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About The Plattsmouth journal. (Plattsmouth, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (May 3, 1951)
EDITORIALS FREEDOM OF PRESS NOT INVOLVED Dr. Edward A. .Rumely, executive secretary of the Committee for Constitu tional Government, has been convicted on contempt-of-Congress charges for refus ing to tell the House Lobby Committee the names of persons who contributed large sums for the distribution of books and lit erature published by his organization. The defense was based around the al legation that Dr. Rumely was protected by the freedom-of-the-press guarantee in the Bill of Rights. He contended, in con nection, with the charges, that Congress had no right to the information and that to compel him to reveal the names .of the financial angels behind his activity would violate the freedom of the press. This contention is absurd. Newspa pers throughout the nation are required to publish the names of their owners. So far as we know, no responsible newspa per pretends that this interferes with its freedom to print the news or to express its editorial opinion. The truth is that newspapers, when their owners are unknown, can be used for improper purposes without the knowl edge of those who read them. The high sounding title of Dr. Rumely's organiza tion gives some prestige to its distribution of various books and pamphlets upon public affairs. ? To require him to give the names of persons who contributed large sums for their publication and distribution would not, in any sense, infringe on the right of his organization to publish and distribute its propaganda. HONESTY TEST COSTS BANK $112 A bank in Atlanta, Ga., depending upon public honesty, recently put a large fishbowl of coins in the lobby and invited customers to make their own change. After trying the experiment for five weeks, and losing $112 in the last two, the bank has reverted to the ancient and hon orable custom of counting its coins in con nection with the art of making change. Assuming that the officials of the bank are men of ordinary intelligence, we likewise presume that the fishbowl-idea was a publicity stunt. We can hardly im agine that mature individuals would ex pect that, among the thousands who cir culate freely in any neighborhood, honesty would be the absolute rule. - "We are thoroughly convinced that the vast majority of human beings are honest and utterly unwilling to take advantage of any opportunity to steal money. Never theless, the percentage of crooks, grafters and thieves is high enough to assure that any such experiment, as that reported from Atlanta, will be a losing proposition. ir VET INSURANCE REFUND The Veterans Administration has be gun to distribute $G85,000.000 to the hold ers of some 8,000,000 National Service Life Insurance policies. Veterans entitled to participate in the division are not re quired to make any application and the checks for their share will be sent two or three months after the anniversary dates of their policies. Last year, the Administration paid out 2,800,000,000 to holders of 16,000, 000 policies. The refund occurred because the Government, in connection with its policies issued to veterans during the war. accumulated a surplus which was not needed to pay losses. Consequentlv, the money goes back to the policy-holders un der a formula which takes into consider ation the length of the policy, the age of the insured and other factors. While the dividends will not be div ided equally among the holders, because of these special factors, they will average about $80 each. This compares with a similarly-calculated average of $175 for the initial special dividend payment last year. What will interest the recipients is the fact that the payments are exempt from income taxation. ( THOUGHT FOR TODAY He who has health has hope, and he rcho has hope has everything. Arab Troverb The Plattsmouth Journal Official Comity and City Paper ESTABLISHED IN' 1SS1 Warded Ak-Sar-Ben Plaque For Outstanding Community Service in 1950" Published semi-weekly. Mondays and Thursdays, at 109-413 Main Street. Plans mouth. Cass County. Nebr. RONALD R. FURSE Publisher HARRY J. CANE ... EditoJ FRANK H. SMITH News Reporter Helen E. Heinrich & Donna L. Meisinger Society - Bookkeeping & Circulation moctanon M o A l. Kntered at the Post Office at Plattsmouth. Nebraska, s second class mall matter In accordance with the. Act of Congress of March 3. 