The Charlotte News
Monday, May 26, 1958
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Paris that Premier Pierre Pflimlin this date had warned an emergency session of the National Assembly that civil war was threatening, calling on all Frenchmen to defend their basic liberties. The rightist drive to place General Charles de Gaulle in power was spreading through France's overseas empire in the worst postwar crisis yet faced and progressively getting worse. The Premier told the Assembly that there had been "no justification and no excuse" for the military-led seizure of power in Corsica, that the Government had already increased its security measures to prevent spread of the pro-Gaullist insurgency to the French mainland. "The Government will use with inflexible vigor all the means it has against any who rise from any side against the law. But security forces are not enough to save our threatened freedoms. The nation as a whole must do its duty." The Government cut off communications and supplies to the insurrectionists who had consolidated their control of Corsica with Algeria-type public safety committees, with rebel leaders in Algiers indicating that they would funnel supplies to Corsica's 140,000 people. The Government also extended censorship to all news distributed in France, whether from French territories or from abroad, announced that Government officials and military personnel who had taken part in the uprising in Corsica would be fined and jailed, asked the Assembly to order expulsion from it of any deputy who worked against the unity of the Republic. A former high commissioner in West Germany had written in the newspaper Figaro that "the coup will not remain isolated and similar attempts may take place in mainland France. One can no longer doubt, in any case, existence of a concerted plan intended to put De Gaulle in power without waiting any longer, and if necessary, by force." General De Gaulle continued to wait quietly in his village home, 150 miles from Paris, had attended Mass the previous day with his family but had made no statement to newsmen. The Premier and his moderate backers had sought to remain in power and preserve the façade at least of parliamentary government, with the Premier in a radio speech having denounced the revolt in Corsica but indicating that there was some emotional justification for the upheaval in Algiers.
In Ajaccio, Corsica, thousands had marched through the flag-decked streets this date to hail emissaries from the rebellious junta in Algeria. The French island was now solidly under control of rapidly spreading public safety committees supported by tommyguns of elite French paratroopers. Special riot police, urgently ordered to the capital from France to deal with the insurgency, were idle under the hot sun or had joined the anti-Government demonstrations. Residents of the capital, birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte, had massed in front of the administrative headquarters and loudly cheered representatives of the Algerian movement, who had flown there the previous night in French Air Force planes to consolidate the takeover on Corsica.
There was a question in Paris as to whose side the French Mediterranean fleet was on, with high sources in Paris admitting that the fleet, under the command of an admiral siding with the Algerian insurgents, was steaming an independent course in the Mediterranean. But the Defense Ministry had insisted that the ships were sailing under orders from Paris after completing NATO maneuvers. Navy headquarters in Algeria had announced during the morning that the ships would make routing calls at the Algerian ports of Bone, Phillipeville and Bougie, then would return to their home base at Toulin in southern France, keeping the ships in the area of North Africa for at least another two weeks. The defection of the fleet from the Government could mean the end for it in Paris as it was unlikely that the Cabinet could regain an upper hand against the wishes of the admirals. The fleet had a long tradition of independence and loyalty to its commanders. Not since the fall of France in World War II had the Government been so concerned about the loyalty of the fleet. The Mediterranean fleet was under the command of Admiral Phileppe Aboyneau, who had announced two days earlier in Algiers that his sympathies were with the Gaullists who sought to overthrow the Government in Paris. He said that his sailors and ships were completely behind the army in Algeria. As the NATO commander in the central Mediterranean, he conferred at Malta the previous night with U.S. Air Force General Lauris Norstad, supreme allied commander in Europe, and NATO sources said that Admiral Aboyneau had assured the General that whatever happened in Algeria, the French fleet would maintain its commitments to NATO. After the meeting, the Admiral had returned to his ship and the fleet sailed out of Malta, with about 17 ships under his command.
