Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Palestine,
violence continued between Arabs and Jews, as Arabs shot at a Jewish
funeral procession and its British protective convoy on Mount
Ascension. Jewish Agency chairman David Ben-Gurion was said to be in
one of the vehicles in the convoy. Eight Jews and a Swedish
journalist were injured in the gunfire. Arab casualties could not be
ascertained but 10,000 rounds had been fired at the attackers. A
couple may have been hit.
In Jerusalem, two Arabs were wounded in a gunfight with
members of Haganah. Two members of the Jewish organization were
arrested.
At Haifa, British forces brought into port a schooner with
850 Jewish passengers without visas. Preparations were made to
transfer them to Cyprus per the usual British procedure regarding
illegal immigrants.
The President's Council of Economic Advisers released its
annual report, urging businesses to engage in voluntary price
reduction and high production for average income people to avoid
serious economic consequences after 1948, when military demands,
pent-up shortages, and bad crops would no longer provide artificial
props for the economy.
Brig. General Frank T. Hines, Ambassador to Panama, told the
President that an agreement would be reached with Panama to allow a
U.S. military base to be established there, despite the fact that
the Panamanian Assembly had rejected the previous night an agreement
whereby the U.S. would lease 14 bases in the Central American
country. The U.S. had returned to Panama 120 bases it had operated
during the war.
Senator William Knowland of California proposed that the U.S.
build a new canal in Nicaragua if Panama was going to prevent it
from enabling adequate defense. He believed that the Communists in
Panama had influenced the negative vote out of a Communist desire to
take over the Canal Zone.
Republican presidential candidate Harold Stassen challenged
the Administration to reveal the names of present or former
officials who had traded in commodities prior to large Government
purchases of those commodities during the previous year and to
reveal whether or not a large profit was made on any such purchases.
Two weeks earlier, the former Minnesota Governor charged such
insider trading by Government officials. His disclosure had led to
the revelation that Edwin Pauley, an assistant to Secretary of the
Army Kenneth Royall, had admittedly engaged in such speculation on
grain and other commodities, but told of having divested himself of
90 percent of them after accepting his Government post and was
getting rid of the remainder. Mr. Stassen found the release by
Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson the day before of 711
names of large traders to be a distraction causing confusion.
In Georgetown, S.C., a mother and her five-year old daughter
who went looking for a Christmas tree by wading into the swamp,
drowned while trying to cut down the tree they had chosen.
In Wilmington, N.C., the world's largest living Christmas
tree, shown in a photograph, had all of its 3,000 lights lit. The
tree was a 300-year old water oak, standing 75 feet high, with a
branch-span of 110 feet. It stood in Hilton Municipal Park. A radio
station had been constructed beneath it to provide Christmas music,
such as "Silent Night", to visitors from loudspeakers,
concealed by the branches. Thousands annually came from all over the
U.S. and from Mexico and Canada to view the attraction.
Dick Young tells of the official declaration of a countywide
emergency in Mecklenburg regarding the shortage of fuel oil. The
City Council appropriated $20,000 to purchase 100,000 gallons of
fuel oil. The County Commissioners followed suit in declaring the
emergency. The fuel oil was to be received at noon on December 26.
Meanwhile, you may have frozen toesies for Christmas. Sorry.
If it looks gangrenous in the meantime, chop it off.
In Charlotte, a middle-aged man selling Christmas trees on
Shenandoah Avenue in the Chantilly neighborhood told many children
that Santa Claus had been killed in an airplane crash. The
revelation caused immediate horror among the children. They ran to
their mothers and denied that such a thing could have happened, but
they cried and shouted nevertheless that it was true. They ascribed
truth to the rumor by the fact that the Christmas tree salesman had
told them of it.
The problem became so bad that a woman called The News and
asked that it print a story calling the rumor a lie. So the piece
provides the skinny: that Santa Claus was not killed in an airplane
crash, that a man impersonating Santa Claus in Miami, while getting
ready to go to a party, had gone up in an airplane which had
crashed, knocking him out but not killing him.
But the report was too tender to tell the full story, that
all of the real reindeer had been killed in that crash and so the
real Santa might be about three weeks late.
The News would not publish on Christmas Day.
The Empty Stocking Fund, sponsored by The News, to
provide Christmas for needy children, had risen by $1,500 from the
previous day, to $6,700, but still remained short of its goal, as
elucidated on the local front page.
Why put it there? Was the rumor of a dead Santa worth more
space than the little children in need of Santa? And then you didn't
even impart the whole story. Also, he was not just a Christmas tree salesman, but sold holly as well.
On the editorial page, "A Message of Hope for One World"
tells of George Bernard Shaw having stated that there would be no
war resulting from the current misunderstanding among the powers and
that anyone who thought differently was "a plain lunatic".
He thought it fine that the London foreign ministers conference had
failed, that the more the foreign ministers talked, the more they
had disagreed.
He also rejected the notion that two worlds had been formed
by the failure of agreement. Britain and Russia had been preparing
to sign a trade agreement and it would proceed despite the failure.
The Soviets would sign other agreements in the future with the West
when they were beneficial to the Soviets.
He believed that the
moratorium on further such meetings would have the ameliorative
effect of encouraging peace. The period would allow the people of both sides to consider
the folly of dividing the world into two armed camps and what
another war portended in an atomic world.
The piece concludes: "During the Christmas lull in the
conflict of nations in 1947, there comes a sign that a Great Purpose
is at work which will restore the world to sanity."
"One Tax Relief Is 'Must'" suggests that one part
of the tax relief proposal, that of extending the community property
system to all states, was appropriate and beneficial. It was likely
that both parties would agree to allow this extension, to eliminate
the disparity in 35 states as to how married couples were treated
under the tax code. In thirteen states, the husband and wife could
divide their income and pay separately, avoiding higher surtax
brackets. The system, it opines, ought be available to everyone.
