The Charlotte News

Monday, September 8, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the primary sections of the U.N. Atomic Energy Commission's second report had been approved by a ten-nation majority of the Commission's political subcommittee. Russia and Poland had voted against all of the sections, save one, the principal section, in which Russia was the lone dissent. The first report, approved the previous December, had received ten affirmative votes while Russia and Poland only abstained. The report, which recommended establishment of an international atomic control agency, would next go to the Security Council for consideration following approval by one other subcommittee.

In Athens, Greece, the coalition Greek Cabinet between the Liberals and Royalists was formed and sworn in, with Liberal leader Themistokles Sophoulis becoming Premier and Constantin Tsaldaris, Royalist leader, becoming the Vice-Premier and Foreign Minister. Mr. Tsaldaris resigned as Premier after the Royalists had failed to develop majority coalition support in the Parliament.

The new Government was expected to offer immediate amnesty for guerrillas who surrendered, supervised by a neutral international commission. The partakers of the amnesty would also be provided employment. Should the amnesty program fail, the Government was reported to be ready to appoint a military leader to wipe out the guerrillas in the north, allegedly receiving training and support from Yugoslavia, Albania, and Bulgaria.

British troops forced the 1,206 Jewish refugees who had been shipped back to Hamburg after being refused admission to Palestine to disembark one of the three ships on which they had been transported from France after refusing to disembark there for over a month. The British utilized clubs and hit scores of the refugees to force egress from the ship. Some of the persons cried out, "This is Hitlerism," as they were herded onto trains to take them to the Poppendorf detention camp for future disposition according to nationality. The passengers had been at sea or in port since they had left France for Palestine on July 10. The remaining two transport ships were scheduled to unload passengers the following day and Wednesday.

During the first three hours of the unloading, the passengers moved down the gangway peaceably, as "Saturday Night Is the Loneliest Night of the Week", and other tunes played from the loudspeaker. But at around 9:00 a.m., trouble developed below decks and recalcitrant men, women, and children were dragged and pushed down the gangway by soldiers wielding clubs and rubber truncheons, called "smackers". Correspondents observed the soldiers beating the passengers.

The first train of 600 to 700 refugees was unloaded without incident at Poppendorf. A British official stated that some of the passengers had torn iron bars from the train windows.

Apparently the British soldiers had been reading of the treatment during the war of Jews at Auschwitz and other places of the kind and determined to take pointers.

William Green, president of the AF of L, stated that he was urging all officers of the organization to sign affidavits stating that they were not Communists, as directed by the counsel for the NLRB, a position created by Taft-Hartley, that they might obtain the services of the NLRB. The executive board of AFL still had to approve the recommendation, but Mr. Green stated that it would so approve, "reluctantly". John L. Lewis, on the executive board, had attacked the requirement and refused to comment to reporters when asked whether he would approve the recommendation.

The CIO was still considering whether to sign the affidavits, having preliminarily given indications of intent to refuse.

Tom Fesperman of The News reports of the CIO organizing a PAC in North Carolina to support candidates who were union supporters. It marked a departure from the past when organizing was only of union locals, without any stress on politics. The PAC would refrain from public endorsement of any candidate as it understood that could be the political "kiss of death", as in other states in the past. There was a great deal of anti-labor sentiment within North Carolina. The effort would be directed at financial assistance and getting CIO union members to vote for those candidates.

Listen heya, boy. You ain't comin' down heya and tell us what to do from up North. We gon' send you packin' right now. We run dis state, heya, and we know what's what and what ain't. Yessuh. No Communist come in heya and tell us what to do, integratin' ever'thing communally, ruinin' ouwa economic setup and what-not. Nawsuh.

Tom Watkins of The News tells of a group of concerned women, motivated only by Christian principle, appearing before the County Commissioners, threatening to request a Grand Jury investigation of the alleged brutal treatment of certain prisoners housed at the Mecklenburg Industrial Home, the reform school for young girls. The chairman, in response, named a three-person commission to investigate the allegations, beginning this date, as well as suggesting appointment of a new Advisory Committee for the Home. The Board also suggested that the matron in charge of the Home remove one inmate from solitary confinement who had been in that status for four months, the Commissioners stating that a day or two in solitary was sufficient. The Home was financially supported by both the City Council and the County Board.

The matron contended that the reason for the punishment was the inmate's attempt to escape and the fear expressed by another matron of the facility that if released from solitary, the inmate might harm her. The complaining women claimed that the latter reason was the only motivation for the treatment and that such had become a routine practice against several inmates. The head matron had no immediate plans for releasing the inmate from the status.

