Wednesday, June 30, 1948

The Charlotte News

Wednesday, June 30, 1948

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin had told Commons that the suggestion of Sir Anthony Eden that a joint diplomatic note from Britain, France, and the U.S. be sent to the Kremlin in an attempt to resolve the Berlin crisis was being considered. He did not make clear what form of protest the note might take or whether a meeting would be suggested with Russia.

Meanwhile, the supply airlift to Berlin continued apace by Britain and the U.S.

The Army tripled to 30 the number of B-29's stationed in Europe.

A U.S. C-45 transport plane crashed during a training flight in Munich, killing four American crew members.

The Yugoslav Communist Party, in response to the criticism from the Cominform for not following Soviet Communism, asserted its independence from outside domination. They proposed a Balkan bloc comprised of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania. Bulgaria said that its relations with Yugoslavia were not affected by the Cominform statement. Marshal Tito remained mum, but presumably had approved the Communist Party statement.

In Palestine, the last of the British troops departed, ending 31 years of military occupation.

In Greece, Government troops were attacking guerrillas who had cut their main supply route eleven miles south of Ioanina.

ERP administrator Paul Hoffman said that U.S. aid could be shut off to any country which sent war-potential goods to Soviet bloc countries, expanding the previously enunciated policy regarding potential shut-off of aid if any aid money were given to the Soviet bloc.

Robert Best, who had become a radio propagandist for the Nazis during the war, was sentenced in Boston to life imprisonment for treason. The Government had sought the death penalty. He read a statement in court, saying that if the Congress had impeached President Roosevelt as the American people wanted, tens of thousands of Americans who died in the European war would still be alive.

The F.C.C. ruled that a radio station could not censor the content of a political broadcast no matter how libelous the statements appeared and that the station could not be sued in consequence therefore of the broadcast, albeit not extending to the speaker of the statement. It could only act to restrict obscene or profane language.

The Government spent 7.5 billion dollars to repay a one-year loan with interest from the Unemployment Trust Fund and also spent three billion dollars on ERP, charged against the record surplus for the fiscal year, to reduce the surplus to 5.7 billion, the ERP funds not to be disbursed until later. The latter transaction was authorized by Congress to aid in paper cost-cutting. The first amount exceeded the Government Treasury but was immediately borrowed back again for another year, to be repaid a year hence.

In Bowling Green, Ky., a retired doctor and his elderly wife were found murdered in their home, having been struck by an axe or blunt instrument.

In Columbus, Ga., a six year old girl was in the hospital after her mother, a minister of the Four Square Gospel Church in Columbus, had been charged with four counts of beating her.

Burlington Mills merged with Kaiser Hosiery Company, subject to approval by the Justice Department as passing muster under antitrust laws. Burlington had eleven plants in North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee and Kaiser had seven in Alabama and one in N.C.

The outbreak of polio in North Carolina became the third worst in state history with the report of 25 new cases, bringing the total for the year to 309, compared to 300 for the previous year. The record had been 878 cases in 1944 and 675 in 1935, with records extending back to 1918. Guilford County, embracing Greensboro, reported eight of the new cases, bringing its total to 37.

Emery Wister of The News reports of a rainstorm bringing needed relief from the high nineties heat wave of the previous week in Charlotte, lowering the temperature to around 70 on the morning of this date, rising to 83 by noon and set to be back at 90 by day's end. No end was in sight, however, to the heat.

It's them Martians with their heat guns that's causing it.

On the editorial page, "Tito Shakes the Kremlin" finds that Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia, responding with defiance to the Cominform criticism for being anti-Soviet, would not likely be purged any time soon. But the fact that he had defied the Soviets showed increasing weakness of the Soviet position in Eastern Europe, as Tito had been one of their more faithful puppets. His conception of Communism differed markedly from that of Moscow. He was not wedded to anti-capitalism and socialism, favoring nationalism and the People's Front over the Communist Party.

The Balkan nations generally did not like the prospect of becoming involved with the West as allies to Russia on the front lines of a shooting war. The Soviets had taken effective control of more territory than they could efficiently maintain with or without force. The Tito revolt, it ventures, should convince Moscow to abandon its imperialistic approach to Eastern Europe.

"W. Irving Bullard—Friend to Man" eulogizes the nationally known manufacturing and civic leader, who had just died on Monday, for his personal warmth. It cites an instance when a circus performer from Canada was injured and left behind by the circus in a local hospital in Charlotte. Reading of the story, Mr. Bullard had sent a check to care for the woman and provide transportation home. He contributed regularly to The News Empty Stocking Fund, providing toys to impoverished children at Christmas, asking that The News determine his proper contribution.

We are still looking for an example of that plastic picker-stick, the revolutionary device he invented, but it seems to have been lost in time, out of reach, discarded perhaps along with the Flit. Maybe somebody bent one into a hoop and the rest was history... Or, it might have been melted down to become the Vegematic or the Cap Snaffler.

"Last Call for Eisenhower" finds the attempt by both the left and the right in the Democratic Party to draft General Eisenhower to be little more than wishful thinking, that the General would continue to renounce all presidential aspirations as he had done in mid-January. But in a letter to a Republican friend, he had indicated that if the Republicans had turned to an isolationist candidate, he would have done something "dramatic".

The anti-Truman forces on the left and right had wasted their time courting General Eisenhower when they should have found an alternative candidate willing to run and set about committing delegates and convincing the President to step aside.

If the President did obtain the nomination, as appeared likely on the first ballot, and then lost, no one would be to blame more than the Americans for Democratic Action on the left and the revolting Southern Democrats on the right.

