The Charlotte News
Tuesday, June 10, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President this date had proposed to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev that technical talks would begin July 1 in Geneva on methods of policing any possible future ban on nuclear testing, the White House having made public a letter from the President stating that the Swiss Government had agreed to the site in Geneva, which the President found preferable to Moscow, which had been suggested by Premier Khrushchev in his agreement to hold such talks. The President said that the Government would not object to the inclusion of experts from Czechoslovakia and Poland on the Soviet side, that the Western powers participating would include the U.S., Britain, France and possibly other countries. He noted that Mr. Khrushchev had indicated that the Soviet Union would not object to the inclusion of additional Western nations with experts in the field of nuclear test detection. Regarding neutral nations, the President said that the U.S. would have no objection in principle to their joining later in the discussions if it was agreed during the course of the talks that it would be necessary or useful. That would possibly allow such countries as India to participate. The President suggested that provision be made for the talks to continue somewhat longer than the three or four weeks which Premier Khrushchev had suggested, to enable resolution of complex technical questions. The President said that the talks would be undertaken without commitment as to the final decision on the relationship of nuclear test suspension or to other more important disarmament measures he had proposed. He proposed that further details for the meeting be handled through normal diplomatic channels, ending the top-level exchange of notes. British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, conferring in Washington with the President, had been informed of the contents of the President's reply.
Secretary of State Dulles said this date that the U.S. probably would want international inspection posts within Communist China, as well as elsewhere, to police any agreement to ban nuclear weapons testing.
State Department officials said that they had linked eight aliens arrested in the country recently with a passport theft ring operating in Palermo, Sicily. (It probably started with the newspaper's Social Security number contest. Don't participate.)
At Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, repeated attempts to "jam" or confuse the Air Force guided missile Mace had failed. The Air Force said that the Mace, using a new guidance system called Atran, had been tested in a series of 650-mile flights from Holloman to Wendover Air Force Base in Utah, and in no case had the guidance system been confused, the vehicles having continued on course with a high degree of accuracy, according to Air Force officials. The Mace was a jet-powered, 650 mph tactical missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. The Atran guidance system eliminated the need for ground control.
In Milwaukee, it was reported that Lt. General S. E. Anderson, director of Air Research and Development Command, had said this date that the Air Force would "shoot for the moon" in August. He said in an interview that the Air Force would fire three "lunar probes" during the year, with the others scheduled for September and October. He declined to disclose the size or weight of the payload which the Air Force hoped to deliver. They would not be instrumented and would be intended simply to crash onto the moon, giving some indication of the arrival. Three-stage rockets, the main power plants of which at takeoff would be modified Thor missiles, would propel the projectiles over a 278,000-mile course to the moon in 2 1/2 days, according to General Anderson. The vehicles would be modifications of military missiles. The Thor was a 1,500-mile range missile, with at least 13 having been tested and of those at least five had been successful. General Anderson said that even if the rockets missed the moon, they would become interesting scientific satellites because their elliptical orbits would carry them far out into space and possibly around the moon and earth in a kind of figure-eight pattern. He said that the first attempt to fire an Atlas over its full designed range of 6,000 miles also would be made in August. He said that they had fired the last of the overweight, heavily instrumented satellites, a series intended for engine tests of the Atlas. An Atlas missile or a Thor missile with appropriate later stages, would be capable of carrying into orbit a 3,000-pound artificial satellite similar to the Russian Sputnik II, according to the General. Given sufficient funding, the U.S. could be "second to nobody" in space, he said, adding that the U.S. was doing about 40 percent of what they thought they ought to be doing. He was in Milwaukee to confer with technicians at the AC Spark Plug division of General Motors, where the gyroscopic guidance system for the military version of the Thor was built.
