The Charlotte News
Thursday, April 11, 1957
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that House Speaker Sam Rayburn said this date that prospects were "good" for passage in the current session of a tax cut effective at the start of 1958, commenting after an unusual policy meeting the previous day with Democratic members of the House Ways & Means Committee, which wrote tax legislation. Democrats were determined to make tax reduction at the session a party issue and possibly beat the Republicans to it before the midterm elections in 1958. Mr. Rayburn had conditioned the possibility on the Government's tax revenues holding up at anticipated levels and Congress continuing its budget-cutting campaign. House Republicans, who thus far had taken no official position, displayed eagerness to get into the act.
In Ellwood City, Pa., chlorine gas escaping from a leaking railroad tank car early this date had made a score of persons ill and had forced evacuations of a large area near the community. The local hospital reported that it had treated a total of 29 persons, many of whom were members of volunteer fire companies. Six persons had been admitted for further treatment, though none appeared to be in serious condition. At least one volunteer fireman had been reported to be in serious condition. A workman wearing an oxygen-supplied mask had succeeded in shutting off the escaping gas about an hour after the leak had been discovered. Residents of the tiny community where it occurred had been returning to their homes as a rising wind began carrying away the gas. Firemen sprayed water over the tank car and surrounding buildings in an effort to decontaminate the area.
In Rio de Janeiro, it was reported that four persons had survived the flaming crash of a Brazilian airliner on an island the previous night, but all 24 others aboard the plane had perished, when it had gone down in a storm while en route from Rio de Janeiro to Sao Paulo. The plane had exploded, setting fire to the surrounding brush. The survivors, including two adults, a child and a stewardess, had not been found until daybreak, and their condition was serious. Another passenger plane had crashed in southern Brazil the prior Sunday, killing 40 persons.
In Raleigh, extension of the Charlotte city limits was the hottest issue before the Legislature, as about 200 Mecklenburg County residents had filled the Highway Department auditorium for a two-hour public hearing before House Judiciary Committee no. 2, which took no action following the hearing, after hearing from each side for an hour each. The pending bill would extend the city limits of Charlotte by more than 30 miles. Representative Jack Love of Mecklenburg had brought two busloads of opponents to the hearing from Charlotte during the morning. He was the only Mecklenburg legislator opposed to the bill.
One opponent to the annexation had caused laughter in the Committee, made up of some of the state's best-known attorneys, when he said, "I wanted to be a lawyer, but I had to make a living." He apologized and said that he did not mean it the way it had sounded.
Also in Raleigh, a resolution urging Congress to pass a law requiring tobacco manufacturers to state on the label whether their products contained "homogenized, reconstituted or synthetic tobacco" had quickly been killed by the House Judiciary Committee no. 1. The resolution had passed several days earlier in the State Senate, despite protests from legislators from the state's tobacco manufacturing counties. Forsyth County Representative William Womble made a motion, which was approved by the Committee, to report the resolution with an unfavorable recommendation. The author of the resolution, State Senator Cutlar Moore of Robeson County, did not attend the hearing. The terms "reconstitute" or "homogenized" and "synthetic" tobacco had been used by persons critical of new processes developed by the tobacco manufacturers which enabled them to use products such as stems and scraps which had been wasted in the past. Some tobacco leaders said that such processes would enable the manufacturers to obtain 20 percent more usable leaf from the same quantity of tobacco.
Charlotte trucking executive Kenneth Gibbons announced this date that he would seek a seat on the City Council.
Emery Wister of The News reports that no mail would be delivered to homes, offices or plants the following Saturday in the community, and deliveries to businesses would be reduced from 3 to 2 per day during the week, beginning the following week. Other changes in service are also listed. The changes in delivery were the result of Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield's directive to all postmasters throughout the nation to reduce service until the end of the fiscal year because of inadequate funds to continue full post office service without an additional 47 million dollars being appropriated by Congress.
Near Spindale, N.C., a Rutherford County man, staring a high-powered Japanese rifle in the face, killed the man pointing it at him with his .22-caliber rifle the previous night, and was charged with murder in the death of the service station operator. The man charged told police that the victim and two other men had parked in a panel truck in his driveway the previous night and had been drinking wine and "causing a disturbance", one of the men having dated his daughter. He exited his home and told the men to leave, at which point the victim emerged from the truck, leveling a large Japanese rifle at him, saying, "Who's big enough to make us leave?" The man then rushed back into his home, picked up his .22-caliber rifle and returned to face the men, firing one shot over the victim's head, at which point the latter moved behind the hood of the truck, keeping his weapon pointed at the man with the .22. Then the latter fired twice at the victim, with the second shot having struck him in the left temple causing his death. One of the two companions of the victim had been arrested and charged with violating the county's prohibition law. The sheriff said that three wine bottles had been found in the cab of the truck. The other companion of the victim was being sought by the Sheriff's Department for questioning. The man who had killed the victim was placed in jail without bond, with a hearing probably to be held the following Tuesday. Neither the victim nor the man charged had any prior criminal record. The dead man was married with four children. The coroner said that there would be no inquest into the shooting, pending further investigation by the Sheriff's Department.
