The Charlotte News
Thursday, May 15, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports that Vice-President Nixon had returned
The Army said this date that eight planeloads of paratroopers returning from a quick trip to Puerto Rico, sent there at the order of the President in case they had been needed in Venezuela to protect the Vice-President, would parachute down upon reaching their home base at Fort Campbell, Ky., during the afternoon.
Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon had announced this date that he would open the following day an investigation to determine if Federal agencies were "ignorant or knowingly undertaking a gamble" in approving the Vice-President's Latin American tour.
In Beirut, Lebanon, it was reported that the capital had been shaken again this date by explosions, sniping from atop buildings and battles between police and anti-Government rioters. Seven bombs had exploded during the night, but calm generally had prevailed until mid-morning this date, at which point rioters had surged through the streets in demonstrations against the pro-Western Government of President Camille Chamoun. An explosion had rocked the Place De Canon in the heart of the business district and several persons had been killed. Police quickly cordoned off the area and rounded up more than 100 people. Snipers on the roofs of buildings had fired at people in the streets and bands of demonstrators had fought to disrupt normal life in the city. The U.S. was flying anti-riot weapons to Lebanon, where disturbances had been underway for the prior six days. A general strike which had earlier choked off normal business activities in Beirut had lost momentum. Two persons had been reported killed and six wounded at Leado, near Beirut.
In Moscow, it was reported that the Soviet Union this date had launched its third and largest Sputnik, an 11.9-foot cone weighing nearly a ton and a half. A special Tass Soviet news agency announcement said that the new satellite, fired in connection with the Soviet International Geophysical Year program, was jammed with instruments for probing the secrets of outer space. It reported that the Sputnik was orbiting normally at the rate of one orbit per 106 minutes and reaching a minimum altitude of 1,168 miles. The exact weight was reported as 2,919.53 pounds or more than double the 1,120-pound weight of Sputnik II, launched the prior November 4. The new Sputnik joined three American satellites circling the earth in outer space, the largest of them weighing 30.8 pounds. Russia's two earlier satellites had re-entered the earth's lower atmosphere and burned up. The announcement said that the satellite had entered its orbit at an angle of 65 degrees to the equatorial plane, indicating that it would cover almost the entire inhabited part of the earth from close to the Arctic Circle to just above the Antarctic. The announcement also said that the rocket which had lifted the satellite had jettisoned and gone into orbit close behind. The satellite was described as 5 feet, 7 inches wide at its base and 11 feet, 9 inches high. That would make it large enough to be seen from earth with the naked eye under proper lighting conditions. In Cambridge, Mass, scientists said that the satellite ought have a life of about six months. Sputnik III might be visible in many parts of the U.S. in the evening twilight this night, according to the director of the Smithsonian Observatory at Cambridge.
Also in Moscow, it was reported that Premier Nikita Khrushchev, in the wake of the giant third Sputnik launched this date, had told the West that it must now come to terms with the Soviet Union.
At Cape Canaveral, Fla., a lightning fast missile, reportedly a secret of the Air Force, the Bull Goose guided decoy weapon, had been fired from the test center this date.
In Paris, General Charles de Gaulle said this date that he was ready to serve France if called upon but did not state his conditions. In the past, he had always demanded a free hand.
In London, it was reported via Peiping Radio that Communist China had accused the U.S. this date of supplying Indonesian rebel forces with a "continuous stream of arms" and said that such intervention threatened world peace.
In Tokyo, some 6,000 leftist-led Japanese students had zigzagged past the American and British Embassies this date, shouting "stop nuclear tests". Heavy lines of police had prevented the demonstrators from getting close to the embassies and no incidents had been reported.
The Civil Rights Commission was set to begin operation this date, following Senate confirmation of its staff director, Gordon Tiffany, former New Hampshire Attorney General, who had been confirmed over the opposition of 13 Southern Democrats the previous day.
In Montgomery, Ala., a $100,000 lawsuit, charging violation of Alabama's right-to-work law, had been filed this date against a local union, two union officials, and an affiliated AFL-CIO group. A man who lived in Montgomery contended that the defendants had conspired to have him fired from his job with a Montgomery plumbing and heating company the prior June.
