The Charlotte News

Wednesday, April 30, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that an Arab-state proposal to the U.N. 14-member steering committee to have considered forthwith the question of immediate independence of Palestine from its status as a British Mandate appeared headed for defeat. Only Egypt, of the five Arab states on the committee, was ready to vote for the proposal.

The House passed a reduced 200-million dollar aid bill, aimed at China and Europe. Originally, as proposed, the bill would have provided 350 million dollars. The measure would now pass to the Senate.

The Senate voted against an attempt sponsored by Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon to split the omnibus labor bill into four separate bills. The effort was in the hope of enabling the President to sign some of the measures. Republicans united to defeat the attempt.

Telephone workers in five unions, comprised of 43,000 members in New York and Pennsylvania, settled their strike by accepting $3 and $4 per hour wage increases. The unions had most recently demanded $6, after originally seeking $12 to $21.

The Wisconsin Telephone Co. had offered its workers a similar settlement package, with $3 to $5 per hour increases, but no word had come as to whether the workers would accept the offer.

The Southern bituminous coal operators, representing a third of the nation's soft coal mine owners, stated their opposition to a nationwide agreement with the UMW and John L. Lewis.

In Worth, Mo., a tornado killed at least 13 out of 233 people in the community, and injured more than 45 others, demolishing most of the town's buildings.

A teacher in the town was credited with saving the lives of her students by seeking refuge in a nearby cave to avoid the approaching tornado. She then proceeded to her invalid mother's home, but the tornado hit before she could enable her mother's escape. Both, however, emerged safely, after her mother somehow managed to move on her own to a safer part of the house. The bedroom where she had been located was heavily damaged.

In Arkansas, another eight persons were killed by the tornado as it passed close to Garfield. Other towns, in Texas and Iowa, were also struck, but without fatalities.

In Baton Rouge, a new execution date of May 9 was set for Willie Francis, who had survived the first attempt to execute him a year earlier when insufficient voltage was passed through him. His attorneys contended before the U.S. Supreme Court that to try to execute him a second time would constitute cruel and unusual punishment, as prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. The Court found it not to be so.

In Lenoir, N.C., George Bernhardt, 52, head of Bernhardt Furniture Co., a manufacturer, and one of the owners of the scenic rock at Blowing Rock, killed himself with a pistol. He had been in ill health for some time.

Dick Young reports of two withdrawals from the City Council runoff, virtually assuring that six candidates from a slate of G.I's, plus a disabled World War II veteran, would be elected to the Council.

In Hong Kong, a ton of opium was dumped into the ocean, having been seized from the Japanese after liberation.

Watch out for the fish which swim in funny ways.

In Beverly Hills, Calif., actress Boots Mallory pleaded not guilty to a charge of drunk driving. Her trial was set to begin on May 19. You will want to be there for the titillating blow-by-blow excitement.

Was she drinking, such that she was impaired? If so, who got her drunk? Was it sinister? Will the world end in 1948? What brand was she drinking? Was she drinking it from a boot?

These questions and others are sure to be answered in the gavel-to-gavel coverage.

On the editorial page, "The Secretary Reports on Round One" tells of Secretary of State Marshall's report of the results of the Moscow Foreign Ministers Council meeting, describing it as having failed, but nevertheless defining the issues of difference such that the next conference could begin at least with clear delineation of those issues.

The tough stand taken By Secretary Marshall presented American foreign policy under the Truman Doctrine as a line drawn, against which the Soviets would either compromise or there would be war.

The policy left little room for a viable U.N. to resolve differences between East and West.

Yet, many observers in Washington regarded the report as heartening, that there still remained hope of negotiating with the Russians on the points of disagreement. Premier Stalin had stated that the conference was merely a first round in the process.

But in the long pull, the conference appeared to leave little hope for a future world order based on power politics.

"Was May the Only One?" remarks on the opening of the trial of Andrew May, former Congressman from Kentucky, and the Garsson brothers, for alleged payments to Mr. May for obtaining war contracts. Mr. May was going to contend as a defense that the payments were campaign donations. Senator Theodore Bilbo, when challenged by the Senate on receipt of gifts for war contracts, had made a similar claim.

Mr. May's attorneys stated that the former Congressman was prepared to tell of other members of Congress receiving like gifts from companies seeking and obtaining war contracts. The piece posits that it was likely to have been the case and hopes that Mr. May would, in fact, present such evidence.

It expresses that it would be far more salutary for the Congress, rather than heading to Hollywood to investigate possible Communist influence in the movies, to investigate the possible graft of its own membership during the war.

"The Planners and the Parking Problem" tells of the City Planning Board looking at ways to increase downtown parking, through elevated facilities and increased bus service. Something had to be done to ease the glut of traffic downtown and the consequent parking issues.

