The Charlotte News

Saturday, March 5, 1949

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Russia had replaced Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov with Andrei Vishinsky, though both apparently remained part of the 12-member Politburo and deputy prime ministers. Mr. Vishinsky, in his U.N. performance, was given to sharper, more vindictive rhetoric than Mr. Molotov, who had headed the foreign ministry for nearly a decade, taking over from Maxim Litvinoff who had favored alliances with the West prior to the war. Mr. Molotov's first major action was to sign the mutual non-aggression pact with Germany in August, 1939.

Observers believed that Mr. Molotov might have been assigned some of the duties of ailing Josef Stalin. His removal also might have been triggered by the Soviet failure to disrupt the Marshall Plan and the advent of the North Atlantic Pact, especially the loss of Norway and, perhaps, Denmark from the informal Scandinavian "neutral" alliance. The defection of Tito's Yugoslavia toward the West and away from the Soviet orbit was also believed a contributing factor. U.S. official reaction ran the gamut from belief that the change signaled a dangerous shift to sterner Soviet policy toward the West, to one that it might indicate a softer approach was in the offing.

President Truman had said recently, receiving raspberries from some of the columnists for an apparently unfounded, impromptu remark, that there was dissension in the Politburo, perhaps now borne out by this change. The President gave no comment on the switch.

Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, senior Republican member of the Foreign Relations Committee and responsible chiefly for the bipartisan foreign policy, said that he regarded Mr. Vishinsky as a "ruthless" man, replacing a "relentless" man in Mr. Molotov. He regarded both as the most accomplished filibusterers he had ever seen in thwarting peace efforts.

Italy, Portugal and Iceland, it was believed by observers, might also soon join the prospective North Atlantic Pact, which was expected to be completed between the principals, the U.S., Canada, France, Britain and the Benelux countries, the following week and signed by the end of March.

Norway's Ambassador to the U.S., Wilhelm Munthe de Morgenstierne, said that joining the North Atlantic Pact was designed to prevent the advance of any "crazy Hitler" who might "challenge the free world". He said that Norway's former neutrality now had no "relation to the facts of life". He also believed that Denmark, which had dispatched a representative to begin talks in Washington regarding joinder of the Pact, would follow suit. He also gave praise to the "glorious Red Army" which had liberated Norway from the Nazis at the end of the war.

In Sofia, the seven-day Bulgarian Government treason and espionage trial of the 15 Protestant churchmen ended after all of the defendants had pleaded guilty and made confessional speeches, claiming allegiance to the Government. The prosecution sought death sentences for the four principal defendants and long prison terms for the rest. Four defendants burst into tears in emotional pleas to the court. The lawyers for the accused begged for mercy.

In Washington, a woman on the Justice Department staff at a low level was arrested for providing documents to a Russian agent, also arrested. The Russian was a member of the U.N. Secretariat. Both were charged with conspiracy to commit espionage. Secretary-General Trygve Lie said that the Russian had been suspended from his Secretariat post, pending the outcome of the case. The documents were described by Justice Department officials as worthless, as they had been suspicious for some time of the woman in question, an employee of the Department since 1943, and had therefore restricted her access to crucial documents. The case fueled suspicions that Russians enjoying diplomatic immunity as part of the U.N. diplomatic delegation had entered the country for the purpose of spying. Diplomatic immunity would also be a key defense in the case of the Russian. The FBI had arrested the pair as the woman was caught in the act of handing the documents to the Russian. She had in her purse typewritten summaries of information abstracted from confidential documents.

Senator Richard Russell of Georgia said that Southern Democrats could count on 58 Senate votes, including those of some Republicans, to stop an expected ruling the following week by Vice-President Barkley that cloture of debate on a resolution or motion could be effected by a two-thirds majority vote, that is 64 votes of the 96 Senators. An Associated Press poll showed that 43 Senators would oppose the expected ruling of the Vice-President and only 19 definitely would support it.

The cloture rule had been applied to bills only. At immediate issue was the motion for a Senate rule change to permit resolutions and motions to be subject to the two-thirds cloture rule. The long-range issue was an attempt by the Southern Democrats to block the civil rights program of the President via filibuster without cloture. Senator Russell said that he believed that the Southern position would be victorious. The Southern filibuster on the rule change, itself, was in its sixth day. Senate Majority Leader Scott Lucas was biding his time for seeking a ruling from Vice-President Barkley on a cloture vote.

In Chicago, three police officers saved a woman who tried to jump from an eighth-floor hotel window but was inhibited by the window closing on her coat tail, holding her suspended three feet below the window ledge. One of the police officers dangled from an adjoining window while the two other officers held his legs as he was able to grab the woman and bring her to safety. She had urged the police officer to leave her alone, that she wanted to die. She was charged with disorderly conduct and released on a $10 bond.

In Missouri Valley, Iowa, about a thousand persons had been evacuated from their homes because of a flood after the Boyer River broke through a dike, sending four feet of water into the business district.

In Peachland, N.C., in Anson County near Charlotte, the sawdust fire which had smoldered for three weeks at a lumber company was under better control as 400 gallons of water was being poured onto it per hour to keep it from spreading to nearby houses. Several fire departments, including those of Greensboro and Charlotte, had dispatched equipment to the scene. There were no longer signs of any blaze, only smoke.

In Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania banned the fraternity hazing practice of paddling pledges as well as that of making them wear outlandish clothing all day. Fines and possible expulsion were instituted for violations.

That's no fun. That only leads to pent-up frustrations, lack of camaraderie, and more sinister, far more sinister, manifestations of aggressive tendencies in the superannuated adolescent male. By this simple utilitarian instrument, the haze, neophytic Greek atomism dissolves into sapient Greek harmony, not forsaking, however, its base atomic constituency, producing a unified field of endeavor, "in form and moving how express and admirable". Take your silly, priggish notions, you sissified mama's boys, and stick them where the moon does not shine.

"Mr. X" will not be identified by the newspaper on the front page and so we shall not have confirmation of his identity. We have, however, proceeded on the assumption all week that he was, in all likelihood, Clyde "Rabbit" McDowell, formerly of Texas, the new Charlotte Hornets baseball club manager, named the previous November 1, though a photograph of him for confirmation has not been obtainable. You can look back to the sports page of November 1 for that probable confirmation, but we have no access to it. We do not know either whether some Scrooge again deprived the Empty Stocking Fund of $50 by identifying him.

Surely, in any event, you guessed that it might be Mr. McDowell, given our exceptional clues toward that end all week.

On the editorial page, "Go Forward … But Where?" discusses Governor Kerr Scott's "Go Forward" program, finding that most North Carolinians supported it in spirit, insofar as it favored improvements in the State's educational system, roads, and social services generally. But the high costs and the idea that the program was short on detail had caused that support to waver.