Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that following a four
hour-plus interview between Prime Minister Stalin and the Western
ambassadors to Moscow, there were signs, according to a source, that
a general area of agreement had been identified, with considerable
negotiation remaining to work out the details. Ambassador Walter
Beedle Smith of the U.S. appeared buoyant after the meeting and said
that there would be more meetings. He said the previous night's
session, the longest by an hour since talks began July 31, had been
interrupted only by "tea and cakes".
Before HUAC appeared Louis Budenz, admitted former
Communist, a woman claiming to be the former maid of Alger Hiss and family, and
three officials of an automobile agency regarding the 1929 Ford
automobile which Mr. Hiss said that he gave to Whittaker Chambers
and which Mr. Chambers identified as a car donated by Mr. Hiss to the
Communist Party on the West Coast, all testifying in executive session, in preparation for
the public confrontation between Mr. Hiss and Mr. Chambers the
following day. Committee lead investigator Robert Stripling leaked
the information to the press gathered outside the chambers.
In executive session on August 16-17, Mr. Hiss had already
identified Mr. Chambers as a man he knew as George Crosley for a
brief period only as sublessee of his family's apartment in late
1935 through spring or summer 1936. He denied knowing Mr. Chambers
as a Communist or having been a Communist. Mr. Chambers said that he
never used the name George Crosley but was known only to Mr. Hiss as
"Carl", his Communist Party pseudonym.
You had better hurry up. School is about to begin and the
beachcombers will no longer have time to consider this case at
length each day prior to the election. The sea turtles will hatch
their eggs and the young will go to sea. Timing is everything.
In Berlin, the Russian commander announced that Germans in the
Russian zone could not participate in community elections in the
fall, that voting would be postponed for a year, the first time that
one of the four powers had postponed an election in an occupation
zone. The two non-communist parties in the Russian zone, the
Christian Democrats and rightist Liberal Democrats, protested the
action, contending that the Communists wished the postponement
because they feared defeat. The Communists claimed that the people
were too busy working on recovery to vote.
A formation of six to ten fighter planes, believed by American
pilots to be Russian Yaks, flew over the Western sector of Berlin
the previous night at a great height. There had been other recent
such flights over the Western sector as well.
Two American C-47 transport planes collided near Frankfurt during
the Berlin airlift, killing four American fliers.
Associated Press correspondent John Scali, to play a prominent
role in the Cuban Missile Crisis fourteen years hence, reports that
Russia and the Balkans satellites had increased their denunciations
of Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia, spreading to the Communist parties of
France and Italy, becoming so pervasive as to eliminate the
possibility of future compromise with Tito. The chances were thus
increased that Tito might turn to the West for support, but no move
had yet been made in that direction. It was also unlikely that
Russia would send troops into Yugoslavia, as they were concerned
that such a move would definitely drive Tito to the West and allow
Yugoslavia to seek U.N. sanctions against Russia. The denunciations
appeared limited to Tito personally rather than against his
government. One ostensibly authentic letter from the central
committee of the Communist Party to Tito had compared him to the
"traitor" Leon Trotsky, killed in Mexico in 1940, an
implicit warning.
John Foster Dulles, foreign policy adviser to Governor Dewey,
said, in an address for the World Council of Churches meeting in
Amsterdam, that Communist policies made it impossible to create
presently a universal organization for peace through law, but that
force also would not resolve the conflict. The Soviet regime, he
continued, was not one of peace and did not purport to be. He
advised that the solution was for those of "faith to exert
themselves more vigorously to translate their faith into works."
Oksana Kosenkina, the Russian school teacher who had effected her
escape from the Soviet consulate "cage" in New York by
jumping from a third-story window, had received a list of thirteen
questions from the press, which she said she would answer while
continuing to recover in Roosevelt Hospital.
In Nassau, N.Y., the Rev. Ernest Bromley of North Carolina had
urged during a sermon that young men defy the draft registration,
following which the U.S. Attorney for the district initiated an
investigation to determine whether he had violated the limits of
free speech. Reverend Bromley was originally from Boston and most
recently had a pastorate in Stonewall, N.C.
Men who married before draft registration could avoid induction,
based on an executive ordering classifying married men or fathers as
3-A or deferred service. Veterans were also deferred.
Thus, by simple syllogism, the Reverend Bromley was only
encouraging marriage.
