The Charlotte News
Tuesday, October 8, 1946
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin stated to the Paris Peace Conference that Britain had no military designs on Trieste and that the Italian treaty was not too harsh, being mindful of Italian cooperation in the war effort after the summer of 1943 with the ouster of Mussolini; but that Italy had to be stripped of its colonial possessions to prevent it from again making war. The Belgian Foreign Minister, Paul-Henri Spaak, had asserted that the Italian treaty was too harsh. Mr. Bevin also stated that Trieste would not become another Danzig, also internationalized after World War I, because Danzig had served only Poland and thus had become the source of international dispute.
*A Russian delegate to the conference, K. V. Kisselev, contended that the United States had insulted Yugoslavia by its proposal in the Italian treaty that Yugoslavia must respect the rights of Italians living in Istria below Trieste. He stated that the Yugoslav constitution and the U.N. Charter adequately protected human rights.
*South African Prime Minister Jan Christian Smuts urged both East and West to put aside their differences.
In Stuttgart, acquitted defendant Hjalmar Schacht had been arrested pursuant to the de-Nazification laws, at the direction of the Wuerttemberg-Baden ministry of state. The state's attorney protested the arrest on the ground that the laws forbade incarceration until conviction. He had been arrested an hour after entering Stuttgart, coming from Nuremberg, where acquitted co-defendants Franz von Papen and Hans Fritsche remained.
In Berlin, the Allied Control Council was set to meet the following day to hear the appeals of 16 of the 19 convicted defendants at Nuremberg. *The Council would meet in the same courtroom in which the Nazi People's Court had met, meting death sentences to scores of Germans deemed responsible for the July 20 bomb plot against Hitler in 1944. It was not expected that clemency would be granted to any of the 16 defendants before the Council. Eleven stood sentenced to death, to be carried out October 16 in Nuremberg. The only possible change in the sentences was thought to be the means by which Col.-Gen. Alfred Jodl and Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel would be executed, possibly allowing them the more dignified military death of firing squad rather than hanging, although it was not clear that the Council had such authority to change the Tribunal's prescribed manner in which sentence was to be executed.
The German Council of States stated their desire to have the Allied Control Council reinstitute the German treason laws to enable prosecution of Herr Von Papen under them. The request was conditioned on his remaining in the American occupation zone. German officials in the British zone indicated their agreement with the action.
Greece had asked Britain to supply arms for use of Greek civilians to fight bandits in the northern provinces, erupting in protest of the vote to restore the throne. The British were considering the proposal.
The State Department was investigating a complaint by Soviet Ambassador Nikoli Novikov that he was treated with discourtesy by customs inspectors, detained for an hour at La Guardia Field in New York the previous Friday. He had refused to sign a statement that his baggage contained nothing illegal
In Apeldoorn, Holland, seven additional schoolboys died, increasing the death toll to nineteen in the crash, reported the previous day, of a Dutch naval plane flying too low over the school, crashing into the gymnasium. Seven other boys were still in the hospital with burns.
The pilot, who was stunt flying over his mother's home to impress her, died in the crash. His mother, witnessing the tragedy, died of a heart attack.
A United Airlines plane crashed near Cheyenne, Wyo., on its way from Chicago to San Francisco. Only two of 46 passengers were killed and ten others were injured.
The Florida hurricane which had 125-mph winds prior to landfall had subsided considerably before striking the area of Tampa Bay and had apparently done little damage. It moved through the middle of Florida, however, still packing sufficient winds to harm citrus crops. It was now off the coast of Savannah with winds down to 40 mph and less, heading off the coast of the Carolinas, passing west of Charleston and into the southwestern section of South Carolina, no longer posing any serious threat.
The B-29 sent aloft to gather data on the storm had been forced to land at Guatemala City in Central America rather than continuing northwest to Dayton, Ohio.
Weather forecasters predicted that a meteor shower Wednesday night from the comet Giacobini-Zinner would be viewable throughout the Eastern half of the United States.
The President addressed the AFL convention in Chicago, telling them that they needed to respond the same way they had during the war to accomplish full production capacity.
The Beef Advisory Committee voted to petition the Government to remove price controls from meat. OPA meanwhile stated it was studying a plan for more equitable distribution of meat across the country and allowance of some price increases.
The Agriculture Department predicted a drop of 447,000 bales from its prediction a month earlier on the prospective annual cotton crop, about 300,000 bales less than the previous year. The condition of the crop was below the ten year average.
Mrs. Wendell Willkie explained that her late husband's grave was now marked with a twelve-foot granite cross, which had been carved in Salisbury, N.C., from North Carolina pink marble. A marble bench was nearby with words inscribed from Mr. Willkie's book, One World. The 1940 Republican presidential nominee had passed away suddenly in October, 1944, after being rejected in an early key primary the previous spring in a run for the 1944 nomination.
In Washington, a thousand bakers walked off the job as part of the AFL Bakery Workers Union strike. They produced 80 percent of the baked goods for the nation's capital.
Good thing that the tin cars did not strike on the same day or we might consider it all some sort of plot through time just to fool us twice again.
