The Charlotte News
Saturday, January 26, 1957
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that at the U.N. in New York, diplomats had moved this date into a weekend of intense behind-the-scenes maneuvering in preparation for a crucial debate on the Middle East crisis, set to take place Monday in the General Assembly. The key issue would be Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold's 3,500-word report on Israel's delay in withdrawing its forces back to the 1949 Palestine armistice line, out of the Sinai Peninsula. Mr. Hammarskjold had informed the Assembly the previous day that Israel had not fully complied with five resolutions calling for their withdrawal, adding that numerous political and legal barriers prevented the U.N. from accepting conditions imposed by Israel for a complete withdrawal. Israel still held two areas seized in the October and November invasion, the Gaza Strip and the Sharm El Sheikh sector on the Gulf of Aqaba. Israel insisted that it had to have firm guarantees that its interests would be protected before withdrawing from those areas. Britain and the U.S. described the U.N. report as constructive, with a U.S. spokesman indicating that they believed it was in accordance with the general wishes of the Assembly.
State Department officials were concerned this date that a remark by Secretary of State Dulles regarding British and French soldiers might adversely affect relations with the two countries. The State Department press officer, Lincoln White, following consultation with Secretary Dulles, had sought to head off negative overseas reaction with an assurance that the Secretary had not meant to insult British and French armed forces. But it appeared from the first reaction in British newspapers that the explanation had not allayed the injured feelings. The London Daily Sketch had carried a front page banner headline reading: "Dulles Insult to Forces". The Secretary had made the remark the previous day while testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services joint committees, in support of the President's request for special military and economic powers to block Communist expansion into the Middle East, the so-called "Eisenhower doctrine". Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, a critic of the proposals, said that he wanted to know why the Administration had not sought a commitment from the British and French to help the U.S. in any fight against Communist aggression in the region, in reply to which, Secretary Dulles had said that Senator Morse ought to "give very serious consideration" to Arab hostility to the British and French because of their invasion of Egypt the prior November. He then added in a humorous vein: "Personally, I'd rather not have a French and British soldier beside me, one on my right and one on my left." After the comment, British and French correspondents asked the State Department whether Mr. Dulles had intended to slur the troops of their countries. Officials had become alarmed at the possibility of what they believed might become a serious "misinterpretation" of the remark.
In New York, the 17-year old son of the couple, Jack and Myra Soble, arrested the previous day by the FBI on suspicion of conspiracy to commit espionage and violating Federal law by being Soviet agents without registering with the Secretary of State, slated to have evidence presented against them at a grand jury proceeding the following week, spoke to the press this date about his parents. A senior at Rhodes Preparatory School in Manhattan, he said: "If they had any crooked dealings, I would've known about it. Spies… What are they spying on? What they saw in the street?" They were charged with collecting information about the national defense for purposes of transmitting it to the Soviet Union or its agents. The couple, along with a third man, Jacob Albam, all of New York City, were being held on $100,000 bail each, while the FBI hinted that others might be involved in the alleged spy ring, including "Soviet officials". The U.S. Attorney for the district said that the "upper members" of the alleged espionage group were not at the present time identifiable. The Soviet consular official in Washington was called to the State Department and reportedly confronted with evidence involving Soviet officials in the case. In Montréal, the sister of Mr. Soble said that they "were a happy couple and they were very proud of being Americans." All three were foreign-born, the two males in Lithuania and Mrs. Soble in Russia. The FBI said that the Sobles had entered the U.S. on visas issued in Japan in 1941 and had become citizens in 1947. Their son had been born in Lithuania. The FBI accused them and Mr. Albam of a conspiracy dating back to 1947, the year in which Mr. Albam had entered the country. No details were made available by the FBI as to the nature of the espionage activities alleged. The U.S. Attorney said that Mr. Soble had "replaced the second secretary of the Soviet Embassy as a dominant figure in the espionage ring after World War II." The second secretary had begun work at the Embassy in December, 1941 and had left for Moscow in the late summer of 1944, then was advanced to the post of second secretary. In 1953, he had been identified in testimony by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover as "the reported head of the NKVD in North America, one of the primary branches of Soviet intelligence in North America." Any official who would be involved in the case would be expelled automatically from the U.S. as persona non grata. It was the first major espionage arrest in the country since that of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1950, subsequently executed in 1953 after being convicted of stealing atomic secrets for Russia from the Los Alamos facility, utilizing Ethel Rosenberg's brother who worked at the facility, during development of the bomb prior to 1945.
