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About La Grande evening observer. (La Grande, Or.) 1904-1959 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 1, 1945)
i ;. EDITORIAL PAGE 1 La Grande Evening Observer Prank Schiro, MONDAY KYKNINU, OCTOBKR 1, 19-15 They Thrive On EVENING OBSKRVKR'S PROORK.SH PROGRAM MtRKiATION Complete the (Jrunilc Konde Valley irrigation project. t.A GRANDE A city of 10.000 . Extend the city limits. TODAY'S TEXT And behold joy and nljnini?ss, Hlaying oxen, and killing sheep, catinir fle.sh, and drinking wine; let ns eat and drink: for tomorrow we shall die. Isaiah 22:13 THOUGHT KOI I TODAY Where there arc laws, he who has not broken lliein need not tremble. Alfieri. Freedom of the I'ress On this, the I'irst day of National Newspaper week, we may have more than usual excuse for pointing out to the citizens of our area the importance of a free and unliammeled press. A free press is important not to the press itself, primarily but to the citizenry as a whole whose poltical and social welfare lies in its free, ready and complete access-to all of the facts guv eiuin,: that welfare. We have learned to regard the citi zens of axis nations as uniformed and propagandized masses, .subject to the will id' their masters, political and so cial, and trained by carefully based psychological presentations to think and respond to the proper stimuli. Such persons can lie moved like pup pels. The ideas which are implanted in their minds become fixations, because they are cleverly tied to basic emotions and they can be roused to emotional heights ,-it will. Tlie lose their claim to heing self willed .-mil can lie induced load toward Funny llusiness "Frankly, I Oiiatl h'i ploying for mooyl" .... i"T ' Publisher Page Four ly in Darkness v,"v:"--- i;-Sr specific objectives though their actions may he diametrically opposed to their own best interests. This result does not take centuries to accomplish. Hitler and Goebbels were able to accomplish if with a people (feu dally 1-enarded as intelligent in less than 1" years. The axis example- is; 'of' course, lin extreme one. We of the United States cannot conceive a similar situation a r i : . -iiiK in our nation. It may not be too much to say, how ever, that a similar situation can obtain at any lime in the United States dif ferent only in (li'K'ree if the full facts of any national matter can be distorted, withheld or otherwise controlled. During' the war. the American press operated under what was nominally a "voluntary" censorship. It was volun tary in the sense that no mandatory law set up and that no federal lepre senlalive was present in every news paper office to see that the news and information received was "slanted" to create certain cm-options and celiac (iient reactions. However, censorship in the name of national security was handled at the source of the news so that complete ness of acconnl was controlled and the lime of announcement was controlled. II is not for us here to cpiarrel with that censorship. II is sufficient to slate thai in that censorship lay the seeds of political and social domination of the people. It is significant that one of the first acts of President Truman after the surrender of Japan was to declare all censorship dead. The press of this nation has alwayn been acutely conscious of its preroga tives and jealous for their maintenance. I hiring the political anil social unr-sl which we will undergo during the next decade, the press will more than before need public realization of the necessity and importance of ,-t five press in pro tecting the liberties of the people. SO THEY SAY Tin lu'iiltli ;iiiti I -being (if tlic hum. m r;nv mv i;ipidly bo rotninn t hi onmimui problem of .ill n, (Metis. Whether we choose t N- oi not, we nvr our brothel's kivpt i . John !). Kookefelier. jr. li thev (the .l.ti ;ne h;intilet! to,, gently, 'hev m.iy forget too soon th.it they loM a nmjor war, ;iiul tn.iy lv tii willing to begin pie;.d .itions for .(nether, Toledo. O.. Tunes. We (the HutisM are the poor est nation of any of the victors in tins war We must see that "M i M i s h made" means more ahio.id than il ever has in the pnt - Sir (fTanville Gibson. We ean't and mustn't try to tinaiue eveiy nation in the world b.iek onto its piewar feet. After all, theie is a bottom to the Amer lean flour barrel, whether Brit ain Hunks so or not. Bartlesville, OkU., Enterprise. Washington Merry-Go-Round Br DREW PEAHSGN WASHINGTON Last week this column revealed two military intelligence colonels in Washington warned their superiors the Germans were about to launch the disas trous Belgian Bulge attack in December 11)44, and urged that General Eisenhower be put on guard. It was also revealed how this advice had been ignored with the re sult American forces in Ihe Ardennes for est were caught offguard and their thin line of defense wiped out, resulting in 60,000 casualties and weeks of further warfare. An additional chapter to this tragic blun der can now be told. On Dee. 10, 1944, six days before the Ger man surprise attack, Col. B. Albert Dickson, chief of intelligence of the second army, wrote a strong report to his superiors warn ing a German offensive was coming. His report, labeled "No. 37," is in the files of the war department and is available to any sen ale committee wanting to get the real truth regarding this blunder which cost so many American lives. Colonel Dickson reported he was convinc ed they were planning a big attack. He re ported a new spirit of jubilant enthusiasm on the part of the Germans he interviewed, a new determination to escape and go back to fight in the offensive. He even reported the Germans