A piece from the New Orleans Item, titled "One for the Watch and Ward", tells of a Boston newspaper re-printing a painting by Waldo Peirce, titled "County Fair", but altering it to blot out a sign depicted in the painting, stating, "Beer and Ale".

Mr. Peirce had called Boston in consequence "Backward Bay".

The piece finds the criticism understandable, for Boston had ignored the fact that Prohibition had ended 14 years earlier. Thus, it concludes, chalk one up for the Watch and Ward Society along the Charles River.

Drew Pearson explains that it had been Speaker of the House Joe Martin who had engineered the vote in the House Banking Committee against the proposed 10 percent rent increase, a committee vote having supported the proposal a month earlier.

Mr. Martin had argued that it would be poor psychology to raise rents at that time. Rather, the builders should be given a chance to produce housing units to reduce rents.

He provides the yea and nay votes on the measure.

He next tells of Representative Carter Manasco of Alabama having his first child, a boy, whom he named John Carter Manasco, to avoid having a "Jr." in the family, who might one day receive the father's mail by mistake.

A rumor was circulating that Senator Robert Taft was not really for the long-term housing bill which bore his sponsorship. The bill had passed the committee vote only narrowly, 8 to 7, through the efforts of Senator Charles Tobey pushing the measure. Senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont had cast the decisive vote, assuring that the bill would reach the floor.

Marquis Childs remarks of the line forming on the right, some on the extreme right, for the governments initially standing in line seeking aid from the United States.

Since the President's address on aid to Greece and Turkey on March 12, an effort in Washington was taking place to obtain aid for the Fascist Peron Government in Argentina. The argument for it was that it would show up the Russians, also seeking to align with Sr. Peron.

Assistant Secretary of State Spruille Braden, former Ambassador to Argentina, was, as always, against the proposal, on the basis that Juan Peron was casting himself in the mold of Hitler. He was utilizing state controls on industry and agriculture, based on the Mussolini model, to amass cash reserves for the purpose of building up his super-nationalist state. The Government would buy up one commodity and then sell it on the world market at twice the price. He was said to be encouraging Chile in that direction on its copper, which would impact American interests.

The Argentine could obtain from Russia, however, none of the armaments, industrial machines, or airplanes which it sought. Those goods could only come from the United States, giving it the superior bargaining power.

Nazi agents were still operating in Argentina with little interference.

At least two other Latin American nations were said to be seeking American aid to ward off Communism.

Mr. Childs urges that the country could not afford to back dictatorships simply to combat Communism. Nothing recently had occurred to make the Peron Government attractive for receipt of aid.

Samuel Grafton discusses the continuing effort of the right wing to destroy and bury Henry Wallace, though they had pronounced last rites over his political corpse more than once in the past. He remained viable, however, in their perception because he represented hope for the future, even if articulated in a somewhat indistinct manner and not carefully and systematically drawn for practical implementation. He continued to express the hope for a vital U.N. which could resolve world disputes, as opposed to unilateral action promising armed camps between the East and West.

The mood now of the country was quite different with regard to the U.N. from the hope of two or three years earlier for the organization to act as grand arbiter to avoid war and have an international police force to enforce the peace where necessary. Mr. Wallace represented a continuity of that hope, otherwise on the wane. The conservatives continued therefore to be bothered by his rhetoric and resorted to desperate tools to try to marginalize his message.

Mr. Wallace reminded of the leftwing Labor rebels in Britain who protested the Attlee Government foreign policy, being a verbal minority which appeared nevertheless to many people to be right, though no program had been elucidated.

It was meaningless to attack Mr. Wallace on such ephemeral things as his choice of venue for making his attacks on U.S. foreign policy, whether at home or abroad.

"No one can see his way clearly, perhaps, through the present fog but one can carry a certain emotion from former days with him as he travels; and Wallace has become its repository for the rest of us. I give you Wallace, the indestructible, with the murmured footnote that he is so, not because of what he is, but because of what we are."

A letter writer praises a workshop on alcohol problems held at the First Methodist Church. At the meeting, however, a minister had stated that the Bible opposed controlled sale of liquor.

The author begs to differ on that point and paraphrases, or perhaps satirizes, to wit, parts of Matthew to support his argument. He suggests that each voter on the controlled sale referendum would need answer the matter for themselves.

A letter from the president of the Mecklenburg Audubon Society agrees with a letter from the Charleston chapter, published the previous Saturday, that a Federal crime had been committed when an eagle had been killed in Chester, S.C., as reported by a story in the newspaper on April 21.

He does not call for prosecution in the instant case, but does wish readers to understand the criminal nature of such an act, not reported by the original story.

A letter from the principal and staff of the Midwood School thanks the newspaper for its support of the referendum on raising property taxes to enable higher teacher salaries than that afforded by the recent 30 percent raise in pay passed by the Legislature.

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