The Charlotte News
Wednesday, January 2, 1957
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that House Democrats and Republicans had called party caucuses this date to work out routine preliminary procedures for the formal opening at noon the following day of the 85th Congress, the meetings expected to approve retention of the same leaders and elected officials who served in the previous Congress. With Democrats in control of the House, it meant that Sam Rayburn would continue as Speaker, having served longer in that role than anyone in prior history, and that John McCormack of Massachusetts and Joseph Martin of Massachusetts would continue as Democratic and Republican floor leaders, respectively, with Carl Albert of Oklahoma and Leslie Arens of Illinois remaining as Democratic and Republican whips, respectively. An intraparty row among Democrats was sidetracked when Speaker Rayburn said that the caucus would not seek to deny committee assignments to Representative Adam Clayton Powell of New York, who had openly supported the President for re-election, in consequence of which some Democrats had wanted to strip him of major committee assignments. Senate caucuses would be held the following day, with no leadership changes expected, but with two vacancies to be filled, as Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana was slated to replace former Senator Earle Clements of Kentucky as Democratic whip, defeated in November, and Senator Carl Hayden of Arizona set to become President pro tem of the body, succeeding Senator Walter George of Georgia who had retired. Senator Lyndon Johnson would remain as Majority Leader and Senator William Knowland would remain as Minority Leader.
The President would deliver his State of the Union message in person on January 10 and prior to that, would send or deliver to Congress a special message asking for standby power to use U.S. military forces if necessary to curb Communist expansion in the Middle East. That plan had been outlined the previous day by the President to Congressional leaders of both parties, calling for broader economic aid to the Middle East, expected to be 400 million dollars for a two-year period. The White House was working under a speed-up schedule this date to obtain action on the plan, with press secretary James Hagerty telling newsmen that the White House and State Department liaison men were already at work with key members of Congress regarding plans for the President's formal message to the body on the proposal. Mr. Hagerty held open the possibility that the message might be presented during the current week. Congressional leaders expected no surprise legislative requests from the President following the conference of the previous day. His legislative package would include general foreign aid, expansion of the domestic atomic power program, Government aid for school construction, civil rights legislation, immigration law revision, increased postal rates, amendments to the Taft-Hartley labor law and additional aid for small business. The anticipated budget for the coming fiscal year, with heavy emphasis on defense and foreign aid, was 72 billion dollars.
In Moscow, Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev had backtracked on his denunciation of Joseph Stalin. Remarks by Mr. Khrushchev at the Kremlin at a New Year's Eve party had been interpreted as further indication of tough measures to combat moves by the satellite nations toward independence from Moscow, as well as an effort by Mr. Khrushchev to bolster his own position. Asian diplomats reported that in giving a toast at the party, he had said: "Stalin was a great fighter against imperialism. He was a great Marxist. The imperialists call us Stalinists. Well, when it comes to fighting imperialists, we are all Stalinists." The comment appeared directed particularly at the satellite nations, as the Kremlin had repeatedly charged that the Hungarian rebellion had been a Fascist plot fomented by "Western imperialists." Mr. Khrushchev appeared to be promising that any such future outbreaks would be met with the same military crackdown which Stalin had used and which had prevailed in Hungary. In contrast to the line Mr. Khrushchev had laid down in his de-Stalinization speech at the Communist Party Congress the prior February, he was quoted as telling the Kremlin partiers, "Men of action make mistakes and Stalin has done so much good that one must overlook his mistakes." An Asian diplomat reported that Mr. Khrushchev had also said that Stalin had made mistakes, but that they should share responsibility for those mistakes because they were associated with him. The official line since the prior February had been that Stalin's mistakes had outweighed his achievements and that the present Kremlin command could not be blamed for those mistakes because Stalin had acted without consulting them.
