The Charlotte News
Monday, January 27, 1958
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President this date had sent Congress a four-year 1.6 billion dollar Federal-state program of aid for education, which aimed to help the nation again obtain the lead in science and technology over Russia. In a special message, the President had said that the nation's immediate security aims in the space era could be furthered only by the efforts of individuals whose training was already far advanced. If the U.S. was to maintain a position of leadership, he said, it had to see to it that the young people of the present were "prepared to contribute the maximum to our future progress. Because of the growing importance of science and technology, we must necessarily give special—but by no means exclusive—attention to education in science and engineering." The program had been first announced on December 30 by Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Marion Folsom. Among other things, it called for granting 10,000 scholarships annually for four years, with emphasis on courses in science and mathematics. It also called for granting graduate fellowships to bolster teaching strength, with emphasis on science and technology. The message had mentioned no specific number of such fellowships, but Secretary Folsom had said earlier that the program contemplated provision of 1,000 during the first year and 1,500 annually for each of the ensuing three years. The message contained no cost figures, but White House press secretary James Hagerty had said that the estimate remained the same as that announced by Secretary Folsom, about 1.6 billion over the four years. Of that, the Federal Government would contribute about one billion and the states and local communities, about 600 million. The President had said that the keystone of the program was "state, local and private efforts; the Federal role is to assist—not to control or supplant—those efforts." He said that "for the increased support our educational system now requires, we must look primarily to citizens and parents acting in their own communities, school boards and city councils, teachers, principals, school superintendents, state boards of education and state legislatures, trustees and faculties of private institutions." He indicated that because national security was involved, the Federal Government had to play an emergency role, but emphasized that it would be a temporary one and should not be considered permanent Federal responsibility. The Federal budget for the ensuing fiscal year included 225 million dollars to finance the program during the first year of operation, of which 145 million had been earmarked for HEW.
The Administration's plans for reorganizing the Defense Department, urged by the President, could be ready in about 60 days.
In Ankara, Turkey, Secretary of State Dulles had told leaders of the five Baghdad Pact nations this date that the U.S. would support their nations with "mobile power of great force" against any Communist invasion. His keynote address at the opening of the Middle East alliance's ministerial council meeting emphasized that any potential aggressor "knows in advance that his losses from aggression would far exceed any possible gains." He said also that "if perchance deterrence fails", the U.S. would contribute its mobile power to save the people of the Middle East. He was attending a Pact conference for the first time since the alliance had been formed in 1955. A few hours before he had spoken, a bomb had blown out the rear wall of a U.S. Embassy warehouse and another bomb had badly damaged a private bookshop, named the American Publication Book Store, near the U.S. Information Service. The bombings apparently had been timed as a demonstration against the opening of the conference. The Baghdad Pact was a major target of the Communists and Middle East neutralists. Turkish security authorities and troops were combing the city through the night in an effort to round up any demonstrators. The bombings generally had been blamed on Turkey's illegal Communist movement. Leaders of the Pact nations along the Soviet Union's southern frontier held out little hope that they would hear from Secretary Dulles any flashy new offers of American aid.
