Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.N. confirmed
that Indonesia had accepted a truce proposal offered by the
Netherlands Government and that it would be signed the following
day. Attempts to resolve the conflict had been ongoing since the
previous summer. Dr. Frank Graham, president of UNC, had gone to
Jakarta with Richard Kirby of Australia to effect the truce on
behalf of the U.N.
In New Delhi, Mohandas Gandhi entered the fourth day of his
fast, seeking to obtain peace in India between the warring sects
following partition the previous August, separating off Pakistan as
a new independent dominion. Medical personnel said that he could
withstand another ten days of fasting before seriously compromising
his health. One doctor said that the Indian spiritual leader, 78,
was getting weaker by the hour.
Gandhi would be assassinated on January 30.
In the Ruhr in Germany, 50,000 striking workers, complaining
of shortages and inadequate food, were getting ready to return to
work. German authorities warned of possible food riots in the
American occupation zone. Many of the workers in the Ruhr were on
near-starvation diets. The president of the British-American zone's
executive committee stated that for the first time since the end of
the war, the people of the zone faced famine.
The President stated in a letter to the Senate Armed Services
Committee that its denial of permission for Maj. General Laurence
Kuter to serve as chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board while
still receiving military pay constituted a "disservice" to
the nation. The post had been vacant since the beginning of the
year.
Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snyder told the House Ways
& Means Committee that President Truman would likely veto a 5.6
billion dollar tax cut as proposed, that it would be a major threat
to economic stability and create a 2.1 billion dollar deficit for
the following fiscal year. He urged instead passage of the
President's proposed tax cut of $40 per person, as a credit for
individuals and dependents, and then paying for it by raising
corporate taxes by 3.2 billion dollars.
Chairman Harold Knutson rejected Mr. Snyder's argument and
said that he intended to push forward on the Republican tax cut.
Representative John Dingell of Michigan, however, placed a bill embodying the
President's plan before the Committee. Former chairman Robert
Doughton of North Carolina stated that he was not in favor of either
plan.
Senator Taft criticized the President's budget in Providence,
R.I., before a group of Republicans, saying three billion dollars
could be cut from the 40-billion dollar total. He proposed an
increase in Air Force funding as an alternative to Universal
Military Training. Senator Taft found problematic the fact that the
Administration now said that there would be a 7.5 billion dollar
surplus, whereas the previous summer, the Treasury reported a
prospect of 1.5 billion, on which basis the President had twice
vetoed the previously passed tax cut.
James Farley, FDR kingmaker and DNC chairman from 1933 to
1940, criticized the third-party candidacy of Henry Wallace. He said
that the Progressive Party appeared as a one-man party and would
possibly end that way.
In Indianapolis, the NLRB sought a temporary injunction
against the International Typographical Union for an alleged
violation of Taft-Hartley, in that it had caused discrimination by
employers against employees based on denial of membership in the
union for reasons other than non-payment of dues.
In Detroit, the UAW announced that it would seek a 25-cents
per hour wage increase and an additional five cents worth of other
benefits. The executive board stated that the increases were
necessary to meet increased costs of living. Either Chrysler or G.M.
would be the first target of the effort. The contract with Ford did
not expire until later in the year.
In New York, a plagiarism suit against novelist Daphne Du
Maurier, contending that she had plagiarized Rebecca, was
dismissed on the ground that she never had access to the works,
Blind Windows and "I Planned to Murder My Husband",
both by Edwina MacDonald, which were claimed as the basis for the
plagiarism. The court also found Rebecca sufficiently dissimilar to the MacDonald works to remove it from the purview of plagiarism. Ms. MacDonald died after initiating the suit and her son continued it as administrator of the estate. Ms. Du Maurier
testified that she had never heard of the author or the works.
Likely story. Everybody has heard of "I Planned to
Murder My Husband". It's on the news almost every night.
In Chicago, an explosion blew a 150-foot wall out of a
structure near The Loop, killing five persons and injuring four.
