The Charlotte News
Saturday, January 5, 1957
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports that the President this date, in a special message prepared
for delivery to a joint session, had asked Congress for advance
authority to use American troops to curb any "ambitious despots"
or "power-hungry Communists" who might resort to "armed
aggression" in the Middle East. He said that he would also seek
400 million dollars in economic aid for the region, with the money to
be spent over a period of two years. The message was carried
nationwide on television and radio
There was a general belief in Congress that the President would receive the standby authority he sought, but that it would take several weeks to pass and that in the meantime, it might be changed in terms of its proposed language.
Senate supporters of civil rights proposals said this date that they believed such legislation might pass Congress during the year, despite defeat of a move to curb filibusters by a vote of 55 to 38 the previous night, an effort to change the rule which required two-thirds of the membership, or 64 votes, to effect cloture of debate. Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota said that they had almost doubled the vote on a similar measure to eliminate or amend the rule in 1953, when it had been defeated by a margin of 70 to 21. He said that there was a "good chance" that the rules still might be changed during the year and that civil rights bills could be enacted. A coalition of Northern and Western Senators, both Democrats and Republicans, had formed to change the rule, which also barred any limitation on debate of proposals to change Senate rules. Supporters of the change argued that the present system gave a small minority of Senators effective veto power over legislation, but Southern members, who had used the filibuster in previous years to block civil rights measures, contended that the issue transcended civil rights, involving the traditional freedom of debate in the Senate. Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson and Minority Leader William Knowland were both in opposition to the change, arguing that "legislative turmoil", as phrased by Senator Johnson, would result if the Senate accepted the idea that new rules could be adopted with the opening of every new Congress, favoring the view that because only a third of the Senate was elected every biennium, the body was continuing and its rules also continuing.
A new Democratic advisory committee met with Democratic Congressional leaders this date in an effort to unify the leadership for a more active "opposition party" role in the ensuing four years. The advisory committee, proposed by the party's executive committee after the Democrats had lost the 1956 presidential election, had organized itself the previous day around such figures as former President Truman and Adlai Stevenson, the party's standard-bearer in each of the previous two presidential elections. Eleanor Roosevelt had agreed to serve only in an informal capacity. At its first meeting, the committee adopted a resolution saying that its role would include presentation of new programs between the national party conventions, helping to deal with new situations which might not be covered in the party platform, and to provide a "collective voice" on a year-round basis for Democrats "who may or may not be represented in either house of Congress."
Representative James Patterson of Connecticut, a member of the joint Atomic Energy Committee, had predicted in his weekly newsletter to constituents that the Air Force would unveil the first atomic-powered aircraft within six months, providing no details. Air Force Secretary Donald Quarles had indicated that such a craft was in development, but was still several years away from being flown.
In Lexington, Va., a collision between a bus and a truck north of the town the previous night had killed six persons, including three members of one family, and injured 34 others. A young mother from Scranton, Pa., her three-week old son and her mother-in-law had been among the victims of the crash of a loaded, double-decker Greyhound bus, which had hit the rear of a parked tractor-trailer truck. One of the injured was in critical condition this date, having suffered a fractured jaw, fractures of both legs and multiple lacerations. State Police said that the collision had occurred shortly after 7:00 p.m. on a dual-lane, divided section of the heavily traveled U.S. 11, one of the main north-south arteries in the East, with the roadway dry at the time. Passengers were quoted by police as saying that the bus had run over warning flares put out by the truck's driver after it had broken down beside the road, with the truck parked partly on the roadway. A shipment of blood aboard the bus, en route from Memphis to New York, had not been harmed and was rerouted to Lexington for treatment of the persons injured in the crash.
In Charlotte, five persons had been injured, one seriously, in a two-car accident at Pineville and Woodlawn Roads, just south of the city limits in the late morning this date, the most seriously injured of whom had, according to hospital authorities, suffered severe head injuries. County police said that the accident had occurred when a car driven by a Fort Benning, Ga., soldier had run through a red light at the intersection and rammed a station wagon driven by a Charlotte man.