In Budapest, the official Hungarian news agency reported that the nation's largest industrial complex, the Csepel Island iron and steel works, had resumed partial production this date after a ten-day shutdown. Radio Budapest said that the continuing grave shortage of coal and power had prevented other large segments of Hungarian industry from operating, but that new supplies of both coal and raw materials had enabled the iron and steel works to begin production again. Prior to the October 23 revolt, more than 30,000 people had worked at the iron and steel works, but only 21,000 had been reporting to work when production had been shut down on December 23, as 17,000 production workers were sent home on half pay and only 4,000 stayed in the plant for routine maintenance, repairs and inventory. The report did not indicate how many people had returned to work. The coal mines were limping along with only about half of the usual force, and the Russian-supported Government of Premier Janos Kadar had been striving to get the miners to return to work, as only about a third as much coal as normal was being mined. Police had been forced to intervene this date when a crowd of about 1,000 people, mostly women and children, had broken from a long queue and stormed a department store in Hungarian Youth Street, formerly Stalin Avenue, which was the main thoroughfare. The shop recently had opened to replace another one destroyed in the October and November revolution. Store personnel had sought to aid police in holding back lines of several thousand shoppers by erecting ropes, but impatient mothers and children had broken through the lines, some weeping women telling reporters that police had used clubs on them.
In Port Said, Egypt, it was reported that ships could not move through the Suez Canal this date but that motorists could drive along the highway which lay beside it, running from Suez on the Red Sea to Port Said on the Mediterranean. The canal had been closed for two months and a stillness had settled over the entire area. The starting point of the trip in Suez, as recounted by Associated Press correspondent Antoine Yared, was almost a paralyzed city, whereas in normal times, the harbor was filled with tankers, freighters, and passenger ships. But now the entrance to the harbor was blocked by a 4,000-ton Egyptian ship lying on its side. An Egyptian salvage crew was working on the ship in the hope of opening the harbor soon. At the entrance to the canal at Suez, a U.N. salvage crew was beginning action, with a Dutch diver having begun work on a sunken Egyptian warship which was on its side and completely visible in the clear water of the canal. Driving along the canal, the motorist could see parts of sunken craft at intervals, some having their bows in the air while the smokestacks of others rose above the water, with many completely submerged and invisible from the highway. The best available information was that there were about 50 sunken vessels strewn from one end of the canal to the other. There was one permanent bridge across the canal south of Port Said, and it had been collapsed by bombs, thus far untouched by salvage crews. Two Germans salvage vessels, working under the auspices of the U.N., were tied up at that point. A few miles north of Bitter Lake was Lake Timsan, another lake through which canal traffic had to pass, and at its entrance lay a sunken Egyptian LST, the first vessel sunk and presenting the toughest salvage challenge in the clearance operation.
In Manama, Bahrain, oilmen had disclosed this date that a storm had wrecked a 1.5 million dollar offshore drilling rig, leaving 20 Arab workers dead or missing and dealing a crippling blow to a four-year search for oil beneath the Persian Gulf. The disaster had struck the 1,200-ton steel floating tower of the Shell Oil Co. the previous Thursday night in the shallow waters of the Gulf which separated the rich oilfields of Iran and Saudi Arabia. A spokesman for Shell, which had invested more than 25 million dollars in the maritime search, said that although the platform was still standing, it was doubtful whether it could be salvaged. Oilmen expressed the belief that it would take two years to obtain steel for a new platform and that it might influence the company's decision to abandon offshore drilling in the area, part of a complex of oil-rich desert lands which was a base for a large group of American technicians.
Traffic deaths during the 102-hour New Year holiday had come close to tying the record for the holiday, established at 407 during a four-day period four years earlier. The latest information had the number of traffic deaths at 405, 70 from fires and 109 from miscellaneous accidents, for a total of 584. The National Safety Council had predicted 490 traffic fatalities, and the Council thanked drivers and law enforcement officers for teaming up to make it a safer holiday. The Christmas holiday, of the same duration, had set an all-time record at 706 traffic deaths and because of it, the combined total for the two holidays set a new record at more than 1,100, breaking the old record of 973 set the previous year.