Also in Chicago, the condemned axe-murderer, scheduled to be
executed this date, made a phone call to two men serving sentences
in Washington State, who he implicated as his accomplices in one
double murder. He had confessed to 44 murders all over the country
and had sought to delay his execution date that he might aid the
authorities. During the 90-minute monitored conversation, both men
whom he accused denied involvement. The telephone call had been
arranged by the Chicago Herald-American. A transcript of part
of the call is included for your perusal.
If either man had an attorney, he ought be executed. In any
event, "Sugar Man"—not to be confused with President
Truman—and the other man both denied even knowing the prisoner.
In Atlanta, Mayor William Hartsfield declared that the small
houses being built since the war amounted to "involuntary birth
control", as the first baby or first dog caused overcrowding.
Eventually, he said, people would have to transport their houses on
their backs as snails.
North Carolina Governor Gregg Cherry praised Josephus
Daniels, who had died the previous day at age 85, succumbing to
pneumonia. His remarks are provided on the page.
On the editorial page, "Josephus Daniels of North
Carolina" eulogizes the passing of the former editor and
publisher of the Raleigh News & Observer, former
Secretary of the Navy under President Wilson and former Ambassador
to Mexico under FDR, from 1933 through October, 1941, in that role
being a prime mover in implementing and fostering the Good Neighbor
Policy initiated by President Roosevelt, significantly improving
relations in Mexico which had suffered prior to the tenure of Mr.
Daniels, since the Pershing punitive expedition of 1916 which sought
Pancho Villa and his compadres for the murderous raid on Columbus,
N.M.
At Mr. Daniels's last public appearance, following a
Presidential press conference at the White House, he had advised the
press to write less of war and instead to induce the people to think
in terms of peace by writing of peace.
Besides being a crusader against such things as British
imperialism and American monopolies, he also was a Puritan who
advocated prohibition and a devout Christian, having caught
pneumonia from attending his Methodist Church in Raleigh with a bad
cold.
He had started the News & Observer at age 18, in
1880, and became one of the nation's most noted editors, similar to
William Allen White in Emporia, Kansas.
Mr. Daniels, it concludes, taught the people that "America's
greatest glory comes from its citizens who love their fellow men and
live courageously in that faith."
We recommend his three-volume memoir for a thoroughgoing and candid history of North Carolina from his early days through his death, as well tracing parts of the history of the nation and Mexico, of which he had first-hand view in his various roles.
It is possible to become blinded by the fact of Mr. Daniels's primary role as a newspaper editor in the white supremacy movement in North Carolina at the turn of the century and the Red Shirt campaign leading to bloody violence in Wilmington in 1898. While not excusing that gross misjudgment, which he fairly admitted as such in his memoirs, it is also necessary to place it in the context of the times, a time when, in 1896, Plessy v. Ferguson and its doctrine of "separate but equal" had become the law of the land. There is no indication in the public career of Mr. Daniels that he was a racist, at least in later years.
W. J. Cash, who in 1938 befriended son Jonathan Daniels, co-sponsor with Blanche and Alfred Knopf of Cash's Guggenheim Fellowship which took him to Mexico in June, 1941, stated, in his sole reference to Josephus Daniels in The Mind of the South:
Again, the very next year [in 1903] after [Emory's Dr. Andrew] Sledd's article [condemning lynching and Jim Crow], John
Spencer Bassett, then serving as professor of history in
Trinity College, a Methodist institution at Durham, North
Carolina, which has since become Duke University, published an article in the South Atlantic Quarterly, issuing
from Trinity and edited by himself, wherein he carried
iconoclasm to the point of asserting that, after General Lee,
Booker T. Washington, the Negro, was the greatest man
born in the South in a century. The demand for his dismissal was so great and strident that even Josephus Daniels, in general one of the most liberal and intelligent editors
the South has had, was swept into the current and regularly printed the professor's name as "bASSett." But the
president of the college told the trustees that he would
resign if Bassett were sacrificed, and the whole faculty
secretly went on record to the same effect. Faced with
that ultimatum, the trustees, after a stormy debate, voted
to retain him.
