Tuesday, October 9, 1945

The Charlotte News

Tuesday, October 9, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that President Truman announced at a press conference at Reelfoot Lake in Western Tennessee that the secret of the atomic bomb would not be shared with other nations, stating that no ally had asked for the secret anyway. He would ask Secretary of State Byrnes to engage in discussions with Britain and Canada, whose representatives had participated in the Manhattan Project, anent outlawing its use.

The President rejected the notion being bantered about in newspapers that the London Foreign Ministers Conference had been a failure, stating that there had been no clash of Russian and American interests and that each country was being badly misrepresented in the other because of differences in language and consequent difficulty of interpretation of nuance.

Part of the difficulty, we suggest, might have arisen from the change from the upstate New York soft "r" and occasionally elongated "o" of President Roosevelt to the Midwestern flat of President Truman. Then there was the Tennessee gentleman's brogue of Mr. Hull versus the more stentorian South Carolinian of Mr. Byrnes, with the entry in between of the non-accented Mr. Stettinius. Russia may have various accents also, but, to American ears, we assure, it all simply sounds Russian. One can readily discern, in any event, why there might have been issues which arose out of the rapid changes in personnel in America during the prior year.

Secretary of War Robert Patterson and Major General Leslie Groves, Army director of the Manhattan Project, advised Congress of their belief that strict control needed to be placed on the atom bomb to assure against its use for world destruction. They advocated the establishment of a commission to plan for the control and development of atomic energy.

In Tokyo, American soldiers stood guard over 250 million dollars worth of Japanese gold, silver, and platinum reserves, part of which had been in the possession of the Japanese Army and Navy, who had not accounted for any of it since 1937. Part of it belonged to the Bank of Thailand and the Bank of Indo-China, as well as to Italy, Korea, and China.

New Premier Shidehara, long an opponent of Japanese military aggression and a liberal, refused to be drawn into a press discussion of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor or any other aspect of the war. He stated, in contrast to his predecessor, Baron Higashi-Kuni, that he believed the Allies had every right to arrest and try Japanese war criminals.

In Paris, Pierre Laval, following an hour of deliberations, was convicted of treason and sentenced to death, a foregone conclusion. Laval was still in the basement dungeon refusing to attend the proceedings. The same tribunal comprised of twelve members of Parliament and twelve of the Resistance had, during the summer, found Marshal Henri Petain guilty of treason and sentenced him to death with recommended mercy, a sentence which General De Gaulle would commute to life imprisonment. There would be no commutation, however, for M. Laval as he did not intend to plead for mercy. After attempting to poison himself prior to the execution, he would be shot by a firing squad on October 15.

In Jerusalem, about 50,000 Jewish workers left their jobs for five hours and gathered in protest of the British policy limiting immigration of Jews.

In Santa Ana, California, Army Brig. General Arthur Easterbrook, who commanded the base which found the previous week some 40 former prisoners of war on K.P. duty, had designated the previous day as "Gripe Day". Most complaints from 550 enlisted men centered around slow discharge, some with as many as 150 points against the 70 needed.

As the Queen Elizabeth pulled into port in New York with 15,000 returning troops, longshoremen walked off the job, refusing to unload the ship, necessitating that the unloading be accomplished by 135 Army troops.

Admiral Chester Nimitz was greeted by a tickertape parade in New York as some 2.75 million people turned out to see the Pacific Navy commander.

General Jonathan Wainwright continues with his second installment of his ordeal in captivity for over three years following the fall of Corregidor in May, 1942. He continues discussing his assumption of command of the forces on Bataan, formerly headed by General MacArthur, as the latter, under President Roosevelt's strict orders, left Corregidor for Australia on March 11. This date, General Wainwright stresses the early days of his command in Manila, beginning in late 1940, with 7,500 men under him, most of whom were Filipinos.

By spring of 1941, he believed war with Japan was inevitable. During the winter of 1941, the War Department had directed that all dependents of military personnel be evacuated from the Philippines; the Navy did likewise.

War Plan Orange, No. 3, called for use of the Philippine division and the Philippine Army to try to halt an invasion by the Japanese, failing which would require them to fight a delaying action as all forces pulled back to Bataan, where a six-month siege would take place, during which time U.S. support could be deployed. Both General Wainwright and General MacArthur viewed the plan as defeatist, but could do nothing to alter it.

The World Series between the Tigers and Cubs, after six consecutive days of play, including a change of venue after the third game from Detroit to Chicago, took a day off before the final and decisive game, to be played Wednesday.

On the editorial page, "Left to Right" comments on the end of the first six months since President Truman had come into office April 12, that he was beginning to be attacked by the right, though not with the vehemence hurled at President Roosevelt.

Despite the evidence, based on general liberal support of Mr. Truman and some conservative criticism, the piece finds him not looking so liberal, that he only appeared so in contrast to the most conservative Congress in years. He was following the trends of his predecessor and the country at large, but not leading. The country historically became conservative as it became prosperous.

The conservatives had been unsuccessful in trying to cast Mr. Truman in the mold of a Red, as they attempted with FDR.

"For the Future" discusses the statement by former Secretary of Commerce Jesse Jones that the South was set to have a sustained period of growth in industry. But it largely would depend, he thought, on how the Government disposed of war plants in the South.

Even so, with these war plants being highly specialized for the most part for manufacture of munitions, it would prove an expensive process to reconvert them to civilian production. So, regardless of how these plants were disposed of, it would not necessarily enable great new industry in the South. The answer still lay in local planning.

"The Sentence" comments on a statement by General Eisenhower to Dutch journalists that there was "reason to believe" that Hitler was still alive. A group of journalists had gone to Patagonia to try to run down some of the stories of Hitler sightings.

