The Charlotte News
Monday, February 24, 1958
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that before the special House investigating subcommittee this date, a Miami attorney had denounced Dr. Bernard Schwartz, former counsel of the subcommittee, as "an unmitigated liar" for having connected the attorney with a television channel applicant and suggesting that he had provided money to FCC commissioner Richard Mack to induce the latter to vote for the ultimate recipient, a subsidiary of National Airlines. He said that Dr. Schwartz had withheld information from the subcommittee, that the latter had known that there was a long record of loan transactions between the attorney and Mr. Mack, going back five years before Mr. Mack had become a member of the Commission. Dr. Schwartz had told the subcommittee earlier that the attorney had turned over at least $2,650 to Mr. Mack, raising a question as to whether it was intended to influence his vote over the Miami television channel. Both Mr. Mack and the attorney had described the money as loans. The attorney also testified that he was employed as an attorney by National Airlines or its subsidiary, Public Service Television, Inc., eventual recipient of the channel. He contended that Dr. Schwartz had known prior to his testimony that his contentions were untrue, that it was not true that Mr. Mack was pledged in the contest for the channel, that neither he nor Mr. Mack had engaged in any pledge at any time.
Vice-President Nixon said this date that in the world struggle between freedom and slavery, "food may well prove to be a more decisive weapon than satellites." Take heed, stupid Trumpies.
In Havana, it was reported that Cuban rebels had El Presidente Fulgencio Batista Batista on a new hot spot this date with the kidnaping of Argentina's world champion auto racing driver Juan Fangio from his hotel in the heart of the city. Embarrassed police had searched frantically for the abductors of the 46-year old, five-time world titleholder, as the capital, jammed for the day's Gran Premio auto races, buzzed over the abduction. Special guards had been assigned to the 24 other internationally famed drivers present. Authorities refused to discuss the case, but rebel leader Fidel Castro was quick to claim responsibility. Friends expressed doubt that the champion was in any danger, believing that the rebels were holding him in an attempt to force cancellation of the auto races, slated to start during the afternoon, and thus give El Presidente an international black eye. The Argentine driver had been taken the previous night, just after returning to his hotel from the racing course, where he had established the fastest trial run. A stranger had walked up to him as he was talking to friends in the lobby, asked whether he was Sr. Fangio, then walked out, then returned about five minutes later with a drawn gun and stood guard in the doorway while a second man walked up to the driver, poked a gun in his ribs and marched him out, the pair then hustling the driver into an automobile where a third man waited, then sped away.
The U.S. had agreed to provide Britain with intermediate range Thor missiles and to make nuclear warheads available, under U.S. control until the time came to launch them.
In Damascus, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser had paid this date his first visit to the Syrian province of the United Arab Republic recently formed and had received a tumultuous welcome from 100,000 of his new subjects.
In Hong Kong, revenue agents announced this date the seizure of 1,065 pounds of raw opium worth about a million dollars locally, the largest dope seizure in the British colony for many years.
In Chicago, the managing editor of the Tampa Tribune this date said that there was a "very dangerous" three-fold threat to the "free institution of the American newspaper." V. M. Newton, Jr., chairman of the Freedom of Information Committee of Sigma Delta Chi, the professional journalistic fraternity, stated in a prepared address to the winter meeting of the Inland Daily Press Association: "We editors must have the steadfast support of you publishers if we, as an institution, are to overcome this threat and remain free." He said that the "arrogant attitude of Washington, 1957" was "just a step or so away from the general practice in Khrushchev's Communistic Russia." He said that there was a stifling curtain of secrecy draped over virtually all of the Federal executive government and over much of the Federal legislative and judicial government, that there was an unhealthy "hostility of attitude" among millions of Federal bureaucrats toward the free press and its obligation to report all of the facts of free government to the people, and that it would take a "super-Houdini" to navigate "the mushrooming maze of Federal bureaucracy" which at present placed a restraining finger on every phase of living of every free American citizen. He said that no records of the Federal expenditure of the billions in tax funding were open to inspection by citizens, that no audited reports of Federal expenditure of tax funds were made available to the citizen, and that both records of tax spending, while audited reports of spending were made available to the citizens of city, county and state governments.
