THE WEEK IN REVIEW
THE WEEK IN REVIEW EXCEPT for labor-management strife {See Page S) American foreign policy continued this week to hold the center of the domestic stage. Old controversies flared up and new ones...
...6"Te was ordered in a telegram signed with the name ? ~ the Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius, to abandon, in January, 1945, his efforts to bring the Chinese Communists and Nationalists together...
...approved lightening of debt and tax burdens, equality of farm prices, adequate care for veterans, and a system of relief administered through the states...
...5An "imperialist bloc" of nations, consisting of « Britain, France, the Netherlands, to a lesser extent, Belgium and Portugal, and before the war, Germany and Japan, have had a stake in keeping China r,:,-nited...
...R Near Fist-Fight Secretary of State Byrnes denied these and other allegations, testifying before the Foreign Relations Committee that Hurley's charges were based on no foundation of fact...
...Old controversies flared up and new ones broke out in the face of a series of rapid-fire developments which included a bitter row over State Department policy, completion of negotiations for a U. S. loan of $4,400,000,000 to Great Britain, Senate approval of military commitments for the United Nations Organization, action on appropriations for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, and a continuation of the Congressional investigation into the Pearl Harbor disaster...
...Bitter opposition to the terms of the agreement developed in Congress, presaging a turbulent battle before approval, is voted eventually...
...I was of the opinion at that time that the governments would be forced to accept a condition of hostilities," Marshall replied...
...Bush, who has been active in atomic work for five years, asserted that there was no danger of another war so soon that the world will not have plenty of time to work out careful and effective controls...
...Names And Notes In The News Atomic Advice...
...Douglas MacArthur in Japan after he had sent them home from Chungking...
...He so reported to Washington, but nobody bothered to tell him to prepare against something far more serious than an attempt at sabotage...
...24, 1941, strongly indicated an imminent attack on Pearl Harbor, but the messages were not translated for a couple of weeks—* until after the blow fell on Dec...
...Short, and, of course, did not reach him until too late...
...Our Unintelligent Intelligence A fantastic story of brass-hat bungling, inefficiency, bickering, and bad guessing was presented to the nation this week as the special Congressional Committee continued its investigation of the Pearl Harbor disaster Dec...
...Miles denied that the late President Roosevelt knew Dec...
...Testimony by Maj...
...7, 1941...
...6 of the approaching break, asserting that the vital Japanese message indicating a complete rupture of relations was not received until mid-morning of Dec...
...Marshall Was Surprised Miles told the Committee that secret Japanese messages picked up as early as Nov...
...This belief, he said, was behind military proposals for joint British and American action if Japan went into Thailand (Siam) west of 100 degrees east longitude or south of 10 degrees north latitude...
...Up to Dec...
...2) the U. S. proposes an international conference next Summer on trade and employment and the formation of an international trade organization...
...For the home front, the program endorsed collective bargaining, but called for "improved Government machinery" to promote peaceful settlement of labor disputes...
...Houston accused the Administration of "giving lip-service to the matter of eliminating discrimination in employment, while doing nothing substantial to make the policy effective...
...Invited to address the NAM convention at New York's Waldorf-Astoria, Hargrove told the nation's leading industrialists that "I can't remember a single contribution your organization has made or a single constructive thing it's done...
...Plea...
...The NAM, to the average thinking person, I would say, means something stubborn, reactionary, and obstructionist...
...Kent told newsmen in New.York that he had taken several documents from the Embassy because they "contained information whieh the Senate and the people of the U. S. should know about...
...See Here...
...Kent Returns...
...4Some of the U. S. career men in China supported ? an imperialistic bloc of nations and were perfectly willing to use Lend-Lease to subjugate peoples, contrary to the policies of the Atlantic Charter...
...The loan agreement provides that 1) the U. S. waives repayment of the 24 billions in Lend-Lease due us from Britain...
...Lagging Nazis...
...The separate national states must set their own houses in order, establishing their own internal system of controls and thus bringing into being agencies which can support the international agency," Bush said...
...Stettinius, he learned, did not actually send the telegram although it bore his name...
...The charges were vehemently denied by Secretary of State James F. Byrnes and Undersecretary Dean Acheson...
...Two career diplomats who, he said, favored "collapse" of the present regime in China, were given vital assignments with Gen...
...Hurley charged, among other things, that: 1Undersecretary of State Acheson wrecked Ameri...
...See Page 2.) 2He (Hurley) was plagued by 12 rival U. S. agencies ? in China while he was being betrayed by his own embassy staff...
...GOP Program...
...State Department officials were busy, too...
...A young Army sergeant, Marion Hargrove, author of the widely read See Here, Private Hargrove, last week gave the members of the National Association of Manufacturers a tongue-lashing they wilL not soon forget...
...Gen...
...A warning to Short to expect trouble was interpreted by the Hawaiian commander to mean that he should take internal precautions against sabotage...
...Protest...
...Marshall testified that Pearl Harbor was not notified by telephone of the imminent break because he feared the Japanese would listen in on the conversation and "grasp at any straw" to prove the U. S. had committed an overt act, and because we didn't want the Japanese to know that we had broken their code...
