The Charlotte News
Tuesday, January 25, 1949
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Nationalist Government in China had officially abandoned Nanking and headed south, following an announcement by the Communists that they were prepared to meet Nationalist peace envoys in Peiping. It was presumed that the new location of the Government would be Canton.
Russia and five other Eastern European nations, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Rumania, and Czechoslovakia, had organized a Council of Economic Mutual Assistance as an answer to the Marshall Plan. The Council left the door open for other nations to join, just as had the Marshall Plan for Eastern bloc nations, including Russia, in its original form in mid-1947.
British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin stated before the Foreign Press Association in London his support for President Truman's proposal for development of underdeveloped nations by pooling of scientific resources and technical knowledge in aid of these nations.
A British Berlin airlift plane had crashed the previous night with German children and sickly persons aboard departing Berlin for the British zone. Seven, including two of the children, were killed and 18 injured. It was believed to be the worst crash in terms of loss of life in the history of the airlift, begun the previous June in relief of the Russian-blockaded city.
Comptroller General Lindsay Warren, originally of North Carolina, urged Congress to provide authority to President Truman to reorganize the Executive Branch of Government, per the recommendations of the Hoover Commission.
Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer told the Senate Small Business subcommittee that the Administration would soon seek mandatory powers to control the distribution of steel and other major commodities in short supply. He urged in the meantime extension for another six months of the voluntary allocations system through industry committees.
In Charlotte, funeral services were held for State Senator and DNC national treasurer Joe Blythe, who had died the previous Sunday of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 58. DNC chairman Senator J. Howard McGrath attended the services along with Senator Clyde Hoey of North Carolina and other dignitaries.
North Carolina Democratic leaders agreed that Jonathan Daniels, Editor of the Raleigh News & Observer and former press secretary and adviser to FDR, as well as adviser to President Truman during the late campaign, would replace Mr. Blythe as the state's DNC committeeman.
The News continued its "Mr. X" contest after the first night of 30 phone calls did not produce a proper identification. Premised on the first clue that the person was a native of New England, two persons had incorrectly identified the mystery individual as John Watlington of Wachovia Bank, another, as J. E. Dowd, vice-president and general manager of The News. (Both were North Carolinians born and bred.) Other incorrect guesses included Superman, Harry Truman, "Clifford Clark", presumably a veiled reference to Clark Clifford, advice columnist Dr. George Crane, and News sportswriter Furman Bisher.
The prize thus went to $20, with another round of phone calls due this night between 7:00 and 8:00. The accumulated $50 by Saturday, if no success had been achieved by Friday night's phone calls, would go to the Empty Stocking Fund to supply gifts for needy families the following Christmas.
The second clue is that the person entered Federal Government service in 1933.
It must be, therefore, Francis X.
Bushman
On the editorial page, "Communists on Trial" discusses the trial in New York of eleven of the twelve indicted Communist leaders in the country for conspiracy to overthrow the Government by force or violence in violation of the 1940 Smith Act. The ultimate outcome would depend on the Supreme Court's interpretation of whether the Communist Party was a legal entity or a foreign agency bent on the overthrow of the Government by force.
The law, the first sedition law since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, had been tested in the 1941 "Trotskyite" trials in Minneapolis and the Supreme Court had refused to hear the case after conviction of the defendants. It was tested again in 1942 and 1944 in the trials of alleged Nazi and right wing advocates, including Lizzy Dilling and William Dudley Pelley, but those cases, with the exception of the Pelley case which went to conviction in 1942, were dismissed after the trial judge died following a year-long trial, and the cases wound up dismissed, as the war by then had ended and the Nazi and Fascist regimes in Europe reduced to rubble.
The opinions on both sides of the issue were hot and the outcome would have consequences. Americans, it offers, could not very well object to Communists in other countries if the U.S. permitted the Communists to thrive at home.
"Growing Power in Asia" comments on the conference in New Delhi of 19 African and Asian nations regarding the Dutch attack on Indonesia. The conference adopted unanimously a resolution closely resembling that of the U.N. Security Council on the matter, calling for release of arrested Indonesian officials, evacuation of the Indonesian capital at Jakarta, withdrawal of all forces from Indonesian territory, and allowance of the establishment of an interim government by March 15, as well as lifting trade restrictions and arranging for an election by October 1. The U.N. resolution called for an interim government by March 15 and final organization by July 1, 1950. The Dutch objected strongly to both proposals and predicted that either would lead to chaos.
If the U.N. failed to prevail in the situation and the Dutch persisted, then an Asian bloc might be the result, having as its rallying point the attack on Indonesia. Such a bloc might turn to Communism if the West did not act positively in its behalf.
The piece thus recommends immediate U.N. action in the matter and U.S. cessation of all Marshall Plan aid to Holland as a sanction until the nation conformed to U.N. orders.
"State Personnel Department" supports passage of a bill introduced before the General Assembly in furtherance of Governor Kerr Scott's inaugural suggestion that a personnel department be established for State Government to afford efficient management in the same vein as that in industry.
"Preliminary Skirmishing" finds that the Republican spite coalition in the Senate with conservative Democrats to defeat, by a vote of 47 to 45, the repeal of the paltry tax on inauguration tickets might portend problems for the President in obtaining passage of his Fair Deal legislation. In 1940, the inaugural tax exemption had been passed, and again in 1944. But it passed only in the House on this occasion. Several Democrats had been absent from the Senate vote and it likely would have passed had they been present. Nevertheless, the vote suggested the problems facing the President.
