The Charlotte News
Monday, January 20, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President had said this date that the country could conquer the recession during the year, pay in full the cost of meeting Russia's new challenge and go forward to "real economic growth without inflation." His annual economic report to Congress included a 42-point program of home front legislation, with most of the requests being familiar, although indicated by the President as now being "urgent". He pledged that his policies would be shaped to foster the earliest possible business recovery, but gave no hint that the Administration was considering any tax cuts, public works or deliberate deficits. He avoided use of the words "recession" or "depression". He said that the economic slump had begun sooner and hit harder than officials had expected, that in the previous three months, national production had dropped six billion dollars or 1.5 percent from the record rate of 439 billion dollars per year achieved in the previous quarter. (It's those damned ugly cars with their four eyes across the front, looking like something out of a horror-show.) The President underscored the warning that if "unwarranted" wage and price increases emerged from collective bargaining in the spring, the prospect of recovery could be delayed. He also said: "The latest challenge of international communism will require a further increase in the economic claims of national security, which are already heavy."
He had further stated that U.S. exports in 1957 had hit a record high, and that a further rise depended on opening American markets more to foreign goods. He said that exports had reached 26.3 billion dollars worth the prior year, 2.8 billion higher than the previous record set in 1956. That record had not included an estimated 1.8 billion dollars in weapons. The President had cited the export figures as a powerful reason why the Government could continue to promote two-way trade among free nations.
The President was starting his sixth year in office this date and began a new Republican drive to control Congress in the midterm elections the following November. He would appear this evening at a $100 per plate Republican dinner in Chicago, where he would be guest of honor and make a nationwide television and radio political address on NBC as head of the party. He and First Lady Mamie Eisenhower would return to Washington the following day. Forty-four Republican dinners for an estimated 40,000 Republicans were being held this night in 27 states and the District of Columbia.
The Senate Preparedness subcommittee, chaired by Senator Lyndon Johnson, would this date look into the adequacy of the Navy submarine and missile programs, as it opened its final week of the current phase of the hearings. Admiral Arleigh Burke, chief of Naval Operations, and Rear Admiral W. F. Raborn, supervisor of development of the Navy's Polaris missile, would be among the witnesses heard in a closed-door session. During the weekend, Senator Henry Jackson of Washington said that Senate Democrats were considering a two billion dollar package proposal to increase appropriations for long-range jet bombers, both intermediate and medium range ballistic missiles, and missile-firing submarines. Senators Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and John McClellan of Arkansas had prepared a bill to establish a Cabinet-level department of science and technology, to include the Atomic Energy Commission, the National Science Foundation, the Bureau of Standards, the Patent Office and other agencies. The bill would also authorize 580 million dollars of direct Government loans for scientific scholarships and Government insurance of another billion in private loans for college and graduate students.
In Tulsa, Okla., a bomb, which police believed was either thrown from a passing car or planted, had exploded the previous night in the front yard of a black family which had recently moved into a predominantly white neighborhood. There had been no injuries. The bomb had exploded in the yard of a 44-year old service station operator, who said that he did not believe that it was racially inspired, indicating: "We've had no trouble with anyone. There haven't been any threats or any trouble. That's why I can't case this thing out." The man said that he was an active worker in the NAACP. The fire chief said that neighbors had told investigators that the family had been having trouble with white neighbors since they had moved into the house two months earlier. Black families lived next door and across the street, according to the homeowner, while a black neighborhood was only about two blocks away. A deputy sheriff said that an unidentified man had called about an hour after the blast and said: "There will be more bombings tonight." None had been reported. At the time of the bombing, only the couple's three children, ages 14, 12 and 10, had been at home. The oldest had been taken to a hospital and given a sedative because of her hysterical condition following the blast. A hospital attendant had quoted her as saying: "Someone threw a bomb. I saw him. I wish I were back in Denver. These things don't happen there." The father said that the family had moved from Denver about a year earlier. The blast had left a crater about two feet deep, located five feet from the front porch of the house, shattering windows in nearby houses and reportedly heard and felt 11 blocks away. Officers said that three sticks of unexploded dynamite had been found in a can in the front yard, leading them to believe that the bomb possibly had been planted.
