Saturday, March 23, 1946

The Charlotte News

Saturday, March 23, 1946

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the atomic bomb tests of the Navy off of Bikini Atoll scheduled for May 15 had been postponed for about six weeks. President Truman indicated that the reason for the delay was to enable more Congressmen to witness the tests. White House press secretary Charles G. Ross denied that the delay had anything to do with Premier Stalin's expression of confidence the previous day in the U.N. and its peacekeeping mission.

Senator James Huffman of Ohio, interim appointee replacing Harold Burton who had been appointed to the Supreme Court in the fall, indicated his intent to try to have the tests completely cancelled, and other Government officials stated that the tests might be put on hold indefinitely until the Allies from the war had adjusted their differences.

Correspondent Eddy Gilmore, following up on his story indicating Stalin's support of the U.N., told of the ordinary Muscovite on the street who generally supported Stalin's statements.

Senator Carl Hatch of New Mexico commented that Premier Stalin had a complete misunderstanding of free speech in the United States when he recommended in his statement to Mr. Gilmore that the Government ought engage in a counter-propaganda campaign against groups backing policies which could stimulate war with Russia. Stalin had implied that the Government could limit these propagandists' freedom of speech.

Of course, given that the likes of Congressmen Martin Dies and John Rankin had, for years, hounded Communists in the country, usually to the exclusion of Fascists and other anti-Russian dissidents, it was not surprising that Stalin misunderstood how freedom of speech worked in the country.

Premier Ahmed Qavam of Iran expressed confidence that a resolution would soon be reached with Russia regarding continued presence of Soviet troops in Northern Iran beyond the March 2 deadline for evacuation. He informed that no new Soviet troops had entered Iran since March 2. The issue was third on the agenda of the U.N. Security Council, meeting again, this time in New York, starting Monday. American delegate Edward Stettinius had put in a request that the matter be moved up to first position on the agenda. Issues of rules of procedure were presently ahead of the matter. Secretary-General Trygve Lie of Norway stated that the matter would likely be advanced at the behest of Mr. Stettinius.

Documents which were proffered as evidence in the preliminary hearing of former Canadian Parliament member Fred Rose, accused of spying for the Soviet Union, showed that the Russians had sought information on the atomic bomb since March, 1945, five months before the Hiroshima bomb was dropped. The testimony of the chief witness in the case, Igor Gouzenko, former code clerk at the Soviet Embassy, continued for the second day. The introduced documents also implicated as members of the spy ring a member of the Labor-Progressive Party, Gordon Lunan, plus Isidor Halperin, and Edward W. Mazerall.

President Truman was slated to speak this evening at the Washington Jackson Day Dinner in what was billed as his first political speech since becoming President the previous April 12. The speech would be broadcast via radio at 10:15 p.m. Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace, the former Vice-President, would precede Mr. Truman for twelve minutes at the rostrum.

We note that the President sounded far more self-assured and smooth in his delivery of the speech, more rhythmic, less beset by note-for-note staccato, than on prior speaking occasions. He may have been receiving jazz lessons at the piano from some adviser.

Captain Frank Littlejohn of the Charlotte Police was made the new Chief by the City Council, replacing Walter Anderson who had just resigned to become head of the State Bureau of Investigation, a position Chief Anderson had accepted the previous June and then quickly decided to reject. Chief Littlejohn's salary was to be $4,500 per year.

News State Editor Bob Cranford has his piece for the first time on the front page, reporting of this and that around the states of both North and South Carolina. Governor Robert Kerr of Oklahoma had spoken at the Jackson Day Dinner in Raleigh, predicting that the Democrats would retain control of both chambers of Congress in the fall, that President Truman would be the party nominee in 1948 and that a Southern running mate would be best for the party. He also stated categorically that there would be no war with Russia.

While wrong on the first count, he was right on the rest, Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky ultimately to become President Truman's running mate in 1948.

A motorist who had been stopped for speeding in Hartsville, South Carolina, Mr. Cranford further informs, had no money with which to pay the fine, but the officer accepted the driver's three Bibles in lieu of monetary payment.

He also points out that five hundred pairs of nylon stockings were handed out as favors to women attending the annual Chamber of Commerce dinner in Durham.

The page tells of Furman Bisher covering baseball in Florida and Burke Davis covering the golf tournament in Greensboro. Not a word of the games this date in the Garden and in Kansas City to determine the finalists for the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament. What kind of a newspaper is this, anyway?

