The Charlotte News
Friday, May 23, 1958
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Paris that Premier Pierre Pflimlin had gone to the National Assembly this date with an urgent request for constitutional reform to strengthen his Government against the military-civilian defiance taking place in Algeria. There was new trouble arising in the meantime in Tunisia, as the French Charge d'Affaires, Jean-Pierre Benard, had hurried home from Tunis to report on several shooting incidents between Tunisian and French soldiers. General Charles de Gaulle had reportedly sent word to the Premier that he was still ready to take over the government, but he was apparently not immediately willing to mediate with the defiant French in Algeria to keep the Premier in office. Leaders of the junta which had seized control of Algeria on May 13 had formally set up a 40-member all-Algeria Committee of Public Safety, in effect, a revolutionary government. Its two chairmen were Paratroop Brig. General Jacques Massu and Dr. Cherif Sidcara, a Muslim politician who had cooperated with Paris and held a high office in the previous French Government. The Committee said that it would stay in office until General De Gaulle assumed power in Paris. Despite the troubles, thousands of French headed for the country for the three-day Pentecostal holiday. An estimated 800,000 persons were expected to leave Paris, where armed security troops still stood ready for trouble. The proposed constitutional changes, initially put forward several months earlier, were now being pushed by the Premier as a way of bolstering the country's weak executive branch, in the hope of reducing the attraction of General De Gaulle as a strong man. The Premier's Cabinet had approved the changes and provided him authority to stake Government survival on the National Assembly's approval, with a showdown possibly to occur on Tuesday. The Premier, who had won office on May 14 with the support of all except extreme rightists and Communists, appeared confident that his coalition would hold together, as defeating him would open the door for General De Gaulle. Opposition, however, was building to some of the Premier's program. Former Premier Pierre Mendes-France reportedly was one of those displeased with the primary proposal requiring any motion to overthrow a Cabinet also to include the nomination of a new premier.
In Panama City, tough National Guardsmen ruled the city this date, as President Ernest de la Guardia, Jr., grappled with a general strike called by rebellious students. A large student group was holed up inside the National University following a day of rioting in which gunfire had killed eight persons, three of whom were teenage students, with another 61 having been wounded. The three National Guard chiefs whom students wanted removed, were running the country under a state of siege by modified martial law. But it did not prevent the strike from getting underway. The first to walk out at midnight had been printers at three morning newspapers. The riots had grown from student complaints regarding school conditions and resentment of the killing of a student in an earlier demonstration. Student bands armed with iron clubs, sticks and rocks, roamed the city the previous day and the Guardsmen had gone into action with tear gas, it soon appearing that the students had lost control to hoodlums whose political alignment, if any, was not clear. Traffic in Panama City was tied up by a bus strike. The rioters had barricaded downtown streets with garbage cans at every corner. Many stores had closed during the fighting, windows were shattered, cars were overturned and traffic lights were smashed. Airport authorities had taken arriving passengers to their hotels by special station wagons. The ten-mile wide Panama Canal Zone split Panama geographically, but a strong cordon of Canal Zone police along the boundary kept the trouble from spilling into the U.S.-controlled area, where most North Americans lived. An American policeman on duty at the boundary was hit by a stray bullet and hospitalized with a minor wound, but no other Americans had been reported hurt. Except for some disturbance in Colon, the port on the Caribbean side, the rest of the Central American country was reported quiet the previous day. The fatalities had all occurred in Panama City. The Government blamed snipers and insisted that troops had not fired into the crowds. Eight men had been jailed and at least three opposition radio stations and one newspaper had been closed by Government order. The editor of that newspaper had also been arrested. The Government charged that foes of President De la Guardia had incited the students, but students denied that claim.
The air safety proposals of the President had received quick backing this date from an investigating Senator and an airline safety director, as Senator Mike Monroney of Oklahoma, presiding at an inquiry into recent military-civilian collisions which had taken 61 lives, applauded the five-point proposal of the President. Carl Christenson, speaking for United Airlines, also supported the proposals. He said that present airspace congestion had resulted from "many more airplanes than we expected" and that by 1965 there would be twice as many as at present. He said that Los Angeles probably was the most congested air space in the country. He proposed that the Civil Aeronautics Administration tighten its regulations to require that all traffic maintain definite separations and altitudes of both visual and instrument flying. He stated that the young pilot who was flying a high-performance jet had his hands full and that safety regulations had to give him ample space even for slight errors. He supported a bill offered by Senator Monroney and 32 other Senators, which would set up a new, independent Federal aviation agency to control all air traffic, replacing the CAA, which was part of the Commerce Department and lacked control over military flights.
