The Charlotte News
Saturday, August 30, 1947
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the 19 nations of the Pan-American Conference had agreed on the terms of the Inter-American treaty to provide for mutual defense from either intracontinental or extracontinental attack on any signatory nation within the "security zone", which extended in the Western Hemisphere from pole to pole and from Greenland to the Aleutians, east to west.
An amendment presented by Mexico had resolved the dispute posed by Argentina as to whether the treaty extended to areas controlled by treaty signatories outside the security zone. The adopted Mexican amendment stated that only consultation, not force, would be employed by member nations in that event.
President Truman would address the conference Tuesday.
Russia ratified the five peace treaties with Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Finland, and Rumania, which had been signed in Paris on February 10. Russia was the last of the Big Four signatories to ratify the treaties. Russia received a total of about 900 million dollars in reparations under the treaties, two-thirds of which was to come from Rumania and Finland. Bessarabia was ceded to Russia from Rumania and Petsamo was ceded from Finland, along with a 50-year lease of Perkkala-Udd as a naval base.
The U.S. and Britain were now required to withdraw troops from Italy within 90 days and Russia was required to withdraw from Bulgaria, also within 90 days, provided that Russia was allowed to remain there and in Hungary as long as necessary to effect communications to occupied Austria. The action still left the treaties to be formed with Germany, Austria, and Japan.
In Tehran, Ahmed Qavan was re-elected Premier by the Parliament of Iran on a vote of 52 to 51, having resigned the previous Wednesday because a new Parliament was elected. He had been Premier since early 1946. He would now appear before the Shah for final approval.
The American Legion parade took place in New York before a crowd estimated at more than one million. About 65,000 marched in the parade down Fifth Avenue, led by Mayor William O'Dwyer.
In New York, a former soldier from Brooklyn agreed to waive contest of extradition to New Mexico, where he would plead guilty to conversion of highly confidential photographs from the Los Alamos atomic facility. The defendant had been arrested by the FBI the previous night and was found to have 27 of the photos and ten negatives at his home. He had, by his admission, taken some 500 photographs while at the facility and kept them when he left the Army in February, 1946, but claimed to have burned them several weeks later. After leaving the Army, he had worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory at the Atomic Energy Commission in Patchogne, N.Y., but was discharged at the inception of the investigation.
In Edenton, N.C., an agent for Standard Oil Company stated that Esso Tanker Number Six, out of Norfolk, had been struck by lightning during a storm at around noon this date, a quarter of a mile out of Edenton Bay. A fire resulted in two or three compartments causing an explosion on the tanker. One of the crew was missing. The remaining crew, save the captain and engineer, had jumped overboard to safety.
Twelve of the nation's hottest pilots took off from Van Nuys, California, for Cleveland, in the 11th Bendix Air Race
Hollywood was represented by a plane
In Cleveland, a storm forced a delay in the program of the National Air Races scheduled for this date. The events might be held in conjunction with other events scheduled for Sunday and Monday. So don't go home.
First prize of $5 in the eighth and final week of The News amateur photograph contest went to a Charlotte man for his still life study of country life. The runner-up, taking a prize of $2.50, was a man living in Monroe, for his "unaffected child pose".
That child looks very posed and affected to us, but each to his own subjective opinion.
Well, you would be, too, we suppose, if reading, in juxtaposition, of the woman who hammered her husband to death, then cut up his body into little pieces and threw them all into the Chicago River.
The following Saturday, the newspaper would announce the grand prize winner from among the eight weekly winners, for the $25 first place prize and three $10 runner-up prizes. All four would then be entered in the national contest, which gave $10,000 for 167 prizes, with the first place entry winning up to $1,500.
It's too late now if you haven't already entered and won.
The Los Alamos defendant might have defrayed some of his legal expenses had he entered the amateur news gathering contest.
On the editorial page, "Dewey Still Steps Cautiously" tells of Thomas Dewey finally taking a stand on certain issues, stating at the American Legion convention in New York that he favored universal military training and bi-partisan foreign policy. It offered some reassurance to those who sought some signal from the Republicans that they appreciated the world crisis and the emergent need for measures such as the Marshall Plan. Governor Dewey did not endorse the Plan but said nothing against it or the rest of the American foreign policy, including the Truman Doctrine. His only criticism was that the Republicans were not consulted enough by the Administration.
