The Charlotte News
Saturday, July 5, 1958
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Paris that Secretary of State Dulles and Premier Charles de Gaulle had completed their formal conferences this date with a half-hour private conversation at the Premier's official residence. Both men had been grave-faced when they departed. Premier de Gaulle had walked with Secretary Dulles to the automobile waiting to take the latter back to the U.S. Embassy, the Premier looking extremely serious. Neither French nor American officials gave any indication of what the two had talked about while they were alone, first inside the official residence and later in the garden. The morning conference, attended by aides of both men, had covered the situation in the Middle East, among others. Mr. Dulles would also meet with French Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville, and Paul-Henri Spaak, Secretary-General of NATO.
In Beirut, fighting had again broken out this date when 80 rebels tried to break out of the Basta Moslem quarter and were repulsed by security forces.
In Jakarta, Indonesia, the ban on travel to the outer regions of the country by foreign diplomatic personnel had been lifted for all areas except Celebes and the Moluccas.
In Damascus, Syria, it was reported that 13 persons had been killed and 17 injured in the collision of a bus and an oil truck on the main highway between Aleppo and Banias. All of the injured had been hospitalized, with some in serious condition.
In Leghorn, Italy, Fourth of July fireworks from an American beach party had zoomed off course in a big wind the previous night and set fire to several cabanas on a neighboring Italian beach.
Traffic deaths across the nation were piling up at a record clip this date as the halfway mark was passed in the three-day Independence Day weekend. The death rate had eased somewhat after racing through the Fourth at a pace far above estimates made by the National Safety Council, which had forecast a record high of 410 deaths for the 78-hour period, to conclude at midnight Sunday. At the midway point, fatalities were in line with the advance estimates, but nevertheless were still slightly lower than during the early hours of the holiday. The president of the NSC urged drivers to continue to use every possible precaution to bring the toll down. During the early hours of the holiday, the highway deaths had run one-sixth ahead of those occurring during the Memorial Day weekend, which recorded 371 traffic deaths, a record for a three-day Memorial Day holiday. The previous three-day record for July 4 was 407 deaths, occurring in 1955. A four-day July 4 holiday had claimed a record 491 lives in 1950. Generally fair weather across the country had produced heavy traffic Friday, during the early hours of the weekend. But thunderstorms and showers had placed a damper on driving conditions by Friday night. Some 45 million cars had been expected to travel 12 billion miles, according to the NSC estimate, during the 78-hour weekend.
At least 21 persons had died violently in the Carolinas during the holiday thus far, with 14 having died in North Carolina and seven in South Carolina by noon this date.
In Hamburg, Ia., the levees of the Nishnabotna River in the extreme southwest corner of the state had been piled high with sandbags this date to hold back the flood crest which had brought havoc in the upper reaches of the watershed.
In Fresno, Calif., it was reported that some 150 firefighters had battled this date for control over a stubborn blaze which already had leveled more than 150 acres of grass and timberland 30 miles northwest of the town.
In Portland, Ore., a fireworks plant on the eastern edge of the city had blown up in a shower of fire and debris early this date, killing a child and injuring at least 20 others. Firemen had taken the body of the small girl from the wreckage of a house near the explosion and they were investigating reports that two other persons may have been in the house. A local hospital said that it had admitted 18 persons with injuries. Firemen were looking for a watchman reported to be in the plant. The explosion had wrecked two houses and smashed doors and windows of a nearby motel, lifting off part of its roof. The heaviest damage had been confined to a two-block area around the plant, but smashed windows were reported 30 blocks away. The explosion had been heard more than ten miles away.
In Myrtle Beach, S.C., it was reported that a man wielding a knife had terrorized passengers and crewmen of a pleasure boat 35 miles offshore during a Fourth of July cruise. He had finally been subdued after accidentally being wounded in the shoulder. The 35-year old man of Louisville, Ky., had begun lashing out while he wielded a knife aboard the boat, but no one was injured. A police officer quoted a crewman as saying that the man had been argumentative during most of the trip and at one point had attempted to throw the crewman overboard. When the man was ordered to quiet down, he grabbed a knife and began waving it. In the rush to get out of the way, several women had fainted. The captain of the vessel and crewmen attempted to subdue the man, who fought his way up from the hatch to the deck, and in an exchange of blows, a gun had discharged, wounding the man in the left shoulder. He was subdued and transferred by the Coast Guard from the boat to a Myrtle Beach hospital where his condition was described as not serious.
