The Charlotte News
Tuesday, May 27, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports from Paris that General Charles de Gaulle this date had
started forming a new French government
At the U.N. in New York, the Tunisian Ambassador to the U.S. had flown from Washington to New York this date and begun drafting a formal request for U.N. action to get French troops out of his country, talking with Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold and U.N. diplomats. He had told newsmen that he was preparing a complaint for submission to the Security Council but would not say when it would be ready. Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba had announced the previous night that he would call for U.N. action on "the extremely grave situation raised by French troops in Tunisia." The President had also said that he had asked for arms from the U.S. and Britain. Top State Department officials had conferred with the Tunisian Ambassador and the French Ambassador and had urged against any military moves which might precipitate new violence. The Tunisian Ambassador was expected to file a formal complaint in the U.N. against France after consultation with members of the Security Council. U.N. diplomats privately expressed doubts that the debate would be of much help at a time when the French Government was in the midst of a serious internal crisis which had virtually ruled out any possibility of French-Tunisian negotiations. Some even doubted whether the French Government could get the 22,000 French troops to leave Tunisia even if it wanted them to do so. The troops remained in the country under the 1956 treaty conceding Tunisian independence. The French Army in Algeria, the leaders of which had rebelled against the Government in Paris, wanted French troops next door as a deterrent to the rebellious Algerian Moslems who received supplies and arms in Tunisia. President Bourguiba had first demanded withdrawal of the French forces after planes from Algeria had bombed a Tunisian village the previous February.
In Jakarta, it was reported that the Indonesian Army had stated this night that the pilot of a rebel Indonesian bomber shot down by Government forces was American. The Army identified the man as being from Miami and that he was one of two airmen captured after their U.S.-built B-26 bomber had been shot down in flames near Amboy on May 18 while attacking Indonesian Government ships. The Government said at the time that one of the two men was a foreign national but had refused to disclose his nationality. The chief Army spokesman had said that both captured airmen had been brought to Jakarta and were held at an undisclosed location. The American was 30 years old and had a wife and two children and documents found on him showed that he was formerly a U.S. Air Force lieutenant, and was now with the "Civil Air Transport, with headquarters in Taipei, Formosa." CAT was the airline founded by Maj. General Claire Chennault of Flying Tiger fame during World War II. The chief Army spokesman said that the American airman admitted having been paid $10,000 by the Indonesian rebel leader. The other captured airman was identified as an Indonesian. U.S. Embassy officials in Jakarta said that they knew nothing about the American airman and had not been informed of his capture.
The Netherlands had protested this date against reported U.S. arms deliveries to Indonesia, as the Netherlands Ambassador had spent more than an hour with Secretary of State Dulles in Washington and told reporters afterward that he "made representations in connection with press reports about arms deliveries to Indonesia."
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee this date had formally proposed economic aid for Russia's European satellites with the argument that it was an area of "maximum vulnerability" within the Soviet sphere.
The House Rules Committee this date cleared for House consideration the following week legislation to extend the country's reciprocal trade program.
The Administration this date released an additional 300 million dollars to carry out the Government's anti-recession housing program. Without the new allocation, the program would have run out of funding in about two weeks. The Budget Bureau had made the money available to the Federal National Mortgage Association to purchase Government-backed home loans. FNMA could commit itself to purchase at par mortgage value not more than $13,500 on homes not yet under construction. In an effort to revive home construction as a counter to the recession, Congress had made available up to a billion dollars for FNMA purchases of FHA and VA mortgages. The Administration had allocated only 300 million dollars when the law had gone into effect the previous month and 220 million of that allocation had already been committed. With the second allocation, the Budget Bureau still had authority from Congress to release an additional 400 million in the future.
Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn said this date that he was fully in accord with the President's recommendation against substantial tax reductions during the current year. Representative Wilbur Mills of Arkansas, chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee, concurred in the statement of the Speaker at a joint news conference, indicating that his Committee would start consideration the following day of a bill to continue corporate and excise tax rates at their present levels. Under existing law, those rates would drop automatically on July 1 and the President had asked Congress to continue them to prevent an estimated 3 billion dollar drop in revenue. Several members of Congress had said that they would seek a reduction in the excise tax on automobiles, the sales of which had been lagging. A bill to extend the present corporate and excise rates was expected to reach the House floor early in June. Mr. Rayburn said that he did not favor a general decrease in taxes at the current time and that both he and Mr. Mills were in agreement with the statement of the President that there would be no further recommendations for tax reduction during the year. He said that he believed that a tax reduction would not be very potent in stopping a recession. He said that he could not comment on whether the recession was tapering off. Republican Congressional leaders said that the Administration's stand against any anti-recession tax cut was prompted by the uneasy international situation and the threat of inflation. Senate Minority Leader William Knowland of California said to the press that he and other Republican leaders had held their weekly meeting with the President, indicating that the President would have to speak for himself regarding his reasons for not favoring a tax reduction at the current time, but that Secretary of the Treasury Robert Anderson had made it clear that the Administration was concerned about the revenue loss which would result from a cut. The President had stated the previous day that he opposed any general tax reduction at the current time, renewing his request for a one-year extension of the corporate and excise taxes at current levels.