Sumner Welles, former Undersecretary of State until August, 1943, discusses the repercussions from a five-week delay from the time of recognition of the new State of Israel before sending a diplomatic representative, waiting until Russia had announced its intention to do so, opening up the charge that the Administration was only seeking to beat Russia to the punch. Also, because the U.S. had only provided de facto recognition to Israel, the U.S. minister would be of lower rank than the Russian minister.

Meanwhile, the State Department had been giving assurances of de jure recognition to Israel if it would give up some of the territory allotted by the U.N. partition plan of the previous November 29. It had given rise to the belief in Israel that the U.S. agreed with the British plan to allow King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan control of Jerusalem and the Negeb, the latter being the only region where large-scale resettlement of European Jews could occur. Britain also had urged the Arab Legion to bomb Haifa once the truce ended, and that policy, too, appeared to the Israelis possibly supported by the U.S.

American policy had increased the prestige of the pro-Russian elements in Israel.

While the U.S. and Britain wanted to try to effectuate agreement on policy, that did not imply that the U.S. should follow in lock-step every British move to the point of undermining Israeli authority and sacrificing U.S. interests. As long as Ernest Bevin remained Foreign Secretary in Britain, he asserts, there would be no policy which entailed justice to the Jews.

Drew Pearson tells of Thomas Dewey stating in private at the previous week's convention that Harold Stassen was young and bitter, needed to lose some fights before he acquired the necessary seasoning to be the party nominee.

Mr. Stassen would achieve those knocks over and over and over and over again, as he would become the quadrennial standing joke for decades to come, yet never again being seriously considered for the GOP nomination. He ran more times for President under an established party banner than anyone else in U.S. history.

Mr. Pearson comments on the draft bill including the authorization to the President to seize essential manufacturing for defense purposes when industry failed to provide materials at a fair price to the Government. He specifically references steel, which would become the object of the controversial attempt at seizure by the President in 1952 during the Korean War to prevent a strike in an essential industry, albeit under Taft-Hartley rather than the draft legislation which would expire in 1950. The Supreme Court would declare the seizure unconstitutional, notwithstanding the fact that the President had used a similar provision previously in 1948 to seize the railroads and utilized Taft-Hartley to enjoin a strike in the coal industry in 1948.

Representative John Fogarty of Rhode Island had taken a poll among Democrats as to who would be the best vice-presidential nominee, found that the choice should be from the East and that House Democratic Whip and future Speaker John McCormack of Massachusetts was the favorite.

He imparts that Governor Dwight Green of Illinois had been the virtual political prisoner of Col. Bertie McCormick of the Chicago Tribune at the GOP convention, receiving instruction from Col. McCormick's minions that the delegation would vote for Senator Taft despite Governor Green wanting to throw the delegation's support behind Mr. Dewey. In the end, the Tribune won out almost to the conclusion of the balloting as Illinois stuck with Senator Taft until the matter was decided on the third ballot unanimously.

Marquis Childs finds that the Democrats indubitably would nominate President Truman, albeit without enthusiasm. He was the only answer in a party beset by many divisions, just as the Republicans had determined with their re-nomination of Thomas Dewey.

Some Republicans, in desperation, had sought during the convention to place General Eisenhower in nomination and obtain his blessings in so doing. He had reiterated his declination by refusing to respond. The important thing, however, was that the GOP had rejected the isolationist wing of the party.

General Eisenhower was likewise not subject to draft by the Democrats. The only realistic alternative to the President was a labor-liberal wing effort to nominate Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. But for the same reason that Senator Vandenberg could not be nominated by the Republicans, it would not be possible for a Douglas nomination by the Democrats. He would not likely compromise on the civil rights issue to placate Southern rebellion.

The Democratic strategy would be to label Mr. Dewey a conservative and the President as a liberal deserving the support of the people who held no significant party alliance, the same strategy used during the President's recent cross-country train tour. Mr. Truman would be handicapped, however, by the fact that he represented a party in power in the Executive Branch for the previous 16 years.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop tell of the state of gloom pervading Democratic leaders in Congress and even among some of the President's top advisers in the wake of the Dewey-Warren nominations by the Republicans. They had hoped that a more conservative vice-presidential nominee, such as Representative Charles Halleck or Senator John W. Bricker, would give a taint to the GOP ticket to supply fodder for attacking Congress. Moreover, the ticket had deprived some anti-Truman liberal Democrats of their hope for a pretext for drafting General Eisenhower to do battle against an isolationist ticket. These Democrats now hoped that General Eisenhower would reiterate his refusal so that they could gravitate toward Justice Douglas.

The President's certain nomination, however, did not assure happy sailing as some of the Northern bosses, as Ed Flynn of the Bronx, would make it plain to the President before the convention that he had no chance of winning and that he should retire for the good of the party. His probable refusal would end there, but it would not make for a happy relationship during the campaign.

The President would be attacked at the convention from both left and right, the latter being the Southerners upset over the President's civil rights program, even though left moribund in the Congress. They would desire a states rights plank to counterbalance the civil rights plank. Furthermore, the Southerners were planning to nominate Senators Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, Walter George of Georgia, and Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina as favorite son candidates.

The President had commitments from only 304 of the 1,234 delegates, and the Americans for Democratic Action on the left would be working for an open convention to obtain the nomination of Justice Douglas.

They conclude that the nomination would be given the President but with "unparalleled rudeness".

A letter writer from Poland comments on the article about Dr. Najder which had appeared in the newspaper, attributing to him the statement that there was religious tolerance in Poland for the first time in three centuries. The writer begs to differ, saying that while Catholicism had been the state religion in Poland, it was not illegal for other religious sects to meet. It was more appropriate to say that other religious sects were not recognized.

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