The Charlotte News
Tuesday, July 15, 1958
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Beirut that the U.S. Marines had landed in Lebanon, with 5,000 having been ordered there by the President, landing this date from the Sixth Fleet a little more than 24 hours after a pro-Nasser revolt had overthrown the Government of Iraq. The action came as the U.N. Security Council had gathered in New York to deal with threats to peace in the region. The President said that the U.S. use of the Marines would end when the Security Council had taken "the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security". He said that the Marines had been sent at the request of Lebanese President Camille Chamoun to guard American lives and protect Lebanon against indirect aggression. The first Marines had landed from 12 landing craft at Khalde Beach just south of Beirut, coming ashore from seven small warships which were offshore. The Marines had marched to Beirut's airport, which had been closed a few hours earlier. The President's statement said: "In response to this appeal from the Government of Lebanon, the United States has dispatched a contingent of United States forces to Lebanon to protect American lives and by their presence they are to encourage the Lebanese Government in defense of Lebanese sovereignty and integrity. These forces have not been sent as any act of war. They will demonstrate the concern of the United States for the independence and integrity of Lebanon, which we deem vital to the national interest and world peace. Our concern will also be shown by economic assistance." He said that the action was taken in conformity with the spirit of the U.N. Charter, recognizing "an inherent right of collective self-defense." He said that there were some 2,500 Americans in Lebanon and that the U.S. could not, consistent with its historic relations and with the principles of the U.N., stand idly by when Lebanon appealed for evidence of U.S. concern and when it might not be able to preserve internal order in defense of itself against indirect aggression. U.S. Ambassador Robert McClintock had urged the 2,500 Americans in Lebanon to leave the country. Ten U.S. Embassy families had already departed this date, including the wife and son of the Ambassador.
As ships from the Sixth Fleet had appeared on the horizon during the mid-afternoon, Lebanese began flocking to the beach by car and even on horseback from nearby villages to watch. People swam and sunbathed nearby while the landing took place. The faces of the observers showed their excitement, but on the whole they had viewed the activities with calm. Along with jeeps, ammunition and guns, several antitank guns mounted on caterpillar tracks had been rolled onto the beach. The Lebanese waiting on the beach mingled freely with the Marines and one group had picked up a tow rope and helped pull a jeep from the surf onto the beach. Later, the Marines slowly began clearing the beach of civilians. As a landing craft unloaded, one Marine was heard to swear and grumble, "All my smokes got wet in that landing." Another Marine looked up at the beautiful Lebanese mountains beyond the airport and remarked, "This is a wonderful country, but they tell me they are trying to wreck it."
At the U.N. in New York, the U.S. this date formally notified the Security Council that American military forces had landed in Lebanon to help stabilize the situation, an announcement made by Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., promising the withdrawal of the U.S. forces as soon as the U.N. could take over responsibilities for peace. The Ambassador told the 11-nation Council that he planned to confer urgently with Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold regarding measures to handle the situation, which he called one of the most serious ever faced by the U.N. He had taken the floor after the Soviet Union had tried unsuccessfully to oust the representative of the overthrown Iraqi Government from the Council. The move had been initiated by Soviet delegate Arkady Sobolev as the Council met in a hurriedly called session to deal with the Middle East situation. Dr. Hammarskjold acknowledged that he had received a cable from the revolutionary government of Iraq naming a new delegate to replace the existing person, but that he did not consider the message in order. The Soviet delegate assailed the overthrown Iraqi Government as rotten and said that the Soviets did not recognize that the Arab Federation gave Jordanian King Hussein authority to issue orders relating to Iraqi affairs.
In London, Britain had announced support of the U.S. Marine landings, but withheld its own troops, alerting bases and its fleet.
Pan American World Airways in London reported that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad had been surrounded by rebels. The British Embassy there had been sacked and burned by the rebels the previous day. Baghdad radio reported again this date that 70-year old Premier Nuri Said had been beaten to death by a mob. Earlier, the radio had admitted that its claims of his death the previous day were not true and that he had escaped.
In Baghdad, rebels said that the ousted Premier had in fact been beaten to death by a mob, as Iraqis were being held under tight curfew by the new military regime.