The President reported this date that nearly a billion dollars in weapons and military equipment had been shipped to overseas allies during the last six months of 1957.
In Greenville, S.C., it was reported that additional Globemaster planes from Donaldson Air Force Base had taken off for Germany this date, with the exact number not disclosed, a base spokesman, however, describing the complement as small.
In Washington, a local attorney who had represented the Teamsters Union had been made chairman this date of the monitor board named by a Federal court to watch Teamsters management.
In Jakarta, Indonesia, Premier Djuanda declared this date that weapons purchased from the U.S. would not be used against the Indonesian rebel regime or against the Dutch in West New Guinea.
In London, about 10,500 striking dockworkers had tied up 64 freighters waiting to unload their cargoes in the port this date, with one small group of workers having stopped work originally in sympathy with 6,500 meat market workers on strike since May 12.
Near Middletown, N.J., investigators were searching a Nike base this date in an attempt to learn what had caused eight fully armed missiles to explode in a mushroom of fire and death the previous day, killing between seven and ten persons and scattering explosive warheads across a wide area of the countryside. The disaster, described by a general as an accident which "could not happen but did", had been set off by a single missile which exploded from undetermined causes. A split-second chain reaction had turned the entire area into a flaming pit of destruction which one eyewitness called "horrible beyond belief". Mangled bodies and human fragments were strewn about where a moment earlier men had stood, and it was impossible thus far to determine accurately the death toll. General Charles Duff of the Army Defense Command said that seven persons were known to have been killed and that three remained missing and were presumed to be dead. Three others had been injured, one seriously. The victims included civilian workers as well as servicemen. Two servicemen in a 20-foot deep pit under a missile launching pad had survived the explosion, one unhurt and the other being treated for shock and hysteria. The missiles, known as the Ajax type, had exploded at about 1:20 p.m. while a team of experts had been working on them. They were to have been replaced the following year by Hercules missiles capable of carrying atomic warheads. Each of the Ajax missiles carried three conventional warheads of explosives and shrapnel. Most of the explosive devices had been accounted for, but some had still not been located this date. General Duff said that ordnance experts had found that all of the eight missiles had left the launching area, flying various distances, with one having spent itself harmlessly in open terrain after an unguided flight for two miles over populated areas. The Army had flown in three inspectors from the office of the chief of ordnance in Washington to investigate the explosion, with the cause possibly never to be known. Residents of the area had protested in vain against the erection of the installation 18 months earlier.
In Sacramento, a small suburban plant, which manufactured shotgun shells, had caught fire and exploded before dawn this date, with the two explosions having shaken a wide area, hurling a sheriff's deputy 40 feet and shattering windows of surrounding buildings. Fire officials estimated damage to the Carlsbad Ammunition Co. at between $20,000 and $40,000.
Near Long Beach, Calif., hundreds of firemen had battled this date to control an oil refinery fire which still raged on Signal Hill after having taken at least two lives and caused millions of dollars in damage. Firefighters had suffered a serious setback early this date when a pump at the pumphouse had broken down and the pressure dropped to 5 pounds at the hydrants, although later, the lines had been tied into the water system of neighboring Long Beach, the pump was repaired and water pressure was restored to normal. Fear had been expressed about a 4,200-gallon underground tank of tetraethyl lead additive on the property, firemen indicating that if the tank went up, it would be a major setback in attempts to control the fire and would cause widespread evacuation of residents in the general area. The fire had begun the previous afternoon from a series of explosions at the refinery, with rivers of burning oil and gasoline running over the refinery grounds from a ruptured tank. Workers ran for their lives as 14 large tanks had blown up one by one. A nearby hospital and the Long Beach Air Force Base had to be evacuated.
In Williams Lake, British Columbia, it was reported that a fire, caused by two unexplained explosions, had leveled a hospital on the Anaham Indian reserve in the wild Cariboo country the previous night, killing 12 children between ages five and eight, members of the Anaham band of the Chilcotin Indians, who made their home on the reserve, 60 miles west of Williams Lake. An undetermined number of persons had been injured in the fire, which had erupted in late afternoon. The supervisor of the hospital, a nun, had been burned severely on her hands and face when she sought to force her way into the burning building to rescue the children. The hospital was operated by the Missionary Sisters of Christ the King, ministering to the medical and educational needs of the Indians on the reserve, one of Canada's largest, located 200 miles north of Vancouver. There had been no fire equipment in the vicinity and Indians had voluntarily battled the fire to the best of their ability with the equipment they had.