Elizabeth Prince, News
medical writer, examines the concept of spring fever, indicates that
it was not a disease recognized by medical science. Bartlett's
Familiar Quotations had a total of 104 references to "spring"
of all types, but not one regarding "spring fever", not
listing Rodgers and Hammerstein's lyric: "I'd say that I have
spring fever. But it isn't even spring," from the movie "State
Fair"
But what if you are not in jail to begin with?
Former Governor John Simms of New Mexico, defeated in the November election by Republican Edwin Mecham, had recently announced that he would be spending most of his time mending fences, as the cedar post and wire fences on his ranch near Santa Fe needed repair.
On the editorial page, "The Man Ike Doesn't Know Very Well" indicates that the President, under polite but pointed warning from the Senate to improve the quality of ambassadorial appointments, had done the opposite by nominating W. Scott McLeod as Ambassador to Ireland—as further examined on the page by Marquis Childs.
It regards it as being somewhat comic to send an ambassador to France who did not speak French. The President said that he did not know Mr. McLeod very well, but had the utmost confidence in his recommendation from Secretary of State Dulles, who had also not known Mr. McLeod very well when the former FBI agent had been brought into the State Department as a beachhead for McCarthyism, a move which it appeared that Mr. Dulles had later regretted and wanted to fire him.
It had been Mr. McLeod, operating for the McCarthy clique, who had initiated and helped involve the State Department in one of the most irresponsible and ridiculous political circuses ever held in the Senate chamber. In 1953, the President needed an ambassador to the Soviet Union to replace George Kennan, and picked Charles Bohlen, a veteran career diplomat whom he knew very well, having been impressed by Mr. Bohlen's knowledge of the Russians and their language.
But Mr. McLeod, the Department's security chief, had given his first allegiance to the witch-hunting Senators whose influence had gotten him his job when the Administration was seeking to kill McCarthyism with kindness. Mr. McLeod had leaked advance knowledge of the appointment of Mr. Bohlen to the McCarthy wing and sought to enlist the support of the President's own Congressional liaison officer in blocking the appointment. Even before the nomination went to the Senate, Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada had been condemning Mr. Bohlen for having been in the State Department during the Truman Administration when Secretary of State Dean Acheson was its head. When that charge had failed to frighten the Senate, Senator McCarran charged that in supporting Mr. Bohlen, Secretary Dulles had overridden the objections of Mr. McLeod that Mr. Bohlen might be a security risk, something which Mr. Dulles denied. Senator McCarthy called Mr. Bohlen a liar, implying that he knew Mr. McLeod's position thoroughly.
At issue had been an FBI file containing unevaluated statements from crackpots to the effect that in the past, Mr. Bohlen had associated with some "dissolute persons". After conferring with Secretary Dulles, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had unanimously approved the appointment.
But Senator McCarthy and his fellow witch-hunters still pressed the theme that Mr. Bohlen was dangerous, prompting Senator Robert Taft of Ohio and Senator John Sparkman of Alabama to check the FBI file for themselves, reporting back that Senator Taft had been unable to find anything which supplied prima facie evidence that Mr. Bohlen had done anything which would make him a bad security risk, that the associations in question were those which anyone might have, an assessment to which Senator Sparkman agreed.
Then, other classified information leaked out of the State Department, and Senators McCarthy and Styles Bridges, the latter being Mr. McLeod's chief political sponsor, accused the Department of using a spurious letter of recommendation for Mr. Bohlen from another diplomat. Senator William Knowland vouched for the letter, but he was needled by the witch-hunters. Eventually, the Senate voted to approve the nomination of Mr. Bohlen by 74 to 13.
Since that time, Ambassador Bohlen had served ably and selflessly for more than three years in Moscow. In the meantime, Senator McCarthy had been censured by the Senate in December, 1954, snubbed by the President and reduced to an occasionally futile and characteristically hysterical grab for the spotlight. Yet, Mr. McLeod, who had been in league with Senator McCarthy and his comrades, had been nominated to be the new Ambassador to Ireland.