In London, England, a jobless farmworker, discharged by the Royal Air Force for mental instability, said this date that he had signed his name and address to a letter saying that a U.S. pilot would drop an atomic bomb near England. But the photostatic copy which the Soviet Embassy had released two days after receiving the letter had been signed only "W." British newspapers had suggested that the Russians had pulled a political trick in publicizing the letter while knowing it to be a hoax, to serve their propaganda campaign. In reporting it to the British Foreign Office, Soviet officials said that it was "probably a hoax" but did not mention knowing the writer's name and address. A small-town British reporter had tracked down the letter writer the previous day, a 34-year old man of Ipswich who had not been near a warplane for almost a year. When police questioned him this date, he denied any political motive but said he only wanted to attract attention to his grievances against the British Government. Police allowed him to go home without bringing charges. He told newsmen that he had written Soviet Ambassador Jacob Malik three letters, one having been the threat to drop an atomic bomb, another protesting his failure to get a gratuity after the RAF had discharged him, and the third complaining that the Government had requisitioned his father's farm.
In New York, a nine-year old girl had been wounded critically the previous night by a bullet which had entered her skull while she sat with her family in front of their Queens home. She had been rushed to a Flushing hospital where doctors had operated to remove the bullet at the base of her skull. Her parents said that they had heard no gunshot, but her brother, 12, said that he thought he had heard a pop just before his sister had called for help. Police questioned neighbors for clues and searched for shell casings.
In Jefferson, Ga., for the first time in nearly two years, a mild-mannered South Carolina house painter and father of seven children was no longer facing the death penalty and would be released in a matter of days. Authorities said that it would perhaps be ten days before the legal technicalities were completed, following the confession of the killing of a Jefferson merchant by a 33-year old former Cairo, Ill., patrolman. The man had been sentenced to die in the electric chair for the crime first in September 1956, and again the prior June. Appeals had delayed his execution. The man who confessed had signed a 2,500-word statement in Columbia, S.C., where he was serving a five-year sentence for conspiracy to commit burglary. In the statement, he detailed how he had planned the robbery which resulted in the slaying of a 60-year old man in June, 1956. He said that the death of the man had been constantly on his mind and conscience. He quoted from the Bible, Matthew 5:10: "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake: For theirs is the kingdom of Heaven." He said that the accused man had been persecuted and asked that God return him to his wife and family and that he live a long and happy life. He had implicated a used car dealer of Winder, Ga., as the finger man in the case. That man was presently in Federal Prison in Atlanta serving the first year of a five-year sentence for illegal liquor. The solicitor general of the judicial district said that he would seek indictments against both men at the August term of the county grand jury. The previously accused man appeared dazed when brought into a press conference at which the confession of the other man had been announced, stating that he was "dumbfounded". One of his attorneys said that the first break had come when a safe-cracker incarcerated in a jail near Atlanta had said that the man who confessed had mentioned several times that he had killed a man in Jefferson. The attorney had followed that lead. During the trial of his client, the defendant had said that he and a companion had been drinking beer in an establishment several miles from the home of the deceased, shortly before the slaying. He had been working at nearby Gainesville as a house painter. The State's star witness had been the wife of the deceased, who was beaten by the slayer when she attempted to telephone for help. She had identified the convicted defendant.
On the editorial page, "The Adams Case: 'In the Beginning…'" indicates that when the House subcommittee, chaired by Representative Oren Harris of Arkansas, had begun, it had no interest in former FCC commissioner Richard Mack and his bad debts or Sherman Adams and his vicuna coat, or other "flyspecks" of any kind. Former subcommittee counsel Bernard Schwartz had said that he was booted out by the subcommittee for hollering about alleged sins of Mr. Adams.
