The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 12

ft'4. ED I 0 I A SATURDAY MORNING, NOV. 30, 1946 Bo Glims Mr. Molotov Beams on the World Walter Lippmann LAW DEFIED ernment will not dare to put him and his lieutenants in jail, that the miners will get the support of the other unions if the government uses its powers to fine the union and to dissolve it, NEW LEGISLATION This Is the dilemma with which he has presented us. He has obtained a strategic monopoly on which the industrial life of the country depends.

He is too powerful to be dealt with by ordinary measures and he believes the government cannot use extraordinary measures. Thus he hopes successfully to defy the law. But in making so perfectly clear the real problem, he has made clear what must necessarily be the policy of the gov ernment. In order to make the existing law enforceable, the President and Congress must agree on leg' islation which will deprive Mr. Lewis, and all other monopolistic unions, of their monopolistic power.

This legislation cannot be passed until the new Congress convenes. But agreement can be reached in advance as to what the main terms of the legislation are to be. INVOKING THE LAW Simultaneously, the government should Invoke the full power of the existing law against Mr. Lewis and the United Mine Workers. It has not yet done so.

It should move for indictmentl under the Smith-Connally Act, and should prepare to prosecute the United Mine Workers under the antitrust laws. For in a situation of this kind trouble cannot be avoided by exerting only a little of the authority of the government. The prompt exertion of the full authority of the -government will be less dangerous because it will be more conclusive and more prompt than partial measures. Mr. Lewis has defied Congress which enacted the Smith-Connally Act.

He has defied the President who took possession of the mines, under that act He has defied the Courts which sought to construe his rights and the government's rights. He is in conflict with all the branches of the government of the United States, and the action of all the branches of the government is now necessary In order to enforce the existing law and to make preventive laws so that this sort of thing will not and cannot happen again. Copyright. 1946. New York Tribune, In It Is quite plain that Mr.

Lewis Is acting in the belief that the government cannot afford and does not dare to enforce the law. Mr. Lewis may conceivably think that he has an arguable case in the injunction proceedings before Judge Goldsborough. But he cannot possibly think that it was lawful to instigate a strike while the coal mines are in the possession of the government. Whatever the merits of the injunction proceedings, it is indisputable that he has defied the law as laid down by Congress in the (Smith-Connally) War Labor Disputes Act.

This law gave the President the power to take possession of the mines in order to prevent an "interruption" by strikes or otherwise of the operation of the mines. AX ABSURDITY There was a coal 6trike last spring, and under this law the President took possession of the mines. Mr. Lewis now pretends that he has a right to strike though the whole purpose of the law was to prevent strikes. His argument is that his contract with the government may be interpreted as giving him the right to strike.

But this amounts to saying that Secretary Krug signed away in a contract the very purpose of the law which put the government in possession of the mines. This is an absurdity. If Mr. Lewis' views on the Lewis-Krug contract were correct, Mr. Krug would have violated the intent of the very law which gave Mr.

Krug the right to operate the mines. So if the contract says what Mr. Lewis says it means, it was an unlawful And. if there had never been a contract, or if there is no contract now, it is still an unlawful act on his part to -instigate a strike. Regardless of the injunction proceedings, Mr.

Lewis is liable to Indictment and prosecution for violating the law. THE REAL ISSUE The real issue Is not the law. It is whether the government can enforce the law. Mr. Lewis believes, or at least believed, that the government cannot and will not.

He believes that the country cannot stand a strike which goes on while he is indicted and brought to trial. That would take weeks. He believes that if convicted, the gov- Even if the council members were unanimous in believing that inspection, con-, trol and development were essential to security, they would hamper the" international authority in much the same way that international air transport is now hampered by the struggles of the flying nations to outreach their rivals. Mr. Baruch and the government he represents take the view that the international atomic development authority must be absolutely free of the veto in all atomic inspection and development.

There is a difference of1 opinion at only one point on the ultimate step of sanctions, or war. Mr. Baruch believes that if some nation were to defy the established atomic authority and seize atomic plants within its jurisdiction, the authority should have the ultimate power of calling out the international police against that nation. Others take the view that at this point the Security Council should take over, to decide for the United Nations whether the nation violating the atomic agreement should be attacked. The Security Council veto could be exercised here, and if it were, the United Nations might disintegrate as the League of Nations did.