In New York, bandleader Jimmy Dorsey, 52, was reported in good condition this date in Doctors' Hospital following an operation to remove a wart from his left lung, with hospital authorities indicating that he was expected to remain under observation for about ten days.
In Indio, Calif., actress Marie (The Body) McDonald had been found in her night clothes on a desert highway near the town the previous night, bedraggled, hysterical and slightly injured, with sheriff's deputies indicating that she had told them that two kidnapers had pushed her out of a car after a high-speed ride from her home in Los Angeles, from which she had been abducted, some 150 miles from the spot where she was found by a truck driver. On three occasions the previous day, she had telephoned friends to say that she had been kidnaped and was being held captive by two men. She reportedly described her captors in one of the phone calls as a black and a Mexican. She was brought to a hospital in Indio and placed under sedatives, with no one permitted to talk to her. Detectives from Los Angeles were waiting to interrogate her. Her condition was not serious and her doctor said that she was in a state of mild shock when brought into the hospital with an injury to the mouth, consisting of two cracked front teeth and a swollen upper lip, but without bruises. She also had a small abrasion on her left knee and an abrasion on the instep of her right foot. A detective said that they had no leads in the case and no descriptions of the alleged abductors, that they wanted to obtain those descriptions when they talked to her. He said that there was no doubt at present that she had been kidnaped, while earlier the circumstances of her disappearance had led to skepticism on the part of the police.
In Charlotte, a program for inoculating about 18,000 high school students with the Salk polio vaccine might start the following month, with the City-County health officer, Dr. M. B. Bethel, stating that the vaccine purchased under the Federal program and allocated through the State department of public health, would be provided by physician-nurse-volunteer teams at each of the junior and senior high schools in the city and county, where approximately 18,000 students were enrolled. There would be time for two shots, spaced a month to five weeks apart, before the beginning of the polio season, after the start of the inoculation program in early to mid-February. An estimated 2,000 shots per week would be administered in the schools. Student speakers would explain the program during January to student groups. No one, it is safe to say, will be wearing stupid little red hats and advising the students to skip the inoculation in favor of injecting themselves with disinfectant. Such people, in 1957, would undoubtedly have been regarded, per the suggestion this date of Hugh Haynie, as Communists, and rightfully so in that instance. But not even the Communists would have been that stupid.
Also in Charlotte, a vote was taking place this date on the two school bond issues, and 28 of the 59 precincts were reporting during the late morning that only 569 persons had thus far voted among the more than 95,000 registered voters in the county. At stake was a bond issue of 5 million dollars for construction of new schools in the heavily populated perimeter area and additions to existing schools. Also on the ballot was the assumption by the County of old City bond indebtedness, which would raise the bonded indebtedness limit from 5 percent to 8 percent of assessed property value for the County, to enable under State law up to 20 million dollars in additional bonds to be authorized by the voters at some subsequent time.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that a trip by Governor Luther Hodges to New York the previous weekend had combined business with pleasure. It had been reported initially as exclusively a pleasure trip for the Governor and his family, but the story had added that they had departed on an Air National Guard plane, leading to questions, with the Governor having explained on Monday that the story had been in error and that the trip had been for business related to the state, as he called on eight large industries interested in relocating to the state. Between meetings with the representatives of those industries, he had vacationed with his wife and son, paying their expenses out of his own pocket. Thus, there had been no impropriety.
In St. Louis, the International Shoe
Co. had sent more than 1,200 pairs of men's blue suede shoes to Camp
Kilmer, N.J., for use by Hungarian refugees. Do not step on them…
On the editorial page, "The Crimes That Do Not Fade Away" indicates that the swift reaction of South Carolina SLED officers to the beating of high school band director Guy Hutchins, allegedly having been abducted off the side of a highway and taken to a wooded area and beaten with a board by hooded men for supposedly having made statements in favor of integration, had been worth the personal commendation of Governor George Bell Timmerman, and more. It urges that it was not prejudging the six accused men to say that vigorous law enforcement was presently more than ever a necessity in the South, with the need for it increased in direct proportion to the rising social and racial tensions, as unsolved crimes involving retaliation for expression of personal beliefs did not fade away as did unsolved crimes of profit and passion.