In Budapest, an American freelance photographer, Mrs. Georgette Chapelle, was sentenced this date to 50 days in jail on charges of entering Hungary illegally. But the court had immediately freed her because she had already served the time in custody, ordering her to depart Hungary within 48 hours. She was released into the custody of the U.S. Legation until her departure. Her codefendant, an Hungarian, had received a sentence of eight months, which he said he would appeal. Mrs. Chapelle had been in jail since December 5. She testified in her defense that she was a representative of the International Rescue Committee, which had been active in aiding refugees escaping from Hungary, telling the court that she had no intention of breaking the law when she had entered the country, but now understood from what she had been told that she had crossed the frontier illegally. She said that she had entered the country with two refugees to deliver some medicines as a token gift to the first Hungarian doctor or hospital she could find. Shortly after they crossed the frontier, they had seen four armed men standing near a haystack, who fired a flare into the air and then began shooting. At that point, one of her companions had vanished but she and the other man had been arrested, then were taken to a nearby building where they had spent the night sleeping on straw. She apologized to the court for her efforts to deliver a gift of medicines having ended in that way. The penalty could have been as high as five years in prison. During her imprisonment, Deputy Undersecretary of State Robert Murphy had demanded her release, at which point U.S. Legation officials were permitted to visit her in jail and take her food and clothing. She stated to the judge that she had not been abused while incarcerated.
In Des Moines, Iowa, a 54-year old man who had walked away from a Wisconsin prison farm in July, 1935, to attend his father's funeral in Oregon, and had later changed his name and remarried, working on farms and as an attendant at Iowa mental hospitals in the interim, had his true identity revealed after being arrested for reckless driving on January 8 at Fort Dodge. He had been released initially, until State agents, conducting a routine fingerprint check, discovered his identity. He was then taken back into custody the previous day at Independence, where he and his wife had gone to visit friends and to seek a job. He waived extradition to Wisconsin and said that he was kind of glad that it was over, that he knew "the jig was up" when they had taken his fingerprints, and said that he was sorry he had not gone back after the first four days in 1935 when he realized he could not get to his father's funeral. He said he had lived a good life in the meantime and had not hurt anyone or stolen anything, that "Everything I ate, I paid for." (Mr. Nixon would say about the same thing in late 1973, but that fact should not necessarily taint this man's statement as lacking in credibility.) His wife had never known of his past after 13 years of marriage. When they parted, he told her to forget him, but she said that she would not and would wait for him. He said that when he originally had been arrested in Wisconsin, he had sat in a car while a person he was with had burglarized two grocery stores, that he had not wanted to do it, but had participated. He had about eight months to serve when he learned of his father's death and escaped from the prison farm. He cheerfully talked about the future, saying that he thought he would return to Iowa in about three years when his remaining original sentence and additional sentence for the escape were completed.
In Miami, Fla., an air and sea search force had been ordered to return to the Caribbean south of Cuba this date after trying to find three missing Air Force crewmen who had crashed following a collision with another Air Force plane during a training mission. Two of the missing crewmen were from South Carolina. The search planes and ships had been augmented by a ground party organized to investigate reports of wreckage on the Isle of Pines, off Cuba's western tip. Navy divers planned to probe what appeared to be a sunken wreck near the Isle of Pines. It had been near the location where the three crewmen of the other plane had been rescued the previous day as they clung to a liferaft.
