Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Arab League,
over the strong protests of Trans-Jordan and Iraq, had formed an
Arab Government in Palestine, with Ahmed Hilmy Pasha, military
governor of the Arab-held section of Jerusalem, named as Prime
Minister. King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan objected that it would
amount to partitioning Palestine without the consent of the people
and represented that which the Arab countries had fought. He wanted
all of Palestine to be under Arab rule. He believed it an effort for
the Mufti of Jerusalem to carve out a base of power for himself. He
said that the Trans-Jordan delegate to the Arab League denied that
the League approved the action.
In Cairo, the Arab League said that material aid, including
an Army of volunteers, would be provided to the new Government.
Renewed shelling began of old Jerusalem, making it one of the
tensest days since the truce began on July 18.
A posthumous report to the U.N. of assassinated Palestine
mediator for the U.N. Count Folke Bernadotte recommended that the
U.N. intervene and end the war in Palestine if the Arabs and Jews
could not make peace. He recommended leaving Israel in place and
leaving Arab Palestine to the Arab states in full consultation with
the Arab inhabitants.
U.N. Secretary-General Trygve Lie prepared to ask for a U.N.
guard of 1,000 to 5,000 men to avoid assassinations of other U.N.
representatives in the future.
In Tel Aviv, Israel adopted emergency measures to deal with
terrorist organizations in the wake of the assassination,
specifically targeting the Stern Gang, two of whose members were
believed to be responsible for the killings. Israeli Foreign
Minister Moshe Shertok informed acting U.N. mediator for Palestine
Dr. Ralph Bunche that 150 Stern Gang members had been arrested in
Jerusalem and 50 others in Tel Aviv and elsewhere since the Friday
attacks. Israeli officials in Jerusalem said that nearly 200 Stern
Gang members had been seized and sent to Jaffa for service in the
Israeli Army. The seized members were believed to include Abu Mimri,
second in command of the Stern Gang. At least two Jewish journalists
were also among those arrested.
A rightist, anti-Communist newspaper in Berlin claimed that
the Communists in Eastern Germany were arming illegal civilian shock
troops for an eventual attempt to seize power by force in the city
and all of Germany. Communist patrols had shortly before raided
anti-Communist newsstands and ripped away the newspapers. The AMG
denounced the action and were considering in response an embargo on
Soviet-controlled publications.
The Big Three foreign ministers met in Paris to determine the
next step regarding the Berlin blockade. The Western envoys had met
with Foreign Commissar V. M. Molotov on Saturday and a source said
that they had gotten the impression that the latter was stringing
them along. He reportedly refused to commit to a proposal to have
the Soviet military governor in Germany Marshal Vassily Sokolovsky
agree to the terms of his Kremlin directive to negotiate in good
faith over the dual currency issue, the original rationale offered
for the blockade.
The U.N. General Assembly was preparing to open its session
in Paris.
A dispatch from India said that the Government of Hyderabad
had asked to withdraw its complaint previously registered before the
Security Council regarding India's invasion of the state, in the
wake of its surrender.
In Germany, the U.S. Army appealed to the 15,000 fighting men
to extend enlistments because of the international situation. A lot
of the men who had gone home wanted to come back. One had written
the commander of the First Division that he went somewhere in the
U.S. where it cost him $3.20 for a drink of Scotch.
That sound like a good enough reason to re-enlist: Fight for
the cheap Scotch!
In Easton, Pa., an Army sergeant filed for divorce against
his Russian wife, still in Moscow, after she had charged in the
Russian press that he was being prevented from writing her because
she was a Soviet citizen. The Moscow newspaper said that she was
filing for divorce.
The State Department said that the U.S. would not necessarily
leave Korea as scheduled by the previous agreement, until the U.N.
General Assembly could take up the issue of the future of the
country. The U.S. statement said that it was prepared to leave as
soon as practicable after a Korean government would be established.
But since Russia had failed to cooperate in the U.N. election in
Korea, the Soviet withdrawal was only one facet of the entire
question of unity and independence. Russia had announced that it
would evacuate Korea on January 1 and expressed hope that the U.S.
would do likewise.
In Denver, the President appealed to Western voters to join
the Democrats in fighting "Republican undercover sabotage of
the West". Big business, with GOP support, had for twelve
years prior to the New Deal, he said, prevented adequate protective
measures of Western forests, range lands and farm lands, for quick
profits. The Democrats had reversed that trend. But, he predicted,
if the Republicans were to win in the fall, the most reactionary
elements would turn back the clock to a time when the West was "an
economic colony of Wall Street". Local leaders gave the
President a "fighting chance" to win in Colorado.