But the world would have been warned, and even though the United Nations could not take unanimous action against the bomb-making outlaw, the other nations could start making bombs at the same time and the aggressor would have no advantage. For if the atomic authority had been at work up to this point, nobody could make bombs out of the denatured fissionable material any sooner than the rest. The experts think that might take a year. If Mr. Molotov's supervision by the Security Council goes no farther than council approval of sanctions, the American plan for atomic control stands a good chance of being established.

But if he wants the international authority to be only a sort of committee of the Security Council while it is trying to do all of its work of inspection and development, there can be no security, and the United Nations will up with its own veto. The situation is more hopeful since Mr. Molotov spoke, but there is a long way to go. The optimistic view is that Mr. Molotov's proposal is far ahead of Mr.

Gromyko's. He said three months ago that the atom should be controlled by a sort of Kellogg Treaty. He recoiled with horror from the idea of inspection. But now Mr. Molotov can say "inspection" and smile.

Someone said that the Russian foreign "policy flows in a series of hot and cold spots, days of "yes" and days of "no." At the moment Mr. Molotov is glowing. "In a single day (our Thanksgiving) he accepted the principle of free navigation of the Danube, a key point in American policy for Europe, and plumped for a system of international control and inspec-' tion of atomic weapons. The Danube softening may be the result of the object lesson taught by the Americans. The fortunes of war put most of the Danube shipping in our hands in the upper reaches of the navigable river.

We held this shipping until re-v cently, to the inconvenience and tion of the countries downstream, "and everybody seems to have gotten the point: that if Danube navigation is not free to everybody, anybody on the winding line of the great river can upset the economies of all the rest. No American river is as important to our economy as the Danube is to Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia; Hungary, Austria and lower Germany; but Americans would have a 'taste of what these countries can suffer with the closed river if Canada were to cut Great Lakes navigation at Sault Ste. Marie and stop the iron ore boats that feed the mills of Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. But before the rejoicing becomes general, it should be remembered that Mr. Molotov has only said, in effect, that he is open to a deal, and the quid pro quo has not been mentioned.

This is also true of his proposal for control of atomic weapons. The sleeper in the atomic proposal if there is one seems to lie in Mr. Molo-tov's stipulation that the atomic control body operate under, or as a part of, the Security Council, where the veto sits everlastingly, like Mr. Poe's Raven. The official American view on atomic control, expressed and interpreted by Bernard Baruch, is that no system of inspection and development can operate under the threat of the veto.

If the atomic authority were required to turn to the council every time it wanted to order a gross of pencils, spend money for a trip to Omsk or set up a plutonium denaturing plant at Dnepropetrovsk, its usefulness would be lost in the endless series of quibbles and the petulant vetoes of powers seeking industrial advantages. The Generalissimo Signs Off Joseph and Stewart AIsop THE SPECTER HAUNTING BYRNES Leeside LEE SH1PPEY Breaking Japan's War Potential Forever in gambling "institutions bounce and the genial proprietors found that was costing them about $20,000 a month and 90 per cent of the checks came from the Los Angeles area. It seems that a check given for a gambling debt is much harder to collect in California than in Nevada and some fellows who are sports for a week-end only get exhilarated, cash checks too freely and repudiate them when they get home. So now the Nevada gamesters plan to shoot all such checks to Los Angeles by early morning plane, so they can be cleared as soon as banks open, INFECTIOUS Nevada men go the limit In protecting what they think are their rights. There are no speed laws so long as you drive safely.

One man who was given a $2 was so annoyed he hired-all the lawyers in the county strike Is an absolute disaster. The disaster is intensified for France and the Netherlands, moreover, by the cut in reparations deliveries of coal from the Ruhr. It is, impossible to question the necessity of this step, in order to bring Ruhr coal production up to a decent figure by getting the mines in. shape. But the French and Dutch Communists are representing it as a foul Anglo-American plot.

