Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Arab leaders had
agreed to the truce in Jerusalem, effective the following day,
provided the Jews recognized the ceasefire.
A neutral mayor of Jerusalem acceptable to both Arabs and
Jews had not yet been found by Britain.
Meanwhile, Jews in Palestine claimed to have seized new
territory from the Arabs in the north, consisting of two villages
between Nazareth and the sea of Galilee and a hill overlooking
Safad. Four Jews had been killed and 25 wounded in the two attacks,
and twenty Arabs killed in one village with heavy losses in the
other.
Winston Churchill urged a 22-nation forum convened at The
Hague to form immediately a European assembly, to be the initial
step toward a Council of Europe, subordinate to the U.N. He favored
the U.N. having three such subordinate councils into the future, the
Soviet Union, the European Council, and the Western Hemisphere.
Former French Socialist Premier Paul Ramadier supported the move.
The U.S., Britain, and France told the U.N. Atomic Energy
Commission that it would be futile to try to effect controls over
atomic energy without the cooperation of Russia and to abandon
therefore any such efforts until such time as Russia would
cooperate. Russia had demanded a pact to outlaw atomic weapons
before establishing controls and without international inspection,
wholly unacceptable to the West, seeing it as a ploy to weaken the
West while the Soviets developed their own atomic weapons. The West
wanted an international authority to exert control and provide
international inspections, with no veto power exercisable over
violations of the pact.
Five Czech refugees fled Czechoslovakia while holding the
pilot of an airliner at gunpoint, and forced a crash landing at
Ingolstadt in the U.S. zone of Germany. It was the third such plane
out of Russian territory since February to be taken over by
refugees.
In Greece, 18 more executions, bringing the total to 213,
followed in the wake of the assassination of Justice Minister
Christos Ladas the previous Saturday. The British Ambassador sent a
note to the Greek Government asking for explanation. Most of those
executed were already imprisoned for crimes against the George
Papandreou Government in 1944, following liberation from Germany. On
Tuesday, 152 prisoners had been executed and 830 others remained
condemned to death.
A White House conference to try to resolve the railroad
brotherhood wage dispute before the May 11 deadline for the strike,
had ended without apparent progress. The participants said that it
was exploratory only with Presidential adviser John R. Steelman.
Attorney General Tom Clark told the President that he retained the
residual wartime authority under a 1916 law to take over the
railroads to avert a shutdown. If the dispute were not settled
by Tuesday, it would cause the shutdown of virtually all of the
nation's railroads.
On page 10-A, a Prentice-Hall published symposium of expert
opinion on the Kinsey Report was reviewed, along with other books.
On the editorial page, "U.S. Overture to Russia" tells of the statements during the week of Secretary of State
Marshall and U.N. Ambassador Warren Austin having set a new tone for
policy toward Russia, expressing the desire for cooperation and
preservation of the U.N. with a rational balance of power in the
world, changing from the stress on anti-communism and ideological
differences with Russia. It also recognized that settlement with
Russia was feasible.
Secretary Marshall had said that it was a misconception to
suppose that domination of the world by a single system was
inevitable or that differing systems could not coexist in peace
under the U.N. Charter's rules. Thus, Secretary Marshall made it
plain that the U.S. was not attempting to exterminate world
Communism. The statements defined spheres of influence, inviting
Russia to abandon the East-West rivalry.
If the Russophobes of the country did not abandon their
fervent opposition to the Soviets, however, then the Russians would
delay their response to the new policy until the election results
were known.
But the statement of Secretary Marshall had dampened the
ardor in Congress for revising the U.N. to try to eliminate the
Security Council veto as well as effect other changes. It finds that
the Administration had taken an important step to try to save the
peace.
"Fire Chief Earns a Rest" tells of Charlotte's
Fire Chief, W. Hendrix Palmer, having announced at 64 his retirement
after 44 years in the Fire Department. The news came with regret, as
he had made a good reputation both locally and nationally as a
leader of the profession. He had been Chief since 1927 and was
president of the North Carolina Fire Chiefs' Association for eleven
years, had been president of the International Association.
He had also been active in supporting the Shrine Bowl high
school all-star football game held annually in Charlotte.
It expresses good wishes to Chief Palmer.
"Stassen Still Sets Pace" finds that both Harold
Stassen and Senator Taft were claiming victory in the Ohio primary
of Tuesday. Mr. Stassen captured nine of the contested 23 delegates
and Senator Taft the remainder, plus the other 30 unopposed
delegates. It appeared to be essentially a draw as Senator Taft had
not delivered a knock-out punch to Mr. Stassen and the latter still
had the momentum going into the Oregon primary. The former Minnesota
Governor managed to show Senator Taft's unpopularity with labor and
liberals in industrial regions.
