The Charlotte News
Saturday, November 8, 1958
ONE EDITORIAL
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from London that public anger had mounted in Britain this date over the killing of British civilians on Cyprus. Demands for tougher measures against terrorists there who had struck with deadly regularity against ten British civilians in six weeks, had come from all sides. Some members of the ruling Conservative Party had pressed Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd for stern action. Conservative Robert Speir would request in Commons the following Wednesday appointment of a military governor for Cyprus. Support for the appointment of Field Marshall Sir Gerald Templar as military governor on Cyprus was reported to be growing in some parliamentary circles. The latter was the former chief of Britain's imperial general staff and had successes against jungle terrorists during his tenure as British commander in Malaya six years earlier. The present governor of Cyprus was a civilian, Sir Hugh Foot. The slaying of a 34-year old man in Cyprus the previous day, just 48 hours after a similar killing of a British banking official, had focused attention on Cyprus terrorism. The Conservative Daily Telegraph said: "Government in Cyprus cannot be maintained at all unless immediate drastic and effective measures are taken against the murder of civilians." It said "present leadership on Cyprus, both civilian and military, is being called in question." It accused Archbishop Makarios, exiled Greek Cypriot leader, of being the "author of these murders." It also accused the Greek Orthodox Church of wrecking attempts by NATO to settle the dispute between Greek and Turkish Cypriots on the future of the island, presently a British possession. The Daily Express said that "the killers believe that if they keep up their campaign of senseless murder long enough, Britain's nerve will crack. Britain must at last get tough."
In Bonn, West Germany, informants said this date that West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer might try to talk the Greeks out of placing the Cyprus dispute before the U.N.
In London, the director of atomic energy research in Britain had left this date by air for the Soviet Union as a week-long guest of the Russian Academy of Science.
In Brussels, Belgium, the six countries of the European Atom Pool this date signed an agreement with the U.S. for building a series of atomic reactors totaling one million kilowatt capacity during the ensuing five years.
In Tehran, Iran this date rejected a Russian charge that it was becoming involved in American war plans.
At Cape Canaveral, Fla., the Air Force had launched its third moon rocket early this date but failed to get it into outer space when its third stage had misfired. It had risen only about 1,000 miles, just a fraction of the 220,000-mile distance to the moon. The 52-ton rocket had taken off in perfect form in the wee hours of the morning, and ten minutes later, the Air Force had reported that all three main stages had fired. But within a few minutes, a radio test showed that the third stage had failed to ignite. In Washington, a spokesman for NASA said, "At this time we don't know why the third stage did not fire." NASA scientists studied data obtained from tracking stations and announced about two hours after the launch that the rocket had reached an altitude of about 1,000 miles before falling back into the earth's atmosphere. The Agency said that it had entered the atmosphere over east-central Africa, about 7,500 miles from Cape Canaveral, and had burned up from air friction. Two more lunar probes had been authorized, both as Army projects. The initial Army attempts could occur in the first week of December, although there had been no official announcement of that schedule. A possible portent of trouble for the Air Force moon rocket, dubbed Pioneer II, had come when its planned firing early on Friday was postponed for 25 hours because of technical trouble. The first Air Force attempt had fizzled on August 17 when the rocket had blown up after 77 seconds of flight. But on October 11, a second 88-foot rocket had traveled about 90,850 miles toward the moon before falling back into the atmosphere and burning up from friction. Scientists had hoped to get this date's rocket to within 50,000 miles of the moon and possibly into an orbit around it, but the chances of Pioneer II being a success had been rated in advance at less than one in ten. In its announcement, NASA said that Pioneer II reached an estimated maximum speed of about 16,000 mph, well below the 23,900 miles per hour which scientists said was needed to send a rocket to the region of the moon.
Also at the Cape, it was reported that a Snark intercontinental guided missile, recovered from an earlier flight, had been fired again by a military crew and had again flown across the Atlantic this date.
In Washington, Representative Brooks Hays of Arkansas said that Governor Orval Faubus had played a big role in his defeat on Tuesday by a write-in candidate espousing segregation. Mr. Hays, who described himself as a moderate on racial issues, had lost by 1,200 votes to Dr. Dale Alford of Little Rock, who had entered the campaign as an independent just a week before the election. Mr. Hays said on Friday that the Governor had supported his opponent after agreeing the previous June to stay out of the race and making what Mr. Hays said was a written pledge to support Democratic Party nominees in the general election. The Governor was reported to be en route to Florida and unavailable for comment regarding the remarks of Mr. Hays. The latter had served 16 years in the House and said at a press conference that he did not know just what the Governor had done in the campaign, but found that in the district it had not been disputed "by friend or foe" that he was for his opponent.
In Charlotte, James Cole, Klan leader and unsuccessful South Carolina write-in candidate for governor, had dropped into town this date and released some ambitious plans. He held a business meeting with the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan the previous night in Charlotte and reported that the group was "growing by leaps and bounds". But he said that his biggest project was to provide help for the five Atlanta men indicted in the dynamiting of the Jewish synagogue there the previous month. He said that he would appear on the courthouse steps in Atlanta on Wednesday night and "try to raise money for their defense. I think these boys are innocent and will make a plea for funds to help in their legal defense. I have every reason to believe they are innocent, were falsely arrested, falsely indicted and, unless something is done, they will be falsely convicted." He said that he would be merely "an independent observer" at the Atlanta meeting, not appearing as a leader of the Klan. He said that his activities throughout the South had not slowed down, that he was scheduled for an appearance the following Friday night in Jacksonville, Fla., and at a Klan rally at West Palm Beach on Saturday night.
