Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Russians had
barred Germans and Western allied officers from entering Berlin, on
the pretext of keeping old German marks, worth more in the Soviet
zone and Berlin than in the Western zones, out of circulation in the
city. The Russians also prohibited Western currency, new and old,
from circulation in Berlin and the Soviet zone. Only three Yugoslav
officers of hundreds stopped were allowed to pass into Berlin.
Freight trains were allowed to enter under careful inspection. Air
travel was not affected. Train and automobile traffic was halted at
the westernmost edge of the Russian zone, 100 miles west of Berlin.
The British moved ten armored cars along the autobahn to
Helmstedt at the border of the Russian zone for an unstated purpose.
In France, a general one-hour strike was called by the
Communist-controlled General Confederation of Labor in protest of
police throwing striking rubber workers from a tire plant in
Clermont-Ferrand on Tuesday night. Garbage collectors heaved garbage
at police and blocked a thoroughfare in Paris. Some were arrested.
A Manhattan woman expressed regret that her telegram had been
responsible for breaking the filibuster of Senator Glen Taylor
regarding the draft bill. She was the wife of a veteran of the war
and viewed Senator Taylor's effort as courageous, said in the
telegram that the Senate could "congratulate themselves on
having one honest Senator". When Senator Taylor read that part
of the telegram on the floor, Senator Owen Brewster ruled that it
cast aspersions on the Senate, was therefore out of order, and the
17-hour filibuster, joined by Senator William Langer, was abruptly
ended. Senator Taylor was, however, able to regain the floor amid
harried confusion regarding whether the bill had then been properly
determined as passed by voice vote. But after a few minutes,
appearing tired and speaking slowly, Senator Taylor gave up.
The draft bill was then passed by the Senate. It would become
effective immediately but inductions would not begin for 90 days.
The bill altered the previously approved 24 months of service to 21
months. Special induction of doctors, dentists and other medical
professionals was dropped. The proposal of Senator Henry Cabot
Lodge, Jr., to enlist 25,000 aliens was also dropped. An exemption
for the only surviving son of families who lost sons in the war was
included. Among other provisions, the President could seize
factories which refused to fill armed service orders at a fair
price. It was expected that the bill would be approved by the House.
The Senate, as expected, approved the bill to admit 205,000
displaced persons from Europe over the ensuing two years. It would
now go to the President.
It was not clear whether the Congress would finish its
business by midnight when the adjournment for the GOP convention, to
start Monday, was scheduled. House Speaker Joe Martin doubted
business could be concluded this night.
A major stumbling block was in the Senate-House committee
trying to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the
appropriations bill for foreign aid. Thus far, they remained a
billion dollars apart.
The GOP platform committee appeared to favor a farm plan
which would lower price supports as a means to control the cost of
living. The National Grange and other farm groups supported the
idea.
The President named a board of inquiry, pursuant to
Taft-Hartley, to study the UMW demands and make recommendations in
an effort to head off a coal strike July 6. UMW wanted the May
agreement on pension payments implemented forthwith rather than
awaiting the outcome of pending litigation challenging the legality
of the settlement. After the board would report its findings, the
Government could then seek a court order to stop the strike for 80
days.
In Durham, N.C., a mechanic was held for the murder of his wife,
alleged to have shot her in the mouth with a 20-gauge shotgun at the
couple's home. A 16-year old daughter and 13-year old son, who
witnessed the shooting, said they believed it to be accidental. It
started with an argument before the wife left for work over the wife
sewing buttons on the husband's shirts. The husband picked up his
wife at work at the end of her shift at 1:30 a.m. and drove her
home, whereupon the argument resumed. The husband, according to the
children, had been drinking. The shooting occurred in the bedroom.
In Rock Hill, S.C., the principal suspect in the murder of
the young businessman, shot once through the back, remained in
custody without charges. Police planned to drag the creek where the
body was found inside a wooden crate, to try to find bloodstained
clothing thought to have been dropped by the murderer.
Senator Arthur Vandenberg accused the President of "partisan
sniping" on his 15-day cross-country tour just completed.
