Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that President Soekarno of Indonesia had stated by radio that Dutch forces were attacking Indonesia by land, air, and sea. He sought U.N. Security Council consideration of the matter. The Dutch stated that warplanes had attacked Republican airfields in Java and Sumatra because Indonesian fighter planes were ready for action, a pre-emptive attack. The Indonesian commander stated that he had ordered his forces to counter-attack each time the Dutch attacked.

Months had passed during which the Dutch and Indonesian Governments had failed to assent to terms of the Cherebon Agreement, which provided for independence of Indonesia in 1949, while remaining under the Dutch crown.

In Jerusalem, following a new outbreak of violence in Haifa and Natanya in which three were killed, a British policeman, a British soldier, and a Jewish civilian, and 24 wounded during a two-day period, a dusk-to-dawn curfew was ordered by the British. The 90,000 in Jerusalem subject to the curfew brought the total number of Jews under curfew in Jerusalem, Haifa, and Natanya to 155,000. There was fear of additional reprisals for the deportation of 4,500 or more uncertified Jewish refugees of the 1947 exodus. Hebrew newspapers had headlined a story that the refugees were being sent back to France.

A bill to outlaw the poll tax, present in seven Southern states, passed the House by a vote of 290 to 112 and now proceeded to the Senate. It would not be considered, however, in that body until 1948, and likely, as in the past, would be filibustered to death. Southern Representatives, led by reactionary John Rankin of Mississippi and Tom Pickett of Texas, had sought to block the vote in the House.

Though North Carolina had not had a poll tax since 1920, its twelve-member delegation in the House unanimously voted against the measure. Virginia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, and Mississippi still had poll taxes.

The President gave a mid-year economic message in which he stated that the country's production, at 225 billion dollars per year, was the highest in history. He warned, however, that inflationary problems, in corn, coal, construction, and commerce overseas, loomed large on the horizon, though nothing about which yet to panic. Price reductions were mandatory to assure a future with peace and prosperity. There was also need for pay raises in some sectors.

The GOP leaders in the Senate were giving priority to a bill to have investigation of the Kansas City voting fraud in the primary the previous summer, involving the President's handpicked candidate, Enos Axtell, who defeated incumbent Representative Roger Slaughter, whom the President had targeted for his consistent blocking in committee of the President's program.

Meanwhile, Senator Wayne Morse was being opposed by the party leadership in trying to bring to a vote two bills extending veterans' benefits. On Saturday, the Senate had approved four bills extending veterans' benefits.

Walter Steele claimed before HUAC that two scientists, who were experts on atomic power and had worked on the Manhattan Project, had taught at Communist schools. One of the scientists had denied being a Communist or having any such affiliation. Mr. Steele claimed that there were five million Communists in the country, and that they were trying to form a third party. They had established schools, he claimed, in San Francisco, New York, Hollywood, Boston, and Cleveland.

CIO president Walter Reuther, in a statement for the Senate Small Business Subcommittee, charged that the major steel companies were creating planned scarcity to enhance profits and create a monopoly. The steel companies were deliberately not equipping themselves to achieve full production. He asserted that 100 million tons of steel would be needed for full employment by 1950, whereas the large steel companies contended that 80 million tons would be adequate. Mr. Reuther stated that the latter figure would result in 14,000 unemployed workers by 1950.

Cotton futures prices in New Orleans rose between $3.15 and $3.95 per bale.

In Poughkeepsie, N.Y., a judge ruled that President Roosevelt's papers and files had been a gift to the American people before his will of November 12, 1941 was executed, and so were not part of the late President's estate. The files and papers had been given to the FDR Library at Hyde Park several months before the will was executed.

In Charlotte, a landlord had issued eviction notices to 30 tenants because he wanted to convert the building into a hotel. Counsel for the Regional Office of Rent Control in Atlanta stated that it appeared to violate the 1947 Rent Control Act, recently passed by Congress.

At Peach Bottom, Pa., the Port Deposit, Md., to Harrisburg, Pa., rail line was halted when three electric trains were stopped by May flies congregating on the lines and short-circuiting motors. The trains had to be pushed to Harrisburg by helper trains. The good news was that the May flies lived for only a few hours in their normal life cycle.

We note that Editor Harry Ashmore was starting his last week at The News, set to become the Associate Editor of The Arkansas Gazette, and soon to become Editor, a position in which he would be awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1958 for his editorials during the September, 1957 Little Rock Central High School integration crisis, credited with quelling community tension in the matter. Mr. Ashmore had begun his tenure as Associate Editor of The News in October, 1945, right out of service in the Army where he had been a Lt. Colonel serving under General Patton in France. He had become Editor in April, 1947.

