The Charlotte News
Tuesday, July 29, 1958
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Beirut that Prime Minister Sami Solh of Lebanon had missed death by only a split second this date when a would-be assassin had blown up a parked car a few yards ahead of his automobile. He was not hurt, but eight other persons had died and a five-year old girl had been hurt so badly that she was given little chance to survive. The dead included a policeman on a motorcycle, three gendarmes and four persons in a car just ahead of the Prime Minister's car. Detonator wires from the exploded car had run up the hillside above the road to a spot from which two men were seen running away. It appeared that they were trying to kill the Prime Minister but had pushed the detonator too soon. Had they waited a fraction of a second longer, he would have been blown to bits. The incident had occurred on a road 9 miles outside Beirut, where the Prime Minister passed daily en route to his Beirut office from his suburban home. The road ran along a sheer drop down to the Beirut River in the valley below. An American-style car, thought to be a taxicab, had been parked in the location for three days, with a rock under a wheel. As the procession had approached, a policeman stepped forward and asked the green car to pull to the side of the road and permit the Prime Minister's car to pass. At that moment, the explosion occurred, knocking the motorcycle and the green car far down the slope. A prime minister was a Moslem by custom in the half-Christian, half-Moslem nation and a president, a Christian. The reasons for the attack on the Prime Minister were not immediately known as most rebel animosity in the nearly 3 months of the rebellion had been aimed at President Camille Chamoun. In action in the rebellion, assailants had fired on Marine positions at two different points in Beirut the previous night, according to a headquarters spokesman. There had been no casualties and the Marines did not return fire. Bullets had hit their positions, at the residence of the British ambassador. A speeding car fired one round into a company command post in the dock area. Parliament Speaker Adel Osseyran told the Associated Press that there was general agreement among all parties that the Army commander, General Fuad Shehab, would be elected to succeed the pro-Western President Chamoun. The speaker said that the General would obtain a virtually unanimous vote when Parliament would meet to elect a president on Thursday. The General had been mentioned as a compromise candidate, but until the present, censors had eliminated such mention of him in dispatches from Beirut. A leading member of the national front, which opposed President Chamoun, had said: "It appears settled. Most of us have already said we are willing to support Shehab. It looks as if he will be president." If the rebels and the Government supporters united behind the General, he might be able to end the 81-day old rebellion of anti-Chamoun forces who had opposed his Western leanings and his reported ambitions to run for a second term. An end to the rebellion presumably would result in the withdrawal of the U.S. Marines from Lebanon.
The President this date was reported to be set to denounce Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's new proposal for a quick Middle East summit conference outside the U.N. It was understood that the President was ready to reaffirm his willingness to attend a summit meeting, but only within the context of the 11-member U.N. Security Council in New York. Barring a sudden Soviet change, Mr. Khrushchev's angrily worded letter, to which the President had responded on Friday, followed by another of the previous day, to which the President would respond on August 1, appeared virtually to kill the chances for any emergency summit in the near future regarding the Middle East crisis. Officials had assailed Mr. Khrushchev's message to the President as vicious and insulting. The harsh tone, they said, had been clearly that of a man more interested in making propaganda that in meeting calmly with the President. The President would, they said, reject as unacceptable the Soviet Premier's bid for an immediate five-power talk in Moscow, including the Big Three plus India, or any other European city. Some authorities believed that the President ought consider Mr. Khrushchev's blast by announcing that he would show up for a high-level Security Council meeting, whether or not the Soviet leader attended. They recalled that the Soviet Union had threatened to boycott the current Geneva technical talks on disarmament, but had changed its mind when U.S. officials had gone to the meeting despite last-minute Soviet objections. The White House foreshadowed the President's attitude when it announced that there was no change in the President's proposal for keeping the meeting within the U.N., despite Mr. Khrushchev's newest blast. Three members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senators Mike Mansfield of Montana, Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, and Homer Capehart of Indiana, had renewed their backing for the President's position, but Senator Mansfield suggested that a Security Council meeting could be held in Geneva in a move to accept at least part of Mr. Khrushchev's suggestion. The initial White House reaction had come from reading news accounts reporting the text of the Khrushchev letter as broadcast by Radio Moscow. The full text of the message still had not been received by the State Department the previous night. Moscow's move in swiftly publicizing the Premier's words had been viewed as added proof that he was mainly interested in maximum propaganda advantage rather than anticipating any U.S. acceptance of his idea.
