The Charlotte News
Saturday, February 9, 1957
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from the U.N. that the U.S. was reported to be putting forth quiet feelers to learn whether President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt would agree to make a conciliatory policy statement which might help in the effort to get Israeli troops to withdraw completely from Egyptian territory and the Gaza Strip. Informed sources had indicated that U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., and other members of the U.S. delegation, had been sounding out Egyptian diplomats on that possibility. The U.S. delegation source acknowledged that Ambassador Lodge had been in contact with the Egyptians over the previous few days, but had declined to disclose details. Those moves were reported as Arab delegates urged punitive measures against Israel because of its refusal to get out of the Sharm El Sheikh area of Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Many Western delegates believed that a mild, solution-seeking statement by President Nasser at the crucial stage might persuade Israel to ease its adamant stand against withdrawal, with Americans reportedly having suggested to Egypt's delegation that such a move by President Nasser would increase his stature and enhance Egypt's prestige in the West. The informants said that there had been no formal move to put that proposition to President Nasser, but that it was being touched on in the course of private talks with Egyptian representatives at the U.N., and that other Asian-African delegates were also being sounded out on the feasibility of such a move. Egypt's refusal to make any commitment or even to suggest its future intentions regarding the Israelis had been one of Israel's main arguing points. In refusing to withdraw its troops from Egypt or the Gaza Strip, the Israelis had stood firm on their demand for assurance of non-belligerence from Egypt. The director-general of Israel's Foreign Ministry had told newsmen in Tel Aviv that Israel would not withdraw from Sharm El Sheikh at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba until they were guaranteed that Egypt would not impair Israeli shipping interests. Egyptian fortifications had kept Israeli ships out of the Gulf prior to the October-November invasion of Egypt by Israel, Britain and France, following the seizure of the Suez Canal by Egypt the previous July 26, followed by failed attempts at diplomacy to reach some agreement on internationalization of the canal supervised by the U.N.
King Saud of Saudi Arabia departed
Washington this date praising the airbase-for-aid agreement he had
reached with the President during his state visit. Vice-President
Nixon was on hand to bid him farewell at departure ceremonies held in
a steady rain at Washington National Airport, the Vice-President
apologizing for the rainy weather and voicing hope that it did not
leave a bad impression on the King, the latter smiling broadly,
saying that it was of no consequence, that the thing he remembered
was the "warmth of the heart". An Army honor guard had
stood at attention as a 21-gun farewell salute had honored his
departure, and the Army band had played Saudi Arabia's national
anthem. While Mr. Nixon and the King inspected the guard, the band
had played "Greensleeves". (Be it not, forsooth, that the King's interpreters might discern too deeply of either the accepted contemporary lyrics
In New York, evangelist Billy Graham said that his days as a mass evangelist might be nearing an end, saying that he found his work exhausting, that he would continue to "evangelize, and I don't know how long, but certainly not too much longer." He said that he had received several attractive offers from universities to serve as a fund raiser.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that J. Spencer Bell, one of Mecklenburg County's outstanding leaders and attorneys, had swept to a clean-cut victory over State Representative Jack Love for the vacant State Senate seat the previous night, in a showing which had set the stage for reorganization of party machinery in the county. Mr. Bell had never had serious political aspirations, but had won by a voice vote of 33 to 18 over Mr. Love in a meeting of the Mecklenburg Democratic executive committee, with another person receiving three votes. Mr. Bell would succeed Jack Blythe, who had resigned less than a week earlier based on his health. Mr. Bell might be sworn in as early as the following Monday by Governor Luther Hodges and expected to assume his new position the following Thursday. Mr. Love said that he planned to return to Raleigh on Monday to continue to work in the State House as an elected public servant. He wished Mr. Bell the best of success in his new undertaking, said that he was not mad at anyone, had sought the Senate position and lost, and "that's that".
Mr. Scheer also reports that some were saying that Mr. Love had lost his "power", that his "machine" was dead, but the questions had arisen as to whether Mr. Love had ever been a power and whether he had controlled anything. An analysis of events since the reorganization of the Democratic executive committee the previous May led to the inescapable conclusion that Mr. Love as a "boss" had been a myth all along, that he had no power and had never been successful in a major political struggle, with no dominant following of devoted political workers. Even some of those who had worked for him, when he had succeeded in placing his supporters in some of the top executive committee jobs the previous May, had defected, some showing up during the current week on the side of Mr. Bell and helping to defeat Mr. Love for the State Senate seat. Mr. Love had never dictated any political appointments or otherwise handed out plums, had never made personal profit from his so-called command of the party, had been interested primarily in assuring himself of a position in high state circles, a matter more of prestige and vanity than the hope of personal profit to wield power for power's sake. He may have risked that which he had accumulated in the attempt to gain the vacant Senate seat out of a desire to prove once and for all to himself, as well as doubting politicians, that he really did wield the power credited to him.
Another piece explains in detail the process of the executive committee in selecting Mr. Bell over Mr. Love.
Mr. Scheer also provides a series of snippets of local and state news, including, for instance, that State Supreme Court Justices Rodman, Denny and Higgins had used index cards when they had administered oaths of office during Thursday's inaugural proceedings. He also finds that "The Great Seal of the State of North Carolina" ought rather be "The Seal of the Great State of North Carolina". He imparts that the three Governors of the state from Mecklenburg County were Nathaniel Alexander, from 1805 to 1807, Zebulon B. Vance, from 1877 to 1879, and Cameron Morrison, from 1921 to 1925, that there would be a dispute over Governor Vance having come from the county, but that it had been Mecklenburg at the time.
Near Lumberton, N.C., the head-on
collision of an automobile with a tractor-trailer car carrier during
the wee hours this date on U.S. 301, where the highway merged from
four lanes to two, had left four persons dead and two injured. The
car, carrying family members from Norfolk and Hemingway, four of whom
had been killed, had crossed the center line and met the carrier
head-on. The only surviving passenger in the car was in critical condition. The family had been traveling to Lake City, S.C., to attend the funeral of the husband of one of the dead and brother of the survivor, the deceased having died from a sawed-off shotgun blast, not yet determined as to whether death was by suicide or accident. Parenthetically, we should indicate that we have no independent memory of that horrific accident, and it is not why we reference it from The Robesonian, the reason being the article below it regarding the arrest of seven men, some of whom were reputed to be Klansmen, in connection with the Montgomery, Ala., bus violence following the December integration of the buses pursuant to Federal Court order, after the end of the year-long boycott led by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., those arrests not being covered on The News front page the following week. But we do recall this incident as reported February 6 in Lumberton. Do not ask us why, as we might tell you
Donald MacDonald of The News reports that a masked thief with a conscience had returned twice to the scene of his crime this date and politely had given back over half of the cash he had stolen at gunpoint from a restaurant. The owner had left the grill in the care of another man the previous night, who had locked the door from the inside while he worked, and in the wee hours, a man wearing a colored handkerchief over his face and dressed in a dark suit, carrying a sawed-off shotgun, had broken the glass in the door, reached in, unlocked it and entered, taking all of the currency, about $180, from the cash register. The night man said that he was afraid that the thief was watching him from outside and so did not try to call the police, but sat down in a booth. A little while later, the man returned and put a pile of money down in front of him, saying, "Please forgive me for what I've done." He then left. The night man was replacing the money in the cash register when the gunman returned again, again asking for forgiveness and saying that he was returning more of the money. He had retained about $80 and returned about $100.
On the editorial page, "Bell Will Put Statecraft above Politics" indicates that the Democratic Party had won a major victory for itself and for the citizens of Mecklenburg County, as attorney Spencer Bell was superbly equipped to represent the county in the State Senate, after having been the clear choice of an executive committee unfairly and inaccurately reputed to be the pliable tool of a factional leader, State Representative Jack Love. The committee members had insisted that the rules of fairness and orderly procedure be followed, and ultimately determined to send the best possible person to Raleigh to serve the county.
It finds that the county's political interest would be in good hands in the State Senate, as Mr. Bell was a man capable of putting statecraft above politics, with the county desperately in need of that kind of representation, as it was often isolated and distrusted by its rural rivals. There was thus still hope that metropolitan interests would obtain a fair shake in the General Assembly dominated by the agricultural eastern section of the state.
It thus concludes that the decision of the executive committee had been just and proper, speaking well for the Democratic Party, and also boding well for the hopes and dreams of the county.
