Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that HUAC chairman J.
Parnell Thomas accused President Truman of trying to conceal the
facts of Communist spying from the American people. He said that he
had evidence of a third major Government spy ring, not yet mentioned
in the hearings, which the Committee would reveal in its hearings
scheduled to start September 7. He said that he knew that locked in
the files of the Executive Branch of the Government was the full
story of the spy activity—which the President refused to
release.
How did you know, then?
Mr. Thomas said, "The facts should have been before the
public many months ago, and the conspirators behind the bars."
Well, we agree. And they would be.
Committee members were angry about leaks coming from the
hearings held in executive session, specifically that of the
previous day during which Alger Hiss had testified that he would let
the Committee know after consulting with his counsel and lie
detector experts whether he would be willing, as Whittaker Chambers
had indicated, to take a lie detector test. Mr. Hiss had replied
that he had heard that such tests were inherently unreliable and
dependent entirely on the subjective interpretation of the
particular examiner. He did not call them, however, "Twentieth
Century witchcraft."
This date, Mr. Hiss would again testify before HUAC, meeting
in executive session in New York for the second consecutive day. He
would unexpectedly be confronted with Whittaker Chambers in person,
the meeting having been accelerated from its originally scheduled
date of August 25, and would ask to see Mr. Chambers's teeth in
close proximity to determine whether Mr. Chambers might be George
Crosley, with whom Mr. Hiss had been casually acquainted as a
sub-lessee of his family's apartment in the period of late 1935
through spring or summer 1936. Mr. Crosley, said Mr. Hiss, had
particularly bad teeth. Mr. Chambers would also testify briefly that
he had undergone extensive dental work, performed by Dr. Hitchcock, since the time when he had known
Mr. Hiss between 1934 and 1937. Mr. Hiss, upon further reflection
after this close encounter and addressing directly to Mr. Chambers several questions, came to the conclusion that Mr. Chambers
definitely was the man he had known as George Crosley, an unpublished freelance writer for magazines. Mr. Chambers,
however, continued to insist that he had never used that alias, only
"Carl", his Communist Party pseudonym, in the presence
of Mr. Hiss and his family.
Mr. Chambers had also testified earlier that Mr. Hiss's
brother, Donald, was also a member of the party but not as active or
committed as Alger Hiss. Donald Hiss had testified previously,
saying also, as his brother had initially, that he did not know Mr.
Chambers and had never been a Communist.
The ambassadors of the Big Three met again in Moscow at the
American Embassy following a meeting the previous night with Soviet
Foreign Commissar V. M. Molotov. No meeting with Mr. Molotov was
anticipated for this date. There was still no comment on the
progress of the talks.
In Berlin, an American C-74 Globemaster, the largest plane
ever to land in Berlin, delivered 25 tons of flour to the
beleaguered city. The plane could carry four times the load of the
C-54 Skymasters being used regularly in the airlift. Officials said
they did not know when the Globemaster would be placed in regular
service. The pilot said that he saw no Russian planes in the air
corridor as the Globemaster flew from the American zone on its
experimental mission.
President Truman signed into law the credit curbs on bank
credit and installment buying, passed by Congress during the special
session, but called it only a small fraction of what was necessary
to curb inflation. He continued to favor wage and price controls and
rationing on a limited basis.
Trans-Jordan claimed that Jewish forces attacked Arab Legion
positions in Deir Abu Tor in southern Jerusalem this date but said
that they were repulsed with several hundred killed.
Field Marshal Viscount Bernard Montgomery warned Britons, in
a speech in Blackpool, England, that they had to be ready for a
sudden attack from an aggressor. He called for 150,000 men and women
to join the Territorial Army, the equivalent of the American
National Guard. He regarded the present situation more as a truce
than a true peace. All Britons were required to undergo a year of
military training at age eighteen, but enlistment in the Territorial
Army was voluntary.
In Chicago, 24,000 UAW workers at seven International
Harvester plants went on strike. Wages were not involved. Grievances
concerned apprenticeships and arbitration procedures.