It suggests that it could think of only one reason why Secretary Dulles would suggest Mr. McLeod for that job, to get him out of Washington without offending the Senate clique with whom he was aligned. It urges that if that were the goal, it could be achieved more directly through the warning given by the Foreign Relations Committee to the State Department against obviously political appointments.
"Political 'Blindness' as a Way of Life" indicates that another proposed bill for reapportionment of the State Legislature had been put forward on Tuesday and the legislators had simply thrown up their hands in desperation, the plethora of bills put forth already having been condemned as "confusing".
It finds that the confusion had been orchestrated by the legislators, themselves, in refusing to accord the mandate of the State Constitution to reapportion the Assembly after every decennial census, but failing to do so since 1950.
It urges that the Assembly could recover its integrity by dispensing with ersatz reforms and passing the safe and sane proposal of the Weathers Commission on Legislative Representation.
"'You Can't Hardly Get Them No More'" indicates that the name Susan for girls in the U.S. was presently all the rage among parents, with Marilyn being second, followed by Elizabeth, Mary and Louise.
It had been contented with the information until running across a piece in the London Daily Telegraph during the morning which had listed in careful detail four names from the Peerage: Lyulph Ydwallo Odin Nestor Egbert Lyonel Toedmag Hugh Erchenwyne Saxon Esa Cromwell Orma Nevill Dysart, born 1876, and three others of comparable length and complexity, born between 1872 and 1892.
"And they call this the Age of Invention?"
We are not quite sure what it was driving at in its title for the piece. Perhaps, one had to be there in the moment, or had read the London Daily Telegraph that day, or something. Well, we won't lose any sleep over it, but it does make one wonder what the hell was going on there. Did some printer's devil or copy editor make an excision without telling the editorial writer? Is it censorship? Is it an effort to make the editors look like boobs without their heads on straight? It is really quite troubling and deserves internal investigation by someone, sometime. What do you think?
No wonder we did not understand, as the inspiration for the piece appears to have come from the Daily Telegraph of January 2, not on or around April 11. What do they expect, that we can read their minds?
Anyway, we did not come here
Henry Belk, writing in the Greensboro Daily News, in a piece titled "Charlotte's 'Charcoal Frog Legs'", indicates that in a Charlotte hotel recently, country-raised "Janet" had been intrigued by an item on the menu, "Charcoal frog legs", for $3.50. She had never partaken of the delicacy, but now was raving about it.
Mr. Belk indicates that frog legs were tasty, but to charcoal them, he believes, destroyed their peculiar tastiness, which was sweeter than chicken, more tender than duck, more toothsome than capon, and that charcoaling them was gilding the lily.
He believes that the charcoal fad was being run into the ground. All over New York the previous summer, one had seen signs such as "Charcoal Hamburger", "Charcoal Steak", etc. He had tried some of the New York charcoal-cooked meats and wished that he had not, as the charcoal flavor was so heavy that one felt like he was eating it. Charcoal to provide a tiny accent to steaks cooked on an outdoor grill was one thing, but "charcoal shoveled on after a manner suggestive of Duplin County's charcoal factory is another."
Drew Pearson, writing from Hobe Sound, Fla., indicates that U.S. Navy blimps, in their routine policing of the U.S. coastline, had sighted about a dozen foreign submarines lying off Cape Canaveral in Florida. The conclusion was that they were Russian, as they did not belong to any ally, such as England or France, and that they were there to watch for and spy on the first intercontinental ballistic missile launch, presumably set to occur soon. The missile would be able to fire from the U.S. to Moscow in about 30 minutes, equipped with a hydrogen warhead. It was no secret that experiments on the ICBM had been taking place at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida, and the Russian submarines unquestionably had received reports of an impending test. Since they were in international waters, more than three miles offshore, there was nothing which the Navy could do about them, unless the U.S. wanted to risk a war with Russia. It would be difficult, however, for the submarines to learn much about the ICBM or to jam it, as it was not radio-controlled, but rather guided by an inertial system with a gyroscope.
Russia had about 400 modern postwar submarines as of the previous year and was building them at the rate of 85 per year, suggesting a current total of around 500. The concentration of those submarines off the Florida coast indicated the extreme vulnerability of the U.S. to submarine-launched missiles in a time of war.
