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Show ! WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS Revolt Interrupts Bogota Parley; Miners Get Pension, Ertd Walkout; GOP Aspirants in Primaries Fight I By Bill Schoentgen, WNU Staff Writer (EDITOR'S NOTE i Whn opinion! art tiprmrd In Ihm eolumm. Ihfy r thw of Wmtf rn Nwippi Union't ocwi aniljiti nd not neceuaril of thu ncwipipcr.) I Oji Wisconsin I ... 1IH M REVOLT: Bogota It was a peaceful early afternoon In Bogota, Colombia, and the inter-American inter-American conference was droning along in customary style in the capl-tol capl-tol building on the Plaza Bolivar. Then, with the firing of four assassin's assas-sin's bullets into the body of Jorge Elicier Gaitan, popular leader of Colombia's Liberal party, one of the worst revolts Latin American has I 3 TREATY: Finns-Russ Russia had what it wanted bom Finland-a buffer state to the north- WThe two nations signed a 10-yeai treaty of mutual assistance which binds Finland to fight within its owr. borders in the event either country is attacked. Finland and Russia, stated the Pact, would battle side by side tc repel aggression by Germany oi another state allied with" Germany The treaty circumspectly failed to mention any other state by name. Despite the fact that Finland s delegation virtually had been commanded com-manded to appear at Moscow to sigr a treaty with Russia, Premier Josel Stalin beamed expansively after the agreement had been concluded, hailing hail-ing it as a "treaty between equals. And he said: "I would like to see us pass from a long period of mutual distrust against each other, to a new period in our relations-to a period of mutual mu-tual trust." Actually, the Finns got a better deal from Russia than they mighl have hoped for. Their nation had not been forced into a tight, arbitrary arbi-trary military accord with the Soviets, So-viets, nor had Finland lost its sovereignty sov-ereignty although it was brought firmly into the bloc of states along Russia's exposed western flank. ATOM BOMB: No Secret Secretary of Defense James For-restal For-restal put a name and a definitive edge, after a fashion, to all the restless rest-less postwar fears Americans have been experiencing. He did it by announcing to the house armed services committee that Russia knows how to make the atomic bomb. More specifically, the Russians possess the knowledge of how to put the bomb together but so far do not have the industrial capacity to capitalize on that knowledge. knowl-edge. Russia does not yet have an atom bomb, but the days of U. S. monopoly monop-oly of A-bomb production are numbered, num-bered, Forrestal said. He told the congressional committee that he got his information from Dr. Vannevar Bush, chairman of the U.S. research and development board. During the course of his testimony regarding a two-year draft of men 19 through 25, the defense secretary answered queries with: "I said they do not have the atom bomb. I did not say they do not have the secret of the atomb bomb. "I am informed by Dr. Bush that the scientific knowledge and technical techni-cal procedure involved in the manufacture manu-facture of the atom bomb are known to Russia." Thus, U.S. -Russian relations on the atomic level had developed tc the point where there was only one unknown quantity: How soon would the Soviets acquire the industrial capacity to produce atom bombs? Secretary Forrestal admitted he didn't know. seen exploded into violence. During the first afternoon Bogota descended into a state of complete anarchy. Mobs prowled the streets, burning and looting. Scores were killed. The residence of President Ospina Perez was attacked and windows win-dows were broken before army troops drove away the crowd. Above the confused clamor of the throng could be heard shouts of "Down with the government, down with the Conservatives." Three days later, as the riots simmered sim-mered to a halt, 300 person were dead, many others injured. Downtown Down-town Bogota was a welter of destruction. de-struction. Colombia had broken relations re-lations with Soviet Russia, and the inter-American conference had almost al-most cracked up, with delegates uncertain un-certain as to whether they could continue. con-tinue. On the face of it, the revolt was a sudden eruption of violent sentiment senti-ment of Liberal party followers against the Conservative government govern-ment in power. Immediate result was the formation of a new coalition coali-tion cabinet, equally composed of Liberals and Conservatives. Big question was how much Communists Com-munists had to do with the Bogota I riots. U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall, who with other Americans In Bogota got through the riots unscathed, un-scathed, claimed the revolt was Communist: "The occurrence goes beyond Colombia. Co-lombia. It is of the same definite patterns as the occurrences which provoked strikes in France and Italy." And the Colombian government, in severing relations with Russia, declared de-clared that a "Communist Insurrection" Insurrec-tion" had touched off the mob fury. Finally, it was announced from Bogota that the inter-American conference con-ference would resume "so that Communism Com-munism coujd not triumph over Colombia Co-lombia and the rest of the nations of the hemisphere." SETTLEMENT: In his South St. Paul home Slav sen grinned with the comfortable cheer of a cat who had just swiped all the cream in Wisconsin as he sat with his wife and received reports re-ports stating that he had run off with 19 of the 27 delegates in that state's primary election. PRIMARIES: Wisconsin Wisconsin's presidential primary election to choose delegates to the Republican national convention in Philadelphia on June 21 was regarded, regard-ed, as usual, as a straw in the wind; but this year the political breeze was a shifting one. For Harold Stassen, ex-governor of Minnesota, a hard, thorough campaign cam-paign waged by himself and his volunteer supporters up and down the state paid off nobly when Wisconsin Wis-consin voters