Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that mediation between the bituminous coal mine operators and UMW representatives would resume at the Labor Department after having been discontinued April 10 at the inception of the strike, despite the fact that the companies refused to commit still to the demand of John L. Lewis for a royalty to support a fund, to be run by the union, for the health and safety of miners.

AFL president William Green stated to the Senate Banking Committee that the House bill to extend OPA had amended it to death and urged continued price controls, found a suggestion by Senator Abe Murdock of Utah that veterans be employed by the agency to enforce price controls and extinguish the black market to be a good one.

Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana accused the Administration of running its own version of the black market by paying 30 cents premium per bushel of corn to obtain food for famine relief.

The four-power foreign ministers conference dealt with the question of Italian colonial interests in North Africa and the Dodecanese Islands in the Mediterranean, the disposition of both areas, especially Tripolitania, being hotly contested by the Russians, desirous of a trusteeship over the latter. The United States wanted Tripolitania and Eritrea under a U.N. trusteeship. Britain was opposed to a Russian trusteeship.

White House confidantes refused to confirm definite rumors, the "rifest" of which had it that either Justice Robert Jackson or Justice William O. Douglas would succeed deceased Harlan Stone as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, with Secretary of War Robert Patterson appointed to fill the Court vacancy. There was no doubt, however, that the President had determined to elevate a current member of the Court and appoint a new Justice to the vacancy. "That much was known definitely,..." And the decision was expected to be announced during the week, possibly the following day.

Moral: Don't believe everything you read or hear via rumor. As indicated, nothing of the kind would occur. Secretary of the Treasury Fred Vinson would be appointed Chief Justice in June.

In Tokyo, former Premier Hideki Tojo, Admiral Osami Nagano, who gave the order to attack Pearl Harbor, former Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka, former Ambassador to Germany Hiroshi Oshima, former Ambassador to Italy Toshio Shiratori, the latter three of whom arranged the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in early 1941, former Foreign Minister at the outset of the war, Shigenori Togo, Col. Kingoto Hashimoto, whose artillery sank the U.S. gunboat Panay in December, 1937 on the Yangtze River, and 21 other Japanese military leaders during the war were indicted for war crimes and were scheduled to be arraigned May 3 on 55 separate counts. An eleven-nation tribunal was scheduled to try the men, charged with the murder of thousands and conspiracy to wage world war.

Tom Masterson of the Associated Press reports firsthand nine days earlier of the fall of Changchun to the Chinese Communists following a four-day battle in which the commander of the National Army was wounded after heroically defending to the end the Army headquarters. The Communists then moved south to stop the advance of the Government First Army seeking to reinforce Changchun.

The Communist troops were still rooting out pockets of resistance and the Government troops expressed the hope that teams from Mukden would soon arrive to end the fighting and straighten out the mess in Manchuria.

The piece notes parenthetically that this latter hope was not realized, as peace negotiations had broken down.

The U.N. Security Council, as expected, voted 10-0, with Russia abstaining, to set up a five-person subcommittee to investigate the charges brought by Poland against Spain, that it harbored German scientists for the purpose of developing weapons of war and, along with its complement of troops arrayed along the frontier with France, threatened thereby the peace. Russia, favoring the Polish complaint, had wanted instead an immediate vote on cessation of diplomatic relations without any prior investigation.

Harold Ickes, in his column, again rails against the Franco regime in Spain and the tolerance of it by the U.S. State Department, which sought implicitly to distinguish Falangism from Fascism, though Mussolini had in September of 1942 made a speech in which he stated that there was no distinction between the two systems or between either system and Nazism, that the three stood united.

U.S. policy had been consistent since the Spanish Civil War in 1936, that the United States regarded the matter as an internal dispute and would not intervene or lend aid to the Loyalists as possibly offending Hitler. But the policy persisted into the present time despite the Allies having crushed in the interim all vestiges of the Wehrmacht.

In 1939, former Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, not then in the Government, in 1940 to become Secretary of War, advised that the State Department campaign against the Neutrality Act and its arms embargo, which effectively prevented the Loyalists from winning the war.

Franco's efforts in supplying the Nazis with food and arms, keeping an army on the Moroccan border to guard against an attack from the rear, and sharing spies and soldiers with Hitler, all constituted participation in the war effort. Spain's claimed neutrality in the war was simply a myth.

The Spanish Falangists remained active in Latin America and the Philippines. Franco maintained soldiers on the French frontier. He was providing a haven for German scientists to plan another war. Effectively, the State Department by taking a soft approach to Franco, permitted Fascism to continue to thrive on the world stage.

Mr. Ickes concludes that unless Franco were ousted from power, World War III would be soon enough in the offing. "Thus Hitler's ghost will be appeased."

In Paintsville, Ky., two men were accused of rape and attempted rape of a 19-year old girl who, subsequent to the assault, fell off a cliff in the dark, breaking both her legs, left laying in the open air for two days and nights. She was found on Saturday by fox hunters.

In Lancaster, Pa., the Amish stated that a proposal by the Pennsylvania Agricultural Administration, that the sect cancel its mandate that only horses pull farm equipment, was "out of the question". The proposal was intended to help alleviate the grain shortage for the starving masses overseas by freeing up the feed provided the work horses. The Amish rejoindered that they could grow more and better crops by use of livestock, and that the lack of mechanical equipment helped to keep the farm families working on the farm.

The way of the ascetic is not always clear when modern life intrudes to make demands upon it. At the same time, it is not entirely clear how such a small sect would substantially impact the grain shortage. There was likely more fertile ground on which to pick than the Amish.

