The Charlotte News
Friday, January 10, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President would send to Congress the following Monday a budget calling for 73.8 billion dollars or more in spending and an increase in the Federal debt ceiling, according to Government informants this date. The new budget, covering the 1959 fiscal year starting the following July 1, would be precariously balanced, as the President had hinted in his State of the Union message of the previous day. He would notify Congress that the supposedly balanced budget for the present year was expected to show a small deficit instead of a planned 1.5 billion dollar surplus, according to officials. He would attribute the return to deficit financing to a 1.3 billion dollar increase in scheduled Defense Department outlays and a reduction of about a billion in estimated revenues caused by declining business profits and personal income. Informants indicated that the deficit would be well under 500 million dollars. Only three months earlier, the Administration announced that it would have its third balanced budget in succession. He would have to seek a temporary, slight increase in the 275 billion dollar debt ceiling, according to the sources. The budget would be about 2 billion dollars higher than the President's original estimate for the current fiscal year and roughly a billion more than the present year's actual spending. It would be the highest Federal spending since World War II. Former President Truman had a larger budget in 1953, the costliest year of the Korean War, but his 74.3 billion dollar budget had included highway spending, whereas the current proposed budget did not as a separate highway trust fund had been established under a 1956 law. The President told Congress that there would be substantial increases in outlays for missiles, nuclear ships, atomic energy, research and development, and science and education.
In London, it was reported that Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin's proposal this date for summit talks had blunted the impact on Western European opinion of the President's call in the State of the Union message for peace through strength.
Nelson Rockefeller, future New York Governor and Vice-President under President Ford, this date had told the Senate Preparedness subcommittee, chaired by Senator Lyndon Johnson, that a drastic overhaul of defense machinery and goals had to be undertaken at present to assure the nation's survival. He said that it was the unanimous opinion of some 50 national leaders who participated in the study of the present defense mechanisms and long-range policies. The subcommittee had been probing U.S. missile, satellite and weapons programs since the launch of the two Soviet Sputniks the prior October 4 and November 4. Mr. Rockefeller had said that the nation, as a leader of the free world, faced critical decisions in the ensuing 10 to 15 years regarding its international security. He said that the panel, set up by a family foundation which he headed, would issue later reports on political, economic and human aspects of those problems. Senator Johnson had introduced Mr. Rockefeller to the subcommittee and said that many of his recommendations for strengthening defenses already had been placed into operation. Mr. Rockefeller said that the non-governmental study was made by a panel of 30 members, which he indicated represented a cross-section of national leadership, that its conclusions represented the thinking of more than 50 persons. He said that the panel felt that the U.S. could afford increased spending for such things as education and health while still remedying its military deficiencies. He said that the major effort, however, had to be concentrated on meeting what he called "two somber thrusts", one from the Communist bloc for world domination and the other from a rapidly developing weapons technology which could destroy mankind. He said that the panel believed that the U.S., in the ensuing year or two, would have the capacity to meet any Russian military moves.
At Cape Canaveral, Fla., the Air
Force had launched
In Miami, Fla., it was reported that a hard freeze had lingered in Florida this date for the second consecutive day, causing fears of new damage to citrus fruit growers and more discomfort to everyone. Subfreezing weather had spread over most of Florida, even into farming areas below Miami.
In Edinburgh, Scotland, a Scottish judge had ruled this date that a wife who had given birth to a test-tube baby after separating from her husband had not committed adultery.
In Yokosuka, Japan, three U.S. Navy men had been killed and two critically injured this date in a catapult explosion aboard the aircraft carrier Kearsarge, according to the Navy.
In Caracas, Venezuela, the entire Cabinet had resigned at midnight the previous night, and President Marcos Perez Jimenez was expected to announce a new cabinet soon.
In Miami, Fla., indictments in a double slaying in Washington and a kidnaping in Virginia were ready for a 21-year old man who had appeared this date for a hearing before the U.S. magistrate.
