The Charlotte News

Saturday, June 11, 1949

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in West Berlin, the American command received a promise from the railway workers that they would end their 22-day old strike the following day against the Soviet-controlled railway system. The Americans had proposed mediation terms, acceptable to both the workers and the Russian management. Nearly all of the principal demand of the union, to be paid in West marks rather than the one-quarter value East marks, was accepted by the four powers, with the Russian management willing to pay 60 percent of the wages in West marks and the City government willing to authorize another 15 percent in West marks. But formal recognition of the union by the Russians, another principal demand, had not been accepted. The Russians agreed not to take reprisals against the strikers, including anti-Communist union leaders. A Monday deadline had been set by the three Western foreign ministers and Russia for resolution of the strike or it would be taken up by the four-power Council of Foreign Ministers in Paris.

The Russian military government in Germany also agreed to resume talks on East-West trade, desired by the Russians but held up by the Western demand that the railway strike first had to be resolved.

Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan warned that cuts to Marshall Plan aid could render ERP useless. He also said that retirement of ERP administrator Paul Hoffman, as invited the previous day by Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee, was "unthinkable".

President Truman visited Little Rock, Ark., to cheers of an estimated 75,000 people. He would deliver an address at the Arkansas War Memorial Stadium in the afternoon. Aides said that he would stress "plain talk" in an effort to head off cuts of funding of ERP aid. The address would be carried by the major radio networks. The President wore a white hat, white summer suit, and black and white shoes.

At a breakfast for Battery D of the 35th Division, of which Mr. Truman had been a captain in World War I in France, an honorary member said that he hoped that the inauguration in 1953 would be even better than in 1949. The President smiled broadly and cautioned him that the newsmen present would think him a plant.

At a speaking engagement before some of the Battery D reunion delegates, the President was referred to as "Comrade Harry" and "The Skipper".

The President asked for a full report from the Army on how TVA chairman Gordon Clapp had been labeled "unemployable" in a report repudiated the previous day by new Secretary of the Army Gordon Gray. The error had apparently occurred from the fact that Mr. Clapp was simply not available for employment in the American military occupation government in Germany, a position for which, he said, he was not aware he was even being considered. Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee also sought an investigation and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Millard Tydings, appointed him and two other Senators to a special subcommittee to investigate the matter.

A Russian pilot who crash-landed his plane in Sweden and declared himself a political refugee was being allowed to remain. The plane was returned to the Soviets.

In Washington, pertaining to the espionage trial of Judith Coplon, former Justice Department employee accused of intending to pass secret documents to a Russian, police said that a week earlier, Morton Kent, 48, had been found with his throat slashed in the Potomac River, determined by police to have been a suicide. He had been last seen by several persons taking a rented canoe onto the Potomac. Mr. Kent, a Russian-born former State Department aide, had been mentioned in one of the top-secret FBI documents read to the jury in the Coplon case the previous day, indicating that Mr. Kent had been in contact with the Soviet secret police via George Dimitrov Sotirov, presently employed by the U.N. Secretariat. He had not worked for the Government in five years. The report said that in October, 1948, Mr. Kent had contacted the wife of Dr. Edward U. Condon, head of the Bureau of Standards, to get in touch with Mr. Sotirov. Mr. Kent's wife said that he was depressed over loss of his job at the time of his death.

Three others named in official inquiries into espionage activities had died suddenly during the previous year. Former State Department employee Laurence Duggan had leaped or fallen from his 16th floor office window in New York after being named in executive session before HUAC by a witness as a provider of information to Whittaker Chambers. Mr. Chambers subsequently denied the allegation and Representatives Karl Mundt and Richard Nixon of HUAC stated after his death that Mr. Duggan had not been disloyal to the U.S. (At the time of Mr. Duggan's death on December 20, Senator-elect Mundt had made a callous wisecrack to the press that the Committee would reveal the names of the persons mentioned in executive session before the Committee as they jumped out of windows.)

Harry Dexter White, former Assistant Secretary of Treasury, died of a heart attack shortly after his testimony before HUAC the previous August in which he denied the allegation by Elizabeth Bentley, the other confessed former Communist agent, along with Mr. Chambers, who had named people in the Government as being Communists, that she had received secret information from Mr. White during the war.

W. Marvin Smith fell to his death down a Justice Department stairwell after he had been named as a notary who witnessed papers in the sale of a Model A Ford by Alger Hiss to Whittaker Chambers in 1936. His apparent suicide was determined to be from personal matters and had no connection to the happenstance of his being a notary in the transaction.

They all knew, however, about the flying saucers, the impending attack by same, and were about to blow the whistle on the Globalist Conspiracy, orchestrated by the saucer-people.