Such crimes were marked down by propagandists, lawyers, political strategists and individuals, serving as fodder for mustering public opinion and emotion, and as condemnation of the South and to support movements to substitute Federal for state laws. Gang or mob action injured Southern communities at home no less than the national reputation of the region. "The stifling tensions and the threat of riots such as have crippled bus service in Florida and Alabama place special strains and burdens on all community institutions. Business interests suffer. So does the general respect for law without which it cannot operate."
It suggests that no one resented the beating of Mr. Hutchins more than his fellow citizens of Camden, S.C., but that without punishment of the attackers, the resentment counted for nothing in maintenance of peace and order. It finds that Governor Timmerman's commendation of SLED would be shared by all thoughtful citizens of the Carolinas.
"In Bigness, a Touch of Badness" indicates that a bigger and better Charlotte had set many records during 1956, but had also killed the greatest number of people in traffic accidents during the previous five years, 23. When the city and county tolls were combined, there had been 49 traffic deaths in some 4,000 accidents during the year, and another 1,298 persons injured.
It finds, therefore, that safety planners had their work cut out for them, that a sustained year-round effort was needed, as the statistics spoke for themselves in the grimmest language possible. There was need for expanded driver training, traffic schools for traffic offenders, sterner law enforcement, stricter speed limits, special traffic courts, and rigid restriction of chronic violators, many of which could be undertaken at the local level, while the state could also make necessary improvements in highway safety through, for instance, implementing periodic motor vehicle inspections.
It concludes that the record was bad enough already and would get worse before it got better unless immediate action were taken on all safety fronts.
"Federal Flavor in a Bait of Change" indicates that it was about to be argued in Congress that the nation could not do without additional Federal civil rights legislation. It finds, however, that for at least the previous 56 years, it had done without such legislation and, historically, had done rather well in advancing the rights and well-being of all citizens.
Without the assistance of Congress, the Supreme Court had ordered the redesigning of social and racial patterns to provide rights which only three years earlier had first been designated as rights. It finds that the digestion of that change would be long and tortuous, particularly for a region which had been slow to change and disliked the Federal "flavor" in the administration of its affairs. It finds it impossible to estimate how long would be required for the the desegregation decision of Brown v. Board of Education to be generally accepted and obeyed, but that all realistic estimates were framed in terms of generations.
Favorable national public opinion developed through the years had, it ventures, largely made Brown possible, and similar Southern public opinion would be required to make it ultimately effective in the South. A new Federal "invasion" into the delicate area of civil rights would hardly be calculated to encourage efforts to assimilate the massive change already ordered.
The President had said in his 1953 State of the Union message that "much of the answer [to civil rights problems] lies in the power of fact, fully publicized; of persuasion, honestly pressed; and of conscience, justly aroused."
It suggests that nothing had occurred to change the wisdom of his prior statement between 1953, when he had asked for no civil rights legislation, and the present time, when the new civil rights legislation was being pushed. It recognizes that great sincerity and cause was motivating some of the sponsors of the new legislation, but asks whether, if a victory were possible, it would be fruitful to anyone concerned.
"It's Those New Ideas That Get You" indicates that amid all of the arguments over whether "Johnny" could read as well as his father and whether modern "progressive education" was all it was cracked up to be, it was pleased to have read recently an authoritative judgment from a magazine titled North Carolina Teacher, from which it quotes as having said that it sometimes denounced an old and tried method most unmercifully in favor of some new scheme, forgetting that the old methods had educated Milton, Tennyson, Gladstone, Longfellow, Holmes, Hawthorne, Ruskin, Dickens, Alexander, Hume, Harry Smith, Battle, Winston, Alderman, Finger, McIver and thousands of other scholarly men and women, while the new methods had yet to produce a fully developed mind and might never do so, advising not to be too quick to set aside an old method until being sure that there was something better to replace it, that doing so was not "progressive education".