At Cape Canaveral, Fla., the Navy was busy in another effort to get its temperamental Vanguard rocket off the ground during the ensuing few days. Unless it performed quickly, the Army's Jupiter-C missile might be the first to launch a U.S. satellite. Informed sources disclosed that bad weather and a frustrating series of mechanical problems in the Vanguard had spoiled several attempts to launch it the previous week. The first Vanguard had blown up on the launching pad on December 6. The failures had thrown the U.S. satellite program far off schedule. If a goal set by the President had been met, three or four satellites would have been in orbit by the present time and the Vanguard would be set to launch bigger satellites in March. Secrecy surrounded the latest attempt and facts were not made known to the public until the previous night. The Air Force fired a Snark guided missile 5,000 miles to Ascencion Island off the African coast the prior Saturday, and informed sources said that the missile "landed in its assigned impact area." At the same time, the Navy was busy with the Vanguard, it had been learned that the launch of the rocket had only been a few minutes away on Saturday when the attempt had been postponed. As the delays continued, the belief grew that the Vanguard had to fly soon, in a matter of a few days, or the Jupiter-C might launch first, carrying a 29.7-pound satellite. The Vanguard still was experimental, with its second-stage guidance system never having been tested in flight. All components of the Jupiter-C had been flown and were reported to have performed well. Authorities close to the Vanguard project said that heavy rains, rare during the present season in Florida, had been troublesome during the previous week's launch attempts. Defective minor parts were found in the rocket during the countdown checks and had to be replaced, and something had gone wrong with the 6.4-inch satellite so that it stopped sending radio signals. One of Florida's worst winters had interfered with efforts to step up the U.S. missile and rocket programs.
A scientist who directed a secret study of U.S. defenses, Dr. Ellis Johnson, director of the Johns Hopkins University operations research office, said this date that the Russians could presently mount a combined bomber and submarine-launched missile attack which could kill 20 to 30 million Americans, that at present, U.S. defenses were "not very good" and in fact were "very poor" if an attack were to come immediately. He said in a copyrighted interview in U.S. News & World Report that an extra 15 billion dollars per year for an indefinite number of years was the price of adequate defense for the country. It was the biggest increase of defense spending yet proposed by various study groups and individuals. The research office of Johns Hopkins had been set up ten years earlier to make scientific analyses of military problems. Under the direction of Dr. Johnson, they had conducted for the Army a study of U.S. defenses, not made public. In the interview, Dr. Johnson said that it was his belief that "right now" the Russians could "throw several hundred bombers at us" and perhaps 50 or more missile-firing submarines, "more than adequate", as he would expect them to be armed with nuclear weapons. He estimated that more than half of the attackers would penetrate American defenses as presently constituted. He said that they would likely target primarily the Strategic Air Command, but that there was no reason why, at the same time, they would not be able easily to spare enough of their attack force on the side to kill between 20 and 30 million Americans and destroy more than 10 percent of the economy, perhaps 20 percent. If the Soviets continued their present production rate for the ensuing several years, he said, the country could expect them to have perhaps 1,000 long-range bombers capable of reaching the U.S. from Russian territory. He said that the Russians had approximately 600 or more submarines and that if they attacked at present, they would attack primarily with long-range manned bombers and submarine-launched missiles of subsonic speed.
In Budapest, Premier Janos Kadar had offered his resignation to the Hungarian parliament this date. He would continue to run the country's Communist regime as first secretary of the Communist Party.
In Algiers, rebel saboteurs and grenade throwers had stepped up their activity all across Algeria during the weekend, as French and rebel military units had also clashed.
The Senate Select Committee investigating misconduct in unions and management had alerted Joey Fay to be ready to testify in hearings which would switch this date its focus to the Philadelphia local union which Mr. Fay had once headed.
In Columbus, O., Governor C. William O'Neill had suffered a mild heart attack, and had canceled all of his engagements and reported to bed late the previous week.