In Little Rock, Ark., a 12-year old boy, quiet and polite, as described by nearly everyone, had chased his piano teacher, 64, from her home the previous day and plunged a knife into her. She was dead on arrival at the Little Rock Hospital. The boy had been taking piano lessons from her for four years. He had stabbed her 19 times with a hunting knife which he wore on a scabbard on his belt. The police had received conflicting stories, the boy indicating initially that the teacher had gotten mad and hit him because he made mistakes, then saying that she had not hit him, later indicating that he was not sure what had happened. No one else had been in the house at the time. Neighbors said that they had heard the woman scream and saw her running from the house with the boy chasing her. One neighbor shouted for him to stop, and the boy looked up, then plunged the knife into the piano teacher. He then had gone into the house to get his music sheets and had run home to tell his parents what he had done. The boy was adopted when he was four months old. He had won several talent contests with his singing and piano playing.
In Monroe, N.C., a 16-year old boy had confessed to the slaying of a storekeeper in Monroe on March 21, according to the Monroe police chief this date. The boy had admitted the shooting after being confronted with "certain evidence", according to the chief. The boy had been under police guard in Union County Hospital since April 23, when he had been shot while burglarizing a store. The man who had been killed had been shot when he had discovered an intruder at his store. The boy was jailed after being released from the hospital the prior Monday. The owner of the store who had wounded him said that the boy was carrying a big knife when he was spotted in the store at night, and that the store owner could have injured him far worse, but chose only to disable him long enough so that he could call the police. The boy was presently charged with first-degree murder. He confessed late the previous day to the police chief and to an SBI agent regarding the killing of the store owner with a .32 caliber pistol.
In Davidson, N.C., David Grier Martin, treasurer of Davidson College, was named its president during the afternoon, following an all-day meeting of the trustees, selected to succeed Dr. John Cunningham. He would be the first of 13 previous presidents of the institution who was not either a clergyman or a professional educator. He had been the treasurer since 1951, following a distinguished career as a businessman, and had become known as a capable administrator and successful fundraiser. A native of Covington, Ga., he had graduated cum laude from Davidson in 1932. From 1933 to 1936, he had served as alumni secretary and publicity director of the College, and from 1936 to 1940, had been manager of the heating equipment department of Campbell Coal Co. in Atlanta. In 1940, he became a partner and sales manager of Grey Hosiery Mill in Bristol, Va., from which he had departed in 1951 to return to Davidson. He had served as a Navy lieutenant during World War II. Both he and his wife had been extremely popular with students and faculty and he had been the popular choice in pre-appointment speculation regarding the presidency of the institution. Since its founding on March 1, 1837, the Presbyterian school had gained distinction as one of the nation's foremost small, private liberal arts schools. When Davidson had opened its doors, it had only 65 students and three faculty members, including the president, and now had 65 faculty members, 860 students and a general and scholarship endowment of $8,579,000. Mr. Martin, during his college days, had been a star athlete, top scholar and campus leader, having been the editor of the student newspaper, The Davidsonian, director of the YMCA cabinet, captain of the Reserve Officers Training Corps unit, an assistant instructor in history, and varsity basketball and track star. He had been elected to Omicron Delta Kappa national leadership fraternity and had been a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon social fraternity. He had also undertaken graduate work at Emory University in Atlanta between 1932 and 1933 and had graduated "with high distinction" from the Harvard Business School war adjustment course in 1944. He had always remained active in affairs of the Presbyterian Church, serving as deacon of the First Presbyterian Church in Bristol, Tenn., and was presently a deacon of the Davidson Presbyterian Church.