In Greece, rebel leader Markos Vafiades urged via radio his
fellow guerrillas to maintain the fight against the Greek Army which
had routed them from their stronghold in the Grammos Mountains and
reportedly forced the rebel leader to flee into Albania.
Five Chicago scientists had revealed research into ways to
prevent destruction of bone marrow, resulting in anemia, from
exposure to atomic blast radiation and overexposure to X-rays. The
method was experimentally to induce in animals anemia before the
exposure, enabling them to avoid damage from even normally lethal
doses of radiation. It was accomplished by bleeding or
administration of the drug phenylhydrazine which caused rupture of
the red blood cells. The animals recovered quickly from the anemia
after the exposure, whereas radiation-caused anemia resulted in a
prolonged recovery period.
The scientists recognized, however, that such inducement of
anemia would not be practical before exposure to radiation in
nuclear plants or before treatment for cancer or prior to an atomic
bomb blast. But other chemicals could be discovered which would
cause the increased production of cells, reducing the harm from
radiation, the opposite of what previously had been thought the
case, that radiation was most harmful during cell production.
The Commerce Department released figures showing that annualized
production during the second quarter reached 284 billion dollars,
compared to 231 billion for all of 1947 and 204 billion for 1946.
But a major reason for the higher figure was inflation. Industrial
production was reduced in June because of a shortage of materials,
but offset by rising farm prices and increases in the costs of other
services. Government spending rose by 2.5 billion over the first
quarter resulting from the initiation of ERP.
A photograph appears of Little Miss America, Kathleen Flynn of
Spokane, with movie director Harold Schuster, director of "My
Friend Flicka", head of the Screen Children's Guild which made
the selection. The girl turned down a movie contract and went home
to be with her five siblings.
Well, you would, too.
On the editorial page, "Not Important Anyway" tells
of a Wake County Superior Court Judge ruling the previous week that
the statute of North Carolina requiring for ballot qualification
10,000 signatures of persons who were registered voters who had also
not voted in either party primary to be unreasonable, thus allowing
the Dixiecrat ticket to be on the ballot should the decision stick.
The State would appeal to the State Supreme Court.
The piece ventures that if the Supreme Court ruled the statute
valid and upheld the State Board of Elections determination to
disqualify the Dixiecrats for not having presented the petitions in
each county to the local registrars for validation before the
deadline for presentation to the State, no great loss would take
place as the Dixiecrats were not headed anywhere in the fall
election. They would have no greater impact in the state, in all
likelihood, than a rainy election day.
The Dixiecrats were not a new party but a party of disinclination
to make a choice between that which it regarded as two evils, the
President and Governor Dewey. Thus, its failure to qualify for the
ballot was merely a current event, not an incident in history.
Well, it's the principle of the matter. We want Fielding and
Strom. That's that.
"Of Hospitals and Rules" explains the visiting rules
at Charlotte hospitals, limiting patients to two visitors at a time.
Read carefully if you are going to visit or are planning to be
visited therein.
"These Things Happen in August" tells of a deer
showing up at windows in the Bronx, in busy streets, pursued by
police, disappearing into the mists, heading to Westchester County.
In Winston-Salem, a woman had reported a deer recently. It was
not likely the same deer.
It conveyed, however, the notion that modern man had lost touch
with the world outside the concrete cities, where wood and rocks
abounded, needing no artificial stimulus.
A piece from the Atlanta Journal, titled "Sea Turtle
Season", tells of the sea turtles coming onshore to nest each
summer, notably at Jekyll Island in Georgia. One could see the
activity at night by walking along the beaches. Raccoons and sand
crabs ate the eggs and sand crabs and fish ate the newly-hatched
young, with gulls sometimes picking them off if they tried to head
to sea by day.
It advises, therefore, confining one's self in an encounter with
a sea turtle on the beach, to observation or riding on its back.
"When ashore she needs friends."
A piece from the Congressional Quarterly tells of the
Congressional Record for the 80th Congress having cost the
taxpayers 2.4 million dollars at $71 per page. Representatives took
up the bulk of the record. Some inclusions were tributes to Senators
by other members, in one case, a tribute to Senator Wayland Brooks
of Illinois from other Senators, included by Senator Brooks.
Statements supportive of the President's label of a "do-nothing"
Congress were included from vice-presidential nominee Senator Alben
Barkley and others. Other members defended the work of the Congress.