Near Clover, S.C., a trip to a movie had ended in violent death for a nine-year old boy the previous day, when he was killed after the car in which he was riding smashed head-on into a truck. A boarder at the boy's home was taking the boy to a movie, but when they got there, they found that it would not open for about an hour, and so apparently they decided to go for a ride. The crash occurred at a curve near the edge of town. The driver was seriously injured, with two broken legs, a broken arm and other injuries. The family had moved to the town from Chester only three weeks earlier. A Highway Patrolman who investigated the accident said that the cause of the collision had not been determined. The driver of the truck, from Shelby, had not been injured.
In Houston, steps were underway for putting a firmer rein on the vast array of Southern Baptist activities. Drawn up over a period of two years by a 23-member survey committee, the revisions were described as being needed to increase the effectiveness of the denomination for greater spiritual achievement. It called for strengthening the convention's interim policy group and its role in reviewing and evaluating work of national agencies, setting up a fully representative inter-agency council, with new advisory powers to coordinate functions of the different boards, commissions and other divisions. The Rev. Douglas Branch, chairman of the survey committee, said that the reconstituted council's decisions would carry greater weight than under previous procedures for coordination programs. The council could only suggest and not give orders, but there was a clear admonition to the agencies to pay attention to the suggestions. Several other Protestant denominations in the previous few years had taken similar steps to obtain more closely coordinated direction in their overall work. The convention the previous day had authorized its executive committee to acquire a building in Nashville as its seat of operations. It presently shared quarters with the Sunday School Board. The executive committee also was relieved of its stewardship promotion duties, under a measure subject to reaffirmation a year hence, and a new, separate stewardship commission was authorized.
In Lincoln, Neb., the jury remained
out, deliberating on the case of first-degree murder and felony-murder
against Charles Starkweather, resuming its deliberations at shortly
after 10:00 a.m., following three hours of deliberations the previous
evening, with the final arguments and instructions to the jury having
taken place the previous day. As the suspense builds on whether they
will find him sane or insane, you can place your bets along with
Chuck, who wants a verdict of sanity, as to whether he will take the
battery charge… He may not have quite understood the difference in intensity
Query, to those who practice criminal law or are simply interested in knowing some of the finer details of how legal defenses, at trial or on appeal, work, whether the prosecutor committed misconduct in his final argument by saying that the jury would understand his request for the death penalty if they understood the things he had seen since first investigating the case, it being prosecutorial misconduct for a prosecutor to express before the jury a personal belief in the guilt or innocence of the accused, which would also implicitly include the personal beliefs for seeking the death penalty, a form of arguing outside the evidence in the case, also misconduct. If so, would it be deemed sufficiently prejudicial to the accused to warrant reversal in this instance, given that the evidence of the other nine January murders, of which the defendant was not at present on trial, had been brought out, not by the prosecution, but by the defense in furtherance of the plea of not guilty by reason of insanity? Was there ground on appeal to assert ineffective assistance of counsel on the basis of the defense having read into the record the 300-plus pages of the various statements of Charles concerning all 10 January homicides, which he provided to police after his capture on January 29, or was it sufficiently considered a proper strategy in trying to establish his insanity defense to avoid the death penalty? Was it proper to do so, however, given that the defendant and the defendant's parents, as next of kin, opposed the presentation of the insanity defense? Or, regardless, was it not a reasonable strategy, given that it was the only legal defense at his disposal to try to avoid the death penalty, as his claim of self-defense was not reasonable under the law by his own admissions that he was the initial aggressor with a superior means of force, his rifle, leading to the homicide of 17-year old Robert Jensen, the act of which the defendant admitted, as the defendant ordered him into the abandoned storm cellar? Could the defense evidence of insanity at the time of the act, that is not knowing that the act was wrong, have been better limited to the single question of whether Charles was deluded in his belief in self-defense only regarding the killing of Mr. Jensen? Or would that have been, based on the knowledge, training and experience of his attorneys, enough to establish the defense of insanity at the time of the single killing, without also adducing his similar beliefs of self-defense regarding all of the other killings, including the knifing of the two-year old half-sister of his 14-year old girlfriend, and his varying statements regarding his culpability as opposed to that of his girlfriend who accompanied him on the trail of death in January? And, in assessing whether there was ineffective assistance of counsel, given that the community was well aware of the general facts of the killings prior to the trial by the detailed front page local press coverage of the killings during and after the rampage, did the detailed statements of the killings given by Charles actually serve to prejudice him in the eyes of the jury beyond that which they generally already knew of the other killings, despite the court's admonition to consider only the facts in evidence as presented during the trial? Which leads to a corollary question of whether the failure to seek a change of venue from Lincoln, as was not done, was, itself, ineffective assistance, a question in that instance not resolvable by reference to defense trial strategy, except insofar as their decision, perhaps, that to seek a trial in another county might result in a jury conceivably less educated or astute than in Lincoln wherein was the University of Nebraska, regardless of whether any such assumed facts would have actually obtained in reality. What do you think?
