The Charlotte News

Friday, October 10, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Guatemala proposed before the U.N. that the Assembly create a force of small nations to act in protection of Palestine against any outside interference. The delegate attacked the exiled Mufti of Jerusalem for his violent and oppressive tactics.

The proposal came in the immediate wake of the determination the previous day by the seven Arab League nations, meeting in Beirut, Lebanon, to send forces from Trans-Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon to Palestine’s borders. The troops were reported maneuvering to seal off the frontiers of Palestine as a precautionary measure against Zionism. The Mufti had joined in the decision.

Troops of Trans-Jordan, said to be the best-equipped troops outside Egypt in the region, were massing around the River Jordan. Forces of the other three countries were also claimed to be on the move or, in the case of Egypt, preparing to move.

The U.S. military attache’s office said that it had no reports of extensive troop movements.

The Jewish Agency for Palestine condemned the move as having been stimulated by the Mufti, emulating the tactics of Hitler and attempting to force the U.S. to shelve the report of the special committee on Palestine, which had recommended partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states.

A Soviet spokesman said that the delegation had not yet determined its position on partition.

Reports were received in Paris that French troops in French Indo-China had begun an offensive to crush the Vietnamese Republican forces in the north, albeit without official confirmation from the French military. A dispatch said that there was unusual aerial activity north of Hanoi, where Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh was believed to have his headquarters.

In San Francisco, the remains of 64 North Carolinians and 42 South Carolinians were among those contained in the caskets and urns with the remains of 3,012 World War II dead arriving for re-interment from temporary wartime cemeteries. Most of those initially arriving had perished at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and in the China-Burma-India theater. The bodies included civilian personnel attached to the services. The North Carolinians are listed.

On Iwo Jima, there were no reported casualties or injuries from the typhoon which hit the volcanic island the previous day with wind speeds reaching up to 170 mph. The American servicemen and their families on the island took refuge in storm shelters. Extensive damage was recorded to facilities on the island, including the blowing down of the flagpole on Mt. Suribachi, site of the February, 1945 flag-raising by Marines, immortalized by the sculpture at Arlington National Cemetery. According to an engineer, the storm had set back the engineers on the island six months.

A tropical storm with winds between 50 and 60 mph was centered 500 miles from Miami in the Caribbean, expected to reach western Cuba this night.

Near Kuala Lumpur, a Malay armed with a penknife ran amok and killed a British soldier, four Chinese and a Malay, aboard a dining car of a train before escaping into the jungle. Others were injured.

In Singapore, an Indian detective wounded three persons with pistol shots before being subdued.

The head of the WCTU proposed, as a grain-saving method, whiskeyless Wednesdays, in between meatless Tuesdays and eggless and poultryless Thursdays.

By Friday night, you will arrive suitcaseless.

We propose gristleless Saturdays.

Crop forecasts from the Agriculture Department in Washington estimated an increase in production of all major crops as of October 1, including an increase of 100,000 bushels of corn over that forecast a month earlier. Corn had suffered from summer drought in the Midwest and the crop had been predicted as the lowest since 1936, 27 percent lower than 1946. But the President saw no great help for the grain situation and continued to urge conservation measures.

A 22-day strike of Railway Express Agency workers led to shutdown of four terminals and one station in New Jersey.

The University of Tennessee College of Medicine at Memphis disclosed a new painless method of injection of medicines, in lieu of the hypodermic needle, via a flashlight-size gun called a "hypospray", which fired a .22 caliber bullet containing medicine into the person—lending new meaning to "shot". The hole thus produced was about a fiftieth of that produced by the needle. It was used in injecting insulin and heart stimulants. Among the benefits from the new form of shot were that the possibility of infection from a contaminated needle was minimized and more exact dosage could be delivered.

That ought to catch on pretty quickly, given the fear of the hypodermic and the damage done.

In New York, John W. Meyer, press agent to Howard Hughes, requested from a court a blood test to determine paternity of an eight-month old child of whom Mr. Meyer was claimed by its mother, a blonde cigarette girl, to be the father. The judge granted the request and set trial for December 4. Mr. Meyer was arrested on the charge of illicit paternity on the previous Wednesday and bail was set at $5,000. A warrant had been sworn against him while he testified the previous July before the Brewster-Ferguson War Investigating Committee investigating the war contracts of Hughes Aircraft, set to resume November 8.

Maj. General Blanton Winship, former Governor of Puerto Rico who had served as a captain of infantry in the Spanish-American War, died at age 77 of a heart attack at the Chevy Chase Country Club in Maryland.

In Asheville, the North Carolina Cotton Manufacturers Association’s 41st annual conference got underway. An executive at Cannon Mills was elected the new president of the organization. Speakers included Governor Gregg Cherry.

The Charlotte Chamber of Commerce formally endorsed the 2.5 million dollar bond measure to construct a new auditorium. The measure would be on a referendum to be decided October 28.

The sports staff, including Sports editor Ray Howe and Furman Bisher, forecast the results of the following day’s football contests. Don't miss it.

Our prediction is 21 to 15.

On the editorial page, "How to Like People and Have Peace" notes an increased interest in Charlotte in the National Conference of Christians and Jews. The Conference recommended meetings for neighbors to get to know one another. The more people knew about one another and their differences, the more likely they could get along. The Conference had been engaged in the endeavor for nearly twenty years.