Julian Scheer of The News
reports from Maxton, N.C., that the short war in Robeson County on
Saturday night, when a Klan rally was held at Hayes Pond, had
continued this date as a battle of words. Charges and counter-charges
flowed in the wake of the scuffle which had occurred on Saturday
night between Indians and Klan members. The sheriff said that he
would ask a grand jury to indict the Klan leader, James Cole, on
charges of inciting to riot, while the latter was vowing that his
constitutional rights had been violated. The sheriff and police chief
had reportedly warned Mr. Cole of Marion, S.C., who claimed to be a
minister with congregations in both North and South Carolina, not to
hold the rally the previous Saturday when feeling was running very
high after cross-burnings had occurred in front of the residences of
Indians, reportedly signaling "warnings" against
associating too closely with white people. In one instance the prior
Monday night, a cross had been burned on the lawn of an Indian family
who had recently moved into a previously all-white neighborhood. In
another instance, occurring the same night, a cross had been burned
in front of the house of an Indian woman whom the Klan claimed was
having an "affair" with a white man. Other cross-burnings
had also been reported. Mr. Cole claimed that the cross-burnings were
not aimed at Indians, but had not adequately explained them
otherwise. Before the meeting on Saturday, he had said, "The
Klan never backs down." Early the previous day, he had
threatened to bring legal action against the sheriff, but later said
that the Klan would "turn the other cheek" because they
were Christian. He said that he had asked for police protection but
had been refused it and could not understand why the sheriff would
not do anything about the Indians whom he claimed had "invaded
us, shot us up and stole our equipment." The sheriff said that
he was glad that the matter was over, that feelings had been running
high and that they had not suffered any fatalities. There had been
four slight injuries on Saturday night when the shooting had
concluded. One man had received a slight buckshot wound in the
forehead, another had suffered a wound from a shotgun pellet in the
eye, an Indian youth had received a hand injury, and a cameraman had
been nicked on the ear. The only arrest was of a Reidsville man who
had been pulled from the bushes by State Highway Patrolmen after the
shooting and charged with drunkenness. He had a gun in each hand and
in his pocket was a property lease near Burlington for a February
Klan rally. Mr. Cole, a Free Will Baptist preacher who shuttled back
and forth between North and South Carolina preaching engagements,
said that the Indians had "misunderstood" the intent of the
cross burnings. The subject of the Saturday night rally had been:
"Why I Am for Segregation". The Indians had conquered and
forced the Klan to run away. Mr. Cole appears in a photograph,
looking rather like a dunce forced to sit in the corner of his
classroom for having engaged in juvenile behavior. He obviously
obtained whatever training for the ministry he had from the refuse of
various garbage cans. In any event, all might have profited by remaining at home Saturday night and skipping the Battle of Hayes Pond, watching instead tele-visión
In Guatemala City, candidates of the right and left were leading this date in first returns from the presidential election in the onetime Communist beachhead of the Western Hemisphere. The outcome of the previous day's voting was not expected to be known until late in the week.
In Honolulu, an armada of ships and planes continued into the second day the search of 75,000 square miles of the mid-Pacific for a missing Military Air Transport Service cargo plane with seven men aboard from Travis Air Force Base in California.
In Guam, it was reported that SOS signals had caused the Air Force to widen the search area to 50,000 square miles this date in a search for a weather plane which had vanished while tracking a typhoon.
In Manila, a strong earthquake had jolted the city for a minute this date, making tall concrete buildings sway, but no damage or casualties had been reported.
In Algiers, French authorities checked this date for the origin of an arms cargo seized from a Yugoslav ship, seeking to establish whether the Algerian rebels had turned to Communist countries to equip their guerrilla army.
In Belfast, Northern Ireland, gunmen, believed to be members of the outlawed Irish Republican Army, early this date had attacked a North Irish police patrol near Killeen, on the Irish Republic border.
