Saturday, June 16, 1945

The Charlotte News

Saturday, June 16, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Tenth Army troops were bearing down on both ends of the three-mile long Yaeju-Dake line and the plateau above the escarpment, nicknamed by the Americans "Hara Kiri Plateau" for the number of Japanese suicides taking place there. Though most of the remaining defenders were service personnel, they still fought fiercely to hold the position, now reduced to eight square miles.

The previous day, after completing capture of Yaeju Hill, the 96th Infantry Division had moved westward with tanks a half mile to attack Yuga Hill, from which the Japanese had been firing upon the First Marines. Despite the fire, the First Marines consolidated their hold on Kunishu Ridge, a mile and a half to the west.

On Luzon, the 37th Infantry Division broke out of the mountain terrain in northern Luzon and into the flat plateau of the Cagayan Valley, advancing 22 miles at a rate of nearly a mile per hour, to move within 150 miles of Aparri at the northern tip.

The 6th Division continued to advance along Highway 4, moving four miles west from Bagabag toward the valley.

A major effort was now underway to secure northern Luzon prior to the coming of typhoon season in July. The typhoons would flood the valley.

Near Baguio, the 33rd Infantry moved along the Agno River gorge in the Tabio sector.

On Mindanao, the 24th Infantry continued to clean out caves and pillboxes near Davao City.

On Borneo, the Australians, veterans of Tobruk in North Africa in 1942, were making their way steadily toward the oilfields of Western Borneo, the refineries for which were centered at Balikpapan, 300 miles south of Tarakan, the initial point of the Borneo invasion on May 1. The troops had seized the capital at Sultanate and continued to move toward the Seria and Miri oilfields. The Timbalai airfield had been captured on Labuan Island.

During the six-day successful campaign to capture Brunei Bay against light opposition, the Australians experienced only light casualties and the American Navy, providing cover and delivering the landing forces, had none.

Tokyo radio reported a three-day carrier-based raid on Truk, which had been bypassed by the Allies. The fleet supplying the planes was said to be British.

A report from the Chicago Daily News stated that Edda Ciano, daughter of Mussolini and wife of Nazi-executed Foreign Minister Count Ciano of Mussolini's Government, had hidden Count Ciano's diaries and transported them, pretending to be pregnant, into Switzerland for safekeeping from the Nazis. The compromising papers had been sought by the Nazis for 100 million gold lire or even in exchange for sparing Count Ciano's life. He was executed in early January, 1944.

In Chicago, M.P.'s arrived to enforce government orders of seizure of 1,700 trucking lines to avert a threatened strike of drivers. On May 23, 1,100 of the lines had been seized to stop a strike.

In San Francisco, the smaller nations were breaking ranks regarding the proposed plan to mandate further review of the Big Five veto power a decade hence as part of the U. N. charter. The Big Five, opposed to the plan, hoped to secure a victory on the issue this night.

Solutions for two other controversies were also being sought during the weekend, in an effort to meet President Truman's deadline for a charter by the end of the following week. Australia wanted the colonial powers, France and Great Britain, to make reports on their colonies to the General Assembly, but the two nations objected. The other issue was whether the General Assembly would be allowed to debate any issue or whether debate would be limited to matters of peace and security.

Britain and the United States rejected the French proposal for a five-power conference regarding the Levant States.

Former Polish Premier, Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, flew to Moscow for the conference of Polish leaders as the Polish government-in-exile in London demanded that all Russian troops be withdrawn from Poland, that a "reign of terrorism" prevailed.

It was confirmed by a spokesman for Prime Minister Churchill that the Big Three conference would take place in Berlin, sometime between the British election July 5 and the final tally of the votes, expected July 27.

First Lord of the Admiralty Brendan Bracken stated that the Labor Party would not be bound by Big Three commitments despite the fact that Labor leader Clement Atlee, Deputy Prime Minister until the dissolution recently of the Coalition Cabinet extant since 1940, had been invited by Mr. Churchill to attend the conference.