In Lake Lure, N.C., it was reported
that police continued their search for a 35-year old pulpwood worker
charged in two warrants with brutally beating his two young sons,
ages three and six, according to information received from their
seven-year old brother. The police chief said that he was around
there somewhere, having been missing since the news of the beating,
which had taken place on Sunday at midnight, had leaked on Wednesday
after the seven-year old had told a classmate, who told school
officials, who contacted police. The older brother had said that
their father had strung the two younger brothers from rafters,
utilizing a dog chain to bind them, in their cabin-type home near
Lake Lure and had beaten them with a heavy leather belt. The older
brother said that his father had become angry when one of the boys
had broken a windowpane of the home. The superintendent of the town
said that the older of the two boys had been "black with bruises
from his shoulders down", but he had not seen the younger
brother. The police chief said that he had been led to expect that
the father would be apprehended the previous night, but they had not
been able to catch him. The town superintendent said that he believed
the man was hiding in the woods around the family's home, indicating
that the family was scared of him. The two boys who had been beaten
had been examined at Bat Cave Valley Clinic, where doctors had
taken photographs of their bruises for possible use as evidence. If
they do not find him soon, it may be time to call on the services of
Bruce Wayne and his sidekick, to step in and take over the mission.
Those not familiar with North Carolina towns, incidentally, should
take note that there is a Bat Cave. Rock 'n' roll haters, by the way, cannot place the blame on Elvis, as his latest recording
In Durham, News publisher Thomas L. Robinson, president of the North Carolina Press Association, had spoken the previous night at the Association's annual dinner at Duke University. His remarks are published in full. Among them, he quoted the late newspaperman William Allen White as having said that nothing could fail more swiftly than a cowardly newspaper, unless it was a paper "that mistakes noise for courage", indicating that they needed brave papers in North Carolina to help the state realize its destiny. "We must communicate with the minds and consciences of our people. We must influence, and nudge and encourage. We must make our papers instruments of the public good—and not the public good in the broad sense alone, but the public good as applied to the specific issues which the state and its people must face together." We cannot help but wonder, given the way the front page has been tending toward the sensational more than the substantive of late, just how that fits with his notions of service to the public, encouraging and nudging in a positive direction. We have our hand raised, sir. Please address our inquiry.
A piece, presumably by Julian Scheer based on previous such pieces, but not bearing a byline this time, addresses the happenings around City, County and State governments, should you happen to be doing a term paper on the gossip around same in early 1957.
Query whether the mystery vehicle in
the snow is one of those new foreign imports, the VW. At first
glance, we admit, we thought it might be one of the Kuku's rather
than a snow-encrusted Beetle
On the editorial page, "An Inaugural Week's Bewildering End" finds that to fanciers of political linguistics, the first week of the second Eisenhower term had "opened in eloquence and ended in bewilderment." The President's inaugural address had fixed some firm national purposes, while not presenting a blueprint.
The President had buried the "fortress America" concept developed by former President Herbert Hoover and the late Senator Robert Taft—omitting inclusion, perhaps because of Senator Kennedy's obvious rejection of the notion, of former Ambassador Joseph Kennedy in the 1950 group—with Mr. Hoover having been on the inauguration platform at the time. The President declared American involvement with the destiny of all men, rejecting all forms of isolationism, identifying the U.S. with worldwide yearnings for peace and freedom, and reaffirming U.S. support of the U.N.
Meanwhile, the problem of leading the nation had cast two Eisenhower Cabinet members before Congress, Secretary of State Dulles, for further testimony on foreign affairs, and Treasury Secretary George Humphrey, for advice on fiscal matters, the two presenting a startling contrast. Mr. Dulles had been unequipped with a policy for the Middle East, but argued for a free hand to pounce on any opportunities or dangers which might present themselves, pleading to Congress that it "trust" the President to exercise legislative powers in the Middle East mess, while proposing no particular policy.