were training men to infil trate behind American lines as American soldiers. It will be remembered nazi troops were found dressed in American uniforms. Colonel Dickson even prepared a map showing vilfcigjL-s where German reserves were billeted in preparation for the Belgian Bulge altack. And he urged that they be bombed out immediately. This recommenda tion was never followed. If it had been, the story of tragic American losses would have been different. Instead, the 12th army group wrote a re port on Dec. 12, refuting Colonel Dickson's report of Dec. 10. It replied such an attack could not happen. Later, on Dec. 1G, SHAEF, headquarters of General Eisenhower, wrote a G-2 "ap preciation," staling a German surprise at tack could not happen. However, Dec. 10, the date of this report, was the actual day it did happen. So, later in the day, SHEAF hastily with drew this "appreciation" and substituted three other pages in its report. The original report, therefore, may not be available to a congressional committee. However, if the senate will find that it contains in black and white the story of how the army was warned the attack was coming, and was even urged to bomb German reserves, "but completely ignored warning. WE, THE WOMEN By RUTH MILLETT Parents are being urged to keep their children homo from school at the first sign of sneezes or sniffles. This they are told would cut down immeasurably on the spread of colds and other contagious dis eases that in the early stages seem to be only colds. If parents would really do that there also would be a future benefit to society. At last we might bring up a generation in which these types of pets wouldn't be quite so common: The woman w h o conies sneezing and coughing into a bridge parly saying brightly, "I really should have stayed in bed bill I just couldn't miss your party." Tin.- man who sits beside you in a movie, coughing his way through a double feature. The office worker who hasn't missed a day from work in so-many-yi-ars, even though Behind Scenes in Washington By PETER EDSON. La Grande ETonlng Obs.rrer Washington Coireipondeni WASHINGTON The labor management governmenl conference opening here Nov. 5 has a ttm-o-lo-one chance of success, says Eric A. Johnston, president of the U. S. chamber of conunere. Johnston's appraisal is important because tie has put in a tot of time during the war years, trying to brin labor and management discord into closer harmony. On his last effort,', to write a charter for labor and management, he took a heating. Predictions have been freely made that the forthcoming conference, called by Pres ident T r u m a n and Secretary of Labor Si'hwollcnhach. ;,t the seuggostion of Sena tor Arthur 11. Vandenbeig. would end in a brawl. Since all past conferences have end ed that way, it is easy to make such cheap predictions. Some people apparently don't want the conference lo succeed and there fore give it a black eye. Pail of the pessimism comes from those who expect the conference to do more than there is any reason to believe it can do. says Johnston. To expect that this conference or any conference will is ridiculous on its face. To expect that this conference will end the present wave of strikes, or to anticipate that the conference will come up with any pro gram of recommended legislation that will automatically end all strikes is equally silly. The belief held in some quarters on Capitol hill that if Ibis conference doesn't produce a solution to all post-war labor troubles, con gress will have to pass something like the Ball-Hatch bill, is dangerous and it gets the conference off to a Kid start. All the mistakes of past labor-management peace conferences President Wilson confer ence of U'lM, President Roosevelt's confer ence of 1IM2, the U. S. chamber of commerce-CIO-AFL charter proposal of last March- Note U. S. casualties in the Bulge were 60,000 compared fewer than 3,000 at Pearl Harbor. Truman Deserts FDR How drastically Harry Truman and At torney General Tom Clark arc deserting one of Franklin Roosevelt's principles was in dicated by a recent incident which few peo ple noticed. One of the great battles Roosevelt fought was against the big utility companies. But the other day, a judge appointed by Truman to one of the most important courts in the country handled a case, even after his con firmation, on behalf of one of the big pow er companies. He is Judge Wilbur Miller, re cently, appointed to the U. S. court of ap peals for the District of Columbia, which handles more important test cases than any other appeals court in the nation. However, even after Miller was confirm ed by the senate, he appeared last week be fore the federal power commission on behalf of the Kentucky Natural Gas company. This makes it unanimous. For both of the other two judges Truman appointd to this important appeals court, ex-Senator Bennett Clark of Missouri and Barrett Prcttyman, also have been attorneys for the big power companies or have been anti-public power. Note Bennett Clark was defeated for the senate by the people of Missouri last year after many bitter years of isolationist oppo sition to Roosevelt's foreign policies. How ever, he worked valiantly for Truman's' nomination at Chicago. Movie Moguls Last week a galaxy of the most powerful moguls of the movie world paid a visit on At torney General Tom Clark. Probably no more high-priced men ever entered the at torney general's office at one time before in history. The group included: Barney Balaban, head of Paramount; Al bert Warner of Warner Brothers; Nick Schenck of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; Spyros Skouras, head of the 20lh Century Fox, and Peter