The Charlotte News
Thursday, January 2, 1958
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports that that in Caracas, the Venezuelan Government of El
Presidente Marcos Perez Jimenez had announced this date that it had
crushed an Air Force revolt in less than 24 hours. The Army chief of
staff, General Romulo Fernandez, in a broadcast, said that the
rebellious garrison at Maracay, center of the revolt, had been taken
by the Government forces in the wee hours of the morning. Independent
reports from Venezuela this date indicated that the Government still
was not in complete control of the uprising. Those reports in
diplomatic circles had stated that a rebel radio station appeared to
be still in operation on the outskirts of Caracas. General Fernandez
had added that scattered pockets of rebels were being mopped up. He
repeated the claim by El Presidente in a broadcast the previous night
that the rest of the country, which was the second largest oil
producer in the world, was completely calm. El Presidente said that
the rebel leaders had fled by air and he reported that the commander
of the Maracay garrison and the governor of the state of Aragua had
been restored to his post along with his chief aide. The
governor-commander of the garrison and other officials had been
seized, according to El Presidente, the previous day by rebel troops.
In the early morning hours this date, he said that 25 Air Force
planes from bases in Maracay were at the main Caracas airport in the
service of the Government. Air Force units at Maracay had launched a
sudden rebellion against the Government early on New Year's Day,
sending jet planes 50 miles east from Maracay to Caracas before dawn.
El Presidente, a short, pudgy
Congressman Omar Burleson of Texas, chairman of the House Administration Committee, said this date that it would soon make public summaries of amounts which touring members of Congress spent from U.S.-held foreign currencies in 1957. He indicated, however, that the figures would not show how much any individual House or Senate member had used out of the counterpart funds, which were in foreign currencies put up to match American foreign aid programs. It would parallel the limited information made public in the aftermath of the 1955 row over reported high spending in what was then a record year for Congressional travels abroad. Mr. Burleson spoke in an interview after an informal survey showed that 1957 was another year of numerous junkets. Incomplete data showed that more than 180 House and Senate members had journeyed outside the continental U.S. during the year, whereas in 1955, more than 200 had done so. Some committees declined to provide information on the subject and so it could not be determined whether the previous year's total had exceeded the 1955 record. The 180 announced travelers had been fairly evenly divided between the parties, with 97 Democrats and 83 Republicans, 139 coming from the House and 41 from the Senate. Many members said that their foreign travels were valuable and necessary to their task and that they performed a lot of work during the trips. Others called the tours joy rides at the expense of the Government. Some went alone while others went in groups.
Americans for Democratic Action had called on Congress this date to reject what it called the "Eisenhower as usual" policies and adopt "bold, far-reaching programs" costing increased billions of dollars.
In Berlin, Russian soldiers, armed with machine pistols, had suddenly been called onto duty in East Berlin to guard border crossing points between East and West and to patrol the main streets.
Also in Berlin, it was reported that Arab and Communist East German labor leaders this date had announced a joint declaration calling for cooperation between their unions.
In Tokyo, it was reported that a Formosan independence advocate had said this date that he was held incommunicado for six days by Egyptian police to prevent his attendance of the Asian-African conference in Cairo.
In Jakarta, newspapers reported this date that Indonesia had made an arms purchase from the Soviet Union, but an Army spokesman declined comment.
In Little Rock, Ark., federalized state National Guardsmen had returned to Central High School the previous day after an absence of nearly two weeks, walking familiar posts this date as the students returned from their Christmas holidays.
In Key West, Fla., a family's holiday cruise had turned into a 14-hour ordeal at gunpoint, when three teenagers boarded their yacht and demanded to be taken to Mexico. A note smuggled ashore had led to the rescue of the family. Officials considered charges of kidnaping and even the archaic crime of piracy against the three youths, all from San Antonio. The oldest of the boys was 17. The members of the family were shaken but physically unharmed. The youths had used a .22-caliber rifle to board the yacht in the Keys on New Year's Eve, telling the family to keep quiet and that they would tell them what to do. The father said that they were polite and did not use foul language, but kept the gun on him and his wife and made them do what they wanted. As long as they did not use foul language and were polite...
Near Eureka, S.D., a head-on auto crash had killed nine persons, including the parents and four children of one family, early this date, injuring two others. The sheriff indicated that it was a straight, level, flat stretch of road and was a clear, moonlit night, but that someone had gotten careless. Authorities said that the youths in one of the cars had apparently just been out riding, all being high school students. The death toll equaled that of the worst traffic accident in the history of the state, with a similar collision in August, 1956 also having taken nine lives, including five members of one family.
