The Charlotte News

Friday, July 25, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the world still was in the dark as to whether there was an "international brigade" fighting in northern Greece as first reported on July 12 from Salonika. The newspapers had stated there were 120 such members fighting in the Kozone region south of Mount Grammos. The following day, the Greek Government had claimed that a thousand men, including parts of an "international brigade" had crossed into Greece from Albania and attacked Konitsa near the border. On July 14, the Greek Ambassador to the U.S. asked the U.N. Security Council to take speedy action on the Balkans case because of the new urgency regarding incursions of the Greek border from Albania. In his plea, he had mentioned the "international brigade".

At present, a subcommission of the Balkans Subcommittee was visiting in Greece to try to determine the facts.

The Greek War Ministry reported that Government forces had used rocket-firing planes and artillery to repel and decimate a guerrilla attack by 1,200 to 1,500 men, 40 miles east of the Albanian border. The report claimed that part of the force was that which had attacked Konitsa.

The Senate, with some alterations, passed the bill approved already by the House for 1.5 billion dollars to finance the foreign policy, inclusive of the 400 million in Greek-Turkish military aid and the 350 million for foreign humanitarian relief. It increased the appropriation passed by the House for occupation troops in Germany and Japan from 550 million dollars to 725 million for the coming year. The bill restored 2.3 million cut by the House for mass resettlement of displaced persons in Europe.

The President officially declared the war to be over, ending some remaining wartime powers conveyed to the Chief Executive at the start of the war by Congress for the duration. Some 175 laws went out of effect, though some wartime powers still remained. It also marked the beginning of the end for G.I. Bill benefits, no longer to be made available to new enlistees or to those who departed the service after less than 90 days of duty following the President's declaration.

Former Congressman Andrew May of Kentucky, convicted of accepting over $53,000 in bribes for war contracts, was sentenced to eight months to two years in Federal prison. The same sentences were provided each of the Garsson brothers whose companies received the contracts and who had paid the bribes. The maximum sentence was six years. Mr. May continued to proclaim his innocence, stating that he never personally profitted from any of the transactions. No fine was levied because of the defendants' impecunious state. The judge could have imposed up to $30,000 each in fines.

In Kearny, N.J., a man admitted beating his wife and then drowning her in the Passaic River after luring her to the spot by telling her that her brother had hurt his leg.

Bishop William Manning, in a letter in The Living Church, had protested the fact that the divorced former wife of Elliott Roosevelt had been permitted to marry a clergyman of the Episcopal Church. He also objected to an Episcopal minister in Detroit being allowed to marry a divorced woman. He regarded them as "ecclesiastical Renos".

The Queen City Athletic Club was studying plans for construction of a large indoor arena for sports events, shows, and meetings, seating about 5,000 people. The Toledo, Ohio, facility was being studied as a model for the arena. The successful "Holiday on Ice" show for 1947, attracting 30,000 people during its run, served as impetus for the planned arena. That program had been sponsored by the Athletic Club.

Eventually, in 1955, the Charlotte Coliseum and adjacent Ovens Auditorium would be built, the former seating 11,166 persons for basketball, if memory serves, at least by the 1960's.

On page 8-A, Chester Davis of The News tells of the Ecusta cigarette paper manufacturing mill in Western North Carolina, the most completely modern manufacturing plant in the country.

Photographs are shown of the winner and runner-up in the Soap Box Derby race held in Charlotte before 15,000 spectators the previous day, sponsored by The News and the Pyramid and City Chevrolet dealers. The winner would get to go to Akron to compete in the national finals the following month.

It looks like the winner had a streamlined job, not one of those planked-up cars.

But the veterans, no doubt, still would like to know where they got all that wood.

On the editorial page, "American Miracle, Midyear 1947" comments on President Truman's mid-year economic report which found the nation in its best shape ever in terms of production, employment, and income. The President had cautioned, however, that it was no time for self-congratulations as inflation remained a concern threatening economic downturn.

But the piece finds this caveat not detracting from the glowing report of the nation's economy in its time of greatest crisis, to meet the post-war demands of reconversion and reconstruction abroad. The country had accomplished the task without controls for the most part on the economy. The feat was unthinkable even six months earlier.

The President said that the country had learned its lesson after World War I and would not repeat it.

The piece says, "Praise the Lord" and "Amen".

"Mr. Reece Warns Mr. Truman" finds it likely that RNC chairman Carroll Reece was merely engaging in political hyperbole when he said that a full investigation of the Missouri vote fraud in the primary the previous year in which the President's hand-picked candidate Enos Axtell had defeated incumbent Roger Slaughter, who had held up the President's program in committee, would imperil the re-election of the President in 1948. Mr. Reece was fond of needling the Democrats and such appeared another example of it.

The FBI was investigating the 1946 primary election and a Federal prosecutor was in charge of the case. A Federal Grand Jury had recently returned five indictments and was continuing to examine the matter.

The Senate Judiciary Committee had voted 7 to 6 not to pursue the case, with six Democrats joining one Republican to form the spare majority, because it was set to be a political witch-hunt to keep alive the scandal for 1948. The Republicans, in their blatant partisan attempt to exploit the matter, had seriously compromised the ability to have a fair and impartial investigation of it.

"They're Wild About Harry" remarks on the impromptu visit by President Truman to the Senate during the week, on a dare from a former Senate colleague with whom he was having lunch. It marked the first time a sitting President had ever entered the chamber unannounced, a matter forbidden by Senate rules.

Because of the President's folksy attitude, which was real and not affected, making him possibly the closest President to the Everyman in American history, it was unlikely that there would be any positive or negative political effect from it. It was simply what it appeared superficially to be, a former Senator dropping by to visit with old friends whom he admired and who, both Democrats and Republicans, plainly admired him.

