Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Andrei Gromyko had ended his boycott of the U.N. Security Council meetings, ongoing since March 27.

Government officials reported that Russia had asked that charges of spying against Lt. Nicolai G. Redin, arrested March 26 in Portland, Ore., be dropped unless more evidence could be adduced to support the charge. The complaint alleged that an unnamed person had accused the Russian Naval officer of trying to obtain from him data on the U.S.S. Yellowstone, a new destroyer tender.

Because the officer did not enjoy diplomatic immunity, the State Department declined to interfere with the matter, leaving it to the Justice Department and the Grand Jury to determine. Had he been listed as a diplomat, the State Department would have asked that Russia recall him as being persona non grata in the United States.

A three-member subcommittee recommended to the Senate Military Committee that the War and Navy Departments be joined in a Department of Common Defense with an autonomous Air Force, following the President's recommendation.

The Department of Agriculture informed a conference of bakers and millers that bread and flour rationing would not be implemented for its impracticability despite the shortages of wheat. Ration books could not be printed in time to meet the shortage.

The meatpackers asserted that the black market in meat was out of control, price controls had broken down, and that the only remedy was to abolish those controls.

CIO and AFL unions called a strike at seven East Coast sugar refineries, involving 8,000 workers, effective at midnight Saturday, which would affect 70 percent of the nation's cane sugar production. Negotiations continued, with the unions demanding an increase of 18.5 cents per hour, albeit willing to compromise at one point at 15 cents, while the companies remained at 13 cents.

Hal Boyle again writes a letter to his wife Frances, this time from Rome, telling her that Romans were mainly employed at the time in either building statues or selling on the black market. There was a statue, most in the nude, to everyone except Mussolini and the street sweepers. He saw so many naked nymphs in stone that he believed after a time he ought step beside one and relieve it of its burden by helping to shoulder a porch.

He had designed a statue to honor the black market, men standing in heroic stature in a circle, each with his oversized hand in the next man's pocket.

As soon as he had arrived from Athens by TWA, men sidled up to him at the airport asking if he had anything to sell or money to change. It was no different along the sidewalks of the city. They would buy and sell anything, but their most active trade was in cigarettes and food. American soldiers were paid a dollar per pack of cigarettes, enabling a non-smoker to pocket 40 dollars per month from his allotment doled out by the Army.

Luxury items were plentiful in the stores and food was also abundant, albeit at high prices.

Street beggars were numerous. A little girl gave him a typed note in perfect English, stating that she was without parents and needed succor. As he reached in his pocket to give her money, a woman rushed from an adjacent shop and gave the urchin a belt on her ear. The wayward waif made an ugly face and then went on her way, looking for another to give her succor.

Attorney General Tom Clark announced a consent decree which dissolved a world-wide match cartel, involving match manufacturers from the United States, Sweden, and Great Britain who had, according to the Government, entered into a conspiracy to suppress the manufacture of everlasting matches, a match which could be struck several times. The Diamond Match Co., one of the defendants, claimed not to know of any such match.

A University of Southern California education professor was sued for every last penny he had by his wife, accusing him of campus affairs and kissing a collaborator on a book. He had resigned the faculty in the wake of the accusations. Under a settlement, he was allowed to keep two accounts receivable worth $1,000, a life insurance policy, his personal belongings, a car, and a one-half interest in unsold books. She received the remainder of the marital property, valued at $50,000, plus alimony, child support, and the manuscript over which he allegedly kissed his collaborator, a former student who was also married. Whether he would get her in the bargain was not included in the settlement.

What happened to the diamond of the everlasting match is not told either.

Perhaps, it is mentioned in the annals of the Poloponessian Wars by Herodotus Les Troyennesanus, the French-Greek author from Jersey.

Three housewives in Buffalo each found $20 in their mailboxes, in a housing project in which they all resided. No one else found such bills and no one knew from whence they came. Perhaps, it was the U.S.C. professor hiding some assets from his erstwhile wife.

A 16-year old war bride from London who had arrived in Salisbury, N.C., the previous Tuesday but then disappeared when her husband took her to the railway station to pick up her baggage, was discovered in New York City by the N.Y.P.D., ever vigilant for missing war brides. She must have had second thoughts, vanished over the line, after seeing where she would abide, that it was not quite Salisbury Plain as perhaps she imagined, but rather Salisbury plain, imaged in she.

