The Charlotte News

Friday, May 2, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that President Miguel Aleman of Mexico was received by enthusiastic crowds of about 1.5 million people in New York as he was driven to City Hall. He declared that solidarity within the Western Hemisphere was a first step in accomplishing the purpose of the U.N.

In Augusta, Ga., Senator Burnet Maybank of South Carolina, in an address to the Cotton Manufacturers Association, found it questionable to loan funds to develop industrial and agricultural growth of foreign nations. Nations with cheap labor, he believed, would threaten the U.S. position as leader in world trade. American jobs would wind up being shipped overseas. He questioned where unemployed textile workers would find work.

In Istanbul, four U.S. vessels arrived for a four-day visit to Turkey. The U.S.S. Leyte, leading the expedition, became the first aircraft carrier to pass through the Dardanelles.

In Berlin, Vera Salvequart, one of eleven defendants sentenced to die for atrocities committed during the war at the Ravensbruck concentration camp, received a temporary stay of execution, which had been set to proceed the following weekend. Two of the defendants had already committed suicide. Ms. Salvequart admitted that her job had been to knock the gold fillings out of the teeth of gas chamber victims.

The British Air Ministry confirmed that the U.S. had dropped at least one rocket-assisted bomb during postwar tests of weapons against German U-boats in 1946 at Farge, near Bremen, on Helgoland.

In Shanghai, inflation was such that the smallest bills remaining in circulation were of $500 denominations. A $10,000 note was worth about 80 cents in American money.

The Senate voted an amendment to the Taft labor bill to prohibit union coercion of workers.The Labor Committee had eliminated the provision over the objection of Senator Taft. The amendment was sponsored by Senators Joseph Ball of Minnesota, Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, Walter George of Georgia, and Alexander Smith of New Jersey.

A bill passed the House the previous evening to extend rent controls to the end of the year, and permitted the President to extend them another three months after that, while allowing each governmental unit to determine whether to take it or leave it. It now proceeded to the Senate. Landlords under the House bill would be allowed to raise rents by 15 percent on a two-year lease with the consent of the tenant.

In Terre Haute, Ind., a coal mine explosion on Wednesday had killed eight miners. A fire continued to burn in the mine and the cause of the explosion was not yet known.

In Seattle, five tons of jade had been stolen. The jade was in boulders ranging from 200 to 1,500 pounds each and was valued at $25,000 to $30,000. It had been mined in Alaska's Seward Peninsula.

Efforts continued to resolve the telephone strike, concluding its fourth week on Monday.

Talks continued on merger of the AFL and CIO.

In West Chester, Pa., Anna Jarvis, founder of Mother's Day, celebrated her 83rd birthday.

A whale became impaled on a Port Lines ship out of England while on a voyage in the Pacific. It was still alive when the ship put astern, and as it finally gained its freedom, it sank out of sight.

In London, Winston Churchill's secretary told interested buyers that Mr. Churchill's paintings on display at the Royal Academy were not for sale.

Hal Boyle, on page 5-A, tells of the day in November, 1944 when the late columnist Ernie Pyle had returned to his alma mater, Indiana University, to receive his degree, after 21 years since leaving school short of graduation, distraught over a broken romance. Mr. Pyle was killed by a sniper on Ie Jima, days after arrival to cover the Pacific war in April, 1945.

The previous day, Mr. Boyle had informed of the scholarship at Indiana set up for journalism students in the name of Mr. Pyle.

On the editorial page, "The Housing Bill Is Up Again" tells of the Taft-Ellender-Wagner long-term housing bill having emerged from the Senate committee by a single vote. The bill had been passed by the previous Senate but stalled in the House.

Senator Taft was being smeared as a Red for his co-sponsorship of the bill, bitterly opposed by the housing industry. Private enterprise had not met the needs of housing as promised. Nevertheless, the industry still opposed the bill.

The piece quotes the Washington Post favoring the bill as minimally intrusive of private enterprise, and also supports its passage as the only way to fill the crying need for postwar housing.

"On Pre-Fabricated Public Opinion" finds somewhat disturbing the approach being taken by the American Legion to promote universal military training, a matter it had consistently supported for 28 years. The Truman Doctrine, to be successful, would need the peacetime training, and the piece supports the bills to provide it.