In San Francisco, Mama's OPA, the nickname for the San
Francisco Council of Women Shoppers, modified their absolute boycott
of meat for its high prices, saying they would pay no more than 65
cents per pound for any kind of meat. Two downtown markets had
engaged in a price war in the wake of the boycott, reducing meat as
much as 44 cents per pound.
In Ormund, Fla., two sex maniacs were being sought in the
seaside rape and murder of a young woman and the murder of her male
companion. Four white youths and two blacks were being questioned by
police in the homicides. The murders took place on a secluded
stretch of beach near Daytona Beach. Footprints in the sand,
pictured, suggested to police a pair of slayers.
In New York, baseball great Babe Ruth died at age 53,
succumbing to a protracted bout with throat cancer, complicated
recently by pulmonary problems. The nature of his two-year illness
had not been disclosed prior to his death. His body would be on
public display at Yankee Stadium this day and the next. The funeral, to be attended by Governor Dewey,
would be held Thursday morning. Burial would be in Gate of Heaven
Cemetery in Westchester County. The major radio networks intended to
cover the memorial services this night. President Truman paid
tribute to the slugger who had played professional baseball for 22
years, until 1935, setting 76 records, 62 of which stood at his
death. He had hit 708 homeruns during his career, including his 60-homerun season of 1927, a record which stood until 1961 when Roger
Maris hit 61, albeit in more games. According to the Catholic priest
who administered last rites, Mr. Ruth died in his sleep after saying
his prayers.
In Charlotte, a determination was underway whether to
postpone for a week, until September 15, the opening of school
because of the polio epidemic.
We ain't gonna go to no school nohow. Paw says we might up
and do the south 40 instead.
On the editorial page, "It Could Have Been Worse" finds that the President, in his mid-year fiscal report predicting a
deficit of 1.5 billion dollars and record peacetime spending of 42.2
billion, had placed the Republican Congress on the spot for having
given a five billion dollar tax cut earlier in the year, passed over
the President's veto.
The piece gives the President credit for his courage in
vetoing the bill and finds GOP judgment lacking in passing it. It
was likely, however, that the country would not have been better off
had the Congress passed the President's tax cut plan calling for a
$40 individual cut to be paid from an increase in corporate taxes.
But Congress had not passed it and so the country only knew the
results of what they had done.
Moreover, they had increased the budget of the Air Force to
allow for 70 groups rather than the smaller increase recommended by
the Administration from the current 55 groups. The Congress had done
little regarding debt retirement, standing at 253 billion, possibly
to go higher to pay for defense and foreign aid increases. The
President was correct to criticize Congress for its spending and tax
cut policies.
But the President had proposed spending on other things, slum
clearance and public housing, Federal aid to education, expansion of
Social Security, increasing the minimum wage, restoration of cut
reclamation and power projects, ratification of the international
wheat agreement and price control, among other things, all made part
of the agenda for the special session. The Congress did not act on
these programs.
The piece suggests that the country could not have paid for
the programs even without the Republican tax cut. The GOP spenders,
it concludes, could have done much worse had they adhered strictly
to the President's recommendations.
"Cloud on Spy Ring Inquiry" finds it remarkable
that no double-checking of stories appeared to have been undertaken
by HUAC investigators before the current controversy developed
between Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers, the former denying Mr.
Chambers's accusation that Mr. Hiss had been a Communist with Mr.
Chambers during the period 1934-37 and that Mr. Hiss had refused to
leave the party when Mr. Chambers left, tearfully begging Mr. Hiss
also to depart. Mr. Hiss had denied even knowing Mr. Chambers,
though admitting the previous day of the possibility that he was one
George Crosley whom Mr. Hiss had known only as a sub-lessee of the
Hiss family apartment during the period of late 1935 through spring
or summer 1936.
Now, the Committee planned to have Mr. Hiss meet Mr.
Chambers, scheduling the meeting for August 25—though in fact
occurring in executive session on this date. The failure of the
Committee to have done its homework had led to public skepticism
regarding its disclosures. The investigators had not done a good job
of protecting rights of witnesses and producing a fair procedure.