In Savannah, Ga., patients were evacuated from a charity hospital this date when a fire had broken out in the attic in the wee hours of the morning, with no reported injuries during the transfer. Two firemen had been cut in battling the blaze, and the fire was officially under control by early morning, with damage to the hospital and its equipment as yet undetermined.
In Dallas, Tex., a customer pulled up to a drive-in grocery store the previous night and was informed by a young man behind the counter that the store was not open for business, that he was just taking inventory. It turned out that he was actually robbing the store and had locked two employees in a rear room.
In Charlotte, someone had broken into the Hastings Seed Store on North College Street early this date and police were looking for a man who owned a dog which needed a haircut, as the only thing missing from the store was a pair of electric dog clippers. Scotland Yard says that they should go in search of a nicely coiffured doggie.
On the editorial page, "Caretakers Must Arise to an Occasion" tells of the new 85th Congress beginning the following day, at which time there would be hearty handshakes, clinking glasses and bipartisan merriment, but which would not last long, as Republicans and Democrats might eventually have use for a gadget invented by a British colonel recently, a mechanical "morale raiser" which cried, "Bravo! Well done! Good show!" then clapped its owner on the back in a friendly manner and burst into uproarious laughter when the latter told a joke.
In the Senate, the Democrats held 49 seats and Republicans, 47, while in the House, Democrats controlled a larger majority, with 233 seats to the Republicans' 200, with two vacancies still remaining as a result of deaths occurring since the November election. Congressional complications, however, during the year would have more elaborate causes that only the two-party split. Democrats could not rely solely on attacking the Administration, and both parties were split. Democratic liberals had gained strength, especially in the Senate, with such new members as Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania and John Carroll of Colorado, but they would be without the support of the Majority Leader, Senator Johnson, while the Eisenhower wing of the Republican Party would still have trouble with diehard rightists from the Republican "dinosaur belt". While the President's prestige would be high initially, it would be put to regular tests, as he would be a lame duck, not being able to run again. The emphasis of his program had shifted from "progressively moderate" to "moderately progressive".
On several issues, Federal aid to education, medical research, roads and housing, the Administration's program had been somewhat closer to that of the New Deal than to old line Republicans.
Vice-President Nixon's buildup would be under constant attack, not only from Democrats but also from Republicans, who would want to challenge his preeminent status for the 1960 presidential nomination.
It was likely that both the White House and liberal Democrats would push integration, as both sides had noted that the Republican national ticket had cracked the formerly Democratic strongholds among black voters in the North and South in the recent election. Efforts to accelerate integration would be bitterly resisted, in turn, by Southern Democrats and some Northern conservatives.
There would also be resistance on both sides of the aisle regarding issues such as foreign policy, natural gas, agriculture, increased spending, Federal aid to education, possible changes of the minimum wage, the filibuster rule in the Senate, housing, taxes and trade.
It finds that the overall prospect was for a rather sluggish conservative session with precious little meat for historians to note. The legislative agenda would be heavy, as many measures had been held over from the previous session, with some of the more controversial decisions likely to be delayed until 1958, during another Congressional election year. It finds that nothing at present suggested any intention by the Democratic leadership to challenge the Administration sharply and consistently on anything, except perhaps foreign policy, with any challenges arising on the spur of the moment.
The challenge would be in the newly troubled world in which the U.S. was the last haven of dynamic democracy. It concludes that the caretakers in Congress had to rise to the occasion even in a non-election year, to discharge their responsibilities of maintaining the nation at a high level of economic, social and political health.
"In the Rosy View, Some Red Ink" indicates, after reading the year-end economic review put forth by Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks, that Pollyanna had been a piker. He had said: "Prosperity is widely shared… People are earning more. Feet-on-ground optimism is warranted by facts… Good times for the American people should continue through the entire 12 months [of 1957] with overall employment, income and production higher than this year… Buying power is high." It followed an announcement by the Commerce Department that people at present had more money than prior to World War II.