The Associated Press reports that high school boys in Winston-Salem, in Houston, in Spokane and in Stilton, Pa., had launched homemade ballistic missiles the previous weekend. A homemade rocket made from chemicals and a foot of electrical pipe had blasted off "almost out of sight" and then returned to bury itself in the ground in Winston-Salem the prior Saturday. A 16-year old Reynolds High School chemistry student had built the rocket, said that it had risen about 400 feet from the launching stand, made from plywood and three bicycle fender braces. He and four boys who had assisted in the launch said that the rocket, which they had named "Scorpion", had lost three sheet-metal fins and its nose cone during the ascent, and all except about two inches of it was embedded in the ground after falling back to earth. The launching had taken place in an open field and was fired by a charge through wires from the battery of an automobile parked about 75 feet away. The Houston crew had their $10 model instrumented at Cape Canaveral with an accelerometer. The boys reported that their launch had attained 700 mph, risen two miles and landed in 50 seconds just where they wanted it. A 16-year old, president of the Rocket Research and Development Society of Houston, said that it was better than they had expected, that it worked exactly as they had predicted and was a perfect shot. The group had been working three years and the launching on Sunday was their 87th. The missile was 30 inches long and two inches in diameter. The boys had gone to work on their R4D, which was 5 feet long, 3 inches in diameter and designed to rise up to 30 miles. The estimated countdown time was T minus 18 months. The group of boys in Stilton had launched their 15-inch aluminum rocket from a farm nearby, and it had gone out of sight. It had been their fifth launch. They had used paper toweling soaked in potassium nitrate for the fusing. They then had gone immediately to work on their sixth attempt, which would be a two-stage rocket. The four 16-year old rocketeers at Spokane still were looking for their missile, indicating that it had gone at least a mile in the air when it had gone out of sight. It had been four feet long, two inches in diameter and made of seamless steel. (Seamless or stainless? Seamless steel would appear to be something from outer space, another planet, like, dude. Where'd you get that? It all starts as flat sheets cut and rolled out of the ingots here on earth.) The boys had built their missile under the supervision of their high school chemistry teacher. A police officer had overseen the launching. The fuel in all the cases was powdered zinc and sulphur. It makes no reference to the story of the young rocketeer in Lumberton, reported in The Robesonian the prior week, who had made a successful launch which attained an altitude of 1,880 feet, with a launch to come which would include a white mouse as a passenger and parachute back to earth. He needs a better publicity man.
In Caracas, the threat of a counter blow against Venezuela's new revolutionary Government had eased off this date, following a night of tension, as the ruling junta appeared to reestablish order. Reports that diehard supporters of former El Presidente Marcos Perez Jimenez, who had fled to the Dominican Republic, were preparing to move against the junta, had placed the nation on edge the previous night. But as the hours had passed, there were indications that the people, groggy with newfound freedom, were strongly supporting the junta. Civilians were risking their lives to help authorities rout bands still spreading terror across the land in support of the ousted El Presidente. Backers of the old regime sped in cars through the streets of Caracas and other cities the previous night, firing machine guns indiscriminately at civilians, troops and national guardsmen. One woman had been killed and about ten persons had been wounded. Apprehension increased as the ruling junta went into emergency session the previous night and armored cars appeared on the streets of Caracas. The junta proclaimed its armed forces to be in full control, but peace and order remained in peril until all diehard supporters of the ousted El Presidente were rounded up throughout the country. Authorities breathed more easily, however, after word came that exiled Juan Peron of Argentina would leave the country "as soon as possible", having been given safe haven previously by El Presidente Jimenez.
The Associated Press reports that 14 persons had burned to death this date in fires in Des Moines, Graysville, Tenn., and Marksville, La., including five elderly men who had perished of suffocation in a blaze causing $50,000 worth of damage to a 75 cents per night hotel in Des Moines. About 35 other residents, many of them old age pensioners, had escaped without injury. Fire officials said that investigation was in progress to determine the cause of the fire. A small blaze had been reported in the same building a week earlier. A young mother and her three children had perished in flames which destroyed their four-room frame house in Graysville, with the cause of that fire still undetermined, while officers said it appeared to be from an overheated stove. A family of five had died in a fire which destroyed their three-room home near Marksville. Police officers said that a man, his expectant wife and their three children apparently had died after sparks from an open fireplace popped into the room and set it ablaze.
In Munich, Prince Oskar of Prussia, 69, the last surviving son of Kaiser Wilhelm II, had died of cancer early this date in a clinic.
In Washington, an armed holdup man had abducted a bank teller from his home the previous night and forced him to open up a suburban Maryland bank, escaping with between $15,000 and $20,000.
