The Charlotte News
Friday, February 11, 1949
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.S., in apparent retaliation against Hungary for expulsion of two U.S. diplomatic officials on the claim that they were spies, ordered the top Hungarian diplomat to depart from the U.S., declaring him persona non grata. The State Department, however, claimed that the timing of the expulsion was mere coincidence but gave no reason for the action.
The State Department also denounced the filing of charges by Communist Bulgaria against fifteen leaders of the United Evangelical Church for allegedly being spies for the United States and Britain, asserting it as part of the continuing program in the Communist nations to limit religious freedom.
In Ulster, elections gave 27 of 52 Parliamentary seats to the pro-British Union Party and five for the opposition, with 20 still outstanding. The Unionists had 35 seats in the previous Parliament. The vote was considered a king-or-republic contest, determining whether Northern Ireland would join with Eire in the Republic of Ireland.
Secretary of State Acheson stated to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the U.S., while favoring European unity, would not dictate what Marshall Plan aid recipient nations could do. The hearing was determining whether to recommend the Administration's 5.58 billion dollar ERP aid package for the coming year, starting April 3, a year after the first year's appropriation.
Senator Arthur Vandenberg announced in Detroit at a Lincoln Day dinner that he was retiring from public life after the 1952 election. He said that it would be the role of the GOP in the coming four years to play the loyal opposition and hold the Administration strictly accountable on foreign policy while continuing a bipartisan approach. Several of the Senator's colleagues, Democrats and Republicans alike, expressed regret that Senator Vandenberg would be retiring.
William Remington, 31-year old economist, after being cleared of charges of disloyalty, returned to work at the Commerce Department. Senators John McClellan of Arkansas and Irving Ives of New York spoke out against the return of Mr. Remington to his former job, dealing with exports to Russia and confidential matters. Senator Clyde Hoey of North Carolina, now chairman of the Senate Investigating subcommittee which had in the previous Congress turned up the evidence of disloyalty the previous spring against Mr. Remington, said that he would request all of the facts from the loyalty board for consideration by the subcommittee.
Mr. Remington had been identified to the Senate Investigating Committee by Elizabeth Bentley as providing helpful Government information to the Communists, though independently, not as part of the so-called Silvermaster or Perlo groups of which she claimed personal knowledge. HUAC deferred investigation directly into Mr. Remington because of the Senate inquiry. Despite the fact, Congressman John Rankin insisted on bringing up the matter during the HUAC hearings the previous August and extensive discussion on Mr. Remington among the Committee members took place. All other HUAC witnesses who were asked whether they knew Mr. Remington, including Alger Hiss, stated that they did not.
Frank L. White of the Associated Press reports of General MacArthur's intelligence chief, Maj. General Charles Willoughby, stating that he believed that the release the day before by the Army of General MacArthur's report on the Richard Sorge spy ring, operating for the Soviets in Japan prior to Pearl Harbor, was timed to educate the American people to the nature of Communist spy operations. He believed that there were remarkable parallels with the Canadian spy case and the U.S. "leaks" of critical information. He said that General MacArthur had no connection with the release of his report in Washington. General Willoughby had no comment on the denial of the report's claim of involvement in the ring of two persons living in the United States, one an American journalist, Agnes Smedley. He claimed that the Army had more information on Ms. Smedley than appeared in the report and felt comfortable in calling her an agent for the Soviet Government.
Housing Expediter Tighe Woods proposed to the joint Economic Committee of Congress that there be a temporary halt in construction of single-family homes in favor of mass housing until the shortage could be remedied.
The House Ways & Means Committee put aside tax legislation temporarily to consider the President's proposed expansion of Social Security to cover farm workers and others not covered by the 1935 Act. The tax bill might be postponed until May.
George Cramer of Charlotte, prominent in textiles, was about to be appointed to a high administrative position with ERP.
A member of the North Carolina State House introduced a bill to make it illegal for anyone in State Government to belong to any organization whose aim was the overthrow of the Government of either the State or the United States. The bill would require a loyalty oath and assertion of non-Communist affiliation. It would make violations a felony.
The State House Roads Committee voted to recommend abolition of the State's vehicle inspection program. The bill would move to the full House the following week.
In Philadelphia, a transit strike by 11,000 workers interrupted the daily commute of residents, causing traffic snarls.
In Clayton, N.Y., a housewife and seven of her eight children were burned to death in a house fire, believed to have been started by a defective oil heater. The husband and father, who tried to rescue the family, survived along with a daughter.
Winds up to 70 mph hit the Rockies and southern Wyoming, especially in Casper, as a cold wave stretched into Montana, heading toward Nebraska, and a blizzard hit northern Minnesota. The Pacific Northwest was beset by snow avalanches and heavy rain.
