North Carolina Newspapers

Utlmntgtmt Ifflnrnmg ^tar North Carolina’s Oldest Daily Newspaper Published Daily Zxcapt Sunday By The Wilmington Star-N^ws R. B. Page, Publisher_ Telephone Ml Departments 2-3311 Entered as^S^Tciass Matter at Wilming fon N. C., Postoffice Under Act of Congress of March 3, 1879._ SUBSCRIPTION RATES BY CARRIER IN NEW HANOVER COUNTY Payable Weekly or in Advance Combi Xirr. Star News nation; 1 Week _$ -30 $ -25 $ ^ 1 Month ... . I® I!" 3 Months - 3.90 3.25 6.50 6 Months _ 6 30 13.00 l Year _ 15.60 13.00 26.00 (Above rates entitle subscriber to Sunday issue of Star-News)_ " SINGLE COPY Wilmington News --- 5c Morning Star ---- *jc Sunday Star-News . --- 10° Bv Mail: Payable Strictly in Advance ! 3 Months ..$ 2.50 $2.00 $ 3.85 6 Months__5.00 4.00 7.70 : Year __ 10.00 8.00 15.40 (Above rates entitle subscriber to Sunday issue of Star-Newrs) ' WILMINGTON STAR (Daily Without Sunday) 3 Months—SI.85 6 Months—$3.70 1 Year—$7.40 When remitting by mail please use check or U. S. P. O. money order. The Star-News can not be responsible for currency sent through the mails. MEMBER OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AND ALSO SERVED BY THE UNITED PRESS TUESDAY. NOVEMBER 12. 1946. TOP O’ THE MORNING When God was seeking a man to whom He could disclose His secret counsels, He took one who possessed the simple charac teristic that he exercised righteous au thority in the home. In selecting Abraham, God said, “For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord.” , (Genesis 18: 17-J9) Keith Brooks One Needed Appropriation It has been shown in these columns that President Truman probably will have sufficient strength in the new Congress to support any vetoes he may issue. It would be well to know that he will also have enough backing on Capi tal Hill to assure passage of legislation essential in the progress and develop ment of the country, and not be handi capped by the powerful opposition in the appropriation of funds needed to carry on important public improve ments. There is need for the elimination of extravagance in federal spending, which reached astronomical figures under Roosevelt. At the same time it is vital that any economy program shall not go to a similar extreme. There is a middle course which in all wisdom should be the course adopted by Con gress. There are dozens of appropriations which ought not to be pared to the bone, in addition to those for the mili tary establishment and the national de fense. One example in which this re gion is concerned is the widening and deepening of the Cape Fear river channel. The project has been approved, but the appropriation for the job is still to be made. If, in its economy program, the new Congress should strike this item out or shave it below the mini mum required, the Port of Wilmington would suffer irreparable damage. For by the time a later session of Congress got around to correcting the blunder, competitive ports to the north and the south would have had time to absorb the bulk of the commerce which, under normal conditions, should have come from or left Wilmington for the ports of the world. OPA And Homemakers With price controls abolished on practically everything but rents, rice and sugar, the attitude of Wilmington homemakers, as reflected in yesterday’s Morning Star, indicates that the buy ing of household necessities will not reach the peak until inflationary prices are lowered to more nearly normal levels. The women quoted in the Star article are agreed that as they have done without so many things for so long a time they can still do without not impose new sacrifices on their tetailies, while supply is catching up with demand and prices drop. As accurately as can be judged, there is no sign of an actual buyers’ strike, but only a tendency to keep close watch on market trends. Considering the heavy advances is ♦ the cost of production, due chiefly to increases in pay which the administra tion has encouraged labor to demand —and get—it is not probable that prices generally will recede in any marked degree unless and until the forthcoming Congress enacts measures to curb labor. This is as essential for processed foods as for heavy industry. More About Atomic Control Philip Noel-Baker, Britain’s Air Minister, leader of the London delega tion to the United Nations General As sembly recently addressed the Assem bly on atomic control and laid down this proposition: “It has now become clear that there is no possibility of making atomic energy available to the world for peace ful purposes, with all the benefits that mankind could derive from it, with out at the same time making atomic weapons equally available to any na tion wishing to possess or use them. The raw materials, industrial processes and the fissle products of these pro cesses are identical, whether they are required for peaceful industrial pur poses or for weapons of war.” There are but two alternatives