The Charlotte News

Monday, February 4, 1957

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that National Guard officials had quoted the President as saying this date that he would "not permit the Guard to be destroyed or materially reduced in strength." Maj. General Milton Rexford, serving as spokesman for four representatives of the National Guard Association, who had met with the President, told newsmen that the President realized the value of the Guard and would see that it was maintained. The delegation had called at the White House in the wake of a controversy sparked the previous week by Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson, testifying that some Guard enlistees during the Korean War had produced "a sort of scandal", a "draft-dodging business". The spokesman for the group, however, said that there was no mention of the Secretary's remark at the White House meeting with the President. He said that he was satisfied with the President's remark that he would not permit the Guard to be destroyed, and that the President had been "very receptive", promising that the Guard would not be "materially reduced in strength." The group had protested to the President against a Pentagon decision to make enlistees take six months of basic training, whereas the Guard wanted training limited to 11 weeks for enlistees below the minimum draft age of 18 1/2. The dispute appeared likely to come up for discussion before a House Armed Services subcommittee which had met to question defense officials about the lagging Army reserve program. The President the previous week had called Secretary Wilson's remark "very unwise", but the President continued to support him in saying that enlistees ought receive six months of active training instead of the present 11 weeks. The six-month program was scheduled to go into effect on April 1.

In Moscow, Soviet officials and diplomatic sources this date discounted a report that a mystery patient in a Moscow hospital was Soviet First Deputy Premier Lazar Kaganovich, but there was still no disclosure of the man's identity. Mr. Kaganovich, a member of the Soviet Presidium, had been on a "grass roots tour" of Siberian cement plants recently. A German doctor said that the unidentified patient had been ill for at least two weeks. The New York Daily News had identified the patient as Mr. Kaganovich, indicating that he had been shot in a behind-the-scenes struggle for power in the Kremlin.

In Greenville, S.C., the Greenville Piedmont had said this date that with prospects dim for a sizable increase in pay, some groups of school teachers were turning to the formation of a union, made known to the State House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, as it prepared to submit its appropriations bill the following week, including an increase in pay equal to about 6 percent for the teachers. The union was being discussed in two forms, possible active affiliation with the AFL-CIO, with some inquiries having been made as to how that could be accomplished, or a statewide organization of teachers, the most likely form in the event a union would be organized.

In Manchester, N.H., the 400 public school teachers in the largest city of the state had gone on strike in a wage dispute this date, and the city's 24 school buildings had been closed until the problem was settled. It was the first teachers strike in the city's history. City officials prepared to ask for a temporary restraining order forcing the teachers to return to work, with the mayor indicating that they were violating their contracts with the City. Some of the city's 9,200 public school students had reported to the two high schools and 22 elementary schools during the morning, but had been sent home when no teachers showed up. The school board issued an order saying that the teachers were placing their contracts in jeopardy if they failed to appear. In several elementary schools, officials organized special safety patrols in an effort to make sure that the students returned to their homes safely. Collective bargaining attempts had collapsed the previous night, leading to the walkout. The vice-chairman of the school board said that there would be school for the pupils whether there were teachers present or not. About two weeks earlier, the mayor and board of aldermen had given all City employees a 10 percent wage increase, but the teachers said that it had not been enough, seeking about 17 percent. Teachers were demanding that those with a master's degree receive $5,300 per year, those with a bachelor's degree, $5,000, and without any college degree, $4,700, compared with present pay of $4,414, $4,214 and $4,014 for the three categories, respectively.

In Bishop, Va., a gas explosion had trapped and killed 37 miners this date in the Bishop Coal Mine, straddling the Virginia-West Virginia line. The blast had jammed an elevator in its shaft on the Virginia side of the border, rerouting rescue operations to a second entrance two and a half miles away, in West Virginia. Word of the disaster had brought anxious friends and relatives of the miners to entrances on both sides of the state line. After the vigil had lasted about eight hours, a joint statement issued by the company and the West Virginia Mines Department had dashed most hopes, indicating that less than 40 of the total 184 miners underground had been involved in the explosion, but of that number, there had been no survivors. A dispatcher said that the rescuers had heard no cries from any of the missing and had made no contact with them. The mine was located in Tazewell County, one of six mountainous southwest Virginia counties declared a disaster area by the President the previous week after that area's worst flood in its history, though the mine was not flooded.