It finds, however, that experts with a better grasp of reality said that a worker who had earned $3,000 in 1939 now needed $6,122 to be as well off as at the earlier time, that a family with an income of $5,000 in 1939 now needed an income of $10,583, and that an executive earning $25,000 per year in 1939 now needed $68,000 per year to live as well.
It finds the flies in the ointment of the economic report of Mr. Weeks to be inflation and taxes, that bankrolls were undeniably much larger, but figures in most bank books were bloated, as a dime was not worth a dime anymore.
But what about the dime's worth of candy which the man in Salt Lake City had ordered the other man to purchase for him on New Year's Eve, coercing him with something in his pocket resembling either his finger or a gun? In 1939, would it have only been a penny's worth of candy? With the 1958 recession around the corner, how much would it be worth 18 months hence? These are existential questions which you must address in your thesis on the economic impact of the Eisenhower years: "Genuine or Disingenuous: Ike's 'Peace and Prosperity'?"
"How Southern Do You Have To
Be?" finds that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch had rushed to
save the Southern accent from a fate worse than death, complaining
about abuse of the accent on television
It finds it distinctly problematic, however, as Mr. Blackmer was Southern, having been raised in Salisbury, N.C., and studied acting for the first time at UNC, while Ms. Garson was British.
Well, you can't blame the
Post-Dispatch too much as, perhaps, their view of Southernese
had derived from Miss Scarlett's rendition in the movie version,
though not nearly so bad as that of Ashley Wilkes, unfortunately
framing falsely the archetype for at least a generation, in fact,
likely causing many Southern children, who thought that movie the
living end, to affect their speech based thereon, rather than on what
they actually heard in their homes or that constructed more naturally
by an earlier generation in the age prior to radio, movies and then
television
Thad Stem, Jr., writing in the Raleigh News & Observer, in a piece titled "The Battle of the Calliopes", indicates pleasure at having missed most of the battles of history as a combatant, though there having been some battles, especially Waterloo and Gettysburg, which he would not have minded having observed at a safe distance. There had been one which he would have liked to have seen at close range, the famous onslaught, with calliopes, between the steamboats American and Wonderland at Bonnet's Mill on the Missouri River in 1915.
The American was tying up in
preparation for the nightly performance, with its arrival having been
announced by the "Professor" and "Calliope Red",
with "O, Dem Golden Slippers"
He recounts further of the back and forth between "Calliope Red" and the other calliope player, concluding that there had been battles which had more sweeping results regarding the welfare of noble ideals, but on that spring day, the river had been hushed except for the easy waves and the mighty blasts of the two calliopes. "True, the calliope is not the instrument that endeared the music of Beethoven and Mozart to the public. But it is typically American, evoking in strident but pulsating tones the sounds, colors, and scents that are elemental in this bare-chested, loudly singing land. This is one battle, and not just because it was bloodless, that, if we could have had our way, we would have certainly seen and heard."
Drew Pearson says that when one looked over the city of Jerusalem, its mosques, synagogues, church, and embattled wall separating the Old City from the New, one got some idea of what the President's non-aggression declaration for the Near East could mean, provided it was embracing enough. One could see and hear a long way in the clear air over Jerusalem, hearing the church bells ringing in the Catholic church on the side of the Mount of Olive in the Arab section, as well as the bells of the Lutheran church very close to where Christ was buried. He ventures that it was perhaps why the wise men could see the stars so clearly nearly 2,000 years earlier in the current season and why the angel could be heard so clearly promising peace on earth, goodwill toward men.
But in the Holy Land at present, there was no peace. Arab guards paced the ancient walls which separated the Old and New sections of Jerusalem, and Jewish guards, inside hidden battlements, maintained a constant vigil on the Arab wall. Life continued on each side of that wall, but it was an unnatural life. A Jewish refugee from Algiers maintained a ladder on his balcony to permit entry to and exit from his home when shooting began, with his primary entrance facing an Arab machine gun nest. Arab guides stood about the holy places hoping, waiting for the tourists who had once made the Old City prosperous. A U.N. team escorted caretakers to the Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus, which was empty and unused, wasted since the Arab troops had captured a strip of land between the hospital and Israel.