Julian Scheer of The News tells of the editor of the Davidsonian, Laurens Walker, having prepared the previous night a special edition of the campus newspaper, with the headline reading, "It's Martin", for a special extra edition during the afternoon, reflecting the confidence which Mr. Walker had, along with other students and faculty members, that Mr. Martin would become the new president. There were only expressions of pleasure in every part of the campus after the selection was made known. Mr. Martin was known as a "straight shooter", a "man of conviction", a "man with his own darned ideas of how to do things", and a "man who'll be his own master". He was quiet, easy-going and had a reputation as a solid business executive with a strong leaning toward academics, and as a persuasive money-raiser. He liked Davidson pretty much as it was at present and would probably hold the size of the institution to about 1,000 students. He was one of those who had helped push grants and donations to high figures and had helped whip the college's vast building program into shape. One faculty member said that he would run things well and leave the academics to the dean of the faculty, just as most faculty members thought it ought to be. He had a son who was a senior at Davidson, a member of the basketball team and a Phi Beta Kappa student, who would soon start a six-month hitch in the Army and then would attend Duke as a graduate student in history. Another son, also a good scholar, was in high school and was also one of the county's top athletes during the current year. He had turned down a Morehead Scholarship to UNC to follow his father and brother to Davidson.
On the editorial page, "U.S.
Saber Rattling Will Solve Nothing" indicates that in South
America, would-be builders
But the Communist world was also encountering severe political weather in its attempts to maintain unity and agreement among the puppet satellites. Premier Nikita Khrushchev apparently was having trouble with his Stalinist enemies at home, and Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia was once again preaching the heresy of national communism. Moscow's attempts to silence Tito had sent a shiver through the uncommitted nations, causing India's Prime Minister Nehru, for instance, to complain about dictation from the Communists.
It finds that, nevertheless, there could be no comfort in Communist quarrels over how to govern, for free nations which lacked either the capacity to govern at all, as in the case of France, or to act with poise and maturity, as in Washington.
Vice-President Nixon had marched with bravery into the apparent Communist conspiracy in South America to harm or even assassinate him, and while all Americans would feel sympathy for the Nixons and strong resentment over the indignities which they had suffered and, through them, which the U.S. had suffered, it was necessary to remember that the "good will" mission had reawakened the memories of U.S. saber-rattling and gunboat diplomacy which good will missions were designed to quiet. It was pertinent to ask why U.S. intelligence had not detected the propaganda plot before Mr. Nixon had begun his tour. At least, a most inauspicious time had been chosen for that tour.
The President had been confronted with the choice of permitting the Vice-President to continue the tour under the shadow of the U.S. saber or to call him home, a distasteful choice because both alternatives smacked of failure of the tour. But the action which the President had taken had left little hope that any "good will" could be salvaged from the tour. The mobs who had attacked the Nixons were not representative of their countries, but all Latin Americans were allied in their abhorrence of North American saber-rattling.
It posits that through no fault of his own, Mr. Nixon's tour had not only laid bare an appalling lack of good will for the U.S. in South America, but had worsened the situation considerably. It finds no quick and easy solutions to promote harmony against the erosion by communism, that the U.S. could not infuse into the French the determination to get their affairs in order, nor psychoanalyze the frustrated and gullible youth in Peru and Venezuela. But the nation could refrain from a self-defeating exercise in bravado and could remember that nothing would please the Kremlin more than for the U.S. to wash its hands of all the "ungrateful" allies.
It suggests that perhaps never before in so short a period of time had the peril and pain of leadership of the free world been borne by the American consciousness, but at the same time, the greater peril and pain of not leading or of leading poorly was even clearer. "For the events in all these trouble spots will hardly fail to encourage the Kremlin in its dreams of world domination."