Two American businessmen had been reported killed by mob action in Baghdad, according to the State Department this date.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee this date had ordered an inquiry into the nation's global foreign policy, in the wake of the overthrow of Iraq's pro-Western Government.
The President this date postponed his weekly meeting with Republican Congressional leaders so that he could keep in touch with the Middle East situation.
The State Department this date advised all Americans against traveling in the Middle East unless it was imperative to do so.
In Guantánamo, Cuba, it was reported that the Cuban rebels, under the leadership of Fidel Castro, still held 29 U.S. sailors and Marines this date, but there was some hope that the scheduled start of their release the previous day had only been delayed by rain. Helicopters had been scheduled to take off from Guantánamo Bay this date for the assembly point in the east Cuba mountains to which the rebels were supposed to bring the servicemen whom they had kidnaped nearly three weeks earlier. U.S. Consul Park Wollam, who had been negotiating with the rebels for the release of the men, sent word that he was confident that some would be freed this date and that possibly all would be back at the base by the following day. The rebels had promised Mr. Wollam that the men would start coming out the previous afternoon, but a Navy helicopter had waited for several hours at the delivery area without any appearance of the prisoners. A Navy spokesman said that bad weather apparently had prevented the rebels from assembling the captives from the mountain camps where they were scattered. The servicemen were the last of those held by the rebels, originally numbering 50, with the 20 U.S. and Canadian civilians and one Navy airman having already been released.
Senate-House conferees agreed this date on a bill to create a new civilian agency to handle space research and activities, NASA.
In Tokyo, it was reported that the U.S. Army this date had returned to Japan Camp Whittington, its 204 buildings and its 17.5 million square foot reservation.
Bernard Goldfine's lawyers asked the House subcommittee this date to halt hearings looking into the Goldfine-Adams matter and instead take before a judge the issue regarding Mr. Goldfine's refusal on the prior Friday to answer 23 questions pertaining to his financial matters. The subcommittee chairman, Representative Oren Harris of Arkansas, had nixed the idea. The lawyers had suggested the move at the start of Mr. Goldfine's sixth day of testimony on charges that he received favored treatment from Federal regulatory agencies after White House chief of staff Sherman Adams had intervened with the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities & Exchange Commission on his behalf regarding trouble which Mr. Goldfine was having with those two agencies. Both Mr. Goldfine and Mr. Adams denied that there was any quid pro quo between gifts provided by Mr. Goldfine to Mr. Adams and the intervention, admitted by Mr. Adams, that the gifts were only tendered out of their longstanding friendship. The subcommittee had threatened to cite Mr. Goldfine for contempt for not answering the 23 questions, refused on the basis that the questions were not pertinent to the subject of the subcommittee's inquiry, the regulatory agencies and whether remedial legislation was necessary. Mr. Goldfine's attorney had again reiterated his refusal to answer those questions, then suggesting that the matter be heard by a court. Mr. Harris said that he intended to call a closed session of the subcommittee during the afternoon to talk over future procedure with Mr. Goldfine, but indicated that the attorney's suggestion did not appear proper at the current time, that he was opposed to the subcommittee "abdicating its authority". The other counsel for Mr. Goldfine, Roger Robb, said that he had never heard of the other attorney's proposal until he had presented it at the public hearing this date. Mr. Robb said that he also had not known about a report put out by Mr. Goldfine's publicity man, Jack Lotto, during the weekend, stating that Mr. Goldfine's lawyers were unanimously agreed that their client ought appeal regarding the questioning from the subcommittee to the parent Commerce Committee. Representative John Bell Williams of Mississippi, member of the subcommittee, said that both Mr. Goldfine and Mr. Adams disputed the quid pro quo aspects of the matter, finding it "very significant" that Mr. Goldfine thus far had not shown that he paid any hotel bills for Mr. Adams before the former New Hampshire Governor had joined the Eisenhower Administration in 1953, whereas the investigators had found more than $3,000 worth of hotel bills which Mr. Goldfine had paid for Mr. Adams since 1953. Mr. Williams suggested that it raised a question about whether friendship had actually been the motivating factor in the gifts.
