Tuesday, June 12, 1945

The Charlotte News

Tuesday, June 12, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Ninth Division of the Australian Army had extended their hold on Brunei Bay on Borneo, advancing southward to within 40 miles of the Seria oil fields against light opposition. The Miri oil field was thirty five miles further, supplying a million barrels a year. The American Seventh Fleet which had landed the troops on Sunday was providing support to the operation. The only resistance offered thus far had been at Labuan Airfield, but that had been eliminated within a few hours after the landings and the airfield captured. It was estimated that the Japanese had only 2,000 to 5,000 troops in the area, the main concentration being 60 miles northeast of the landing points, in the vicinity of Jesselton.

On Okinawa, the Americans effected a surprise landing to the south, completely encircling the remaining trapped Japanese on the Yaeju-Dake escarpment where the enemy was reported firing for the first time phosphorous shells in defense of their position. Fifteen caves were sealed with demolition blasts the previous day by the 96th Infantry Division, killing hundreds of the remaining 15,000 enemy troops. Both Sunday and Monday, the 184th Regiment of the Seventh Divisions cleared 419 caves, 300 with flamethrowers, along the eastern flank of the trap.

It was predicted that the action would wind up operations on the island within a few days. Lt. General Simon Bolivar Buckner provided an ultimatum to the Japanese commander which went unheeded. It was the first time such an offer had been made in the Central or Western Pacific campaigns. Within six days, General Buckner would lose his life in the campaign.

A Tokyo broadcast stated that B-24 Liberators and about 40 Superfortresses participated in mine-laying operations in southern Kyushu as well as off the west coast of Honshu at Wakasa Bay.

Headquarters of the 21st Bomber Command under General Curtis LeMay provided the updated destroyed square miles of Japanese cities, which included 36. 3 miles of Tokyo, 12.33 miles of Nagoya, 8.94 miles of Yokohama, 6.8 miles of Kobe, 14.93 miles of Osaka, and 3.37 miles of Kawasaki.

In London, General Eisenhower was honored by Prime Minister Churchill and King George VI. The General then briefly spoke to an assembled crowd.

Mr. Churchill disclosed to Commons that Britain had been in secret negotiations with Vichy during the fall of 1940 but that the government was under too much Nazi duress to provide assurances that the French Navy would not be surrendered to the Germans. Thus, no agreements were ever made between Britain and Vichy. The statement was in apparent response to a claim by Marshal Petain.

In London, an inquiry by the Admiralty into the collision October 2, 1942 of the Queen Mary with a British cruiser got underway to determine fault. The Admiralty contended that the ocean liner had turned improperly while the White Star Line stated that the cruiser had sought improperly to cross the liner's bow. The cruiser had been crushed and sank in five minutes with 338 aboard.

In New York, two transport ships arrived with 16,845 liberated American military prisoners of war, the largest single arrival yet from Europe.

Harry Hopkins arrived in Washington to consult with President Truman regarding the trip to Moscow and the compromise reportedly offered by Premier Stalin to settle the issue of the provisional government of Poland.

A day after the President's chief aide was referenced by Drew Pearson as having been seated, at the behest of Margaret Truman, at the head table of a social gathering thrown by Evalyn Walsh McLean, Edward McKim resigned to become a deputy Federal Loan Administrator.

At the San Francisco Conference, the Big Five nations pushed for a vote on the Security Council veto issue against the opposition by Australia seeking to limit the veto to use of force while permitting a vote of the full Council on whether matters could be resolved by peaceful means.

The House Rules Committee deadlocked on a motion to send to the floor the bill to make permanent the Fair Employment Practices Committee to prevent employment discrimination in businesses with government contracts. It appeared, therefore, that the bill was dead in committee. Five of the six opposing votes were from the South, the other being from Missouri.

A young woman, age 21, hid in a packing case aboard a glider being towed to France by the American Air Forces so that she might be with her new husband, an American Air Forces officer. She pleaded guilty in London to leaving the country without authority and was then taken out back of the courthouse and shot as a spy.

Not really. She was fined $100.

On the editorial page, "What of the Public?" wonders at the opinion of the State Attorney General, Harry McMullan, that the new Charlotte ordinance, making bathing facilities and electric lights compulsory in residential dwellings, might be unconstitutional.

The editorial seeks to justify both conditions on health and safety, finding that, according to the City Health Officer, bathing was conducive to good health, and, per the Fire Department, the rendering obsolete of kerosene lanterns was insuring of proper safety.

