The Charlotte News

Tuesday, May 25, 1954

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that at Geneva, the Indo-China portion of the peace conference, according to Western sources, had made "some progress" this date during its first "real working session", regarding a proposed cease-fire and related military matters. A reliable informant had reported that representatives of both the Indochinese government of Viet Nam and the Vietminh rebels had spoken during the secret session and that each had briefly regarded all points of a seven-point discussion plan placed before the conference the previous day, that there appeared to be a "considerable amount of common ground" as the nine delegations met, but the source did not disclose particulars. He believed that agreement could be reached on certain points.

From Luang Prabang in Laos, it was reported that the French hoped to complete their airlift of wounded from fallen Dien Bien Phu within the ensuing three days, with the shuttle having reached a record high of 150 casualties evacuated the previous day, including the first group of French officers and some Vietnamese. The total evacuated was now 572, leaving 313 yet to be transported ultimately to Hanoi. Helicopters and light planes, necessary to accomplish the airlift because of the airstrip next to the fortress having been destroyed during the battle, were shuttling back and forth every 20 to 30 minutes, delivering a maximum of six wounded on each trip. The Vietminh had put gangs of coolies to work this date on repairing the airstrip so that large transports could speed the airlift.

From Hanoi, it was reported that Genevieve de Galard Terraube, the heroic nurse who had tended French wounded for 40 straight nights and days at Dien Bien Phu prior to its fall to the Vietminh, declared this date to a press conference, after arrival in Hanoi, that it had been the "most formidable experience" of her life, opening "new horizons" of courage and devotion to duty while French soldiers and officers "were so brilliantly fighting and dying". She said that she had only done her duty. She indicated that on the night of March 30-31, the most dangerous and dramatic moment of the battle had occurred, when the Vietminh had hurled several thousand mortars and heavy artillery projectiles into the fortress, resulting in hundreds of French wounded and dying. Many of the wounded, she said, had to wait many hours in line in the underground bunkers, while in terrible pain, before she could help them. They had only a few doctors to assist and she was the only woman nurse present. She said she felt mixed joy and sadness, because she had been ordered to leave behind many wounded and people who had worked with her who needed her help. She said she planned to return to her home in Paris within a few days to see her family and rest, and then would continue her work as a nurse.

The wife of captured French General Christian de Castries, former commander of Dien Bien Phu, had arrived by plane in Paris this date from Indo-China.

Secretary of State Dulles said this date to a news conference that the Communists may have shipped arms to Guatemala so that they could build up a Communist bastion near the Panama Canal. A report the previous week had indicated that Poland had shipped 2,000 tons of arms to Guatemala, worth ten million dollars. The Secretary said that Guatemala was the only country in the West to receive a massive amount of arms from an Iron Curtain country. The State Department had announced the previous day that arms were being airlifted as rapidly as possible to Nicaragua and Honduras, neighbors to Guatemala, in response to which Moscow radio had announced that the action was in preparation for an attack against Guatemala. The Guatemalan Foreign Minister, however, had said that he did not believe the arms shipment had anything to do with Guatemala. Secretary Dulles also said that the U.S. would support an appeal to the U.N. for the dispatch of a peace observation mission to Southeast Asia, that the U.S. had made it clear to the French in talks presently underway what terms and conditions would be required for U.S. intervention in the Indo-China war, including approval by Congress and the creation of an anti-Communist coalition in Southeast Asia. He also said that the U.S. was about to send a new diplomatic note to Russia regarding President Eisenhower's proposal, made before the U.N. the prior December, for an international atomic energy sharing pool, and that negotiations on the matter were proceeding with Britain and France.

The District of Columbia Board of Education adopted, by vote of six to two, a five-point blueprint for ending segregation in the schools of the District. The plan called for a start toward ending segregation the following fall, with desegregation to be completed within one year. The President had stated his hope that a successful plan for ending segregated schools in Washington could serve as a guide for abolishing segregation in 17 Southern and border states where it had been compulsory. The five points of the program were that all assignments and ratings within the school system would be based on merit, rather than race or color, that no pupil would be favored or discriminated against because of race or color, that children would not be permitted to attend schools outside the boundaries in which they lived for reasons of race or color, that no records of pupils or personnel would make any reference to race or color, and that all schools would use maximum efficiency without regard to race or color.

The previous day, the Supreme Court had instructed lower courts, in light of its decision in Brown v. Board of Education, handed down May 17, to reconsider cases involving admission of black students to the University of Florida Law School and L.S.U., and the affirmance by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals of the refusal to allow black admission to operatic performances by a privately owned theatrical group which leased a publicly owned amphitheater in Louisville, Ky. (For subsequently held elucidation of the principle distinguishing between the required "state action" to invoke the Fourteenth Amendment in cases of discrimination in denying a fundamental liberty interest based on a suspect classification involving immutable characteristics such as race, and situations involving purely private action, and the fact situations falling in between involving some state action, see Palmer v. Thompson, 403 U.S. 217, decided by the Supreme Court in 1971, and cases cited therein. Do not become confused, however, with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, prohibiting, by Federal statute, discrimination even in privately owned facilities which are engaged in business affecting interstate commerce, the power of Congress so to legislate having derived from the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, not necessarily the Fourteenth Amendment, requiring some, even tenuous, form of state action.) While Brown, per se, only applied to primary and secondary schools, it was considered broad enough to encompass public colleges and universities by the fact of having stated that "in the field of public education", segregation was unconstitutional. The Court also declined review of a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals order that six qualified black applicants be admitted to the University of Wichita Falls in Texas, formerly Hardin College. The Court also declined review of the Circuit Court decision allowing admittance of blacks to municipal golf courses in Houston, Tex., albeit on a segregated basis, and a California Court of Appeal decision upholding an order of integration of public housing projects in San Francisco. These were the "orders" to which the brief bulletin had alluded the previous day.

