The Charlotte News

Thursday, August 14, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that at Dachau in Germany, the U.S. military tribunal sentenced 22 convicted Buchenwald war criminals to hang for atrocities committed in the camp during the war. More than 50,000 prisoners had died there. Some 250,000 prisoners had passed through the camp during its existence. Five others, including the notorious Ilse Koch, were sentenced to life terms. One defendant received a sentence of 20 years, two got 15 years, and one received ten years. One of those sentenced to life was an American citizen who had been selected as a trusty. Another was Prince Josias Waldeck of the S.S., the first member of royalty sentenced as a war criminal.

After liberation, General Patton had civilians in the nearby town of Weimar escorted through the camp to impress upon them the horrors inflicted by the Nazis. Buchenwald was now in the Russian zone of occupation.

Hal Boyle writes of there likely being laughter in both heaven and hell regarding the ironic fact that Ilse Koch had been sentenced to life by the tribunal for her crimes, including the allegation that she fashioned lampshades from the skin of the victims of the camp. She had been known as the "Queen of Buchenwald" among the prisoners. The wife of the former commandant of the camp had enjoyed life at Buchenwald with grim and sadistic satisfaction and so, he says, it was perhaps poetic justice that she would spend the rest of her days in prison.

Mr. Boyle had seen Buchenwald "where the dead were piled like logs", shortly after General Patton's Third Army had swept through the area. He met scores of prisoners liberated from the camp, and they had remembered Frau Koch with curses. Her husband's cremated remains were in a small jar when he visited, a posthumous punishment for having stolen funds from the Nazi Party. One prisoner shook the jar and commented that Frau Koch ought be there with him. The prisoners reported that she had scouted her victims by looking for prisoners with interesting tattoos to make her lampshades more colorful.

Mr. Boyle saw the lampshades.

She also enjoyed riding her horse through groups of prison laborers who were too exhausted to move out of her way, and never stopped to determine the deaths or injuries she had caused. She would shout curses at the prisoners and tried to lure them into sexual liaisons, whereupon she would have them flogged.

Frau Koch was pregnant at her sentencing, occurring during her imprisonement without explanation. He questions whether the fact might have spared her the death penalty.

An Austrian general who had imparted many of the stories about her to Mr. Boyle during his visit to Buchenwald had cried when he gave to him an orange. He had not seen an orange in six years. "To him it had become as strange as—freedom."

At the U.N., Andrei Gromyko accused the U.S. of "the crudest interference" in the internal affairs of Greece and stated he would reassert the Russian veto if necessary to stop the U.S. and Australian proposals for the Balkans, to establish a border commission in Greece. Mr. Gromyko told the Security Council that the Greek democrats had a greater chance now of being hit by a bullet than previously. He denied any incursions of the Greek borders by Albania, Yugoslavia, or Bulgaria, as found by the Balkans Inquiry Commission.

The United States waived Italy's billion dollar war debt to ease "burdensome clauses", according to the State Department, in the Italian treaty. The debt consisted of the costs of civilian supplies and occupation.

Britain surrendered the reins of power over the Moslem region of Pakistan in India. As the transfer of power took place, communal rioting was occurring in the Punjab, causing at least 153 deaths and 136 wounded in Lahore, the capital. The following day, Britain would surrender control over Hindustan, the Hindu section of India. Viceroy Mountbatten would then become Governor General of that new dominion by consent of the Congress Party. It would be the first time in nearly 300 years that natives of India would have control over their government.

At a press conference, President Truman expressed his full support for the Justice Department probe of high prices of housing, clothing, and food. But he did not believe it would check the spiral of inflation.

On the second anniversary of V-J Day, he stated that he regretted having to decide to drop the atomic bombs but still believed that they saved some 250,000 American lives in what would have otherwise been an invasion, planned for November, 1945—not to mention the continued conventional aerial bombing of Japanese cities, which had, before the end of the war, taken far more lives than the two atomic bombs.

Despite frequent criticism of the Truman Administration, Senator Claude Pepper of Florida expressed his support for President Truman in 1948. Senator Pepper was close to the CIO and other labor groups, was also a good friend of Henry Wallace, and so the endorsement was significant. Senator Pepper described the President as the "salt of the earth", sincere and honest.

When asked whether he thought General Eisenhower might be drafted by the Republicans in 1948, the Senator responded that he admired the general and did not know whether he was a Republican or a Democrat, but because he was such a good person he was entitled to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty and so he fancied him a Democrat.

In Georgia, 45 prisoners of the state highway prison camp in Charlton County petitioned Governor M. E. Thompson to allow them to finish their sentences in the camp, following an order by the Board of Corrections that it be closed. They liked the warden and the personnel at the camp. The closure had been ordered pursuant to an investigation into a shooting of eight black prisoners at the Glynn stockade for allegedly attempting to escape.

In Los Angeles, New York stage actress Joen Arliss testified that her producer husband, Martin Gosch, was extremely jealous and frequently left her at parties. She was granted a divorce, a property settlement, and alimony and child support. They had been married in 1943 and separated since the previous February.