In Raleigh, Thomas Allen, who was resigning from his post as State ABC Board chairman, had this date resigned as Veterans Service officer, a job to which Governor Luther Hodges had appointed him the previous month. His latter resignation came after heads of several veterans organizations in the state had protested the appointment, contending that he did not have the qualifications for the post.
The Post Office Department had ordered spittoons to be removed from the nation's post offices by February 1. But local postal authorities in Charlotte four or five years earlier had gathered up the 100 or so spittoons from the lobbies and offices and placed them in storage for sanitary purposes. In its Postal Bulletin, the Department had said that it was "in the interest of employee welfare and morale, improved working and housekeeping conditions and other attendant benefits."
In Vasteras, Sweden, it was reported that the tomb of King Eric XIV had been opened this date after wondering had transpired for 380 years whether he had died from pea soup. Most historians had believed that he had died after eating pea soup spiced with arsenic by his brother, King Johan III. But according to other accounts, the King was smothered by a pillow, bled to death by a doctor, or was poisoned by opium or some other drug in the late 1570's. Cranes had removed the two-ton marble lid of the tomb in the presence of official witnesses, including a bishop, a Cabinet minister, a governor and a mayor. Thirteen scientists would spend a week on a belated inquest, using X-rays and the entire arsenal of modern spectroscopic and chemical analysis to examine the evidence. Press and television reporters were barred and only official pictures were permitted. The average Swede only knew of the King such details as that he sported a big red double-beard, played the lute, loved wine and women, married the beautiful blonde daughter of a stable hand and was insane when he presumably had been killed by his brother. Historians described him as a talented but tragic figure who spoke Latin, French and German, and ruled in a time of external expansion and internal reform. He had been born in 1533, deposed and imprisoned in 1568 in a revolt led by his brothers after an eight-year reign. Some historians said that his brother had obtained the consent of the Council of the Realm to kill him and had done so on February 25, 1577 out of fear of plots to reinstate him to the throne. He had actually died on a foggy curve in the highway.
In Hollywood, the 17-room Bel Air home of the late movie producer Louis B. Mayer had been purchased by comedian Jerry Lewis for $350,000.
On the editorial page, "What a Difference a Week Makes" indicates that on January 9, the President had delivered his State of the Union message to a joint session of Congress. A week later, his first press conference in 2 1/2 months had produced what appeared to be a general reaction of depression and disappointment. It finds the difference in reaction interesting and perhaps important.
Both groups had been interested primarily not in the state of the nation but in the state of the President following his mild stroke of November. They were already aware of the visual evidence of the Sputniks and of the testimony of scientists, military men and study groups that the state of the nation regarding national security was not good. On the basis of history, they also knew that in times of national crisis, the state of the nation depended ultimately on the strength of the President.
His firmness before Congress was evidenced in his blunt warnings that interservice warfare within the Pentagon had to be replaced by unified direction and improved organization. A Congress frustrated and sometimes befuddled by its inability to obtain direct and comprehensive answers from Pentagon brass took the President's words as a promise of some head-knocking. The military was the President's field and the applause had been lusty when he seemed to indicate that he was going to take charge of it.
But at his press conference, his remarks on that and other subjects lacked the same toughness. There had been varying accounts of his physical appearance and agility in fielding fast and far-ranging questions. The Associated Press reported that he had appeared "ruddy as of old and the consensus of the 270 newsmen on hand was that he handled himself well." The United Press, however, said that he was "pale" and suggested that he had increased trouble in communicating his ideas. The Washington Post said that "there is room for concern over his diminished vigor." The Washington Star said, "It seemed indisputable that since his last illness, the President has slowed down." James Reston in the New York Times said, "This public appearance provided many of his hearers with little reassurance."
It finds that the variations of reaction regarding his appearance and speech could not extend to what he had said. The disappointment had not been so much that the President had changed because of his illness but because he apparently had not changed because of the crisis. One reporter said, "President Eisenhower doffed the battle dress of his State of the Union message and slipped back into the role of chairman of the board." He had lost his temper in defending Secretary of State Dulles, but showed none of the emotion which had excited Congress in his comments on service rivalries. He showed an open reluctance to take a strong lead in imposing his judgment in the matter.