In Tunis, Tunisian demonstrators had streamed into the streets this date demanding anew that French forces leave the country, their protests having been sparked by renewed weekend fighting between French and Tunisian troops in Remada in the southern Tunisian desert, where the fighting had ended this date. Demonstrations in Tunis had carried over from the previous day and there were more reported in Bizerte and the olive-growing sections of Tozeur and Deggarhe in south-central Tunisia. The demonstrations had been vociferous but orderly. President Habib Bourguiba had been scheduled to make another radio broadcast to the people later in the day, having declared a state of emergency for all of the country the previous day after fighting at Remada had increased. French warplanes had bombed and strafed Tunisian positions 25 miles north of Remada, and five French soldiers had been killed and 14 wounded as the French military commander there tried to break through Tunisian roadblocks. Fighting at Gafsa in central Tunisia had also been reported to have ceased after Tunisian troops had fired on planes landing on a French airstrip. In Algiers, insurgents had charged the French Government in Paris with plotting to create incidents in Tunisia to discredit the committee of public safety governing Algeria. The spokesman said that the Premier was seeking to exploit the Tunisian situation to obtain international sanctions against the Algiers junta. He added that 22,000 French troops in Tunisia were "working in very close contact with us for operational reasons." The French troops there were commanded by General Fernand Gambier. The spokesman had not made clear whether the General was taking orders from General Raoul Salan in Algiers or from Paris. The official version of the alleged plot was that former Premier Pierre Mendes-France had been working closely with Tunisian President Bourguiba to discredit the right-wing movement, but the spokesman said that complete calm ruled in the Remada region and that the Paris Government had failed in its maneuver.
In Beirut, Lebanon, a bomb exploded in a streetcar this date, killing six persons and wounding 20 others, the most vicious act of terrorism since a general strike against the Government had begun 17 days earlier.
In Panama, rebellious students and President Ernesto La Guardia, Jr., were still deadlocked this date in their school condition dispute, which had paralyzed business since the prior Thursday's riots. National Guardsmen had kept Panama City quiet but tense.
The third announced nuclear detonation of the year's series in the Pacific had taken place the previous night, according to the Defense Department and the Atomic Energy Commission, providing no further details except that the test had occurred at the Eniwetok proving ground.
In Vienna, it was reported that Czechoslovakia this date had followed the Soviet lead and rejected the U.S. invitation to send scientific observers to the hydrogen bomb tests in the Pacific.
In Shippingport, Pa., it was reported that the President had waved a slightly radioactive rod in Washington and some 215 miles away in the town, electricity had surged from the world's first large-scale completely commercial atomic power plant.
Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn said this date that there would be a decision by the end of the week on whether to push for a tax-cut during the current session or to extend existing law, declining to say publicly what he thought should be done.
In Detroit, Ford Motor Co. said this date that it was not thinking of making any new offers at the current time to the UAW.
In Manila, it was reported that the most notorious bandit leader in the Philippines, Leonardo Manecio, had been captured by police and constabulary troops in a gun battle near the city. He had been wanted for more than a dozen killings. He had outdone even Chuck.
In Rockport, Tex., the struggles of a drowning nine-year old girl had drawn ten rescuers from a sunny beach late the previous day and seven persons had perished, including the little girl whom the others had sought to rescue. Other victims had included an Air Force chaplain, the little girl's mother and four other children. The little girl had stepped into a deep hole off the small public beach on the Gulf of Mexico. An Air Force priest from Syracuse, N.Y., had sought to rescue her, and the father of another child, who had also drowned, as well as the little girl's mother, had followed, with efforts also made by seven other children, four of whom had drowned. The father of the little girl, an airmen from Foster Air Force Base at neighboring Victoria, Tex., had been in the crowd of more than 3,000 persons who saw the bodies of his wife and daughter pulled from the surf. A father of another of the doomed girls had seen the first little girl threshing in the water and dashed from his parked car, too late to reach either his own daughter or the nine-year old. The seven bodies had been recovered within 90 minutes and resuscitation efforts had been unsuccessful. Some signs warning people about the deep hole would be erected, according to the fire chief, who estimated that the sandy bottom dropped into a hole eight feet deep at that point.