In Birmingham, Ala., about 20 hooded and robed men, at around 10:00 the previous night, broke into a home and beat a Birmingham woman, threatening to burn her at the stake, leaving a fiery cross burning in her yard. The woman, who had recently undergone surgery for a brain hemorrhage, said she was struck twice in the head. When she had seen two of the armed men at her door, she attempted to load a shotgun but dropped the shells during the process as the men broke a window pane and gained entry, hit her and grabbed the shotgun. She was able to lift the hoods of four of the men, who said they could kill her for doing so. She quoted one of the men as saying that three or four preachers were present among them who would pray for her as they hung her or burned her at the stake. They also said, when she told them that the police had been called, that they were the law. The men claimed that neighbors had complained that her house was being used to bring men and women together and to sell whiskey. Sheriff's deputies had arrived about an hour after the men left. She said that she thought that she could identify several of the men.

In another incident outside nearby Brookside, Ala., a group of 16 carloads of hooded men took charge of a cafe full of patrons and threatened the proprietor, ordering him to "keep those niggers down". According to witnesses, a Brookside police officer observed the situation but made no effort to intercede.

Both victims were white.

In Baltimore, a 49-year old man, who received anesthesia in preparation for surgery, shortly afterward stopped breathing and lost his heartbeat for 20 minutes, was revived, and then again "died" for nine minutes before being revived again, each time by heart massage. The doctors said that by all the rules he was dead each time. He regained consciousness the previous morning and recognized his wife. There were no signs of a permanent disability from the ordeal.

Near Southern Pines, N.C., a man believed to be a declared outlaw, subject to being killed on sight, was sighted by a service station operator. He had been outlawed on May 31 shortly after allegedly shooting in the mouth a Hamlet police officer who had sought to serve an arrest warrant on him for the murder of his wife and two children. The officer was recovering satisfactorily.

News reporter Mack Bell tells of a four-member Latvian refugee family arriving in Mecklenburg County to begin their new life after five years in Germany serving as forced labor in displaced persons camps. A statewide group of Baptists had arranged for and sponsored the family's pilgrimage to America. The group had arranged jobs for the parents and provided the family a place to live. They spoke only small bits of English. They were the first of several Latvian families who would settle in the state.

John Daly of The News relates of the jubilation of Lewis Burwell, Jr., of Charlotte, head of Resort Air Lines of Southern Pines, after winning a three-year fight to get approval from the Civil Aeronautics Board to operate. The airline would cater only to passengers booking complete vacation reservations and, for the present, would operate only overseas flights from the U.S. Application to undertake domestic service was still pending before CAB, which had promised to look at it again after having denied it earlier.

On the editorial page, "Wishful Thinking" tells of the Greensboro Daily News having criticized The News for its stand against the recently approved 25-million dollar statewide bond issue for school construction. The piece reiterates that the position was based not on the principle of the issue but rather because of the way the money would be allocated, based on average daily pupil attendance, causing it to be weighted toward the poorer school districts regardless of size and need and so against the more populous counties as Mecklenburg. The additional 25 million dollars allocated by the Legislature for the same purpose would go to the 100 counties on a strictly pro rata basis.

Since the election, the Daily News had taken much the same stance as The News, urging that the money be expended wisely and calling for consolidation of the non-accredited one-teacher schools into larger schools. But the State would retain no authority over how the money would be spent once allocated to the counties. It would be up to each local school board to allocate the money. And it was not more than wishful thinking, the piece opines, to assume that the boards would show any greater wisdom than in the past in placement of school buildings.

"Finding a Scapegoat" suggests that most Americans would rather see the impending deficit cured by paring some of the Fair Deal programs rather than ERP funding, a new form of the old prewar isolationism, as suggested by the Shoemaker cartoon of the day.

"Resignation of Bill Sharpe" hates that Mr. Sharpe, heading for twelve years the State News Bureau, was resigning from State Government to go to work as the public relations director for Carolina Power & Light. It finds that he had done a wonderful job for the State.

A piece from the High Point Enterprise, titled "To Heck With Hoyle", comments on a recent piece in The News which had speculated on whether Guilford and Mecklenburg Counties might get an additional State Senator in the 1951 legislative session of the General Assembly based on the 1940 census and a provision of the State Constitution, even though the interim biennial sessions had not taken up the matter. While the News piece, itself, had been accurate and realistic, finds The Enterprise, the headline writer who speculated that Mecklenburg might get another Senator, was a "wild-eyed optimist".

In apportionment of State Senators, the Legislatures had ignored the State Constitution more often than observing it. It had taken years to get 50 Senators for the 100 counties. It was unlikely that a second Senator would be appointed for the two most populous counties in the state because to do so meant taking a Senator from one of the smaller counties.

Drew Pearson tells of Ambassador to Britain Lewis Douglas having convinced the British to delay recognition of the Chinese Communists until after the fall of Canton, provided the British could recognize them a day or two ahead of the U.S. The main reason Britain wanted to recognize the Communists was to try to save Hong Kong.

He provides again the minutes of the meeting of Klan Klavern No. 1 in Atlanta. The organizer of the "Bilbo Club" became upset with Grand Dragon Samuel Green and wanted an accounting of Klan funds. Friends of Dr. Green were placated for the nonce, but the anti-Green faction continued to cause problems. A group had already broken from the Klan and formed headquarters in Columbus, Ga. Dr. Green now called them "a bunch of Bolsheviks".