It finds that the President had not satisfied a hunger in the nation for strong, purposeful leadership and that although expectation of that kind of leadership would continue, the expectations would not be met. It suggests that it was not primarily because of the President's illness but because of his personality. "Bold announcements, precise opinions, provocative challenges to Congress and the people are not his style. The lack of these traits played no small part in his overwhelming campaign successes."
It finds that they would continue to play a large part in a national mood, however vague, of unease and apprehension. "The times have changed. The President has not."
"The Curly Locks of Nikita Khrushchev" indicates that in Russia, it had been said that the man in the street had to understand explicitly what paintings meant, and that what all of the paintings meant was that the man in the street had to go straight back to work from the art gallery. Work was glorified and leisure, shunned.
A Reuters dispatch from Moscow had said recently: "The Soviet citizen is rarely seen in repose, contemplating, behaving like a spectator, dreaming or just relaxing in an armchair. If the artist does paint a young woman in work clothes, sitting on the windowsill in the sun and gazing over the rooftops, then in the foreground he also paints a large bucket of soapy water. This means that she is entitled to a little break after scrubbing the floor of her home." Wheat fields had to have people in them harvesting; seascapes had to show fishing boats hauling in a catch, a bridge being built or a power plant being erected.
Shortly after the Hungarian rebellion of fall, 1956, a national magazine had carried a picture of a portrait of Nikita Khrushchev with a full head of hair. It finds that not to have depicted realism, any more than a portrait did, without also showing Mr. Khrushchev "with an axe, knife, pistol or some instrument of destruction in his hands."
It finds it very confusing and suggests that the explanation was that the party line on painting made a slight zigzag around Mr. Khrushchev's cranium.
"Words the Government Can Do Without" indicates that it, alone, among U.S. editorial pages, stubbornly refused to take sides in the debate stirred up during the month when the President had used the word "finalize" in his State of the Union message.
Instead it recalls that in 1955, the Government had issued a 44-page booklet telling Federal employees how to write short, simple letters. One section contained a "watch list" of words and phrases which "the government can do without." They included "ameliorate", "facilitate", "inadvertency", "initiate", "predecease", "pecuniarily interested" and "finalize".
A piece from the Green Bay (Wisc.) Press-Gazette, titled "Lost Language", indicates that in earlier times words had been used precisely to transmit ideas exactly. "They did not try to get along on the 50 to 100 words or even 500 most people use nowadays to transmit much more complicated ideas." They had liked the nicety of flowing language in conversation, which was now almost a thing of the past, as people in living rooms across the nation stared at television programs, not knowing or caring about the joys of good conversation.
The language had lost many more words than it had added, most of those added regarding modern life. The word "carved", for example, was now used to cover the dismemberment of every kind of fish and fowl for the table. But the ancestors who had possessed a nice sense of discrimination and description, had said that a pheasant was allayed, a plover, minced, a peacock, disfigured, a hen, spoiled. The carver dismembered a heron, but he displayed a crane. A coney was unlaced, a deer, broken, a brawn, leached, a sturgeon, tranched, an eel, transoned, a lamprey, strung, a bream, splayed. Pigeon, woodcock and other small birds were thighed, while a porpoise was undertrenched.
"It is clear that in the good old days carving was looked upon as an art, and it was given its appropriate language. Matters are handled with less show of ceremony today but the people are as well nourished."
The question for modern television viewers is whether beaver was cleavered.
Drew Pearson looks back at the previous five years of the Eisenhower Administration, indicates that he had watched the candidate in 1952 hammer at "Communism, Korea, and corruption," cataloging Democratic mistakes and producing a list of sincere Republican promises in response. Probably by now, the President believed that the career of a soldier was easier than that of a politician. Mr. Pearson had thumbed through the speeches he had made in the autumn of 1952 to see how near he had come to fulfilling his promises.
Regarding budget deficits, he had promised on October 17, 1952 in Wilmington, Del., that a Republican administration would stop "wild spending of your money and prevent these recurring national deficits from putting the pressure on your money to go down and down." But inflation had gone up and the value of money had gone down.
