Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that before HUAC,
Duncan Lee, former OSS employee and legal counsel to General "Wild
Bill" Donovan during the war, denied that he was ever a
Communist or that he ever gave secret information to Elizabeth
Bentley as she had charged, claiming that she then gave it to the
Soviets. He said that he knew Ms. Bentley by the name of Helen
Grant, had met her at the home of Mary Price, originally of North
Carolina, and that he and his wife had tried to break off their
purely social connection with Ms. Bentley because she became a pest.
He said that it was hard for him to believe that her accusations
were those of a "rational person".
Ms. Bentley was then
re-called to testify and reiterated her accusations against Mr. Lee,
saying that, among other information, he informed her about
something "super-secret" going on at Oak Ridge, though, she
said, he was not aware of what it was.
HUAC served subpoenas on Mr. and Mrs. Michael Ivanovich
Samarin relative to their desire to seek the protection of the
American Government and not return to the Soviet Union, as desired
by the Soviet Embassy. Mr. Samarin was a school teacher who taught
the children of the members of the Soviet delegation to the U.N. He
had volunteered information to the FBI, the exact nature of which
was not known. A demand by the Soviet Ambassador that the American
Government turn over the couple to the Russian Embassy was rejected
by the State Department. The presumed object of the HUAC inquiry was
to see if the couple had information regarding the alleged espionage
ring within the Government before and during the war.
Another Russian teacher, Oksana Kosenkina, was also being
sought for service of a subpoena, but she was apparently at the
Russian consulate and could not be served as long as she remained
there.
In Tokyo, an official in General MacArthur's headquarters had
been suspended without pay pending a loyalty check. The man was head
of the price and distribution division which directed rationing and
price controls on Japanese food and other essential commodities. The
man said that he was not and never had been a Communist and was
loyal in all respects. An investigation of him by the FBI pertained
to his prior service in the Civil Aeronautics Authority and the
Office of Price Administration. A hearing would be held on the
matter in Washington.
Rumors circulating in Berlin were discounted regarding the
Russians being about to lift the blockade insofar as rail traffic.
President Truman signed the housing bill into law passed
during the special session of Congress which had ended the previous
Saturday. He criticized the measure as "far short" of
what should have been passed. But he said that it would be "some
help" and so he signed it. He said that the GOP members had
blocked the Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill which would have provided
public housing and slum clearance.
The New York Star published a report that Secretary of
State Marshall had threatened to resign as a result of the
President's proposal regarding Palestine. Press secretary Charles G.
Ross said that he was not aware of any such situation.
Secretary Marshall would resign, effective at the beginning
of 1949.
DNC chairman Senator J. Howard McGrath said that the
President might make a Labor Day speech in Detroit. He did not say
whether the President might begin his campaign prior to that point.
The President, he said, would be making whistle-stops around the
country and maybe traveling by "Mississippi boat".
The Democrats were treading water financially, with only a
$5,000 balance, while the Republicans were flush. The Democrats had
received virtually no contributions from the South, usually quite helpful to the campaign war chest.
Friends of Governor Dewey said that he was so confident of
victory that he might make fewer than ten campaign speeches. They
said he might take one long tour by train.
Why take risks when the election is in the bag? Stick to
fewer than ten speeches. That ought to do it.
The Dixiecrats met in Houston this date for planning campaign
strategy and for the formal acceptance speech of presidential
nominee Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. The speech would
take place the following day.
Governor Thurmond was greeted by H. R. Cullen,
multi-millionaire oilman and philanthropist—to demonstrate
that the Dixiecrats were on the side of the common man.
The Texas Democratic executive committee had just certified
the Truman-Barkley ticket for inclusion on the November ballot after
the Dixiecrats had sought to prevent it.
