The Charlotte News

Saturday, November 1, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.S. proposed a plan to speed up the creation of sovereign Arab and Jewish states in Palestine, seeking their establishment by the following July 1. But differences with Britain threatened the plan. An authoritative source told of the U.S. contemplating a compromise plan favored by Russia to get by the impasse, that being to place the matter of enforcement of the plan with the Security Council rather than the General Assembly as favored by the U.S. The latter proposal was for a three-nation commission to act in an advisory capacity from Palestine after partition. It was also reported that the U.S. wanted ultimate control of the commission to vest in the Assembly, even if immediate control was under the Security Council.

Regardless of control of the enforcement, the plan proposed by the U.S. would allow Britain to retain control for six months and provide that the Jewish state government should be established at that point, irrespective of whether the Arabs accepted the plan, with a U.N. trusteeship then placed over the Arab section of Palestine.

The Russian expression of resentment toward the "mechanical majorities" of the West surfaced during the debate on the Yugoslav proposal for a condemnatory resolution against the U.S. and Britain for sheltering war criminals.

Yugoslavia ordered two American journalists out of the country within 24 hours. Correspondent Arthur Brandei of The New York Times and his wife, Mary Lester, a U.P. correspondent, were being expelled because, according to the Tito Government, their writing had not been conducive to better understanding between America and Yugoslavia. Mr. Brandei had covered the recent treason trial of Peasant Party leader Dragoljub Jovanovic, sentenced to nine years imprisonment, and his co-defendant Franjo Gazi, sentenced to five years.

A long and strong earthquake struck Lima, Peru, this date, but no details were available on casualties and damage.

President Truman approved the seal of the newly created Department of the Air Force.

The UAW reversed its previous decision not to file the affidavit of compliance pursuant to Taft-Hartley regarding non-Communist affiliation, and did so prior to the midnight deadline. The UMW and the United Steelworkers, however, maintained their position of defiance. It meant that the 1.15 million workers in the two unions would not be able to obtain the services of NLRB in effecting mediation of labor disputes.

In New York City, Rockefeller Center was jarred by a series of explosions the previous night and early on this date, emanating from underground, pouring smoke into the lobby of the 70-story RCA building. It was believed that a defective electrical transformer in the building caused the explosion and resulting fire.

Unrelated to the fire, a man tossed two typewriters from the 41st floor of the building in protest to his employer. He also smashed other office equipment, and cut his wrist on broken glass, accidentally or deliberately, not having been determined. One of the typewriters narrowly missed two pedestrians.

That would have been an ignominious way to die, to be hit by a falling typewriter, difficult of description into the future.

In Charleston, the South Carolina Library Association ended a two-day convention with the election of its officers.

The California Institute of Technology at Pasadena released a report stating that laboratory tests had demonstrated that the atomic blasts over Japan on August 6 and 9, 1945 might result in generational genetic deformities in the victims which would continue for a thousand years. The tests were based on the growth of corn exposed to the two experimental atomic blasts at Bikini Atoll in July, 1946. The result might be the birth of mentally defective babies or crippled and deformed persons. The defects appeared only in the second generation of corn, not the first. The report suggested that the problems might spread throughout Japan in time. The changes exhibited in the corn were albino or pale seedlings and ears with small seeds, shrunken seeds, off-color seeds or ears on which half the seeds did not form.

We do not wish to be children of the corn.

On the positive side, the report stated that the atomic bomb could be of benefit in the growth of crops.

Does that mean we should drop some more to cure world hunger?

In Charlotte, the Carolinas Christmas Festival organizers were trying to settle on a crown large enough to be worn by the girl to be selected as Miss Christmas on November 12. They had searched for one all the way to New York City before finally obtaining the right article. Everyone who saw it after its arrival in Charlotte gasped at the spectacle of its proliferation of rhinestones throughout its periphery. "It really did shine," exuberates the piece. The final assistance in locating it had come from a New York telephone operator, and the head of the Festival had sent a commendatory letter to the telephone company for the directory assistance. They wanted her to attend the festival.

A young woman models the crown for a photograph appearing on the page.

Is Miss Christmas going to come down the chimney with Santa Claus?

The piece traces the history of Palestine from Biblical times to the modern era.

The momentous event about to take place in New York reminded of the tremendous changes taking place in these days, events in which Charlottean Herschel Johnson, the American second delegate to the U.N., was taking a lead role. It was transforming the time of grave conflict in the world into an era which held hope yet for a lasting peace.