We may boycott.

On the editorial page, "A Calm Voice in the OPA Storm" wonders whether Chester Bowles served his purposes in trying to keep the lid on inflation with price controls by asserting that a small group of "greedy, selfish men" were responsible for the problems with the economy. The piece states that it was not so simple, as millions of regular businessmen also wanted price controls removed.

Recently, A.L.M. Wiggins of Hartsville, S.C., head of the American Bankers Association, had stated his support for continuation of price control. The piece hopes that other businessmen would take heed of this conservative defense of OPA by the head of the ABA.

"Man's Job for a Very Small Boy" expresses concern that the State Department had rejected out of hand the request by the Soviets to delay for three weeks the upcoming session of the U.N. Walter Lippmann had written that there was good reason to grant the request, not so that the Russians might have additional time to prepare their case on Iran, but because the U.N. Security Council, without a secretariat or research staff, was not equipped to deal with such an important issue as its first real test as a viable organization.

The State Department appeared to react premised on a belief ab initio that no case could be presented by the Russians.

"Well, all we can do is hold our breath and keep our fingers crossed and hope that Messrs. Truman and Byrnes have, for the first time since they sat down to play poker with Generalissimo Stalin, guessed right. There's a sizable pot on the table right now."

"The First Cavalry Rides Again" reports that the First Cavalry Division, on occupation duty in Japan, had undertaken to teach all of its members the equestrian arts. It had operated during the war as an infantry division, and many of its members had never sat astride a horse. They had a record in the Pacific war which had been superior to most infantry divisions, resultant of their high morale developed out of the division's history. They had a reputation to uphold, that cavalrymen were the fightingest men in the Army.

Thus having proved themselves so well in combat, no one should begrudge them this drift into "never-never land where war is not a dirty business conducted from a hole in the ground" but rather in "a land where hooves pound, sabres flash in the sun, bright banners stream, and the United States Cavalry comes galloping over the hill in the nick of time."

Drew Pearson recounts the criticism directly provided by Eleanor Roosevelt to Winston Churchill when he came to Hyde Park to place a wreath on the grave of FDR. She was profoundly displeased with his speech at Fulton, Mo., on March 5 and let him know it, accusing him of desecrating the ideals for which FDR had given his life, and in the process undermining the goals of the U.N.

Mr. Pearson notes that Mrs. Roosevelt had never been warm to Mr. Churchill, had, in 1943, during his stay in the White House, telephoned her daughter from New York, where she had deliberately gone to stay during the visit, and asked whether "that man" was still there.

On D-Day, Mr. Pearson had related of Mrs. Roosevelt's distaste for Mr. Churchill after encountering him wandering the halls of the Executive Mansion, smoking his cigar and wearing only his kimono and slippers.

He next tells of former Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, during his testimony against the confirmation of Ed Pauley as Undersecretary of the Navy, having withheld a line from his diary. Pesky Senators wanted it out, until they were informed that the line said that Mr. Pauley believed former DNC chairman Ed Flynn was a "cheap Bronx politician", after which apprisal of the censored contents, the Senators suddenly backed off their demand for the uncensored diary.

The column next informs of the Spanish Government of Franco providing aid to the Fascist underground in Italy. Just prior to the capture of Mussolini in April, 1945, many of the leading Italian Fascists had fled to Spain with plenty of money in hand to aid their flight. These Fascists were working with supporters of Franco in aid of the Italian Fascists. The State Department, however, had made no move to break off diplomatic relations with Spain.

Finally, he tells of Federal investigators looking at wholesalers of liquor who were illegally engaging in "tie-in" agreements whereby several cases of rum, wine, or other slow sellers were required to be purchased by retailers for every case of Scotch or bourbon purchased. Such a practice violated the Federal Alcohol Administration Act. The situation had become worse with the prospect of grain rationing. The Justice Department would, in all likelihood, bring conspiracy charges against the wholesalers.

Bob Cranford had reported on the front page of Governor Ransome Williams of South Carolina warning the Legislature of the need to take action in response to this situation.

But if you are going to tie one on, why not have wine, rum, cordials and whisky all at once, with some pairs of stockings the wife or girlfriend received as favors in Raleigh? with three Bibles and a heavy foot thrown in to boot.

