The Charlotte News

Monday, October 20, 1958

THREE EDITORIAL

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Taipei, Formosa, that the Communist Chinese had broken their cease-fire in the Formosa Strait this date, hitting the island of Quemoy for nearly three hours and then turning their guns on tiny Tatan islet off the Communist Chinese port of Amoy. Secretary of State Dulles, on his way to Taipei for important talks, said that it was a tragedy that the Communists had again displayed their "war-like disposition", making the statement during a refueling stop for his jet tanker at Fairbanks, Alaska. The Nationalists on Quemoy, amply supplied during the nearly 15-day cease-fire, returned the Communist fire. The Communist artillery had caught four Nationalist supply ships in the Quemoy beach area, including three LST's and one Navy transport, with no word reported on whether any had been hit. The Communist guns had hit Quemoy for two hours and 45 minutes before halting. Eighty minutes later, they had opened up on Tatan, a 96-acre islet 2.5 miles south of Amoy. There was no immediate report on the volume of Communist fire or on the Nationalist retaliation. The Chinese Communists said that they were suspending their cease-fire, which was scheduled to end the following Sunday, because U.S. warships had convoyed Nationalist supply vessels to Quemoy, though U.S. officials denied that. A Nationalist spokesman said that no American ships had been in the beach area. The Communists, in ending the cease-fire, had charged that U.S. warships had broken the truce by escorting Nationalist supplies to Quemoy the previous night. The U.S. denied the charge, saying that they had only "conducted a small-boat operation … lifting Chinese Nationalist supply craft through international waters, " at least 15 miles off Quemoy. The Nationalist Defense Ministry said that the Communists had resumed the shelling in late afternoon, 50 minutes after Peiping Radio had broadcast orders canceling the cease-fire. The Communists announced a week earlier that their self-imposed cease-fire had been extended to midnight the following Sunday, having originally been set on October 5 to last a week. The mission of Secretary Dulles had been intended to clear up misunderstandings with Nationalist President Chiang Kai-shek and lay the groundwork for a more substantial cease-fire in the Formosa Strait. Communist Chinese Defense Minister Peng Teh-huai gave his reason for resuming the bombardment, charging that U.S. warships had encroached on Chinese territorial waters the previous night in escorting Nationalist ships to Quemoy. The Communist order said: "Shelling must therefore be resumed as a measure of punishment." The U.S. Taiwan Defense Command had declared that the charge was completely untrue. The previous day, U.S. Navy commanders had disclosed that additional warships had been rushed to bolster the U.S. Seventh Fleet in the Formosa Strait after the Communists had started massive artillery attacks on the offshore islands. In escorting Nationalist supply ships to Quemoy, U.S. warships had remained three miles or more off the island, the limit of territorial waters recognized by the U.S., while the Communist Chinese had unilaterally imposed a 12-mile limit. In announcing the first cease-fire, effective at midnight on October 5, the Communist Chinese had set as a condition that the U.S. halt its convoy escorts.

The President carried his midterm election efforts to California this date, while other campaigners argued over his foreign policy and its place in the political debate. An increased weekend tempo also found DNC chairman Paul Butler virtually inviting those Democrats who disagreed sharply with the party's civil rights program to leave the party, saying that they could "take political asylum" in the Republican Party or in a third party. With the Congressional election campaign moving into its last two weeks, the President spoke this night in Los Angeles and would speak on Tuesday night in San Francisco in what the White House said would be a hard-hitting explanation of Republican accomplishments. Former President Truman and Vice-President Nixon would resume their campaign activities the following day in the East, after a weekend of rest for each. Adlai Stevenson, speaking in Milwaukee on Saturday night, had called U.S. policy toward the Nationalist Chinese islands of Quemoy and Matsu "this miserable mess." He said: "We have had almost four years of grace over the last crisis of Quemoy to extricate ourselves. Instead, we have allowed Chiang Kai-shek to bring us closer to war, to imperil the prestige and the peace of the United States over little islands, which in the long run are untenable." Both the President and Secretary of State Dulles had said that they thought foreign policy ought not be a subject of partisan debate in the campaign, though each had indicated some loopholes and later approved of the Vice-President's statement attacking Democratic critics. Mr. Truman had stated in Washington on Friday that he was glad that the President now agreed with him that foreign affairs ought not be a campaign issue. Mr. Butler, when questioned about comments on civil rights during a television interview, said that they applied specifically to Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas and also to Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, if he felt the same way. He said that the Democratic Party would welcome as many Americans as possible but that "if they don't want to go along on the racial problem and the whole area of human rights, then I think they are going to have to take political asylum wherever they can find it, either in the Republican Party or a third party."