In the 20th day of hearings before the Senate Investigations subcommittee regarding the dispute between the Army and Senator McCarthy, Maj. General Cornelius Ryan, commander of Fort Dix in New Jersey, testified this date that the subcommittee staff had repeatedly asked for special leaves from duty for Private G. David Schine, but that he had no knowledge whether the requests were for any purpose other than subcommittee work. General Ryan utilized charts to explain the leaves, and Senator McCarthy called the charts "phony and dishonest" and "an attempt to deceive the American people", by showing in large black squares the days on which Private Schine had enjoyed pass privileges during his basic training, while in relatively unblemished white squares, showed the pass privileges of the "average" inductee. The General said he did not see anything dishonest about the charts, and that he did not think that anything put out by the Army was dishonest. He also said that he had never heard Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens ask Private Schine to pose with him for a photograph, and that he had been with Secretary Stevens every moment of the time the previous November when Senator McCarthy had contended Mr. Stevens had made such a request. He also stated that there was no preferential treatment for Private Schine at Fort Dix, unless the leaves were considered preferential treatment, that he had made available at Fort Dix a conference room to be used by Private Schine and the McCarthy staff, but that the room had been used only once, that Private Schine had made 250 long distance telephone calls during his eight weeks at Fort Dix, and that insofar as the General knew, no other private ever had that many calls, adding that there was nothing wrong about a private making telephone calls if he had the time and money to do so. He further said that despite the leaves, Private Schine had completed his training with a "superior" rating, while being rated only "fair" on character, a rating which the General described as "very low". He testified that members of the staff of Senator McCarthy had called the General's headquarters 29 times regarding Private Schine during the eight weeks of training. An aide to the General, Lt. John Blount, testified regarding telephone calls he had with subcommittee chief counsel Roy Cohn regarding Private Schine, saying that Mr. Cohn had been "extremely angry" regarding treatment of Private Schine at Fort Dix and had let him know about it in no uncertain terms. He said, however, that there were no swear words used. One such call occurred January 9, regarding a January 10 assignment of the Private to kitchen duty. Lt. Blount said he told Mr. Cohn that the Army considered kitchen duty part of the routine of basic training and that Private Schine could not be excused from it. General Ryan had testified that Mr. Cohn had remarked, in reference to the kitchen assignment, that certain Army officers were making it as difficult as they could for Private Schine and that he would not forget their names.

During the afternoon session, Army Lt. Col. John Murray would testify regarding the preparation of the charts described during the morning regarding Private Schine's leaves. Col. Kenneth BeLieu, a staff assistant to Secretary Stevens, would also testify regarding his accompanying Secretary Stevens on his October 20, 1953 trip to Fort Monmouth and generally corroborated the testimony of Army general counsel John G. Adams regarding the anger displayed by Mr. Cohn after being denied entrance to the top-secret radar facility, and that he had stated it was done to embarrass him, that it meant war with the Army and that the subcommittee would proceed to investigate more vigorously the claims of subversives at the facility.

The House Ways & Means Committee reversed itself this date and decided against bringing an estimated 150,000 medical doctors and interns under the Social Security program, following a motion by Representative Thomas Jenkins of Ohio, which passed by a vote of 15 to 10. The AMA had opposed the original recommendation which had included the doctors. The Committee also voted 22 to 2 to keep municipal firemen and policemen out of the Social Security system as well, after having previously recommended extension of benefits to 270,000 police and firemen.

The Justice Department dropped the prosecution of Val Lorwin, former State Department official accused of lying when he denied Communist affiliations. A representative of the Justice Department stated that the decision had been reached because of misrepresentations made by a prosecutor before a grand jury. The prosecutor had said that two FBI informants would be available for the trial, when there were no such informants, and had also said that there was no need to summon either Mr. Lorwin or his wife to appear before the grand jury because they would probably refuse to testify on the grounds of self-incrimination, when there was no basis for that statement. A loyalty board hearing had previously completely cleared Mr. Lorwin, who had since become a professor at the University of Chicago, on leave.

In Baltimore, a 15-year old boy was shot and killed the previous day while target shooting in a wooded area with his best friend, an 18-year old boy, who ran from the woods for help, but got lost on return, taking 30 minutes before six policemen could locate the boy's body.

In Elmira, N.Y., 300 people attending the 27th annual conference of the Eastern Association of Fire Chiefs were on hand the previous night when local firemen had to put out a small blaze in the kitchen of the hotel.

In Bryson City, N.C., a man was sentenced in Federal Court this date to ten years in prison after he pleaded guilty to armed robbery of a branch bank on May 5.

In Toronto, a 63-year old woman finished her annual birthday hike on schedule the previous night, traversing a mile for every year she had lived. She had started the 63-mile hike on Sunday morning, at a pace of four miles per hour. She offered $25 to anyone who had seen her show signs of quitting and also challenged Toronto's female population to accompany her, but there were no takers. She said she thought that the women of Toronto were just a bunch of sissies, saying that she was peppy all the way and hoped to do it again the following year if she could, as it kept her figure in good shape.

On the editorial page, "City School Officials Look Ahead" indicates that the City School Board had taken a wise precautionary step when it decided to undertake a special study of biracial education in the city, pending further action by the Supreme Court and appropriate state authorities, with regard to implementing a plan for desegregation. It suggests that the City Board could not do much else at the moment.