It is unnecessary to exaggerate the meaning of this.
There were many factors at play in these decisions—the
threat of the standardizing authorities to strike Trinity off
the accredited list, for instance, and the concern of many
of the professors for their own professional status. It is perhaps not without significance that Bassett, though a native
North Carolinian, did not tarry long before retiring to the
North. And there would yet be other instances of the triumph of intolerance in the schools. Enoch M. Banks, a
native Georgian, was dismissed from the University of
Florida faculty in 1911 merely for saying in the Independent that in the Civil War "the North was relatively in the
right, while the South was relatively in the wrong." Nevertheless, the slow development of criticism and tolerance
for it within the academic circle was indubitable.
—from Book III, Chapter II, "Of Returning Tensions—and the Years the Cuckoo Claimed", Section 23, page 331 of 1969 ed.
"Congress Doesn't Feel the Cold" tells of
Democratic Senator Burnet Maybank of South Carolina joining the
Republicans in denouncing the President's economic message, desirous
of limited wage-price controls and rationing. He believed the talk
about controls was frightening the people. But with the fuel oil
shortage, his words, it suggests, likely struck a hollow chord with
many Southerners.
The fuel oil problem was national in scope and required some
form of control to cure. Charlotte officials had done their utmost
to obtain fuel oil and seek Federal assistance but had come up
short.
"Sweetness in American Politics" tells of Terry
Tullos, 3, the poster child for the March of Dimes drive to fight
polio, having visited the White House from his native Laurel,
Mississippi. He had thrown his arms around Mr. Truman and said that
he was sweet. In so doing, he had accurately described an endearing
quality possessed by the President. It stood in contrast to many
politicians who were mean-spirited.
The President's bright disposition had proved such an asset
that it might induce others to follow suit. It suggests that it
might have come from his piano playing and love of music—which,
with hindsight in plentiful store, we know to have proved a generally
fallacious assumption, as in the case of a successor who also played the
piano.
The information had come directly from Martha Truman, the
President's recently deceased mother, who had reported that Harry Truman
never tired of playing for her the old songs she liked, and that it
was this fact which had made his nature sweet.
You can do it, too, of course, without learning to play an
instrument. Use the record player and refrain from playing your own
favorites too much and too loudly.
Bear in mind the old, old axiom: Your mother should know.
Of course, the mother of Richard Nixon may not have favored
any music outside church music and "Simple Gifts", in
which case, perhaps creating some of the problem. But who knows?
As we have mentioned once before, in March, 1970, when Ed Sullivan presented a film of the Beatles singing, for the first time publicly, "Let It Be", our mother, a school teacher, commented that she had played the song for her pupils, who loved the piece. We, having never heard of it prior to that time, thought she was crazy, but let it go. It turned out that she was right, as we discovered many years later among her possessions the sheet music for the song, recorded as we now know, in 1969, prior to the recording of "Abbey Road", released the previous October. Your mother should know.
A piece from the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, titled "A
Tar Heel for 'The Voice'", praises the selection of George V.
Allen of Durham as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs.
In that position, he would administer the international information
service, including the Voice of America, and the student and
technician exchange program. The previous Assistant Secretary had
been William Benton, who resigned in frustration the previous
September, claiming that he could not do his job with the budget cut
in half to six million dollars.
Thus, Mr. Allen faced a formidable task and would need to try
to obtain from Congress increased appropriations.
Drew Pearson again assesses the chances of war between Russia
and the U.S., based on his observations while recently in France and
Italy to accompany the Friendship Train. In this entry, he looks at
the optimistic signs, tells of the Communist Party in Italy being
the largest outside the Soviet Union, controlling a third of the
Parliament. The proportion was similar in the French Chamber of
Deputies. Thus, both Governments had to cooperate with the
Communists. In Italy, many cities had Communist mayors. But most
appeared only superficially Communist, likely to change with the
winds as conditions improved.
Most of the Italian and French people with whom he had dealt
who were Communists did not understand the theoretical basis for it.