In Paris, French insurgents in Algeria had threatened to break with Premier Charles de Gaulle this date as he strove to untangle France from a snarl of domestic and foreign problems. A communiqué from the All-Algeria Public Safety Committee opposed his plan for local elections in Algeria within a month and demanded a house-cleaning of political parties in France. The communiqué was met with official silence in Paris, but it was unofficially reported to have stirred deep suspicion that the Algerian right-wingers wanted nothing less than one-party rule in France. The Committee, formed following the May 13 revolt in Algiers, still held extensive power in the French North African colony despite Premier De Gaulle's notice to its leaders to relinquish their ruling role. The Committee, which had demanded that General De Gaulle be restored to power, had shown impatience because he had left its leaders on the outside in the reorganized Government. The Committee insisted that Algeria be bound tighter to France, with one currency, one postal system, one rail administration and one electric administration. Some of the measures demanded by the Algerian insurgents would impose a tremendous strain on French finances at a time when Premier De Gaulle was attempting to ease the threat of inflation and balance France's unfavorable foreign trade. The Committee's communiqué had been sent to Premier De Gaulle with the notation at the bottom that it had been approved by General Raoul Salan, to whom the Premier had delegated full military and civil powers in Algeria. The Committee still pledged its support to the Premier personally, about the only concession. The Premier was reported earlier to favor cutting the French parliament in two, with a weakened National Assembly for continental France alone and a more powerful Senate for all of the French Union.
In Nicosia, Cyprus, thousands of Turkish Cypriots had looted Greek grocery stores and fruit stands this date, the fourth straight day of violence on the island.
A House inquiry into the affairs of Boston industrialist Bernard Goldfine had been temporarily derailed this date by a legal hassle between his attorney and the members of the inquiry panel.
In Hartford, Conn., RNC chairman Meade Alcorn was named as one of eight defendants in a Federal civil suit claiming a conspiracy to evade company income taxes and to defraud a Connecticut brass fabricating firm.
In Baton Rouge, La., LSU's president and its deans had been ordered to explain to the Louisiana House of Representatives the following day why 59 faculty members had opposed segregation in public schools. The House had voted 70 to 0 the previous night to demand the public hearing because the 59 members were among 600 who had signed a Louisiana Civil Liberties Union petition opposing the joint legislative segregation committee's plan to close schools threatened with racial integration. Two LSU professors had appeared before the House Education Committee earlier in the day to protest the eight segregation bills before they had been approved by the Committee. The bills would authorize the Governor to close any public schools ordered to integrate, to provide for continued payment for school personnel, to provide a system of educational expense grants to children attending private schools, to set up education cooperatives by parents, and to prohibit local school boards from approving budgets for racially mixed schools. They had also set up a pupil assignment law patterned after the Alabama law, which had been upheld recently by a three-judge panel of the Federal court, provided for malfeasance charges against any school official found guilty of efforts to bring about integration and eliminated a section of the State Constitution held unconstitutional in the New Orleans school desegregation case, in an effort to offset Federal court rulings. The State House had directed LSU president Troy Middleton to bring the college deans to the hearing. In a resolution, Representatives said that they were "entitled to know how far-reaching such activities are with respect to the LSU faculty and administration." One member of the State Segregation Committee, Representative Ford Stinson, said that he favored holding up the LSU budget for the following year until the mess was straightened out. Waldo McNeir, an LSU English professor, and Dr. Charles Reynard, a law professor, had protested the bills before the education group, with Prof. McNeir stating that he was in favor of integration and Dr. Reynard, who taught constitutional law, responding to a question as to whether he was for integration by saying that he had not said that, but was for the "supreme law of the land".
In Toronto, it was reported that an explosion had ripped a 40-foot hole in a four-story brick apartment building in the North End of the city the previous night, with one man having been killed and two women and a man having been injured. A deputy police chief said that diggers had found the apparent cause of the blast during the morning, a boiler buried in the basement debris, with its half-inch thick steel walls having been ripped open. Police continued to investigate other possibilities, including that there had been a bomb involved, as one investigator said that it was mysterious that the full force of the blast had been in one direction. The possibility of a natural gas explosion was discounted by a gas company official, who said that there was no gas service for 500 yards on that side of the street. The shock of the explosion had seemed to one 72-year old woman like an earthquake. Two detectives said that a man who had been on the third floor had crashed through to the ground floor but was not badly injured.
In Minneapolis, a 38-year old former Detroit gangster, presently serving a term in South Carolina, had pleaded guilty the previous day to a Federal indictment charging him with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution for the kidnaping and murder of Tony Devito of St. Paul, who had vanished 4 1/2 years earlier.
