Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Paris, the
three Western powers drafted a joint note to Russia seeking a clear
decision on the Berlin currency issue, to be delivered this night or
the following day to the Soviet Ambassador for transmission to the
Kremlin. They determined to allow the Soviets another week before
bringing the Berlin crisis before the U.N. General Assembly meeting
in Paris.
Russian delegate Andrei Vishinsky said that the U.N. had
become the "disunited nations" and criticized a proposal
by Argentina that seven votes of the eleven-member Security Council
be allowed, regardless of veto, to determine U.N. membership. Russia
had vetoed five such applications for membership.
Israel said that it would be premature to accept the
posthumous report of Count Folke Bernadotte in determining policy
regarding Palestine. Two Arab delegates also rejected the proposal,
which would recognize Israel and provide Arab control of Arab areas
of Palestine. Britain accepted the proposal. The U.S. had accepted
the proposal the previous day. Tel Aviv newspapers uniformly
editorialized against the proposal.
In Jerusalem, the Irgun organization turned in its guns and
closed down after the Israeli Government ordered its dissolution,
while continuing to crack down on the Stern Gang, two of whose
members allegedly had assassinated Count Bernadotte the previous
Friday in Jerusalem. Moshe Dayan, the commander of Jerusalem for the
Israelis and future chief of staff of the Army and Foreign Minister,
said that the Irgun members who refused to join the Israeli Army
would be treated as draft dodgers.
Reports from Haifa said that Stern Gang members had made at
least indirect threats on the life of acting U.N. mediator Dr. Ralph
Bunche, prompting the Israeli Government to provide him with a heavy
guard.
The Israeli Government reported that Arabs had ambushed an
Israeli convoy near the Latrun pumping station, headed to Jerusalem,
including a white U.N. jeep, killing an American technician and
three Israelis, one of whom was a woman.
The hurricane which had hit Florida was pushing northward
through the Citrus Belt along the Indian River, having lost none of
its punch, ranging to gusts of 160 mph and hitting Miami the
previous night with 75 mph winds. Miami and the Keys were still
being hit with gale force winds and torrential rains, recording 8.34
inches in Miami during the previous 24 hours. Miami suffered little
damage but had power outages and flooded streets. The storm hit
Everglades City head-on, 70 miles west of Miami, a village made
famous by visits of General Eisenhower and baseball player Ted
Williams. Two persons had been killed during the storm, one
electrocuted and one blown from a fifth story roof, with many having
suffered minor injuries. The track of the storm was projected to
head toward Melbourne and then enter the Atlantic at Merritt Island.
Its center was about 25 miles west of Vero Beach and moving north
northeastward at eleven mph. Hurricane warnings were posted from
Daytona Beach to Charleston.
The President arrived in Reno, Nev., with a crowd estimated
at 25,000 greeting him, as he warned of another Republican Congress,
led "by a bunch of old mossbacks" living as though it
was 1890, and a Republican Administration to go with them. At
Sparks, Nev., where the crowds were estimated at 2,000 to 2,500, he
had said that the Republicans were exponents of "double talk"
and that the audience knew where he stood, that he would not engage in
double talk. He promised further development of Western reclamation
and power projects.
His next stops were in Oakland and San Francisco.
In Nashua, N.H., Royal Little, president of Textron, Inc.,
offered a deal to the city whereby the company would maintain the
two Nashua mills, which it had previously announced would be shut
down, in exchange for a ten-year guarantee from the city that taxes
would not exceed $20,000 per annum, urging also that the TWUA
agree to supply working conditions comparable to those of Southern
textile workers. The sincerity of the statement was immediately
called into question. A TWUA leader called the proposal an insult,
not a challenge. Mr. Little had said to a Congressional committee
investigating the plant closures that Southern workers were better
than New England workers, in some cases 100 percent more productive,
leading to his decision to shut down the plants.
In Charlotte, the Chamber of Commerce declared its support
for the natural gas pipeline project proposed to run from Texas and
Louisiana into the Piedmont Carolinas. Duke Power Company issued a
statement saying that the pipeline would benefit the community.
In Angola, N.Y., a Lutheran minister declared that the
"Hollywood embrace", popular at the end of wedding
ceremonies, was in "bad taste", as was the practice of
ministers kissing the bride. He preferred a kiss on the cheek,
representative of "brotherly love".
In New York, butter dropped 3.5 cents per pound and chain
stores responded by lowering prices as much as four cents.