In Florence, Italy, a court this date opened the trial of a Roman Catholic bishop and his parish priest charged with defaming a couple after their legal civil marriage. Neither the two defendants nor the plaintiff had shown up. It was the first time that a Catholic bishop had been called to trial since the Vatican and Benito Mussolini had signed the Lutheran Pact 29 years earlier. The Bishop said that his prestige and the holiness of his ministry forbade him to appear in person, and that he had also instructed the priest not to attend either. The judge said that the clerics would be tried in absentia. The plaintiff, a 32-year old grocer and wartime partisan fighter, had been too ill to appear, having suffered a stroke several months earlier. His wife, 23, had attended court with their small baby and could not get into the courtroom until police cleared the way for her. The case had been been initiated nearly two years earlier and had started a nationwide controversy over relations between church and state. The couple had been married in a civil ceremony in 1956 because the husband had broken with the church. Several weeks later, the priest being sued had read a letter in church from the bishop denouncing the couple as "public sinners" and the husband then brought defamation charges. The latter's attorneys said that their client's health had been impaired by the bishop's letter, claiming that he lost business and friends and was worried about his future. Communist and Socialist deputies in Parliament had denounced the bishop's actions as a violation of the Lateran concordat of 1929. In his letter to the judge, the bishop said that his condemnation of the couple was within his rights as a bishop. If convicted, the bishop could receive up to two years imprisonment or be fined the equivalent of about $260. The priest could receive up to three years imprisonment for making the letter public. The wife said that she had sued the bishop because civil marriage in Italy was legally binding and she could not tolerate being called her husband's concubine.
Near Newhall, Calif., an East Los Angeles boy, 14, had been shot to death and another, 13, had been wounded after being kidnaped gangland style, according to sheriff's deputies this date. The shootings had occurred the previous night in Soledad Canyon, ten miles from the town, after the boys had been dumped out of their abductors' car. Two youths, ages 18 and 20, had been arrested early this date in East Los Angeles for questioning, booked on suspicion of murder, kidnaping and attempted murder. A motorist had picked up the wounded boy on the highway late the previous night and the boy had led officers to his companion's dead body. A deputy said that he had been told that trouble had developed among a number of youths the previous afternoon at a movie theater where one of the arrested boys had been employed as an usher. The deputy said that the two kidnaped boys had been forced at gunpoint into a car and taken to the canyon, that the surviving boy had said that they were going to take them for a ride, that they had taken them for a long ride and finally stopped just off the road in the canyon, telling them to get out of the car, which they did, whereupon the two abductors had started shooting. The surviving boy said that he had only been shot in the arm but that his companion had been shot badly, that he had fallen down and he supposed they thought he was dead also. The deputy said that there had been bad blood brewing ever since a shooting in which the 18-year old arrested boy had figured on February 7. On that occasion, the latter had fired at a 17-year old boy as the latter had run from a theater after a woman's purse had been snatched, the bullet having embedded itself in a crucifix hanging from the boy's neck, the impact causing the crucifix to embed itself in the boy's chest, though he was not seriously injured. At that time, the 18-year old who had done the shooting was not held.
In Greensboro, an editorial challenge by The News on January 21 to UNC, that it was time for the University to reassert its leadership in the state and the South in a time of new turmoil, had been answered by Governor Luther Hodges. The Governor had replied in a speech before a Board of Trustees meeting at the Consolidated University, that, "Sometimes, when a lot of noise is not being made, people feel nothing is being done." The editorial had stated: "The University of North Carolina still enjoys a worldwide respect as a center of Southern enlightenment. Its reputation as a rallying point in social, economic and racial inquiry is without equal below the Mason-Dixon line. The plain fact is, however, that the University made its reputation during the turbulent Thirties at a time when much of America was stricken with a social conscience. It has not bolstered that reputation in recent years with anything resembling the noteworthy accomplishments of those earlier days of courage and candor." The editorial indicated that new leadership was necessary and that it would have to come from a young and eminently promising, but still untested, inheritor of the mantle of Frank Porter Graham, the newly installed president, William C. Friday. The editorial had been followed by comment in other newspapers in the state, including the Greensboro News and the Raleigh News & Observer. The Governor said that references had been made in certain sections of the press in recent weeks to the fact that the University needed to "rekindle its flame", that the University had always had great influence on the life and progress of the state and that he had told his people, outside the state and outside the nation, of that fact.