Mr. Goldfine had until the end of the business day to file his 1957 Massachusetts state income tax return, according to the State Tax Department this date, having obtained a 90-day extension to issue the return, which had been due on April 15.
In Detroit, it was reported that American industries had bought nearly 600 billion dollars worth of industrial cleaning commodities in 1957, compared with 516 billion the prior year—a fact on which you will be tested later. Take copious notes. It may be significant in keeping the executive branch clean as a hound's tooth.
In St. Louis, a mystery had developed as to who had killed two young women in a St. Louis tavern June 9, after which, on July 2, a 27-year old illiterate produce clerk had confessed to the slayings, telling police that he had spent $75 in the tavern buying drinks for the 29-year old and 22-year old victims but that neither would date him and so he had shot them both. He had been indicted on two murder charges, but the previous Saturday, police had picked up a transient with two pistols, a ballistics test having revealed that one of the weapons had been the gun which killed the two women. That individual had promptly confessed, telling officers that the two women had threatened to tell police about his plans to conduct a holdup. At that point, the man who had originally confessed to the killings had recanted. There had been only two witnesses to the shooting, a barmaid and a customer, both identifying the originally confessing man as the perpetrator. The barmaid, however, changed her mind and said that the second man was actually the slayer, saying that she was now definitely certain. There was a slight resemblance between the two men. The customer had returned to St. Louis the previous day from his home in Fitchburg, Mass. Initially, he had failed to pick out the second man from a lineup, but when brought to a live show-up, said that he had never seen the man in his life. The first confessing man said that the customer had been the man whom he saw shoot the two women. The prosecutor had pointed out that the second confessing man did not have possession of the gun at the time of the murders, even if he claimed that he did. Thus, both men were now being held, with the first man still being charged with the slayings.
In Charlotte, the Auditorium-Coliseum Authority this date acted to speed up the repair of the Coliseum, the roof of which had been damaged by wind on June 15, ripping off three-eighths of the aluminum sheeting covering its concrete dome. The summer had brought the most rain in years and the roof was leaking into the building, though no damage had been done. The only repair thus far had been the placement of insulation paper on the exposed concrete. The aluminum sheeting had to be specially manufactured and had been ordered, but had to await the mill's start of its production run at the required thickness.
In other action this date, the Authority virtually killed the prospect that the New York Metropolitan Opera would come to Charlotte, rejecting its request to build a portable stage at the Coliseum, necessary for the performance, as the Opera would not play in venues of less than 3,500 seats, eliminating the adjacent Ovens Auditorium which did not meet the minimum capacity. The Authority was unwilling to spend the $50,000 for the stage.
The Authority also approved dates for the Ice Capades, to be held December 14 through 21. Get your tickets now.
John Kilgo of The News reports on the Civil Service hearing for police Capt. Lloyd Henkel this date as the former clerk of the City Recorder's Court, Allen White, also a police officer, had been called to testify about checks cashed in the clerk's office by Mr. Henkel. Police Chief Frank Littlejohn's attorneys were attempting to pin "bad check" charges on Mr. Henkel this date. Courtroom observers had agreed that Mr. White's testimony was the most important to be heard at the hearing to date. (But wait until you hear from Mr. Blue, who has the inside view…)
On the editorial page, "There's Still Time To Save the Near East" finds that the coup in Iraq had taken from the West whatever had been left of diplomatic initiative in the Middle East. The U.S. had to face the fact that it had been outwitted by Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser of the U.A.R., outwaited by Premier Nikita Khrushchev and outdone by Arab nationalism. The U.S. had never had a clear program for the region and there was no discernible policy now to review. The "Eisenhower Doctrine", whereby upon the request of a Middle Eastern state, the U.S. would provide military and economic aid to ward off an outside aggressor, was now an empty threat.
The Baghdad Pact, an alliance conceived by Secretary of State Dulles but given only lip service by the U.S., was now virtually useless with Iraq in unfriendly hands. The three-power resolution designed to keep the Arabs and the Israelis from fighting one another had not worked. Even relations with Premier Nasser had ranged from open hostility to peaceful coexistence, one moment withdrawing the Aswan Dam offer, casting public aspersions on Egypt's financial stability, and the next rescuing Premier Nasser from the British, French and Israelis in the 1956 Suez-Sinai crisis.