Be especially forewarned of Bolshevik Klansmen. You will know them by their red hoods.

Averell Harriman, Ambassador for the Marshall Plan, had been instructed to see what he could do to avert the British financial crisis. He had orders to get the British to devaluate the pound. Sir Stafford Cripps, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was against devaluation, believed it would produce inflation. Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snyder, however, was eager to guide British finances, as the 1930 slump in Europe had started in England.

Since the column had reported that the President had trouble attending his family Baptist Church since becoming President because of curiosity-satisfying worshipers, he had heard from the pastor that it was not the case, that people were respectful of the President when he showed up for services.

The U.S. charge d'affaires in Madrid had told Generalissimo Francisco Franco to apply again for a loan from the Import-Export Bank, despite being turned down two weeks earlier. The President, however, had declared that he was adamantly opposed to any such loan.

Secretary of State Acheson had summoned Ambassador to Czechoslovakia Joseph Jacobs home for consultation on the critical situation in the country. Mr. Pearson predicts that he would be replaced by Ellis Briggs, Ambassador to Uruguay.

Recently, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee set aside a bill to approve medals awarded by foreign governments to some U.S. scientists, all civilians. During the brief debate, Senator Charles Tobey had asked whether Presidential military aide General Harry Vaughan's controversial medal from Argentine dictator Juan Peron was included on the list. It was not but the debate nevertheless lasted two minutes before the bill was shelved.

Joseph Alsop tells of the economic downturn in the West also taking place in the Soviet sphere, especially in Eastern Europe. In Czechoslovakia, which at the time of the coup in 1948 had the highest standard of living in Europe, had declined sharply since. Lack of cash to pay for goods abroad had produced a shortage of raw materials, harming industrial output.

The problem had become a bitter issue between the more moderate and experienced wing of the Communist Party, led by such men as President Gottwald and Foreign Minister Klemintis, and the hardcore Muscovites, such as Slansky, Geminder, and Kopecky. In consequence, the Kremlin's Czech specialist, Zorine, had been called to return to Prague to straighten things out. The Gottwald-Klementis wing was said to have criticized Stalin's order for Czechoslovakia to stay out of the Marshall Plan.

There were also difficulties economically in the Eastern zone of Germany, in Poland and Hungary. The emphasis on rearmament by the Soviets, the effects of political isolation, and the barrier of American export controls had all taken their toll, primarily the latter. As a result, it appeared that Russia was preparing for an economic truce in the cold war.

Mikoyan, the former Soviet Minister of Foreign Trade, had thought V. M. Molotov wrong in preventing Soviet participation in the Marshall Plan. The signs were that the Eastern satellites would be released from nearly all economic restraints and allowed to obtain from the West what they needed. But it was likely to do little good.

Just as with the arms race, the question had developed as to which side, East or West, would experience the worst of the current economic downturn.

Robert C. Ruark, in Caldwell, O., tells of Cyrus McGlashan, 80, retired printer who had been at the trade since 1884 without succumbing to the temptations besetting the occupation, profanity, irregular living, and whiskey. He was the best man in Ohio, as after a poll of the two thousands residents, undertaken on a bet made by a wealthy clothing merchant, no one had a bad thing to say about him.

He had refused to set the print for ads for whiskey or beer, one time costing him a job. Yet, the drunks of the town would hug him as he walked down the street.

He was a Sunday school teacher, a great gardener, and according to his wife of 55 years, a model husband. The latter, Mr. Ruark finds, was the supreme compliment. The only thing she mentioned on the negative side of the balance sheet was that before he had lost his teeth he chewed tobacco and sprayed the juice all over the place, a type of complaint echoed by a neighbor who found that Mr. McGlashan's pipe tobacco which he used to smoke had "smelled like hell".

Excerpts of testimony of Assistant Federal Security Administrator J. Donald Kingsley, anent compulsory national health insurance, is reprinted from Capital Comment, the official publication of the national Democratic Party. He finds that the problem of inadequate distribution of medical personnel resembled that of voluntary, private health insurance, that they were least abundant in the areas wherein there was the greatest need.

The citizens of six rich states with 36 percent of the nation's population had about 60 percent of the policies issued by Blue Cross, the leading provider of health insurance. Only about 17 percent of the policyholders lived in the South and West, which held 43 percent of the nation's people. Less than three percent of the rural population had Blue Cross policies. An estimated two-thirds of the people had no health insurance.

Only through social insurance to shore up the voluntary hospitals and private medical practice could the system withstand further intrusion by state medicine.

A letter from the chairman of the Campaign Committee for the North Carolina Medical Society seeks to answer the Kingsley testimony. He finds it illogical to advocate installation of State Compulsory Insurance to avoid State Medicine. He believes that the pending bill would impose a large Federal bureaucracy on medicine. And he asserts that the method of financing of the program would only add to the national debt. He finds the propaganda being used against the medical profession to be "fallacious and misleading".

The response is long on generalities but short on facts.

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