Mr. Humphrey, on the other hand, had a policy in the form of the Administration's budget, but did not argue for it, leaving to Congress the hope that it would cut the budget somehow in some unspecified place. It appeared to be a request for Congress to exercise the executive branch's responsibility to construct a budget. That responsibility boiled down to determining which segment of the civilian population should have its funding cut. Congress appeared more likely to yield its authority to the President than to let him yield his to Congress.
Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota had said rather testily that he was tired of hearing the President "plead for something one day, only to observe the next day a Cabinet official in the cloakroom, calling Senators off the floor politely, but very urgently, suggesting that it might be a good idea if a budget request for a particular item were not adopted."
It indicates that the slogan-makers would be hard-pressed to describe the tack which the Eisenhower second term had taken. Neither "dynamic conservatism" nor "conservative progressivism" appeared to fit the two Secretaries' testimony before Congress. It suggests that the Administration appeared to be somewhere in an uncharted area of a state of indecision and that only firm leadership by the President could lead it from that place.
"There Is Absolutely No Resemblance" indicates that whenever civic ne'er-do-wells turned their sneering condescension on U.S. club women, they called them "Helen Hokinson types", after the old New Yorker cartoons by one of America's most penetrating chroniclers of the upper-middle-class matron. The Hokinson girls had all been middle-aged, but determinedly young in heart, "well-upholstered" but hopefully about to reduce, relentlessly uplifted in mind but utterly scatterbrained about civic affairs.
It indicates that there was no resemblance between the members of Charlotte's top women's organization and the cartoons of the late Ms. Hokinson, that in fact there was a startling contrast.
The Charlotte Woman's Club, formed 57 years earlier, deserved the community's special salute this date because it presently was and had been everything the organizations satirized by Ms. Hokinson had not been, "intelligently aware of committee responsibilities, progressive in outlook, pioneering in civic projects of enormous worth."
The Club had a well-documented claim to being Charlotte's oldest civic organization, had founded the community's first parent-teacher group, established the first kindergarten, furnished one-third of the amount necessary to install domestic science courses and equipment in local schools, had organized an Americanization school for the foreign-born, had sponsored adult education classes, formed three traveling libraries to tour the county before the State Library Commission had been activated, had donated thousands of books to public, school and institutional libraries, had established scholarships, supported many cultural projects, organized the Tuberculosis Seal Sale Commission in 1913, established girls' clubs and a Girl Scout troop, had done organizational work in cancer control, travelers aid, the YWCA and many other noteworthy projects.
It was now busy with its new Homemakers Service, providing homemakers on a full time basis to go into a home and maintain it temporarily when one or both parents were unable to do so, a project being handled through the Family and Children's Service of Charlotte.
"Miss Hokinson, bless her soul, would be shocked."
"New Substance for Hysteria's Obituary" finds premature the hopeful obituaries which had been written regarding the Red scare which had sown wild seeds of suspicion throughout the country. No sooner than some pundits had proclaimed a new era of trust and good feeling between Americans, than there had been a new chase after "red-sheeted ghosts and hobgoblins."
One of the most glaring offenses against individual liberties had occurred after the overdue exit of Senator McCarthy from the national limelight. That had been the initial refusal of a Navy officer's commission to Eugene Landy, an honors graduate of the Merchant Marine Academy, on the grounds that he had been "close" to his mother, a former Communist.
Publicity had prodded the brass to reverse that decision, rejecting the alien doctrine of "guilt by kinship", prompting new sighs of relief from Americans, long afraid that basic U.S. liberties would be sacrificed to a security system designed to preserve those liberties. The system continued to work injustices, but not of the type which produced another cause célèbre as with Mr. Landy. Much of the security system was shrouded in secrecy and only major blunders reverberated publicly.
