The Charlotte News

Wednesday, March 9, 1949

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State Dean Acheson said that the North Atlantic Treaty, as presently drafted, made clear that its signatories would defend themselves against aggression in accordance with the self-defense provisions of the U.N. Charter. He said that it had provisions for a regional high command and a consultative body of the member nations and would eliminate insecurity among the member nations, aiding in recovery. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee informally approved, the previous day, a final draft of the treaty.

Administration Democrats determined to make an effort the following day to break the filibuster of Southern Democrats seeking to prevent a rule change to enable cloture of filibusters on motions and resolutions by a two-thirds vote, as was the current rule on bills. Senate Majority Leader Scott Lucas would force a ruling from Vice-President Alben Barkley on whether debate could be limited on motions and resolutions. The Vice-President was expected to rule that it could be limited by a two-thirds vote. The ruling could then be appealed, however, to the full Senate on a simple majority vote.

Senator Lyndon Johnson of Texas continued this date the Southern filibuster. The previous day, two Republicans had held the floor for nine hours discussing extraneous matters, causing Senator Lucas to remark that they had joined the Southern Democrats in the filibuster, ultimately against the President's civil rights program.

The House Rules Committee elected not to send the veterans pension bill championed by Congressman John Rankin to the floor for debate, leaving it up to Mr. Rankin to try to accomplish the matter by motion.

Secretary of State Acheson said that the Russian employee of the U.N. Secretariat arrested earlier for receiving confidential information from an employee of the Justice Department, both charged with espionage, did not enjoy diplomatic immunity from arrest on the charge.

Syria said that it would not enter talks with Israel regarding peace until the talks between Israel and Lebanon had concluded.

Flooding hit four states, Louisiana, Nebraska, Iowa, and Montana, causing evacuations in some areas.

In San Francisco, an earthquake struck at 4:30 a.m., causing little damage.

In San Fernando, Calif., the police reported that 2,000 of the swallows ordinarily bound for San Juan Capistrano had taken up residence on the local jail farm.

In Sand Springs, Okla., a man was charged with fatally slashing the throat of his six-year old daughter while she slept. He was planning also to kill his little boy, age 10, but relented when the boy began begging him not to harm him. The man told police that he committed the murder because of "family troubles", saying that his in-laws had caused the problem and that he had intended to kill them.

In Newton, Mass., a former wrestler applied a "scissors hold" to a metal ash can to free a seven-year old boy who had become trapped in the can, after the efforts of two policemen had failed to extricate him from his predicament.

In Carson City, Nev., a legislator proposed a bill to allow $5 divorces via an apparatus which would allow daily registration of proof of residence in the state during a required six-week waiting period, by means of a key inserted into a jukebox-type device. The machine would then dispense the divorce decree.

"Mr. X" remains unidentified. The man born in 1891 may have been in the British military.

On the editorial page, "Marshall Plan Extension" finds that in its first year of operation, the Marshall Plan had accomplished well its goal of rebuilding Western Europe economically, enabling those nations to resist Communism. But whether a second goal of social and economic adjustment internally to avoid extremes of right and left political swings was being achieved was as yet doubtful.

John Kenneth Galbraith had warned against too much optimism for the Plan achieving such a goal. Fortune and Harold Callender of the Paris Bureau of the New York Times had cautioned likewise. Mr. Galbraith stated that the Continent was possessed of many old grievances and Communism was promising to lift the burdens under which people had struggled for generations. Without extensive social reforms, those tensions would persist.

The piece urges that the Marshall Plan should continue, even if it would not assure such reforms, as without its facilitation of economic recovery, reforms would take place along Communist patterns.

"Pay-As-You-Go Progress" tells of the Legislature considering a bill to allow counties and municipalities to issue bonds for revenue-producing civic projects without having them charged against the local tax rate and without a vote, simply selling them on the open market. The piece thinks it a wise move to enable projects which had been deferred or defeated in referenda, such as construction of a new local civic auditorium.

"Fabulous Sol Bloom" tells of the death Monday night from a heart attack of the Congressman from New York at age 79 after 27 years in Congress. He had been born poor and become wealthy before serving in Congress, trying to assure others the same breaks which he had obtained.

He had been a delegate to the U.N. Charter Conference in 1945 in San Francisco, where he stopped at Lotta's Fountain to sell violets as he had in his youth. He was tireless and wise, worked harder with age, had enormous knowledge of foreign affairs.