It was better, thought the piece, that Hitler be left dead. For alive, he would only create confusion to the Nuremberg Tribunal, and, moreover, if he was still alive skulking in the brush of Argentina, he deserved the fate, to live indefinitely with his memories.

"Monstrosity" takes issue with the newest merged word, "know-how", finding it without utility and less suited to its meaning than other substitutes such as experience, insight, learning, proficiency, etc.

The previous day, the President had used it in connection with the atomic bomb, thus fusing it with the American consciousness, viz., "the American know-how that enabled us to manufacture it" would be kept from the rest of the world.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Representative Joe Martin of Massachusetts trying to insert an amendment into the reorganization bill which would mandate at least a 25 percent reduction in administrative costs of any agency impacted by reorganization. But Congressman John Cochran of Missouri objected that there would be no bill if such a provision were included.

After the Republicans assured that it was expressed only as a hope, not a mandate, Congressman Clare Hoffman of Michigan noted his consternation at the Democrats not joining with the Republicans to make such a cut when President Roosevelt had come into office in 1933, promising such cuts in government spending.

Drew Pearson discusses the London Foreign Ministers Conference, says it was doomed from the start, saddled with tension such that no productive session occurred. The British knew what they wanted out of it as did the Soviets, but the British were unwilling to parley for what they wanted. The United States, as usual, came unprepared with demands, except to insist on democracy for the Balkans, alienating the Russians. Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin was brusque and rude much of the time; V. M. Molotov engaged regularly in sarcasm, as when he stated, similar to a radio quip published a couple of weeks earlier, that Mr. Byrnes wanted democracy in the Balkans before he achieved it in South Carolina.

Potsdam had determined that the conference should concern itself only with treaties for Italy, Bulgaria, and Rumania. But the Russians came prepared to negotiate a myriad of issues beyond this scope, causing Mr. Bevin and Mr. Byrnes to chastise V. M. Molotov whenever he exceeded the designated limits.

A treaty was established for Italy, but reparations ran into problems because the U.S. refused to go along with large reparations desired by Britain and Russia as the U.S. would ultimately be footing the bill. That issue was left unresolved.

Dissension developed when Molotov sought to establish a sole Russian trusteeship over Tripoli, in contrast to the British and American desire that all Italian colonies be placed under international trusteeships. Mr. Molotov indicated that Russia would make concessions to the British and Americans in the Balkans in exchange for such a sole trusteeship over Tripoli. But Mr. Byrnes refused to be dragged into such a trade.

Problems also arose regarding Russia's desire for control of the Dardanelles to enable a sea route into the Mediterranean. Mr. Byrnes and Mr. Bevin objected to the terms the Russians sought to impose on Turkey to achieve this goal. Russia then brought up British control of the Suez Canal and American control of the Panama Canal, angering both Bevin and Byrnes. Molotov argued that the Dardanelles were no more the business of America and Britain than the Panama Canal and the Suez were to Russia.

Russia also angered Mr. Byrnes by demanding a share in the occupation government of Japan for the critical help by the Russians in the latter six days of the war. Mr. Byrnes denounced the suggestion for fully thirty minutes until Mr. Molotov nearly left the room.

When the United States asserted its right to Navy bases in the Pacific, Russia demanded Paramushiro in the Kuriles to the north of Japan.

In all, the three-week conference had been a setback to world peace. The United States suffered for lack of preparation. Issues pertinent to Italy were not resolved and those relevant to the Balkans were likewise not settled.

Marquis Childs remarks on the return home of Admiral Nimitz to throngs of admirers. But when the last of the parades passed, there still would remain the issue of defining the role of the Navy in American military life. It would be determined by the security of the country, not by tradition. The Marines were concerned that they would lose their identity in a merger of the armed forces under a Department of Defense.

There was a body of opinion in Congress which wanted the United States to take full title to all Pacific islands which now had an American base. Look Magazine publisher John Cowles had returned from a 20,000-mile tour of the Pacific, reporting that the American people were not aware of the vast sums of money, running to the hundreds of millions, being spent to make permanent bases out of temporary war facilities in the Pacific.

Mr. Childs finds the expenditure all the more extraordinary with the advent of the atomic bomb, which he believed would render these bases obsolete.

Admiral Nimitz and Admiral Raymond Spruance, commander of the Fifth Fleet, both understood the inherent difficulties associated with trying to establish an empire in the far-flung Pacific. It was primarily the isolationists who favored this course of expansion. Their imperialism was dangerous in an age of atomic weaponry.

He concludes that the system of defense had to be strictly consistent with security needs, not based on "traditional flourishes".

Samuel Grafton discusses the troubles with Russia, that the rift had developed in spite of the genuine desire by the Russians to effect a working relationship with the West. But Russia was also not prepared to allow true democracy to govern the countries within its sphere of influence in the Balkans. Russia wanted a world organization but also wanted a kind of Big Three organization to control the world organization, unacceptable to the West.

Yet, the alternative to getting along with Russia was unacceptable. He predicts that it would take a long time to form a relationship with the Russians which would not be strained. It was a problem of many decades and was not dependent on particular persons in power in any of the countries.

A letter writer echoes the sentiment of several North Carolina newspaper editorials reprinted the previous month at the passing of Tom Jimison on September 11, that a State Hospital at Morganton be named in his honor. The author provides high praise to the letters, humility, and humanity of Mr. Jimison, describing him as a genius who genuinely sought the betterment of humanity.

Another letter writer objects to the advice given by syndicated advice columnists Dorothy Dix and Dr. George Crane regarding a woman holding onto her husband. No woman, the letter writer says, would want a man around who was sex-crazy and had to be cajoled to stay at home, rather than cudgeled, as he ought. She accuses Dr. Crane of giving bad advice, advising women to go to lengths to keep such a man around. She felt he should stick to issues of character and not write about sex.

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