Before the Senate Select Committee investigating misconduct of unions and management, Max Block, head of the New York Butchers Union, faced more questioning about his finances this date, indicating that he could "outlast and out-talk" the Committee. He was polite but noncommittal the previous day in replying to all questions.
A bipartisan Senate group planned a fight this date to broaden legislation to extend unemployment benefits, but supporters of an emergency bill said that they had the votes to pass it without change. A final vote on the anti-recession measure was possible this date, but there was some sentiment to wait until the following day for a vote. The emergency bill had already passed the House and followed closely the Administration's recommendations. The drive to strengthen the bill had been announced by Senators John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, Paul Douglas of Illinois, and some Republicans from industrial states. Senators Kennedy and Douglas had prepared the amendments which would broaden the temporary features of the bill and write in higher permanent standards for jobless payments, with such payments presently varying in duration and amount under state laws. The group favoring a stronger bill contended that the House-passed measure would provide no help for many jobless workers who had exhausted their unemployment payments.
In Washington, a warship bearing the bodies of two unknown soldiers in twin bronze caskets made its way up the Potomac River this date, to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery the following Friday to symbolize all of the nameless dead of World War II and Korea. A third unknown, brought with them from foreign battlefields, had been given a sailor's burial at sea the previous day after a final selection had been made during a rendezvous off the Virginia Capes, the latter having been selected from the anonymous dead of World War II. The following morning, the two caskets would be removed to the Rotunda of the Capitol, where they would lie in state. On Memorial Day, they would be entombed in Arlington close to the Unknown Soldier of World War I. The unknown from the European theater of World War II was aboard the destroyer Blandy, and aboard the missile carrier Boston were the bodies of the unknown from the Pacific theater and the unknown from Korea. All three bodies had been transferred to the missile carrier Canberra off Cape Henry, Va. After the selection had been made by a holder of the Medal of Honor, the Canberra had sailed out to sea for the ceremonial burial, and the other two unknowns were transferred to the Blandy for transport to Washington.
In London, it was reported that British and Singapore representatives had agreed this date on the contents of a constitution granting self-government to the Asian colony, but differed on whether known Communists ought be allowed to seek office there.
In Seoul, South Korea, it was reported that 19 women and girls had drowned the previous day when an overcrowded boat had capsized at a reservoir 60 miles south of the city, the women having been on a Buddhist holiday outing. Five persons and two boatmen had been rescued.
In New York, two white boys had been slashed slightly on their faces by one of four black youths this date as they stood outside their vocational high school on the lower East Side, with no apparent reason having been given for the attack.
In Raleigh, it was reported that a study made by a faculty committee had played a major role in the decision of the board of trustees of the Consolidated University to seek a reduction in the powers of the State Board of Higher Education, as revealed this date when the report of the faculty group had been made public. The trustees the previous day had adopted unanimously the report of a special trustees committee which had proposed that the State Board be stripped of many of its powers. The faculty group, headed by Henry Brandis, Jr., dean of the UNC Law School, expressed the opinion that under present state law, the board of trustees was "completely deprived of the legal right to control the education policies of the University." It asserted that the law ought be changed to restore that authority to the trustees. The committee had discussed the Board of Higher Education's action in reducing a proposed housing development at N.C. State in Raleigh from 500 to 300 units, not criticizing the action but indicating that the Board may have exceeded its authority by fixing priorities on the assignment of housing units to married students. The faculty committee also told of recommendations received from the Board of Higher Education dealing with salary scales at the University, adding that the extent to which the Board believed that it had the legal authority over salary scales was not clear, but that the apparent intention was to assert a position in the matter superior to that of the University and virtually equal to that of the State budget division.
In London, singer Jerry Lee Lewis
In Bucklin, Kans., a woman who had contributed a can to the covered-dish luncheon at the Helping Hand Club had opened the can containing her contribution and found that she had picked up the wrong item at the grocery store, that instead of green beans, she had contributed dog food.
