Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that military
authorities in Greece stated that the guerrillas were withdrawing
from the besieged perimeter of Konitsa and that the battle was
virtually over. The guerrillas had sought the town near the Albanian
border as a capital for the "free state", declared on
Christmas Eve by General Markos Vafiades, guerrilla leader.
Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett suggested that should
Russia or its satellites recognize the newly declared "free
state" in Northern Greece, they would provoke a showdown with
the U.S., that such a stance would be a departure from the U.N.
Charter. Diplomats suggested that a response would likely be to
divert to military purposes more of the 300 million dollars in aid
appropriated under the Truman Doctrine for Greece, and to increase
the size of the U.S. military mission in the country. The U.S. would
also seek active assistance from other U.N. member nations.
King Mihai I, who abdicated the throne of Rumania the
previous day, leaving governance to the Communist-dominated
Parliament, applied for a passport and was expected to leave the
country, probably for Switzerland.
The U.S. announced to all nations that it would be conducting
atomic tests from Eniwetok, beginning at the end of January, and
to keep ships out of a 39,000 square mile area throughout 1948. The
area was about half that set aside for the two Bikini tests of July,
1946.
The President stated at a press conference that he believed
the year had been a good year but not as good as he would have
liked. He congratulated GE for voluntarily reducing prices, praising
C. E. Wilson, the company's president. He said that his personal
physician had done nothing wrong in trading in the commodities
market. He also did not know of Ed Pauley's speculative dealings in
the grain market until it had been brought forth in recent
Congressional hearings. He wished everyone a happy New Year and a
prosperous 1948.
He answered a reporter's question regarding the lost
"half-a-loaf" anti-inflation bill, saying it had not been
found and was not even a slice.
Whether he would cut his finger on it remained to be seen.
Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson stated that he
would recommend to the President that publication of the names of
commodities speculators cease as it was causing undue damage to the
reputations of persons who had done nothing wrong.
But this year and the next began the Years of Public Slander
with Congressional immunity by certain Tricky individuals. Why stop
now when we're having so much fun creating a domestic enemies list,
dividing one American against the other in a time of peace? Peace is
such a beautiful thing, bringing everyone together in harmony.
Future 1952 vice-presidential candidate Senator John Sparkman
of Alabama stated that he believed the third party candidacy of
former Vice-President Henry Wallace would wake up the grass roots of
the Democratic Party and create greater turnout at the polls in 1948
for Democratic candidates.
Senator Glen Taylor of Idaho was strongly considering running
with Mr. Wallace on the Progressive Party ticket.
In Canon City, Colo., a dozen hard-bitten criminals battered
their way out of a cell block the previous night and two had been
killed by officers, two others wounded, and four re-captured. More
than a hundred men, augmented by National Guardsmen, were searching
for the other four escapees. One of those recaptured had been
bludgeoned by a ranch wife using a claw hammer.
If you see any of the four on the lam, approach with caution,
unless you have a hammer and know how to use it.
Dick Young of The News tells of the death of
internationally known industrial chemist Peter Gilchrist, 86, at his
home in Charlotte during the morning.
The News selected its Man of the Year for Charlotte,
George Ivey, the department store head who gave his time and energy
to civic, business and religious affairs of the city during the
year.
The building and grounds of the Charlotte Sanatorium, located
at Seventh and North Church Streets, had been transferred to new
ownership and it was reported that it would be converted to either a
doctors' clinic or a hotel for women. The facility had been closed
since sometime in 1941 and was used during the war as a hospital for
Camp Sutton, later as a venereal disease clinic.
On the editorial page, "Henry Wallace, the Wrecker"
finds Henry Wallace's decision to run as a third party presidential
candidate to be the result either of a well-meaning man confused or
a vengeful man bent on wrecking his own party. It suggests that it
was possible that Mr. Wallace was both men. He had become the Sad
Sack of American politics for the coming campaign year, creating
confusion for everyone and bringing pain to himself.
But wait until you get a load of the new Joker on the horizon
next year before awarding the Sad Sack prize.
Mr. Wallace's promise of "peace and prosperity" no
longer sounded of a return to the Roosevelt era but rather of a
veiled offer to "pinkos and crackpots on the extreme left".
He protested that he was joking when recently he was quoted as
saying that between Truman and Taft, he would vote for Taft. But a
vote for Wallace in 1948 would be a vote for Taft and isolationism,
hence Communism.
Communists welcomed him to the race on the notion that he
would help elect an isolationist Republican, which would lead to a
failure of the Marshall Plan.
"Hope for a Tax Cut in '48" finds Democratic
advisers championing some form of tax cut in the new year, as a
means to check forecast deflation during the latter half of 1948.
The Republicans needed no convincing.
"Abel C. Lineberger's Memorial" eulogizes the
passing of Mr. Lineberger of Belmont, a textile chieftain of the
area. His forebears had come to the region from Alsace before the
Revolution and his father built a textile mill in 1840. Mr.
Lineberger had been a pioneer in the development of the combed yarn
industry.
A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled
"Alcoholics Anonymous", relates of the history of the
organization, with members totaling more than 48,000 worldwide.
Their first goal was to achieve one full day without a drink
and then to keep it up thereafter. No moderate drinking was
tolerable for the alcoholic.
