Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the
Russians claimed that the British transport plane was
responsible for the crash with a Russian fighter over Berlin two
days earlier, saying that the transport had darted from a cloud bank
and hit the fighter. The British denied that scenario.
Field Marshal Lord Bernard Montgomery and
Russian Field Marshal Vassily Sokolovsky had met the previous night
and agreed that if the British withdrew their threat to accompany
transports with fighter escorts, there would be no recurrence of
such interference by Russian fighters.
The Russians boycotted two more committee
meetings of the four-power governing body of Germany, and it was
reported that the Russians had extended their restrictions to
embrace parcel post between Western zones of Germany and Berlin.
Russia and the Ukraine were expected to boycott
a meeting of the Security Council regarding the U.S.-backed
trusteeship program for Palestine.
The U.S. indicated opposition to admission to
the U.N. of five Soviet satellites, Albania, Outer Mongolia,
Rumania, Hungary, and Bulgaria, but urged admission immediately of
Italy. The Ukraine had also proposed Finland, to which the U.S.
probably would not object, as well as Italy. The effort by the U.S.
appeared to try to force Russia either to agree to Italy's admission
or veto it in advance of the April 18 elections. It was likely that
the Soviets would resort to their previous position that all former
enemy nations had to be admitted at once.
The Marshall Plan threatened to split the
Communist-dominated Italian Labor Confederation, with its membership
believing that the choice in the April 18 elections was between the
American Plan and Russia. The non-Communist and Socialist members
asked the executive committee to reconsider its stand opposing the
Plan, while protesting the call for a nationwide general strike for
one hour the following Monday in protest of the 36 deaths and at
least one disappearance of labor leaders during the previous two
years, believed by the Communists on the executive committee to have
been eliminated by the Mafia.
The President appointed Paul G. Hoffman,
president of Studebaker, as director of ERP, and his appointment was
immediately confirmed by unanimous voice vote of the Senate, after
sailing through the Foreign Relations Committee without opposition.
Mr. Hoffman would next designate a deputy administrator and roving
ambassador.
The House Armed Services Committee voted
unanimously to approve increase of the Air Force from 55 to 70
combat groups. Secretary of Defense James Forrestal had opposed the
measure as requiring commensurate increases in the other branches'
manpower allotment, causing defense expenditures to be prohibitive,
at potentially an additional 18 billion dollars. The Secretary had
asked for three billion in increased military budget.
The President's Council of Economic Advisors
stated to the press that the need for standby rationing and price
and wage controls was greater at present than three months earlier.
It was also stated, however, that there was no immediate need to
recommend legislation for the purpose. The House Banking Committee
chairman, Jesse Wolcott of Michigan, had already stated that it
would be futile to request anew such controls.
Attorney General Tom Clark obtained an order to
show cause re contempt in Federal Court against John L. Lewis and
the UMW for refusing to obey the Court order served on Monday to end
immediately the soft coal strike and return to work. The matter
would be heard the following Monday. Mr. Lewis claimed that the
emergency provision of Taft-Hartley, under which the order was
issued, was unconstitutional pursuant to the Thirteenth Amendment
banning involuntary servitude, thus preventing the Government from
ordering miners back to work. He also contended that it violated the
First and Fifth Amendments, and abrogated the extant contract with
the operators permitting such a strike.
Three railroad brotherhoods renewed their threat
of a strike if their demands for higher wages were not settled by
April 27.
In Wisconsin, former Minnesota Governor Harold
Stassen won the Republican presidential primary of the previous day,
taking 20 of the state's 27 convention delegates. About one-sixth,
or 500, of the state's precincts remained to be tabulated. Of the
Stassen slate of seven delegates, the low vote receiver had a total
exceeding the high vote receiver of the MacArthur slate. Observers
suggested that the General might therefore quit the race. The
General was likely to receive seven delegates while Governor Dewey
was likely to receive none, as his own campaign staff had predicted
the day before the primary.
Governor Dewey had won 106 of the 303 delegates
thus far chosen, having picked up 90 delegates in New York without
contest the previous day. Governor Stassen had 47—25 from his home
state of Minnesota—, Senator Vandenberg, 41—all from his home
state of Michigan—, and General MacArthur, 7, with 102 uncommitted.