Governor Dewey was set this night to open his campaign at Des
Moines, Iowa, expected to ignore the Truman barbs and outline what
kind of administration he would install. In Chicago, he read a
formal statement to a dozen Latin American delegates of the
Inter-American Council of Commerce and Production, urging progress
together as partners.
House Speaker Joe Martin predicted that the Republicans would
retain control of the Senate and add about twenty House seats to
their majority. He could not find three states outside the Solid
South which the President was likely to carry. President-elect Dewey
would carry Virginia, Tennessee and perhaps North Carolina, he
ventured.
Before HUAC, Louise Bransten Berman, an heiress from a family
of California pioneers, refused under the Fifth Amendment to answer
questions propounded for 90 minutes regarding the Committee's
continuing investigation into espionage in nuclear facilities,
focusing on agents in California during the war. She provided a
statement to reporters which she said that she had read to the
Committee, in which she stated that she had never done anything
wrongful or attempted to create the impression that she had. She
resented the "slanders" of the Committee. She said that
she had used her money to help people help themselves and secure a
decent living.
The Greek steamship Orion reported that it was aground
and afire in the Strait of Belle Isle, between Labrador and
Newfoundland.
In Deerfield, Ill., the mother of six children with polio
said that the cases were light and that they were lucky. Four were
hospitalized and two were at home with their two other healthy
children. Her husband had turned down several offers of money and
personal aid.
In Dayton, O., Edward Woll, an engineer at G.E., told a
conference of mechanical engineers that reheating the exhaust of jet
engines raised the speed of the waste gases and increased thrust by
100 percent.
Hurricane warnings were posted from Miami to Key West as a
tropical storm moved close to Cuba and headed toward the Keys.
In Portsmouth, Va., a man with $26,000 in his pocket hid from
seven masked gunmen in an attic at the Boat House early Sunday,
along with two other men, to avoid being robbed. The men were able
to get $2,500 worth of cash and jewelry from other patrons of a stag
party thrown by the owner. No arrests had been made.
Be on the lookout for seven masked gunmen.
But we have to question why someone would show up at a stag
party with $26,000 in cash. Perhaps, he was social chairman.
In Southport, N.C., 69 refugees from Estonia arrived after
their 79-foot boat had crossed the Atlantic in 70 days. They were
escorted up the Cape Fear River to Wilmington by the Coast Guard. Fifteen
Estonians were at Ellis Island after landing also at Southport on
August 17 in a 37-foot sloop. All were reported to be in good
health.
In New York, David Steinman was assigned the task by the City
of modernizing the Brooklyn Bridge. He had grown up with the
structure, built in 1883, and regarded it as sacred, said that he
would not change its appearance.
A list of 124 new teachers in the Charlotte schools appears
on page 8-A. Get to know them. One may be assigned to your class.
On the editorial page, "Industry Looks to the South" remarks of Nashua, N.H., Fall River and Lowell, Mass., being the
big three of New England textile mill towns. So it was remarkable
that in Nashua, Textron, Inc., was shutting down its two big mills
because they were losing money, had for some time. Senator Styles
Bridges started an investigation to see if the Government had been
responsible in any way for the shutdown. State leaders also began
inquiries. TWUA said that Textron was destroying the livelihoods of
10,000 textile workers.
Ten percent of Nashua's 35,000 population was out of work as
a result of the move. Textron had begun in 1945 vertical integration
of the company founded in 1823. It was heartening to the South that
the company was more optimistic about its chances in the South
because of cheaper labor and operation costs generally. While the
piece does not think it appropriate to rejoice at the loss of
another region, it suggests that New England had to recognize that
the new industrial frontiers were in the South and Far West.
"Re-Appraisal Must Be Explained" remarks on
Charlotte's proposed property tax re-assessment, County assessments
for similarly situated property having been much lower than those
for the City. Rural residents were disturbed by the prospect of
re-assessment for the purpose of equalization. To satisfy the
complaints, the piece suggests that the County Commissioners begin
immediately to educate the public to the need and benefits to all
from the re-assessment.
A piece by Robert West Howard, appearing in Steelways,
titled "Enlightened Load", tells of the history of the
wheelbarrow, originated 4,000 years earlier in Central China. The
president of Bell Aircraft had remarked that everything had an
engine in modern times save the wheelbarrow and so put his engineers
to work on solving the deficiency. Early in 1948, they developed the
first mechanical wheelbarrow, with a 3 h.p. motor and a half-ton
capacity moving at 3 mph.
