Wednesday, September 19, 1945

The Charlotte News

Wednesday, September 19, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Acting Secretary of State Dean Acheson, acting in the position while Secretary James Byrnes was in London, announced that it was the Government, not General MacArthur, determining policy with respect to Japan, including the number of troops necessary for occupation and the duration of it, to be determined by the contingent necessities for "rendering Japan permanently peaceful" and changing the social and economic system to insure that end. The statement did not mention General MacArthur by name but was clearly responding to the General's statement in the previous few days that occupation troops could be reduced likely to 200,000 within six months and that occupation might be successfully completed within a year. Mr. Acheson did, however, express that he could not understand how General MacArthur could predict at this early point of occupation how many troops would be necessary in six months, but found it unimportant to State Department purposes.

President Truman asserted that General MacArthur had made his own estimates of the necessary complement of soldiers but that no one could accurately predict the needs presently.

He also stated that there would be no padding in the military and that no one would be retained in service longer than necessary.

A 37-year old private, who had been a barber supplies salesman in civilian life and had been in the Army but four months, told the Senate Military Committee that he and other men had been ordered at Fort Belvoir, Va., to cut grass with their bayonets to keep them busy. He stated also that he had been transferred from Fort Belvoir to Camp Shelby, Miss., because he had informed the Washington newspapers about the assignment to cut grass and lack of morale generally among the soldiers.

At the first press conference ever provided by a member of the Japanese royal family, Premier Higashi-Kuni stated that he had no advance knowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor, had never ordered the execution of any of the Doolittle raiders of April 18, 1942, and did not consider Emperor Hirohito a war criminal. He contended that the reason for Pearl Harbor was that the militarists had deceived the Emperor as to the strength of Japan. He stated that he did not realize Japan was so weak militarily and that only a few militarists understood the fact. It was, he asserted, one of the major reasons for Japan's defeat.

Where did they get this guy?

A story from Hong Kong from liberated prisoners of war indicated that an airman  who had parachuted into Hong Kong in January had been caught by the Japanese, given a mock trial, and on April 6, lashed to a wooden cross and shot dead. The trial was conducted in Japanese and the flier provided no chance to defend himself. The charge was indiscriminate bombing.

The same newspaper in Paris which had predicted that Premier Stalin would step down as Premier during the winter named Klementi Voroshilov as his likely successor. Voroshilov would become in 1953 Chairman of the Presidium while Nikita Khrushchev would become General Secretary of the Communist Party. Khrushchev would become Premier in 1958.

In London at the Foreign Ministers Conference, France, Great Britain, and the United States agreed that elections should be held as soon as possible in Greece, hopefully prior to the end of the year.

The Senate unanimously confirmed the nomination by President Truman of Senator Harold Burton of Ohio to the Supreme Court to replace Justice Owen Roberts. The nomination had been sent to the Senate by the President less than 24 hours earlier. Senator Burton, a Republican, was 57 years old.

The Senate also voted to give the duties of the U.S. Employment Service, that of finding jobs for the unemployed, back to the states. President Truman had asked that the action be delayed.

In London, Lord Haw Haw, William Joyce, voice of Nazi propaganda during the war, was convicted of treason in 25 minutes of jury deliberation, and sentenced to hang. The headline mocks, "Haw! Haw!"

The argument that he was not a British subject was refused on the basis that he had left Britain under the protection of a British passport in 1939 and so had allegiance to the country. Mr. Joyce was born in America and had acquired German citizenship after 1939. A statute was cited dating from 1543 allowing that treason committed outside the realm of the Empire could nevertheless be tried in the British courts.

A flight of three B-29's from Sapporo, Japan, to Washington, a distance of 6,500 miles, planned as a non-stop flight to set a record for multi-engine aircraft, was possibly to be interrupted in Detroit as to two of the planes because of low fuel from having to fly into headwinds. The two planes radioed that they expected to have to land. The planes were averaging 300 miles per hour. The third plane appeared able to proceed to Washington.

In Detroit, striking oil refinery workers at Socony-Vacuum Oil Co. had left the city with only a three-day supply of aviation fuel and the buses with a four-day supply.