Pardon us for being perhaps unduly suspicious of Mr. Nixon, but given what we know subsequently of his dirty tricks and dirty tricksters whom he constantly had around him as President, we cannot help but suggest that there was the alternative explanation for the riots which had greeted him in Peru and Venezuela, that being operatives, CIA or more informally organized, deliberately infiltrating within the various political groups in Lima and Caracas to create moderate trouble, without going too far and actually harming the Vice-President, so as to promote his political stock for the 1960 election, in the hope that his triumphant return would have lasting impact and overshadow the far more impressive war record, for instance, of Senator John F. Kennedy, thought to be one of the most likely to capture the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960. Mr. Nixon always thought ahead politically and always with a devious streak, which ultimately proved his undoing. Or, perhaps it was not at his direction but had been fomented for him to the same end. With the police standing by idle by the reports and the crowd having penetrated the bullet-proof glass of the limousine in which the Vice-President and his wife were riding, had the crowd wanted to harm him, they could have in Caracas, and in Lima, he had actually confronted at least one of the demonstrators face to face, as captured by a Life photographer. It appeared designed for photographic appeal for later use in his campaign. Perhaps that was not the case and things were as they ostensibly appeared in the trouble he had in Lima and in Caracas. But once a politician goes down that route of dirty tricks, all things previous and subsequent become highly suspect.
Mr. Nixon was always seeking to divide and conquer, his paths to victory in both his initial House race in 1946 and in his Senate race in 1950. He continued to do so in each of his subsequent campaigns for the presidency, more so in 1972 than in 1960 or 1968. He was never satisfied with merely the trappings of power, but wanted absolute power.
The present occupant of the White House, having been shepherded previously by some of Mr. Nixon's shepherds, Roy Cohn and Roger Stone, to name a couple, has followed his playbook in spades. We continue to believe that he will, ultimately, reach the same end politically as Mr. Nixon. His luck is running out. There is a price to be paid by surrounding oneself with political incompetents, amateurish lackeys of the type proliferating in his second Administration, and that is that their incompetence will ultimately erode the Leader's power by seeking so hard to divide and conquer to consolidate his weak power, save with the MAGA base of about 30 percent of the country, that they alienate the broad mass of people in the country irretrievably, to the point where the bulk of the country will no longer listen to him or follow him, at which point he is dead politically. We are nearly at that juncture. The present crowd has grossly miscalculated the support for His Highness by viewing him through their own sycophantic lenses all rosy in color, failing to recognize that the broad majority of the country do not see him as any grand savior of the republic, but rather as a considerable threat to democracy, his spare plurality having been achieved in the last election largely through systematic manipulation of the gullible regarding the economy, accomplished through Fox Prop and the like. Such brainwashing in heat wears off quickly when the facts show him not only not improving the economy but considerably crippling it, and seeking now, with his Big, Beautiful Bomb, to cripple it further. The Fascist tactics in the streets also have not helped his cause.
Even Mr. Nixon, with a few notable exceptions, had some sense of decorum and verbal restraint in public.
"Those Who Wait Are Disappointed, Too" quotes a modern jingle: "Everything comes to him who waits/ If he waits in a place that's meet,/ But never wait for an uptown car/ On the downtown side of the street." It indicates that between stonings in South America, the Vice-President had paused long enough recently to declare that it was "no crime" to aspire to the White House but that "those who seek the presidency seldom win it."
It suggests that the Vice-President, as usual, was having his little joke at the expense of those who took his exercises in political semantics seriously. Since only one person at a time could occupy the Presidency, it supposes that it was true that the "seekers" seldom won the office, as only one "seeker" was chosen, while all the rest were necessarily disappointed. But if he meant that he would not seek the presidency in 1960, then he had been wasting the time of every Republican in the country, from ward-heeler to national chairman, for roughly the previous six years.
"All sorts of things come to him who waits—except election as president of the United States."
"Prosperity: Just Add Salt and Serve" indicates that Americans were being asked by Latin American coffee companies to use 12 more beans per cup to assure the stability of the companies, that if 112 million Americans drank 85 billion cups of coffee at home per year, by adding the 12 extra beans, it was estimated that coffee consumption would be increased by more than 600 million pounds per year, such that everyone in Latin America would be happy and prosperous and no one would think of spitting on a U.S. Vice-President ever again.
It indicates that everyone in North Carolina would be happier and more prosperous if everybody else smoked an extra pack of cigarettes per week, bought another chair for their living room and invested a little more lavishly in textile products for their home. The possible effect on the North Carolina economy staggered the imagination, perhaps as wonderful as what the economists had once said would be the effect if each Chinese added an inch to the tail of his shirt.