Mr. Hiss's denial of being a Communist had shaken confidence
in the stories of star witnesses Elizabeth Bentley and Mr. Chambers,
both admitted former Communists, and, in the case of Ms. Bentley, an
admitted courier of information to the Soviets—the admission
of Mr. Chambers to like activity only coming later in the fall in
the context of the defamation suit to be filed by Mr. Hiss against
him and the subsequent grand jury investigation, the first time Mr.
Chambers would implicate Mr. Hiss in espionage activity.
If the hearings wound up a fiasco in terms of public opinion,
then the unfairness with which they had been conducted would be to
blame. If the Committee had followed rules of evidence, then the
idea that it was a "red herring" to distract from more
important issues such as inflation, as charged by the President, or
a smear campaign for political gain, would be less likely to obtain
traction. Chairman J. Parnell Thomas and the other Committee members
had not so far performed well in the public eye.
"No Escape for Us on the Moon" comments on the
director of Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles taking patrons on a
trip to the moon via the Observatory's telescope providing close-ups
of the lunar surface. It was an unfriendly place, with temperatures
in the day reaching a hundred degrees above the hottest Earth
temperatures and by night, falling to 200 below zero. There was no
water or air or edible vegetation.
But, the piece observes, there was also no Berlin, Oksana
Kosenkina, Truman, Dewey, Wallace, or Stalin. It was peaceful, even
if hot and cold.
Scientist G. Edward Pomeroy predicted that younger readers at
the time in 1948 would visit the moon. Competition for a vantage
point from which to wage war would lead to sending men to the lunar
surface. If the U.S. got there first, it could set up a V-2
launching site and control the world. If another country got there
first, the atomic bomb would be rendered useless.
The piece predicts that it would be awhile before man made
the trip of 240,000 miles. The problem of storing adequate fuel for
the journey would have to be resolved to accommodate passengers.
It finds that the idea of a pleasant retreat seemed thus to
dissolve in practicalities. In any event, once the moon was
politicized, there would be picnic rallies for various candidates
and that would be too much to endure.
Drew Pearson tells of Senator Alben Barkley relating to
Speaker Joe Martin, upon the latter congratulating him for being
chosen the Democratic nominee for the vice-presidency, that it
reminded him of the story of the man with two sons: one went to sea
and the other became Vice-President and the father had heard of
neither since.
Navy justice had not been significantly altered since the
days of John Paul Jones. Annapolis graduates received preferential
treatment in Navy courts. Recently, a junior officer was made the
scapegoat in an incident involving Washington's Naval Research
Laboratory, charged with stealing a generator, while his commanding
officers received only a slap on the wrist, despite the generator
being found bolted to the floor of the cabin of his commanding
officer and an officer having signed papers authorizing its
shipment. The commanding officer was reprimanded for unauthorized
use of Naval property. A captain involved pleaded not guilty by
reason of insanity and would likely be discharged without
punishment.
Two bigshot gamblers stood trial the previous week in Macomb
County, Michigan, a feather in the cap of the prosecutor, Ed Jacob.
He had favored Mrs. Dudley Hay, pro-Dewey, to be the secretary of
the RNC, opposed by the rest of the Michigan delegation, for Senator
Vandenberg. Mrs. Hay had helped Mr. Jacob in his effort to clean up
crime in Macomb County. He had pursued the two gamblers all the way
to Reno, where they had lived for three years. Powerful GOP forces
in Michigan were trying to defeat Mr. Jacob. The Dewey people were
looking at him as a young prospect for a Dewey Administration.
A new place, labeled "Boom Town" by the G.I.'s,
had grown up eight miles outside of Frankfurt, Germany, to maintain
and repair the airplanes used in the Berlin airlift.
Top Air Force personnel admitted that the airlift was a
rehearsal for future air operations. The Air Force did not intend to
abandon its installations even if successful in getting the Russians
to lift the blockade. Boom Town would remain, in case the Russians
repeated the episode in the future.
Sumner Welles, former Undersecretary of State until August,
1943, comments on criticism received from the public for his
statement two weeks earlier that the Progressive Party platform had
been dictated by Communists who had taken control of the party
machinery. One eminent college professor from a leading Eastern
university wrote that he was part of the platform drafting committee
and assured that it was the result of reasoned, patriotic debate,
not dictated by anyone. Mr. Welles wonders whether democratic
institutions were functioning when such a person could be so
influenced by his ideology to be blinded to facts.