to a race in atomic armament, he declared. One is that the nations must “be pre pared to forbid not only the manufac ture of bombs but also the manufac ture of fissile material.” The other alternative is “for the nations to agree to some system of international con trol, which would be possible only if all countries were willing to open then frontiers and permit freedom of ac cess to the extent necessary to enable control to function.” In the first proposal, he noted, “the great economic benefits which might flow from atomic energy would have to be sacrificed.” In the second, there would have to be complete international control of atomic energy for all pur poses, “with safeguards at every stage.” It was his opinion that a draft con vention should be called by the Atomic Energy Commission with the obvious purpose of framing a world control program which would eliminate the atomic bomb from possible future wars. In some quarters there have been references to the elimination of poison gas as an offensive weapon, with the idea that atomic bombs might be simi larly eliminated. The comparison is apt in one way, but wrong in another. It is true that poison gas was not em ployed in World War II, but the reason was that both Germany and Japan knew full well the United States had carried out a program not only to com bat but to outdo both if either resorted to chemical warfare. Literally, it yas fear of consequences that restrained Hitler and Tojo, more than agreement in advance that turned the trick. With nations as well prepared for atomic warfare as the United States was for chemical warfare in the late unpleasantness, there would be danger that one or another might launch an atomic attack at any time, with what results the world can only surmise. The Star has thought that security from future atomic attack lay in an ample supply of atomic bombs ready for use in emergency. It is not now so sure that this is the correct solution of the problem. The wiser solution would be adequate control of atomic energy for peacetime use only, with enforceable restraints on all govern ments against the manufacture of bombs. Franklin As Composer A French baron, Guillaume de Van, mother was a native of Richmond and who was born in Memphis, has dis covered a string quartette composed by Benjamin Franklin. Though the efforts of Mrs. Philip L. Scruggs of the Radolph-Macon women’s college faculty, it is to have a hearing in Philadelphia, the city in which Frank lin spent most of his life. Of its merit little is known, or at least made public, but as Franklin was a contemporary of Beethovan, who turned out string quartettes of the highest merit, it is possible that it reflects the Beethovan influence. Baron Van found the score in a pile of neglected works. It later found its way into a Paris book store whose proprietor, a Mme. Odette Lieutier, told Mrs. Scruggs about it, and Mrs. Scruggs forthwith started a move ment to have it presented under sponsorship of the Franklin Institute. It will not add to Poor Richard’s fame, however meritorious it may prove to be, but adds additioal proof that Franklin was a many-sided man. As Pegler Sees It BY WESTBROOK PEGLER (Copyright, 1946, by King Features, Syndicate, Inc.) NEW YORK, Nov. 11.—Harrison Smith, a speaker at a book show had something to say about the effect of big incomes on young writers. He thought the effect was not good. At first, I was going to agree with him. Then I was going to disagree. But, I find that I do and I don’t. A man for his team would be Cervantes who wasn’t young when he did Don Quixote, but so poor that he lived ir. the garret of a brothel. He was so poor that, as Marcel Weber tells us in his great biography, “Cer vantes,” the master was on the point of suicide one day when a mouse stole his last morsel of cheese but, in angry despair, killed the mouse with an empty wine-bottle, aimed by fate, no doubt, and ate it up. Otherwise, Don Quixote would have been a much shorter story which would not have been a bad idea, either. As a matter of fact, I just made tnat up ana, as far as I know, there never was a biographer named Marcel Weber, but if there had been he probably would have told us something like that because biographers are the worst liars in the world and often give us direct quotes from people who have been dead a hundred years or more, they make a lot of money, though, and, excusing that fictional make-believe with which they dress up their Henry’s and Louies and Katherines, they are very good and worth every dollar they get, considering the time and reading they have to put in on a book and then the writing on top of all that, I know because, in collabora tion with the late George Phyffe, of the old Evening World, I did not a mere biography but an autobiography of Babe Ruth back in 1922. After I had chased .'he Babe all over the western wheel with the Yankee club and had nailed him for only fifteen