We suspect the aim was more at eliminating the frustration of coming suddenly around a long curve upon a horse drawn buggy, while doing 60 in a jalopy.

Burke Davis, on page 12-A, tells of a visit with Chapel Hill author Betty Smith, known for her 1943 best-seller A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, hard at work on her latest book, "The Streets of Little Promise", apparently a working title changed to Tomorrow Will Be Better, published in 1947, a more optimistic title. We hope so. Ms. Smith would only publish two more novels, the next not until 1958.

On the editorial page, "Notes on the British Loan" finds some of the arcane rationales for the British loan to be too complicated for non-economist laymen fully to comprehend and so suggests looking for guidance at the types of people favoring and opposing it.

"A Strange, Backward Scramble" informs that only four states maintained white-only primaries, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Arkansas. The Supreme Court had blocked virtually every machination aimed at denying the franchise to blacks. But the insistent of the four states were still at work trying to find loopholes.

"There are still many among them who seriously predict a return to the bloody days of Reconstruction if the Negro gets a primary vote, ignoring all the evidence available in the seven Southern States, including this one, that long ago abandoned the white primary."

The piece states that it was a peculiar reaction as it had only been in recent years, as pointed out by The Columbia Record, that blacks had been excluded from the primaries. Both races voted for Wade Hampton following the Civil War, the election which ended Reconstruction in the state. The Record advocated allowing full participation by blacks, that the white-only primary system had served the state badly. There was no reason to wait until being compelled by the Supreme Court to admit blacks to the primary process. The editorial agrees.

"Has Anybody Got the Time?" comments on the return of Daylight Savings Time, here and there, while Standard Time remained there and here. Clocks were stuck an hour behind.

The hour, it's getting late.

In the olden days, in the olden times, in Bristol, Tenn.-Va., one could cross the street, across the line, at closing time, and still find the stores open, with time to abide, on the other side.

Drew Pearson comments on the War Department keeping under wraps the diary of General Patton, considered charged with material too hot to handle. He had criticized Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery for being too slow and cautious in his movements in France, slowing operations by months, that the war could have been won sooner had Patton been permitted by Montgomery to move unimpeded in September, 1944, when the Nazis were still regrouping.

Patton was stopped at the border of Germany, not by lack of gasoline as reported at the time, but by the decision of General Eisenhower that he would need to wait for General Montgomery to catch up, that it would be impolitic to outrun the British into Germany.

Mr. Pearson does not mention that the other reason was that the Russians wanted to take Berlin and the Americans had to wait for them to break through at Warsaw and overrun Prussia and East Germany.

General Patton was also none too kind in his diary to American commanders, including General Eisenhower.

The Third Army had crossed the Rhine on March 22, 1945 and established a bridgehead of eight miles within a few hours, an achievement not much reported at the time in the American press. At the same time, General Montgomery, commanding three armies, established a bridgehead of only one mile on March 24, but an action publicized as a great stride forward.

The Patton family had refused to grant permission for release of the diary but some members of the Third Army wanted it published and the proceeds used to build the monument to the Third Army in France, which the General told friends he would like to have built.

Mr. Pearson adds a note that on October 22, 1944, he had published a story of General Eisenhower being exasperated with General Montgomery's sloth and demand for more American troops, refusing to launch the breakthrough on Normandy at Caen. Mr. Pearson states that he had received a vehement denial of the report at the time from the British. (As October 22 was a Sunday, the column is not available herein. The next day's column, interesting for its separation in time by over five months from the previously referenced diary entry of General Patton, expressing the diametrically opposed opinion on the same topic, finds Mr. Pearson relating of General Eisenhower being impressed that he was permitted to conduct the war free of election year politics. The collision is also interesting for the fact......)

He next publishes another 1,500 calory per day diet, equivalent to the European daily intake of food, this one supplied by the wife of Attorney General Tom Clark, whose family was being fed the diet.

Have at it, and remember the slender figure always cut by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, then in his teens. The diet must have done him good. Somebody might ask him what he thought of it.

For supper, the Clark household had eight ounces of beef barley soup, two five-inch stalks of broccoli, a half cup of steamed carrots, a half cup of creamed potatoes with butter, rye melba toast with a half pat of butter, fruit cup of pineapple and strawberries, and a glass of milk, totaling 506 calories.

Hold the lettuce, hold the mayonnaise, and the chicken salad.

"Hair", incidentally, from March 23, 1945, is now here. "East Germany" is now here.

Marquis Childs indicates that the bread pasta ration in Italy was being reduced by a third, to 150 grams per day, resulting in a lower daily caloric intake than the prisoners in the German concentration camps. Already, Italians got no more than 900 calories per day, including 250 from the black market. The Premier of Italy had called Fiorello La Guardia, head of UNRRA, to inform him that he could not be responsible for what might occur after the cut, implying violence in the streets.

Samuel Grafton comments on the reports from Bavaria that university students told each other hopefully that Hitler was still alive, while at the University of Munich, American soldiers had discovered a course in racial theory being taught by Prince Wilhelm Karl von Isenburg, a course established in 1935 under the Nazis. Added to it was the unearthing of the corpse of Mussolini in Milan to parade it before the people again.

"Shall we laugh or shall we fret? Is it comedy or is it drama? Drama, I think, and the third act begins just when we thought there was nothing left to do but to sweep out the theater."

A letter promotes the third annual drive of the United Negro College Fund, to support the 33 member colleges, four of which, Johnson C. Smith in Charlotte, Bennett College in Greensboro, Shaw University in Raleigh, and Livingstone in Salisbury, were in North Carolina. All except one of the colleges was in the South. There were 37 accredited black colleges nationwide, the first having been founded in 1854.