In Albemarle, a retired surgeon had announced that he was marking from his books all accounts owed to him. He had been named the 1956 "Man of the Year" in the town and said that he was doing the charitable act for two reasons, that many people were having short hours and were out of jobs, while others would not pay the bills even if they had the money. He estimated that the total owed to him amounted to $750,000. He said, "Just forget about them and don't worry about them anymore."
In Charlotte, quiet, skillful safe-crackers had robbed the Charlotte City Coach Co. of an estimated $4,000 the previous night, having broken into the building, knocked two padlocks from a depository box and made off with the cash with little or no noise. A night mechanic said that he had heard a noise in the building but told police that it was so minor he had paid no attention to it. The thieves had left no fingerprints behind. They had gained entrance by tearing out a screen and climbing through a window leading to the lounge, then pried open a door leading to the cashier's office where the depository box was located. They had knocked the combination off another safe in the office but failed to break it open, and had also pried open a drawer, obtaining nine dollars in change. Most of the money taken was in bills.
In Las Vegas, singer Gisele McKenzie, 31, and her personal manager, had been married early this date, after having flown from Hollywood with a small party of friends after midnight.
In Baghdad, an Iraqi woman had given birth to a girl at her home the previous week and the next day had felt unusual pains, had gone to a hospital where two days later, she gave birth to twins.
On the editorial page, "Hopeful Suspense in Higher Education" indicates that at the Woman's College of UNC at Greensboro, Gordon Williams Blackwell, one of the region's most distinguished sociologists, had been formally installed as chancellor during the afternoon. He was greeted with genuine manifestations of high esteem and high hopes, as he had demonstrated great promise as an administrator during more than seven months at the institution.
The College, as with other units of the Consolidated University, had lately been affected by the apathy of an apathetic era, with internal discord and imperfect leadership having dimmed the image of the College.
There had been a long, bitter controversy involving the previous chancellor, Dr. Edward Kidder Graham, which had done little to strengthen the institution and its vital role. Dr. Blackwell brought an experience which few in higher education had, balanced between administration and teaching, research and action, scholarship and human relations. He had first gained his experience at Furman, later at UNC in Chapel Hill, and on important projects in Washington and New York. As a graduate student and teacher at Chapel Hill, he had worked under renowned sociologist Howard Odum, succeeding the latter as director of the UNC Institute for Research and Social Sciences. As with Dr. Odum, he had helped the University conduct an objective study of the South and its problems of poverty, ignorance and race, while also teaching as a professor of sociology. It finds that his strength and leadership, together with his understanding of the role of the University in creating a better South, could mean much to Woman's College.
It finds that his installation address showed his understanding of the value of a strong liberal education for women, indicating: "The liberal arts and sciences have always been the central core of the Woman's College. This must continue to be true. Liberal education must free us from 'the immediacy and loneliness of the present.' We must continue to place stress on the humanistic and artistic values of the creative mind and the spirit in an age of technology and mass society. It is these values, fully as much as our economic system, which distinguishes us from Soviet Russia."
He also indicated that a recent study of sophomore women at Vassar College had revealed that the chief goal of almost all of them was to marry and have their 2.7 children, provoking the question as to why they went to college. He had found that the answer was that the college graduate who experienced "a truly liberal education would more likely have the maturity, the serenity, the breadth of interests, the fundamental sense of values which are required in the effective handling of the trying responsibilities of motherhood and homemaking. As responsible citizens our students will acquire the ability to discriminate between the significant and the trivial, the true and the false, the relevant and the irrelevant, the objective and the biased… In summary, we agree with Dr. [Charles Duncan] McIver that women have a unique role in the furtherance of our civilization and the transmission of our cultural heritage. In his words, 'The proper training of women is this strategic point in all culture.'"