He would need to be more specific to avoid appearing as a fence sitter
The foreign policy was in fact the result of bi-partisan effort and consultation. Republicans had been consulted quite a lot on the decision to oppose Russian expansion in the Balkans.
While answering where the Republican Party stood on UMT, Mr. Dewey had not provided any specific statement of the party's understanding of need for bi-partisanship in implementing the foreign policy.
"Justice for 'Court House' Lee" discusses Lt. General John C. H. Lee, under fire for having lived luxuriously while Mediterranean occupation commander, at the expense of the enlisted men, who lived rudely and were subjected to unnecessary discipline. Inspector General Wyche had been dispatched by General Eisenhower to investigate the Italian command.
General Lee had done more than any other high-ranking military officer to create cynicism in Americans regarding Army officers, and the extent to which caste prevailed in the military. That the War Department did not act until newspapers took up the charges, investigation into which having been first undertaken by journalist Robert Ruark, was not helping matters.
The piece favors going back to investigate his command during 1942 as head of supplies for the European Theater of Operations when it was alleged he ran a spit-and-polish dictatorship while appropriating special privileges for himself.
That he was retiring did not end the necessity for such a probe.
"The Strong, Silent Congressman" tells of an unnamed Congressman, while at home greeting constituents and mending fences, the traditional activity of members of Congress during the summer recess, having stated, in response to a reporter's question as to what he thought of the Marshall Plan, a terse, "Yes." He said that his position on Taft-Hartley could be found in the Congressional Record.
The piece thinks that the Congressmen, now that they were no longer in Washington under the press of business, should take the time to answer questions directly and not with the usual avoidance, hearing no evil, seeing none, and speaking none, as ordinarily characterized their replies.
A piece from the High Point Enterprise, titled "Fritz Should Resign", opines thusly re the principal of the Hudson High School, R.L. Fritz, whose teaching credential had been stripped by the State Board of Education based on his being found to have utilized improper accounting methods to pay teachers for overtime, in excess of that authorized by law, to keep the school functioning, by employing substitutes
While a laudable sentiment had motivated his conduct, most of the $1,300 to $1,600 in question had gone to the principal's wife. He had acted with the knowledge of the Superintendent of the school system.
While viewed by his peers as a man of integrity, he had been party to a fraud against the State and, the piece concludes, should resign his posts as president of the NCEA and as principal. It wishes him well in any other endeavor which he might undertake and in his court contest of the Board's ruling. But the fight for higher teacher pay might be compromised should he not tender both resignations.
Robert S. Allen awards the column's brass ring for patriotism and distinguished service to former Secretary of War Robert Patterson, who had just resigned from the post in advance of the merger of the military. He remarks that he could not understand why the White House had not bestowed the Distinguished Service Medal or Legion of Merit award on him, as far lesser men had received one or the other.
Mr. Patterson had received the Distinguished Service Cross in World War I and his type of individual integrity needed no further recognition. He had been a U.S. Court of Appeals Judge when President Roosevelt asked him to join the War Department in 1940 to direct logistics, working thereafter during the war without respite to arm and equip the unprepared country.
Mr. Patterson's son had been a bombardier in the Army Air Force, assigned to conduct the first raid on the Ploesti oil fields in Rumania, 1,200 miles from the base in Italy from which the B-17's then flew. It had been essentially a suicide raid as a B-17 sustaining any damage in the raid had virtually no chance of return. At the time, Mr. Patterson was Undersecretary of War and was scheduled to depart for the Pacific when word came that the raid was successful but that 60 percent of the B-17's were lost. He left Washington without knowing the fate of his son. A week later, he learned that while the son's assigned B-17 had been shot down, his son had been hospitalized two days prior to the flight and was not on the mission as a result. As it turned out, however, all of the crew members on the mission parachuted to safety and were recovered from a German prison camp at the end of the war.