In Raleigh, it was reported that the State Board of Elections this date had called for a recount of votes in Cabarrus County's tied contest between two candidates to the State House of Representatives, after the chairman of the Board had called for it. The two candidates, Bedford Black and E. T. Bost, Jr., had sought a recount of three ballot boxes. A Republican member of the State Board had made the motion for a recount of all of the ballots.
Ann Sawyer and John Kilgo of The News report that bonds forfeited by professional bondsmen were practically lost to City Recorder's Court as a source of income during the previous year, according to an investigation by the newspaper. Reporters checking the cash receipt book in the clerk's office of the court this date could find only two bonds totaling $250 paid by professional bondsmen during the previous year. Not a single forfeited bond had been recorded in the book for 1958. The continuing investigation by the newspaper of apparently illegal dismissals of charges in the court had turned up at least 71 such cases. The newspaper had checked out a large group of warrants in the clerk's office during the morning and had found 43 which had apparently been illegally marked as "nol pros", only legally done when the solicitor determined there was not enough evidence to prosecute, a practice supposed to be accomplished only in open court. A check of the court's minute book, in which all judgments were recorded, showed that 43 warrants, plus at least 28 others, had not been entered. Judge Basil Boyd of Recorder's Court and Solicitor George Miller had begun calling defendants on the questionable warrants into court, since the judge had ruled the previous day that the dismissals of the charges were null and void. The newspaper had checked the cash receipt books from June 28, 1956 through May 15, 1958, and had found that only $2,000 in forfeited bonds had been paid by professional bondsmen, with the total income of the court from fines and forfeitures during calendar year 1957 having been $112,745, a figure which included bonds forfeited by individuals and professional bondsmen, plus fines. A police sergeant, who was acting as the court clerk, said that forfeitures by professional bondsmen would be reflected in the cash receipt books. One bondsman told a reporter this date that he had receipts in excess of the amount of bonds as shown in the clerk's cash receipt book. Many of the nol prossed cases which Judge Boyd and Solicitor Miller had been scheduled to hear during the afternoon had been dated during a time when Judge J. C. Sedberry had been the City Recorder. Some apparently dated back to 1954.
In Monte Carlo, it was reported that Princess Grace and Prince Rainier had invited former President and Mrs. Truman to drop over on Saturday night for an old-fashioned songfest, at $23.81 each, with any champagne being extra. The singing would be led by Frank Sinatra and Noel Coward, on behalf of a charity which the Princess was sponsoring for the U.N. Children's Fund. As Grace Kelly, she had sung with Mr. Sinatra in the movie "High Society". The Trumans were currently vacationing on the French Riviera.
In Hollywood, it was reported that the funeral of silent film star Virginia Belle Pearson, 72, would be held this date, after she had died the previous Friday in the Motion Picture Country Home. She had appeared in such films as "Blazing Love", "Wildness of Youth", "Sister against Sister" and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame".
Elfrida Von Nardroff, the largest money winner in television quiz show history, had pushed her total to $248,000 the previous night. The 32-year old Brooklyn woman would return the following week for NBC's "Twenty One" with a 10 to 0 lead over her opponent, a hotel clerk and lawyer from Goldsboro, N.C., after time had run out the previous night. Earlier, the woman had added $10,500 to her winnings by defeating a New York City patent attorney and marine architect, 21 to 0. She said that she planned to continue on the program as long as her spirits held up—which meant, of course, that as long as they continued to feed her the answers.
In Kansas City, exhibits at the Hobby Industry Association of America's annual trade show had included a flying saucer, complete with a pilot whose complexion was deep green. That was simply based on common experience since Roswell eleven years earlier. Never mind the red ones; you have to be concerned about the green ones. They were out slaughtering everyone in sight, masquerading as human beings, these green ones. Witness the recent case out of Nebraska.
On the editorial page, "Council Should Launch Its Own Probe" indicates that irregularities in the administration of the City Recorder's Court were now threatening to make a mockery of the concept of equal and exact justice on the local level. It had first appeared that only a few minor indiscretions had been involved, but court officials now admitted that the scales of justice might have been tampered with by a person or persons having access to official documents, as the existence of warrants which had apparently been nol prossed illegally had been formally acknowledged.
The issue was the respectability of the court, which had to be above suspicion. If it was not, then it had failed the ultimate test of responsible government.
