THE NOME NUGGET
Published Monday, Wednesday and Friday by The
NOME PUBLISHING CO.'
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Entered as second class matter October 14, 1943. at the postofficc
at Nome, Alaska, under the Act of March 3, 1879.
Nome, Alaska, Wednesday, August 25, 1948
. |
BERLIN BATTLE LINE
(New World News Service)
i
Berlin is in the headlines. It is ideological deadlock
and diplomatic impasse between two great powers bat
tling for control.
In the face of this titanic struggle the West desper
ately pins her hopes on the Marshall Plan to pull the
fat out of the fire.
Meanwhile the Soviet Union continues to consolidate
and expand its ideological position—sabotage in Ma
laya, non-cooperation in Korea, civil war in Greece and,
China and the never ending infiltration behind the
scenes in every nation.
Besieged Berlin is a dismal picture—competing cur
rency, rival police forces, two hours of electric current1
and transport cut off each day at 6 p.m.
But a more precious freight than food and coal is be
ing flown in and out of Berlin these days. Blockade
breaking planes are bringing key Germans to partici
pate in the Caux conference for Moral Re-Armament
inSwitzerland. One of these, Dr. Rudolph Pechel, chief
editor of the important German Magazine, Deutsche
Rundschau, arrived at the World Assembly with a first
hand report on the struggle. “Economic and political
measures alone won’t save us,” he declared. “We must
promote swiftly and unitedly the great ideology which
comes from Caux in place of the great front of material
ism. A radio station director said they are flooded with
thousands of letters from all the zones as a result of the
broadcasts on Caux. The results exceeded our greatest
expectations.
“We must find and put into operation God’s plans,”
Dr. Pechel continued. “We need men trained in Moral
Re-Armament in every government office, industry
and labor union, just as the subversive forces have peo
ple for other purposes like the network throughout
Western Germany.”
Some people ask what MRA is doing behind the Iron
Curtain. Dr. Pechel says, “I know of people in the Rus-i
sian Zone who have begun to apply and spread this
ideology merely through reading about it.”
What has Moscow to say about the overarching ideol-1
ogy of Moral Re-Armament? On August 3, the London
Daily Mail’s Moscow correspondent wrote, “Apart from
its usual target (the war mongering capitalists) the
Moscow press has four main grumbles.” The second of
the four grumbles is the Moral Re-Armament program,1
called in Moscow “the re-armament of international re
action.”
In the focus of Berlin we find a new battleline. Not
between East and West, but between right and wrong.
In that perspective the basic issues are moral. Perhaps
that is why Moscow grumbles.,
THE SHOCK TREATMENT
(The Denver Post)
Early this month in Nanking, Chiang Kai-Shek’s
Kuomingtang party held a caucus on reforms which got
nowhere because the liberals held out for reforms and
the right wing of the party didn’t want any part of them.
The caucus ended with much talk and little action,
as has usually been true of attempts to clean up the cor
rupt Chinese regime. In China there have been few re
forms, even after it was unofficially made clear to Chi
ang that he would have to do. some cleaning up if he
wanted further American aid. Appeals to the honesty,
forthrightness and will for justice of the Kuomingtang
have failed signally. Now however, a reader of Shang
hai’s left-wing China Weekly Review has come up with
a new appeal, in the form of a dialog between a farmer
TALE OF TWO CITIES
and his landlord.
“How happy you are, master,” said the farmer ad
miringly. “You have no need to overreach yourself by
plowing and reaping. My age is much less than yours,
but I look older than you.”
“Ah, farmer,” replied his master. “What you say may
be right, but in my opinion, I am none the happier for
all my wealth now. The present day government is too
corrupt and too fond of nepotism, and will fail to pro7
tect your master. Certainly I shall die under Commun
ist rule, because you know in the past I was fonder of
squeezing money from my poor farmers than of any
thing else in the world.
“When the worst comes to the worst, could you save
my neck? You must say I am a good man.”
“Master, even if I do, what can I do when £o many of
my poor colleagues talk against you?”
The letter concluded that since Chinese landlords are
so afraid of Communism that they are laying plans for
the future, the government has an obligation to protect
them by thoroughly reforming itself.
