Florida and Arkansas had in November passed constitutional amendments barring the closed shop, but the Florida Supreme Court, faced with a challenge to the amendment by a shipyard which said it would have to close its doors if forced to obey the amendment, rendered the Sunshine version invalid by allowing the shipyard to continue to recognize the closed shop agreement.

Sewell Avery, chairman of Montgomery Ward, had defied the Government successfully on the basis that the WLB orders were only advisory and that he did not intend to abide by the order to recognize maintenance-of-membership agreements. The courts had upheld his position insofar as Government takeover of the plants, on the basis that Montgomery Ward was not involved in war industry but was instead only a catalogue sales company.

Recently, a Gastonia foundry had similarly defied WLB's order to recognize the closed shop, asserting that it would not fire workers for failing to maintain union membership.

The piece finds the litany to be an echo of the reluctance of the people to accept Government enforcement of unionization.

The Governor achieved more or less that which he had desired, moderate increases in salaries and services while preserving the status quo of surplus, setting it aside for post-war times when revenue would likely be considerably diminished. The first order of business had been to devote 55 million of the State's surplus to debt retirement, thereby saving annually several million dollars in debt service. Moderate achievements, albeit a start, in the state's hospital and medical care plans, increase in minimum mandatory schooling to the ninth grade, increase in teacher pay, and the putting off of a statewide referendum on Prohibition until after the war were all items passed during the Legislative Session.

The soldier relates of his experience in 1940 at the time of the German breakthrough into Belgium and France. In August, he had been demobilized, and lived in Paris with his wife and children until the liberation. He had worked in the underground intelligence service in 1941-42 and escaped arrest by being in the hospital when the Gestapo raided his house in February, 1943 and arrested twenty of his compadres. He participated with the FFI in its efforts to assist in the liberation of Paris.

Now, he had once again proudly donned the uniform of Free France, was in Paris working for the French liaison section, assisting the U.S. Army. He told of the continuing hard life in Paris but assured that patience was the watchword until transportation could be re-established and civil government fully restored following the end of the war.

The colonel, during the course of the fight with the ELAS, posing as an American-sponsored UNRRA relief worker, flying an American flag on his car, had slipped behind ELAS lines, ostensibly to discuss food distribution, the while seeking only intelligence on ELAS positions and strength. Eventually, his car, still bearing the American flag, hit an ELAS mine, causing his death.

Mr. Pearson points out that he had reported in his column in October, 1943 that the Greek guerilla factions uniformly rejected a return to Greece by King George and that if the Churchill-backed policy of having him do so was implemented, there would be trouble. Churchill's close advisers had so instructed the Prime Minister. Most of the Churchill Cabinet, he continues, had opposed the British policy of use of military force in Greece against the ELAS.

He repeats a previous statement of his column that Churchill had been helped by the Hambro Bank early in his public career and that the Greek Government had borrowed heavily from Hambro.

General Joseph Stilwell, having been brought home during the summer from Burma and China to become Chief of Army Ground Forces out of Washington, continued his reputation for friendliness to the common soldier. Recently, he had traveled across town in Washington to inquire of a realtor whether he could obtain one of the scarce apartments in town for the widow of one of General Stilwell's junior officers, recently killed in action. He got the apartment.

He stresses the contribution made to the Allied war effort by Italians operating both with the Allied armies in the southern and central portions of Italy and as guerillas in the north. The Italians had also contributed greatly behind the lines in re-establishing transportation and supply conduits, saving Allied manpower for fighting. Italians had used mules to carry munitions and supplies over practically impassable mountainous terrain to the foxholes of Allied troops.

Such cooperation thus performed in the war effort on behalf of the Allies, despite two decades of prior Fascist control, gave the prospect for Italian renascence when the north and south would be again reunited at war's end.

The objection that the smaller nations would be thereby enticed to borrow at will and speculate with the money, at the risk of loss and depletion of the fund, was met by the fact that these potential problems had been foreseen and contingently resolved at the conference. The borrowing nation would be forced to deposit its own currency, as a form of collateral, in the same amount as that borrowed, also to be limited to 25 percent of its contribution to the fund in any one year. Further, the borrower had to pay a service charge and use its gold to repay the fund before it could devote the base metal to other uses.

A second objection, that the replacement of the country's own assets for that borrowed might leave the fund with "bad money", was overruled by the practical reality that the purpose of the fund was to stabilize world currencies so that there would be no "bad money". He analogizes to the concept of bank insurance providing the assurance of stability to bank assets.

A third objection, that the fund would enable foreign nations to buy U.S. goods with U.S. money, while valid, was not the basis for exception. For with the other country's money on deposit, the U.S. could purchase the other country's goods with that country's money, establishing a form of reciprocity to insure parity.

She points out that these reservations were valid in that the Munich Pact in September, 1938 had similarly assigned the role of ultimate arbiter to Britain, France, and Germany with respect to Czechoslovakia and Austria, leading to the dismemberment of the Czech Republic.

A year later, Hitler, blaming Germany's aggression against Poland on its unwillingness to cede to Germany the Danzig Corridor separating Germany from its territory in East Prussia, contending that Poland's recalcitrance in this regard couched it as the aggressor to Germany, invaded under the pretext of a punitive expedition. Hitler then blamed Britain for breaking the Munich Pact, insofar as its vow never to wage war on the other Pact signatories. Thus, Hitler claimed in his deranged logic, based on false and unilaterally conjured assumptions to suit subjective will in the premises, that Britain actually had started the war.

In the Dumbarton Oaks proposal lay just such seeds of potential conflict down the road. The Big Three and France would be immune, by virtue of a veto on the Security Council, to unanimous action against, whereas the other nations would not be. The proposal thus was not truly a world order of law but rather a means by which the major powers could exert their will on smaller nations, with the smaller nations unable to retaliate in kind. The only cure for this pitfall, potentially reprising the failure of Munich, would be for the major powers to subject themselves to the same restrictions as the other nations, that is, submit to the majority will of the Security Council, or at least its uananimity without reference to the vote of the alleged aggressor nation sitting on the Council.

"Many distrust any concept of world peace which divides the world into separate orders of morality and sovereignty. Their reasoning is not only 'idealistic.' It is also empirical."