Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that large-scale
fighting between Jews and Arabs in Palestine had erupted during the
morning hours of this date at Yazur. Violence in the same area the
previous day brought to 300 the unofficial death toll in fighting
since November 29 when the U.N. approved partition. The total
throughout the Middle East stood at 420. The latest fighting began
when Haganah units attacked Arab bands in reprisal for recent Arab
attacks on convoys bringing supplies to Jewish settlements.
There were no immediate reports of casualties in the new
fighting, but ten had died in violence in other areas of Palestine
the previous day. A Jewish employee of the Palestine Government was
gunned down close to his office in Jerusalem. The man had once
worked for the Chicago Tribune and the Manchester
Guardian. The largest single attack the previous day was in
Safad where one Arab was killed and three more wounded, while two
Jews had been wounded. Two Jews were stabbed to death in Yazur when
the oil truck in which they were riding was set afire by several
Arabs. Other specific incidents of violence are also provided.
Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson released the names
and addresses of 771 "big traders" in grain and other
commodities, driving inflation. Of the total, 296 engaged in
speculation and the remainder in "hedging" and
"spreading". On the list was Edwin Pauley, assistant to
Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall. No other employees of the
Government were on the list. There was also one North Carolinian.
Another list would follow.
In Krakow, Poland, the supreme national tribunal sentenced 23
top-ranking Nazis of the SS to death for their acts while
officers at the Auschwitz extermination camp. Five other defendants
received life imprisonment and two were sentenced to ten years each,
three, to five years each. One defendant was acquitted.
A strike by Western Union was averted by referral of major
differences between the company and three AFL unions to a
fact-finding board for decision.
That's a relief. We were afraid you might not be able to send
your telegrams for Christmas.
Representative Harris Ellsworth of Oregon speculated that the
flying saucers which had been seen the previous summer were from
rocket experiments conducted by Russia. He had heard a report that
the Russians had developed a very high speed rocket with nearly
unlimited range, propelled by a series of rapid explosions. The
source of the report was not stated, but more than likely was
extra-terrestrial, merely trying to draw attention away from the
true origin of the saucers and fool the gullible inhabitants of
Earth, maybe even seeking to start a nuclear exchange.
In Havana, the three-judge trial court found guilty the woman
accused of killing her lover, Chicago attorney Mr. Mee. She was
sentenced by the court to fifteen years in prison for manslaughter
and forced to pay $5,000 in restitution. The verdict and sentence
came as no surprise to the defendant. The public prosecutor had
reduced the murder charge to manslaughter the previous week. With
good behavior and credit for time served, she could be released
early in 1958.
A photograph shows a four-year old girl in Harrisburg, Pa.,
overcome with tears at the receipt of a puppy for Christmas, that
for which she had wished. She did not believe, however, that she
would get the puppy, but Santa Claus had provided it early.
Just don't let the cute little puppy get into the rat poison,
little girl, as Governor Cherry did with his little cocker spaniel.
But, if it does, as he said, there are always plenty more where that
one came from. C'est la vie.
Also, make sure that the doggie does not fall from the top of
the Empire State Building, or even the Chrysler Building. Even
though he flew in upon a sleigh over the rooftops, that wouldn't be
good.
With only three days left in the drive, the Empty Stocking
Fund, sponsored by The News, was falling short. The requests
for aid had surpassed those in previous years because of inflation.
The Fund stood at $5,230, compared to $7,059 at the same point the
previous year.
There are about 100,000 of you yulers out there. C'mon, let's start giving.
The farm pages of the newspaper tell of the North Carolina farm workers having been engaged in curing Canadian tobacco since 1920. The Farm Bureau's national convention had been held in Chicago. And soil conservation brightens up your Christmas.
On the editorial page, "Fateful Winter for the West"
tells of Secretary of State Marshall having explained the failure of
the foreign ministers conference in terms of the need to rebuild
Europe before any assurance of peace could be had through "paper
agreements", there being a political vacuum existing in most of
Europe after the war.
