Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President, in
his message delivered in person to a joint session of Congress to
begin the special session on emergency aid to Europe for the winter
and control of inflation, asked the Congress to restore wage and price ceilings as well as rationing of important consumer
goods in short supply. He also asked for extension and strengthening
of rent and exports control, replacing of controls on allocation,
inventory, and credit, in addition to other measures. He again put
forward the need for 597 million dollars of emergency aid for Italy,
France, and Austria, to cover the period through March, by which time it was
anticipated that the full Marshall Plan for the 16 nations would be
approved and implemented.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was to begin hearings
the next day on the interim aid and its members showed no objections to the
amount being requested by the President.
The U.N. General Assembly was expected to make another
statement critical of the Franco regime in Spain but to refrain from
any action. The Soviets wanted economic sanctions imposed on the
Fascist Government. The Assembly appeared ready only to approve an
already passed political committee resolution which proposed issuing
a statement of moral condemnation and
withdrawal of diplomatic recognition of the Franco Government by U.N. members, of whom
only Argentina had not yet complied. The U.S. abstained from voting
on this latter resolution in the committee.
The only possibility for positive action against the Franco
regime would be in the Security Council, which was believed unlikely
to occur as Poland, whose two-year membership on the Council expired
at the end of the year, was the customary Soviet-bloc member to propose such a
resolution.
In Paris, twenty-five Communist members of the City Council
walked out of the chamber following election as president of the
Council, the equivalent of Mayor, Pierre
De Gaulle, brother of General Charles De Gaulle. The Communist leader had come in
second, claimed that Parisians had been tricked into voting for the
Gaullists in the recent municipal elections.
In Marseilles, a strike of 30,000 coal miners joined strikes
of the dock and transportation workers.
B. H. Lamarre, president of Aviation Electric Corp., testified
to the Senate War Investigating subcommittee that $28,000 of his
$31,000 annual salary was paid to retired Maj. General Bennett Meyers at a
time when the latter was the deputy chief procurement officer for the Army
Air Forces. Mr. Lamarre had previously informed the subcommittee
that General Meyers had put up all of the money, over a million
dollars, to organize the firm in 1939. He testified that he had been
making $35 per week at his former job before being made president of
the company by General Meyers. Lawrence Bell, president of Bell
Aircraft, testified that, at the suggestion of General Meyers, he
had sent over a million dollars worth of subcontracts to Aviation
Electric.
Committee counsel William Rogers—future Attorney General
under President Eisenhower and Secretary of State under President
Nixon—asked Mr. Lamarre whether there was any doubt that General
Meyers was the boss of the company and owner of all its stock, to
which Mr. Lamarre answered that there was none.
Secretary of Labor Lewis Schwellenbach urged Congress in
testimony before a House Labor subcommittee to raise the minimum
wage from 40 cents per hour to 75 cents and not tamper with the
40-hour work week established by the 1938 Wage and Hours Act. Some
members were urging that the overtime provision be repealed.
In Ikego, Japan, seven large warehouses packed with
ammunition of the U.S. Eighth Army exploded, from as yet an
undetermined cause. Six persons were injured but only one, an
ambulance driver, seriously.
In Havana, Cuba, the defense continued its case in the
shooting death of Mr. Mee, the attorney from Chicago shot by his
showgirl girlfriend aboard his yacht. Doctors were testifying
regarding the fact that he had died five days after the shooting,
the defense contending that he received rough treatment during his
removal from the yacht to the hospital, and that it was this
jostling which was the proximate cause of his death rather than the
shooting. Two autopsy doctors stated that many patients had lived
after such wounds as he received. But one admitted on
cross-examination by the prosecutor that his neck wounds were
usually fatal, that, however, the rough treatment might have
exacerbated the wounds.
In Nellsville, Wis., Sheriff's deputies had a farmhouse
surrounded in which two former convicts were located, suspects in
the rape of a University of Michigan co-ed and murder of her
boyfriend. She had escaped from the two men and described what had
happened when the couple hitched a ride with them after the couple
had attended a football game at the University of Wisconsin in
Madison.
In Philadelphia, 50 members of the Baby Sitting &
Tutoring Service Bureau were enrolled at the University of
Pennsylvania to study their craft, led by an instructor seeking her
doctorate in psychology.
News reporter Charles Markham, on page 3-A, continues
his interview held in Durham with former Georgia Governor Ellis
Arnall, who predicted, quite erroneously, that President Truman
would defeat Governor Thomas Dewey in the 1948 presidential
election. But who could have predicted that the Republican Congress
would muster enough support among conservative Southern Democrats to
impeach the President the following July and remove him from
office?—mainly for being a Communist sympathizer, but ostensibly for
the vote-rigging scandal in the 1946 Congressional primary in his
home district in Missouri, and moreover, rigging the 1946 World
Series, that being the last straw in Un-Americanism.
