The Charlotte News
Thursday, March 21, 1957
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Tucker's Town, Bermuda, that the President and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, having both now arrived for their conference, had assigned priority to the Middle East crisis, including the Suez Canal problem and Egyptian-Israeli issues. The session had opened in the drawing room of the Mid-Ocean Club, where the two heads of state met with advisers at a circular conference table. The real quest of restoring the British-American partnership in world affairs had begun at a three-hour dinner the previous night when the President, the Prime Minister and the foreign ministers of each country, Secretary of State Dulles for the U.S. and Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd for Britain, had discussed world issues. It appeared probable that the second item on the agenda would be Britain's plans for reducing its worldwide military commitments. American officials foresaw the possibility that the U.S. might have to make new commitments to keep the free world's military guard up in light of those announced cuts. Diplomats said the President and Prime Minister, together with the foreign ministers, and other officials, probably would hold two meetings daily through the following Saturday. Both heads of state had expressed the previous day upon their arrival that they had confidence that the meeting would result in strengthening of British-American cooperation in world affairs, with their advisers agreeing privately that the hope could be realized only if the two heads of state could agree on a better understanding regarding some tough and practical problems, including Britain's military cutbacks. The Prime Minister had arrived, determined to tell the President that because of reduced finances and economic pressures at home, Britain had to retrench regarding its military commitments and that they could foresee no change in that basic decision. American officials said that the U.S. recognized the gravity of Britain's plight but was worried about the effect of the cutbacks on the free world's defenses, believing that the Prime Minister was prepared to negotiate the timing and extent of the reductions. Those officials said that the U.S. had not thus far been fully informed officially of Britain's plans, but was aware that Britain planned in the ensuing year to call home about 13,000 of its 80,000 men stationed in West Germany under an announced plan, and that qualified informants had said that Britain also was planning to withdraw most of its 5,000 troops in South Korea, though no official word had been conveyed to the U.S. on that point or regarding what would happen to British commitments in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaya and Libya. American officials did not expect any early British cuts of importance in Cyprus, Malta and Gibraltar, but wanted official confirmation from Mr. Macmillan covering all of those points.
Before the Senate Select Committee investigating racketeering and organized crime influence in the Teamsters Union, Pierre Salinger, a staff investigator for the Committee and future White House press secretary to President Kennedy and future Senator from California, testified this date that union funds had been used to purchase a new automobile for the girlfriend of an organizer, that a check signed by Frank Brewster, chairman of the Western Conference of Teamsters, who had been testifying for the previous three days, had been used for that purpose, as confirmed by Mr. Salinger in a telephone interview with the girlfriend in question, indicating that the car had been purchased in June, 1954 for $3,115 by a union organizer, Terry McNulty. There had been previous testimony that Mr. McNulty, while carried on the payroll of the Conference as an organizer, had devoted considerable time to Mr. Brewster's horse racing stables. Mr. Salinger testified that Mr. McNulty, who had also been interviewed by Committee investigators, had claimed that the price of the automobile had been refunded to the Western Conference, but Carmine Bellino, an accountant-consultant for the Committee, then testified that no such amount was recorded as a credit in the records of the Conference. Mr. Salinger said that Mr. McNulty had claimed that he had turned over the money to Gordon Lindsay, the former secretary-treasurer of the Conference who had since died. Prior to the testimony of Mr. Salinger this date, Mr. Brewster had testified that the automobile in question had been purchased by the union for use of union organizers, not for the girlfriend of Mr. McNulty, though stating he would have to check the records to ascertain the exact nature of the purchase. After the testimony by Mr. Salinger and Mr. Bellino, Mr. Brewster testified that the nature of the transaction was news to him and he could not understand why the refund was not recorded as Mr. Lindsay had been someone he regarded as having high integrity. He reaffirmed, in response to a question by Committee chairman Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, that he had signed the check, but had done so routinely in blank, acknowledging that it was a bad practice with union funds and would seek to amend those practices in the future, that he was no longer signing blank checks. Just prior to resumption of the hearings this date, Mr. Brewster had told the press that he was willing to provide his personal financial records to the Committee. He had also told the Committee earlier that he intended to repay the union whatever he owed based on what he would determine from an audit had been paid from union funds for any personal expenses related to his racing stables, his investments and other uses of union funds for non-union purposes, which the Committee had already explored during his testimony, as well as in other testimony by Mr. Salinger the previous day.