The relations with Israel had been equally erratic, with the U.S. properly supporting it as a democracy among Arab autocracies, while no serious effort had been made to persuade the Arabs to make peace with Israel as part of an overall settlement of the Suez crisis.
Throughout the region, economic requirements had always seemed to get lost in the shuffle of military objectives. It suggests that what was needed was American help to focus on regional objectives so appealing that national enmities and frustrations would be overcome, programs which had never come to fruition.
Now, Premier Nasser was the dominant personality and influence throughout the Middle East, symbolizing the nationalism which the mobs in every Arab country espoused fervently. And the Soviet Union had become a Middle East power with no intention of withdrawing. Premier Nasser preferred "positive neutralism" to exploitation from either the East or the West, but the final choice might be that of Russia and not Premier Nasser.
The Middle East, with at least 75 percent of the world's known petroleum reserves, was the grand prize in the cold war and it was difficult to see how the West could retain any portion of it unless the pieties of the past were replaced immediately by the realistic wisdom of strong and imaginative leadership. Arab policies were slippery and the role of the street mobs could not be safely predicted. But the emergence at the moment of a broad plan for the constructive use of American power in the region could conceivably save something, if only face for the West.
"Why Ask the Man Who Owned One?" indicates that the end of the manufacture of the Packard had caused a moment of regret, as it had been a piece of industrial art, and as a means of transportation, a symbol of financial substance combined with good taste as an emblem of conscientious craftsmanship. Its preeminence in the fine-car field had effectively ended long earlier, with its best year as a luxury car having been in 1928 when 50,000 had been sold. Its highest sales year had been in 1937, when 109,000 had been sold after the company entered the medium-price field.
But long after its loss of popularity, its reputation for quality and quiet elegance had persisted. More recently, the manufacturer had radically restyled the car and entered it in the technicolor derby, whereas it had always been traditionally black, but by that point, it was evident that that the car was already dead.
It would be a long time before the last Packard would be consigned to the junkyard, as they lasted for a long time. The knowledge that no more were to be manufactured would strengthen the determination of some owners to keep them rolling.
It concludes that it would watch them go by with the realization that they were part of the finest flowering of America's automotive genius.
"Celebration" indicates that Alaskans thought big, as statehood had been celebrated with an earthquake and a tidal wave.
"Old Buildings Also Deserve Bouquets" indicates that the shrub-and-flower plantings at the foot of the new Wachovia tower relieved the eyes and freshened the senses of Trade Street pedestrians. The bank's low-level merger with nature added a delightful fillip to a Herculean expansion program.
But it caused it to feel pity when passing the old and idle Wachovia building at Tryon and Fourth Streets, which would not be empty for long. Its spaces had served many bank customers for years, and such buildings gave character to the places in which transactions occurred. It indicates that it was why it felt a little gloomy in seeing the scion with flowers heaped at its feet, and the old building empty and idle with no nosegay to its name.
Go over and place a dandelion there.
A piece from the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, titled "A Writer's Duty", indicates that a reporter in Charlottesville had asked William Faulkner recently, at the end of another year for him as writer-in-residence at the University of Virginia, "If you were the last man on earth, would you still write?" He had replied: "Yes, I would. When a writer passes through the wall of oblivion, he will even then stop long enough to write something on the wall, like 'Kilroy was here'."
It indicates that a story was still told in Chapel Hill about the long-time chancellor Robert B. House, now retired but teaching English, in which a colleague had been "trembling on the brink of flight" from the University as salary cuts in depression days had caused the going to be tough, with Mr. House having been said to have commented: "You may go if you like. But I have enlisted for life. And if everybody else departs I expect to come up to the old South Building every morning, ring the college bell, knock the ashes out of my pipe and lecture to the birds, the squirrels, and the trees on the state of the universe and the university."
It finds that Mr. Faulkner would understand perfectly, as he had said in Stockholm upon receipt of the Nobel Prize for literature: "I believe that man will not merely endure: He will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things."