There were 1,094 Republican delegates in all to be chosen.
President Truman had 54 Democratic delegates of
the 1,234 to be chosen. General Eisenhower had one, from New York,
and 135 were uncommitted.
In Americus, Ga., the death sentences of a black
woman and her two sons, ages 16 and 14, convicted for the killing of
a white sharecropper, were commuted to life imprisonment, each
eligible for parole after seven years. The court ruled that since
the convictions were founded only on circumstantial evidence, the
court was permitted to set aside the death sentences.
In Washington, Missouri Representative Orville
Zimmerman, a Democrat, died of a heart attack at age 67, while in
his office at the Capitol.
The sports page, performing its annual tour of
the Tri-State League baseball prospects, examines the 1947 pennant
winners, the Spartanburg Peaches.
On the editorial page, "Race Issue at
Chapel Hill" tells of three black students having made
application to the UNC graduate school and the matter being before
the Board of Trustees for determination.
The piece favors rejection of the applications,
for the benefit of the black students as well as the public
interest. It posits that it would debilitate race relations in North
Carolina, which enjoyed a history of progress.
The issue followed closely on the heels of the
January Supreme Court case of Board of Regents v. Sipuel,
which held that the University of Oklahoma had to admit a qualified
black woman applicant to the University law school unless the State
provided a separate and equal law school facility. The State had
sought to form such a facility in the course of three ensuing weeks,
with the petitioner as the sole student and only three professors,
an arrangement which she rejected as unequal. The case had not yet
been finally determined, as the Court had rejected, for not being
ripe, her subsequent petition to find inadequate the alternative
separate law school and to order therefore her admission to the
University law school. The matter was still pending before the
Oklahoma courts and had first to be determined there before again reaching
the High Court.
The piece opines that the rejection of the
alternative law school by the petitioner in the Sipuel case
demonstrated that seeking equal educational opportunity was only
a secondary goal, behind obtaining integration of educational
facilities. The opposition by black leaders to the regional graduate
school concept, whereby Southern states would pool resources to form
such schools, was another indicator of that attitude.
It again states the position of favoring such
regional schools. It finds North Carolina to have performed well in
providing separate but equal facilities for education. The State had
eliminated the poll tax in 1924. Black and white teachers earned the
same pay. The State paid tuition for black students enrolled in some
schools and had established the North Carolina College for Negroes
at Durham, with a law school—now N.C. Central University.
The State, it offers, was meeting the demands of
blacks with an affirmative answer. While there was still plenty of
room for improvement in race relations, the State had gone a long
way in meeting the problem, and to admit black students to the
University against public sentiment, it posits, would set back race
relations and "indefinitely defer a real solution of this
vexing social problem."
The record over time plainly shows the editorial
opinion to be wrong and to be advocating the very thing it proposes
to be forestalling. For it was the entrenchment of Jim Crow through
eighty years after the Civil War which had caused the white
community to come to accept a form of economic enslavement to
replace actual slavery in the country, and to become inured to a
system of apartheid. Moreover, while elimination officially of
institutional inequality on a theoretical plane may have convinced
some that the separate educational facilities were equal, they were
not, as anyone who grew up in the South in the 1950's and 1960's,
before integration fully entered the public schools, could attest.
All one had to do was to visit an all-black school of the time to be
so convinced. It takes integration of society, economically,
socially, and educationally, to eliminate prejudice.
The piece got one thing right. They still had a
lot of room for improvement, and there is still, 67 years later,
room for more, despite many advances through 50 years and more of
integrated educational facilities and increased integration of
society. Those who move to the suburbs to escape integration and
those who send children to private schools for the same purpose
ignore the realities of life in the society at large, deferring
indefinitely the elimination of prejudice, while admitting that
their children are not up to the challenge of getting along in
integrated schools, with many different types of students of varying
socio-economic backgrounds.
"A-Bomb Works Against Us" ventures
that Russia, in its insistence that the atomic secret be turned over
to the world before any agreement on inspection coupled with
continued unilateral veto power regarding atomic questions and
misuse of the technology for other than peaceful pursuits, was a
Russian propagandistic method of promoting American domination in
the world. The recent vote on the Atomic Energy Subcommittee at the
U.N. against the Russian proposal, by a vote of 9-2, with only
Russia and the Ukraine voting in favor of it, confirmed the fact.