The worst of it Is that the cold and hunger caused by coal shortage will inevitably hasten the grave political tendency already apparent all over Western Europe. Anyone studying the French or Italian election returns must observe that the electorates are beginning, so to speak, to polarize around the extremes. Communist gains have been emphasized in the headlines. But in truth in both countries the extreme right, definitely tinged with Fascism, gained as much as the Communists if not rather more. SANITY DISAPPEARS Under the grinding pressure of misery, after the terrible experiences of the war years, men and women everywhere are abandoning the principles of sanity and moderation on which, a free society must, be based.

They are flocking instead to the standards of violence and excess. If this process continues, a situation must eventually arise in. which there are no alternatives but Fascism Communism. Already very disagreeable reports are current from France. On the left it is charged that Gen.

de Gaulle, in conjunction with the still powerful bankers and financiers, means to precipitate a financial crisis in the spring. The idea is that the crisis will offer the occasion for a sort of rightist coup d'etat. Those close to de Gaulle deny that he has any such intention, and this kind of plotting assur- Not nearly enough emphasis has been placed on the disastrous effects of the coal strike on American foreign policy. These were neatly summarized by two of the wisest observers in Washington one American and one foreign with whom your correspondents have recently talked. The American remarked grimly that if "the strike were much prolonged, we should simply cease to have a foreign policy." And the foreigner more specifically predicted that a long strike would produce "either Communist or Fascist regimes, probably Communist, in France and perhaps Italy by the summer." These men were no doubt overpainting the picture, yet the breeziest optimist must admit that the picture is very dark.

The infinitesimal margin of well-being in France is directly dependent on American coal. COAL. FOR EUROPE American coal is an even greater factor in the economies of Italy and the Netherlands, which will be virtually brought to a halt by the cessation of coal deliveries. In Germany food stocks are nonexistent; starvation already threatens in the British zone, and a holdup of food deliveries owing to transport breakdown will produce a catastrophe. The figures tell the tal.

In July and August total American coal deliveries to Europe were running around 2,250,000 tons monthly. Of this amount France received in the neighborhood of 700,000 tons monthly, while Italy got about 650,000 tons. The shipping strike cut deliveries by 40 per cent in September, and almost to nothing in October and early November. European users of American coal were already scraping the bottoms of their bins when trans-Atlantic freight service was resumed. Thus a coal strike following on the heels of the shipping edly does not seenv in character for a man of such rigid probity and somewhat touchy honor.

On the other hand, the Gauli- ists also predict an economic and financial crisis simply on the basis of the underlying bad situation and the impotence of a divided government to deal with it They further admit that such a crisis might cause France to look to her former leader. And they assert that de Gaulle would then form a government omitting the -which could hardly be done without some violence, in view of the Communist control of the labor unions. COAL MUST BE SHIPPED These reports are presented here, not as predictions of future events, but as symptoms of the atmosphere. At the same time, there are other and perhaps more probable reports of Communist maneuvers towaid power. The important point is that the tendency to polarize around the extremes clearly exists, and will threaten the whole basis of French society if it continues and increases.

The same holds true for Italy. There is only one step that can be taken to halt this tendency. That step is to slleviate the misery in which the tendency flourishes by using our resources to the full. Part of the job must be done by the Europeans themselves, but part of the job must also be done by us. American coal shipments must be resumofl and enlarged, as the essential first step: Some guarantees of future participation in rising coal production in the Ruhr must be offered the French, as compensation for the present cut which has so embittered them.

The French loan must be put through the World Bank with all speed. And in the case of Italy and other affected countries similar measures must be adopted. Copyright. 1946, New York Tribune. Xno.

cess of steel production not needed for peace be eliminated. This would mean, according to his figures, that three-quarters of the islands' steelmaking capacity be uprooted and given to China, the Philippines, Australia, France, India and Britain. Mr. Pauley, recognizing that the Allied aim must be not merely to disarm Japan for 20 years or so but for good, further would reduce the empire's merchant fleet, commensurate with what a disarmed, third-rate power ought to have. And he would remove every magnesium, aluminum and synthetic oil plant.