In Elkins Park, Pa., a thief broke into a locker at the Ashbourne Country Club, took a wallet with $400 in cash inside, but stuck $328 back in the pocket of a pair of trousers hanging in the locker.

In Goshen, Indiana, the Elkhart County W.C.T.U. re-elected Mrs. C.C. Wine as its president. Presumably, she was able narrowly to defeat Mrs. C.C. Sherry and Mrs. C.C. DeRide.

The Soap Box Derby champion of Charlotte departed for Akron, Ohio, and Sundays' national race against 133 other entrants. A News reporter accompanied him on the trip.

Let's hope the streamlining wins the race for the lad. Get the cheese grater and shave her down good before the race.

On the editorial page, "Clark's Price Investigation" finds the Republican objections to the Justice Department investigation of high prices of homes, food, and clothing to be absurd. Representative Fred Crawford of Michigan had claimed that the move was designed to bring about a depression at home to help foreign countries buy more goods from America, an absurd statement and appearing as a smokescreen to obstruct the Marshall Plan. He had blamed the Truman Administration for rising prices, failing to regard the Republican contribution to the termination of price controls the previous summer by gutting it to useless discards.

The investigation needed no more impetus than the fact that inflation was running high at a time when production was at record levels. Consumers were forced to spend 93 percent of their income whereas during the war it was only 76 percent for necessities, housing, food, and clothing. Prices on these goods were higher than the inflationary prices following World War I. The prices were highest where Government supervision had been least.

"New Order in Criminal Court" tells of Mecklenburg County Solicitor Basil Whitener having done an excellent job in reducing the 500-case backlog extant before the war, to the point where only six cases were pending in the current week's term of court, not enough to occupy the entire week. Three weeks of court had been cancelled in July and August for lack of cases. The new efficiency would serve as a deterrent to crime. The docket had been reduced by speedy trials rather than dismissals.

The piece finds it a public service which could not be too highly praised.

But, was justice served in such speedy trials on serious charges such as murder? The answer is that it was highly doubtful. An efficient docket may not be the best docket. Indeed, Hitler's People's Court was one of the more efficient ever on earth. It should be remembered whenever and wherever the efficiency experts start in on the judicial system. Justice is not usually very efficient in appearance. The more ragtag it may seem to the public, the likelihood is that it is the more in keeping with the intent of the Founders. We do not streamline justice without giving up a large part of our freedom, and freedom starts in the criminal courts.

"Labor Is Missing the Point" tells of George Googe, Southern director of the A.F. of L., having spoken at the state convention in Wilmington, predicting that Senators Hoey and Umstead of North Carolina, Senator Maybank of South Carolina, Senator Russell of Georgia, and Senator Stewart of Tennessee would be defeated in their next elections. But he was not as impressive as John Pollard of the United Textile Workers who traced wages in the industry from 1930 to the present, showing that they had increased from 10 cents to 96 cents an hour. And he predicted another rise of 16 cents.

The delegates had cheered Mr. Googe's exhortations to war against the five Senators for their support of Taft-Hartley, but the piece suggests that the workers would ultimately find the words of Mr. Pollard more salutary in the long-run. There were many others responsible for Taft-Hartley than the so-called "tories", on whom Mr. Googe laid blame for the legislation, and it remained to be seen whether it would really turn out to be the slave law predicted by some labor leaders.

A piece from the Fort Worth Star Telegram, titled "A Rare Bureaucrat", compliments Comptroller General Lindsay Warren, originally of North Carolina, for his bureaucratic efficiency in reducing the number of employees in his office by 26 percent, reducing his budget for the ensuing fiscal year by ten percent or four million dollars, and for having returned to the Treasury two to three time as much money, 100 million dollars, as the G.A.O. spent, all without complaint and voluntarily. He was in his seventh year of a 15-year term as head of the G.A.O.

Robert S. Allen, former partner of Drew Pearson prior to the war, substitutes for the columnist while he was on vacation, tells of a Congressional committee looking at the activities of Lt. General John C. H. Lee, commander of the Mediterranean Theater, and his staff, based on numerous complaints from G.I.'s and their parents that the General and his staff lived in lavish luxury while the enlisted men were not properly housed or fed and underwent Prussian-type discipline. He presents some of the specific charges contained in letters from the G.I.'s and their parents.

One of the more serious charges was that at Pisa, a disciplinary camp was being operated, a charge denied by the Army but supported by evidence collected by the committee.

The investigation potentially could negatively impact the proposed universal military training, urgently needed. A model training camp, by contrast, had been established at Fort Knox.

General Lee was not popular during the war when he had been the chief supply officer in the European theater. In Paris, he commandeered a hotel for his personal use and private residence. He clashed repeatedly with the "late, great" General Patton for not properly supplying the Third Army with such necessities as proper winter clothing. Only after the Third Army had repulsed the German Ardennes Offensive in the winter of 1944-45 had General Patton begun to receive some of the supplies.

