The Charlotte News
Wednesday, October 20, 1948
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.N. political committee voted 41 to 6, with ten abstentions, to adopt the Canadian proposal to have the nuclear control issue turned over to the Big Five of the Security Council plus Canada to seek agreement on basic principles. The committee also rejected the Soviet proposal to ban the bomb and simultaneously create an international control organization to enforce the ban.
In Seoul, a battle was expected between loyal and insurgent Korean soldiers in the wake of a rebel band of soldiers having killed or captured a hundred policemen and burned the police stations in two towns, Yosu and nearby Sunchon. Martial law was declared in South Korea and Home Minister Y. Y. Yoon said that the rebels were led by a cell of 2,500 Communist soldiers based at Yosu. The growing insurgent force, numbering as many as 4,000, was said to be marching on Kwangju, capital of South Cholia province. Regular troops had been sent to meet them and the battle was expected to ensue during the night. The American military occupation commander said that he was "reasonably sure" that no Americans were involved in the fighting.
A Russian bomber with three Russian soldiers aboard, including two officers seeking asylum, landed at the U.S. base near Linz, Austria. A sergeant aboard who said that he did not know the plane's intended destination and wished to return to Russia was allowed to return with the plane. The two officers were granted their request for political asylum.
Two black educators and attorneys of Howard University recommended to a conference of black college presidents that to end discrimination in segregated Southern education facilities would require application for injunction by the Federal Government to halt payments to states for land-grant colleges if the states did not distribute Federal funds fairly between black and white schools, asking Congress to require states to contribute equal amounts of state funds to black schools, taking similar action at the state level, bringing damage suits in individual cases of discrimination, and suing to obtain admission to white land-grant schools on the basis of discrimination in the failure to maintain equal black schools under the Fourteenth Amendment. They said that such actions would have to be undertaken until the Supreme Court declared separate-but-equal doctrine unconstitutional, a necessity for finally ending educational discrimination.
In Angola, La., the wife of a prison camp captain was found beaten and stabbed to death in her home on the penitentiary grounds. A trusty was being sought for questioning. He had been missing since the murder. Bloodhounds were on the trail.
In Atlanta, a 62-year old groom sued his 19-year old bride for divorce, claiming she had married him just to get a baby sitter for her six-month old baby by a prior marriage. He said that she had left him to care for the baby while she went drinking with a soldier for seven hours. She also, he alleged, resisted his advances by placing the baby between them and later exhibiting a sharp double-edged dagger. He said that she had startled his relatives in Concord, N.C., by asserting that she had been married six times, had killed two of her husbands, divorced two, and that two had run away. The bride of ten days said that she was willing to have the marriage annulled. She claimed that the statement she made about the six other husbands was just a joke, that her new husband did not appreciate her sense of humor.
Tom Fesperman of The News tells more of the President's two speeches the previous day in Raleigh. At one point in Mr. Truman's nationally broadcast State Fair speech, a farmer had muttered underneath his breath that the President ought say something about civil rights. During the motorcade earlier, a man had shouted, "Hooray for Thurmond!" Otherwise, the day belonged to the President, albeit with some spectators drawing adverse comparisons to FDR and the excited crowd reaction he would have elicited, compared to the tepid response inspired by President Truman. The Fairgrounds "Hoover-cart" speech, as the press had dubbed it, was one which ought to have had Democratic audiences cheering and yelling, but the crowd, though large, remained polite and unexcited.
In Miami, just as GOP vice-presidential nominee Earl Warren led the California delegation into a parade as part of the American Legion convention activities, a deluge began which damaged several pieces of band equipment and floats, drenching the participants. The Miami Daily News headlined the news of the weather interruption as: "Better Than Snow". Governor Warren later addressed the convention.
Dick Young of The News provides the third report in his series of articles regarding the cities and towns of North Carolina not getting their fair share of gasoline and licensing revenues from the State for the purpose of maintaining and improving roads. He points out that fire and police departments had to pay the 6-cent gasoline tax to the State to keep their vehicles running, but the State did not give the money back to the municipalities. The total expended locally for the year in such taxes was $16,800, equivalent to one cent added to the property tax rate in Charlotte. The State only refunded five of six of the cents on "off-highway" equipment.
Lance, Inc., was closing its Rock Hill, S.C., plant opened in 1944, as being "no longer practical". No crackers and peanut butter any longer for you, Rock Hill.
The second installment of Second Time Girl by Rob Eden appears on page 4-A. It's awesome and iconic, from one of literature's genuinely awesome icons, possibly the best ever. Be sure and to not miss it.