In Raleigh, the State Supreme Court this date upheld the action of the Greensboro City Board of Education the previous fall in assigning six black students to previously all-white schools, the action having been challenged by several white parents. The Court had affirmed the decision by Superior Court Judge L. Richardson Preyer, future Congressman, dismissing the appeal of the white parents. Associate Justice William Rodman, former State Attorney General, indicated that Judge Preyer had been correct in his dismissal, stating that if a parent was dissatisfied with the operation of the school because of the assignment of another pupil to the school, the remedy was to request reassignment of the parent's child, not to appeal the assignment of the other pupil, that to provide the interpretation claimed by the white parents would be contrary to the declared intent of the committee which had recommended passage of the pupil assignment law and would raise grave questions as to its constitutionality. The six children had been attending the schools to which the Board had assigned them since the opening of school the prior September.
In Chapel Hill, authorities planned further questioning of a 14-year old boy who was a psychiatric outpatient at Memorial Hospital, in connection with a rash of fires which had broken out around the University campus the previous night. An unofficial estimate from authorities during the morning placed the damage from the flames, which had swept through the WUNC-TV studios at Swain Hall, at nearly $60,000. The deputy State fire marshal of Raleigh had joined local police and the fire chief in the investigation of seven fires, all within 300 yards of the fire at Swain Hall. They said that they had questioned the boy for several hours late the previous night, finally releasing him to the custody of his mother and his psychiatrist in the wee hours of the morning. The suspect was spotted near the scene of several of the blazes. He was not from Chapel Hill but had been living there recently for outpatient counseling in the department of psychiatry at the hospital.
Julian Scheer and Bill Hughes of The News report from Rockingham, N.C., that the case of Frank Wetzel for the first-degree murder of State Highway Patrolman W. L. Reece had gone to the jury this afternoon after the prosecution had made a strong plea for imposing the death sentence. The prosecutor had called it "the most heartless, most cruel, most merciless killing" of which he had ever heard. The defense attorney, however, had characterized the case as "a smokescreen", arguing that there was a lack of scientific evidence in four instances, that the State had either found nothing or refused to tell what it had found in the case of a match which the State's primary witness, who had claimed to be hitchhiking with Mr. Wetzel at the time of the shooting, had left in the car, with the prosecution, he said, either failing to compare the match with the remainder of the witness's pack of matches or having found nothing when they did make such a comparison. He also raised the lack of a study of car bumpers, after testimony that the getaway car had reportedly backed into the patrol car before speeding away, with no comparison of the bumpers having been introduced by the prosecution. He also raised the issues that the bullet used to kill the patrolman had not been found, and that tire marks left at the scene of the slaying had not been compared to the alleged getaway car which was eventually located in Chattanooga, Tenn., and from which the FBI had retrieved four fingerprints which its expert had testified perfectly matched those of the defendant. The prosecutor had stated at the conclusion of his argument that he was calling for a conviction for second-degree murder, but following a recess, returned to inform the jury that it had been a slip of the tongue. Mr. Wetzel was also accused of killing a second Highway Patrolman on the same night in a different location, but because there was no eyewitness to that slaying, the prosecution had elected to proceed first on the instant case.
Another story indicates that on December 9, Mr. Wetzel had been led and almost pulled through a crowd to a preliminary hearing, shying away from reporters and photographers, that at the hearing, he had mumbled and was asked to repeat inaudible words, finally, reluctantly, having allowed his picture to be taken, and that after the hearing, had sat in a secluded office and wept. Now, there appeared a different man in the courtroom, as he sat and listened without a motion, with his head up, as the FBI agent had testified. He now spoke freely and confidently to reporters regarding the FBI agent's testimony, saying: "It's the way they asked the questions. Either way you answer, you're caught." In the next breath he had denied killing Patrolman Reece. As the trial had proceeded, he talked more with his attorney and said that he was "doing a good job". On one occasion when his attorney had remarked on the statement of a witness that the eyewitness had called the driver "ruddy", stating that the witness had never heard the word "ruddy" in his life, provoking laughter from the audience, Mr. Wetzel had told him that he had done a very good job on that point. He had been friendly with reporters, deputy sheriffs and jailers. He had received no preferential treatment but at the same time, was handled with care. Witnesses repeatedly had referred to him as "Mr. Wetzel". When he was handcuffed, the officers were considerate. His facial expressions had varied little and he barely moved his lips as he chewed on a piece of gum. He stared at witnesses and his eyes were cast downward when he walked into and out of the courtroom. The piece concludes that Mr. Wetzel had changed, at least outwardly, in the 30 days since his first appearance in the case.
