Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Palestine,
fourteen more Arabs and three Jews had been killed by gunfire and
bombs, with 81 others wounded this date. Six Arabs were killed in Jaffa from bombs. At Jerusalem's Damascus gate,
two anti-personnel bombs exploded in an Arab marketplace, killing
six Arabs and injuring 41 others. Two Arabs and three Jews died in a
gun battle at Beersheba. The death toll for the previous
two weeks since partition was approved by the U.N. stood at 215,
with 331 having been killed throughout the Middle East.
In London, the session of the foreign ministers conference
scheduled for this date was postponed until Monday, following a
heated argument the night before regarding a British proposal on
reparations from Germany to Russia. American sources said that the
conference was hopelessly deadlocked on the issue, as well on
economic unification generally. But Soviet Foreign Commissar V. M.
Molotov was said to be agreeable to have the sessions continue. The
future of the conference rested with Secretary of State Marshall,
who was scheduled to meet this date with Mr. Molotov and Andrei
Vishinsky to try to find out the Soviet position on reparations.
A director of the Chicago Board of Trade stated that there
would never be any significant Congressional investigation into
speculation in the grain market because too many high Government
officials had participated in the speculation. Hearings into the
grain and corn speculation of Ed Pauley, special assistant to
Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall, were set to continue the
following week before the Senate Appropriations Committee.
House Ways & Means Committee chairman Harold Knutson of
Minnesota stated that during the last day of the special session of
Congress, he would introduce a tax reduction bill for a five billion
dollar tax cut.
The Justice Department announced the filing of suit against
DuPont for monopolization of the cellophane industry. Attorney
General Tom Clark said that the company had produced two-thirds of
the domestic cellophane for several years and had acquired a
monopoly through foreign cartelization. The suit sought divestment
and sale of plants, that others could produce cellophane. The only
competitor in the market, the suit alleged, existed at the mercy of
DuPont.
Robert Denham, general counsel for the NLRB, ruled against a
Nashville, Tenn., firm in seeking an injunction to stop a strike
against a CIO union which had not signed the compulsory affidavit of
officer non-affiliation with Communist organizations, requisite for
NLRB arbitration in collective bargaining under Taft-Hartley.
Margaret Truman told junior journalists in an interview in
Kansas City that she and her father did not participate in duets as
his musical tastes differed from her classical, operatic repertoire.
The President did not play on the piano the songs she normally
sang. She said, in response to questioning, that she did not get
upset with music critics who were not flattering of her voice,
instead had learned much from them. She was not nervous at her debut
in the Hollywood Bowl because she was too cold to think of being
nervous. She said also that the Secret Service did not tag along
with her on dates as she relied on the date for protection.
The North Carolina Education Association asked Governor Gregg
Cherry this date to call a special session of the General Assembly,
which ordinarily met once every two years for about 90 days, to
raise teacher salaries, based on a surplus in the budget, to
compensate for the rising cost of living.
Tom Fesperman of The News reports that the oil
shortage reached a critical stage this date in Charlotte, as many
residents had exhausted their fuel oil supply and would not be able
to receive any more before the first of the year. Others were about
to run out. Several dealers reported that they had no fuel oil to
sell until January. Other dealers stated that their supply was
reserved for regular customers. The worst problem was among the
families with 50-gallon tanks, as at the units at Morris Field Homes
for 404 veterans and their families.
Temperatures in Charlotte this date ranged from 33 to 38
degrees.
Hell of a thing. Make it through the Battle of the Bulge maybe,
three years earlier, and come home to suffer through Christmas of
1947 in the freezing cold of winter. What a life.
On the editorial page, "Wallace's Reckless Course"
echoes the sentiments expressed by Stewart Alsop this date, that it
was a reckless bit of zealotry which had led Henry Wallace to
suggest that Senator Taft should be the GOP candidate for 1948. For
the latter would steer a course toward isolationism which fit
perfectly with the Communist plan for America, to bump it toward
economic collapse from inflation. Mr. Wallace stated that he
preferred Senator Taft to the President, as Mr. Taft was not solidly
behind the Marshall Plan and opposed universal military training.
It posits a scenario where Mr. Wallace's support could throw
the election to the Republicans.