"Sign of the Times in Raleigh" tells of a letter
writer to the Raleigh News & Observer contending that
public officials in Raleigh were aiding "the current national
campaign to abolish the existing social structure of the South"
by allowing unsegregated audiences at the public appearances of
Henry Wallace, Paul Robeson, and to view the exhibits on the Freedom
Train.
But the absence in Raleigh of any general protest at
non-enforcement of the segregation ordinance suggested that the
people of Raleigh had no great objection to its relaxation after
many years on the books.
The law violated the right of free assembly under the First
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But beyond that, the changes of
which the letter writer had complained were taking place because the
people were changing, not because of any public officials.
A piece from the Atlanta Journal, titled "One Way
to Help Europe", tells of a plan put forward by the American
Express Co. to help foreign countries strapped for American dollars
to obtain them. Figures had shown that American tourism enabled the
largest accumulation of American dollars in foreign hands. So, it
recommended that the American Government remove travel restrictions
on Americans and that some part of the credits to be advanced under
the Marshall Plan be set aside for foreign governments to encourage
American travel abroad.
Drew Pearson, in Paris, tells of a high-ranking Russian
diplomat recently confessing to him that the Russians had nearly
lost the cold war. Moscow had gauged incorrectly the expectation
that the U.S. would face unemployment and economic collapse after
the war, that another mistake had been made in expecting the Italian
and French people to flock to Communism, and another error in conducting an anti-American campaign through V. M.
Molotov and Andrei Vishinsky.
The diplomat said that Stalin and his associates at the
Kremlin still believed that the U.S. was on the verge of economic
collapse, preventing significant aid under the Marshall Plan.
Russia's own precarious economy had prevented giving aid to
its satellites, let alone bolstering the French and Italian
Communists, whose precarious status Moscow had realized.
The diplomat concluded that the Politburo had forgotten that
nearly everyone in Europe either had relatives in the U.S. or wanted
to emigrate to it. The Europeans knew that the poor people of the U.S. were
better off than most of the rich of Europe after the war.
Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett had only himself to
blame for the State Department firing ten employees without a
hearing after determining that they were bad security risks. The
Department had recently decided to accept the resignations of seven
of the ten, after clearing three and accepting their resignations.
Mr. Lovett had refused to allow the procedure earlier. But the ten
were still out of a job and were having difficulty obtaining other
Government employment.
Mr. Pearson notes that the FBI had nothing to do with the
investigation of the ten, contrary to reports by several sources.
Cattlemen had recently told the President that the present
arrangement with Mexico would not stem hoof and mouth disease from
cattle imported from that country. "Planned eradication",
they said, would need be implemented.
Samuel Grafton suggests that it was a wonder that the
anti-inflation measure had passed the Congress without gales of
laughter in accompaniment. For it was sending puffballs at the
problem. It would be irrelevant whether or not the President signed
the measure as it would have little or no effect, most of it being
based on voluntary action by industry and business, the remainder purporting to provide powers which the President already
possessed.
The truth was that very few members of Congress were trying
to halt inflation and so the effort was merely a facade for the
public for purposes of the 1948 campaign. It would enable the
Republicans to blame the President for not implementing the bill
properly when it inevitably would fail to work. The Republicans had
mirrored the businesses which raised their prices and provided to
the consumer a coerced take it or leave it offer.
The bill reflected inflation and was a product of it, thus
would not curb it.
Joseph Alsop, back in Washington from London, tells of the
unofficial diplomatic consensus following the failed London foreign
ministers conference, that the country was in a "zone of war".
The fact that there was danger did not necessarily mean that war
would come or even that it was likely, but only that there would be
many tests in the time ahead. The tests would become more difficult
and dangerous than in the previous two years since the end of the
war. The Russians, for instance, might expel the Austrian Government
from the Soviet zone in Austria.
Conventional wisdom had it that the Russians would shortly
purge any remaining opposition in the Eastern zone of Germany and
establish a new puppet national front. They would hasten the process
of crushing independence in Czechoslovakia and would move forward in
the purge of "unreliable elements" in the governments of
the other satellites.
At the same time, offensive moves along the border with the
Western zone of Europe would likely take place. The first step
probably would be to recognize the Communist government in Northern
Greece, led by General Vafiades. That would permit on the part of
Yugoslavia, Albania, and Bulgaria an increase of pressure on the
Greek Government at Athens.
Other moves might take place against Turkey, Iran, and Iraq,
as well the uranium-rich Chinese province of Sinkiang and in
Manchuria and Northern China.
The question was whether this condition could be changed. It
was necessary to study Soviet strategy in so determining, a process
revealed at the formation of the Cominform, setting as its goals
first the establishment of the Soviet Union as a single entity and
second the determination to derail the Marshall Plan. The stress was
more on preventing rehabilitation of Europe than on specific
situations. For if the 16 nations participating in the Plan
recovered, it would substantially alter world power.
A letter writer relates the story of the birth of Jesus in
Bethlehem, says that Mahatma Gandhi—who would be alive but 38 more
days—had said: "A Saviour, such as we desire, was born in
Bethlehem nearly two thousand years ago. It is not God but man that
needs to be born again."
The writer continues that the Christians then responded that
they had forgotten about the fact.
A letter from P. C. Burkholder, failed Republican
Congressional candidate, finds the Marshall Plan to be a waste of
more billions "in a European rat hole" which led to
Russia. Russia, he says, was profiting from American relief since
the war.
He was opposed to "any and all of Truman's long-range
wild cat schemes". It would lead, he thinks, to a "busted
chain gang country". He urges a "whole pack of new hounds
in the White House".