Whatever the case may be, don't forget that cross-country
tour. For we have a feeling, sniping or not, that it might make a
difference come November.
On the editorial page, "Gazing into Our Crystal Ball" predicts that Thomas Dewey would be nominated the following week on
the tenth to fifteenth ballot. Governor Stassen obviously
anticipated holding out no longer than the ninth ballot, on which he
had predicated his victory. Then, he would throw his delegates to
Senator Vandenberg.
It bases the prediction on the most recent Fortune poll
which showed Governor Dewey still in front in popular appeal among
Republicans and solidly in front of President Truman.
Senator Taft, preferred by the Old Guard, lacked popular
appeal and so would not be nominated. He would also have a hard time
against President Truman. In all likelihood, it finds by a process
of elimination, he would throw his delegate support to Governor
Dewey—or, as it points out, Yewed E. Samoht.
It was that kind of year.
Yrrah, Lleh Me' Evig.
"Peace Offensive Is Revived" tells of the Russian
effort to engage in peace rhetoric, started in early May, then
subsiding, having been re-initiated. Yugoslavia had offered to
settle U.S. claims. Bulgaria was willing to negotiate normalization
of diplomatic relations with the Greek Government. Russia had
accepted the U.S. proposal for a ten-nation conference on free
navigation along the Danube. Russia had agreed to accept large cuts
in demands for reparations from Hungary, Finland, and Rumania.
Washington opinion held that Russia was trying to build up
good will in advance of the fall meeting of the U.N. General
Assembly in Paris, to help cast the U.S. and Western Europe as
war-mongering nations. The piece thinks it a good analysis.
It was a part of the long-range effort by the Soviets to
allow the U.S. to take its time in rebuilding Western Europe
economically in the hope that the U.S. would break itself in the
meantime.
"Styles in Thought Control" discusses the
Communist purge of the Prague libraries of certain books incongruous
with Communist ideology. It would likely not occur publicly but
rather in secret.
In America, such surreptitious methods were also being used
to curb thought, such as the Mundt-Nixon bill and the HUAC
proceedings, (with more to come with a vengeance in August). If
such methods were to be condoned in the U.S., then the people should
not be too quick to condemn such methods in Communist-dominated
lands or even those employed by the Nazis.
A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled
"Gravitation vs. Gravity", tells of the London Times
having editorialized anent the feat of a 101-year old Pennsylvania
woman, sliding down a stair rail. Amid the troubles of the world, in
Palestine and Congressional cuts to ERP, she had managed to provide
fresh ground for placing the U.S. and Britain again on speaking
terms.
Drew Pearson examines the favorite for the Republican
nomination, Thomas Dewey. When he was first being considered for the
nomination in 1940, he was not ready. When he was the nominee in
1944, he had improved but was still "cantankerous, conceited,
not seasoned enough" to be President. He had candidly admitted
to Mr. Pearson that the mistakes he had made in the latter race had
helped to make a man of him. He also paid homage to FDR for keeping
the Government clean for all of his twelve years in office.
Mr. Pearson says that in the past he had never liked Mr.
Dewey but now did. He had improved with age and appeared to be the
best qualified of the GOP candidates, save perhaps Governor Warren,
only a favorite son.
The drawback was that during his tenure as District Attorney
for Manhattan, he had run roughshod over civil liberties in the
quest to prosecute organized crime, holding witnesses in jail for
weeks at a time. A lot of people had thus asked whether he would
establish a national Gestapo. He had gone a long way toward
dispelling that notion with his debate against Harold Stassen in
Oregon in which he took the unpopular stance that to outlaw the
Communist Party would be to engage in thought control.
He goes on to look at the potential for his financial policy
and foreign policy, the latter to be orchestrated by John Foster
Dulles, the former by Winthrop Aldrich of Chase Manhattan Bank. Mr.
Pearson regards Mr. Dulles as a mistake as he had helped to build up
Germany after World War I and would do so again. His appointment as
Secretary of State therefore would trouble the French, the Italians
and the moderate Europeans generally. Russia would invoke his name
as a symbol for American imperialism. Mr. Pearson thinks that Mr.