Secretary of State Dulles said this date that his diplomatic talks in London had strengthened the confidence and morale of Turkey, Iran and Pakistan to meet any new Middle Eastern threat.
In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, it was reported that a band of exiled Army officers had seized barracks next to the National Palace early this date, but the rebels had been reported to be wiped out in a swift Government counterattack. The band, believed to number no more than six, had landed via launch under cover of darkness, commandeered trucks and seized the Caserne Dessalines in back of the palace shortly after midnight. The band had captured 50 soldiers following a brief clash in which the Army said that three soldiers and an artillery officer had been killed. Government forces counterattacked and liberated the soldiers, then killed the last holdout rebel in a burst of machine-gun fire, according to the Army. Radio Port-au-Prince said that the rebels had been supporters of former President Paul Magloire, presently in exile in the U.S. It also said that two Americans were among the rebels. A succession of radio announcers broadcasting on the only station in operation during the morning had urged the people to arm themselves and go to the palace to defend President Francois Duvalier. The broadcast also summoned all soldiers to the palace. The situation had been extremely confused and no one seemed to know what was taking place. Among the armed civilians in the streets had been the underminister of commerce. Coatless, he carried an automatic carbine of U.S. manufacture and was accompanying a group similarly armed.
House investigators had recommended contempt of Congress proceedings this date against Bernard Goldfine, the gift-giving friend of White House chief of staff Sherman Adams. The Committee chairman, Oren Harris of Arkansas, said that the investigating subcommittee's recommendation would be submitted as soon as soon as possible to its parent House Commerce Committee. If endorsed by the full Committee, the contempt citation would go before the full House. If approved, it would go to the U.S. Attorney for handling as a criminal case. It would have to be done quickly to obtain action in the current session, as Mr. Harris told newsmen after a 40-minute closed session of the subcommittee. The accusation was based on Mr. Goldfine's refusal to answer about two dozen questions concerning his financial dealings with Boston real estate companies of which he was the majority owner, refusing on the ground that they were not pertinent to the subcommittee's investigation, which was aimed at the operations of Government regulatory agencies. The principal real estate company among Mr. Goldfine's holdings had failed for years to file required annual financial reports with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The latter agency had finally gone to court to force the filing of the reports and the matter had later been settled with a $3,000 fine and a promise on the company's part to comply. Mr. Goldfine had readily answered numerous other subcommittee questions, claiming a long personal friendship as the basis for his frequent contacts with Mr. Adams and the gifts he had provided to him. But he contended, as had Mr. Adams earlier, that he had received no special favor from Government agencies as a result, despite Mr. Adams having admitted contact with the Federal Trade Commission at a time when Mr. Goldfine was having a problem with that agency, and having, indirectly, made contact with the SEC.
In Vientiane, Laos, it was reported that foreign newspapers had been placed under censorship this date after a tense weekend during which an alert had been ordered for the police and Army of the small kingdom.
In New Orleans, an Air Force transport was reported to be leaving this date with the body of Lt. General Claire Chennault, carrying him to a hero's grave in Arlington National Cemetery.
In New York, it was reported that Idlewild Airport had been closed to landings for seven hours after a Northeast Airline DC-6B had blown its four main landing-gear tires the previous night.
