THE WEEK IN REVIEW
THE WEEK IN REVIEW ANATIONAL debate over America's future military policy was in full progress this week after Gen. George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, had handed Congress and the country a...
...The crisis had come and passed at Stalingrad before this nation was able to gather sufficient resources to participate in the fight in a determining manner...
...The proposal of Sen...
...DAR...
...5. "There can be no doubt that the greed and mistakes of the war-making nations, as well as the heroic stands of the British and Soviet peoples, saved the United States from a war on her own soil...
...Reconversion...
...Outright repeal, Doughton pointed out, primarily would benefit 900 corporations which would receive a tax reduction of $1,797,000,000, or an average of about $2,000,000 apiece...
...Capt...
...Truman denounced the DAR's race discrimination, but Mrs...
...These big corporations would thus get 70 per cent of the $2,555,000,000 tax cut made possible by repeal of the excess profits tax...
...Walter Bedell Smith, who was Gen...
...nopoly is a strike against the public interest, and one has only to read the records of the Department of Justice to know the extent of monopoly in this country...
...through these 'strikes' to gain a higher wage for his labor...
...Arthur Vandenberg to create a Congressional committee to investigate the whole problem before the nation embarks on any policy was sidetracked in the House by the Administration after the measure had won unanimous approval in the Senate...
...Strife Over The Atomic Bomb Gen...
...The Truman Administration, backed by a powerful lobby of War Department brass hats, was driving for legislation which, while ignoring the foreign policy aspects of the atomic bomb, would place domestic control in the hands of a commission appointed by the President...
...Doughton cited statistics to show that these 900 powerful corporations would get more than twice as much benefit as all the rest of the 18,000 corporations which make excess profits, whereas none of the benefit would go to the remaining 261,000 corporations that make no excess profits...
...The House bill, which rode to passage by a vote of 343 to 10, contains these principal provisions: 1. Individuals will have their taxes cut a total of $2,527,000,000, with income levies being removed entirely for 12,000,000 persons in the lowest brackets and reduced 10 to 40 per cent for the rest...
...2. The defeat of Germany resulted from Adolf Hitler's break with his generals and the substitution of personal strategy which failed to accept the limitations of Germany's war-making capacity...
...The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration is just about broke and needs more U. S. cash immediately, President Truman told Congress last week...
...Both houses of Congress were embroiled in bitter debate over the course the United States should pursue...
...2. Neither Russia nor any other ally had asked for the engineering know-how that led to the perfection of the bomb...
...Robert L. Doughton, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee...
...Washington observers were hopeful at mid-week that the Administration would cease its policy of drifting and formulate a clear-cut wage program which might aid in settlement of current strikes and head off the scores of major strikes threatened by powerful internationals...
...Names And Notes In The News Candidate...
...Red leaders in New York promptly launched a violent tirade against their late associate, charging that he had deserted to the "reactionary cause of gigantic monopoly corporations" and denying that his action was taken because of religious conviction...
...The People's DAR, Powell said, means "Drive Against Reaction...
...Here were three criminal nations eager for loot and seeking greedily to advance their own self-interest by war, yet unable to agree on a strategic over-all plan for accomplishing a common objective...
...Truman attended a tea given by the Daughters, saying that she did so without relation to "the merits" of the controversy over the organization's policy of racial bigotry...
...After a sharp debate, the Senate last week confirmed Raymond S. McKeough, Chicago, as a member of the U. S. Maritime Commission...
...The farmer was seeking...
...Louis F. Budenz, president and managing editor of the Daily Worker, mouthpiece for U. S. Reds, was reconverted to the faith of his fathers— the Catholic Church—last week, quitting his posts on the paper and his membership in the Communist Party...
...The differential that won us victory was the American industrial potential, the size and capacity of our giant plants, and the industrial 'know-how' of management and labor...
...Lieut...
...Dwight D. Eisenhower denied this week that he had ever said Adolf Hitler was alive, but agreed with a statement that "no human being can say Hitler is conclusively dead...
...UNRRA Broke...
...Lynching...
...It is an unending conflict with religion and true freedom...
...4. A principal factor in the Nazis' defeat was the entrance of Italy into the war, particularly Mussolini's attack on Greece and Egypt...
...Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Negro Congressman from New York, after the Daughters of the American Revolution had denied use of Constitution Hall in Washington, D. C, to Powell's wife, Hazel Scott, a pianist...
...The atomic bomb and its development are a good illustration of the meaning of American industrial power, which was the cornerstone of the victory just won...
...Confirmation...
...The Axis Had No Plan Gen...
...But if serious assault by large bodies of men must still come over the seas—either by ships or by air—and if the Navy and the Air Force (scarcely considered in this report) can control those seas, the case for universal military training (in defense of the country) and for a large peacetime army loses much of its force...
...President and Mrs...
...Formation of a People's DAR was announced this week by the Rev...
...4. The $5 automobile use tax would be abolished July 1. 5. The social security tax would be frozen in 1946 at one per cent each on employes' pay and employers' payrolls...
...2. Corporation levies would be lightened by $1,888,-000,000, including partial repeal of the wartime excess profits tax and lowering of the business surtax rate...