In Memphis, a four-year old boy took a bite of food for the first time in his life, consisting of an ice cream cone given him the previous day. (Whether it might have been Smokey's Ice Cream is not imparted.) Previously, he had never eaten naturally or known the flavor of food, and appeared delighted by the new taste. (Wait until you encounter the taste of boiled okra, kid.) His parents and the surgeons who had made the event possible watched with smiles. The boy had been born with an incomplete esophagus to connect his throat to his stomach, with the upper end having no outlet and the lower end connecting with his trachea or windpipe. When he had been two days old, surgeons had inserted a tube through the abdominal wall into his stomach and all of his food had to be ground up and injected through that tube. In a recent 2.5-hour operation, his esophagus had been reconstructed using a 14-inch section of his large intestine as a spare part. The rubber tube would be left in place until the boy became accustomed to eating and then it would be withdrawn. Bon appétit…
In Schenectady, N.Y., a woman complained to the Water superintendent that she had gray hair for 30 years until she had washed it the previous day, causing it to turn black. She was one of several hundred who complained as a private company sought to clean the City's water system. Previously, the water often had been rust-colored, and it was explained that cleaning the system stirred up murky deposits, as well as dyeing women's hair and giving clothes a black appearance. The superintendent said that the condition would persist all of the following week, but that even though it had an "odd color", it was safe and healthful for home use.
Meanwhile, this kid
On the editorial page, "Carnage in the Airways Must Cease" indicates that Congress was presently investigating the midair collision the prior Tuesday over the Potomac River between a military aircraft and a commercial airplane, killing 12 persons. There had been many grim reminders of the same type of crash prior to it and too little action had been taken in response. Nine years earlier, 56 persons had been killed when a commercial aircraft and a military plane had collided near Washington, and the total who had been killed in such collisions during the previous nine years had amounted to 300, with almost 1,000 near-misses in just the previous year.
It finds that a sustained and painstaking determination on the part of Congress and the Administration needed to be undertaken if the shocking toll from such collisions was to be averted.
A high official of the Civil Aeronautics Administration had said that the problem would not be solved overnight. Roughly 11,000 aircraft were in the air over the country at any given moment, but only part of those were subject to the traffic controls of the CAA, which had little control over military planes. It suggests that without centralized or tightly coordinated traffic control, there was no hope of a solution.
"The Answer to a Charlotte Prayer" tells of a Chamber of Commerce committee having the previous day approved the idea of a united fund for the arts. It finds it the only sensible solution, as the major cultural organizations of the city had been barely able separately to keep their heads above water, and had separately been forced to hound a small number of well-endowed contributors to distraction by begging year-round.
With a professionally organized, well-directed single campaign, annual giving could be established, asking the public to give only once for all of the major organizations, the Symphony, Opera Association, Mint Museum, Oratorio Singers, Symphonette and Choral Society. Budgeting would be simpler and planning, more certain.
With Chamber of Commerce backing, the united campaign could be initiated in 1959. It suggests that it be scheduled for the spring to avoid conflict with the annual United Appeal, but that months of careful planning would be required before the drive could be attempted, and so there should be no time wasted.
"Life in France" indicates that a nightclub called the Fontaine des Quartre Saisons on the Left Bank of Paris featured a striptease performer who began her act dressed as Mona Lisa.
Well, whom was she dressed as at the end of her act?