In Limestone, Me., it was reported that a B-52 jet bomber had crashed this date 3 miles south of Loring Air Force Base, killing eight men. It was returning from a routine training mission. The Air Force rushed rescue equipment and search parties to the scene near the Strategic Air Command base near the Canadian border. Residents of the area said that the plane had barely missed a farm home. Wreckage was scattered over a 20-acre area. The plane normally carried a crew of six, but on a training flight, there were eight aboard. Some of the wreckage had caught fire and was burning when Air Force firefighters arrived at the scene. B-52's were equipped to carry nuclear weapons and one had crashed in January, 1957 just across the Canadian border, ten miles from the scene of this date's crash. Air Force security officials immediately had moved into the area to keep civilians away from the wreckage. There had been only one survivor of the crash, an instructor pilot, who was taken to the base hospital where his condition was described as good. The cause of the crash had not yet been determined.
In Houston, a waitress had reopened the file of a 35-year old slaying, telling police the previous day that her convict brother, 57, had told her that he had killed an Army sergeant in 1923. She volunteered the information to Harris County authorities and signed a statement accusing her brother of the murder. She explained that her conscience had bothered her. Her brother had a police record dating back to 1925 and was serving a 7 to 10 year sentence at the North Carolina State Prison for robbing a motorist and stealing his victim's car. Two members of the Harris County sheriff's department planned to fly to Raleigh to question him. On September 2, 1923, two hunters had found the decomposed body of a white man submerged in Green's Bayou on the Beaumont Highway near Houston, and the Army had identified him as a sergeant stationed at Fort Sam Houston. Houston police marked the case unsolved and military authorities had shipped the body to the man's mother of Vancouver, B.C. The sister of the accused said that shortly before the body had been found, her brother and the sergeant were to have visited her in Beaumont, Tex., but her brother had arrived without the sergeant, later telling her that he had killed him. She said that police had questioned her brother but later let him go. The sister said that the two men had been old Army buddies. Houston police records showed that the accused had first gotten in trouble in 1925 when he was given a ten-year sentence for armed robbery. In 1931, he had attempted to escape prison while serving a five-year sentence for robbery by assault. During the escape attempt, a guard had been killed and the man had been sentenced to life. He escaped in 1937 and was recaptured in 1941, paroled in 1946, but arrested in 1949 as a parole violator. Records at Central Prison in Raleigh showed that the man had been released on parole to Michigan on April 12, 1957 and the previous March 20, had been convicted in Wake County of robbery by force involving the taking of about $10, resulting in the sentence. On March 27, a State detainer warrant was received from Texas authorities charging the man with violating his parole. The man had walked away from the police station following a preliminary hearing in Raleigh on the robbery charge, but was captured the next day by Clayton police who recognized him from his picture in a Raleigh newspaper.
In Lakehurst, N.J., the "Flying
Sausage"
In London, it was reported that Dominic Elwes, who had defied English law by eloping with shipping heiress Tessa Kennedy, would be released from prison the following day. A judge ordered the release, saying that Mr. Elwes had been in prison long enough to vindicate the rule of law.
John Kilgo of The News reports that a majority of the Charlotte City Council planned to appoint a civilian clerk of City Recorder's Court, probably at the following day's Council session. Four members of the Council had originally planned to ask for the resignation of Police Chief Frank Littlejohn at the following day's meeting, but apparently had abandoned those plans after a story in the previous day's News. The chief was already on record as vigorously opposing a civilian clerk of the court and such action by the Council would constitute a slap in the face to him. A police sergeant was presently serving as the clerk, taking over as acting clerk when officer Allen White had been transferred out of the office on May 19. The chief said this date that he still opposed a civilian clerk as long as they had a man as capable as the sergeant currently serving in that capacity.
Ann Sawyer of The News reports that Mecklenburg's grand jury probe into City Recorder's Court was lacking the excitement and parade of headline witnesses which had accompanied similar investigations in Charlotte. She found that it was about to set an all-time record for dullness. Most of those entering the grand jury room had been police officers and other witnesses for the routine bills of indictment for Criminal Superior Court. One of the four State Bureau of Investigation agents working on the probe had been behind closed doors for about two hours the previous day and had returned with his records during the current morning, waiting in the corridor.