Marquis Childs reports that future Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had met in Washington during the week with 30 Republican Senators, regarding the U.N. Mr. Dulles had been the alternative U.S. delegate at the recent London meeting. The Senators reacted with some conflict to his support of the organization, sounding as isolationists. Senator Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin was one such member, using pre-Pearl Harbor rhetoric to make his case. Some cited the failure of Britain to pay for World War I loans as ground for denying the presently pending loan.

After a three-hour session, some of the Senators, such as Warren Austin of Vermont, found the talk magnificent. Others left in a gloomy mood, dissatisfied with the absence of a transformation in the party. It was especially distressing as there had been virtual unanimity in the Senate for confirmation of the U.N. Charter. The troubles with Russia were now being used as excuse to retreat to a form of isolationism.

Mr. Dulles had charged that the United States was not giving its best efforts in support of the U.N.

Mr. Childs suggests that voting for the U.N. Charter had been easy, but now issues were before the Congress, notably the British loan and the extension of the draft, requiring substantive, not merely symbolic, action.

Samuel Grafton states that the proposal by Henry Wallace that Democrats who had joined the coalition with Republicans be stripped of the party label had met denunciation by Southern Democrats in the House, calling him a "Fascist". Mr. Wallace had sought to make dissent an evil, and, given that politicians were subject to local control by their constituencies and party chieftains, just as whisky, and that dissent was considered a right in the country, he had encountered difficulties in trying to charge the action as heresy and suggest banishment as a just punishment.

Mr. Grafton believed that placing the Southerners in a Conservative Bloc was the way to treat them, that they had formed a "shadow Government, which rules without taking responsibility."

Either the Southern Democrats would return to the party or they would join the Republicans, perhaps paying the political price for doing so. The Government could not continue in the present mold: "government by a weird luncheon club of public enemies and private friends."

A letter favors a return to family production of liquor to reduce its cost from the current $90 per gallon in some cases to 90 cents per gallon. But, the writer admits, the prospect was futile as the revenue from liquor to the state was too important. But the need to raise spondulix had also bred the host of problems surrounding liquor.

The editors respond that they had now heard everything.

A letter comments on the previous exchange regarding I Timothy and its suggestion that a "little wine" was good for the stomach, stressing that a little strychnine was also deemed beneficial while too much of it could result in death. The writer quotes again from Proverbs 23 and states that she had tended to an individual suffering from delirium tremens who thrashed about as if real snakes were harassing him.

She indicates that if the letter were published, she would try not to bother the newspaper again, but would not promise it.

The editors respond that they were glad to report all of the news, including the Dry part.

A letter states that the New York Times recently had carried an item from Charlotte dated March 9 regarding the story by John Daly of The News that Northern businessmen were buying up Southern cotton textile mills for speculative purposes and then routinely reselling them for large profits. As "management counsel", the writer relates of his experience in trying to locate businesses for his client to purchase. He had found that "refugee money" was being used to buy up old businesses and apartment houses at high prices.

Once again, we have correctly, astoundingly so, predicted not only the results, but the scores in the N.C.A.A. Tournament semi-finals played this night, won by North Carolina over Ohio State, 60-57 in the Garden, and by Oklahoma A & M over California, 52-35 in Kansas City. We cannot reveal our process for reaching this precision as we fear it might be co-opted by dark, perhaps foreign, forces for the wrong purposes.

Now for our prediction for Tuesday in the Garden: North Carolina will win over the Aggies. The final score, however, has yet to come to us and we must engage further in analysis of the player match-ups before we can reveal the precise outcome. But it is clear that North Carolina will win the game, and we say that without bias.

Just why The News has made no mention of this fateful event is beyond our understanding.

We have also looked into our crystal and found that eleven years hence from this date, North Carolina will meet Kansas in Kansas City in the title game and, unfortunately, will suffer their first loss of that season by a single point, when one of the players misses a pair of free throws in the waning seconds of the third overtime, after a stunning three overtime win against Michigan State the previous night.

Kansas in that year will be dominated by a small guard who will be a whiz at free throws, and, amazingly, will score 43 free throws in a single game during the tournament, all being tossed underhanded like a girl.

Unfortunately for North Carolina, its coach by then, a Southerner who disliked Irishmen and especially Yankee Irishmen, will meet a former player for Kansas during the tournament, an assistant for Army, and, then, in reliance on faulty judgment, hire this former player of Kansas, who had been on a team in 1952 which lost to Adolph Rupp and Kentucky in the final game of that tournament, a team for which the 1957 North Carolina coach had been an assistant, by a score of 80 to 63, to be an assistant at North Carolina to the Yankee-hating Southern head coach, nicknamed by his players "Woolly", for reasons unknown.