"It All Began Nearly 170 Years Ago" indicates that on May 13, 1790, with the Federal Government not yet a year old, Senator William Maclay of Pennsylvania had called on the Treasury Department and demanded access to public information regarding the receipts Baron von Steuben had given for funds advanced to him. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton had refused to provide the information and Senator Maclay had written in his diary: "I told him any member of Congress had a right to any papers in any office whatever; that as chairman of the committee I had promised to procure what papers were necessary." He further said that "the papers I wanted belonged to the public and to no private gentleman whatever, nor would it do for him to refuse information to a committee of Congress."
Senator Maclay had not been provided the papers, but the basis had been laid for a constitutional dispute which had lasted to the present time over executive refusals to provide Congress and the people access to certain public information. Generally, Congress had permitted the executive department to exercise discretion in providing such information. But abuses of that privilege had occurred of late.
Bureaucrats had been using a 1789 Federal housekeeping statute to justify their refusal to permit access to public records, the law having been intended merely to authorize Federal departments and agencies to take care of executive papers, but it had been stretched and construed into an authorization of secrecy.
The Senate Judiciary Committee had passed a bill introduced the previous year by Senator Thomas Hennings of Missouri, and it had gone to the floor. An identical bill had been approved on April 16 by the House, both of those bills bringing the 1789 housekeeping statute back to its original meaning by adding the sentence: "This section does not authorize withholding information from the public or limiting the availability of records to the public."
It finds that the bill ought be enacted because a free government resting upon the consent of the governed could not be conducted in secret.
Much of that problem was, of course, eliminated by the Freedom of Information Act, passed and signed into law in 1967, though it has substantial exceptions for matters of "national security", resulting in sometimes heavy redactions. Those are supposed to be done to avoid disclosure of names of agents of intelligence organizations stationed in foreign countries or involved in some area of undercover work, and to prevent disclosure of methods of intelligence gathering. Whether it is limited to that, of course, is difficult to ascertain until the redactions are finally removed, sometimes taking decades to accomplish.
As to the current brouhaha in Magaville, U.S.A., over release of certain records regarding the List of Adrian Messenger, we suggest that, for consistency, these idiots storm the Justice Department and demand to see in person the files, taking over the building. What the hell? His Highness will pardon them.
There is an old saying regarding being hoist by one's own petard.
"Life in America" wonders
if anyone remembered a horror movie titled "Shock"
No, not guilty as to both counts.
It actually apparently referred to two series of well-known monster-type movies which were released as packages for airing on television in 1957 and 1958, respectively. In any event, the news was actually far more frightening than anything which Hollywood could conjure.
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "The Henhouse Special", indicates that the Katy Flyer, a famous train which traveled between St. Louis and Parsons, had, before its last run, become known to some riders as the "henhouse special" because it dealt as much with baby chicks as with passengers.
A few weeks earlier, the New York Central's 20th Century Limited had been downgraded into something more like a milk train, after 56 years of service. Pennsylvania's Broadway Limited was nearly the only survivor of the golden age of railroading, which had also produced Santa Fe's California Limited, that having been superseded in speed and even decor by the Super Chief.
The old Fall River line's Steamboat Express, dating to prior to the Civil War, the Central Railroad's Empire State Express, which had set a speed record just a few days earlier, the Baltimore & Ohio's Royal Blue, had all also gone.
Many of the old names remained,
including Eagles, Black Crows, Bluebirds and Larks, Generals,
Admirals and Diplomats, Hiawathas, Olympians, and even Magnolias. The
Wabash Cannonball, celebrated in song, still came to St. Louis
The trend of disappearance of the old trains was there and some railroads, particularly in the East, were giving up passenger service, glamour and the business, with the famous train names seeming to be going the way of the steam whistle, which had not left even an echo behind.
Drew Pearson, "en route", indicates that as he had traveled through Europe, he got the impression that the entire U.S foreign polciy was caving in. France, a stanch ally and friend for 175 years, was in the throes of a mortal political struggle. The Vice-President had nearly been killed in Caracas, in a country considered a good neighbor. And one of the friendliest pro-Western nations in the Middle East, Lebanon, was in danger of joining the Nasser-Soviet bloc. Russia had recently launched Sputnik III, the largest satellite yet put in orbit, 100 times larger than the U.S. satellites. He says that European friends who wanted to support the U.S. wondered why it was.