Rathbone, head of RKO. They entered Clark's office, laid a brief on his desk and departed. The visit lasted exactly six minutes. Since the salaries of these movie moguls average around $200,000 a year each with out bonuses or stock dividends, and since they were accompanied by a battery of le gal counsel probably drawing from $50,000 to $100.0110 annually each, it was estimated that this six-minute session, including travel time from New York, cost $25,000. The brief they handed Clark opposed the government's anti-trust suit against the movie industry. V 1 in that lime he has often exposed the en lire office force to colds that never got him down. The neighbor who sends her small child lo play with yours because, though he has a cold, she just can't keep him in bed and he is miserable without someone to play with. The hostess who goes through with her dinner invitation even though she confiders she knows she is coming down with "a ter rible cold." We're afraid of colds. But seldom of our own. The only ones that really frighten us are the colds of other people. So if children can be taught thai when they have a cold they are a menace toothers, we may yet have a generation of adults con siderate enough lo worry as much about exposing others to their ills as they worry over being exposed. are being avoided. The agenda for the forth coming conference is being prepared with considerable care and cooperation. What il aims at is a short and simple declaration of fundamental principles in labor-management relations. That is all anyone has any right to expect immediately. No effort is being made to prepare a fin ished collection of pious rc.-Urtions and platitudes that can be handed to the con ferees to mull over for a few days, shifting commas about here and there before adopt ing and going home. Instead, the six-man advance planning sub committee headed by Marine Mnj. Paul L. Douglas, representing Labor Secretary Schwellcnbach, has mere ly worked toward agreement on subjects that can be taken up by the conference and settled. That recognition of the right of collective bargaining will be included goes without saying. But. balancing it off. it is hoped that there wll he recognition of the right man agement to manage There was a statement to this effect in the Johnston-Murry labor management charter which A. F. of L. and the National Association of Manufacturers walked out on. These two forces are in on the play this time, so there is better chance of success. Extending the charter declaration on man agement's right to manage at the forthcom ing conference, the settlement of the place of foreman and supervisory employes in in dustry misht be achiived. If agreement can be reached in this field, one of the most troublesome of all presentday labor disputes might be removed from the field of contro versy. The right of management to earn a prof it might also be carried forward from the See WASHINGTON . . . Page 6 Side Glances cow, iw by he wavier twa. yitiii.pkrorK ; ' "I'm lired of this kitchen work I'd get married in a minute if I knew a woman who could really cook bolter than I dol" P McKENNEY ON BRIDGE By WILLIAM E. McKENNEY America's Card Authority TYPE OF YOUR HAND DETERMINES DOUBLE Harry J. Fishbein brings out a good point in connection with to day's hand. He says: "There are certain types of hands on which you cannot double, and this is one of them." . . East unquestionably can defeat the three no - trump contract. North at no time has indicated he was interested in going any where on the hand, but when have the contract beaten, do not double and then blame your part ner if he makes the only opening lead that will allow declarer to make it. o IN FORMER YEARS Thirty Years Ago The state fair management at Salem has announced Union county has won the county agricultural district exhibit in district No. 3. Morrow county was second, and Wallowa county third. Over 200 head of Malheur cat tle have been purchased by Sam Litch of Enterprise. Mr. Litch was in the city this morning on his way home and stated that his new acquisition in th-3 cattle line will be brought in shortly and put on winter range in Wal lowa county. . FT AQ7 V84 2 K J9 KQI07 W E 8 Dealer Duplicate Neither vul. South West North East Pass Pass Pess 1 Pass Fifteen Years Ago Construction work was started today for the Natural Gas coropr ation of Oregon with mains being dug throughout the cily and the beginning of the 185,000 feet of pipe laid. 1 N. T. 2N.T. 2 3N.T. Pass Pass 2 SoUth persists in bidding two no trump, North finally bids three. Fishbein points out that, if East doubles, West will open a heart, as the double of a three no-trump contract asks partner to lead the first suit bid by dummy. In this case, the heart suit might be the only lead that would allow the declarer to gain the timing on the hand, and make the contract. East wants- his partner to make his natural opening, because East can establish ihe suit for him on the first round. Therefore, when you know you Ten Years Ago The relief m:m nf ITninn Wallowa c-nitnlieu mucin' hi, IT,,, ley Richardson and on display in the Commercial club windows for many months, was back in La Grande today after six weeks in Portland. Tho driest September in 15 years or more, and one of the warmest Septembers in local his tory came to a close at midnight yesterday. DIAMONDS! WATCHES! Costume Pieces 1 We are pleased to present a very fine selection of jewelry in vogue for the Fall and Winter season. Be sure lo sec our beautiful diamonds, gracefully styled watches, costume jewelry and gifts of all kinds. Gifts for Kvcry.Occ;i.-iiin filuKSWiirc I'olteiy THE GIFT SHOP 121-1 !i "Adams and Phone 435-W
