Progress had been made and consciousness aroused, but specific actions still had not been initiated to attack the condition.

"Let's quit shuffling and deal," urges the piece.

A feud had developed between Asheboro and Randleman. On August 15, 58 Randolph boys got into a fisticuffian duel in the streets of Randleman, some as young as 14 years of age. They were given 30-day sentences, suspended, and warned to cease their duality.

While it was true that, as the only wealthy nation left on earth after the war, America would need to spend to enable international trade again to flourish, the former policy should not be followed to the end of merely spending to grease the wheels of trade, as it would eventually follow the law of diminishing returns and cause economic difficulties as in the 1920's.

It concluded that if the country could not find means through the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to stabilize currencies and increase trade, then the country was "as good as done for".

The Congressmen were being besieged by mail from G.I.'s, wanting to go home, especially those still in uniform stateside who had returned from overseas. Mr. Pearson predicts that the election in 1946 might turn on how the next few weeks went insofar as the release of veterans from the service, whether Governor Dewey's contention during the 1944 election campaign would prove true, that the Army and Navy were planning to hold men in service to stem unemployment and maintain a fighting force.

Many in Congress believed that the Army brass hats had not been playing cricket with them. For instance, they had received varying figures, between 160,000 and 300,000, from the Army as to the number of men age 38-39, the variance taking place just between June and August.

In May, after V-E Day, the Army contended that there were 1.388 million men with 85 points, the minimum number needed for discharge. But at this juncture, they had admitted that only half a million men had those points. Nor had the Army reduced the points since V-E Day.

The result was that veterans with ribbons were being used to pick up matches to keep them busy during the discharge revision process. It was causing the G.I.'s considerable perturbation.

He next turns to Margaret Truman, the First Daughter, who was digging her grave, he says, with the press. She had now offended the Chamber of Commerce back in Independence by refusing to pose, at the request of the Chamber, for photos to appear in National Geographic. Three young women were then selected to pose on the sidewalk leading to the Truman home. The Secret Service initially had registered no objection.

But two days later, the head of the Kansas City Secret Service called the magazine to say that Margaret Truman did not want those photos published or to have these three young women posing on the sidewalk to the Truman home.

The Chamber of Commerce was displeased, especially when it discovered that Ms. Truman had posed in the back yard of the Truman home with her aunt, Mrs. George Wallace, for Fox Movietone News.

Finally, he tells that G.I.'s had accepted the President's explanation as to why they could not bring their wives to Europe. But, Mrs. Ed Pauley had accompanied her husband to Moscow when he had gone to chair the reparations commission. She was also provided $25 per day while overseas, despite having done little other than to act pleasant. Moreover, the Russians had paid for all expenses of the mission. She had been on the trip for 80 days and so presumably collected $2,000.

While favoring the dissolution of Germany since the aftermath of World War I, Ms. Thompson also asks whether the wholesale removal of a million or more people to unknown destinations was not the equivalent of extermination or slavery. Was it an example of the old dreaded adage: might makes right?

If the United States abandoned its principles abroad, would it not soon lose them at home?

Allowing the Russians to expropriate the German manufacturing machinery stripped one class, the industrialists, by way of compensating the Russians. It would likely have a serious impact on the entire European economy. The Russians were looting Austria in its zone of occupation, causing individuals, not the Austrian state, to pay reparations, as in Germany. Some of the properties being taken belonged to G.M. and Ford.

The ultimate outcome, she predicts, would be the extinction of legal property rights and elimination of human rights, leading on to chaos. The most ruthless individuals and parties would be able then to obtain power out of this morass, as soon as the Allies would withdraw.

So suddenly ending Lend-Lease had embarrassed the American Allies, especially Britain and France. It showed not that the country was great, but merely big. It was done to hasten reconversion, to allow the pursuit of happiness: new nylon stockings, a new refrigerator, and a new car.

He suggests that President Truman would need to do a lot of soul-searching on this new position of the country and articulate for the American people the direction in which they were headed.

He tells of being able in a little town to buy 20 gallons of unrationed gas within a few days following V-J Day. He was then able to buy newspapers telling how cold Europe would be during the coming winter. It did not feel like greatness.

The muddled policy presently in effect had produced the result that food was about to be shipped to Germany but not to Britain.

It was the product of "small and weak conceptions, unequal to the grandeur of the nation which entertains them."

But, he reminds soberly, it was best not to forget that the United States was an island of haves in a sea of have-not nations. General De Gaulle, in his visit with President Truman, had sought to provide a general picture of the condition of France rather than coming with particular requests for aid in hand. He brought two maps of France, one showing the area of destruction on November 11, 1918 at the Armistice, the other, France on V-E Day. Only the Channel areas had been badly affected by the first war; the second had caused pervasive damage across the nation, each province being harmed to the extent of 20 percent or more of its area.

But America could not shoulder the burden to rebuild Europe.

General De Gaulle, however, hoped for some alliance which would bring about economic cooperation. It would be an answer to the radicals of the right and left who insisted that there was no other avenue than a controlled economy under Fascism or Communism.

While President Truman had no choice but to end Lend-Lease, it appeared to have been undertaken too abruptly. In the post-war peace, there would be needed equivalent creative thinking to that which had brought about Lend-Lease, "the courage of new ideas."

With the Army making average cuts of 25 percent in its orders for the fall, there would be many thousands of tons of food available. The question was whether it should simply enable the ending of rationing in the country or whether it should go to feed Europe, to fight anarchy which might otherwise result during the long winter ahead.

Common sense, he suggests, promoted the latter result.