In Charlotte, a marquee at a drive-in theater on Old Monroe Road, which admitted both black and white patrons, had been dynamited early the previous morning according to police. The blast, caused by a single piece of dynamite, had blown a hole about the size of a basketball in the marquee and scattered the lettering in all directions. The operator of the theater said that he had been admitting blacks for the previous several months, but he did not know whether the dynamiting had anything to do with that fact, indicating that they had not had any trouble at all previously. The owner of the theater who leased it to the operator said that on the night of December 22, she had awakened to find her barn and three trucks on fire and that they had not been able to find out what had caused the fire. She confirmed that blacks had been attending the theater for the previous several months. She hoped that the newspapers and police could get to the bottom of it.
Emery Wister of The News reports that the long line of people at the Carolina Motor Club indicated that the present date was January 2, when new state and city license tags went on sale. The deadline was February 15.
In Charlotte, rustlers the previous night had hit the Morris Live Stock Co. and taken 14 head of cattle, worth between $1,850 and $2,000. The owner said that the thieves had also broken into his safe, but it was undetermined whether they had gotten anything out of it. It's all these Westerns on the tv.
A cold front which had swept in from the snow-crusted plains states had brought winter back to the Carolinas this date, giving Charlotte its most severe weather since mid-December. The temperature had dropped to 20 degrees at the Charlotte airport and the Weather Bureau said that the following morning might be even colder, with a forecast low of 18, reaching a high of 40 this date and 42 the following day.
On the editorial page, "North Carolina: One State, One Destiny" indicates that no one could convincingly answer the somewhat ridiculous question of whether the eastern or western part of the state should supply in its turn the next governor, in accordance with tradition.
It finds that stubborn sectionalism had placed an undesirable limitation on the quest for leadership of the state in the past, that by rotating governors between the two sections, some deserving political stalwarts had been shuffled out of an opportunity to serve—especially as the governor was limited to only one term.
The reasons for the sectionalism were rooted in the state's beginnings as a royal colony, with the coastal region having been the site of the first settlements. Soon, however, pioneers had pushed into the upper Cape Fear Valley and settled in the Piedmont, finally, by 1760, reaching the mountains. But power remained in the hands of the planters and big landlords of the east. By 1830, it was estimated that half of the state's population existed west of Raleigh, and yet most of the governors continued to come from the politically powerful eastern section. Whenever a new county was created in the west, a new one had to be formed in the east as well to permit the east to retain its power. It was not until 1835 and later that governmental reforms liberalizing voting requirements and reapportioning legislative representation had presented the western part of the state an opportunity to increase its voice in state affairs.
Sectional animosities, however, continued and the rotation system emerged in 1901 as a type of truce. Yet, the eastern section continued to dominate the General Assembly, and still did to some extent. Some of the state's most important votes, such as the call for a secession convention in 1861, the disfranchisement of black voters in 1900, and prohibition in 1908, had revealed noticeable variations of opinion between the eastern and western sections.
But there were few valid reasons for the split of the state at present and it was silliness to continue to give serious thought to a rule which had outlived its usefulness. The east-west rotation had gotten off schedule in the successive elections of Kerr Scott and William B. Umstead, as it had been the east's turn in 1948 when Mr. Scott from Alamance County in the central Piedmont had defeated the east's Charles Johnson. It quotes from the Raleigh News & Observer to that effect.
It concludes that the time had come to forget ancient political rivalries and run the state on more intelligent, realistic lines, allowing the people to take charge of their political destiny.
"After the Big Boom, Pandemonium" suggests that if an hydrogen bomb were dropped in the neighborhood of Charlotte, it would be possible that parts of two states and a dozen counties would be more or less involved. As civil defense was the primary responsibility of state and local governments, the result would undoubtedly present a major snafu.
In March, 1956, then Federal Civil Defense administrator Val Peterson had attempted to alert the nation to that potential problem when he said: "We have the situation created that transcends the limited approaches that were in our minds back in 1950. I might illustrate it this way. If you drop one thermonuclear weapon … on metropolitan Philadelphia, you involve parts of three states … 11 counties … and 39 cities of over 10,000 population." He had recommended that the FCDA administrator "get some command control and direction over state and city defense organizations" through the power to withhold Federal funds from them.