"Mr. X" this week, the
former well-known football player, must have been Peahead Walker. But he was known as a head coach and not so much as a player. We give up. You figure it out
On the editorial page, "The Atlantic Pact and Peace" finds that the emphasis by the Administration on the North Atlantic Pact, shortly to become NATO, demonstrated that the cold war was not limited to economic aid but also had a military aspect.
There had been an Eastern Defense Pact since 1943 when Russia agreed to provide mutual military assistance to Czechoslovakia, followed by such arrangements with Poland, Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Rumania and Finland. It supplied the groundwork for Eastern military aggression, even if not yet realized.
The North Atlantic Pact was thus a defensive arrangement in response to prevent a third world war. But the Russians decried the Pact as preparation for war. Both regional pacts, however, were sanctioned by the U.N. Charter.
The NATO agreement would prevent the prospect of a Soviet lightning strike across Western Europe and, moreover, forestall the chance of coups taking place, as had occurred in Czechoslovakia the previous year.
Norway was seeking to join the North Atlantic Pact, provided it received assurances of defense against Soviet aggression. The complicating factor was that only Congress could ratify treaties entered by the President and so only Congress could authorize such protection. There remained the questions of whether Russia would retaliate against Norway during the negotiation process and what, if any, action would be undertaken by the Western powers in the meantime to protect Norway, as well as determining whether Norway, with a common border with Russia, would be given priority in receiving military equipment, with or without joinder to the Pact.
Participation by the Scandinavian counties in the Pact was considered by the Western allies to be crucial for its success and Secretary of State Acheson was thus busy trying to negotiate to this end.
The piece suggests that the cold war was being resolved on this point, through creation of a balance of power, that the ensuing months would determine whether peace was an illusion or a reality.
"Complete Overhauling" discusses a bill before the Legislature to overhaul the justice of the peace system by limiting the number of such positions, to be appointed by county commissioners based on population, limitation of terms to two years, provision for salary rather than reliance on collection of fees, and providing for close supervision of the work. The bill would also require the magistrates to be bonded. The piece finds the measure appropriate and adequate to address the abuses of the system. It hopes that the Legislature would not succumb to lobbying efforts, as had been the case in the past, to sidetrack the measure.
A piece from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, titled "High Cost of Glamour", reports that Fortune had revealed that the estimated cost of fashion for women was twelve billion dollars per year, equal to the defense outlay the previous year, the largest such expenditure to date in peacetime. Itemized, for cosmetics and beauty parlors, the sum was 1.6 billion, for dresses, 1.55 billion, for shoes, 1.5 billion, jewelry, 1.3 billion, coats, skirts and suits, a bit over a billion, hosiery, 600 million, undergarments, 450 million, millinery, 400 million, figure support, 225 million, and gloves, handkerchiefs and pocketbooks, 200 million.
It concludes that a recent Government estimate that the male spent more on clothing than the female of the household was obviously incorrect.
Drew Pearson tells of being criticized by his wife for being undignified in standing outside the Argentine Embassy in Washington while Presidential military aide General Harry Vaughan received a medal from dictator Juan Peron. Mr. Pearson had once covered Argentina as a reporter for La Nacion in the days when it was a democracy and freedom of press prevailed. But now, despite the undying charm of the Argentine people, Argentina had become the most undemocratic nation in the Western Hemisphere, seeking to undermine all of the policy for which the U.S. stood in Latin America, chief among which were civil rights. Sr. Peron had encouraged most of the coups which had taken place in Latin America.
Since the President had obviously authorized the receipt of the medal, Mr. Pearson thought it important to stand outside the Embassy in protest to give publicity to the fact, especially throughout Latin America.
Mr. Pearson had one of his assistants taking notes inside the Embassy during the ceremony and he had recorded that very few dignitaries were present, only Senators J. Melville Broughton of North Carolina and Dennis Chavez of New Mexico. General Vaughan had railed against Mr. Pearson. When it became known that the assistant worked for Mr. Pearson, the conversation shifted quickly to compliments and General Vaughan stalked off.
He notes that the medal had to be approved by the Senate. Senator Ed Johnson of Colorado was the only member so far, however, to raise some objection.
Congressman Norris Cotton of New Hampshire had taken to song regarding the move to eliminate the discriminatory margarine tax. To the tune of "Maryland, My Maryland", he sang, "Gone the day when cow was queen, margarine, my margarine."
Marquis Childs discusses the effort in Congress to craft a new labor bill to replace Taft-Hartley. Republican Senators Wayne Morse of Oregon and Irving Ives of New York were against providing injunctive power, as under Taft-Hartley, to stop strikes which threatened a national emergency. They believed that an emergency could be dealt with by Congress on an ad hoc basis as the railway strike in spring, 1946, when the President's mere request of Congress for emergency powers, including seizure of the railroads and drafting of railway labor, had resulted in the strike being called off.
Senator Ives wanted a provision enabling the President to appoint a fact-finding board for a specified period during which both sides of the dispute would do nothing. He believed that the need for national emergency legislation was largely academic.