He forgot to provide her a Cheerwine, one of the chiefest attributes of Salisbury, after all. She would have been hooked, perhaps even seen Stonehenge in the broad distance, as most do after a couple of good belts of Cheerwine to provide succor.

J. B. Engle relates of the story of little Johnnie Doe, an infant of a few weeks' life, who, as told in the reprinted note left with him by his mother, was found abandoned in a pew of the St. Mary's Catholic Church in Washington, herself sans another. The note apologized for the mother's act of abandonment but explained that she had no means to support the child as she was a teenager and her parents had refused her succor.

The child had been born out of wedlock, the result of a union with her boyfriend in the service who did not return from the war. He had been of another unstated religion and the mother's parents would not allow the marriage. She wanted something by which to remember her beloved in case he did not return from the war and so they decided to have a child.

She asked that the Church care for the child and find it a good home.

The piece explains that if the mother did not return within a year, the child would be placed for adoption and in the meantime would receive care from the Welfare Department.

A 32-year old woman had been convinced in West Caldwell, N.J., by a fortune teller to go to the woods for four days and nights to cure herself of her undetermined ills. She followed the advice and was receiving nourishment after conclusion of the ordeal. Police were looking for the fortune teller to whom the woman had paid a dollar for the advice.

Whether the woman had left Salisbury and then turned a baby over to the Catholic Church in Washington, having become lovelorn after collaborating with a university professor on a book, having another little child roaming the streets of Rome, and was possessed of exactly $19 in her pocket, was not yet reported. But police might wish to investigate.

Mary Dublin of Cleveland was named that city's Sesquicentennial Queen, as told by the photograph's caption, immediately above the story about the everlasting match of which the Diamond Company had never heard.

On the editorial page, "Jimmy's Fancy Footwork Isn't Enough" finds the efforts of Secretary of State Byrnes to bring the Iranian issue before the Security Council, upholding the principle of preservation of rights of small nations in conflict with major powers, to have been a laudable bit of statesmanship. But another issue now lay ahead, that of whether the Security Council could examine the agreement reached independently between Russia and Iran. The Russians would contend that it violated the sovereignty of each nation to do so.

"Starting from the Wrong End" discusses a booklet produced by the Committee for North Carolina to educate voters on the process of voting. It was a worthy effort, though some might criticize the Committee for its ties to the Southern Conference of Human Welfare, which advocated equal voting rights for everyone. But even critics could not argue with the effort to bring people to the polls.

"A Chance to Rout Another Killer" comments on the opportunity to try to arrest the still largely unknown and undiscussed disease of cancer, in addition to the campaigns which had been active to halt polio and tuberculosis, as well as lesser campaigns regarding heart disease and diabetes. The local chapter of the American Cancer Association had set a goal of $16,425 to be met by April 17, appeared on their way to reaching it.

A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Reece Is No Departure", comments on the selection by the Republicans of Representative Carroll Reece of Tennessee to be the new RNC chairman, stating that it found the choice no departure from the Republican view that the South remained conquered territory, despite the Southern roots of Mr. Reece.

Drew Pearson discusses the plain talking among the 50 Southern Democrats who met behind closed doors to demand an apology from DNC chairman Robert Hannegan for the article by subsequently dismissed staff member Jane Heidt in the Democratic Digest, which had called a vote for the anti-labor Case bill a vote against Americans and urging that it be remembered at polling time.

He reports that Representative Sam Ervin had explained to his fellow Southerners that Mrs. C. W. Tillett, the wife of the Charlotte City Attorney and head of the women's section of the Digest, was as much a Southern Democrat as Mississippi Congressman John Rankin or as Senator Beauregard Claghorn of Charleston claimed to be. But the invitation to redirect the venom failed as the 50 were out to string up Mr. Hannegan and Henry Wallace by dawn, the latter for his urging party discipline by depriving wayward Democrats of use of the party label.

Louisiana Representative Charles McKenzie stated the matter as being based on the Administration generally not paying proper heed to the 120 Southern Democratic members of Congress in its formulations of policy. Were things not to change, then the President would lose their support completely.

Representative Rankin, however, received little response when he tried to change the topic to his favorite subject: "'The Communists, Niggers and Jews.'"