Yet, Arab residents inside Israel paid tribute to their freedoms, cooperated with the Israeli Government, and alongside the border, a Jewish tractor driver spread fertilizer so close to Jordan that part of the fertilizer blew across to enrich the fields of the Arab neighbor. The chief rabbi of Israel, Isaac Herzog, quoted to Mr. Pearson the 19th chapter of Isaiah to prove that the Jews, the Egyptians and the Syrians could get along with one another.
He concludes by repeating that it was part of the armed tension which the President's non-aggression declaration could cure, provided it was embracing enough.
Marquis Childs indicates that too often statements by U.S. officials had sounded as though Hungary were in some way a great triumph for the West, proving that Communism had been a failure. He finds, however, that no proof such as the tragedy of Hungary had been necessary for that conclusion to be reached, that the failure of Communism was inherent in its nature, demonstrated repeatedly in various countries. But Communism supported by Russian troops was something else, the dilemma of Hungary which had to be faced.
Vice-President Nixon had performed a useful service in dramatizing the need for American aid both in admitting larger numbers of Hungarian refugees and in providing greater assistance in Austria to cope with the refugee problem across the Austrian-Hungarian border. Mr. Childs suggests that such aid should have been given earlier, and that what to do about Hungary and the millions of Hungarians likely to freeze and starve within it during the present winter had not been tackled, that there were surely many patriotic Hungarians who had remained behind after having had the courage to rebel, along with those who had fled. Those who stayed knew that for Hungary to have any future, it had to endure grimly the present anguish with the conviction that the country would ultimately survive.
He finds that the Administration had been following a circuitous course regarding whether an approach was to be made directly to Moscow regarding the satellite nations, with the President in his most recent letter to Premier Nikolai Bulganin having appeared to open the prospect for negotiation for mutual withdrawal of Western troops from Germany and Russian troops from the satellites, with limited aerial inspections as a guarantee. Well-informed observers were of the opinion that it should not be rejected out of hand but explored with due caution for the customary traps. As long as Soviet troops remained in the satellites, another Hungary could be in the offing, with potentially explosive consequences.
The West, and the U.S. in particular, he finds, had been the beneficiary in world opinion of Russia's ruthless suppression of the Hungarian uprising, as demonstrated in part by the success of Prime Minister Nehru's recent visit to the U.S. against the backdrop of his revulsion at the brutality of the Russians in Budapest. A new opportunity for friendlier relations with India had resulted, and after seven months of delay, an excellent Ambassador to India had been appointed, Ellsworth Bunker, until recently the head of the national Red Cross.
But the opportunity opened up in Asia could not be exploited if American policy was immobilized on the rigid lines of the past. Senators Mike Monroney of Oklahoma and Albert Gore of Tennessee, who, upon their return from the meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Thailand, had reported on how U.S. stock had risen and that of the Soviet Union had fallen, also bringing back word that American diplomatic and military officials on Formosa had not only backed Chiang Kai-shek in his announced determination to return to the Chinese mainland, but were encouraging him. Any conflict between Formosa and Communist China, with active U.S. backing for Chiang, would dissolve present good will for the U.S. overnight. Communist Chinese Premier Chou En-lai, taking advantage of Russia's involvement in Hungary, had been talking softly and holding out all types of promises, not only to friends of China but also to its enemies. Asians would, with minor exceptions, favor Communist China if U.S. force were used to aid Chiang to try to return the Chinese Nationalists to the mainland. The realities were against the success of any such effort by Chiang, in the view of those who viewed such things objectively.
The likelihood was that there would be sufficient votes in the U.N. General Assembly the following fall to admit Communist China to membership, presenting the Administration with trouble, as the President's supporters in the most recent election, such as Senate Minority Leader William Knowland and others in the right wing of the party, had said that they would lead a move to take the U.S. out of the U.N. if it recognized Communist China.
