Thursday, June 10, 1948

The Charlotte News

Thursday, June 10, 1948

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the four-week U.N. truce to which the Arabs and Israelis had agreed in Palestine would become effective at 1:00 a.m. Friday. During the truce, a permanent peace would be sought at Rhodes in Greece.

Irgun rebuked the Israeli Government for accepting the truce and wanted as a condition that all Arab forces be withdrawn from Palestine.

U.N. mediator Count Folke Bernadotte invited 21 officers each from the U.S., France, and Belgium, plus six patrol vessels from the three nations to oversee the truce and freeze the military situation during its pendency.

The fighting was continuing until the effective time of the truce.

The Senate approved by a vote of 78 to 10 the peacetime two-year draft for those single men between 19 and 25 who were not veterans with 18 or more months of service since 1940 or active duty of 90 days or more during World War II. The bill now went to the House. Military leaders estimated that if passed, two of every three such eligible males would be drafted. Registration would start at age 18.

Secretary of Labor Lewis Schwellenbach died of a heart attack this date at age 53 after an illness of some duration. Mr. Schwellenbach had been a Senator and Federal judge before entering the Cabinet under President Truman in 1945. He had been in the hospital since May 28.

Congressman Cliff Clevenger of Ohio said on the House floor that the President was "a nasty little gamin" slinging mud, for the President's statement the previous day at Spokane, Wash., that the 80th Congress was the worst in the history of the nation. Mr. "Clever Cleaver" Clevenger referred to him as "High Tax Harry" and suggested that "Congress-tanned Missouri Jackass hide" would be on the market after November. House Minority Leader Sam Rayburn took offense at the "amazing performance", said that no President should have such language applied to him.

Presidential candidate Harold Stassen likewise found the President's statements unjustified and "unstatesmanlike". Mr. Stassen, however, pleaded before the Senate Appropriations Committee not to approve the House cut of foreign aid, including ERP, as he believed the cut would imperil European recovery and thus world stability. He nevertheless praised the Congress for its two-year record on foreign relations.

House Majority Leader Charles Halleck responded to the President's remarks by saying that many believed that the President was the "poorest President" in the history of the country.

Yeah, but the person who is presently serving is always going to be so labeled by some idiot.

The soft coal operators demanded that John L. Lewis and the UMW continue working after the July 1 expiration date of the current contract until a new contract could be determined. Mr. Lewis was seeking immediate disbursement from the pension fund of $100 per month payments to miners per the terms of the May agreement, held up by litigation challenging its validity under Taft-Hartley.

The Federal Court granted the temporary injunction sought by the Government against the railroad strike following seizure of the roads by the Government in May. It replaced the temporary restraining order previously in place.

The body of a 19-year old woman from Jacksonville, Fla., was found in a creekbed near Norristown, Pa., the victim of a murder. Police theorized that she had been killed inside her parked car nearby the location of the body and dragged to the water.

In Athens, Greece, former King Mihai of Rumania was wed to Princess Anne of Bourbon-Parma. Their apparel is again described. They then danced, per the Greek tradition, while being showered with rice.

In Raleigh, Governor Dewey spoke to North Carolina Republican leaders stating his approval of the full funding of the Marshall Plan but favored spending it as "hard-headed business men, not soft-headed saps". He criticized the President for over-regulating the country and championed free enterprise. He promised to clean house in January after becoming President. He said that the best way to clean the house of Communists was not to appoint them in the first place, as had President Truman. He found the President's civil rights program to be a "clumsy and crude copy" of the 1944 Republican platform plank on civil rights.

He would arrive in Charlotte at midnight and leave for New York 35 minutes later, in case you want to go out to see him.

Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington announced that the XS-1 had flown on several occasions faster than the speed of sound and that the first such flight had been made by Captain Chuck Yeager, 25—though not stating that it had occurred the previous October 14. Captain Yeager had destroyed thirteen German planes during the war. Aviation Week had disclosed the breaking of the sound barrier in its December 22 edition, prompting the Air Force to ask the Justice Department to look into the disclosure as a potential violation of national security. Attorney General Tom Clark had indicated two weeks earlier, however, that no laws were broken.

