The Charlotte News
Tuesday, January 29, 1957
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in New York, King Saud of Saudi Arabia had received a full welcome from the Government as he arrived this date for a state visit, while New York City had given him a cold reception, as Mayor Robert Wagner had vetoed any official City ceremony, which usually greeted visiting foreign dignitaries, stating that it was because the King was anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic and upheld slavery. A U.S. destroyer squadron had passed in review and fired a 21-gun salute as the ship on which the King was traveling reached the entrance to the harbor, but the usual toots from other harbor craft had been missing, as City fire boats had not shown up to emit water. When the King had finally reached Manhattan, he received only a sedate police escort of ten cars, without motorcycles blaring sirens. The police had also been directed to halt the motorcade whenever it encountered a red light at an intersection on its way to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where the King was staying, not the usual practice. Citizens also paid little attention to his arrival. At the pier on the Hudson River, there was only an estimated 350 to 500 spectators, many of whom having been attracted only by the commotion, having to ask what was taking place. When the King had arrived at the hotel, there were only about 50 persons there to greet him. No pickets were in evidence, as expected to have been the case. The King took no note of the cool reception. U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., had greeted the King as the personal representative of the President.
The Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, meeting jointly, had voted unanimously this date to conduct a complete review of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East during the previous 11 years. Senate Minority Leader William Knowland and Senator Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin, the latter being the ranking Republican member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that the White House and State Department had no objection to the inquiry. The action had apparently cleared the way for ultimate Senate adoption of the resolution sought by the President on the Middle East. The vote had come as the House had begun debate on the resolution, with the expectation being that it would be approved in the House the following day. House Minority Leader Joseph Martin of Massachusetts said that he thought there was a chance that the House might vote on it late this date. Senator Theodore Green of Rhode Island, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, had read a letter from Secretary of State Dulles, received while the vote of the Committees was underway, setting up certain conditions under which confidential documents would be made available to the Senators. The Secretary said that it was his understanding that in its review of documents, the Committees would not seek to breach the confidence of other friendly governments. Several members of the Committees said that they wanted clarification of what the statement meant, but it had been generally agreed that the Committees would not be bound by the language of the Secretary. Senator Knowland had told reporters earlier in the day, following a conference of Republican Congressional leaders at the White House, that the Administration would make every effort to cooperate with the review of Middle East policy. He emphasized that an original proposal advanced by Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas had not been acceptable to the Administration, Senator Fulbright having sought the previous week a review of U.S. policy in the region in advance of any Senate committee action on the Administration's proposed program for the region. The Fulbright resolution had now been amended to carry the proposed inquiry back to 1946, when the Democrats had been in power. The extension of the review to the previous ten years appeared likely to accelerate action on the resolution.
In New York, the armed services
announced previously unidentified missile projects this date, showing
motion pictures of some of them publicly for the first time, at the
annual meeting of the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences. Maj.
General B. A. Schriever, head of the U.S. ballistic program, said
that the program was "beginning to pay dividends" and that
the Thor 1,500-mile intermediate range ballistic missile had entered
its flight test phase, while the Atlas and Titan 5,000-mile ICBM
In Barbourville, Ky., the rain-swollen Cumberland River had exceeded its flood stage by almost three feet early this date, causing flooding to about 30 percent of the town. Its mayor had called for the aid of the Kentucky National Guard in evacuating the population of about 3,000 persons. Many of the town streets were under six feet of water by mid-morning.
In Rockingham, N.C., two men were being held in the Richmond County jail this date on armed robbery charges in connection with the holdup of a roadhouse near Gibson the previous night, just across the South Carolina line, with officers indicating that they were charged with holding up the proprietor and his wife with a .22-caliber pistol and taking $70 from the cash drawer, along with a shotgun and a pistol which they had found behind the counter, then allegedly forcing their victims to walk down the highway while they drove in the opposite direction. A Scotland County rural policeman spotted the pair in their car at a drive-in restaurant between Hamlet and Laurinburg shortly before midnight and had confiscated the weapons of the two, at which point one of the two men jumped him, the officer knocking him down with the confiscated shotgun, when the other man drew a pistol, the officer's gun then jamming. The man, however, had been unaware of the fact and surrendered, tossing his pistol from the car. The officer radioed for help and other officers of Richmond County had taken the pair into custody.
