Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.N. General Assembly convened this date in New York with its top priority being to try to narrow the widening gap between the Soviet Union and the West. Acting presiding officer of the Assembly Oswaldo Aranha of Brazil stated that the task of the Assembly would be to determine whether the ensuing decade would become the road to peace or to strife.

The night before, Russia had cast its 19th and 20th Security Council vetoes since the founding of the organization two years earlier, regarding the effort to establish a border watch commission in Greece, the immediate questions being considered having been the U.S. proposal to allow the General Assembly to determine the matter and have the border commission continue its status temporarily in the meantime. A majority of 9 to 2, however, having favored removal of the matter from the Council to the General Assembly, enabled the Assembly, pursuant to Article 27, Section 2 of the Charter, at least to make recommendations on the Greek situation.

On the first day after signing of the five peace treaties with the former enemy states, less Germany, Japan, and Austria, Yugoslavian troops encountered a border incident with American troops at the disputed boundary between Yugoslavia and the new Free State of Trieste. The Americans brought a tank to the border as Yugoslav troops sought to cross and were refused permission by the Americans until they could consult with their superiors. The Yugoslavs believed that, pursuant to the treaty with Italy, they could cross into the Free State at once. The incident ended peacefully.

Rioting took place between Italians and Yugoslavs within Trieste.

Associated Press correspondent Donald Doane reports that in Deggendorf, Germany, a bullet-scarred Ukrainian guerrilla who had entered the American occupation zone along with 39 other fellow Ukrainian guerrillas, was warning that agents of the Communist political police in Poland were admonishing the Polish people to prepare for war between the U.S. and Russia. The guerrillas claimed to be fugitives from Communism. The U.S. Army had not yet decided what would happen to the guerrillas, who had come into the zone heavily armed. The man with whom Mr. Doane spoke said that the Ukrainians wanted the war soon because it gave them hope of liberation by the Americans from the Soviet yoke.

Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson echoed other Administration officials' calls of the previous day for Americans to eat less farm livestock product, meat, eggs, and milk, so that the country could more ably provide aid to Europe. The Mayor of Chicago proposed two meatless days per week for hotels and restaurants. Other big city mayors were considering the problem.

The Teamsters and the United Textile Workers of America, both AFL unions, announced that their officers had signed the affidavits required by Taft-Hartley, disavowing Communist affiliation. As the AFL, because of John L. Lewis's objection, had not fulfilled the requirement, all affiliated unions would nonetheless be barred from using the services of the NLRB to effect collective bargaining. The two unions were intending therefore to ask the NLRB to reverse the general counsel's decision that all affiliated unions of any labor organization not signing the affidavits were subject to the provision.

Near Benton, Ark., seven persons burned to death in a three-room frame dwelling. Ruins of a small liquor still were found in the room where the blaze appeared to have started. An eleven-year old boy escaped the blaze and told of being awakened by an explosion and then able to escape by a rear door. The fire spread quickly, according to an investigator on the scene, as if fueled by an accelerant.

In Pittsburgh, two elderly sisters, ages 89 and 91, were removed by police from their garbage-littered apartment on Squirrel Hill after neighbors reported their concern. The two women weighed only about 65 pounds each and had refused offers of help by neighbors. They had gone into seclusion three years earlier at the death of a third sister. One was unable to move and the other, barely able, when the police discovered them.

In New York, two businessmen in a small monoplane were facing difficulties in landing in the fog at Newark Airport, with only seven minutes of fuel remaining. The tower then directed an Eastern Airlines plane to lead the small plane into La Guardia by means of the larger plane's low approach landing equipment, effective in fogged conditions. All arrived safely.

In Asheville, N.C., drys pledged not to accept money from bootleggers or South Carolina liquor dealers, provided the wet forces would not accept contributions from liquor interests in the upcoming ABC referendum on controlled sale of liquor.

In Columbia, S.C., Governor Strom Thurmond, speaking of his having stated his outrage regarding the housing situation, in a written declaration delivered the previous day to a convention of realtors meeting in Myrtle Beach, said: "I said what I meant. I meant what I said." He had charged that some realtors were withholding rental property from the market because of rent ceilings not being high enough, and were profiteering from the misery of others.

The president of the National Association of Real Estate Boards stated in Chicago that the Governor was to be pitied rather than scorned for his statements. The South Carolina Association made a similar remark, finding the people of South Carolina pitiable for having elected a leader who was not knowledgeable of the housing situation. Some had asserted that the statement appeared to have been written by the CIO and that it was doubtful that the Governor ever saw it. Governor Thurmond stated in reply that he had no affiliation with the CIO and had written the statement himself.

Well, you can make up with him, boys. Just issue a statement saying: "We favor not renting to Negroes and other Communists."

Happy-happy, again.

Hurricane warnings were issued from Fort Lauderdale to Titusville, Florida, as the raging storm with 160 mph winds whirled its way toward the Atlantic Coast, for the nonce remaining 175 miles east of Palm Beach, with a drift westward at five to seven miles per hour. It was due to hit the Palm Beach area late this night, absent a shift in direction. High winds and heavy rains were already hitting Palm Beach, Miami, and nearby Fort Lauderdale.

Residents of the Everglades were being reminded that nineteen years earlier on this date, 1,500 people had died at Lake Okeechobee when a hurricane blew the water out of the lake, drowning the victims. The Everglades had already experienced flooding during the summer and so was provided special warning of the threatening hurricane.

Batten the hatches.

On page 2-A, radio critic John Crosby began a series of columns on radio station WGN of Chicago, owned by Col. Robert McCormick, publisher of the Tribune and leading isolationist.