On the editorial page, "The Little Loans" tells of the small loan companies forced to pay high fees to the State to do business, higher than the fees charged to regular banks. The reason for the fees was to deter such lenders from doing business for the fact of their usurious practices.

Recently, the Legislature had asked the State Banking Commission to regulate them and so a regulation was instituted whereunder interest was limited to 6 percent on loans of up to $50, causing many of the small lenders to pull up stakes, as it was in these small loans that they had made the bulk of their money.

"Enter the IRB" relates more about the $200,000 loan in 1939 by John Hartford, president of A & P, to Elliott Roosevelt, paid off for $4,000 in 1942. The loan was to finance Mr. Roosevelt's broadcasting venture which went into receivership after only a year. Mr. Roosevelt got $33,000 from the distributed proceeds of sale of the assets, but Mr. Hartford did not seek payment from those proceeds toward the loan.

Now the Internal Revenue Board was investigating to determine whether Mr. Hartford was properly entitled to take the deduction from his taxes in 1942 for the $196,000 loss. He had returned to Mr. Roosevelt the stocks put up as collateral and if the stocks had worth in excess of $4,000, then the bad debt should instead be treated, to the extent of that excess valuation, as a gift to Mr. Roosevelt. If among the stocks was stock in the broadcasting company, then Mr. Hartford was entitled to a distribution of the assets according to his share.

Stay tuned.

"Big Game Appears" finds from a report on the Veterans Administration hospitals that the attending personnel for mental patients were, per War Department policy, re-assigned soldiers who were deemed physically unfit for duty. But the care of mental patients required a certain physical dexterity and also a great deal of patience and skill, so could not be left to just anyone. There had been reports of abuse of patients in the Veterans hospitals. Some of the personnel were even said to be neurotic.

The editorial thus calls for an investigation into the War Department policy.

"Bill of Lading" suggests to Japan that it consider the lesson learned from the air power of the Allies exerted against Germany, and further consider the announcement of General Hap Arnold of the Army Air Forces that, starting July 1, 5,480 tons of bombs per day would be dropped on Japanese cities. At that rate, within two weeks, more tonnage would be dropped on Japan than all it had received thus far in the previous year since the first B-29 strikes on June 15, 1944. And five of Japan's major cities already lay in rubble.

While air power, it had been shown, could not effect the whole measure of victory, as it was once thought possible two years earlier, and ground troops would ultimately be required to finish the task, it was well for the Japanese to recall the words of General Von Rundstedt after he had been caught, that air power had defeated Germany by destroying oil and gas supplies, railroads, sources of raw materials, and wrecking industrial areas. Japan, with more concentrated industry within a small area, was more vulnerable from the air than had been Germany.

And after all that tonnage of bombs, the final and ultimate bill of lading would sadly read: "On 2, F.O.B., collect".

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Representative Ellsworth Buck of New York registering objection to the Bretton Woods proposal for an International Monetary Fund, stating that the objective of stabilization of currencies was good, but the means by which it was set to be achieved would only lead to loss of the investment.

He countered the argument that unstable world currencies led to war by relating his own personal experience in 1913 traveling to Europe at a time when currencies were stable. Yet, that situation had not prevented World War I.

His response to the argument that world trade did not function properly when currencies were not stable because businesses could neither sell nor buy abroad when exchange rates were in flux, is truncated, and so we cannot tell what his point was.

It might be just as well, as his first point is nonsensical, ignoring completely the reality that the Nazis and Fascists rose to power in Europe out of destabilized European economies during the twenties and the worldwide depression of the early thirties, hence leading directly to the war.

Drew Pearson discusses the trouble brewing within the War Surplus Property Board between big business and small business as to who would gain control of the billions of dollars worth of surplus war property to be sold off by the Government. The trouble could prove damaging in time to the Truman Administration if not checked.