Australia banned importation of The Memoirs of Hecate County by American author Edmund Wilson on the ground of alleged obscenity. The State of New York would subsequently obtain a conviction for obscenity against Doubleday & Co. for publishing and distributing the book in New York, and the Supreme Court would, in 1948, uphold the conviction by an equally divided vote of 4 to 4 in Doubleday & Co. v. New York, 335 U.S. 848, meaning the case was not resolved and the decision below therefore stood automatically. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, this opinion does not appear to be available online. Perhaps, it is obscene.
In Hollywood, the Screen Actors Guild voted to cross the picket lines of the AFL Conference of Studio Unions, in their 13th day of the strike. They were striking because of mass firings by the studios when they refused to work on sets constructed by the rival International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, also an AFL union.
A pair of macabre photographs, from The New York Daily News, appear of the young woman who died as she walked down the aisle to wed her childhood sweetheart for whom she had waited throughout the war, the excitement being exacerbated by her rheumatic heart.
After suffering through the war, the country was obviously somewhat hardened to such realities of everyday life, perhaps even lending a sense of normalcy again, as the editorial the previous day had commented with regard to the gangland shooting in Hollywood. No longer were there daily headlines, as had been the case throughout the war, of literally thousands of soldiers killed on several fronts on any given day, especially in the war in Russia and in China. Any perceived insensitivity thus has to be filtered through the perspective of their experience at the time.
*In Chicago, according to zoo director Marlin Perkins
*The Pacusan Dreamboat
On the editorial page, "Further Reflections on Nuernberg" comments on the letter printed Saturday from Charlotte City Attorney C. W. Tillett, providing his perspective on the Nuremberg trials and convictions, and their likely impact on international law into the future.
On the same day, alternate judge at the trials, Judge John J. Parker of Charlotte, stated that it had been an "autopsy on a totalitarian state" and that it provided a precedent under which future aggressors could be punished by judicial means.
The piece disagrees with Mr. Tillett's belief that Nuremberg had worked to crack "the shell of the sovereign state", that the statement ignored the present unsteady relationship between the West and Russia. While the principle might stand against the remaining Fascist state in the world, Spain, on which both the West and Russia agreed, it was of questionable application to non-fascist states, such as Russia, itself, which reportedly was shifting troops into the "neutral" Balkans to obtain an outlet to the Mediterranean through the Dardanelles. The Russians also were reported to be frantically seeking to develop their own atomic bomb. The actions appeared to threaten the peace.
America, too, was maintaining full production of atom bombs, sending military aircraft on long-range flights, arming bases in the Pacific seized by force from Japan, putting in place a plan to train and arm troops in Latin America, sending warships into the Mediterranean, and considering the President's proposal for universal military training. These acts also were threats to the peace.
Thus, either nation could be properly indicted under the precedent of Nuremberg. And then, it wonders, whether impartial judges could discern the difference between waging aggressive war and defensive war.
No law, it posits, could be effective until accepted by all subject to it. There had to be definition of what constituted aggressive acts, presently lacking. The only immediate value, it finds, of Nuremberg, was to call attention to that omission.
"Birthday Cake for Gaston" comments on the centennial of Gaston County and the special edition of the Gaston Gazette devoted to it. It finds the edition to be one of the best of its kind it had seen. It congratulates the county for its progress and relative affluence generated by its textile industry.
"An Equally Revealing Item" finds it depressing that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had declared it futile to try to continue the search for the murderers of the two black couples lynched near Monroe, Georgia, in July.
It came just as the verdict had been issued in Columbia, Tenn., finding two of the 25 black defendants guilty of attempted murder out of the riot of the previous February 26, a result the piece calls a travesty for the convictions.
Such stories countervailed the efforts in the South to present the region's slow but sure progress in race relations.
In California, a story had been reported that an unidentified black short-order cook had been playing the numbers and won $19,000 which he placed in a safe deposit box. The Internal Revenue Bureau wanted to talk to him. Significantly, he did not use the money to live high off the hog in San Francisco or move to Harlem. Rather, he packed up and headed back home to buy a farm—in Georgia.
Drew Pearson seeks to answer letters he had received regarding his proposed five-year plan for peace and friendship with Russia. He informs one writer that the plan is conditioned on Russia's cooperation and that proposal would afford a five-year breather from the tension currently characterizing Russo-American relations.
He tells another that Secretary of State Byrnes's approach of firmness with Russia was probably a correct stance, especially were Russia to start offensive moves toward Turkey over control of the Dardanelles. His policy was aimed at the government of Russia; Mr. Pearson's suggestion was aimed at the people. They did not conflict. Both approaches were needed.
His proposal included a Russian newspaper and radio station in New York to explain the Soviet viewpoint to the American people, provided Moscow would allow an American newspaper and radio station. He believes that what the Russians needed was a comics page, that laughing at one another would prevent fighting with one another.
It might be difficult to sell the Kremlin on the plan but they were presently so worried regarding the new Byrnes policy, that they might relent and consider the offer of five years of friendship and exchange of information.