In Mahnomen, Minn., a high tension wire which had fallen into a pool of water had killed three young people who raced to a wrecked car containing the bodies of two victims early this date, after which the six other teenagers in the car had escaped alive by climbing to the top of the car and leaping over the water to dry ground. The dead included the driver of the wrecked car, which had hit an electrical pole, causing the downed wire, and one of his passengers, and two teenagers who had leaped from a passing car and participated in the fatal rescue attempt. The six survivors were under sedatives for shock and minor injuries in the hospital and a clear picture of the tragedy had not immediately been available. Investigating Highway Patrol officers and other sources, however, had indicated that the car with a driver and seven passengers had been en route home from a dance pavilion in a nearby town, when it sheered off the power pole and plunged into a water-filled ditch, with the driver having apparently been killed in the crash and his passenger apparently been killed when he stepped from the car into the ditch into which the power line had fallen. The latter had said that he was being shocked and asked for someone to help him, as the other six passengers remained in the car. At that point, the passing vehicle stopped and two 18-year old passengers, apparently unaware of the presence of the power line, raced to provide help and both were electrocuted. Two other passengers in that car apparently had been unable to get out of the car as fast as the other two and thus had been saved by that fact, then becoming aware of the charged electrical current. Another passing vehicle had then stopped, and the driver had sought to rescue the others, apparently not aware of the electrical current, and had also been electrocuted.
In Dallas, Tex., it was reported that torrential rains had flooded streams and roads across central Texas the previous day, and five tornadoes had skipped across portions of the state, as thunderstorms continued to hit portions of south-central Texas this date, though the rain had tapered off in other areas. A father and son were believed to have been drowned when heavy rains caused a stream to overflow, but were later found safe. A 19-year old husband and his wife had been critically injured when their car had hit a culvert during a heavy rain in Waxahachie.
Across the Carolinas, an early spring freeze threatened the multi-million-dollar fruit crop during the morning, but first reports indicated that the fruit had escaped damage.
In Raleigh, a showdown on the issue of required legislative reapportionment had been set for the following Tuesday by the State Senate Judiciary No. 1 Committee, which would then vote on two measures which would amend provisions of the State Constitution regarding reapportionment, with no immediate indication as to which way the vote might go. There was a general feeling that the 1957 biennial session of the Legislature had been easier to deal with regarding the State Constitution's mandatory reapportionment after each decennial census than had Legislatures of the previous few years, which had ignored the requirement since 1951. If the bill were to get out of the State Senate, it was expected to have a rough time in the State House. Passage of it would automatically give Mecklenburg County a second State Senator. The State Senate, unlike the Federal set-up, was the chamber which was supposed to represent the people proportionate to the population of each district.
Also in Raleigh, State Secretary of State Thad Eure sought the previous day to explain how 360,000 North Carolinians had voted against him the previous November in favor of a dead man, Grover Robbins of Blowing Rock, the Republican candidate in 1956, despite his having died the prior June, five months before election day. The fact had been overlooked until The News had published a story a month after the election pointing out the unusual vote. Mr. Eure had said that he wanted to explain after the story had been mentioned in a Senate speech, saying that he did not know that Mr. Robbins was dead at the time of the general election and that nobody else around there knew of it either, in consequence of which his name had remained on the ballot. Mr. Eure had received more than 737,000 votes. He explained that Mr. Robbins had a son by the same name and that when the father had died, people in the part of the state from which Mr. Robbins hailed had not been surprised to see his name on the ballot, believing it might be his son.
In Charlotte, Dr. M. B. Bethel, City-County health officer, announced that allocation of $166,750 for the city's proposed health center had been made by the North Carolina Medical Care Commission, pursuant to a request for the matching funds filed the previous week and considered by the Commission at its meeting in Raleigh the prior Friday, with the allocation not being contingent on any particular site or the recent questions regarding use of Independence Park lands for the health center.