1879. SUBSCRIPTION RATE: $3.50 per year in Cass and adjoining counties. $4.00 per year elsewhere. In advance, by mall outside the city of Platts mouta. By carrier in Plattsmouth. 20 cents for two weeks. . SECTION B -CASS COUNTY'S NEWSpaper Serving Plattsmouth and Cass County for Over Seventy Years Furse's Fresh Flashes We hear that some taverns are equip in": their bars with glasses having mag nifying bottoms for watching television. A Plattsmouth man says windows and widows are very similar when you get near them, you want to look out. Just to make sure the garden got spaded, a local wife buried two-dozen of her husband's golf balls in it. Flipper Fanny, our dainty little con tour twister, says thrift is a wonderful thing especiallv in ancestors. About the only thing you can't get on time these daws is meals. Students at a . Missouri school peti tioned for an afternoon nap as part of the course. They probably just wanted to make it official. A new baby makes the days brighter, says our doctor. And during the teething period it helps brighten up the home at night, too. Our banker tells us you can't do much without some sort of backing. Wonder if he ever heard of an evening dress. A magician isn't the only one who produces things you never saw before. Look at what the laundries bring back. Again we read where the old-fashioned doctor is disappearing. No wonder so is the old-fashioned familv. Some women are outspoken but not often. DOWN MEMORY LANE OA YEARS AGO U The pipeline placed across Cass county from the southern boundary to Plattsmouth where it crossed the Missouri river, was given valuation of $17,500 on 24 inch mains and $4,400 on! 8 inch lines, which added to the tax producing prop erties of the county; this was first year placed on tax rolls . . . Miss Martha bor der accepted position as swimming instruc tor in the womens department of the Y.M.C.A. at Pueblo, Colo. . . . White & Bucknell Hardware store was looted of merchandise valued from $300 to $500 . . . Construction contract for overhead viaduct at the Pappio creek just south of Ft. Crook was awarded the Peter Kiewit Sons Company . . . Class of P.H.S. 1931 presented the play "Holiday" at the Par mele Theatre, with Maxine Cloidt in lead ing feminine role, James Begley, Margaret Shellenb&rger and Richard Spangler in supporting roles. Others in the cast were Merle McCrary, Paul Iverson, Jean Hayes, Towner Livingston, Francis Yelick, George Lepert and Velma Fulton. 1( YEARS AGO 1U Miss Irma Pitman accepted position in Washington, D.C. . . . Jim Sandin was selected as a member of the cast of "Bro ther Orchid" commencement week dram atic club production at Peru Teachers College ... A benefit dance was staged for purchase of new uniforms for base ball club team. Ray Shafer was manager of this group . . . L. O. Minor, one of the active leaders o local Rotary during hi.s residence here, was named to bead the club at Kankakee, III. ; (Copyright, 1949. By the Bell Syndicate. Inc.) DREW PEARSON SAYS: HOUSE COMMITTEE WITHHOLDS IMPOR TANT TESTIMONY ON CHIANG KAI-SHEK; TAFT FOUND MAC ARTHUR POLITICALLY COOL; HERBERT HOOVER HAD HIS GENERAL. Washington. Locked in the files of the House Foreign Affairs Committee is some dynamite-laden evidence by a for mer adviser to Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek, which would be of great interest in the MacArthur-Truman debate if it were made public. Secret testimony was given on April 6, 1949, before the Foreign Affairs Com mittee by Maj. Gen. David G. Barr, for mer military adviser to Chiang. AtN that time Barr testified, among ether things, that Chiang's staff officers were incom petent, lazy, derelict and in some cases downright dishonest. He described the surrender of some Manchurian cities to the communists by Chiang's generals as so sus picious as to raise possible doubts of .a sell-out to the enemy. In some cases, Chiang's staff officers were not even pres ent when the troops under them surrendered. NEVER ENDING REPERCUSSIONS THE PLATTSMOUTH, NEBRASKA, SEMI-WEEKLY JOURNAL Thursday, May 3, 1951 Section B PAGE ONE I cur u 1 .i Ifashinerton General Barr also told how great quantities of American equipment which we supplied the Nationalist forces fell into communist hands, and in turn made the red conquest of China much easier and quicker. In one case a big. allied supply base at Chinchow was left vir tually and mysteriously unde fended. Considering the amount of American equipment stored there, the actions of the Na tionalist Chinese had all the earmarks of a sellout to the communists who shortly there after