The Charlotte News
Tuesday, February 8, 1949
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Budapest, Josef Cardinal Mindszenty was convicted by the Communist Government of treason for conspiring to overthrow the Government and speculating in foreign currency, and was sentenced to life imprisonment and confiscation of his possessions. All six of his co-defendants were also convicted, with sentences ranging from three to fifteen years. The only other defendant to receive a life sentence was the Reverend Bela Ispenky, secretary to the secretary of a Catholic lay organization. The secretary of the organization received three years. The prosecutor thought the sentences too lenient and demanded death for Cardinal Mindszenty. An appeals court could review the sentences and impose more severe penalties. There was no possibility of clemency as it only applied to death sentences. The action against Cardinal Mindszenty was condemned throughout the non-Communist world, denounced by Catholics as Communist action against the Catholic Church.
In China, an unofficial peace mission to Peiping would depart from Shanghai the following day, having no official power to negotiate peace but set to engage in exploratory talks on behalf of Acting President Li Tsung-Jen.
Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Marshall Plan Ambassador Averell Harriman told a joint meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the Soviets were losing their battle to stop the Marshall Plan. Mr. Harriman said that the attempt was turning against the Russians as they were combating a plan directly benefiting the Western European nations. ERP administrator Paul Hoffman said that the proposed extension of the Marshall Plan for 15 months at a price of 5.58 billion dollars was a "bargain", as it was bringing peace and stability.
Secretary Acheson spoke favorably also of the creation of the Council of Europe, the advisory parliamentary organization formed by France, Britain, and the Benelux countries as a military, economic, social, cultural, and political mutual assistance organization.
The State Department was meeting in Washington with representatives of the five aforementioned nations regarding the formation of the North Atlantic Pact. It was believed the subject would be submission by Norway of its desire to join and whether it would be afforded protection from Communist aggression in that event.
In Greece, the Communist guerrillas named John Ioannides temporary president of the guerrilla government, so-called "Free Greece", replacing Markos Vafiades, believed executed by the rebels for failing to conquer Greece. Markos had resigned his post citing health.
The Senate Banking Committee voted unanimously to investigate retail and consumer price inflation to determine the need for authorization of the President to have requested emergency economic controls.
The Administration, through Housing Expediter Tighe Woods, told the House Banking Committee that if provided new powers over rents with criminal penalties for violations, it would roll back "black market" rents. The Republican rent control extension bill of 1947, according to Texas Congressman Wright Patman, afforded only injunctive relief against the offending landlord, but no fines or other penalties. The result was that most tenants had endured quietly 33 to 100 percent rent increases across the country.
Robert Denham, counsel for the NLRB, told the Senate Labor Committee that unions had grown up and did not need to be "babied" by Congress any longer and that they should be required to bargain collectively as provided under Taft-Hartley but not under the Administration's proposed bill similar to the former Wagner Act.
A new winter storm hit the State of Washington, headed toward Montana, as a cold wave was moving toward the Midwest. Travelers stranded in Northern California and Nevada by the recent blizzard were beginning to emerge. The Air Force haylift to eastern Nevada livestock had to be halted because of the storm and the situation there had become the most dire since its beginning.
The sheep are all going to die unless they get sweaters. Help them, please.
In Campbellsville, Ky., a farm fire took the lives of seven persons, six of whom were members of one family.
In Greenville, N.C., two teenagers confessed to beating, cutting and stomping a cab driver to death after they netted only $3 from robbing him. They removed him to a tobacco barn, beat him, then finished him off. The man had been a German prisoner of war in the last 15 months of World War II.
In Cincinnati, a man picked up on suspicion of illegal immigration was asked by a city detective how he got into the country, to which he responded that he was a full-blooded Sioux Indian and was born in the country. He asked the detective how he got into the country.
In Beverly Hills, a 51-year old man, heir to a banking fortune, was arrested for setting false fire alarms on six occasions. He said that he did so because he loved seeing the hook-and-ladder trucks.
"Mr. X" this week, a former well-known football player, must be Whizzer White.
On the editorial page, "ABC's of Atomic Energy" finds reasonable the effort of the Atomic Energy Commission to instruct the public in beneficial uses of atomic energy through release of a handbook on the subject, as well as the effects of atomic weaponry.
Use it to heat your home, run your automobile, wash your dog, and if a bomb comes, duck and cover. It's wonderful. It's the future. Trust us.
If the cancer rates rise in the
process, don't worry. Be happy
Don't blame them. They were only
spewing what they were being fed
"A Reasonable Request" finds that the greatest single threat to passage of the 200 million dollar bond issue for the Governor's four-year rural road building project would come from urban dwellers in the state who felt that they already bore a disproportionate tax burden to support public services. The cities were required to pay for their own street improvements and only wanted a penny from the gasoline tax, or slightly less than seven million dollars per year, from the State for the purpose, when they paid 60 percent of the gasoline tax.
