The Charlotte News

Wednesday, August 27, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.S., China, and Brazil had approved proposals for formation and operation of an international agency for control of atomic energy. The Soviet bloc offered no opinion, while France, Britain, Canada and Australia each gave their general assent to the proposal.

In Nuremberg, the war crimes trial of 24 directors of the I. G. Farben chemical trust began before a four-man U.S. military tribunal. The charges against them were that they had deliberately fostered Hitler's wars of aggression, exploiting labor in occupied countries and utilizing slave labor from the concentration camps. The American prosecutor stressed that they were not being tried for being Nazis or because they had exercised great power or because they were possessed of great wealth. He added that they would repeat the conduct of which they were accused if given the opportunity.

The State Department dispatched three diplomats to the Paris economic conference discussing the Marshall Plan. They included George Kennan, architect of the Plan. Their purpose was to advise and answer questions of the sixteen European nations attending the conference to determine how much aid each country would need under the Plan and what resources each country could provide to assist the Plan.

In Athens, Greece, King Paul agreed with Liberal Party leaders and other opposition party leaders that forming a new Government with one-sided Royalist Party composition would be detrimental to the national interests. Support for Constantin Tsaldaris's efforts to form a coalition Cabinet had faded. The King stated, however, that he would not interfere in the process unless the opposition presented concrete affirmative proposals. He also said that under law, should Mr. Tsaldaris be unable to form a Cabinet, he would be required to entrust the mandate to opposition leader Themistokles Sophoulis. Thus far, Mr. Tsaldaris had been able to obtain the support of only 166 members of Parliament, twelve short of a necessary majority.

The Trumans greeted their daughter Margaret at the airport, arriving in Washington from California at 12:30 a.m. She had made her debut as a concert soprano at the Hollywood Bowl the previous Saturday. It marked the first trip by any member of the First Family in the new four-engine aircraft, dubbed the "Independence", which had replaced the "Sacred Cow" as the President's personal plane.

In New York, the American Legion members began arriving for their convention. One Legionnaire brought a bison calf for Mayor William O'Dwyer.

In Raleigh, the North Carolina Hospital Association was preparing to meet to discuss the demand of the State Nurses Association for higher salaries and increased job security. They wanted a minimum monthly wage of $150 plus full maintenance, or $200 without maintenance. Among other demands, they also wanted a 44-hour week.

Anything else? Free shoes and caps, maybe?

General Eisenhower was scheduled to speak at N.C. State's Riddick Stadium in Raleigh the following day on the occasion of the 40th annual Farm and Home Week.

Old Macdonald was said to be ready to appear at the drop of a hat, if the General had to cancel. The Farmer would bring along Mr. Pigman, Mr. Wadleigh, and Mr. Hiss, plus other Major Players in the Farm Band.

Representative Charles B. Deane of Rockingham, N.C., was visiting Charlotte. He bemoaned the fact that the Republican Congress could not show the same level of cooperation as had the President. Mr. Deane had supported Taft-Hartley, but did not believe it needed enforcement teeth as recommended recently by Congressman Fred Hartley, co-sponsor of the bill.

Providence Road residents of Charlotte were planning to object before the City Council to placement of an ABC store in their neighborhood. They were especially upset that it would be parked in front of a neighborhood playground, plaguing the children, who then might be enticed to the booze and become raging alcoholics as a result.

Better get on down there and protest that before they get all these drunks out here creating chaos and no telling what not.

In La Spezie, Italy, a newspaper ran a story headlined "Catastrophe of 1871 Repeated", which went on to tell of an earthquake and resulting fires leaving Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland in ruins. It had prompted a man in Italy to contact relatives in Chicago to insure that they were alright. They were. The story actually referred to an earthquake which had hit the area on August 9, doing little damage.

But the Big One is yet to come.

On the editorial page, "Men Unfit for Police Duty" discusses the two incidents involving law enforcement during the previous week which had shaken the faith of North Carolinians in the fitness of the personnel assigned the task of serving and protecting the public. The killing of the Cherryville Police Chief by the Highway Patrolman in Kings Mountain, after a traffic stop in which the Chief allegedly charged the Patrolman with a knife and cut him on the arm before the shooting transpired, had been the first incident. The second was the beating administered in Littleton by the three Highway Patrolmen of the escaped inmate from a prison camp, whom the Patrolmen had admitted manhandling, as they tendered their resignations.

The Highway Patrolman in the first incident now stood charged with murder, on the basis of a warrant sworn by the Chief's daughter. The Patrolman had not not been suspended from duty based on the coroner's jury having found that he acted in self-defense. But the public reaction suggested a revival of the feeling that officers were prone to shoot too quickly and to abuse their authority.

Despite the Governor and the Commander of the Highway Patrol acting decisively in the second incident, with the former Patrolmen charged with assault with a deadly weapon, the public confidence in the Patrol had been nevertheless severely shaken. There appeared a major problem in officer training in the Patrol.

In a third incident, the former Police Chief of Waxhaw, who had terrorized certain individuals while in office, killed a black man against whom he held a grudge, then killed a magistrate's constable and wounded a deputy while attempting to flee.

It concludes that allowing dangerous men to wear badges was no way to have a law enforcement agency capable of enforcing the laws. It recommends that the State, the cities and the counties conduct investigations to coordinate law enforcement agencies and develop uniform standards for selection and training of personnel.