It concludes that the University, the state and the South could look to Dr. Blackwell for resourceful and enlightened educational leadership.
"Modern Martyrs Are Awfully Clumsy" indicates that the well-publicized martyrs of the nuclear age would do their causes considerable good by reading up on the elements of tragedy. For nearly a decade, citizens had been turning up at bomb sites, proclaiming their determination to be bombarded by radiation in the interests of a non-nuclear future. But despite it, no one had died.
Four pacifists had set sail on a 30-foot ketch for the Eniwetok area where the U.S. had slated for April another round of nuclear tests, but when a Pacific storm had occurred late the previous week, they called for help from the Coast Guard and, at last report, their boat was under full sail for San Francisco. It finds it not to prove any lack of sincerity as the four might sail again to the blast site, but for seekers of martyrdom, theirs had been an "atrocious clumsiness", finding it tragic that accidental death on the seas might have befallen them while sailing toward a suicidal end amid nuclear radiation.
It indicates that suicide in a bomb test area could only make the world nervous, and it was already nervous about the known peril of radiation. To become a martyr, helplessness was an essential part of the art and pacifists who radioed for help to the Coast Guard did not qualify.
A piece from the Winston-Salem Journal, titled "'Look Homeward' on Broadway", indicates that if Thomas Wolfe had been given his choice, he might have been an actor or a playwright, as he had trained for the stage both in Chapel Hill and at Harvard, having had high hopes that one of his early plays, The Mountaineers, would be a success. He had said that it was the best play which had been written in New York that year "simply because I have burned with eagerness and desire to have the truth out."
But he had found that eagerness and desire were not enough. A Broadway producer whom Mr. Wolfe had approached on behalf of one of his plays had given him two five dollar bills as a handout. He never made the grade as a playwright, before becoming a success as a novelist. But now, the late Mr. Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel, his first novel from 1929, had hit Broadway as a play and with critical success.
Walter Kerr, writing in the New York Herald Tribune, had been struck by the "perfect, perfectly sustained tension" with which the play held the violently opposed emotions of love and fury in balance. Brooks Atkinson had said in the New York Times that the adaptation by Ketti Fring had been performed "with understanding as well as skill… The performance is magnificent."
The piece suggests that Mr. Wolfe would have experienced a thrill to see his "wordy, rambling work of autobiography reduced to manageable proportions for the stage. For he once acknowledged that a persistent fault of his was to try 'to reproduce in its entirety the full flood and fabric of a scene in life itself.'" It indicates that if he could have known the praise which the performance of Anthony Perkins as Eugene Gant had elicited, the author's massive frame would have rocked with laughter at those who had rejected his claim that he could "write better plays than most of those on Broadway."
Drew Pearson indicates that House Commerce Committee chairman Oren Harris of Arkansas, now chairing the subcommittee investigating the FCC scandals which he had sought to suppress, was "juggling a tiny spool of wire as if it were radioactive." It contained the recorded confession of FCC commissioner Richard Mack that he had accepted money, part of which he had described as "gifts, advances, or what have you", from a Miami attorney who had asked him to grant a multi-million dollar television license to a subsidiary of National Airlines. Mr. Mack had also admitted in the recording telling witnesses that he had pledged his vote to the Miami attorney, a vote which he later had cast in favor of awarding the channel to the airline. Mr. Harris did not know what to do with the evidence which House investigators had obtained by hiding a miniature wire recorder in a briefcase while they cross-examined Mr. Mack in his office on January 17.