The Supreme Court this date denied the petition for writ of certiorari and affirmed a lower court order that blacks had a right to use a golf course and other park facilities managed by the New Orleans City Park Improvement Association, a municipal corporation.

In Belfast, Northern Ireland, it was reported that a Government employment agency at Strabane, just inside the Northern Ireland border, had been wrecked by an explosion early this date.

In Nicosia, Cyprus, it was reported that two Turkish Cypriot auxiliary policemen had been shot to death during the morning at a mine near Polis, in West Cypress. Police believed that the killers had escaped on motorcycles.

In Jerusalem, Israeli Sector, it was reported from the Israeli port of Eilat that two British ships had begun loading heavy equipment at the Jordan port of Aqaba this date. Britain had announced the prior Saturday that it would start withdrawal of its 5,000 paratroopers from Jordan this date. They had been deployed, along with U.S. Marines in Lebanon, to bolster the governments of each country against possible takeover by the forces of the United Arab Republic, led by Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser, in the wake of the coup in Iraq. The withdrawals had been negotiated as part of an arrangement made at the U.N., and with the understanding that the new leadership in Iraq was taking a neutral stance and was not pro-Nasser, the ultimate fear being that the Communists were using Premier Nasser to gain a foothold in the vital oil-producing Middle East.

In Sevierville, Tenn., it was reported that a 33-year old minister faced a preliminary hearing this date on a charge of kidnaping an 11-year old mountain girl, after their marriage plans had been thwarted by the law in two states. The minister, who said that he was ordained as a Baptist minister in March, 1952, was accused of abducting the girl from her home in nearby Happy Hollow. Police said that their romance had blossomed after the minister had come to the Smoky Mountains community five months earlier as pastor of Friendship Baptist Church. Authorities in Tennessee and Georgia said that the couple had gone to Georgia Friday to get married, but clerks in several Georgia towns had denied them a license because of a three-day waiting period, and they had gone on to Atlanta, where the minister took the girl to the home of an aunt on Friday and returned to Tennessee early Sunday to pick up clothes for him and the girl. But Tennessee officers had arrested the minister en route and brought him to Sevierville. The girl's parents had sworn out a warrant against the minister, accusing him of "kidnaping by taking a female under 12 years of age from her parents and taking her out of the state into the state of Georgia." The minister's wife of 16 years had divorced him about two months earlier, accusing him of non-support. They had five children, three boys and two girls, ranging between four and 14 years of age. The preacher told newsmen that the young girl had taken a "liking" to him about a month earlier and had suggested marriage. The previous Tuesday, he said he had lunch at the girl's home and the two had "more or less agreed" to marry, having told him again that she wanted to marry him. He had told her that she was too young and "it wouldn't do. Then she said I didn't want her, and I agreed to marry her." In an Atlanta detention home, the girl said: "We had been planning this a long time. I love him and I intend to marry him."

John Borchert of The News reports of the 20th anniversary of the appearance of Dr. Herbert Spaugh's column, "The Everyday Counselor", in the newspaper. He was the minister of the Moravian Little Church on the Lane in Charlotte. The column had started on a weekly basis, called, "Musings of a Minister", then appeared twice per week and finally became daily. He called it a "newspaper pulpit. The counseling I do stems from it." From the column had developed the Alcoholics Anonymous program in Charlotte. In 1933, Dr. Spaugh had been asked by Brodie Griffith of the newspaper, currently the general manager, to write the column. Dr. Spaugh had responded that he did not know anything about newspaper writing and Mr. Griffith said that they would teach him, which they did. He had said at the time that he wanted to get 30 columns written ahead of time before he began the task, indicating that the only writing he had done before that point had been a few English theme papers in college and some letters he had written to his father asking for more money. The first column had been about the Moravian Church. Since, there had been thousands of columns, all on file in his offices. He said that Mr. Griffith and then-editor J. E. Dowd had been working with him on the column and wanted to reach the man in the street who did not attend church, as, they said, the preachers would reach that group. That was when the name, "Everyday Counselor" was decided on and the column had become a daily feature of the newspaper. Dr. Spaugh said that his poorest grades had been in psychology, and yet he had achieved local renown as a counselor, enlisting the aid of Dr. P. J. Wingate, a Christian psychologist. There is also an editorial on the subject this date.

On the editorial page, Drew Pearson, in Clinton, Tenn., tells of the debris of the recently dynamited Clinton High School, which had been desegregated in fall, 1956 amid some violence, primarily from outside the community, stimulated by Columbia-educated segregationist rabble-rouser John Kasper of Baltimore, directed at the 12 black students and one white clergyman who had undertaken to escort them to and from the school for their safety, as chronicled in 1956 by Life and by Edward R. Murrow's "See It Now" television program.