Regarding farm prices, he had promised at Brookings, S.D., on October 4, 1952 that the Republicans would sustain the 90 percent of parity price support and help the farmer obtain his full parity at 100 percent, with the guaranteed price supports at 90. The previous week, the President had sent a message to Congress urging that farm price supports be reduced to 60 percent.
Regarding the family farm, the President had indicated in 1952 at Columbia, S.C., that he was for programs to put a "firm foundation under farm prosperity and to strengthen the family farm as the mainstay of our agricultural production." Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson now advocated the end of the family farm.
Regarding military defense, the Republican platform in 1952 had said that a new administration would review the entire preparedness program and strip it "clean of waste, lack of coordination, inertia, and conflict between the services." Mr. Pearson indicates that recent developments spoke for themselves.
Regarding unemployment, the President had said in Worcester, Mass., on October 20, 1952 that "never again must the crime of mass unemployment be visited upon our people." Unemployment was now approaching four million people.
Regarding business expansion, the President had said on October 2, 1952 in Peoria, Ill., that the new administration would encourage venture capital investment at home and abroad, and support foreign investment which would encourage growth throughout the free world. The country was still using foreign aid and government loans to support foreign economies.
Regarding education, the President had said in Los Angeles on October 9, 1952 that the country must undertake to help needy states build schools. No school construction bill had been passed yet during the course of the Administration, and the previous summer, the White House did not even make a single phone call to Congress to urge passage of the pending school construction bill put forward by the President.
Regarding housing, the President had said in Pittsburgh on October 27, 1952 that the country needed better housing for Americans forced to live in slums, substandard dwellings and blighted neighborhoods. The previous year, the President had criticized Congress for passing a 177 million dollar urban renewal-slum clearance housing program.
Regarding inflation, the President had said in Tulsa on October 13, 1952 that the country was committed to stabilize money and quit living off the "piggy banks of our children and the IOUs of our grandchildren." The previous week, the President had announced that he favored deficit spending.
Regarding tax reduction, the President had said in St. Louis on September 20, 1952 that the people who paid the taxes would know that the country was on its way to a balanced budget, to reduction in the national debt, and to lower taxes. Taxes had not been lowered. The President had indicated the budget would not be balanced and there would be an increase in the national debt.
Joseph Alsop, in Paris, discusses a series of six lectures delivered via BBC radio in Britain by former State Department planner George Kennan, an expert on Russia. His statements about the Soviet Union and its relations with the West had attracted far more interest and stimulated far more controversy in Britain, France and West Germany than anything which either the President or Secretary of State Dulles had said in recent memory. The excitement had thus spread to the U.S., where former Secretary of State Dean Acheson rebuked Mr. Kennan "with extreme brutality". Mr. Kennan had received enough attention to delight most castoff policymakers, but, characteristically, he had only been made miserable by it.
He had made a lucid, penetrating analysis of the present state of the Soviet Union, with witty but gentle criticism of the peculiar diplomacy of Secretary Dulles, but without any personal attack. He had plugged his previous idea that the West should offer the evacuation of Germany by all NATO forces plus a guarantee of Germany's future neutralization in return for Soviet evacuation of all of Eastern Europe, plus permission for German reunification. But the Soviets would never withdraw their troops from the satellite states, particularly after the revolt in Hungary of the fall of 1956.
Of that latter point, Mr. Kennan said that if the Soviets refused to accept such an offer, then they would be to blame for preventing a European settlement.
He had also recommended that the defense of Western Europe be planned on the Swiss model. He had a nearly neurotic horror of military power in its modern forms. Mr. Alsop considers it odd in such a courageous man and a weakness, since military power had to be thought about calmly and unemotionally. That weakness had led him into plain silliness at times. Even so, in his final lecture, he had gone to great pains to correct himself by saying that he had not meant that "military strength would not be cultivated on our side until we have better alternatives," and did not favor "unilaterally giving up the nuclear deterrent" or "desisting from the effort to strengthen the NATO forces in Europe." He had added a long series of realistic condemnations of Soviet imperialism and stern warnings of their implacable hostility to freedom in the West.