In the Canadian Rockies, in the Bugaboo Range near
Spillamachean, B.C., two mountain climbers of the San Francisco Bay
Area died after being struck by a bolt of lightning during a sudden
snow storm. Two others in the party were seriously injured. The four
were huddling in a cave to escape the snow when the lightning struck
them. All were knocked unconscious. One of the two who had died fell
over a 1,000-foot cliff after being struck and the other was
paralyzed and had to be left behind while the two injured persons
sought help. The rescue party then could not reach him in time.
In Gainesville, Fla., the author of Cross Creek,
Marjorie Kinnon Rawlings, was found liable in a civil suit for
invasion of privacy in the nominal sum of one dollar and court
costs. Ms. Rawlings was sued by her former researcher, claiming that
the author had used her as a model for a character in the novel. An
earlier trial had wound up in a verdict for Ms. Rawlings, but the
Florida Supreme Court reversed the case and allowed the award of nominal damages.
In the News amateur photographic contest, an Army
sergeant won the week's $5 prize for a photograph, printed on the
page. Second place pocketed $2.50.
In September, the grand prize would be awarded of $25 and the
winning snapshot submitted to the national contest which awarded prizes
totaling $10,000.
On the editorial page, "Modifying the Housing Law" agrees with the City Manager that modification of the Standard
Housing Ordinance in Charlotte should occur so that quick
enforcement could take place under the newly implemented ordinance,
to remedy the worst of the slum conditions. It was wise to defer
enforcement of parts of the ordinance in deference to the parts
which would effect better sanitation forthwith.
"Communists Are Not Idealists" finds those
Americans from the middle class who had been attracted to Communism
not to be idealists but rather opportunists who merely wanted to be
on the winning side. Whittaker Chambers, testifying before HUAC, had
said that such was the grip of the party on adherents to Communism
that one could not say that one surely was on the winning side when
a member left the party. Indeed, it was more likely, he indicated,
to say that one was leaving for the losing side, but it was better
to be on the losing side than to live under Communism.
The Washington Post had replied to this statement of
Mr. Chambers by asserting it to be explanation of how the party held
mesmeric power over youth drawn to it.
"Get Rid of the Ragweed" tells of ragweed pollen
at this time of year being most responsible for hay fever. One could
escape by going to the desert or to the Northern regions or to
southern and eastern Florida, each of which claimed no ragweed.
It recommends no particular remedy. For the present,
sufferers would have to bear the scourge and the sneezing.
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Faith
in North Carolina", says that the Gloomy Guses who never tired
of gloomy predictions were not taking their cues from North Carolina
agricultural experts, economists or businessmen.
The director of the farm extension program at N.C. State had
said that farmers of the state had a rosy future, with prosperous
years ahead. Industries which relied on tobacco and textiles were
also optimistic and many plants had their products sold in advance
for months to come. Plant expansion was ongoing everywhere.
Drew Pearson provides his third column anent the corruption
of HUAC chairman J. Parnell Thomas of New Jersey. After having
covered his kickback scheme whereby Mr. Thomas employed bogus staff
and received their salaries to boost his own Congressional pay and
his favors to an Army private to keep him out of combat by asserting
falsely to the man's Army superior that he was an investigator for
HUAC and essential to maintaining security, Mr. Pearson in this
piece cites another example of favors for an Army private deemed fit
for combat, that his father might contribute, as he had, to Mr.
Thomas's re-election campaigns in 1944 and 1946. It was not clear,
as in the other case of favoritism, precisely what Mr. Thomas said
to get this soldier off the hook, but he did wind up with the break
he sought and avoided combat, remaining stateside.
The soldier also then sought entry to Officers' Candidate
School, which because of a negative recommendation from one of his
two superiors, never materialized despite Congressman Thomas's help.
He also sought a transfer, also helped along by the Congressman,
which never came to be. But on both occasions, Mr. Thomas had
written to the soldier encouraging words on the subject. Eventually,
the private had to go to the Pacific with his unit. Yet, because he
was a clerk, he never was placed near the front lines.
The private wrote to Mr. Thomas that he had been able to save
$500 and send it home to his father. Eventually, his father gave
exactly $500 to Mr. Thomas's campaigns.