Now, Mr. Peterson's words, given the Soviet missile development, had new urgency, for to leave civil defense to the states and municipalities, many of which had inadequate facilities and leadership, would be the height of absurdity. A bill presently pending before the Senate Armed Services Committee would somewhat remedy the situation as it would make civil defense the joint responsibility of Federal, state and local governments, would authorize the Federal Government to purchase and maintain radiation detection devices for use by the state and local civil defense agencies, would authorize the Federal Government to pay up to half the administrative and personnel expenses of local civil defense agencies, would authorize the Federal Government to pay up to half the expenses of students from states and cities attending the FCDA School, and would establish criteria for state and local civil defense plans and authorize the FCDA administrator to cut off financial assistance to states which did not comply with those standards.
It indicates that there was a strong argument in favor of making civil defense an arm of the Defense Department with the Government fully in charge, just as with the armed forces, but the bill presently pending in committee at least represented a forward step. The measure had been passed by the House the prior July 15, and it urges that for the sake of all potential targets across the nation, including Charlotte, it should be passed by the Senate.
A piece from the Chicago Tribune, titled "Dingle's Jingles", indicates that Dingle Foot, a Labor Party candidate in Britain, had carried a parliamentary by-election at Ipswitch, Suffolk, after a contest in poetry at ten paces with his Conservative opponent, John Cobbold, a local brewer. As Mr. Cobbold was not too well versed in verse, Lord Hailsham, the Conservative Party leader, had served as his stand-in, opening hostilities with the stanza from a music hall song: "In a cottage in the country/ Live her people crushed with shame;/ Drink the champagne that she sends them,/ But they never speak her name."
Replying, Mr. Foot had recalled Lord Hailsham's political trick of ringing bells at party meetings to wake up the Conservatives, then quoted Lewis Carroll: "This was charming no doubt;/ but they shortly found out/ That the captain they trusted so well/ Had only one notion for crossing the ocean/ And that was to tingle his bell."
It indicates that unfortunately, Lord Hailsham and the brewer did not think to come back with a reference to Edward Lear's "At Dingle Bank", wherein a choleric headmaster, though having rewarded his boys with heaps of buttered toast when they learned their lessons well, also showed another side: "But he grew rabid-wroth, he did,/ If they neglected books,/ And dragged them to adjacent cliffs/ With beastly button hugs,/ And there with fatuous glee he threw/ Them down into the ocean blue."
"But Mr. Dingle Foot was permitted the last verse and he rhymed himself into Parliament by some 7,000 votes. It seems a rather more humane procedure, at that, than ours, where we are compelled to listen to nonsense unrhymed."
Drew Pearson indicates that not everything which had occurred at the recent NATO conference of the 15 member heads of state had come to light. It had been published that the President had canceled a state dinner with Henri Spaak of Belgium just 40 minutes beforehand, but what had actually occurred was that the NATO session had begun to run long that day and the President, well in advance of the dinner, had told press secretary James Hagerty that he would not be able to make the dinner. It had taken some time to notify all the heads of state and so it was not until 40 minutes before the dinner that the announcement had been issued. Actually, the President had donned a dinner jacket and dined with some old friends in Paris, not with the heads of state.
It had been published, and the French press made quite a stew over the fact, that the President had referred to some delicious French wine as a martini. But what actually had occurred was that the waiter had passed a tray of drinks which the President had refused. But as a toast was proposed, he had taken a glass of wine, barely touched it to his lips, then, wanting to be agreeable and wanting to say something, patted his stomach and said: "I haven't had a martini for years." Mr. Pearson indicates that it was true, for the President drank only scotch and water in the privacy of the White House. American newspapermen had decided not to write about the incident until a British brigadier general had rushed out to the French and British press with the story that the President had drunk wine and called it a martini.
A lot had been published about the dressing-down which Mr. Hagerty had given to Art Buchwald, the humorous columnist of the New York Herald Tribune. But the events which had preceded the dressing-down had not been published. Friends said that Mr. Hagerty was having trouble with his ulcers and he could not keep newsmen in line in Paris as he frequently could around the White House. What had griped him was the opening line of Mr. Buchwald's parody of a press conference conducted by Mr. Hagerty, quoting a fictitious "Jim" as saying: "I'm sorry I'm late, gentlemen, but I thought the show at the Lido would end at 11:30." Mr. Hagerty was a night-owl, but like some other prominent night-owls, did not want the public to know of it. Newspaper friends had hushed up, for instance, the fact that, during the President's recent mild stroke in November, the White House could not locate Mr. Hagerty until 4:00 a.m. in a Paris nightclub. So, when Mr. Buchwald, who knew Paris better than the Paris police, had tossed in his little dig about Mr. Hagerty and the Lido, Mr. Hagerty had hit the ceiling.