Senator Morse pointed out that the coal strike of late 1947 went on for eight days after issuance of an injunction, resulting in a fine for contempt of UMW and John L. Lewis, but no jail time. He thus called into question the effectiveness of injunctive relief.
Senator Robert Taft had also become less enthusiastic about injunctive relief as a solution and might vote against it. He remained in favor of the extreme measure, however, to stop a jurisdictional strike or secondary boycott. Senators Ives and Morse believed that the latter forms of strikes should be spelled out in the law and left to NLRB to resolve rather than to the courts, at least until the unions defied NLRB orders.
Generally, the Democrats would need the cooperation of moderates as Senators Ives and Morse among the Republicans to mold new legislation to counter-balance Southern Democrats who would resist the changes to Taft-Hartley.
James Marlow discusses the story released by the Army of the Russian spy ring which had operated in Japan until shortly before Pearl Harbor, warning the Russians of the German invasion of June, 1941 a month before it happened and informing that Russia would not be invaded by Japan from the Siberian side, enabling concentration of troops on the German front. He regards it as far bigger news than that of the Canadian spy ring, revealed in 1946, or the U.S. spy ring, revealed in 1947-48.
The Japanese ring had consisted primarily of a German, Richard Sorge, and a Japanese, Ozaki Hozuma, both hanged by the Japanese after discovery. Herr Sorge, posing as a Nazi, had been an adviser to the German ambassador in Tokyo, thereby obtaining high level secret information which he passed to the Soviets. Mr. Hozuma had been an adviser to the Japanese Cabinet. They both believed in the perfection of Soviet life and thus were devoted to Communism, much as had been the story of the Canadian spies.
The Russians had put a lot of effort into both spy rings, down to coordination of the smallest details. It led to the question of the kind of spy ring in operation in the U.S. There had yet been no proof of an existing spy ring within the country, despite investigations by HUAC and the New York grand jury. The only indictment by the latter entity had been of Alger Hiss, for perjury, not for spying.
Mr. Marlow thinks that it would be absurd to believe, however, that the Russians would not have set up a spy ring in the U.S. And the pattern in the Canadian and Japanese rings was to establish trusted, smart personnel in high places who could listen and then impart information through a network of spies.
One has to wonder where things had gone so awry that no one was asking the most relevant question of all: why the country was now so interested in the spying by a World War II ally on America's foremost two enemies during the war? Without Russia's effective resistance to Germany and preoccupation of the German Wehrmacht on the Russian front, the war probably would have been won by the Axis, certainly would have been much longer and more costly in lives for the Allies, especially the United States. That glaring fact seems to have been lost in the shuffle, in the "red herring" fear-mongering produced by HUAC during the year prior to the 1948 election in a desperate attempt to whip hysteria through the country in the hope of using it to recapture the White House, hysteria which would be continued by Senator Joseph McCarthy beginning in 1950, in another assault on both truth and the Constitution, designed to produce, this time more effectively, the same political ends, giving birth to the era of Nixonian politics.
Given what would subsequently transpire between the President and General MacArthur in Korea in 1951, one has to wonder historically just whose side General MacArthur wound up supporting after his years of being wooed by the post-war Japanese and the lovely little Emperor and Empress.
Education of the public as to the modus operandi of Communist spy networks could have been accomplished without confusing the issue as to who had been the ally and who the enemy during the war. But that would not have served the politics of isolation and reaction.
Joseph Alsop, in London, tells of the British people having accomplished a miracle during the previous year, going from a dark economic outlook in the fall of 1947 to a return nearly to normalcy, albeit without luxury.
But the miracle went beyond the improvement on the surface and penetrated into the economy itself as revealed by the statistics. During 1947, British exports had increased by 40 percent in value over 1946. By the end of 1948, Britain had nearly reached its national export goal, 150 percent of 1938, the last year before the war. Britain had also come close to balancing its exports and imports.
There remained, however, an imbalance in trade with the U.S. resulting in a large dollar deficit, 670 million for the second half of 1948, though declining. Industry was in need of retooling and meeting competition from a revived Germany and other economies, and farming had to be improved to increase production substantially.
But the miracle was real and was the product primarily of the people, with the help of industry and the Conservative opposition in Parliament behaving in a bipartisan manner to assist the Labor Government. A large measure of credit was also due Sir Stafford Cripps as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
If the British miracle were not upset by world economic collapse, Britain would be standing on its own by 1952 when Marshall Plan aid was set to terminate. A strong Britain would mean that the U.S. would no longer have to deal alone with rebuilding the world economy. If the Anglo-American partnership were maintained, it would become a formidable challenge to any aggressor.
A
Quote of the Day: "Among the
typographical obsolescents is the exclamation point—perhaps
because nobody these days is surprised
Framed Edition
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