THE NOME NUGGET
Published Monday, Wednesday and Friday by The
NOME PUBLISHING CO.
Nome, Alaska
Telephone: Main 125 P. O. Box 61k
W. A. and EMILY BOUCHER ..Ed.tors
$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.
Friday, January 2, 1948
One Of Freedom’s Fathers
•
(By Saul Pett—(/P) Newsfeatures)
MEET THE MAN WHO MADE HIS TRAIN
FRANK MONAHAN had a train to make. He had to
make it with a lot of baggage. He made it, but almost
blew a fuse enroute.
The train was the Freedom Train now in a 12-month
tour of the nation. The baggage was documents repre
senting about 700 years of man’s struggle for democ
racy.
Dr. Monaghan was chiefly responsible for getting the
125 prceless documents together. Historian and former
Yale professor, he went to work for the train’s sponsor,
the American Heritage Foundation, late last July. At
first it was planned to carry facsimiles of famous manu
scripts on the 33,000-mile journey. Then it was decided;
to use originals wherever possible.
The tram was scheduled to start from Philadelphia
Sept. 17. Manufacturers needed two weeks to make the
special lucite cases to protect the documents. That left
Dr. Monaghan and his co-workers less than a month to
get ready.
About half the papers were to come from the Library
of Congress and the National Archives, and that was
comparatively easy. The other half would come from
state historical societies and various private groups and
individuals. This frequently wasn’t easy.
Dr. Monaghan had known about red tape. During the
war, he was an air force colonel who headed a secret j
project to analyze the possibility of Germany being;
knocked out by air action alone (the answer was no).
Now, he has a book out—“Heritage of Freedom,” which
tells the history and significance of each document
aboard the train. But as to their most recent history, he
says:
“It kept me awake nights, but thank God not a single
item was mislaid, damaged or lost. We got most of what
we were after. No one turned us down flatly. Where we
failed or had difficulty it was due to a combination of
circumstances, and the circumstances often were har-{
rowing.”
One of those “combinations” meant that a certain fa
mous colonial document is not on the train now, The pa
per was in the local state archives, which was willing to
lend it, but state law prohibited its removal from the
state.
After much arranging, the state legislature passed a
special law permitting the document’s removal. Every
body concerned was all ready to let it go, including the
governor. Then the bill went to him for his signature;
He vetoed it by mistake. There wasn’t enough time left
to start the whole thing over again.
The- original manuscript of Woodrow Wilson’s first
inaugural address involved a classic snafu. The docu
ment came from Princeton University and made the
Freedom Train only two hours before it left Washington
for Philadelphia, where the grand tour began officially.
Meanwhile, an aide happened to hear Dr. Monaghan
says he would prefer to have the original Covenant of
the League of Nations as an example of Wilson’s work.
This involved permission from the Library of Congress
and the widow of the World War I President.
While these arrangements were being made, the aide,
without telling anybody, went ahead and removed the
Wilson inaugural. The train left Philadelphia without it
and traveled four days with an empty case.
“The empty cose,” says Dr. Monaghan, “attracted
more attention than the Declaration of Independence.
There was lots of hot speculation over our motives in
leaving Wilson out. But we finally got the Covenant
draft in.”
Getting Alexander Hamilton’s own volume of his
IS IT WELL-DONE THIS TIME ?
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“Federalist” papers aboard the train involved a long
oddyssey of telephoning and waning hope. After a dozen
calls, Monaghan found the secretary of the man who
now owns the papers. The secretary said permission
from both him and his wife would be needed.
The wife, it developed after more calls, was vacation
ing the Adirondacks. Dr. Monaghan phoned her for
three days. On the fourth, they made contact and per
mission was granted.
And where was the husband? In Donduras vacation
ing. Cables didn’t reach him. Four days later he sudden
ly turned up in New York, and that’s how the “Feder
alist” caught the train just in time.
Another Hamilton, name of Andrew, didn’t make it
though. He was the man who defended Peter Zenger in
the famous freedom of the press case of 1735, for which
New York City presented him with a scroll and a gold
snuff box. Dr. Monaghan wanted the scroll; he wasn’t
particularly interested in the snuff box.
With the case manufacturers screaming they didn’t
have much time left, investigation turned up the parch
ment scroll in the Pennsylvania Historical Society,
which was happy to lend it.
But in a highly legal paper, the owner of the Hamil
ton items had stipulated that the snuff box could not
leave the society. Dr. Monaghan said fine, all he wanted
was the scroll. Three lawyers representing the owner’s
family were consulted. They conferred and studied and
it was finally decided that the owner must have meant
the restriction to apply to the scroll as well as the snuff
box.