Recent disclosures had severely shaken the public's confidence in the manner in which the court had been operated. The judge was responsible for the conduct of the court over which he presided, but the overall responsibility belonged properly to the City Council.
It suggests that it would be prudent for the Council to initiate an independent investigation into the entire operation of the court, with a mere audit of the books no longer being sufficient as it would only tend to turn up financial discrepancies, when something far more serious was now involved, the concept of equal and exact justice in a court of law.
"UNC: A Renaissance in Reverse" finds that a dramatic heritage of sorts had grown up in Chapel Hill, owing its beginnings to the late Professor Frederick Koch, the Carolina Playmakers and the University's hospitality to native talent. Prof. Koch had proved that there was as much "good theater" to be found in the lives of North Carolina sharecroppers as in café society.
One of his students had been the late Thomas Wolfe, who said: "The dramatic is not the unusual. It is happening daily in our lives." Playwright Paul Green had also come from one of his classes. But perhaps the best all-around theatrical scholar to emerge from the Koch era had been Samuel Selden, appointed as technical director of the Carolina Playmakers and a member of the UNC faculty in 1927, inheriting the mantle of Prof. Koch when the latter had died. As chairman of the department of dramatic art, Mr. Selden had continued the Koch tradition while expanding the technical features of the University's program in dramatics, initiating new undergraduate courses in theater practice and supervising the development of graduate work in dramatic arts. Under him, UNC had become more of a seedbed of original thought in the fields of dramatic techniques and the aesthetics of the theater. Mr. Selden had written ten books on the theater and was under contract for an eleventh, and had also directed outdoor historical dramas by Mr. Green and Kermit Hunter throughout the South.
Now, Mr. Selden was leaving for UCLA's department of theater arts, to become its chairman in 1959. It finds the loss to the University, to the state and the South to be great, indicating that his role in making fine drama and "good theater" a part of the cultural heritage of the region to have been too important to be overlooked. The state had not only lost a superb educator, but a unique cultural force as well. It wonders how long UNC had to go on being stripped of its best.
"Adm. Strauss: Mum Was the Word" indicates that a lot of Americans had been uneasy about the Atomic Energy Commission while Admiral Lewis Strauss had been its chairman during the previous five years. It suggests that they might have felt more uneasy had the agency had a chairman of less skill and dedication, of which Admiral Strauss had an abundance and employed those qualities in what he thought were the best interests of the nation. But during his reign, a strong taint of political partisanship had attached to the agency, conceived as holding the trust and respect of the people and Congress.
Because the public was told very little regarding atomic matters, its attitude toward the AEC was framed by what it thought of the men who were its members, holding the future of the people in its decision-making. Unfortunately, the talents of Admiral Strauss as a technician had not been matched by a corresponding skill in political and public relations. He had come to be known not as a member of the AEC but as its arbiter in all things, and thus, rightly or wrongly, blamed for the AEC's habit of patronizing the public with misleading explanations regarding the danger of nuclear fallout. He had become a symbol of excessive secrecy, and symbolism was important in that area of government because the public had so few facts at their disposal. It finds it a pity that the President had apparently overlooked that point in choosing a successor for the Admiral.
He had chosen Los Angeles businessman John McCone, who had good administrative talents, and, as an Undersecretary of the Air Force during the Truman Administration, would know something about the political aspects of Washington. But it suggests that unless he could come onto the scene with a blaze of public esteem, as had Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy, he would suffer from the lack of national prestige which now marked him. Nevertheless, he was due everyone's good wishes in administering the Commission, including not only the military aspects but also deciding whether to suspend testing, and peaceful uses of the atom either by commercial or government development, a constant battle in which the political stakes were high.
It suggests that he could make a good start on winning the prestige and confidence he would need by urging the AEC to reassess its public information policies, at least to the extent that the public ought be given access to information which the Russians already had.
A piece from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, titled "A Look at the Tattooed Man", indicates that the cigarette which emphasized that it was "a man's smoke" often illustrated its advertisements with pictures of virile, masculine-looking individuals sporting tattoos on their chests or arms, that in the public mind, tattoos and "he-men" had sometimes been associated.