Charles Kuralt of The News tells of Mrs. Robert Howerton, elected by the City Council the previous day to become the first female member of the Park Board, following a month of Council in-fighting on the matter. Mrs. Howerton had expressed her stance that she wanted to see more playgrounds on the west side of town, believed that the Board emphasis on spectator sports had gone "plenty far enough" and that it was time to work for family recreation, and favored the long-range recommendations of the report by the independent commission, including the "school-park" concept which would turn many school playgrounds into community recreation centers. Mrs. Howerton would serve on an otherwise all-male Board. She said that there was a "horrible" condition in the large black neighborhood east and west of S. Mint Street, where children played in the streets and needed a playground, having to venture across town to the Nature Museum for the purpose or to swim, indicating that if she had a choice between building a baseball field or building a "family" park, she would opt for the latter. Mrs. Howerton was a widow with two sons and a daughter, was a graduate of Queens College and Northwestern University, and had lived in Charlotte for 32 years, was pleasant, soft-spoken and had no previous formal experience in government. She was likely to face opposition at Board meetings if she strongly supported the independent report's recommendations for a wide network of supervised parks and playgrounds, as many believed it visionary and unrealistic. She had been supported by three of the seven members of the Council the previous day on the first ballot, and then Council member Martha Evans had shifted her vote to her to make a majority, followed by shifts in the votes of the other three members to make it unanimous.
The first of incumbents among the members of the City Council, Herman Brown, had stated his intention to run for re-election in May. He had been elected to the Council the first time in 1953, and re-elected in 1955. All other members of the Council were expected soon also to announce their re-election bids.
In Austin, Tex., the State House had unanimously passed a bill allowing persons with bats in the belfry to kill them, as it had been illegal in Texas to do so since 1917. A State Representative from Wichita Falls had stated that the bats constituted a health hazard. Why would anyone be playing baseball in the belfry in the first place? And who is on first?
We recall playing baseball, albeit without a bat, not in a belfry but in a second floor rear dormer window at our grandparents' home in the ensuing summer of 1957, as well during each of the successive two summers, with our older brother throwing the ball up to us from down below on the ground. We associate it with the first episodes of "American Bandstand" in August, 1957, as we seem to recall our brother talking about that new program as he threw us the ball. On one occasion, though perhaps in one of the two successive summers, we also recall, the ball missed its target, the open window, and hit a pane, breaking the glass, requiring the services thereafter of a glazier, whose skill we studied carefully and thereby learned the craft of glazing, just as we learned by similar intense observation of a brick mason during the summer of 1959, just down the street from our grandparents' home, the craft of brick masonry, by observing the mason laying brick for a carport foundation, even if the skills thus subsequently manifested were transacted a good bit more slowly than the practiced glazier or mason, just as we learned how to play basketball, by close observation of those who knew how. Baseball, however, for some reason, was never quite thus transmitted to our neural pathways controlling hand-eye coordination such that we could, with facility, play that game, at least as Mr. Doubleday intended.
Speaking of sports, News sports editor Bob Quincy again reports from Kansas City, site of the NCAA basketball Tournament semifinals set for Friday night starting at 8:30 local time, with the first game to be between number one UNC, at 30-0, and number 11 Michigan State, and the second game, between number two Kansas, with Wilt Chamberlain, and unranked, defending national champions from 1955 and 1956, the University of San Francisco. The page carries two announcements, one being that the semifinal and either the final or the consolation game, depending on outcome, in which UNC played would be broadcast by WBTV in Charlotte, as had been the prior weekend's Eastern Regional final involving UNC against Syracuse. The other rather stunning announcement was the reprinting on the page of a telegram sent the previous week from the Wake Forest basketball team in Winston-Salem, wishing the Tar Heels well in their effort, stating: "You proved it to us. Now prove it to the nation." UNC had barely missed the preemptive end of their undefeated season in the semifinal of the ACC Tournament, navigating tumultuous waters between Scylla and Charybdis to get by the Deacons by two points, at a time when to qualify for the NCAA Tournament, the team had to win the ACC Tournament to be crowned official conference champion, one of only two leagues at the time, the other being the Southern Conference from which the practice derived, holding conference tournaments to determine their champion. In any event, it was a magnanimous gesture by the Demon Deacons, probably prompted by their new head coach, assistant coach Horace "Bones" McKinney, whose hiring would be announced the following Monday, as he was an ordained Baptist minister and always and invariably conducted himself in accordance with the best rules of sportsmanship on the court, and undoubtedly will lead in future years to no more harsh words from the fan bases of either school directed at the other, both to comport themselves with the dignity reserved to churchmen, no one with such dignity, obviously, being so disreputably dissolute and unruly as to tell the other to "Go to hell, Carolina, go to hell", or words which would so imply, including, on occasion, such words and sentiments directed at individual fans of either school. Whether UNC's basketball team, the first under coach Dean Smith, still a year in 1957 from being hired by coach Frank McGuire as an assistant, would have the presence of mind to reciprocate in 1962 when the Demon Deacons would make the semifinals, the next time an ACC team would advance that far, albeit in a losing effort to 1960 champion Ohio State, we shall simply have to wait five years to see.
