Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State Marshall was expected within two weeks to decide whether it would be necessary to call a special session of Congress to enact emergency legislation to provide aid to Europe in advance of the winter. He would probably make the decision after his emissary, George Kennan, returned from Paris where he was making a report on the European situation, consulting with the representatives of the sixteen nations meeting there to determine their needs under the Marshall Plan.

As Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett had announced the previous day, the dwindling dollar supply in conjunction with the need for food, especially grains, had created an emergency which could not await the full implementation of the Marshall Plan to relieve the problem.

Secretary Marshall and Senator Arthur Vandenberg were scheduled to speak on radio this night regarding the 19-nation Inter-American Defense treaty just formed in Rio de Janeiro.

President Truman announced in St. Louis at the Fourth International Cancer Research Congress, attended by representatives of 44 nations, that the U.S. was initiating a program of sharing "tracer" atoms from atomic ovens with scientists of other nations in the hope of accelerating the search for a means to arrest cancer and other diseases. It was suggested that the move might smooth the way for international agreement over control of the atomic bomb and nuclear energy.

None of the 20 radioactive elements offered for sale under the program could be used for development of atomic energy for military or industrial uses and did not include plutonium or uranium. Russia and 24 other countries had inquired about the program, but none had yet filed requests for any of the offered elements.

You have bomb? No bomb. We get back to you.

In Trieste, two U.S. Army officers claimed that they were dragged across the Morgan Line into Yugoslav territory by Yugoslav troops after they had entered the Yugoslav zone of Venezia Giulia to negotiate the release of three other American soldiers, detained after they made a wrong turn into the Yugoslav zone. The officers were then detained six days before being returned to Gorizia headquarters this date. Two other Americans detained in August while fishing in the Isonzo River, were still in the Yugoslav zone.

An informed source reported from London that Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin's suggestion that the U.S. redistribute its supply of gold across the world was viewed by Britain as an integral part of the Marshall Plan, and that the suggestion had been made in an informal meeting with U.S. Ambassador to Britain Lewis Douglas.

In Greece, the Cabinet established the previous Friday by Constantin Tsaldaris, after the fall on August 20 of the Cabinet of Demetrios Maximos regarding the conduct of the war against the guerrillas in the north, already faced difficulties. After the Government stated intent to discharge 15,000 civil service workers in six months as an economizing measure, a threatened walk-out by civil service workers which would have paralyzed the country was averted. But a vote of confidence loomed in Parliament as the Cabinet was supported by only 141 of the 354 members, and was disfavored by the U.S.

Premier Tsaldaris had negotiated with opposition members to set up a more representative Cabinet in which Mr. Maximos would again be Premier. The opposition was reported to be willing to negotiate with Mr. Maximos but not with Mr. Tsaldaris.

The American Meat Institute predicted a meat shortage for the ensuing 15 to 20 days, which could bring disaster in the event of an early frost in the corn belt where the planted corn crop was behind schedule.

Gird yourselves for the worst.

Senator Albert Hawkes of New Jersey endorsed the opinion of former President Hoover, expressed in American Magazine, that the U.S. might have remained out of World War II had not the country provoked Japan to attack, presumably by the cutting off of exports of oil and scrap iron and demanding that Japan give up all acquired territory in China and French Indochina before the exports would be resumed. Mr. Hoover had opined that a decent peace might have been negotiated—presumably modeled on that made by Mr. Chamberlain at Munich.

Of course, Mr. Hoover and Mr. Hawkes failed to point out also that there would have been then the little matter of half the country speaking Japanese and the other half German as a result. And then the concentration camps for any dissidents. But that was incidental.

Senator Hawkes thought that Japan and Germany would have been defeated without U.S. intervention—plainly in the offing from both the Russian and British sides in latter 1941.

Darn it. Those 305,000 Americans died for nothing. And it was all the fault of FDR. You better vote for a Republican for President in 1948, no matter who the nominee is, even if it's Mr. Hoover again.

Senator Olin Johnston of South Carolina suggested that the former President's hindsight in this instance was as bad as his foresight had been while President, when he said that prosperity was just around the corner. He suggested that Mr. Hoover would plunge the country into a third world war if his advice were followed.

Senator Joseph O'Mahoney of Wyoming, Senator Carl Hatch of New Mexico, and Representative Adolph Sabath of Illinois echoed the sentiments, the latter suggesting that the sixteen million American veterans who fought in the war would resent the implications of Mr. Hoover's statements.