He next tells of a meeting held during the war between General Hap Arnold, General Breton Somervell, War Department chief of supply at the time, the late General Leslie McNair, and Ferdinand Eberstadt of the War Production Board, with Henry Kaiser, regarding the latter's proposal to build large cargo planes to combat the U-boat menace in the Atlantic plaguing the convoy system. General Somervell opposed the proposal and had been saying he would run Mr. Kaiser out of Washington. At the meeting, Kaiser confronted him with the statement and said he would like to see him try to run him out of town, began pitching dishes at the General before order was finally restored. Mr. Kaiser thereafter had no further trouble with General Somervell. Mr. Allen sees it as a good example for Howard Hughes in his confrontation the previous week with the Ferguson Subcommittee.

He tells of Charles Potter, double amputee in fighting in France, having won the Republican nomination for a vacant Michigan Congressional seat.

Former Marine Tommy Breen, who lost a leg during the war, was a movie actor, capturing a starring role in the MGM musical "Luxury Liner".

Col. Oscar Koch, who had nearly succumbed to an illness brought on by combat duty, had been made the head of the Army's G-2 intelligence school at Fort Riley. He had been General Patton's intelligence chief during the war, between late 1942 and V-E Day.

Mr. Allen had volunteered for the Army during the war, served on the staff of General Patton, rising to the rank of Colonel, losing an arm in combat and winning a Silver Star, among other decorations. He had also served in World War I.

Paul W. Ward, in the tenth article of his series for the Baltimore Sun, collectively titled "Life in the Soviet Union", tells of music in Communist Russia, that the composers had not divorced themselves from ordinary listening pleasures to the point of inspiring only Bolshevik emotions. Dimitri Shostakovich and Serge Prokofiev had recently been officially criticized, perhaps the cause for their refusing recent invitations to be guest conductors of the Boston Symphony.

Until "Culture and Life", the Soviet bi-monthly publication, brought forth the previous summer an article regarding music, the Communist Party central committee had left the area alone. In 1936, Shostakovich's "Limpid Stream" and "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" had come under the scornful eye of the party bosses, but only for the music being cacophonous, not the libretto or story line. But his Ninth Symphony had been attacked by "Culture and Life" as having ideological weakness, lacking warmth and conviction, revealing the influence of Stravinsky, who, according to the publication, had no ethical principles. In consequence, most Russian radio programmers began excluding Shostakovich material from their broadcasts. The exclusion, however, had thus far not harmed Shostakovich personally.

Harlem-trained Eddie Rozner, director of the Byelorussian State Jazz Band, had been criticized for "triviality and banality", but the Kremlin had not yet reverted to its pre-war stance of regarding jazz as "American slave music designed to lull the exploited masses into acquiescence." They did insist, however, on shunning Western music as the product of capitalism.

Theater directors had been warned that to include Western plays would subject them to charges of sabotage. They were ordered the previous September by the party central committee to revise their programs. The plays of Somerset Maugham and Hungarian exile Ferenc Molnar were specifically banned, while the plays of Lillian Hellman and most of those of George Bernard Shaw, Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Calderon, and Richard Sheridan had so far escaped the ban.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop warn that it was time for the country to brace for hysteria reminiscent of the days of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, during the last years of the Wilson Administration. Word had come of a secret Grand Jury investigation ongoing in New York State, conducted by J. Edgar Hoover, into a Canadian-type Soviet spy ring in the U.S.

Effective action needed to be taken against such spies if they existed. But the FBI had already overreached in the "Amerasia" case, wherein confidential documents had been leaked. The accused Jack Service of the State Department, however, had been cleared as the leaker. If something were to come of the New York investigation, it was to be hoped that the American people would retain perspective and realize it as an isolated incident.

A tension had developed between the personal rights of those who worked for the Government, especially in atomic security, and the need to assure a tight ship. The Atomic Energy Commission had quietly dismissed several employees believed to be sympathetic to the Soviet Union. Recently, the State Department had, more publicly, dismissed ten of its employees on the same ground.

They cite as the best example of how not to deal with the issue having been the Rees bill passed by the House, to allow star-chamber type proceedings against any Government employee based on "derogatory information", not defined in the bill. Congressman Sam Hobbs of Alabama, a conservative, and others in the House saw it as monstrous and had fought it.

A letter writer finds the report of the expenditure by the A.F. of L. of a million dollars against Taft-Hartley to be as disturbing as the activities during the first session of the 80th Congress by the real estate lobby to get legislation passed allowing rents to be raised. He believes that representative government was a compromise between individual and group desires, not what a majority numerically wanted.

A letter writer responds to a picture appearing August 9 on the front page of the local section with the caption "Collected by Cops", in reference to foreign-made guns not registered as required by the Federal law. The writer believes the statement to be untrue, based on his reading of the American Rifleman of July, 1947.

He could not understand why Americans were always harping about "war souvenirs" and "foreign guns", as American guns would kill just as certainly as foreign-made guns and were more easily obtained.

The editors quote from the article cited by the letter, that the Federal law required registration of fully automatic weapons, rifles or shotguns with a barrel length less than 18 inches, except those chambered for the .22 rim-fire rifle, foreign semi-automatic pistols permitting automatic firing, and foreign pistols equipped with a detachable stock-holster. The article had asserted, however, that foreign manufacture alone was not a basis for registration.

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