The real national security secret which no one could divulge was that Beeman's Gum was the responsible agent for the success of the mission.

On the editorial page, "Vandenberg Jars His Party" praises Senator Vandenberg for attacking the Republicans of the House for cutting foreign aid including ERP. It demonstrated that he placed the national interest ahead of partisan politics. It suggests that the indictment might open a major breach in the party.

In contrast, House Appropriations Committee chairman John Taber struck a new low for the 80th Congress in appealing to selfish private interests ahead of the national welfare, representing ERP as a raid on the Treasury in an effort to appeal to voters of like sentiment. Emasculation of ERP at such a critical juncture could lead to global conflict. The House Republicans were undertaking the cuts to demonstrate the economy which they had promised when they came into power after the 1946 elections. The same had been true of the passage of the tax cut over the President's veto earlier in the year.

The general tenor of the Republican Congress was to pass measures designed to win elections rather than preserve the national interest.

It concludes that while Senator Vandenberg had increased his stature, it would not likely improve his chances of winning the nomination. It was more likely that Mr. Taber spoke for the GOP.

"A Gain for UN in Palestine" praises Count Folke Bernadotte for orchestrating the agreement between the Arabs and Israelis on the four-week truce during which a permanent peace would be sought in Rhodes.

It regards the creation of Israel as a fait accompli, as Russia and U.S. recognition substantiated, to which the Israelis had proved in the previous four weeks their legal and moral right. Arab opposition to Israel's existence had apparently lost much of its steam with the recognition that it would not be so easy to conquer Israel as at first conveyed by the bluster of the Arab hotheads. Both the U.S. and Britain had shown increasing displeasure with the Arab nations. Both Arabs and Jews appeared to recognize that setting off a world conflagration would do neither group any good.

The tacit recognition by the big and little nations that cooperation in the UN was essential to their mutual interests suggested that they had moved to higher ground.

"The Good NC Neighbors" discusses a plan proposed by the High Point and Greensboro school boards whereby High Point would turn over its community tax revenue to Greensboro for the next fiscal year provided Greensboro would reciprocate in 1949-50. The reason for the move was to enable both cities to fund educational projects which their separate annual revenues would not support. The piece finds it an admirable plan of cooperation and hopes that it would be approved.

A piece from the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, titled "Pappy Passes", tells of Pass the Biscuits Pappy Lee O'Daniel deciding to pass on seeking a second term in the Senate, having originally defeated Congressman Lyndon Johnson in the special mid-1941 election to fill the unexpired term of his deceased predecessor Morris Sheppard and then again winning in 1942 for the full term. The hillbilly music and folksy style he had employed in those earlier elections and his elections in 1938 and 1940 to the Governor's Mansion had worn thin with Texas voters and he obviously believed he could not win re-election.

It notes that the South occasionally elected peculiar sorts of people to the Senate.

The race was now between former Governor Coke Stevenson, Mr. Johnson, and Houston attorney George E. B. Peddy. P the B would not endorse any of them and, suggests the piece, that might suit each of them fine.

Drew Pearson tells of the diminishing influence of Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, once the most powerful man in the Cabinet, since he gave the President a bum steer recommending reversal of U.S. support of the Palestine partition plan in favor of a trusteeship. Other advice by the Secretary had also not been wise of late. The Secretary was trying to get the scalp of Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington for besting him in Congress on obtaining a 70 group Air Force rather than a compromise of 66 as an increase to the current complement of 55. He recently told Congress that the money appropriated for the expansion of the Air Force could not be spent wisely. He had also been relating of his bad feelings toward Mr. Symington along the cocktail-party circuit.