captured it. It was not long before all Manchuria feil to the communists. -' "t General Barr testified that he believed Chiang himself was honest, but that his troops, lacking leadership, long ago had lost the will to fight. For a while the war against the com munists on the Chinese main land simply depended upon how rapidly Mao Tse-Tung's men wanted to travel. For reasons best known to himself. John Kee of the House Foreign Affairs committee has been sittin? on this testimony for two "ears. Note Another witness who could shed great light on Chiang Kai-Shek's fighting qualities and his real feeling toward the United States is Col. James McHugh. retired Marine Corps officer. McHugh was aide to Chiang Kai-Shek during the war. speaks Chinese, and is one of the few Americans who have written a textbook in the Chin ese language. Experts such as Colonel McHugh and General Barr. who have lived in China and know Chiang Kai-Shek in timately, should be called as witnesses before the Armed Services committee. Taft and MacArthur Friends of Senator Taft re port that the Senator's visit with General MacArthur at the Waldorf Tower. New York, net ted only two things Taft's firm conviction that MacArthur meant what he said about keep ing out of politics, and second, that the general could out-talk the rather loquacious Senator from Ohio. Taft went to see MacArtrmr to find out discreetly whether the general had any political intentions: and second, if not. to lay some diplomatic ground work so that the general might later get on the Taft band- WttKUH. J MacArthur was cordial, aui politically negative. He gave Taft a shortened version of his congressional speech, quoting it in such verbatim detail that it almost seemed as if he had memorized it. Taft. who is no mean talker himself, could hardl" get a word in edgewise. Taft's friends say that he did not tell the General that he. the Senator, was a candidate for the presidencv though tie did hint that th Republicans were most grateful to MacArthur for what he bad done and that they would certainly want him to b a leading defense planner if thv won in 1952. Howpver. MacArthur was no ticeably cool toward everv Pol itical overture ?nd in effect repeated his ambition to "fade away." History Repeats Herbert Hoover, who has been the chief confidante of General MacArthur durine the present hie debate, paradoxically was on th othe' end of a somewhat Kirni'ar situation when h was Frirtnt of the United State Hoover made the mistake of ordering the court-martial of Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler, a popular Marine Corps figure, after Butler had stated in a lecture that Benito Mussolini, then dictator of Italy, had run over a child with his car but failed to stop. General Butler's court-martial was ordered after Italian ambassador Di Martino had protested officially. But immediately there arose a tremendous outcry from the American press and public, and for weeks Hoover was the butt of possibly more scathing crit icism than Harry Truman. The situation was ' somewhat comparable to the present Mac Arthur debate in that the admi rals did not like General Butler any more than some of the lea ders in the pentagon love Gen eral MacArthur. It was also significant that Hoover's popularity at that time had sunk to an extremely low ebb, comparable to that of Tru man's today. In the end. Hoover did what Harry Truman has not done. He abiectlv surrendered and called off General Butler's court-martial. Note Hoover privately has been something of an admirer of President Truman, extolled his virtues at a gridiron club dinner, and has expressed pri vate appreciation of the fact that Truman brought him back to Washington in various ad visory capacities after the thir teen -var, anti-Hoover boycott by FDR. WASHINGTON REPORT hy Howard Buffet! Congressman, 2nd Dorothea Keil Journal Correspondent The American people are amazed, frightened and angry. They have lost confidence in those now directing the na tion's affars. This message has come to' me in hundreds of wires and letters since MacArthur was fired. This great outburst of emo tionalism and moral indignation is a heartening sign. But of it self, it will not solve our serious and complex problems. Orderly, courageous and patriotic think ing and action must follow. The greatest threat to Ameri ca is not from without. It is within. It is that our govern ment will continue policies that end in self-destruction. This is the first fact to remember. No great nation in history has