In Raleigh, legislators began arriving this date to begin preparations for their biennial session of the General Assembly, to start on Wednesday, followed by the inauguration of Governor Luther Hodges for his first full term on Thursday. The legislators probably would agree with the Governor's assessment that a thorough review of the state's tax structure would be the most important problem facing the session. Teachers and State employees were also expecting pay raises, but how much and how it was to apply, whether on a merit system or across the board, would be a major debating point. Other issues included government reorganization proposals, separation of the Prisons Department from the Highway Commission and reorganization of the Commission, itself. Reapportionment, to bring legislative representation in line with population, was also an issue, along with highway safety proposals, including mechanical inspection of motor vehicles, blood tests for drunk drivers and driver education. There was also the perennial demand of dry forces in the state for a statewide liquor referendum. The fact that there had been ratification the prior September of the "Pearsall plan" by the voters, following adoption the prior August by the Legislature meeting in special session, providing for two amendments to the State Constitution, whereby school districts could, by popular vote, abolish their public schools or provide public tuition grants to students for attendance of private schools, would probably forestall any major issue regarding school segregation.

In Newton, N.C., the sheriff said this date that a 32-year old clerk had admitted responsibility for a missing 221 bottles of whiskey worth about $400, taken from the Newton ABC store. He had admitted the theft after taking a lie detector test in Raleigh on Saturday, along with three other clerks of the local store. He posted a $1,000 bond and was set to appear on Friday in Catawba County Recorder's Court on a charge of larceny. He had not implicated anyone else in the store. The sheriff said the clerk admitted taking the whiskey over a period of eight months, had sold it from the shelves and pocketed the money. He also admitted taking a few bottles for his personal consumption.

John Borchert of The News reports that a Federal grand jury in Charlotte had indicted 12 manufacturers and distributors of automatic sprinkler subsystems on charges of violating antitrust laws in the sale and installation of the systems, indicating that the sprinkler companies had engaged in a conspiracy to allocate customers for sprinkler systems in the states of North Carolina and South Carolina.

In Baltimore, an 82-year old woman, charged with stealing 69 cents worth of meat from a food market in the city, stood trial this date before a magistrate. The shopkeeper said that shoplifting had reached huge proportions, so bad that he had hired two private detectives, making up his mind that the next case would be prosecuted regardless of who it was. The magistrate had interrupted, saying that usually when one made a hard and fast rule, the wrong case came along. The storekeeper had replied that they had decided to draw the line, whether it was a 12-year old or an 82-year old. He recited the facts of the case, indicating that a package of meat had been taken the previous day, that he was suspicious of the woman and had followed her outside and asked her if she had taken it. He then saw her drop the package from under her overcoat and called the police, ordering her arrest. He asked the court to forgive him for being so cold-blooded, but that something had to be done. Two policewomen who had offered earlier to pay the 69 cents, turned their eyes to the magistrate, and with difficulty, the latter sought to elicit the defendant's side of the story. The woman broke down, admitted taking the meat, saying that she did not know why she had done it, as she did not even eat meat. She explained that she was a widow living alone and wanted to pay a fine and go home. The magistrate said that he treated an "old youngster" the same way he treated a "young youngster", providing her a prayer for judgment continued, which meant that she would not have a conviction on her record.

In Fort Worth, Tex., a 96-year old trail driver, Harry Halsell, Indian fighter and author who had credited his long life to numerous guns and the ability to use them, had died quietly in his home the previous day. He said that he had received his first six-shooter when he was seven years old and had ranched in Texas and New Mexico for many years. He had written nine books, including an autobiography, about life on the cattle trails in the 19th Century. In 1941, he had written that he now realized that for three decades, from 1870 to 1900, the habit of being well-armed had saved his life on several occasions. By age 11, he was a regular hand helping his father drive cattle north from Texas, and had once helped drive a herd down Commerce Street in Fort Worth, when it was a frontier town. On several occasions, he had used his six-guns and rifle to fight off Indians. He said that one of his closest scrapes had come on Christmas Eve, 1880, in southwestern New Mexico, having driven his stock into a small valley with only one entrance and bedded them down. Around midnight, he spotted a group of Apaches riding toward him in the moonlight, mounted his horse, held the reins in his teeth and fired a six-gun in each hand as he charged them, the Indians, believing that a large band was attacking them, having `scattered and he had escaped. He said later that he had learned that Geronimo had been in the lead of the Apaches and that the band had just ambushed a stagecoach. He had turned to writing when his trail days ended.

In Whittier, Calif., after a couple had been married, the bridal party had gone to the home of the bride's mother for a reception, and one of the family's friends, a sheriff's deputy, asked the newlyweds to close their eyes for a surprise, whereupon he placed handcuffs on them. Everyone had laughed, including the couple, until it was discovered that their friend did not have the key to release them. The wedding party then proceeded to the sheriff's station, led by the deputy, to achieve their freedom. Sounds like something the Vice-President would dream up as a practical joke.

On the editorial page, "Will North Carolina Never Learn?" quotes from American Automobile Association Report that a study made during 1950 in Delaware had shown that untrained drivers had nearly five times as many accidents and five times as many arrests as a comparable group of trained drivers.

It indicates that for years, the proof had been accumulating from surveys done in Arizona, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan and the District of Columbia, supporting that same basic finding. By 1955-56, about 52 percent of the nation's schools had been offering driving instruction to 56 percent of the eligible students, while in North Carolina, only 24 percent of the schools offered such training to 19 percent of the eligible students.

Meanwhile, the highway death toll in the state had risen, with more than 1.8 million licensed drivers operating more than 1.6 million motor vehicles in 1955, killing more than 1,100 persons and injuring another 17,000.

It thus urges that it was time that the State undertook its responsibility fully for untrained drivers making battlegrounds of the streets and highways. With driver education recognized as the most effective long-range plan to improve driving conduct, the present license examination procedure was not enough protection against "fools and incompetents" haunting the thoroughfares.

State Representative Thomas White of Lenoir, it finds, was on the right track, proposing a statewide driver training program to make the instruction available to students in every high school. It would cost as much as 2.1 million dollars per year. But even if the State provided only the cost of teacher salaries and local school units provided the remainder, a reasonable start could be made, with other states having found that when the teacher salaries were provided, the other obstacles disappeared quickly.

It thus urges the 1957 General Assembly to conduct a thorough study of potential revenue sources and enact legislation to provide the necessary funding, cautioning that because it would take at least a year to set up a statewide program, there was no time to lose.

"Southern Violence and Yankee Piety" indicates that the South had more than its share of people on hair triggers of racial reaction, and threats of more to come created even larger uncertainties regarding segregation. It finds that there was nothing to be said in its defense, but that there was reason to hope that it carried its own antidote, as violence destroyed the ends which its users professed to seek.

Florida Governor LeRoy Collins had said in his inaugural address: "One may be hated and still retain his human dignity, but one who hates suffers a shrinking of his soul. We can never, never find the answer by destroying the human spirit. Indeed, through hate, we magnify our bewilderment and fortify our fears."

It indicates that his words suggested that the South's worst reaction of violence and threats already was prompting more vigorous and candid expressions from the best of its leadership. Governor Collins had urged being honest with themselves, by recognizing realities which existed. "Man's greatest failures have come when he has refused to recognize the realities of a changed situation and failed to understand that to admit the existence of a reality is not necessarily to welcome or even agree with it... We can find wise solutions, I believe, if the white citizens will face up to the fact that the Negro does not now have equal opportunities; that he is morally and legally entitled to progress more rapidly, and that a full good-faith effort should be made forthwith to help him move forward in the improvement of all his standards. The Negro also must contribute by his own attitude…"

It finds that the solution of the racial dilemma demanded more than the suppression of physical force, that there was also an intellectual violence in arrogant assumptions of superior virtue, "an equally large barrier to the preservation of harmony between individuals and regions."

The City Council of Philadelphia, for instance, had petitioned the President to undertake a mission to the "moral wastelands of our country." They wanted the President to proclaim that he would go to Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.

It suggests that the Council in Philadelphia would do better by going to Florida themselves and having a talk with Governor Collins or perhaps examining that part of his speech in which he had said: "To be practical about it, compulsion and ignorant interference by those without a background for understanding now only generate resistance, resistance develops hate and this defeats the Negro's own purpose…"

"The McCarran Image Must Be Muted" indicates that many years earlier, a 16-year old boy had sneaked aboard ship in an Irish port and come to America as a stowaway, the father of the late Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada, ruling the state as a political fiefdom for 20 years, able with his seniority in his later years to shape U.S. immigration policy in his own image, not that inscribed on the Statue of Liberty which had attracted his father to the shores.

It finds it one of history's little ironies that if Senator McCarran's immigration act had prevailed when his father had left Ireland, the Senator probably would never have been born a U.S. citizen, as his father would probably have been wrapped up in vast amounts of red tape, subjected to minute insinuations and suspicions, and finally shipped back to Ireland.

