THE NOME NUGGET
Published Monday, Wednesday and Friday by The
NOME PUBLISHING CO.
Nome, Alaska
Telephone: Main 125 P. O. Box 618
W. A. and EMILY BOUCHER .Editors
$1.50 PER MONTH $16.00 A YEAR
Entered as second class matter October 14. 1943. at the postoffice
at Nome, Alaska, under the Act of March 3, 1879.
Wednesday, August 18, 1948
DANUBIAN BLUNDER
(By Barnet Nover)
Andrei Vinshinsky, Russias’ representative at the
Danubian conference being held in Belgrade, has been
having a wonderful time rubbing the faces of the west
ern powers in the mud.
It must give him and his masters in the Kremlin par
ticular satisfaction at this time to lay down the law to
the United States, Great Britain and France. This Vi
shinsky has done again nad again since the conference
opened on July 29. Te did it with evident relish the fol
lowing day when he told the representatives of the
western powers:
“The door is open for.you to come. The door is open
for you to leave. Nobody forced anyone to participate in
this conference. Nobody forced anyone to come.”
The worst of it is that, allowing for the inevitable
Russian distortion, there happens to be a good deal of
truth in Vishinsky’s remark. The plight in which the
western powers find themselves at Belgrade is wholly
of their own making. They walked into a Russian trap
with their eyes wide open; in fact, they helped build the
trap while hoping all the while that it would not be a
trap but a doorway to peace co-operation and enhanced
trade between east and west.
It was Secretary Marshall who suggested last May
that a technical conference be held to regulate traffic on
the Danube, in accordance with the agreement made at
the Paris peace conference in the summer and autumn
of 1946.
Secretary Marshall’s intentions were of the very
best. Next to the Rhine, the Danube is, in relation to the
volume of traffic it normally carries, the most import
ant of Europe’s waterways. In all 1,725 miles long, it
flows through or touches eight countries—Germany,
Czechoslovakia. Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Roman
ia, Bulgaria and the Soviet Union (i. e., the Ukrainian
Soviet Republic).
It stands to reason that if trade between eastern and
western Europe is to be revived and expanded—the ul
timate success or failure of the Marshall plan may de
pend on whether this happens or not—the Danube must
be reopened throughout its navigable length to the free
movement of traffic.
To get the Danube reopened, the United States has
been willing to make considerable concessions. It was
announced that if the proposed Danube conference
were held this country would not insist, as Russia in
sisted at the time the satellite peace treaties were being
negotiated, that decisions be reached by a unanimous
vote or the Big Three or the Big Four.
To get the conference to meet at all, the United
States promised to refrain from using its veto power
and also to regard majority votes as binding. This open
ed the door to a conference dictated by Russia.
Policymakers in Washington felt that the risk was
worth taking, first, because the reoponing of the Dan
ube to navigation was worth a great deal, even if at the
cost of a system of regulation beneficial to the Russians
and* second, because a Danube conference would also
provide an acid test of Russia’s readiness to abide by
international agreements she had freely made after the
war.
It is clear from Vishinsky’s remarks that Russia sees
the Belgrade conference in a very different light from
the way this country does.
In the eyes of the Kremlin the conference is a heaven
sent opportunity to make the western powers lose pres
tige by forcing them to display their helplessness in the
fact of Russian pressure.
(All in all, the Belgrade meeting is a demonstration of
I HOME
I
western diplomacy at its worst. The only value it may
have for us is as a demonstration that Russia’s pledges
are meaningless, that her international commitments,
even those secured from her at a great price, are not
worth the paper they were written on.
THE UNSETTLED U. N.
(Rocky Mountain News)
The special session, in one of its few useful acts, has
made good on the earlier failure of Congress to author
ize the $65 million interest-free loan for building a
United Nations headquarters in New York City.
This was necessary to redeem an American pledge.
From some of the comments, however, one might sup
pose this guarantees the permanence of the U. N. and
of its seat in New York. Of course that is not the case.
Not that amount or much more money could determine
the life of the internaional organization. .
The U. N. is sick not because it is poor, but because
from its birth it has been poisoned bv Russia. Stalin
never wanted a U. N. he could not control. All the
bribes to get him into this one—including three votes
for Russia besides the satellites, and the extreme veto
power—have not converted him. They merely have en
abled him to sabotage more effectively.
