Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Andrei Vishinsky
proposed in a two-hour speech to the U.N. political committee that
Russia would put its "cards on the table", revealing its
full inventory of arms and armed forces, provided the U.N. would
adopt the Soviet proposal for arms reduction of the major powers by
one-third and that the other four major powers would also reveal
their armaments and armed forces. While the speech was largely
conciliatory, U.S. chief delegate Warren Austin accused Russia of
thwarting efforts to solve the Berlin crisis.
Britain and France joined the U.S. in seeking to accelerate
Security Council action on the Berlin crisis. The three powers found
the six Security Council "neutral" nations' proposal to
have a temporary end to the blockade while direct negotiations
transpired between the West and Russia to be useless and a diversion
from the central purpose of the debate, to end the blockade and the
crisis. Russia had not yet replied to the proposal of the six
"neutral" nations.
Also before the U.N., Russia, through Alexei Pavlov, accused
the U.S., Britain and South Africa of practicing racial
discrimination and accused Cuba, by its proposed amendment to the
U.N. Charter, of attempting to "water down" the article
against discrimination. He said that in the American South, blacks
were terrorized, and that Indian minorities were discriminated
against by the British in South Africa and other colonial
territories. He also stated that women, especially in Georgia,
endured discrimination in both the U.S. and Britain, whereas in
Russia, there were more female members of parliament than in all the
other nations combined.
In Berlin, the official Soviet-published newspaper declared
that the blockade would remain until the Western powers removed
their currency from the city. It echoed Andrei Vishinsky in say that
actually there was no blockade.
An effort was being made by the Western powers to evacuate
children from the Western sectors of the city to alleviate some of
the burden on the airlift. Since September, 1,200 children had been
evacuated to the British sector of Germany.
In Paris, electricity was cut off by the Communist-led strike
of the coal mines, in its ninth day. It would be the ninth straight
winter in which power was reduced in the country.
In Cincinnati, John L. Lewis and UMW extended a peace offer
to the rest of American labor, asking for unity. He said that
Taft-Hartley was an example of a result unfavorable to labor
occurring through disunity.
In Tacoma, Wash., AFL longshoremen drove off CIO longshoremen
who were picketing two docks this date, and resumed unloading two
ships.
In Stockholm, King Gustaf V, 90, was ill with the flu, was
being treated with penicillin.
The I.N.S. disclosed that it had taken into custody 33
persons in New York and Florida in a drive against smuggling of
Jamaicans into the country with false birth certificates. Included
among those arrested was the reputed ringleader of the operation.
The I.N.S. said that he had admitted obtaining 50 false birth
certificates from various sources in South Carolina.
A few months earlier, the Service had broken up a similar
operation regarding Orientals coming into the country via Cuba for a
price of $1,200 per person.
In Philadelphia, the United Lutheran Churches of America was
asked to vote on a resolution to join with the other eight branches
of the Lutheran Church.
In Richmond, Ind., the President said that Governor Dewey had
provided his imprimatur to the 80th Congress in its passage of
Taft-Hartley. He accused the Congress also of endangering the
farmer, by failing to approve permanent price support legislation.
He would also speak in Illinois, with an address at the Armory in Springfield.
In Louisville, Ky., Governor Dewey accused the Truman
Administration of "clumsiness, weakness and wobbling" in
foreign affairs, making the country appear repeatedly as a "fumbling
giant". He said that the Democrats had failed to consult with
the Republicans on foreign affairs despite the GOP having taken the
leading role in insuring bipartisanship in foreign relations. He
said that the bipartisan policy had made great gains despite
Democrats acting unilaterally, getting the country in trouble. He
would also speak in Illinois.
Representative Ed Cox of Georgia said that the Dixiecrats
would have no impact on the way the House would be organized by the
Democrats when they won a majority in the election. He predicted
that Southerners would unite with Northern Democrats to bring unity
to the party and the nation, to effect an end to the "kneeling"
to Stalin.
