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Show I WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS Fighting Truman Gets Democratic lamination, Sails Special Session; Barkley Selected as Running Hate ' By Bill Schoentgen, WNU Stafi Writer (EDITOR'S NOTE: When opinions are expressed in these columns, they are those of Western Newspaper Union's news analysts and not neoessarily of this newspaper.) j PERSHING: Taps Sounds Gen. John J. (Blackjack) Pershing, Persh-ing, who led American troops tc victory in World War I., is dead a the age of 87. The aged former chief of stafl had been ill since February, 1938, when he was stricken at Tucson, Ariz., by a form of rheumatism which affected his heart muscles. He came close to dying at thai time, but rallied with a display o fighting spirit which amazed his physicians. Since then he had lived at Walter Reed hospital in Washington, Wash-ington, D. C. Death was caused by a blood clol which reached his lung. At Pershing's Persh-ing's bedside when death came were his son, Warren; his sister, Miss May Pershing, and his longtime long-time physician, Maj. Gen. Shelley Marietta. Long the idol of a grateful nation, Pershing held the rank of general of the armies, a title conferred on only four other American soldiers, Washington,- Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan. He outranked such contemporary con-temporary five-star generals as George C. Marshall, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Douglas Mac-Arthur. Mac-Arthur. Their title is general of the army. Pershing won his greatest fame as commander-in-chief of the American expeditionary force in World War I. Appointed to that post in 1917, he took personal command of the American troops sent to France. He almost immediately imme-diately became involved in a dispute dis-pute with other Allied commanders who wanted to break up the American army and use it to reinforce rein-force the French and British armies wherever necessary. Pershing Persh-ing flatly refused to let his troops lose their identity. Born Sept. 13, 1860, in the frontier fron-tier town of Laclede, Mo., Pershing Persh-ing was graduated from West Point when he was 26. He became a sec- ( ? 'Yv "r! " ' w Hiim'iny - fpwwtnw jffwMypypssre-wyty lwwsps M . ? - '1 X '. V- - - I i ' " i ' f ' ' ' , ' - - Truman 'WE ACCEPT! ' Barkley In Fighting Mood Born in Log Cabin ing senator from Paducah, Ky., for the vice presidency. The President's call for a special session provided a dramatic and startling climax to the 30th convention, conven-tion, which had been marked by bitter debate over ferocious family differences. The party had been ripped by infighting in-fighting between northern progressives progres-sives and southern conservatives over the issue of equal civil rights for Negroes. One-half of the Alabama Ala-bama delegation 13 of the 26 votes and the entire Mississippi delegation of 22 had stormed out of the convention amid boos, cheers and a great pushing and shoving. This was the high point of . the widely-heralded southern revolt, although al-though a rump convention was called to meet in Birmingham, Ala. ' - - ' i " ' 'V 1 I, 4 ;x ' f ' I The PHILADELPHIA STORY Truman - Barkley If the Democrats hadn't known before their convention that President Presi-dent Harry Truman was their man they found out on the steaming Wednesday when their political show slammed through to a smashing, smash-ing, triumphant finish. Harry Truman told them so, after the enterprising liberal forces of the party had spent all that Wednesday in the 105-degree heat of convention hall proving it beyond be-yond any doubt. It looked like the Democratic party might have been completely i revitalized in 12 tense hours on that last day of the convention, ending a period during which the Democrats' morale and will to win slowly had been ossifying. The revitalization came as a result re-sult of two potent factors which actually could be reduced to one President Truman's influence. In the first place, in adopting the strong, positive civil rights plank in the platform the party not only repudiated the idea and spirit of reaction but also dealt an extremely sharp and real slap to the hands of the southern wing which had tried, at times almost savagely, to produce a cleavage within the party. That action, closely followed by the nomination of President Truman Tru-man to run for re-election and the nomination of Sen. Alben Barkley Df Kentucky by acclamation for the vice-presidential spot on the ticket added another solid timber to the structure that the liberal elements Df the party were fighting so hard to build. Those developments were, in themselves, a complete and victorious vic-torious proof that the Democrats this year intended to bring themselves them-selves before the American public as a responsible, cohesive party that would be striving for nothing less than total victory in the November No-vember election. But it remained for President Truman to give the whole affair a significance that could not be Ignored. GENERAL PERSHING Last Battle ond lieutenant in the sixth U. S. cavalry and launched a career in soldiering to which he devoted his entire life. He fought Indians in the American west, Spaniards in Cuba, Moro tribesmen in the Philippines, Mexican bandits under un-der Pancho Villa on the U. S.Mexican S.