On the editorial page, "Mr. Dewey Opens His Campaign" tells of Governor Dewey starting his campaign in Des Moines, setting
forth the principles on which he would run the country if elected.
He mainly dealt in generalities, which might attract some votes
while not endangering any. He spoke of high prices and the housing
shortage, the need for improved civil rights, and faith in the
country in the face of the threat in the world. He generally took a
higher plane, finds the piece, than the ill-tempered remarks of the
President.
Mr. Dewey was far ahead in the polls but not so far that he
could coast to victory. During the ensuing six weeks, he would need to explain how he would
accomplish the lofty goals he had set forth for his administration.
"A Border State?" tells of the strength of the
Democratic Party in North Carolina having diminished since the New
Deal years when the state was easily carried by FDR four times. The
state had always had a mind of its own and in 1948, it was being
touted by the GOP as a "border state", possibly to come
into the Republican column for the first time since 1928.
Less than a third of the state's population were black, a
smaller proportion than most other Southern states. It also had less
adherence within the population to the concept of white supremacy.
Kentucky, Maryland, and Tennessee, traditional border states, had an
even lower percentage of black population.
Other reasons had been advanced for the state's stubbornness,
such as less of a tradition of "moonlight and magnolias"
to sweep aside after the plantation era had ended in the Nineteenth
Century. There were more small, independent farmers in North
Carolina.
Henry Wallace also had courted North Carolina voters on the
premise of their independence.
It concludes, however, that nothing was assured to anyone.
But if the South turned again to the two-party system, it ventures,
North Carolina would serve as the seed-bed for that revival.
North Carolina would vote for President Truman by a margin of
58 to 32 percent, with Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats polling 8.8
percent.
Strom and Fielding would have won except for the obvious
fraud at the polls.
"All That Glitters Is Not Coal" tells of the
marriage of Barbara Sears, a coal miner's daughter, to Winthrop
Rockefeller, Jr., and the marriage of Stephana Saja, also a coal
miner's daughter, to Francis Hitchcock, wealthy sportsman. The
phenomenon had competing explanations, that the mothers of
debutantes were allowing the cream of the crop to slip through their
daughters' fingers, that the coal miners' daughters were becoming
more aggressive, that the trend was a fad, that someone had been
reading Cinderella, or that John L. Lewis had done more for the
miners than everyone realized, making their daughters suddenly
appealing to high society.
None of the explanations were satisfactory. Rather, it
concludes, the couples were the only ones who knew of their precise
motivations. It predicts that marriage to a coal miner's daughter
would replace yachts as a status symbol among the playboy set, and
that numerous young women would adopt a coal mining father of West
Virginia or Pennsylvania to assure a good vein.
Drew Pearson tells of President Truman while in Iowa calling
Governor James Cox, 1920 Democratic presidential nominee with FDR as
his running mate. Governor Cox told him that he could carry Iowa by
giving them rain, as the Republicans would likely promise rain and
then the President could take credit for it at the time of the
equinox.
The U.S. had hesitated in July when the Russians clamped down
on the Berlin blockade, begun in June. General Lucius Clay, military
governor of the U.S. occupation zone in Germany, had urged at the
time sending a train loaded with supplies through the blockade,
believing that the Russians would back down. The Joint Chiefs and
the National Security Council approved the proposal, but the State
Department and subsequently the President refused to go along.
Berliners had supported General Clay's idea, believed that the
Russians had been bluffing. At present, however, Russia had moved up
more divisions of the Red Army into Germany and appeared ready to
fight. It might have been otherwise in July.
He equates the decision to that of the French in 1936 to
stand pat when Hitler annexed the Rhineland.
The big airlines wanted Congressman Carl Hinshaw of
California to be Secretary of the Air Force in a Dewey
administration. He had gotten Congress to pass large subsidy
increases for the "big five" airlines.
Brig. General "Buck" Lanham invited in a sergeant
to see him while he was having a conference with a colonel, asked
the sergeant if the matter was personal or whether the colonel could
stay.
The President, speaking before the American Hospital
Association, urged compulsory health insurance despite it being
unpopular with doctors. The president of the Association told the
President that the plan would inhibit voluntary hospitals from
providing services. Half of the money spent annually on American
hospitals, he informed, came from private philanthropists. But the
President had responded that a third of the men who had reported for
the wartime draft had been turned down for physical and mental
reasons. Hospitals were overcrowded and could not care for the
populace. When told that the program would cause voluntary hospitals
to fall under Government control, the President responded that the
banks had not fallen under Government control with the advent of the
Federal Reserve System.