been destroyed from without at least until it became rotten within. Various perils within are in finitely more dangerous than Russia and Communism. One is the disintegration of the two party system. There is nothing dramatic about this decay but a strong and virile two-party system is vital to the preserva--tion of liberty. It has not func tioned effectively since before 1940. , A second peril within is mili tarism. We have only "yes" men heading our armed services. Congress gets no information (except for a MacArthur) that the administration doesn't want it to have. As a result, con gress is operating in the dark. Intelligent Americans will not Week end callers at the home of Mr. and Mrs. George Trunk enbolz were Mr. and Mrs. R. A. Shumaker and son of Weeping Water and Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Ludi of Lincoln. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Scatter good spent .last Sunday at Rus kin .with their, son-in-law and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Eldon Sorenson. Mr. and Mrs. Jay Busker and family of Elk Point, South Da kota, spent the week end with Mrs. Busker's parents, Mr. and Mrs. A. W. Adams. Mr. and Mrs. Walter Phillips. Vicki and Tommy of Hayelock were the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Phillips and daughters. Kasie Mrs. Wilson At Mother's Home Mrs. Fred Wilson of Lewellen, Nebr., who had been ill for a week was brought to the home of h?r .mother, Mrs. Hallie Stew art last week. She was taken to Clarkson hospital in Omaha on Wednesday for observation and treatment. She was re leased from the hospital the latter part of the week. After recuperating at the home of her mother she was improved and able to return home with hei husband on Monday of this week. Kngle Miss Emma Dennis and Paul Dennis of Lincoln spent last Sunday afternoon with their cousin, Mrs. Laura West. Mrs. Agnes Caudel of Mitch ell, Nebr., visited at the home of her cousin, Mrs. Elmer Froh lich and family last week. Mrs. Caudel- and Mrs. Frohlich also visited relatives in Lincoln and friends in Ulysses. Easie Mrs. Bassett Is Club Hostess Recently Mrs. Ivan Bassett entertained the Camp Fire Extension club at her home April 16. A covered dish luncheon was enjoyed at noon. Mrs. Vernon Bennett and Mrs. LaVal Swarts presented the lesson sewing. Eagle Attend Funeral Services At Walton Funeral services were held Saturday afternoon for Mrs. Minnie Schroeder of Walton at Trinity Lutheran church south of Walton with Rev. Leubke of ficiating. Mr. and Mrs. Fred Schwegman and Mr. and Mrs. Dick Schwegman attended the services. Kajrle Misses Caroline and Freda Reitter spent Sunday afternoon, April 22nd at the Dr. Ryerson home in Lincoln honoring Mrs. Arthur Ryerson of Colusa. Calif. The Pleasant Hill club met Friday, April 20. at the home of Mrs. John Weyers. be distracted or confused by ex citing events abroad. So keep your eye on the ball. The de cisive battle for liberty in this generation will be won or lost in America. It will be won by Americans faithful to the old fashioned, single-track patriot ism of ONE GOD, ONE COUN TRY, ONE FLAG! THE HUB-BUB over the command ouster of General MacArthur overshadows anything that is hap pening in Washington. Folks, how ever, should not loose their per spective over what is happening. If you do not agree with President Truman that we should not at tack Red China and do agree with General MacArthur that we should attack Eed China, then an argu ment could ensue until both were black in the face over which is right. Bnt if yon are an American citizen and believe in the con stitutional provisions, then yon must of necessity agree that President Truman is right and General MacArthur is wrong, when the latter declines to obey the orders of the President or even of the chiefs of staff. As a military man, his doty is to carry oat the orders of bis commander-in-chief. If he can not do this with a clear con science, his duty is to resign his military commission. And according to some authorities, this is just what he was in the process of doing when Presi dent Truman nipped that plan in the bud and dismissed him instead. The President's new nvbil'mlion advisory board contains the names of four representatives of the tcp farm organizations in the country. but significant is the absence of the name of Allen Kline, president of the American Farm Bureau Fed eration, largest of the farm organ izations. The President did name a farm bureau man in Ray B. Wiser, president of the California