Near Durham, N.C., officers said that a five-year old girl had accidentally shot her younger brother and sister the previous day while playing with a pistol she had found in the yard. Her two-year old brother had been shot in the upper lip, the bullet passing through his left cheek, and her three-year old sister had been shot in the right leg. Both children had been admitted to a local hospital for treatment and observation. Hospital officials said that the bullet was removed from the sister's leg and that she was doing as well as could be expected, that her little brother was listed in satisfactory condition. A deputy sheriff said that the weapon fired by the little girl had been a .22-caliber pistol.
One of the nation's most powerful FM radio stations, WMIT, was off the air for an indefinite period of time because of severe icing. The station, located on Clingman's Peak at Mount Mitchell in the extreme western part of the state, had gone off the air during mid-afternoon on Friday and would be off the air until the ice melted. The president and general manager of the station had told the newspaper this date that severe icing on the towers had created a situation which forced the station to leave the air. A combination of wind, moisture and temperature had created such an "electrical unbalance" that short-circuits and other electrical disturbances would burn out the antenna under present conditions if they tried to operate. If the weather relented, he said, music probably would resume, with the first number likely to be "Winter Wonderland".
On the editorial page, "Differences at Memorial Can Be Healed" indicates that discontent in medical circles regarding certain administrative affairs at Charlotte Memorial Hospital had perhaps been magnified in importance, but that the fact remained that strong disagreement existed over the role of doctors in determining hospital policies.
It finds the seriousness of the internal friction to have been dramatized recently by the resignation of Dr. Paul Kimmelstiel, the hospital's internationally recognized pathologist, and the furor which had followed it. The public interest in the controversy had been equal to the public interest in the hospital. As a potential patient, every citizen wanted certain assurances about the reasonably blissful relations between the parties who might at some moment control their fate. The hospital needed the public's full confidence and the public needed complete confidence in the hospital.
It finds that no one's best interests were served by prolonging off-the-record grumbling on both sides, bothersome to the public and doing nothing for the well-being and contentment of the doctors, the administrative staff or the members of the board of commissioners. It asserts the belief that the matter could be straightened out by a compromise on both sides and some needed repairs in the lines of communication between the parties who were in disagreement.
It asserts that the hospital was a great asset to the community and was responsible to an extent for the city's reputation as one of the region's leading medical centers, and that the reputation could not be permitted to wither away.
Could not they find out the root of the problem by simply watching afternoon soap operas, or was there not one of those yet on the air which followed hospital people? We do not know, as we never watched those, found them to vacillate between unintended humor, bad acting, bad scripting and downright boredom.
"The Southern Art of Under-Doggery" suggests that every year about this time, the memory of Robert E. Lee fanned the sparks of the Confederacy which still lingered in many Southern breasts, with the stainless steel character of his personal virtues being the cause of misty-eyed remembrances, at least in part. But he was not the only man of integrity who had led Southern armies. What had caused him to exist within Southern sainthood had been his habit of winning against overwhelming odds.
It finds some irony in the fact that Southern politicians got so exercised over the fact every year, as they were without peer in the practice of under-doggery, shown by a quick look at the balance of power in Congress.
Surveying the seats of power in Congress, U.S. News & World Report had found that Southerners from 11 states headed eight of the 15 Senate standing committees, and 11 of the 19 standing committees in the House. The leaders of both houses, House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, were from Texas. That preponderance of Southern influence on the course of national legislation was no mean feat to have been achieved by 11 states which, in varying degrees, still considered themselves as an embattled minority.
Congressional chairmen, while not possessing veto power over legislation, were in a position to delay and obstruct and to choose the time for political battles, holding strategic advantages which would make General Lee shake his head in envy. It finds nothing remarkable in how those advantages had been achieved. Long-time adherence to one party and the Congressional seniority system had combined to accomplish it. The remarkable thing was that occasionally the South was tempted to risk the loss of those chairmanships by joining a third-party movement. Generally, however, common sense had prevailed.