"Thurmond Chatham: Man of Courage" indicates that during the eight years Mr. Chatham had served the Fifth District in Congress, he had voted on hundreds of significant measures, but would be remembered best for his vote which he refused to cast on the so-called "Southern manifesto", signed in Congress March 12, 1956. It indicates that it was a fair measure of the man that he was willing to risk, if not invite, political defeat to serve his own deep conviction that the manifesto, regardless of how much it served Southern sentiment, would not serve the South's cause.
It finds that history would likely prove him correct, but regardless, he had met the major test of a democratic leader, to vote his studied conviction on a crucial issue in a time of popular passion.
It opines that there was room for conviction on both sides of the issue, but that Mr. Chatham had not shared the convictions of his constituency.
It concludes that his death in Durham during the week had deprived the state of a leader of rare political courage.
"A Blooper in the Grand Tradition" tells of Justice William Rodman of the North Carolina Supreme Court having inadvertently sworn in the new insurance commissioner, Charles Gold, as commissioner of revenue.
It says that an inaugural without a blooper, however, would have been the exception, having begun with the inauguration of George Washington in New York in 1789, when someone forgot to provide a Bible on which to take the oath of office. At the last minute, a messenger found one in a downtown tavern. (Don't impart that fact to today's Magwumps, for, judging by the contest by the Fwiends, Womans and Countwymen to the legitimacy of the prosecution ongoing in Georgia presently in 2024, they will seek to use it as a basis to invalidate the inauguration of President Washington as having been the result of an investiture of power based on an unholy edition of the good book, derived as it was out of scurrilous hants and perditious environs full of disconsolate and dissolute Anti-Federalists, so as to invalidate every other Presidency which followed to today, thus giving rise to the need for starting the entire countwy over again from March, 1789, and thus invalidating all amendments to the Constitution which have passed and been ratified since, eliminating, of course, the always contwovewsial Fourteenth Amendment, and thus permitting, absent Section 3 thereof, the instigation with impunity of a violent insurrection undertaken only to draw attention to the flaw, in the grand ol' spiwit of 1776, as well the desperate attempt to overturn the electorate, and thus to bring about true democracy in the land based on a properly sanctified edition of the good book, the New Twomans edition, with apocrypha restored, including the Book of Cheesebros, after serious, Thorough and dedicated research and forethought, sans malice, back to the Time of the Garden.)
It suggests that in America, perhaps plainness should be the rule rather than pageantry, permitting Justice Rodman merely to clap Mr. Gold on the back, saying, "Put 'er there, pal, and welcome back into the fold!" It concludes that it might not be dignified, but no one would muff their lines.
"Are the Billboard Tilters Quixotic?" tells of Senator Richard Neuberger of Oregon, when he had been a new member of the Oregon Legislature a number of years earlier, having innocently signed a bill restraining outdoor advertising along public highways. In Democracy under Pressure by Stuart Chase, published in 1945, the reaction had been described, indicating that the advertisers' lobby had then begun to teach him the facts of life. Threatened with pecuniary loss, the lobby had gotten the Painters' Union to denounce the measure and called Mr. Neuberger an "enemy of labor", followed by a torrent of letters, telegrams, and editorials in the newspapers. Eventually, the bill was quashed.
Now, Senator Neuberger had proposed Federal legislation to control commercial advertising along interstate highways to be built soon. The proposal was to permit the Federal Government to reimburse the states for purchasing advertising rights on private property within 500 feet of the public highway. Advertising standards prepared by the Secretary of Commerce would restrict signs within that 500-foot right-of-way to three types, those necessary for highway information and directions, those advertising property adjacent to the highway for sale and those advertising services available to motorists on premises adjacent to and accessible from the highway, with all other signs banned. Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks had indicated that he was considering a similar plan.
It finds the plan worthy enough, as it would tend to beautify the countryside along highways and prevent many wrecks by not having signs distracting to motorists. The cost factor, it urges, ought receive careful study as it could be prohibitive, but the opportunity was unique because thousands of miles of new superhighways were about to be constructed, and once they were built, it would be too late. The proposal of Senator Neuberger would not impact billboards already placed along the nation's roads.
It concludes that, sooner or later, billboard control would become a public necessity and Senator Neuberger's proposal deserved the earnest consideration of Congress.
