The Charlotte News
Wednesday, September 10, 1958
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Newport, R.I., that White House press secretary James Hagerty had stated from the summer White House this date that a published report was untrue that White House chief of staff Sherman Adams, target of Congress in recent months in the Bernard Goldfine matter, had resigned. The story had appeared in the Laconia Evening Citizen in New Hampshire. Mr. Hagerty said, "There has been no resignation in any shape, form or manner submitted by Governor Adams." There had been reports in Washington and elsewhere that Mr. Adams would depart soon because Republican candidates regarded him as a major political liability in the upcoming midterm elections, especially after the disaster for the Republicans in the Maine elections the prior Monday, when Governor Edmund Muskie had become the first Democratic Senator from that state in 47 years.
Also in Newport, it was announced that the President would deliver a major nationwide television and radio address from Washington the following night regarding the Far East crisis.
In London, it was reported that Communist China had charged that a U.S. Navy plane had violated airspace over its territorial waters this date, after it had extended its territorial waters from the traditional international three-mile limit to 12 miles, embracing Quemoy.
In Reykjavik, Iceland, a Foreign Office spokesman this date stated that the Foreign Minister would fly to New York on Saturday to put his country's fishing dispute with Britain before the U.N.
NASA, the newly established civilian
space agency, had made public detailed plans to probe the
heavens with a series of earth satellites during the year ahead. For
the more distant future, the agency was already at work on projects
to explore the moon and then to move on to the planets. Its program
plans had been disclosed for the first time at a dinner meeting of
the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences the previous night,
outlined by Edgar Cortright of the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory
in Cleveland, a major unit of the National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics, which was in the process of space-age transformation
into NASA. Mr. Cortright said that he believed that through the NASA
programs, man would be placed into orbit around the earth within two
years, would land on the moon and return to earth within 6 to 10
years, would undertake exploration of Mars eventually, but not for at
least 10 to 15 years—being off by a year and a half on the
first orbital flight of John Glenn in February, 1962, by less than a
year on the July, 1969 landing on the moon, and an as yet
undetermined amount of time on a manned Red Planet
In London, it was reported that planes patrolling off England's southwest coast this date had reported no sign of Capt. Glenn Butt, 11 days overdue in his attempt to sail the Atlantic alone in a 41-foot catamaran.
Democrats, turning out in record numbers, had posted major voting gains in the previous day's ten-state primary elections. The party upsurge stood out particularly in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Utah, coming on the heels of the Democratic victories in Maine the prior Monday. The strength of the turnout of Democrats stood out from what was otherwise standard voting patterns in the year's last big series of primaries for Congress and gubernatorial elections before the midterms in November. In Wisconsin, Democrats topped the combined Republican vote for the first time in the current century, as William Proxmire was renominated for the full Senate term after having become the first Democrat elected to the Senate there in 25 years, when he had won the seat in August, 1957 in a special election to succeed the deceased Joseph McCarthy. An unprecedented turnout in the cities, particularly in Milwaukee, had bolstered the Democratic totals. Rural Wisconsin still favored Republicans. Utah Democrats displayed unprecedented strength in nominating Frank Moss to oppose veteran Republican Senator Arthur Watkins. In Minnesota, the Democrats rolled up substantially bigger votes than the Republicans in almost all of the contests. The size of the Democratic turnout had posed a threat to the Republican Senate seat held by Edward Thye. Representative Eugene McCarthy, 42, had been nominated by the Democrats to oppose the Senator—and would win. Senator McCarthy would be a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968, vying against Senator Hubert Humphrey and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, prior to the latter's assassination in Los Angeles just after the Democratic primary in California, which he had won on June 4, 1968. In Florida, incumbent Senator Spessard Holland had defeated former liberal Senator Claude Pepper in the latter's bid for return to the Senate. Mr. Pepper—who, while in the Senate, had sent a complimentary telegram to W. J. Cash regarding The Mind of the South in April, 1941—would be elected to the House in 1962, where he would continue to serve until his death in 1989.