A recent Fortune poll had found 28 percent of American respondents favoring better treatment of minorities. These people could bring about a revolution in understanding in the country were they to apply those opinions in the manner suggested by the Conference, to ameliorate the half of the respondents who expressed a bias against one group or another.

"The Great Smokies Have It" finds the nation’s tourists regarding the Great Smoky Mountains as the most scenic attraction on the continent, as more than a million tourists had visited during the year, more than any other national park.

Of course, the piece does not account for the fact that the Smokies were and are generally more accessible to greater numbers of people than the other national parks of comparable size.

"Shoe on Another Foot" finds Congressman Clare Hoffman of Michigan exercised about the Civil Service Commission maintaining a "smear file" on some members of Congress. The editorial suggests that it ought give pause to the witch-hunters in Congress, but that it probably would not. The most flagrant violations of civil rights in the country had originated in HUAC. It finds the secret files of the Civil Service Commission on Congressmen to be more worthy of approval than HUAC. It was unlikely to reach the same level of violation of civil liberties as that of the Committee. Moreover, if there was a disloyal member of Congress, the public had a right to know of it.

A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "The ‘Fascist’ Pattern", finds both the extreme left and the extreme right tending to lead in the direction of denial of civil liberties and a police state. The current American focus on Communism left fascist elements in place, undisturbed.

Fascism usually exhibited a form of racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, nationalism in the extreme, isolationism, eschewing of attempts at international cooperation, indiscriminate condemnation of the left, lumping liberals with Communists and fellow travelers, condemnation of organized labor, and endorsement, if only implied, of fascist and Nazi regimes. Americans evidencing all such characteristics were probably few in number and not much of a menace, but too many were allowing two or three of the characteristics to creep into their thinking. It needed to be watched.

The Reverend Malcolm Reese of the Salem Methodist Church in Albemarle describes the system of stationing Methodist ministers, developing out of John Wesley’s idea that an itinerant ministry, rotating between communities, would solve the religious problems of England. When the Wesleyan societies were formed, it was stipulated that no minister could be associated with one church for more than three years. The system was transferred to America in 1769. By 1774, the unofficial time limit recognized in America was six months and remained so for the next 30 years, at which point it was extended to two years.

By 1846, there were three branches of Methodism, a Methodist Episcopal Church in each of the North and South, divided on the issue of slavery, and the Methodist Protestant Church.

By 1888 the time limit had increased to five years from three, the limit for the previous 24 years. In 1900, the time limit was abolished. The Southern branch of the church retained a four-year limit until 1918.

All three branches united in 1939, and none retained time limits.

Drew Pearson tells of the visit to the U.S. of Georges Bidault, French Foreign Minister, having hardly made a ripple, despite the importance of the visit. France was the key to the anti-Communist fight in Europe and M. Bidault had volunteered to act as intermediary with Russia to try to effect rapprochement with the West. He informed the President that the divide was hurting European recovery. He had turned down Secretary of State Marshall’s proposed French joinder economically to the American and British occupation zones of Germany. He believed that such a combination would only exacerbate the suspicions of Russia. But part of his decision was political, in advance of the November elections in France, out of concern Communists might win votes from such a move.

Mr. Pearson notes that the President agreed to provide a few million pounds of flour, that the French bread ration could be raised to 300 grams per day.

Speaker Joe Martin approved the voluntary food conservation program, but Governor Thomas Dewey appeared to duck inquiries about it, making himself unavailable.

Senator Elbert Thomas of Utah, a former Mormon missionary to Japan, had been spotted recently, according to a gossip columnist, stripped to the waste, dancing on a veranda in Guatemala. He was known for his sobriety and had recently married. It turned out the source of the story, a journalist, denied the account. The gossip columnist apologized.

The head of the National Grange believed strongly in feeding Europe, viewed it as being as much an emergency as wartime. He had shown to the President a picture of a week’s ration in the American occupation zone of Germany, covering a dinner plate with a small loaf of bread on the side. That was typical, he said, of the countries needing assistance. He had visited Europe the previous spring. He believed that if America did not act to send more food and aid, Communism would sweep Europe. The President said that he was aware of the situation generally but found the quantity of the ration depicted to be surprising and appalling.

Samuel Grafton advocates regulation of the amount of grain to be consumed by livestock, that the conservation of bread, meat, eggs, and poultry was all to the good but would be of little worth if livestock continued to eat wheat without limitation. Moreover, conserving meat would only mean that cattle were being fed more wheat before going to market. He is for the Luckman conservation program but wants sensible limitations. With them, more animals would be sent to market and the prices would likely begin to fall, with more meat available to the consumer. He does not mind forgoing bread some of the time as long as it did not wind up being consumed by a cow somewhere.

Marquis Childs, in Paris, tells of two types of American diplomats with whom a visitor to a foreign country might come in contact. The first type was young and well-bred, knowing the native language, receptive to the people of the country in which he was stationed. The other was jaded, much older, tended to look down on the native ways as uncouth.

The foreign service, he suggests, needed extensive overhaul if it was to serve properly American foreign policy. Embassies and legations were understaffed and compensation was too low. There were too many bureaucratic restrictions boxing in the personnel to particular functions, from which they were afraid to stray.

He had heard visiting Congressmen grumble of the inadequate foreign service. He recommends that they do more than grumble when they returned to Washington, and rather hold hearings to determine the weaknesses in the service and provide proper remedies.

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