Mr. Pauley's plan will cause some" hearts to bleed, but anyone who wishes to see peace permanently restored in the Orient will subscribe to it. At the cost of many thousands of -American lives and many billions of American dollars, as well as much wealth and manpower of our Allies, the Em- pire of Japan was defeated. Reparations Commissioner Edwin W. Pauley, hold-ing the sensible idea that Japan must be permanently shorn of the power and propensities for making war, now proposes a sweeping program to reduce key Japanese iron, steel and oil industries and emasculate her merchant marine.

When the Japanese war lord hierarchy began preparing Japan for the war which brought her downfall, the iron and steel industry became the backbone of the military. Mr. Pauley recommends that the ex Producers, a Little Late Drop Appeasement Seeing isn't believing in Las Vegas. Even when you sea it you can't believe it A recent arrival from New York said; "I wish I'd never before used the word fabulous." A man who had been connected with one of Hollywood's night spots told me Hollywood was comparatively unsophisticated. The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce refers to its gambling houses as "our institutions." A couple of blocks of it are brighter than New York's White Way, and the thrifty city dads turn off the street lights there because the brightness of signs and windows makes them unnecessary.

SPIRIT OF LAS VEGAS I thought I caught the spirit of Las Vegas at the Last Frontier, a hotel which has two bars, a display of saddles in Its lobby, a casino and a chapel in which there are about 100 marriages a month. It has a battery of slot machines in the lobby, for those who can't wait till they get into the casino, and a wishing well which recently yielded $4500 for Boys Town. It offers weddings from $25 to $40, the latter including organ music, bride's bouquet and trimmings, and a sight-seeing tour. One of its bars is a mahogany affair which came around the Horn to San Francisco, served on the Barbary Coast and then in the Arizona Club. It was pockmarked with historic bullet holes, mementoes of battles staged by its patrons, and they were what made the late R.

E. Griffith, who built the hostelry, pay a high price for it. But the seller, pleased by Griffith's generosity, wished to show appreciation, so he had the back-bar refinished before delivering it and all the bullet holes were 'removed. GREEN LIGHT STRIP I thought that mixture of generosity, sentiment, old West atmosphere and readiness to let your conscience be your guide expressed the spirit of Las Vegas, but I hadn't seen much yet Everything "goes" on a couple of blocks on Fremont St It is almost solid with gambling rooms and night clubs. In one the buffet supper counter opens at 1 a.m., for the place never closes.

Places which appeal to the family trade close at 4 a.m., but you can see crowded gambling rooms at any hour. The big crowds are at night though, for Las Vegas Is the Land of the Ail-Night Sucker. LOS ANGELES MONEY Don't think that is because Las Vegas is wicked. The crowds come from Los Angeles. About per.

cent pf the checks cashed to new demands, they will have, made a start toward stabilization. Of course, they made their most serious mistake years ago when they agreed to the closed shop; but the peace-at-any-price policy since pursued has also been very damaging. Their latest proposal seems to leave Sorrell no face-saving exit from an impossible situation. The latter has to admit he called a strike he can't win, and reporting to hungry members that he has got nothing for them is something no labor -leader enjoys. But he seems to have no alternative.

In their latest communication to Herbert Sorrell, chief of the Conference of Studio Unions, the film producers take, at long last, a firm stand. They will not deal with Sorrell, they now say, till the C.S.U. takes steps to stop strike violence, accepts unqualifiedly the arbitration award of last December, agrees to abide by the wage agreement of last July, and promises to indulge in no further work stoppages. If the producers have really learned that in the long run, and sometimes in the short run, appeasement merely leads Raymond Moley; and spent hundreds of dollars to beat the case. One sees almost as many worn-en as men about the gaming i tables and more about the slot machines.

Most of the girls don't like to risk important money but will nickel the night away, i They run all the way from sweet young brides hoping to win enough to start housekeeping to habitual divorcees, but mostly they are folks out for a dash of uninhibited frolic with a dash. of risk in it Owing to an em- barrassing Incident in my callow youth I never have learned to dance, but when a lady dared me to rumba I couldn't take a dare. I fear her toes will never be the same again but she brought it on her own feet THE TIMES-MIRROR COMPANY NORMAN CHANDLER Preaideot and Publisher MARIAN OTIS CHANDLER Chairman of the Board PHILIP CHANDLER Vlce-Preeident and General Masai L. HOTCHKI83 Idltor RICHARD O. ADAM3.