farm bureau federation, but, it is said when Mr. Wiser learned that Kline had not been named he has re fused to serve. According to ob servers here, however, it is easy to understand why the President did not name Kline as a farm rep resentative of the board. In the first place Kline has been the most outspoken of all farm leaders against the secretary of agricul ture and of the administration's agricultural program. As a matter of fact, Kline has been ballooned for president by a group of grain dealers in the middle west. Unfor tunately, Mr. Kline does not possess the tact and finesse that his predecessor Ed A. O'Neil, did as resident of the Farm eureau Federation for many years. Like able Uncle Ed made friends on ixith sides of the political fence and the story is often told in Wash ing about how he used to sit in the gallery behind the clock in the house chamber and by a series of "nods" of his head and sign lan guage, guide farm legislation through the congress. Mr. Kline, however, although making a good personal impression in Washington, these observers say, has used nis head as a battering ram only. Other members of the President's committee include Mr. Hershel Newsom of Indiana, master of the National Grange; Mr. D. W. Brooks, of the National Council ol larrn Cooperatives, and President Pat- ton of the National Farmers Union. - The President's commission oa migratory labor has recent ly issued a report on this im portant subject, indicating that these thousands of laborers who follow the crops and the sea son from south to north and back, are accepting jobs and working conditions in many re spects worse than $0 or more years ago. The committee said: "They neither belong to the land, nor does the land belong to them. They pass through community after community, but they neither claim the cona muniiy as home, nor does the community claim them. As crops ripen, farmers anxiously, await their coming; as the har vest closes, the community with equal anxiety awaits their going." The committee , says that if the present domestic farm labor force puts, in G't days more of employment in 1951 than it did in 1950, it will' overcome the 700,000,000 add!-; tional man-hours required for the 1951 crop to offset emergen cy period losses of 100,000 to 200,000 farm workers per year. ! Senator Charles W. Tobey, of New Hampshire, considered one of the more liberal of the Republican veterans in the senate, has come in for some general censure from most all sources- here because he admittedly tapped or recorded pri vate phone conversations with the President. Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Kreck low of Manley spent Sunday, April 20 with Mr. and Mrs. George Winkler. AIDS OPPRESSED SANTA BARBARA, Calif. In the will of William Zimdin, 71, who died March 4th, was a pro vision setting up a trust fund $1,000,000 to aid refugees from tyranny. A native of Esthonia, Zimdin fled the Bolsheviks in 1917 and then left Germany when Hitler came into power. He came to this country ten years ago. He left another $1,000,000 to relatives, including his wife. CARD-WILL PHILADELPHIA. Pa. Type written inside a birthday card which Frederick C. Meisinger sent to Mrs. Margaret Haines, s friend, last October, was a wit nessed will in which Meisinger said he was leaving all his prop erty to Mrs. Haines. Meisinger died December 14 at the age of 55 and left an estate valued at $8,000. The court upheld the will. FARM LAND VALUES Farm-land values reached a new high in November, 1950, ac cording to statistics of the Agri culture Department. After a downward trend during 1949, farm-land values started to rise in 1950 and in November were one per cent above the peak of November, 1948. In the U. S. there are 3.0G9 counties. Crossword Puzzle " HORIZONTAL 1 Capital of N. Algeria j I Part of mm church , To fleo 1 lan a4t8Nti ; pie 14 F.nwU feoa 10 a debate 18 Matured 20 Buiixm demon 21 Compui pol 22 Sun god, 24 Mine r entrance 26 Beverage as Arctic 30 Stamp too til 32 A parrot fish 33 To eat away 37 Allowance for waste 39 Holland commune 40 Afiitatei 42 Cover with pitch 44 Symbol for samarium 43 Feminine name 47 Teara 49 Spanish for yes Si A genua of metis 53 Measure of length 56 Hardens 59 The Sandarae tree 60 To be In debted to 61 Malting ready 63 Roll oi money 64 To purloin 65 Dance step bird V f a C t jl J 4 I IS it 'I? j T 1 9 1 10-14- ir tr j "nr"- -J 7m m, u-i I 49 ISO W 71 52 W T5 S4 H m : 60 61 62 6J 64 65 VERTICAL. 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