"Thanks from France" tells of the Merci Train getting ready to pass through Charlotte the following day, bearing gifts from the appreciative people of France to the people of the United States in return for the Friendship Train sent to France in November, 1947, loaded with food and clothing for the previous winter, before the Marshall Plan emergency aid took effect. Both trains were symbols of "hands-across-the-ocean friendliness and neighborliness" which, the piece posits, the world needed.
"Matter for Trustees" finds that while UNC president Frank Porter Graham may have been indiscreet at times in allowing his name to be used in connection with organizations whose membership included Communists, he, himself, was a man of loyalty and integrity. It finds the attack on him therefore by Congressmen Edward Hebert of Louisiana and John Rankin of Mississippi, both formerly of HUAC, unwarranted and that the University ought be the party to suggest to Dr. Graham that he be more selective in allowing organizations the use of his name. It finds that in the case of Mr. Rankin, the attacker was not of the same character of the man he was attacking.
A piece from the Winston-Salem Journal, titled "No Connection", tells of Gordon Gray having been in Winston-Salem in 1946 attending his duties as publisher of the Journal when the RFC loan was made to Strickland Furniture Company in High Point, as Drew Pearson commented upon the previous week and again in this date's column. Thus, Mr. Pearson's suggestion that Mr. Gray, as Assistant Secretary of the Army, had been an "unwitting tool" in the matter, along with Army Secretary Kenneth Royall, was not correct. Mr. Gray had assumed his post in September, 1947.
Sumner Welles, former Undersecretary of State until August, 1943, examines the formation of the Council of Europe by France, Britain, and the Benelux countries as a weak series of compromises. The French resistance to re-establishment of German power had produced problems. The British wanted the French to relent in this regard as it threatened the economic stability of Europe to have a weak Germany.
The U.S. believed that only a European Union could enable full European recovery, that the Marshall Plan alone would not accomplish the goal by its scheduled end in 1952. Mr. Welles asserts that the European countries receiving Marshall Plan aid ought be told by the U.S. of the expectations of the American people that they would form a Western European Union in return for the financial support.
Drew Pearson tells of a meeting between State Department planner George Kennan and the Senate Armed Services Committee in which Mr. Kennan imparted that the "peace offensive" of Russia could not be trusted, that it was merely calculated to influence world opinion and seek to lull the West to obtain a breathing spell as things were not going well within Russia. The U.S. was hoping to draw off the Russian satellites into the Western sphere. Mr. Kennan believed that war was not imminent but could be triggered by accident. Meanwhile, democracy was gaining ground in Western Europe with the success of the Marshall Plan. Norway was now looking to join the North Atlantic Pact.
The Reconstruction Finance Corporation was due an investigation by Congress, as evidenced by the loan obtained from RFC by Strickland Furniture Company of High Point, N.C., through pulled strings, as reported the previous week by Mr. Pearson.
Joseph Alsop, in Belgrade, finds the Russian "peace offensive" not in evidence in Yugoslavia, where the Russians had redoubled their efforts to bring the heretical satellite into line. The Russians were seeking to cause division in Yugoslavia, but without success. The major threat to Yugoslavia was an economic blockade being orchestrated from Moscow.
More than half of Yugoslavia's trade was with the Eastern bloc countries and that trade had been cut off. In consequence, Marshal Tito was obtaining raw materials wherever he could and the Anglo-American alliance was quietly allowing him to do so. He was also negotiating trade agreements with Western Europe. Still, great sacrifices were being demanded of the Yugoslav people. And as long as Moscow was attempting to subvert Tito's leadership, some modicum of well-being was necessary to placate them.
Tito would not back down and seek reinstatement into the Soviet sphere as it would surely mean his end. His only remote chance for peace with Russia lay in the death of Stalin. The resulting competition for power in Russia would enable Tito to back one of the competing factions in the hope that it would prevail. Otherwise, the only place to which he could turn for aid was the West.
Marquis Childs suggests that there was something comic in all the attention being paid to Josef Stalin's answers to Kingsbury Smith regarding a meeting with the President and ending the Berlin blockade, when the answers were pat, merely reiterating that which had been said by Stalin before. Mr. Smith was the chief representative of William Randolph Hearst in Europe, affording Stalin free propaganda across the world courtesy of Hearst newspapers. The effort appeared as one by the Hearst newspapers, joined by the isolationist McCormick and Patterson newspapers, to try to stir the pot to make it appear that Secretary of State Acheson was considering appeasement of Russia.
Recently, Mr. Acheson's brother Edward, a professor with a good reputation in international finance, had made an off-the-record remark at a college alumni meeting regarding addressing the merits of Stalin's proposals. It was picked up by the press and Senator Styles Bridges stated that it must reflect the thinking of Dean Acheson, even though his brother had denied making the remarks attributed to him. That had started the rumor mill regarding possible appeasement by the Secretary of State.
Mr. Childs suggests that when a genuine peace feeler came from Moscow, possibly soon, then Secretary Acheson ought be free to field it and work toward peace without concern regarding whether his actions and statements might be interpreted as dreaded appeasement.
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