Tuesday, July 30, 1946

The Charlotte News

Tuesday, July 30, 1946

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State James Byrnes told the 21-nation Paris Peace Conference that the United States would stand by the recommendations of the foreign ministers conference, but that if the 21-nation conference were to make contrary recommendations adopted by two-thirds of the nations present, then the United States would support those recommendations. The conference Rules Committee voted unanimously to make the conference open.

Near Peiping, three hundred Chinese, some with the uniforms of the Communists, fired on a truck convoy containing a hundred U.S. Marines, killing four and wounding nineteen in a four-hour attack. The trucks had been headed from Tientsin to Peiping. At least two of the attacking force were killed. The Chinese, some dressed in the garb of farmers, some in shorts, ran at the convoy through the corn rows, appearing as "Indians on the warpath".

The Senate War Investigating Committee heard from a Tacoma contractor that he provided $2,500 to the secretary of Congressman John Coffee of Washington to obtain "service" from the Congressman. Senator Tom Connally of Texas told him that he had violated the criminal law and ought to be indicted for soliciting influence. The contractor claimed that he was not trying to obtain influence but simply better service under the contract. Whether he also expected cream and sugar was not stated.

Congressmen John Rankin and Vito Marcantonio argued over a contempt citation which Mr. Rankin wanted issued against a representative of a group which he labeled Communist. Mr. Marcantonio claimed that he was holding up legislation to provide automobiles to amputee veterans. Mr. Rankin saw the issue as being between Communism and a "free government under Christian civilization".

House-Senate confreres agreed that the back furlough pay for enlisted men would be paid in five-year negotiable bonds.

OPA was deciding whether to lift price controls on bread and bakery products.

The sugar shortage was reported to be easing shortly.

In San Francisco, a hotel fire, the fifth nationwide in two months, killed four firemen. The fire erupted in the seven-story Herbert Hotel. Shortly after the firemen entered the ground floor nightclub, a flashback blocked the entrance, trapping them inside and the four who died were among the rescuers.

In Chicago, the prosecutor in the William Heirens case stated that the youth was not going to confess after all, as he said that he could not remember anything regarding the three killings of which he stood accused. His own attorneys had announced that he would confess to the murders to avoid the death penalty.

Hal Boyle, in Nuremberg, tells of a noisy mouse inside a castle where he was staying, as noisy as "a Holstein bull in a Chinese porcelain emporium or a symphony orchestra in a Pullman berth." The castle had been built by the Eberhard Faber lead pencil magnate and now housed members of the allied press corps covering the war crimes trial.

The mouse did not waste a glance on the nude lady or the cupids with filmy veils on the painted ceiling. "He should get a neckache looking at a fat lady on a ceiling?"

He sounded like he was wearing golf shoes. Mr. Boyle's typewriter did not deter him at all. He bulged at the sides, apparently having acquired some black market cheese.

Mr. Boyle goes on to follow meticulously his trail up and down bedposts and over beds, into shoes, eventually giving up on the presence of any nourishment and adjourning to the kitchen.

It may have been a slow day in Nuremberg.

Liggett & Myers announced a three percent boost in wholesale prices of Chesterfields and its other brands, the equivalent of 4.5 cents per carton.

Cigars selling for below two for a quarter were also set to rise by 10 to 20 percent. Since Pearl Harbor, employment in the cigar industry had risen 70 percent and the previous year had seen cigar production up by half a billion cigars.

In Greensboro, the State Baptist Convention voted on whether to accept the Smith Reynolds Foundation offer of an annual endowment of $350,000 to Wake Forest College provided it would move to Winston-Salem and change its name to Reynolda-Silas Creek Branch. The Convention was said to be in a tizzy over the name change but would probably let it go.

In Philadelphia, the five-year old inquisitor of the police who had been found wandering through traffic at midnight on his trike was claimed by his grandmother who said that he was always running away because people treated him nicely when he did. His name, of course, was Paul Rider.

That is why they called him...

In Portland, Maine, Eleanor Roosevelt was forced to cancel reservations at the Hotel Eastland after it declared Fala an unsuitable guest, that dogs could not be transported through the lobby of the establishment.

Dog? Probably some Republican outfit. Ye Fala?

On the editorial page, "The Checks and Balances Still Work" comments on the atomic control bill having been finally passed by the Congress, headed for the President's desk. It is also discussed below by Marquis Childs.