Mr. Pearson next reports that the Australian delegate to the U.N., Col. W. R. Hodgson, had also walked out of the Security Council but only behind closed doors and only briefly. He initially protested the calling of a secret meeting by Secretary-General Trygve Lie. After being assured that the meeting would primarily center on the site of the next General Assembly meeting in September, Col. Hodgson showed up. But when Secretary Byrnes began speaking on the Iranian issue, he walked out. Mr. Byrnes rushed to his side to try to explain that he was still only discussing procedure, and Mr. Hodgson again agreed to remain.

Marquis Childs comments that with the Iranian question resolved, the U.N. Security Council would next consider the more pedestrian question of procedures and rules. But other issues lay simmering in the noonday sun, with particularity, that of Egypt and its intense nationalism in the face of continued presence of British troops. Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin had told Parliament that delegates would be sent to Cairo to negotiate a new treaty with Egypt, which would hopefully resolve the issues between the two countries. The treaty allowed for mutual agreement to revision of its terms after a decade.

Samuel Grafton comments on the organs which had neatly wrapped up the Iranian crisis as finished with the Russo-Iranian agreement. The New York Times had proclaimed that the resolution had established the U.N. as a new authority in the world and that a precedent had been formed for the future regarding the ability of small nations to obtain redress of grievances.

Mr. Grafton finds it not yet an occasion, however, for shouting "callooh, callay" to such a frabjous day.

He suggests that the Security Council had become excessively legalistic, not allowing discussion of Iranian oil, not allowing postponement to April 10 to take up the question, as sought by Andrei Gromyko and on which basis he had walked out of the Council, a request which had not been made idly as the agreement with Iran was concluded on April 5. While nations resolved between themselves substantive issues, oil and borders, the Council was mired in procedural matters.

The result in the particular case left Russia with the ability to suggest with probity that the Council was not receptive to objections of one of its own members, merely asking in good faith for delay of consideration of an issue, when in the time it had sought Russia had concluded the treaty.

It also raised the question of why the Iranians continued to press the issue when they were aware of the ongoing negotiations and their status. The outcome suggested that the Iranians shrewdly used the Council to exert pressure on Russia during those negotiations.

The mode of operation may have settled the issue for the time being as to whether the Security Council was an organization designed amicably to resolve issues or a rigid body wedded to automatic processes to resolve disputes through those processes, much as a court. Such a stance would not lead Russia to place less reliance on its veto power and, while convenient to write a conclusion to the episode as had the Times, it was not a concluded matter.

A letter from a sergeant at Fort Bragg, a lawyer from Oklahoma in private life, stated that his state had been maintained as dry for 40 years, drinking wet, voting dry. The Drys all welcomed the support of the bootleggers during their campaigns. They talked of high principles while pragmatically realizing the need for sale of liquor to keep the wheels of commerce greased. And with their senses made acute by the dollars they raised from bootleg whisky, they knew that drinking was much higher under legalized liquor sale than under bootlegging.

A letter responds to the letter of the previous week which had in turn responded to the letters responding to the latter author's earlier letter, the previous week stating that the baboon had difficulty showing his point. This letter says that her point that a drunkard could not achieve entry to heaven was not provable and urges not to engage in judgment.

He also believes that the Bible said woe unto lawyers and doctors. (We believe that it was rather the equivalent of scribes and Pharisees, the scribes equating to teachers of religious law, having nothing to do with lawyers in the modern sense.)

A letter from a member of the American Friends Service Committee asks that the citizens join to prevent peacetime conscription as being an encouragement to war.

A letter comments that the dog food fed to America's dogs would feed Europe and questions how the dog owners were sleeping.

And, of course, we offer our congratulations to the Louisville Cardinals for their N.C.A.A. title on Monday night against the University of Michigan, which, you will note, we predicted in our note of Saturday, including precisely the correct score, 82 to 76. The latter part requires a bit of higher discernment to establish, but we are certain you can quickly understand and so we shall refrain from condescending to your higher powers by deigning to provide further explanation. We are glad that no small-scale riots or shootings occurred in celebration of the victory, and congratulate the Louisville fans for proper restraint. We also welcome Louisville to the Atlantic Coastal Plain, sort of-kind of, Almost Midwestern, Conference, beginning next year, and we trust that they will not be planning to beat our school anytime soon, should they ever wind up meeting after the expansion to 53 teams in three or four years.

One thing though to bear in mind as you go through life: if you want to win the national championship in basketball, go out and play volleyball before the semi-final game. You may not get there right away, but, eventually, maybe fifteen years later, that volleyball game will pay off.