The vacuum quickly was being filled, inspired by the promise
of the Marshall Plan, despite resistance by the Communists. A
political trend to the right, away from Communism, had developed
throughout Western Europe, in Italy, in France, and Great Britain,
all in prospect of the Marshall Plan.
The Communists were predicting against restoration through
the Plan, wanted it to fail. But their desperate propaganda bespoke
their confidence that the Plan would likely not fail. Their primary
hope was in the possibility that the Congress would reject the Plan
or so water it down as to be ineffective. If such doubts would be
removed in the coming months, then it would be time to finish the
"paper agreements" to try to effect a lasting peace.
"Taft Still Is Running the Show" tells of Senator
Taft's voluntary inflation control bill having tied the President's
hands and put him on the spot. Either he had to sign the bill or be
without any form of control through the next critical months of
winter. It also placed the burden on the Administration to try to
make a weak program work and set back the prospect of real controls
until the voluntary system had been tested with industry and
business.
Conservative Democrats had voted with the Republicans for the
measure after failing to obtain their amendments to the bill,
demonstrating their reluctance to have compulsory controls.
The victory for Senator Taft on the issue portended the
possibility of passage of a tax cut in the new year, two such bills
having been vetoed the previous summer.
The President had scored a success in obtaining the interim
emergency aid for Austria, Italy, and France, but signs were that
the House might seek to trim the overall Marshall Plan.
The special session thus had gone well for the Republicans,
but the President had also obtained a substantial portion of what he
sought in calling the session, especially when considering that he
was trying to govern with a divided Democratic minority in both
houses.
"Clearing the Air over Fritz" discusses the
granting of a non-suit by the judge on Saturday in the trial of
former high school principal R. L. Fritz on the charge that he
misappropriated school funds by paying regular teachers for overtime
work. The judge had found no criminal intent but also criticized Mr.
Fritz's improper handling of school funds and found at least
suspicious circumstance in that some of the money went to his wife,
who worked at the school.
The piece considers the result fair and sending of the
message that such extralegal activity, in circumvention of legal
accounting practices, would risk criminal prosecution of others in
the future, even if, as probably was the matter in the present instance, it should be politically motivated.
With the court proceeding done, it would now be up to the
State Board of Education whether to restore Mr. Fritz's teaching
certificate. The piece suggests that the many friends who had come
to his defense leave the matter between Mr. Fritz and the Board.
A piece from the Greenville Daily News, titled "Atomic
Energy and Food", tells of the world population having expanded
during the war by 200 million people and increasing at the rate of
twenty million per year. Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission
David Lilienthal had stated that within ten years, atomic energy
would open the way to a future free of disease, suffering and
hunger. He believed that it would enable farmers to produce food
faster to feed the growing population.
But that science had not yet been realized. The increased
fruit and vegetable production in Japan after the atomic bombs had
given evidence of this phenomenon.
At present, man still had to rely on the standard farming
techniques until such time when science developed something new.
Drew Pearson, in Paris, tells of the French Chamber of
Deputies having voted on a resolution to thank the U.S. for the
Friendship Train and the Communists not knowing how to vote. After
considering the matter, they voted to approve the resolution and it
passed unanimously, to the surprise of the French people.
The people had greeted the food and supplies with great
approval. The dockworkers had agreed to unload it and the railroads
agreed to transport it. The boxcar shortage would delay some of the
shipment, but the first train was moving toward Marseilles. Ninety
percent of the food would go to children.
The French newspapers, thin for lack of newsprint, were
greeting the train with a large amount of favorable publicity. He
provides positive excerpts from the commentary from seven
publications. Even one Communist newspaper had praised the gift.
Stewart Alsop discusses the Progressive Party movement, set
to nominate Henry Wallace as a third-party presidential candidate,
finds it to have been exposed as an instrument of Soviet foreign
policy. The Progressives, he says, were revealed as Communists at
the core of the party. Even Mr. Wallace was reported to have qualms
about running on the party ticket.