Now, the subcommittee had heard from John Fox, who had made allegations against Mr. Adams and his old friend Bernard Goldfine, which had made Dr. Schwartz "sound like the soul of timidity."
Originally, the subcommittee's purpose had been to examine into the condition of all of the regulatory agencies to see if they were wielding their vast power in the public interest and acting within the meaning of the legislation which had created them, and whether new legislation was required.
It finds that the probe had found two suspected weaknesses in the agencies, that insufficient care had been exercised both by Congress and the Administration in appointing personnel to them. The fact that Mr. Mack had ever become a member of the FCC demonstrated how purely political some of the appointments had been. The other weakness was the facility with which the Administration and Congress could intervene in the deliberations of the regulatory agencies.
It finds that the whole matter had boiled down to an issue of who stole the horse, while the question of how the barn was left unlocked had been forgotten or at least overlooked by the subcommittee on "legislative oversight". It finds it doubtful that the subcommittee would ever get back to the fundamental question now that it had undertaken its happy hunting, doubtful that any Congressional committee could examine candidly and openly the apparatus of secret pressure which had been brought to bear on the quasi-judicial regulatory agencies. For Congress was part of the apparatus.
It suggests that it could appoint a fact-finding citizens commission to inquire into the fundamental conditions of the regulatory agencies, not an ideal approach to the problem, but better than no approach at all, which was the current status of the probe.
"'It All Depends on Whose Ox Is...'" finds that the U.S. District Court judge who had delayed continued desegregation in the Little Rock schools until the beginning of 1961 had brought a vital and related issue into focus, goring the integrationist ox, with the resulting bellows being pretty much indistinguishable from those emitted by the segregationists during the previous four years since the Supreme Court had held public school segregation per se unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education.
It indicates that criticism of the judge's decision had not stopped with disagreement, but included strong intimations that he was a prejudiced judge trying to hold back the dawn of righteousness. It suggests that one did not have to go far to reach the conclusion that something had to be done about the courts, the same conclusion reached by some segregationists and other groups because of the previous decisions holding segregation to be unconstitutional.
Conservative forces generally were dissatisfied with many recent rulings of the Supreme Court and made no bones about saying so, backing legislation which would restrict its jurisdiction or raising such a ruckus that judges were aware they were not winning popularity contests.
It indicates that anyone could disagree with a court decision any time they wished and conservatives could try to bring pressure on the courts as the liberals had done during the 1930's.
It finds that the contesting hue and cry of opinion made it very clear of the necessity of having an independent judiciary, one which did not consider itself bound to bow to the fervors of the moment. It finds that it also illustrated the danger of tampering with the judiciary in an effort to make it fall in line first with one group and then with another.
"Let gored oxen bellow, but let them be careful not to run amok."
As indicated, the U.S. District Court decision would be reversed by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in August and the original District Court orders to proceed with desegregation reinstated, a decision affirmed in September by the Supreme Court.
"Not So Fast, UPI!" quotes from a UPI story appearing in the Charlotte Observer on July 4, that Doris Fleeson would be married in New York the following month to Dan Kimball, former Secretary of the Navy.
It corrects the piece, which had indicated that Ms. Fleeson's column appeared regularly in the Observer, that in fact it appeared in The News while the work of the UPI appeared regularly in the Observer, an arrangement, it says, with which it was "right well satisfied".
The distinction by the following April 6 would become somewhat academic as Knight Newspapers, which owned The Observer, would purchase The News, though the two newspapers would maintain their separate identities, staffs, and editorial policies, only sharing thereafter the same printing facilities. Whether the acquisition was rumored by this point and the slight dig at the conclusion of the piece reflected that scuttlebutt, we know not.
"Here's to Talkative Trooper Tedbury" comments on the talkative member of the Horse Guards, who prided themselves on remaining stoically silent for an hour at a time. Breaking with that tradition, the trooper appeared to be headed for Britain's farthest outposts where the shame he had caused might die with him.
