Churchill criticizes Russia, Cronkite says goodbye: News Journal archives, week of March 5

"Pages of history" features excerpts from The News Journal archives including the Wilmington Morning News and the Evening Journal.

March 6, 1946, Wilmington Morning News

Churchill urges U.S.-British military pact; charges Russia is menace to world peace

Winston Churchill called for a virtual Anglo-American military alliance yesterday with a blunt warning against what he termed Russia’s desire for “indefinite expansion” of its “power and doctrines.”

Asserting “a shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory,” the former British Prime Minister declared in an address at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri during a joint appearance with President Harry Truman.

“Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international organization intend to do in the immediate future, or what are the limits, if any, to their expansive and proselyting tendencies,” he said.

Britain’s wartime leader gravely declared that prevention of another great war “can only be achieved by reaching now, in 1946, a good understanding on all points with Russia under the general authority of the United Nations Organization.”…

“From what I have seen of our Russian friends and allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than military weakness,” he said….

Recent news about Russia's invasion:As war in Ukraine continues, US officials warn Beijing to stay out of it

March 6, 1981, Evening Journal

Tonight marks end of an era; Walter Cronkite will say his last ‘that’s the way it is’

After tonight, the world will be a little bit different. No longer will Walter Cronkite be around to assure us – as he has done for the past 19 years – “that’s the way it is” as he closes the nightly CBS Evening News.

At the end of tonight’s newscast, Cronkite is putting himself out to pasture. He’s leaving the anchorman post to follow less strenuous pursuits at CBS News, including hosting its prime-time science series, “Universe,” this summer.

Here is a man who has become a father figure for an entire nation, whose recounting each day’s events has come to be seen as the way things actually took place, whose perceived image as the country’s most trusted man has been carefully guarded.

Cronkite’s reputation for putting the chaos of the world in electronic perspective, thus reassuring viewers that there will be a tomorrow, was earned in November 1963. In shirtsleeves, he appeared on the nation’s television screens the afternoon of Nov. 22 to tell us President John F. Kennedy had been shot by an assassin. Over the next several days, with dignity and sensitivity, Cronkite guided his network’s coverage of the aftermath and mourning.

Because of that exemplary performance, a generation of Americans came to accept him as a member of the family, the trusted uncle who could be counted on in times of stress….

March 8, 1965, Wilmington Morning News

Clubs, gas batter praying blacks; Alabama marchers beaten

Selma, Alabama – State troopers and mounted deputies, charging behind a barrage of tear gas, attacked 600 Black marchers with clubs yesterday and drove them bleeding and screaming through the streets of Selma.

Troopers and possemen, under orders from Gov. George C. Wallace to stop the Black “walk for freedom” to Montgomery, attacked the blacks as they knelt to pray on a bridge at the edge of the business district.

Deputies on horseback chased the choking, bloody blacks nearly a mile, clubbing them as they ran. At least 67 persons were wounded and scores left gasping by tear gas.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., persuaded by his aides not to lead yesterday’s ill-fated march, announced in Atlanta that he would lead a “renewed” march from Selma to Montgomery Tuesday, “in spite of the dangers.”

Among the injured was John Lewis, chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee….

At a mass meeting last night, one of Dr. King’s aides told 600 blacks, many wrapped in bandages, that “if we stop now, we go back to yesterday, but yesterday is too miserable to live. We can’t go back now.”

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March 10, 1993, The News Journal

Dial tone cost to jump 40 percent, water rates to soar

Beginning today, Diamond State Telephone Co. residential customers will be paying 40 percent more for their dial tone.

The increase, from $8.23 to $11.60 a month, will give Diamond State $10.4 million more in annual revenues.

The hike is temporary while the Delaware Public Service Commission continues its deliberations in a rate case in which the phone company seeks to raise its annual revenues by more than $13.6 million…..

Customers of Wilmington Suburban Water Corp. are facing water rate hikes totaling 60 percent during the next five years as the utility spends $28 million to upgrade its plant to comply with the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.

Today’s typical residential water bill of $175 per year would increase to $300 by 1997….

Reach reporter Ben Mace at rmace@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Russia criticized, Cronkite's farewell: News Journal archives March 5