It advises that the date of the issue from which it was quoting was December, 1889, and that it raised a reasonable question as to the exact age at which a "new" method became "old" and therefore blessed with special virtue. The new methods which had dismayed the teachers of 1889 had become old reliables a generation later, only to be discarded in favor of the shocking new techniques, which were now being cited by traditionalists as the "old, reliable verities".
"In certain circles, there is nothing so uncomfortable as a new idea; nothing so soothing as an old one."
For unknown reasons, incidentally, the quote in the piece omits, without proper insertion of an ellipsis, the names of Walter Scott, "'Christian Reid', Ransom, Vance, Mrs. Spencer," all listed on one line and so perhaps omitted by inadvertence through overworked eyes. Charles McIver and Edwin Alderman directed the North Carolina Normal and Industrial School, which became Woman's College at Greensboro or UNC-G. Cornelia Phillips Spencer was an historian and editor of tracts and a Chapel Hill newspaper. George Winston was a professor of Latin at UNC and was elected president of the Teachers Assembly in 1889, two years later to succeed Kemp Plummer Battle as president of UNC. Zebulon B. Vance was a post-Civil War Governor of the state, prominent in the development of public education, as well as a Senator at the time of the 1889 article. Harry Smith presumably refers to Davidson College professor Henry L. Smith, mentioned elsewhere in the Teacher, and Alexander is presumably professor Eban Alexander, at the time a UNC professor of Greek and classical literature, also mentioned elsewhere in the publication. Hume presumably refers to the Reverend Thomas Hume of the University, also mentioned in the publication, and not the philosopher, David, albeit also mentioned in passing. (We tend to agree with the Reverend Hume: why read of "Mr. Crab" in the second grade, when you can read of the eggmen and be advanced as far as the ninth grade, perhaps including King Lear in the parallel list, enabling a crossover from Aesop to the caskets of Portia—being little or nothing pertinent to James Dean or "Giant"? By the obverse token, why should the reader retard the exercise by drawing in Crayon books in the ninth grade, when that was all done during the stretch in the seventh?) Dorms at UNC are named for Mrs. Spencer, Messrs. Winston, Alderman, Alexander, McIver and a former dorm turned administration building, for Governor Vance, between Battle and Pettigrew. Ransom presumably refers to Senator M. W. Ransom of North Carolina, in office at the time of the article, and mentioned elsewhere in the Teacher. Sydney Finger was the elected superintendent of State public instruction at the time of the article. (If you do not like your teacher, he is the putative origin of an expression of displeasure for him or her, best communicated furtively rather than overtly to avoid suspension or expulsion. Nah, that's not true. That derives from Kilroy during the war. We just made the association because our local superintendent of public schools had the surname Ward, which always conveyed to the mind, secretly, of course, the prison connotation, especially on snowy days when our mama, who taught in the county system before consolidation, stayed home from school while we had to attend a city school, even in the slippery slush.)
A piece from the Shelby Daily Star, titled "Luxury for Laying Hens", indicates that after great strides had already been made in poultry raising, it was deemed that something more efficient was necessary to cut costs and increase production. Texas A&M had been conducting experiments, and now reported that it had conclusive proof that a cool hen laid more and better eggs. One test had proved that cool hens in summer weather not only laid more eggs but also were less susceptible to heat mortality.
Two chicken houses had been used in the two-month experiment, with 950 hens in each, one having been equipped with evaporative coolers and the other, the control henhouse, without. The farm service adviser, of the Texas Power & Light Co., had reported that during the period, temperatures in the cooled house had averaged about 15 degrees below those in the uncooled one, and about 29,000 eggs had been laid in the test house, while only 17,000 in the other. Only two chickens had died in the cooled house compared to 18 in the uncooled one.