minutes one Sunday morning after Mass in Chicago for the only personal touch we had to go on, George and I sat in his apartment with Spalding guides and records and the envelopes out of the morgue and did 80,000 words in three days. I would wait for the Babe like a private detective in the hotel lobbies until all hours of the morning but he wouldn’t show up until about nine when he w'ould come bustling in with a silly little cigar-box ukelele that he used to carry around for social eve nings, get a little breakfast and barge in on Ping Bodie, his room-mate, to catch a little sleep before time to go to the ball-yard. Then nothing doing, of course, until night when he would disappear again. He aid promise to talk to me on the train from St. Louis to Chicago, but instead he got into a game of hearts in a drawing-room that didn’t bust up until Engle wood that Sunday morning. Then I got sore at the big babboon because, after all, he was get ting $1,000 and 50 per cent of the gross, and he finally listened to reason and gave me that fifteen minutes. I asked him a few questions and when I asked Mrs. Ruth's pet name for him he said “Babe.” Then Meusial stuck his face in the room and said they were waiting to play hearts some more and that was ail there was to it. Long afterward, I was talking with George Creel about the difficulty of ghosting auto biographies and George recalled that, back in 1915, he went way out to Kansas to inter view Jess Willard for his life story and asked him what he had called a dog that he had had when he was a little boy. Jess said “Rover,” and that was about all George got, too. The^ just couldn’t give. This must have been a very fine autobio graphy of Ruth, in the spots that I did, at least, if Harrison Smith’s theory has any merit because we were having a gaudy inflation just then and I was getting $50 a week. Phyffe was way up around $150 a week but he was like Charles Dickens, who made an awful lot of money, too. Max Perkins, of Scribners, a great editor whom you never heard of, prob ably, because he isn’t a celebrity, told me that Dickens used to write those long-winded jobs of his in “parts” or instalments which were sold by themelves, not in magazines like our present day serials. He said that when the sale of the early intalments of Martin Chuzzlewit were drooping, Dickens and his publishers held a story conference, such as we have in Hollywood now, and decided that the way to hop it up and stimulate business was to knock Americans. Dickens was very good at this and up he went. The profit motive and wealth didn’t hurt Dickens’ delivery; Shakespeare got so rich that he retired and I have heard that when Tennyson’was under contract for a guinea a word and wrote “Break, break, break, on thy cold, grey stones, oh, sea!” the publisher want ed to use ditto marks and dock him two gns. Max Perkins said Dumas had a kind of story factory with a lot of assistants to do the hack work and just put in the hot licks and purties himself, like some comic strip artists who get so lazy after they pass $25,000 a year that they buy their britol-board already ruled in squares and just sketch the drawings from script done by scenario men and turn them over to ink-monkeys for finishing. It was told along Park Row in my time that when Joe O’Neill, of the Old World, went out to Dearborn to jazz up Henry Ford’s In dependent, Mr. Ford balked at buying custom made fiction from Kyne and Cobb and Mary Roberts Reinhardt, and proposed something like the Dumas system. Old Henry told Joe to get one of the staff men to write the doings and another one the sayings and to assemble it, himselfi He said it wasn’t sensible to pay high price for made-up stories without a grain of truth in them. Anybody could think up a pack of lies. I have been hedging away from the argu ment here because it seems to be such a yes and no proposition. In his cub days, Paul Gal lico used to sit in a cell in his basement in Larchmont and beat out fiction for cheap magazines when he could have been dead tired, or helling around on bath-tub gin but not because he was poor. He was very well off but he was a wolf for recognition and success and enjoyed spending the fiction money, which was velvet over his salary as a sport writer, for luxurious dresses and fur coat for Mrs. G. I don’t recall how good or bad his early fiction was but I am not second-guessing when I tell you I knew he would get there. He was a -writer, that is all. You can tell, usually. IT’S SINK OR SWIM • i6^*AV*«LM*e^**2M AlfA».?2fe«»«'Z&t/l&fii Italy’sFood Runs Short, Importing Needs Mount, As UNRRA Aid Nears End McKENNEY On BRIDGE 4k A K 10 8 6 ¥ Q 10 9 3 ♦ J ♦ Q 7 4 4k J 9 7 ¥ A J 6 5 4 ♦ 6 4 4k K 10 5 4k Q532 ¥ 7 ♦ K 10 8 5 2 4k AJ6 Tournament—Neither vul. South West North East Pass Pass 1 4k Pass 4 4k Pass Pass Pass Opening—4k 9 12 BY WILLIAM E. McKENNEY America’s Card Authority Written for NEA Service Peter