We note that in the case of the the shooting of the Cherryville Police Chief, stopped for drunk driving, the Patrolman, at least ostensibly, had little choice but to fire in self-defense, provided the Chief was, as described, charging him with a knife and had actually assaulted him. That he fired five times could very well be deemed excessive force under certain scenarios, but it also might simply be indicative of a violent scuffle, as described, and a reasonable belief on the part of the Patrolman, amid the confusion of such an assault, that he needed to fire the gun multiple times to stop the Chief from stabbing him to death, in which case it was legal self-defense. If it later was deemed by a jury that the Patrolman had acted on an imperfect or unreasonable belief in the need for self-defense, then the Patrolman might be convicted of manslaughter on the theory that such imperfect belief negates the element, necessary for murder, of malice aforethought—to be distinguished from premeditation, not in issue in this case, as first degree murder was not charged.

"American Women Brighten the View" tells of the nation's women having become more optimistic of the future in 1947, based on a readers' poll taken by the Woman's Home Companion. It showed that 47 percent of the respondents were confident that the world's problems could be resolved without combat, compared to only 18 percent who took that view a year earlier. And the remaining 53 percent believed that war was about 25 years into the future.

The poll results showed even more optimism on such matters as future prosperity, race relations, and religious differences.

The piece thinks that a man might chalk up the notion to "woman's intuition" and be dismissive thereof. But it cautions not to be too quick in that conclusion, for hopes and prayers also had a place at the peace table. The women were placing their hopes on organizations outside the political process.

The respondents were not feminists, as 91 percent were against a woman becoming President and few had interest in feminist issues. It might be seen as a negative, but it also might indicate that women had determined to leave the realm of politics and statesmanship largely to men and to concentrate on keeping alive faith which could move mountains.

"Royall Floats a Trial Balloon" remarks of Secretary of War Kenneth Royall having stated his interest in becoming Governor of North Carolina, but also hedging his bets by saying that he had no idea whether he could become a candidate, suggesting that he was giving approval to backers to begin to test the waters of a potential candidacy without committing himself to the process.

The backers of State Treasurer Charles Johnson were less optimistic than they had been a couple of months earlier when they viewed Mr. Johnson as a shoo-in for the gubernatorial nomination.

Charles B. Markham of The News discusses the disappearing liberal in America, though the term had changed during the New Deal from the Jeffersonian notion of the best government being that which governed least.

He defines the continuing characteristics of the liberal to be compassion for the individual, championing the cause of the working man, though not regarding management as holding positions set in stone, support for blacks, while not heaping condemnation on the racist, as the cure for racism was understood by the liberal not to be reverse racism.

If liberalism was in disrepute, he opines, it was because it was hard in the modern materialistic age to place confidence in the individual and to sublimate prejudices in a prejudiced, greedy society.

But, he concludes, the path of the liberal, though marked always with difficulty, was a worthy one. "For the greatest liberal who ever lived was the Young Nazarene."

Robert S. Allen discusses railroad tycoon Robert Young bracing for battle in his bid to gain control of the New York Central Railroad system. He was prepared to resign from the chairmanship of the C & O and the Allegheny Corporation, the holding company for his railroad empire, and wage a battle for control of the New York Central in the open market by purchasing 50,000 shares of the railroad's stock and then trying to get the stockholders behind him.

At stake in the battle were control of the Pullman Company and the Association of American Railroads, the latter having vigorously opposed Mr. Young. The Supreme Court had ruled against him in his bid for control of Pullman, but if he got control of the New York Central, he would, in combination with the C & O, have the whiphand on controlling Pullman.

Mr. Young was opposed to the Wall Street "rackets" on the railroads and favored modernization and elimination of aging cars.

In an interview with Mr. Allen, Mr. Young had stated that he would like to be President of the United States.

Paul W. Ward, in the 21st article in the series from the Baltimore Sun, titled collectively "Life in the Soviet Union", provides his impression that visiting Moscow was cathartic in that simple observation allayed any concerns that Russia would be able anytime soon to develop an atomic bomb or to extend in perpetuity its influence over its satellites, Poland, Bulgaria, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Finland, East Germany, Hungary, Ruthenia, and Czechoslovakia.

Russia could not even manufacture an automobile, let alone an atomic bomb. They could not develop lasting bonds with their satellites. While having the advantage of a disciplined and ruthless Communist Party at the beck and call of the Kremlin, the Russians also were poor propagandists, unable to convince even their own people of the benefits of Communism over capitalism. The Party still hewed to the line of Lenin, that conflict and war were necessary to sustain the Soviet Republic and that until capitalism could be vanquished, the goal was to delay and dodge. The leadership had found it necessary to extinguish individual democracy and substitute in its place Stalinism, akin to the rule of the Czars, the system which the Revolution of 1917 had overthrown.

Marquis Childs, writing from Berlin, tells of America facing a dilemma in dealing with Germany, with Britain no longer able to foot its share of the bill for occupation costs, necessitating that the U.S. pick up the tab of feeding 40 million Germans in the British-American zone. The U.S. was already spending 625 million dollars per year for half of those costs.

The problem in Germany was the division of the zones, with Potsdam having determined that the food-producing regions went to Poland and Russia, while the industrial Ruhr and the scenery of Bavaria went to the British, Americans, and French. He compares it to dividing America between the heavily industrialized Northeast and the food producing regions of the Midwest and South, and the developing industrial areas and scenery of the West, with each such section administered by different sovereignties, with no trade between them.

"With the deepening split between Russia and the West, these four zones have been increasingly walled off as separate little worlds."

It would be necessary to enable Germany to produce exports to pay its own way. But for the U.S to pull out would lead to disaster, as the Soviets would take over Germany and thus all of Europe, as hunger would set in and the people would in consequence become easy pickings for the Communists.

He provides the analysis as an "oversimplification" of the German dilemma. The bottom line was that the 40 million Germans in the Western zones, without sufficient source of food developed from their own land, presented a daily problem which had to be solved.

Herblock...

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