The Charlotte News

Wednesday, February 25, 1948

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that 74 House Democrats from the South had signed a pledge to "oppose to the finish" the President's civil rights proposal. The pledge had been drawn up by some 50 Southern Democrats the previous Friday. Some of the Southerners were now voicing opposition to the President's nomination as the Democratic candidate.

The House Judiciary Subcommittee approved the Federal anti-lynching law, part of the President's program, the principal provisions of which are set forth on the page. The legislation would now proceed to the full Committee.

In Prague, President Eduard Benes announced that he had accepted Communist Premier Klement Gottwald's proposal for a new Cabinet, dominated by Communists but including some Social Democrats and members of other parties.

The Senate passed the one-month temporary extension of rent controls already passed by the House, and the measure was thus sent to the President for approval. The bill was designed as provisional while details of a longer range program were considered by the House. The Senate also passed the long-range 14-month rent extension and sent it to the House.

A General Accounting Office report of widespread fraud in war contract settlements, involving about one in twenty such contracts or 145 total regarding some four million dollars in overpayments, brought calls on Capitol Hill for a prompt investigation of the matter.

North Carolina Senator William B. Umstead announced his candidacy for re-election to the seat to which he was appointed by Governor Gregg Cherry on the death of Senator Josiah W. Bailey in December, 1946. His only announced opponent in the primary race was former Governor J. Melville Broughton—who would win the election, only to die after two months in office.

In Tallahassee, Fla., a white man was in custody for criminal assault of a sixteen-year old black girl following indictment by the Grand Jury. The man allegedly had hired her as a nurse for his children and she claimed to have then accompanied him to a remote spot where the assault occurred.

In Hollywood, a large lumber company fire destroyed part of a square block and threatened the rest.

In Washington, eight persons were injured when a streetcar struck a bus and bounced some 60 feet off the tracks at an intersection four blocks from the Capitol.

It was fortunate that the whole place was not destroyed.

In Charlotte, mud, loosened from city streets in a light rain, coated the sidewalks and was being tracked by pedestrians everywhere they went. The slow rain was not hard enough to wash away the muddy residue left by alternating spring and winter weather of recent weeks.

You better find yourself a mud-shoveler down 'ere at the hardware store.

The City Manager of Charlotte, Henry Yancey, was seeking an audience with the State Attorney General to find out the limits of authority between the City and County Government and how they might combine services to promote efficiency and fiscal parsimony.

The initial respondents to The News straw poll in the presidential race favored General Eisenhower and Henry Wallace over the President. Mr. Wallace tied for first place with General Eisenhower, followed in order by the President and Senator Arthur Vandenberg. Thomas Dewey was tied for third with Senator Taft and former Secretary of State James Byrnes. In addition to those for Mr. Byrnes, votes were cast for such Democrats as Ellis Arnall and Senator Harry F. Byrd.

The poll was continuing. Send in your three cents worth on the zig-zag.

On the editorial page, "U.S. Stands by United Nations" tells of the primary argument against U.S. support of the U.N. effort to save the partition plan, and hence the viability of the U.N. itself, being that it would anger the Arab states, give the Soviets a foothold in Palestine via their part in an international police force, and thus jeopardize the U.S. interests in the Middle East, significantly, continued access to the oil on which the country had increasingly come to depend as its own reserves had been depleted by the war.

And, moreover, even if undertaken, there was no guarantee that armed force would quell the conflict in Palestine and enable the partition. There was also no assurance that the other nations on the Security Council would support creation of an international police force for the purpose. Britain had not liked the partition plan from the beginning and had shown an increasing sympathy, since it was passed the previous November, for the Arab cause.

But not to take action would leave the door open for Russia to undertake unilateral force to stop the violence as a threat to its own security.

No progress could be made without agreement between the U.S. and Russia. It ventures that agreement on this issue, despite agreement on partition itself, would require more concessions than either country previously had been disposed to make.

The situation gave a bargaining advantage to Russia. It was to be hoped that forces were directing the nations against their will along a course toward peace.

"A Gain for Our Children" discusses the local plan championed by the Jaycees to establish public school classes for mentally retarded children. The step was needed, and, with the help of such experts as Dr. Bernardine Schmidt from the University of Mississippi, soon to provide a talk on the subject, the effort should prove salutary.

"Wallace Out of This World" finds Henry Wallace's testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee to have established only that peace on the world stage was impossible and that Mr. Wallace was the last person to be entrusted with the responsibility of trying to achieve peace. His plan to end the cold war was to introduce world socialism. His efforts would make the Soviets even more intransigent in their claims of imperialism against the U.S., given his statements against the Administration, the Wall Street bankers, and Republican "imperialists".

Instead, a program was needed which made sense to Wall Street and Washington, as well as to Moscow. Leaders could not be replaced overnight, as Mr. Wallace appeared to assume. It had to be impressed upon the leaders and people of both sides that war was not inevitable.

A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled, "Man Without a Country", tells of a Harvard graduate of good background renouncing his U.S. citizenship to become a citizen of the world. He was concerned about the growing nationalism in the world. Many in the country shared the basic sentiment. But by taking the extreme step which the young man had, he had sacrificed his role in determining the future course of the cause which he espoused. Even the proponents of world government allowed that national identities and citizenships would not be renounced under such a formulation, only that the larger citizenship of the world would take its place alongside national citizenship.

