The Charlotte News

Saturday, October 18, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Ukrainian Foreign Minister criticized the new book of former Secretary of State James Byrnes, Speaking Frankly, in which he had stated that every effort should be made to cooperate with Russia in the formation of a German peace treaty but if there was no agreement, the U.N. ought order Russia to evacuate Eastern Germany. The Ukrainian delegate stated that Mr. Byrnes was trying his best to start a war with Russia.

A Congressional committee had returned from touring Europe and favored immediate action on the Marshall Plan.

In Charlotte, 122 of some 10,000 war dead of the city began arriving for permanent interment. Most of the first arrivals had perished in the attack on Pearl Harbor. They had been formerly buried at the cemetery of Schofield Barracks at Pearl Harbor. A service was held at the First Presbyterian Church for the fallen men. The Reverend Herbert Spaugh presided over the memorial service. Thomas L. Robinson, publisher of The News and Navy veteran of the war, spoke at the service.

The Citizens Food Committee was planning to reconsider its eggless and poultryless Thursdays as a means of conserving grain. It had been roundly ridiculed. The National Poultry Producers Federation had asked that it be lifted, that it would not save grain.

A reporter for the Wall Street Journal told a Congressional subcommittee studying construction of housing that bricklayers laid only about 300 bricks per day when paid by the hour, less than  half the pre-war production of 800 to 1,000. He said that he thought the sloth was the result of individual rather than union action.

A tropical storm out of the Atlantic had reached hurricane force with 100 mph winds, but would likely miss hitting Florida on its current course, moving northwestward at 12-14 mph from its position centered 120 miles north of Turks Island.

The French Intercontinental Transport Co. plane which had crashed into the Mediterranean near Cartagena, Spain, the day before had in fact lost 41 of the 43 persons aboard. It had been previously reported, based on the advice of an airline company spokesman, that all 30 aboard had been rescued.

In Montreal, a physician who performed an illegal abortion on a woman who died as a result was found guilty of murder and sentenced to hang. The jury had recommended clemency, but the judge ruled that the law did not allow such a recommendation in a murder case. The man had been acquitted of criminal abortion ten years earlier. It was one of the first such convictions in Canada’s jurisprudential history.

In New York, Jasper Efird of Charlotte, member of the family which founded Efird’s Department Store, died at age 57.  

In Los Angeles, the "Dancing Daddy" bigamist who met most of his eight wives in dance halls was sentenced to 10 to 20 years.

The executive committee of the Southern Conference upheld the eligibility of UNC football star Charlie Justice, whose eligibility had been questioned for his having allegedly signed in 1943 a professional football contract while under the age of majority, a contract alleged to have been subsequently rescinded for the fact. The committee was convinced that the All-American halfback was never under a contract with the Philadelphia Eagles.

The committee refused to relent on its previous decision ruling ineligible Vernon Morgan who was seeking to play football at the University of Richmond, based on his still being under contract to the New York Giants baseball team, a contract he had signed at age 15.

Our prediction yesterday, incidentally, proved nearly correct. The score was 48 to 43, not quite 49 to 42. It was a close call. The steel plate made the difference.

On the editorial page, "A Coalition Isn’t the Answer" remarks on an editorial in The Salisbury Post which had recommended a coalition between Democrats and Republicans to nominate the best man for the presidency, finding a four-year moratorium on active politics to be the only savior for the country.

Aside from the political practicalities of such a move, which the Post understood as inconceivable, the piece thinks it likely would produce no better Government than currently was in place. Such a process would effectively deny the efficacy of democracy to the rest of the world, thus forfeiting the debate on democracy versus totalitarianism to the Communists.

But the piece does believe that the country should abandon its partisan differences on foreign policy, end the ongoing bitter vilification of adherents to different points of view, and engage in debate on a level which matched the gravity of the issues.

"The Return of the Heroic Dead" remarks that the first war dead being brought from temporary graves back home to Charlotte, most having died at Pearl Harbor, presented a challenge to peace as it grimly reminded of the horrors of war which had taken the lives of some 10,000 Charlotte residents.

"Truman and Taft in Wonderland" finds President Truman reacting to Senator Taft's charges of the White House engaging in totalitarian tactics by going further to the right than Senator Taft, with the President's remarks during the week that he disfavored a return to price controls and rationing in peacetime, as tactics of a police state.

The piece agrees with Senator Claude Pepper of Florida who disagreed with the President, believed that price controls fairly administered represented the height of democracy in action.

The President's insistence on a lack of control of the economy flew in the face of his position that price controls had worked well until Senator Taft led the fight to remove them in the summer of 1946. But neither the President nor Senator Taft seemed now to recognize that controls had worked and that their removal had only led to inflation. It placed both in Wonderland.