"Truth-Blabbing" suggests that the parade of Pentagon brass being grilled by Congressional committees recalled the advice of Air Force General Emmett "Rosie" O'Donnell given by his boss, General Carl "Tooey" Spaatz: "Rosie, answer as many questions as you can with 'Yes, sir' and 'No, sir'. If this doesn't suffice—and it probably won't—don't tell any lies. But don't go blabbing the truth!"
It notes that it was ten years earlier but that times had not changed a bit, that honesty was still the worst policy.
"How To Buck up the Billionaires" says that its tears had flowed "like pale dry sherry" recently when J. Paul Getty, "the richest man in America", had unburdened his soul to American Weekly readers in a confession called "It's Tough To Be a Billionaire". His peculiar misery was based on the conviction that great wealth often brought nothing other than unhappiness.
He had complained: "Even the simple, every day matter of tipping can become a major problem. If I tip well, someone is certain to accuse me of showing off. If I don't overtip, that someone will be the first to sneer 'penny-pincher!'"
Those and other heart-tugging complaints merely confirmed the desperate need for a League for Improving the Lives of the Rich, first advocated as a social welfare program by the late Clarence Day. While people granted that many rich people were unhappy and led miserable lives, the public nevertheless made the assertions that when people were distressingly rich, it had to be their own fault, that no one had to stay rich if they would just make the effort, that if they would not make an effort, they were probably of a bad lot.
But Mr. Day and other early humanitarians had recognized that society could not just be selfish and mind its own business when confronted with a genuine social problem. "The rich are our brothers. How can the rest of us let ourselves be truly happy when our brothers are suffering?"
It again proposes its League, indicates that Mr. Day had foreseen many missions for such a league to perform, that it could establish neighborhood houses in all of the wealthy districts where reformers could go and live just like the rich, enabling a few people to mingle with them day by day and gradually brighten their outlook and alter their standards. It could send trained welfare workers to inspect the most desperate cases and gently reform one by one their conditions of living. It could instruct volunteers in the best methods of rich relief work, especially methods of relieving the rich of their wealth.
The seriousness of the problem, however, had never been quite so apparent until it had read Mr. Getty's complaints, causing it to realize suddenly that there had to be thousands like him, maybe millions, who were denied the simple joys of a healthy poverty-stricken existence, free of any fears about excessive tipping and things of that sort. It suggests that some might live in Charlotte and that surely Americans with a social conscience would not let that condition proceed forever. It concludes that Mr. Day had been right, that the hearts of Americans were kind, that they just had not thought.
Whether this piece was perhaps
prompted by the previous night's episode of "Maverick"
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "The Queen and I", indicates that to one who had learned in grammar school that the pronoun "I" ought be second in combination with another pronoun, it had been a shock to see an item in the Manchester Guardian which read: "The Queen has sent the following message to the Governor-General of Ceylon: 'I and my husband are deeply distressed to learn of the tragic damage caused by the floods in Ceylon. Please convey our sincere sympathy to the relatives of those who have lost their lives and those who have been made homeless.'"
It indicates that upon reflection, it was clear why the Queen had to put herself first, as she was head of the realm and outranked her husband, who was a mere Prince. But it thinks that there were ways to get around the matter to avoid the conflict in English, suggesting that the Queen adopt instead the editorial "we" in the manner of her grandmother, the late Queen Victoria, who had once said: "We are not amused."
It indicates that the British long earlier had worked out the style to their own satisfaction and that American suggestions would only be resented, and yet it was disconcerting, as disconcerting as the remark once made by Winston Churchill, then Prime Minister, who had entered a room and told the group present, "It's me."
