The Charlotte News
Thursday, August 22, 1946
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the United States was considering fighter plane protection for American transport planes which were required to pass near Yugoslav territory in the wake of the two incidents in which one C-47 transport with a crew of five had been shot down and another forced to land by Yugoslav forces. A ban had been placed on further flights over Yugoslavia along the route from Italy to Austria.
The State Department protest to Yugoslavia had indicated that the two flights in question may not have been over Yugoslav territory. The State Department also issued a 48-hour deadline for release of the seven-man crew and three civilian passengers from the first downed flight and to permit U.S. diplomats to investigate the second incident. If the ultimatum were not met, the U.S. intended to take the matter before the U.N. Security Council in special session.
An American veteran with combat experience who was an eyewitness from his hotel window to the second incident, reported that the Yugoslav fighter planes which shot down the C-47 appeared to be of American manufacture. But the State Department clarified that Yugoslavia had received no lend-lease fighter planes and any such planes would have come through Russia. Another source, however, reported that the planes were Russian-made Sturmovik fighters.
Yugoslavia had provided permission to two U.S. Army officers to search for bodies in the area of Bled, where the plane had been shot down. Bled was near the summer palace of Marshal Tito.
An unofficial Yugoslav source reminded that two weeks before the first incident, Yugoslavia had sent a note objecting to Allied planes flying over Yugoslavia.
In Paris, Secretary of State Byrnes departed the peace conference to confer with advisers on the Yugoslav situation.
At the peace conference, Greek Premier Constantin Tsaldaris attacked Albania's efforts to join the conference as an equal and further sought cession of Southern Albania to Greece.
The British announced plans to remove the 20,000 remaining British troops from the Dutch East Indies by November 30.
In his first news conference since returning from the Bikini tests of the atom bomb, Vice-Admiral W.H.P. Blandy, who had commanded the tests, stated that he favored outlawing of the bomb as long as it would be by multilateral agreement among nations.
OPA raised price ceilings on hard coal and coke by 30 cents per ton and on soft coal by 18 cents, and indicated a coming hike on oranges of a half cent per pound. Lamb was slated to be higher by about a nickel per pound than the June 30 ceilings when OPA had expired. The lamb subsidy had not been revived by OPA and the Agriculture Department, whereas it would be revived on cattle and hogs. Meat prices would be reeled back to their June 30 levels, having risen 20 to 80 percent during the period in which controls had been off. Bread prices, which had been raised a cent per loaf, would be reduced by that amount probably during the fall.
OPA head Paul Porter promised strict enforcement to prevent black markets.
In Duluth, Minn., striking National Maritime Union workers clashed with police, injuring 20 of the picketers of the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range Railroad.
In Dallas, N.C., the Mayor claimed the movement to oust him, following a mass meeting of 84 veterans the previous day with that aim, had been spawned by those his administration had indicted and by certain politicians in the township who wanted to get control and establish beer parlors and poolrooms. He thought the whole thing smelled.
Dick Young reports that, following an investigation since early July by an agent of the S.B.I., the alleged ringleader of the Charlotte "butter and eggs" numbers racket had been arrested along with 49 others, on charges of conspiracy to operate a criminal lottery. The racket was said to bring in $3,000 per day. It constituted the first such arrests in a long history of operation of the racket.
On the editorial page, "Peace Is a Practical Matter" comments, as does Herblock, on the fact that Ethiopia was one of the first nations to come forward with its contribution to the World Bank, finding it the more remarkable for the fact that Ethiopia had been one of the first nations to experience Axis conquest, in 1936-37, when Mussolini stormed it. Ethiopia, sold out by the major powers, had every reason therefore to turn to isolationism. Its internationalist stance resulted undoubtedly from a practical determination, that it had little choice.
The reasoning underlying that decision also applied to the great powers, though the larger nations appeared less able to understand it, blinded by national ambitions which led to the false belief that future war between East and West was winnable, despite the inevitability that the atom bomb had proved future war to be tantamount to national suicide.
It concludes that the only assurance of peace could come by an understanding not only that each of the major powers, Russia, Great Britian, and the United States, would have an equal chance of winning any future war, but also from the fact that so would Ethiopia.
"Notes on a Teapot Tempest" conveys the saga of the citizen of Charlotte who had successfully bid on the lot owned by the City, purchased for a veterans recreation center to be built from donated funds, but then because of strings attached, could not be accepted, requiring sale of the lot. The City decided to defer decision on the sale, though the bid exceeded the amount the City had paid for the lot. Citizens had protested the sale, wanting the veterans center eventually built on the site, even though it could not be built anytime soon because of limited availability of building materials and lack of money.
The piece finds the whole of the matter tiring and thinks the City Council ought go through with the sale.
"On the Inside, Looking Out" comments on the request of writer N-24043, an inmate in an Eastern penal facility, seeking information from the State of North Carolina's Division of Advertising and News for an article he was preparing on the state.
The State had sent him the requested pamphlets, casting aside any concern that he might treat of the state as Erskine Caldwell had treated of the South. The Division said it welcomed the "horn into its variegated brass band."
The piece thinks it a good thing and that N-24043 would have the peace and quietude necessary to write a splendid work.
A piece from the Asheville Citizen, "Inflation or the Big-Time?" comments on the first public official in the state to earn $16,000 as a salary, new City Manager of Charlotte Henry Yancey. He had previously held the same position in Greensboro and before that, Durham. It remarks that The News had found the salary justified on the basis of the experience of Mr. Yancey and that he would be answerable to 110,000 people, the Citizen then inserting parenthetically, "Grandma, what a big census you have!"—a remark which had sparked a News editorial the previous day, inviting the Citizen to send to Charlotte anyone it wanted to verify that The News had not whiffed marijuana to come by its high numbers.