It concludes: "Come back, Mr. Faulkner, and write about them."
Drew Pearson indicates that a tug-of-war was developing between the Justice Department and the Senate Select Committee investigating misconduct of unions and management regarding the Mafia, with both the Department and the Committee wanting to obtain credit for cracking down on the kingpins of organized crime. The Mafia had been investigated thoroughly for about eight years, but still appeared to thrive.
The column had first published a series of Mafia exposes in October, 1950, showing how terrorism had first been employed in Sicily against Italian landlords, then used in the U.S. to develop overlords of crime. Following that, Senator Estes Kefauver had investigated the Mafia, and for a time had them on the run. Then Attorney General James McGranery had started a campaign to deport Mafia chieftains, listing over 100 top gangsters for deportation. His successor, Herbert Brownell, had talked a lot about deportation, but few of the gangsters had actually been deported.
More recently, Paul Williams, the U.S. Attorney in New York, had tried to build himself up as a Republican candidate for governor by rushing indictments of top Mafia members. Meanwhile, the Senate Committee was holding daily hearings. Mr. Williams had staged a dramatic arrest of Vito Genovese, the top Mafia leader, along with some of his henchmen in New York. He was backed up by a special task force of Justice Department investigators. Simultaneously, Committee counsel Robert F. Kennedy had his agents checking on the Mafia.
Both sides had learned about the same thing, that the Mafia had taken over loose control of most organized rackets and that the loot from those rackets had been invested in legitimate businesses which served as fronts to hide the Mafia's secret income. The largest Mafia-controlled racket was narcotics smuggling. Investigators had uncovered evidence that the November, 1957 meeting of gangland leaders at Apalachin, N.Y., had been called to shake up the narcotics organization and redistribute territory among them. It was believed to be related to the gangland slaying of Albert Anastasia in a New York hotel barbershop and the attempted slaying of Frank Costello. Mr. Genovese and Mr. Costello had been rivals inside the Mafia.
Investigators had also found a link between the Apalachin conference and Lucky Luciano, presently exiled in Italy. The latter's secret contact man, Santo Serge, had met with two Mafia messengers in Palermo, Sicily, shortly before the Apalachin conference, which had been attended by 139 mobsters, coming from everywhere, from California to Cuba. The main Mafia headquarters were located in New York, Chicago and Miami, with other important Mafia rings operating in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Denver, Omaha, Detroit, Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta and Tampa.
He posits that what was needed to curb the Mafia, in addition to exposure, was a law permitting the FBI to aid local police, based on the fact that most Mafia murderers crossed interstate boundaries, with the killers usually imported from out of state, witnesses usually either terrorized or killed, the getaway cars, usually rigged with phony license plates, having crossed state lines, and the murder weapons, in case they were dropped or abandoned, having no markings which could be traced. Those Mafia methods had made it almost impossible for local police to cope with them. As a result, the Mafia had left a long series of unsolved murders in its wake.
Most Mafia victims had a definite appointment with death. The killers seemed to know exactly when to expect their victim at the murder scene and then would blast the person at close range and flee in a waiting car before witnesses realized what had happened.
Joseph Alsop indicates that the country's more progressive educators had now progressed beyond the English language, as evidenced by the syntax of the average presidential press conference or the Government's more formal public pronouncements, "obviously produced by an ingenious machine that masticates clichés and used blotting papers into a smooth, uniform mush; homogenizes the mush with oil of self-righteousness; and rolls out the result in press releases, all in one continuous process."
He finds that such signs had long foretold the doom of out-of-date English, "with its tiresome apparatus of tense and number, precise word meaning and cumbersome grammar." He finds that the school system had for long been the only obstacle to the transition from the feudal age of language into a newer, brighter, freer era, but now, it was falling before the march of progress.
Standard English was still being written by the minority who believed that the schools ought teach the three R's and possibly punish the unfortunate young with a hint of science, but finds also that another language was usually written by the progressives, insisting that teachers hardly needed to know what they were teaching as long as they held master's degrees in education.