Mr. Stassen had also forced Senator Taft to abandon his
conservative stance and try to recast himself in the public mind as
a liberal.
It predicts that if Mr. Stassen continued to do well in the
remaining primaries, it would be difficult for either or both
Senator Taft and Governor Dewey to stop him from garnering the
nomination.
We remain very confident that in 1949, it will be President
Stassen.
A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled
"Planning Farms and Homes", tells of the need for
farm-and-home planning as recommended by General Eisenhower's
brother Milton, president of Kansas State Agricultural College. Such
planning was beginning to sweep the nation in the South, Midwest,
and New England, having started in Missouri. The piece thinks it
ought be incorporated into farm legislation by Congress.
Drew Pearson tells of the National Grange warning of another
dust bowl unless development were begun of the grasslands of the
West. High prices and demand for wheat had kept farmers from
maintaining pasture lands, causing soil erosion. The Grange
recommended to the President fluctuating support prices based on
supply and demand. The President said that he would consider it.
Two of Hitler's bankers, Herman Abs and August Schniewind,
had come back to power in Germany as president and chairman,
respectively, of the Bank of the German States. He tells of Robert
Murphy's telegram to Secretary of State Marshall regarding the
behind-the-scenes vote of the bank board and the roles of each man
during the war. Seven other German bankers with democratic
backgrounds had been considered for the positions, but the two
former Nazi sympathizers had won.
Marquis Childs finds a shadow of a police state darkening the
Capitol as members of Congress were allowing their fears and
prejudices to guide them. Congressman Clare Hoffman of Michigan had
introduced a bill to provide for up to a year in jail and a $1,000
fine for anyone divulging confidential information of a
Congressional committee. It had been passed by the House Rules
Committee. Representative Clarence Brown of Ohio, a newspaper
publisher and member of the Committee, was surprised to find that he
had voted for a bill which applied to journalists, said that he
would amend it to exempt the press when it reached the floor.
Nevertheless, Mr. Childs views it as a major step toward a
police state. One thing had led to another to justify the Hoffman
bill as protecting the demand for disclosure of Executive branch
reports on loyalty, which were supposed to remain confidential in
the Executive branch. Mr. Hoffman had used the wartime press
restraints to justify such restraints in peacetime.
HUAC wanted the FBI loyalty report on Dr. Edward Condon, head
of the Bureau of Standards, to try to justify its own assertions
that Dr. Condon was a major security risk for the atomic secrets,
based on his supposed association with a Russian espionage agent. It
would give to the FBI a power it did not seek or want, to pass on
the fitness of candidates for political office.
Joseph Alsop finds that Senator Taft had not made any great
improvement of his political fortunes by winning the Ohio primary
but had at least avoided disaster, while Harold Stassen had not
experienced any disastrous setback, only slowing down his momentum
from the Wisconsin and Nebraska wins.
Mr. Stassen, however, had to make a good showing in the May
21 Oregon primary, lest he be written off by the Republican
professionals, as they would like to do. If he were to win, he would
eliminate Governor Dewey from contention.
The Old Guard had been revived by the Ohio Taft showing,
hoping anew that he could win the nomination. They would demand that
the stop-Stassen movement be formed on their terms if Governor Dewey
were defeated in Oregon.
The likelihood of a deadlocked convention had increased after
Ohio, increasing the chance that Senator Vandenberg might be
nominated.
The most likely nominee was either Governor Dewey, Mr.
Stassen, or Senator Vandenberg, with the loser in Oregon between the
first two being eliminated.
A letter from the Mayor of Monroe, J. Ray Shute, hopes that a
commission appointed by Governor Gregg Cherry to study local control
of sales taxes, state income taxes and gasoline taxes would come down
on the side of allowing them to be returned, at least in part, to
each county and municipality where they originated.
A letter from a professor of political science at Davidson
College corrects an article appearing in the newspaper anent a talk
he had given at the Rotary Club on May 4, in which it was implied
that he might approve theoretical communism and that he did approve
socialism. He clarifies that he approved neither system. He merely
sought to show that Russia presented a face of democracy to the
world and to its own people but that communism was a "nonsensical
pipedream", impossible of achievement. He viewed it as bait
held out to suckers to justify the rigors of totalitarianism.
He finds socialism inferior to capitalism, believes that it
would reduce living standards for any country which embraced it.