Mr. Pearson notes that most doctors who had tried compulsory
insurance claimed it provided them a steadier income and their
patients better health.
The Democrats needed only four seats to capture control of
the Senate, but Senator Scott Lucas, chairman of the Senatorial
campaign, had called only one meeting because of being busy touring
Europe
Marquis Childs discusses the Senate races, a focal point for
drumming up interest in an election deemed a foregone conclusion at
the top. The Republicans might hold on to a scant majority,
permitting them to name chairmanships and thus control the progress
of legislation. But that would be the extent of control. Neither
party could exert true control for the fact of several independent
Senators in each party routinely voting their consciences.
For the GOP, the group included four, Senators Wayne Morse of
Oregon, William Langer of North Dakota, George Aiken of Vermont, and
Charles Tobey of New Hampshire. None of the four was standing for
re-election. Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky was a fifth
such member, but his re-election bid was being hotly contested. With
but a narrow majority on either side of the aisle after the
election, this group could join with independent Democrats to form a
third body which could effectively control the outcome of votes.
Thus, the lobbyists who were investing great sums of money,
especially for the GOP, to exert control over legislation in the new
administration, were apt to be disappointed in the outcome.
At least two newcomers for the Democrats, he points out,
would be present, Congressman Lyndon Johnson, who had defeated in a
landslide former Governor Coke Stevenson in the Texas primary runoff
after the results of Box 13 had been revealed, and Congressman Estes
Kefauver of Tennessee, defeating incumbent Senator Tom Stewart in
the primary. Both men had been effective in the House.
A third future vice-presidential candidate, successful in
1964 running with President Johnson, would be Mayor Hubert Humphrey,
to win the general election in Minnesota over the incumbent, Joseph
Ball.
James Marlow discusses the convening of the U.N. General
Assembly in Paris, with questions before the body regarding control
of atomic energy, Palestine, and Berlin. The Assembly could only
recommend action and exert a moral force by voting for a particular
resolution, thus expressing world opinion.
The Security Council, with its five permanent members, having
the power of unilateral veto, and the six rotating smaller nation
members, was the real force in the organization. But with Russia
usually exercising its veto on matters which conflicted with its own
policy, the likelihood of obtaining action on an issue such as
atomic control or Berlin was practically hopeless.
Whether the crisis in Berlin would be placed before the
Assembly remained to be seen.
David McConnell reviews Free Speech and Its Relation to
Self-Government by Alexander Meiklejohn, former president of
Amherst College. The author examined anew free speech in the country
in light of HUAC investigations and loyalty tests, found that
American citizens did not need protection from thoughts which
Congress believed were too dangerous for them to hear. Citizens
should be able to hear criticism of their Government and listen to
debate from all quarters so that democracy would remain strong.
He devoted considerable space in his book to Justice Oliver
Wendell Holmes's opinion that free speech existed only to the point
of yelling fire in a crowded theater, when the words constituted a
clear and present danger that they would precipitate violence or
evil reaction.
The author was more liberal than Justice Holmes and believed
that his prescription had placed too much suppressive power in the
hands of Congress.
A letter writer thinks that the type of football which
Central High School was playing did not justify the hike in ticket
prices to $1.25 and $1.75 from $1, as charged by the other schools.
The other schools also had increased expenses and Central, he
recommends, ought play opponents of its own caliber in the Western
Conference. Fayetteville was in the Eastern Conference, considered
the "big league", and so it was not surprising that
Fayetteville had shellacked Central—clocked their chimes, rung
their cash register, made the jewels sparkle in the sunlight as a
rotten mackerel.
A letter writer commends the white citizens of Charlotte for
aiding the mutual betterment of race relations. He had recently
visited New York where he talked with one of the YMCA directors of
the Harlem branch and informed him that blacks in Charlotte were
among the more progressive in the country, making great strides
economically, educationally and in religion. White citizens of the
community had donated $200,000 to aid in the $250,000 project to
construct a black YMCA building, and had been cooperative in
developing playgrounds for the black community. As a black citizen
of the community, he believes that these projects showed that racial
friction was absent from the city.
A few citizens apparently did not like the uppity campaign,
however, of Henry Wallace, as he spent the night in black homes and
hotels across North Carolina and the South during his recent tour,
preaching social equality and the need for complete integration of
society. To some, the egg and tomato throwers, that was the
equivalent of Communism. But, while they were loud and able to drown
out Mr. Wallace on occasion, they were also few in number, and, in
Charlotte, those responsible were arrested and prosecuted on
misdemeanor charges.