A piece from the Washington Post, titled "Atomic Education", finds a good example of grass roots democratic action taking place in Prince Georges County, Md., with regard to understanding and educating the public anent control of nuclear energy, to determine the role of the individual citizen in the process.

Drew Pearson tells of the War Assets Administration proposing to sell the Canol pipeline, built during the war to pump oil from the Canadian Arctic to the Alaskan seaboard. It was to be sold for scrap to two private companies for a mere $700,000. Its original cost was nine million dollars. The Government was considering building a 700-mile pipeline to the Alaskan wilderness to extract oil from recently discovered rich oilfields, which would supply the Navy and end any need for rationing of oil in the U.S. It was not easily understandable why the Government did not remove the Canol pipeline and use the pipe for the purpose, as new pipe would cost at least twice that of the Canol pipeline. The sale now had to be approved by Attorney General Tom Clark, and Mr. Pearson predicts that he would nix the deal.

Maj. General Leslie Groves, who had been the Army head of the Manhattan Project, briefed the Army and Navy brass recently and told them that Russia already possessed the atomic bomb secret but did not have the industrial power as yet to produce a bomb and would not before 1951. It was believed that, technologically, the Russians had not yet figured out the exact ratios of uranium particles which should be mixed with other substances. A scientist predicted that it would take 15 years to develop an effective V-2 rocket.

So, nothing to worry about before 1962. Relax. Think about something pleasant. Ball scores.

Democratic leaders were displeased with the number of Republicans being appointed by the President to the Administration. The latest was Arthur Barrows, former head of Sears, a bitter Roosevelt-hater, who had been appointed as Undersecretary for Air.

To air is human, to ground, devilish, save eggs.

Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs Will Clayton finally had resigned under pressure from his wife. He had differed with Undersecretary for Political Affairs Robert Lovett regarding policy toward Russia, Mr. Clayton favoring the notion of increasing trade between Russia and the West as a means to effect peace.

Marquis Childs, in Paris, again tells of France's immediate need for dollars with which to purchase wheat and coal to get through the winter. Once those needs were met, the long-term problem would shift from the economic to the political realm, to determine how to use the available resources to effect recovery.

Jean Monnet had put forward a plan for the general recovery which had already enabled France to produce more coal than in 1938. The planners viewed a stable currency as a sine qua non for recovery. But the Bank of France had ordered a huge increase in the volume of paper francs in circulation, lending to the growing lack of confidence in the Government and the currency. Farmers were holding back food and wheat for their own consumption because it brought so little worth on the market.

The coming municipal elections had firm lines established between the Communists on the left and the Gaulists to the right, with the Ramadier Government floundering in the middle.

M. Monnet, a well-respected business man, believed that his plan could be successful only by cooperation with the Communists, and there was considerable evidence supporting the view. He believed that the French Communists would be influenced by the long tradition in France respecting democracy and thus would moderate their views from those handed down from Moscow. Since the Communists had a million members and had polled five million votes in the previous election, no Government could succeed without inclusion of them. That was so despite the perils accompanying such inclusion.

Samuel Grafton tells of Winston Churchill voicing the opinion that were Russia planning war, it would not be so belligerent as it was presently, suggesting that the Russians desired peace. Nevertheless, Mr. Churchill counseled continuing the tough policy with Russia. For even if Russia left the U.N., there would still be hope for peace, as the West would be so much stronger than the Soviets.

Mr. Grafton wonders when Mr. Churchill would trust Russia, if he would not when, by his own account, they desired peace. Mr. Churchill would only suspect war in the event of a conciliatory gesture by Russia.

The Churchill approach assumed that peace with Russia was impossible, an opposite counterpart to the Soviet view that America, because of its capitalism, was a warmonger. Both sides thus dispensed with hope.

Russians did not hesitate to find in capitalism warmongering but would react in anger should any American statesman accuse it of being a warmonger because it followed Communism. Mr. Churchill stated that the road to peace was to maintain military strength superior to that of Russia; if the Russians took that approach, the West and Mr. Churchill would be horrified.

A letter from the chairman of the Charlotte Chapter of the United World Federalists finds the October 9 Tom Lynch piece on the World Federalists, who favored world government centered around the U.N., to have been fair and accurate, while the responsive letter of October 14 had been otherwise. He says that the aim of the organization was not to unite the world against Russia, as the letter writer had charged, but rather simply recognizing of a reality that if the Russians refused to participate, a unity forged from the remainder of the world was better than none. Law and order, he suggests, had to replace the dog-eat-dog diplomacy and war "while there are still dogs left to howl."

A letter writer finds the ads for the Southeast Railroads to be misleading. His tracks become a bit hard to follow, but the gist appears to be that the railroads had made record profits in 1946 and would likely make even more in 1947, protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.

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