Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that General George S. Patton had been critically injured in an automobile accident the previous day near Mannheim, Germany. He was described as partially paralyzed from a fractured neck vertebra. Though described as conscious and aware of his surroundings, the General's condition had markedly deteriorated since he had been first admitted to the hospital.

The accident had occurred at Bad Nauheim during the morning hours of Sunday as an Army truck pulled onto the autobahn on which the General's car was traveling, on the way to a pheasant hunting trip near Mannheim with his chief of staff, Maj. General Hobart Gay. General Gay and the driver, Pfc. Horace Woodring, were unhurt in the mishap.

General Patton would die from his injuries on December 21, 12 days following the accident.

George Tucker provides an exclusive interview with the German chief of sabotage within the Abwehr, Maj. General Erwin Lahousen, in which he provided the German intelligence assessment of both General Eisenhower and General Patton. The former was regarded as a great military leader, even superior to German generals, for his ability to put aside politics in favor of success in military operations. General Patton was seen as the best field commander among the American generals.

General Lahousen was to be a star witness at Nuremberg and had already taken the stand to establish the foundation for certain German intelligence documents showing that Hitler and the High Command had plotted the war from spring, 1938.

At Nuremberg, following the belated entry of a plea by ailing Ernst Kaltenbruner, formerly second in command of tthe Gestapo behind Heinrich Himmler, American prosecutors disclosed for the first time a German document dated March 5, 1941, signed by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, which indicated that the Nazis were trying to induce Japan to attack Singapore in spring, 1941, to bring Britain into the war and keep the United States out. It appeared that the Germans had no knowledge of the plan to attack Pearl Harbor at that time. Keitel urged the Japanese to attack American bases only if the U.S. could not be kept out of the war.

Other documents showed that on March 29 and April 5, 1941, Foreign Minister Joachim Ribbentrop, in his pied conversations in Berlin with Japanese Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka, had mocked the Japanese fears that American submarines stationed in the Philippines would pose a threat to any Japanese aggression.

The March 5 document, incidentally, was signed less than a fortnight before the March 18, 1941 death in New York City of Ulrich von der Osten, aka Julio Lopez Lido, a German Abwehr officer hit by a taxi, triggering fortuitous discovery by the FBI of documents in possession of the Kurt Ludwig spy ring, 32 of whom were eventually rounded up and arrested on the weekend of June 28-29, 1941, all with the exception of Ludwig, himself, who managed to remain on the lam until caught in the State of Washington in early August. A search of the hotel room in New York where Von der Osten had been staying found a detailed report on the defenses of Pearl Harbor and Hickam Field.

Thus, whether the Nazis, with German support staff in Japan during the months prior to Pearl Harbor, as had become public knowledge at the time, knew of the attack plan and whether Keitel simply and deliberately cloaked knowledge of the attack in feigned ignorance, or whether in fact, the Germans stoked the plan as agents provocateur, their modus operandi when present on foreign turf, necessitating subtler means than serving as principal boot-kickers, remains quite subject to debate.

General George C. Marshall, continuing his testimony before the joint Congressional committee investigating Pearl Harbor, stated that the G-2 intelligence assessment predicting a drive south by the Japanese had been accurate, even though the strike at Pearl Harbor had obviously not been foreseen. There had been no intent to invade at Pearl Harbor, only to strike and seek to cripple the U.S. Fleet for six months.

The General testified that he had agreed with President Roosevelt and Admiral Stark that if the Japanese were to strike in Thailand at the Gulf of Siam, as was thought would be the case and as turned out the case on December 7, then it meant war between the Japanese and both Britain and the United States as the move would put the Japanese at the back door to Singapore. Admiral Stark had sent a memorandum to the President on November 5, 1941 indicating that prospect.

Leo Szilard, principal of the Manhattan Project, testified to the Senate committee investigating atomic energy that the atomic bomb was delayed by eighteen months because of unnecessary secrecy imposed on the project by the Army. Each scientist was allowed to work only on parts of the project and was not allowed to discuss the work with scientists laboring on other parts. His best guess was that, without this stricture, the bomb might have been developed by spring, 1944. He also testified that Hitler could have produced the bomb within eighteen months had he realized its destructive force.

Without the Army's concern for secrecy and resulting pigeon-holing of tasks, would the bomb have been used in spring, 1944 against two German cities, thus not confining any untoward consequences to an island nation thousands of miles from the West? Would the scientists have convinced Roosevelt and Churchill, with Roosevelt then convincing Stalin, that the necessity of saving lives in Europe outweighed the risks that the nitrogen chain reaction might be set afoot to destroy the entire earth? If so, would the world be the same today?