And, as we have commented before, while individual cases exhibited various glitches and pitfalls along the way, the diplomats and leaders of the world in those times, on the whole, did a splendid job preserving the world from any further world war or nuclear holocaust. Thus far, the world has learned its lesson from the terrible events of World War II and its ominous conclusion. Query, as we have also asked previously, would the lesson have been learned so well were it not for the deadly demonstrations of the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945, saving in the process hundreds of thousands of American and Japanese lives.

Thoughtlessly criticize though we may, we are still here to relate the tale and to critique our past leaders, both those of the West and the East.

But don't then try to exert the same logic backward to Hitler and Mussolini and Tojo, suggesting that without their militarism being exerted on the world, there would have been no atom bomb, and so… For that is the point. There would have been no atom bomb.

The student in question had been accused of leading the strike by primarily black workers against R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. the previous summer in Winston-Salem.

Campus leaders at UNC said that only a handful of Communist Party members existed on the campus, perhaps 15 or 20. The piece thinks that negligible in terms of presenting any menace in a student body of 7,500. It commends chancellor Robert B. House for declaring that no action would be taken against any student for his political opinions.

It adds that Dr. Graham was in good company on the Committee, but it would have preferred that he had convinced his colleagues to adopt a more practical program of preservation and extension of civil rights in the country.

Tungsten was useful in making hard-metal tools, cutting instruments, electric lights, spark plugs and other electrical devices, as well as having military application in the production of hard, armor-piercing shells, necessary during the war, with the tungsten supply from China and the East Indies cut off.

Though more facts had come to light since the court martial, the clemency agreement might prevent further prosecution. The War and Justice Departments were continuing to investigate the possibilities.

He next provides further reaction to his idea for a "Friendship Train" to run from Los Angeles to New York, starting in a few days, to collect food and other essentials for Europe along the way, promoting the notion that aid was coming from the American people out of a genuine sense of humanity, not just from the cold largesse of the Government for political and economic reasons.

Goodyear had announced its provision of rubber packing material for the collected food. The Alabama Council of Church Women was collecting hermetically sealed cans of syrup. Similar efforts were reported from Seattle, Palo Alto, Little Rock, Bingham Canyon, Utah, and many other places.

The main problem was obtaining the right types of foods. European diet consisted mainly of bread and thus wheat and wheat flour were the most needed products, plus dried beans, dried peas, evaporated milk, sugar, macaroni, and spaghetti. Weevil, however, had to be prevented from invading the shipment of wheat and wheat flour, and the farm co-ops were assisting in that regard.

Mr. Bevan pointed out that were the U.S. as dependent on coal as Britain, it would also have had manpower problems, that the conversion largely to oil for heating in the U.S. had avoided that issue but also created a worldwide oil problem with political overtones.

To the Conservative press, Mr. Bevan was a villain, having convinced the Labor Cabinet to seek to place restrictions on the power of the House of Lords and to favor the nationalization of iron and steel to go along with coal.

He believed that capitalism concentrated too much wealth at the top, leaving IOU's in the hands of the rich. He dismissed Conservative criticism that the Labor Government had created IOU's of its own, in the hands of the working people of Britain, by paying them with money which would buy little or nothing.

His power in the Cabinet was nothing as that of Sir Stafford Cripps, appointed recently to be the economic czar, with authority over several ministries. Mr. Cripps was from an upper-class family and considered saintly by political friends and foes alike. Winston Churchill excepted him as a man of integrity when bitterly criticizing the Labor Government. By contrast, Mr. Bevan and Mr. Churchill were bitter political enemies, as Mr. Bevan was one of the few Laborites willing to take on Mr. Churchill during debate in Commons.

The Committee would favor administration of the American end of the Plan by an independent agency on the order of the War Production Board, with an executive at its head. The most difficult problem was determining the prospective relationship between that new agency and the foreign governments participating in the Plan.

A proposal had been made by GOP presidential candidate Harold Stassen that the Plan be conditioned on the participants vowing to end socialism in their governments, and the idea had gained traction in some conservative quarters. But the Committee had determined that such a proposal would condemn the Marshall Plan out of the gate and so had nixed it. Even the British Tories had warned that such a condition would prevent any participation in the Plan in Europe.

But the Committee also understood that it could not be passive and merely dole out aid, that increasing production in Europe through the Plan was critical to its ultimate success, to enable the countries to become self-sufficient within the foreseen four-year program, and thus for the economic and political health of Europe.

But for years Charlotte had been trying to get the railroad just to construct a new station to replace the dilapidated affair which greeted visitors to the city. It was Charlotte, not Boston.

The person asks that his or her name be withheld, so as not to reveal that they were stupid enough to read anything from a certain person in High Shoals.

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