The Charlotte News
Saturday, July 12, 1958
ONE EDITORIAL
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Moscow's repeated refusal to obtain freedom for nine American soldiers held in East Germany threatened this date to blow up into a first-class row between the U.S. and Russia. Deputy Undersecretary of State Robert Murphy had told Soviet Ambassador Mikhail Menshikov the previous day that the Soviet Government was permitting East German authorities to use the nine captive Americans to blackmail the U.S. while denying Russia's own responsibility for their return. Continuation of the situation "can only worsen the relations of the Soviet Union and the United States to the profit of neither country," according to Mr. Murphy. In the same session with the Soviet envoy, Mr. Murphy had also delivered a stern protest against the Soviet shooting down of an unarmed U.S. transport plane on June 27 and demanded punishment for "those guilty of the attacks on the plane." All nine of the crewmen of the plane had been returned recently. Mr. Murphy also said that the U.S. reserved its rights to compensation for loss of the plane and injuries to the crew. Five of the crewmen had been beaten by Armenian civilians after parachuting from the burning aircraft, one of them narrowly escaping being hanged by the peasants. The four other crewmen had remained with the plane as it crash-landed in Soviet Armenia. Russia had charged that the transport had deliberately flown over Soviet territory, with the U.S. having replied that the plane was on a flight to Tehran over the regular commercial route across Turkey when it strayed across the Soviet frontier during inclement weather. Mr. Murphy's note said, "To suggest that a slow, four-engine, propeller type, unarmed aircraft would attempt to violate a heavily defended foreign area is preposterous."
In Guantánamo, Cuba, it was reported that U.S. officials were increasingly irritated this date because Fidel Castro's rebels had still not released 29 American servicemen after freeing the last civilian hostage. C. Allen Stewart, deputy director of the State Department's Middle American affairs division, had flown from Washington to Havana the previous day to confer with Park Wollam, the U.S. consul at Santiago, who had been negotiating with the rebels. There was no indication as to whether they had devised any new plan to speed the release of the sailors and Marines, taken by the rebels two weeks earlier to dramatize their fight against El Presidente Fulgencio Batista's regime. Mr. Wollam said that the rugged country was slowing up the movement of the servicemen to points where a U.S. Navy helicopter could pick up the men. Raul Castro, Fidel's brother, had been quoted as saying that he regarded the captives as an efficient means of halting Cuban Army attacks against the rebels, as the Army had curtailed its offensive for fear of harming the Americans.
Representative John Bell Williams of Mississippi had offered a peace feeler to Bernard Goldfine this date, indicating that a contempt citation might not be voted against him for a time, if at all, saying that the House subcommittee looking into the Goldfine-Adams matter was not anxious to cite him, that they were "much more anxious to get the information" about some of Mr. Goldfine's finances, information which the latter had refused to provide thus far on the grounds that it was not pertinent to the inquiry at hand into the administrative agencies and the need for any remedial legislation regarding them. Mr. Williams said in an interview that although groundwork had been laid for a vote to cite Mr. Goldfine for contempt of Congress, the subcommittee was not likely to ask for it for awhile, that it wanted to complete the record first, and that what they really wanted was the information. Further questioning of Mr. Goldfine was expected to last two days, perhaps more, starting the following Tuesday, with other witnesses also on call. Mr. Goldfine had said that he would think over a subcommittee plea that he answer more questions, but gave no sign of yielding, as he and his wife prepared to fly home this date. The House inquiry into Mr. Goldfine's relations with his friend, White House chief of staff Sherman Adams, and with two Federal regulatory agencies, the Federal Trade Commission and Securities & Exchange Commission, with whom Mr. Goldfine had been in trouble, intercession with which Mr. Adams had undertaken for him, with no action ultimately taken against him or his textile companies for repeated violations of the wool labeling act, had hit a climax the previous day when Mr. Goldfine had refused to answer 23 questions specially prepared under threat of contempt if he did not answer them. The questions related to Mr. Goldfine's milking of a company he controlled, but did not completely own, of $104,973 in easy loans during the period 1945 through 1948.