Weather in Charlotte looked good for Thursday's Miracle Day,
during which a 120-acre rundown farm owned by two veterans would be
turned into fertile land in the course of a few hours through the
volunteer effort of farmers of the region as a demonstration of soil
conservation techniques. Provision was being made for 15,000 cars of
spectators of the event.
WBT's Grady Cole would be on the scene to provide radio
listeners with the plow-by-plow description of the day's
festivities.
On the editorial page, "Get Your Red Feather" tells of the beginning on Thursday of the Community Chest annual
drive, with its symbol, the red feather. It urges contributing to
this worthy cause and lists the several organizations benefited by
the fund.
"A Grim Jest" remarks that with all the tension
in the world regarding the Paris U.N. meeting and the Berlin
blockade crisis, financial writer in New York Louis Schneider had
simply concluded his column by saying, "Pray for war,"
for the fact that scrap steel prices were approaching $50 per ton
and consumer inventories were at the highest peak in months, with a
lot of receipts due from foreign investors.
The piece regards it as a grim jest given the preordained
outcome of an atomic war. It regards the statement also as foolhardy
as the Russian propaganda machine would feed on such a jest.
It advises fervently praying instead for peace and resolution
of the conflict through "patience, calmness, and spiritual
fortitude", as counseled by Assistant Secretary of State
Charles Saltzman, speaking at the University of New Hampshire.
"North Carolina's Titanium" tells of the
development of the mining of titanium, once thought to be little
more than an impurity. Demand for the hard metal had steadily
increased for use in manufacturing and North Carolina's mines would
prove a valuable resource for its development. Northern capital from
Du Pont should be welcomed in that process. People in the western
and the extreme eastern parts of the state, where average income was
lowest, would benefit as there were in those areas deposits of
limenite and rutile, from which titanium was derived.
Drew Pearson discusses Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan,
whose original reputation as a great prosecutor had become tarnished
now that he headed since 1947 the Senate Investigating Committee. He
started in the spring of that year by going after automaker Preston
Tucker, claiming, after extensive investigation, that major
revelations would be forthcoming. None were. He then dropped the
whole matter without explanation.
At the time, Mr. Tucker paid nearly $18,000 to Mrs. Dudley
Hay, former GOP National Committee member and National Committee
secretary, and her husband. She was a friend to Senator Ferguson.
There was nothing per se illegal about the payment, but it appeared
as payoff to get the investigation dropped. Mrs. Hay went to
Washington several times in the spring of 1947 and called Senator
Ferguson on the telephone several times while there.
The Justice Department would shortly call a grand jury to
investigate the Tucker matter.
Unless banks would loosen home loan credit for veterans, the
Congress would pass legislation to put the Government in the loan
business, as warned by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Federal banks
nevertheless were continuing to cut down on home loans, forcing up
interest rates on G.I. loans from 4 to 4.5 percent.
The labor committee for President Truman had offered $2,000
in prizes to unions which turned out the most members at the ballot
box on November 2.
Marquis Childs relates that notwithstanding the fact that the
Progressive Party of Henry Wallace was losing strength daily, a
solid core would vote for him anyway. The great majority of the
supporters were neither Communists nor fellow-travelers. Many were
church people sincerely seeking peace in the world and believed that
Mr. Wallace was the candidate who could achieve it. Others saw him
as the true heir to FDR's New Deal.
Mr. Childs says that he had received numerous letters from
Wallace supporters in recent weeks, some expressing hurt that the
party was deemed by many to be dominated by Communists. He seeks to
answer those letters, first by defining what was meant by
"Communist", declaring it to be someone who placed the
interests of the Soviet Union ahead of the United States and
regarded everything the former did as right and everything the
latter did as wrong. With that as his definition, he proceeds to
provide the factual basis for his conclusion that the Progressives
were dominated by Communists.
Most of the people around Mr. Wallace echoed the Soviet line.