As long as America held exclusive control of the
atomic secret, it was susceptible to the claim of lording over the
rest of the world. The country needed therefore to develop an
effective means of waging peace, by creating a world governing body
along the lines of the U.N. but with more effective enforcement
means, with or without the participation of the Russians. The
Marshall Plan, it suggests, would not be enough to offset the war
fear being promoted by Russia, with America as the purported
aggressor.
"New Thought on Old Problem" tells
of a mother observing her eight-year old daughter, home from school
with a cold, diligently at work on a letter. When the mother picked
up the letter, she read its six sentences addressed to the school
principal, replete with misspellings and improper syntax, but,
suggests the piece, putting forth a common sense solution to the
problem of inadequate schools: "We haveent got but 4 taecher.
1. 2. 3. 4. rooms to taech in the Poeple are in 1.2. 3 4 We need
more room. Or les poeple."
Well, we can empathize. We took the second grade
in a trailer classroom while the City undertook to build a couple of
new schools for overflow.
Two years later, we had to fill out body tags
one October morning, to assure proper identification in case of
incineration by a missile launched from Cuba or the Soviet Union,
and at that point, the "les poeple" notion advanced by
the little girl took on a whole new meaning. By then, the hallway or
just a little broom closet would have been deemed quite sufficient
for a classroom, regardless of overcrowding, as long as we were not
being irradiated or made sick by nuclear fallout.
Perhaps, it was because more stress in the
society generally through time had been placed on the first
editorial's opinion and how disingenuously to circumvent the rulings
of the Federal Courts, and not enough on that of the second and
third opinions of this date.
In any event, the whole matter is rather
Poeple-esque.
But, at least we did not have to live in fear of
one of our fellow students or a former student of the school coming
into class with a gun.
A bicycle chain here and there, however, was
another matter...
A piece from the Louisville Courier-Journal,
titled "No Easy Way to Democracy", tells of there being
no cheap way to accomplish the reconstruction of Europe, that cost
should not become a weighing element in the process, as peace would
depend on the success of the Marshall Plan.
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., had proposed
that 50,000 foreign troops be recruited in Europe to keep down the
number of Americans necessary to maintain order. But this approach
suggested simplicity where there was none to be found. The U.S. had
to provide full backing for the Plan or it would fail. Seeking
European recruits would be an admission of lack of full American
resolve. The U.S., it concludes, had adequate manpower to perform
the job.
Drew Pearson tells of Congressman August
Andresen of Red Wing, Minn., threatening the Southern Democrats with
anti-tobacco, anti-cotton, and anti-peanut legislation should they
not refrain from their fight in getting repealed the discriminatory
tax on margarine vis-à-vis
butter. Mr. Andresen,
who expected to become chairman the following year of the
Agriculture Committee, had led the fight to bottle up the
legislation in committee, just released finally the previous week in
a discharge petition led by Congressman Harold Cooley of North
Carolina. Mr. Andresen was enraged by the Southern effort.
Meanwhile, consumers paid 10 to 12 cents more per pound for
margarine than for butter.
The President had sent his veto message on the
tax bill to Congress on April 2, three days ahead of his intended
schedule because of the stated intention of Democratic Minority
Leader Sam Rayburn to head home to Texas. Mr. Rayburn was so upset
at the President for splitting the party with his civil rights
program, however, that he refrained from participating in the debate
on override of the veto. Only three Democrats in the Senate spoke in
favor of sustaining the veto, including Senator Alben Barkley, to
become the vice-presidential nominee.
Air Force and Navy recruiting figures had risen
so high in the first two months of the year that it threatened to
take the pressure off Congress to pass the draft and UMT bills. Army
figures, however, lagged behind the quota for the first two months
of the year by almost 20 percent, still better than the 50 percent
lag during the previous November-December period.