Robert F. Kennedy, counsel for the Senate Select Committee investigating misconduct by unions and management, said this date that the underworld was milking at least a billion dollars per year from the labor-management rackets. He said that it would be borne out by the Committee as it got deeper into its investigation of alleged gangster infiltration of both labor unions and business enterprises across the country. He said, "It may prove to be a conservative figure," declining to give at present a breakdown of the amount taken by such rackets in any particular area. The Committee planned to resume on Tuesday public hearings on the rackets' infiltration of the Chicago restaurant industry, hearings begun during the current week. Later hearings would deal with rackets in Detroit, New York, Pennsylvania's garment industry, Miami, Los Angeles and various other places. Chicago gangster Tony Accardo and three of his alleged lieutenants had repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination the previous day, refusing to answer any questions about alleged extortion conspiracies.
At Cape Canaveral, Fla., the search for the Thor-Able nose cone and its passenger, Wickie the mouse, was abandoned this date by the Air Force. Poor little Wickie... He's dead for sure.
Julian Scheer of The News, in the last of three articles on the launching of the Thor-Able ICBM with Wickie aboard, reports from Cape Canaveral that "this gaudy and tinsel state is growing so fast the earth seems to tremble beneath your feet." Cape Canaveral was no exception, as the motels, the neoned drive-ins, the shopping centers and the housing developments were going up quickly. Yet, around the Cape, itself, there was a different air, of security, mystery and seriousness. The center of activity away from the Cape was the Starlite Motel at Cocoa Beach, 8 miles away, and its meeting place, the bar or restaurant, which was populated by engineers, technicians and reporters. All had a stake in the Cape's biggest product, the future. In 1947, one could have bought most of the desolate, lonely Cape for a song, whereas at present, it was priceless, and housed a 400 million dollar per year operation with a 100 million dollar payroll. It would only get larger as the future in missiles, satellites and rockets became greater. What made that section of Florida different from the rest was probably I.Q., as at the Cape there were some of America's best and busiest minds, working some 24-hour shifts. There were technicians who wore badges marked "Boeing", "Martin", "Convair", "Douglas", "Lockheed", "Northrup", and "Avco". There were crewcut youngsters just out of engineering school and the long-haired scientists from a Midwest lab. There were business executives with millions of dollars tied up in a fuel project and former Army and Navy men and women who had once learned something about radio or radar, whom RCA could now use. Together, those people worked under the direction of Pan American World Airways for the Air Force, Army and Navy on research projects pertinent to missiles. It was a big business and one which would get bigger. The Cape was the home of the Air Force Missile Test Center which operated the Atlantic test range, the world's largest proving ground for guided missiles. The range was a string of islands stretching from the Cape to the deep South Atlantic past Ascension Island, with a string of islands with tracking and instrumentation stations stretching along a 5,000-mile path. Headquarters for the operations was Patrick Air Force Base, headed by Maj. General Donald Yates. The introduction during the war by Nazi Germany of the V-1 and V-2 rocket bombs, lacking guidance capability, had been indirectly responsible for the establishment of the agency and the Government going into the missile testing business in 1947. The Air Force had been designated to take over the operation in 1951. The Center did not build guided missiles and did not launch arms and missiles, merely providing research and development facilities for the Air Force, Army and Navy. The Center provided the test range, assured safety of the Atlantic range and, while the missile was in flight, governed its destruction in case of errors. Its technicians gathered data regarding the flights.
At the Eniwetok Proving Grounds in the Pacific, another nuclear blast had taken place the previous night, according to a joint announcement this date by the Defense Department and the Atomic Energy Commission.
In New York, Hungarian groups this date announced plans to resume picketing the Russian United Nations headquarters despite the Communists' claims that it might prevent them from taking part in U.N. work.
The Senate had sped to the House a 2.475 billion dollar omnibus housing bill in a form strongly opposed by the Administration.
In Nicosia, Cyprus, it was reported that three Turkish Cypriots had been killed and three wounded this date in an ambush, the heaviest single blow at the Turks since communal fighting had erupted on Cyprus five weeks earlier.
In Rome, it was reported that bus, streetcar and suburban train service had been halted in every major Italian city this date by a 24-hour nationwide transport workers' strike.
In Erie, Pa., it was reported that a 24-year old woman, after being buffeted by waves and chilled by frequent rain squalls, had abandoned her attempt to become the first woman to swim Lake Erie from Erie to Canada.
At Sandpoint, Ida., a 73-year old man had gone berserk the previous night, killing one woman and wounding three men before killing himself. He had fatally shot a 66-year old woman as she sat eating ice cream at a lunch counter in a tavern-cafe, and also wounded the owner in the neck as well as a second man as he fled through the back door. The police chief was wounded in the chest and leg as officers laid siege to the man's barricaded home where he had gone after the shootings. The wife of the tavern owner said in a telephone interview with reporters that she was outside in the car when she heard the shots, that it had been their wedding anniversary and she thought someone was shooting off firecrackers in celebration. Her mother had been eating ice cream and cake inside in celebration of the anniversary, and the woman hurried inside to find her sprawled across the bar, at which point she screamed. Her sister-in-law reported that they were afraid as they did not know where the "crazy man" was, as she could hear the shooting and shouting. She told the telephone interviewer that she had to hang up because she had to hide. Shots could be heard as deputies talked to the Associated Press. (Note to the Magaville, U.S.A., nuts of today: Despite it being Idaho, nobody was blaming "radical left-wing Fascist-Commie Democrats" or violent radicalizing rhetoric from the left for the shooting. It was, most probably, the conspiratorial combination of the usual suspects, easy access to a firearm, perhaps a cocktail stimulant for "courage", plus some harbored animus, be it jealousy, projection of harbored vengeance held against someone onto a complete stranger, or some other of the usual suspects psychologically, having nothing to do with right or left-wing politics. Hint: Use of a firearm to kill, maim or wound without legal justification, by definition, transforms any situation into extreme right-wing violence. Think about it, stupid. It's primarily the guns, dummy.)
In Albuquerque, N.M., the bearded 47-year old recluse and former mental patient who had been arrested the previous day for killing two children the night before in an unprovoked attack on the main street of Cuba, N.M., a tiny farming village, said this date from his hospital bed: "It had long been known there are too many people in the world. It was time for the job. I had to. There was nothing else I could do about it." He had been prospecting for uranium in his mountain retreat 20 miles north of Regina. After the shooting, he had fled there and had wounded a pursuing posse member in the shoulder. The previous morning, the State police had flushed him from his hiding place, wounding him in the foot before the capture. He was rushed to a hospital for surgery on his shattered foot and for questioning. He stated that it was "a proven fact" that there should be no more than 10,000 people(?) in the world and that he had been planning on doing something about it for three years, but admitted that getting rid of the excess would be "a big job". He said that he had not seen before either of the two related dead children, ages 12 and 14. He said that when he saw that it would be so easy, he had to do it. He was not sorry that he had killed the children as "they had to be pulled down." He said that he would not pull down others with rifles and the only reason he had used a rifle on the two children was because it was all he had with him. He then tired of the questioning and turned to the interviewer, saying: "You are to stop this right now. Otherwise, I will have to shut you down." The interview ended. See thar? He 'as prob'ly one of them lib'ral Democrats always a-talkin' 'bout birth control and other ungodly things as that for the pleasure organs to be allowed to run unfettered. It's always them lib'ral Democrats. They's the only ones who wants the guns so's some nice little, ol' feller can be radicalized inta usin' 'em to shoot the li'l children. It's awful and it must stop. There're just too many people around and most of 'em have to be locked up or sterminated.