He suggests that the answer was that foreign policy eroded rather than collapsed suddenly. He finds that the incidents in Latin America actually stemmed from relations with Latin America as far back as the Coolidge Administration, between 1923 and 1929, when he had been reporting for El Mundo in Havana and La Nacion in Buenos Aires. It had not been sudden. Latin American editorials had first chided Mr. Nixon when he had barnstormed through Asia in 1953, advocating an Asia-first foreign policy for the U.S. They had understood what Americans apparently did not, that Asian-African tropical products competed with Latin American tropical products. The more coffee, cocoa, tin, etc., which the U.S. bought from Asia and Africa, the less it bought from Latin America, and the more money the U.S. sent to those countries in foreign aid, the more it upset Latin Americans.
Later, when the Vice-President had gone to the new African republic of Ghana to help inaugurate its new President, there was more criticism in Latin America. His trip to Ghana might have helped with the black voters in Harlem, but it had not made him an effective good will ambassador for countries which competed with Africa. Remembering his previous trips to Brazil and Central America, they dubbed him "Fickle Dick".
AFL-CIO president George Meany had visited the same countries which had treated Mr. Nixon so badly and he was acclaimed a hero. In Montevideo, where the Vice-President was hissed because of the U.S. tariff on wool, Mr. Meany received a rousing reception from the Uruguayan Trade Union Council. He, David Dubinsky, of the Ladies Garment Workers Union, and O. A. Knight, of the Oil Workers Union, who accompanied him, had joined the Uruguayans in a solemn pledge against dictatorships. In Peru, where Mr. Nixon had been treated especially badly by university students, Mr. Meany had received an ovation. Labor leaders seldom entered the U.S. Embassy in Lima, but they had turned out for Mr. Meany.
He finds that to some extent, the success of a good will mission depended on the ambassador sent, with a winning smile and handshake not being the only things which counted.
The previous month, he had sat with the new Ambassador from Venezuela, Hector Santaella, an hour after he had presented his credentials to the President. Despite a warm reception, two days later, the President had placed a new restriction on Venezuelan oil, on the same day he gave a nationwide telecast urging Congress not to impose restrictions on foreign trade.
Walter Lippmann indicates that at his press conference the prior Tuesday, Secretary of State Dulles, in response to a series of questions posed regarding whether he believed that the recent crises across the world required re-examination of U.S. policies, in response to which, he appeared unperturbed and impervious, denying that anything very significant had occurred, with the net result of the press conference having been an invitation to the American people not to allow themselves to be stirred into thinking about the state of their affairs.
Tuesday had been a day for the Administration to promote complacent self-confidence, the theme of Secretary Dulles's press conference in the morning, and the theme of the President's address, regarding the recession, on Tuesday evening.
Mr. Lippmann regards it as impossible, however, to have such self-confidence accepted by sweeping under the rug harsh and disagreeable facts which worried so many people. Thus, while it might be the case that the recession was stabilizing and that eventually there would be a rise and, one day, another boom, the question arose as to whether the people could accept the prospect of a prolonged slump at the present level, especially as its repercussions were being multiplied abroad and aggravating the present international disorder. He believes that it was not inspiring of confidence that the President was unworried, that generally there would be more confidence if he were worried about the ugly things.
Secretary Dulles had plenty to worry about, including that which had taken place with respect to the Vice-President in Venezuela, who had been stoned, spat upon and had his vehicle pummeled with rocks, an incident not disposed of by saying simply that the Vice-President had received a bad reception in all of the countries he had visited in Latin America. In only two, Venezuela and Peru, had there been significant disturbances, but there had been bad will and plenty of it in all of the countries he had visited. He finds it a mistake to minimize the basic fact that almost everywhere in Latin America, there was great dislike and hostility for the U.S. and its policies. To pretend that only a few hoodlums led by Communists had been unfriendly was to delude oneself, or that because the Vice-President and his wife had behaved with courage and dignity, the incidents ought be closed, forgiven and forgotten. It was to trivialize serious incidents which demanded sterner complaint to Venezuela and a searching re-examination of U.S. policy and the record toward Latin America.
Doris Fleeson wonders how many members of Congress or high government officials would have to be killed in airplane crashes like the one which had occurred in Brunswick, Md., during the week, involving a collision between a jet trainer and a passenger plane, before the country would prepare for the jet age. She finds that no one had started to work on the problem in any significant way since the collision on Tuesday, which had taken 12 lives, occurring 40 miles northwest of the nation's capital.