The Associated Press reports that in Asbury Park, N.J., police the previous week had begun receiving complaints from parents that youngsters were staying out late shining shoes. Acting on the complaint, officers had confiscated 20 shoeshine boxes. Later, some of the boys appeared at police headquarters to ask for their boxes and licenses to shine shoes. A local ordinance called for licensing of bootblacks, making no provision for the issuance of permits. Thus if one wanted to get a shine in the town, it was recommended that the police station would be the best bet as that was where the equipment was.
In Tulsa, Okla., City Hall, in an effort to see whether department heads checked figures before signing payrolls, had planted 50 deliberate errors here and there in the columns, with the result that the Mayor reduced the salary of his assistant by $20 and the finance commissioner had paid himself $7.50 instead of $375. The latter had not been amused and would take the matter up with the City Commission.
In Ogden, Ut., the dog pound master had shown police where a screen door had been ripped out and a door damaged. Officers had rounded up the suspected canines from the pound and pinned the crime on a watchdog which had flecks of paint on its lips and teeth.
On the editorial page, "Election Board Tackles the Mystery" indicates that the County Board of Elections had moved forthrightly to unravel the mystery surrounding the recount of ballots in Precinct 31 of Mecklenburg County, the mystery being whether perjury and/or fraud had been involved in efforts to force a recount in the Charlotte Township constable race between the incumbent and his opponent who had won, Robert Dellinger. The Board had subpoenaed the signers of the affidavits and those who had gathered them, with the intention of seeking an explanation of why most of the affidavits had turned out to be worthless.
It suggests that whether or not the Board was able to establish the facts, the effort reflected the concern of the Board and the community regarding an incident which tended to impeach the electoral process.
It says that the newspaper had not suggested that there had been any tampering with the ballot box, though the Board had taken exception to its statement that "… the suggestion is left that some of these persons (who signed affidavits) … were false, were thoroughly bamboozled, or that there had been tampering with the contents of the ballot box." It indicates that the suggestion had merely been inherent in the circumstances, as the recount had not produced the number of votes which persons had sworn they had cast for the incumbent, indicating that some of those persons had lied, were misinformed as to the nature of the affidavits they signed or that the ballot box had been tampered with.
It says it would not suspect that the latter possibility was the explanation as all of the available facts pointed the other way. It concludes that it was the Board's responsibility to judge the possibilities and it commends the Board members for setting out to do the job.
"Let the Facts Speak for Themselves" finds that the rumored effort to oust Police Chief Frank Littlejohn added yet another distracting irrelevancy to Charlotte's scandal with City Recorder's Court, and it urges that nothing ought divert the responsible officials from the task of getting to the bottom of the mess.
It indicates that the unique role of the chief in the case was a proper subject for public concern, but that any evaluation of his role by the City Council ought be made on the basis of facts and not by real or imagined vigilantes. The Council was capable of making the proper decision and ought be left free to do so without nonsense about being "bought", pressured or panicked.
"U.N. Needs a Standing Police Force" indicates that had there been a U.N. police force, U.S. Marines might not at present be engaged in an action in Lebanon to hold ground while losing prestige for the U.S. in the Middle East.
One of the necessities of assuring the continued existence of the U.N. and averting the Big Power interventions which inevitably worsened international relations was the provision for such a force, the only practical means of focusing the world's desire for peace in the form of a fire extinguisher. The current crisis demonstrated the real danger involved in the U.N.'s failure to use that means in the face of a demonstrated need.
Sir Leslie Munro, president of the U.N. General Assembly, had made the point in the New York Times Magazine, indicating that he wanted no army, but a lightly-armed, mobile force which could be rushed to the aid of any government threatened with aggression or subject to subversion. He said that "there are few aggressors who will flout public opinion in an area where an effective U.N. force is either functioning or is about to function." The role of the temporary force in pacifying the Gaza Strip supported that belief.