An example was Alcoa, to which the big business interests on the Board wanted to give the bulk of the surplus tools, providing Alcoa with a ten year head start in the industry and enabling a monopoly.

The Board had sought to exclude from its meetings and then to replace its chief counsel, Wesley Sturges, a defender of the interests of small business. The slated replacement was a defender of monopolies. Eventually, Senator Lister Hill of Alabama got wind of the problem and called War Mobilizer Fred Vinson who got the Board to relent.

Other problems appeared likely from the appointment as Board chairman of Stuart Symington, future Senator from Missouri and 1960 Democratic presidential candidate. Mr. Symington had previously been cited by a Federal judge for engaging in monopolistic practices regarding parking meters—just as the little squib in the column a few days earlier had indicated. At one point, he had written a letter to an associate regarding plans to dominate the parking meter business by "establishing sales prices and methods". He then told the recipient to destroy the letter, which was not done.

Dorothy Thompson discusses the need in Germany and Austria to restore a system of justice and to feed the hungry. Those were paramount concerns, according to an Austrian churchman, necessary for successful American occupation. The guilty of the Nazi regime would need be punished and those who had resisted would need be rewarded.

Thus far, however, Ms. Thompson finds, the military government set up by the Allies was not satisfying those prime concerns. Instead, many who had given financial aid to the Nazis were still at large, such as Arnold Rechberg, a cartellist who used the Nazis to line his pockets and was once believed to be the richest man in Germany. He was handing out self-promoting material when all political activity in the country, even anti-Nazi activity, had been banned.

Neither had there been proper concern for those who resisted. Pastor Martin Niemoeller, released from German custody for over a month, had not been able to make contact with his wife. Ms. Thompson had provided the only news of him in her column of a couple of weeks earlier.

The families of the men who had conspired in the July 20, 1944 plot against Hitler were not being sought by the Allies. Ulrich von Hassell, formerly of the German foreign office, had been hanged for his role in the plot, and his wife was living in a remote villa without any guard or aid of any sort from the Allies. Von Hassel had left behind papers which would be valuable to the War Crimes Commission and which his wife wanted to provide to the Allies, but no one had sought her out for the information. Her grandchildren and 20 other children of anti-Hitler conspirators had been sent away to concentration camps and, as yet, no one had provided word of their whereabouts or sought them out.

Such stories were repeated by others.

Ms. Thompson concludes that unless things changed rapidly, confidence in the Allies among the Germans and Austrians who had fought the Nazis would wane, especially as they saw nothing but indifference toward many self-serving scoundrels who had provided financial aid to the Nazis.

An anonymous visitor to the city writes a letter in which the author makes reference to the need for a downtown park in Charlotte. The letter remarks of a church across the street from the Hotel Charlotte where the author was staying, which had an oak grove surrounding it. But there were no benches and the public seemed never on the grounds, separated by an iron fence.

It points out that in London during the depression, tramps were allowed to sleep in St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

"The present scene does make one wonder just how the worship of a homeless peasant has been changed to the exclusive use of valuable real estate."

The editors note below the letter the old campaign to have the cemetery behind the First Presbyterian Church converted to a downtown park with benches, yet to no avail.

Tom Jimison provides a piece for Father's Day, regarding his own father and his simple, uneducated ways. He had been a veteran of the Civil War, fighting for the Confederacy, but harbored no prejudices toward anyone. He had heard young Tom preach sermons in the Methodist Church in the early days of his ministry, but was unimpressed. "Tom overspeaks hisself a lot of the time, and he says a heap of mighty foolish things, but I reckon he'll outgrow what he thinks he learnt off yander at them schools," he told Tom's oldest brother.

Mr. Jimison was with his father when the Pale Horse came by for him and says that he faced death as he had everything else in life, with an even temperament. He was thinking of his father on this day.

Mr. Jimison, as we have previously mentioned, would pass away in September.

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