A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "Who Pays the Taxes", reports that Representative Herman Eberharder of Pennsylvania had said that all except two million taxpayers were in the under $5,000 taxable income bracket. Only 1,401 paid taxes on incomes above $300,000. The rest were in between.

In North Carolina, 730,000 of 747,000 taxpayers were in the below $5,000 bracket. The state had 26 taxpayers in the over $300,000 range, ranking it 12th in the nation and second in the Southeast in upper-bracket taxpayers. Florida was the Southeastern leader in that category.

Most taxes thus were paid by the middle income brackets in North Carolina, as in the nation at large.

Drew Pearson tells of Democratic Representative Ray Madden of Indiana appearing to come to the defense of Labor Committee chairman Fred Hartley of New Jersey by saying that he wished Senator Taft would stop disagreeing with Congressman Hartley on the meaning of the Taft-Hartley law. Recently, when Mr. Hartley had said that the mine operators were violating the law with their recent agreement with UMW, Mr. Taft had disagreed. Mr. Madden said he believed the chairman of the committee to be correct. But, moreover, he found the disagreement to be emblematic of that which the President had said of the bill in his veto message, that it was full of confusion which no one could interpret. According to Mr. Madden, the fact that its two sponsors disagreed on its meaning so early had borne out the President's argument.

As promised, in continuation of his column of two days earlier, Mr. Pearson next tells of Oklahoma Congressman Toby Morris, along with nine other Congressional Democrats, recently meeting with Secretary of State Marshall, telling the Secretary that a war with Russia would be as meaningless as the 500-year battle between Mohammedans and Christians. Secretary Marshall agreed. He believed the real problem in the contest between East and West was the intense belief of Russians in nationalism, along with the critical economic situation in Europe and the Near East.

He also said that it would be a mistake to view the Soviet Union as being held together by police force, that it took more than force to sustain cohesion. It took trust, and the Russian people obviously trusted their Government. He asserted that much of what was being printed in the press from Russian diplomats and leaders was for home consumption and did not reflect the true Russian policy toward the West. Premier Stalin had not denied to Secretary Marshall that the assertions of V. M. Molotov that the U.S. had stolen millions of dollars worth of German patents was purely propaganda.

Secretary Marshall explained that the American soldiers during the war hated the Japanese because of their cold-bloodedness, but had never shown passionate hatred of the Germans until the latter months of the war, after the Malmedy massacre in which 30 American prisoners-of-war were murdered by the Germans during the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge in December, 1944. The Germans had butchered millions of Russians during their invasion of Russia, and the Russian people would not forget it. It was that which held them together under the Government. It was necessary to understand that fact to be able to understand the issue of reparations. The outrage felt against the Germans regarding the murder of 30 American prisoners was multiplied by the hundreds of thousands in Russia.

Secretary Marshall also was disappointed that Congress had not supported the Voice of America, which had been a beneficial tool to fight misinformation about America, being provided to the Russian people and to Eastern Europe. When Secretary Marshall had been in Moscow, he readily saw the benefit from the program.

Marquis Childs discusses the Red scare being whipped like wildfire by the hysteria of "the perfervid rumors of the frightened, the frustrated, and the insecure."

The new loyalty test for Government officials was one example. A State Department employee had said that the test asked for the respondent's stand on the tax bill and Taft-Hartley. He could not understand how such information explained whether an employee was a security risk.

Members of Congress were revealing confidential information related by the FBI, that the member might achieve headlines. These Congressmen and irresponsible members of the press were doing far more damage to national security than the real threat of Communism. The false information and rumor distracted from the real menace.

There had been an attempt in Congress to give the FBI policy-making powers, which J. Edgar Hoover neither sought nor wanted. The FBI's role had always been to enforce policy, not make it.

The real damage being done was to undermine the Government and convince honest people not to want to work for the Government under a cloud of suspicion. There were also those who were making personal gains from the rumor-mongering in the name of self-advertised patriotism.

Indeed, one of them would become President two decades down the road.

Samuel Grafton tells of what the Martian come to Earth might consider when viewing the 1947 session of the Congress. He would believe that there was no housing problem in the country, as it had not been considered by the Congress. He would assume that landlords had it rough, as the Congress gave the landlord a 15 percent increase in rents provided the tenant signed a lease through 1948, to avoid higher rent when rent controls were finally to be terminated the following February 29.

The Martian would assume steam fitters and ditch diggers were riding around in limousines, thus the need for Taft-Hartley to curtail their power and wealth at the expense of the owners and management, fishing around in the streets for garbage to eat.

Wool producers undoubtedly were on the brink of starvation, as were sugar producers, hence the protective legislation for both commodities against competition from foreign imports.

"These are outlines of whatever strange country it is for which Congress has been legislating, however sincerely, these past six months. It isn't the United States. Maybe it's Mars."

A letter writer, while seeing the wisdom in the President's veto of the tax-cut legislation, remained convinced that the only way to save money was to keep it from the spenders in Washington, and the only way to achieve that end was by way of a tax cut. It remained to be seen whether the continuation of wartime revenue would be applied to reduce the wartime debt or would go toward providing for the Marshall Plan.

That argument had already been met, however, by analysts who believed that the Plan would generate returns in increased ability to buy U.S. exports, stimulating the American economy as the European economy was improved. Thus, in the long-term, it was calculated that the Plan would cost little or nothing.

A letter writer asks whether women were being included in the Mecklenburg County jury summonses per the new state law.

The editors reply in the affirmative, noting that the process of selection was somewhat haphazard but was being revised to enable a better process.

A letter writer states that former adherents of the "master race" theory had started a new campaign against democracy, that "you will know them by their fruit".

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