Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that President Truman, in a speech at a Navy Day celebration in Central Park in New York before a million people, declared that the United States would maintain a strong Navy and Air Force to preserve the peace in the world. His twelve-point foreign policy statement, his first since taking office, included favor toward outlawing of the atomic bomb and reaffirmation of faith in the international organization created in San Francisco in June. He disclosed that scientific information, not inclusive of atomic secrets, would be exchanged soon in talks with other nations.

The President also stated that the United States would not recognize any government imposed by force anywhere in the world, interpreted as a reference to the Balkans and the Soviet-dominated governments there.

It was indicated separately that Ambassador to Russia Averill Harriman had sent a message from President Truman to Premier Stalin, the contents of which were not disclosed. The aim of the foreign policy statement was to attempt to improve ailing relations between the West and the Soviets since the breakdown of the London Foreign Ministers Conference in September.

The 45,000-ton aircraft carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt was also commissioned by the President during ceremonies at the New York Navy Yard.

As set forth in conjunction with The News of October 27 and 28, 1937, the Cuban Missile Crisis entered its twelfth, penultimate, and most dangerous day on Saturday, October 27, 1962. On Saturday morning, a communique was received in Washington from Moscow, adding to the conditions set forth in the letter of the previous day believed to be from Chairman Khrushchev, agreeing to removal of the missiles from Cuba provided the United States would agree not to invade Cuba or assist any other state in such an invasion. The new message, however, added the condition that the United States would have to remove the Jupiter missiles in Turkey. While these missiles were obsolete, having been replaced by Polaris submarines in the Mediterranean, and were scheduled for removal anyway, the Kennedy Administration did not want to set the precedent of bargaining bases for bases. So, the condition was deemed unacceptable.

The crisis, with an air strike set for Monday morning, appeared to be careering inexorably toward war with no brake now in sight.

It was unclear whether Premier Khrushchev had been deposed in a coup and whether his original message could still be relied upon. The plan was then put forth simply to ignore the second message and agree to the terms of the first.

Attorney General Robert Kennedy was assigned the task of meeting with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin at the Justice Department on Saturday evening at 7:30 with the proposed acceptance of the first letter's terms and a deadline of Sunday for capitulation. When Mr. Dobrynin balked, Mr. Kennedy then added the pre-authorized condition that the Jupiter missiles in Turkey would be removed after six months per the pre-established schedule for removal, but not as a publicized trade of bases, and that any public statement to the contrary would negate the deal. Mr. Dobrynin departed the meeting with assurance that he would transmit the communication to Chairman Khrushchev.

The world went to bed this Saturday night with trouble on its mind. Not disclosed was the possibility that the Soviets might strike first if the deal proved unacceptable in the end at the Politburo, as communication of the Sunday deadline telegraphed preparations for a Monday air strike on Cuba.

The "horse for the rabbit", in Mr. Nixon's terms, had been traded, albeit in secret and therefore minimizing impact on diplomacy. The horse, of course, was an old Nag anyway. But, in terms of importance, the point was the precedent, not the fact of the Turkey bases.

President Kennedy might have reflected that day back to his own statement at the start of his Harvard honors thesis, published in fall 1940 as Why England Slept: "[W]e have warned the Japanese to stay out of the Dutch East Netherlands, yet, if they seized it, would the cry, 'Are the Dutch East Indies worth a war,' go up, strangely similar to the old cry in England at the time of Munich, 'Are the Sudeten Germans worth a war?' And, like England, we have always considered ourselves invulnerable from invasion. But the airplane changed this position for England and may change it for us."

Now that the atom bomb and rocketry had, in combination, changed radically the playing field once again since 1945, the updated question posed now might have been whether obsolete missile bases in Turkey and the potential for some weakness in future negotiations with the Soviets would be worth the risk of nuclear annihilation at worst, a conventional war, perhaps in Berlin, at best.

Whatever the case, on the morning of October 28, 1962, a message was received in Washington stating that the Soviets agreed to the terms for removal of the missiles. The crisis of thirteen days duration, of 17 years in the making, had passed.

Unknown at the time, however, according to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, in discussion of the crisis in 2002 at Harvard, several Russian submarines equipped with nuclear warheads continued for several days to hover off the East Coast of the United States, not having received word that the crisis had ended. Their captains, he further informed, "caught hell" when they returned home for not having fired their warheads.