He concludes that even a cursory look ahead at 1957 made it clear that if the dangers were great, so were the opportunities for a new and constructive approach to the unresolved issues of the time. He finds that there was a brief reprieve at present, with much dependent on what use was made of the new opening.
Doris Fleeson tells of the Administration's projected request from Congress for the right to counter Russian military action in the Middle East being offered as a creative response to a sudden crisis, finding it instead to be no such thing. Russian penetration of the Middle East was not a sudden accomplishment, having been prepared for some time and coming into the open a year earlier when the present Soviet Foreign Minister, Dimitri Shepilov, had appeared in Cairo as the editor of Pravda. It had been reported at the time that he acted as a secret agent rather than as a journalist. She suggests that if the CIA had not long been telling the Administration the truth, it was time to take a look at that agency.
The President was seeking to make it appear that his planned request to Congress for authority to use political, economic and, if necessary, military force in the Middle East was a gesture of cooperation from Congress, when it was not. The President had the power to take those actions as commander-in-chief and as the chief executor of the foreign policy and did not need Congressional approval in the exercise of his constitutional powers.
She finds that what he was actually doing, as with the similar Formosa resolution of two years earlier, was to foreclose Congress from vetoing or even criticizing his subsequent actions in the Middle East. She finds that he had three ends in view, one being a public relations matter, whereby the President would be built up as a man of peace, reluctant to make war but freed to do so by Congress having stated implicit confidence in him. His tactic would also form a way of warning Russia without diplomatic niceties against further involvement in the Middle East. The second aim was to stop Congressional discussion of how the country had gotten where it was, which might prove embarrassing. The new Congress promised to be more free-wheeling than in the recent past, at least with respect to foreign policy.
The final aim of the President was to share the blame, if any, with the Democratic majority in Congress. After France and England had to withdraw from the Suez in humiliation, largely as a result of displeasure expressed by the U.S., they had left behind a power vacuum which could not be ignored. U.S. military leaders had long understood the pressing nature of the problem in the Middle East, with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Arthur Radford, having the previous year told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that it was American diplomacy which was lagging behind in the region, not its military power. It had been no accident that the most powerful U.S. fleet was presently in the Mediterranean.
Joseph Alsop addresses a letter of farewell to his brother, Stewart, reflecting back to early 1941, when he had arrived in Chunking, China, just prior to a Japanese bombing raid. Then, he had written confidently of China's problems from Washington, but upon arrival in Chunking, had begun to suspect that everything he had written had been pure drivel, with the suspicion confirmed within less than 48 hours. He had then resolved that if he ever returned to the newspaper business, he would try to go where the news was before writing about it, with both brothers having adopted that first rule of their reporting partnership.
It had now been a decade since they had returned from the war and founded their joint column. He finds that in that decade, freedom's cause had failed to prosper with saddening frequency, despite the great efforts by the U.S., and was not prospering at present, with world events accelerating at a fast tempo.
He reminds his brother of what the Red Queen had sternly said in Through the Looking Glass: "It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that." He has the same feeling at present about maintaining awareness of the vast developments and crises which were now ongoing within the Soviet empire, in the Middle East and in Western Europe.
He explains that it was why it was a letter of farewell, quite probably for an entire year, that it was necessary to remain faithful to that principle which they had adopted all those years earlier. He hoped in that year to examine first-hand the Middle Eastern ferment and the weakening of Western Europe, as well as the stirring ferment within the Soviet empire, shaping the struggle between the free and the enslaved of the world. Moscow would be his first port of call, with the poem by Clarence Day running through his mind:
"Farewell, my friends—farewell and hail./ I'm off to seek the Holy Grail./ I cannot tell you why./ Remember, please, when I am gone./ 'Twas aspiration led me on./ Tiddlely, widdlely, tootle-oo./ All I want is to stay with you./ But here I go. Goodby."
He concludes that he was not seeking any Holy Grail, but simply the news of events which would shape the future, but also could not tell why, except that seeking news was their business. "So 'here I go. Goodby.'"
Ninth Day
Framed Edition
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