Former Ambassador to China, General Patrick Hurley, continued his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, providing further details on his charge made Thursday, that Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson had wrecked American foreign policy, approved by President Roosevelt and former Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, a policy designed to thwart British monopolies in the Middle East and especially in Iran. General Hurley, former Secretary of War under President Hoover, claimed to have formulated the policy. He did not provide specifics as to how Undersecretary of State Acheson had wrecked the plan.

Perhaps, he should have consulted Ms. Luce.

Mr. Acheson had testified about a meeting with Ambassador Hurley in which the two nearly came to blows regarding General Hurley's assertion that a young assistant to Mr. Acheson had not seen military service and should be in the Army. General Hurley offered a different account of the meeting.

Air rescue squadrons comprised of 193 planes and 24 long-range bombers continued to look for the ill-fated and missing Flight 19, comprised of five Navy Avengers, which had disappeared on the late afternoon of December 5. In all, 27 men were killed in the mishap, 14 within the Navy planes and 13 aboard the rescue plane, also never found.

No shred of wreckage was ever discovered from any of the planes, leading to the numerous supernatural explanations for the loss, fueling the longstanding legends of the Bermuda Triangle. The most plausible explanation posited is that the planes flew off course in bad weather and became lost, following their squadron leader who apparently was not in good health that day, ran out of fuel, having reported late in the afternoon that they had but 75 minutes of fuel remaining, and ditched in the water within the strong currents of the Gulf Stream, quickly carrying away, as in a swiftly moving river, all remnants of the wreckage. The explosion seen that night from the Gaines Mills coincided most likely with the rescue plane having crashed.

John L. Lewis, in fulfillment of recent predictions by the columnists that he was going to return to his natural political fold, the Republican Party, while trying to split labor to his own advantage, lashed out at President Truman's plan for fact-finding committees and a 30-day cooling-off period prior to a strike, calling the plan an "evil, vile-smelling mess". In testimony before the House Labor Committee, the UMW head also found G.M.'s role in the UAW strike indefensible and dishonest, and the CIO role "stupid" for the bad timing of the strike. He believed that the strike could be resolved by the Government quickly if reasonable price increases were allowed manufacturers.

Meanwhile, the UAW counter-offered to Ford a plan whereby instigators of unauthorized strikes could be discharged. Ford had wanted a $5 per day penalty assessed against any member engaging in an unauthorized strike, unacceptable to UAW.

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover told the annual gathering of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, meeting in Miami, that loose youth and lax parents were to blame for rising criminality sweeping the country. The war had moved to the home front. "Lawlessness has taken on such proportions as to startle the imagination. The crime waves proclaimed in the daily press are not imaginary. They are real, they are bloody. If anything, the press is guilty of understatement rather than overstatement." He predicted that the roaring twenties scum would return to the streets without strict enforcement of the laws.

It was, of course, a favorite tactic of the Director, in order to preserve his tenure, which would last nearly half a century, to generate in the population as much fear of crime and criminals as he possibly could.

The Empty Stocking Fund, as reported by Freck Sproles of The News, had doubled since Friday, to $2,379.65. She includes two brief letters, one from a small child enclosing $3 so that the little girl on the front page could have a baby doll—apparently not realizing that the photos were deliberately posed, but that's okay—and the other from a couple in the hospital recovering from an automobile accident, sending in $2. If they could give, urges Ms. Sproles, then the campaign was worthwhile.

In quickly scanned juxtaposition, the Nazis in the dock at Nuremberg appear to be sharing a good laugh over the decidedly sad fate of a fourteen-year old boy in Detroit who would likely not make it to Christmas, his future truncated by the encroaching hand of death from a spinal injury which had gradually placed pressure on his brain, first cutting off sensation in his legs, then depriving him of sight, then his voice, and finally his hearing. He was able still to communicate, however, by tapping Morse Code onto his hand, learned in the Boy Scouts and from his younger sisters' toy telegraph key.

It's just like a Nazi to find that funny. Hear no evil...

A cold front moving in from Canada hit Charlotte, with morning lows expected for Tuesday at 25 degrees. Bundle up.

Incidentally, there is no edition on the microfilm for December 8, September 8 having somehow occupied the space instead.