Mr Wallace, himself, in his speeches, had consistently attacked the
U.S. while defending Russia. The American Communist Party and its
front organizations had actively supported the Wallace candidacy,
appearing to be directed from Moscow. The platforms of both the
Communists and the Progressives were similar, both opposing the
Marshall Plan and other foreign aid measures. That part of the labor
movement active in eliminating Communism from the unions, as CIO
head Philip Murray, opposed Mr. Wallace.
While the U.S. was not always right, it was neither always
wrong and he views these foregoing indisputable facts as showing
that the party was controlled by the Communists. He concludes that
the tragedy of Mr. Wallace was that he had tied himself to the
Communist line, one which led to loss of freedom and integrity.
Joseph Alsop finds the new Republicans, such as Thomas Dewey,
Harold Stassen, and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., having overcome the
"deadwood" of the Harding-Coolidge-Hoover era, to be the
reason why Mr. Dewey was going to become the next President.
On the Democratic side, Justice William O. Douglas had
proposed the candidacy of Adlai Stevenson for Governor of Illinois,
a departure from the strictly localized practices of the big city
machines of the past. Ed Kelly of Chicago, in 1944, had blocked his
friend, Justice Douglas, from obtaining the vice-presidential
nomination and forced the choice of Harry Truman.
As Jacob Arvey, the new political boss in Illinois, realized,
the machines now had to offer a better educated electorate
government service, not just the personal favors of the old
machines. The machine had gone along with Martin Kennelly, a clean
government man, becoming Mayor of Chicago. But he had stressed clean
government at the expense of some of the public welfare programs.
Yet his campaign had saved Chicago for the Democrats.
Samuel Grafton, no longer carried by The News, finds
Governor Earl Warren, GOP vice-presidential candidate, receiving a
lot of praise for his enunciated stance that the country needed both
parties, defending the parties for the lack of differences between
them on many of the issues, especially foreign policy. Mr. Grafton
finds the position commendable but also a bland vision for the
country, a kind of mechanical politics in a time steered by
technology and mechanical devices.
"It is not surprising, perhaps, that in a country as
our own, and as skillful in developing mechanical devices, we should
long for some automatic, self-lubricating, double-compensating,
positive action political system which will function without
attention, and give us wonderful presidents and splendid policies
while we sleep or go shopping, and in spite of all human tendencies
toward error."
Sumner Welles, former Undersecretary of State until August,
1943, discusses the attempt by Britain and the U.S. to stampede the
U.N. into adoption of the posthumously proposed plan of Count Folke
Bernadotte re Palestine. He regards the failure of its adoption to
be fortunate. The plan was to recognize Israel and provide Arab
control over Arab portions of Palestine.
The situation in Palestine, with U.N. uncertainty, only
incited Arab imperialists and Jewish terrorists to further
aggression, tempting both Russia and the Western powers to intervene
for strategic self-interest.
Israel was warranted in rejecting the Bernadotte plan. It
would have removed the Negreb from Israel and reduced territory of
the new state by more than half of that provided in the partition
plan of the previous November 26. Such reduction would have
prevented Israel from providing sanctuary to more than a handful of
refugees and ceded to Trans-Jordan a resource, the Negreb, vital to
its future development. Such cession, however, would have benefited
Britain and so the latter had given its hearty approbation to the
proposal.
Secretary of State Marshall's approval of the plan gave cause
for additional dissension between Russia and the U.S., encouraged
more anti-American sentiment in Israel, especially as the U.S. had
been the primary sponsor of the original partition plan.
The U.S. was underwriting the effort by Britain to rewrite
the plan to Britain's strategic and economic benefit. It was a
repetition of the mistake in the early Thirties by the League of
Nations, placing momentary expediency ahead of collective security
by refusing to take a stand against aggression.
There was an opportunity for the smaller nations to lead an
effort toward peace by supporting the original partition plan.
Another Pome appears from the Atlanta Journal, this
one "Outlining What To Do When You See a Woman of Such
Enchanting Beauty That You Are Struck Dumb:
