The Charlotte News
Tuesday, November 25, 1958
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from London that Vice-President Nixon had begun a four-day visit to Britain this date with a pledge that the West would remain in Berlin. He warned against a policy of "rewarding aggression" through appeasement either in Berlin or the Formosa Strait. His speech had been prepared for delivery at a luncheon of the Pilgrims' Society, an influential British-American friendship organization. The Vice-President and Mrs. Nixon had arrived in England following an overnight flight from Washington. With London Airport enshrouded in fog, they had landed an hour late 20 miles south of London and had caught a reserved carriage on a suburban train into the city. British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd, U.S. Ambassador to Britain John Whitney and other members of the official welcoming party had hurried in from London Airport to greet Mr. Nixon at Victoria Station. Although the Communists had scheduled an anti-Nixon demonstration this night, there had been no incidents as the party had driven away from Victoria in ten black limousines. The Vice-President had come to represent the President the following day at the dedication of a chapel in St. Paul's Cathedral, which honored the 28,000 Americans who had been killed during World War II operations in Britain and from British bases. Queen Elizabeth would entertain the Nixons and have Thanksgiving dinner at the U.S. Embassy with them. The Vice-President was scheduled to have four discussions with Prime Minister Harold Macmillan regarding broad international problems, including Berlin. In his speech to the Pilgrims, Mr. Nixon had spoken of the Russian threat to pull out of the four-power occupation of Berlin as "the latest Soviet probing action." He said: "When the resolution of the free world is tested by such operations, we believe it is essential to show our unmistakable determination to stand firm. We have made clear our determination to remain in the city until a German settlement, acceptable to the German people, has been achieved."
In Berlin, it was reported that East German Communist boss Walter Ulbricht this date had said that his regime was prepared to negotiate with the Western allies regarding their access to isolated West Berlin. His declaration had borne out the belief of many observers that the immediate Communist aim was not to drive the Western allies from Berlin but rather to force them into negotiations with the Communist government of East Germany, which the West had refused to recognize as not being a popularly elected government. Mr. Ulbricht repeated the Communist thesis that the Western allies had no legal right to be in Berlin, indicating that there was no legal basis for the presence of foreign occupation powers in the city. But he also said that there was no reason to fear that the Communists would blockade the city, as they had in 1948-49, because there existed the possibility of negotiations. When and if the Russians were to carry out their threat to withdraw unilaterally from the four-power occupation of Berlin, as threatened on November 10 by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, one of their first acts was expected to be a transfer to the East Germans of control over the surface and air routes used by the West to supply their garrison in West Berlin.
In Bangkok, Thailand, it was reported that Marshal Sarit Thanarat, strong man of Thailand, had flown this date to a Cambodian border area where 30 Thais had been reported kidnaped by uniformed Cambodians. The two Southeast Asian neighbors had been having border troubles for years. (Hint for the future to Mr. Nixon: Don't extend the Vietnam War into Cambodia, as it may hasten the end of your Presidency one of these days.)
In Tokyo, a member of the Atomic Energy Commission, John Graham, had arrived this night to visit Japan's Atomic Energy Research Institute and Hiroshima, the first city which had been destroyed in August, 1945 by an atomic bomb. Mr. Graham was the first member of the AEC to visit Japan and would also confer with top Japanese Government officials and nuclear experts.
In Amman, Jordan, it was reported that an unidentified jet plane had dropped three bombs over Jordanian territory this date and flown off in the direction of Israel, according to a military spokesman. All three bombs had exploded in the air and he made no mention of any casualties.
In Hong Kong, the U.S. Consulate said this date that it was trying to confirm an unconfirmed report that Bishop James Walsh of Cumberland, Md., the last American Catholic priest in Communist China, had been arrested.
In Nicosia, Cyprus, British security forces said this date that a Greek Cypriot youth had been shot dead while trying to escape, the seventh Greek Cypriot killed in the previous two weeks for failing to halt when challenged.