...The American commander was kept in the dark because top officials felt that circulation of the information should be restricted to a few at the very top in Washington, but, the testimony of Miles, and others disclosed, the secret was passed on to the British and became cocktail bar gossip in Washington—while Short was kept in the dark...
...George C. Marshall, then Chief of Staff, said that he would take some of the blame himself...
...In foreign affairs, the GOP demanded "open covenants," support of the United Nations Organization, fulfillment of "pledges to small nations," rejection of "Great Power domination of the world," and endorsed the relief and re» habilitation of stricken nations...
...The warning was sent by slow commercial cable to Gen...
...Sen...
...The loan, which would run for 50 years at an effective rate of interest of 1.63 per cent, was approved by President Truman in a statement in which he said that the huge loan is for the purpose of aiding Britain financially and establishing a world trading and monetary system "within which the trade of all countries can be conducted on a multilateral, non-discriminatory basis...
...L. T. Gerow, chief of the Army War Plans Division in 1941, said he would take full blame for failing to follow up Short's message, but Gen...
...Prof...
...He said that "in due time I will have something to say that will be of interest to the people of the U. S." He dismissed as "pure invention" and "strictly fiction" published reports that 15,000 coded messages were found in his London apartment in 1940 and that contents of the messages reached the Germans and Italians...
...Undersecretary Acheson also took the stand to deny Hurley's charges...
...Marshall told the Committee that he believed late ii 1941 that hostilities between Japan and Great Britain in the Pacific would involve the U. S., too...
...That message that they were on the move meant war, didn't it...
...Charles La Follette, Indiana Republican, last week called on the GOP to "return to the traditions of its founders" and again become "the radical party in America and not the conservative...
...Charles H. Houston, one of the two Negro members of the Fair Employment Practices Committee, resigned last week with the charge that the Truman Administration was "saying one thing and doing another" about the nation's minority problems...
...this week greasing the wheels for Congressional approval of the $4,400,000,000 loan to Britain...
...Even when it's right, it always seems to be right for the wrong reason...
...3Britain was opposing U. S. policy for the unification ? of China at the very moment that he was trying hardest to negotiate an agreement between the Chinese Communists and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek...
...We can say the Germans did not have anything at all," he reported...
...Vannevar Bush, director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, last week took sharp issue with both scientific and military spokesmen as he urged Congress to discard "fantastic notions" about the danger of the atomic bomb and to proceed slowly in attempting to set up international control of atomic energy...
...7. Why ? The Joint Intelligence Committee of the Army and Navy could not begin functioning because the two branches were wrangling over office space, policy, personnel, and protocol...
...S. A. Goudsmit, chief of an Army Intelligence mission to Germany, told a Senate committee last week that the Nazis never got close to learning the secret of the atomic bomb...
...Immediate issue, he said, was "the refusal of the President to allow the Committee to issue its decision" directing the Capital Transit Co., Washington transport system, to cease discriminatory policies in the employment of Negroes...
...Their scientists simply did not have the vision and Germa-ny had abandoned the bomb project for this war...
...7 and was not delivered to the White House and State Department until past mid-afternoon the same day...
...The GI speaker characterized the NAM as "prejudiced, behind the times, and more than a shade hypocritical...
...Homer Ferguson, Michigan Republican, a member of the Committee, brought out the fact that on Dec...
...Sherman Miles, who was chief of Army Intelligence at the time, revealed that Lt...
...Walter Short, then Army commander at Pearl Harbor, was not informed that we-had .cracked the Japanese secret code and was kept in complete ignorance of a number of messages suggesting Japan's intention of breaking diplomatic relations and resorting to war...
...S) both nations will move for the relaxation of trade barriers ; 4) within one year after the loan becomes available Britain will end the sterling area trade restrictions and abolish the sterling area dollar pool so that there will be no bar to purchase in the U. S. by the countries in the sterling area...
...They were way behind...
...Tyler Kent, former American code clerk at the U. S. Embassy in London, returned to this eountry last week after having served nearly fiveyears in a British prison on charges of violating Britain's "Official Secrets Act...
...can foreign policy in the Middle East, and especially in Iran, which is currently the scene of bitter wrangling between the U. S. and Russia...
...7, 1941, Marshall said, he felt that Pearl Harbor was "the most improbable" target for enemy attacks and he was more worried by the possibility of surprise assaults on the Panama Canal and the West Coast than he was on Hawaii...
...6 Ambassador Jiohn G. Winant had messaged Washington from London that the Japanese were on the move...
...Hurley, however, countered that Byrnes was "dodging" the main issue...
...A platitudinous program of principles was drafted last week by Republican members of Congress and subsequently approved by the Republican National Committee...
...Ferguson asked...
...Patrick J. Hurley, who had been President Roosevelt's trusted trouble-shooter abroad and served as U. S. ambassador to China until his angry resignation recently, presented heated accusations against our own State Department and the policies of our Allies in new testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee...
...He traced his row with Hurley to a near fist-fight in the State Department last year over the policy toward Iran...
Vol. 9 • December 1945 • No. 50