But Mr. Yancey would receive twice as much as the Governor, and nearly as much as coaches and faculty of the State's institutions of the "highest learning", which the piece decides should remain nameless—probably because of ties to Ho Chi Minh.
It finds it commendable, however, that a city had been willing to put up big money for its manager. It was either that or inflation had struck "our Scotch-Irish cousins down east of the foothills."
Drew Pearson reports that in addition to the large contingents of Missouri and Arkansas natives around the President, there had developed an Alabama contingent as well, as "Big Jim" Folsom, recently nominated as Governor of Alabama, had paid a call on the President and had lunch with him, together with Alabama native, Justice Hugo Black, Alabama Senator Lister Hill, and Alabama Senator-nominate, Congressman John Sparkman. One Alabaman noted that it would be the first time that the state would have a liberal Governor and two liberal Senators at the same time.
Most of the Cabinet was present at the dinner, given by DNC chairman Robert Hannegan. Part of the reason for the dinner was for the President to show that he was still close to Mr. Hannegan.
At the dinner, the President had stated that he did not think there would be a war with Russia, that Russia did not want war, any more than did America. He also believed in taking a firm attitude with Russian attempts at aggression. He thought Secretary of State Byrnes was doing a fine job at the Paris Peace Conference.
When the subject of Palestine arose, he expressed bitterness about the way the British had behaved on Palestine and that they were destroying the West's moral position vis-a-vis Russia, making it more difficult to protest Russian aggression. He wanted the proposed immigration of 100,000 Jewish refugees to Palestine to take place.
He also commented on the defeat by Joseph McCarthy in the Republican primary of Senator Robert La Follette, that he had begged Senator La Follette to become a Democrat after he decided to abolish the twelve-year old Progressive Party, and he lamented the loss of a progressive in the Senate.
He would come in years ahead
Marquis Childs comments on a radio speech by Robert Hannegan, chairman of the DNC, in which he praised the legacy of the Roosevelt years and found President Truman to be carrying on in continuation of that tradition. He was seeking to prepare the groundwork for 1948 while focusing on the fall elections. He counted on overconfidence by the Republicans in limiting their expected take-over of the House.
They would in fact win both chambers, albeit losing them again by equally overwhelming numbers in 1948, to be branded by the President as the "do-nothing" 80th Congress.
Peter Edson discusses inconsistency by the 79th Congress, beginning with examination of the surplus silver held by the Treasury, that it did not expect to sell it despite the fact that Western Senators had forced through a bill raising the price from 71 cents per ounce to 91 cents, a move which Mr. Edson finds to have been one of the most inflationary acts of the previous Congress. Foreign silver mines could now supply the U.S. demand for silver for jewelry and photography. The move to have the Treasury sell its silver brought commercially-mined silver to market.
Another inconsistency was the passage of the tidelands oil bill, vetoed by the President, to take from Federal control the offshore oil lands and give it to the states, when the Senate had caused the withdrawal of the troubled nomination of Ed Pauley, a proponent of the tidelands oil bill, to become Undersecretary of the Navy earlier in the year.
Veterans organizations worried about the bill for back furlough pay to veterans, that the public would think that veterans were getting too much and prompt cutbacks to the ten-billion dollar appropriations for veterans affairs.
He next reports that Congresswoman Helen Douglas Mankin of Georgia, though losing the primary under the unit-voting system while winning the popular vote, had been certified by the Georgia Democrats to run also in the fall election against her Democratic rival.
Southern political leaders had claimed that wherever Northern interference had occurred in elections in favor of liberals and progressives, the conservative candidate had won, such as in the race for Governor of Texas where Beauford Jester beat former University of Texas president, Dr. Homer Rainey. In consequence, Southern candidates were shunning CIO PAC endorsements.
A letter from Charlotte City Attorney C. W. Tillett, who had visited the San Francisco U.N. Charter Conference in spring, 1945, tells of a talk he had made to the Exchange Club anent the U.N. and how it had fared to date. The News had reported on it, he says, but had compressed his comments too much and, he believed, were therefore in need of explanation.
He states that the organization had done a splendid job to date and that if it proved effective, the world a thousand years hence would appreciate that job.
He corrects the assertion in the article that he had supposedly said that the Russians had contributed to the formation of the Atlantic Charter in 1941, not possible for its locale, when in fact he was referring to the U.N. Charter.
He had stated that Russia's conduct of foreign affairs was that of a "stupid, dull, overgrown boy on the school grounds", adding that there were many brilliant Russians, but not apparently within the Politburo, directing the actions of Foreign Commissar Molotov and Mr. Vishinsky in Paris, and Andrei Gromyko at the U.N. Russia's consistent use of the veto in the U.N. had no purpose other than stupidity. It was also evident in the Russian support of Yugoslavia in the current showdown with the United States and Great Britain. The attitude, he believes, was dangerous.
A letter from a Major General of the Army comments on whether the country could build an adequate all-volunteer Army, that the story would be told in the voluntary enlistments during the ensuing months. There was no draft during July and August and a small draft set for September. During the previous year, 900,000 men had enlisted, but the goal was 1.55 million.
He believes that an all-volunteer Army could become a reality under the new higher pay scale and other benefits accorded the enlisted man.
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