The Labor Department reported this date that its consumer price index had held steady at 123.7 percent of the 1947-49 average, the same level as reported in August and September.
In Washington, the D.C. Court of Appeals this date upheld the Government's right to flood lands of the Seneca Nation of Indians in connection with a flood-control project.
In Dayton, O., it was reported that a turn for the worse had been noted this date in the condition of Charles Kettering, the famed automotive inventor and engineer. He was in a coma and his condition was now deemed serious.
Emery Wister of The News reports that Charlotte's air transportation headache had eased somewhat this date as four airlines were working feverishly to move the mass of travelers grounded because of a strike against Eastern Air Lines. The strike by the flight engineers and mechanics had caused cancellation of all 62 Eastern flights serving Charlotte, placing the burden on the four other airlines, Delta, Capital, Piedmont and Southern Airways.
In Oroville, Calif., it was reported that a prisoner awaiting trial on charges of falsifying checks had objected that he was a captive audience for Tuesday night religious services. The sheriff had offered him cotton to place in his ears. The prisoner had the previous week filed petitions to the U.S. Attorney General and the California Attorney General, contending that his constitutional rights were being violated by "intolerable and fanatical rantings and ravings" of Oroville volunteers at non-sectarian services in the Butte County Jail. The executive director of the ACLU chapter in San Francisco had supported the prisoner's claims the previous day, indicating that there ought be some provision for prisoners who did not want to attend the services. A postman, who was the leader of the religious group, said that as long as the sheriff said it was okay, they planned to carry on with the services. What happens if the cotton balls get rotten?
On the editorial page, Joseph Alsop, in Jericho, Jordan, tells of having visited the old city, its wall, mud and round tower, the discovery of which had pushed back the history of what was called civilization by something on the order of 3,000 years, not much more time having passed since the moment when the trumpets had blown and old Jericho's long story had ended, with Joshua having grimly proclaimed: "Blessed be the man before the Lord that riseth up and buildeth this blessed city, Jericho."
But the small and humble town had
existed in the hill millennia before Abraham, and the men who had
made it had only stone tools, fire and water to crack the rock for
the ditch. From the summit of the tower, the people of the city might
have even fired their flint-tipped arrows at the last man of the
Neanderthal race. For the Neanderthalers
Until the great British archaeologist, Dr. Kathleen Kenyon, had found the tower, wall and moat, civilization's known history was thought to have begun in the Iraqi village of Jarmo about 5000 B.C., assuming civilization was defined as the adoption of a settled, food-producing way of life in place of the hunter-gatherer stage. Dr. Awni Dajani, the Jordanian director of antiquities who had shown old Jericho to Mr. Alsop, had indicated: "Jarmo was nothing but a miserable, unwalled village! Here, perhaps, three millennia earlier, we had a walled, water-moated, fortified town of several thousand, built long before man had even invented pottery."
The proof that man had invented war before inventing almost anything else except improved stone weapons and techniques of agriculture was on display in the carefully cut sides of the great pit, seeming to be a continuous record of man's inveterate inhumanity to man.
The people who had made the tower, walls and moat at the bottom of the pit had lived in round, mud-floored houses, maintaining a cult of skulls of their ancestors or their enemies. They had been the first to till the field watered by Jericho's spring of Elias, which made a rich oasis in the town and the desolate Jordan valley.
When the town was destroyed, its ruins had made a little hill and another people had then come to build on the hill. The new people still had no pottery and had also made a cult of skulls, even molding plaster faces on the dead bones. They had certainly been men of another race because they made another sort of brick, built large square houses and neatly plastered their floors. In the end, their time had also come and their city was also destroyed, and they were also followed by other peoples who had pottery but still used stone weapons.