In Birmingham, England, a man promised publicly this date to quit dallying with dahlias, provided his runaway wife would return home. He was a dahlia fancier who had won many prizes in flower shows. He told the newspapers that his wife had vanished on December 30, leaving a note which read: "Dahlias, dahlias, dahlias—I am fed up with them. Breakfast, supper and bedtime that is all I have had to hear." The man said that he was now sure that his wife had just gotten fed up to the "back teeth with my dahlias", that if she would return, he would give them up as he now realized that his wife was more important than dahlias. His wife's name was Daisy.
On the editorial page, "Ike Removes the Nation's Real Worry" indicates that the energetic and assorted Paul Reveres who had battered at U.S. complacency for the previous three months had not ridden in vain.
The President had in effect joined their ranks in his State of the Union address of the previous day by recognizing the "unique threat" of a totalitarian society totally engaged in a cold war of expansion.
He found that the chief danger was an inadequate response to a certain threat in the future, while reassuring that the Soviet future threat would not succeed, as the real worry was not that the country could not surpass the Soviet Union but that it would not take the trouble to do so.
While Congress was expected to agree quickly to the expenditure of large new sums for missiles and other weapons, it would be tempted to take those funds from the foreign aid budget, and thus the President had repeatedly warned of the dual Communist threat, those militarily and economically, a point which it regards as having been well made.
It finds another strength of the message to have been its recognition of organizational failures in the defense establishment. The President had stated that whatever the extent of harmful interservice rivalries, the country wanted them stopped. It finds it a strong and timely demand for better teamwork within the Pentagon, while recognizing that action was more difficult than statements in that regard. Years of presidential warnings and legislative action against interservice rivalries had failed to produce the full benefit from the individual dedication of the services.
It finds that the President would have less trouble with the program designed to remedy the deficiencies in education and research.
In sum, he had paid comprehensive attention to deficiencies in the defense effort, the schools and to the lack of realization that economic aid to underdeveloped nations was an essential part of the nation's security, but the message had not defined the "sacrifices" which Americans had to make to support those programs. It suggests that the definition of those sacrifices would be at the root of any Congressional resistance to the programs and that it was safe to say that unless the President specified the sacrifices, they might be regarded haphazardly.
Overall, it finds the President's message to have constituted the catalyst required to make the U.S. move forward to new positions of strength in the struggle to save itself and the free world.
"American Beauty Is Worth Defending" indicates that feeble efforts in Congress during the previous session had failed to kill the billboard lobby's plan to line the new Federal highway system with billboards. It suggests that a Congress deeply concerned over missiles, taxes and elections in the present session would not find time to listen to that lobby. Maine Representative Robert Hale had, on the opening day of the session, introduced a bill to control the billboards, providing that Congress would approve incentive payments to states cooperating in the effort to let the taxpayers have unspoiled beauty along the new superhighway system.
A similar bill had been killed in the Senate the previous year and the House had taken no action on one. It finds it encouraging and possibly important that Mr. Hale was making another attempt. "Just possibly a Congress that must vote billions to defend the land may be moved by the idea that the beauty of America is worth defending, too."
"Small Concerns for a Small Issue" indicates that North Carolina Superior Court judges were cooperating in the State Bar Association's commendable effort to bring new dignity to the bench by asking that judges don black robes.