President Dewey, as many famous historians have recorded,
found it rough going because his only mandate to amount to anything
had come from the city of Chicago. He persevered, however, until the
great power confrontation with General MacArthur in 1951 regarding
Korea, at which point, effectively, a military coup took place and
President Dewey also was then impeached. Well, you know all that and
the rest of the story.
In Los Angeles, as interim ERP was being set forth by the
President to Congress, Allie Earp, 96, sister-in-law of Wyatt Earp,
passed away. She had been married to Virgil Earp, who served as
Wyatt Earp's deputy and also had been a prominent gun fighter, dying
40 years earlier.
On the editorial page, "Taft and Wallace, Fellow
Travelers" finds both candidates for the presidency, albeit an
undeclared candidacy of Mr. Wallace, voicing the same concern from
diametrically opposed positions on the political spectrum, that the
Marshall Plan was potentially imperialistic and financially unsound,
too costly.
The simpatico opinions reminded that anti-imperialism was as
consistent with isolationism, the traditional stance of Mr. Taft, as
it was with internationalism, the stance of Mr. Wallace. Between the
wishful thinking of the two men, it suggests, they might manage to
wreck the one program which had a chance to preserve the peace by
rebuilding Europe. The other options would be either military
isolationism, which would cost many times the cost of the Marshall
Plan, or a war, intolerable to Mr. Wallace.
"UN Deals Blows to the Soviets" tells of America
achieving its third straight victory in the U.N. by checkmating the
Communist effort to seize control of all of Korea, when the General
Assembly voted 43 to 0 to set up a commission to supervise the
creation of an independent state in the country.
The opportunity for trouble had been created at the end of
the war when the Soviets were given control of the North and the
U.S. control of the South, pending creation of a government for the
whole country, divided arbitrarily at the 38th parallel. The
occupation of the military forces of each country in those
respective zones had been prolonged because Russia was not ready to
withdraw, building up a strong Communist movement in the North in
the meantime. All political parties, save the Communists, had been
driven underground. A large native police force was trained by the
Red Army. The Communists were believed to have also a large secret
army in place, ready to support a coup.
In contrast, the Americans had allowed all parties to
flourish in the South, where the native police forces numbered only
55,000, compared to four to nine times that in the North.
While the U.N. action did not avert the danger in Korea, it
did set the stage for stronger native democratic resistance to the
Communists and more forceful steps to be undertaken by the U.N.
against Soviet aggression in the country. The Russians gave the
appearance that they might seek to block the special commission
overseeing free elections in the North, which appeared as a bluff to
be called.
"Storming in the Un-American Way" comments on the
20 or so American Legion members, dubbing themselves
"Americanization Committee for Community Betterment",
having barged into a home in La Crecenta, California, wherein a
meeting was being held of a Democratic Club, and ordering the
members of the club to disband and "thank God" that they
lived in America. The Legionnaires had thought that the club meeting
was one of the Progressive Party.
What the club did or advocated was beside the point. Rather,
hoodlumism had to stop. No group had the right to cloak itself in
the flag and barnstorm a private residence, demanding that a
political meeting break up or else.
It was too bad that these veterans of World Wars I and II did
not better appreciate the ideals for which they had fought. But
their activities fit a pattern becoming all too common across the
land, seeing Communists behind every bush, revealing a lack of faith
in the American way, a position which might prove more deadly than
the "Red bogeyman" which they thought they saw.
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Camp
Butner's Usage", tells of the facility near Durham which had
been given to the State by the Federal Government, having been put
to good use as a mental hospital, already housing 500 patients.
Another part of the facility would be used for feeble-minded
children. The Daily News urges that the prison camps set up
throughout the state for young first offenders ought be transferred
to this facility.
Drew Pearson, still on the Friendship Train heading from Los
Angeles to New York collecting food for Europe along the way, tells
of Western Governors appearing to forget about party lines, Governor
Earl Warren of California, a Republican, being on good terms with
Governor Vail Pittman of Nevada, a Democrat. He attributes it
possibly to the notion that the Westerners had to gang up on the
Easterners in Congress to obtain programs and funding, or just that
Westerners were more open-minded.
He provides a quick appraisal of Governor Pittman, a native of
Mississippi, a miner, lumber dealer, and jack-of-all-businesses
before Nevada had become a state, eventually becoming a newspaper
publisher in Ely. He collected truckloads of food from all parts of
the state, which he knew well. He had begun his role in politics
after the death of his brother, Senator Key Pittman. He had nearly
defeated Senator Pat McCarran in the Democratic primary.