In Marion, N.C., the sheriff of McDowell County faced a coroner's inquest this night after the fatal shooting of a construction worker the previous night, possibly resulting in formal charges against the sheriff. The coroner reported that the sheriff had shot the 43-year old man in the abdomen, the man later dying in the hospital. The shooting had been the latest incident in a long and turbulent term of office for the sheriff. Several years earlier, the State Bureau of Investigation had investigated him and his deputies, with a report from the SBI provided the County Commission but never made public. The chairman of the County Commission said that the the victim of the shooting had charged from the courthouse steps that some of the Sheriff's Department personnel had taken payoffs from bootleggers, though not accusing the sheriff personally. The sheriff said that the man had sent word that he was "out to get" the sheriff and had been apparently reaching for a weapon before the shooting. The dead man had recently returned to Marion after having spent six years in Alaska. The coroner had quoted a police officer in the town as saying that the sheriff had received a call from "a drunk" at a restaurant where the deceased had been the previous day. When the sheriff arrived, the drunk was gone, but witnesses told the coroner that the deceased had followed the sheriff from the restaurant into the street, where he was then gunned down. The coroner said that the man had died before he was able to provide a statement, though having stated in the hospital that he wanted to make a statement.
In Charlotte, a large hole had been cut through the front wall of the projection booth of Ovens Auditorium, with the manager having stated that the hole had been cut to provide a port for a spotlight needed for various stage productions, as the booth had only one spotlight port and they needed two. Windows had also been cut through the tile of the Coliseum wall near the concourse leading to the Auditorium, the manager explaining that they needed more ticket booths for the year and a half old facility.
Spring was in the air around Charlotte this date as warm, sticky air from the south had caused temperatures to rise to an expected record-breaking 72 for the date, with the old record being 71.8, set in 1947. At noon in Wilmington, the temperature had been reported as 72, 71 in Greensboro, 65 in Hatteras, 66 in Asheville, 70 in Raleigh, 69 in Columbia, S.C., and 74 in Charleston, S.C. Miami, Fla., had recorded 79 and Jacksonville, 76. Meanwhile, New York City had a high of 33. Washington hit 36 and Memphis, 44. A low of 40 was forecast for the following morning in Charlotte, with a high of 50 predicted for the afternoon.
In Hollywood, the business manager of Humphrey Bogart stated that the late actor's estate would involve holdings of "well over a million dollars". He denied reports that it would approach eight million dollars and declined to estimate the exact figure, saying that it would not be known until all of the late actor's holdings had been assessed. He said that a percentage of the estate would be devoted to establishing a foundation for various charities, of which Mrs. Bogart, actress Lauren Bacall, the manager and a bank would act as trustees. Mr. Bogart had died of cancer on January 14.
In Indiana, Pa., an 86-year old man, the father of 22 children, 20 boys and two girls, with 20 still living, had a new grandchild the previous day, the seventh of one of his sons, bringing the total number of grandchildren to 76. The piece does not envy his having to purchase Christmas presents for the brood.
In Boiling Springs, N.C., a polio victim, 19, was studying at Gardner-Webb College via two-way radio, having received her first semester grades the previous day, achieving a 97.2 average.
If you want to know where Charlotte
will be in 1967, whether the unprecedented growth
On the editorial page, "An Unwelcome Change to the Lineup" comments on the announcement the previous day by Charlotte Mayor Philip Van Every that he would not seek re-election for a third two-year term, desiring to devote more time to his business and his family, thus ending the prospect for what had been anticipated as an active contest between the Mayor and the Mayor Pro Tem, James Smith, with the latter now the odds-on favorite to be elected.
It indicates that connoisseurs of political pageantry had naturally been disappointed, and that the loss of Mayor Van Every had been significant, as the city needed all of the civic heavyweights it could get to run for its top offices, regarding the Mayor as having been a strong candidate for re-election, having been a vigorous and imaginative leader, battling stubbornly for what he had sincerely believed to be the best interests of the city, regardless of special interest groups.
It admits that the newspaper had differed with him at times, had never pulled its punches and neither had he when rebutting one of its editorial jabs. Nevertheless, it finds that his sincerity and devotion to duty had never been questioned, and it hopes that he would again at some point enter public service.