The effectiveness of a world police force would depend on the U.N.'s determination to use it with dispatch and vigor, a willingness to put out the fire first and argue about the identity of the arsonist later. At present, U.N. cops had to be recruited after the U.N. decided they were needed and after the trouble had been inflamed by provocative maneuvers by one or another of the Big Powers who considered their vital interest to be involved in each and every place on the globe.
A standing U.N. force would not be a panacea for mounting international tensions or for the U.N.'s problems in dealing with them. But it likely would help and the U.N. needed all the help it could get.
"How Dostoievsky Became a Star" indicates that while Feodor Dostoievsky had written like an angel, the masses could have cared less, at least until Hollywood had dug up his old manuscripts and made them into a wide-screen extravaganza, now making him a star. At least that was what Eric Johnston, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, had indicated, stating: "How many have read The Brothers Karamazov since its publication? But how many millions more have become familiar with Dostoievsky's masterpiece through the motion picture? Scarcely an English classic from Melville to Shaw to Somerset Maugham has not been brought to the screen, reaching audiences into the hundred millions."
It finds it all fine and it agrees that movies were better than ever. Dostoievsky, however, had not been a screenwriter but rather a novelist and the only satisfactory way to become familiar with his masterpiece was to read the novel, as it was never enough just to see the movie. He was great because of what he had written and the way the words were put together to make the masterpiece. While his readers might be few when compared to movie audiences, it asserts that it would be the book which would be remembered long after the movie had worn out its welcome in theaters and on television screens throughout the world.
It suggests that the author would probably have preferred it that way, as he had been a star in the literary world for about 100 years.
Janetta Ridgley, writing in the Baltimore Sun, in a piece titled "Uncle Sam Colonizes England", indicates that around St. Paul's Cathedral, two travelers from America had recently wandered until brought up short by a notice chalked on a battered brick wall which said, "I like Elvis." Near the statue of Sir Henry Irving in Charing Cross Road, a man with a cart did a very brisk business in the evenings selling hotdogs, while the young wandering out of nearby movie theaters lined up to buy his product.
The traveler then went to a nearby
espresso bar, gay and friendly places, generally run by cheerful
Italian families, and found them selling excellent coffee and
pastries, but that they did equally well with American cola drinks.
Young men in jeans and girls with long, lank hair mingled with
soldier-citizens and listened to rock 'n' roll records
Rock 'n' roll was another fact of English life to which the idealistic American had to become accustomed, as squealing crowds queued up outside the stage doors for autographs of rock 'n' roll singers.
In Sherborne, the jewel of the
southern counties, whose ancient abbey church was the delight of
architectural connoisseurs, some tourists, a week or two earlier, had
stopped to listen to the strains of Bach coming from the magnificent
organ, the fans having skirted the Saxon gateway and the Norman
ruins, and came into a peaceful yard, where the muted sounds of the
organ could be enjoyed. "There was a medieval lancet window to
the left and out of it came saxophones and drums and a voice yelling
'Rock!
At Winchester school, among the stately buildings of Bishop Wickham, whose motto was "Manners maketh man," one quadrangle had reverberated to Artie Shaw's recording of "Nightmare".
"After all this, it is not strange to find little market towns advertising hamburgers. Frozen food is advertised with 'Try something from our fridge.'"
Drew Pearson indicates that there was an interesting illustration in Tennessee at present of what happened to some of the money people put into insurance policies, also illustrating why it was difficult to get some Senators to fight for the public interest rather than big business. The previous March, Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee had the courage to oppose a special tax concession for the insurance companies, arguing that with 5 million people unemployed and the Government certain to go into the red heavily for defense, there was no reason why the insurance companies ought have a special retroactive tax cut of 124 million dollars. He had waged a tough battle against the insurance companies, demanding that they be given the same tax treatment as other groups.