On the editorial page, "Timid Men Around the President" comments on the reluctance of the Administration to deal with the problems of American inflation and the crisis in Europe. Some of the advisers to the President were counseling against calling a special session of Congress, believing that the nations of Western Europe could survive until the next session would begin in January, after which the Marshall Plan would be passed and put into effect.

"Pious Talk and Power in UN" tells of John Foster Dulles having spoken during the weekend in Tarrytown, N.Y., regarding the U.N. being the conscience of the world, able to defy Russian vetoes through moral suasion. As the leading Republican foreign policy adviser and a member of the American delegation to the U.N., he was an advocate of not appeasing Russia.

"Eisenhower 'Surge' Goes On" finds a few observers having come to believe, in light of General Eisenhower's eschewing a draft movement to make him the 1948 Republican nominee for the presidency, that he had nixed the prospect of such a movement. But, it notes, he had waited until the movement had gathered its own self-perpetuating momentum before squelching it, and so it appeared as a clever maneuver to improve his tactical position in the campaign.

A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "The High Sheriff Speaks", comments on the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's newly enunciated policy to have his deputies enforce the criminal laws rather than engage exclusively in the traditional duties of being bailiffs and serving process.

Drew Pearson tells of Oswaldo Aranha of Brazil and Herbert Evatt of Australia being the most likely leaders of the U.N. session about to start in New York. Sr. Aranha was pro-American and had presided over the General Assembly during the special session on Palestine. He had toured extensively and come to love the country. He was the only diplomat who had put Andrei Gromyko in his place for routinely being late to sessions and trying to sabotage the session on Palestine.

Mr. Evatt was also pro-American, anti-Russian, and the champion of the smaller nations, as he had demonstrated at the U.N. Charter Conference in spring, 1945. He had fought to exclude from the Charter the Security Council veto of the Big Five nations. He opposed, alongside Secretary of State Byrnes, the delaying tactics of the Russians at the Paris Peace Conference the previous year, charged with settling the five peace treaties which became effective the previous day. Britons, however, did not care for the steadfastness of Mr. Evatt's pro-American stance.

He disagreed with the U.S. on policy toward Japan, believed General MacArthur to be appeasing the Japanese in a way that could lead to future war by allowing the Japanese to rebuild their industry. Many Americans considered Japan an Asiatic base against Russian expansion in the Pacific. While Mr. Evatt appeared captivated by the charm of General MacArthur when he had visited the General in Japan recently, he remained opposed to a soft peace for the former enemy.

The U.N. General Assembly session would last three months and consider the critical issues of Palestine and the Balkans. As to the former, the British would evacuate Palestine if the country were partitioned between Arab and Jewish states, leaving it to America to have to send troops to preserve the peace. Ideally, an international force would be created under U.N. supervision for the purpose, but the Russians had sabotaged that effort thus far.

The session would also deal with the Balkans threat to Greece. The General Assembly could override a Soviet veto by a two-thirds majority. It would be the greatest test of the organization thus far. (It should be noted that, pursuant to Articles 108 and 109, any amendment to the Charter required not only a two-thirds majority vote by the Assembly, but also unanimous approval by the permanent members of the Security Council, i.e., the Big Five, the U.S., U.S.S.R., Britain, France, and China.)

The session was of great importance to determine whether the General Assembly could provide new power to the U.N. by getting around the Security Council stalemates.

Joseph Alsop, in Rome, tells of the visitor encountering with shock the grave emergency besetting Italy's economy and the realization of the centrality of America's role in Italian politics. Everyone in the country, right, left, centrist, and Premier de Gasperi, agreed on the latter point.

Samuel Grafton suggests that the reluctance of the Administration and Congress to call a special session before January came from a concern that to do so would be to admit that the country had taken off Government controls too quickly after the war. As soon as the war had ended, the Government terminated rationing and encouraged consumption. And the country followed suit with a vengeance after the constraints of wartime. A starving world looked on as America gorged.

A letter writer, a Roman Catholic who was married to a Presbyterian and attended the Presbyterian Church, takes exception to an article appearing in the newspaper the previous Thursday in which the Presbyterian Synod apparently had been reported to have objected to Presbyterians marrying Catholics. He does not like the stance of the Presbyterians, thinks it better that people as himself, rather than drunks, marry Presbyterian women, but also was not intending to quit the Presbyterian Church over it.

A letter writer responds to the Baptist minister who had written in objection to the September 1 News editorial, "American Bigotry in Rome", which had found the Baptists off the mark in objecting to the President communicating with Pope Pius anent the situation in Italy and to the Supreme Court decision of the prior June holding it not violative of separation of church and state for a public school district to bus Catholic schoolchildren at public expense.

This writer, born and educated in England, agrees with the editorial stance, finding it only fair that Catholics, who contributed tax dollars to the public schools, receive their fair share of services in return. He finds the clergyman's attempt to analogize the situation to Baptists using public school buses to bus children to Baptist Sunday schools absurd.

Pope Pius XII and the Vatican had clothed and fed and sheltered persons of all faiths during the war. The Catholic Church taught that though disagreement with others might arise, each person had a duty to respect the other and not to ridicule him.

A letter from failed Republican Congressional candidate P. C. Burkholder posits that there was confusion in the land, that responsible people advocated the Marshall Plan while admitting that even if all the money sought were paid to foreign countries, it would be but a drop in the bucket, while bankrupting the U.S. in the process. He suggests that there had been confusion brought on by the New Deal for the previous 14 years and it had nothing to do, nothing at all, with the current Republican Congress, in office since January.

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