So, it votes for finding constitutional the new ordinance on the ground of a proper government function of regulating health and safety.

"Workout" discusses the pending legislation on race relations in the Congress, the bill to strike down poll taxes having been taken out of committee and turned over for a vote on the floor, and the bill to make permanent the Fair Employment Practices Committee, as reported on the front page, stalemated in committee and thus likely dead. The House had previously voted twice to knock out poll taxes only to have the Senate filibuster it to death.

The piece comments that poll taxes were dying, as evidenced by the recent action of the Georgia Legislature in striking down that state's tax, and, it predicts, they would be gone entirely within a few years. It suggests that the better approach might be to let them die off naturally.

It finds the FEPC to be a noble experiment seeking to change ingrained ways in a hurry. The delay that went into effecting these changes among the citizenry was agonizingly slow, it says, sometimes a nuisance, but frequently a virtue.

"The Censors" comments on the three-week delay in release of the news of the disaster surrounding the U.S.S. Franklin, after it had safely reached port in Brooklyn on April 26, and the five-month delay by the Army in making public the danger of the Japanese balloons which had been released with the tradewinds such that they drifted over the Western United States, in one case exploding and killing a woman and five children in Oregon.

There was no discernible rationale behind these cases of censorship, just a military policy allowed to dictate procedure over good sense.

"An Anniversary" states that, after two months of President Truman, the country was in much the same position, in terms of both its foreign policy and domestic policy, as at the death of President Roosevelt.

Much had transpired, the end of the war in Europe, the beginning of reconversion, and the San Francisco Conference, but the basic foreign policy of prosecuting the war to unconditional surrender, the policy with respect to Spain and Argentina, the distrust of De Gaulle, as shown by the policy regarding the Syrian crisis of the previous couple of weeks, all remained the same as under President Roosevelt. The Administration continued to support the world peace organization and the Bretton Woods proposal for a World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Domestically, President Truman supported making permanent the FEPC, no tax reduction before VJ-Day, and no holiday for big business in reconversion, with OPA likely to continue.

The new President was getting along better with Congress than FDR had. He consulted with the leadership on Capitol Hill on a regular basis, even going to the Capitol on several occasions, a break from tradition. He invited Senate president pro tem Kenneth McKellar to sit in on Cabinet meetings. The President had invited both Herbert Hoover and Alf Landon to the White House and reached out generally to Republicans in Congress.

Overall, the President appeared to be somewhat to the left of center, just as had President Roosevelt through most of his tenure, just as had Harry Truman while a Senator. Most of the key advisers from the Roosevelt Administration remained in important positions.

It concludes that President Truman had thus far discharged the burdensome duties of his office well and did not create factionalism in doing so.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record, mostly obliterated, finds Congressmen Howard Buffett of Nebraska, Brooks Hays of Arkansas, and Jerry Voorhis of California debating the Bretton Woods proposal.

The particular subject of the debate appears to be interpretation of a term which Mr. Voorhis appears to resolve to the satisfaction of Mr. Buffett and Mr. Hays.

But beyond that, it is simply too hazy to read. Fortunately, it is continued tomorrow and so may be elucidated further—or not.

Drew Pearson comments on the trip to Moscow of Harry Hopkins and his apparent success in ironing out the dispute with Russia regarding the provisional government of Poland. The agreement provided for an immediate meeting of three groups of Polish leaders to set up the new government, to be comprised of all factions. The meeting would include former Premier Mikolajczyk and Labor Minister Jan Stanzyck of the London government-in-exile, and four leaders from the Lublin Government, including President Boleslaw Bierut. Five others, not connected with either government, would be ex-Premier Witos, Socialist leader Zygmunt Zulawski, professor of economics Adam Kyzyanoski, professor of history Stanizlaw Kutzraza, and another leader named Kolonzewski. Invitations to it would come from the Big Three.

The Hopkins-Stalin meeting was being considered a milestone in American-Soviet relations. It had started by addressing the 16 arrested Polish leaders and Stalin's explanation that they had come to Moscow possessed of a secret radio for calling London. There had been adequate British and American communications facilities available to them, he further explained, if they had not trusted the Russians.

When Mr. Hopkins explained that the issue was problematic in terms of stimulating anti-Soviet sentiment in the United States and Great Britain, Premier Stalin had responded that the British and Americans who were normally anti-Soviet would latch onto anything which was negative to Russia, regardless of whether it was real or not.