It has a concern for Judge Susie Sharp of Reidsville—to become the state's first female member of the State Supreme Court and eventually its Chief Justice—, the state's only female jurist at the time, as to what the robe might do to her feminine instincts. "Suppose the lady judge's fancy should be taken by the beauty and perfume of a rose on her way one spring morning to her solemn duties. Must she forgo the desire to wear the rose, thereby denying the bench a symbol of beauty and resurrection, while enhancing its bleak majesty by wearing a plain, black robe? One reluctantly supposes the rose would have to bow to the robe."
It muses further that the President could not wear a crown and would not wear a robe and yet was the chief magistrate of the country. He could not properly be addressed by titles of respect such as "your honor" and "your excellency", as judges and governors might be addressed.
A piece from the Wall Street Journal, titled "Applesauce", tells of a survey which the newspaper had taken in New York City, Shaker Heights, O., and Opp, Ala., finding that a New York City teacher had said of sixth-graders that they were healthy, happy children, but did not learn much at school. A Bronx teacher had said that her children formerly had been able to master grammar and decimals by the time they had finished the fifth grade, but that now her fifth-graders were "terribly retarded" in grammar and were still on "concepts" in math. "In painting, clay-modeling and sewing, though, they are really in fine shape."
The result was that at the University of Illinois, a quarter of the new freshmen had to take a non-credit course in remedial English, starting with third-grade grammar and spelling. At the Portland State College School of Engineering in Oregon, about 60 percent of the new students had to take a course in "bonehead math", starting with advanced fractions and elementary algebra, which the head of the physics department regarded as a "sorry situation".
The piece suggests that what many educators were using instead of the basic reading, writing and arithmetic was not nearly so good, and it does not see much room for improvement until the parents and teachers complained more loudly. Nor does it see much chance for the youngsters as long as the schools did as the New York City school curriculum instructed, limiting first-grade students to learning numbers from 1 to 10 while teaching them to make applesauce.
But it would give them a chance
early to address the metaphysical question regarding how many apples
It might also, in encouraging indirectly higher powers of discernment by preserving through time the necessary data to form both contrasting and concordant viewpoints, instilling thus the importance of maintaining memory and memories and not abusing one's mental acuity through the introduction of ersatz external substances designed unnecessarily to relieve, unnaturally, the natural stress which, through triggering the fight or flight complex inherent in man, propelling emissions from the adrenal glands, only improves acuity, if uncomfortably at times for the frightening anxiety produced, enable comparison of apples and oranges, even if at first the varying texture of the outer skin and the balance of sweet versus acidic tastes preponderating in the one more than in the other, suggest to the uninitiated that they are without attributional coincidence other than as both being classified within the fruit group for a properly balanced
Drew Pearson indicates that former Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson had been complaining that the Administration was seeking to make a goat of him regarding the missile lag. Mr. Pearson suggests that if he protested too much, there was an incident which one-time Republican friends might reveal, that being that on November 29, 1954, former Nazi missile expert Wernher von Braun had made a speech before the Women's National Press Club in which he had urged that the U.S. develop a satellite, indicating that the possessor of the satellite could pry out the secrets of the world and that it would be a tremendous propaganda weapon. He said that the nation which got the satellite first would rule the world and predicted that men would eventually be able to place a station in outer space from which they could transfer to another vessel for regular excursions to the moon. The next day, Secretary Wilson had held a press conference and was asked by Sarah McLendon of the El Paso Times, the Sherman Democrat and other Texas newspapers, about Dr. Von Braun having said that the project could be attained in a few years provided the Government spent enough money on it, and whether he would recommend that the money be spent. Secretary Wilson had replied in the negative, that he would rather keep his feet on the ground both figuratively and physically and did not know how anyone could know that "you would rule the world with a space ship. It's a little dreamy, I think. I'm almost tempted to tell a story."