In Czechoslovakia and Poland, there were many who wished to
break away from Russia. The same was true in the Yugoslavian states
of Bosnia and Southern Serbia.
France and Italy had the advantage of not having had to deal
with the Red Army. But hunger had caused many to gravitate to the
Communist Party. And when the Marshall Plan would begin to have an
effect, these same people, he asserts, would bolt. But food and
money alone, he cautions, would not win Europe. It would take
convincing them of the peaceful intent of America in extending the
aid.
Russia had done an excellent job of propaganda against the
U.S., tainting its image as an imperialist nation in the eyes of
many Europeans. Many believed that there was no social security in
America or unemployment insurance and old-age pensions. They
believed that Wall Street completely controlled the country, that
the aid was only offered as a bribe to prevent Europe from falling
into the Soviet sphere.
Relating that the goods aboard the Friendship Train had been
loaded by free labor and transported overseas by free labor made an
impression on the French and Italians. The lesson was that America
needed to explain to the people of Europe its motives for giving the
aid and provide Europeans with new goals for which to strive.
He promises a future column on what could be done to instill
hope.
Marquis Childs tells of the Progressive Party, under whose
banner Henry Wallace was running, intending to hold a rally in
Chicago to find support for Mr. Wallace, thus far not attracting any
great number of liberals as hoped.
When he was in the Roosevelt Administration as Secretary of
Agriculture and then as Vice-President, Mr. Wallace had many loyal
followers among liberals in Government. Most, however, had left the
Government, but still held influential positions around the country.
Yet, only two or three had rallied to the Wallace candidacy, prime
among them being C. B. Baldwin, former head of the Farm Security
Administration.
Mr. Wallace's supporters hoped to garner up to 200,000 votes
in Illinois. If he should attract that many, it would likely swing
the 28 electoral votes to the Republican candidate.
Representatives of two unions in Illinois had approached the
Democratic king-makers and told them that if Professor Paul Douglas
were the candidate, they would defect to a third party. Professor
Douglas was a liberal and for the Marshall Plan. The Democrats
ignored the warning and selected Mr. Douglas as the candidate to run
against the isolationist incumbent, Senator Wayland Brooks.
It was not clear what the rally would accomplish, except
possibly to nominate a vice-presidential candidate, probably Senator
Glen Taylor, assuming that he would accept. He had said that he
would do so if he were to become convinced that the President
intended to lead the country into a preventative war—that which we
have come to call "preemptive" warfare.
Samuel Grafton tells of the New York Journal of Commerce
saying that retailers were counting on continued high prices to
maintain dollar volume. The notion was circular: the retailers were
dependent on high prices, which had reduced production volume by
seven percent the previous year, to maintain high return. The cycle
of inflation worked that way, requiring dependence on it for
survival. Only more inflation could take care of the problems caused
by inflation.
But some consumers were eliminated from the market with each
price rise. He says that he was not acquainted with the supposed consumer who
was indifferent to high prices. At a party which he had attended
recently, a boycott of the week was proposed, beginning with butter.
He had thus forgone butter for several days.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop tell of the leaders of the
Northern Democratic organizations having sent word to Justice
William O. Douglas that the vice-presidential nomination was his for
the asking. Of course, Senator Alben Barkley would become the
candidate.
The supporters of Justice Douglas were the same big city
bosses who had been responsible for the Truman candidacy in 1944,
rejecting incumbent Henry Wallace and War Mobilizer James Byrnes.
The President had not weighed in on the choice and his
decision would be respected.
The party leaders had rejected Professor Paul Douglas for the
gubernatorial nomination, favoring Adlai Stevenson. They instead
supported him for the Senate, though they did not like him, but
thought he might win.
The South was already expressing its anger regarding the
President's anti-discrimination proposal and a Douglas
vice-presidential nomination might be the final straw, for his
consistent liberality and tolerance. While many of the Southerners
liked Justice Douglas personally, they would not be disposed to
accept a candidacy forced on them by the North.
A letter writer suggests the virtues of simplicity as being the
"Gibraltar of democracy".