Democrats were re-evaluating the notion that, with a
Wallace-led third party race, the Republicans could win easily provided the leader of the pack was not a loud barker. Some
Democrats now viewed the prospect of such a candidacy as a blessing
in disguise to the Truman campaign. The American Labor Party in New
York, which had given the state to FDR in 1940 and 1944, appeared to
remain in the Truman camp despite the prospect of a Wallace
candidacy. Thus, the conventional wisdom that such a third party
could throw the state to the Republicans appeared unlikely of
occurrence.
Both the chairman and vice-chairman of the Progressives had
resigned in protest of the intention to run a presidential
candidate, having nothing to do with Mr. Wallace per se, but stating
that the third party candidacy in the presidential race would split
the Democrats and hand the election to the Republicans.
PM, a liberal New York newspaper which had been
expected to endorse Mr. Wallace, had an editorial which denounced
the movement, finding the object of the campaign's Communist backers
to be the election of a reactionary Republican.
A. F. Whitney, president of the Brotherhood of Railroad
Trainmen, had resigned the Progressive Party, meaning that no
non-Communist labor support would be in the Wallace camp. The CIO
PAC was also expected to reject the bid.
One Democratic strategist believed that Mr. Wallace could
poll no more than a million votes and while most of them would be
lost to the Democrats, they would be made up by the fact that the
third party attack on the President would move independents to his
corner and that non-Communist labor would be pushed into fighting
for him. Thus, the Communist strategy behind the campaign appeared
likely to backfire.
Former Vice-President Wallace would poll 1.15 million votes
in 1948, 2.4 percent, and would carry no state in the process.
Victor Riesel comments on the labor situation in Greece,
where the Government had banned strikes under penalty of death for
violation, erasing much of the good which American aid, pursuant to
the Truman Doctrine, had accomplished. The ultimate punitive
sanction had apparently developed from hysterical reaction to the
strike situation in Italy and France. The death penalty had
alienated public opinion, which had redounded to the U.S.
The American labor mission, operated on a shoestring, was
trying to obtain cooperation from the 60 or so different Greek labor
unions vying with each other. The Greek monetary system was in
chaos, with money losing value so fast that it was nearly impossible
to obtain a decent wage. It was meaningless to obtain a raise as the
value of the money might be reduced by 50 percent in a day.
The result was that the Greek unions were always threatening
strikes. The consistent demand was to have a dependable living wage.
James Marlow of the Associated Press outlines the Marshall
Plan as proposed by the President in his message of the previous
Friday sent to Congress. It would spend 17 billion dollars on the 16
recipient nations over the course of 51 months, with 6.8 billion to
be spent in the first 15 months. Some of the money would be
considered loans, although no specific amount was stated.
It was unlikely that it would pass Congress in the form
proposed. The Republicans wanted to commit to the Plan only a year
at a time with annual review. It also wanted to reduce the overall
expenditure on the program. Furthermore, there was disagreement over
administration, the President recommending a central authority and
the Republicans wanting a governing board.
He then recaps the history and purpose of the Plan, proposed
the previous June 5 at Harvard by Secretary of State Marshall,
originally intended to embrace the Soviet Union and its satellites,
to aid in rebuilding the war-torn countries in cooperation with
their own resources and self-determination. The Soviets did not want
to partake because of perceived imperialist aims of the U.S. in
proposing the aid. It constrained its satellite governments to do
likewise, even though Czechoslovakia and Poland had expressed
initial interest in receiving the aid.
The 16 nations finished in mid-September, after meeting in
Paris, their determination of their own resources and necessary aid.
The President's Harriman committee then reviewed the report and cut
slightly what the nations sought, presented its report in mid
November.
The special session of Congress had been called to deliver
emergency aid as an interim measure for the most needy countries
during the winter, Italy, France, and Austria, prior to passage of
the Marshall Plan.
When Congress would re-convene January 6, the debate on the
Plan would begin.
An epiphany would, no doubt, be the result.
A letter from an anonymous business man says that his
business would donate its oil on hand to individual families to
alleviate the fuel oil shortage in Charlotte and return temporarily
to usage of coal. The shortage was expected to last until January.