Anyone, we suggest, who seeks to second guess the wisdom of the Kennedy Administration at that time is blind to the reality of the day, that the concept of nuclear confrontation was a reality, nearly a fait accompli, with which everyone able to understand their existence lived every single day. For this particular week in 1962 in history, everyone lived that reality far more consciously than during most previous and subsequent days of the Cold War.

It was not a test of a "young President", as some contend, ignoring the reality of Quemoy and Matsu in 1958 during the Eisenhower Administration and a similar confrontation over the Red Chinese attempt to take those islands, deemed critical to the defense of Taiwan. It was not the result of any prior policy of the Kennedy Administration, though the Soviets sought to blame it on the Bay of Pigs invasion of April, 1961, an invasion plan inherited from the Eisenhower Administration and slated to occur regardless of who won the 1960 election, a plan of which Vice-President Richard Nixon had actually been a primary author in 1959. The offered excuse was just that, the time span in between the two events tending to belie the Bay of Pigs being the actual rationale. Perhaps, loose talk by various Republicans, favoring continued efforts to oust Fidel Castro, contributed, in conjunction with the Bay of Pigs, to the Soviet ploy. In any event, the Kennedy Administration, to this point in time, followed no significantly different foreign policy with respect to the Soviet Union from that of his two predecessors, President Truman and President Eisenhower, both of whom agreed for the most part with President Kennedy's handling of the missile crisis. Each of the three administrations since World War II had sought diplomacy; each had used brinkmanship when faced with crises, avoiding at all turns the concept of appeasement, realizing too well the lessons of Munich.

The 1962 standoff which nearly ended the world was, in the end, rather the result of misunderstanding between peoples of a different language and the unfulfilled need to bridge a gap long existing, a fundamental misunderstanding between cultures, both of whom having distrusted one another since 1917, and both of whom therefore having become increasingly fearful of one another in the seventeen year old age of nuclear weapons, to the point that many hard-line militarists within each country wanted to destroy the other before the other had a chance to destroy them.

It was a time, and nearly the end of time, as measured collectively by man.

Only one man had been killed, Major Rudolf Anderson, a U-2 pilot, during a reconnaissance flight over Cuba on Saturday, October 27. Millions could have been.

Charlotte native, Rear Admiral John Wilkes, received the Legion of Merit Medal for his service in the Pacific between May 26 and October 15, 1945.

The House and Senate confreres approved tax cuts of 5.92 billion dollars for the coming year, an increase over that approved by the Senate bill, 5.78 billion, and by the House bill, 5.35 billion. Corporations were afforded 3.136 billion of the cuts and individuals would receive 2.644 billion in tax reduction.

It was announced that the Steel Workers Union planned a strike vote soon. The outcome of the Chrysler vote on Wednesday was showing a decided preference for strike.

In the eighteenth installment in the series by General Jonathan Wainwright on the fall of Bataan and Corregidor in April and May, 1942, he describes another evacuation of 25 nurses and officers on May 3 by submarine, adding to the 50 evacuated earlier on two planes. He specifically ordered the chief nurse of the hospital, Captain Mieler, to leave on the sub, but she refused, effectively consigning herself knowingly to Japanese captivity.

After the departure of the sub, the Japanese stepped up fire on the Rock, especially on the northern side facing Bataan's guns. The flag again nearly hit the ground but was again saved by quick action and was rehoisted by four men while under fire. As with the men who saved the flag the first time, General Wainwright awarded each the Silver Star.

The enemy shelling reached its height on the morning of May 4, for five hours until noon, striking the fortress with one 500-pound 240-mm shell every five seconds, a total of 3,600 shells, 1.8 million pounds, 600 truckloads. In addition, the enemy struck with 13 air raids that day.

On May 3, General Wainwright had informed General Marshall by radio of the bleak situation on Corregidor. It would fall three days later.

In London, sculptor Jacob Epstein refused to attend a showing of his piece, "Jacob and the Angel", for the fact of it being displayed as a freak show exhibit on Oxford Street. He called the exhibition "a vulgar pornographic presentation". It was being billed as the "World's Greatest Shocker" and spectators were being charged sixpence to have a peek at "Jacob wrestling with an angel" in the nude.

The promoter of the exhibit, describing the piece as "a masterpiece depicting the eternal struggle between good and evil", added that it was "better than a fat lady, because you are never sure that the fat lady will turn up every morning."

In any event, it gives Dean Rusk's comment on Wednesday, October 24, 1962 a whole new meaning.