On the editorial page, "Dewey Pulls a Boner"—possibly in subtle reference to the concluding lines of his June nomination acceptance speech—tells of Thomas Dewey having committed his first blunder on the campaign trail by claiming that he had initiated the bipartisan approach to foreign policy during the 1944 presidential campaign. Former Secretary of State Cordell Hull was quick to protest, saying that he had invited Mr. Dewey to approach foreign policy in that manner and that Mr. Dewey had instead turned his foreign policy determinations over to John Foster Dulles, albeit adopting a bipartisan approach then and since.
The piece finds Mr. Dewey's campaign of conciliation and unity laudable but also so polite that the crowds were gravitating to President Truman. The GOP candidate had to be careful that his effort at being nice did not make people mad at him in the process.
"Pay of Legislators" tells of the four amendments to the State Constitution on the ballot two weeks hence, none of which had created much excitement among voters. But each was important. One would increase the pay of legislators from the 1928 adopted standard of $600 for a regular session, usually lasting 60 days, to $1,200, with an increase also in pay for extra sessions.
The editorial favors this amendment as encouraging the election of better qualified legislators.
"Palestine's Challenge to the UN" finds that the U.N., the Arabs and the Israelis had each failed in their responsibilities to achieve peace. The latest result was the recent fighting in the Negev desert in southern Palestine. Even if the Israelis were to accept the ceasefire ordered by the Security Council, it would be at most a short hiatus in the fighting.
The three parties were making only half-hearted attempts to end the fighting. The U.N. had adopted the partition plan the previous November but had not stood behind it. The U.S. likewise had pursued an uncertain policy toward Palestine, with the President and Secretary of State constantly at odds. Russia had exhibited a cautious, confusing attitude, while Britain had trained and supplied the Arab Legion, enabling it to be a formidable fighting force.
The Jews would continue to fight until they had gained all of the territory promised under partition. The Arabs would fight as long as they had ammunition and arms. Israel would never accept two parts of the Bernadotte proposed plan, which he had drawn up before his assassination in mid-September, placing both Jerusalem and the Negev under Arab control.
The only two ways to stop the fighting would be either to accept the Bernadotte plan or the original partition plan, and then stand behind the plan chosen with an international police force. It was unlikely the U.N. would follow either course, however, as it had no such police force in existence and Russia had refused to cooperate in its creation.
The only thing the U.N. could do at present was to order the opposing sides to stop fighting, and such effort was proving ineffective.
A piece from the Charleston News and Courier, titled "Fighting Among Themselves", remarks on there being two Democratic parties in the South. One was the regular Democratic Party which, while supporting the President and Democrats for the House and Senate and in state races, refused to support the President's policies on civil rights. The other was a party, comprised primarily of black citizens, which supported the President completely, including his civil rights program.
The piece remarks that the latter position was sincere and consistent, one which would not elect members of Congress who would then betray the party and its platform.
Drew Pearson tells of the President's directive to Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, to increase the training of reserve contingents of the Army and Air Force to match those of the Navy, having been a slap in the face to Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall and Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington. The top brass at the Pentagon were not in favor of reserve training, wanted a large standing army.
But the President believed that such a standing army was far too costly and unnecessary, that reserve training was the better path. Secretary of State Marshall and the President's chief of staff Admiral William Leahy favored the reserve approach to back up a small standing army.
Mr. Forrestal was refusing to campaign for the President, saying that he did not have the time. But a year earlier, he had been campaigning quietly for the vice-presidential nomination.
The Dixiecrats were quietly funneling money into the GOP campaign of Senator Joseph Ball of Minnesota in an effort to defeat civil rights advocate Mayor Hubert Humphrey.
Railroad engineers were contemplating picketing the train of Governor Dewey with signs saying that his engineer was not a lunatic, in reference to the Governor's comments to a crowd in the wake of an engineer having backed the train up into a crowd of a thousand people. The engineers, ironically the only group of railroad workers who had not endorsed the President, were angered by the statement and the other glib remark of Mr. Dewey, that the engineer should be shot at dawn.
Judge Sam Rosenman was preparing two drafts for the President's New York speech the following month in which he would seek to explain further why he had proposed the mission to Moscow for Chief Justice Fred Vinson and that it was not intended to cut Secretary Marshall out of the diplomatic loop.