Emery Wister of The News tells of a two million dollar, 175,000 square foot merchandise mart being planned for Charlotte on Independence Boulevard near the Coliseum, which would further enhance the city's position as a wholesale distribution center. Dwight Phillips, Charlotte developer and builder, headed the company which planned the three-level structure, which would be the third-largest merchandise mart in the nation, only behind those in Chicago and Dallas—though within four years to drop to fourth, as a large, 22-story mart would be built in downtown Atlanta. Mr. Phillips owned the eight-acre site on which the building would be built, saying that he expected it to be quadrupled in size within a few years. Some of the land first had to be rezoned from "office institutional". The building would have a frontage of 360 feet and a depth of 150 feet, would have 300 showrooms with space for display of 1,200 lines of merchandise on its three floors. If expansion were carried out as anticipated, the building would eventually have 1,000 showrooms with space for display of 3,000 lines of merchandise. The building would be of brick and pre-stressed concrete, with floors covered in terrazzo or vinyl tile. The entire structure would be air conditioned. Mr. Phillips said that the building would not display furniture so as not to compete with the High Point Merchandise Mart. (It would be very nice if they would ban cigarette smoking, as the blue haze which will permeate the ceiling of the basement temporary show spaces will choke young lungs and provide a banging headache within short order, every bit as much so as did the halo of smoke which hung over the Coliseum at basketball games. Those of you who still object to no smoking regulations in public spaces, get a life. If you wish to smoke in private and poison yourself, that is your privilege. But do not impose your nasty, stifling habit on others in closed spaces.)
On the editorial page, Drew Pearson indicates that when historians would write the record of how the U.S. had coasted right up to the "brink" of war over a small group of islands a few miles off the Chinese mainland, they would probably say that the U.S. was "nuts". Quemoy occupied the same position to the Communist port of Amoy as Staten Island did to New York City. The Joint Chiefs had long stated that the U.S. could not possibly defend it without the use of atomic weapons, which would mean world war three. The President had consistently said that it was foolhardy to become involved on the Chinese mainland, having told Mr. Pearson that in April, 1952, just before announcing for the presidency, and had continued to repeat it to the National Security Council, that he did not want to be drawn into a war without allies and that there would be none if going to war over Quemoy and Matsu. He had repeated that Napoleon had been called a great military genius because he always fought against coalitions. But he had told his advisers that Napoleon had lost and that he did not want to be another Napoleon. The President had said publicly on February 10, 1954, "No one could be more bitterly opposed to getting the United States involved in a hot war in that region than I am." Later, in April, 1955, some of the President's best friends had become so worried about being drawn into a war regarding Quemoy and Matsu that they had made a special trip to Washington to caution the President. Those included former Governor Thomas Dewey, General Lucius Clay, the former U.S. commander in Germany, and Paul Hoffman, the former Marshall Plan administrator, all of whom were liberal Republicans.
Even Secretary of State Dulles, early in the Administration, had held a background talk with newspapermen in which he suggested the possibility of relinquishing Formosa to the Chinese Communists in return for peace in Korea. His law partner, Arthur Dean, had been quite specific in a talk to newsmen, that Communist China would be recognized, while Vice-President Nixon, in talks with the Premiers of India, Pakistan and Indonesia, had held out the definite possibility that Communist China would be admitted to the U.N.
He indicates that the reason that the President and Secretary of State were carrying out a policy which alienated the country's allies, risked war and which they did not, in their hearts, appear to support, was because the China Lobby, supported by the conservative wing of the Republican Party, had dominated U.S. foreign policy, and because of a chain of events over which the President, sometimes inclined to enthusiasm, had gotten carried away by the enthusiasm of others. The chief enthusiast whose contagion had first infected the President had been Admiral Arthur Radford, who had been exiled to the Pacific by President Truman because of the bitter civil war he had staged against the Air Force. The Admiral, an opportunist and a salesman, had flown to meet President-elect Eisenhower on Iwo Jima in December, 1952. Mr. Eisenhower had flown to Korea and during the hour when his plane was refueling on Iwo Jima during the return trip, the two men had stretched their legs, and fast-talking Admiral Radford had sold the President-elect on the most important change in American policy in the current decade, to unleash Chiang Kai-shek to retake the mainland of China.
