3®ilmingtnn morning i’tar North Carolina s Oldest Daily Newspaper Published Daily Except Sunday K. B Page. Publisher _ Telephone All Department* 2-S311 Entered as Second Class Matter at Wilming ton, N. C., Postoffice Under Ac1 of Congress o>* March >. 1879._ SUBSCRIPTION RATES BY CARRIER IN NEW HANOVER COUNTY Payable Weekly or in Advance Combi Time Star New* nation ; 1 Week_* .30 C -25 $ .50 1 Month .. 1 30 1.10 2.25 3 Month* ......... 3.90 3.25 6.50 6 Months _ 7.80 *.50 13.00 1 Year . 15.60 13.00 26.00 (Above rates entitle subscriber to Sunday issue of Star-News) SINGLE COPY ' Wilmington News __ lc Morning Star .. -- 5c Sunday Star-New* __—-10c By Mail; Payable Strictly in Advance 1 Months ...S 2.50 I 2.00 $ 3.85 6 Month* .—5.00 4.00 7.70 1 Year . 10.00 8.00 15.40 (.Above rates entitle subscriber to Sunday issue* ol Star-News WILMINGTON STAR (Daily Without Sunday) 8 Months—$1.85 0 Months--$3.70 I 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 OS THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AND ALSO SERVED BY THE UNITED PRESS «— l l — - i ■ ■■■ ■ -- -ii. ■———i Star Program State ports with Wilmington favored in proportion with its resources, to in clude public terminals, tobacco storage warehouses, ship repair facilities, near by sites for heavy industry and 35-foot Cape Fear river channel. City auditorium large enough to meet needs for years to come. Development of Southeastern North Carolina agricultural and industrial re sources through better markets and food processing, pulp wood production and factories. Emphasis on the region’s recreation advantages and improvement of resort accommodations. Improvement of Southeastern North Carolina’s farm-to-market and primary roads, with a paved highway from Top sail inlet to Bald Head island. Continued effort through the City’s In dustrial Agency to attract more in dustries. Proper utilization of Bluethenthal air port for expanding air service. Development of Southeastern North Carolina’s health facilities, especially in counties lacking hospitals, and includ ing a Negro Health center Encouragement of the growth of com mercial fishing. Consolidation of City and County governments. THURSDAY. APRIL 17, 1947. GOOD MORNING Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in the execution of them.—Colton. Vote In Primary The time to register for the forth coming city election is past. The time fo’* candidates to file is past. The one remaining duty is to vote. The primary is less than a week off. ; It is in this balloting that Wilming ton’s electorate will select the candi ; dates whose names will appear on the * final election ticket. ; Nothing save illness or other serious ; circumstance over which the individual ; voter has no control should interfere ; with a visit to the polls next Monday. Wilmington voters on the whole • have long been averse to casting bal lots. On the other hand they have been very willing to criticize elected officers and condemn a whole administration. It is only fair to say that any eligible voter who stays away from the polls on election day has no right to complain of any official action of successful candi dates. The one way to justify com plaint is, after having voted, the voter finds the candidate or candidates he supported failing to fulfill pre-election pledges. Otherwise he or she should take what comes in silence. It would be well, considering the problems that must be settled by the next city administration, for the next council to be the choice of a large ma jority of the city’s electorate. Wil mington is getting too large, Wilming ton’s opportunity for advancement is too great, for a minority administra tion. Wilmington is its own greatest cor poration. No business concern, no in dustry, or combination of them, oc cupies as vital a place in the com munity’s financial and economic struc ture. The council is Wilmington’s board of directors. It must be chosen with the same type of carefulness and broad support that the stockholders of a private corporation elect its directors. We, the voters of Wilmington are the city’s stockholders. Remember that when primary day rolls around. The New Truman Policy President Truman’s Jefferson Day dinner address is still receiving atten tion from columnists and editors, i fact which may well be accepted as ar indication that he touched minds as closely as the dinner touched pocket books. The Christian Science Monitor goes so far as to declare the President “laid down several planks for a democratic platform in 1948.” One of these, the Monitor admits, has “boxed” republi can opposition. It is his proposal to aid people resisting Russian expansionism. “For those who oppose it,” adds the Monitor, “find themselves accused of going ‘soft’ toward communism.” Carrying its comment to a logical conclusion, the Monitor continues: “The republicans may well criticize and amend specific measures for carrying out this policy. But they will be hard put to it to find an adequate counter so long as tensions between Russia and the