Better keep going. Try for Cleveland.

On the editorial page, "Changed Tune" finds Shinegori Togo, the former Japanese War Minister during 1941 and afterward, to have suddenly become tender of heart toward America. He contended that he had fought in vain on August 6, in the wake of the Hiroshima bomb, to end the war.

The piece suggests that it would likely turn out that he had been a man of peace all along, impelled into war only by some supernatural evil force—the which is.

Mrs. Togo, a German, contended that her husband's life must be saved, that he had always worked for peace.

America had not reacted when it was determined that the Emperor would be retained on the ground that he was powerless before the war lords, yet indispensably powerful over the people of Japan to afford easy transition to peace.

Then it came out that most of the militarists in Japan had actually opposed the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Thus, it was in line with this thinking that Togo was simply a dove-carrying victim of circumstance and, now that occupation was ongoing, free at last to speak the truth prevented by the war.

"Labor, Too" reports that George Meany, secretary-treasurer of the AF of L, was aboard the campaign of the isolationists to alienate the country from the Russians. As long as the Russian trade unions remained under government domination, he had asserted, the AFL could not join the international labor movement. Making his case before the British Trades Union Congress, he was roundly booed for the statement.

Mr. Meany had also charged that CIO unions had sought to undermine the war effort in America before Germany declared war on Russia and cooperated in the production effort only after Russia entered the war on the Allied side. He also contended that AFL had stood ready to produce supplies and weapons for Russia before the United States had gone to war.

It appeared that Mr. Meany would be willing to cooperate to a degree with Russia only if it made political peace with the Western democracies. Short of that, international trade peace appeared unlikely.

"France & Friends" comments that Leon Blum, once in the mid-thirties the Socialist Premier of France, was walking a thin line, advocating that France should join a bloc of Western European nations, but also not become anti-Russian politically or anti-American economically.

The piece asks whether, implicitly, M. Blum thought that the converse would be alright. He also advocated a Franco-British union while recognizing that Britain must also get along with the Soviets, but that it should not take the form of an "autocratic combination" against the interests of the United States.

While the editorial does not wish M. Blum ill, it reminds that it was not the first time France had sought to walk the tightrope as a member of a Western European bloc, that Blum had been in power in 1936 when France ignored the plight of the Loyalists in Spain against the Insurgents of Franco.

"The Hermit" comments on the removal by Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace to his own corner, no longer playing the role of prophet of liberalism in government, as he had as Vice-President from 1941-45.

One theory was that the change was to make himself appear more palatable to business for a run in 1948 for the Democratic nomination. Some were suggesting that he had become a chamelion, no longer interested in fighting at the drop of a hat.

The piece reasons, however, that perhaps it was no mystery, that he had simply determined to buckle down to his job and establish a new form of public relations, that his book, Sixty Million New Jobs, adequately stated his governmental philosophy.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Senator Clyde R. Hoey of North Carolina commenting again on the slow discharge of men from the service, this time stressing the shortage of doctors in the country and that doctors in the services, no longer needed, could be discharged to fill the civilian shortage.

He then reads a letter into the record from a group of Army Air Force medical officers in which they stated that the majority of doctors in the services had led a leisurely existence during the war, often having less than two hours of work to do in a given day. The result had been restlessness, then rage when the need for civilian doctors had become acute.

They also pointed out that Army hospitals were deliberately crowding in patients, many of whom were ambulatory, and were retaining convalescent patients long after their needs required hospitalization. The Army required one medical officer to every 163 patients when, in peacetime, civilian hospitals only demanded one for every thousand.

Drew Pearson discusses why there was one unpaved street near the President's home in Independence, Mo. The reason was that the Truman in-laws, the Wallaces, had objected to utilizing WPA labor to pave the street during the thirties because it would raise taxes. The Wallaces owned about a third of the property in the block in question.

But now that it was the President's summer home, the town had decided to pave the street to cater to tourists, and it had just received a coat of tar prior to the President's visit the previous weekend.