In Charlotte, Lewis Carter Burwell had died this date in a local hospital after a brief illness. Mr. Burwell had long been prominent in Charlotte affairs and was a past president of the Charlotte Rotary Club, in 1934, having headed the Community Chest and had been chairman of the Charlotte Red Cross between 1937 and 1941. He had also been active in that latter period in founding the blood bank. He was a member of St. Peter's Episcopal Church, where he had served many years on the vestry. He was formerly the executive secretary of the North Carolina Diocese of the Episcopal Church and had served on the board of St. Peter's Hospital before it had merged with Memorial Hospital. He was president of the Cotton Belt Candy Co. until 1933 when he entered the insurance business, and since 1947, had been associated with the Union Central Life Insurance Co. of Charlotte. He had earned the degree of Chartered Life Underwriter from Wharton School of Finance in Pennsylvania.
In Charlotte, it was reported that North Carolina's ten top beauties would compete this night for twelve college scholarships, other awards and a chance at the Miss America title. A third set of preliminary winners had been selected during the afternoon at Ovens Auditorium this date. A full house was expected for the evening ceremony which would see the reigning Miss North Carolina, Elaine Herndon, pass her title to one of the 62 pretty and talented girls competing in the pageant. Tickets were still available for the finals, should you wish to attend. In the previous night's preliminary judging, Miss Randolph County, Carolyn Jones of Asheboro, 19, and Miss Goldsboro, Joyce Daughtry, 20, had won, respectively, the talent and bathing suit competition. Other winners named in preliminary competition on Thursday night had been Pat McQuage of Wadesboro, representing Anson County, winner in the bathing suit division, and Janet Johnson, Miss Monroe, winner in the talent competition. The ten finalists, selected by a point system, would be reduced to five before the selection of the new Miss North Carolina. The contestants themselves would select Miss Congeniality from among the finalists.
On the editorial page, an editorial book review, titled "The Wit and Wisdom of Harry Golden", regarding his recently published Only in America, indicates that the strange thing about Mr. Golden was that he existed at all, that if it were not for his prodigious outpouring of prose, one might be tempted to believe that he was invented by some latter-day Charles Dickens or William Hogarth.
He was a Jew from New York's Lower
East Side, a product of Tammany Hall, a crony of old Socialists, a
nonconformist extraordinaire, an integrationist and self-styled
Friend of Man editing the Carolina Israelite in Charlotte, a
city noted for its Proper Presbyterianism and its political and
social orthodoxy. "'Ah-h-h,'
For those who had watched his publication grow into a journalistic legend of sorts, the book was only a verification of an old truth, as Mr. Golden had been turning out the most flavorful and provocative one-man journal in America, with the book being a distillation of the best of the Carolina Israelite, the entire content of which he wrote. He had added to the book several pieces originally prepared for Commentary, Midstream and the American Jewish Congress Weekly. The result had been a "remarkable extravaganza of humor, opinion, reminiscence, whimsy and erudition" which was typical of Mr. Golden and uniformly delightful.
Carl Sandburg had provided the foreword, stating: "Whatever is human interests Harry Golden. Honest men, crooks, knuckleheads, particularly anybody out of the ordinary if even a half-wit, any of them is in his line. He writes about them. He drops the sheets of writing in a barrel. Comes the time of the month to get out his paper, the Carolina Israelite, he digs down into the barrel and finds copy. As you go along in this book or in copies of his paper you may be saying, 'That fellow doesn't miss anything—he has ears to hear and a pencil to write it down.'"
It finds that Mr. Golden was the only person who could call Dostoyevski a "guy" and get away with it, and that few writers at present were equipped with a better nose for paradox. He searched it out wherever it existed, in relations between Christians and Jews, in the plight of the Southern black, in the gray-flannel world of Madison Avenue and the Organization Man, in contemporary politics. Yet he was no soapbox artist. He was primarily an entertainer, but with a point of view. Laughter was his weapon and he used it deftly. He frequently had his readers chuckling at their own social villainy, just as had Mark Twain in the past and, at present, Mort Sahl. If the villainy was not dissolved, it was at least diluted.