With some prompting, Secretary Wilson had told a story about a man who stopped in front of an insane asylum to change a tire and while an inmate watched him over the fence, the man accidentally stepped on his hubcap which contained the nuts to replace the tire and they rolled down a culvert. Noting the motorist's consternation, the inmate suggested that he remove one nut from each wheel and thereby get enough nuts to replace the tire. When the motorist had asked him what a man of his brains was doing in the insane asylum, the inmate replied, "I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid."
Mr. Pearson notes that Carl Estes, a publisher from Longview, Tex., had stated, when he heard White House press secretary James Hagerty assert that the U.S. was not in a race with the Russians to achieve a space ship: "Then why are we in such a race? If President Roosevelt had been in the White House we would have been in that race and we would have won it." He also notes that in fairness to former Secretary Wilson, it had to be recalled that in 1954, he had been overruled by the President when he warned that a budget cut could jeopardize national defense.
Stewart Alsop indicates the Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson had said that the defense issue would dominate the present session of Congress, and Mr. Alsop asserts that the Senator would in turn dominate the defense issue, which was why he was well positioned to win the presidency in 1960. His handling of the defense issue suggested why many considered him to be the most gifted political leader of the generation.
One secret of his success was that he got all of his ducks in a row before he shot, as exampled by the fact that he had telephoned the President and talked with him at length about the release of the Gaither Report on the nation's defenses, had then notified all Democratic Senators that he was holding a party caucus, the main purpose of which was to brief them on the defense picture, and then had notified Senators Styles Bridges and Leverett Saltonstall, the leading Republicans on the Preparedness subcommittee which Senator Johnson chaired, regarding his intention to call the caucus and suggested that they do likewise with the Republican members. All three actions were typical of the way he operated.
The President was firmly opposed to release of the report and the President was likely to have the last word on that issue. Senator Johnson, therefore, was not expected to make release of the report a major issue. His calling of the Democratic caucus had other purposes, however, such as serving possibly to obtain agreement on the issue of reform of the Joint Chiefs. Senator Johnson had been careful to assign Senator Stuart Symington a leading role in the briefing, thus avoiding any appearance of shunting him aside, as he had the best claim to have been correct on the defense issue from the start. He had also been careful not only to give Senators Bridges and Saltonstall prior notification of his intention to hold the briefing, but also offered them the services of his chief counsel if they wished to hold a briefing. He had thus cut the ground from Republican charges that he was using the defense issue for purely partisan ends.
Mr. Alsop finds his handling of the issue to have been remarkably adept. His record on defense issues had been better than most and he was capable of recognizing a decisive issue when it arose, was shrewd enough to see that any appearance of political partisanship in handling such an issue would destroy its effectiveness. Thus he had sought to represent nonpartisanship and responsibility, a theme he had stressed often, earning the nickname among his colleagues of "Responsibility Johnson". His purpose was to get a unanimous report from his subcommittee, signed by all Republicans and Democrats. Yet, despite the theme, it was obvious that the defense issue at present had a profound political impact.
The Senator insisted that he was not and would not become a candidate for the presidential nomination in 1960. Previously, his closest admirers had agreed that he had virtually no chance in any event for the nomination, given his Southern birth, the oil interests dominating in Texas and his heart attack of mid-1955, combining to be more than enough to prevent his nomination. But now there were beginning to be second thoughts. The defense issue was one of the few on which Democrats were united and it was the type of overriding national issue which would tend to remove from the Senator the damaging sectional label. He also had a gift for political leadership which even his enemies recognized.
He remained an outside bet for the nomination, but all the same, it would be interesting to see "how this remarkably able man handles himself in the turbulent months to come on Capitol Hill."
Doris Fleeson indicates that Senator Johnson, at the start of the session, had offered his public "a dazzling display of eloquence and organization." He had provided to the Democratic caucus a counterpart to the State of the Union message of the President.
House Speaker Sam Rayburn had held one of his famous press conferences an hour before he called the House to order for the State of the Union. Some 100-odd reporters crowded in to listen and ask questions because Mr. Rayburn never talked to or at them, only with them.