In Atlanta, it was reported that a pre-dawn roundup of bootleggers had sent 107 persons to jail this date, with a large percentage of those arrested having been women. Federal, state, county and city officers had begun the raids in the early morning and within seven hours, the Fulton County Tower had been packed with alleged whiskey runners, with some of those jailed being described as key operators who bought bootleg whiskey in carload lots and distributed it across the city. The wholesale price of non-tax paid whiskey ran between six dollars and eight dollars per gallon, with retail customers paying two dollars or more per pint. The State revenue commissioner said that the raid had been staged to keep Atlanta from regaining its dubious title as the moonshine capital of the world. The arrests followed undercover work by agents for about six weeks, with the revenue department having borrowed a North Carolina agent to help in the work. Federal charges would be lodged against 17 of the arrested persons.
In Raleigh, a subcommittee report, intended to strip the State Board of Higher Education of some of its powers, had been presented this date to the board of trustees of the Consolidated University, the report of the three-member study group already having the unanimous approval of the trustees' executive committee. The subcommittee had been appointed several months earlier at the urging of Governor Luther Hodges, to work with a similar committee from the Board of Higher Education in an effort to resolve differences between the two groups. The two subcommittees had held only one meeting together and had failed in their efforts to make peace. The subcommittee of the trustees had then prepared its report, presented in the executive committee on May 12 and adopted unanimously. Governor Hodges, who traditionally presided over meetings of the board of trustees as its ex-officio chairman, was not present for this date's session, having left Raleigh the previous day for a vacation in Europe. The prior Thursday, the Governor had expressed the hope that the subcommittees would meet several times and resolve whatever differences they had between them, that it would be a tragedy for higher education in the state if the feud between them was not settled. The report of the subcommittee had been intended to be maintained in secret until this date's meeting, but word of its recommendations had leaked and had received widespread publicity the previous week. Disagreement between the trustees and the Board of Higher Education had flared openly at a meeting of the UNC trustees in Greensboro the prior February, with the trustees having been critical of the action of the Board of Higher Education in reducing the size of a housing development for married students at N.C. State, one of the three member institutions of the Consolidated University, along with UNC at Chapel Hill and Woman's College in Greensboro.
In Charlotte, the widow of a man who had been killed in a fall from a Piedmont Airlines plane on June 13, 1956 during a flight from Charlotte to Asheville shortly after their marriage, had filed suit on behalf of her husband's estate for $300,000 in Superior Court against Piedmont Aviation, Inc., of Winston-Salem, alleging wrongful death. The man had fallen from the plane after the door had opened, pulling him out, as the plane coursed over the Shelby area, the man landing dead in a cemetery, just outside Shelby. The suit claimed that the man had left his seat to go to the bathroom and that when he found it locked, had pulled an unmarked handle which immediately opened the outside door. It said that Piedmont had been negligent in that the purser on the flight had not been in his usual seat at the rear of the airplane but rather in the cockpit where he could not see the passengers. The unmarked door handle had been stated as another aspect of the negligence. The suit had also named the pilots of the airplane.
In Atlanta, it was reported that a man and woman who had met more than a year earlier when their cars had been engaged in an accident, had developed a relationship after the man had called up the woman who was slightly injured. She said that he had the right-of-way and she had to go to traffic school. He said that his car had been repaired and hers had not and so he asked her if she wanted a ride to traffic school. She had accepted and their first date was at the school. They had been married on Saturday and left on a honeymoon trip to Mexico by plane. Hope neither falls out after imbibing too much at the reception.
On the editorial page, "Charlotte Is Prepared for the Future" indicates that after less than nine months of limited racial desegregation in the Charlotte schools, a pattern of progress and social adjustment was apparent, with the public being increasingly accepting of the facts of constitutional life, though for many, it being neither a happy nor willing acceptance, while most were adjusting with unusual grace and dignity.
When the City School Board had approved its 1958-59 pupil assignment rules the previous week, there had been no discernible discontent exhibited within the community, notwithstanding the fact that they were the same procedures which the Board had adopted the previous year, when limited desegregation had followed in September at four City schools. This time, there had only been silence, suggesting that a valuable lesson had been learned in the meantime, that the Board had acted the previous year to preserve the public schools when it admitted qualified black students to the previously all-white schools.