Mr. Pearson next informs of an unwritten policy of censorship undertaken at the Naval Air Station in Banana River, Fla. The base newspaper, "Banana Peelings", had published some unfavorable comments by Navy men regarding the slow discharge process. One seaman had commented that he was about to butt his head against a bulkhead were he not soon released.

But no sooner than the newspaper had begun circulation, all copies were ordered by the commanding officer to be confiscated. He was determined to keep the reputation of the Navy without blemish.

The column next discloses that several Republican Senators and Congressmen were busy aiding the Republican National Committee in digging up dirt on Elliott Roosevelt, James Roosevelt, and Eleanor Roosevelt so that they could discredit the former First Family and thereby hope to discredit the New Deal. The charge against James Roosevelt, known before the war, was that influence had been used to get companies to insure with his firm, that the investigation into A.T. & T. had come about because they had refused business with the firm. Mrs. Roosevelt had become a board member of the company when James went into service, and the charge was that she had done so to prevent dirty laundry from emerging out of the firm's records.

Finally, he tells of the Mayor of Independence, Roger Sermon, having been diligent about limiting the guest list to welcome President Truman to only residents of Independence and those of his old World War I unit. Even residents of nearby Kansas City were kept off the guest list.

Marquis Childs again discusses the sudden termination in August of Lend-Lease, which had served as an all important crutch to the ailing wartime economy of Great Britain.

It had even been intimated from within Leo Crowley's Foreign Economic Administration that the move was intended to embarrass the new Labor Government of Clement Attlee, a charge which President Truman had vigorously denied.

The British had assumed that they would receive thirty days' notice of the termination to give them a chance to adjust. They then sought some accord under which they could be compensated retroactively for their trade in goods between the start of the war in 1939 and the start of Lend-Lease in March, 1941, but Mr. Crowley rejected this suggestion and instead urged that Britain take a loan to pay for the goods. But with Britain's war debt already having taxed the nation to the hilt, it could not take on any more.

Presently, discussions were underway to try to resolve the impasse.

A letter writer advocates raising the old age pension payments by the Government from the current average of under $25 per month to $100 per month and not allowing anyone receiving them to hold a job, thereby freeing a million jobs for returning veterans.

Sounds good on its face, but would young veterans wish to do work which was previously being performed by those over 65?

Another letter writer, now that the war was over, wanted President Truman to see to it that the work or fight legislation, previously rejected, be made law.

But that proposed law had been premised on necessary war work stateside and those not doing it having either to submit to the draft or go to jail.

Ah well.

Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta Theta...

Dorothy Thompson discusses the upcoming Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, that, while it would satisfy a sense of revenge to an extent, its primary purpose would be to vindicate the original intent of the 1929 Kellogg-Briand Pact made between 54 nations, including the Allies and all three World War II Axis nations, Germany, Italy, and Japan. The Pact had outlawed war as a means of settling disputes and would be the premise for charges of crimes against the peace brought before the Nuremberg tribunal.

It was somewhat ironic, posits Ms. Thompson, that the nation most concerned about enforcing this provision to outlaw aggressive warfare, the United States, was the country presently most uniquely situated, with sole possession of the atomic bomb, to engage in aggressive warfare.

She concludes, "...[I]t is reasonable to predict that when all nations have the atomic bomb, either war must be really outlawed or Democracy will sit on a volcano."

If successful, the War Crimes trials would go a long way, she predicts, in establishing the law of nations as agreed in 1929 and in providing means by which to enforce it should aggressor nations again seek to violate it.

Incidentally, one understands the conically vortical Black Hole in the culture when you discover that the article at Wicked-pedia on the Kellogg-Briand Pact, merely outlawing war, still quite viable, receives 715 words, including several glaring omissions and misleading statements, while the article on Elvis Presley, probably also replete with many misleading statements, is entered at 16,854 words, over 23 times longer. Everything you ever wanted to know about the King, virtually nothing about the treaty banning war. Thank ye, thank ye very much...

The article on Jesus Christ, by the way, has 14,297 words. Someone needs to add about 3,000 words to bring Jesus ahead of Elvis.

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