◆ SpookStack

i ay yee a ae SP 9m en erence i - - {teoree een ares 4 "EDITOR: Michaet “Straight CONTRIBUTING EDITOR: Henry A Wallace “EDITORIAL: “DIRECTOR: Bruce Bliven PUBLISHER: Daniel Mebane ASSOCIATE ‘PUBLISHER: W. D. Patterson EEE CONTENTS FOR MARCH 8, 1948 5 The Week Hollywood Quickie The UN and Palestine Oil.and the FPC - 42> Henry Wallace 12 Czechoslovakia 14° Revolt in the South: "Civil Rights in 1948 "Truman's Problem “Strategic Materials’ The South Today - 22° Books +, 27 Movies _ 29° Theater 30 Radio .3i Bandwagon wo ARTICLES: Norman Grieser (Chief), Joseph Lyford, Thomas Whiteside STAFF CONTRIBUTORS: Malcolm Cowley, John Farrelly, Lew Frank Jr., William Har- fan Hale, Robin Kinkead, Ralph G. Mar- tin, Claire Neikind, James R. Newman, _ Thomas Reynolds, Vincent Sheean, Rich- ard Watts Jr. WASHINGTON BUREAU: William Walton (Chief), Jean Begeman, Helen Fuller, Jan Hasbrouck DEPARTMENTS: Robert 1. Hatch (Chief), George Mayberry (Books), Harold Wolff (Business), Angus McDonald (Farm}, Eva Putnam (Foreign Press), Willard Shelton (labor), Charles Miller and Cecil Smith (Music), Saul Carson (Radio), Irwin Shaw (Theater), Jane Bedell (United Nations) ART: James Grunbaym (Chief), Lynn Chase COPY EDITING: Elizabeth Huling (Chief), Sally Howell, Ruth Tareov RESEARCH: Myriam Wilson (Chief), Elizabeth 1. Gardner, Barbara Greenfeld, Vasiliki Sarant LIBRARY: Patricia Kuhne!l (Chief), Fannie 8B. Sibley ADVERTISING MANAGER: E. G. Wood CIRCULATION MANAGER: Eric Shumway PUBLISHED WEEKLY AND COPYRIGHT, 1948, IN THE U. S. A. BY EDITORIAL PUBLICATIONS, INC., 40 EAST 49 ST., NEW YORK 17, N. Y. ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS * MATTER, NOVEMBER 6, 1914, AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y., UNDER THE ACT OF MARCH 3, 1879. SINGLE COPY, 15¢; YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION, SIX DOLLARS; CANADA & FOREIGN, SEVEN DOLLARS. Printed In the U.S, A, MARCH a 1948 wasminarox WIRE Tus, BIG domestic news this week is the growing despair of the Democrats. Following the Jackson Day-dinnet flop, Truman’s prestige took a further giddy decline in the handling of the Palestine issue. Party leaders are at last asking themselves if it’s possible to switch to another candidate. The prac- tical answer is Yes, but it means al- most certain defeat. It’s a repudiation of the party's own leader and record. The Roosevelt coalition is fast falling apart, Wal- lace leading off one wing, Southera- reactionaries—an- other. There’s no fun in any of this for middle-of- the-road progressives. With all Truman’s mistakes and in- eptitudes, they. feel he’s been right on | social legislation, the Taft-Hartley Act, - taxes, the Marshall: Plan and. civil lib- erties. Truman’s position now, is a good deal like that of Lincoln's succes- sor, Andrew Johnson, who managed to alienate almost everybody in a remark- dbly short time, some for good reason. The Democrats ditched Johnson, and the Republicans and the money powers took over. Things look good for them today, too. ERP will pass. What's happening in Czechoslovakia and Finland ends all doubt about the Marshall Plan in Con- _ gress. There seem good prospects that Senate and House will pass it by the April 1 deadline, with a” 12-month figure close to the $5.3 billion fixed by Vandenberg. When ERP was pro- posed, few thought it could pass in the time set or on the scale proposed. Many observers still feel the mood of the country is basically isolationist —war-weary, cynical, disillusioned. Russia, according to this theory, would have wrecked ERP if she had sweetly signed up. when invited to do so at ~ the Paris parley. But Russia didn’t. For good or ill, her course since the war has been nicely calculated to produce results in Congress the exact opposite of what she wanted. Amid sorrow over the Czechs, the ERP leaders in Con- gress can be heard muttering, “Nice timing, Joe, nice timing! Grab bag. Republicans are shushing some of their greediest followers for the sake of election appearances. ‘Thus, most of the wind is out of the Fulton Lewis Jr. drive against farm codpera- tives, which Chairman Knutson of the House Ways and Means Committee backed. The -co-ops have a lot of votes, it appears. Western states also are getting back a good part of their reclamation money, which: the power lobby previously blocked. Even so, two extraordinary grabs are going on, the success of which shows the postwar ‘apathy of public opinion. First proposal is to give offshore oil back to the states for private ex- ploitation, even though the Supreme Court has ruled this is a part, and an invaluable part, of the public domain. Wizened Senator Moore (R, Okla.), spokesman for the oil lobby, is lead- ing this fight. It’s about the same thing as saying, “Let's parcel out Yosemite National Park to the real-estate in- terests.” Second grab is the Rizley-Moore natural-gas bill, Here again, the na- tional interest would be denied and consumer rates for natural gas would be boosted, to aid the power lobby. It would also hamstring the Federal Powez Commission, set up to guard the consumer. Odd angle. A funny angle here is that Truman has made one of his characteristically inept nominations to fill a current vacancy on the five-man board (see page 10). The commission is bitterly divided, two to two, on the general idea of the Rizley bill. In- stead of seizing the issue as a heaven- sent opportunity to dramatize the lib- eral side, Truman has sent up the name x ‘New Reputlie|~ , i at ieee