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Show NEWS REVIEW London Meet Dissolves; Inflation Bill Defeated The lethargic, uninspired ending of the Big B'our foreign ministers' conference in London was reminiscent reminis-cent of nothing so much as the rather dreary business of tossing out the Christmas tree after the holidays. There was a small amount of nostalgia nos-talgia and regret expressed over the abrupt finish of the unsuccessful discussions, dis-cussions, but there was also a thinly veiled feeling that perhaps, after all, it was a good thing the afluir was over. As seen dimly through clouds of futility and frustration, what the wind-up of the German and Austrian Aus-trian peace treaty talks amounted to was this: The western powers had failed utterly to reach any kind of agreement with Russia on the fate of Germany, and the failure leaves Europe more firmly divided than at any time since the war ended. Although the delegates were unable un-able to agree on any single issue on their agenda, the point upon which the conference balloon burst was the problem of German reparations. To the inevitable question, "What now?" diplomatic authorities were answering with a prediction that the United States, Great Britain and France would begin negotiations soon among themselves concerning the unification of western Germany. Russia would be out of it, and there was no prospect of another four-power four-power meeting in 1948 or in any other year. CONGRESS: 'Straiv Man Of the two pressing reasons why President Truman called congress into special session in November, one had been disposed of but the other kept hanging around like an evil spirit as the year drew to a close. The senate and house had voted strongly in favor of authorizing up to 597 million dollars for emergency winter relief for France, Italy, Austria Aus-tria and China, but no such accord 9 Thrift Plan Meanwhile, although congress had given its approval to the proposition propo-sition that interim relief should be rushed to Europe and China, the emergency aid issue continued to send forth echoes. This time the struggle arose over the actual bill to appropriate the 597 million dollars previously approved ap-proved by congress. The house appropriations ap-propriations committee, showing the same cutting ways it had exhibited ex-hibited earlier in the year toward budget requests, knocked 88 million dollars off the original figure in preparing pre-paring the bill for floor action. Thus, the bill carried only 509 million mil-lion for winter relief. The appropriations appro-priations committee, headed by Rep. JohnTaber (Rep., N, Y.), said the cut was represented by items which would have been used by France and Italy for payment of interest on their foreign debts and for making payments on commercial commer-cial accounts. Aroused at the Republican display dis-play of economy, Democrats labelled la-belled the committee's action as an "undercover" attempt to hamstring the aid program. They served notice no-tice that they would attempt to restore re-store the cut. TRAINING: In Driving If a training course in automobile driving were made a requirement in the curriculum of every high school traffic deaths could be reduced re-duced by 5,000 to 10,000 a year, according ac-cording to Dr. Wayne Hughes, director direc-tor of National Safety council's college col-lege and school division. A safety council survey made among Cleveland high schools between be-tween 1939 and 1941 showed that effectual ef-fectual driver training reduced traffic traf-fic accidents by 50 per cent, the council said. "It is our firm belief that if every ev-ery high school in the nation would pui uuu eueui sucn a course we would see miracles within five years," Dr. Hughes asserted. Oftlcials pointed out that statistics for 1946 proved that mile for mile the 15-24 age group was a third more dangerous behind the wheel than any other comparable segment of the population. That group accounted account-ed for 33.8 per cent of the nation's fatalities in 1946. At present only 10 per cent of the 25,000 high schools in the U. S. have what the council regards as adequate ade-quate driver training courses. And only a part of the schools conducting conduct-ing such courses have actual automobiles auto-mobiles in operation. was displayed in dealing with the problem of inflation at home. Rejecting President Truman's 10-point 10-point proposal for fighting inflation by imposing wage and price controls con-trols and selective rationing, house Republicans offered an anti-inflation bill based upon voluntary agreements agree-ments for price reductions. With a two-thirds vote needed for passage, the Republican measure went down to defeat 202 to 188. The house split almost exactly along party lines over the bill, not one Democrat breaking ranks to vote in favor of it. "The President has asked for bread and you have given him a stone," said Rep. Brent Spence (Dem., Ky.) in summing up the debate de-bate for the Democrats. Rep. A. S. (Mike) Monroney (Dem., Okla.) dusted off another bromide when he charged the GOP majority with "setting up a straw man to combat the menace of inflation." That was the swan song for any anti-inflation legislation during the special session. Although the senate was preparing to act on the house-killed house-killed bill, there appeared to be little likelihood that the Republicans would be able to put through their proposals. Guard Strength Up Members of the U. S. national guard totaled 201,041 on November 30, 1947, a strength larger than that of the prewar national guard in any year except 1940, according to an announcement by Maj. Gen. Kenneth Ken-neth F. Cramer. Projected strength of the national guard on June 30, 1948, is 271.000 men, 250,000 of whom will be in approximately 4,500 army units and 21,000 in 365 air units, he said. |