Sumner Welles, former Undersecretary of State until August,
1943, reflects on the interview which General Lucius Clay, U.S.
military governor in Germany, had given to New York Times
correspondent Drew Middleton in response to an editorial by
Walter Lippmann criticizing the General. General Clay stated that
there was no truth to the rumor that he, rather than the State
Department, was conducting foreign policy in Germany, but that the
recommendations he and his staff had made had played a principal
role in determining policy.
But Mr. Lippmann's primary criticism remained unanswered, as
General Clay appeared not capable of understanding that policy in
Germany determined policy for Europe and, consequently, the future of the world.
General Clay had taken action on occasion which shaped policy. The
State Department had allowed General Clay and his staff to initiate
policy. Yet they were career military men who showed little or no
understanding of European history. They had not undertaken policy to
avoid the re-emergence of German nationalism or to convince the
Germans of the benefits of the Western European Union, safeguard
German youth from Nazism and militarism, or to convert the German
spirit to individual freedom and democracy. No land reforms had been
undertaken and no dispersion of concentrated industrial power had
occurred. In short, there was no program in place to prevent the
Germans from joining with the Soviet Union to try to gain world
domination.
The two goals of the AMG had been to make the Western zones
of Germany self-supporting and provide a military buffer to the
Soviet Union.
General Clay had formulated the policy regarding
internationalization of the Ruhr and creation of a separate Western
German government, policy which provoked the blockade of Berlin. The
policy also had undermined U.S. relations with France.
The Soviet Union would only be contained if it were led to
respect the military strength of the West. The more rapidly could be effected the
economic and military reconstruction of Western Europe, of which
France was the key, the more likely war could be averted. But if
France believed that its security was endangered by the type of
programs formulated by General Clay, then they would not have the
confidence necessary for economic reconstruction nor the willingness
to cooperate with the U.S., indispensable to military security. The
policy in Germany for which General Clay was principally responsible, he concludes,
had endangered achievement of the basic objectives of U.S. foreign
policy.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop posit that the blockade of Berlin
would soon be lifted by the Soviets, followed by a four-power
conference on the future of Germany and perhaps all of Europe. Thus,
another war appeared for the nonce to have been averted.
The expected power of Russia in Europe and the Middle East
had not materialized. Instead, Russian expansion had been halted
dead in its tracks. The Communists of Western Europe could not take
power by legal or illegal means, and the West, with the help of ERP,
was showing signs of recovery. In Iran and Greece, where the Soviet
effort to expand had been most direct, there had also been Russian
failure.
In Eastern Europe, Tito's defiance of the Kremlin was only
one manifestation of a growing trend. The youth section of the
Socialist Unity Party in Berlin had condemned the Soviet blockade as
a "crime against humanity". In Czechoslovakia, Premier
Gottwald and Foreign Minister Klementis had demonstrated signs of
independence, probably making them ripe for being purged. Hungary
also appeared on the verge of revolt but for the presence of the Red
Army.
Nationalism in the people was weakening the grip of the
Kremlin. Even the Chinese Communists, strongest of the parties
outside the Soviet Union, had shown signs of independence.
A letter writer distinguishes states' rights from local
rights. He attempts to give a somewhat long-winded explanation of
what he believes states' rights to be, without ever mentioning what
it actually is. It is embodied in the Tenth Amendment and is the
residual power to the states and the people which is not provided to
the Federal Government. Generally, the power of the states and
localities, the so-called "police powers", is the right to regulate the health, morals, safety and
welfare of the people of a given state or locality, as long as that
regulation, both substantively and procedurally, does not offend the
Constitution, principally the Amendments and the Supremacy Clause. There is some Federal police power, but not
co-extensive with that of the states, circumscribed by the delineated powers such as the power to regulate matters in and substantially impacting interstate commerce.
In any event, he concludes correctly that the Dixiecrats, in
championing states' rights, were "spitting in the wind".