But a University of Oklahoma research team had now found that the tattooed man was a little bit more apt to be on the sissy side than was a non-tattooed man. The researchers had compared tattooed and non-tattooed patients at the Oklahoma City Veterans Administration Hospital, with the findings having been reported to the American Psychiatric Association meeting at San Francisco. It was found that the tattoos usually were obtained between ages 17 and 21 while the recipient was "reasonably" sober. The tattooed men were no more inclined toward turning up in a psychiatric ward than were other men, but the men who had tattoos were less likely to be married, more likely to be divorced, more likely to have come from broken homes and much more likely to have spent time in jail, with a high proportion of those jailings having been for drunkenness.
The researchers had not found out how many of the tattooed men now wished they had never gotten the tattoo. Some, it suggests, undoubtedly regretted it, especially if they had inscribed some name in a heart tattoo on their chest, but had subsequently fallen in love with a woman of another name, which could prove annoying.
Nowadays, and for several decades,
the study would also have to include young women, for reasons which
still escape us. Is it the quest for unique identity, for the love of
art and the wish to have art, the same art, always accompanying one's
body
Drew Pearson indicates that Anthony Drexel Biddle, former tennis star who was now adjutant general of Pennsylvania, was the American who knew General De Gaulle best and could best swing him toward better cooperation with the U.S. When Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt had been snubbing the General during World War II, Mr. Biddle was one of the few Americans who had gone out of his way to win the friendship of the General. Mr. Biddle had then been stationed in London as Ambassador to the governments-in-exile from Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway and other occupied countries. Initially, he did not represent the French, but had sent a telegram to FDR indicating that unless he heard from the President to the contrary within 24 hours, he would assume that his mission also included the exiled government of France, headed by General De Gaulle. Thereafter, he had also become the ambassador to the General, who had been kept so ignorant of Allied operations that he did not even know that British and American troops were landing in North Africa until he had read it in the newspapers. Mr. Biddle had found him sincere, sensitive, stubborn on little things, not on big things, and completely courageous.
An up-to-date investigation of lobbying in Washington was long overdue, with lobbyists supposed to register with the Justice Department, though increasing numbers of them had found loopholes in the law, one being to distribute anonymous literature, the latest illustration of which was a neatly bound book received through the mails by Congressmen from "The Long House" publishing firm in New Canaan, Conn. It was called "Mainline" and was authored by Senator "Molly" Malone, the isolationist Republican from Nevada. The book was a lengthy, rambling, bitter attack on the reciprocal trade treaties and had been mailed to Congressmen for the purpose of influencing their votes against the Reciprocal Trade Treaty Act presently before Congress. But the identity of the person or organization mailing the material remained a secret. Someone was funding it. Congressman Charles Porter of Oregon had written to Long House to see who was distributing the propaganda, noting that the book had been sent as a gift, the compliments of an "interested friend". The publisher had replied that they had been requested and had agreed to keep in confidence the name of the man, whose identity was not even known by the author of the book.
Doris Fleeson, in Bastogne, Belgium, states that the names of the U.S. states were engraved in gold on the stone of the roof of the columned memorial on the knoll just beyond Bastogne, erected to the 76,890 American dead, wounded or missing in the Battle of the Bulge, the last significant thrust by the Wehrmacht against the Allies in December, 1944. It was one of the worst American casualty rates of any battle in U.S. history. The memorial named no single hero, for the number of them, including the Ardennes Belgians, according to the official account, "died or suffered wounds of great privation helping these friends from overseas cannot be known."
From Bastogne, General Anthony McAuliffe had issued his well-known "Nuts!" in response to the invitation to surrender from the Germans, commanded by General Von Runsted. The city square had a statue to General McAuliffe and a unique sign, "This way to the Nuts Museum", where the General's and other mementoes of the siege of the city were enshrined.
She indicates that Americans now visiting the Brussels World's Fair would find only green meadows and deep, peaceful forests where the battle had once raged.
The battle had begun December 16, 1944 in fog and darkness. The official account stated: "The thin defending line was overwhelmed and broken … the Ardennes door lay open. It snowed deeply and, attacking in snowsuits, the enemy could scarcely be seen. The weather turned cold." Further on, said the account: "The loss from exposure grew great … as men fought for shelter and warmth... The enemy knew by Christmas Eve that his plan was defeated. But there was no sudden strategic retreat. Every hill and roadway had to be rewon by firepower and lives."