Unless the coming showdown sessions of the U. N. in
Paris can strengthen the body, it will continue to lan
guish. If it does grow strong, Russia probably will with
draw.
Some of the U. N. members, who originally favored
locating it in the United States, now think it would
have a better chance if situated in Europe. They say
that would counter criticism, which is not limited to
Russians, of alleged American domination of the U. N.
They add that small nation delegations cannot afford to
meet high-living costs in America.
These factors, plus proximity for Europeans, caused
j the U. N. to shift its fall sessions this year to Paris. If
that experiment is successful, the talk of removal from
New York probably will increase.
Americans are far more interested in the survival of
the U. N. than whether it remains in New York. This
new loan for buildings, which would revert to the
United States if not used by the U. N.> should not chain
the body here if ever the members want to move else
where.
Most of the talk out of Washington about reducing
the outlandish cost of living is pure political hokum. The
last thing either the President of Congress wants is a
price break. Government—federal, state and local—can
not be maintained in the extravagant style to which it
has become accustomed on a low wage, low-price leveh
Let prices start slipping and the President and Congress
will be falling over each other trying to build a floor
under prices.
Salmon Runs Far
Relow Normal
U/P) Special Washington Service)
(By Bern Haugland)
WASHINGTON, (/P) — Howard
Baltzo, newly appointed chief of
Alaska fisheries for the fish and
wildlife service, said yesterday
that the week’s shutdown of Ter
ritorial fisheries was necessitated
by a crisis in the industry.
Baltzo said it is the first such
action ever taken by the federal
government. The shutdown of all
but a small segment of the fishing
was ordered Monday by service
director Albert H. Day, now in
Alaska.
Virtually all Alaskan canneries,
traps, seine boats and gill nets
will remain idle this week. If a
la‘e run of salmon develops, the
fishing season may be extended a
few days beyond the Sept, dead
line to make up for the current
week’s loss.
A series of interior department
hearings on next year’s commer
cial fishery regulations and Alas
ka will begin at Kodiak Sept. 15
and end at Seattle Oct. 18 and 19.
“But the situation has become
so serious that a mere change in
fishing regulations may not be
enough,’’ Baltzo told a reporter.
“Something drastic must be
done or the industry may pass out
of existence within a few years.”
The current shutdown involves
chiefly the lucrative pink salmon
pack of Southeastern Alaska. The
pink salmon season, which used
to start as early as June, began
Aug. 9 this year.
L.ast year the pack was at an
all-time low of $88,000,000. The
decline in production has been ac
companied by a price increase
that long ago took salmon out of
the cheap-enough-for-cat- food
class.
“Basically it’s a case of over
fishing—too much of all kinds of
gear,” said Baltzo.
“It takes big ones to produce
little ones—and it’s the big ones
that are being killed.”
Baltzo, who arrived this week
from Alaska, said the sockeye or
red salmon fishery, which has
also been declining, was better
than expected and about the same
as last year. The sockeye catch,
an early-season industry located
largely to the west of the pink
salmon areas, in Bristol Bay and
Cook inlet, probbly will outweigh
the pink salmon catch this year,
as it did last,year.
Baltzo, a University of Wash
ington graduate, has returned to
the fish and wildlife sei vice after
more than a year as operator of a
store at Wrangell, Alaska, where
he had been fishery agent.
Working out of New Orleans
and Brunswick, Ga., Baltso took
part in the shrimp research a dec
ade ago which resulted in vast
expansion of the Gulf of Mexico
shrimp fishery.
VANCOUVER, B. C. (&)—'The
British Columbia Packers, Ltd.,
urged yesterday that Dominion
and provincial gove r n m e n t s
“make appropriate arrangements
to prevent the B. C. salmon fish
eries from becoming another field
of disastrous experimentation.”
The statement was made in the
firm’s annual report which ex
pressed concern over power de
velopment on provincial salman
streams.
“If the experience of others
teaches us anything,” the report
said, “we should . have learned
that power dams and salmon . . .
have not yet been successfully as
sociated. on any stream in North
west America.”