Mr. Pearson provides highlights of the recorded conversation, in which Mr. Mack had said that he had "borrowed" the money from the attorney, but admitted that he would sometimes call up and say that he could not pay him and his generous friend would say to forget it. When asked how much had not been repaid, he said it was not a large amount, that the loans were "casual amounts", indicating that he believed he could call the attorney right then on the telephone and tell him that he needed $1,000 and that he would send it to him. Mr. Mack had stated at that point that he would not be as frank with the committee. He said that he had originally favored one of the other applicants for the television channel, but that applicant had died. He also liked another applicant. He stated his awareness that the Miami attorney was concerned about the subsidiary of National, and that he was more opposed to another applicant than being in favor of National. He said he had voted for the subsidiary of National despite the fact that he did not even like some of the people in that company, that he knew too much about them. He said he had been a credit manager in Miami for a long time. He also hinted that if called as a witness, he might implicate an unnamed Senator, that he could produce a letter from a Senator to him that he wanted a definite commitment. He also said that his dealings with the attorney had never impacted his vote on the Commission. He said that he had no records of what he owed to the attorney but offered to call him to find out. He said that most of the money had been paid back in cash. He also complained to the investigators that he had "a hard time to make a living."
Stewart Alsop asks whether the President's luck had run out after he had encountered during his vacation the worst weather in Georgia occurring in a couple of generations. He had always been lucky, a vital aspect of the political scene for many years.
There had been about the President an aura of success and triumph, a great Republican asset, the X factor which had ensured the crushing defeats of Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956. But now it had begun to fade so rapidly that it was hardly present anymore.
Just before the President had left Georgia, record unemployment figures had been announced. When he had made an optimistic statement about a coming economic upturn, the nation had yawned skeptically and the stock market had fallen. Since he had departed Washington for his vacation, a little-known Democrat had come within a small margin of taking a Minnesota Congressional seat which had been heavily Republican for as long as anyone could remember. The main issues were the recession and the Eisenhower farm policy. Congressional inquiry had suggested that the behavior of some of the Eisenhower-appointed members of the Federal regulatory agencies had been somewhat less clean than a hound's tooth.
Those were the latest in a series of problems which had plagued the President throughout the previous year, which had begun early in 1957 when former Treasury Secretary George Humphrey had hosted the President at his Georgia plantation, attacking the Administration's budget, after which the President had failed to respond vigorously. That episode had sparked the budget revolt which had disastrously eroded the President's authority in Congress. Since that time, everything had gone wrong, from Little Rock the prior September, where the President had reacted "too much and too late", to the Russian Sputnik launches on October 4 and November 4, respectively, challenging the myth of the President's infallibility regarding the nation's defense, and presently, worst of all, the threat of a serious recession.
At least in a symbolic sense, the lead paragraphs in the current issue of Time Magazine, posits Mr. Alsop, might represent a more significant political event then the Minnesota election, as Time sharply criticized the President, at least by implication, for his inattention to his duties. The President had enjoyed the most favorable press of any President in U.S. history, not excepting George Washington. The admiring press had been a major factor in his aura, in addition to his attractive personality, but especially since the Little Rock crisis, the launch of the Sputniks and the onset of the recession, the President had been far less immune to press criticism than in the past, as borne out by Time's unprecedented criticism.
Added to that was the prediction by the Democrats, seconded by many Republicans privately, that they would achieve a landslide in the midterm elections, in proportion to the 1936 FDR landslide. There was also a mounting Republican revolt within Congress against the President's policies. All of it combined to produce a real and present danger of a two-year period of headlessness, with a lame duck President lost of his aura, his authority disregarded, his leadership challenged, leaving him to serve out his remaining term in isolation and frustration.
Mr. Alsop suggests that perhaps the danger was not real and present after all, that it would not become a reality if the responsible Congressional leaders could help it. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, for example, was fully aware that Congressional government simply could not be made to work in the present times. An economic upturn, for example, or a firm reassertion by the President of his leadership at home and abroad, could transform the situation. But he wonders whether the President did not sometimes regret his decision to run again in 1956, whether he sometimes thought longingly of the happy, untroubled days he might presently be living at his farm in Gettysburg, loved and respected more even than former Presidents Thomas Jefferson at Monticello or George Washington at Mount Vernon.