"End the Inquisition, Pass the Doctrine" finds that the so-called "Eisenhower doctrine" had been obscured by Secretary of State Dulles having undergone a Congressional inquisition, creating partisan delight in and out of Congress. The Secretary at times had been able to paint bright pictures regarding world affairs when the RNC was in the market for them, and had come before Congress on the heels of the debacle in the Middle East, providing dire warnings of another disaster unless Congress approved the Administration's plans.
It finds the doctrine wrapped in melodrama since the Administration had first leaked it to the press in an effort to inflate its stale substance, and that the Secretary had not been able to add to that substance by indicating how internal threats in the Middle East were to be met after warnings had been issued against external Soviet aggression. But it had also been clear that whatever substance the doctrine had could be dissipated by Congressional delay or evidence of extreme reluctance of approval. Once Congress had been asked to join in the warning, its only course in wisdom had been concurrence, suggesting that it would be better to issue no warning against Soviet aggression than to issue one halfheartedly.
The first responsibility of Congress was to dispose of the President's request, to be done with dispatch, indicating that the dissection of the Dulles record could be delayed or, better, ended, as his critics had exhibited sufficiently their lack of confidence in him and reminded that he enjoyed very little popularity overseas. It finds that to go beyond that in an attempt to force his resignation was to risk repetition of Congressional excesses in the attacks on his predecessor, Dean Acheson, during the Truman Administration. Congress had then only succeeded in creating the fiction that Secretary Acheson had been personally responsible for all of the world's ills and that a new Secretary would fix everything quickly. But the successor, Mr. Dulles, had not fixed the problems.
It concludes that unless Congress was prepared to assume direction of foreign policy, offering no proposals of its own, it would be wise to let Secretary Dulles remain, and the responsibility retained by the Secretary and the President.
"Extending Charlotte's Jungle Limits" indicates that the Greensboro Daily News, impressed by the news that Charlotte schoolchildren were able to read better than the national average, had editorially prepared a Primer for Young Charlotteans, which provided that Charlotte was a big city, the biggest in the state, that elephants were big animals, which lived in jungles, were the biggest animals in the jungle, that elephants did not live in cities unless the city was big enough to have a jungle in it, and if there was an elephant jungle inside a city, then an elephant could live inside a city, that Charlotte had an elephant jungle and so elephants could live in Charlotte, and that there was no other city in the state or the U.S. or the Western Hemisphere or in the whole world which could make that statement.
It finds the vision utterly false, that Charlotte had not played host to any runaway elephant in many months and that the only thing answering to the name Jumbo in the area was Charlotte's appetite for progress. It indicates that the primary preoccupation was annexation rather than elephants.
"So, have a care, sirs. Among the outposts of suburbia city fathers are currently coveting is a patch of veldt laughingly called Greensboro. When Charlotte starts extending its jungle limits, anything, but anything, can happen."
A piece from the Greensboro Daily
News, titled "Is the Picture Window Cracking?"
indicates that at last someone was concerned about the current
phenomenon of American suburban life, "'the box
John Keats, in his new book, titled The Crack in the Picture Window, had said that life could be different, as could housing developments. Quoting Dr. Charles Winslow of the Yale University School of Public Health, he had stated: "The postwar house is too small to entertain guests, lacks sufficient storage space, has poorly lighted dining alcoves placed in the path of major circulation, lacks space anywhere for children's playcorners, and its bedrooms lack privacy. Families living in these houses may well suffer serious mental and physical ills."
It finds that because the men were away at work all day, women ruled the house as a matriarchy, seeing so much of their neighbors that they either became bored with them or refused to speak to them. Caught in long-term mortgage loans, the young couples, with increasing numbers of children filling the inadequate housing, could not escape to more satisfactory homes and so remained, stewing in their own mews, peering unhappily through their picture windows and fervently wishing they were outside.
Statisticians predicted that by 1975, over 75 percent of all Americans would be living in urban areas and that 85 percent of the urban growth during the ensuing 20 years would be in the suburbs. It asks whether, therefore, it was not time to begin planning for housing developments, not only within the financial means of young couples but also within their happy-living means, providing space, privacy and some outdoor area, if their marriages and their children were to grow to satisfactory maturity.
Drew Pearson indicates that the most guarded documents in Congress were not reports regarding security but the expense accounts of the members while traveling abroad. He indicates, however, that the column had gained access to some of those top-secret vouchers, stating that the only reason for the secrecy was to conceal from the public how much money the members were blowing on extravagances.
