The Charlotte News
Wednesday, November 25, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Berlin that Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko had made a secret flight to East Berlin, obviously to discuss with East German leaders the next Communist move in the Berlin crisis. An announcement from the East German news agency, ADN, said this date that Mr. Gromyko had discussed current political questions but had not indicated when those discussions had taken place. Mr. Gromyko and Soviet Ambassador to East Germany, M. G. Pervukhin, had conferred with East German leader Otto Grotewohl, Communist party boss Walter Ulbricht and Foreign Minister Lothar Bolz. The ADN announcement had appeared to be aimed at keeping up the Soviet nerve war on the Western allies. Mr. Gromyko's visits to East Berlin were usually heralded by formal announcements and welcoming ceremonies, but this time it had come as the U.S., Britain and France awaited a promised Soviet note on the future of Berlin. Premier Khrushchev had announced on November 10 that the Soviets intended to end unilaterally the four-power occupation agreement anent Berlin, formed at the end of World War II, and hand over their powers to the East Germans, in the process demanding that the allies withdraw from West Berlin. The three Western powers had reached agreement on a secret plan to remain in Berlin, even if the East German regime employed a blockade in an attempt to force recognition from the West of the East German government, something which the U.S. had been unwilling to do because it was not popularly elected. The French, British and American military commandants in Berlin had met during the morning to discuss the situation, the meeting having been held in the building from which the Russians and the Western allies had once run Berlin, the Russians having left that command post in 1948 just before the first Soviet blockade of West Berlin, and had never returned. Maj. General Barksdale Hamlett, U.S. commandant, said that no special agenda had been prepared and declined to remark on what had been discussed. The Western allied plan was said to be to provide for an airlift should the East Germans seek to impose controls over the 110-mile land links between West Berlin and West Germany. The three powers reportedly vetoed West German suggestions to push armed convoys through any blockade. A Soviet Embassy spokesman in East Berlin said that Mr. Gromyko had left East Berlin but had declined to say when that was. He said that an announcement on the talks could be expected later from the Soviet news agency, Tass. Mr. Gromyko presumably had briefed the East German leaders on the measures which the Russians intended to take in carrying out the plans for Berlin set forth by Mr. Khrushchev.
In Augusta, Ga., the President, as announced by White House press secretary James Hagerty this date, would confer on Sunday with Secretary of State Dulles regarding the Berlin crisis and other international problems. Mr. Hagerty said that it was not in the nature of an emergency meeting. He had said on behalf of the President the previous week that the U.S. was determined to prevent Russia from ousting the Western allies from West Berlin. Mr. Dulles was to make the stop en route to the inauguration of Mexico's new President, Adolfo Lopez Mateo.
In Taipei, Formosa, the Nationalists had taken advantage of a no-shelling day and clearing weather this date to send another supply convoy to Quemoy. Two LST's had crossed the Formosa Strait to deliver cargoes of steel rods, cement and food to the Nationalist offshore island. The Communist Chinese had made a voluntary agreement not to shell the offshore islands on even-numbered days to permit resupply of the islands.
In Juneau, it was reported that Democrats had scored a victory in the first state election since Alaska had achieved statehood, set to go into effect on January 3 at the start of the 86th Congress. As returns from the previous day's balloting came in, Democrats led in all major races and were assured of overwhelming control of the 60-member Legislature. Less than half of the estimated total vote of about 40,000 in the election had been reported, but big-city precincts, still outstanding, would, it was believed, only reinforce the steadily growing Democratic lead. Republicans still had a chance in the major contest between Democrat Ernest Gruening, former appointed territorial governor, and Republican Mike Stepovich, who had resigned during the year as territorial governor, for one of the two new Senate seats from the state. The latter was the strongest candidate for the Republicans for any major office. Current returns had Mr. Gruening leading 8,323 to 7,734. E. L. Bartlett, who had been the Territory's Democratic delegate to Congress for the previous 14 years, had captured the other Senate seat in a landslide. Ralph Rivers, the Democratic nominee for the lone House seat from Alaska, claimed victory on the basis of the mounting returns. William Egan, the Democratic nominee in the gubernatorial race, was increasing his margin, currently leading Republican John Butrovich, Jr., a veteran territorial legislator, by 1,850 votes.
In Detroit, it was reported that a Hillsdale College student had told police this date that he had beaten his roommate to death with a shotgun during a quarrel at their dorm room the previous night. The police had found the body of the roommate after the 18-year old had told them: "You'd better arrest me. I did something real bad." A police officer said that the youth had given no explanation for the quarrel during which his 21-year old roommate had been beaten to death. The roommate's body was found under a bed in the room which the two students shared. The young man who confessed was a freshman, a fourth string member of the Hillsdale College football team during the current season. His roommate was a junior who had formerly attended Adrian College where he was quarterback on their team, but had not tried out for the football squad in the current year. The college was located 100 miles southwest of Detroit.