In referring to Metropolitan Life, he had told the Senate that it had assets equal to those of General Motors, the Ford Motor Co., and U.S. Steel combined. He also reported that while they had always heard about the widow who had a policy, the president of one company had a salary of $134,500, referring to I. W. Dawson, president of Mutual Life of New York, saying: "I suppose that is approved by the widows who hold policies. The ten largest insurance companies have total assets of more than 62 billion dollars." He had then shown that those ten companies would obtain a tax benefit of 81.4 million dollars pursuant to the tax law which Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma, a multimillionaire oilman, was seeking to rush through the Senate.
In the end, the big insurance companies and Senator Kerr had won and Senator Gore had lost. Now, insurance money was being spent in Tennessee to defeat Senator Gore, with the insurance moguls knowing that if he were to win re-election, he would lead another fight the following year to prevent any more special tax concessions. The campaign against him was bitter and well-heeled, so much so that Tennessee highways were littered with billboards urging votes for the Senator's opponent. But the people of Tennessee were becoming suspicious of so much money being spent against one person and so the campaign against him might wind up getting him re-elected.
Undersecretary of State Christian Herter had acknowledged under Congressional cross-examination recently that the U.S. Marines had gone ashore at Lebanon only to find a strange, lackadaisical, almost bloodless civil war. It was mainly a war between snipers who appeared trying to aim as close to their targets as possible without hurting anyone. Mr. Herter estimated that casualties from actual fighting were less than one per day. Government and rebel headquarters were conveniently located within 300 yards of each other, with all the civilized comforts, including full telephone service. The only signs of war were casual sentries wearing rifles strapped under their shoulders. He admitted that for the most part the civil war was a political battle between the "ins" and "outs".
Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon had asked Mr. Herter leading questions about the strange war at the secret briefing, awaiting answers, and then had sprung a verbal trap: "I am glad of my record in opposition to the Marine landings and I make Mr. Herter my witness. There was no reason for sending a single Marine over there. There is no really serious fighting. The whole affair is almost a sham battle. Of course, I don't know anything about it except what Mr. Herter told us."
Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas then broke in, stating: "I heard the Secretary this morning. It is really difficult to compare his report to the headlines we have been reading—'Major Fighting in the Streets of Beirut'. Mr. Herter didn't give us any reason to believe there were any great battles over there."
Senator Morse then said: "All they want is a new government. And they will get it when we move out."
Rev. Joseph Simonson, a Lutheran preacher and enthusiast for the President who had become Ambassador to Ethiopia, had decided to get out of politics and diplomacy in favor of religion for keeps. He had been abruptly relieved of his ambassadorship after Vice-President Nixon referred to him scornfully as "that cornball". Dr. Simonson had been public relations director of the National Lutheran Council in New York and had given his all for the "great crusade" campaign of General Eisenhower in 1952, and had been rewarded with an ambassadorship to Ethiopia. But when Mr. Nixon made his tour of Africa in 1957, the Ambassador had differed with him regarding the Vice-President's habit of handshaking and baby-kissing. Though Ethiopian authorities had worked out a careful schedule, Mr. Nixon had insisted on stopping occasionally on street corners to mingle with the crowds. In Ethiopia, that was considered undignified and Ambassador Simonson had promised Ethiopian officials that the Vice-President would do no handshaking while the royal family was with the entourage.
Joseph Alsop finds that the most ominous and darkest aspect of all of the ominous events of the previous two weeks, to which too little attention had been paid, had been the British and American governments' agreement to the proposal of Premier Khrushchev for a summit meeting based on his threat of force. Secretary of State Dulles had not wanted to do so and, Mr. Alsop posits, no self-respecting government would have accepted a note from another government containing such a crude threat as the reminder by Mr. Khrushchev that "the Soviet Union … possesses atomic and hydrogen bombs, an air force and a navy, plus ballistic missiles of all types, including intercontinental ones." Such a note, he suggests, would have been coldly returned to the ambassador who had presented it, that which Mr. Dulles had wanted to do.
