The Charlotte News

Thursday, January 20, 1949

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that President Truman was sworn in at 12:29 p.m. this date for his first full term as President, then delivered his inaugural address from the steps of the Capitol. His main themes in the twenty-minute address were "peace, plenty, and freedom" for the world, "unfaltering support" for the U.N., continuation of programs for world economic recovery through the Marshall Plan and by increasing world trade, support, inclusive of military advice and equipment, to "freedom-loving nations" to thwart aggression, and a new effort to aid the world's needy areas by supplying American scientific and industrial skill. He attacked generally Communism as a force of aggression in the world to be resisted, without ever naming Russia.

The nation had no chief executive for 29 minutes as the President's official term expired at noon in accordance with the Constitution. Alben Barkley was sworn in as Vice-President at 12:23.

No reason is provided for the lapse of time. What happened to the missing 29 minutes? Did it disappear along with that British plane into the Bermuda Triangle? Or did it vanish in the vanishing point of some "scrambled eggs" art down Track 29?

The President took the oath of office from Chief Justice Fred Vinson on two Bibles, one open to the Ten Commandments and the other to the Beatitudes.

After the President had breakfast of ham and hominy grits at the Mayflower Hotel in a reunion with the members of Battery D, which he had commanded during World War I, the President, accompanied by various high Government officials and their families, had attended a small church service at 10:00 a.m. at St. John's Church, the church where FDR had gone on his four inauguration days, joining the minister in prayer for peace and divine guidance in the years ahead. The minister then imparted of the lesson from Isaiah 14.

The parade route from the Capitol to the White House was lined with an estimated one million people. A carnival atmosphere extended over the parade.

Washington merchants had taken out a $200,000 insurance policy with Lloyd's of London to insure the President's appearance at the inauguration, to avoid loss of their investment of $260,000 in inauguration costs. The premium had cost them $10,000.

In Independence, Mo., the President's hometown, a fire raged through a half block of the business district in sub-zero weather, causing $400,000 worth of damage, eight blocks from the summer White House. It was one of the worst fires in the town in over a hundred years. No cause was mentioned. Only one minor injury resulted.

In China, the Government offered formally to declare a ceasefire and negotiate with the Communists for peace, leaving the next move to the Communists. The Kuomintang had approved the executive Yuan's same proposal of the previous day, enabling the offer to go forward. Chiang Kai-Shek had not spoken on the matter but had the power to override the tender. The Communists had said nothing since chairman Mao Tse-Tung issued an eight-point surrender proposal the previous week.

In North China, a separate peace reportedly had been reached with the Communists but not yet implemented as a result of the mission under flag of truce of the delegation from Peiping on Monday. That peace and surrender agreement would only apply to that portion of North China still in Government hands.

In East Berlin, the rump city government, established by the Communists November 30, set up a separate city parliament, the "bloc presidium and working committee", named by appointment, not the promised elections. It was designed to rival the city assembly of West Berlin, constituted by the elections of December 5, boycotted by the Communists.

In retaliation for the Communist ban on Western newspapers in East Berlin imposed in September, the three Western powers ordered this date the Russian-controlled newspapers banned from the West Berlin post offices. The ban came in the wake of the newspapers propagandizing against the West for sabotaging efforts to resolve the Soviet-imposed blockade of Berlin, in effect since late June, by refusing to agree to currency proposals of the U.N.

In Conway, S.C., two men were being held by the Sheriff in connection with a fatal boating accident, charged with murder by negligence—seeming to any lawyer a contradiction in legal terms, but never mind. A woman had drowned when the small boat in which she and her four companions had been capsized in the wake left by a passing yacht, the skipper and helmsman of which were the subject of the charges. The other four on the boat survived.

We assume that those charges were eventually amended to either second degree murder by reckless acts amounting to malice, voluntary manslaughter for reckless conduct causing a death, or involuntary manslaughter for negligent conduct causing a death. But maybe not. Maybe it was a unique case of murder by negligence.

A new cold wave hit the Midwest and West, with the threat of 40 below zero temperatures in Colorado, Wyoming and parts of Montana, with minimum readings of a beachy, surfing 15 below. The cold weather extended to Northern Illinois, where Rockford recorded 21 below during the morning, Chicago, 4 above. Suffering was reported at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where Army and Red Cross units were conducting an airlift to supply food and fuel to the storm-bound residents of the reservation. Kansas and Nebraska also continued to suffer from the cold weather. It rained in Southern California, beset by snow and freezing temperatures in recent days.

The California Citrus Growers Association reported that 34,000 carloads of fruit, estimated to be 26 percent of the crop on the trees at the start of the season, had been destroyed by the cold weather.

So there will be a lot of Snow Crop Frozen Foods sold probably during the winter as a result.