John Kilgo of The News reports that in Charlotte, a crude attempt had been made the previous night to set fire to the auditorium at East Mecklenburg High School, but the fire had gone out on its own without much damage. The arsonist had stacked three chairs, one with a wicker seat, against the stage curtain of the auditorium, part of which had been burned along with one of the chairs. Investigators said that the arsonist had apparently placed paper in one of the chairs and set fire to it, and that the only thing which had saved the auditorium from going up in flames was that the stage curtains had been flameproof. There was no indication yet as to how the arsonist had gained entrance to the school building, though there was speculation that the person had hidden in the school after it was locked up the previous afternoon and then had departed after setting the fire. East Mecklenburg was a segregated school and neither police nor school officials could provide any motive for the attempted arson.
In Orange, Mass., Fair Weather had run away, wandering into a restaurant near the Massachusetts Turnpike, living off handouts for three days. On the fourth day, a minister had stopped to eat and fell in love with Fair, who then consented to go home with the minister and soon had become a buddy to the minister's three children. But not long afterward, Fair had wandered away and did not return, prompting the family to post an ad in the newspaper. As it turned out, Fair had wandered into the yard of a woman in another part of Orange, who took one look at Fair and called a relative, who, it turned out, happened to be the person with original interest in Fair. He then brought Fair back home with him. But the latter would not eat and appeared to be pining. So to make Fair happy, the man returned Weather to the minister and his family.
In New York, a man, who had lived
for six days with his heart plugged into an electrical socket, had
gone home this date for Thanksgiving. A tiny electrical stinger
inside his heart kept him alive, repeatedly pulling him back from the
brink of death. The 76-year old Brooklyn grandfather had been nearly
dead when he had been brought to the hospital the previous June 27,
pale and gasping for breath. Doctors described him as depressed and
unresponsive, that he did not know where he was and, at times, did
not know who he was. They diagnosed a total heart blockage, rheumatic
heart disease and artherosclerosis. On August 18, a tiny wire with a
small electrical shocking tip had been fed into a blood vessel in his
left arm. Carefully, the doctors had worked it through the blood
vessel to the heart and finally into the right ventricle, then hooked
up the wire to a machine called a pacemaker, named after the area of
the heart which regulates the heartbeat. Another machine had acted as
a kind of heart sentry, keeping a constant electrical watch on the
man's heartbeat. The instant his heart stopped beating for as long as
five seconds, an electrical beam, much like the beam of an electric
eye, was broken in the sentry machine, which then activated the
pacemaker with a short 1.5-volt shock sent to the man's heart to jolt
it back to life. At first the man had needed almost constant help
from the machine, but a few weeks earlier, had improved so much that
he could go for a considerable length of time without help. Doctors
had hooked up a 50-foot extension to his heart sentry
In London, it was reported that an English surgeon, Dr. C. L. Smith of Cambridge University, had announced that he had performed microscopic surgery on a living cell measuring only 20 by 30 billionths of a meter. Using beams of tiny alpha particles, the nuclei of helium atoms, the surgery had been performed to determine the effects of radiation on the cell, which had been taken from the embryo of a chicken egg. The operation had shown that irradiated cells did not divide properly.
But what happened to the eyeless,
boneless, chickenless egg? And which had come first?
On the editorial page, "The Weird Policy of Having No Policy" indicates that in Berlin recently, Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey had told Mayor Willy Brandt of West Berlin that Democrats "agree entirely with State Department policy on West Berlin."
It finds it a kind sentiment but questions what the State Department "policy" was. By the press reports, it judges that the Department had not arrived at any policy to counter the Kremlin's latest bluster and that neither had the NATO allies, who talked of a high-level meeting, come to terms among themselves.
The West Germans of the school of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, echoing Chiang Kai-shek in Formosa, wanted tanks and guns to burst through a blockade should the East Germans try to use one to strangle West Berlin. But the opposition party, the Social Democrats of West Germany, would not tolerate that, and nor was it likely that the British or French would run the risk of war to run a blockade in 1958. Notwithstanding the fact that Secretary of State Dulles had not stated that U.S. policy was reunification of the two German states via free elections, that "policy", as Walter Lippmann pointed out on the page this date, had become a dead horse.
Thus, the "policy" of which Senator Humphrey had spoken to Mayor Brandt was that apparently in every crisis for several years, as in almost every crisis since the previous Berlin blockade of 1948-49, the weird "policy" was to have no policy. "Our 'policy' is to bestride a crisis with a hydrogen bomb in one hand and a Dulles encyclical in the other." Vice-President Nixon, who appeared to bespeak with uncanny accuracy what Mr. Dulles happened to be thinking, had told the Pilgrims' dinner in London on Monday night: "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."
It indicates that everyone believed in what Mr. Nixon called "standing firm", but he had no monopoly on diplomatic firmness. Foreign policy had shown no signs of anything other than standing firm and there was a difference, which Mr. Dulles did not appear to recognize, between standing firm and being blind, and standing firm with an eye open to the possibilities for change.