On the editorial page, "The Honeymoon that Wouldn't Quit" indicates that old pols had been predicting the end of the honeymoon of Governor Luther Hodges ever since he had become Governor at the death of Governor William B. Umstead in November, 1954, with the forebodings always having been darkest before a new session of the General Assembly had opened, but never so early as in the current year.
The Assembly would not meet until the following February and yet the Raleigh News & Observer during the week had stated that political prophets predicted that the Assembly would be "a humdinger", with the suggestion that the long honeymoon of Governor Hodges with the legislators might be headed for a "bitter end".
It finds that the prolonged honeymoon of the Governor had been too much attributed to the luck of an artless amateur, while the fact was that artlessness and amateur status were as far removed from the world of the Governor as the Congo was from Alabama. The Governor was a seasoned professional politician who left nothing to luck, was wise enough to bet only on sure things, depending not so much on the advice of his lieutenants as on his own uncanny sense of timing and judgment.
He had weathered the storm which followed his appointment of B. Everett Jordan to succeed the late Senator Kerr Scott, despite that appointment having been displeasing to Senator Scott's supporters. He had emerged from his battle over the Highway Commission reforms the previous year without any damage and he had sold the Pearsall Plan for pupil assignments to comply with Brown v. Board of Education with similar ease and success. He had also been able to sell more governmental reorganization to conservatives in the state than any Governor in recent memory.
It finds that none of it had been luck, that the success had been planned coolly, carefully and consciously, not by an artless amateur but by an artful professional. Because he was a superb politician, far better suited to the role than the President, he made his own luck and to a large extent controlled the duration of his own honeymoon, probably the longest in history. It had probably normally ended in 1955 and that which had followed only resembled a honeymoon because the Governor, the Legislature and the people were all so admirably adjusted to one another.
"Step Right Up and Take a Stand" refers to the letter to the editor this date, desiring repeal of the "two-corner" zoning law and wanting to know how current candidates felt about it.
It finds it a fair question, properly directed to the City Council, which had to grapple with the law, preventing it from doing what it wanted with respect to corner lots on two roads, its desires having been based on a thorough study of the facts. But it had eventually rejected a suggestion from the City-County Planning Commission that Charlotte be exempted from the state law so that it could make its own decisions on how street corners ought be zoned.
The General Assembly delegation generally only drew up such measures at the request of local governing bodies and Charlotte could be exempted from the state law by a simple amendment, which it urges ought be enacted.
"When Man Bites Dog, That's News" indicates that at Washington's National Airport when the President had welcomed back Vice-President Nixon from South America, Congressman Sid Simpson of Illinois had asked the President whether he would play golf in the afternoon, to which the President had replied that he was going to work.
Then, according to George Dixon of the Washington Post, the President had glanced over the assembled newsmen and noted that no pencils were in motion, indicating that it always got into the newspapers when he played golf and so wondered why it was not mentioned when he stayed in his office to work.
It concludes: "By George, he's right. Don't those Washington reporters know a news story when they see one?"
A piece condensed from "The American Teenager", titled "These Are Our Teenagers", indicates that only 45 percent of the nation's young adults believed that newspapers ought be allowed to print anything they wanted except military secrets, with 13 percent believing that religious belief and worship ought be restricted by law, 26 percent believing that the police ought be allowed to search a person or his home without a warrant, 15 percent believed in refusing some criminals the right to have a lawyer, 25 percent agreeing that some groups ought not be allowed to hold public meetings, 17 percent indicating that they might support police jailing people without naming the charges against them, 33 percent indicating that the people who refused to testify against themselves ought be made to talk or severely punished, with an additional 20 percent uncertain on that point.
Nine percent believed that one could not be a scientist and be honest, with 14 percent thinking there was something evil about scientists, 27 percent believing that scientists were willing to sacrifice the welfare of others to further their own interests, 30 percent saying that a normal family could not be raised while being a scientist, 35 percent believing that it was necessary to be a genius to become a good scientist, and 45 percent thinking that their own educational backgrounds were too poor to permit them to choose science as a career.
Fourteen percent said that foreign countries had very little to contribute to American progress and 37 percent said that immigration of foreigners to the country ought be restricted since it might mean "lowering national standards".
In short, those teenagers were the ones to whom, as later adults, Trump and his neo-Nazi minions have sought since 2015 to appeal and cultivate in virtually every public statement they have made regarding education, science, health, and constitutional rights.