Fair weather was recorded in the East, South and Northwestern states. It was 80 degrees in Jacksonville, Florida.

On the editorial page, "Enforcement of Taxi Law" comments on the Mayor's warning the previous day to Red Top and Victory cab companies that they had to abide by the City Council's order of December 8 to install a telephonic dispatch service or risk having their licenses suspended or revoked, finds the warning appropriate as the cab companies needed to comply with this and other new regulations, preventing cruising for fares tying up traffic, installation of meters for accurate fare determinations, and a ban on renting cabs, encouraging acceptance of only short distance fares.

Tell your cabbie to comply or else.

"Long Range Bombardment" comments on the finding of the same Senate subcommittee which the previous summer had severely criticized the State Department's information services as being inept, now stating that the Voice of America was doing a splendid job, putting the Soviets on the defensive in propaganda terms.

It had been reported that one Russian woman learned from The Voice that potato peels with eyes in them would, if planted, be fecund in producing spuds. She had done so with her neighbors deriding her, and the result was a boon for American propaganda, a rich harvest of potatoes.

It concludes that now that even the Republicans approved of The Voice, it was to be hoped that the potent weapon it posed would be allowed to continue into the long-range future.

"Something for Nothing" tells of Britain's Health Minister Aneurin Bevan urging Britons not to become hypochondriacs for the fact of free medical, dental, and optical care begun the previous July. Since the experiment had begun, Britons had shown a sudden upsurge in need of the services. The piece finds it reminiscent of the "army game" played with the availability of free medical care in the armed services during the war and only human.

Doctors in Britain complained that they were underpaid and overworked.

It predicts that before the experiment in socialized medicine was over, the British would long for the good old days of free enterprise in the field. But, it finds, Britons had not lost their sense of humor in the face of the problems. M.P. Frank Mendicott had responded to Mr. Bevan by asking whether he realized that the widespread gnashing of teeth over the increased expenditure to the Government had contributed greatly to the necessity for increased dental care.

A piece from the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, titled "1948's Lynching Record", discusses Tuskegee Institute's finding of two lynchings in 1948, both in Georgia, one involving a white farmer and the other involving a black farmer, plus a borderline case because only two persons were involved in killing a black man wishing to vote, rather than more than two, deemed by Tuskegee to be the minimum number to constitute a lynching. It gives credit to law enforcement in the South for stopping 19 lynchings.

Still, it regards the argument that this greater vigilance had obviated the necessity of a Federal anti-lynching law to be flawed in that the State action to curb lynching was in part motivated by the threat of such a Federal law and because the crime of lynching was one shared in disgrace not just by Southerners but was a shame to the whole nation and hampered its efforts to achieve peace and world security.

Drew Pearson tells of a lot of prominent Senators, Congressmen, and lobbyists, Democrats and Republicans alike, being upset that they were not being invited to the inauguration parties. The reason for the omission was that the President had insisted that the invitations be reserved for the people back home, who had come a long way to see the festivities. He had ignored the carping of Washington socialites that the new arrivals were "unwashed Trumanites". And it was here, says Mr. Pearson, that the President showed his greatest strength, the ability to relate to the average person. The people had admired and loved FDR as their champion, but did not view him as one of their own, as they did President Truman. The fact that he had become President was inspiration for any farmer or haberdasher or county politician to rise to the highest office in the land.

As he took the oath of office, he had two big assets, a Congress enthusiastically in his corner and a new confidence in himself, engendered by the upset victory in November. He no longer was a mere political accident and no longer did he owe the fact of his position to those who had favored him in 1944 for the vice-presidency. But it was also important that those closest to him were, by and large, men of mediocre abilities.

The State of the Union message of the President repeated most of the same programs he had previously advocated to the 80th Congress. After most of it would likely be passed by the new Congress would come the job of implementing it, requiring the services of capable personnel.

Mr. Pearson refrains from giving names, as he fears that the President would become as a result the more fiercely attached to his cronies. But a revitalized Cabinet would be important to the success of his second term and to the people who had reposited enough confidence and trust in him to elect him for another four years.

While during this date, Mr. Truman would be in the limelight and no one would be much concerned about the Cabinet, it would assume major importance during the ensuing four years in determining whether he would occupy a role in history alongside the great Presidents, the Andrew Jacksons and FDR's, or the mediocre ones, the Andrew Johnsons and Calvin Coolidges. It would determine whether the voters would come through the period disappointed in the outcome or proud that they had cast their lot with the President.

Kentucky had first proposed a sign for its inauguration parade float which read: "Kentucky—Home of Vice-President Barkley and 62 Distillers!" But it was banned from the parade.

More trouble tremblingly gestating in the wings of delirium.