Secretary BARKY W. BOWEH8. Treasurer Hos angcles EVERT MORNING IN THE TEAR DAILY FOUNDED DEC. 4. 1881 65th YEAR HARRISON GRAT OTIS.

1881-191T CHANDLER. 1917-194 OFFICES T1nt Bulldlnr. Itnt and Sprint. (S3) Wa.hlniton Offlee, 1217-1318 National Tnm Club Bld. (4) NATIONAL NCPRCtCNTATIVK Wtlliami, Lawrence A Creamet Chleara Office.

860 North aflehltaa Ave. (II New York OUce. 885 Maditon Avenue (17) Detroit Office, 8-238 General Motor, Bid. (2) Bun FVancttro Office. 681 Mrkft Street (5) The Tlmaa rennet be reteootlhle It anMllclteel aienueerlpta We eiyw.nt mede for wty MEMBER OC THI ASSOCIATED PRESS Ihe Auoetetfd Preei eiclueltel? entitled the me for repubhcitlon ef ell nw, diipetcltM erf filled to It or not otsrrwtie eredltrd In this ptper and t'tt the leril new, puMltnrd berna.

All rtKhte or recubllcetloo ef ipeclai diapatcnee nereln are elee tewrttd. A THOUGHT FROM THE BIBLE And they that knoh Thy namt will put their trust in Thee: for Thou, Lord, hast not forsaken them that seek Thee. Psalm ONLY WAY OUT The government, by a long succession of laws and court decisions, has so weakened itself that it can no longer perform its elementary duty of preventing disaster. And it has done this by failing to recognize the dis-. tinction between strikes that can be endured and those that cannot Flood Control a Wise Investment in the Future drain the national treasury of the union and still more weeks to drain the districts and.

locals. And the union and Lewis would comfortably depend on the Supreme Court to pay the money back. The miners will refuse, have refused, to trust the government to protect them if they go back to work. The union controls their jobs and would expel them for working. If the government did not see that the managers fired the men who would thus be expelled from the union, Lewis, under the law, would proceed against the government for unfair labor practices.

The government, in the beginning, did the spectacular thing of seizing the mines. Now it may do the spectacular thing of unseizing them. But that would merely continue the crisis. Some employers may give in to Lewis; others will close up. If all employers increase prices, a whole wave of new inflation will come.

Judge Goldsborough came to summarizing the paramount issue when he reminded the Lewis defense lawyer that when society attempted to protect itself against cold, hunger and disintegration, it was engaged in something more vital than a labor dispute. The weapons used or proposed In John L. Lewis' case illustrate how far government has dissipated its power to protect its own citizens. And this weakness will appear in an enlarged form as the issues now raised approach the Supreme Court. Suppose, as has been suggested, the government should try to impose receiverships on the U.M.W.

and its locals and districts. The collection of fines out of the till will take time, and the public can't wait until the union has been exhausted by daily levies, even levies as large as $200,000 a day. These look big, but the union can hold out long enough to paralyze the country. It would take a dozen weeks to be endured. It goes without saying that Lewis would never have approached this contest if the present court held the views of almost any earlier Supreme Court in our history.

Lewis contends that the Norris-LaGuardia Act does apply to a dispute in which the government is a party; also, that the Smith-Connally Act is unconstitutional. Nothing in the record of the majority of this Supreme Court offers any hope that Lewis contentions will be denied. The only answer Is legislation so clear and explicit that even the present Supreme Court cannot evade it, ious projects toward this end have cost $172,814,348. And we are not even half through. The Federal government and the county plan further expenditures of during future years on catch basins, dams and channel improvements.

These will be projects of obvious importance and necessity for the welfare of our community. The money spent will be a sound investment in insurance for our growing population, our expanding industrial wealth and the farm and residential sections of the county. Geographically situated as we are In Los Angeles County, in the valleys and on the slopes of foothills and mountains, it has been a continuing struggle to combat floods and uncontrolled water flowing down to the sea. Thirty-one years ago the citizens of Los Angeles County formed the Los Angeles County Flood Control District to cope with the dangers of high waters which in each rainy season created great havoc. To date, according to a report by Supervisor William A.

Smith, the var.