United States produce such war like sounds.” Sound reasoning, we think. And in addition to its humanitarianism, Mr. Truman has laid down a policy which has all the earmarks of being sound political judgment as well. Medal For Hull No man, with the possible exception of General John Pershing, occupies a higher place in the regard of the Ameri can people than the Hon. Cordell Hull. It is with true gratitude, we are sure, that they learn of the honor finally bestowed upon him in the form of the Medal of Merit with oak leaf cluster, personally by President Tru man, in a simple ceremony at the Naval Hospital where Mr. Hull has long been a patient. The citations note that Mr. Hull, as Secretary of State, made diplomacy “a powerful weapon in support of our armed strength,” and commend his services in the defense period up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Roosevelt clan probably will dispute the declaration that he is the father of the United Nations, but we believe the majority of those who know the course of events while the organ ization was being formed are in full agreement with it. Mr. Hull gave his entire active career to public service. After many years in Congress, w'here his voice was always raised in behalf of sound legislation, he was called into the Cabinet by President Roosevelt, as Secretary of State, at which post he remained until his health broke. It was he who created the “good neighbor policy” which has done more to cement relations between the United States and republics in Latin America than any American statesman in this nation’s history, since the Monroe Doctrine. On his 75th birthday he issued a statement from his hospital room set ting forth his views on the trend of world affairs. He reviewed conditions throughout the world without glossing over evil conditions even then emerg ing in the aftermath of World War II. In conclusion he wrote: “There is an overwhelming need to day for every one o fthe United Na tions, whether large or small to keep faith with those ideals of a brother hood of peace, justice, and freedom which inspired our wartime unity and cur wartime efforts to insure unity among us after victory. All mankind will be eternally grateful to those statesmen who follow this course un swervingly and thus demonstrate their courage, their ability, and—above all — their unyielding devotion to peace and humanity at one of the most perilous junctures in history.” Like most good advice his recon mendations have been ignored. This does not lessen their value. It would be well for the world if the General Assembly of the United Nations and the Big Three gathered in Moscow heeded them. Reynolds Sets Record To Milton Reynolds and his Bomb shell plane goes the credit of creating a new record for world-girdling flight. The time, 78 hours, 55 1-2 minutes. This reduces the time consumed by Howard Hughes in 1938 by some twelve hours, eighteen minutes. Hughes’ record was 91 hours and 14 minutes. Mr. Reynolds had with him aboard his reconstructed A-26 attack bomber Captain William Odom, war flier, and T. Carroll Sallee of Texas. The next question is when a rocket plane will circumnavigate the earth and what will be its elapse time, Air travel, despite this performance of the Bomb shell, is still in its infancy. But it has become a lusty infant, for. all that. With each successive trip the world, to all intents and purposes, , shrinks a little more. Jules Verne, for example, believed he had performed another miracle when he sent his fictitious character, Phileas Fogg, around the world in eighty days, i This .was in 1872. Nelly Bly. made her actual trip from here back to here, figuratively, in 72 days, six hours and eleven minutes, and what a stir Hearst made of that. A year later George Francis Train cut her time, making the trip in 67 days, 12 hours and three minutes. In 1903 J. W. Willis Sayre got around in 54 days, nine hours and two minutes, and Henry Frederick did it in 54 days, seven hours and two minutes. Then in 1907 Colonel Burnlay-Campbell re quired only 40 days, 19 hours, 30 minutes. There were several other trips, no table for reducing previous records, but it was not until 1931 that Wiley Post in his famous Winnie Mae, traveled the northern air circumference of the world in eight days and some minutes, and again over approximately the same route cut his own flying time to seven days plus. Then, in 1938, Hughes, over the longer route, set the record just lowered by the Bombshell and its intrepid crew. Bad Council By ARTHUR KROCK WASHINGTON, April 16. — Henry A. Wal lace. once Vice President of the United States, has gone abroad to build up opposition to the Truman Doctrine in the British Isles and on the Continent, the task being supererogatory in Soviet Russia and areas controlled from Moscow. On the errand he has already met and will meet members of other governments. In so doing Mr. Wallace has put himself at least within the shadow of the shadowed of the Logan Act, and Congress is full of j voices demanding