The National Defense Research & Development
Board recommended the building up of an air cargo wing in the
military to support supply lines in the event of an emergency. It
stressed the growing menace posed by Russian submarines to sea
transport, with the Russian submarine force five times larger than
that possessed by the Nazis during the war. The Russian XXI was 60
times more difficult to locate and destroy than German U-boats. It
rejected the stockpiling of material at forward bases in favor of
expendable bases which could destroy targets and then be transplanted near the next target. That strategy made air transport the best option to form the means of
supply. Air lift capability in future wars would, the Board had predicted, be
the controlling factor.
Presently, only 60 air cargo planes were in the
air and 125 were operated by the veterans' air freight companies.
The military chiefs had stated the need for 4,000 cargo planes.
The Board recommended support of the domestic
and overseas airlines to accomplish the desired end.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop examine the
determination by the Administration to enter formally the Western
European Union formed recently by France, Britain, and the Benelux
countries. If Senator Vandenberg and the other Republican leaders
approved of the move, then it would be placed before the Congress
during the current session. At very least, the President would
request military support for the WEU, with an informal commitment of
defense in the event of war, similar to that made by FDR to Canada during the late war.
The pact—to become NATO the following
spring—would not formalize an amalgamation with the WEU in
terms of its economic pact but rather a treaty under which the U.S.
would pledge military support in the event of an attack by Russia on
the member nations. It would likely revive lend-lease.
It was more likely, they posit, that the formal
pact would be accepted by Congress than forcing the informal
commitment by the President, as that would not carry the
authoritative weight through time of a formal treaty, as it would
lack bipartisan support, and, they predict, it was "probable
to the point of certainty" that President Truman would not
occupy the office a year hence.
Samuel Grafton tells of meeting Senator Robert
Taft to continue his series of columns on the Republican candidates
for the presidency. The Senator believed that the President might
obtain passage of the temporary draft without UMT, but he believed
it was too soon to put a draft into effect without first analyzing
carefully the military needs of the country and determining whether
a large Air Force might be a sufficient substitute to provide
adequate security.
Mr. Grafton finds that he was not a great
leader of men but also that he could not be led. In 1936, Senator
Taft had stated that he favored 750 million dollars worth of relief
for the following year, the only person running that year who stated
exactly how much relief he favored.
As to the current foreign crisis, he stated that
the country did not yet know of its extent, that it appeared
the Russians would not attack with an army. The takeover by the
Communists in Czechoslovakia presented no real change since the end
of the war, as it had been dominated by the Communists throughout
the period, possessing control of the police. He favors the TR line: "Walk
softly and carry a big stick." He did not object to the policy
toward Russia, but rather the atmosphere in which it was
accomplished.
Mr. Grafton remembers, however, his similar
reaction to the threat posed by Nazi Germany in 1940—not to
mention his prediction in fall, 1941 that Japan would not attack the
United States. He concludes that it was possible in the current
atmosphere to be tempted toward any vision of peace, even one
maintained behind a giant air screen, as Mr. Taft favored. But,
given the realities, that would neglect the fact that achieving a
real peace entailed far more complexities and hard work than
present in a military solution.
He promises more on Senator Taft in the next
column.
A letter writer who was in charge of the
Charlotte Armory-Auditorium discusses recent vandalism at the
facility, as one among many such acts. In every case, he had found
the parents to be unaware of the juvenile culprit's whereabouts at
the time. The recent vandalism at Freedom Park, draining the lake of
most of its water, thereby killing most of the $5,000 worth of
recent stock of bream fingerlings, was only the most publicized of
many acts of vandalism in the community. He regards the statement of
Police Chief Littlejohn, laying blame on the parents, to be
appropriate.
His suggested solution is to publish the names
of the culprit and the culprit's parents, as well their address, as
a deterrent.
The editors point out that such publication was
prohibited by North Carolina law for juvenile offenders under 16
years old.
A letter writer cautions of a threat being
present in the country through Communist infiltration to extinguish
the rights secured by the Constitution. He urges protecting the
rights of citizens to make democracy live, by making sure that
Communists had no rights.
A Quote of the Day: "Difference is that
the carpetbaggers of 1948 wear a Democratic tag." —Dallas
Morning News
Doggerel of the day from the Jackson (Miss.)
Daily News:
"Then call us Rebels, if you will
We glory in the name
For bending under unjust laws
And swearing faith to an unjust cause
We count a greater shame."