On the editorial page, "Ike Must Chart a Course at Bermuda" ventures that the Anglo-American alliance had to be restored at the meeting between the President and Prime Minister Macmillan, with a frank examination of differences and a new sharing of confidences.
At present, the British did not know where American foreign policy was headed, any more than the U.S. had been aware of the strategy of the British and French immediately prior to their invasion of the Suez Canal region the prior November 1. Solid accomplishment in the meeting would depend primarily on whether the U.S. had finally determined a Middle East policy to replace the contorted statements previously expressed by Secretary of State Dulles, whether the legitimate aims of Britain and France would continue to be subordinated to the ambitions of Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt.
It suggests that the British would be able to state their purpose as being survival, that they had to have oil and unrestricted passage through the Suez Canal to obtain it, and to do so, had to have guarantees against capricious and punitive actions by Egypt, guarantees which only the U.S. could provide. The U.S. had assumed that role by forcing the British and French out of Egypt and if the alliance was to survive, the guarantees had to be provided.
It finds that the "assumptions" under which the Israelis had been lured to withdraw from the Gaza Strip would not suffice for the British, who did not trust Secretary Dulles in his wavering support of the assumptions which he had approved, constituting fresh fuel for their doubts of his steadfastness. Since it was unlikely that Mr. Dulles would be removed as Secretary, the President had to remove the doubts for the benefit of Premier Nasser as well as for the British and French.
"Why Penalize the Innocent Child?" tells of bills having been proposed before the General Assembly which would deny public assistance in the state to illegitimate children during ten consecutive biennial sessions. In the end, reason had always prevailed and the bills had been killed.
But such a proposal had again been made anew by the State Representative of Bertie County, the bill making its effect contingent on the mother persisting in having babies out of wedlock. It finds the bill to be without moral legitimacy as it would, in effect, punish an innocent child for the transgression of the mother when need was the only basis of qualification for eligibility to receive public assistance.
Moreover, such a bill would cause the state to risk losing all Federal funding for aid to dependent children, which in the past had amounted to about 80 percent of the program.
The State House Welfare Committee, in May, 1955, had adopted a subcommittee report noting that "there is no relationship between the aid to dependent children program and the number of illegitimate births in North Carolina." It also said that there were few children born out of wedlock after a mother began receiving aid to dependent children. The head of the State Department of Public Welfare assured the Committee that the record of illegitimacy in the state was not nearly so bad as many other areas of the country and that they had the situation under control.
It concludes that rather than cutting illegitimate children from needed support, the General Assembly would serve the cause of humanity better by allowing the appointment of guardians in extreme cases, that a child was made no less needy by dint of its illegitimacy.
"A Lady Politico & Six Abraded Egos" indicates that six members of the City Council had gathered to protect their male egos against encroachment by the single female member of the Council, Martha Evans, who had been elected two years earlier and was standing for re-election in May.
It says that it is tired of the mugwumping because it was pathetically male, that even if Mrs. Evans were to run last in the voting, the men could not win and no one expected a woman to do well in politics anyway. "The caveman occasionally clubbed his woman on the head, to be sure. But who toted whom home?"