The piece hopes that his example would endure to inspire others to work likewise in Congress.

A piece from the Winston-Salem Journal, titled "If We Could Regulate the Wind", tells of the southwest wind having made the winter moderate in the Southeast while the northwest wind had produced frigid temperatures and blizzards in the West.

If the wind could be regulated by statute, it suggests, the trouble would not be over, as Congress would filibuster and debate the issue.

It was better, it concludes, that men could not govern the wind, as they would never agree on what to do with it, on when it should blow and in what direction and strength.

Drew Pearson tells of new Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky wanting to purge Premier Klement Gottwald in Czechoslovakia for being too independent. Premier Gottwald had refused to accept the return of 300,000 Sudeten Germans expelled by the Czechs into the Eastern zone of Germany, deemed by Mr. Vishinsky to be the last straw of recalcitrant independence, causing him to recommend that Mr. Gottwald be liquidated.

The real estate lobby was circulating testimonial letters from non-existent landlords regarding hardship supposedly imposed on them by rent control.

Friends of the President had sent to him a homily instructing that one needed most protection from one's friends.

A contest was being held in Connecticut to determine who would receive a donated wedding gown from the Merci Train from France. Air France was also going to provide a honeymoon trip to Lyon for the winning couple.

General MacArthur had been given permission to increase the size of the Japanese police force to hunt for Communists. Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall approved the plan while denying the General's request for more occupation troops.

Senator Styles Bridges, as recently told in a News editorial, had criticized wasteful Government publications reporting on various trivial matters.

Secretary of State Acheson was concerned about deteriorating Latin American relations and so was considering reviving the position of Assistant Secretary for Latin America, a position abolished by Secretary Marshall.

The CIO was warning the Senate Banking Committee that unless the new rent control measure bore criminal sanctions, rents would be raised despite it.

The American diplomat recently kicked out of Hungary warned that Hungary was building up its army, trained by Russian officers, in direct violation of its peace treaty.

The FBI reported that certain leading American Communists were fleeing the country in the wake of the prosecution of the twelve top Communists pursuant to the Smith Act. Moscow, however, had directed them to stay in the U.S. to participate in the "class struggle".

Marquis Childs tells of the Civil Aeronautics Board having issued an order shutting down all unscheduled airlines, including Resort Airlines, founded by a veteran airman and winner of the Distinguished Flying Cross during the war, Lewis Burwell of Charlotte. Mr. Burwell had invested large sums of money to establish the airline, which was to cater to vacationers wishing to go to the Caribbean and Central America in the winter, and to the American West and the Canadian Northwest in the summer, as part of a package of accommodations.

But the major airlines had complained that Resort and other unscheduled airlines were trying to horn in on their trade and prevailed successfully on CAB not to license them. Resort had responded that there was no competition as the passengers for their airlines were unlikely to make their own reservations. Despite having flown 25 million miles without an accident, Resort was denied.

Mr. Childs suggests that the President, who was the last avenue of appeal for Resort and other unscheduled airlines, now had an opportunity to underwrite his support for small business.

Stewart Alsop finds that observers of the Soviet Union had advanced the theory that the replacement of V. M. Molotov with Andrei Vishinsky as Foreign Minister might signal a return to the prewar form of foreign relations, abandoning diplomacy for an effort to undermine the non-Soviet world by whatever illegal means necessary to weaken it and seize power by force.

It might also be only the case that Mr. Molotov was being groomed to replace ailing Josef Stalin or that he was being punished for not accomplishing the goals of thwarting the Marshall Plan and attracting Germany into the Soviet sphere.

A letter from two tuberculosis patients confined to a sanatorium tells of how lonely such patients felt and encourages visits to friends so confined.

A letter from a man in Purvis, N.C., continues to promote the Dry argument, says that he is too broke to travel to Charlotte or to afford stamps for letters, but encourages people to come visit him and debate the issue. He was the same man who, three weeks earlier, thanked Governor Scott for literally putting Purvis on the map.

A letter writer urges progressives in North Carolina to speak out against red-baiting and race-baiting. He finds the failure of Congress to repeal Taft-Hartley and to vote for civil rights, as well as engaging in the campaign to persecute Communists, to be part and parcel of an attempt to enslave the American people to big business.

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