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Show " :WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS 7-1 Western Allies Place Berlin Issue Before U.N. as Negotiations Fail; Two Unions Barred From A-Plants I By Bill Schoentgen, WNU Staff Writer (EDITOR'S NOTE: Wken eplnleas art eisrtseed la theee aolemns, ! nre Ibeee of WnMti Niwimmi Union's bows Baalists and sal aseeeaartly at tale newspaper.) BLACK FURY': Peace Threat There was no war In sight, yet the East-West situation was starkly dangerous. dan-gerous. It was dangerous for the United States, Great Britain, France and Russia and for the United Nations which now had to thrust its hands into the tangled skein of diplomatic threads and try to straighten out the snarls. PRACTICALLY no optimism existed ex-isted among U. N. delegations in Paris. There was no reason for any. The United States, Britain and France had broken off negotiations with Russia over blockaded Berlin and referred the issue to the U. N. security council as a threat to peace. No hint of appeasement appeared in the western nations' attitude. They said they would reserve to themselves the full right to take whatever measures were necessary to maintain their position in Berlin while referring the case to the U. N. BRITISH FOREIGN Secretary Ernest Bevin told the U. N. general assembly that Russia would be to blame if a "black fury," the incalculable incal-culable disaster of atomic war," strikes the world. Immediate cause of this Inflamed condition in Europe was the blatant bad faith exercised by the Soviets during the 58-day series of talks in Moscow between the three western ambassadors and Stalin and Molo-tov. Molo-tov. After the three ambassadors, Smith of the U. S., Roberts of England Eng-land and Chataigneau of France, had left the Soviet capital the western west-ern allies made public a 24,000-word "white paper" chargmg the Russians Rus-sians with welching on a secret agreement by Stalin to lift the Berlin Ber-lin blockade. WHEN THE western nations discovered dis-covered the disillusioning fact that Russia was literally trying to pull a fast one In order to gain control of Berlin, further direct negotiation was patently useless. Thus, the issue is-sue was turned over to the security council. Not that anyone hoped the security council would be able to take any effective action. The Russian veto probably would nullity any efforts it might make. MOTIVES: Russian Washington believes the crisis centering in Berlin will continue at fever pitch at least until next spring provided it does not explode into total war before then. It is a bad outlook, of course, from the U. S. viewpoint. But for the Russians the coming six months loom as a golden opportunity to expand ex-pand their power in Europe and throughout the world. THEY WILL be able to do this, they believe, because American efforts ef-forts and sentiment will be divided and weakened by the election campaign. cam-paign. Official Soviet attitude is that American leaders will be so immersed im-mersed in domestic affairs that they will be able to give only a fraction Futility Unlimited II 1 1 11 aaifain 'In 1 1 I These are the three western ambassadors to Rnssla who en--gaged In six weeks of rigorous but unavailing diplomatic fencing fenc-ing with Soviet Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov on the subject of Germany and the Berlin blockade. block-ade. They were able to accomplish accom-plish nothing and finally left Moscow Mos-cow to report to the head of their respective governments. Left te right are: Yvea Chataigneau, France; Walter Bedell Smith, U. 8., and Frank Roberts, Great Britain. I Bill Collector Russia, the only nation that has not closed Its lend-lease account with the U. S., has been asked to pay up pronto. The state department. In a new note, called upon the Soviets to resume re-sume negotiations for settling Its long overdue lend-lease account of II billion dollars. News of the action was kept secret se-cret for two weeks for fear of up setting the delicate Berlin diicuc-alons. of their time to consideration of international in-ternational developments. That's why the Russians are trying try-ing to shoot the works now. It Is why they saw fit to make the virtually virtu-ally Impossible demand tor control of all traffic land, air and water-between water-between Berlin and western Germany Ger-many as one of the conditions for lifting the blockade which has throttled the German capital since June. WHAT IS IT the Russians want so badly that they are willing to risk an atomic war to get? Briefly, they want to get the U. S. out of Europe, and that means nothing else but that they want to control Europe themselves. The Kremlin, some time ago, rejected re-jected a proposal that Russia and the western allies stabilize their military and political positions roughly along the lines that existed Immediately after the war. ACCORDING TO the Russian plan tor domination of Europe, that arrangement ar-rangement would be no good because be-cause the Soviets fear the West would gain and they would lose too much. With American help, western Europe Eu-rope could consolidate and strengthen strength-en its position and possibly prosper to the extent that Russia's situation in the East would be endangered. Moreover, the Soviet satellites, influenced influ-enced by a free and thriving West, would be difficult to control. IN THE RUSSIAN mind it follows, fol-lows, then, that America must.be driven out, the European recovery program destroyed and the whole of Europe reduced to such a state of disorder and poverty that it would be unable to resist Russian demands. de-mands. r- ANYTHING NEW 1 Cooler Crisis 1 i HOTTEST QUESTION of the month in Washington for a while was not "Who will win the election?" elec-tion?" It was not "Will we get Into war?" It was a question of who ordered 96 gleaming, new 1948 model refrigerators re-frigerators installed in the offices of every one of the United States senators. Government workers were busily engaged in clamping the refrigerators refriger-ators to the office floors (at an estimated esti-mated cost of well above $10,000) before anybody thought to ask who had conceived this ingenious scheme. THE PROJECT Ailed for moving mov-ing refrigerators into the offices of senators who never before had had them and putting new ones into those senatorial sanctums that already al-ready were equipped with old ones. It was a clear case of higher standards of living for solons. Senate appropriations committee staff-members denied they had approved ap-proved any appropriation for senatorial sena-torial refrigerators, said furthermore further-more that there was no record of any such appropriation. RANKING NEXT to the riddle of who put the refrigerators there was the question of why a senator should need a refrigerator in the first place. Somebody said maybe they were intended to replace the pigeonhole as convenient spots to keep legislation legisla-tion proposed by the President on ice. NO ATOMS: Two Unions Mortally afraid of skulduggery at the atomic crossroads, the government govern-ment has acted to bar unions whose officers refuse to take the non-Communist oath from its atom bomb plants. SPECIFICALLY, the atomic energy en-ergy commission issued an order telling two CIO unions to keep out of atomic installations the CIO United Electric Workers and the CIO United Public Workers. The action came cn the heels of congressional charges that a network net-work of Soviet spy rings tried during dur-ing the war to dig up atomic secrets se-crets for Moscow. Also, the atomic energy commission commis-sion said, other unions from now on will be recognized officially as qualified qual-ified to work in atom plants only if they can qualify for certification by the national labor relations board. Said David E. LIllenthaL. chairman chair-man of the commission, all atomic energy facilities must be operated "in a manner best calculated to assure as-sure that those who participate In the program are loyal to the United States. ACTUALLY, UNION activity In all atomic plants, with the exception excep-tion of the one at Oak Ridge, has been curtailed sharply since the atomic bomb project was launched. Nevertheless. number of unions have tried to keep active In the hope that the curbs on union organisational organi-sational work would be eased In the future. A congressional committee had heard testimony from a self described de-scribed former Communist that the United Electrical Workers was "the largest Communist dominated or-! or-! ginlzatlon In the United States." WHIZ: Rocket Plane It wasn't the sort of subject that Stuart Symington cared to be very specific about, but the air secretary did hint in an Air Force association speech that the U.S. X-l rocket-powered research plane might have blasted through the air at a speed of from 860 to 1,000 miles an hour. SYMINGTON MADE this startling star-tling semi-disclosure in an off-hand manner. Enumerating achievements achieve-ments by the air force during the past year, he made mention of "an airplane flying hundreds of miles faster than the speed of sound, which is 760 miles per hour at sea level." AS ORIGINALLY designed, the X-l was supposed to reach a speed of 1,107 miles an hour at 40,000 j feet altitude and 1,700 miles an hour at 80,000 feet. AS FAR AS is known, only two ! X-l type planes now are In operation opera-tion by the government one by the air force and the other by the national na-tional advisory committee for aeronautics. aero-nautics. Five other X-l models are on order, or-der, and a new and drastically different dif-ferent design, the X-4, is awaiting trial flight. BIG LIFT: To Berlin Despite the smug Russian belief that Berlin could not be supplied from the air, the American air lift to the blockaded German capital has been spectacularly successful. DURING THE first 90 days of the great aerial portage American transport planes flew more than 200,000 tons of food, fuel and medicine medi-cine into Berlin since the Soviets clamped on their blockade In mid-June. mid-June. Air force headquarters at Wiesbaden Wies-baden said its planes had flown more than 15 million miles, through good weather and bad, along the' narrow air corridors from the western west-ern zone of Germany to keep the heart of Berlin's isolated western sector beating. IN THE FIRST 90 days 28,848 flights were made, with the air cargo including 125,608 tons of coal, 68,142 tons of food and 7,748 tons of other necessary Items. A typical 24-hour period in the air lift has about 400 flights carrying more than 3,000 tons of supplies Into the besieged city. EXPORTS: Up or Down? Predictions by the department of agriculture that U. S. grain exports during the current crop year may top last year's record by nearly four million tons was expected to give rise to a cabinet tiff over bow much grain should be shipped overseas. over-seas. There are two schools of thought Charles F. Brannon, secretary of agriculture, favors Increasing exports ex-ports to prevent posiible surpluses in the U. S. that might lead to an expensive price support program. SECRETARY OF Commerce Charles W. Sawyer, on the other hand, insists that grain shipments should be cut to a minimum In order or-der to keep food prices down in this country. He argues, also, that Europe Eu-rope would be better off to use its dollars for Industrial machinery rather than food. According to the agriculture department, de-partment, the world's big exporting countries probably will have about 10 per cent more grain to spare this year than In 1947-48 when exports topped 34 8 million tons. THE DEPARTMENT added that the U. S. "Is again likely to provide pro-vide nearly half of the total world trade." Last yesr the United States exported ex-ported slightly more than 13 million tons nearly 44 per cent of all the grain exported. PEARY: left a Note A United States expedition to the Arctic last summer found documents left there In 1905 by Rear Adm. Robert E. Pesry, discoverer of the North Tole, a recent state department depart-ment announcement has disclosed. The brief report contained no explanatory ex-planatory details. It said: "As Is usual on northern expeditions, Peary's notes found In the cslrn were replaced by appropriate documents |