Of course, Mr. Wallace, being shrewd, may well have instead
been making his statements to urge the Democrats to re-evaluate some
of their positions which had become increasingly conservative and
scarcely distinguishable from Republican policy. His favoring
Senator Taft had to come from the realization that Senator Taft, in
a showdown, could not win the country's support, as all the polling
data showed, that he did not bring with him the panache and youth of
Governor Dewey, the greatest threat among Republicans to re-election
of President Truman, and also embracing views more similar to those
of Mr. Wallace than were supported by Mr. Taft.
The piece finds Mr. Wallace, however, echoing the Moscow
line, as well that of Col. Robert McCormick, publisher of the
Chicago Tribune and notorious isolationist. It finds the
former Vice-President to be allowing himself to be used as a tool
for such interests, inimical to the Marshall Plan and thus
stimulative of European decline, Russian aggression, and world war.
But in their zeal to dislike and discredit Mr. Wallace, many
of the columnists of the day, especially Stewart Alsop, who all but
stated expressly that Mr. Wallace, in his insistence on appeasement rather than antagonism of Russia, was a Communist sympathizer,
appeared purblind to his more probable actual intent.
"Ed Pauley Wears Out Friendship" reviews the past
of Ed Pauley—which we summarized yesterday—and suggests that the
newest controversy, his speculating in grain and corn at a time when
the President had decried such speculators as contributing to
inflation of prices of these precious food commodities for feeding
Europe, proved that he had too many other financial interests,
including oil interests, properly to serve in the Government.
His friendship with the President had earned his previous
appointment as Undersecretary of the Navy in 1946, withdrawn after
the trouble with Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes, and his new
role as special assistant to Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall,
and had made him the target for Republican investigation, seeking to
embarrass the Administration.
"One Great Step Toward Peace" finds the Senate
ratification quickly of the Inter-American treaty formed at the Rio
conference the previous August to have been a good thing. The treaty
stood for mutual defense of the Western Hemisphere, and with the
U.S. ratification, Latin American countries would follow suit. The
treaty established a pole to pole "security zone"
stretching longitudinally from Hawaii to Greenland, and provided for
joint action on vote of a two-thirds majority of ratifying
signatories to the treaty in all matters save use of military force.
The latter would be binding only on the nations so assenting.
The treaty enabled elimination of the Security Council veto
in the U.N. for Western Hemispheric action. Only Article 51 of the
U.N. Charter, providing for a two-thirds vote of the General
Assembly on certain questions, could override the veto. The treaty
sent the message to Russia that the Western Hemisphere was united
against outside aggression and would thus provide for world
equilibrium.
A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled
"Are All Men Equal?" informs of a well-known columnist
having suggested that not more than one in a million Americans
actually believed in the concept that "all men are created
equal", as stated in the Declaration of Independence.
Notwithstanding, the piece finds the maxim to commend itself
to free society, as President Lincoln had indicated, and should be
constantly sought and approximated, even if never perfectly
attained.
We suggest that the salutary precept, thus conceptualized, is
as elusive "truth".
Drew Pearson provides more about the 44 American transport
planes carrying 800 troops, shot down primarily by friendly fire
over Catania and Gela, Sicily, in mid-July, 1943, developing
additional information about the effort of Col. David Laux to
prevent future occurrences of the type by seeking to have mandatory
installation of self-sealing fuel tanks and armor plate on the
planes. He recaps that Col. Laux had finally presented the matter
directly to Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who turned it over to
General Barney Giles, an opponent of self-sealing tanks for their
restricting the range of the aircraft. At that point, Col. Laux was
transferred to Alaska.
Shortly after Col. Laux arrived in Alaska, General Giles sent
a telegram to General Dale Gaffney at Nome, directing him to obtain
from Col. Laux all reports and papers he had regarding self-sealing
tanks. General Gaffney became suspicious and told General Giles that
he did not need an officer of the rank of Col. Laux assisting him.
Nevertheless, the latter sat out the remainder of the war in Nome.
No investigation was ever conducted regarding the failure to
equip the planes with self-sealing tanks prior to the Catania and
Gela incidents, despite Col. Laux's insistence that there was
"criminal negligence" involved. The whole matter appeared
far worse than the profiteering on which Maj. General Bennett Meyers
was about to be indicted, following revelations before the Ferguson
War Investigating subcommittee of the Senate.
