The Charlotte News

Saturday, February 18, 1950

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that American businessman Robert Vogeler, accused by the Hungarian Government of spying for the U.S., pleaded guilty to the charges, claiming that he had been instructed to aid atomic physicists escape from Hungary and to dig up information about radar production, rockets, and uranium and oil deposits, that he had been a U.S. Army intelligence officer since 1942. Six other co-defendants, one from Britain and five from Hungary, including a Roman Catholic priest, also pleaded guilty.

The State Department the previous day had complained that the trial was rigged from the start and that a finding of guilt had been a foreordained conclusion.

Communist Chinese leader Mao Tse-Tung and Foreign Minister Chou En-Lai were headed back to China after a two-month visit to Moscow to effect an agreement with the Russians, including a 30-year non-aggression and mutual assistance treaty.

Bob Sain of The News reports on an interview with Evangelist Dr. Billy Graham, at home to visit his parents. Dr. Graham said that the Kremlin possessed a supernatural power acquired through Satan and that unless the nation had a spiritual awakening, God would not be on its side. He said that he had twice sent telegrams to the President asking for a national day of prayer to ask for God's protection against the Russians. He found that the Russian-American war would be the "ultimate conflict of the age old war between God and Satan", and that the U.S. would lose it unless God was on its side, the reason that he was preaching through the land for "moral re-armament and spiritual awakening". He believed that if the Labor Government won re-election in Britain later in the month, they would enter a secret pact with Russia to allow them to bypass Britain and attack America directly. He believed that the Russians were a year ahead of the U.S. on development of the hydrogen bomb and would have no scruples about loading one onto a ship, sailing it into New York Harbor and detonating it. He found Communism to be "counterfeit Christianity", sharing some of the attributes of Christianity, but promising an earthly heaven, "Satan's trick".

His largest crowds on his nationwide evangelistic tour had been in Los Angeles and Boston.

By logical extension, we would conclude that the praise of the present "President" extended to former KGB agent Vladimir Putin and the Russians in his Government would be tantamount to praising the recipients of the power of Satan. The present "President", therefore, by further logical extension, especially given the heaven on earth he has created for himself and his family, must be, himself, the recipient of the power of Satan. How else would one explain a person winding up in the White House without at least a plurality of the nation's popular vote and under highly suspect circumstances regarding Russian interference with the U.S. election and its hacking of Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign computers?

Of course, in the world of alternative facts, Vlad and Donny are just two earthly angels.

Columnist Bruce Barton, in answer to a correspondent who had remarked that America's days of opportunity were past and that he could have done better in frontier times, says that there never were any "good old days". Every age had been good for some, bad for others. Thousands of babies had been born in log cabins in 1809 when Abraham Lincoln was born in one. He died in the White House while many others lived and died in their log cabins. The times were bad, as civil war had raged for four years, but Mr. Lincoln's times had been relatively good.

Mr. Barton had friends, Floyd Odlum and Del Webb, who had been broke during the Depression, only to achieve great wealth through hard work in the period since that time.

He finds it nonsense that the country was old, sad, and tired. Recently a friend had pointed to an elderly man who had kissed a woman who, as a little girl in 1826, had kissed Lafayette during his visit to the United States. She had become a school teacher and at the end of each day, gave each child a parting kiss, including the man whom his friend had pointed out.

He concludes by telling his correspondent that he had the greatest potential wealth in the world, youth, and in a country so young as the span of only two lifetimes.

In Rockville Centre, N.Y., two commuter trains headed in opposite directions collided at 10:35 p.m. the previous night, killing 29 passengers and injuring a hundred more. There were about a thousand passengers on both trains at the time. It was the worst rail disaster to date in New York's history and the worst in the nation in four years. The motorman of one train was arrested for second degree manslaughter for negligently running past a red stop signal in a gantlet which allowed only one train to pass at a time while a portion of the tracks were under repair. One of the cars on one train was loaded with theater goers from Manhattan at the time of the accident.

In Asheville, N.C., an ABC officer was shot through the back and left shoulder during the morning while engaging in hand-to-hand combat with two occupants of a rum-running automobile. He was in fair condition and the two men were under arrest.

The President's fact-finding board told him this date that it was doubtful that a resolution to the coal strike would be reached during the weekend but the President decided against any further action before Monday. The board believed that it was possible the miners might return to the job before Monday. The Administration had sought and obtained a temporary restraining order against the strike the previous Saturday, but the miners thus far had not obeyed it, despite John L. Lewis ordering them back to work, reiterated the previous night with stronger language than on the prior Saturday and Monday.

In Raleigh, Governor Kerr Scott asserted that some judges in the state were not cooperating in a crackdown on kingpins of bootlegging, gambling and dope rackets. The Governor also berated the State Utilities Commission for slow progress in extending telephone service to rural areas.

In Charlotte, a series of explosions early in the afternoon of this date at the Rulane Gas Co. on Thrift Road had caused $50,000 worth of damage. No one was injured.

In Paris, Ill., two youths placed their cat in a washing machine and pretended it was on television, then got tired and left. The mother of one of the boys then dumped in a load of clothes on top of the cat and turned on the machine, later retrieving a dizzy, wet cat.

That is bound to be a bit of an apocryphal stretch to make the newspaper. No self-respecting cat would not flee as soon as the door was opened.

On the editorial page, "The Bus Strike" favors immediate negotiations to try to settle the dispute with the Duke Power bus drivers in Charlotte and five other cities across the state before it would begin. If it could not be done by settlement, then it should be submitted, it offers, to arbitration.