The Charlotte News

Monday, October 13, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Andrei Vishinsky launched another attack before the U.N. political committee on the American aid program in Greece and pressed for immediate withdrawal therefrom of all foreign troops, that a U.N. commission be established to administer the aid program.

On Saturday, the committee had voted 36 to 6 to establish a border watch committee in the Balkans, as proposed by the U.S.

A leading non-Russian Slav delegate in the Soviet bloc and an Arab spokesman stated that Russia was prepared to support the partition plan for Palestine. Russia was expected to declare its position during the afternoon session.

In Jerusalem, the U.S. Consulate was attacked by a bomb, apparently heaved into the garden from an adjoining street by a woman who then walked away. Two female employees of the Consulate were injured in the blast, albeit not seriously. It was the third recent attack on consulates of nations favoring partition. It was believed therefore to be the result of Arab extremists.

Jewish sources reported that Syrian troops were encamped near the border of Palestine opposite Jewish agricultural settlements.

An Arab source stated that the Arab League planned to start military action as soon as British troops evacuated, which was anticipated during the winter.

The President met with top Government officials to discuss the situation in Europe via firsthand reports from the American ambassadors to Britain and Russia and the American Military Governor of Germany, General Lucius Clay.

In Rome, the Christian Democrats of Premier Alcide de Gasperi were running about even with the pro-Communist People’s Bloc in the election results thus far recorded for the Mayor and 90 City Council seats, with the former leading by a scant 3,000 votes. The Premier had ousted leftists from his Cabinet in June and the election was being closely watched to determine how his strength had been impacted by leftist attacks since that action.

Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee, former president pro tem, announced that he would not run again for the Senate.

In Miami, more than 3,000 homes, valued at 4.5 million dollars, were damaged by flooding from the weekend hurricane, causing the highest waters in the area in more than 25 years. Crop damage amounted to 15 to 20 million dollars worth. The storm was moving northeast at 25 mph, 300 miles below Cape Hatteras, with winds still at 50 to 60 mph.

It could have been that the half ton of dry ice utilized by the rocket scientist from G.E. in the B-17 to seed the cumulus clouds produced the heavy torrential rains. Maybe, next time, lay off the dry ice and whatever it was you were consuming along with it.

Reverend Dr. E. H. Nease, former pastor of Hawthorne Lane Methodist Church in Charlotte, had received appointment as superintendent of the Methodist Charlotte district. It provides the new line-up of Methodist ministers in the city.

In Morecambe, England, James Caunt, editor of the weekly Morecambe and Heysham Visitor, entered a plea of not guilty to a charge of seditious libel against the Jewish people for an article published in the newspaper on August 6, regarding anti-Semitic outbreaks in Britain in the wake of the Irgun reprisal execution in Palestine of two British sergeants for the executions of three Irgun members convicted of involvement in the May 5 bombing and shooting attack at Acre Prison.

The alleged libelous statement, purportedly designed to stimulate anti-Semitic hostility, was: "There is very little about which to rejoice except the pleasant fact that only a handful of Jews bespoil the population of our borough." He also referred to Jewish refugees to Palestine as "scum" who would "swell the ranks of the terrorist organization" and then commit murders.

He asserted his right of freedom of speech in making the statements, triggered, he said, by the level of violence by Irgun directed at the British in Palestine.

After preliminary examination, the court committed Mr. Caunt for trial.

A jury would subsequently render an acquittal of the charge.

On the editorial page, "Methodists, UMT and Statesmanship" comments on the Western North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Church having just adopted a resolution against universal military training, suggesting also that statesmanship be strengthened to avert World War III.

A friend had reacted by saying that it would leave the country so vulnerable that the Russians would believe that they could run over Americans, that they could vanquish American troop strength in Europe in a day.

The piece believes that the demand for UMT betrayed a failure of statesmanship, as implied by the Methodists. But the Methodists were also not providing a concrete alternative for effecting rapprochement with the Russians via better statesmanship. It presented a "dangerously unrealistic" attitude if it was based on the mere hope that the tension between East and West would ease merely through statesmanship.

"Voices Come Down from Babel" tells of RNC chairman Carroll Reece having presented the concept of the GOP on the world of the future, one headed inexorably for war, already in a form of warfare, and needing the guidance of the Republicans in the bloody years ahead.

Governor Dewey had warned that Americans had better watch their pocketbooks and granaries vis-a-vis the demands of Europe for aid, that all Americans first had to be fed. The piece finds this new concern of the GOP for domestic hunger "touching", recalling in contrast their anger at FDR's concern for the "ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed".

Kansas Republican Congressman Clifford Hope, by contrast, thought everything was swimmingly good with the domestic situation.

Speaker Joe Martin believed that, while Europe had to be rebuilt, the Government could not do the job. Rather, the task belonged to private industry.

The piece finds it a summary of the GOP’s uninspiring plan for an era of Manifest Destiny.

"A New Kind of Murder Record" discusses Mecklenburg County leading the state in traffic fatalities, registering 32, though less populous than Guilford County with but 14. Eighteen of the deaths were in the congested city and the remainder outside. The counties with large cities in the state averaged only a dozen traffic fatalities, despite comparable congestion. Fayetteville, with nine deaths, was in second place.