The state's pupil assignment law permitted the local school board to retain local control over admissions, removing the risk of the massive, court-ordered integration which presently threatened Virginia, allowing a community such as Charlotte to act in good faith in observing the law without courting disaster, which could follow Federal action to accomplish abruptly the social engineering which would take years to complete successfully.
It indicates that it was only the beginning of a delicate experiment in a future with many challenges ahead, but which Charlotte was up to meeting.
The beginning of the effort had been stormy, at least at one high school, but in time, wisdom, restraint and stability had emerged, with only a tiny, irresponsible element in the community having made trouble since the prior September, that trouble having been only slight. It had been a difficult nine months for race relations and community relations, but when tensions had been at their highest there seemed to have been a resurgence of social responsibility.
It finds it impossible to say what would happen in the immediate or long-term future, but it is convinced that a reservoir of responsibility existed in the community, out of which would flow the "courage, wisdom, understanding and sense of justice to carry through any social emergency."
"Latin America: Look Who Was Talking" indicates that the State Department had more than ample warning of seething unrest in South America prior to the bad treatment received by Vice-President Nixon during his tour, especially in Peru and Venezuela.
On January 23, 1953, a distinguished authority on international affairs had warned the American people: "Sometimes we're inclined to take South America for granted. But the reality is that there are strong Communist movements in South America and Fascist influences in some quarters which are working away, largely underground so far, and they are trying to destroy the traditional friendship between the people of the American republics. The past Administration has been so preoccupied with some of these problems of Europe and Asia and Africa that I referred to, that I fear it may have somewhat neglected South America and taken it for granted that we could forget about South America for a time and then go back and find everything the same as it was before. But actually any such policy of neglect would lead to growing danger."
The author of the remark had been Secretary of State Dulles, who, it finds, had been responsible for another five years of neglect of U.S. obligations to South America.
"No Editorializing!" indicates that the typographical error of the week had occurred in the New York Journal-American's account of a sermon on sex by evangelist Billy Graham, indicating: "He listed five ways to commit immorality: Through thought; eye; tongue, through off-color stories; dressing to excite others, and by literature and pictures designed to stimulate the imagination. fAI-t pwinmitnimet."
It says it desires just the news.
"'Now, If I Were a Businessman...'" finds the President's advice to American business on how to end the recession to have been embarrassingly plaintive in tone and content, indicating that if he were a businessman, he would know what to do, that he would bring costs under control, hold the line against unearned wage increases, modernize his plant, improve his product, hold inventories at something more than minimum levels and obtain a strong competitive position for the inevitable prosperity just ahead.
It indicates, however, that the President was not a businessman, and, as President, ought engage in more than wishful oratory and establish a program of governmental action to end the recession. It asserts that the time had passed when economic growth and stability could be furthered without Government action. Taxation, it finds, was the best tool to accomplish an upturn. If taxes were reduced enough to have a substantial impact on the economy as a whole, many of the steps which the President recommended would become feasible. Yet, for months, the Administration had been unable to decide whether to use that tool. Meanwhile, the recession had deepened and broadened. The logic of the situation called for an immediate decision, indicating that a quick and substantial tax cut would offer the economic stimulus needed desperately to trigger an upturn.
The current Congress and Administration in 2025 just finished providing you MAGA morons the tax cut for billionaires, a class to which most of you obviously belong, designed to do what has never worked in the past, afford "trickle-down economics", in a time when there was no recession, and which promises to stimulate one, just as the last time this happened.
"Life in America" indicates that a wife in Columbus, O., had recently asked the newspapers to withhold news of her divorce suit because she had a date to lecture a church group on "Family Life".
A piece from the Washington Post & Times-Herald, titled "Short Story", comments on the news that two cars could park as cheaply as one, provided one was a small foreign car, causing consternation among motorcycle patrolmen as to whether either car could be ticketed. Recently, a Volkswagen owner had squeezed in behind a Renault, and was hauled before a judge who found the Volkswagen driver guilty, but suspended sentence, indicating that it might be a solution to Washington's parking problem.