**He also recommends that Henry Wallace be sent as ambassador to Russia because he had influence with the Russian government and people.
**He favors an immediate moratorium on all rearmament of Russia and the United States as a start toward abolition of all offensive weaponry. Herbert Hoover had been right during his presidency to try to disarm, to eliminate the means of waging war and hence its temptation. Small PT-boats or destroyers were efficient for policing purposes. Tanks and heavy bombers were not necessary, either at home or abroad. Fighters without long range capability were adequate for defense. But all disarmament had to be mutual. Russia would have to reduce its massive Army.
**Free access of the citizens of each nation to the other was necessary to enable trust and understanding. Some of the Army and Navy brass were concerned about a sneak attack via a suitcase bomb or over the North Pole, and thus were urging a preemptive war against Russia. Other military officers favored sharing of the atomic secret with the Russians provided the Russians would permit free access to their factories and free exchange of information on military developments. The Russians thus far were unwilling to agree to such a condition, one of the most significant issues which needed to be resolved.
**Denotes portions of Pearson column not in The News this date.
, now in Copenhagen, tells of the uneasiness among Scandinavians with regard to the political tension between the U.S. and the Soviets, that they had lost a great deal of faith in the U.N. as delegations prepared to fly to New York for the October General Assembly meeting.There was a sense of unity in Scandinavia, that the three countries ought form a cohesive economic bloc. But the feeling was not unanimous as Sweden had managed to stay out of the war and away from Nazi occupation while Norway and Denmark had suffered from the five years of occupation, leaving the countries psychologically scarred and envious of Sweden.
Denmark had engaged in slowdown tactics during occupation and the population had become accustomed to those work habits.
There was a tendency in Denmark, as well as in Sweden, away from old dogmas to more free thinking, led in Sweden by a progressive daily newspaper and in Denmark by The Information. The tendency was spreading in Europe, even into rigid France.
An unfavorable trade balance with Britain had caused Denmark to have to export goods to Britain at lower prices than otherwise obtainable on the world market. Britain had sent Denmark eight million pairs of roller skates causing the daily newspapers to joke that it was now the patriotic duty of every Dane to learn to roller skate.
Soviet propaganda that reactionary forces were taking over in America tended to reinforce a growing sense of distrust by Scandinavians of American statements which often did not accord with action.
tells of a private conference between Secretary of State Byrnes and Russian Foreign Commissar V. M. Molotov for the first time since the start of the Paris Peace Conference ten weeks earlier. No one had disclosed what transpired, but the next day Mr. Byrnes had made his statement to the American Club in Paris that war was not imminent and so apparently things had gone reasonably well.Mr. Grafton remarks that the history of diplomacy during the previous year had been characterized by the absence of face-to-face negotiations between the major leaders, rather by a futile struggle to find substitutes. A year earlier, after the failure of the London Foreign Ministers Conference, the President had stated that there would be no more Big Three meetings between the heads of state. The President, in his October 27 Navy Day speech, had stated ambiguously that there would be no sharing of the atomic secret until adequate security measures were in place at which point there would be sharing for peaceful purposes. Mr. Molotov then stated ten days later in Moscow that Russia would soon have the secret. Such diplomacy through speeches continued through the speech by Mr. Byrnes at Stuttgart September 6 and the reply of Prime Minister Stalin.
There had also been an attempt at diplomacy by parliamentary action in the U.N. General Assembly, hopeful of replacing the Security Council with its unilateral veto. But the Russians had blocked the effort.
At Paris, there had also been an attempt to carry on diplomacy through the device of press handouts, which resulted in nations being wedded to positions too early in the negotiations, making compromise difficult.
Each of these substitutes for direct negotiation had proved unsatisfactory and so the meeting between Mr. Byrnes and Mr. Molotov promised perhaps a new beginning, perhaps in mind when former Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden had called the previous week for a new Western approach to relations with Russia.
A letter writer from Atlanta attaches a letter sent to the Civil Aeronautics Board, urging that Eastern Airlines be required to add routes into Charlotte. He relates several personal anecdotes in which he was able to obtain passage where he wanted to go only through persistence, only to find that there were empty seats aboard.
A letter from the public relations department of Delta Airlines states that they had read Pete McKnight's stories on the subject in the newspaper and found them encouraging of the desire to obtain a route through Charlotte on Delta.
He adds that it was no "soft soap", but absolutely true—not the least bit tricky
Yeah? Well, then how about sending us a check for $250 for the Nikon camera which your sorry, thieving employees stole from our suitcase in 1991, and then relocked it with their key; and then you had the unmitigated audacity to tell us that your insurance policy did not cover cameras, as if that had anything at all to do with it or your sorry, thieving employees who stole with impunity with corporate acquiescence and obvious approbation.
Letters from Senator Clyde Hoey and Senator Josiah W. Bailey also express hope that Charlotte would obtain new air routes.
A letter from Congressman A. L. Bulwinkle expresses the same sentiment.
The chairman of the C.A.B. states that he had read the articles in the newspaper and had passed them to other members of the Board.
*Denotes story not on the front page of The News, culled from other front pages of the date.
Framed Edition
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.