South Carolina originally planned not to be represented in the parade, but Governor Thurmond had accepted the President's invitation, said he would arrive this date in the morning and depart in the evening. Governors Beauford Jester of Texas and Earl Long of Louisiana had sent their Lieutenant Governors as representatives. Thirteen states, only two of which were Southern, Arkansas and Mississippi, had stated that they would not send representatives. Those states included New York and Pennsylvania.

James Marlow discusses the failed 1948 campaign for the presidency of former Vice-President and Secretaries of Agriculture and Commerce Henry Wallace. He had tried to get a telephone interview with Mr. Wallace at his farm in New York, but he had said that he was not granting interviews, that he would continue in politics, that the Progressive Party was needed presently more than ever. He was now silent, whereas he had been very loquacious during the campaign. Had he attracted the five million votes which some pundits had originally predicted, he would have swung the election to Thomas Dewey.

Mr. Marlow views Mr. Wallace's goal in the election to have been to defeat President Truman, who fired him in September, 1946 as Secretary of Commerce for his expressed differences with Secretary of State Byrnes's "get tough" policy toward Russia, after the President had initially approved Mr. Wallace's Madison Square Garden speech to that effect in advance.

Mr. Marlow reflects on the former Vice-President's career as a series of setbacks from which he had always rebounded, starting with his being bumped from the ticket in 1944 at the Democratic convention in favor of Senator Truman, from which he quickly recovered to be appointed by FDR in late January, 1945 as Secretary of Commerce.

But Mr. Marlow wonders how he would come back from the humiliating defeat of the election, in which he garnered only 1.1 million votes of 48.7 million cast, the same number as received by the Dixiecrat ticket headed by Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.

But, Mr. Marlow concludes, Mr. Wallace would not starve as he had money.

Marquis Childs discusses new Secretary of State Dean Acheson and the good will from both the President and Congress which would greet him as he began his tenure heading the State Department. Mr. Acheson would also be able to work well with existing State Department staff. He got along well as Undersecretary with planning department head George Kennan, chief architect of the Marshall Plan, and counsellor for the Department Charles Bohlen. Mr. Acheson, in fact, had been partially responsible for the appointment of Mr. Kennan.

Mr. Acheson would need to make several changes gradually in the diplomatic posts, where effective representation was wanting in some locations. Ambassador to Moscow Walter Bedell Smith was likely to resign, as he had intimated after two years in the solitude of the American Embassy in Moscow, isolated largely from interaction with the Russian hierarchy.

Mr. Childs finds that reflective of the "era of hysteria and fear now happily passing", Mr. Acheson's critics had been most concerned about whether he would appease Russia, a suspicion which those familiar with Mr. Acheson's work at the State Department found absurd as he had been an advocate of toughness, abandoning his former position of trying to get along at all costs with the Soviets.

Mr. Acheson would have to be resolute while not being unyielding in the face of a genuine opportunity to end the cold war, a tough row to hoe as the Russian foreign policy usually changed in silence.

One of his difficulties to be faced was the public expectation that he would be able to solve the world's ills through foreign policy. The attitude had led to most of the criticism of George Marshall, retiring from the post this date. It was said that General Marshall's military background had hampered him in the position, and Mr. Childs suggests that of course that had been the case, but that nevertheless Secretary Marshall had demonstrated greatness in the role for the previous two years through the postwar transition period.

He concludes that everyone had limitations and that no one could resolve every problem. Mr. Acheson's qualifications for the post were so obvious that it should not be surprising when his limitations also would become obvious.

A piece by Joseph Harsch of the Christian Science Monitor discusses China and the need to prevent Soviet control of the country after the inevitable Communist victory. Chiang Kai-Shek had been once considered a means to effect that result, but he was now no longer a powerful agent.

The notion of sending American armies to China had been discarded. American Marines were present in Tsingtao in small numbers to train the Chinese Navy, not to be used offensively. The Communists actually did not mind their presence, as the Marines prevented destruction of property under the scorched earth policy being followed by the Nationalists.

The West was now prepared to allow the chips to fall where they would in China, would not go to war to prevent the fall of the Chiang Government to the Communists. But this position did not mean that the West had resigned itself to a permanent Communist state in China under Russian control.

There were two possible lines of strategy, first, to engage in economic trade with the new Chinese government, a gamble because it could enable success of the new government. But the anti-Communists in China, who could not be purged quickly for their being essential to Chinese economic life, might also be strengthened by such a policy.

Second, for the future, it was to be hoped that Russian influence might weaken in China commensurate with the weakening of its influence in Europe as Western Europe was rebuilt.

He concludes that it was likely that America would treat the Chinese Communist government the same way the British had treated the Tito Government in Yugoslavia.

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