The Admiral had argued that Nationalist China could retake the mainland if given a few old U.S. destroyers, plus American supplies. The President-elect accepted the idea and also appointed Admiral Radford as his new chairman of the Joint Chiefs. It had not mattered that the former chairman, General Omar Bradley, had argued that Chiang's Army was too old and that the Nationalists were too unpopular. He notes that they had massacred 60,000 natives on the island of Formosa and probably would have been been driven off the island had it not been for U.S. support.
Marquis Childs finds that if it were not for the extraordinary misconception of Communist China's intention which was at base of U.S. policy, it would not be clear that the Communists had extracted about all of the advantage they had sought from the latest scare regarding Quemoy and Matsu. He sums those advantages as, first and foremost, the setting of the 12-mile territorial limit, a propaganda maneuver which had succeeded when U.S. warships had come within 3 to 4 miles of the coast to protect Nationalist China's supply of Quemoy, enabling the Communists to make an official charge of "aggression". He indicates that it was of the greatest significance in Asia, even if seemingly unimportant in the West. The principal objective of the exercise from the viewpoint of the Communists might have been to demonstrate to the world again that the U.S. was denying them access to islands which lay within plain view of their coastline.
Second, a war scare had again diverted the attention of the West from critical problems of immediate concern. In the Middle East, U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold was having great difficulty carrying out the assignment passed on to him by the General Assembly to arrange conditions under which the U.S. and British forces could withdraw from Lebanon and Jordan, respectively.
Third, the Communists had advertised to the world that even without a direct invasion of the offshore islands, it had only been with the help of U.S. naval forces that the Nationalist position on Quemoy and Matsu could be maintained. In the face of the Communist artillery barrage, Nationalist gunboats had been helpless and the islands had been successfully blockaded until the U.S. 7th Fleet had intervened. While reporting from the Formosa Strait had been confused and often conflicting, it had been fairly well established that the Communists were at no time prepared for imminent invasion.
Fourth, U.S. admirals had come
through, as so often in the past, to help out the propaganda effort.
Vice-Admiral Roland Smoot had given a typical press conference in
which he said, among other things, according to the reports, "We
can lick 'em." Such statements were eagerly seized on by the
Communist propagandists to make the U.S. appear bent on aggression,
causing dismay to the uncommitted peoples and fright to U.S. allies. (Perhaps, Admiral Smoot had culled his expression from Lik-m-Aid and, reminiscent of the Army-McCarthy hearings in spring, 1954, Pixie Sticks—different from punji sticks—, to which we have been introduced by some of our new comrades of late here in 1958, in and around the Village, wherein, as we have recounted, they hold weekly air raids at noon on Saturdays. This is a strange place
Mr. Childs indicates that it was not to deny that a grave danger existed. Chiang Kai-shek had a pressing interest in involving the U.S. in a war with mainland China. While most of the evidence indicated that the Communists wanted to stop short of war, they might not be averse to drawing the U.S. into a costly invasion engagement, which could end in nothing except disaster in an all-out nuclear war. The Communists were completely indifferent to human life and they knew that if the U.S. used atomic bombs on Orientals again, the U.S. would have no friends left in Asia. The memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have faded in the U.S., but not in the Far East.
He indicates that the fundamental misconception of American policymakers was that the Peking regime was eager for recognition by the U.S. and for relaxation of tensions, when nearly the exact opposite seemed to be true. To industrialize a futile, peasant nation of 600 million people in one generation, as China was seeking to do, the most ruthless Stalinist methods were essential and continuing world tension served that end well.
He finds that it came down to what was perhaps the greatest gain which the Communists had reaped from the latest exercise, to work their own people up to the threat of aggression. Peking Radio reported that huge rallies were being held in all of the major cities and propaganda was making hay at the expense of the wicked American imperialists. The American response to the threatened invasion, as projected in the propaganda out of Peking and the cries of alarm out of Formosa, perfectly suited that end, with the admirals talking about "licking 'em" and the President meeting in a well-publicized session with the National Security Council to consider two tiny islands in the Pacific.
"We would stand firm, we would send more warships, we would never allow this attack to succeed. Quite apart from the danger of actual war, it is a built-in situation for the Communists who mean to exploit to the fullest the strange position in which the United States finds itself."
As we have fallen behind, there are no further notes on the front page or editorial page of this date, as the notes will be sporadic until we catch up.
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