"Congress Still Makes Progress" finds that, despite the 79th Congress having performed poorly on the reconversion effort, it was still essentially the same Congress which had performed admirably to win the war. In the end, it had passed the reorganization bill which streamlined committees and subcommittees, eliminating chaff but also positions of power. It provided a $5,000 raise to the members and so was to their benefit but, nevertheless, stood as a major piece of legislation, long overdue.

"90 Is Just Another Milepost" comments on the 90th birthday of George Bernard Shaw, both the literary personality and the social critic, the latter role always drawing him into immense controversy and the former usually bringing him immense praise. Celebration of his birthday had included a special issue of the Saturday Review of Literature.

Mr. Shaw had asserted that a person needed to live 200 years to achieve political maturity. (Actually, he had said 300 years: "I have lived 89 years and am not yet fully adult politically. Give me a second century of apprenticeship as a ruler and at the end of it I might be qualified as a senator, and an oracle for a third century. What is contemplated as a political lifetime is a century of infancy and adolescence, a second of political maturity, and a third of voteless oracular wisdom. That is enough for learners, administrators, and senators.") The piece thinks he might have convinced himself that he would live that long, and, indeed, might be able, as in some of his other arguments, to demonstrate that "death too is a state of mind".

CHARLES. What is hell like?

THE SOLDIER. You won't find it so bad, sir. Jolly. Like as if you were always drunk without the trouble and expense of drinking. Tip top company too: emperors and popes and kings and all sorts. They chip me about giving that young judy the cross; but I don't care: I stand up to them proper, and tell them that if she hadn't a better right to it than they, she'd be where they are. That dumbfounds them, that does. All they can do is gnash their teeth, hell fashion; and I just laugh, and go off singing the old chanty: Rum turn trample—Hullo! Who's that knocking at the door?

They listen. A long gentle knocking is heard.

CHARLES. Come in.

The door opens; and an old priest, white-haired, bent, with a silly but benevolent smile, comes in and trots over to Joan.

THE NEWCOMER. Excuse me, gentle lords and ladies. Do not let me disturb you. Only a poor old harmless English rector. Formerly chaplain to the cardinal: to my lord of Winchester. John de Stogumber, at your service. [He looks at them inquiringly] Did you say anything? I am a little deaf, unfortunately. Also a little—well, not always in my right mind, perhaps; but still, it is a small village with a few simple people. I suffice: I suffice: they love me there; and I am able to do a little good. I am well connected, you see; and they indulge me.

JOAN. Poor old John! What brought thee to this state?

DE STOGUMBER. I tell my folks they must be very careful. I say to them, 'If you only saw what you think about you would think quite differently about it. It would give you a great shock. Oh, a great shock.' And they all say 'Yes, Parson: we all know you are a kind man, and would not harm a fly.' That is a great comfort to me. For I am not cruel by nature, you know.

THE SOLDIER. Who said you were?

DE STOGUMBER. Well, you see, I did a very cruel thing once because I did not know what cruelty was like. I had not seen it, you know. That is the great thing: you must see it. And then you are redeemed and saved.

CAUCHON. Were not the sufferings of our Lord Christ enough for you?

DE STOGUMBER. No. Oh no: not at all. I had seen them in pictures, and read of them in books, and been greatly moved by them, as I thought. But it was no use: it was not our Lord that redeemed me, but a young woman whom I saw actually burned to death. It was dreadful: oh, most dreadful. But it saved me. I have been a different man ever since, though a little astray in my wits sometimes.

CAUCHON. Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?

JOAN. Well, if I saved all those he would have been cruel to if he had not been cruel to me, I was not burnt for nothing, was I?

DE STOGUMBER. Oh no; it was not you. My sight is bad: I cannot distinguish your features: but you are not she: oh no: she was burned to a cinder: dead and gone, dead and gone.

THE EXECUTIONER [stepping from behind the bed curtains on Charles's right, the bed being between them] She is more alive than you, old man. Her heart would not burn; and it would not drown. I was a master at my craft: better than the master of Paris, better than the master of Toulouse; but I could not kill The Maid. She is up and alive everywhere.

We are occasioned to retreat here, for reasons you will have to discern for yourself, as we do not wish to quote ad infinitum. "Monuments", incidentally, is now here.

It becomes a bit ghostly, sometimes, doesn't it?