But the Legion's approach, replete with canned letters to editors and promotional material for the campaign to support the bills, reminded of labor union and manufacturing lobbying efforts and caused longing for the time when Americans could be relied upon to make up their own minds on issues of import.

"The Unconquerable Heart of Britain" comments on England still remaining in spirit despite the economic woes and winter hardship encountered as its empire was crumbling all around. It was evident in the air-mailed copy of The London Times, received each day only one day behind publication, replete with letters to the editor, despite shortage of newsprint, which ran to some length on such subjects as the date in 1878 when Dr. Henry Whitehead, Bishop of Madras, dined with the president and fellows of Trinity College, or the giving of praise to The London Bird Report as being the most comprehensive account of bird life ever attempted in England.

A piece from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, titled "Hinkey-Dinkey, Parlez Vous", tells of the death of British minstrel and composer of 20,000 songs, Alfred James Walden, at age 80. His most famous song was "Mademoiselle from Armantieres!" The tune had been well known by the soldiers of the AEF in 1918, a favorite marching tune. To it, "a world was reprieved for democracy."

Drew Pearson suggests to the Republicans that they meet with the President over the proposed labor bill if they were genuine in their desires to pass a bill which would not be vetoed.

In the end, of course, they would pass the Taft-Hartley bill which would need an override of the President's veto to become law in June.

He next relates a verbatim record of a dialogue between Assistant Secretary of State William Benton and members of a House Appropriations subcommittee regarding modern art acquired by the State Department for display abroad. The members showed the paintings to Mr. Benton and sought his reaction. He could not explain or pass judgment on any of the art. He was afraid of offending the artists. Eventually, he admitted that a mistake had been made in allowing one person to select all 79 works. Some of the members were horrified by the paintings. Mr. Benton said he saw it as art.

Marquis Childs explains that the visit of President Miguel Aleman of Mexico to the United States had a serious objective, to obtain loans for the country's industrial and farm production to ward off inflation. The loans were to come from the World Bank and the United States directly, and from private loans.

Soil and water experts from the U.S. could be encouraged by the President to go to Mexico, as Congress pared down reclamation and conservation programs.

Iran, Iraq, and Palestine could also make use of such assistance. Several years earlier, a representative from Afghanistan had come to the U.S. seeking such assistance. He was now Commissioner of Public Works for Afghanistan and was putting the techniques he had learned to good use. The country had signed a contract with a New York engineering firm to build a large irrigation project.

Mr. Childs notes the irony that Afghanistan could afford to build such projects while the U.S. deemed itself unable any longer to pay for soil conservation and reclamation, a short-sighted approach. Now Mexico would borrow American experts to do for Mexico what would no longer be done so much as in the recent past in the U.S.

Stewart Alsop, now in London, looks ahead a year to a time when the U.S. loan of 1946 would run out. It would provoke a debate as to whether would remain Great Britain or Little England, unable to afford to continue as a major power on the world stage.

The Labor Party rebels wanted to sever the country's foreign policy from that of the U.S. and cut Britain's commitments around the globe, following a policy of appeasement with regard to Russia. Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin wanted to maintain ties to the U.S., continue, to the extent possible, commitments abroad, and take a hard stand against Russian expansionism.

Henry Wallace's visit to England recently had set the tone for the debate, in foreshadow of what might happen a year hence. He had collaborated with the Labor rebel leaders in shaping the tenor of his speeches. He had also, apparently naively, accepted sponsorship by the Communist-dominated Lancashire Trade Council and the British Students' Federation, to the bewilderment of most Britons, leading one newspaper to label Mr. Wallace "A Child in a Great Dark". Mr. Alsop thinks the label apt.

A letter opposes the proposed cross-town boulevard in Charlotte, to become Independence Boulevard, for its cost of construction and maintenance through time.

A letter writer favors the referendum to establish controlled sale of liquor through ABC stores and wants to have such a referendum in her town of Hamlet. She says that there were bootleggers in her church and that they were murderers. She hopes that honest Christians would support the measure.

She asks that her name be withheld as her husband would be angry for writing on the subject.

A letter writer finds it astounding that certain ministers in Charlotte were advocating the controlled sale referendum. He cites four Americans convicted of clubbing to death Japanese as evidence that liquor "biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder."

He wants more people like Inez Flow, perennial letter writer, and former Governor Cameron Morrison, both of whom strongly supported prohibition.

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