But Mr. Dulles had been restrained from following his impulse, as Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd were determined to accept the invitation, although the latter had admitted that the language was somewhat impolite. The President, apparently, was enough divided about the matter to prevent Secretary Dulles from fighting for his own viewpoint. So the U.S. Government had agreed to follow the British lead to the "monstrous" summit which was now planned.
He predicts that the least deleterious result would be to add public humiliation to the defeat which the Western nations had already suffered in the Middle East, and for the British, the results could be much worse. Britain's only Middle Eastern policy presently consisted of a desperate resolve to hold the small, oil-rich sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf at all costs, and by military occupation if necessary. It was not the sort of policy which was aided by public discussion, even with allies. Premiers Khrushchev and Gamal Abdel Nasser were not friends, but would certainly seek to frustrate the British policy, with many opportunities to do so.
He thus wonders why the British, normally sensible, were so anxious to expose themselves in such a "seemingly lunatic manner". He suggests that the answer was not that Prime Minister Macmillan and Foreign Secretary Lloyd were directly intimidated by Mr. Khrushchev, any more than had been Secretary Dulles, but that the menacing statements of Mr. Khrushchev remained the key to the answer. For the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary were responding to the British public's passionate desire for another summit, which had begun after the warning of the Soviet Sputniks launched the previous October and November, provoked by Britain's awareness of the "atomic and hydrogen bombs … [and] ballistic missiles of all kinds, including intercontinental ones."
A similar reflex reaction had caused almost all of the British people to applaud Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's September, 1938 Munich agreement with Hitler. The upset of the balance of power which had produced that earlier agreement was primarily the fault of the British Government. He suggests that the pattern on this occasion was similar, but this time, the upset of the balance of power had been the fault of the U.S. Government.
He finds that it was no use blaming the British for an instinctive reflex which was also becoming noticeable in the U.S., that the only useful thing to do would be to look at the first cause. The U.S. could not have halted the progress of Soviet weaponry, but could at least have made the effort to maintain the U.S. lead, which had still existed in 1953 at the start of the Eisenhower Administration. If that lead had been maintained, there would have been no psychology similar to the aftermath of 1938 Munich in Britain or anywhere else, and Premier Khrushchev would not presently be able to resort to crude, open threats. But instead, the U.S. had permitted the lead to be transformed into a Soviet lead, the first cause of the recent catastrophe in the Middle East, and the present disarray in U.S. diplomacy.
Vermont C. Royster, writing in the Wall Street Journal, provides a short history of eggheads, indicating that when Charles de Gaulle had begun to crop up in the news again recently, the background articles had made much of the fact that he had written a book and was described variously as a poet, mystic, philosopher, historian, political theorist and visionary, suggestive of an intellectual egghead, but nevertheless skillfully outmaneuvering the practical politicians in the French National Assembly and outflanking the generals in Algeria.
It was deeply embedded in the culture that when it came to practical matters, eggheads were not very smart. While being proud of poets, painters, scholars and writers, because they were useful in either making people happier or, as with scientists, sometimes inventing things, it was the general notion that it took "practical men" to clear the prairies and build the factories out of the wilderness, while historians wrote about it and philosophers thought about it. "And after Adlai Stevenson it will be a long time before an American political leader lets on he's literate."
Even the eggheads thought of themselves as a group apart. Even the avant garde in Greenwich Village were puzzled by the phenomenon of a poet in the insurance business, as had been Wallace Stevens, but Americans generally had thought of it as an exception to the rule.
To the Greeks, a man was not a man unless he was a whole man, both a practical doer and an egghead. No one had thought it strange that Alexander had been a star pupil of Aristotle or that Archimedes had been invited into a council of war. It had been a journalist, Xenophon, who was called to save 10,000 Greeks from the Persian Army, and a dictator, Pericles, who had made Athens the city beautiful. Caesar had written history while he made it and Marcus Aurelius had written philosophy while, as Emperor, he applied it.
