Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that as Jews throughout
Palestine celebrated, violence had erupted in Palestine and Syria
during the weekend, following the approval on Saturday by the U.N. of partition
of the Holy Land into Arab and Jewish states. A dozen deaths,
including eight Jews, had resulted in Palestine and Syria, and a
threat of war by the Arabs loomed over the Middle East. The U.S. was
the object of violence in Egypt and Syria, as was Russia in Syria,
for their active support of partition. Four persons were killed at
Communist headquarters in Syria. The American Legation in Damascus
was stoned. The secretary of the Arab League declared that the Arabs
would never submit to partition, threatened to wage a fight to
prevent it, believed their hand was being forced to violence.
King Ibn Saud was reported to have offered the 18 million
dollars paid him in American oil royalties annually to support the
Arab cause.
Hagana, the Jewish underground organization, had readied
50,000 to 70,000 troops.
At the London foreign ministers conference, French Foreign
Minister Georges Bidault stated that if there were no agreement
forthcoming on the German treaty, then the French would likely
consent to merger with the British-American zone to form a united
Western Germany, as urged by Secretary of State Marshall.
Russia was reported to have opposed a French compromise on
the definition of German assets in Austria for purposes of
reparations to Russia, preventing conclusion of the Austrian treaty.
The French had proposed on Friday that the reparations be limited to
100 million dollars worth, to be derived from Danube shipping and
the Zisterdorf oil fields.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to restore 38
million dollars of 108 million it had cut from the proposed 597
million in emergency aid for Italy, France, and Austria for the
winter.
The Senate, with little opposition, placed three conditions
by way of amendments on the emergency aid, that American press and
radio representatives be admitted to each of the three countries
receiving the aid, that a report be prepared by March 31 on the
amount of commodities distributed under the program and the number
of recipients of the aid, as well other details, and that the report
then be forwarded to Congress.
In Paris, the leaders of the Communist-dominated General
Confederation of Labor defied the Government's anti-strike
legislation and stopped all subway service in the city. They had
threatened a general strike if the National Assembly passed the
legislation. Gas service was also curtailed or cut off completely in
several cities. Fights began at Lievin when 700 coal miners sought
to return to work. The GCL had demanded increases in monthly wages
of $9.50 to $12 American, and the Government had reportedly
responded with a $2.40 offer.
Secretary of Commerce Averell Harriman told the House Banking
Committee that if the limited controls proposed by the President
were not implemented, general controls on prices and wages might
become necessary in the future.
The wife of one of the dummy officers in Aviation Electric
Corp., the wartime company set up by Maj. General Bennett Meyers
which paid him substantial money while receiving on his
recommendation, as deputy chief procurement officer for the Army Air
Forces, government contracts, testified before a Grand Jury. She
refuted the General's claim before the Senate War Investigating
subcommittee that she was his girlfriend and that the company was
set up for her benefit and that of her husband.
General Meyers had already been stripped of his decorations
and deprived of his disability pension since the revelations from
the hearings in November.
Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall said that he could not
retire from his position to run for the Democratic gubernatorial
nomination in North Carolina the following year.
In Philadelphia, a fire killed six persons and injured
seventeen others at a dormitory for homeless men, many of whom were
employed as street Santa Clauses.
In Sutton, W.Va., two brothers and two sisters, double
dating, died from asphyxiation when carbon monoxide gas leaked into
their car.
In Hollywood, producer Ernst Lubitsch, 55, died of a
heart attack after being ill for several years. He had become known
for the "Lubitsch touch" in film.
In Charlotte, prominent civic and business leader E. B.
Dudley passed away at age 61 after an illness of seven weeks
duration.
News reporter Nancy Brame arrived on the scene of a
fire in the the city prior to the Fire Department, as she and a
photographer were on their way to another assignment when they
spotted the fire. The owner of the home continued working in a
nearby store, despite being aware of the fire. She expressed full
confidence in the Department, having nearly lost her store to a fire
the previous winter. Damage to the home was slight.
Hal Boyle lists his pet hates on page 7-A. They include little white dogs which smiled until they sneaked up behind you and bit you in the leg, tarantulas and snakes, eels and centipedes, alarm clocks and low-held umbrellas, cold pork gravy and unmade beds, among other things.
Well, Hal, ol' pal, here goes, for starters: A Saturday, when it happens, save Sundays and Christmas, to be your only day off the whole year from the drudgery of combing 67-year old newsprint, and your side gets bazookaed by an assault-team you had taken for granted all fall as pretty much assuring a safe victory at the end, prior to the onset of winter; that on the heels of a Wednesday where the Butler dunnit, and in the Bahamas, no less, on a slicked-up, makeshift floor in the ballroom, interrupting your side's traction, necessitous to its ordinary form of unreserved battle, not so much to the more methodical opponent.