He relates that the process which led to the party platform
was published and well known, that it had adhered to the Communist
Party line, excluding all references to fixing any shared blame for
the world crisis on Russia. It demanded that the U.S. abandon the
atom bomb, withdraw its occupation forces and abolish the draft,
while making no similar demands on Russia.
He suggests that the preference for the Soviet economic
system over the boom-and-bust capitalist system had grown into a
psychosis. Such adherents refused to see that the Soviets destroyed
freedom while professing political liberty and democracy. No one
would deprive them of their beliefs and right to express them, but
no one would support the notion that enjoyment of freedom would also
permit its destruction.
The Kremlin was pursuing a policy of imperialism more
strenuously than had the czars of old, causing the West to lose the
respect for the Soviet Union which had been extant during the war.
The U.S. would have to stand firmly behind a policy of containment
unless it was to abandon the concept of the free and peaceful world
for which it had fought in the war.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop posit that there were hundreds of
thousands of persons in the Western zones of Germany and Austria who
shared the feelings of Oksana Kosenkina, the Russian school teacher
who escaped the Soviet consulate in New York by jumping from a
third-floor window and professed a desire to defect to the United
States. Many since the war had fled the Soviet occupation zones to
the West. Their numbers could not be ascertained as they usually hid
their identities. Estimates pegged the figure at around a half
million.
At the end of the war, there were millions of Russian
nationals in Germany, Austria and elsewhere in Europe. Some had
fought willingly for the Nazis while others were kidnaped by the
Nazis as slave labor or because they had specific skills. After
Yalta in February, 1945, many of these persons were placed in
railway cars and sent East. Most were now either dead or in slave
labor camps in Central Asia and Siberia or in the Kolyma gold mines.
Tens of thousands of Soviet citizens had escaped repatriation after
the war and so many mass suicides had taken place that the
repatriation policy was terminated.
Many of these Soviet citizens were distinguished professors,
scientists, generals, journalists, administrators and others of
distinction. They had adopted false identities to escape detection
by the Russian secret police.
The Alsops conclude that while the Kosenkina case should not
take center stage to the exclusion of the more important issues at
stake between the West and Russia, it was significant that so many
Russians chose to live as ghosts, fugitives, and displaced persons
rather than return to Russia. It exposed the weakness of the Soviet
state.
A letter writer tells of being charged three cents for a cup
of water at a Charlotte drive-in restaurant, charged, according to
the carhop, for the cup rather than, per se, for the water. He finds
it especially troubling with the high cost of living in the country
attributable to food costs. Water remained cheap in Charlotte, and
the ice in the cup should have added nothing to the cost.
Conical Dixie Cups, fitting within a metal conical
receptacle, were produced, he points out, during the war so that
water could be served in a cheap, disposable cup. The cups sold at
wholesale for less than a penny apiece. They were still in
production—and remained so for twenty more years or more.
Having to pay three cents for the better made Dixie Cup was, he
thinks, highway robbery without a revolver.
He regards the drive-in to be money-mad.
The letter writer's first name was "W".
It all went down on Penny Lane, here, there, and everywhere,
perhaps also in Strawberry Field, somewhere deep in the Black
Mountains of the Dakotas.
A letter writer from San Francisco says that in his many foreign travels, he had compiled
a list of numerous people who wished to
correspond with Americans and that he would be glad to supply names
to persons who wished to write to them.
A letter writer finds it more disturbing than the disturbing
revelations of disloyalty by certain persons named in the HUAC
hearings that not only were many innocent people who were mentioned going to
be unable to obtain employment, but also that the admitted former
Communists who were the accusers, such as Whittaker Chambers, a senior
editor for Time, had obtained such prestigious jobs. He
supposes that Elizabeth Bentley would wind up teaching economics at
Notre Dame.
A letter from the secretary of the Charlotte Group of the
American Association of Social Workers thanks the newspaper for
promoting the slum clearance campaign ongoing in Charlotte and the
need for it.