The matrons apparently had been reading of the penal techniques employed at Buchenwald during the war and obtained some pointers.

Burke Davis of The News continues his look at the mental health system in the state, with emphasis on Mecklenburg County, suggesting that hundreds of people were walking the streets of Charlotte who ought be in mental hospitals, but for the dearth of available facilities throughout the state. North Carolina had no system by which even to locate such individuals, let alone house them. Many were treatable and none were necessarily dangerous.

Some twenty percent of the population would need mental health assistance over the course of a lifetime while only one and half percent would be admitted to a State Hospital. The treatment would vary from seeing a psychiatrist to confinement for observation to long-term treatment.

The statute authorizing intake to a jail facility required that the person be found dangerous and then confined until determined either sane or insane. The inmate had to be brought before the Clerk of Superior Court within ten days of incarceration and the Clerk would then make the order.

The Clerk in Mecklenburg, he reports, had long been an enemy of this system and maintained pressure on local hospitals to admit such persons as patients. He found it inconsistent that the state could build plenty of highways, but few hospitals.

The Mecklenburg Sheriff ordered his deputies to begin vigorously enforcing the criminal laws and to discontinue the traditional functions of the office, that of being bailiffs and process servers.

The Department of Agriculture reported an above-average cotton crop at 73 percent of normal production, compared to 67 percent in 1946 and a ten-year average of 70 percent. North Carolina was at 75 percent of normal production and South Carolina at 69 percent.

That which the Charlotte debs would be wearing at the "Terps' Chorean" Club Ball in Raleigh—which we make bold to assume was actually the Terpsichorean Club Ball—to take place the following Friday, is displayed on the Woman's Page on 3-B.

We hope that 3-B got the name right, lest some of the debs perhaps might find it apropos to show up dressed as singing turtles.

On the editorial page, "That 'Insult' from Henry Wallace" tells of the VFW wanting to have the Government gag Henry Wallace from speaking out further against U.S. foreign policy within any foreign country, an ideological faux pas which the VFW had branded "insult" to the country. The proposed ban would apply to any U.S. citizen.

The piece asks where the crime was in Mr. Wallace expressing his opinion as a private citizen. The VFW had often sought to influence American foreign policy and that was all Mr. Wallace was seeking to do. It appeared that they believed it okay to influence foreign policy from within the U.S., but not from abroad.

It asks whether American citizens should be required to change or mute their opinions before going overseas. To silence free expression of political opinion was not a prescription for advertising democracy and free speech to the foreign nations.

"Congressman Jones on Taxes" tells of Congressman Hamilton Jones of Charlotte believing in the tax cut, albeit one more evenly distributed than that offered in the first session of the 80th Congress by the Republicans and vetoed twice by the President, sustained both times. He believed that the Democrats would offer their own version of a tax cut bill in the next session, and that it could be passed while also reducing the national debt.

The piece suggests that there could be no sound tax cut without also at least equivalent budget reduction to compensate for the loss of revenue. That would be difficult with the need to maintain a strong military and supply foreign aid, to resist Soviet expansion. To get the budget cuts would thus require chopping away more at domestic programs, the cuts in domestic appropriations in the previous session already having incurred the ire of constituents, especially farmers, back home.

It thus wishes Mr. Jones luck in his endeavor to cut taxes while reducing the budget.

"The 'Machine' and Public Apathy" predicts that somewhere down the line North Carolina might produce—as it would in 1972—a Theodore Bilbo or Huey Long or Boss Ed Crump and that the enlightened and progressive citizens of the state would come to wonder how it happened. Candidate for governor R. Mayne Albright had suggested as much at the Civitan Club in Charlotte a few days earlier, referring to the apathy apparent in North Carolinians lending ripeness for such conditions to find fruition.

Concentration of political control in the hand of a faction or small group was the primary factor which led to reactionary bosses and demagogues.

Mr. Albright had pointed to 18 municipalities in the state in which only 27 percent of the registered voters had cast ballots and only 53 percent of those eligible to vote had registered.

While North Carolina had not worried of a state machine because it had generally enjoyed good state government, that was the result of a long tradition of progressivism in the state rendering a higher caliber machine politician than in other areas of the country.

It was good for the state to have an independent voice speaking out. The state organization had not been strongly challenged since Dr. Ralph McDonald had run in 1936 against Clyde Hoey in the gubernatorial race.

Having governors and other state officials essentially appointed by the machine could not go on indefinitely without undesirable results and the destruction of the traditional progressivism—turning it to Helmism, synonymous, unfortunately, with North Carolina from 1973 through that idiot's final demise.