On the editorial page, "The Churches Branch Out" tells of five churches, the Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Moravians, and Episcopalians, having banded together to provide for youth of the Myers Park area of Charlotte recreation facilities. The editorial found the project worthwhile to the youth of the community.

"No Greater Provocation" finds the criticism of OPA and its director Chester Bowles to be for the most part unwarranted, that Mr. Bowles was an honest and sincere businessman, not a career bureaucrat, who had taken the job to stem wartime and post-war inflation, and deserved credit for having done so. While some of his decisions appeared to involve poor judgment, on the whole his wisdom had proved sound and he deserved the thanks of his country. To remove price controls, as many favored, would be an invitation to calamitous inflation and the steadfast resistance by Mr. Bowles to pressures to do so, while not appreciated by many, was keeping the lid on inflation.

"Last of the Pentlands" remarks on the passing of Julia Wolfe, mother of Thomas Wolfe, the model for Eliza Pentland Gant, mother of Eugene Gant in Look Homeward, Angel. Ms. Wolfe had been 85 when she died in New York, having gone there to see about developing Look Homeward into a movie and seeking also to have produced three of her deceased son's unpublished plays. She had remarked in recent weeks that Tom would have been 45 had he lived, and she felt as though he were still alive. Thomas Wolfe had died of tuberculosis of the brain in October, 1938.

A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "Pickets on the Pavement", comments on four Communist Party pickets who paraded in front of the State Department, demanding the resignation of Secretary of State Byrnes for the imperialist policies they perceived to be occurring in China, demanding that the Marines be brought home.

The piece finds that amid the "Hurley-burly" accompanying the statements and charges of Ambassador Patrick Hurley anent the State Department, Secretary Byrnes probably remained well-insulated against the four pickets on the pavement in the cold of December in Washington.

Drew Pearson reports that former Postmaster General Frank Walker and Bernard Baruch had been working with the Japanese diplomats in Washington prior to Pearl Harbor to try to prevent war. The relationship had been disclosed by Japanese special envoy Kurusu, and confirmed by Mr. Walker and Mr. Baruch.

Marquis Childs looks at the loan terms which had been proposed for Great Britain, a loan of 3.75 billion dollars—though Drew Pearson says 4.4 billion—the equivalent of the expense of 15 days of modern warfare. The loan had been prepared by Secretary of the Treasury Fred Vinson, within six months to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and by Assistant Secretary of State Will Clayton, Texas cotton exchange partner. Both were practical men, not New Deal idealists, and so when the loan came before Congress, their pragmatism would help lend seriousness to the need for the loan, to aid in re-establishing world trade and in rebuilding Britain.

Samuel Grafton examines the continuing effort of OPA director Chester Bowles to maintain price controls, nearly in desperation. He had tried in increments releasing controls on certain items, with the result that, for instance, juke boxes had doubled in price, from $250 to $500 overnight, while oranges had gone to a dime apiece in the Midwest.

House and Senate Republicans wanted all price controls removed by February 15, as did the National Association of Manufacturers, without regard to the prospects of inflation.

There were a few businessmen who understood the import of inflationary prices, such as the San Francisco real estate tycoon who shuddered at the thought of his income increasing by $200,000 per year because of rents going from $45 to $125, should rent controls be abandoned.

Two critical dates lay ahead, the first being January 1, when the excess profits tax would end and manufacturers who had held back product to avoid it could then begin releasing their pent-up inventory into the marketplace. The second date was June 30, when price controls would expire unless renewed by Congress. Builders, for instance, were planning to begin building after that latter date, to maximize profits.

The Bowles policy of waiting until supply and demand were approximately equal before releasing price controls appeared the soundest national policy, much better than an arbitrary date for release of controls as advocated by some members of Congress and the N.A.M.

Otherwise, ten-cent oranges would just be the start of inflationary trends in every sector of the economy.

A letter to the editor assails North Carolina for having some of the highest taxes in the nation on businesses, scaring away industry. The editors quickly correct the letter writer's error, indicating that combined local and state taxes were actually among the lowest in the Southeast and compared favorably with the national average, which was why many industries were locating in the state.

Another letter supports the Student Legislative Assembly for its foresight in voting to admit the following year black students to the Assembly, despite the calls of Secretary of State Thad Eure that they reconsider the action as contrary to tradition. The action had been discussed in a News editorial the previous week. To cut off funding to the University or to abolish the Assembly or curtail student activities as a result, urges the author, would only retard development of the state and its young leaders of the future.