Leventritt, one of the active members of the executive committee of the American Con tract Bridge League, visits many tournaments and is one of the most popular of the New York experts. He came to my office recently to discuss our campaign to raise funds for a new hospital unit for the fight against cancer in children, and at the same time he gave me an unusual end-play in today’s hand. Declarer played low from dum my on the opening club lead and West won with the king. West re turned the jack of spades, North won with the ace and played the jack of diamonds. East won this with the ace and returned another club, and dummy'i jack won. A I small diamond was ruffed by de I could tell Evelyn Vose Wise was a writer 12 years ago when I saw some little fiction she had done and sent to an agent. Mrs. Wise is no celebrity and never will be in the mock-modest manner of the dirty-book bums but she has come along nicely, with five books pub lished so far and, now that we are turning to clean, spiritual and reli gious stories sincerely written by really fine souls, you may be hear ing of her, she has a large Catho lic clientele already because, for some reason, although she is a Protestant, she has written several stories about country pastors of the kind called “little” priests. There is an author who makes Mr. Smith’s point for him, at least to the extent that her literary sin cerity has never been heckled by enormous returns or autograph hunters or night-club celebrity, and I can’t conceive that it ever could be. Unquestionably, authoring is a trade now and unquestionably this is a gold rush if not, in the artis tic sense, a golden age of letters. Notwithstanding inflation, taxes and all we who sell words in ar rangement on paper have been working the great mother lode for more than 20 years. Don’t wake me up; let me dream ROME, Nov. 11—{JP)—In the past, the tourists’ favorite description of Italy used to be, "Smiling.” Now, it could well be, “hungry.” This fascist-weakened, war-scar red country, which never has been able to feed itself entirely and never ate well, somehow will have to import approximately $300,000, 000 worth of food in 1946-47, ac cording to recent estimates. Where the food or money will come from is anybody’s guess, since the figure represents the dif ference between Italy’s needs and her domestic production and UNRRA imports already arranged. Besides, UNRRA will officially shut up shop Dec. 31, although it will continue delivery of goods al ready purchased well into the sec ond quarter of 1947. In wheat alone Italy will need to import 2,000,000 metric tons. And wheat is the basis of half the diet of the Italians, loving, as they do, their “pasta,” spaghetti, maca roni and other grain products. The 1946 crops were far above last year’s but there was then, and still is, tremendous room for im provement. In the first year after the war ended they were disastrous ly short. Italy’s own produce and imports in 1945 gave the non-food-produc ing Italian, who makes up four fifths of the population, an aver age of 1,289 calories a day. This compares with the 2.500 calories of the prewar Italian, the 2,800 of the German, the Frenchman and the Belgian, the 2,984 of the Engl ishman and the 3,288 calories of the American. The 2,500 calories received by the prewar Italian was the ave'age during the five-year preiod 1933 38 and, as noted, fell below the general European average, despite all of Mussolini’s trumpeting about building up Italian farm products. A recent UNRRA survey points out that Fasicism’s heavy sub sidies, tariff protection and artifi cial price structures did permit Italian agriculture "to share in the technological advancement of Eu ropean agriculture" between World Wars one and two. clarer, the queen of clubs led and overtaken with the ace. Now the eight of d;amonds was led and West showed out. North ruffed and picked up West’s trumps, winning the last in dum my with the queen. This left- in dummy the kinf ten of diamonds and seven of hearts, while declarer had the queen-ten-nine of hearts. East had to hold the queen-nine of diamonds and a heart, and West had the ace, jack and a small heart. At this point declarer led dum my’s seven of hearts, East won with the king and was end-played in diamonds. If West had played the ace of hearts, he would have caught his partner's king and then he would have been end-played in hearts. * * * As the cards lay, declarer could have made his hand without the end-play by ruffing out two of his hearts and discarding one on the king of diamonds. But the play given is the way it actually happened. 