It suggests that poor police enforcement, inadequate streets and traffic controls, or a run of bad luck might be the culprits in Mecklenburg. Also, high consumption of liquor could be a contributing factor, along with the hair trigger on which most drivers seemed regularly to operate.

It recommends positive action.

A piece from the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, titled "Of Carolina Cuisine", remarks on Jonathan Daniels's recent indictment of North Carolina restaurants and hotel fare in an article he had drafted for the magazine Holiday, finds it fair game for the commentary. Virginia had no call for brag on the subject, having recently, at the behest of the State, called a gourmet chefs competition at Virginia Beach to increase the quality of the fare to attract the tourist trade. But, it remarks, the general consensus was that there were at least a few notable restaurants in the Old Dominion, whereas there were none in the Tar Heel state.

It remarks of Thomas Clingman, antebellum North Carolina Senator—for whom Clingman's Dome is named—, having once remarked that more people had been killed by bad cookery since the Civil War than had been killed during the fighting.

The piece concludes that the reason for the poor quality generally of restaurant fare in the South, north of New Orleans, was that most Southerners preferred to eat at home, that most of the outside eating occurred at political barbecues—which, it assumes, probably accounted for Senator Clingman's statement.

Drew Pearson tells of the backstage events leading to the announcement by the President of meatless Tuesdays, after the Citizens Food Committee headed by Charles Luckman wound up initially split on the issue. A representative of the League of Women Voters on the Committee opposed the concept as she contended that most housewives already were observing at least one meatless day each week because of high prices. She favored cutting down the grain fed to cattle, and wanted the President to call a special session of Congress to deal with the European relief issue. The head of the National Farmers’ Union also favored such an approach, as did Philip Murray’s right-hand man at CIO. The latter stated that consumers only needed one-seventh of the protein from wheat contained in meat from grain-fed cattle. The representative of the National Restaurant Association likewise agreed, saying that a meatless day tried in 1945 and after World War I had not worked for the restaurants.

The representative of the National Grange favored the meatless day, objected to the calling of a special session, contended that lowering of prices would increase consumption and not provide more food, that conservation could only work through voluntary action. Conservation would serve, he said, to bring down prices.

The final vote of the Committee was about even between those who favored a meatless day and those opposed. Mr. Luckman prevailed on the nay votes to change and most did. So by the time the President had gone on the radio a week earlier, the Committee was largely supportive of the plan for stupid bloodless Tuesdays.

Marquis Childs, in Paris, attributes the failure of American diplomacy in the two years since the end of the war to a lack of understanding of political leaders on the moderate left, primarily Socialists and Social Democrats, not associated with Communism. Greater accomplishment might have been had if more effort had been devoted to winning such persons over to the belief that the U.S. stood for true democracy and that the aid program was not an imperialistic effort. There was a strong left of this type in France and Italy, as well in Britain. But they had been allowed to drift toward Communism.

The failure developed out of the pattern of American diplomacy which failed to take into account a sufficient range of politicians and parties on the periphery. Based on the British model, diplomacy was traditionally conducted on behalf of the monarch. The British had broken from the model, principally under Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, more than had the U.S. American embassies and legations had labor specialists who appeared knowledgeable of their field but had definite bureaucratic limitations.

The void had been filled to an extent by the U.S. Information Service until the present Congress had curtailed drastically its funding earlier in the year. The British, by contrast, maintained information services in a half dozen key cities within France, enabling friendly contact with editors and politicians.

Stewart Alsop takes a view of the counter to the assessment by the President’s Council of Economic Advisers that the steel industry was "unimaginative" in its leadership and was not expanding fast enough given its high profits post-war, that it was content to hoard those profits and in so doing made a depression an inevitability. The chairman of the finance committee of U.S. Steel, E. M. Voorhees, argued that only the consumer could create a depression or avoid it, that the steel industry was not hoarding product, but was expanding as fast as it could, that while profits were the highest in history, they remained moderate relative to other sectors of the economy, and likewise prices, relatively low. Further expansion, he contended, would drive inflation higher and cause havoc in the construction industry, as it took steel to make steel.

Anne O'Hare McCormick, in a piece from the New York Times, suggests that the main business of the U.S. was peace, and that the quicker it stopped being distracted by Moscow noise, the job of making the peace would be more effectively accomplished.

Russia was in a position in which it could not cooperate with the West, given its system, but could only coerce and dominate. Cooperation was not easy for the U.S. or those nations involved in the Marshall Plan. But this cooperation was the fundament on which peace would be based.

The Soviet propaganda could not be allowed to have effect on American foreign policy if peace was to be had.

A letter comments on the editorial "Lesson on American Free Press", finds the piece unduly optimistic about the American press being "unregimented", that the American people had been left in the dark until July, 1946 on the situation in China and its corrupt, reactionary National Government. At that time, he points out, the widow of Sun Yat-sen stated that Americans had to be made aware that Chinese Nationalists were trying to stimulate war between the U.S. and Russia, as war was an indispensable ingredient for perpetuation of the feudal system in China. He gives praise to Madame Sun's forthrightness in raising the curtain.

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