A piece from the Washington Post & Times Herald, titled "Crimea and Punishment", tells of the Manchester Guardian having brought to light that the "New Soviet Man" was capable of donning a gray flannel suit as well as drabber proletarian garb, as an advertisement appearing in the Guardian contained the invitation: "A new paradise for holidaymakers! The Russian Riviera—Crimea and the Caucasus." It was followed by: "Here's the holiday that's really new—and exciting! A new, wonderful Riviera for you to explore and delight in... Exotic scenery magnificent bathing, thrilling trips into the mountains, wonderful cruises on the Black Sea … all yours! This summer!"
It wonders what Karl Marx would have said about it, suggesting that opening the Crimea to tourists could pose some headaches for the Soviet Travel Agency, as bikinis might produce counter-revolutionary havoc on the work norms of the fishermen and there might be an irresistible demand by tourists for some of the same attractions which prevailed on the decadent French Riviera, including Russian roulette. It suggests that there would also be a problem of glamour, with the need to send an Intourist commissar to Hollywood to bring back a starlet to shine on the Crimea, with the result that the Crimean workers would next be demanding exemption from the Russian draft and tax laws, at which point the Soviet Travel Agency could truly boast of the Russian Riviera as a worker paradise.
Drew Pearson tells of the diplomatic disturbance caused by the President having gone to the airport personally to meet King Saud of Saudi Arabia when he had earlier visited Washington, whereas he had refused to meet other such visiting foreign dignitaries and heads of state, sending either Secretary Dulles or Vice-President Nixon to perform the chore. It had reached the point that the British Foreign Office had asked the State Department informally whether the President would meet Queen Elizabeth at the airport if she were to visit Washington the following fall, with the implication being that she would probably not visit if she did not merit the same treatment as the head of state of an oil-rich kingdom where slave-trading remained legal. It had also been discussed inside British diplomatic circles regarding the visit of the President to Bermuda to meet Prime Minister Macmillan, that Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd might precede Mr. Macmillan and greet the President. Though the latter idea had been discarded, the fact that such discussion had taken place showed that foreign governments had resented the fact that such old friends of the U.S. as Winston Churchill had not been met by the President at the airport when King Saud had.
He notes that the new state of Ghana in Africa had begun taking its new-found independence seriously when Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah had not greeted Vice-President Nixon at the airport when he visited Ghana recently, with the excuse provided that Mr. Nixon was not a head of state. That snub, suggests Mr. Pearson, was certain to produce chuckles in Capitol cloakrooms, especially among old-line Republicans and Southern Democrats who resented the Vice-President's sudden switch in favor of killing filibusters—his invention of the later so-called "nuclear option", not then implemented—a switch which those Republicans and Democrats had suggested had been inspired by a desire to win black votes.
Senator Lyndon Johnson had been wooing the press at private breakfasts, in what were now termed as "Lyndon's charm schools". Mr. Pearson indicates that if Senator Johnson said in public what he told newsmen, he would make more headlines, providing recent examples: "Either Dulles lied to Congressional leaders or Nasser lied to Dulles regarding Egypt's move back into the Gaza Strip"; "The Eisenhower doctrine for the Middle East is a bunch of hogwash"; "I am shocked that the three leaders of the United States Government should all be out of the country at the same time".
Walter Lippmann addresses the issue of the change in status of the West vis-à-vis the Arab world in the Middle East as it was being influenced by the Communist world in the latest crisis involving the condemnation by the U.S. of the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt the previous late October-early November, compromising thereby the ability of the U.S. to negotiate effectively with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser for his control of oil to England and Western Europe by the seizure the prior July of the Suez Canal and, despite the agreements made in the U.N. to reopen the canal to international traffic, his continued desire to wage a controlled war against Israel to enable him to maintain his power within the Arab world.
He posits that the optimists believed that the U.S. role in the U.N. amid the crisis had won the country the esteem of the Afro-Asian nations, such that they would now accept the U.S. as being uncontaminated with "colonialism", that the position was viewed by those nations as at once anti-Communist and purged of the historical grievances and suspicions against colonialism as practiced by European nations. But Mr. Lippmann does not share the view, finds it naive and wishful thinking, that the connections of the U.S. to the West generally could not be separated in the perception of the Afro-Asian nations, that a new accommodation between East and West would not come easily.