Mr. Rayburn always assumed that the American people and his colleagues in Congress would do their duty and expected that they would do it in the usual efficient and partisan manner. He had been Speaker longer than any other man and had never felt it necessary to lecture either the public or the press. Reporters thus found their exchanges with him a refreshing change from the atmosphere encountered in the Senate. They learned to rely on the Speaker's ability to discern what he could and could not get out of the House. He said that Congress would vote whatever sums it was persuaded were necessary for national defense. Virtually every other issue he had pronounced as being controversial. He would not join any effort to organize Democratic programs or policies, leaving it up to the committees to devise legislation rather than to a group of leaders.
Ms. Fleeson indicates that there were not many headlines in such absence of bombast, but there was a great amount of practical politics. In a real sense, the aims of the House leaders, as distinguished from those of the leading Senators, would be different in the ensuing few years. The House could be held to concentrate on legislation as the chances of its members running for the presidency were remote, whereas most Senators were now running for the presidency.
Senator Johnson had, with great skill, attempted to obtain the defense issue for himself. Not the least of the coming controversies which Mr. Rayburn had sensed, though not mentioning it, would be the effort of some of Senator Johnson's Democratic colleagues to share it with him.
Walter Lippmann indicates that the Congress would be more than willing to vote a substantial increase in military expenditures, and the President could have the money he had sought and was likely to be criticized because he had asked for too little rather than too much. The realization had struck home that the Soviets were moving at a faster rate than the U.S. in armaments and that the balance of power could soon be decisively against the U.S. What was not so certain was whether the country had been made to realize that the insecurity in which it was beginning to live could not be overcome by weapons alone, as the reason for falling behind had been the result of a decline in the country's intellectual activities and public energies.
If the country whipped itself into an hysterical fixation on missiles, it would alienate the allied countries in which the bases for the missiles would have to be placed. The U.S. could achieve the security which it now believed was threatened only if the military effort was part of a much larger revival, including diplomacy, education and the intellectual life of the nation.
The crisis at present was the result of errors and neglect over a long period in the field of education which could not be cured by money alone, though in need of plenty of money, but moreover a change in the popular attitude toward the support of education.
The country would have to reappraise some of the principal aims of its foreign policy given that its military superiority had ended. If it did everything recommended by both the Gaither and Rockefeller reports, it would at best maintain the balance of power as one great power competing with an equally great power. The decay of U.S. foreign policy was the result of the inability of those who made it to recognize or to accept the fundamental fact that the U.S. was not the paramount power but only an equal power.
Yet, in the Far East, in the Middle East, and in Germany, the official aims of U.S. policy were those of a paramount power, and those aims could be achieved only by the unconditional surrender of Communist China and Russia.
A letter writer from Albemarle says that man could not create life in anything and yet things lived, and so men had to believe that life came from something, and Christians liked to think that it was from God. "Without God we would not exist ourselves. We would go back to the dust of the earth from which God created us." He believes that the sun should be proof that God existed, as man-made light only existed for a short time while the sun had existed since God had created it and it would always exist if God told it to do so. He says the moon was also created by God and had always existed since creation, while man-made moons lasted only a short time. He advises putting trust in God and not man because God can save human souls through Jesus.
A letter writer says that one of the saddest things of which he was aware was divorce. He indicates that the Bible said that all had sinned and fell short of the love of God, but God was always ready and willing to forgive upon confession of sins. He believes that when a couple married and brought children into the world, God held them responsible for their welfare and training, and that even though they might obtain a divorce, God still held them accountable for their marriage vows.
That latter statement is only true unless the other has been unfaithful to the marital vows, in which case remarriage is not deemed Biblically to be adultery.
Anent, incidentally, a letter of the previous day regarding foundations becoming a fourth branch of government, while looking for something else, pertaining to Swain Hall and movie interiors which may or may not have been shot there during a Hollywood strike in 1967, call it the "blue oyster cult" of Monterey phenomenon
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