Frederick the Great had debated philosophy with Voltaire and Napoleon had seen visions and argued the philosophy of the law. The British Empire had been built and preserved by men who were novelists, essayists, poets, artists, scholars or philosophers, men of action such as Francis Bacon, Benjamin Disraeli, William Gladstone, Arthur Balfour, and Winston Churchill.
In America, the founders were eggheads, including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Adams.
The dichotomy between eggheads and "practical men" was partly the result of history, and, possibly, partly the result of confusion of intellectualism with education. Pushing westward and building factories left little time for the type of education which was called cultural. The builders in time acquired a scorn for the scholar who could not plow a field and the few with leisure for education came to look down upon the builders who were ignorant of Homer and Beethoven. That separation by cultural exposure obscured the fact that "intellectual" described not education but a quality of mind. The person who could think from particular problems to general ideas and back again, who had curiosity for all within the person's purview, who had sensibility for beauty in music or in mountains, was an intellectual whether he dug in ditches or in libraries.
Thus, Andrew Jackson, a rough-hewn soldier, was a first-class egghead and the nation remained influenced by his political theories. Abraham Lincoln, likewise, was in that category, as were the plainsmen who saw more in the West that adventure or the tycoons who saw visions as well as money in the railroads. America could not have come to be were it not for the men of action having included a large percentage of those of speculative mind. Yet the dichotomy persisted.
Scholars disdained "practical affairs" and executives hoped that no one would notice if they read philosophy at home.
"Casey Stengel, the Yankee
philosopher, is barred from the fraternity of eggheads just because
he garbles his grammar. And radio and record crooner Pat Boone
dumbfounds
He concludes that it was not known whether Premier De Gaulle could do for France what Winston Churchill had done for England, but he suggests that perhaps both could do something for America, reminding that action did not require a silencing of the mind. "Perhaps they can even lift the impression left by all the many drudges educated beyond their capacity—that all eggheads are incompetent to do anything."
A letter from John P. Kennedy, Jr., a Democratic candidate for the legislature from Mecklenburg, indicates that he shared the editors' belief expressed in an editorial on Saturday that political campaigns ought be fought on issues, on which he encourages a frank discussion in the coming election. But he indicates that one of the issues in the campaign for the State House was a very practical one, raising the question of how effective Republicans could be in the Legislature largely dominated by Democrats, a question about which he believed the public was entitled to have frank discussion and answers. He says he had been told that no statewide legislation of significance had been proposed by a Republican and accepted by the Legislature during the previous 50 years, that he did not know whether it was completely true, but appeared very nearly true, indicating the obstacles which any Republican would have in the Legislature. He indicates that Mecklenburg, because of its large population, was entitled to greater representation in the Legislature than it presently had and if it sent Republicans to Raleigh, the electorate would be reducing effective representation still further. He does not wish that the campaign be dominated by that issue as there were other extremely important issues, among which were state services, sources of revenue, constitutional reform and court reorganization. He believes that all of the Democrats were agreed that during the fall, there would be discussion of all of the issues.
A pome appears from the Atlanta Journal, "In Which Is Extended A Modicum of Advice Regarding The Development Of Personality:
"Lest you wind up on the shelf
Do your best to be yourself."
But if you are a mental elf,
Emulate the Cabinet's fealty dealt
Speaking of Munich, it is, no doubt, of great relief to those who admired Der Fuehrer to know that there were men of unmistakable integrity and grit at work, in and out of Congress, in 1970, in the immediate wake of Kent State, making sure and double-aught sure that the record on Herr Schicklgruber's quotes was correct and accurate for history's sake, not as those liberals would try to twist and add to his words to seek political advantage by ironic analogy to times then extant. Perhaps those relentless hunters for accuracy knew, without giving quarter, for having been present at all of his many speeches in 1932, being, as they indubitably were, aficionados of ol' Schick, sorely displeased at having his memory tarnished by inaccurate reference made to him by radicals and lawbreakers, Communists. Let's get one thing perfectly clear...
Q.E.D., indeed.
Framed Edition
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