The trooper had taken umbrage at a professional guide taking issue with the genuineness of his leather boots and his coat, eliciting the response from the trooper, "You're a liar. Now, move on." The guide, a veteran of two world wars, Capt. John Reeves, said that he would report the trooper, which he had done.
The British War Office had announced that an official investigation was underway. The trooper's comrades had come to his rescue, however, saying that he had spoken only after the guide had made outlandish claims about the Guards. They had also drunk to his health for daring to talk back, saying: "We put up with a lot. We are human beings after all and we get fed up."
"So here's to Trooper Tedbury, who will not become an unknown soldier. To him we offer 15 American yippees and a triple heel click, and to Capt. Reeves, a most un-British razzberry."
A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled "Fish or Chicken?" indicates that those who were absorbed in making a living, according to a magazine, did not even know what they would eat for supper until they sat down at the table.
It suggests that while that might be so of the commuting crowd, in the average small town, the wife would telephone her husband at least three times each day, with one call being to ascertain if he got to work alright, the second being to tell him that someone was looking for him, and the third to remind him of a meeting scheduled for that night at the PTA or some similar delight. At that point, the husband would ask what was being served for supper and the wife would ask what he preferred, chicken or fish, the husband responding that either would be fine, at which the wife would state that one was no more trouble than the other and ask that he please help her decide. So the husband would say fish, after which there was a pause by the wife, resignedly saying that she would stink up the house if that's the way he wanted it, that he would be unable to close a window for a week. At that point, the husband would say that he would just as soon have chicken, though he knew that he had made her have fish.
"You look at the office window
but there isn't a single carnival
The Cleavers probably got one of those $1 grills on special down at Johnston's Furniture, which cooks without being lit. You could afford three or four of those and then when the bottom burns out, you would have a new one straightway to put into immediate operation to fill the void, just like a spare missile—overkill.
Drew Pearson indicates that a lot of Johnny-come-latelies were now claiming credit for making Alaska the 49th state, while the man who unobtrusively but consistently had badgered Senators and Congressmen and maneuvered in the smoke-filled rooms to bring about statehood was former newspaperman Ernest Gruening. He had first come to Washington in 1933 as chief of the Insular Affairs Division of the Interior Department, organized under the late Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes. Mr. Gruening had guided the destinies of such U.S. territories as the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Hawaii and Alaska. He had received a degree from Harvard Medical School, but had spent much of his time as a newspaperman, editing the Portland, Me., Evening Express when he came to Washington to nurse American territories. After representing their causes before Congress, he had been made Governor of Alaska in 1939 and as such had done a revolutionary thing, going all over the territory, visiting every Eskimo village, every island in the Aleutians, every backwoods settlement, getting to know the people and their problems.
Back in Washington, when Congress was in session, he had called on members to plead for Alaskan problems. For 14 years, longer than any man in history, he had remained Governor of Alaska. Then when President Eisenhower failed to reappoint him in 1953, the people of Alaska elected him as their unofficial senator and he moved to Washington to undertake a 24-hour per day lobbying campaign for the territory's statehood.
Shortly before that, his son, Peter, a correspondent for the United Press, had been killed in Australia, and his grief-stricken father more than ever put forth his heart and soul in the battle for Alaskan statehood, in effect, making Alaska his child.
Former Congressman Victor Wickersham of Oklahoma, who had parlayed his Congressional salary into hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of real estate around Washington, had used another piece of real estate to try to stage a comeback in Oklahoma. The latter was the additional land which the Army wanted to add to the Fort Sill firing range in Oklahoma to complete ground-to-ground missile testing, as missiles were replacing artillery, for which Fort Sill had been first founded. Mr. Wickersham was trying to make the farmers of Oklahoma believe that their land around Fort Sill was as valuable as the land he had acquired around Washington, to enable his re-election to Congress.
He had previously been defeated for Congress when the people back home had realized that he was spending more time on real estate deals than on their problems. He had used one of his secretaries, paid by the taxpayers, to handle part of his real estate operations. He was able to buy up property in Virginia and Maryland which he believed would skyrocket in price with the expansion of the nation's capital.
The farmers of Oklahoma did not wish to give up their land, though the low rainfall made it marginal, subject to scorching droughts, leading some of the farmers to move to California during the earlier bad years in the 1930's. But the tug of home was always powerful and Mr. Wickersham had found a potent campaign issue by campaigning against the Army's acquisition of more land, ignoring the fact that it would be difficult for the Army to continue at Fort Sill unless it could acquire more land, with Fort Sill being one of Oklahoma's major economic assets.
Using that issue, Mr. Wickersham had come within 824 votes in the primary against the incumbent elected in his place, Congressman Toby Morris, a down to earth, conscientious person. In so doing, Mr. Wickersham had forced a runoff primary to be held in three weeks.
Joseph Alsop compares Bernard Goldfine to Mr. Pickwick of Charles Dickens, ostensibly warm-hearted and generous of nature, until found out "for something far more serious." There was something warm, human and likable about the energetic and resourceful man, who had begun life in America as a poor Russian immigrant boy, who had made a large fortune in a difficult textile industry and had saved a few New England towns from economic decay, making it understandable why Sherman Adams and many others had surrendered to him.
The generosity extended to Mr. Adams, however, had been taken as business expense deductions for Mr. Goldfine's income taxes. Mr. Alsop suggests that if one wanted to see beyond the Goldfine-Pickwick analogy, then one had to look to Roger Robb, the lawyer whom the White House had commanded that Mr. Goldfine hire. Mr. Robb had been hired by Atomic Energy Commission chairman Admiral Lewis Strauss to prosecute Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, hiding the fact that Admiral Strauss had seen every significant item of evidence against Dr. Oppenheimer in 1948 and had thereafter approved the latter's security clearance with apparent confidence. Mr. Robb was a good symbol of the ugly extremes of the past, partisan in purpose and now returned to haunt the Republican Party which had benefited from them.
General Harry Vaughan had been hardly more than President Truman's doorkeeper, and if so much had been made of his imprudences, then the question arose as to how was nothing to be made of the imprudences of Sherman Adams. That was the first reason why the matter had been blown up to such strange dimensions. But the second reason was that Mr. Adams was almost the president where huge areas of the Government were concerned. "And if the Goldfine hearings end badly for Sherman Adams, then, no doubt, all those areas of government pass through much the same experience as a real change of President."
Walter Lippmann indicates that with about 60 Americans being detained in four different countries, there had been a sour note in the celebration of July 4th, with the captives being a sharp reminder that American power and prestige were no longer what they had been when, if Americans were held prisoner in time of peace, there would have been a great demand for their release, whereas at present there was a loud declaration that the U.S. would not pay blackmail for them, combined with the silent admission that there would be no force used to accomplish their release. Yet, the Americans were being held to induce the U.S. to make a political concession.
The nine members of the helicopter crew which had strayed into East Germany were being held to induce the U.S. to label its negotiators as diplomatic agents of the U.S. Government. Though it would not carry with it any actual diplomatic relationship with East Germany, the form of the credentials of U.S. agents was supposed to be very important. The Communists placed a high value on the formula and West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer did as well. In the meantime, the Americans were detained while the four governments, those of East and West Germany, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, quarreled about the metaphysical problem of "recognition".
The nine members of the Air Force who had lost their way in a cargo plane were being held, it appeared, to make the U.S. Government admit that American planes were in the habit of intruding on the airspace of the Soviet Union. The admission would not be made and the men would be held, presumably until the Soviet Government would become tired of holding them.
Four Americans were being held captive in Communist China and had been there for a long time, pawns in the negotiations which, until they had been suspended, had been carried on in Geneva between an American ambassador and a Communist Chinese ambassador. Those negotiations might be resumed, but no one appeared to know what the price for the release of the imprisoned Americans was. It would likely be high as the Americans had been convicted of crimes under Chinese law.