While there were many different factors at work on the 1958 economy, as well as on the 1930-32 economy, not present in 2025, the above-linked February 24 Time article's recollection of the hollow words of President Hoover, that "prosperity is just around the corner", as he stated in 1930 just months after the Crash, brings to mind statements in Trump's acerbic, divisive, incoherent, unprecedentedly partisan and unpresidential "state of the union" message of 2025, in which he proclaimed much the same thing after his disastrous first six weeks in office has brought the decided upturn which was evident in the economy in 2024 to its knees, now on the verge of a recession, in the apparent hope that he can use it as a stalking-horse behind which he can blame "Biden" for everything which turns negative economically in the next four years, resonating well with his core supporters not too blessed with a memory of yesterday, let alone a couple of months ago or more, while he proceeds to steal the nation's wealth through tax breaks for his billionaire pals, many of whom populate the Administration as either Cabinet secretaries or high-level advisors and bureaucrats not subject to Senate confirmation, and dismantles the mechanisms for reporting to Congress and the public the state of the executive branch, the watchdog mechanisms in place since the late 1970's to check "fraud, waste and abuse", as he claims to be eliminating it, actually eliminating the services provided by the Federal Government under the "general welfare" clause of the Constitution and in place since the New Deal, as he tries to sell you on private corporate charity as well as having two chickens in every garage to supply your home with affordable eggs and put the poultry farmers finally out of business.
"Just bear with me," he said. "It may hurt a little bit at first." That assumes that things were in the "horrible, terrible" shape he repeatedly proclaimed, contrary to the actual facts, during the campaign. But he has to have something to "fix" in the view of his moony-eyed fans at the rallies, and so it is time to break a few things to blame on "Biden" so that they can be "fixed" by heroic Trump, and then he can say: "See, I told you so. We fixed it. Those incompetent Democrats with their wokeness and DEI only wanted to break it because they hate America First
As with Herbert Hoover, albeit a benign bumbler wedded to laissez-faire to Trump's deliberately mischievous messing interloping in the manner of an incorrigibly self-centered juvenile delinquent, his overly assiduous efforts to lend substance to his claims of coming prosperity, if we just have "a little patience", are obviously, to anyone who understands the fundamental rudiments of the macro-economy, not going to do anything except to make things a lot worse. One does not break the economy to make it stronger by throwing tariffs at allies and initiating a trade war of major proportions, promising immediate inflation, already being felt in food prices which have soared under Trump—and don't forget it, little Trumpie—with gas prices at the pump starting to follow and home energy prices also certain to rise in coming months, reverberating in turn throughout the economy as transportation costs for getting goods to their destination rise commensurately, employment layoffs having hit record numbers in February irrespective of the Government firings as companies prepare for downsizing in the gasping throes of a weak economic forecast, until we finally do have a serious recession and possibly a depression.
Then, Trump can run in the mid-terms on "give me just a little more time" to fix the Biden "mess" he supposedly inherited, the while having deliberately created a smoke-screen to hide his theft, as the Republican leadership in Congress continues to nod adoringly, smile and feign laughter as he tells his little mendacious jokes, just as they did about the supposed cut from the Government of "millions for trans-gender mice, can you imagine?" when the program in question was actually regarding trans-genic mice used in biomedical research, having nothing to do with changing gender, wokeness, DEI, male mice invading the female mice's dressing rooms at the Miss Mousiverse Beauty Pageant, or any of the other trigger-phrases which he and his obeisant sycophants are so adept at parroting to earn the cheers of the crowd eager to drive their gas-guzzling trucks, surcharged with a 25 percent tariff come April 2, off a cliff into the abyss of climate-change, where unusually fierce and uncontrollable hurricanes, floods, and forest fires occur with increasing frequency and devastation, but with more "beachfront property" to be had as a result so that more Gaza Strip Rivieras can be built for all the party stalwarts and the specially chosen party invitees to the free-speech gala open only to those who say the secret word, says the slick stereo bait-switch salesman of 42nd Street fame. "Don't worry. It may not sound so good now in this noisy store. But just wait until you get it home in your living room. Just give it a little more time and it will grow on you. Here, take this free tub while you're listening, fill it with scalding hot water, too hot to even touch, and gradually slip into it, one toe at a time, until you immerse yourself and feel nothing."