He could be appropriately sociological on the question of the Jew and the black in the South and merely logical on the matter of dying. He had stated in one essay in the book: "Monday is the best day of the week to die. The folks have a clear field ahead of them, and can give their activities and the 'arrangements' the respective unhurried dignity. Tuesday is not too bad, but Wednesday and Thursday come close to the danger point, and Friday is completely out of the question. The first thing the folks will think of when death enters their lives on a Friday, is that their weekend has been completely smashed up."
Regarding why other planets had not contacted earth, he had said: "In all our space literature, we automatically picture the Martians or the Visitors From Outer Space trying to wipe us out and grab our women. Big deal. We are always worried about someone carrying off our women. This is chutzpah. I believe the reverse is closer to the truth. I think the Martians and other Visitors From Outer Space are afraid they'll get killed the minute they set foot on this nervous, inhibited, frustrated and trigger-happy little Earth… They keep watching and keep saying, 'Not yet, Charlie.' They have decided to wait."
Large portions of the book were devoted to the Lower East Side and reminiscences of life among its Jewish immigrants, being among Mr. Golden's more ambitious pieces, dealing with local color and exotic situations with great zest and humor, some examples of which the piece provides.
The South was also present, including his "Vertical Negro Plan", noting that blacks and whites had been standing up together at store counters and bank teller windows for years without incident, so suggesting that desks be provided in the integrated public schools, but no seats, that pupils would be compelled to stand, and "since no one in the South pays the slightest attention to a vertical Negro, this will completely solve our problem."
He was sensitively concerned with the "Negro problem" but recognized that it was not confined to the South. He had said: "In San Francisco I learned that the Negroes call the South 'Egypt.' Later on I chided the Negro editor. I said how come—over in Oakland I hear the same old story—children of Italian immigrants moving out of neighborhoods as Negroes move in. The editor smiled and said, 'We call the South Egypt but you didn't hear me calling this the Promised Land did you?'"
It finds that he was at his best when dealing with men rather than Man. The characters who were in his essays were undeniably real, including "our new breed of knuckleheads", referring to the quiz show champions, the mediums, of whom he said: "Why Lafayette should have talked to me and why some old relative from Galicia hadn't made contact puzzled me, naturally, but I suspected the reason for it was that none of these mediums or their confederates could speak Yiddish."
"It's all here in 317 pages. In fact, Golden leaves but one really vital question unanswered in Only in America—when can we expect another book?"
A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled "The Twilight Owlets", indicates that the newspaper had recorded previously that the owl was a "stupid stick-in-the-mud, an utterer of discordant nonsense, a mask of ugly and shiftless diffidence waiting for a hapless insect to deliver himself up as a welfare check."
"The little screech owls will grow ugly and stupid eventually, alas, but along about now they are a tremendous improvement upon the arch provincial parent who is glued to the limb. When the weather is silky after supper, when the color curling from the woods is a sort of greenish blue, the owlets take off much in the manner that the Wrights did at Kitty Hawk. There is more of prayer than hope in these first flights. Excitement is bound with fear as the owlets flail, quiver, fall, rise, and flounder ahead at slight altitude."
It finds it a marvelous show for one who was bound to town and city and that the poet in the observer sought to push down the subsequent truth that "the roisters will finally hole up on a limb, premature superannuates doing their best to master the ignoble art of immobile stupidity. Like father, like son. Too soon, too soon."
