Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that King Abdullah of
Trans-Jordan had stated that his Arab Legion troops had occupied
Jericho, less than 20 miles northeast of Jerusalem. The troops
present in Jericho, however, stated that they were there as part of
the British protection force and were unaware of any plans by King
Abdullah to have them fight the Jews.
Jewish sources claimed that Arab Legion troops had shelled a
Jewish settlement near Naharaim on the Trans-Jordan frontier,
killing ten Jews. Jewish sources said that Haganah had captured two
police fortresses, following British abandonment, near the
Trans-Jordan frontier during the night. The Irgun organization said
that it had captured the Arab quarter Manshieh of the Arab port of
Jaffa. British forces had been dispatched to break up the
Haganah-Irgun attack on Jaffa. The attack, according to a Jewish
Agency spokesman, was to alleviate Arab offenses against Tel Aviv
launched from the city.
The death toll in Palestine since partition had been approved
by the U.N. on November 29 had reached 3,427, including 1,313 Jews,
1,909 Arabs, 171 British, four Americans, and 30 others.
British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin reaffirmed the British
intention to withdraw from the mandate in Palestine beginning May
15, as previously indicated. There would be no extension as the
Arabs and Jews had not made any movement toward resolution of their
differences, the previously stated British contingency for a
postponement until the Arab and Jewish states could be formed.
A nationwide rail strike, prompted by the Brotherhood of
Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, was set to begin May 11 as mediation
continued to try to avert it.
Senator Styles Bridges might quit the board of the UMW
welfare and pensions fund, to which he had been appointed willingly
to end the coal strike two weeks earlier, if he were to become
convinced that John L. Lewis would lead a strike on July 1 when the
present contract expired.
At its convention, the Textile Workers Union removed the
power of subordinate organizations to call strikes and placed the
authority in the hands of the union president. A drive to unionize
the South had admittedly flopped, according to a union spokesman.
The FDA sought to round up a contaminated glucose shipment,
potentially injurious or fatal, from Cutter Laboratories of
Berkeley, California. Three deaths had already occurred after
administration of the glucose, though direct causation was unclear
as the patients had been very ill. The shipments had been directed
to Florida and the Southeast.
Gael Sullivan, as expected, resigned as executive director of
the DNC to enter the private sector.
Republican presidential candidate Harold Stassen won the
uncontested Pennsylvania primary, narrowly defeating by 4,000 votes
Governor Dewey. The vote was not binding on the state's delegation
to the convention. The primary was conducted by write-in votes only.
HUAC unanimously approved legislation to permit criminal
prosecution of Communist Party officials and to expose members and
fronts.
The Senate Rules Committee passed the anti-poll tax measure
previously passed by the House.
The Supreme Court, based on systematic exclusion of blacks
from juries in Forsyth County, N.C., had ordered new trials for nine
men charged with misdemeanors in connection with tobacco strikes in
1946, while the decision upheld convictions of a labor organizer and
three others on similar charges, leaving the State Supreme Court
somewhat baffled by "ambiguity", according to Chief
Justice Walter Stacy. He said that the High Court had not
invalidated the North Carolina jury selection statute, condemning
only the particular practice in the county by which juries were
chosen.
That to which Chief Justice Stacy alluded will have to remain an ambiguity as apparently someone ripped the case out of the reporter, the citation, Brunson, et al. v. North Carolina, 333 U.S. 851, coming up empty. The problem may have been a distinction between selection of the jury venire by a process systematically excluding blacks in the nine cases, cured by lack of actual exclusion of blacks by the prosecutor in exercise of peremptory challenges in the four other cases not reversed. But that is only an educated guess.
In Dallas, whether of N.C. or Texas not being clear, two
alleged traffic offenders failed to appear in court as both had been
killed in separate traffic accidents since issuance of the
citations.
A wedding of an Anderson, S.C., woman, 26, dying of leukemia,
would take place in an Atlanta hospital on May 16, unless the
doctors' prediction that she would not live that long came true. The
woman's parents lived in Charlotte.
On the editorial page, "Promise of the Passover" tells of the destruction in 70 A.D. by the Roman Emperor Hadrian of
the temple of Solomon in Jerusalem to erect a new Capitolina in
honor of Jupiter. The Jews who resisted had been massacred by the
thousands and those who submitted were sold together with the horses
at the Fair of Hebron. Israel was destroyed.
Now, in 1948, the armies of Jews and Arabs were gathered on
the southern borders of the city and ready to engage in battle.
The week since the previous Friday had marked the observance
of Passover, celebrating the deliverance from Egypt of the Jewish
people under Moses.
While deliverance of the Jewish people once again appeared to
be realized the previous November at the approval of partition of
Palestine, since that time Arab opposition had intervened to prevent
it from realization without violence.
The coming year brought new significance to the meaning and
promise of Passover. It would be the supreme test for the young U.N.
"'They'll Fortify the Moon'" remarks on Secretary
of Defense James Forrestal's comment before the Senate
Appropriations Subcommittee in reference to leaving to the military
the planning of the nation's defenses.
The Secretary favored a 66-group Air Force instead of the
70-group force favored by Air Secretary Stuart Symington and members
of Congress, anxious to show Russia that the country was committed
to opposing its expansion with force if necessary, but without
implementing yet the unpopular draft or UMT. Meanwhile, the military
strategists were content with a 55-group force.