In China, masts had been attached to the wheelbarrow to
improve its load carrying capacity and ease the burden moving up
hills. Four or five passengers and a trussed pig could proceed along
the hill trails in a stiff breeze. In 1000 B.C., emperors of the
Chou Dynasty imposed a speed limit and required primitive
speedometers be mounted to the sailing wheelbarrows.
The modern powered wheelbarrow could plow gardens, operate
lawnmowers and perform other yard tasks, easing backaches.
Drew Pearson tells of Governor Dewey having proposed to
Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire that increases in Government
salaries be considered to attract better qualified personnel.
Senator Bridges flatly refused to agree regarding bureaucrats,
though he said that raises for the Vice-President and members of the
Cabinet might be considered. He said that he knew that on the House
side, John Taber, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, would
agree. Governor Dewey then let the matter drop.
Congressman Clare Hoffman of Michigan had several relatives
on the Government payroll, his son receiving $6,000 a year as
counsel for the Expenditures Committee and a granddaughter receiving
$3,200 as Congressional secretarial staff. Meanwhile both were
spending an inordinate amount of time at the Hoffman campaign
headquarters in Michigan.
The GOP leadership was trying to promote a blue-stocking
candidate over Jewish and Italian candidates for the nomination for
the U.S. Senate against incumbent Rhode Island Senator Theodore
Green. Then, when news of a meeting by wealthy Republicans to raise
money for the primary campaign leaked, the $50,000 target amount
dwindled to only $9,200 raised.
Marquis Childs tells of the Berlin crisis reaching its
climax, with the State Department preparing a White Paper on the
matter to explain its efforts to undertake every reasonable step to
conclude the crisis peacefully. The next step would be referral of
the matter by the three Western powers to the U.N. General Assembly,
where it would likely wind up with 48 nations arrayed against the
Soviet bloc of five or six nations. That split might end the U.N.,
causing Russia and its aligned nations to withdraw.
That was the hopeful view, based on the assumption that the
Soviets did not want war at the present time, a perilous assumption
to make, suggests Mr. Childs.
Josef Stalin could reverse the entire situation, with one
last meeting still in the works with the Western envoys. But those
with closest dealings with Russia were pessimistic regarding the
outcome. Stalin had at first sounded an optimistic tone in a recent
meeting, suggesting that only technicalities remained in overcoming
the worst part of the dispute which had precipitated the blockade,
the issue of competing currencies in Berlin, one Russian, one
Western. But when the matter got down to brass tacks in Berlin, with
the four military governors meeting, it became apparent that Marshal
Vassily Sokolovsky, the Russian military governor, was not concerned
merely with technicalities but rather hewed to the line of having
matters all Russia's way or nothing.
Now, the frightening part of the situation was that it
appeared that the angry, rioting mobs in Berlin had it within their
power to set off the spark which could lead to another world war.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss the role of the National
Security Council as it had developed in the previous year. It was
undertaking policy decisions which were too large for individuals to
determine, anticipating decisions which had to be made in the
immediate future, and preparing a coherent definition of American
political objectives for the world as a whole and specific areas
within it.
When a decision was needed, the President called the Council
into meeting and the decision was made forthwith during that
meeting. Such had been the case regarding the issue of returning
Trieste to Italy, as proposed by the Soviets prior to the April 18
Italian elections. Similarly, a meeting had been called a few days
earlier on two hours' notice when it became apparent that the
four-power negotiations in Berlin were breaking down for Soviet
recalcitrance. The Council decided to recommend to Britain and
France that the negotiations be suspended, with one last attempt to
be undertaken in the Moscow talks between the Kremlin and the three
Western ambassadors.
The Council also met regularly on the first and third
Thursdays of the month in the Cabinet room at the White House, with
one or more decisions for the future being canvassed. The policy
makers in the State Department and each of the three military
branches prepared and submitted reports. The Council then reviewed
them and reached a consensus. The President did not ordinarily
attend these regular meetings but received the policy papers and a
briefing on them, and in the case of disagreement, made the
final decision. Otherwise, the President reviewed and approved the
final Council decision.
Presently, no decision had been reached by the Council
regarding what the next step on Berlin would be if negotiations
failed and referral then to the U.N. did not produce a result.
The State Department's advice on foreign policy was
preeminent but the Defense Department's position was taken into
account on every issue.