For some time, Sam Pryor, vice-president of Pan American Airways, had been telling Mr. Pearson about the tropical charms of Jupiter Island, near the place where he was presently vacationing, but he had always resisted its allure until a beautiful widow had issued the invitation. He indicates that Mr. Pryor had been correct and that he and his wife had found Jupiter Island to be "a tropical paradise where the coconut trees form vistas of majesty, where the pounding of the surf acts like a sleeping pill and the Gulf Stream is soft and warm and azure in the distance.
"On it you see the pelicans rise and fall with the roll of the waves as if they hadn't a care in the world. You see the white-bait so thick in the water that a cloud seems to be passing over the waves. Back from the shoreline a mess of cabbage palm, bayonet palm, and prickly grass confronts you with a warning."
He does not explain what the warning
was—possibly that 5 1/2 years down the pike, the Russians,
upset about the proximity of Jupiter missiles in Turkey pointing at
the Soviet Union, and the general standoff in Berlin, would respond
to Premier Fidel Castro's request for protection against another Bay
of Pigs operation to overthrow his regime, the plans for which had been laid by the Eisenhower Administration in 1959, by providing him offensive medium and intermediate range ballistic
missiles and launchers, capable of hitting with accuracy virtually
any target within the Eastern half of the United States,
significantly shortening the warning time for a nuclear attack and
thereby upsetting the balance of power, bringing the prospect of
nuclear war to the doorstep of the U.S., 90 miles off the coast of
Florida, into the Western Hemisphere. But he may have had another
warning
Marquis Childs addresses the suicide of the Canadian Ambassador to Russia, Herbert Norman, finding it to raise an issue of responsibility of the Senate Internal Security subcommittee, labeled by many as recklessly irresponsible in having raised again a disputed and disproven charge that Mr. Norman was a Communist, after the Canadian Government had investigated the claim in 1951 and found it meritless.
He finds that it confronted the State Department and Secretary of State Dulles with questions which had been evaded. The Department was aware of the damage done by the subcommittee in releasing the unverified information concerning Mr. Norman. There was damage not only to Canadian-U.S. relations but to the country's position in the free world. Counsel for the subcommittee, Robert Morris, had verified that the Department, through Robert Cartwright, had approved the release of the information. Mr. Cartwright, of the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs, was deputy to W. Scott McLeod, chief of the Bureau. Mr. Cartwright said that all he had done was to approve release of testimony of John Emmerson, a foreign service officer who had been asked in executive session about Mr. Norman. Regardless, Secretary Dulles had exercised only limited authority over Mr. McLeod and his Bureau.
John Robinson Beal, in his recently published biography of Mr. Dulles, which Stewart Alsop had reviewed the previous week, described instances of Mr. McLeod's "excess of zeal", including reports that the latter's men of the Department's policy-planning staff had been receiving copies of the Communist Daily Worker, consistent with the view of Secretary Dulles that it was important to know the enemy. Mr. Beal had stated in the book: "But Communist publications were not the only target of McLeod's underlings. When they began inquiring which members of the planning staff read the Reporter, a non-Communist liberal periodical, the staff chairman, Robert Bowie, protested to Undersecretary Walter Bedell Smith, who put a stop to it." Mr. Beal indicated that later, Mr. Dulles had stated to him that he wanted to fire Mr. McLeod when it had become evident that the latter had gone over his head to spread derogatory information about Ambassador-designate to Russia Charles Bohlen, both in the Senate and at the White House at the time of Mr. Bohlen's nomination. But Undersecretary Smith had dissuaded him on the basis that it would damage the Administration to fire Mr. McLeod.
The latter had been placed in the State Department by Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, after Mr. McLeod had been his assistant. Mr. McLeod's loyalty appeared to be to Senator Bridges and other conservative Senators, including Senator McCarthy, with whom he had been associated. His friends had said, however, that his views had been altered by service in the Department and that he had been reformed, doing a good job supervising the refugee program.
The previous Tuesday, it had been announced that Mr. McLeod had been nominated to be Ambassador to Ireland. Mr. Childs speculates on whether the motive might have been to get him out of the State Department or reward him for his reform, but suggests that, regardless, the appointment would remove a person who had occasionally seemed to exercise independent authority, bringing into focus the question of responsibility in the Department.
Responding to early reports of the appointment of Mr. McLeod as the new Ambassador to Ireland, the Irish Times, a conservative newspaper in Dublin, had indicated some protest. There had long been rumors of Senate opposition to the appointment, currently held by William Howard Taft III. Even before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had received notice of the nomination, the name of Mr. McLeod's successor at the Bureau had leaked, to be Roderick O'Connor, who had been a close personal assistant since Mr. Dulles had become Secretary. Mr. O'Connor was now deputy assistant secretary for Congressional relations.