The President had now made a new appeal for revision of the McCarran Act, and a group of House Democrats had also launched a new attempt to make changes which both parties had endorsed but had failed to effect in the previous two Congresses. Nothing less than basic revision would satisfy legitimate demands for a larger measure of common sense, fairness and simple democracy in immigration policy.

The Hungarian fight for freedom had shown how narrow and unwelcoming the traditional U.S. haven for the oppressed had become, and the efforts by the President would permit the nation to prove its sympathy for the aspiration of freedom fighters.

"But a good report of democracy is not built on feverish generosity spurred by an unexpected revolt. The U.S. is tested daily by the operation of its immigration laws. And in the uneven scales of the McCarran Act, it is found wanting as a preceptor for a world seeking freedom."

A piece from the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, titled "Say It with Spondees", indicates that many people were worried about the influence of rock 'n' roll without knowing exactly what to do about it, short of demolishing the radio and the record player. A professor of English at Notre Dame had offered another solution, contained in an article in America. He had pointed out that the forefathers had to cope with the same problem. Boethius, who had flourished some 1,400 years earlier, had dealt with the effect of wild music on impressionable juveniles, mentioning one individual who wanted to burn down his girlfriend's house after listening to music in the Phrygian mode, a "real gone" form of music from Asia Minor, featuring hot trumpets and bearing no relation to the shepherd's pipe melodies which had made Greece what it had been in its palmy days.

According to Boethius, quoting Pythagoras, there was only one remedy for that early rock 'n' roll, making the patient listen to the old, square, long-hair music until snapping out of his fit. "Only the even, slow beat of spondees would cure him of the effects of syncopation."

It concludes that in a practical way, it would mean playing "My Country 'Tis of Thee" or reciting "Hiawatha" to any young persons whom one believed needed it, and if they fell asleep, so much the better, as they were never more attractive than when they were asleep.

Drew Pearson tells of Congressman Graham Barden of North Carolina, who, for years, had exercised one-man rule over the House Education and Labor Committee. His refusal to hold meetings in the past had delayed legislation on construction and improvement of schools and higher minimum wages. Recently, a group of younger Congressmen had revolted against Mr. Barden's one-man rule, winning part of their battle, though he had won the right to block Congressman Adam Clayton Powell.

Congressmen Stewart Udall of Arizona, Lee Metcalf of Montana, James Roosevelt of California, Frank Thompson of New Jersey and Edith Green of Oregon had carefully planned a strategy for six months, having dispatched Mr. Roosevelt to Texas the previous month to clear their plans with Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn. When the Labor Committee had met, those younger members were ready with a new set of rules drafted by Mr. Udall, which they planned to ram down Mr. Barden's throat, feeling confident of Republican support in any test vote. But Mr. Barden had outsmarted them, secretly producing his own new set of rules, surrendering part of his power, but not all of it. He had delivered a copy of it to Representative Sam McConnell of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Committee. The Republicans had berated publicly Mr. Barden for hamstringing labor legislation while, in actuality, not wanting much labor legislation, only enough to win votes. Mr. Barden knew, therefore, that Mr. McConnell would go along with his plan to keep certain controls in conservative hands.

Mr. McConnell called a conservative caucus of the Republican members of the Committee, deciding to back the plan of Mr. Barden against the rebellious Democrats. When the Committee met, he announced that he had decided that subcommittees ought be appointed, meaning that he could no longer bottle up legislation in the full Committee, proposing a resolution to that effect. The young members, who were ready with their own resolution, wanted to know whether they could consider the provisions one at a time, to which Mr. Barden said that they could not. He then read his new rules, reserving for himself the right to appoint subcommittee chairmen and members. Republican Congressman Ralph Gwinn of New York, one of the most reactionary Republicans in the Congress, moved for the adoption of Mr. Barden's resolution, and another Republican seconded it. Eventually, Mr. Powell arrived in the hearing room and inquired of the chairman whether the subcommittee chairmen were going to be appointed according to seniority, knowing that if that were to be the case, he would be a chairman, though he also knew that Mr. Barden did not want him in that role. Mr. Barden said that seniority would not be the rule because of "complications". Ms. Green came to the defense of Mr. Powell by offering a formal motion in opposition to Mr. Barden, calling for seniority in appointing subcommittee chairmen, meekly seconded by Mr. Powell. In the end, Mr. Barden had won by a vote of 19 to 9 against Mr. Powell, with no Republicans voting with the latter, despite the fact that he had campaigned for the President in the fall and had swung thousands of black votes to him in November.