One of those peoples to the east had been a rude race on the still-growing hill of old Jericho, almost as the Bedouin camp was at present. Finally, they had also been driven out by the men of the early Bronze Age who had first discovered that square bricks were more convenient than rounded bricks. They had been the first users of metal of old Jericho and had been the contemporaries of Egypt's earliest pharaohs. They also had a flourishing city, the history of which had lasted many centuries longer than the histories of most modern nations, but at last, they had grown complacent and neglected their defenses, had made a final desperate effort, never finished, to rebuild the fallen defenses, but were overrun by the onslaught of remorseless invaders who burned them to the ground.
Those invaders had been another rude
race, fit only to fight and conquer the city-builders. Their time had
come when other, more advanced bronze-users had seized Jericho and
its well-watered fields. They had been the men of Jericho during the
time of Abraham. They also had been killed or driven out in the end
by those who had built the last of all of the old Jerichos, that
which had fallen to Joshua
Dr. Dajani had said to Mr. Alsop: "But, really, we have almost nothing from Joshua's Jericho except one poor little jug. It was too early in the story, and erosion of the hilltop had washed away whatever Joshua left behind." There still remained some hope that souvenirs of the last Jericho would be discovered beneath the mud heights of the vast neighboring camp where many thousands of Arab refugees from Israeli Palestine presently enjoyed their death-life existence. The camp area was a huge, ancient cemetery, and the refugees were glad to dig for hidden tombs beneath their mud floors because they were paid a few shillings which would briefly relieve the long-dull misery of their lives.
Marquis Childs tells of Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee, not a newcomer to nuclear testing and nuclear weapons as for four years he had been a member of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and before that, when he had been in the House, had an important role in appropriating funds for atomic development, having been named as a member of the American delegation to the conference on nuclear testing in Geneva. He was a novice at the game played by the Soviets in repeated international conferences since the end of the war.
After sitting in on that game for two weeks at the conference, however, Senator Gore had come up with a proposal which illustrated what common sense and boldness could do when applied to a seemingly insoluble diplomatic deadlock. He had flown back to Washington to talk with the President and found him receptive to the new approach, that being to propose to the Russians an agreement to end all testing, except that conducted underground, for three years. If they rejected it, the blame for the failure of the conference would then be on them. The Senator, however, believed that they would accept it.
Underground testing did not pollute the atmosphere and yet with such tests, the military would be able to continue to carry out work on adaptation of nuclear explosives to small arms. Those nations which did not have and thus did not test atomic weaponry would be assured that for a long time no additional poison would be put into the atmosphere.
With the common sense in his background, the Senator had seen the weakness of the official U.S. position at Geneva, that any agreement to end testing had to be preceded by a worldwide system of control and inspection, which the Senator viewed as an impossibility. Thus, that was merely another piece moved on the chessboard to achieve a stalemate without seeming to want a stalemate. The inspection system would cost several billion dollars and thousands of experts would have to be stationed at some 37 posts in Asia, 24 in North America, seven in Europe and many more in Australia and South America, plus on ten ships permanently at sea, and, to be really effective, the system would have to include inspection posts in Communist China.
Senator Gore believed that by constantly pushing that proposal for a permanent end to all testing with the propaganda skill they had repeatedly shown, the Russians were likely to come out of the stalemated conference with a propaganda victory. They would have convinced the neutral nations and such nations as Japan, where the fear of nuclear pollution was great, that they wanted to do something and that the U.S. was standing on an impossible demand.
The proposal of the Senator was not new. An agreement to end testing for two or three years, or perhaps longer, had repeatedly been put forward, but the Senator's timing, together with his integrity and conviction, had carried great weight as a new move to break through the old, rigid maneuvers.
Mr. Childs finds that it had been characteristic of the Senator since he had arrived in the House from the backcountry of Tennessee in 1940 at the age of 33. He played the game by the dictates of his own conscience and when the Democrats in his first year in the House had refused to grant him time to speak against a Roosevelt Administration appropriation which he thought was wrong, he had received permission from the Republicans and had made a stirring speech which resulted in defeat of his party's bill.
Because we have fallen behind, there will be no further comments on the front page or editorial page of this date, as the notes will be sporadic until we catch up.
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