Drew Pearson, in Bucharest, Rumania, indicates that the city exhibited strange paradoxes, in the middle of it, having roosters crowing in the morning and around its most ornate public square, the sound of the rain crow calling in the afternoon, while in the evening one heard the rhythm of a jazz band and the wail of a gypsy flute. Strict doctrines of a Communist regime had clashed with the lackadaisical corruption of royalty, and the Communists had won.
The Russian Army had taken over from the Nazis, and where the landmarks of German energy still stood out, there was an airport far more modern than La Guardia in New York, and a Council of Ministers Building, stern in design but yet in a way beautiful. The parks of the city were delightful and the streets were almost empty of cars. It had interesting museums built by the monarchy and well managed by the Communists. Free enterprise at times seemed confined to the tapping of the boot black outside one's hotel window every morning, trying to drum up trade. There was little other advertising in the country, with billboards instead promoting the virtues of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin and the link between Russia and Rumania.
The Communists had cut out sensuousness and appeared to have eradicated a certain amount of sin, though the Communists could not eradicate sex. They had been harsh and ruthless in taking over the palaces and estates of the old regime and crowding one-time nobility into small rooms with no bathrooms. They had given those confiscated homes to workers and there was bitter resentment from the old nobility, with genuine cases of suffering.
In the store windows, set aside for the sale of personal keepsakes, one could see relics of the past, a statue of a czarist cavalryman, an old photo of Charlie Chaplin and Lillian Gish, a set of China, a sword worn by one of King Ferdinand's courtiers. But that was the past, and the Communists were living for the future.
To see how they were looking to the future, Mr. Pearson had gone to some of their schools, one being a nursery school attached to a state factory which manufactured clothing, where mothers were working in the factory and left their 200 children in the nursery, which he found excellent, better than some American nursery schools where his own grandchildren had attended.
He had also visited a Pioneer Place, a special relaxation and training school for children to keep them off the streets and get them started as young Communists. The one he attended was in the King's old summer palace and was beautiful, rebuilt into classrooms for study of radio, electronics, telephone, painting, theater, manual training. He found it all extremely well done, that there might be a political motive but he could also find no juvenile crime in the satellite countries.
Marquis Childs, in Paris, indicates that all over France, committees for General Charles de Gaulle were being secretly formed, and while their existence was screened by censorship of the Government in Paris, they were preparing for the return to power of their hero. They were made up of small businessmen, farmers, some upper civil servants and older people living on pensions, sharing not so much a sense of hero-worship as deep disillusionment with things as they were and a conviction that General De Gaulle might be able to do what had to be done for France.
They assumed that the General was coming back to power, a widely accepted belief in Paris despite the large majority given recently in the National Assembly to the Government of Premier Pierre Pflimlin. No one suggested that they knew when or how the General would come back to power but the fatalistic acceptance of the fact was expressed in the shrug of a taxi driver who said, "Oh, well, we had better see what he can do."
The Rightist parties were preparing for the eventuality, particularly the Peasants Party of former Premiers Antoine Pinay and Joseph Laniell. They might even pave the way for the General to take over legally by putting together a coalition of Rightist parties which would vote against higher taxes or the constitutional reforms which Premier Pflimlin had said were essential. In that event, the Communists would vote with other Left parties and with some of the Center, and the specter of a "popular front" would precipitate a new crisis, triggering the fall of the Pflimlin Government.
The relationship of the Communists to General de Gaulle and the Gaullist movement was one of the mysterious unknowns in the weird political tangle. Moscow had become increasingly moderate, with stress on the fact that it had been General De Gaulle who, as Premier after the war, had gone to Moscow and reached an agreement with the Soviet Union, implying the possibility that something like that might happen again.
The General was working, with a calm view of destiny, the dominant element in his temperament, on the completion of the third volume of his memoirs, and those close to him said that he was adding a final chapter which would prophesy the future of France. It would be an apocalyptic vision of the decline and fall of the system of political parties and the return of a savior to restore the glory of the country, the savior obviously being the General, who, as the head of the wartime resistance movement, had not reproved hero worshipers who identified him with Joan of Arc. The history of the previous 20 years for the General had been himself, both his strength and weakness, his strength because it underwrote his unshakable confidence that he had the capacity to lead France from the wilderness of confusion and conflict, but because it colored his judgment of contemporary events, also represented a great weakness. Part of his distrust of the U.S. and American policy had been based on his experience as leader of the Free French during World War II, when he had often been in conflict with both President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
He had been living in the past in his years of retreat and had a vivid memory of the dispute in North Africa after the U.S. landings in 1942, when General Eisenhower had denied authority to General De Gaulle and his faction in Algiers. The General and many others in France had placed the blame for General Eisenhower's decision on the U.S. diplomat, Robert Murphy. Thus, when Mr. Murphy had been sent by Secretary of State Dulles on a good offices mission to seek to reconcile the differences between France and Tunisia over the French bombing of a Tunisian border village, all of General De Gaulle's suspicion had been stirred anew. In his press conference of the previous week, his strong feeling had been evident when he spoke of "a diplomatic Dien Bien Phu" coming from the good offices mission. The General and a large segment of French opinion which treated the Algerian war with the utmost seriousness had been convinced that Mr. Murphy would demand a catastrophic surrender from the French in North Africa.