But, as they say, it is always darkest
Walter Lippmann indicates that the President's latest letter to Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin, published the previous week, had suggested what might be a way around a growing difficulty, whereby the Government was being forced by the pressure of world opinion toward a summit meeting without any genuine prospect of serious negotiation on substantive issues. Previously, the Western position had been that a summit meeting would be fine provided the foreign ministers or the ambassadors, acting under the orders of the foreign ministers, could work out agreements which could then be ratified at the summit meeting by the heads of state. The Soviet position, by contrast, had been that while nothing could be negotiated on the real issues, something might be done about control of armaments provided there was a summit meeting where an agreement would be reached to instruct the foreign ministers to do something.
The basic difference between the two sides was that the Soviets wanted to have a summit meeting for its psychological effect but not to settle great issues, while the West did not want to have a summit meeting unless and until great issues could be settled.
In one part of the President's letter, he had addressed the difference and proposed that Russia and the U.S. organize an exchange of visits by "citizens who exert an influence". There was some reason to believe that the Russians might see the need to establish more personal contact among men at the top and there were signs that, combined with the determination not to negotiate on the real issues and the Russians' obvious interest in propaganda appeal, there was also a genuine desire to emerge from their isolation and know more of the outside world. Mr. Lippmann indicates that it would not surprise him to hear that what the President had to say on that point might be his response to intimidation which he had encountered from Moscow.
He finds it a good idea as there had been considerable danger that the U.S. might be painting itself into a corner, having made so much of the argument that a summit meeting could not be held unless there were adequate and successful preparation that it had begun to look as if the U.S. might nevertheless go to such a meeting without adequate and successful preparation. That would be very dangerous in that the world would assume that the President's attendance of such a summit was only because Secretary of State Dulles had decided that the meeting would be successful. If it were not successful, the blame would rest on the U.S.
The new suggestion by the President could be used to avoid that dilemma and to say that before the U.S. would put on a big show at a summit meeting, meetings of other influential persons should first take place as negotiators, advisors, politicians, to determine what should happen at a summit meeting.
A letter writer from Rock Hill, S.C., finds Julian Scheer's story of Harry Golden on the editorial page of February 20, heartwarming and excellent reporting, showing that it was no wonder that the News was perennially awarded prizes for its top-notch journalism. He finds that Mr. Scheer's ability and deftness with words made him the best-liked writer in the area.
A letter writer indicates that he had read with considerable misgivings that James "Catfish" Cole would call his Klan public meetings and cross-burnings interdenominational or non-denominational religious services, indicating that the public was protected from untrained, unskilled and unscrupulous men in most vocations or professions except for religious advisors. He finds it a shame that a man who was trained as a carnival barker and patent medicine peddler, with a long police record, could, with impunity, hold the title "Reverend". He finds him interdenominational in the sense that the Klan had attacked Catholics, Jews and blacks, the latter most likely representing Protestants. He was non-denominational in the sense that no denomination would claim him. "One's soul must hunger for wisdom if he seeks spiritual guidance from such a source."
A letter from Robert F. Williams of Monroe, the Union County representative of the NAACP, indicates that the Klan dared again to raise its "ugly head" in that county. He finds the county to be a Klan paradise because of the "weak-kneed, spineless law enforcement officers", whereas officers in other counties had publicly let it be known that Klansmen were not welcome. "The Klan is up to no good. It never was. A meeting in a church does not make it any more Christ-like. This organization of rats has never been humane enough to face its opponents the way men who walk upright should…"
A pome appears from the Atlanta Journal, "In Praise Of People Of Superior Intelligence:
"Though their heads be round or
flat,
They're the tops, and that is that."
But if their heads be pointy capped,
No brain may be inferred beyond a
cat's.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.