On the editorial page, "For Temperance" comments on the efforts of the North Carolina Association for Wine Control, an arm of professional vintners, not prohibitionists, to eradicate bootleg liquor and wine. Its field agents were seeking to locate it and report it to state officials. Their motivation was to avoid being put out of business by both the prohibitionist forces and the bootleggers.

"Casual Murder" reports that the British had released evidence that only 6,000 of the 100,000 German soldiers captured by the Russians at Stalingrad had survived the war. Germans who had made it to the British zone told the story of systematic starvation.

"Alf's Answer" remarks negatively on the suggestions of Alf Landon of Kansas with respect to Russia: that after the U.S. was sound financially, Germany should be made sound financially, that all nations should give up territorial claims and abide by the Atlantic Charter, that no relief or loan should be provided without such repudiation of territorial aggrandizement, and that internationalization of the atom should also occur. Then the hand of friendship ought be extended to the Soviets and, according to the 1936 Republican presidential nominee, if it were then refused, Russia should be regarded as an aggressor on the prowl.

"How About Ike?" suggests that, while General Marshall was capable and fit to continue in his role as chief of staff of the Army in time of peace, as President Truman had asked him to do and as the Washington Post had editorialized that he ought as an essential ingredient to the creation of a viable peacetime defense, he was not the only person capable of doing the job. General Eisenhower had demonstrated the competence to perform in the role also, and he had the advantage of youthful vigor and personal charm.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Representative Charles Eaton of New Jersey asking that an arsenal in his district not be closed, finding support from Congressman Clarence Cannon of Missouri who stated that the arsenal personnel could not be easily absorbed in surrounding communities with their limited industrial capacity.

Drew Pearson tells of the mail he had received from soldiers and sailors who had fought in the war regarding their very negative feelings on the Army and Navy.

Editor R. F. Beasley of the Monroe Journal takes to task the News editorial of the previous Monday which had concluded from statistics that there were nearly 12,900 more farms in the state since 1940 and puzzled in consequence over where therefore the great influx of immigrants to the city during the war had come if not from the farm. Mr. Beasley states that the statistic derived from the mere re-definition of what a farm was, a plot of ground which produced at least $250 worth of crops or livestock. Thus, a good sized Victory Garden could suddenly become classified as a "farm".

He concludes that it proved the proverbial three classifications of lies: "lies, damn lies, and statistics."

A letter writer who had fought in the Pacific was disgusted at his return to Charlotte to find residents complacently, without protest, paying for parking spots on the streets through the nefarious banditry of that heartless beast known as the parking meter.

He goes on to say that the Japanese, with inferior ideals, at least did not allow "vandals to impose on the good nature of their home-folks with nuisance taxes—they just lop off a few heads and go peacefully on about their business."

Hey, pal, don't give them any ideas.

In the end, he counsels writing the City Council, but also not to become destructive, as had been the case in one city where the residents started putting salt in the meters.

Hey, pal, don't give us any ideas.

Dorothy Thompson discusses the Senate adoption of a resolution to appoint a committee of eleven members to study the development, use, and control of atomic energy. She suggests that this committee start with five fundamental premises: 1) That atomic energy would soon be available, within 15 years, to all nations with physicists, modern industry, and fissionable material, which included such countries as Belgium, for the Congo, and Czechoslovakia, a source of uranium for the Soviets; 2) That the atom bomb was uncontrollable and could not therefore be used for any good purpose defensively, that its continued existence would benefit totalitarian regimes acting in secrecy and by non-parliamentary action, and countries of large area and population with widely dispersed industries; 3) That the bomb could destroy countries of concentrated population such as England and several European countries, thus favoring Oriental countries over the West; 4) That the bomb was an instrument of unlimited political blackmail by government seeking to use it despotically, thus potentially leading to world domination by threat, not war; and 5) That secrecy over the bomb, threatening to jail scientists for revelation of the secret, could act to overthrow democracy and establish totalitarian states—much as the McCarthy-Nixon era did in fact attempt to do.

She posits further, "The United States Government did not digest [these propositions] before it recklessly let loose the atomic bomb, despite the fact that the majority of scientists who created it, did foresee them, and warned against its unconsidered use, being contemptuously overruled by the War Department—as they are still bullied especially whenever they use the word 'morality.'"

It was probably time to remind Ms. Thompson that the alternative was the potential of hundreds of thousands dead on both sides in a conventional invasion and continued bombing conventionally of Japan, until there would be essentially nothing left on the island of Honshu. Her editorial, as increasingly had become the case on this subject, appeared to operate too much in a vacuum, even if the overall sentiment, to control atomic power, was one with which nearly everyone, including most especially President Truman, generally agreed in theory. The question remained, which she does not answer, as to how it would be accomplished.