Another test had been conducted by a large egg producer, using fogging equipment, a cheaper method to cool the atmosphere, consisting of the spraying of water in a fine mist. Doing so had increased egg output by 20 percent.
It suggests that all hens might not have such favorable conditions, but it did prove that better health and production resulted from such improved environment. It finds it noteworthy, that in addition to strides being made in medicine and mechanics, such marked improvements were also being effected in the field of agriculture, animal husbandry and fruit growing.
Drew Pearson indicates that first drafts of the President's proposed State of the Union message, scheduled to be delivered directly to Congress on January 10, had already been returned to the White House by Cabinet officers with their comments. As it now stood, the speech would be devoted primarily to foreign policy, with the President issuing a strong reminder that the traditional British-French allies were true friends of the U.S. and emphasizing American sympathy for people everywhere who wished to be free. He would call for a large foreign aid program. On domestic issues, he would seek mild reforms in farm legislation, civil rights, the Taft-Hartley Act and Social Security, while also speaking hopefully of America's prospects for continued peace and prosperity.
Former heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis and Congressman Adam Clayton Powell owed large amounts of money to the IRS, with Mr. Louis alleged to be owing over 1.1 million dollars in back taxes, not having realized the tax bracket into which he had fallen with his large winnings, not bothering therefore to lay enough away to pay his taxes. He had never cheated but got behind in payments, and at the rate of 6 percent interest on back payments, the bill had become quite large. He had taken to wrestling to try to earn enough to pay the Government bill, and during the previous three months had paid $124,000. Recently, the Treasury had attached a $65,000 trust fund left for his children, ages nine and 13. He had not claimed that it was the result of racial discrimination.
Congressman Powell, minister of the largest Baptist black church, was supposed to know, as a member of Congress, more about taxes than Mr. Louis. The previous summer, he had cozied up to Vice-President Nixon, finally switching to support of the President in the previous election campaign. Nevertheless, a Federal grand jury in New York was still considering his case. He claimed that racial discrimination was at work, and some of his friends in the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters had protested on his behalf. Two of his secretaries had been convicted in connection with paying salary kickbacks, and one other had been indicted. Meanwhile, the grand jury had been digging into additional information supplied by a former member of Mr. Powell's staff, that he had paid his rent while in Washington by putting his landlord on the Government payroll. The column had checked into the claim and found that the staff member had been on Mr. Powell's payroll for $77 per month between January and June, 1945, months in which Congress had been in session, and in an amount not far from that which one would have paid in rent for a room in a private home. The records of the House also showed that the staff member had been on Mr. Powell's payroll for $88 per month from January to March, 1946. The money was supposed to be paid to a Congressman for his staff to help his constituents, not for payment of rent, food or personal expenses of a Congressman. The staff member had admitted that Congressman Powell had rented a room from him for $60 per month and also that he had been on the payroll, but denied that there was any connection between the two. He claimed that he was placed on the payroll for advising Mr. Powell on civil rights. Mr. Pearson notes that Mr. Powell had denied that he took kickbacks from his secretaries or that he failed to pay his full amount of taxes.
Steven Spingarn was first in line to become deputy chairman of the DNC.
Congressman Burr Harrison of Virginia, who had taken a post-election trip to Europe to study tariffs for the Ways & Means Committee, had been so conscientious about spending taxpayer money that he returned 25,000 French francs in counterpart funds, and had left his wife at home. He notes that Mr. Harrison had his sights on the governorship and wanted to remain in the good graces of Senator Harry F. Byrd, the great economizer.
Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee had demanded that the President fire Ambassador Carl Rankin, who had been envoy on Formosa for the previous six years. He also wanted him to fire top Army-Navy aides in the U.S. Embassy. When visiting Formosa, Senator Gore had been shocked to find Ambassador Rankin deluding Chiang Kai-shek into believing that the U.S. would support an all-out attack on the mainland. Ambassador Rankin had been on Formosa for so long, believed Senator Gore, that he had lost objectivity and was so fanatically pro-Chiang that he would get the country into trouble unless transferred.
Marquis Childs indicates that there would be no quick and easy approval in the Senate for the President's resolution calling for authority to use, if necessary, U.S. armed forces in the Middle East to repel Soviet aggression, that at the very least there would be a preliminary inquiry into the background of U.S. policy in the region, and that it was possible that the Senate would drastically redefine the resolution.
Both the Democratic and Republican leadership might unite to force it through within a few days, but it would mean suppression of significant disaffection, and Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson was unlikely to begin the new Congress in such a way, having to quiet a smoldering revolt among Democrats regarding civil rights and being too shrewd to take on another fight for the sake of smoothing the path for the Administration's foreign policy.
It rather appeared that there would be a delay of several weeks, with the final resolution taking a different form from that proposed by the Administration, the first reason for such delay being the absence of retired Senator Walter George of Georgia. Two years earlier, when a similar resolution authorizing the President to use armed force in the Formosa Straits to protect Chiang Kai-shek, Senator George had not tolerated opposition as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, where his word was law. On the floor, he had angrily rebuked Senators Wayne Morse of Oregon and Herbert Lehman of New York for raising doubts about such a sweeping guarantee. (Senator Morse, incidentally, would be one of only two Senators to oppose the similar Gulf of Tonkin resolution of August, 1964, authorizing the President to take "all necessary measures" to repel armed attacks on U.S. forces in and near Vietnam and "to prevent further aggression" in Southeast Asia.) Senator George had been an agent of the Administration, armed with extraordinary powers. But now, no such agent was operating in the body.
Another reason for delay was that a number of Democratic Senators, at least five of whom were on the Foreign Relations Committee, were determined to explore the background of U.S. policy, or lack of it, in the Middle East. They wanted to have Secretary of State Dulles testify before the Committee and largely in public. He recalls statements made by the President following the attack on Egypt by the British, French and Israelis, pledging that the U.N. would be used as the instrument for achieving a settlement of the longstanding disputes in the region. The question of aid for Egypt's Aswan Dam and the abrupt withdrawal of that suggested aid would be investigated when Secretary Dulles appeared before the Committee. Democrats had some Republican backing for such an inquiry, including one or two members of the Committee. In part, Democratic disaffection went back to previous differences with Secretary Dulles, partly a feeling of deep resentment over the claims made for Republican foreign policy during the fall campaign and, in contrast, the eagerness of the Administration to ensnare the opposition in the responsibility in the showdown for such a policy by such means as the Formosa resolution and the proposed resolution on the Middle East.
The third reason for delay was that there were serious doubts regarding ceding to the President the Congressional right to declare war on the basis of such a sweeping and generalized statement. Some Senators, such as Paul Douglas of Illinois, who had made a tour of the Middle East following the Suez crisis, possessed a detailed and expert knowledge of the region, and they wanted to know what would happen if Iraq were to attack Syria or Jordan, and if Soviet "volunteers" and experts were to become involved. Russian experts were reported already infiltrating in numbers into Syria's armed forces. The Senators would want to know whether U.S. force would be required to end such conflict.
But those who would object to the President's proposed resolution understood that they would need to come up with some alternative or be accused of obstructionism. Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana, whose knowledge of both the Far East and the Middle East was detailed and comprehensive, was one of those preparing alternative proposals likely to result in modification and redefinition of the Administration's proposal.
Some Senators, both Republicans and Democrats, were resentful of what they called a "snow job" by the Administration, first by sending up a trial balloon heralding the new policy and then putting forth a series of articles saying that approval was essential if the world was to be on notice of the country's firm determination to resist Communism. Mr. Childs finds the latter to be undoubtedly true, but that it was also true that what had gone before could not be exercised by the simple language of a resolution.
