The Charlotte News

Saturday, May 22, 1948

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Cairo, it was declared that Egyptian troops moved northward to Hebron and Bethlehem, linking with Arab Legion troops five miles south of Jerusalem in what appeared to be a new drive against the city.

Israeli troops who sought under bright moonlight to rescue the Jewish garrison inside the walls of old Jerusalem were turned back by the Arab Legion.

Jerusalem was reported approximately split in half between Arab and Israeli forces.

Haganah reported that Israeli troops launched counterattacks against Sheik Jarrah at the base of Mount Scopus and at Beit Safafa, just south of Jerusalem, an Arab village. Haganah also reported that the Jews were holding the boundaries of Israel despite contrary Arab contentions.

British headquarters announced that in Haifa, British planes shot down four Egyptian Spitfires as they raided the Ramit David Airfield in the British area of Haifa. Three Britons were killed and six were wounded seriously.

The State Department announced that the American Consul General, Thomas Wasson, had been seriously wounded in Jerusalem following a meeting with the U.N. truce commission.

The Lebanese Government replied to the State Department's objection to the internment of 40 American citizens as possible bearers of arms for Israel, but the substance of the reply was not yet disclosed.

At the U.N., there would shortly be an announcement that the organization would undertake action to end the war in Palestine. The Arab-Israeli conflict had produced bitter feelings between the British and Americans. The British, for instance, had resented the speed with which the President gave recognition to the Israeli Government.

Paul Hoffman, ERP administrator, asked the 16 recipient nations to stop ordering U.S. cotton until detailed financial arrangements could be made with each government.

The President signed into law the bill providing appropriation for a 70-group Air Force, the largest in peacetime.

The veto by the President of the bill to require the Executive branch to turn over confidential reports to Congressional committees was sustained by the Senate, after 27 Democrats voted to sustain. Nine Democrats, eight of whom were Southerners, had voted to override, leaving the bill four short of the necessary two-thirds majority for override. Several of the Southerners participating in the revolt against the President on civil rights voted to sustain the veto, including Senators Lister Hill, John Sparkman, both of Alabama, Olin Johnston of South Carolina, and John Stennis of Mississippi. Some observers suggested the outcome as indicative of greater Democratic Party harmony as the convention approached.

Federal officials with relatives who were known to have Communist connections were urged by Representative Fred Crawford of Michigan to resign their posts, as had a Commerce Department official after disclosure that his daughter worked for the Russian news agency Tass.

In Oregon, with two-thirds of the vote counted, Governor Dewey maintained a small lead, 6,600 votes, over Harold Stassen in the all-important Republican primary of the previous day. It appeared likely that Mr. Dewey would win, but neither man had proclaimed victory or conceded. The primary had produced a record turnout of voters.

The ten-week old meatpackers' strike ended, having caused no serious meat shortages in the country for its duration. The United Packing House Workers Union accepted the original pay raise package offered by the companies, nine cents per hour. The strikers had sought 29 cents per hour.

In Conshohocken, Pa., a World War II veteran who had lost both legs in the war quit as tax collector because he did not have the heart to collect the unpaid taxes from the people of the community, many of whom were his friends.

In Hayneville, Ala.—site of the mistrial and retrial of the alleged Klan killers of Viola Liuzzo in 1965—a raging fire the previous night destroyed nine buildings, a third of the town's business district.

In Philadelphia, Pa., there was a fire in a fire alarm box, readily extinguished by the Fire Department. The fire started from a short in the wiring.

From Lawton, Oklahoma, a man claiming to be Jesse James is shown in a photograph holding a photograph of Jesse, who was shot by Robert Ford in 1882. The newspaper in Lawton claimed to have proof that the man shot by Robert Ford was actually Charlie Bigelow.

In truth, the man who shot Charlie Bigelow was John Wilkes Booth after he made his getaway cleanly following the assassination of President Lincoln. Everybody knows that.

On the editorial page, "Forward in Slum Clearance" finds it good news that private enterprise in Charlotte had taken on the responsibility of slum clearance, pursuant to a plan to build 2,000 to 3,000 low-cost housing units in the ensuing five years, developed by the Board of Realtors and the Home Builders Association. Four duplexes for black families were about to be started. These would serve as model housing to show that the plan was workable.

The plan would open the door to enforcement of the Standard Housing Ordinance, as the City did not condemn substandard existing housing for fear that it would leave the occupants homeless. But as the former slums were vacated, the City could condemn them.

"Arab League in Power Race" finds the Arab League to be a new world power arising out of the war in Palestine. The League was composed of seven Arab states, Trans-Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. The League was effectively formed in 1943 in Alexandria. Palestine was deemed a great prize for the League for its strategic significance to the Middle East. Possession of it would give the Arabs leverage to bargain with the major powers, playing the Soviet bloc against the Western bloc.

There was, however, an intense rivalry between the seven constituent nations of the League, each headed by an ambitious ruler.

The impotence of the U.N. in the face of Soviet recalcitrance had provided the opening for the League to expand its power. The piece finds therefore that nationalism and imperialism were causing disaster abroad while the U.S. and the West delayed in strengthening the U.N. and creating world government.

"Do You Need Illuminating?" tells of a new X-ray machine which could make X-rays 500 times brighter than before. Developed by Westinghouse, the machine permitted transmission by closed circuit television of the images between doctors.

But it finds problems in the new device in that it removed individual privacy. It says it would not wish to become a "transparent Christmas tree", as everyone should retain some secrets.

A piece from the Carolina Israelite, titled "Civil Rights—FEPC", finds that one of the worst habits of Americans, including Jewish Americans, was to think in terms of minorities, strangers within their native land. If the concept were carried to its logical end, then minorities should ask for a separate state within the state. Otherwise, all energies ought be directed toward strengthening civil liberties.