On the editorial page, "Taxes Are Part of a Pattern" finds the charge by Speaker of the House Joe Martin that the President was engaging in politics when he vetoed the tax bill the second time to be a dubious assertion, as typically the way to get votes was to approve of tax cuts. The President's veto message, stressing that the bill was one for the rich and not the poor, was, it believes, a political message.

"The Perils of Foreign Education" tells of the President's program to send American students abroad for education, financed by 137 million dollars from sale of war surplus materials abroad. The first students would be selected in the fall.

"A Tar Heel Enters the Cabinet" tells of the appointment of Undersecretary of War Kenneth Royall to be Secretary of War to replace Robert Patterson who had resigned because of the impending merger of the military. Mr. Royall was the first North Carolina native to be appointed to the Cabinet since Josephus Daniels had become Secretary of the Navy under President Wilson in 1913.

A piece from the Columbia Record, titled "Surprise for the Politicians", recommends that the South Carolina Legislature begin considering the absence of primary laws in the state in the wake of the failed attempt to eliminate blacks from voting in the primaries by privatizing them. Federal Judge J. Waties Waring had issued his decision ruling the all-white primary unconstitutional in South Carolina, after the Legislature had sought, by wiping all primary laws off the books, to allow the political parties to operate as private clubs, administering the primaries themselves.

The piece indicates that many in the state had long sought to have the primaries open to all voters, that the State should have taken the initiative before being forced by the Federal Government to open the primaries. It had been primarily the politicians of the state, interested in re-election, who wanted them closed. Now, those politicians would need eliminate the racist rhetoric from their speeches.

Drew Pearson tells of Frank Costello, organized crime figure, who had gambling houses in Miami and New Orleans, controlled the slot machines in Louisiana and had several large roadhouses in New Jersey, being subject to deportation should anyone take a close look at his past. When he became a naturalized citizen in 1925, taking the oath to uphold the laws and the Constitution, he was then engaged in breaking the Volstead Act and the Eighteenth Amendment by bringing illegal liquor into the country, perhaps more than any other gangster. He had also concealed from Government officials the fact that he had been convicted previously for carrying a concealed weapon. Ordinarily, it would be enough to send him back to his native Italy.

Marquis Childs tells of the rebellious Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, not being cooperative with his fellow Republicans, in return receiving their considerable rancor, in words, he says, which were unfit for print. Recently, Senator Morse had sought to introduce a bill which would increase the allotment to veterans attending school, only to have the Republican leadership attempt to sidetrack the measure. He intended to speak across the country about the Republican Party being unwilling to protect veterans.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss the Republican campaign for the presidency, that the stop-Dewey movement was proceeding quietly, with the strategy being to elevate Senator Robert Taft through Chicago Tribune publisher Robert McCormick and his movement in support of General MacArthur, recently compromising to accept Senator Taft as a second choice. General MacArthur would likely return within a year to make a spontaneous cross-country tour for the presidency, with the pre-arranged understanding that the delegations which would form around his candidacy would be turned over to Senator Taft on a second ballot at the convention, with the hope of stopping the Dewey bandwagon.

A letter writer, taking a leaf from Drew Pearson, addresses a letter to his daughter who had regrets over including economics in her curriculum in college. He urges her to understand that economic theory and reality were two different things and that she could become an economist as long as she maintained that maxim uppermost and used commonsense in application of economic theory.

A letter writer who had promised $100 to anyone who showed him where the Bible said that God promised an immortal soul to man, seeks to backtrack on his offer, having had his bluff called by a woman who, in a letter, cited John 3:16 and passages from Hebrews. He says that he intended the $100 for anyone who could show any verse in which God had given to man an immortal soul, distinguishing the promise from the act.

He wants action.

We can accommodate you, Mister, should you deem it wise to continue in your obviously dissembling track, seeking to avoid payment of your obligation, denying that which you agreed to do. Payment is overdue and action you will see soon enough should the clock continue to tick. Carrying charges will apply.

He says that he was 78 and was a reader of the Bible throughout his life, and hoped that he would meet the other writer one day in heaven.

It may come very soon, very soon, indeed. Should you have a change of heart, you may send the payment c/o Frank, General Delivery, New Joursey.

A letter writer compliments the aforementioned responsive letter and thanks the author for her citations of verse, that he believed in the promise of everlasting life. He disagrees with her point, however, that theological teachers who smoked and drank were necessarily condemned, that the Bible did not condemn smokers.

Framed Edition

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