Drew Pearson indicates that while Senators were making speeches on Alaskan statehood, the grandson of the late President Grover Cleveland had been one of the unsung heroes of the Alaskan wilderness. Tom Cleveland was an Episcopalian missionary in Alaska in a small Eskimo village far from civilization with no means of transportation except by dogsled and an occasional airplane which landed at a makeshift airport. The Reverend Cleveland had made no speeches about Alaskan statehood, but had written an eloquent report to his family regarding life in the territory, indicating what citizens of the other 48 states would encounter when they would tour the latest addition to the nation.
"A lot of snow and ice has melted and over a foot of grass has grown since I last wrote in December. This is really a land of contrasts. There are only a few hours of light in December, but a few nights ago the mail plane landed at midnight in almost broad daylight. Come the end of May, because of long days and a great deal of moisture, the trees and grass go from buds to greenery in three days. The change from death to life seems almost instantaneous…
"Beaver season was poor and the price was low again so at the season's end everyone was looking for work. Unemployment was as high in Alaska as anywhere, so the men who used their beaver money to go to the city to get work had many disappointments. The economic situation in the villages looks like it's getting worse with low fur prices and a real lack in seasonal and out-of-the-village employment.
"We were hit last winter with some form of distemper amongst the dogs, and we must have lost 30 or 40 dogs in this village alone. This is like having almost every car and truck in a city out of commission! For this reason I was happier than ever to see the bishop arrive for his visitation. He brought us three full grown dogs from Fort Yukon and two pups from Nenana. Two of our dogs had died, including my leader. It was quite a sight to see the bishop squeezed in his little plane with five dogs, six Easter lilies, and fresh groceries for three villages.
"The one great need we have within the mission and the village which some of you have asked me about is some kind of tractor. For several years we have had our eye on the old tractor at our mission in Anvik, but now it has broken down and won't seem to run at all just when we were going to get it. There is no way to haul anything in town except by brute force, wheelbarrow, or dogsled, and a tractor would be a tremendous help to us all. Anything any of you would like to do to help us obtain this modern convenience would be greatly appreciated.
"There is not a soul in the village now except for the schoolteacher and the postmaster and ourselves. Everyone left about ten days ago for the Yukon and their summer fish camps. We will stay here most of the summer."
Mr. Pearson indicates that the Reverend Cleveland did not know that he was quoting from the letter and would be surprised when he read it, but it seemed important not only that the American people know about their new state but that they also become aware of how the grandson of an American President was serving mankind.
Would it were that the offspring and grandchildren of the other occupant of the White House who counts twice in the number of Presidents through history would do likewise and not go around spewing hatred and division or otherwise trying to make millions and millions of dollars off their father's position. Send those two silly bastards, the sons of the papa, up to Alaska and get them out of here. They are part and parcel of the "hate speech" which the personal attorney of the man in the White House, acting out as "attorney general", thinks should be criminalized, in complete derogation of a long history of Supreme Court cases holding otherwise under our Constitution, which she obviously failed to study very much during her tenure in the 100th best law school in the country down there in Florida. Hey, they try harder, if not so much as the 300th best law school in the country attended by the present unprecedentedly contumacious director of the FBI, his law school obviously seeking to get to the bottom of it all. Either those two clowns didn't attend classes, perhaps too busy out and about trying to locate some post-high schooler with a semester of community college before dropping out possessed of obvious hatred for all college students because he did not get into West Point, believing his slot stolen by a black female benefiting from Affirmative Action and bitter enough therefore to reach the turning point, into a racist, routinely mendacious little pig and lead the new, irresistible, recrudescent wave of neo-this and thatism, all, of course, to be promoted loudly in the name of free speech negative-pregnant intercourse between students, or they taught constitutional law there via comic books. Nothing which we have heard them say suggests any understanding of the Constitution of the United States. Perhaps they have a thorough understanding, however, of the former constitutions of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, which they seem more to espouse on a regular basis, following the Leader of Magaville, U.S.A., being what they appear to represent when they talk of "constitutional law".