She finds the details of the battle to be compelling when visiting the scene. Inscribed on the memorial pillars were the varied ranks who had fought there, Army corps, paratroopers, armored columns. For the U.S. armies, it was one of the great battles of their history, given the men engaged, the fierceness of the fighting and the accomplishment at its end. The official tribute read: "The uniformed ranks of the United States fought for this soil as if it had been their homeland."
She found that the hospitality accorded visiting Americans by the Belgians was "overwhelming, almost embarrassingly so." Many of the visitors were families of men who had died there, "which is only natural."
Gerald W. Johnson, North Carolina newspaperman who had worked for the Baltimore Sun for many years and had been a friend of W. J. Cash, had been asked by The American Scholar recently to be one of several persons to explain their faith, why they wanted to keep on living beyond age 60, with excerpts of his reply being printed, as contained in the autumn, 1957 edition of the publication. (The others, incidentally, to whom the existential question was addressed were: R. L. Duffus, author and member of the editorial staff of the New York Times; Henry Beetle Howe, co-editor with his wife of the weekly Vineyard Gazette, newspaper of Martha's Vineyard; Humayon Kamir, philosopher, author and teacher, then the Indian Minister of Civil Aviation; Rene Fuelop-Miller, writer, lecturer and teacher of sociology; Howard Mumford Jones, professor of English at Harvard; Cid Ricketts Sumner, author of several novels and two recent non-fiction works; Paul B. Sears, chairman of the Conservation Program at Yale and chairman of the board of directors and retiring president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; William Carlos Williams, poet, novelist and physician of Rutherford, N.J.; and Melville Cane, lawyer and author.)
He states that a man's faith was "his reason for continuing to be when he might his quietus make with a bare bodkin" and so regards the correct response to be the reason for one's current presence among the quick. He does not believe such an explanation could be made, not regarding any reason as adequate unless it satisfied a considerable number of people, and he considered his reasons for continuing to live to be satisfactory to no one but himself. An illustration of Ralph Waldo Emerson's undue optimism was that, "Every man is wanted, and no man is wanted much." He posits that if a man beyond 60 could make himself wanted at all, he was fortunate and very unusual, that as a rule, what he had to give to the world, he had already given, and what he might reasonably hope to receive from it, he had already received. Thus, his reasons for continued existence had to be strictly subjective.
He remembers how strange it seemed to a small American boy that England no longer had a queen when the death of Victoria had been announced, and how strange it seemed to a graying man that England had a queen, when Elizabeth was proclaimed in 1953. Between the two queens had been two world wars, in the first of which he had participated, and had watched the second from the sidelines. "I have seen an economic system that men thought as solid as the everlasting hills collapse into utter ruin. I have seen orthodoxy repudiated and heresy rampant over half the earth. I have seen the transit of four great men—in my time Wilson passed, Lenin passed, Roosevelt passed, Stalin passed."
One of his grandfathers had reached age 92, and he believes that if he should live to see 1990, he should not be completely amazed, but neither would he be appalled. (He would live until 1980.) He says he could not hope to contribute anything of much value to the world if he lived for another generation and did not expect the world to reward him with either fame or fortune at that late date. He realizes how well-informed had been the Psalmist when he declared, "The days of our years are threescore and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years"—or even five score—"yet is their strength labor and sorrow."
But he would also not be appalled if he knew that he would live to be 100, for he had learned that it was an infinitely curious world and that practically every guess he had made about it thus far had proved wrong. He holds with Arthur Schopenhauer that of the two absolute evils in the world, pain and boredom, boredom was by far the worse. "So long as I am protected by ignorance of the real nature of the world—and that ignorance is plainly invincible—I cannot be overwhelmed by the worst of all afflictions, tedium."
He finds that there were some valid
excuses for suicide, such as inoperable cancer or the arrival of the
police with a warrant correctly charging first-degree murder, or "any
other presage of physical death inevitable, slow and agonizing."
(He does not mention it but Hitler had once contemplated suicide in
1923 after the beer hall putsch, when police arrived in front
of the house in which he had taken refuge from the hunt for him,
armed with a warrant for his arrest for treason, but was stopped by
the woman with whom he was staying, submitting to the arrest and the
fulfillment of his Destiny...