A piece from the New York Times, titled "With Many Tongues", tells of the tragic fact that racial and religious hatred had to be taught, that it was not something with which anyone was born. If there were no such teaching, then perhaps the world might grow up without such hatreds.

It posits that the U.N. school for children, ages 3 to 11, of employees and attaches of the organization ought be so organized on an Utopian basis. All were to be taught English and French, while some of the lessons would be instructed in the native tongue of each of the students. Expected enrollment was to be a maximum of 900.

Thus, while the school could have but limited impact on the world, it could be leavening for a start at inoculation against prejudice before a child could become infected and inculcated with it.

It thus wishes success to the International School of Lake Success.

Drew Pearson tells of Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett having declared the emergency in Europe necessitating a special session of Congress based on the discovery by the Army that the Russians planned a Communist revolution in Italy. Communist munitions stores had been found in Italy along with an Italian-Slav army prepared to seize northern Italy as soon as the Americans evacuated. U.S. agents had learned of the plot by attending Communist meetings. It was likely the reason for the sudden Russian approval of the Italian treaty, which then required all foreign troops to evacuate within 90 days.

He goes on to publish the details of the plot, leaders and logistics, as obtained through undercover agents. The plan received direct aid and advice from the Soviets and was based on the Soviet model for stimulating internal revolt. All of the provinces were organized, even those which were primarily anti-Communist.

Marquis Childs, still in Essen, Germany, tells of the British North German Coal Mining Commission occupying the 450-room Villa Hugel, which had belonged to the Krupps family prior to the end of the war. The family had been so powerful in Germany that they were considered somewhat above royalty. Recently, Frau Bertha Krupps had written to the British Government seeking the return of her villa. She was ignored. But the audacity of the request bespoke the unreality in which she lived. The head of the household, Gustav Krupps, and his son Alfred, were under indictment for war crimes.

The lavish surroundings from which they had controlled their huge cartel stood in stark contrast to the miners' rude habitats. Most lived in air-raid bunkers built close to the mine shafts, providing refuge during the war for the miners. Mr. Childs visited with one such family with eight children who had lived in a two-room barracks inside one of the bunkers since 1943, when their home had been bombed. Despite the father having worked in the mines for 29 years, it was all they had. They, like most others who worked the mines, saw no connection between the war and their plight. Local Communist propaganda sought to place blame for the abject conditions on the democracies.

He found it hard to understand how free enterprise could ever thrive in the Ruhr, as the desire by the German workers for socialization of the mines was strong and fully 85 percent of the pre-war production had been controlled by a cartel. Nevertheless, the American goal was to establish a form of free enterprise resemblant to the American paradigm.

Samuel Grafton suggests that the idea put forth by Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, that the U.S. ought redistribute the gold in Fort Knox across the world, to be a college boy bull session notion. It betrayed the helplessness being felt in Britain.

The idea was not quite so bad as that of former President Hoover in recently expressing in American Magazine that America could have and should have stayed out of the war, that it would have been nevertheless won by the Allies. That also reminded of a bull session pipe dream. It had to sound odd to impoverished Britons to hear him suggest that America could have been even more economically powerful by avoiding the war. The U.S. was already the world's bank in terms of reconstruction loans. Mr. Grafton wonders just how powerful Mr. Hoover wanted America to be.

The Paris Conference of 16 nations determining their needs under the Marshall Plan also devolved to a kind of bull session, as the Congress was not set to reconvene until the following January, by which point, according to Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett, it could be too late to avert economic disaster in Europe. The only hope was a special session, but that was not at present in the offing.

Russia's strategy was thus made manifest: to wait out the self-destruction of the West, as it participated in schoolboy games while a genuine crisis stood manifest before them.

"Anybody know a couple of funny stories, fellows, for a nightcap before we turn in?"

Yeah, Sam, you'll like this one. There once was a fellow from Mattamuskeet, who came to the table...

A letter writer finds the country the most unstable since its early days. He believes that it would take little to foment a revolution, especially given the reckless leadership of labor. He singles out Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas of California as jumping on the bandwagon to generate class warfare by labeling the Republicans as the friend of big business and the real estate lobby.

But Taft-Hartley, he thinks, only made labor relations bi-lateral, was not the monster it had been labeled by labor leaders.

He does not want life regimented at the expense of freedom.

Good. Vote for Nixon, and see what happens, sucker.

A letter writer thinks that if a purge should ever develop in America, it would more likely come from the left than from the right.

Don't bet on it, sucker.

He offers paraphrase, in cynical, anti-FDR terms, of the hat motto suggested by the letter writer of September 4.

Good. You also can vote for Nixon. Come talk to us about it 27 years down the road. We'll see you there.

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