He next relates of a colonel who sought to have his haircut
in the Pentagon barber shop, waited in line for 17 ahead of him to
have their clipping, was about to take his seat in the chair when a
general walked in and the barber said that he was next. Then, three
more generals came in for their haircuts and also were provided
precedence over the colonel. Mr. Pearson concludes that anyone below
the rank of general should look elsewhere than the Pentagon
barbershop for getting their earslowered.
Samuel Grafton tells of the new look, uncontrolled, being a
dull, myopic look. For the uncontrolled prices were so high that no
one could afford the previously controlled products which were now
more available, but beyond the average consumer's reach. Butter was
a dollar per pound, for instance, and less of it was being produced
and consumed than at any time since 1920. The new look was smug, the
old, interested, one which could see beyond the end of the nose.
The new look had blind spots, overlooking, for example,
expectant mothers in New York who had problems obtaining adequate
food.
The new look constantly was concerned about disloyalty and
doubted everyone, was wary of every step. The old look had been bold
and proud, if forced to endure rationing and control for patriotic
reasons.
The new look was defensive about the American system, whereas
the old look accepted the notion tacitly and quietly, had nothing to
prove as it manifested daily efficiency and loyalty.
He suggests that the bogey of Communism might dissipate were
the country to begin moving forward again, toward providing adequate
housing, food, and clothing for all its citizens. The country would
be harder to hit on the move. The sitting bird which it was made it
an easy target.
Stewart Alsop discusses the statement during the week by
Henry Wallace that he would be willing to be a candidate for a third
party and would, in any event, support such an effort unless the
foreign policy of both parties changed. Barring a miracle, it meant
that he would definitely run—as he would, heading the Progressive
Party ticket, with Senator Glen Taylor of Idaho as his running mate,
a call which Mr. Alsop makes with deft insight.
He suggests that it would please William Z. Foster, head of
the American Communist Party, as the Communists were the real
backbone of a third party movement. He had recently spoken in favor
of a Wallace bid. The Communist hope was that a third party would
make election of a right wing Republican more likely, thus weakening
the country's influence abroad and its economy at home.
It would also isolate more the Communist stronghold in the
labor movement, that in CIO. With the exception of the electrical workers,
the CIO had largely shaken loose the Communist influence in the
organization, especially after the victory of Walter Reuther at the recent UAW convention. In many state CIO conventions, especially in Wisconsin and
Minnesota, where previously Communists had an impact, the influence
had been eliminated. The CIO would likely endorse President Truman
in 1948 for his veto of Taft-Hartley, among other things.
Mr. Wallace, himself, had stated that a third party would
make the election of someone such as Senator Taft more likely,
hastening the reversal of the American foreign policy, the hard line
against Russia, with which Mr. Wallace disagreed. It was the
conventional wisdom of this movement that such a result would return
the country to a form of isolationist foreign policy.
A letter finds the Department of Agriculture out to lunch on
its policy anent hoof and mouth disease among American cattle
imported from Mexico. It had changed from a program of slaughter of
the cattle to vaccination. He finds the wasted money on the former
program remarkable.
He also believes that FDR cut the dollar to "59.06"
and thus started the ball rolling toward national bankruptcy,
continued during the war when inflation ran rampant. (Never mind the
facts as they are often inconvenient when you're on a roll.)
He recommends that all members of Congress read Henry
Hazlitt's Will Dollars Save the World? The book, he says, was
printed in large letters and would not strain the eyes, was only 88
pages and cost $1.50. He says he would gladly refund the cost of
purchase to any member who found the book not worthwhile.
The continuing decline of the American dollar, he warns,
would result in universal ruin and prevent the country from helping
its friends.
He probably had been talking to the spacemen out in Roswell
for this incisive prospectus for the country and its future. Only
one word comes to mind: brilliant.
Anyone who could take recent facts of the Republican party's
shenanigans, aided by reactionary Democrats, with respect to
inflation and turn it about to lay it off on FDR, dead for nearly
three years, had to have plenty of good sense. Anyway, all the
statistics showed that the rise in the cost of living,
outpacing wages, had primarily taken place after price and wage
controls were released following the war.