The hate speech is coming from the top, stupid, from your boss man. It has been for the last decade. As soon as you clowns disabuse yourselves of the personality cult surrounding him, just as it was with Hitler in the 1930's, the country will begin perhaps to recover from this prevailing regime of neo-Nazism and neo-Fascism.
To condemn the Third Reich in the time of Nazi Germany would not, at least in the reasonable minds of those populating the Allied nations, have been considered "hate speech". Likewise, in present-day America. If you don't like it, move to El Salvador, with your buddy down there, El Presidente. But you do not condemn people for "hate speech" for merely speaking the truth about the senile nut currently at the head of the Government, who thinks he owns the Government and who is busy every day implementing the "unitary executive" concept, eschewing not only the other two branches but also the intrabranch checks put in place by Congress through the decades to ensure against too much concentration of unfettered power in the office of the chief executive to offset a scenario where Congress and the Supreme Court are dominated by one party and abdicate routinely their check and balancing responsibilities, that circumvention of the Constitution and Congress put forth in Project 2025, written by Herr Doktor Goebbels, the Duke graduate.
Speaking of whom, he, too, had a
wife and little children, at least before the loving parents
decided to kill them when they killed themselves in the bunker at the
tragic end on Walpurgis Night—so that they could all reunite in the peaceful valleys of Valhalla. So should we also be condemned for being perhaps a little
caustic against him as the propaganda minister for the Third Reich?
Should we, perhaps, posthumously plump for a Goebbels remembrance
day
Oh, let us not forget David Duke
Day, also
Walter Lippmann indicates that barring an invasion of Lebanon from Syria, there would not be and could not be an Anglo-American armed intervention in the Lebanese civil war. The report of the U.N. observers had cut the ground from such intervention at the request of Lebanese President Camille Chamoun based on promises made to him or on the basis of Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, or under an interpretation of the Eisenhower Doctrine. For unless the report was contradicted by events in the future, it not only denied that there was any just cause to intervene, it also made certain that the U.N. would oppose and condemn any intervention.
The thesis of the report was that the fighting was an internal Lebanese civil war and the idea of landing British paratroopers, presently in Cyprus, and U.S. Marines, presently with the Sixth Fleet, had thus been opposed in advance. President Chamoun's friends were challenging the U.N. report, claiming that the United Arab Republic was infiltrating its own fighters and sending in arms. They were conducting a propaganda campaign as well on the radio. There was no doubt that the rebels were being helped and encouraged and that it was intervention by U.A.R. Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser in Lebanese affairs, but the question was whether it was "massive" intervention, as claimed by the Chamoun Government, or, as the U.N. report had it, not enough to be significant and decisive.
He indicates that to the American bystander, asked to choose between those two conflicting accounts, there was an undeniable fact which argued convincingly in favor of the U.N. report, that being that the Lebanese Army was passive, doing little more than containing the rebels, refusing to subdue them. That destroyed the claim that Lebanon was defending its national independence against foreign aggression, the basis for the Eisenhower Doctrine. It supported the judgment of U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold and the U.N. observers that the real opposition to President Chamoun was from the Lebanese, those who were in open rebellion against the pro-Western Government, and by those who, including the Army, were refusing to help put down the rebellion.
There were some who believed that in failing to intervene actively in support of President Chamoun, the U.S. would be participating in another Munich of 1938, the sacrifice of a friendly nation to appease an aggressor. There were others who believed that if the British and American forces were to intervene, the U.S. would be participating in another Suez Canal crisis of 1956. Mr. Lippmann suggests that it would be better not to argue by analogy and to discard the stereotypes of Munich and Suez and try instead to see the Lebanese problem itself.
Lebanon was a unique state, unlike any other in the Middle East or anywhere else, existing by virtue of a pact between the Christian and Moslem communities to live and work together. Its independence rested on the main tenets of the pact, and the crucial question of the civil war was not whether Lebanon ought adhere to the Eisenhower Doctrine or whether it should align with Premier Nasser, but rather whether the Christian community and the Moslem community could live together. If they could, Lebanon would not be absorbed by Premier Nasser even though it abjured the Eisenhower Doctrine. If the Christian and Moslem communities could not live and work together, there was no solution in sight, instead every prospect of the endless misery of an endless war.