A piece from the Elizabeth City Advance, titled "In Praise of Sweat", comments on weeds having been killed atop a three-story structure by human sweat. It was the most potent chemical known to man for dealing with just about anything, from "hitlerism" to "may-ism", in reference to Mr. May of Kentucky.

Drew Pearson discusses the first year of Secretary of State James Byrnes having worn him down by five trips abroad and constant dueling with V. M. Molotov. Despite disappointment, he had become increasingly effective in the role and was running a more efficient Department than had Cordell Hull.

Having begun in September at the London conference with an anti-Russian attitude which had backfired, he began to adjust to the idea that the U.S. had to get along with the Russians. At the Moscow conference a few weeks later, he sought to achieve rapprochement with both Stalin and Molotov. But the Russians yielded little at that conference.

Since then, Mr. Byrnes had come to the view that Russia wanted to keep the threat of an outside war on the minds of its people to avoid unrest at home in the aftermath of the war.

After cession of the Kurile Islands to Russia, angering Army-Navy staff, Mr. Byrnes concluded that the more he sought to mollify the Russians, the more they demanded. He now believed that firmness had to be exerted toward them.

Mr. Byrnes was not universally liked in the White House because he was more experienced in Government than the President. Though disappointed that he was not tapped to be the vice-presidential nominee in 1944, he no longer set his eyes on the presidency but rather was adamant about winning the peace.

Marquis Childs celebrates the fact that the Congress had finalized the legislation to establish an all-civilian atomic energy commission with patent distribution left to the commission, not in the hands of private industry. Du Pont, which had built the Hanford, Washington, plant, had renounced all ownership rights in the patents and insisted that they be turned over to the Government. It was the only sensible resolution. The House had surrendered to the Senate on both the patent dispute and the establishment of an all-civilian commission.

At the same time, the Congress appeared ready to finalize the Congressional reorganization bill.

History, he thinks, would therefore link these two important pieces of legislation together.

Samuel Grafton discusses the lingering ghost of isolationism in the form of the legislation just passed and signed into law for stockpiling critical materials, replete with a clause requiring that the critical materials be made or produced in America. It thus required America to purchase its own materials which were in shortage.

In atomic energy, isolationism was also evident as Senators Homer Capehart and Styles Bridges were opposing the Baruch plan to internationalize atomic energy, complaining that the plan would give away the atomic secret.

Meanwhile, the Russians opposed the plan for its being too favorable to the West, with its proposal to eliminate the unilateral veto and establish inspections to insure international compliance with peaceful uses of the atom before the secret would be shared.

Another isolationist symptom was that the President had withdrawn his planned attempt to get Congress to provide an additional 1.25 billion dollars to the Export-Import Bank out of the concern that it might provoke such a display of anti-Russian rhetoric in Congress that it would backfire diplomatically.

While isolationism had changed its form, it was plainly not dead.

A letter again takes issue with the letter writer who had complained of the veterans receiving $20 per week for up to a year in unemployment compensation. He wants the woman who wrote the letter to apologize to all veterans who had fought and won the war for her.

A letter suggests that the newspaper try to defeat the Democrats who helped emasculate OPA.

The editors respond that if they were to do so, it might result in a Republican Congress which would surely end OPA.

A letter warns "agitators" such as Drew Pearson to return north and stop meddling in Southern affairs, that blacks were "an inferior race of people or they would not have been slaves. They were savages not so long ago, and some were cannibals."

He favors segregation to keep the black race pure, as only two percent were pure and the rest "mongrels". "The whites will always be supreme." The slaves were sold to the South by Northerners and "we also ran the works".

The editors respond that the letter libeled a whole race and perhaps should not have been printed. But they had determined to do so to demonstrate that vicious racism still existed and to show the parallel between the sort of thinking displayed in the letter and that of Alfred Rosenberg of the Nazi Party in Germany. The only difference was that the Nazis professed their hate openly while American fascists put it forth in secret, hiding behind the anonymous letter, as this one was, and the hoods of the KKK.

A letter writer wonders for what black soldiers had fought and why they could not be accepted as equals. She believed that Hitler was a hero to some in the country.

Some thought that the black community wanted intermarriage with the white community. She says it was not the case. Black citizens were only seeking equal opportunity and democratic treatment.

"There are many mothers, wives, sweethearts, and fathers of both races who have lost boys. Tears have been shed on both sides. Yet we are being hated, and scorned. Why? We all did our part to help win the war. We are not slaves anymore and we never will be. We want what's right. We want real freedom."

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