It finds that everywhere, from Quemoy in the Formosa Strait, through the Middle East to Berlin, the idea of the U.S. was to hold a line which was bound to change, whereas a real policy would have designs for exploiting those changes were they to occur. The position of Germany at the moment, it finds, remained the chief irritant, not only between East and West but between the political wings in various allied countries. It appeared to it inevitable that something would have to be done to remove Central Europe's tensions before a trivial incident precipitated a nuclear war.
The East and West Germans, and primarily those not in sympathy with Moscow, were united regarding the necessity of some solution of German division. Mr. Lippmann observed this date that he had heard talk, not only from West German officials in Bonn, but from the Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko, regarding a dual confederation under which both East and West Germany would retain some of their autonomous characteristics within a framework of unity.
The piece concludes that perhaps such a "confederation" was the answer. "Mr. K", in his latest move, was certainly trying to force a showdown and was being true to form in overlaying his intent with a lot of obnoxious bluster, which should, nevertheless, not make the West too angry to see that changes needed to be made with respect to Germany.
Walter Lippmann finds that the most likely explanation for what the Soviet Government was up to in Berlin was to make the West Germans more willing to deal with the East Germans. The two sides of Germany were already negotiating at the technical level, as a trade agreement announced the prior Friday had reminded. The Soviet Government's policy had called for a broadening of those negotiations with a view, eventually, to a political agreement for a limited reunification of the two German states.
He indicates that when he had been in Moscow in October, he had talked with Foreign Minister Gromyko, and when the latter had gotten to the German question, he had to ask him what the Soviet view was regarding how the Germans could be reunited. Without hesitation, Mr. Gromyko had replied that it could be done only by a "confederation" in which each of the two German states could retain their own social institutions. As with Soviet Premier Khrushchev, whom Mr. Lippmann had interviewed the previous day, Mr. Gromyko had maintained that German reunification by confederation would have to be effected by negotiation between the two German states.
The advocacy in Moscow for a German confederation seemed to Mr. Lippmann very significant, given the fact that the previous March, when he had been in Bonn, West Germany, he had heard the same thing in high quarters. The State Department continued to repeat the old official formula that Germany ought be reunited by free elections in which the Communist regime would be demolished and East Germany would be absorbed into the West German state. But he doubts whether there were many responsible men in West Germany who would want Germany to be reunited in that way, even assuming that the Russians would permit it. For the two sides of Germany had developed very differently and an attempt to integrate them would presently be quite difficult, posing a heavy burden for the West Germans and creating possibly considerable resistance in East Germany. There were also other reasons why few responsible West Germans wanted to have integration in a unified state, as it would change radically the balance of religious forces and political parties.
The alternatives were either the formation of some type of dual state or the continued partition of the German nation.
He had read the news of the maneuvers by the Soviets in Berlin against that backdrop. He indicates that Mr. Khrushchev was certainly aware that there was a strong and growing sentiment in West Germany in favor of expanded negotiations with East Germany, and there was already a lot more talk between the two sides than the official policy of non-recognition contemplated. There was also no doubt that there would be yet more talk were it not for the respect and the fear in which West German Chancellor Adenauer was held.
Thus, the Soviet idea of negotiations leading to confederation was one to which the West Germans were not unreceptive. When Chancellor Adenauer, approaching 83, eventually would leave the scene, the idea would have no chance to become a live issue. Mr. Khrushchev was one who liked to ride the waves of the future.
Mr. Lippmann indicates that there was no way of telling what would be the immediate course of the maneuver in Berlin, but that it would be surprising if the Soviet Government, though it might withdraw its own forces, were not to keep the East German government under strict control. For it was committed to defend the East German government if it were attacked, making it reasonably certain that Moscow would restrain the East Germans from doing anything which might provoke an attack. There was no reason to suppose that Moscow believed that, regarding the German question, the U.S. was a "paper tiger".
He indicates that therefore he did not believe that the Soviet objective was to blockade the West and force it out of West Berlin, as the Soviets knew that would mean war. Rather, their objective was to demonstrate to the West Germans in particular that the Soviet Government had, and that the Western allies did not have, a realistic and reasonable solution to the German question.
"The Soviet idea of confederation is a horse, perhaps a poor horse, but unmistakably a horse on which a growing number in both Germanys would be willing to place their bets." But the Western idea of free elections to be followed by the integration of East Germany into the West German state was no horse at all, and one could not beat a horse with no horse. The Russians would not agree to free elections and the West Germans did not want integration. Moreover, it was probable that a very large number of East Germans, who were Socialists though not Communists, also did not want integration and would fight against it.
"Lacking a policy of our own for the unification of Germany, we have become hysterically attached to the status quo. It often looks as if we were not quite sure of the distinction between hardening of the will and hardening of the arteries."
As 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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