The Cuban Missile Crisis provided, we suggest, the first real answer since the advent of the bomb. In hindsight, it can appear as a piece of dramatic theater. At the time, it was, as with any such standoff militarily, theater with the highest of stakes, yet to be left with few, if any, critics at the end of the play, should the ending have been other than reaffirming of life rather than acceptance of collective death. The world in that thirteen days, however, might be said to have been scared straight as a result of the reality play, concocted somewhere in the theater of the absurd decades before its performance, a fact which President Kennedy and the men surrounding him well understood for having lived the results, if less immediately capable of Ragnarok, during World War II.

Moreover, someone ought have reminded Ms. Thompson that the scientists who developed the bomb were not under lock and key and could have, as many believe the German scientists working for the Nazis did, simply malingered on the job, feigning inability to develop the bomb. Many of the scientists, Edward Teller being one, embraced the bomb and all of its destructive capability. So, her characterization of a kept lot of scientists who reluctantly developed this weapon and now uniformly wanted it shared and controlled in the sharing, was not a completely accurate picture of the situation in 1945. Nor does it even make sense. Dr. Oppenheimer, director of the project at Los Alamos, and others plainly were repentant over its development and wanted it effectively destroyed as a weapon through control by an international organization. But the opinion was not uniform among the scientists.

In any event, she concludes by stating that the bomb should have been demonstrated in New Mexico during the time of the San Francisco U.N. Charter Conference and all the delegates allowed to observe the demonstration.

"And then the United States should have demanded a real world organization."

Of course, she unwittingly misses the mark again, as the bomb was not ready to be tested until shortly before July 16, set finally to coincide with the beginning of the Potsdam Conference. The San Francisco Conference had ended June 26. The original target date for the Trinity test was not until July 4. But these facts were not public at the time and so one cannot find fault with Ms. Thompson on this count.

To accommodate Ms. Thompson's 20-20 hindsight, one could make the case that the San Francisco Conference might have been deliberately prolonged by the American delegation for three more weeks to embrace the Trinity test. But patience was already running thin on the part of the delegates after two months, and the move would not have been conducive to a more united conference in the end. Indeed, the Soviets, as they had already threatened to do regarding the issue of the 16 arrested Polish officers, the Balkans, and the dispute regarding small nation representation on the Security Council and the unilateral veto power on the Security Council even on issues involving aggression by a permanent member, likely would have packed up and left the conference in the face of an atomic test, viewing it as a coercive threat. And the world would have been in even worse shape than it now was a bit over two months after V-J Day.

We suggest that Ms. Thompson, on the issue of the atomic bomb, made a better columnist than policy-maker.

Samuel Grafton suggests that the people of the United States begin studying the substance of the quarrel between the U.S. and Russia, not slogans, but substance. It was not a quarrel based on trade or economics. The National Association of Manufacturers had reported that a billion dollars worth of Russian orders in the U.S. had been held up because of the quarrel between the two countries. Thus the dispute was harming of the American economy, not because of it.

Most Americans appeared not to subscribe to the view of Representative Eugene Cox of Georgia who had stated that Russian Communism and American freedom could not long co-exist in the world. Most Americans believed that the United States could get along with the Soviet Union and believed also that war between the two countries was not a foregone conclusion. Indeed, even Mr. Cox had recommended at the end of his speech rapprochement between the two countries.

America took a dim view of the Balkan situation and the general refusal of the Soviets to recognize civil liberties inherent to Americans. But, he adds, there was something "shadowy" about using these issues as a ground for a planetary quarrel with the Russians.

"For what if Russia were to say bluntly: 'We will not permit hostile small countries on our borders, even where the majority of the people involved show by democratic process that they prefer to be hostile?' It would be curiously hard for any great power to take violent exception to such a stand; no great powers permit hostile small countries on their borders; in fact Russia is one of the few which have had to face such a problem, perhaps because the small nations involved felt they had great friends elsewhere."

He concludes by stating that the purpose of his piece was not to show why the two countries quarreled but rather to point out that it was a difficult knot to unravel.

"To quarrel with Russia has for twenty years been the program of those without a program, and if our quarrel is different, the difference should be explained and made clear, in the sharpest possible terms."

The "Grin and Bear It" of the day, not unlike the pieces by Ms. Thompson and Mr. Grafton, seems strangely propitious of that which was to come 17 years from this date, nearly determinative of mankind's final fate.