He believes that the woes of the world were not attributable to the fact that the leaders knew too little but that they knew too much which was not true, it having taken him 40 years to come to that realization after receiving his license to acquire an education, the Bachelor of Arts degree—which he had received at Wake Forest. But he was not embarrassed by the fact because the world had the same truth before it for 23 centuries and had not learned the lesson yet. "Socrates' remark that he was wise because he knew that he knew nothing was made 400 years before the birth of Christ, but it is still ignored."
He regards it unlikely that he would ever become a public menace because he failed to realize how much he did not know, and so was free to pursue information without the worry that he would acquire too much, even if his life might last another 30 years. He cites as example that he had only quite recently realized that "dour" rhymes with "poor" and not with "sour". He had not yet learned why, as it seemed in any well-regulated world that it would rhyme with the latter. His mistake was simply the result of mispronunciation, having long known what the word meant, as he had been raised in a Calvinistic environment.
Another word which he found more difficult and wanted to have between 20 and 30 more years to devote to the effort to translate it, was a favorite of Aristotle, at least according to Theodor Gomperz, that being Autarkeia, transliterated, not translated, as autarkeia, commonly supposed to be related to autarchy, but according to Webster's, was the result of confusion with another word. Mr. Gomperz had translated it as "self-sufficiency", but had appended a warning that the rendering was inadequate. The idea of independence was present, but much more was included, freedom, but even more than that, as apparently Aristotle had in mind not merely the state of being able to be free and independent.
Millions of Americans had been made free and independent by George Washington, but had not been able to remain so. Released by General Washington from the tyranny of George III of England, they had promptly fallen under the tyranny of their bosses or their wives or their pastors. "And that reincarnation of Jeremiah, the Prophet Wylie, avers that the whole nation lies under the worse than Neronian tyranny of Mom. This would suggest that George of Mount Vernon wasted a good deal of his labor, for there is small profit in making people free if they simply can't bear it."
It finds that there was evidence indicating that George Washington was the one American, and perhaps the only one, who was able to be free, though he had seen no proof that he had ever encountered the word "autarkeia", but finds that everything known about him indicated that he had the quality. He suggests that it was possible that Benjamin Franklin also had it, although he would have laughed and denied the imputation. But for the rest of the Founders, there was doubt regarding the matter. Alexander Hamilton never wanted it, having "preened himself on his slavery to the idiotic code [duello] that sent him to his death." Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who were both Greek scholars, knew the word and sought it diligently, but with only partial success. Mr. Emerson had preached it, "but his metaphysical chains clanked dismally throughout the sermon." Walt Whitman suspected its existence but without having any idea of its nature. Henry David Thoreau's "quiet desperation" was an explicit denial that he had it.
The greatest American he had ever seen during his lifetime had been Woodrow Wilson, and the second was FDR. As with Messrs. Jefferson and Adams, they had both striven mightily to attain the ability to be free and had succeeded in a measure far beyond the capacity of any other man of their time. But he does not believe that either came so close to it as had George Washington and perhaps Benjamin Franklin. He had known many men whom he regarded as better or happier or more successful than either President Wilson or President Roosevelt, but none of his time had come nearer to being free men. He admits of the possibility, however unlikely, that he might encounter an American who not only had freedom but was able to sustain it, and that if he should meet such a person, he might acquire enough understanding of the meaning of the word to translate it into English.
It provided him a reason for living which he found sufficient, though not expecting that it would satisfy anyone else. He doubts he would ever encounter anyone of that type again, but considers the search itself to be "always astonishing, frequently amusing, and occasionally inspiring—fatiguing, too, and at times painful, but dull only on those days when I allow myself to forget what it is all about."
He concludes the excerpt by saying that he admitted that from the reader's standpoint, there was no convincing reason why he, or any other than a small number of others past age 60, ought continue to live. "I cheerfully insist that from my standpoint the reasons are good and sufficient. Hence I must politely decline all invitations to suicide, not as denying their logic, but simply because I am too busy to arrange it."
A Pome appears from the Atlanta Journal, "In Which Is Contained An Observation Concerning Powders And Juices Designed To Keep One From Growing Old:
"Don't forget this basic truth:
There is no substitute for youth."
And blended ministrations of dyes,
blubber and vermouth
Render the Administration's eyes no
less of the gutter uncouth.
Framed Edition
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