He believes instead that the recent events in the crisis had instead made a difficult task in that regard more difficult, as the U.S. had made an irreparable error in handling the crisis, that instead of insisting at the outset that Premier Nasser had provoked the attacks by Israel, France and Britain, and that the intervention and provocation for it had to be resolved at one time, the U.S. had insisted that the intervention had to be eliminated first before its causes, placing pressure on Israel, Britain and France, without any on Premier Nasser and without obtaining assurance from him, from India or the Soviets, that it would not return to the status quo ante from which the intervention stemmed.
U.S. policy on the canal and the pacification of Palestine had thus been to precede negotiations with pacification of Premier Nasser and thus reduce U.S. bargaining power, providing him "the big trumps before the diplomatic game is played," thus negotiating from a position of weakness. With the Soviets, Communist China, Premier Nasser and the Arab world against the U.S. position, and India, as well as the U.N., under the influence of their combined pressure, the U.S. was left in a weakened stance.
The question now was not whether imperialism and colonialism were to be eliminated, but how and in what period of time. But there was no vision of what the new international order would be after the period of colonial and imperial rule. National independence alone would not construct that new order whereby East and West could live in peaceful coexistence, as the new nations and old nations could not live isolated from one another for their interdependence, with Western Europe dependent on oil transported through the Suez Canal from the Middle East and the Arab world being unable to dispose of their oil except through the West. If there was to be a stable and durable interdependence, there had to be reasonable equality of bargaining power in working out the details and principles of the new relationship.
But during the crisis, the balance of bargaining power had turned against the West, as suggested by the fact that the U.S. and the U.N. were not negotiating with Premier Nasser, only appeasing him because they lacked bargaining power to negotiate. And he was opposed to cooperation with the West as his continued power in Egypt and the Arab world generally depended on that stance, thus preventing him from agreement on international use of the canal under principles on which all nations could rely. He intended to use the canal as a means to further his anti-Western, pan-Arab agenda, continuing to wage limited war on Israel to the extent he could with a safely calculated military risk to avoid a general conflict with the West.
The stance of Premier Nasser in that regard was making it difficult for moderate leaders in the Afro-Asian world to settle with the West out of concern that it would be viewed as treason and betrayal of their own people. That applied even to India, where Prime Minister Nehru was presently declining the role he had cast for himself as mediator between East and West, not wanting in recent months to differ with Egypt. The U.S. could not expect India to redress the balance of bargaining power which had turned against the West as long as the practice of the West was to appease Premier Nasser.
Enlightened Western leaders had believed that the imperial and colonial system could be eliminated through friendly acceptance of Eastern nationalism, education, technical assistance and development of the new nations, but there was no ground to believe that Premier Nasser wanted such a peaceful evolution and it was not easy to have peace when only one side desired it. Egypt believed it had the upper hand with its control of Western access to oil, and that control had proved itself with the failure of the British-French invasion of November. Egypt believed that the U.S. would continue to appease Premier Nasser.
Those assumptions would now be put to the test regarding the administration of the canal, whether the Gaza Strip would again become the base for guerrilla war and attacks on Israel, and the right of passage in the Gulf of Aqaba. If Premier Nasser were not checked, U.S. influence could not be maintained through the recently passed Eisenhower doctrine of providing financial aid and, if necessary, U.S. military force to the Middle East to combat Communist aggression, or by declarations against the menace of Communism.
A letter from the secretary of the Myers Park High School Student Council indicates that she had been asked to write the letter on behalf of the Council, making it known that they endorsed the legislative proposal to increase the salary of public school teachers by 20 percent, that they were deeply concerned about the future of their educational system, and that to strengthen and preserve the schools, they felt that the security and welfare of their teachers had to be improved, both for the sake of present educational quality as well as to provide examples to students who might wish to become teachers in the future.
A letter writer suggests that if people were "in God's business", they would not be attending to other people's business, and that "the best business to be in is out helping a sick neighbor and doing good for others" to prove oneself a good Christian. She often thought of how good it was to have a place to live in which there were kind bus drivers, good doctors and nurses who were kind to their patients when they were sick, and hopes that everyone would do more for God's kingdom and be good neighbors and kind to others.
Framed Edition
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