granted him a total of 19 of the state's 27 delegates to the GOP convention. Gen. Douglas MacArthur took the remaining eight to run a poor second, sec-ond, despite a flamboyant publicity drive carried out by his backers (notably the Hearst newspapers) which was built around the theory that he is "the only man equipped to deal with Russia." Gov. Thomas E. Dewey of New York drew a complete blank in Wisconsin, Wis-consin, where he had been the Republican Re-publican favorite In 1940 and again in 1944. As a result of the Wisconsin election, elec-tion, Stassen was catapulted into public consciousness as a leading contender for the Republican nomination. nomi-nation. It was certain that his top-heavy top-heavy victory there would be reflected reflect-ed in the other primaries to follow, and that he had gained considerable Italian Style Pi y n i E.!i,,t,.. M1 m t U.S. Ambassador to Italy James Clement Dunn (right) peers benevolently benev-olently at an Italian worker in Taranto as he tastes grain that was among the foodstuffs delivered aboard the 500th relief ship to bring food to Italy. CONTROLS : Cold Shoulder Coal Strike John L. Lewis wasn't exactly in the position ef a man who had asked friends out to dinner and then found he couldn't pay the check, but he was verging on some such situation. Half a million soft coal miners started to straggle back to work after a 28-day strike when Lewis informed in-formed them that the fight for $100-a-month pensions had been won, but Lewis himself had to appear before Federal Judge T. Alan Goldsborough to answer a contempt of court charge. Lewis was cited for contempt by Goldsborough, his 1947 nemesis, on the grounds that he Ignored an April 3 court order to call off the strike. Apart from the contempt of court citation, settlement of the coal strike was distinguished mainly by a slightly marvelous amalgam of political po-litical action and expedient compromise. compro-mise. ' , Beginning of the end came when Speaker of the House Joseph Martin (Rep., Mass.) moved into the dispute dis-pute by persuading Lewis and Ezra Van Horn, a mine operator, to meet with him in his office. Martin then suggested that Sen. Styles Bridges (Ren.. N.H.) be named the third stature in me wiawesi. It was difficult to tell which of the two losers Dewey or MacArthur had been hit harder by his defeat. Dewey, who received no delegates, might seem to be in a position similar simi-lar to that of Wendell Willkie in 1944 when he withdrew from the GOP race after losing ignominiously in the Wisconsin primary. But the New York governor previously had beaten Stassen in the New Hampshire primary, pri-mary, and, also, he had the full slate of New York delegates pledged to him. It was on MacArthur, who had claimed Wisconsin as his home state, that the axe of public disfavor appeared to have fallen with greatest great-est force. More To Come From Wisconsin the election year wind swung to the plains of Nebraska where seven leading contenders in the Republican presidential race fought it out in a free-for-all match, with Stassen again emerging as the big winner. After Nebraska the battlefield shifted to Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Massa-chusetts on April 27. A total of 108 delegates to the GOP convention was at stake. The jeering specter of price, wage and ration controls was invoked again by President Truman's council coun-cil of economic advisers whicl called for nationwide "discipline" tc prevent inflation under the impact of the new defense program. As usual, this advice rattled cheerlessly cheer-lessly among the stony hearts oi electioneering congressmen. In its report covering the first three months of 1948 the council denounced de-nounced the tax cut law as "inflationary" "infla-tionary" and recommended new I member of the board which administers admin-isters the miners' welfare and retirement re-tirement fund. (Lewis and Van Horn are the other two members.) At a subsequent meeting of the three, Bridges proposed a plan that would give $100-a-month pensions to 62-year-old miners with 20 years of service who retired after May 28, 1946, the date on which the miners' welfare fund was set up. Bridges' plan was accepted and the strike called off. Actually, Lewis, in approving the New Hampshire senator's proposal, had descended several notches from his original demands. Politically, the most fascinating aspect of the affair was how Joe Martin managed to take the play away from the administration in arranging for a settlement On May 4 Harold Stassen was to carry the fight to Sen. Howard Taft's home arena, the state of Ohio. It was no secret that Taft was worried wor-ried over which way his fellow Ohio-ans Ohio-ans might go, and a good showing by Stassen would hamper materially Taft's White House ambitions. In his second pitched battle with Governor Dewey (New Hampshire was the first) Stassen was slated to invade Oregon for that state's GOP primary on May 21. While results of the Oregon primary were not expected ex-pected to be conclusive, they would ! serve to provide a first sampling of West coast opinion. Final state presidential primary on the Republican side occurs in California on June 1. Earl Warren Is unopposed as the state's favorite son for the GOP nomination. taxes if the planned defense spend ing is not offset by reduced govern ment costs in other areas. Republican - dominated congress received rather happily the coun cil's call for reduced government spending, but maintained a glum silence on the subject of selective price, wage and ration controls. Congressmen indicated that they want to study possible inflationarj effects of the preparedness program and foreign aid spending under the I Marshall plan before they give any j serious consideration to resurrect-1 ing economic controls. Although the council admitted thai foreign spending coupled with a bit ! defense outlay "will not swamp our economy nor require us to pass from free enterprise to regimentation," it I added that "some rather system'atii and vigorous discipline must be ex j ercised." |