He says that the most important result of the maneuvering was that subcommittees would now handle labor amd school problems and that legislation would not be bottled up by Mr. Barden in the central Committee.

Joseph Alsop, in Moscow, sums up his impressions of Moscow, or at least his surprises, as he prepared to depart for Siberia. He says that the previous few weeks had been the most interesting and awakening experience which he could recall in a long time, full of surprises, including the character of Russian architecture, such as Palmyra, alien styles borrowed from foreign lands and made larger, heavier and more ornate. The character of official Soviet taste was another surprise, committed to the style of a small German principality of the mid-Victorian era, called "Soviet realism". The charm and vitality of the people, despite the hardness of their lives, and the obstinate vigor of the Russian intelligentsia, which should have died during the years of Stalin, the intensity of most Russians' interest in the arts and things of the mind, despite, or perhaps because of, their limited opportunities in those realms, were all surprises as well.

But the largest surprise was the hardest to articulate, the discovery that, although the problems of Soviet society were quite different from the problems of Western society, they were real, though there was no imminent crisis as confronted the Western leaders in the Middle East. The primary problem was long-term, arising from one of the Soviet's greatest achievements, having raised the society to high technical achievement, with industrial production surpassing the combined production of Britain and Germany, where the Industrial Revolution had begun. Consumer goods had persistently been slighted, as was still the case, in favor of the types of industrial investment which increased the strength of the state rather than the comfort of the citizens. But it was still a highly technical society, politically necessitating education on a wide scale such that the Russian people were no longer dumb, compliant masses of illiterate peasants, which had been the case 40 years earlier at the time of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The people now included a large educated group who knew about broader horizons and wanted to seek them.

But because of the status of a highly technical society, the methods used to achieve the result were no longer workable, as the society was now too complex and massive, too delicate in its interrelationships and too full of ramifying chains of consequence, to be successfully managed with the knout, as Stalin had used. Thus, while education had provided to the people a longing for broader horizons, the progress had created a positive need of an even more important type, more independence of judgment, more freedom of decision, more flexibility and open communication at all levels of the managerial apparatus.

Soviet leaders unquestionably had initiated the deStalinization campaign because they recognized the demand and need briefly and crudely to set forth. They had been as surprised as everyone else by the uncomfortably dramatic response which had followed. DeStalinization and then the reaction, needing to restore parts of the Stalin image, would only obscure and could not permanently solve the problem created for the Soviet leaders by their own success.

Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, says that he was not concerned with the moral implications of "Baby Doll" and similar works by Tennessee Williams, did not denounce the immorality of the Erskine Caldwell accounts of low life in the South, says he could not even manage to read William Faulkner.

He says that one day, he was going to write a book about the South which would not be "littered with clay-eaters, lint-headed mill hands, idiots, rutting, itinerant preachers, juvenile delinquents, morons, slatterns, cripples, freaks, and other characters who did not wash, live off sardines and soft drinks, hang around bus stations, and breed merrily within the family."

He says that he had picked up a paperback recently, which he would not name as he did not wish to plug it, which had boasted that it contained writing as realistic as Tobacco Road, an old Caldwell clay-eater. It had contained all the promised ingredients, and most of those of Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner and other Southern "discomforts".

He says that it was possible that some of the people had been born and raised in slovenly squalor and it had rubbed off on them to the point of unforgettableness, and that they therefore deserved sympathy, but finds that the byproduct should have been clinical rather than literary, that it was possible to grow up in the South without the presence of nymphomaniacs, drunkards, lynchers, randy preachers, camp meetings, hookworm, albinos, dirty hermits, old mad women, and idiot relatives to form one's early impressions, despite the literary output of the previous 25 years so presenting it.

"The southern school of rotten writin' has become as much a cliche as the private detective compost heap. You know—the 'I mashed my mouth on hers until I could taste the teeth and then I shot her in the belly' sort of writing. I suppose the customers like it, as they must like the houn'-dog under the decayed porch, dirty-overalls brand of southern stuff. Else people wouldn't keep publishing it."

He indicates that having been born and raised in the vicinity of Wilmington, N.C., he seldom recognized any fictional types which were not to be found in Philadelphia or Hartford, as every hamlet had "its idiot, its do-less characters, its slattern, its loose-moraled juvenile." But all of the South was not decadent and all of the houses were not falling down. Nor was everyone called "Colonel Massa Boss", was not a Jeter Lester, and, he indicates, he had participated in very few lynchings as a child and never had enjoyed eating tobacco. His years around Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and the Carolinas had yielded a minimum of what they called "southern realism". He could find more spareribs in Harlem, more chitterlings and cornpone, more creaky attics with dirty people in Greenwich Village than in New Orleans.