He reports that the all-time spending record had probably been set by Senators Dennis Chavez of New Mexico, John McClellan of Arkansas, John Stennis of Mississippi and Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts, who had taken a lavish tour through European and Mediterranean countries in late 1955, with Senators McClellan and Stennis having taken their wives along, and Senator Chavez having brought his son, his personal physician, his lawyer, his secretary and assorted assistants. They had all traveled on Government planes and ships and so the transportation costs could only be estimated. In Spain, Senators McClellan and Stennis had decided to go home early and demanded a special Air Force plane for the journey, the Air Force having sent two empty planes across the Atlantic to pick them up at an estimated cost of $20,000. When the fact had made the newspapers, Senator McClellan had hastily arranged commercial transportation for his wife, and both Senators had demanded an apology from the Defense Department for embarrassing them.
The Senators had spent nearly $38,000 for hotels, nightclubs, excursions, souvenirs and the like, claiming that only about $1,100 had been for personal expenses, with the remainder being picked up by taxpayers as "official". Most of those latter expenses had occurred in Paris, Rome and Madrid, totaling more than $25,000, with another $4,700 tallied in England, while they had stayed in no country more than a week each.
They were supposed to have been inspecting military installations, but their expense vouchers did not sound very military, instead, the vouchers from Italy, for example, having listed taxis on the Isle of Capri, cocktails at Piazza, Blue Grotto excursions, a trip to Pompeii, and rental of automobiles in Naples. A note to the State Department from the U.S. Embassy in Rome had reported that the attaché had paid all of the expenses, including the rental of vehicles, whiskey, Kleenex, etc. A voucher from London had listed Navy wine, Embassy wine, Dorchester Hotel reception, H. J. Adams theater tickets, and Daimler Hire of Cars, with an item listed at the bottom indicating that items with no obtainable receipts had included 60 boxes of Kleenex, two cartons of cigarettes, Wedgwood china, and tips. In Paris, Senator Saltonstall had drawn $453 to cover his out-of-pocket expenses, and in Rome, Senator Chavez had drawn $594, Senator Stennis, $362, Senator McClellan, $250, and Senator Saltonstall, $239. In London, Senator McClellan had drawn $244, Senator Chavez, $183, Senator Stennis, $187, and Senator Saltonstall, $70.
The biggest spender, he notes, was not a Senator but the playboy son of Senator Chavez, who had signed vouchers for over three thousand dollars worth of Spanish pesetas in Madrid, part of which had been spent in nightclubs.
Joseph Alsop, in Moscow, tells of the U.S. Embassy having been one of the former palaces of Moscow sugar millionaires which the Soviet Government considered appropriate for the more important foreign representatives. "The setting was therefore surrealist—vast rooms of wildly clashing styles positively writhing with carved marble and molded stucco and gilded and frescoed ornament. Against this fantastic background, the little party of Westerners seemed slightly out of place. Yet the two ambassadors talked shrewdly about the Soviet economy. The food and the champagne were delicious. Altogether, it was rather like a particularly civilized picnic in the middle of a movie set left over from the earlier period of Cecil B. de Mille."
At the hotel, a French newspaperman and an Italian colleague had been waiting for a nightcap, both being typical European intellectuals, "bearing in their different ways the scars of Europe's agony in the last war." The Italian, who had been a pupil of Benedetto Croce, proposed to discuss the application of Sr. Croce's dictum, that history was merely the story of human freedom, to the Soviet Union. The verdict of the debate was on the whole in favor of a better human future. By that point, the big party which some Polish students had been giving next door had reached a climax, and the Italian suggested joining in the fun, which he proceeds to describe, as happy singing had gone on for hours, with the Italian remarking, if illogically, that it proved that the human race would be perfectly all right if only governments would let the human race alone.
Mr. Alsop says he offers the
vignette as a way of suggesting the violent and startling contrast of
a visit to Moscow, where foreigners were insulated, all the more so
if one were a temporary visitor under the care of Intourist. That
visitor had largely to accept the judgment of more expert and
permanent foreign observers, the most brilliant of whom had said that
his task was "like psychoanalyzing the actors
He had gathered from snippets of conversation that the mysterious Soviet system, no matter how inhuman one might think it, was still inhabited by "extremely human beings".