Robert Allen, substituting for vacationing Drew Pearson, tells of
the United States having a trumping ace up its sleeve in the battle
of Berlin. It was now certain that the Western zones of Berlin could
be amply supplied through the winter. The airlift was now carrying
4,000 tons daily, whereas the minimum requisite amount was 4,500
tons, expected to be met on a regular basis, regardless of weather,
by October 1, with the U.S. carrying 3,300 tons and the British
1,200 tons.
One of the richest men in Congress, Wyoming Senator Edward
Robertson, had nevertheless padded his salary by having his wife and
personal chauffeur added to the public payroll as "clerks",
his wife's actual duties being negligible.
Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter wished to remain silent
about the many New Deal proteges for whom he obtained Government
jobs, now absent from Government, saying he had "judicial
lockjaw".
The President's tendency not to supply action behind his liberal
words was again being demonstrated as he had talked prior to the
conventions, during his cross-country train tour, of contesting the
power interests while having done little to challenge the utilities
raising rates, such as in the case of the Washington, D.C.,
Streetcar Co., raising its rates despite high profits during the
war.
When the Congress enacted ERP, it created, by unwitting jest in
its initials, the position of U.S. Special Representative, a
position held by Averell Harriman.
Despite worries over the commodities price reductions during the
spring, total farm income would be only slightly less in this year
than in the previous record-breaking year, good news for the
economy. For when the farmer could buy freely, industrial production
remained high.
John Foster Dulles, Governor Dewey's foreign policy adviser and
presumed Secretary of State in waiting, had participated in a
meeting at the State Department which determined that the
Administration would reverse its opposition to return of Italy's
former African colonies, a move Mr. Dulles favored. He then
apparently informed the Governor who promptly announced the move,
scooping the President, who had planned to make the announcement the
following month after the campaign got underway.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss Soviet scientific and
technological progress. They provide an authentic vignette in which
scientists gathered for the Moscow Congress after the war wanted to
tour the laboratories of the Soviet agricultural biologist T. D.
Lysenko, ultimately barred by the scientist, himself, who
nevertheless agreed to provide a lecture. At the lecture, he
proceeded, to the surprise of the attending Western scientists, to
rail against "foreign bourgeois genetics" in favor of
"Marxist-Leninist genetics". As proof of the latter
being conducive to qualitative empirical results, he produced a
tomato the size of a cantaloupe.
When one of the visiting scientists, however, managed to pocket
one of the tomatoes, it was quickly ascertained that it was made of
wax.
Now, the central committee of the Soviet Communist Party had
endorsed Mr. Lysenko and his science over that of genuine Soviet
scientists, such as A. R. Zhebrak.
The Alsops draw inferences from the move, that such party
dictates would retard scientific and technological achievement in
science and hence deter the growth of modern industry in Russia.
Moreover, it was unlikely, given the anti-empirical attitude, that
the Soviet scientists had been able to glean from the captured
Germans enough valuable information to produce their own atomic
bomb. It was, essentially, therefore, "time's revenge upon the
policemen", the police state. The secret policemen must have
known that the Lysenko tomatoes were only wax imitations.
DeWitt MacKenzie discusses the formation of a United States of
Europe being given a further boost by France as Paul Reynaud, French
Finance Minister, former Prime Minister before the fall, expressed
the hope that the British would support the idea by the following
fall after the dominions conference. Now, French Secretary of State
and future Prime Minister Francois Mitterand announced that the
Cabinet had given its support to the idea of holding a conference to
draft a charter for uniting Western Europe under a Federal
constitution.
Mr. MacKenzie thinks M. Reynaud's support to be highly
significant as he was the recognized financial expert in France and
had virtually dictatorial powers to meet the extant emergency. He
had interviewed M. Reynaud ten years earlier when he had been
Finance Minister as war loomed. He had said at the time that
America's isolationism reminded him of the fact that England, too,
had once thought itself an island.
He believed that a United States of Europe would complement the
Marshall Plan. Mr. MacKenzie agrees and ventures that it would
likewise lighten the financial burden the country was bearing in
European rehabilitation.
A letter writer wants the fish and game laws of the state to be
more pleasing to sportsmen. All veterans, he urges, should get free
licenses. Such laws would encourage farmers to be more friendly to
the game warden, cooperation which would prove invaluable.
