Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that British artillery
had shelled the Manshieh quarter of Jaffa for several hours after it
had been captured the previous day by the Irgun fighters following
four days of fighting with Arabs previously in control of the
quarter. The British were opposed to the Jewish occupation of Jaffa.
A ceasefire had been called by the British in Jerusalem until
9:00 a.m. the next morning, but Jews and Arabs had not yet heeded
it.
Egypt and Iraq reported that large armies from their
countries were converging on Palestine.
Jews claimed capture of Beisan, 15 miles south of the Sea of
Galilee, a way station for Arab troops coming into Palestine from
the east.
The Trans-Jordan Arab Legion claimed to have occupied the
Jewish settlement of Gesher in the Jordan Valley and killed hundreds
of Jews, after Jews had allegedly killed a Legion sentry inside
Trans-Jordan on Tuesday.
The effort of the U.N. Trusteeship Council to set up an
international police force for Jerusalem appeared dead from the
refusal of the Arabs to cooperate. Jews had accepted the proposal.
In Berlin, Russian troops began inspecting all traffic in the
Soviet occupation zone. Some observers believed that they were
searching for deserters from the Russian Army.
Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall told the Senate
Appropriations Committee that the Army needed an increase to 837,000
troops to accommodate present world conditions rather than only the
previously requested 790,000. Currently, the Army had 540,000
troops. He supported the compromise plan on the Air Force proposed
by Defense Secretary Forrestal to expand to 66 groups but not 70, as
favored by Air Secretary Stuart Symington.
The House voted the previous day to repeal the discriminatory
tax on margarine and the bill now moved to the Senate.
The President said that he believed Federal mediators would
be able before the strike deadline of May 11 to resolve the railroad
wage dispute brought by three brotherhoods.
The stock market clerks ended their month-long strike on Wall
Street by accepting a new wage offer.
In Sioux City, Iowa, 37,000 hams were heated up in a fire at
strikebound Armour & Co.
The President objected to the Congressional proposal to
provide only one-year or two-year terms across the board for the
five Atomic Energy Commissioners, reappointed by the President to
the staggered terms, incrementally from one to five years, provided
in the original bill. The President said that the shorter term
proposal would hamper progress in atomic energy.
In the Senate Judiciary Committee, it was hoped that the
anti-lynching legislation proposed by the President would shortly
pass the Committee.
In Charlotte, two police officers were on patrol in the early
morning when a truck ran a red light. After the truck pulled over,
the driver emerged and ran, eventually getting out of the officers'
field of vision. A dog barking in the neighborhood, however, drew
their attention and they pursued in the direction the dog was
pointing, nabbed the man. After questioning, they ascertained that
the truck had illegal whiskey aboard. When they returned to the
location of the stop, another man in the truck had driven the
haul away, but they were able to track him down and arrest him, too.
In New York, a little boy chastised reporter John O'Reilly of
the New York Herald Tribune for his story on the Ringling
Brothers & Barnum & Bailey Circus, appearing with a picture
of the boy leading the elephants all the way to Madison Square
Garden. The picture had resulted in his being barred by his parents
from attendance of the circus for straying too far from home. Mr.
O'Reilly, though not responsible for the picture, took the letter to
heart, talked to the boy's parents, and convinced them to allow the
boy to attend the circus with the reporter.
On the editorial page, "North Carolina Needs Dentists" tells of dentists in the state seeking the establishment of a school
of dentistry at UNC. The national average was one dentist for every
1,800 people, whereas in North Carolina, the ratio was one for every
3,800 people.
They would get the school of dentistry.
"Harry Truman's New Look" comments on a new air
of confidence and exuberance on the part of the President, hardly
conveying a man dropping in the polls and even possibly to be dumped
by his own party. His new buoyance likely was the result of the
stalling Southern anti-Truman campaign, and unopposed favorable
primary results in several states.
Furthermore, his prospects for the general election were also
improving.
The Italian election results and the beginning of
implementation of the Marshall Plan were aiding his cause. If
European consolidation continued apace and the problem of Palestine
could be resolved by the fall, he would be basking in the sunshine.