This assistant would go on to become head coach following the resignation of Woolly, Woolly having been begged by the president and chancellor of the University to stay in Chapel Hill, but insisting, after achieving four more national championships in succession, over Seattle, California, in both 1959 and 1960, and Cincinnati, in that order, the latter led by a tall player they dubbed the "Big E", that he had to move on to another river, and so took a job in the NBA with the Frankliners of Philadelphia, a failing franchise before he took over, to coach the star guard who will play for Kansas in 1957. The Frankliners, under Woolly's guidance, becoming famed for smoking a Churchill as victory appeared imminent in each game, went on to win 21 straight NBA titles, Woolly turning down numerous coaching offers in the collegiate ranks in the meantime, one coming from U.C.L.A. which had not had a winning season since 1948, including another notable episode in which, after the assistant hired in his stead, known by the students as "Well-Meaning Loser" for his string of five consecutive seasons in which the team averaged a record of 5 and 20, and whose now infamous favorite expressions were, alternatingly, "Big Mo Is Less", "Too Fast for Me", and "Bring Back the Jump Ball After Each Field Goal", begged the chancellor of the University to beg the "Southern Gentleman", as this coach had, since his departure from Chapel Hill, become known in Philly, to return, and Woolly famously will respond: "I shall return, but not in this form. I must move a nation first."

The unpopular assistant who had been hired in his stead was finally fired after being hung in effigy on Polk Place by the students during eight successive losing seasons, but then became the most successful Coca-Cola salesman in the history of the company.

In his stead was hired a former Air Force coach, known for his even temperament in the face of the most trying circumstances during and after games, known also for his trademark Carolina blue sweaters, who will, 30 years from now, coach the next team which will nearly become the first undefeated team, *not on probation and ineligible for post-season play, to win the national championship, Duke coming close in 1964, Kentucky, in 1967, Florida State in 1972, and North Carolina in 1973, each suffering their only losses in the finals, but for the fact of their also losing their final game in the N.C.A.A. finals of 1976, in a last second miscue by their guard, nicknamed "Boo Rad", who will toss the ball to one of Indiana's players after being distracted by a fan suddenly waving in his face a big sign which read, "Boo, Rad, Can't Make the Grad", simultaneously being corralled in the corner of the court by a host of North Carolina players threatening, below the din, to box Boo's ears if he tried to call for help, saying, "Hey, man, don't call for help or we shall box Boo's ears," thus trying, before passing the ball away, to call a timeout he did not have, which, for the errant pass, was fortunately not recognized by the referee for his lack of possession, as he made the "T" sign using both hands aforehand and thus lost the ball simultaneously anyway as he sought to make the pass, the intercepting Indiana player, known by his teammates as "Birdman", then driving the length of the floor to score on an uncontested layup to win by a point, some calling it a fluke, claiming that the Indiana players somehow cheated, having learned the Technique from Woolly and his Southern mystique.

The following year, however, the University of Detroit would stun the conventional basketball world by going 34-0 and cutting down the nets at the end, but then the coach, within the throes of exultation over the victory, having made the foolhardy promise of feeding the entire nation pizza, as the entire team and coach were Italian, was then sued in a class action lawsuit for damages for breach of contract when the coach had to decline fulfillment of the promise, saying it was just a joke, and, losing before a jury in South Carolina, deemed the proper venue, comprised of twelve men and women who had never had pizza and wanted some, was assessed for the cost of 220 million pizzas, which bankrupted the university, also sued under the theory of respondeat superior, and forced the firing of that coach who then went into the pizza business and made a killing, not on pizzas but on replicas of the Mona Lisa, which he painted in his spare time.

An oddity of the end of that 1957 season, incidentally, will be this phonograph record, recorded prior to the final game, thus completely obsolete in the end as misstating entirely the outcome. While a little obscure, the tiny button to get it to play is beneath the lower photograph. Few have ever heard this record and so you can now be among the happy few. It may change your life. It certainly did ours, eleven years from now. We shall move to Jamaica at that point and live there ever after.

You can take it all to the bank as collateral for whatever you need, even if not what you want. It is better than that "refugee money". But beware that some of the above is in double-secret code and you must discern its cryptography to achieve the properly accurate results.

Herblock.

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