Drew Pearson indicates that the most forthright newspaper in New Mexico recently had been the Santa Fe New Mexican, founded in 1849, and proud of its boast as being the "Oldest Newspaper in the West". It had taken on new life when publisher Robert McKinney had taken it over a decade earlier. The newspaper had exposed financial finagling in the office of the State adjutant general and had forced a refund to the taxpayers. It had exposed the terms of the Delhi-Taylor oil deal with the Navajo Indians, revealed graft and inefficiency in the Springfield Reform School, and had publicized the padded costs of constructing prisons in the state. Mr. McKinney had also focused on the operations of Senator Dennis Chavez of New Mexico and campaigned for higher taxes on uranium mining, succeeding in getting the tax rate raised.
In 1951-52, Mr. McKinney had served as Assistant Secretary of the Interior in the Truman Administration, at which time the newspaper had followed a pro-Truman policy. But in the spring of 1957, as Mr. McKinney began angling for an appointment in the Eisenhower Administration, orders had been given to tone down editorials critical of the President, had omitted the Herblock cartoons when they were too hard on either the President or Admiral Lewis Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, and had also ruled out criticism of Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson. Later, orders had come from the front office to drop criticism of Senator Chavez and of the Republican Governor, Edwin Mechem.
The prior September, Mr. McKinney had been appointed U.S. representative to the international Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. At the same time, he had put forth the policy that there be no critical editorial comment on the President, on Secretary of State Dulles or of U.S. foreign policy, and no comment on domestic problems or criticism of the Governor. Simultaneously, Joseph Lawlor, for six years the news editor and then editor, had resigned, explaining that as Mr. McKinney had left for Europe he had told him that his primary interest was in seeing the monthly balance sheet. Mr. Lawlor, who had helped expose waste in the prison construction, the finagling in the adjutant general's office, and the inefficiency in State government, had been trained in the Thomas Jefferson school, which had it that, "No government ought to be without censors and where the press is free none ever will." He felt that if a wrongdoing was to be exposed under one Administration, it should be exposed under another, regardless of whether his publisher held office under President Truman or under President Eisenhower, because in both cases, the people's interest was involved.
Some Senators appeared to think that Mr. Lawlor was old-fashioned. Senator Johnson, who had obtained for his wife Lady Bird lucrative radio and television stations in Texas, had told fellow Senators that he was going to rush the confirmation of Mr. McKinney through the Senate without hearings. Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon asked for delay, wanting time to scrutinize Mr. McKinney's record because he had found that he promoted President Truman when he served under him and promoted President Eisenhower when he wanted a job in the latter's Administration. He said that the people of New Mexico, dependent on the newspaper to know what was happening in the world, were not important to Mr. McKinney, as he fed them the news according to whether he wanted a job under the Republicans or the Democrats. He found that not to be why the press was provided a special freedom in the Constitution, that it was for the purpose of bettering government, not bettering a publisher's personal ambition.
But Senators Johnson and Clinton Anderson of New Mexico had refused to wait and pushed Mr. McKinney's nomination through the Senate.
Mr. Pearson notes that readers in Santa Fe, as with those in many other cities, had only one newspaper locally, that recent surveys showed that in 15 states at present, there was no single city with multiple ownership of newspapers, that in 12 other states, there was only one city with such multiple ownership, that newspaper ownership of radio and television stations had tended to intensify the monopoly of news dissemination, such that many publishers were genuinely concerned about the issue and were going out of their way to provide readers with diverse viewpoints. Some others, however, were giving readers only the publisher's viewpoint.
Attention Fox Propaganda and the idiots who watch and listen to that garbage, thinking that they are getting any grain of truth. You are listening to an echo chamber promoting Trump and Trump's financial interests. Grow up, lest you become little, stupid Nazis. To most people who wear them, the little red caps bearing "Make America Great Again" mean a return to the segregation era of Jim Crow and generally stepping backward politically by about 100 years, drifting toward Nazism in the process. That's what it represents and that is what Trump is about. He is a stupid, xenophobic hater of everyone other than himself.