It suggests that the judge's
pronouncement might help the parking problem but left the moral
question open, especially since American automobiles were penalized a
full nickel for the parking spot. So it offers as a solution minting
of 2 1/2-cent coins and splitting the full size parking spaces into
two smaller ones, each with a meter ticking for half the time. "Thus
could justice
Drew Pearson, in Prague, indicates that getting behind the Iron Curtain was presently relatively easy, so easy that "Iron Curtain" was about as outmoded as nomenclature as the line of forts once stationed along the Mexican border. (Trump and his policies, of course, are bound and determined to re-establish both.) He says that eight years earlier, he had skirted the Iron Curtain from Turkey in the south to Germany in the north and had encountered barbed wire entanglements between Turkey and Bulgaria, troops and artillery along the Albanian border, in a rigid curtain.
But now, all one had to do was board an airplane in Zürich and fly to Prague. He had flown in a Czech plane made in Russia, which was quite comfortable, arriving in Prague late at night without visas, having been told by the Czech Embassy in Washington that they did not need any for transit passage, a correct assessment. But it was supposed to be impossible to get beyond the airport hotel to the downtown area of Prague without a visa. Yet, the passport officials appeared anxious to please and after some telephoning, they had gotten permission to stay at a hotel in the heart of Prague.
He observed American tourists everywhere, quiet, modest, spending their money unostentatiously, inconsonant with their general reputation. He suggests that they might be the secret weapon by which the U.S. conquered the no man's land behind the Iron Curtain.
A French wool salesman staying at the hotel made the rounds of Iron Curtain countries every two weeks, indicating that when the people there had money, they bought, and when they did not, they did not buy, but were easy to deal with and paid promptly. He sold wool to government-owned textile plants and reported that business had been good, as the textile mills were operating at full production.
Mr. Pearson concludes that it was quite a switch from the old days when it was hard even to get mail into Prague from the West.
Rowland Evans, Jr., tells of the President being angry and resentful at speculation that he might resign so that Vice-President Nixon could obtain executive experience prior to the election campaign of 1960, at which time it was expected that he would become the Republican presidential nominee. Recently, the President had amazed some of his Republican associates by his bitter reproach of politicians whom he apparently suspected of encouraging the gossip surrounding such a prospective resignation, having appeared indignant, asserting affirmatively that under no conditions would he resign unless compelled to do so by his health.
Mr. Evans finds it no surprise that the President would resent suggestions that he was planning to resign and turn over the Presidency to the Vice-President, even if the suggestions had come from partisan Democrats such as DNC chairman Paul Butler, who had been regularly hinting at such a dark plot. The President had regularly repudiated publicly that idea.
In the opinion of some influential Republicans, however, the resentment went beyond that of such Democrats and extended to Republicans as well behind closed doors. Many Republicans believed such talk was nonsense and that to discuss such a possibility would be an affront to millions of American voters who had cast their ballots for the President in 1956. But to other Republicans, it appeared consistent with the idea of keeping the Democrats from obtaining the White House in the election of 1960, making Mr. Nixon a more palatable candidate. Those Republicans included practical politicians of both the conservative and "modern" wings of the party. They argued that the 22nd Amendment, applicable for the first time to a sitting President to prevent him from running for a third term, as the Amendment had been ratified during the second term of President Truman and was inapplicable to any then-sitting President, now made the President a lame-duck and eroded his power over his party, leading to an immediate search for a successor.
Mr. Nixon was, of course, first in line of lawful succession to the Presidency and was also apparently the choice of major factions of the party for 1960, making the third-term ban only meaningful in relation to Mr. Nixon's unique position, especially as a relatively young man, whereas if he were older or not acceptable to powerful factions of the party, there would be little talk of the President's resignation.
Another major point of the Republicans who were favorable to the idea of a resignation was that the President had incurred three major illnesses, his heart attack of September, 1955, his ileitis of June, 1956, and his more recent mild stroke of late 1957, all of which had imposed limits on his activities, preventing him from taking advantage of the energy and resources of the party in a time of crisis abroad and economic disorder at home, and that unless the President could deal more realistically with those problems, the Democrats would be unbeatable in 1960.