The orderly process contrasted with the former situation
under prior Administrations in which decisions were reached only
after squabbles with the President. The London Economist had
observed that the Council might represent a milestone in America's
development, as much so as Washington's Farewell Address.
Samuel Grafton, no longer carried by The News,
discusses the President's defense the previous week of the atomic
scientists against HUAC investigations into their loyalty. He had
sided with the eight scientists who had written him that the
investigatory work of HUAC was endangering national security. It was
refreshing to have the President coming to the defense of scientists
as against politicians.
But there was also something sad in the fact, as the
President's defense was not premised on freedom for its own sake,
but rather on the notion that impingement on the scientists' freedom
was adversely affecting their work on the atomic bomb. The bomb thus
appeared no longer the handmaiden and protector of freedom, but
rather had become the master of freedom, with seemingly grudging
recognition that a certain greater amount of freedom was necessary
to protect the sanctity of the bomb.
He recognizes that neither the President nor Congress viewed
freedom in this strict light but, nevertheless, it had so become.
"It is not freedom busily working on the atomic bomb
that has to be protected, but freedom doing anything or going
anywhere, freedom with its hands in its pockets, or freedom
whistling an aimless tune, freedom in any field and any
enterprise—and not because freedom is good, or bad, but
because it is what it is, and we are what we are."
He urges that if that concept seemed far-fetched, then the
reader ought examine by how much it so appeared and then gauge
thereby how far the country had wandered from a standard "which
once used to seem to us as un-far-fetched as bread and butter."
A letter writer finds the School Board probably justified in
raising the price of admission of the football games at Central High
School by a quarter from a dollar and questions the wisdom of the
writers from the Southern Railway Station who had written in protest
of the action. No one had ever blackjacked him into attending a
game.
A letter writer who was the parent of a Central student
thinks the ticket hike justified by increased expenses.
A letter from the son of a Confederate veteran who was on
duty at Fort Moultrie the morning on which the firing began at Fort
Sumter, reacts to the September 9 editorial, "The Great
Migration Northward", anent the migration of blacks to the
North, changing the demographics of the South and the other regions,
slowly equalizing thereby the attendant problems of assimilation
which the South alone as a region had faced since the Civil War. He
thinks the activity regarding blacks in the South, to provide equal
rights and opportunity, was more harmful than helpful to the plight
of blacks and also hurtful to the country. He urges not allowing
Henry Wallace and his kind to blind the South to its duty toward
blacks. Social equality was fraught with great danger and reckless
action, he counsels. The South, he says, would not stand for such a
prostitution of "our civilization".
Speaking of which, we have to wonder how a certain presidential candidate got through Harvard Law School if he truly believes his statement, "If it's not in the Constitution, it's left to the states". That is not what the Tenth Amendment says, if you bother to read it. It refers to powers of the Federal Government and those not granted that Government by the Constitution or prohibited by it to the states being left to the states or the people. The presidential candidate apparently restricts himself to Articles I and II and blinks Article III completely, in his generalized statement, especially as he suggests to the public also that entrusting to "five unelected lawyers in Washington" governance of the society is unconstitutional. For one of those powers, which the Tenth Amendment necessarily excepts from the states and the people, as stated in Article III, Section 2, regarding the Federal judiciary, is that "The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States..." The phrase "arising under this Constitution" necessarily includes, obviously, the Fourteenth Amendment and its Equal Protection Clause, among other things in the Constitution, which was implicated by the particular subject matter under scrutiny by the presidential candidate. The state courts have the first crack generally at redressing claimed violations of the Constitution by state laws or functionaries, before matters reach the Federal courts for final redress. As with all such demagogues, that which the presidential candidate implies to his not-so-swift coterie of supporters, imbued with their moral recitude and fervor, is that the "five unelected lawyers", referring to the majority of the Supreme Court, act unconstitutionally by "governing the society" outside the powers given them by the Constitution, stepping into the realm of states' rights.
It is the same argument, of course, which Senator Cruz's ideological progenitors, the segregationists of the South and other regions, made for decades after the Civil War through the 1960's and beyond in this country, reading out the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, appealing to moral rectitude and emotion, the way things always have been down heya, while failing to accept that changing trends and times in a society are cognizable under the law and the Constitution. Otherwise, the Constitution would be written with specificity as to particular issues and not, as it is, merely setting up a framework for governance of the country, with certain specific rights set forth, expressly not meant to exclude others, which were considered by the Founders the most critical in protection of a free society from despotism exerted by a king or dictator. The states and localities and their employees and functionaries do not exist apart from the Federal Government and the Constitution, as dictators of their little fiefdoms.