Marquis Childs indicates that Vice-President Nixon was enjoying a rare vacation in Florida and when he returned to Washington, he would have recharged the reservoir of energy which had helped to push him on his meteoric career. At the end of the year, at the time of the President's third illness, a mild stroke, he received great acceleration in his career as many powerful Republicans, especially within the publishing field, more or less frankly expressed their belief that the country would be better served if Mr. Nixon replaced the President in office. Their ardor for that change had cooled somewhat when they realized that, pursuant to the 22nd Amendment, if he were to serve more than two years of the unexpired term of the President, he would be able to run only one time, and a one-term President was automatically under a severe handicap. (Ironically, President Ford after he assumed the office in the wake of President Nixon's resignation in August, 1974, was subject to that one-term limitation—to which, of course, he was not elected, having been defeated by Governor Jimmy Carter in 1976. As Vice-President, Gerald Ford was the first person to hold that office who had not been elected to it, and his Vice-President, Nelson Rockefeller, was the second and last thus far to occupy that office without election—that the result of the 25th Amendment passed and ratified in 1967 in the wake of the assassination of President Kennedy, leaving the vice-presidency vacant until after the 1964 election.)
Nevertheless, continues Mr. Childs, Mr. Nixon and his record had been given new and glowing currency, being portrayed as grave and capable, yet youthful and appealing, "regent as well as the heir apparent to the White House."
He indicates that in 1958, the Nixon drive would continue, with the Vice-President and his wife Pat visiting Western Europe in the late spring where they would make a good will tour of the NATO capitals. Having toured Latin America, Asia and Africa, he would, by adding Europe, further establish the identity of the responsible statesman compared to his old image of the tough-fighting politician. (In May, he would go to troubled Venezuela and receive a rousing reception: Bienvenido Nuevo El Presidente.)
Among the hundreds of persons with whom he had talked during the previous year had been one of London's noted liberal editors, with whom the Vice-President had talked for 30 minutes regarding the need for American foreign aid and technical assistance, America's information program, and its world responsibility. Greatly impressed, the unnamed editor had said that he had a question but hesitated to ask it until Mr. Nixon urged him to go ahead with it, at which point he asked how anyone who had spoken with his sense of responsibility and awareness could have done what he did to Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas in his Senatorial campaign of 1950. According to one of those present at the meeting, the Vice-President, with a troubled look on his face, replied, "All I can say is that I was very young and very ambitious and I am sorry." The editor was deeply impressed by that frank confession from the "new Nixon"—the second version of which the country would see in 1968, until the old, old Nixon slowly but surely began to resurface after his first year in the White House.
Recently, the Vice-President had been quoted in an extreme right-wing magazine as saying that he opposed the move to reinstate the security clearance of Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, "father of the atom bomb", after the Atomic Energy Commission, on a split vote, had found him to be a security risk following a hearing which had stripped bare his whole life. Recently, many noted scientists and others, concerned over the American scientific and technical lag behind the Russians, had suggested that his case be reopened so that he could have an opportunity to be cleared and put to work on behalf of the Government again.
When the office of Mr. Nixon had been asked about the statement attributed to him on the matter, the response had been "no comment", serving as a reminder of the "old Nixon" who, as late as 1954, exploiting the issue of Communists in the Government, had driven another distinguished physicist, Dr. Edward U. Condon, out of Government service, despite the latter having been repeatedly cleared.
Mr. Childs indicates that the admirers of the "old Nixon" were not the admirers of the "new Nixon" and whether he could maintain both sets was becoming increasingly doubtful. The old admirers were inclined now to take a jaundiced view of the expedient new Nixon. But Mr. Childs finds him not a man to be underestimated, that he achieved "one altitude only to zoom onto another, leaving critics and admirers alike dazzled." (He had bragged in 1952 of owning only a 1950 Olsmobile, though perhaps by now replaced with a Cadillac, and so the metaphoric comparison to a rocket ship to represent his meteoric rise was only natural. And, not unlike Vanguard, he would have a few fizzled lift-offs ahead before his final victory...)
Walter Lippmann tells of White House press secretary James Hagerty during the weekend having come forward, likely on the instructions of the President, with the denial of rumors that the country was presently in danger. The rumors had arisen from the secret but highly publicized Gaither report, finding a wide audience because it was known, or at least not denied, that the report called for an increase in defense expenditures of many billions of dollars per year. The President and Mr. Hagerty, he suggests, would do well to study carefully the reaction to Mr. Hagerty's denial, as it was one of great skepticism as to whether the statement was more than a part of the truth.