On the editorial page, "Three Items for Christmas"
tells of holiday shopping being well underway.
The American Legion Auxiliary Gift Shop campaign had begun
its collection for the needy, having taken in $25,000 the previous
year for the patients and families of veterans confined to
hospitals.
The National Tuberculosis Association was conducting the
Christmas Seal drive, with a county goal of $25,000, to be devoted
to support of the mobile X-ray unit from the Mecklenburg Sanatorium.
Third, the annual News Empty Stocking campaign was
underway, to provide Christmas for needy children of the county.
"Don't Let Death Take Your Holiday" warns of
December and January being the most active months for automobile and
pedestrian accidents, urges care and caution. The chances of
becoming a pedestrian statistic rose between the hour of 6:00 and
7:00 p.m. And pedestrians accounted for roughly one-third of the
predicted 35,000 traffic fatalities nationwide for 1947. Two-thirds
of the total deaths would occur after dark.
The total for 1946 had been 33,700, and after three quarters
of 1947, the death rate had dropped four percent. The last quarter
would tell the tale.
"Hurrying Us Toward Two Evils" tells of foreign
affairs expert for the Wall Street Journal,William Henry
Chamberlain, being able to argue as no one else for a reactionary
foreign policy. He currently was suggesting that the U.S. had a
choice only between support of Communism or rightist dictatorships
in Europe.
The piece thinks him too eager to dismiss the elan vital
of the moderate political forces, that Mr. Chamberlain
unintentionally was helping the Communists with such an argument.
His own argument could have shown that the non-Communist liberals
and radicals had been the most potent allies of the U.S. as
underground fighters against Communism and Fascism.
Socialist Britain was a valuable ally, as were Socialists in
France and Italy. In the latter two countries, the Communists had
tacitly recognized the moderates as their chief opposition and were
provoking the strikes to try to unseat them from power. The
Communists wanted America to turn to General De Gaulle and to Chiang
Kai-Shek in the hope that such reactionary turns would open the door
for Communist inroads with the consequently oppressed people.
A piece from the New York Times, titled "The
'Forgotten Cities'", remarks of the displaced persons camps in
Europe containing over a million persons who were still barely
clinging to life. They were consigned to spend yet another winter in
former SS barracks, in closed off sections of German
villages, or in makeshift children's centers with inadequate
personnel.
Countries such as Britain had agreed to take a total of
314,000 of the D.P's within the ensuing three years. Palestine had
absorbed 45,000 since the war. But the U.S. had refused to accept
any persons on an emergency basis, despite the President having
pleaded with the Congress to make an exception to the immigration
quotas. Thus far, only 22,000 D.P.'s had entered the country
pursuant to the standard quota system limiting immigration.
The Stratton bill pending before Congress offered a remedy to
such a cold-hearted attitude, proposing acceptance of 100,000
refugees per year for four years. But during debate, the voices of
"ignorance and narrow prejudice" had been loud in their
opposition.
Drew Pearson tells of Gael Sullivan soon to depart as
executive director of the DNC, having stayed on in that capacity
after Senator Howard McGrath had replaced Robert Hannegan recently
as DNC chairman. The two had not gotten along, in part because
Senator McGrath had embraced some of the old Liberty Leaguers, held
at bay by FDR. It appears to Mr. Pearson that the Senator was taking
the Democrats down the primrose path.
A previously untold story was that Senator Elbert Thomas of
Utah had saved the imperial palace in Japan from being bombed during
the war, having counseled FDR against it to avoid bitterness on the
part of the Japanese people, ascribing divinity to the Emperor.
Hirohito had heard of the fact and so sent his personal thanks to
the Senator for his intervention.
Iowa Senator George Wilson had determined to block the
Administration's policy for China because he could not wrench loose
from the State Department the report on China, prepared by General
Wedemeyer.
White House adviser John Steelman had taken Revolution
Before Breakfast, an account of General Juan Peron's rise to
Fascist dictatorial power in Argentina, with him when he attended
with the President the Inter-American Conference during the summer
in Rio.
The War Department was planning to present a medal of merit
to singer Kate Smith for her efforts during the war to entertain the
troops.
Two hangmen on trial for war crimes committed at Dachau
understood English when Senator Styles Bridges, visiting the trial,
asked a guard who the hangmen were and what they had allegedly done.
Both had pricked up their ears and raised their hands.
Pope Pius XII also had recently spoken English on All Saints
Day, declaring, "I think I have met half of the American
Congress this summer."