that he be proceeded against for its violation. The decision rests with the President. But there are so many reasons, both technical and practical, why the demands are ill-found ed and why the course proposed would react heavily and unfavorably against its purpose that virtually no one in Washington expects Mr. Truman to undertake it. Among the tech nical reasons are these: 1. The Logan Act passed in 1799 and now in revised form appearing in the United State : Code as Section 5 of Title 18, bans what is termed "criminal correspondence with foreign governments." It provides fines and impris onment for any persons subject to the juris diction of the United States who "directly or indirectly" (a) carry on verbal or written correspondence or intercourse with any for eign government or its officers or agents, without official authority from Washington, de signed to "influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government. . .in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States: and (b) for persons under this juris diction who "counsel, advise or assist in any such correspondence." 2. The Congress which passed this act met while rumors were prevalent that Bonaparte had ordered the French Fleet to attack our coast and an insurrection of slaves was being fomented. Dr. Logan of Philadelphia, who later became United States Senator, decided to go to Paris on a self-appointed mission to improve the relations between this country and France, and if possible to prevent war. He saw Talleyrand and other ministers, was V'armly received by the French press and people, but this government resented his un auth >rized activities. Secretary of State Pick ering induced. Congress to pass the statute now known as the Logan Act — a law Picker ing himself violated when he fell from power. It has been invoked several times, but never importantly, and no prosecution or conviction under it has occurred. 3. No government of a country in Mr. Wal lace's itinerary is engaged in any official con troversy with the United States over the Tru man Doctrine. Therefore. Mr. Wallace is not violating the Logan Act in this respect. 4 Undoubtedly the purpose of his trip abroad is to build up foreign sentiment against the Truman Doctrine which could "influence the measures or conduct of other govern ments ’ to a point that might conceivably "defeat the measures of the government of the United States" in the areas w'here it is proposed to test out the Truman Doctrine— Greece and Turkey. But the Truman Doc trine is not a “measure,” Congress not yet having put it in operation. And after it has become a "measure," if Mr. Wallace pursues his effort abroad it would be very difficult to establish in a court of law that he has urged on foreign governments procedures to “defeat" it as such. A ground for action under the Logan Act could be found, perhaps. But it would be nar row and very insecure. The practical reasons against statutory pro ceedings, including the violent proposal that Mr. Wallace’s passport should be revoked, are even stronger: 1. Many who now condemn his taste, his judgment and even his patriotism would draw back in alarm from the precedent that might be created. Although he has been a Cabinet Minister and Vice President, Mr. Wallace is now a private citizen and a publicist. If it shoulo be established in American law that a private citizen, an editor under a free press guarantee, invites legal punishment if he goes abroad to repeat to foreign audiences criti cism. of a domestic policy which he has ut tered here, official abuse of the new power would become a new temptation for future American governments. And if the law were successfully invoked on the technicality that this private citizen had physically come in contact with members of foreign governments, the technique would be sufficiently suggestive of the practices of police states to arouse widespread protest among informed friends of the American system of government. 2. Because of this and other probable conse quences it would be bad politics for the ad ministration, and a heavy disservice to the im mediate objective and the Truman Doctrine it self. 3. A good many students of our history would see in the proceedings a revival of the Federalist thinking that produced the Alien' and Sedition Acts, which instruments of official.tyranny were destroyed by Jefferson, who, in this instance, had the assistance of John Marshall. 4. Signs are multiplying that the British and French publics are increasingly aware that Mr. Wallace’s influence on American pol icy is steadily diminishing. If these things are true, then his selection of a forum abroad will add to the support of the President at home, contribute nothing to the "defeat” of the policy when made, and assure a hostile reckoning in public opin i ion when he returns.—New York Times. WHOSE TEAM IS HE PLAYING ON, ANYHOW? /F YOU #SK mtrUMKTffS $tive devices for industry be abandoned at the same time. (Copyright. 1947, by United Fes’ ture Syndicate. Inc.)