During the first years of Mr. Dulles's tenure as Secretary, he had felt compelled in many security cases involving any doubt at all to resolve the case against the officer or employee of his Department to avoid suspicion of Senators, who had made the Department their target. Mr. Childs suggests that it might have been shrewd political strategy, but had created a serious morale problem which had not been resolved.
Some talk had been heard of an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the release of the hearsay information about Mr. Norman's associates nearly 20 years earlier, Mr. Childs indicating that it might be useful but could not erase the tragedy of the suicide of Mr. Norman nor undo the damage to America around the world.
Stewart Alsop discusses the sudden and complete eclipse of Senator McCarthy, which he regards as a major national phenomenon, having disappeared following his December, 1954 censure by the Senate. (Senator McCarthy would die on May 2, just three weeks hence.)
He wonders whether he would disappear politically once and for all the following year when he had to run again or whether he would continue to exist as a local, largely unnoticed phenomenon. He regards the question as important for the Administration in general and for the President in particular.
The President did not like Senator McCarthy, and White House press secretary James Hagerty had gone out of his way to make public a snub of the Senator when he was the only member of Congress not invited to the White House the previous year. If the Senator were to be re-nominated by the Wisconsin Republicans, the President would be asked whether he endorsed the candidacy, an embarrassing situation which the White House would as soon avoid.
Former Governor Walter Kohler had told friends that he had virtually decided to run against Senator McCarthy in the Republican primary, but he could ultimately change his mind, as he had in 1952. Senator McCarthy still retained the support of the Wisconsin Republican fat cats, with the possible exception of Tom Coleman, but it was less passionate support than in the past, and there were signs in the rank-and-file of a revolt against the Senator in favor of Governor Kohler, with the consensus being that the latter would win in a two-man primary. But if Representative Glenn Davis entered the race, Senator McCarthy might benefit as he would likely hurt Governor Kohler more than he would the Senator.
Even if Senator McCarthy survived the Republican primary, the Democrats had three potential candidates ready to do battle with him, State Senator Gaylord Nelson, William Proxmire, who had almost beaten Governor Kohler in the gubernatorial race, and Representative Henry Reuss, who had beaten McCarthyite Charles Kersten in 1954. (Eventually, following the death of Senator McCarthy, Mr. Proxmire would win a special election the following August to finish the term and would be elected to the full term in 1958. Gaylord Nelson would also be elected to the other Senate seat in 1962, currently held by Senator Alexander Wiley.)
Even when Senator McCarthy had been relatively strong, he had run a third of a million votes behind the national ticket in 1952.
But even if the Senator was to be defeated, the other two members of the anti-Eisenhower right-wing radical triumvirate, Senators George Malone of Nevada and William Jenner of Indiana, who were also up for re-election in 1958, were considered safe for renomination and re-election. Senator Malone did not matter as no one paid attention to him, but Senator Jenner was still an important symbol because he called the President's old friend, General George Marshall, a traitor. The central symbol, however, was Senator McCarthy, who had given the President more trouble in his first term than any other person, Republican or Democrat.
"And the shrinking down of McCarthy, which has been as peculiar a process as the shrinking down of a human head by Ecuador's Jivaro tribe, has been, in a sense, one of the great achievements of the Eisenhower administration, reluctant as the President initially was to start the process. It has also been, it must be added, tribute to the ultimate good sense of the American people."
A letter writer from Pittsboro wonders how long the people would continue to put up with deliberate frauds being practiced on them and suggests that it was time for someone with national prestige to come forth and tell them of it. He says he had just heard on the radio false claims for NATO, "fraud if there ever was one." He indicates that there had not been a time since America had withdrawn its principal forces from Europe that Russia could not have gone to the English Channel within 30 days if it had wished to do so, and yet Americans were subjected to the argument that Russia was waiting for the effort to become difficult before attempting to march. He believes that there was just about as much need for a ground army in Europe at present "as a sow has for a side pocket." He suggests that Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge John J. Parker and the late Justice Robert Jackson of the Supreme Court had done much better than they had probably realized at the Nuremberg trials, where he believes they had set out to make the Germans hate war by convicting German war criminals of crimes of war "that were recognized as legitimate acts of war in both the American and British manuals of war…" He regards the Nuremberg trials and the Marshall Plan to have done more for the peace of the world than a dozen U.N.'s. He favors pulling out the Army from Western Europe, in which case he believes East Germany would reunite with West Germany and provide the world a real chance for peace.
Framed Edition
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