A piece from the Manchester Guardian, titled "Do It Yourself, Indeed!" indicates that the do-it-yourself craze among scientifically minded American teenagers, which had already produced a rash of rockets and guided missiles capable of soaring several thousand feet up, looked as if it would continue to cause bad headaches in the Defense Department and at the FBI. In the current issue of a popular American electronics magazine, an advertisement had appeared which stated: "Build your own A-Bomb: Correspondence course covering Atomic Fission and Fusion Bombs and Reactors." It could be had for four dollars per lesson.
It suggests that perhaps the advertiser was being somewhat overambitious as, even in America, the uranium and the millions of dollars necessary to make such a bomb had to be fairly hard to obtain. Probably it would be a few years yet before there would be nuclear-armed gangs flaunting their ultimate deterrence on street corners.
Still, there were plenty of other attractions in the same magazines, one advertisement inviting the respondent to be a spy through a correspondence course on wiretapping, bugging, telescopic sound pickup, recording techniques, and micro-photography, with lessons in surveillance and tailing. Another advertised an "Electronic Hypnotizer. Simplifies the art of hypnosis. Wired and tested $29.50."
It wonders how they tested the device, suggesting that they might get a batch of new hypnotizers lined up on a stage facing an audience of tried and trusted hypnotizees, most of whom would be middle-aged housewives who came along regularly to earn pin money, and suddenly the first hypnotizer was switched on and the ladies would drop their knitting and crosswords, chatter would subside, and they would go into their first trance of the morning. But it wonders whether the machine could make them dance in a wild, abandoned way or make them lie between two chairs as stiff as boards while the manufacturers stuck pins in them. "Or does it merely send them to sleep? It would be nice to know."
Drew Pearson, in Europe reporting on progress which the Soviets might have made among the NATO allies, has his column this date written by his associate, Jack Anderson, who indicates that Premier Nikita Khrushchev was driving his scientists to launch a man into space and to shoot a rocket to the moon as propaganda stunts to convince the world that Russia was still ahead in the space race, at least according to the technological spies whose electronic devices had superseded cloak-and-dagger methods for finding out what was going on behind the Iron Curtain.
Their modern methods had produced the evidence that Russia had already failed in two attempts to launch a man into space in the nose cone of a giant missile and that, as recently as the third week of April, the Soviets had also failed to launch a moon rocket. They had successfully launched two more intercontinental missiles, however, during the previous few weeks, which had gone over Siberia from the Caspian Sea to the Kamchatka Peninsula, having been tracked by U.S. radar as the nose cones re-entered the earth's atmosphere without burning up, and then either landed on the peninsula or plunged into the Bering Sea less than 1,500 miles from Alaska.
The technical experts expected that Russia would again attempt soon to astonish the world in a feat more spectacular than Sputnik, believing that Mr. Khrushchev wanted to shoot a man into orbit and then bring him back alive in a sealed capsule parachuted from outer space, and that he intended to beat the U.S. to the moon with the first rocket.
The first missiles of the U.S. bound for the moon would not be ready until August, when both the Army and Air Force would attempt to shoot small, camera-carrying satellites around the moon. The launches would be scheduled at a time when the moon was between the earth and the sun, such that the sun would illuminate the back side of the moon which scientists hoped to photograph. The Air Force also hoped to boomerang the moon in September and October with more complex satellites. If present plans worked out, the October attempt might carry a television camera. Meanwhile, special observation stations would be built in Hawaii and England for the moon shots.
Mr. Anderson concludes that 1958 might go down in history as another 1492. Think again…
Walter Lippmann tells of the latest Soviet note, which had arrived on Sunday, appearing to show that Premier Nikita Khrushchev had not missed the points of the NATO communiqué, published May 7, that for the time being, at least, there was no compelling demand on either side for a summit meeting, but that on both sides, there was a compelling interest not to have negotiations discontinued. For them to continue, Mr. Khrushchev had agreed to the original proposal of the President, adopted at the NATO meeting in Copenhagen, calling for expert studies of the means to "detect nuclear explosions".