Drew Pearson tells of Jim Farley, once the kingmaker of FDR, having to search in vain for a seat among the dignitaries at the President's swearing-in ceremony on the Capitol steps the previous Thursday, only to wind up sitting with the press and lesser lights.
When, after waiting to view the last of the inaugural parade, the President finally arrived at the reception at the Mellon Art Gallery, reserved for the average people who had worked during the campaign for him, he found 3,000 such persons waiting expectantly to shake his hand. The President saw that it was a hopeless gesture to try to shake hands with them all and so he announced he would shake hands with Vice-President Barkley and that the ladies accompanying them would shake hands, so that the crowd could then tell the folks back home that they had shaken hands with the President. The entourage then departed. The crowd then lined up and shook hands with Jim Farley, who was also present.
Former HUAC chairman J. Parnell Thomas, under indictment for defrauding the Government through pocketing salaries for bogus staff, still drew his Congressional salary and was still technically a member of HUAC, though too ill to attend to his duties. Some other GOP members of the Committee, as Congressman Pat Kearney of New York, had refused to serve on the Committee in the new Congress as long as Mr. Thomas remained a member.
Eskimos of Alaska on Little Diomede Island had relatives who were Soviet citizens of Siberia three miles to the West on Big Diomede Island. Boatloads of Eskimos often paddled between the two islands. But, Mr. Pearson notes, strangers on Little Diomede Island would not get far into U.S. territory without being reported by the loyal Eskimos.
Joseph Alsop, in Rome, describes the atmosphere as being much better since he was last present there in November, 1947, prior to Marshall Plan aid. Now, the Communist threat was behind them after the elections of the previous spring in which the Communists had been soundly defeated. The next task was to obtain internal approval to join the Atlantic Alliance if invited to do so.
Until recently, a policy of neutrality had been favored by the Vatican on the Right and the Communist-controlled Socialists on the Left. During the previous week, however, the views of the Vatican had changed to favor the West.
The British opposed Italian joinder to the Alliance on the ground that Italy's best contribution to Western security would be to remain neutral. France and the U.S. countered that Western defense at the Rhine would be useless if the backdoor to Europe through the Po Valley of Italy were left ajar.
If Italy were allowed to join the Alliance, then their 15 army divisions would be provided arms by the U.S., and the air base at Foggia would be available for American B-29's, supplying a base for defense of the Mediterranean.
The desire for a base in the Mediterranean had caused the British to oppose return of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania to Italy while anti-Italian prejudice appeared to be the reason for opposition to return of Eritrea and instead providing it to Abyssinia. A new plan would enable the British to retain Cyrenaica while returning a major part of control to Italy of Tripolitania and Eritrea, with the right of joint basing in those latter colonies. With peace secured in Israel, the West would thus have control of the Mediterranean, with the U.S. exerting more influence in the region than it ever had in the past, in a shared Anglo-American partnership.
The Marshall Plan was thus not only altering history of other nations but changing it as well for the U.S.
Elton C. Fay tells of the race for supremacy in rocket technology resulting, by 1952, in the U.S. devoting 40 percent of its military budget, according to leading military scientists, to the task, much of it to guided missile research and production. Presently, only 534 million of the President's proposed 15.9 billion dollar defense budget was allocated for all research and development. The Navy and Air Force were allocated about 40 percent each of this budget.
The scientists had said that guided missile technology would probably not have evolved enough by 1952 to allow for pinpoint accuracy in targeting other continents but the hope was that propulsion and guidance systems would have been significantly improved by that point with such a large percentage of the budget potentially devoted to research and development of same.
The scientists agreed that if an attack were to occur presently, World War II technology would largely have to be relied upon for counter-attack. But they also believed that by 1952, those weapons and planes would be obsolete, replaced by secret weapons being developed.
Samuel Grafton, no longer carried by The News, finds the President's reference in his inaugural address anent lifting up underdeveloped nations to be a good concept, but flawed for the fact that other Western nations were in the meantime engaging in forms of aggression—the Dutch in Indonesia, the British against Israel, and the French, with 100,000 troops in Indo-China.
He wonders how the plan of the President would be carried forth under such conditions, suggests that the Western Alliance determine first what its policy was toward the Far East, and then get together with the proposed Far Eastern alliance being considered at the New Delhi conference, led by Prime Minister Nehru of India. The proposed alliance should be welcomed by the West as being within the Charter of the U.N. for mutual regional defense and the West should work with it, to provide for a cohesive policy between the Far East and the West for the first time by mutual agreement.
He concludes that the chief weakness of the President's proposed policy was that if he could not promise decent treatment to the underdeveloped nations from the Western Alliance, he could not promise them much of anything.
A letter writer urges giving to the March of Dimes campaign for polio research and treatment, set to conclude at the end of January.
A letter writer finds hope in the draft of the West German constitution which provided for voluntary relinquishment of sovereignty to an international organization, allowing entry to either a regional federation or world government. She thinks that Americans ought encourage Europe to unite and enter a world federation to establish world peace.
All very well and good—in an imaginary world which has never been and never likely will be. For the very reason that, as stated in the Drew Pearson column, the President cannot shake everyone's hand. Good intentions and nice, pretty words are fine, but we also have to be practical.
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