In San Onofre, California, six escaped Marine Corps prisoners, armed with two carbine rifles, were cornered in heavy brush on a beach early this date and captured twenty minutes later following exchange of gunfire with State Highway Patrol officers. The prisoners had escaped from the brig at Camp Pendleton the previous day by stealing a truck and exchanging fire with MP's and police. There was no indication as to how the men obtained the weapons.

The State Board of Education exonerated the Superintendent of the Caldwell County schools, despite his alleged knowledge of the improper accounting methods employed by Hudson High School principal R. L. Fritz, from whom the Board had stripped his teaching certificate the previous month for the problem, which involved paying substitutes, having the substitutes return the money, paid then to regular teachers for overtime to alleviate the staff shortage and keep the school operating.

Horace E. Stacy of Lumberton, a Board member, moved to exonerate the Superintendent. Mr. Stacy was the brother of State Supreme Court Chief Justice Walter Stacy.

The Superintendent claimed that he had no knowledge of the padding at the Hudson School, a contention corroborated by several employees of his office. Mr. Fritz had claimed that the Superintendent was fully aware of the accounting method. The Superintendent admitted that he was aware that the wife of Mr. Fritz was on the payroll and that he knew that she was a "non-regular teacher", receiving the bulk of the disputed payments of $1,600, but that he was not aware that she was returning the payments to be redistributed by her husband to regular teachers for overtime. He said that he had to depend on limited personnel to make reports on the expenditures represented by 450 to 500 checks issued each month in the Caldwell County schools, and had no idea of anything "going on" out of line at the Hudson School until receipt of a letter from the State informing him of same.

In other words, he was fully aware of the accounting method and parsed and dissembled to the Board, which then white-washed his conduct. But, for purely political reasons, the Board had gone after the principal, who had advocated higher teacher salaries than ultimately authorized by the Legislature in the late session and had, earlier in the year, won, from this stance, his position as president of the North Carolina Education Association. He had sought to keep his school operating for the benefit of the pupils through a manipulation of the books which in no way entailed personal financial gain for anyone except the teachers who honestly had worked overtime to keep the school operating. That was considered improper because he did not color the book exactly and precisely within the idiotic lines established by the Legislature, resulting in pupils who could not read or write the English language—some of whom from the past were, no doubt, in the Legislature, and apparently on the State Board of Education.

Why, because, suh, you let them lib'rals get away with that and next thing you know, they might try to integrate the schools, heya, on they own. Yessuh. We make up the rules heya, no matter how stupid and unjust you may think them to be. That shows ouwa powa. And we are sure gonna make sure that they look to the outside wo'ld as lib'ral as any lib'ral might want. We are not Mississippi, heya. Nawsuh.

It is all well and good to put up a front for receipt of official public approbation, following the accepted party line of the moment, all to the disadvantage of the public in any reasonable view of the situation. But recognition of reality requires the hard understanding that civil rights, including the right to a proper education, applies to everyone equally, especially the politically disfavored dissenters to the powers of the moment.

In London, a centenarian got out of bed to obtain her usual nip of whiskey, slipped and fell, and died as a result.

Moral: Don't push your luck for a nip.

Dick Young of The News tells of a newborn baby girl, "cute as a button", being found on the front porch of a residence in Charlotte during the early morning hours. The infant appeared two or three days old and was wrapped in three blankets. A couple of extra diapers were included but there was no milk bottle or feeding instructions. The infant was warm and comfortable and never cried, even after police took her into custody. The Sisters of Mercy at Mercy Hospital readily agreed to take charge of the infant.

The Charlotte anti-noise ordinance, a piece reports, covered everything from the noisy rooster to the blasting radio, not just automobile and truck noise on the streets.

The issue had been alive before Pearl Harbor, perhaps indicative of the tension of a populace on edge from anticipation of things to come. During the war, excessive noise appeared relegated to the bins of superfluity, perhaps merging with the noisy background of maintenance of the war machine, suggesting that endurance of hardship was not so nerve-wracking as waiting for it to begin, fear of the unknown.

On the editorial page, "Turn Off the Charlotte Noise" tells the noisemakers that they were responsible for the editorial and the move by a City Councilman to have stricter enforcement of the noise ordinance in the city.

"Quiet, dammit!"