Mr. Patterson was responsible for the Government program to develop modern and effective artificial limbs, the advancements in which had not been significant since World War I. In the spring of 1945, Mr. Patterson, against opposition from the brasshats, set up a civilian committee of scientists, engineers and surgeons to develop new artificial limbs, a committee still in existence two years hence. It had made important strides forward and, if allowed to continue, would benefit nearly all of the 800,000 amputees in the country, military and civilian—among whom was Mr. Allen, himself, having lost an arm during the war.
He ascribes the advances in the technology to the impetus supplied in that direction by Mr. Patterson.
Marquis Childs, in Berlin, discusses further General Lucius Clay and his role as military governor of the U.S. occupation zone of Germany. He had been called America's "viceroy" in Germany. His headquarters had only two M.P.'s, the only military presence in evidence. He had to maintain the appearance of prestige, which counted for more than in the U.S. Thus, he had a private plane and a private train in which to shuttle back and forth between Berlin and Frankfurt, the latter being the location of the principal American headquarters. His house in Berlin was without ostentation. He had three German servants whom he paid from his own pocket.
The son of a former Senator from Georgia, General Clay had attended West Point and then joined the Army engineers. He befriended James Byrnes during the war and when Mr. Byrnes became Secretary of State in mid-1945, the latter determined to keep the occupation duties of Germany in the American zone within military hands, with the State Department determining policy. General Clay, then deputy governor of the zone, often found himself thus in the middle of a tug of war between the War Department and the State Department. When decisions did not come immediately from Washington, he made them himself, as his role was to supervise the feeding, de-Nazification and re-education of the 17 million Germans in the American zone.
One of his decisions was to halt the sending of machinery from the American zone to the Russian zone as reparations. He did so because the Russians were not abiding by varioius conditions established at Potsdam in July, 1945. Despite the fact, he remained on good terms with his Russian counterpart, General Vasily Sokolovsky.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss the talk transpiring among Democratic leaders as to who would be President Truman's running mate in 1948. The determination had been made that the person had to be a vote-getter, and preferably one from the East, as New York, according to Bronx boss Ed Flynn, would be hard for the Democrats to carry. The candidate had to be appealing to both labor and liberals. Above all, he had to be possessed of "glamour".
But no one among the Democrats had yet come to the fore with all of those traits.
Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson of New Mexico had suggested to the President that he become the vice-presidential nominee. And in ordinary times, he would be fine. But the present did not constitute ordinary times. He might even discourage votes in key states.
Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland was another prospect, but had an anti-labor record to weigh him down.
Chief Justice Fred Vinson was mentioned as a prospect. Though a Southerner, he was capable of winning votes in the North. But a movement to nominate him, begun a month earlier, had died in its infancy as he had no interest in intermixing the Court with politics. The same was true of the effort to draw Justice William O. Douglas onto the ticket.
A dark horse was Representative Mike Monroney of Oklahoma. But the bosses in the large cities wanted someone whom their constituents knew.
That left the field comprised of Senator Alben Barkley, Minority Leader, Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, and Secretary of Commerce Averell Harriman.
A letter writer indicates the belief that building costs would not likely be reduced in the near future.
A letter from "C.C." complains of the high cost of living, violative of expectations of a better life after the war. C.C. concludes: "Postwar expansion? Dreams come true? I'm dumber than most people, but it looks like nightmares to me!"
Why not rhyme it a little, C.C., and conclude, "...but obviously so are you."
A letter writer replies to a letter of August 26 which had said that the Bible did not state that there is either eternal salvation or eternal damnation, this writer saying that he was no Dante but was not in position to state whether there was hell fire or not. But he found that the Bible, in Revelations 20:10, tells of the lake which burns with fire and brimstone where the wicked burn forever.
He could withstand the heat even of Southern California or tropical Africa, but did not wish to be in the service of His Majesty, Satan, or suffer the long, slow burn on the sulfuric beaches of Hell.
So he was going to walk the straight and narrow.
Good news, though. That Scripture only appears to apply to the "devil". So, if you're not him, you may be okay after all, even if traveling on the crooked and wide
For, at day's end, one is apt, on the former, to have head-on collisions.
Yet, there is Psalm 11:6 with which still to contend, which appears to be more generic, in applying to the "wicked".
But then along came Jesus and the Apostles, and all the wine
Framed Edition
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