But he also agreed that not all of the 16 leaders would be tried and that some would be released soon. He asked, however, that their release not be made a condition for continued negotiations on the Polish government. Both Mr. Hopkins and U. S. Ambassador Averill Harriman agreed to try to convince Prime Minister Churchill and President Truman to approve the plan. The President had readily agreed and so Mr. Hopkins returned to negotiations with Stalin.

Mr. Hopkins then proposed the new list of members to be included in the government and Stalin then provided his own list of acceptable members. The lists were then provided to former Premier Mikolajcyck who studied the list with some of his British Government friends.

Under the formulation, the Poles would begin consultations in Moscow immediately, with Mikolajcyck speaking for the Poles outside Poland and President Bierut speaking for the Poles within Poland. The Big Three would watch over the conference but would not enter into the negotiations to form the new government.

Marquis Childs discusses the transformations which had taken place in the Communist Party during the war. With the Russo-German non-aggression pact of August, 1939, the war propaganda had gone from anti-Fascist to a denunciation of the war as imperialistic. The result was confusion in some places, such as France, where the struggle between Communists and Fascists had, to that point, been bitter.

Then, in June, 1941, the propaganda line switched yet again after the Nazis invaded Russia. Suddenly the war became one of liberation. The American Communist Party under Earl Browder became conservative, calling for the outlawing of strikes during the war.

These changes followed Russian foreign policy. And so the recent foreign policy shifts of Russia took on added significance with respect to the policies likely to be adopted by Communists worldwide. Now, the Communists appeared to abandon the capitalist cooperation advocated by Mr. Browder and were moving instead back to the old militant policy, antagonistic to capitalism.

Samuel Grafton reports that eggs were hard to come by but strawberries were plentiful.

He indicates that many Congressmen were attempting to get the Office of Price Administration to guarantee that every item produced by every manufacturer would generate a profit, that so doing would encourage manufacturers to produce more scarce items. Yet, contends Mr. Grafton, it was an inflationary solution for an inflationary problem. The Republicans, chief proponents of sound money, were the very ones promoting these incentives to inflation.

He concludes that it would be better should the Congressmen who were directing their frustrations at OPA, direct them instead against the black market, in which case the latter could not for long thrive.

Dorothy Thompson, writing from a farm in Bavaria, near Munich, tells of the terrible conditions in Germany and the disorganization under the Allied Military Government. Munich was a pile of rubble, beneath which were rotting corpses, making the clearing of the rubble a dangerous task for the diseases likely to be contracted.

The American officers in charge of the village near where she was located were young and inexperienced at the task of government and were thus loathe to make decisions; the Germans were afraid of upsetting the Americans and thus were likewise hesitant to make decisions.

Food was scarce, though Bavaria, which in normal times produced 78% of its own food, was in better shape than other areas of the country. Displaced persons roamed about at night looting grains and animals. Often, shooting was heard out of the darkness.

She concludes that unconditional surrender was a "total reality" and a "terrible burden" to the Allies.

The greatest fear in the average German was that the Americans might withdraw and leave the zone in chaos and enable the former Nazis to exact revenge.

A snippet from Parade tells of the child who, when asked why she talked so much, responded that she did not know many big words and so used lots and lots of small ones to make up for the exiguity.

Magazine Digest told of the little girl who became afraid during a thunderstorm and called downstairs to her parents. Her mother reassured that all was well, that God was watching over her. Another thunderclap occurred and she ran downstairs and told her parents that she would stay with them and they could go upstairs and be with God.

And, from Caravan came a story composed by a student from a school in Manhattan. The teacher had submitted it as the most interesting of the stories written by the members of the class.

It seems that a poor young man had fallen in love with the daughter of a woman who maintained a candy store. He could not, however, marry her for he had not enough money.

Then, fortuitously, a wicked man offered him $20 if he would become a drunkard.

The young man said, "I will not become a drunkard for $20. Get thee behind me, Satan."

Well, on his way home, he found a pocketbook with a million smackers inside, in gold no less.

The candy store owner's daughter then happily consented to marry the young man.

"They had a beautiful wedding and the next day they had twins. Thus, you see that Virtue has its own reward."

But, young student, what about the poor sucker who lost the million in gold. Don't you think he or she is going to come looking for it. Then what?

Oh, the sad tale of woe which awaits those who place their faith in riches and trinkets.

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