In Los Angeles, it was reported that Harry (Tim) Moore, 70, who had played the "Kingfish" on the "Amos 'n' Andy" radio and television shows, was in the hospital for diagnosis of a serious, undisclosed illness. He would die on December 13 of pulmonary tuberculosis.
In Lincoln, Neb., Caril Ann Fugate, 15, was expected to testify starting the following Monday in her own defense, claiming that she had not been a willing accomplice of her boyfriend, Charles Starkweather, 19, who had been convicted the prior May of the first-degree murder of 17-year old Robert Jensen and sentenced to death in the electric chair. He had already testified in the case for the State, providing testimony that Caril had acted willingly in accompanying him and assisting in some of the ten killings which had taken place in late January. She was being tried as an aider and abettor only in Mr. Jensen's murder. The prosecution contended that she had, herself, stated to law enforcement that she had held a shotgun on Mr. Jensen and his girlfriend, 16-year old Carol King, as they were driving at the direction of Charles after Mr. Jensen had picked up the couple hitchhiking on the side of the road, eventually being directed to an abandoned storm cellar, where the evidence showed that Mr. Starkweather had killed both Mr. Jensen and Ms. King. Late the previous day, Ms. Fugate's defense counsel had made a motion for a mistrial because Charles would not respond to all of the questions posed by the defense on cross-examination. The court denied the motion on the basis that defense counsel had not sought an order from the court directing Mr. Starkweather to answer the questions, which pertained to the murders of a service station attendant in Lincoln on December 1 and of a traveling salesman killed by the side of the road in his car near Douglas, Wyo., on January 29, the last of the murders, after which Caril had surrendered voluntarily to a deputy who happened onto the scene and shortly afterward, following a high-speed car chase, Charles had given up after being wounded on his ear by flying glass from the shot-out rear window of the stolen car he was driving. The prosecution had presented evidence on both of those murders during direct. Caril was contending that she was a hostage of Mr. Starkweather, forced to do as he directed her on threat that her mother, stepfather and baby half-sister, supposedly being held by a third-party, would be killed if she refused. The prosecution had produced evidence, however, showing that she had known of the deaths of her three family members before she and Charles had left the family home on January 27. It was after that point that the string of seven other murders had begun, a farmer whom Charles knew in Bennet, Neb., the young couple also in Bennet, a well-to-do couple and their deaf maid in Lincoln, and the salesman near Douglas, Wyo. The defense had elicited from him admissions that he had provided to law enforcement statements which conflicted, and that he had lied.
Who knows? Perhaps Hoss, now holding the moniker "Hognose" Hughes
On the editorial page, Marquis Childs quotes a Soviet citizen he had encountered in Kiev the previous summer during his visit in Russia: "You will admit, of course, that your country is run by the Rockefellers, the Mellons and the Fords." The person had been so indoctrinated with the official propaganda that it had been little use arguing with him that, politically speaking, nothing could have been further from the truth. In the naïve propaganda from Moscow, Nelson Rockefeller's victory in the gubernatorial race in New York over incumbent Governor Averell Harriman was being hailed as another piece of evidence of the rule of big money in America.
He indicates that unlike other men of great riches, however, who had tried to play a part in American political life, Mr. Rockefeller had found broad appeal to moderates and liberals, that of a friendly, likable person who was assuming in his campaign that under the rules of fair play, the golden spoon to which he was born would not be held against him. At the same time, he was demonstrating that a rich man could do it the hard way by getting into the thick of the political fray. Others in his income bracket were following the old course of trying to buy their way through contributing, as Vice-President Nixon had pointed out at the start of the campaign, to the hate peddlers only too eager to promise that the good old days of William McKinley could be restored—those lying, little demagogues in the vein of Trump.
In Oregon, a less conspicuous victory of that state's Secretary of State, Mark Hatfield, who had defeated an old-line Republican candidate in the Republican gubernatorial primary and had gone on to win a friendly-handshaking campaign. In a once-Republican state in which the Democrats had captured virtually every office, the former professor of political science had used a new approach and technique, rather than resorting to buying billboards and television time. Mr. Childs indicates that he would bear watching, that if the Republican Party had a future, it lay in realists such as the new Governor-elect.
An exception to the liberal-moderate tack was Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, who had won re-election through a down-with-Reuther campaign, but the roles of the two parties in that state were the reverse of what they were almost everywhere else. Senator Goldwater had set out to create the image of the ardent crusader, even though his words were those of reaction. In the new Senate in January, Senator Goldwater would be a lonely figure. The extreme right had already lost Senators Joseph McCarthy and Herman Welker, the latter of Idaho, and in announcing his retirement, Senator William Jenner of Indiana had forecast the handwriting on the wall, failing by a wide margin to put over his hand-picked successor, Governor Harold Handley.
In the Democratic sweep, the right wing had lost Senator John W. Bricker of Ohio and Senator George Malone of Nevada, and Senator William Knowland of California, on whom they could usually count, had gone down to a foreordained defeat to State Attorney General Pat Brown in the gubernatorial election. In Wyoming, the right had lost Senator Frank Barrett, who had almost always voted on the conservative side.
Presumably, the leader of the greatly shrunken Republican Party in the new Senate would be Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois. His would be far from an easy task during the last two years of the term of a President Eisenhower, who had just been effectively repudiated by the voters.
But if Senator Dirksen was bound to have troubles with his sad minority, so would Majority Leader Senator Lyndon Johnson with his greatly swollen majority. He believed in a place for everyone and that everyone had a place, but would have to cope with eager beavers taking new confidence from the liberal-labor sweep in the midterms.
"Altogether it promises to be an extremely interesting two years. And if a Rockefeller should emerge as the Republican candidate for president, no one should be in the least surprised."
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.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.