And one could find better writing anywhere than the "roughage produced by the Suthron boys who got to write dat old South so you can jest smell de green mold on Grandma, with dat old mockingbird singin' hallelujah in de mortgaged magnolia while Dude bounces his ball off de shanty-side and Pa marries all his granddaughters."

"Possibly we live real low-down in the South, from a steady diet of rat cheese, gingersnaps and corn whisky; maybe we all hate Pappa and love Momma, or the other way round; possibly we only have one gallus to keep the denims from falling off.

"Maybe it's all true, but through my mouthful of snuff I will declaim that I am damn well sick and tired of reading about it. You boys go pick on the Yankees for a while and give us Crackers a rest."

Speaking of basketball, UNC, by this date, had, while having achieved for the previous two weeks the number one ranking in the Assocated Press poll, though being chased by former number one-ranked Kansas and Wilt Chamberlain, 13-1, having lost two weeks earlier to Iowa State, remained undefeated on the season at 16-0, though to be pushed during the week by games at Maryland and as host to Duke on Saturday. A decade hence, they would be number two at this juncture in the season, at 14-1, having lost only to Princeton, and the following year, number three, also at 14-1, behind number one UCLA and Lew Alcindor in 1967 and behind Houston and Elvin Hayes, and UCLA, in 1968, Houston having beaten the Bruins in the Astrodome that year to capture the top spot for awhile. UNC would go on in the latter campaign, as in 1967, to win the Eastern Regional, beating Davidson, as again they would do in 1969 on a last second shot by Charlie Scott, both years sending home the Wildcats, coached at the time by Lefty Driesell, who died this past weekend in 2024, having brought much needed color to the game during his coaching career at Davidson and Maryland. In 1957, Davidson was coached by former UNC coach Tom Scott, who had coached the Tar Heels from 1946-52, and after ending his coaching career in the 1960 season, would, as athletic director of Davidson, hire coach Driesell in 1960, a year before coach Frank McGuire, Mr. Scott's successor at UNC, would move to the NBA to coach Wilt Chamberlain, with the Philadelphia Warriors in 1961, prompting chancellor William B. Aycock to hire, amid a betting scandal which had landed the program on probation for a season, assistant coach Dean Smith, who would have a middling career at best, hung in effigy a couple of times on campus during his first four seasons, though with a couple of fair seasons afterward, retiring eventually to obscurity, albeit with a large parking lot on South Campus named for him as consolation, probably some sort of figurative honor to his patented four-corners offense, which he had introduced in 1966 in the ACC Tournament semifinal game against vaunted Duke, a wooden performance on both sides, reminiscent of a petrified forest, losing 21-20—prompting, unfortunately, his firing at that juncture, in an age when nothing short of perfection every season was tolerated. Coach Smith would, of course, go on to have an illustrious career at another school, returning to his home turf in Kansas, where he had been a member of the 1952 national championship team under coach Phog Allen, who had been coached by James Naismith, inventor of the game. But that was yesterday, and yesterday's gone.

Note bene, the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford and SMU: You need to begin memorizing your ACC history, as there will be a quiz on these points next season to affirm your status as bona fide new members of the league, when you begin visiting your new sister schools. For without knowledge of history, we are condemned to repeat it.

A letter from Harry Golden responds to a letter writer who had said that he would not vote for Mayor Robert Wagner when the latter sought a second term in New York City. He says that Mr. Wagner, born and bred in South Yorkville, was fully aware of a very important Southern tradition, that local mayors could handle their business without advice from citizens of Dubuque, Iowa, or Appleton, Wisconsin. The previous writer had said that Mayor Wagner should have honored King Saud upon arrival in New York "as a service to our best interests" instead of paying attention to the desires and interests of his constituents. He says that the decision of Mayor Wagner not to honor the King with a ticker-tape parade went deeper than mere superficiality, as he believes the Mayor had reached his decision because Saudi Arabia was a slave kingdom, where the King received 300 million dollars per year from oil revenue, where they had 300 Cadillacs for 250 miles of paved roads, where a subject had his hand chopped off at the wrist when caught stealing food. The Mayor had not expressed that thought, but it had been said the previous summer at Geneva by a U.N. commission studying the slave kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

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