He offers an example from the current Atlantic Monthly, a piece by Dr. Daniel Tanner, presently an assistant professor of education at San Francisco State College: "Among the many attacks levied at American public education in recent months, none has been more vociferous than those which strike at teacher preparation and certification." Mr. Alsop finds that the word "levied" was proof of genius, as old fogies still leveled attacks and only levied taxes, but that "levy" and "level" sounded almost the same and so one could be substituted for the other, finding it to be an achievement of life-adjusted English, the abandonment of undemocratic distinctions of word-meaning. Dr. Tanner had also confused his numbers, saying "none has been more vociferous than those". He finds it forecasting of a time when young people would write "they is", "she are" and "we am" and obtain approval for it.
He suggests that one could read almost any current American academic work on sociology or psychology or politics and find the same usages, a language as far removed from English as Czech was from Russian, full of such word inventions as David Reisman's "privatization of women", mainly meaning the tendency of stenographers from small towns to be lonely in big cities.
"Thank God, then, the new day has dawned. Enjoy it while you can, for with television in every home, the written word will soon be going out."
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, hopes that Bernard Goldfine would get the word that Mr. Ruark would be in New York and Boston during the middle of the month, indicating that he was never bothered by conscience, that his ties were raveling at the ends and his shirts had Irish pennants on the cuffs. He did not own a hat and his Savile Row britches were worn down to a precarious margin at the heels. His Rolls-Royce was a mess and needed a new paint job. His yacht was full of barnacles and his elk's tooth had a cavity in it.
He says that he had pull in high places, in Washington, New York, and in Europe, that all he wanted from Mr. Goldfine was friendship, free suites, free clothes, a charge account at the better bistros and the more important shops, such as Abercrombie and Fitch, because he needed to replenish his armament to safari with the Cabots. Mostly he wanted friendship, having a car waiting, the customs fixed and flowers in whatever suite Mr. Goldfine had chosen for him, because friendship worked two ways. He assures that his requirements were few, that if Mr. Goldfine got the dough, he could get him an interview with King Freddie, the Kabaka of the Buganda, because he knew him, too. "Always drop in when I am in Entebbe, just to see if Freddie has hit oil."
A letter from Harry Golden, editor of the Carolina Israelite, thanks the newspaper for its review of his book, Only in America, which he says was a review about which every author dreamed, in between the nightmares. He now felt a burden of responsibility never to take himself too seriously and never to take advantage of his readers with gimmicks, warnings, exposés, gossip, promises of rewards or pictures of naked women, but just to continue to write words always with the hope that some of those would be "good words".
A letter writer says that in recent weeks he had come across statistics which appeared to make the recession only a bump in the road. Family income was at an all-time high, with an average of $5,300 and was expected to rise to more than $7,000 by 1975—in which case you would be in the poor house, unfortunately, with intervening inflation, especially in gas prices. (Sorry to throw cold water on your statistics.) Family liquid assets in savings were at 3.75 billion dollars—a good family of which to be a part, we suppose, but most are not Rockefellers. The nation's population had doubled during the previous 50 years and babies were being born at the rate of 4 million per year, in need of 100 billion dollars worth of new housing in the ensuing 20 years. U.S. production doubled every two years and an estimated two million new businesses would be needed to produce and distribute American goods in the ensuing 25 years. The country was in the market for 500 billion dollars worth of new schools, roads, houses, hospitals, city renovation and development, business buildings and plant expansion. Real wages in relation to prices had increased four times during the more than 100 years since 1850 and Americans now spent 18 billion dollars annually on travel, increasing at the rate of three billion per year. The ten billion dollars spent each year on research and development would result in 22 million more jobs by 1975.
By 1975, the new slogan of the new
President, following the resignation of the old President, having
acceded to the office as the first non-elected Vice-President, after
the old Vice-President had resigned after pleading nolo contendere
to accepting bribes on construction projects while Governor of
Maryland, would be "WIN", for "Whip Inflation Now",
which, in conjunction with "Nixon's the One" from 1968,
came to suggest in some circles a negative pregnant. But never mind…
Weren't you once a preeminent Shakespearean actor?
Framed Edition
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