Mr. Alsop finds the explanation for the upset over his remarks to have been simple enough. In the present crisis of confidence afflicting the Western alliance, many sane people felt hunger for comfortable self-delusion, demonstrating itself mainly in a strong drive for negotiations with the Soviets at all cost, just for the sake of negotiating, plus an equally strong drive toward unilateral disarmament, to end the arms race. It had been because what Mr. Kennan had said in the lectures was so obviously authoritative and penetrating that the self-deluders had seized upon his name to make their own strange impulses respectable. His idea about Germany had been distorted into the semblance of the so-called Rapacki Plan. His natural advocacy of continuous diplomatic contact with the Soviets had been transformed into a call for summit meetings, which he expressly condemned. His patches of silliness about the Western military posture had been interpreted as a call for unilateral disarmament, which he had also expressly condemned.
"It is a frightening phenomenon, this carnival of opium-eating. It augurs much worse to come when men less capable than Kennan begin to gain a hearing. But the cause is not Kennan. The root cause is the Western crisis of confidence, so largely resulting from our Allies' total loss of faith in the present foreign policy-leadership of the United States."
A letter from Harry Golden, editor and publisher of the Carolina Israelite, corrects an editorial which had indicated that on the occasion of the Gettysburg address on November 19, 1863, the Chicago Tribune had stated, after praising the lengthy oration of Edward Everett, that: "The President of the United States also spoke and made the usual ass of himself." Mr. Golden says that while the quote was correct, it was not uttered by the Tribune but rather by the London Times reporter at Gettysburg, who had also stated of the President's brief statement, "… anything more dull and commonplace would not be easy to produce." The Tribune had happened to be the only major publication which correctly estimated the value of the address, stating in an editorial the following day: "The dedicatory remarks of President Abraham Lincoln will live forever in the annals of man." Mr. Golden says that he had obtained the information from the Democratic Digest of December, 1953.
The editors note their thanks to Mr. Golden for the correction and apologize to the Tribune, hope that a copy of the Democratic Digest would be sent to former President Truman, in whose address before the Overseas Press Club the editors had found the reference to the Tribune.
A letter from a captain of artillery in the U.S. Army Reserve, formerly a first sergeant in the Marine Corps, indicates his disturbance at a recent editorial endorsing the trend of centralizing the command of the armed forces. He says that absolute unity of the services would compromise the ideals and traditions instilled at the military academies and in military training. He indicates that the country believed in tradition in all walks of life and in the military, tradition and esprit de corps was valued as in no other field. He says that he had observed in the South Pacific jungles men cursing the very breath they drew and yet would cut a person's throat if they spoke disparagingly of the Marine Corps. "The traditions from Tun Tavern to Iceland kept a man going. No longer was home, flag, country and Pearl Harbor of significance. Your old neck and the Globe and Anchor were the shining pot of gold!" He says that the Marine Corps and the Navy had never had a sitdown strike as had the Army in the Philippines and Hawaii shortly after World War II. He believes that if the military were united, the Army would run the show, a terrible mistake. "The belly of a sub is no place for a Selective Service draftee. The bridge of a cruiser is no place for a '90 day blunder' or 'mama's little lamb.'" He lists several suggestions which he believes would obtain more and better for less money, including abolition of the Women's Reserve Corps in all military branches, allowing the military installations to operate all concessions with their own people, abolition of airborne troops as a waste of money, using the Pentagon for schools and placing the people there into combat units, organizing each Naval District into a task force with Army, Marine and Air Force troops therein as a component part, making use of all Federal prisoners in industry, labor and allied jobs for military manufacture, cutting retirement age to 16 years active and four reserve, or 14 and 16, if retirement on 30 was desired. He also advocates abolition of the Defense Department because it was a "farce", abolition of the Joint Chiefs, making each task force commander accountable to the President only. He says that the suggestions were not brilliant but that they would make a noise when proposed. He adds that he enjoyed the newspaper every night and that the editorials were good and timely.
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