Yet, it was the center of world air travel, from which the President, Vice-President, Secretary of State and leading members of Congress traveled all around the globe. The previous Sunday, the Washington Evening Star had disclosed that the Civil Aeronautics Board had reported 971 near-misses by aircraft during the previous year, 53 of which had occurred in the Maryland-Virginia-District area.
Word of the crash had reached the House as it had been debating the Commerce Department's appropriations bill, where jurisdiction over civil aviation rested. Members quickly voted an increase of 74 million dollars for CAB more than that of the previous year, which was still not very much given that the jet age would dawn in about six months for commercial aviation.
Debate in the House had suggested that civil and military aviation would be blamed for failing to coordinate their activities, with coordination requiring more than just the few phone calls which some House members appeared to believe would save the day. The fact that the hearings were taking place on control of outer space posed a grim irony to those who had long complained of a lack of vision regarding present air travel problems and prospects. Some localities and states had done better than others, with Washington uniquely at the mercy of the White House and Congress. Plenty of those in Congress were capable of understanding what could and ought be done in that regard, as in related areas such as land and water usage, and yet there was curious paralysis at just the time when they should have been acting with urgency.
While conservative opinion, in thinking of budget deficits and the national debt, was sound judgment, it was content not to plan, believing that more self-reliance among individuals would accomplish the job. Liberal opinion lacked creative ideas, or at least the courage to express them, much less fight for them. Nor were there 1960 presidential possibilities on the liberal horizon who appeared to grasp the challenge and preach about it, though they were the first to complain about the existing lack of leadership at the White House.
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, indicates that he had gotten his wife into a state of collapse and wishes to pass on handy tricks to help win the battle of the year with a copy of Vogue and some malicious thought. He asserts that the way to do it was to strike one's wife psychologically below the belt, that when she was bulging in spots where women normally had a burden described as "a delicate condition", the husband ought kiss her tenderly and ask innocently when she was expecting. If she said not to be silly, then he says to suggest mildly that perhaps she had better lose a little weight, and when she responded profanely that she had lost weight, the husband ought murmur, "Maybe it's the dress, darling."
He reiterates that hitting below the belt was necessary to the campaign, and indicates that if the belt was behind the behind, the husband should tell her it exaggerated the lines in her face or that for the first time, he realized that she was broader in the beam than when he had originally proposed marriage to her.
Another approach was to tell her that the sack dress she was wearing was lovely because it reminded him of his mother, but that she was younger then. If the skirt was too short, he should say that he never realized before how many knock-kneed and bowlegged people there were around in current times, "how many piano-legged, fat-ankled, skinny-legged girls there are in the world," especially given all the vitamins. When an expensive dress she had just purchased reminded the husband of an elephant's hindquarters, he should compliment her on her new coat, and when she explained that it was not a coat but a dress, he should then ask her where it unbuttoned and express naïve amazement that it was a dress. If it had loops in it, he would use the outside pockets to place in it his cigarettes, house keys, old correspondence and match folders. Regarding short, tight skirts, he carried a pair of copy shears and when his wife could not get in or out of a taxi cab or one of the two-tone automobiles, he produced the scissors and simply began to snip.
The large hats which women wore made excellent pots for plants, a surprise for the cocktail table. He suggests flowering plants for the felt and straw hats and a green, leafy plant for the printed fabrics.
He indicates that there were other matters he had not touched on to help win the war against horrible female adornment, but that the ones he had mentioned were at least sufficient to reform the French fashion designers and "more than adequate to buy you a sort of home-permanent divorce."
A letter writer indicates that anyone who questioned whether school buses had the safest means of operation by young student drivers in Mecklenburg County and across the state was not familiar with the requirements that the drivers had to meet, compared to ordinary driver's license acquisition. He says that his oldest son, who was now attending UNC, had driven a school bus for three years, and that one of the proudest days of his life was when the school bus instructor had asked him who had taught him how to drive and he had responded that it was his father. His son had been second in one of the school bus rodeos at East Mecklenburg High School. He indicates that when parents realized that the greatest danger to those who rode the school buses was getting on and off, they would be directing their efforts in the right direction, rather than at the actual operation of the buses. He finds that ordinary drivers were "licensed killers, driving at open highway speed past a group of children waiting the arrival of their bus", sometimes striking and killing one of them, then freed by the "stupid wheels of justice in this state", finding it regretful that the public then blamed the student bus drivers.
Framed Edition
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