There was no blinking the fact that the Constitution and its amendments had not been fully realized.

It finds instructive the advice of Dr. Joshua Loth Liebman, author of Peace of Mind, that American Jewry should reject minority group classification, rather being a religious community, able by its rich and unique history to teach hope. Dr. Liebman had suggested, "Not minority status but equality status in the religious symphony of humanity must be our first contemporary Jewish 'declaration of independence'."

Drew Pearson again looks at the murder of CBS correspondent George Polk in Greece, probably killed by the rightwing extremists whom he had regularly criticized for corruption within the Government.

But despite Mr. Polk having been silenced, his last letters to various people, including Mr. Pearson, revealed much information. He publishes more of the letter, which he began publishing two days earlier.

Mr. Polk had opined that the U.S. should either get in or out of Greece and not take halfway measures. He said that the propaganda of both the Communists and rightwing in the country were identical, both charging the U.S. with interference in internal Greek affairs and using Greece to form an American empire. The same royalists who so carped had surrendered Greece to the Nazis during the war.

He had found that Constantine Tsaldaris, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, and his followers were soft-peddling these notions of late so as not to upset the munificence of ERP. But once included in ERP, the coalition government, he predicted, would be dissolved along with the Parliament, in favor of a dictatorial form of government.

Mr. Polk found no appreciation for the 876 million dollars worth of aid, including UNRRA aid, which had been provided by America thus far to Greece since war's end.

He found the rightwing to be engaging in severe criticism regularly of the U.S. on the notion that no matter what occurred in Athens, the U.S. would continue to provide aid. The Government was "shell-shocking" the American aid mission and determined to discredit many American correspondents reporting of the graft, corruption and inefficiency in administering the aid program.

He concluded that the rightwing were tough guys, "some of the most calculating, unscrupulous, able politicians" he had ever seen.

Mr. Pearson adds that Mr. Polk could not have known just how tough they were until he wound up bound and thrown into Salonika Bay after being shot in the back of the head.

Marquis Childs, for the third day in a row, examines the Mundt-Nixon bill, focusing on the FBI's request for a 50.1 million dollar budget and getting 43.9 million instead approved by the Bureau of the Budget, with little or no disposition in Congress to increase it, despite the heavy workload associated with the loyalty tests of Government employees. Director J. Edgar Hoover had told Congress that the lower budget would require cutting 1,800 positions, possibly requiring the closure of FBI offices in the territories, including Hawaii and Alaska.

Senator Taft had indicated that the Mundt-Nixon bill would require further study by the Senate before passage, and Mr. Childs hopes that it would include an assessment of whether its security goals could be achieved more efficiently within the bounds of the Constitution.

While HUAC had often misused publicity for purposes inimical to civil liberties, it might help elucidate the nature of the Communist conspiracy if some of the FBI files were released. The FBI was said to have a "Black Book" with the names and backgrounds of 200 leading Communists and Communist agents in the country, to which only few were privy.

The people of the country, he suggests, ought appreciate that there could be no absolute security by law. Communism would fall of its own weight in a healthy, progressive society, with reasonable security precautions in place. But to try to outlaw Communism might end in eradicating freedom along with it.

James Marlow examines the allegations by HUAC against Dr. Edward Condon, head of the Bureau of Standards, that he was the greatest security risk within the Government anent atomic energy for supposed association with a Communist agent. Dr. Condon, himself, had told the National Academy of Sciences that providing general information on projects of a secret nature would be easy, but giving away detailed scientific information would be difficult for the simple reason of the complexity of the topics involved in nuclear physics.

Dr. Condon believed in security but not to the point of hamstringing scientists in their work.

After HUAC had demanded the FBI loyalty report on Dr. Condon and, pursuant to the direction of the President, the Commerce Department refused to provide it, the House and Senate had passed a bill requiring the disclosure upon request by a Congressional committee, with assurances that the information would remain confidential, providing severe penalties for release of the information.

The Atomic Energy Commission had stated that Dr. Condon had no access to sensitive atomic information. The FBI had cleared him of any taint of disloyalty.

The matter had just been resolved this date by the Senate sustaining the President's veto of the bill.

Fred Zusy of the Associated Press begins a series of articles on the presidential candidates, starting with Senator Robert Taft—scheduled, as the editorial note mentions, to visit Charlotte on June 4.

He finds that Senator Taft had gained measurably in stature since coming to the Senate a decade earlier. No longer just the son of a President, he had developed his own reputation. He had headed the Republican steering committee since 1945. He had co-sponsored the Taft-Hartley Act.

Born in Cincinnati, he had been a shy, studious boy who would go on to finish first in his class at Yale and also at the Harvard Law School, editing the law review.

He had worked closely with Herbert Hoover on the European food relief program after World War I.

Senator Taft was not a back-slapper, was friendliest in small groups, exhibited calm self-control, walked and talked deliberately.

The Tafts, his wife more ebullient and outgoing than the Senator, mixed in Washington social life but were not regulars at the parties.

Mr. Taft did not smoke but liked an occasional martini, played golf some, fished, was a member of the Episcopal Church.

A Quote of the Day: "The other day I heard this—a woman speaking: 'Oh, look at that beautiful oak! It reminds me of an elm, it's so willowy.'" —Memphis Press-Scimitar

Another pome from the Atlanta Constitution, this one "in Which Is Contained Advice for Those Who Do Not Wish to Earn a Reputation as a Blabbermouth or a Noisy-Boisy:
"Don't revel or roister:
Be as mum as an oyster."

Long as the Walri
Lick not their lips moister,
Desirous of you, shy,
In your shell's cloister.

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