It finds that more important than attitudes in Washington were those in the country at large. In Detroit during the week, there had been an incident when a 14-year old girl had been awarded an Americanism medal by the Charles A. Learned American Legion post auxiliary. Her brother, 16, had won a similar award two years earlier. Both presumably were "close" to their parents with whom they lived. Their father had been a former chief of the Communist Party in Michigan and their mother faced deportation as an undesirable alien. But the children had presumably proved their Americanism by conduct and by writing an essay on the subject.
It concludes that the auxiliary had proved that "guilt by kinship" had not become embedded in the U.S. after a long period of demagoguery and fear.
A piece from the Washington Post & Times Herald, titled "Multiplying Teenagers", indicates that the low mark in youth population resulting from reduced birth rates during the Depression had now been passed, with young people between 14 and 17 becoming relatively more numerous, according to Bureau of Labor Standards reports. It meant that the nation's adults were in for adjustment, needing advance planning.
Home and school would have to struggle with more adolescent problems. More high schools and high school teachers would be needed. Competition for after-school and vacation jobs would increase. No doubt, more rock 'n' roll music or its equivalent would emanate from radios, phonographs and jukeboxes. (You got that right, Mack.) More debate would resound over use of the family car and there would be demands for more night chauffeuring by fathers. More business would be ahead for vendors of hot dogs and ice cream sodas and for the manufacturers of teenage clothes. More bathrooms would be littered with wet towels. More plundered refrigerators would greet housewives each morning.
It posits that the big problem was to get those teenagers, the war babies of earlier times, educated. For they wanted to go to school, even those who were past compulsory school age. Most of the gain in high school enrollment since 1933 had been among 16 and 17-year old adolescents. Many of the teenagers also wanted to work while attending school.
In 1953, 17 percent of all youths enrolled in school had part-time jobs, whereas in 1955, a postwar high of 22 percent had been reached. At the same time, opportunities for youth who dropped out of school had been declining. The big adolescent population presently increasing would have its quota of dropouts. The nation was finding that its responsibilities, like those of the home, did not decrease as children grew older.
Drew Pearson indicates that bitterness over H. Meade Alcorn's selection as RNC chairman was such that many former supporters of the late Senator Robert Taft had sworn privately to resist Mr. Alcorn's leadership. They believed that the President's "modern Republicans" were leading the party to political ruin by trying to remodel it not in the image of the President, but in that of the Democratic Party. They considered Mr. Alcorn's appointment as the final affront to the conservative wing, had already nicknamed him derisively "Acorn from the Nutmeg State". Conservatives in Congress were particularly upset over Mr. Alcorn's pledge to strengthen the RNC, interpreting it to mean that he would seek to dictate policy to Republicans in Congress, and that if he were to try it, they would fight him.
Mr. Alcorn had been picked by retiring RNC chairman Leonard Hall and White House chief of staff Sherman Adams, the "assistant president", both of whom had persuaded the President to run again in 1956. The President had gone along with the selection of Mr. Alcorn. When an official Republican delegation had called on the President to ask his choice, however, he had turned the tables and requested their recommendation, with both the President and the delegation understanding at the time who was to be selected. Their spokesman, Harry Darby, had indicated politely to the President that they had come to find out his choice, with Mr. Darby having been the favorite of the conservatives for the chairmanship. Finally, the President had said that he would appreciate it if the national committee would select Mr. Alcorn. Some conservatives had been annoyed with the President for asking the recommendation of the delegation when it was known that he had already decided on Mr. Alcorn, grumbling privately that the national committee was nothing more than a "rubber stamp for the White House" and might as well cease to function.
Mr. Alcorn had been "elected" by a voice vote of the committee, after Mr. Hall had asked for the voice vote with a sheepish smile, having already announced the President's choice. Conservatives were undecided on what to do about Mr. Alcorn, some wanting to fight him openly while others preferred to wait until after the 1958 midterm elections, being convinced that the Democrats would win and figuring that it would be the best way to discredit the RNC chairman. Whether silent or open, the President had a serious conservative revolt on his hands.