Mr. Pearson recommends to Jim Farley and Senator Chan Gurney that before visiting with Francisco Franco and urging the country to recognize Spain under his regime, they might wish to talk to refugees coming from Spain of late. He provides excerpts of reports from three such refugees, telling of political arrests, taking of property, and other such repressive measures in Spain. Sabotage as a result was on the increase, had reached levels almost as bad as during the Spanish civil war.
Marquis Childs comments on the easy victory ahead for Governor Dewey and the problems he would face when he became President. He would have to propose to re-arm Europe and seek a new appropriation for ERP, as well as to begin the process of urging that the U.S. join the Western European Union.
The new President would need to undertake the "house-cleaning" of the Government which he had promised, along with lower taxes.
Mr. Childs wonders why, with victory so assured, Mr. Dewey did not eliminate his campaigning state to state. One answer was the desire to control the Senate. But the Governor also genuinely wanted to promote unity in the country.
Mr. Dewey was trying to convince the average voter that the GOP was no longer the party of reaction, as under President Hoover and leaders in Congress, but rather was a dynamic new party of progress. He also wanted to assure that the two-party process was healthy. Among GOP members of Congress, he had been closest to Senators Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., and Raymond Baldwin, and Congressman Christian Herter, all progressives on foreign policy and not reactionary on domestic issues.
Thus, another task which he would undertake as President was the refashioning of the party. But he still had to get along with such isolationists as Dewey Short of Missouri, whom Mr. Dewey had endorsed, as well as reactionaries Senator Curly Brooks and Representative Harold Knutson.
Such members of his own party would ultimately provide a showdown with Mr. Dewey regarding his New Deal-type program.
James Marlow discusses the President's question posed to the American Legion convention in Miami, whether there could be peace with Russia. The Communists in power believed in the ultimate collapse of capitalism and world control by Communism. Before the war, the Stalinists were content to remain inside Russia and conduct reforms. But after the war, with Russia no longer fearing any country in Europe, things had changed and the effort to create satellites in Eastern Europe begun, controlled by Communist stooge governments.
Were the West to pull out of Germany, the Russians would soon take over, and then all of Western Europe would follow. If America followed an isolationist course and withdrew aid from China and Asia, those areas, too, would soon be communized. Then the Communists would move into Latin America. So, only the U.S. and Canada would be left as islands of democracy. Mr. Marlow suggests that under such a scenario, the U.S. would not be able to survive long in its current form.
The only way to have peace would be for Russia to abandon its goal of world Communism, eliminating Moscow's role in the fifth columns in the U.S. and elsewhere. But it was unlikely that Russia would ever do so voluntarily.
Sumner Welles, former Undersecretary of State until August, 1943, wonders how ERP could succeed if the Congress, as suggested by its action in the summer on the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, would curtail imports. America was acquiescing to the British belief that military alliances and compensation agreements were adequate.
Former Ambassador to Britain Joseph P. Kennedy had recently urged a Marshall Plan for the Americas, to re-invigorate the FDR Good Neighbor policy with Latin America. He believed that building up these countries would broaden the base of assistance ultimately in the world conflict. But thus far, nothing was being done about this important proposal, a critical mistake, as Latin America would prove vital as allies in the contest with the Soviet Union.
Less than two percent of the ERP funds had gone to Latin America, resulting in growing political and social unrest in the countries of the hemisphere.
Mr. Welles believes that if such a policy were undertaken now, along with extension without qualification of the trade agreements and facilitating the Western European Union, then the future could be approached with far greater confidence.
A letter from the secretary-treasurer of the Second District Dental Society thanks the newspaper for its support in making the recent Charlotte meeting of the Society a success. The newspaper had conveyed well, he thinks, the issues regarding the need for a new dental school in the state.
A letter writer comments on the October 14 "Mirror of Your Mind" column by Lawrence Gould, consulting "psychologist", re eating habits and anxiety experienced over missed meals. He says that he never realized that on a day in 1937 when he skipped lunch, he simply was not very hungry, and that on a day in 1940 when he had missed breakfast and did not feel good until lunch, it was because his mother had not given him his 6 o'clock feeding on a day in 1932.
You must be one of those young
whipper-snapper smart-alecks. You'll find out, that when thou mocketh
the psychologist, thou shalt wind up in need of one sooner than
later. How are they supposed to earn a living, after all, except by
convincing everyone, as a public service, that they are at least a
little nuts, that their heads are not quite screwed on tight, and
that a visit to the psychologist will sort out the nuts from the
bolts and get them screwed up tight?
Parenthetically
Framed Edition
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