Stewart Alsop indicates that almost at the same time that the President had been conferring during the week with Congressional leaders, Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev had been addressing a banquet in the Kremlin. He finds a direct connection between what had happened in the Kremlin and what had happened at the White House conference. The most significant part of Mr. Khrushchev's statement had been largely overlooked. He had said that the U.N. had called on Britain and France to halt the aggression in Egypt and that nothing had then happened. Then, he continued, Premier Nikolai Bulganin had sent a letter to Prime Minister Anthony Eden and French Premier Guy Mollet, after which, within hours, the British and French had promised to withdraw their forces from Egypt.
At the White House, the President had given the Congressional leaders a briefing on the situation in the Middle East and why he needed advance authority to send in U.S. forces in the event of Communist aggression. He had described the situation as "somber", and Secretary Dulles had added, ominously, that "if the Russians go into the Middle East, and we don't stop them, we are gone."
Mr. Alsop finds a clear connection
between the two meetings. On October 31, without prior consultation
with the U.S., Prime Minister Eden had announced the forthcoming
Anglo-French intervention into Egypt, and the following day,
Secretary Dulles had submitted a resolution to the U.N. calling for
an immediate cease-fire, promptly vetoed in the Security Council by
Britain and France. Meanwhile, the Soviet press began publishing
accounts of how 75,000 "volunteers" were to be sent to
fight with the Egyptians against the "imperialists" of
Britain and France. On November 5
U.S. Ambassador to France, Douglas Dillon, had spelled out the meaning of that sequence of events while in Washington a few weeks earlier, saying, in effect, that the controlling factor in the British and French decision to accept a cease-fire had not been the U.N. resolution or U.S. policy but rather the Soviet threats to use force. Mr. Alsop suggests that perhaps it was a tactless thing to say, but, as with many tactless things, it was almost certainly true. He finds it true at the very least that informed persons, whether in Egypt, in Britain, in Washington or Moscow, believed that the Anglo-French intervention had been halted, and Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser saved in the process, not by "moral forces" but rather by Soviet threats. The fact that it was believed, especially in Moscow, represented a grave danger to the West, for where threats had succeeded once, there was a strong temptation to threaten again.
At the earlier time, there had been those, especially in the Pentagon, who believed that the Soviet threats were bluff and that it ought be called with the U.S. 6th Fleet, which was capable of stopping Soviet "volunteers" from reaching Egypt. The U.S. had as much right to send volunteers to Hungary, where the brutality of Soviet action had been condemned by the U.N., as the Soviets did to send volunteers to Egypt.
The U.S. was committed to
retaliation against any attack on Britain and France with a massive
counterattack on the Soviet Union. Those who would wish to call the
bluff wanted those facts spelled out firmly and quickly, but the
President had decided otherwise. Mr. Alsop suggests that perhaps he
was right, as there was always a risk in calling a bluff, since it
might not be a bluff
The proposal for a resolution by Congress restating the American intention to resist with force Soviet aggression had not been motivated by a genuine belief that the Soviets were planning an armed invasion of the Middle East, but instead was designed to tell the world, and especially the Russians, that the U.S. had not suddenly turned pacifist. No doubt, the Congressional resolution would serve that purpose, but would not eliminate the damage to the West resulting from the seeming success of the Soviet threats, and it was at least worth asking, in retrospect, whether the world ought ever have been permitted to conclude that the U.S. had "suddenly turned pacifist".
A letter from the president of the Queen City Optimist Club in Charlotte thanks the newspaper for keeping their Christmas Tree Project before the public, indicating that the response had been excellent and that their first such venture had been a success. The proceeds of the sale would go toward their program working with boys, which he indicates was worthwhile, as they felt they were building better citizens for the community by providing better opportunity for the boys.
Twelfth Day
The Epiphany, 1957 and 2024: Never may the Day be profaned by the happenstance of a coinciding crass attack
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.