Mr. Pearson notes that Mr. Hall wanted to be appointed as Secretary of Commerce to replace Sinclair Weeks, who had, however, no intention of resigning voluntarily. As a compromise, White House aides were talking about giving Mr. Hall an important foreign post to groom him for a run for governor of New York in 1958 against Governor Averell Harriman—ultimately to be defeated instead by Nelson Rockefeller.
He indicates that it had been discussed only in backstage whispers, but Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson had been seeking to appoint anti-labor Democrats to the Senate Labor Committee, explaining privately that he wanted to get some "conservative thinking" on that Committee. He had first maneuvered to appoint freshmen Senators Frank Lausche of Ohio and Herman Talmadge of Georgia to the Committee, both unpopular with organized labor.
Marquis Childs indicates that the impending visit to Washington sometime during April by Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia had produced protest both in public and private within the Administration in a nearly unprecedented manner. An invitation to Tito had been extended some months earlier and since, there had been lengthy exchanges regarding the date of the visit. If no agreement could be reached, given the President's crowded schedule, then the visit might be canceled. At a recent press conference, the President, when asked about Tito and new British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, replied that consideration was being given to several state visits but that he could say nothing regarding the timing.
But with mounting pressure to withdraw the invitation, it appeared that the State Department had surrendered, fully realizing that it would constitute a setback to the long-range policy of detaching the satellite states from control by the Kremlin. In the view of Secretary Dulles and those close to him, neither the revolt in Hungary nor the "national communism" achieved by Poland would have been possible without Tito, who had broken with the Moscow-dictated Cominform in 1949, at a time, with Stalin still alive, when it seemed likely that Yugoslavia would be overwhelmed by Russian military force for the show of independence.
State Department policymakers believed that it was that first crack among the satellites which had precipitated ultimately the revolutionary events of the previous six months, shaking the Communist empire to its foundations. One of the best informed officials in the Government had indicated that the Hungarian revolt was the greatest blow struck for freedom since the American Revolution.
It was in that context that the visit by Tito had been arranged, as he had wanted to visit for at least the previous three years. Mr. Childs points out that if the U.S. were to base invitations on the degree of civil liberty in a particular country, as one official had expressed it, there would never have been an invitation extended to King Saud of Saudi Arabia, presently on his way to the U.S. The King was an absolute monarch who had forbidden any American of Jewish origin to work at the American airbase at Dharan, one reason for the strong Jewish opposition to his state visit. But the State Department believed that the visit was important to maintain Arab friends in the Middle East.
The opposition to Tito's visit stemmed in part from the ancient religious schism between the Slav Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. Shortly before World War II, when Yugoslavia had been a monarchy, a concordat was negotiated with the Vatican, one which never could be ratified in Belgrade because of Serbian opposition. The dispute had been heightened during the partisan war after 1941, when Serbs and Croatians had been pitted against each other. After Tito had consolidated his power, charges of collaboration with the Germans had been brought against many, including Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac, who was imprisoned and became a martyr in the eyes of millions around the world. In 1953, he had been released with permission to leave the country or confine himself to his native village where he could officiate at mass in the village church. Two years earlier, with the assent of the Archbishop, the Church and the regime in Belgrade, a bishop coadjutor had been named to carry out the duties which had been those of the Archbishop.
Strong protests against the visit by Tito had come from various members of Congress, including House Majority Whip John McCormack of Massachusetts, who had intimated that he would seek to block any foreign aid to Yugoslavia if Tito were to visit as a state guest.
During the hottest phase of the campaign the previous fall for the presidency, the President, on the recommendation of Secretary Dulles, had resisted similar pressure when he found that Yugoslavia was entitled to U.S. aid. Congress had approved assistance for Yugoslavia on condition that the President reach a public determination that Tito was not under the domination of the Soviets.