Dewey ought instead try to obtain the services of Senator Vandenberg
as Secretary of State.
He had endured many derisive characterizations through time, such as "the little man on the wedding cake", so dubbed by Alice Longworth, "the man in the blue serge suit", as Harper's had called him, and the candidate who was "throwing his diaper into the ring", as Harold Ickes had stated. He had stopped wincing at such comments but still avoided doing anything which would draw criticism, watched the Gallup poll closely.
If he were elected, he would operate differently from
President Truman. Instead of snap judgments based on the advice of
"hard-drinking, meagre-brained aides", he would seek all
night advice from earnest experts before rendering a decision of
moment. The decision would be slow but carefully determined.
Joseph and Stewart Alsop discuss the Republican convention
set to convene Monday in Philadelphia, predicting that the outcome
would determine the fate of the nation and the world. It pitted
Governors Dewey, Stassen, and Warren plus Senator Vandenberg, the
progressive wing, against the right represented by Senator Taft,
Speaker Joe Martin, and Senator John W. Bricker, the 1944
vice-presidential candidate. At base would be the future of American
conservatism.
Governor Dewey, while progressive, had been supported by New
York bankers who were in his corner only because the conservatives
could not win. If elected, he would nevertheless have obligations to
them as well as the group in the Republican hierarchy favoring
pre-McKinley policies.
Senator Taft was less conservative than Mr. Martin or Senator
Bricker, but was nevertheless the favorite of Col. Bertie McCormick
of the Chicago Tribune. The businessmen backing the
progressives were of a different type, such as Paul Hoffman, ERP
administrator, who realized the need for rebuilding the European
economy. The conservatives, save Senator Taft, believed strictly in
free enterprise.
The world and the country waited with bated breath to see who
the nominee would be, as he would likely be elected in November.
And it would be so in Chicago. The Republicans, and most of
the press, however, neglected the fresh eggs factor.
Marquis Childs gives praise to Senator Vandenberg for his
able management of the bipartisan foreign policy in Congress. His
friends and supporters were working without coordination for his
nomination while he refused to assist the process, much to their
frustration. Many of his supporters favored Governor Dewey for the
second spot on the ticket.
If he were to be nominated and elected, the conservatives in
his own party would still be around to thwart him as they were
jealous of his power and resented his influence. Generally, a
Republican might be as much a prisoner of the Republican Congress as
had been President Truman.
While Senator Vandenberg had undergone his conversion from
isolationism only during and since the war, so had millions in
the country, giving them a certain sympathy for the Senator.
The Editors' Roundtable, a weekly round-up of editorial
opinion compiled by James Galloway of Asheville, appears for the
first time, to become a regular feature each Saturday. It starts
with a look at editorial opinion on the fate of Western Germany as
determined by the six-nation London conference, to which all six
nations, the U.S., Britain, France and the Benelux countries, had
agreed and ratified, establishing a central government in Western
Germany and internationalizing the Ruhr industrial area.
It looks at editorial opinion of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which believes the U.S. ought ignore Russian
propaganda against the plan as divisive of Germany; the Hartford
Courant, opining that the power which could reunite Germany
would be the one to win Germany, and that Russia was the country
favoring unity, with Berlin within the Eastern zone and thus subject
to Russian pressure; the Chicago Daily News, asserting that
the plan could work if executed well; the Milwaukee Journal,
finding that the West must make it clear that Russia was
responsible for the disunity; the New York Herald Tribune,
suggesting that the Russians might be pulled into the orbit of
the Western plan by realization of the futility to resist it; the
Chicago Sun, finding France disappointed in the plan; and the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, favoring mollification of French fears
over re-industrialization of Germany via the Ruhr by international
inspection to assure that it could not be used for
re-militarization.
Generally, Mr. Galloway found opinion to be that division of
Germany would be long-lasting and favored stronger assurances to France against renewed German aggression.
A letter writer favors the two-party system in North Carolina
as long as the Democrats remained in office.
A Quote of the Day: "Another thing that worries us is that once more, for a second time, we can't remember where we planted the parsley." —Lexington (Ky.) Herald