Congressman Harold Knutson, chairman of the House Ways &
Means Committee, recently had criticized Senator Taft for poor
speeches in San Francisco and Seattle, concluding that he had no
character.
Senator Bridges had been informed by the Austrian foreign
minister, Karl Gruber, that the German zone of Austria had the key
industrial cities, the great agricultural lands, and the oil fields,
while the American-British zone contained the scenery.
Marquis Childs, in Chicago, tells of good economic times
usually benefiting the party in executive power, enabling it to
retain the White House. In this case, however, President Truman was
far from being a shoo-in; to the contrary, he was the underdog.
Nevertheless, he was leading in the public opinion polls and he
could not be written off as some complacent Republicans were seeking
to do.
In Chicago, the previous year's election of Martin Kennelly
as Mayor, running counter to the machine of Boss Ed Kelly, persuaded
not to run for re-election, stood as an example of a new era
emerging in Illinois politics, one not dependent any longer on the
favorable opinions of the Chicago Tribune or the patronage of
theDemocratic machine. The Tribune's stooge Senator,
Wayland Brooks, would be facing stiff opposition from either
University of Chicago Professor Paul Douglas or Adlai Stevenson, the
former appearing to be the probable choice of the
Democrats—Professor Douglas ultimately to be successful in the
effort. Senator Scott Lucas would likely run for Governor against
incumbent Dwight Green—eventually, the candidate to be Mr.
Stevenson, successful in the effort, to go on to become the
Democratic nominee for the presidency in 1952 and again in 1956,
then Ambassador to the U.N. under President Kennedy.
The Democrats had an advantage going into 1948 in that they
knew who their party nominee would be, even if they suffered from
party division, not yet healed from the loss of FDR who had managed
most of the time to coalesce the various disparate elements of the
party, with ideologies ranging from liberal to reactionary, from
internationalist to isolationist.
Until the Republicans settled on a candidate, Mr. Childs
offers, the race would not become clearly defined.
James Marlow of the Associated Press discusses the dispute
over whether to re-enact rationing and wage and price controls, as
recommended by the President regarding certain scarce commodities.
Senator Taft had characterized the President's plan as seeking
dictatorial powers, wanted an unfettered economy.
But such had not been the case since the anti-trust laws were
enacted at the turn of the century for industry and subsidies began
to be paid farmers. The Depression had shown the free market system
to be one inevitably consigned to problems through self-interested
avarice in boom times.
In 1938, Congress had passed the Wage and Hours Act, setting
forth a minimum wage based on a forty-hour week.
Then the war came, with its inevitable need for economic
controls to prevent crippling runaway inflation. When the war ended,
Congress abolished OPA in the summer of 1946, leaving only a few
controls in place, especially on meat, ended finally by the
President after the prediction of the Administration came true that
the few remaining controls would not work.
Then came the previous year of rampant inflation, contrary to
the experts' predictions that increased production would lower
prices as demand was met by volume.
Yet, still Senator Taft decried re-institution of controls.
Mr. Marlow wonders whether the country could afford to go on
indefinitely under the free enterprise system but also questions
whether, if it imposed controls, it would not be an admission that
the system of free enterprise only worked part of the time, and
further queries what that portended for the economic system of the
country.
Charles W. Duke, with another in the series on the "Freedom
Train", suggests that the youth of America who reveled in tales
of adventure and romance would likely be able to find on the train
representative documents to satiate their literary palates. Example
was the original manuscript of the journal maintained during the the siege of Fort
Schuyler, N.Y., in the summer of 1777. It told of the first military raising of the American flag,
one improvised quickly from a design approved by the Continental
Congress on June 14, 1777. The fort's journal also recorded the
first time that the British ensign had been hung as captive by an
American force.
Paul Revere had become known, even internationally in
Britain, by 1773, two years before his famous ride, for having taken
a prominent role in the Boston Tea Party by riding to New York to
inform the Sons of Liberty of the event. He sought assistance also
in Philadelphia after the British closed the port at Boston. He
became the official messenger of the Massachusetts Committee of
Safety, by commission issued by General Joseph Warren, killed three
days afterward at Bunker Hill. The commission was aboard the train.
The original manuscript of Francis Scott Key's "Star
Spangled Banner" was also aboard, with Mr. Key's own
emendations on the document.
One could peruse the log book of the U.S.S. Constitution,
"Old Ironsides", containing entries summarizing its
derring-do in both the Revolution and especially the War of 1812.
Also aboard was a letter from General Andrew Jackson to
Secretary of War James Monroe, dated January 9, 1815, describing the Battle of
New Orleans.