Joseph Alsop, in Moscow, indicates that it had been an astonishing experience in Moscow to read reports of the testimony of Secretary Dulles before Congress regarding the "Eisenhower doctrine" for the Middle East. He believes hours had been devoted to discussion of dangers which hardly existed, when the actual dangers had been rapidly glossed over.
He suggests that the violence of the Soviet reaction to the President's new doctrine had to provide it the look of truth in the eyes of the Administration, given the warnings about the possibility of Soviet armed aggression in the Middle East. But in fact, he reports, there was not the slightest evidence in Moscow suggesting that the Soviets had any intention of using their armed forces in that region, either at present or for the ensuing years to come. All of the evidence indicated that the Soviet leaders never had any intention of resorting to force at any time during the Suez crisis, even at the moment when Premier Nikolai Bulganin had sent his threatening note to London and Paris warning against invasion of Egypt, which had taken place on November 1. That message had precipitated panic in Washington.
But in truth, the reason for the intensity of the Soviet reaction to the Eisenhower doctrine had been frankly stated by a brilliant Soviet expert on foreign affairs, the only member of the local hierarchy with whom Mr. Alsop had yet been able to talk at length. He had said that they believed the doctrine was "a pretext for putting the buckle on the chain of American bases which surrounds the Soviet Union."
Mr. Alsop indicates that it did not mean that the Soviet program in the Middle East would be abandoned. The Soviet expert had said that the Soviets would never be content to let well enough alone in the Middle East or any other troubled area on the Western side of the line which presently divided the world.
In the same manner, in Paris, following the first London conference on the Suez crisis, Soviet Foreign Minister Dmitri Shepilov flatly had told French leaders that his country "could never under any circumstances abandon its historic mission" of assisting in the "liberation" of people's seeking to throw off the "colonial yoke".
Mr. Alsop suggests that maybe the position would be different if it were certain that Soviet intervention on the Western side of the line could lead to general war, as it might have led to war if the U.S. had behaved about Hungary as the Soviets had behaved about Egypt. Perhaps the intervention in the Middle East would never have been attempted, had it not been for the Big Four summit meeting in Geneva in July, 1955.
He says that in Moscow, he had found plenty of expert support for the opinion that the President and former Prime Minister Anthony Eden had been too successful in Geneva in explaining their remorseless dedication to peace at any price. He suggests that it must have been delightful to Soviet leaders to hear about that dedication just at a time when a wholly new Middle East program was being tentatively weighed. Thereafter, the old Far Eastern emphasis of Soviet policy had at least temporarily been abandoned. The links had been formed with Egypt's Premier Nasser and the other Arab nationalists. The Middle East program, which essentially consisted of encouraging the Arabs to do what they wanted to do anyway, had been adroitly launched. The danger of the program lay in the fact that vengeance on the Western nations for wrongs, real and imagined, was the immediate goal of Arab nationalism. The link with the Soviets in turn gave the Arab leaders the self-confidence to seek that vengeance in ways which could prove fatal to the Western powers and especially to Britain. Yet, encouraging the Arabs to do what they wanted to do cost the Soviets very little and involved a minimum of risk.
He finds that to be the major present theme of Soviet grand strategy. "One can only admire the cool daring and astute calculation of this strategy which gives the Soviet leaders a good chance of rather decisively upsetting the world balance of power at such small cost to themselves. One cannot feel this strategy will be successfully countered, either, simply by telling the Soviets they must not do the one thing they do not mean to do." Yet, the President had delivered his proposed doctrine to Congress for approval and if the Congress refused to pass it, the after effects were likely to make the summit meeting appear, by comparison, "like one of the more hard-headed episodes of Bismarckian diplomacy."
Robert C. Ruark, in Ikoma,
Tanganyika, continues his story of bungalow Bob about his safari and
the "enchanted leopard", which you may read on your own if
you have a mind to do so. We really do not. We have enough dangerous
cats with whom to deal stateside
Did we ever tell you about the time in February, 1986 that we happened to bump into "Charlie"
Framed Edition
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