A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled "The Year the Tree Fell", indicates that people who lived in rural North Carolina did not need a diary to keep up with local history. A certain house was 21 years old because the house was built during the summer the big oak tree fell in someone's yard, the same year Alf Landon was running against FDR, and because of the tree toppling over, the owners of the yard could not receive the election returns on the radio.
It recounts similar situations and finds that it was not only an accurate way to index local history but was charming also.
Harry Golden, "the erudite editor-immigrant from New York's East Side to Charlotte", said that city dwellers sometimes kept up with history the same way, measuring certain events as occurring during the year they heard Caruso sing or during the year when some notable person died.
It concludes that any person's calendar anywhere was composed not merely of dates but of memories. "And memories fix events not only on dates but in our lives."
Drew Pearson indicates that the State Department was having problems in handling King Saud and his retinue during his visit to the U.S., such as the refusal of Mayor Robert Wagner of New York to greet him formally. Such problems had been widely publicized but most had not, one, for instance, being purely budgetary in that the State Department was restricted by Congress in the amount it could spend on entertainment of foreign dignitaries, thus setting a rule that heads of state could not bring along more than ten retainers, though stretched to include 15 aides for President Sukarno of Indonesia, but not embracing coverage of King Saud's retinue of 70. The Saudi Embassy, in consequence, with an assistant from Aramco, was picking up the check for the balance. Saudi Arabia had also paid for the King's and his retinue's passage on the U.S.S. Constitution, and when he would leave, he would go by way of Europe and then be flown home on a U.S. plane. Twenty members of the King's retinue were staying at Blair House, across from the White House, paid by the Government, and the remainder were staying at a hotel paid by Aramco. The housekeeper at Blair House had been prepared for only a three-day visit and when the King had decided to stay there for the entire ten days, the unofficial limit on the time a chief of state could remain at Government expense, it had placed great pressure on Blair House. It had also caused problems in the State Department, as originally, it had been planned that he would go on a tour of U.S. factories and farms to impress him with modern America. But he had declined that invitation, saying that his two sons could make the tour while he would relax in a nearby palace, and the Department arranged for him to stay at the Greenbrier Hotel at White Sulfur Springs, W.Va. He had then changed his mind a second time and decided to remain at Blair House.
Another minor problem for the State Department had been the procurement of the King's lamb, two-thirds of which while in Washington had been purchased, without his knowledge, from either Jewish or Catholic wholesalers.
Yet another problem which had worried the State Department had been an earlier arrangement to have young Prince Mashur treated at the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in West Orange, N.J., one of the leading institutions for treating crippled children, but at the last minute, arrangements had been canceled because Henry Kessler, head of the Institute, was Jewish. The Department was not prompted by any distrust of Dr. Kessler, but rather by fear that King Saud would misunderstand if anything had gone wrong with the treatment. The Department knew that Arab children were given exactly the same treatment, however, as Jewish children in Government hospitals of Israel.
A letter writer indicates that he lived barely within the city limits and the previous year had paid city taxes of about $100, for which he received police and fire protection, city water and garbage collection, though city sewer service was not available to him or his neighbors except at a prohibitive cost, and so they opted for septic tanks. He says he did not mind paying the city tax as he was proud to live in Charlotte, but also had paid county taxes of about $50, which he did not understand. It was his understanding that the latter money was used to build schools for people in the county and to furnish them with buses to transport their children to school while city children had to walk varying distances through city traffic or get to school the best way they could. It was also to pay for a County police force and its equipment and for the health department, a County courthouse and various salaries involved. He asked why people in the city had to pay that money to the County.
A letter writer resorts to verse to explain his support of annexation, concluding: "City fathers, we beg your protection. Please don't let them fix the election, merely for means of city projection."