There were other odysseys, some successful, some fu
tile, but all had in common endless telephoning, tele
graphing and scattered parties of the first and second
parts.
“I even had to do some telephoning to get a certain
George Washington letter out of a bank valut,” Dr
Monaghan recalls. “Who was the owner? Me.”
When Russia Screams
(By Barnet Nover)
WASHINGTON — Not so many
years ago, so violent a note of pro
test as that sent recently by Russia
to Iran, following the refusal of
the Iranian pa ljament to •atiF.
the 1946 oil agreerrmn1, wo-j:
have been tantamount to a dec’.r
ation of war.
In those days, when diplomats
resorted to strong langaugc, arm
ies got their marching orders.
That is no longer true. The gur.s
did not go off when Andrei VI
shinsky made his unprecedentedly
savage attack on the United States
at the opening of the U. N. genera
assembly. Nor is it expected '. \
Washington that the latest Rus
sian note to Iran, explosively an
gry as it was, will be followed by
aimed action.
It would be a mistake, however,
to dismiss that note as merely ihe
blowing off of steam by the Krem
lin.
. The note charges Iran with
hostile activity . . . incompatible
;‘h normal relations between the
.vo nations.” The middle eastern
kingdom is accused of “treacher
ously violating obligations” and
vacticing “gross discrimination
against the U. S. S. R.” the Iranian
'Tovernment is warned that it must
now be responsible for “the con
sequences of its action.”
Ec%:n<i this threat—a threat it
would be wise not to discount too
much—is Russia's realization that
she has been outmaneuvered and
outsmarted by the Iranians, with
the indispensable help of the
United Nations and the United
States.
This circumstance is far more
Irksome to the men in the Krem
lon than the fact that because of
Iran’s action in nullifying the 1946
agreement Russia will not be able
to develop a new and possibly
valuable outside source of oil very
close to her border.
Russia is short of oil. Even if all
her oil wells were producing at
prewar levels, which is not the
case, she would still be short of
that vital fuel.
With her industry expanding
and her transportation system get
ting back to normal, she needs
more oil for civilian needs. She
needs more oil because she is de
termined to achieve a far higher
degree of mechanization in her
army than she had succeeded in
doing before or during the war.
Actually, despite the addition ol
new fields in the Ural area and
S.beria, and the exploitation o! the
oil resources of Romania, Austria
and Hungary, Russia is suffering
from oil hunger.
That is one, if not the only, rea
son for her interest in Iran. No
doubt, it was the willingness dis
played by Premier Ahmad Gha
vam to conclude an agreement
with Russia whereby the latter
was granted an oil concession in
the northern provinces of Iran,
that helped smooth the path for
the withdrawal of Russian troops
from that country.
The 1946 agreement provided
for the creation of a joint Soviet
Iranian company in which Russia
would hold 51 per cent and Iran
49 per cent of the shares during
the first twenty-five years of the'
life of the agreement. This com
pany was to be given the author
ity to prospect for oil in five pro
vinces, including the province of
A7 rbaijan.
Concurrently with the signing oi
the oil agreement, Russia agreed
to withdraw her troops from Iran.
This was another instance where
it was found necessary to buy
Russia twice since the Soviet gov
ernment was already pledged to
clear out of Iran once the war had
ended.
Evacuation of Iran did not mean
the end of Russian influence there.
At least the Kremlin did not think
so. Left behind by the Red army
in Azerbaijan was a Russian-cre
ited puppet regime. However,
once deprived of the backing of
Russian armed force, this regime
speedily evaporated.
There can be no question of the
legality of the action of the Iran
ian parliament in voiding the 1946
agreement. It was provided in that
pact that the terms would go into
effect only after ratification. The
members of the parliament, taking
into account the fact that the 1946
agreement had been forced on the
Teheran regime at the point of the
gun, would have nothing of it.
In taking this stand, they were
reflecting the national desire to be
independent, a desire which has
the backing of the United States.
THAT’S THAT
(By Bruce Guslin)
THIS COUNTRY'S Indim p '
icy is a national disgrace. Under the
Constitution, American Ir>di ns
are American citizens. But thrv
are denied rights and privileges of
citizenship. They are “wards of
the government.” They are not al
lowed to manage their own af
fairs. In some states, they are n >*
even permitted to vote, as a recent
expose of shocking conditions on
the Navajo reservation in New
Mexico disclosed, many are doom
ed to poverty and starvation.