...Harold E. Stassen, former Governor of Minnesota, will quit the Navy before Dec...
...15 and launch his candidacy for the 1948 Republican nomination for President...
...This invaluable asset—the capacity to manufacture, to turn blueprint dreams into battlefield realities in greater quantity than any other nation in the world—is the real secret of the atomic bomb and was the primary secret of our success in the war...
...What The General Ignored The demand for conscription drew prompt fire from many quarters, including some military analysts who pointed out that Marshall had greatly underestimated the role of new and deadlier weapons like the atomic bomb...
...1. A move developing in the Senate to amend the House bill by wiping out the corporation excess profits tax entirely was denounced by Rep...
...Secretary of Labor Lewis B. Schwellenbach, who has been working night and day to bring order out of the labor-management chaos, issued a powerful plea to farmers to exhibit a better understanding of the problems of workers...
...3. Wartime excise taxes on luxuries, including liquor, luggage, furs, jewelry, and cosmetics, would be reduced sharply...
...Accepting a position on the economics staff of Notre Dame University, Budenz announced that he would soon launch an expose of the Communist movement which, he said, "aims to establish a tyranny over the human spirit...
...3. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes will initiate discussions with Great Britain and Canada,-our partners in the development of the atomic bomb, looking to the outlawing of its use...
...Tax Reduction Near Early action on tax reduction was assured this week when the Senate Finance Committee launched hearings on the House-approved measure which provides for $5,350,000,000 in tax reduction for 1946...
...Denial...
...Every mo...
...Marshall's concentration on the peacetime draft unfortunately obscures what is, in this observer's opinion, an even more important element of American defense...
...Marshall's lengthy report included a number of highly interesting observations, the most important of which were: 1. Interrogation of the German high command had failed to disclose any over-all German 'strategic plan to conquer the world...
...President Truman, discussing the problem at a press conference at Reelfoot Lake, Tenri., announced that: 1. The secret of the atomic bomb will not be shared with other nations...
...Commenting on Marshall's insistence on permanent conscription, Hanson W. Baldwin, military analyst for the New York Times, wrote: "If the United States had a 'live' land frontier and a neighbor of great power and aggressive intent in the Western Hemisphere, the case for peacetime military training and a very large land army would be, per se, proved...
...Writing in the Pennsylvania Co-op Review, Schwellenbach asserted that "the right to strike is a precious right...
...3. The Axis was hampered by lack of coordination among Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo...
...Marshall's demand for peacetime conscription and a huge army of foot soldiers came as the nation was debating the disposition of the secret of the atomic bomb and atomic energy...
...The President tossed off a comment that the reconversion crisis was "just a blow-up," but after talking seriously with his chief aides in the labor and reconversion fields, the President seemed to take a far more sober view of the situation...
...Marshall's report was the opening gun of a new and revitalized campaign to force acceptance of permanent peacetime conscription on the nation for the first time in our history...
...Dwight D. Eisenhower's Chief of Staff, asserted last week that Britain produces the best high level military planners and intelligence officers on earth...
...The vote was 42 to 34 in favor of the Midwest Regional Director of the CIO's Political Action Committee, 39 Democrats, two Republicans (Langer and Morse), and one Progressive (La Follette) voting for the appointment while 25 Republicans and nine Democrats lined up against McKeough...
...Intelligence...
...Meanwhile, a number of scientists publicly demanded that the secret of the atomic bomb be shared with the rest of the world on the theory that 1) the secret could not be long kept, and 2) international control would prevent the world from destroying itself in an atomic war...
...The tax was scheduled to jump to two and a half per cent against each on Jan...
...Assistant Secretary of State William L. Clayton placed the total of American money needed at once by UNRRA at $550,000,000...
...Jesse James Payne, a young Negro under indictment for attempted criminal-assault of a 5-year-old white girl, was taken from an unguarded jail at Madison, Fla., last week and shot to death by a mob...
...I can recall incidents of considerable violence in such strikes, of milk trucks being pushed from the roads and milk destroyed...
...Friends said he is definitely a candidate and will embark on a nationwide speaking tour as soon as he sheds his Navy uniform...
...The farmer, he said, "also strikes...
...George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, had handed Congress and the country a 72,000-word report calling for the establishment of an aggressive military machine which would enforce a Pax Americana on the world—not by the power of democratic example or moral suasion, but by the power of our armed might...
...Industry has long engaged in the most effective of 'strikes'—through establishment of monopolies to curb production," Schwellenbach pointed out...
...Groping For A Wage Formula The Truman Administration appeared this week to be settling down at long last to the critical home front problem of labor-industry disputes...
...Warning that the "only effective defense a nation can now maintain is the power of attack," the Chief of Staff insisted that universal peacetime military training was necessary to enable the United States to mobilize an army of 4,000,-000 men within one year after an international crisis...
...U. S. Communist leaders, he asserted, "get their orders from somewhere—but I no not know where...
...Figures released by the National Labor Relations Board showed that union demand for higher wages is the cause of 68 per cent of the strike vote notices filed with the Board...
Vol. 9 • October 1945 • No. 42