The fundamental objection to British-American armed intervention in favor of President Chamoun was that it would destroy the chances of restoring and maintaining the Christian-Moslem pact. Western intervention on behalf of the Christian President of Lebanon would surely arouse the implacable opposition of the Moslems. In all likelihood, the internal war would become what it was at present, a religious war. The West's true interest was to defend the independence of Lebanon by using influence to preserve the integrity of the basic Christian-Moslem pact. To the extent that President Chamoun stood in the way of a political settlement of the civil war, the West should advise him to step aside and warn him not to prolong the struggle by gambling on British-American armed intervention. If the pact would be preserved, his successor would also be a Christian Arab and there was no present reason to believe that that person would be any more ready than was President Chamoun to be absorbed into the U.A.R. That person would be that much less ready if the West had played the part of mediators for a settlement rather than of partisans of President Chamoun personally.
If the West's commitment to President Chamoun personally had been as explicit as many reputable reports indicated that it was, the outcome would be inglorious, regardless of how prudent it was. In fact, President Chamoun was the third conspicuous case in recent times when the U.S., so as not to be drawn into an irrational war, had to disentangle itself from client governments. The other two cases had been that of President Syngman Rhee of Korea and Chiang Kai-shek of Formosa, in both of which there had been a time when the local leaders believed that each of the two could lead the U.S. into war, Mr. Rhee for the reconquest of North Korea, and Chiang for the reconquest of the Chinese mainland. Those were dangerous entanglements and in both cases the U.S. had managed to disentangle itself. A similar entanglement with President Chamoun in Lebanon appeared to have existed until, thanks to the U.N., there had been found a way to disentangle from it.
A letter from the chairman of the Mecklenburg County chapter of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis comments on the July 8 editorial, "Come on in, the Fund-Raising's Fine", expressing appreciation for the interest demonstrated in those who were volunteers for the program. But he indicates that it was distressing to find that there was still a blind spot on the part of some as to why it was necessary for major volunteer health organizations to remain free from community federated fund-raising programs such as the local United Appeal. He says that at the June convention of the American Medical Association in San Francisco, the house of delegates had passed a resolution which included a statement that it reiterated its commendation and approval of the principal voluntary health agencies, that they ought be free to conduct their own programs of research, public and professional education, and fundraising in their own particular spheres of interest. He says that there was little or no warfare between the March of Dimes and the other fundraising groups, that the volunteer board of trustees of the organization, composed of 38 of the nation's leading businessmen, had determined that the fundraising policy which had proved successful in the fight against polio would be maintained in the expanded program of the National Foundation, to be announced on July 22, and that the volunteers of the local chapter were in complete accord with that determination.
A letter writer agrees with another letter writer bearing his same name that in furnishing evidence of the need for additional courthouse facilities, the bar ought consider a property opposite the courthouse for purchase as a government center, tearing down the buildings on it and making it into a metered parking lot until improvements could be afforded. He says that he would vote for bonds for the purpose.
A letter writer indicates that Gilbert and Sullivan, in "The Pirates of Penzance", had told of what could happen if the proposed bar reform of the state's court system occurred: "Friends, who plough the sea,/ Truce to Navigation,/ Take another station,/ Let's vary piracee/ With a little burglaree!" He believes that there was nothing wrong with the courts which could not be straightened out by some common sense and public interest.
A letter writer from Hamlet quotes a poem from Josiah Gilbert Holland regarding the status quo of the U.S. at present. Its concluding lines are: "For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds/ Their large professions and their little deeds,/ Mingle in selfish style,/ Lo! Freedom weeps,/ Wrong rules the land, and wailing Justice sleeps!"
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