Other appeals for reforms in China have fallen flat,
but this one, an appeal to the cupidity of the govern
ment and its backers, could have some good effects if
circulated widely and forcefully. Perhaps the American
state department ought to start whispering in Kuo
mintang ears: “The Communists will get you if you
don’t watch out!” If repeated loudly and often enough,
this might even shock the Chinese government out of
some of its feudalism.
LIKE MASARYK?
Fortunately, Mrs. Oksana Stepanovna Kosenkina,
“kidnaped” Russian school teacher, will probably live
to tell the truth about one of the most bizarre develop
ments of the present spy investigation.
The terrified woman who plunged from the third
floor of the Soviet consulate may have a story to tell
which will reveal the brazenness of Russian secret po
lice activities within the United States.
The Russians have insisted that Mrs. Kosenkina was
“rescued” from anti-Communists who were trying to
prevent her return to the Soviet Union. But, in our sim
ple way of putting two and two together, we come up
with a different answer. In our books, persons don’t
show appreciation and confidence in their “rescuers”
by plunging from third-story windows.
Somehow, the story of Jan Masaryk, the Czechoslo
vakian foreign minister who died after a similar plunge,
comes back to mind. The Russian mentality is clumsy
and not very original. If this suspicion should prove cor
rect, the Russian consul-general, and his staff, should
be given an opportunity to test their contention that
they are immune to American law.
JThere is no room for the N. K. V. D. and its methods
I within the United States.
Russia Stops All
Consular Relation
With United States
(Continued from Page One)
Aug. 19, asked the Russian gov
ernment to recall Jacob M. Loma
kin, the Soviet consul general in
New York, because of his activi
ties in the Kosenkina case.
• Lomakin is scheduled to start
home Saturday. The U. S. note in
formed the Russian government
that Mrs. Kosenkina would not be
turned over to Russian authorities
against her Will and rejected con
tentions that she had been kid
naped.)
The Soviet reply as published
by Tass. categorically rejected the
United States contention that Lo
makin and other Soviet officials
had exceeded their legal rights in
the cases of Mrs. Kosekina and
Mikhail I. Samarin, another Rus
sian school teacher in the United
States. Both teachers were in the
United States as instructors of
children of Soviet officials and
decided against returning to Rus
sia.)
“The actions and statements of
the Soviet government and its of
ficial representatives in the United
States in the affair of Kosenkina
and Samarin fully correspond to
the lawful interests of the Soviet
Union in defense of its citizens
from criminal infringements on
their freedom and civil righst,”
the note said.
It is apparent that the govern
ment of the United Stages not
only does not intend to stop those
actions of American adminis.ra
tive authorities by whom such cir
cumstances — to the degree that
American police invaded the Sov
iet consulate in New York on
Aug. 12—are being created but in
fact justifies such clear viola
tions.” (New York police entered
the consulate on Aug. 12, the day
Mrs. Kosenkina jumped from a
third floor window of the build
ing. She was taken to a hospital
by the police*.
The note repeated Soviet accu
sations that the federal bureau of
investigation was implicated in
the Samarin and Kosenkina cases.
U. S. ACCEPTS ORDER
WASHINGTON, pP)—Secretary
of state Marshall said today the
United S.ates will accept Russia’s
order for closing the American
j consulate in Vladivostok.
Marshall told a news confer
ence the Soviet action, announced
i last night as a climax to a dispute
over runaway Russian school
teachers is regrettable but not a
very serious matter.
The American consulate in the
Pacific port was so circumscribed
in his activities that he was able 1
to accomplish very little, Marshall
said.
I Moscow also canceled a 1947
agreement to permit reopening of
a former American consulate in
Leningrad. Marshall told report
ers that no progress had been
made toward opening the consul
ate there.
Along with this action, the Sov
i iets ordered the closing down of
| the Soviet consulates in New York
and San Francisco. That move
speeded up a steady recall of .Sov
iet citizens from this country.
Carefully choosing his words
Marshall noted that the Russians
i still have the Amtorg Trading or
ganization with headquarters in
New York for conduct of business
affairs in this country. He also
, said consular sections presumably
will continue to be mainatined in
| the Russian embassy in Washing
ton.