General Bradley seemed to have isolated the cause for the criticism: the American Legion commander had disagreed with the General on the location for a veterans hospital in Illinois, a site in which the commander had a personal interest. After the statement by General Bradley to this effect, the commander backed down.

The AMVETS charged that the commander was seeking to regain the Legion's lost control over the V.A., accumulated following World War I.

The charges against the Legion seemed apt, since General Bradley had only been in the position for six months.

The piece asserts that General Bradley appeared to be doing what was best for the veterans, not for the American Legion.

He answered the call, and she was now doing fine, progressing apace with her novel.

The implications for North Carolina, the piece predicts, were remarkable. Soon, everyone in the state could have their morning cup of centella and go forth into the world with increased mental acuity.

The State could start advertising campaigns which would disseminate material containing such slogans as, "Come to North Carolina—The Land of Mental Giants", or "Improve Your Perception in Pasquotank" and other such phraseology in alliterative combination with county names.

It concludes that the Gamecock boast to the south, that vegetables in the Palmetto State were possessed of higher than ordinary iodine content, was nothing if not idle compared to this new revelation about the North Carolina swamp.

Of course, the editors could not yet know that in 1947, the Federal Government would take note of this phenomenal discovery and derive from the flora the name for the new intelligence gathering spy agency, it having had its proto-genesis as a variant of Centella Intelligencia Asiatica.

Then, the editors went home and had a terrible nightmare, that the newspapers printed nothing about crime, thus leading the populace to be apathetic toward it, allowing the community to sleep peacefully while untoward mischief continued to prevail, albeit enshrouded in darkness, unreported, at least until something so bad would occur that the secret would out.

Then everyone within the nightmare asked why they had not been apprised of the crime wave. Had they been, they might have blunted its worst blows to the community. They condemned the press for censorship and not keeping the public informed.

The editors were reminded not to take naps on their back, which was how they always had nightmares, especially after listening to talks by high school students.

Of course, the piece could not foresee a day when not only was there a newspaper, but wall to wall television news, magnifying every small story into a globe-shattering event in order to sell more cornflakes along the Yellow Brick Road. And, plainly, while we have always had violence, this constant wall-to-wall coverage, sometimes for days on end, of purely local news stories which would have remained local 35 years ago, but now become global in their impact, spawn and propagate the species of violent criminal acts.

There is such a thing as too much news coverage, to the point where the general reaction is either to ignore all of it as jaded or to imbibe and instill it, then lock the doors, have handy the gun, with or without skillet, and hide under the bed or in the safe room, acting like a complete nut, not only waiting for something to happen, but hoping that it will, to provide rationale for the paranoiac behavior, to the point that the "incident" is finally stimulated or even invited.

Mr. Wyatt wanted the housing industry to build three million units in the ensuing two years, not just the 400,000 which they said they could accomplish. To do it, he wanted non-essential building in the commercial arena stopped and controls replaced on building materials on a priority basis. He also wanted subsidies for low-cost housing and conversion of Army camps to temporary housing. His proposal favored giving the highest priority to building of houses costing $5,000 and advocated the use of pre-fabricated materials to quicken the pace.

—You 'an slap them plywood up 'ere 'lot easier 'an them lapboards. You know what I'm sayin'? Then you get you a little wall-to-wall carpet rather than them 3-by floorboards. Finally, throw you up some gypsum instead o' that lath and plaster work, and you're done inside a couple or three weeks.

Neither Mr. Snyder nor Mr. Allen liked the plan. Mr. Allen first wanted the approval of Congress, as several bills regarding housing were already pending.

The President, however, liked the plan. Mr. Ross disagreed with Mr. Snyder's assessment that the press would react unfavorably. The plan was ultimately delayed until some of the objections by Mr. Snyder could be resolved.

Among Mr. Pearson's Merry-Go-Round items was that Representative John Rankin of Mississippi was searching for a ghost writer to provide the skinny on Mr. Rankin's HUAC.

A recent report by L. E. Degolyer, considered the most informed authority in the world on oil at the time, had disclosed that the amount of oil beneath Saudi Arabia was greater than that in both North and South America. Texaco and Standard Oil of California possessed the sole rights to develop the Saudi oil.

Ed Pauley, wealthy oil magnate, had been nominated to be Undersecretary of the Navy. It had been alleged that Mr. Pauley had participated in the Mexican oil deal.

According to some sources, Ralph Davies, another oil man was to be nominated as Undersecretary of the Interior, and slated to become Secretary at the resignation of Harold Ickes. (It would not be so. Within days, Julius Krug, most recently former head of the dissolved War Production Board, would be appointed to succeed Mr. Ickes.)

As oil men, they were knowledgeable and qualified to look after America's oil reserves and safeguard American interests in the Middle East. The Navy, with U.S. reserves depleted by the war, wanted to assure supply for the country out of that region.

The primary question centered on the terms on which access to the oil would be obtained. Mr. Childs asks whether Mr. Pauley and Mr. Davies would wage an undeclared war in the Middle East for the oil, and whether the competition for it had the potential to become a shooting war, belying all of the principles on which the U.N. had been founded the previous June.

He concludes that talk of internationalizing the oil of the Middle East might constitute naive idealism, but he counsels the nation to make the attempt rather than perpetuate imperialistic rivalry—which at that juncture primarily involved the British, the French, and, to a lesser degree, the Russians.

Likewise, the business community feared VOA because of its Government control, distrusting it despite the mission of VOA to represent the benefits of private enterprise to countries in the Balkans, the Near East, and in Russia, a way of countering the Russian Socialist propaganda.

In the end, the story which VOA ought be relating, Mr. Grafton suggests, was that of a country divided against itself.

Nazism, while portrayed as rightwing, had been defined by the Nazis, and perceived by the Germans, as the Revolution. The leaders of the movement were either old Army officers or frustrated intellectuals, attacking all previous German values, removing not only Socialists and Communists, but also those Germans who represented the traditional standards. Nazism represented Nihilism, not Conservatism.

Nor was the opposition to it only from the left. Karl Goerdeler, for instance, had been a moderate. He was executed by Hitler. Many of the opponents were financed by the Bosch works, including some of its engineers and executives. Many were hanged.

Some of the most stubborn opposition had come from the church.

Presently, there were three anti-Fascist movements emerging in Europe: Social Democracy, Christian Democracy, and Communism. None was oriented toward capitalism, though the first two wanted to limit government interference and control. Communism, except where backed by foreign governments, had made little headway. It had made the most progress in countries distant from Russia, such as France.

She posits it to be an illusion to assume that economic reform and social conservatism were incompatible. They were part of the same movement, one representing progress and the other maintenance of tradition while progress was being forged.

There were more things to which Germans wanted to return than to advance toward. Nazi atrocities and sadism were things they wished to abandon. Nazism had also established state control of the economy.

She concludes by quoting Dostoevsky, that "the earth will weep for its old gods." Much of it, she found, already did, "and especially those countries which have looked closest into the eyes of some of the new gods."