Mr. Evans concludes that it was in essence the case being made by some Republicans who were concerned about the party's future, and that the talk would surely continue, but that judging from the President's indignant reaction to it, it might do no more than stiffen his resolve to complete his second term.
As it turned out, of course, the consternation of the future partner of Mr. Evans, Robert Novak, notwithstanding, that which the President actually should have been considering, had he a perfect crystal ball in his possession, was to stem the flow of the river which would feed the wheel, producing all kinds of grist for the mill, some admittedly a little false, but most being more true than anyone then even realized, leading inevitably to the first Presidential resignation in U.S. history, and, to date, the only one, lending some ironic credence to that slogan Mr. Nixon would use in 1968.
Actually, Mr. Nixon could be rather likable at times, if he was not so damned harboring of vindictive malice toward those he considered to be his personal enemies, to the point of bitter obsession, rendering of him not a completely counterfeit caricature of one of several Shakespearean characters, ranging from Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to the Thane of Glamis and Cawdor, and several in between.
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, indicates that the annual WCTU nonsense regarding banning of interstate liquor advertisements appeared over again and the "blue-noses" had departed, more or less secure in the knowledge that their noble works would wither again in the Senate Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, as in the previous nine Congresses, when similar bills had succumbed to common sense.
He says that he had bought enough booze in his time to own a controlling interest in a distillery, but owned no stock in one, that he and most of his friends would continue to drink if they had to boil their own cough syrup in the cellar, as they had done before, not having forgotten the recipe for bathtub gin. But he objected to the fatuous and slyly conceived remarks from the head spokesman for banning liquor ads, those of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, who said that the advertising would probably convert children to drink. He doubts it because they were so busy playing with switch blades and sawed-off shotguns that they barely had time for such an innocuous thing as a beer at a ballgame. He offers a remark of the late James Walker, presumably referring to the former New York Mayor, that he never knew a girl to be seduced by a book. Dr. Peale had said, "If you take liquor out of this world, you would reduce human problems by 75 percent—maybe 85 percent."
Mr. Ruark indicates that the Bible had an injunction about taking a little wine for the sake of the stomach, and that alcohol had a part in most religions, except that of Muslims. (He forgets, however, that such took place in an age in which there was little else to drink than something fermented, as they had no refrigeration or large sources of fresh water out there in the desert.)
He also comments that Hitler had been a teetotaler and Winston Churchill liked a cigar and a champagne-brandy-whiskey combo, and had for decades. (No one, however, could make the case that there were not so many other variables in the equation that one could hardly make the absence or presence of liquor in the diet the sine qua non for either the start or end of World War II.) He also indicates that sour mash had been a favorite of General Ulysses S. Grant, but refrains from suggesting that his fondness of the bottle had caused the South to secede. Former President Hoover and Bernard Baruch had achieved honorable old age while still taking a snifter against the cold.
In any event, he goes on, rather boringly, in that vein, as most drunks do in trying to rationalize their habit, sometimes desperately so and quite irritatingly, concluding: "And, finally, the world has been so messed up by wild-eyed ascetics that I flatly challenge the statement of Dr. Peale that 75 to 85 percent of the human problems disappear if you knock off the grog. The way things are now with the world, you got to stay a little loaded or you couldn't stand it."
As indicated, Mr. Ruark would die at 49 in 1965 of cirrhosis of the liver.
A letter from the director of Region 5 of the AFL-CIO, commends the editorial of May 21, "The Wage Bills Never Become Law", regarding the recurring, unsuccessful effort in the North Carolina Legislature to pass a state minimum wage law for those employees, which he estimates at 90,000, not covered by the Federal law for being employed in intrastate as opposed to interstate commerce. He suggests that voters ought to demand that candidates accept the party platform and not receive party support unless they promised to pass such a law in the state, and that they should be held to carry out any individual promises to do so.
A letter from the superintendent and minister at the Methodist Home expresses gratitude to the newspaper for its helpful articles which had appeared during the previous few weeks regarding the Home, which he says was doing a job which they thought was worthy of attention. He especially singles out reporter John Borchert for his articles on the subject.
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