He provides similar biographical synopses for Governor Herbert Maw of
Utah, Governor Lester Hunt of Wyoming, and Governor Lee Knous of
Colorado.
Speaker of the House Joe Martin was upset with fellow
Republican, House Ways & Means chairman Harold Knutson, for his
issuing off-the-cuff statements to the press regarding proposals for
tax legislation. The Speaker had to deny that any effort would be
made, as first voiced by Mr. Knutson, for bringing up anew tax cut
legislation in the special session convened this date. Mr. Knutson,
said the Speaker, was vindictive toward the President for vetoing
his prior two passed proposals back to back during the summer. But
trying repeatedly to bring it up at every opportunity made the
Republicans appear ridiculous. Virtually all House Republicans were
united behind the Speaker in wanting to defer such a proposal until
the regular session in January. Even if an interim bill were passed
and not vetoed, it would be superseded by a more comprehensive bill
in the spring and so was useless.
Marquis Childs finds the discussion of having a general
become president to be originating with those who believed that in such
turbulent times, no lesser personage could properly handle the job,
that the civilian candidates for the presidency did not measure up to the task.
Either General Eisenhower or General MacArthur was deemed the best
fit by such persons. The chief proponent of the latter, Lansing Hoyt
of Milwaukee, had stated that General MacArthur would come home in
the spring and declare his candidacy, a claim which the General had
not denied. His supporters liked to contrast his great success in
rebuilding Japan with that of Germany.
Mr. Childs, while not seeking to detract from General
MacArthur's superior job, makes note that the situations in the two
countries were entirely different at the end of the war. Japan was
not divided four ways between the Allies as Germany. A Japanese
Government existed at surrender which was not heir to the Tojo
regime, which had started and maintained the war. General MacArthur
enjoyed the vicarious authority of the Emperor, a deity to the
Japanese, not the case with the military commanders in Germany.
General Eisenhower and General MacArthur did not get along,
starting with their time in the Philippines when Eisenhower served
as MacArthur's subordinate. The feeling was exacerbated by the war,
as General MacArthur believed that the Pacific theater was being
denied supplies in favor of the European theater.
The European-Pacific rivalry carried over into America's
foreign policy, with some favoring a subordinate role for the
Marshall Plan vis-a-vis Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist China
and its civil war with the Communists under Mao Tse-Tung in the
North.
Col. Robert McCormick, isolationist publisher of the Chicago
Tribune and a chief admirer of General MacArthur, was visiting
Japan, and recently had reportedly addressed a group of American
soldiers assembled by General MacArthur to hear Mr. McCormick
promote General MacArthur's candidacy, claiming that America was
clamoring for him.
Mr. Childs does not think the country had reached a point
where it needed a general, without political experience, to unify
it. There were plentiful able candidates in the race, skilled in
public affairs.
"If we cannot furnish leadership for high office, our
democracy will be at an end and it will not matter very much who
gives orders."
Samuel Grafton tells of his friend Harry reading of the
upcoming wedding of Princess Elizabeth, to be held November 20 in
London. He decided that if he were a baronet, he could not obtain
invitation to the wedding, while a viscount could attract a very
good seat. Harry was fascinated by such protocol. He wondered, as he
walked home in Manhattan, where an assistant credit manager might
fit in. Two weeks earlier, he had been an unemployed veteran.
He stopped, per his habit on the way home, to acquire a soft
drink at a shop with an open window to the sidewalk. The proprietor
handed him his drink without conversation. He offered a hot dog to
an old man sitting nearby, apparently down on his luck, and the man
took it reluctantly. Harry asked him if his friend next to him was
also broke, to which the old man replied that he wasn't because he
was a panhandler.
A letter writer, international representative of the
International Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers,
provides an open letter to Charlotte Police Chief Frank Littlejohn
regarding the latter's report that a reported assault on the author
had been a hoax. The author accuses the Chief of labeling it a hoax
because the police could not find the perpetrator. He reviews the
facts of the alleged assault, which he says occurred at 9:00 p.m. on
October 28. He was treated by a doctor for his wound on his head,
which the Chief described as a "pin scratch", but of which,
he says, others had made remark regarding his head bruises. He then
returned to his home in Richmond, Va., where his physician
hospitalized him for several days. The Chief made no attempt, he
says, to contact him in Richmond and then labeled the claimed
assault a hoax. The story had been circulated by anti-union people
in the paper industry in other states.
He says that the police force was negligent in their investigation.
The Chief had offered $100 to anyone with information on the
matter and he indicates that he would match that amount.
A letter writer finds interesting the editorial on the
proposal by Bell Telephone to raise rates based on increased demand,
contrary to normal economic theory. He thinks that maybe the Federal
Government might be able to give relief on telephone rates,
advocates an official study of the matter.