Meanwhile, no one but those who are Fascists—of whom there are admittedly many in this country, some standing squarely on the side of "fairness" on particular issues subjectively appealing to them while denying the most basic human liberty, freedom of thought and speech to disagree with their subjective point of view—would deny the right of an individual to condemn in the strongest terms conduct which they find morally repugnant. But to allow states through their functionaries to exist in that way, to be morally condemnatory in derogation of individual rights, leads to an established state religion, specifically prohibited by the Founders. As state and local functionaries, citizens are charged with the responsibility of carrying out the laws under the constitution and laws of the state which they serve and the laws and Constitution of the United States, the Supremacy Clause causing the latter to trump the former when they conflict. A county clerk in Kentucky, for instance, has the right to believe as she pleases and practice her religion all day long if she wants. But she cannot take her religion into public office and use it then to deny individual rights and liberties deemed protected by the Federal courts. If her conscience conflicts with the exercise of those duties, there is the simple solution of resignation. She does not own her public office. To counsel otherwise is to counsel chaos and anarchy, governance by little local dictators. It is akin to the voter registrars of the past in the South who refused the right to vote to citizens based on subjectively determined tests of literacy or non-payment of poll taxes.
Likewise, no one but a Fascist would truly believe that the Fourteenth Amendment protections are only protected by the states at their whim and fancy and that the "five unelected lawyers", each of whom is appointed by a President for life, subject to Senate confirmation by a majority vote, have no business determining whether that or other provisions of the Constitution have been violated by a particular practice of a state or locality. After all, in those states and localities, the ultimate arbiter of disputes under the law are, inevitably, usually four of seven "unelected lawyers". Who is to rule, the street mobs and the demagogues? the police acting on hunches and intuition?
No one, we posit, could have possibly gotten through any accredited law school in modern times, and probably not one even under the ancien regime, outside Hogwaller U. Down-in-the-Holler, believing such tripe as Senator Cruz has recently spewed to the public. They would flunk out after the first set of exams. Certainly, therefore, by logical inference, we conclude that the Senator is not a Fascist but rather is merely pandering to a segment of the population, trolling for votes, dangerously so, using that old timeworn tradition out of the lowest form of American and international politics, demagoguery, saying something he knows to be false to appeal to those who are not so sharp as to be able to distinguish between personal beliefs and morals and the idea, embodied in our Constitution, of live and let live—freedom from State religion and other forms of government tyranny. In short, he forsakes his own education, and his duty inherent in it to educate others, for political expediency.
Senator Cruz's dissembling rhetoric would, if translated back into the 1950's, deny the Supreme Court the power, for instance, to order the desegregation of public schools. Perhaps, quite seriously, someone ought ask him where he stands on that issue. His rhetoric is atavistic, as much so as those "Reagan Democrats" he professes to represent. Again, here's a hint: Ronald Reagan has not been President in over a quarter of a century. That means that a whole generation has grown up since Ronald Reagan was in the White House. Mr. Cruz and his ilk do not seem to get it. For they grew up, unfortunately, thinking that Ronald Reagan was the earthly incarnation of a deity. We saw it all the time at the time. And given the Hollywood-style hype he received while President, it is no wonder that the children became confused.
We do not agree with young Senator Cruz.
On the other hand, perhaps we give Harvard Law School and its graduates these days too much credit.
Maybe a law school degree generally is not what it once was in terms of its implications regarding the ability to think and analyze without artifice and subjective will to a preconceived conclusion dictating the result.
A letter writer praises the life and courage of Count Folke
Bernadotte, U.N. mediator for Palestine who had been assassinated
the previous Friday in Jerusalem. He finds that the only way he
could have knowingly walked into a trap with such lack of fear was
by having a devotion to God and faith that the life of the Spirit
was supreme. "Greater love hath no man than this; that he lay
down his life that others might live."
Count Bernadotte, it was reported, had received threats that
he would be shot at upon arriving from Damascus in Jerusalem on the
previous Friday, and that upon arrival, his car had been shot,
hitting a tire. He nevertheless refused to be cowed by the threats.
Another Pome appears from the Atlanta Journal, this
one "pointing out a simple and fairly trustworthy method of
improving your morale:
"If your spirits feel too flat Go and buy yourself a hat."
But if you've a cat's paw, a dog's eye, an egret's feather, or a pig's knuckle,
Best not grin 'til the win's in the bag, the tent's tethered, and taut, the belt's buckle.