While President Eisenhower and General De Gaulle were unlike in temperament, that which the latter was saying to the French people at present was similar to what General Eisenhower had said when he gave up the command of NATO to run for the presidency in 1952, that unity and national confidence were more important than the divisions of the parties and that he could be a leader of all the people above the quarrels of the parties, the reason the people should look to him for salvation.
Mr. Childs indicates, however, that whether he could understand the nature of the deep divisions in France and whether he had the political capacity to heal them and unite the French people remained the greatest of unknowns.
Joseph Alsop, in Paris, indicates that virtually the entire Army, a large part of the permanent civil service and ever-increasing numbers of influential people in the other key sectors of French life presently believed that General De Gaulle's return to power was "the only way out." Yet only a very small minority felt any enthusiasm for the experiment which they were advocating. No one doubted the General's greatness, but no one had any clear idea of what he would do with the power so many people wanted to give him. Most of those who most strongly believed that France needed the General had just resigned themselves to great change, regarding it as risky but unavoidable. The sudden surrender to the General demanded an explanation.
He finds that the explanation was a growing rejection of the National Assembly, which had seeds in the darkest days of World War II, 1940. A member of the personal staff of Premier Paul Reynaud had just made his way to the U.S. after notable adventures, with everyone asking why M. Reynaud had not led a French Government in exile to the same North African provinces now troubling France. It was known that Premier Reynaud had wanted to do so, and so it was questioned why he had turned over the Government to the advocates of surrender to the Nazis, Henri Petain and Pierre Laval. On being asked the question, the former staff assistant to Premier Reynaud had offered the explanation that the Premier had wished to lead a Government in exile which would represent "a parliamentary majority" which had dissolved in disaster, and therefore handed it over to the advocates of surrender in the belief that Hitler's surrender terms would prove "unacceptable", causing a parliamentary majority to rally to Premier Reynaud, after which the departure for North Africa could be organized in proper form.
Mr. Alsop indicates that if that account was correct, M. Reynaud in fact had regarded the opening of surrender talks with Hitler as a parliamentary maneuver, completely unrealistic. Mr. Alsop indicates that in the previous 18 months, he observed the same phenomenon on many occasions, having heard, for example, two successive Premiers discussing the Algerian problem at length and in detail, both being able men but hardly once touching on the cruel realities of the situation in Algeria, rather commenting on the quite different realities of the National Assembly, regarding the measures which the deputies would approve and not approve and of how different groups stood, etc.
As in the case of M. Reynaud, a kind of substitution of realities had occurred, not seeing the problem, itself, but the problem as it was reflected in the distorted mirror of the passion-charged, endlessly maneuvering Chamber of Deputies. Precisely because of its intricacies and uncertainties, the French Parliament lived a life of its own which supplanted the actual life outside. He finds that it was that strange state which made the outer world think that France was weak, whereas France in fact was a nation in full renaissance, bursting with renewed vigor. But those who were living actual life in France had been alienated from those living the parliamentary life, and it was that state to which Premier Pflimlin was now belatedly and desperately seeking to remedy with his constitutional reforms.
They were already talking, however, in the Assembly of replacing the Government with one headed by Guy Mollet, and even if Premier Pflimlin endured and the Assembly voted for his reforms, it was hard to see how it would restore the authority of a government which no longer had any real authority either over the Army or in Algeria.
A letter from the legislative committee of Madison Park Homeowners Association favors repeal of the "two corner" zoning law in Mecklenburg County, which made it mandatory for two corners of an intersection to be zoned for business if the other two were already so zoned. Thus, business establishments could lawfully "cross the street" in spite of objections by local homeowners and local planning rezoning commissions. They urge candidates in the coming primary to make their feelings known on that zoning legislation, and hope that the Mayor and City Council would help make it an issue by expressing themselves before the primaries as being in favor of repeal of that law. They also urge the newspaper to continue its efforts to have the legislation changed so that Charlotte zoning could be done by the Planning Commission and City Council and without hindrance by the statute.
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