Inflation was on the rise again and that pitted the
President's urging of price and wage controls against a do-nothing
Congress.
There remained, it counsels, plenty of time for changed
fortunes before November.
"$20,000 to Save the Peace" tells of the American
Friends Service Committee having used its portion of the Nobel Peace
Prize money to improve Russian-American relations. Whether it was
able to do much with that small amount remained to be seen, but the
fact that the Committee had stepped forward to accomplish this vital
purpose could produce a ripple effect.
Much of the country and Congress had concluded that it was
useless to try to befriend Russia. If that tack continued, war would
be inevitable.
A piece from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, titled
"Keep the Trees Growing", discusses the construction of
a second newsprint mill in the South, this one at Childersburg,
Ala., the first having been established several years earlier at
Lufkin, Texas. The new plant would begin operation in 1950. Wood
pulp production had increased in the South from 1.5 million cords to
4.1 million in the decade between 1936 and 1946.
The piece urges small mill owners to cooperate with Federal
and state programs to increase and maintain wood crops for the
growing industry.
Drew Pearson tells of the real estate lobby which had opposed
the Taft-Ellender-Wagner long-term housing bill having its chickens
come home to roost as Representative Charles Fletcher of California,
a strong advocate for the lobby, was under investigation by the Home
Loan Bank Board, while chief lobbyist Morton Bodfish was under
indictment. He provides detail of Mr. Fletcher's questionable
dealings.
He next reviews the backstage developments prior to the
Italian elections of April 18. The State Department offer to return
Trieste to Italy had influenced the outcome greatly, beating Tito in
Yugoslavia to the draw, as he had planned to make the same offer on
behalf of Russia.
The fact that Ambassador James Dunn got the American fleet
out of Italian waters also helped, taking away fodder for Communist
propaganda.
Marquis Childs discusses the Ohio primary race between
native-son Senator Robert Taft and Harold Stassen, finds Senator
Taft chafing under the label of conservative in relation to Mr.
Stassen, considered liberal. On domestic issues, the two were
comparable, both favoring long-range housing programs, Mr. Taft
having co-sponsored the bill which had just passed the Senate with a
provision to build 500,000 low-income units in the ensuing five
years. Mr. Stassen wanted about six times more money appropriated
for the purpose of public housing.
Interestingly, Senator Joseph McCarthy, a strong backer of
Mr. Stassen, was a chief opponent of the housing bill, though Mr.
Stassen could not control that which his supporters favored or
disfavored.
But on foreign policy, the two were markedly different,
Senator Taft having desired to cut ERP aid by a billion dollars.
Yet, Mr. Stassen wanted to deny aid to nations favoring
socialization of industries, a provision which would be seen in
Europe as political interference and would likely kill the aid
program.
Regardless of the similarities, it was likely that Mr.
Stassen would pick up at least nine delegates in Ohio, proving that
once labels had been fixed, few voters bothered to look behind them.
Joseph Alsop discusses the effort ongoing in Europe between
the Western European Union military staffs to formulate their
military needs, to enable Congress then to confront whether to
appropriate the money for them. The British and Benelux countries
wanted France to shoulder two-thirds of the burden of ground troops
as a hedge against Russian expansion beyond the Rhine, while Britain
would supply the air and navy. France might balk at this suggestion,
remembering the lessons of World War II and the 1940 fall of France.
The desire for American aid was so great, however, that a
compromise was expected to be reached by the WEU. The five nations
had indicated, however, that they would need Congressional approval
of the guarantee of American military support if they were attacked,
not merely the President's assurance, given the coming election.
Such approval might take the form of a resolution by the Senate
coupled with the President's assurance, plus presentation of a
treaty to the Congress.
A letter writer supports the notion advanced by the United
World Federalists for world government and thanks The News for
the four articles beginning two weeks earlier.
A letter from A. W. Black responds to the letter responding
to his letter which had opposed world government as the product of
an Utopian dream. He urges that peace could only be achieved upon a
mutual pledge of nations not to cross each other's boundaries with
military force and by mutual disarmament.
A letter from an optometrist thanks the newspaper for its
coverage of the Southern Educational Congress of Optometry.