Preston Tucker, father of the Tucker automobile, was told the previous week by War Assets Administrator Jess Larson that the Government would not sell him the blast furnace in Cleveland at Republic Steel which Mr. Tucker wanted. The Government rejected all bids because of their inadequacy. It meant that Mr. Tucker would be unable to manufacture his cars for want of steel, and he had oversubscribed his stock with 25 million dollars worth sold to the public, had sold out his franchises in advance for another seven million.

Senator Homer Ferguson was investigating how Mr. Tucker was able to move into the Chicago plant two months before the deal on it with the War Assets Administration was completed. The WAA tried to assist Mr. Tucker by bringing Republic Steel to terms with his company on the Cleveland furnace, whereby Republic could have it provided Republic would give Tucker 77,000 tons of steel. But Mr. Tucker walked away from the deal, wanted the blast furnace for his own. As a further attempt at assistance, WAA asked to see Tucker's designs to determine the risk, but he refused, saying it was an attempt to steal his inventions. Officials had indicated that Republic had been equally high-handed and wanted the furnace for itself.

Senator Taft was handing out tie-pins with a "T" on them, left over from his father's presidential campaigns of 1908 and 1912.

Mr. Pearson was too polite to suggest that the effort would inevitably give rise to opposition claims that Senator Taft was engaging in Model T politics.

The coup in Paraguay had been an effort to keep the country out of the hands of Argentina's dictator Juan Peron, as Sr. Peron had become the real master in the country since helping Paraguay's President to withstand an earlier coup. Then, Sr. Peron set out to destabilize the Paraguayan Government by creating total anarchy to give an excuse to move in troops. So, the Paraguayan Army chiefs had fomented the coup and installed the Supreme Court Chief Justice as President, generally a respected statesman.

James Marlow discusses the Senate-passed bill sponsored by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., to allow 25,000 aliens into the armed forces under the new draft bill, with citizenship eligibility after five years of service. While not creating true mercenaries, some Senators objected that the charge would be made.

Mr. Marlow tells the history of hired soldiers and alien soldiers as far back as the Greeks in 407 B.C., forward to the Hessians fighting for the British during the American Revolution, of whom 13,000 of 30,000 either died or settled in America after the war.

Marquis Childs discusses the potential for political upheaval in France in light of the six-power agreement in London regarding the future of Western Germany, providing for a central government and a constituent assembly, something of which France was suspicious. France did not want Germany to return to European dominance economically and it saw a central government as a first step toward that end. With U.S. dollars set to be invested in rebuilding Germany, the prospect of quick recovery for German industry lay ahead.

The Government of Premier Robert Schuman, with Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, had managed to placate the fears of the Communists on the left and the Gaullists on the right, but the new agreement threatened that balance. A few weeks earlier, the prospect had been discussed of a form of lend-lease by the U.S. to France, which for a time ameliorated fears. But eventually U.S. officials deemed the transfer of 30,000 much-needed rifles not possible for want of Congressional approval and for the fact that even surplus weaponry was needed in light of the Soviet threat. That left the Schuman Government in perilous straits with both the right and the left.

Since the war, French policy on Germany had been short-sighted, often seeming to echo that of post-World War I. French recalcitrance had caused problems for General Lucius Clay, military governor of the American occupation zone of Germany.

The threat of upheaval in France coincided with the House determination to cut 25 percent or a billion dollars from foreign aid, including the ERP budget. That move could slow European recovery and threaten continued cooperation among the Western European recipient nations. If that should happen, Mr. Childs suggests, it would be difficult or impossible to regain the lost trust.

A letter writer comments on the editorial, "Notes for a Letter to Stalin", regarding the Drew Pearson open letter to the Russian Prime Minister. The writer disfavors a get-tough policy with the Soviets, that it would only lead to a world war.

A letter writer finds truth in Isaiah 59:1-2, that the iniquities of the people had hidden God's face from them. He favors uncovering sins, making straight the crooked ways, and gathering out the stones, at which point the people could expect "showers of blessing".

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