We note from a spot check in the market just yesterday that prices during the previous week of Trump have actually gone up substantially on many items. Frozen Chinese food, for instance, has gone up fully three dollars, about 50 percent, in one week. Why do you suppose that is, stupid, little Trumpy? It is more than likely the result of food companies anticipating the Trump trade tariffs which will raise the price substantially of many goods, including the ingredients of various food items. Prices are not going down under Trump. They are going to go sky high, through the roof. The very idea that you allowed yourself to be fooled by Fox Propaganda yet again, tells us that you're a bunch of stupid, gullible fools who will believe whatever you are told which sounds good, regardless of whether there is any possible fact behind it or not. You are going to find that you never had it so good as under the Biden Administration, given the conditions under which President Biden came to office, amid the worst pandemic in U.S. history, caused by the incompetence of Trump and his wavering advice from week to week, downplaying the seriousness constantly of the pandemic, even after he, himself, in September, 2020, came down with it, albeit for only a couple of days and in a very mild case. He was responsible for the deaths of over a million Americans. If you forget that single fact, you will be stumbling in the dark forever. He should be in jail as a convicted felon. If you forget that fact, you are lost. He is now seeking to weaponize the Justice Department, sure enough, against his enemies, putting in place his own loyal, subservient operatives to replace the traditional independence of that Department. Those who were gullible enough to believe that the Justice Department was "weaponized" in the Biden Administration simply because they sought and obtained indictments against the wealthy and powerful who had broken the law and the insurrectionists who sought to overthrow the Government, were simply not paying attention to the facts as they transpired, rather only to the kooks in the House and Senate who raised their campaign chests from appearances routinely on Fox Propaganda. That was how Nazism took hold in Nazi Germany in the 1930's, a great mass of people too busy to be bothered with anything other than regaining their perceived lost national pride after World War I and too engrossed in their own self-immersed pleasure-seeking forms of escape from that perceived emasculation to note the tragic direction which their country was taking, winding up in more than 40 years of hardship and division following World War II. It can happen here.
Stewart Alsop suggests that both political parties were at fault regarding the country's record on defense, but judging by recent oratory by White House chief of staff Sherman Adams and others, the blame belonged with the Democrats, while the Democrats were busy blaming the President.
Until a few months earlier, it had almost universally been agreed among Democrats that there was "no mileage in the defense issue" because the President's military reputation was considered unassailable. But since the launch of the Sputniks in October and November, respectively, his reputation for infallibility on the defense issue had been shaken if not shattered. Especially since the bitterly partisan speech by Mr. Adams recently, the temptation among Democrats to go after the President, himself, was becoming increasingly commonplace.
A few days earlier, the Senate Preparedness subcommittee, chaired by Senator Lyndon Johnson, had met in executive session, during which Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri had been interrogating Thomas Lanphier, vice-president of the Convair Corp., which made the Atlas ICBM. The Senator had asked him whether it was true that the ballistic missile had been started in 1946 and then canceled in 1947 when the Army Air Corps had been part of the Army, which Mr. Lanphier had confirmed had occurred in July, 1947—the point at which the National Security Act had been signed into law, reorganizing the intelligence and defense establishment, establishing the Defense Department and the CIA. Senator Symington indicated that it was when the Army chief of staff was General Eisenhower.
Mr. Alsop indicates that the latter fact was insubstantial, as Senator Symington, himself, had implied later in the testimony, and yet that type of partisan rewriting of history in which Mr. Adams and other Republicans had recently indulged, had been largely made up of just such insubstantial stuff. He notes that it was not entirely so, as former President Truman, regardless of how cocky and condescending he was during his morning walks, could not get away from the fact that he had appointed Louis Johnson as Secretary of Defense, and in the pre-Korean War period, the latter had unquestionably cut new weapons research to the bare bone. But his disastrous budgets had been devised with the advice and consultation of then-General Eisenhower. To protect himself, Mr. Johnson had even spoken of his first two budgets as "Ike One" and "Ike Two".