Drew Pearson, in Paris, discusses, as does Barnet Nover, the
new Government of Robert Schuman in France. General De Gaulle was
reported to be planning a speaking tour to drum up support for a new
government to be organized under his leadership.
Premier Schuman had scarcely been heard of in either the U.S.
or in France before coming to power on November 28. He had lived in
a rented room in a friend's house in Paris for 28 years and led a
very low profile life, even after becoming Minister of Finance a
year earlier. He made few speeches and said little to the press. He
had been born in Luxembourg and, it was suspected, had served in the
German Army during World War I. His family had been taken under
German rule in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 when their native
Lorraine became German territory. When Lorraine was liberated from
the Germans, Schuman was elected a member of the French Chamber of
Deputies.
He had served briefly in the Vichy Government, a holdover
from before the Nazi occupation, but proved too liberal and was
imprisoned by the Gestapo. He escaped from Germany disguised as a
school teacher on vacation, then joined the Resistance, stating that
Hitler was doomed to fall.
He was a moderate politically, with left leanings, more
conservative than the Socialists, but not nearly so as General De
Gaulle. Schuman took the stance that the Communists were the main
enemy of France and so the Gaullists voted for him.
Since election, he had become increasingly popular,
especially in the way he had handled the national strike. But he had
done nothing yet about inflation. A new series of strikes were
expected before the winter unless inflation could be brought under
rein.
Joseph Alsop describes the weighty responsibility upon the
United States to take the world out of the "dark zone of war"
and into the "sunlight of peace". The Soviet Union's
expansionist policies had placed the country in the "zone of
war" and the only way to arrest the process was through the
Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe and to hold the line along
the border between the Soviet and Western worlds.
The country therefore had to have leadership tantamount to
that during the war. If Congressional isolationists were to have
their way, the Plan would be condemned to fail out of the gate.
The Western world was dependent on an American food surplus.
Aldous Huxley had remarked that the country had already enjoyed
eight good harvests, more than vouchsafed to Pharaoh and Joseph. It
would likely require reviving the food production of South America,
where Argentina had its wheat production capacity cut by a million
acres, and in Southeast Asia, where political chaos had prevented
agricultural recovery. But the whole of the Western world was
involved.
The second operation would be to hold the line against the
Soviets in Greece, the Middle East, and the Far East, and for that
challenge, the country was less well prepared. It would require
carefully planned localized political and economic measures in
Athens, Ankara, Tehran and Baghdad, in Damascus and Cairo, and
Nanking. Such measures had to be coordinated with those of the
British for reasons of economy.
Thus, a combined Anglo-American economic staff was essential
to success of the program. But beyond that, the whole Western world
had to be mobilized politically.
Barnet Nover tells of the political situation in France since
a fragile coalition with the Gaullists had enabled Robert Schuman to
construct a Government on November 28 to succeed that of Paul
Ramadier. But on December 23, the neutrality of the Gaullists toward
the new Government ended when a vote in the National Assembly on the
anti-inflation measure, seeking to impose an austerity program, was
resisted by the Gaullists, particularly regarding a provision requiring
purchase of peacetime bonds to finance the Government. The Gaullists
at that point aligned with their detested enemies, the Communists,
the only party which had resisted the formation of the new
Government. The measure was approved but only barely.
The primary reasons for the resistance of the Gaullists, he
posits, was that the Schuman Government had accomplished what the
Gaullists believed only General De Gaulle could do, elimination of
confusion and division in the country, and doing so within the
context of the new Constitution which General De Gaulle believed
needed amendment to provide for a stronger chief executive, on the
U.S. model.
Many had urged avoiding the extremes of both Communism and
Gaullism, and the Schuman Government appeared to be doing that.
General De Gaulle, in the wake of the success in the
municipal elections of October 27, had demanded dissolution of the
Assembly after it amended the Constitution.
A letter from a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, in
December, 1944 through January, 1945, tells of finding out in a
piece in the newspaper the "secret" identities of the 16
nations who would partake of the Marshall Plan—something
promulgated often enough during the July-August period. He is
surprised and outraged to see Switzerland, Portugal, and Eire
included for their neutrality during the war. He views them as "war
dodgers" and undeserving of aid.
But he failed to realize that all of Western Europe,
including Italy, was to benefit under the Plan for the good of all
mutually, having nothing to do with war politics. The Eastern bloc
countries had also been included in the invitation to partake of the
Plan, but had declined, at the insistence of the Soviets, also
included in the original conception of the Plan.
Sorry, G.I., but being a veteran does not an expert on
foreign affairs make you, or on how to rebuild the world after such a
destructive war to prevent another one, possibly the final decision
for all of Earth, pleasing only to Martians and those bent on a
collective suicide.
A letter from failed Congressional candidate P. C. Burkholder
again attacks the Administration for its foreign policy, appeasing,
he thinks, to Communism, especially the Chinese Communists.
If you, too, wish to be a failed Republican Congressional
candidate, take to heart his example and run with it over the cliff.
A letter writer complains of lack of preparedness, once
again, in the country for war. He wants the country to get the lead
out and get the lead in.
A Quote of the Day: "The venerable office caller opines
that we need not expect the millennium until we see a bronze statue
of a man and a woman who merely attended to their own business."
—Columbia Maury Democrat
Happy New Year, have a prosperous 1948, 2015, or what have you in
the space-time continuum, and Happy Seventh Day of Christmas: Seven
hammer-toters throwing.