There were some 40 men, including three Canadians, who had been kidnaped in eastern Cuba by the rebels under the command of Fidel Castro, though his brother Raul had been immediately responsible apparently for their capture. The ransom was the stoppage of American military aid which the rebels believed was being provided to the Batista Government. It was a guerrilla version of military reprisal analogous in reverse to what had happened in earlier times when the gunboat of a great power bombarded a town in a recalcitrant small country. It was in many respects the most significant of the captive situations because of the light it shed on the realities and limitations of military power in the current age.
It involved a small guerrilla army operating in the mountains of eastern Cuba with no common frontier with a Communist state, part of an island in waters under the absolute naval control of the U.S. The U.S. had for a long time had a military base right next to the rebel territory, at Guantánamo, and yet the rebels dared to kidnap over 40 North Americans, including American soldiers, and hold them for ransom.
Despite the country's nuclear weapons, its Air Force, Navy and Army, it was somehow inhibited from using them even in Cuba, in the inner regions of the Western sphere of influence. He believes it a function of their having been two revolutions in the nature of warfare, the one having been the tremendous increase in firepower of the greatest states, that with which the Pentagon dealt, while the other was what he refers to as the poor people's military resistance, which could be passive, as under Mahatma Gandhi, or active and violent, as at present in Algeria and in eastern Cuba.
There had been a large amount of argument about the major deterrents and the conventional weapons, designed for what could be described as another Korean War. But he finds that there was a greater question than whether in addition to the major deterrents, there should also be big "conventional" forces, and there was the question of how to cope with guerrilla warfare.
"For it is evident, I think, that in the revolutionary condition of the modern world, and all the softer spots of Asia, Africa and Latin America, fighting is likely to take the form not of overt war but of the kind of smoldering war which enables guerrilla leaders, like Castro for example, to defy the might and majesty of a great power like the U.S.A."
A letter writer from Cheraw, S.C., indicates that the elections in South Carolina were over and that most would agree with Governor-elect Ernest Hollings that the state ought enact a requirement that groups printing in the papers or pamphlets statements concerning candidates for office ought sign their names, which would put an end to false and defamatory statements about candidates for making them subject to the libel laws. He says that there had been many false statements made in the last primary and that such a practice was not fair to the state, the country or the people. It was not fair to the candidate seeking public office to serve the people rather than just a group or a privileged few.
While the writer's point sounds well and good on its face, refinements have been made through time to general common law defamation principles regarding public figures, public officials and candidates for public office, to balance defamation with the First Amendment. The public official standard was established in 1964 in New York Times v. Sullivan, that the false matter has to be published with knowing or reckless diregard of the falsehood. The standard was extended to candidates for public office in 1971 in Monitor Patriot Co. v. Roy. (In 1967, a more stringent standard of responsibility, though still not as great as with ordinary private citizens, was applied to public figures who are not public officials or candidates for public office, in Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, combined with a separate case involving former Maj. General Edwin Walker. In the same year, the Court, in further refinement of the Sullivan standard, held in Time, Inc. v. Hill—a case argued for the Hill family by former Vice-President Nixxon, that old Esso Barrister, mainly given to barratry—that the standard of actual malice applied to coverage of "newsworthy events", in that instance involving a 1955 Life Magazine story purporting to reenact the actual event on which was based the 1953 novel and 1955 Broadway play, later that year also a movie, "The Desperate Hours"
The senile moron in the White House, unfit to hold office morally, ethically and mentally, thinks that with the stroke of his diktat pen he can change the law, as if Hammurabi the Lawgiver, to erase Supreme Court decisions. That way, he and his wife could sue more citizens frivolously for exercising their First Amendment rights, chilling the exercise of free speech and stamping out dissent, triggering settlements to avoid the prospect of large legal fees in defending against their shilpit litigation, not ever realizing that by entering into the public domain as a politician, he necessarily sacrifices a certain degree of the privacy accorded ordinary citizens, to enable the free marketplace of ideas to flourish with a free press and free speech so that the despotism His Highness wishes to establish cannot come to pass. Stupid is as stupid does. The odor of mendacity in this Administration stinks to high heaven, daily getting higher.
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