Doris Fleeson indicates that Senators J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, Richard Russell of Georgia, Mike Mansfield of Montana and others were trying to impress upon the President their utter lack of confidence in Secretary of State Dulles, and she ventures that if the President dismissed it as mere politics, he was only asking for more trouble. The Senators who were questioning Secretary Dulles on the proposed Middle East resolution to provide the President authority to use the armed forces, including ground troops, if necessary, to arrest any Communist aggression in that region, and to afford him authority to spend up to 200 million in the ensuing year on economic and military aid for the region, were internationalists who were not craving of headlines. They understood the Senate and had recently returned from the last of several trips abroad during which they had ample opportunity to judge how U.S. policy looked from that vantage point.
She indicates that the truth was that Secretary Dulles had appeared to Democrats for a long time as an intensely political Secretary, but to the present time, they had not attacked him, even during the presidential campaign, in the way Republicans had attacked his predecessor, Dean Acheson. It had taken the proposal to give the Administration a free hand in the Middle East to arouse the anti-Dulles Senators to public statement. They did not believe that the President, as had FDR, was essentially acting as his own Secretary of State, or they might have refrained in any event.
Senator Fulbright had demanded a review of Secretary Dulles's conduct of foreign affairs and it often appeared to reporters that the Senator, a former president of the University of Arkansas, was still more the scholar than the politician. But his intent, nevertheless, had been clear, calling the Middle East proposal the equivalent of a vote of confidence in the Administration's conduct of foreign relations, one which he not willing to give until he had discovered how the U.S. and its allies got to the point where they were at present.
Joint Chiefs chairman, Admiral Arthur Radford, and the advisers from the State and Defense Departments, had sought not to watch Secretary Dulles as the Senators grilled him, the latter looking grim. They were members of two committees meeting jointly, Foreign Relations and Armed Services, which were not only powerful but were as ably staffed as any in Congress. They believed it a duty to go on the attack against Secretary Dulles, though regarding it as a disagreeable responsibility, as was evident.
The White House had been aware of the failing influence in Congress of Secretary Dulles and had tried to handle it by hiring two former Democratic members to help sell foreign policy, the former chairmen of the Senate and House committees on the subject, Senator Walter George of Georgia and Representative James Richards of South Carolina. But the former was old and not strong and the latter had never established himself as a real student of foreign affairs or worked hard at it. Both men were also former members, and other ambitious men had moved into their shoes. She thus finds that the President's problem could not be solved in that manner.
A letter writer replies to a letter of January 24, indicates that he was an eighth-grade student, finding that the previous writer had appeared to have forgotten history, comparing President Lincoln with General Robert E. Lee, finding his remarks on Mr. Lincoln excellent, but taking issue with the notion that if Northerners had found inspiration in the life of General Lee, so had Americans who had an aversion for democracy found inspiration in the lives of "un-Godly Hitler and Stalin". The writer indicates that if the previous writer intended to compare Mr. Lincoln and General Lee, he should get his facts straight, as neither of them resembled Hitler or Stalin, or any other dictator. He indicates that President Lincoln had been a great man because he had led a nation in a way he thought it should be led and that when the time had come to fight, he had fought for what he believed to be right, that when the time had come for General Lee to fight, he also had fought for what he believed to be right, believing in states' rights, not slavery, for he had freed his own slaves. He finds the previous writer to be trying to build up President Lincoln by tearing down General Lee, finds that silly, as President Lincoln did not need building up and General Lee ought not be torn down, as both had been religious, courageous and honorable men, assets to democracy.
But then, young man, so, too, had been Caesar, an honorable
A letter writer and 32 others from
Greensboro comment on the editorial, "Fade-Out for Two Popular
Pitchers", having read it in a Greensboro newspaper and coming
to the conclusion that it was one of the "most unfair, untrue,
prejudiced, cruel articles" they had ever read, at least as it
referred to Elvis Presley. She asks whether the editors realized how
many people loved Elvis, numbering in the tens of thousands,
indicating that they did not understand those who did not like him,
finding that such editorial comments hurt him deeply, even though he
might not have seen the particular editorial in question. Thousands
of fans had seen the comments. She says that she was sure that the
newspaper did not know what love was, that "when someone has joy
and you feel pleasure, when someone is sad and you feel sorrow, that
is love
The editors respond: "There, there, now! We were only funning."
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