"City's Loss in Quartermaster Depot" tells of the Government decision that Charlotte's Quartermaster Depot would become primarily a tobacco warehousing center for the Commodity Credit Corporation rather than badly needed warehousing space for private firms as sought. It was not clear for how long the Government would continue to operate the facility, inhibiting the construction of new warehouse space, depressing commercial expansion. The region had received less than its share of wartime construction. The warehouse issue was the result of poor Government planning, Congressman Hamilton Jones and the Charlotte Central Labor Union having been the primary reasons for the Government decision.

"Freedom for Women, Suits for Men" regards the Little Below the Knee controversy, protesting the fashion of longer skirts, suggesting that the editorial column thus far had remained mum on the topic because it believed the fashion would be short-lived, the women ultimately likely insistent on being allowed to go without clothes completely, in furtherance of emancipation.

A piece from the Chicago Times, titled "Money Isn't Everything", relates of several news items suggesting the title of the piece. Security, recognition, leisure, and self-expression were considered as important as money, perhaps more so. It was necessary, says the piece, to bear it in mind when inflation would subside and the breadwinner could concentrate on something other than stretching the dollar.

Robert S. Allen tells of Army politicos seeking to sidetrack General Omar Bradley as the successor to General Eisenhower as chief of staff of the Army. Instead, a move was on to create a special command of which General Bradley would be head. General Mark Clark was the first on the list of possibilities for chief of staff in lieu of General Bradley, who the brass believed was too lacking in political savvy.

Marquis Childs, in Berlin, tells of the trade union movement outside Russia dominated by Communists being the most powerful instrument of Soviet foreign policy, more powerful than the Communist Party. That was the take on it by observers in Berlin. France was prime example, as the Communists controlled the French confederation of workers and thus were able to paralyze French industry. The French Government used the prospect as a means to persuade the State Department to delay making Germany self-sufficient. The logic of communism in Western Europe was that 40 million starving Germans were ripe for conversion to communism.

Victor Riesel tells of the cheap, threatening tactics employed by press agents of some of the larger unions. One suffered from the D.T.'s and was prone to threaten violence against reporters who did not toe the mark for the union. But at least a reporter could ask him questions, whereas 42 percent of the country's unions had no press agent or anyone designated to field questions from journalists.

Samuel Grafton discusses the new women's fashions in New York, expressing approval of the longer skirts and soft shoulders, but not the more extreme examples, which caused the wearer to appear "caved in at the top while getting her feet caught in an umbrella vase at the bottom". The more conservative versions made the woman appear as a lady of elegance and refinement.

The women of Dallas and elsewhere who had formed Little Below the Knee clubs hadn't a chance, he offers, were as helpless as the small creatures within the grasp of the hootie owl.

It was as futile to fight the trend as it had been a year earlier to fight against removal of price controls. If the women could not defend their market baskets, then they had no cause to believe that they could now prevail in the skirt-length battle.

He believes that the battle might convince women of the strength of tidal wave campaigns and how the riptides were impossible to resist from mere neighborhood organizing efforts. So, he counsels them to stop squawking and to hold still while they "put it on you."

A letter suggests a paragraph to paste in the hats of Charlotteans to avoid being labeled Red. It began: "I shall love Franco and the great Spanish democracy with all my heart and all my soul. Upon rising in the morning, I shall repeat at least ten times that Congressman J. Parnell Thomas, [chairman of HUAC], is a second Thomas Jefferson and that Henry Wallace is a traitor. I shall thank God for having lived in the same generation with Eva Peron and her beautiful medals, and I shall say over and over again that Dr. Frank P. Graham is a cad. At least twice a day I shall repeat that Congressman John Rankin is a second Abraham Lincoln..."

A letter writer wants a shepherd to look after the lost sheep of North Charlotte, where she resided, counsels reading Matthew 21, 33, and 34.

A letter writer again wants something done about the disloyal draft dodgers who did not serve their country during the war, that they should be ordered to work or fight. She wants action, not talk.

A letter writer who had stated that the Bible does not provide for either eternal damnation or eternal salvation responds to the letter which had responded to him, saying that he hoped that he was right about there being no Hell, but not about there being no Heaven. The writer says that he never suggested the latter and that he was certain there was such a place, but that he was equally certain there was no such as the former.

He adds that he had received several letters calling him a fool. That was nothing new to him, as he had known for 78 years that he was a fool, had never claimed to be anything else. But he had never been fool enough to believe that "mongrel mess of unscriptural and God-dishonoring doctrine of the eternal burning hell and immortality of the soul."

Burn him. Burn him at the stake. That'll teach him to defy the Word from on High.

Framed Edition

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