He indicates that no doubt it was true at present that the older deterrent weapons, which the U.S. had, were still more powerful than the newer weapons in which the Russians had the lead. But the grimmer part of the truth was that the Soviet rate of progress in military technology was faster than that of the U.S. and that truth was causing deep anxiety among those who knew the facts.
The half-truth expressed by Mr. Hagerty had not dispelled that anxiety but had only increased the skepticism with which Congress and the country would read the President's forthcoming message on the state of the Union. In that message, the President would "'give his estimate of the military strength of our country as it is now and what has to be done in the future to continue that strength.'" The great question was whether the President's estimate would be so candid and convincing that the country would accept it and whether it would provide an agreed basis on which the Congress could act.
There would be partisan attacks on the President's estimate, no matter what it was, but there was an informed, concerned and responsible body of opinion in both parties which would decide whether or not the Administration's estimate was substantially the truth. It was to that body of opinion that the President's message would primarily have to be addressed.
Unlike Mr. Hagerty's statement during the weekend, addressed to the uninformed, the President's message had to be addressed to the informed minority who were capable of judging those highly technical questions. The President had to deliver not so much a popular message as an expert message, as only such a message would, in the present mood of the country, be popular.
Joseph Alsop, in Paris, addresses an open letter to his brother, Stewart, in which he indicates that trying to sum up his impressions after 12 months as an itinerant foreign correspondent would be "pretty melancholy". He indicates that he was frightened for the first time in his life, even including when he was on the floor in Hong Kong straining to hear a ruined radio barely whispering the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, while the Japanese bombs hit the blacked-out city. Even then, he was not so frightened as he was at present.
For at that time, he did not fear for the future of civilization, human decency and human freedom. He suggests that maybe he should have begun to feel doubts about the future long before the present, having perhaps placed too much reliance in American defenses. In any event, now he felt doubts about the future, not because he had been converted to the belief that the basic problems were insoluble, but had doubts because it seemed to him that the American response to the supreme challenge of the previous year had been quite inadequate.
The challenge had occurred suddenly after five or more years of self-indulgence, with the U.S. having been lulled by leaders who sometimes refused to believe the intelligence and who sometimes simply lied about it. So the U.S. had allowed its power to be overtaken and surpassed by the Soviets, the central lesson of the previous year.
When CIA director Allen Dulles had at last been permitted to make an honest presentation of the country's real power-position to the leaders of Congress, Mr. Alsop had been informed that Senator Harry F. Byrd's only question had been, "When are they going to hit us?"
Mr. Alsop indicates that he did not believe there was much danger of a direct hit from the Soviet Union through their considerable nuclear striking power, as the U.S. had enough deterrent power with which to strike back. The real danger was more complex, manifesting itself in increased boldness and aggressiveness on the part of the Russians, in the Middle East, for example. It had shown up in the U.S. timidity in response and in the visible loosening of the vital bonds of the whole Western alliance.
He indicates that the signs did not portend a cataclysm in which life would end on earth, but that they clearly pointed to a series of local defeats and surrenders which would gradually impair the strength, undermine the economy and encroach on the borders of the free world. During the Thirties, Hitler had taken half of Europe through piecemeal nibbling and grabbing, always protected by the fear inspired by his superior power. That was what the Kremlin was expecting and preparing to do on a world scale during the late Fifties and early Sixties.
At the end of the Thirties, the British and French had awakened to the fact that they could not hope to survive in a Hitler-dominated Europe. Mr. Alsop indicates that he did not believe that islands of remaining freedom in America and Western Europe could hope to survive either in a world dominated by the Kremlin. Thus, he now feared for the future for the first time.
"But I would not be afraid, if I could only see a new, vigorous and wise American leadership telling the honest truth to our people, seriously mobilizing the vast resources of our country, and sternly preparing to discharge America's heavy but glorious responsibility as the last, best hope of freedom in the world."
A letter writer suggests that the future could be made brighter by recognizing the failures of the past, including those of the previous year. "Into each and every life there comes a shining star, a sputnik, a hope for a brighter tomorrow. It is when the individual sees the shining star, attains the reach of the sputnik, lets the scope of his dreams become reality, that his hopes for a brighter tomorrow makes the world better today."
Ninth day of Christmas
Framed Edition
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