-Mexican border and Germans in France. Throughout World War II, Pershing Persh-ing received a full report twice a month from General Marshall, his aide of 1917.. -Although old and feeble, the general followed daily developments closely from his hospital hos-pital room,' paying particular attention at-tention to "my boys," who included Generals Marshall, Eisenhower, and George S. Patton Jr. Discord Flares Discord prevailed long before the 1,596 delegates from the 48 states and territories gathered in stifling, steaming Philadelphia for the quadrennial convention. Dissident factions of the party rallied behind a concerted drive to draft Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower as the party's standard bearer. "Ike," however, removed himself from the race with his third and final insistence that he "would not accept the nomination." The day after the Eisenhower boom collapsed, the New Deal efforts ef-forts to oppose Mr. Truman with j Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas also blew up. Douglas, whom the President had wanted for his running mate, flatly refused to be considered and also knocked himself out of the vice presidential running. After Douglas declined to enter the presidential race, Senator Pepper of Florida announced his candidacy with the backing of the New Deal wing, but his bid was not considered very seriously. Civil Rights After seven days of wrangling, a platform pledging the Democratic party more specifically than ever before to work for basic constitutional constitu-tional civil rights was adopted after a floor fight which proved rather 1 tame in view of the anticipated knock-down, drag-out battle. The platform calls on congress to support guarantees of: "The right of full and equal political po-litical participation" meaning anti-poll tax legislation. "The right to equal opportunity of employment" another way of promising a fair employment practices prac-tices act. "The right of security of person" meaning a federal anti-lynch law. "The right of equal treatment in the service and defense of our nation" na-tion" meaning the end of segregation segrega-tion in the armed forces. The long-heralded southern revolt, re-volt, however, failed to develop into the Dixie-wide proportions predicted. Only Mississippi's 22 delegates and 13 of Alabama's 26 stalked out of the convention in protest against President Truman's nomination and adoption of the strong civil rights plank. However, 263 remaining southern delegates registered that area's protest by voting for the presidential presiden-tial nomination of Sen. Richard B. Russell of Georgia. Size of the protest pro-test vote indicated the Democratic party still has a problem on its hands in the South. CROPS: Record Output Barring a major crop disaster, the nation will harvest another bumper crop this year, with indications indi-cations pointing to a general crop production which may surpass that of the outstanding year of 1942 and the recordset in 1946. Acreage in crops is among the largest in recent years and yield prospects are good for most crops, agriculture department spokesmen said, on the basis of July 1 conditions. condi-tions. An all-time record corn crop of 3,328,862,000 bushels was forecast although corn, the largest feed crop, still faces such hazards as a dry, hot August or an early frost. Previous record was 3,287,927,000 bushels in 1946. The wheat crop prospect of 1,241,-751,000 1,241,-751,000 bushels represents a gain of 4 per cent from earlier forecasts. If that amount is harvested, it will rank as the second largest crop in history. Rice will set a new acreage record rec-ord and nearly equal last year's record output. Oats and barley will be well above average crops. Bumper crop prospects are not expected to mean any immediate increase in meat supplies or any noticeable decrease in meat prices but the record harvest should mean larger meat supplies in the future. Fighting Finish It was a far cry from a love test as the Democratic clans, feuding for many months, met in the City of Brotherly Love for their 30th national convention. After three days of strife and bickering, the conclave came to a close as a fighting President Truman Tru-man triumphantly accepted his party's nomination for the presidency presi-dency and then rocked Democrats and Republicans alike with an instant in-stant summons to the 80th congress to return for a special session July 26. The convention, perhaps the most bitterly divided since 1860 and 1924, ended with a political explosion ex-plosion detonated by the quiet man from Independence, Mo. The explosion ex-plosion startled even the regular members of his own party who had engineered the nomination of Mr. Truman to the presidency. The Democrats pinned their November No-vember election hopes on a ticket of Harry S. Truman and AJben W. Barkley. It was the 64-year-old modest, low-voiced former senator from Missouri, who had succeeded to the office upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945, for the presidency. And it was the 70-year-old, soft-speaking, cdmpromis- |