A letter writer responds to a letter of the previous Friday regarding integration and the previous writer's pro-segregation stance, which this writer finds cogent enough, but disagreeing with his conclusion, being an anthropologist, finding it too theoretical, such as his comments that "those churches in the North … misapplication of the teachings of the Old and New Testament", which he finds unfortunate and presumptuous, and his logic, deceptive and arbitrary. When the previous writer had stated that amalgamation of the races was practiced in "the southern half of the Western Hemisphere", resulting in a citizen who was neither "white, black nor red," was "definitely an inferior human product", this writer had rejected that conclusion in the interest of good logic as being irrelevant and totally unrelated to the truth or facts implied in the premises, being a mockery of the syllogism and doing violence to the rules of Aristotelian logic. He finds that the only conclusion which could be inferred from the two premises was that the southern half of the Western Hemisphere had a peculiar citizen who was neither white, black nor red, with the question of inferiority entirely absent in the propositions contained in the premises. He says that anthropology had for some time discredited as unscientific the theory which assumed the superiority or inferiority of a people or race within the same species on the basis of color and physical similarities or dissimilarities. He finds it unfortunate that the writer had insisted on calling integration, which this writer believes was simply a just decree of the Supreme Court concerning Constitutional rights, to be a "one-race-one-blood doctrine". He also thinks it an arrogant presumption to suggest that the so-called doctrine was "promulgated by those churches of the North" and that its practice ought be condemned as a "misapplication of the teachings of the Old and New Testament alike." He finds that there was a religious doctrine at work, but only because the nature of justice and right was religious. He indicates that integration was not miscegenation as the previous writer had insisted. He finds that to aspire to true Christian humanism should be a greater concern of men than anything else, says that such a philosophy was taught and practiced at Belmont Abbey College, where he had studied.
A letter writer from Phoenix urges that every good American citizen ought refuse to buy any article made in Japan or any other foreign country, a rule he had adopted many years earlier. He urges that the country owed nothing to Japan after its sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, precipitating involvement of the U.S. in World War II, that his son had been stationed there at the time of the attack and had escaped death only by a miracle. Before he purchased any article in any store, he inquired as to whether it was made in America and demanded that such manufacture be proven, says that if the majority of Americans followed that rule, merchants would refuse to handle foreign merchandise, which he finds usually of an inferior grade anyway. He says that many American capitalists who had large investments in foreign countries were insistent on more foreign aid for those countries and too often Congress fell for it. He urges that if there were ever to be permanent peace, the country had to quit feeding foreign countries and handing out aid to keep those countries supplied with arms. He says that what he had seen of Europe in 1918-19, the Indians could have it, along with Los Angeles, from which he had just returned and to which he hoped he would never have to go again, having heard more foreign languages spoken there than he had heard for years. He concludes that he was proud to be an American and would always try to be a good one.
The editors remark that the letter writer, who had written many times previously regarding his various attempts to strike it rich in mining in the desert around Phoenix, was a former resident of Charlotte.
A letter writer from Rock Hill, S.C., indicates that when Secretary of State Dulles had appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the previous February, he had stated that Saudi Arabia was the country's ally. But he finds that looking at the record of that country, as reported in the Chronicle of the United Nations, during the tenth General Assembly, regarding motions sponsored or approved by the U.S., Saudi Arabia's delegation had voted in full agreement only 23 percent of the time, had disagreed partially 44 percent of the time and disagreed fully 52.4 percent of the time, finding that to be a strange ally. In contrast, regarding Russian-sponsored or approved resolutions, Saudi Arabia had agreed with 81.2 percent of them and expressed disagreement only 4.2 percent of the time. He says that if Secretary Dulles could persuade allies to correct that incongruous state of affairs, then King Saud's trip might yet be worth the millions it was costing the U.S.
A letter writer says that Communist Chinese Premier Chou En-lai had attacked the Eisenhower doctrine for the Middle East and expressed irritation over the refusal of the U.S. to recognize Communist China's membership in the U.N., stating that if the U.S. continued not to recognize the Communist Chinese for 100 years, China would not topple. Secretary Dulles, in defending the Government's Middle East policies, predicted that history would judge those policies as honorable and sound. He says that according to the prophet Ezekiel, peace through settlement of differences between communism and the free democracies could not be expected and that Americans should beware any peace move by Russia, Communist China and North Korea, that Russia, "the greatest anti-God and anti-Christ nation on earth and of all times," appeared to be borrowing the technique from the anti-Christ of which Daniel 8:25 said that "by peace", he shall destroy many. He finds that regardless of the sincerity or subtlety of present Russian leaders, God would have a hand in bringing about the downfall of Russia and communism, "in His way and time."
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