He indicates that if past experience was a guide to the future, that concession by the Soviets would once again pose the question which haunted Western diplomacy, whether to raise the ante and press for more concessions or play for a little and limited agreement. There were powerful arguments both for and against the latter, and in the discussion which the Soviet note would open, those arguments would call for a number of important decisions. The biggest of the arguments would turn on the issue of a policy of pressure versus a policy of relaxation. There were those who believed that the Communist order in Russia and in China would change its fundamental international character only if it was encircled and subjected to mounting pressure of military power and economic non-intercourse. But there were those who believed that the policy of encirclement and near-boycott, while impotent against the authority of the central governments, was of great support to them in regimenting their peoples and compelling them to accept the sacrifices of the totalitarian systems.
When those two points of view were argued, those who believed in the policy of pressure were likely to say that the other side was gullible and pacifist, and those who believed in a policy of relaxation were likely to say, or suspect, that the others regarded war as inevitable, and preventive war as conceivable. Both were extremist viewpoints and the real question was, on the assumption that a balance of power was maintained, which was the wiser political policy, to exact maximum pressure while maintaining high tension in the world, or to moderate the pressure to encourage those on both sides to believe that there would be no war. Those questions were difficult on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
He finds that therefore it was careless and untrue to suppose that the policy of relaxation was a Soviet device calculated to divide and disarm the West, while the Soviets and Communist Chinese advanced to domination of the world. The truth was that the policy of relaxation was feared by many leaders on both sides, feared in the West on the ground that it would diminish the support of NATO and encourage the democracies to follow their natural bent, toward isolationism, and was feared on the other side for essentially the same reason, that with peace on the horizon, it would be necessary to relax the internal pressure of the Communist systems compelling the Russians and Chinese and the satellite nations to work, save and obey.
The temporary relaxation of the tension after the summit meeting in Geneva in July, 1955 had unfortunate and inconvenient consequences in the West, but also had been followed a bit over a year later by the revolts in Hungary and in Poland in the fall of 1956.
Between the two policies, Mr. Lippmann suggests that the West's true interest was in a policy of relaxation, given an effective and astute management of foreign affairs. He indicates the realization that there was a strong tendency in Congress and the other NATO legislatures to retrench in military and foreign affairs, once the fear of more or less imminent war was removed. But it was a risk that good leaders and a vigilant press could mitigate and overcome. On the other hand, he did not believe that the Western democracies could be frightened enough to cause them to support an indefinite and cumulative armaments race. The policy of pressure regarding the NATO democracies was subject to the law of diminishing returns.
The reason that military objectives of NATO were not being met was that the European democracies were not really very much afraid that war was imminent. If they became frightened enough to make them want to arm more heavily, chances were that neutralism would be the result.
He believes that it was likely that the Communists would be profoundly affected should the world's tensions be reduced, on the assumption that the West remained armed and that its diplomacy was alert and realistic. There was more to gain than to lose by the West by going forward toward little and limited agreements, with the most likely agreement being one to suspend nuclear tests once the present series of tests in the Pacific concluded.
Doris Fleeson indicates that Andrew Knutson, a farm implement salesman and proprietor of an hotel in the tiny town of Oklee, Minn., had made clear the difference between a female member of Congress and a male member, that being that when the husband of the female member complained about her job and asked her to come home, he made front page news.
Many of the wives of the 551 male members were unhappy in the same manner as Mr. Knutson, and made mention of it freely. But it never seemed to be news. Occasionally, a member who headed home would mention that he was bowing to his wife's wishes, but it was rarely believed to be the whole truth and so its minor mention in the news was justified.
She counts it as one reason why Washington had rallied with remarkable unanimity to Representative Coya Knutson. All the women in Congress, including Senator Margaret Chase Smith and 14 Representatives, from both parties, were naturally indignant. But Congresswoman Knutson's male colleagues also stood up to be counted, with their principal spokesman being North Carolina Representative Harold Cooley, chairman of the Agriculture Committee, on which Congresswoman Knutson served. He stated that she was a hard worker and devoted to agriculture and that he would not swap her service on the Committee for any man. Other Committee members agreed that Congresswoman Knutson worked at her job, one indicating that it came as a pleasant surprise because she was a cheerful blonde, addicted to bright clothes and costume jewelry, such that he had thought she might trade on her personality.