The piece finds the Congressmen to be deluding themselves in
this latter regard, as the larger Air Force would require manpower
to operate, ultimately necessitating a draft to
provide the requisite personnel. The Congress would therefore have
to implement the draft and UMT shortly after the election in any
event.
"Our Loyal Government Workers" reports that the
Federal Government's review of loyalty among its workers
had, after completing over 60 percent of the process, found less
than a thousand cases in need of further review, many of whom
voluntarily had left the Government for the private sector and
others having been cleared. No one had proved a dangerous
subversive.
The editorial thinks that an apology by the organizers of the
hunt was due to the Government and its workers, as well as to the
public for creating unnecessary alarm and expense.
—Yeah, Bob. We have to get to work on that, as November is
not far away and they are starting to think that everything is very
safe and secure in the Government. We must undermine their trust,
make sure they know...
—Yeah, absolutely, Bob ... that there are real crooks in
there.
—Snakes, that's right. Find us some snakes, and soon.
—Pigs? Yeah, yeah.
A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled
"Ridiculous Position", finds it absurd that the country
had not yet joined the U.N. World Health Organization, despite the
U.S. having sponsored its formation. The reason for the sloth was
that the House Rules Committee had pigeonholed the legislation
approving membership, for the belief that the WHO would support
socialized medicine. It had long ago been passed by the Senate. The
AMA supported membership, stood firmly against socialized medicine.
It finds the Rules Committee to be the last bastion of isolationism
in the country.
Drew Pearson tells of the President having conducted a policy
under which war plants had been sold off as surplus and
demobilization sustained as he urged the temporary draft, UMT, and
expansion of the military. Representative Lyndon Johnson of Texas
had finally called the President's attention to the need to halt the
sale of the plants. The President had at first ignored him but after
persistence, Congressman Johnson obtained the President's attention.
The President had thought that, pursuant to the contracts of sale,
the plants would revert to the Government in the case of an
emergency, but that was not the case and Congressman Johnson made
the President aware of his error. The President eventually acceded
to the request.
Atomic Energy Commission chairman David Lilienthal had not
told the President in his recent conference with him that the AEC
had discovered a method to wipe out wheat rust and other such
destructive fungi through irradiating it and changing the genetic
pattern of the rust's growth, making it attack weeds instead of the
wheat.
The campaign of Harold Stassen, while soliciting $1,000
contributions, inadvertently sent a letter to Senator Theodore Green
of Rhode Island, a Democrat who was a member of the Senate Rules
Committee which oversaw campaign finance. Senator Green sent a
letter in response asking for a complete report on how much money
had been raised and from whom.
The President had intended to throw the first pitch of the
Major League Baseball season with his right hand to keep everyone
guessing, but instead decided to switch to his more reliable left,
lest the press make something out of a low grounder tossed with his
right.
A portion of the Texas Democrats were beginning a revolt to
join the rest of the Southern revolters against the President,
despite the Texas delegation as a whole recently having pledged its
support to the party nominee. Such a revolt had been attempted in
Texas in 1944 against FDR.
Marquis Childs finds that Republicans believed that the
President had tried to pick a quarrel with the Republican Congress
for the sake of election year politics in his reappointments to the
Atomic Energy Commission of the five existing members. He did so
without consulting the chairman of the Atomic Energy Committee,
Senator Bourke Hickenlooper. The President could have made recess
appointments in August and left the permanent appointments until
after the election. He appointed the controversial chairman David
Lilienthal to the only five-year term within the staggered terms, each of the five terms based on decreasing one year increments designed to provide continuity.
Senator Hickenlooper told the President that if he appointed
Mr. Lilienthal to the one-year term available, there would be no
controversy. The President would not budge.
While the appointments might all be confirmed, there would
certainly be a contentious debate which might harm the work of the
Commission.
One possible compromise was a pending bill which would change
all five of the terms to only one year from the current expiration
in August. If the President were to veto it, then all hope of
confirmation would end. Mr. Childs thinks the bill a reasonable
compromise.
Samuel Grafton tells of the U.N. ignoring the request of the
U.S. to set up a trusteeship in Palestine, and the Jewish state,
supported by Jewish arms, being set up irrespective of the U.N. or
the U.S.
The result was to convey the notion that the U.S. had power
to create the Jewish state in November when the partition plan was
passed, but not to block its formation.
U.S. power by its nature was ad hoc, created for
special purposes and good only as long as those purposes were
beneficial to effect independence of a given people. It flagged
badly when trying to take away or delay the dream of independence.
The loss of U.S. power tended to infect other relations throughout
the world.
R. F. Beasley, in a piece reprinted from the Monroe
Journal, presents the opposition to world government urged by
the Charlotte unit of the United World Federalists in four articles
ten days earlier. He finds the rioting in Bogota two weeks earlier
to be a modern version of the British Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes
against Parliament, occurring November 5, 1605.
He thinks the U.N. would be useful in preventing small wars,
but not ones between the major powers, before whom it had proved
itself impotent.
He believes that a Pax Americana, formed of military
alliances in the Americas and in Western Europe, would be the only
hope for peace though the next century while democracy had a chance
to spread and eradicate in the process the seeds of Communism.