1 But, as a long-range proposition, Fascism hurt the Italian farmer, according to UNRRA, by: Making production patterns and price structures lose all relation ship to international competitive markets: Isolating Italy economically, thus impairing the Italian diet “quan titatively and qualitatively’’: Crippling once-flourishing farm cooperatives and suppressing farm labor groups: And by failing completely to solve the problem of the system of land tenure which today still has 42 per cent of all farm land in the hands of one per cent of the farmers. Religion Day By Day BY WILLIAM T. ELLIS HE MIGHT HAVE BEEN My memory is flooded at the momen with recollections of Colo nel T. E. Lawrence started by reading Lord Tweedsmuir’s chap ter his autobiography upon Law rence (it was Tweedsmuir, then plain John Buchan, who first in troduced me to Lawrence) Law rencerywas clearly the outstanding figure of War I. Lord Tweedsmuir speculates upon the possibility of Lawrence’s becoming and erpp^re leader or possibly a leader'$£*a new. world, had not his heart been broken by his Government’s betrayal of the pledges, to the Arabs. I know that Lavirence’s own de sire Was to retunrfto archaeology. Throughout one aHfcfternoon, in my London apa^Mpit, he told me the story of his^s fp and adven Doctor Says— NEUROTIC ACHES MAINLY ESCAPIST By WILLIAM A. O'BRIEN, M B In the face of insecurity. (a ’ .' or unpleasant unemployment* ' *’ man beings often attempt in escj'.'1' through illness. Neurotic ac„PI and pains are just as real as th'.'! which develop in actual ores-i* disease, but the treatment required is, of eoursse, different. Modern medical practitioners at tempt to determine as quickly possible whether a patient is ing with a neurosis or with an „' ganic disease. Patients with organ ,c co_ plaints are recognized by . e st ‘’ they tell and by thorough pm, examination and special iabo j* tory tests. Neurotic patients aj,’ have characteristic symptoms 0( one sort or another. Neurotic complaints usually a* present for some time w-thout progressing to recovery or ,d vanced disease. Naurotic complaints mav VJn from hour to hour and from d-' to day; in fact, many neurotic J. tients make a list of their com plaints so that they will not for. get any in telling the doctor how they are feeling and have !»:• Patients with organic disease do not have to make lists, as jj, ' complaints tend to become ‘pi> gressively worse or disappear with recovery. Neurotic complaints. SLiC^ t headache, abdominal pains, rhea, nausea, vomiting, rap,'„. heart, shortness of breath, a-' blurring of vision, may occur in dividually in patients sufferng with organic disease, but a cora. bination of difficulties in various parts of the body in the absence of organic disease is distinctive 0j a neurosis. Neurotics may have organic disease, but the two conditions need not be related. A neurotic patient with gallstone colic will have his colic relieved bv removal of the gallbladder and stones, but his neurosis will still be a problem. Neurotic patients should cot expect physicians to make endless tests to discover the cause of the:: difficulty. It is much better for them to spend their time and money telling the physician what is worrying them so that he can help them. A young veteran who developed signs of heart trouble due to anxi ety over his job was given an ex amination by his physician at the first visit and was told he was or ganically sound. When his physi cian learned what was worrying him, he urged him to go back to work without fear of injuring his heart, but to come back for help in dispelling his anxiety. Such advice is good snd should be followed unquestioningly by the neurotic patient. QUESTION: Will penicillin help a patient who has varicose ulceis’ My father has had an ulcerated leg for years, and vein injections have not helped him. ANSWER: Penicillin will de stroy certain germs in the ulcer, but many leg ulcers which are difficult to treat do not get well until the entire external vein sys tem draining the leg and thigh is tures, as he never later narrate: it in print. What an expe.ief.ee that was, to hear hot and fres3 from a hero's own liPs such 1 matchless epic! I wrote, for be New York Hearld and its syndics e the first story ever printed »h<® Lawrence; but it was a cold liftless thing that came from my inade quate pen. Lawrence was a brilliant mar., rare vision and strong h"-0'1 principal: his mo'her wai * missionary to China. He seeW devoid of ordinary ambition. H had he remained unbroken,^ * romantic personality might “ * challenged the veterans of th* ^ to a crusade for peace and such as the statesmen and pt>-;;‘‘ cians of Europe so coir.p e!' bungled. Ah! The might-havebeem in God’s great opportunities! For great lives we thank Tk« O Lord; and we confess »ur e#l" mon sin that they have not <*< greater. Help us each t° limit for Thee and Thy *°r Amen. WE SAY by STAN J COUINS « LJ'^ Ryot> Mkff :!80NDUMMYCUXtf plggncy The popular fallacy that dummv cl®’ * are set at 8:18 In commemorition o Abraham Lincoln’s death is 'arorre^j Lincoln was shot at 10:10 P.M. «:,d 1 bthe following morning at 7:o0. Du®®. blocks are set at 8:18 to allow more ! space on the face of the clock lor a vertising purposes.