Ms. Fleeson indicates that the House did not really like prima donnas, male or female, and never had. The fact that Mrs. Knutson was more of an average woman in her taste, her abilities and her outlook than some of her famous predecessors, had been in her favor with her colleagues, as they did not have to be jealous of her and she had not outrun them in newspaper publicity, at least until her husband had stepped in. Her son, 18, a freshman at Luther College in Iowa, had put the matter on the basis of simple justice when he recalled that his father had joined in all the family consultations about his mother running for the House, and had agreed.
She finds that the incident revived the question of the handicaps of women in politics, that there was more expected of them in terms of character, ability and conservative behavior, than of men. They never got to run for office unless their personal affairs were in perfect order, which was not true of males. They were perhaps watched more closely than other male colleagues, not because they were women but because there were relatively few of them and so they stood out. What they did, said and were became common currency quickly, and nothing really escaped the cocktail conversation in Washington, including the President's dog.
Mr. Knutson, she concludes, might discourage some women ambitious for political office, but his reception in Washington ought to encourage them.
A letter writer from Rocky Mount finds that more heat than light had been emitted from the tentative report of the Bar Association subcommittee regarding the selection of judges, that some newspapers had regarded the issue as being whether the state ought abandon its historical method of electing judges and substitute appointment, with the public then later able to confirm them. He says that in his opinion, the present system was not truly by election anyway. He indicates that 85 percent of the Supreme Court justices in the state since 1928 had been appointed by a governor to fill an unexpired term of a justice who had died or retired, and that a majority of the Superior Court judges likewise had been appointed. Rarely was the governor's appointee successfully challenged at the ensuing election, and where there was a challenge, the conscientious voter often consulted with a lawyer friend and asked his opinion of the judge's qualifications because the voter had not had the opportunity to observe the person in court or read the person's judicial opinions. For all practical purposes, therefore, there was an appointive system already in the state. He says that his study of the 1787 convention in Philadelphia to draft the Constitution had failed to disclose that the method of selecting judges for the Federal courts by election had even been considered, that the two methods debated had been selection by Congress and appointment by the President. The result had been a compromise, with the Senate required to confirm the President's appointee. He suggests that if the critics of the Bar Association subcommittee's report had proposed to change the Constitution to provide for election of judges, he had not heard of it, and that no person from the South would have a chance at present of being elected to the U.S. Supreme Court. Benjamin Franklin had suggested at the convention, with some levity, that the system then used in Scotland for selecting judges ought be adopted, whereby a commission of lawyers would select them, indicating that the lawyers always picked their best man to get rid of him so that they could divide his law practice among themselves. All of the 13 original states, except Georgia, had appointive judges, and for the first 50 years of the nation, about half of the new entering states provided for selection of judges by the legislatures, with about half doing so by appointment by the governor. A big switch to elected judges had begun around 1850. But now, other than in 36 of the states, judges were not elected in any country of the civilized world except in Switzerland, Russia and its satellites. He regards the major issue therefore as being whether the governor should have the power of appointment without some limitation, to mitigate inevitable politics in the selection process. He regards Governor Luther Hodges as having entered politics with few political obligations, but that a case might arise where someone with high qualifications, such as a successful political campaign manager, might not have judicial qualifications. He believes that the selection of judges was of such importance that the appointment should not be entrusted to any single person. The U.S. Constitution required the concurrence by the Senate of judicial appointments, but because the North Carolina General Assembly met only biennially, such a method would not be workable. The Bar Association subcommittee had recommended creation of a judicial council to screen candidates before appointment by the governor. He proposes that a committee appointed by the Legislature be responsible for concurring or not with the governor's appointments.
A letter writer expresses appreciation to the newspaper for reporting on the Billy Graham Crusade.
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