Regarding the more recent past, the testimony before the subcommittee provided the Democrats with a lot of ammunition against the Administration. The executive session testimony of CIA director Allen Dulles, for instance, had been both honest and accurate when he said, in effect, that the Administration in the pre-Sputnik era had paid little or no attention to the CIA hard intelligence of Soviet missile progress, with the President and his advisers refusing to listen to what they did not want to hear.
The Republicans, on the other hand, also had ammunition against the Democrats, not only against former President Truman but also the titular party leader, Adlai Stevenson, and Senate Majority Leader Johnson. Mr. Stevenson, in 1956, had followed the "no mileage in defense" approach, which did not contribute to any democratic dialogue on the issue during the campaign. (He ignores Mr. Stevenson's oblique approach through his then-controversial proposal for a multilateral mutually verifiable nuclear test ban treaty, bitterly opposed by the President at the time, though more recently being proposed in a similar form by the Administration in the wake of the Sputniks.) Senator Johnson, who had a good voting record on defense, was nevertheless open to the charge that he had only summoned his subcommittee to make a serious inquiry into defense preparedness after the issue had been dramatized by the launching of the Sputniks.
Mr. Alsop finds that with one or two exceptions, it was hard to see how anyone was going to make any political hay out of name-calling or a rock-throwing contest on the defense issue. He suggests that perhaps for that reason, that sort of contest could be avoided, as both the President and Senator Johnson would prefer. Obviously, defense would be an issue and ought to be as it was the most difficult problem which the country faced. "But the kind of sleazy rewriting of history which politicians like Sherman Adams and Democratic chairman Paul Butler are beginning to produce can only do both parties—and the country—the maximum of harm."
A letter writer from Pembroke finds that a story appearing in the newspaper on January 14, titled "Lumberton Klan Goes on Warpath against Indians", had been in error in its facts and its purpose. The unnamed writer says that the Indians of Robeson County did not have a town of their own in Pembroke or a college, Pembroke State College for Indians, indicating that Pembroke was like any other town, where all three races owned property and where there were several white-owned businesses, constituting at least half of the trade in the community. There was no college for Indians in Pembroke. Pembroke State, from its founding until 1945, had limited its enrollment to Indians of Robeson County, but after 1945, enrollment had been extended to Indians recognized by the Federal Government, and in 1953, the General Assembly had amended the statutes to give authority to the board of trustees to extend its mission to include any persons of the Indian or white race approved by the board. Acting under that latter authority, the board, in May, 1954, had approved the admission of white students, and since that time, many white students had been admitted to the college and attended successfully without incident. The person notes that the article had also stated that one Klansman had said that the Indians were acting as a "front" to break down the barrier of segregation. The writer indicates that they were doing no such thing, that they were merely attending to their own affairs, suggests that the Klan could serve mankind much better if the time they spent burning crosses was spent kneeling at them.
Regardless of the letter writer's picking at its details, that which the story drove home plainly was that the Klan did not have sense enough to get in out of the rain, begging the question, however, as to how they burned the two crosses in a driving rainstorm, perhaps having used a considerable amount of accelerant
A letter from the director of region five of the AFL-CIO indicates that the recent layoff of AFL-CIO organizers had been regrettable, that the reduction in staff was not hurriedly considered, having been discussed even prior to the 1955 merger. He indicates that responsibility for organizing primarily belonged to national and international unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO and not the parent organization, itself, except in unusual cases. Loss of income, failure in many instances to organize in basic industries and an intensified survey, which had indicated that the climate for organizing was not too good, had led to the necessity for the layoffs. He indicates that an organizer's existence was precarious as the nature of the work made it necessary in many instances for him to spend a great deal of time away from home base and it was generally understood that anyone accepting a position as a union organizer realized that fact and ought be willing to accept any assignments. Shifts and transfers of personnel between the parent organization and its member national and international unions had been for a long time common practice. A determined effort was being made to place all of those who had been laid off with a national or international union, and those who failed to obtain employment would be given a generous termination benefit.
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