point ever assembled as a cohesive bloc of nations, and had done so at the cost of millions on millions of lives in the Allied countries, heaped in heaps so high as to reach to Heaven itself in a plea for mercy, the entreaty of all the sane and rational, from further war.

So, Ms. Thompson, who could blame the leaders of your time for the way they behaved in reaction? Demonstrations of the atomic bomb in the desert of New Mexico with Hirohito present? Demonstrations for all the delegates of the San Francisco Conference?

Pray tell, to where did your memory, so intensely aware just a few months earlier of the utter vacuous nonsense of these untenable, even irrational, positions, disappear?

To us, with perfect hindsight in 2012, your words, perhaps, ring all too true and even prophetic from 1945. But, it is far more complex that that which you presented in 1945, yourself not yet aware of the forces to be unleashed in the world to come, far beyond in potential the relatively tiny explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the very real dangers posed by this new infernal technology, even as to its supposed peaceful purposes for energy, dangerous as it could possibly be and destructive of the health of the earth, not surprising as its origin was impelled, and forced upon the world ultimately, by the insistence of Hitler and the Nazis to develop it first.

But once Pandora had leaped from the Box, it was nearly impossible to put it back, still is.

We have asked the existential question previously: Did we all perish that fateful Saturday night of October 28, 1962, in a blinding flash, of which none of us here in this level of reality could fathom for its instantaneous disintegration of our bodies?

You merely blinked.

Are you dead?

Are we kidding ourselves? Insisting that nothing really happened, that we all awoke on Sunday morning and went to church and all was well in Mudville?

Strange things have happened since then, have they not, stranger than fiction?

How do you know?

Maybe, killing the President of the United States was not such a hot idea, after all.

Boo.