Drew Pearson tells of the British and French Governments seeking to suppress the release by the State Department of seized German Foreign Office documents showing that Russia had sought to form a separate peace with Germany during the summer of 1943 because of the slow opening of the second front in Western Europe by the other Allies to take the Nazi heat off of Russia. The reason was that Russia had seized German documents showing that the British, under Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, along with his supporting Cliveden Set, had urged Germany to invade Russia. Those documents would paint Britain in as bad or worse light than the U.S. documents did Russia. Lord Lothian and Lord Runciman were center stage in this British effort. At one point, FDR, alarmed by reports of British banks lending money to Germany in the spring of 1939 for its rearmament, warned Mr. Chamberlain that if the efforts continued, Great Britain would have to function on its own. Following the creation of the Munich Pact at the end of September, 1938, FDR instructed Ambassador Joseph Kennedy to tell Mr. Chamberlain that appeasement had to end, that Hitler only understood hard-boiled tactics.

It eventually leaked that Prime Minister Chamberlain, himself, had investments in German armament. Not until March 16, 1939, a day after Hitler took the remainder of Czechoslovakia, did the British finally stop their appeasement policy. Throughout the prior time, British leaders urged Hitler to invade Russia while Britain supplied the funding for the armament.

He notes that many observers considered the policy of Republican foreign policy architect John Foster Dulles and Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, favoring rebuilding of German industry, to parallel that of the Cliveden Set in 1938.

Senator Kenneth McKellar placed a document in the Congressional Record recently, giving himself credit for establishing TVA, when he had been one of its most ardent critics through time for its want of supplying him political patronage. The document had been written at the direction of Senator McKellar, himself, by a staff member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Earl Cooper.

Marquis Childs discusses the attempt to woo Henry Wallace back to the Democratic Party being futile, as Mr. Wallace was a visionary who believed in his vision, as all such visionaries. He had described his followers as Gideon's Army, implicitly placing him in the role of Gideon. Such a man was unlikely to return to the worldly camp of the Democrats.

Some had written Mr. Childs, based on earlier columns on Mr. Wallace, and accused him of suggesting that only Communists would support the former Vice-President. But that was the opposite of what he had said in January when he expressed that Mr. Wallace had probably dealt the President's re-election bid a mortal blow. For Mr. Wallace's followers were in favor of all that was good and against all that was bad and fit therefore into Gideon's Army.

It was also true, however, that most of the zealots and manipulators around Mr. Wallace were Communists or sympathetic with the principles of Communism. They were aiming for 1952, with 1948 merely a staging ground. It was hoped that the Wallace candidacy would cause the Republicans to nominate a conservative as Senator John Brickman or Speaker Joe Martin, who would then be elected and provoke such reaction that Mr. Wallace would win the support of the defectors in 1952 after an economic depression.

While it was doubtful that Mr. Wallace, himself, thought in such terms, the end result was that it was extremely dubious that Mr. Wallace would return to the Democratic Party.

DeWitt MacKenzie discusses the attempt of Czechoslovakia to escape the Communist net being drawn over Eastern Europe and the dynamic in the effort providing insight to the methodology of the Communists in a relatively open arena. First came the infiltration subtly of Communists into trade unions and political organizations, until certain key positions in Government could be obtained, after which would come the death blow to liberty. He thinks the same sort of thing could transpire in North or South America and thus warranted analysis.

Washington said that there was no doubt that Moscow was pulling the strings of Premier Klement Gottwald. The present crisis occurred when eight anti-Communist ministers resigned the coalition Cabinet. President Eduard Benes then refused initially to accept the resignations, which had been precipitated by the efforts of the Premier to communize the police force. Premier Gottwald insisted that the resignations be accepted, that he might fill the positions with Communists. The Premier then had his Minister of Interior place the police in front of all government buildings and foreign embassies, stifling speech to a degree and arresting foes of Communism. Police seized the headquarters of the anti-Communist National Socialist Party and the country quickly was turned into a police state.

The questions thus arising were whether the Russians would dare challenge world opinion by using force to take over Czechoslovakia and if force were to be used, would the Czech people fight, if so, would they have the strength to resist the Communist tide. Mr. MacKenzie deems it a crucial moment for the future of freedom.

A letter writer tells of his gloom regarding several stories in the news of late, from the Chinese situation as discussed by the Alsops, (including the prospect of Soviet joinder to the embryonic Communist movements of Southeast Asia, not "Southwest Asia"), to the Palestine partition plan discussed by Dorothy Thompson (in the Greensboro Daily News). Walter Lippmann thought that emergency measures beyond the Marshall Plan might become necessary.

Don't worry, mister. A-Day will occur January 1, 1953 and take away all your troubles in a flash.

A letter writer finds the attempts by ministers the previous Sunday, in honor of George Washington's birthday, to paint the nation's first President as an orthodox Christian to be without foundation in historical fact. He had attended the Episcopal Church, but mainly to accompany wife Martha. Bishop White had said that President Washington was a great and good man but not a believing Christian. The rector of the church in New York which the first couple attended during his Presidency, said that he was a "Deist", meaning that he believed in a God of Nature but not that the Scriptures came from God.

Such may explain why the General, in his devoirs to the ladies of the countryside, is said by some noteworthy historians to have been the father of the country in more ways than one.

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