The Charlotte News
Saturday, September 13, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Taipei, Formosa, that Communist artillery fire had driven another Nationalist supply convoy off the beach at Quemoy in pre-dawn darkness this date. Four Nationalist Chinese supply ships had been forced to withdraw after unloading only a small portion of their cargo. Within an hour, the Communists had fired more than 7,000 high-explosive shells onto Liaolo Beach where the vessels were seeking to unload badly needed supplies for the besieged Nationalist outpost island. It was the third unsuccessful attempt by the Nationalists to run the Communist blockade with U.S. warships escorting them to within three miles of Quemoy, the first attempt under cover of darkness. A spokesman for the U.S. Taiwan Defense Command said that neither damage to the Nationalist ships nor casualties had been reported. The spokesman said that the ships remained at the beach for 23 minutes before the heavy fire forced them to withdraw and that during that time, some cargo had been unloaded, not indicating how much, but likely only a small portion. The prior Thursday, a Nationalist convoy had been at the beach for 45 minutes and unloaded only a small part of its cargo before being driven off by gunfire. The spokesman said, however, that they were not unhappy about the progress made by the Nationalists in learning to handle amphibious supply operations under fire. "We will try all kinds of different techniques." Some American commanders had acknowledged privately that Quemoy eventually would strangle unless some way were found to get more than the present trickle of supplies to its 100,000-man Nationalist garrison. Peiping Radio had reported that Communist China had begun organizing "the entire people" into an enormous militia, indicating that millions had already joined the militia with the watchword, "Strike back at any time the enemy dares to attack." In Warsaw, Poland, Chinese Communist Ambassador Wang Pingnan had returned from Peiping after five days of consultation, set to represent the Communist Chinese Government in talks with U.S. Ambassador Jacob Beam on the Formosa crisis.
In Newport, R.I., the President this date appealed to Russia to prevail on Communist China to renounce use of force in the Formosa Strait area and turn to peaceful negotiations. In a new message to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, the President criticized the Kremlin leader for what he called a "one-sided denunciation" of U.S. policy in the Far East. The President also made clear that the U.S. had no intention of withdrawing its forces from the Far East, as Premier Khrushchev had demanded early in the week. Referring to the 4,000-word letter of Mr. Khrushchev, the President said: "I regret to say I do not see in your letter any effort to find that common language which could indeed facilitate the removal of the danger existing in the current situation in the Taiwan area. On the contrary, the description of this situation contained in your letter seems designed to serve the ambitions of international Communism rather than to present the facts. I also note that you have addressed no letter to the Chinese Communist leaders urging moderation upon them. If your letter to me is not merely a vehicle for one-sided denunciation of United States action, but is indeed intended to reflect a desire to find a common language for peace, I suggest you urge these leaders to discontinue their military operations and to turn to a policy of peaceful settlement of the Taiwan dispute." It was an indirect call for Communist China to get started quickly on proposed Warsaw negotiations with the U.S., looking toward a peaceful settlement. While the note from the President had been conciliatory in tone in that regard, he had been firm in making it clear that the U.S. was ready to fight in the Far East if the Communists pushed too far, also the central theme of his television and radio address on Thursday evening. In his message to Premier Khrushchev, the President said that the issue in the Far East simply was "whether the Chinese Communists will seek to achieve their ambitions through the application of force, as they did in Korea, or whether they will accept the vital requisite of world peace and order in a nuclear age and renounce the use of force as a means for satisfying their territorial claims."
In Jerusalem, Israeli Sector, it was reported that an Israeli Army spokesman had said that Syrian riflemen had fired this date on settlers of Gonen village, who had returned the fire, with no casualties on the Israeli side.
In Algiers, it was reported that French troops had trapped and killed 44 Algerian rebels in a battle near the Moroccan border the previous day, according to military authorities, with 14 prisoners taken.
In Richmond, Va., it was reported that 17 black pupils, backed by a Federal District Court order to admit them to the all-white Warren County High School, had appeared this date at Front Royal to seek enrollment, but were turned down. NAACP attorney Oliver Hill of Richmond said that he would take legal action to force the enrollment, but did not specify what he had in mind. The Front Royal high school was the first school in Virginia to be closed under the state's program of massive resistance to integration. Governor J. Lindsay Almond, Jr., the previous night invoked the powers vested in him by State anti-integration laws and took over control of the 1,000-pupil high school, effective on Monday at the start of school. The 17 black pupils were among 22 ordered admitted to the school, the only high school in Warren County. Following a closed-door meeting with the superintendent, Mr. Hill said that he was advised that "due to the action of Governor Almond taken yesterday, he would have to decline to enroll the students." The superintendent said that he acted on the assumption that the Governor had control of the high school. The Governor had said the previous night that "under the compulsion" of a Federal court order entered less than a week earlier, both white and black children had been inescapably enrolled in Warren County High School as of Monday. The anti-integration laws of the state automatically provided for closure of any school integrated for any reason. It appeared to be only a matter of days until the same law might close schools in Norfolk, Charlottesville and possibly Arlington County, a suburb of Washington, as in all of those localities, Federal District Court judges had ordered integration. Announcement of the Governor's action in assuming "all power and control" over the Front Royal high school was made at the Governor's office the previous night in the form of a letter to the county school board and superintendent. An aide said that there would be no statement at the time on any plans for reorganizing the school on a segregated basis. State law empowered the Governor to do so. The development appeared to relieve the county school board of responsibility under the order of the District Court judge and bring the Governor before the power of the Federal court.
In Washington, reaction of Southern Senators to the Supreme Court's decision the previous day that black students had to be readmitted without delay to Little Rock's Central High School had pointed to hard resistance to any new civil rights legislation, to moves aimed at curbing filibusters, and renewed efforts to pass legislation to restrict the powers of the Supreme Court. Senator John Stennis of Mississippi said that the Court had "reaffirmed its determination to 'rule or ruin' the Southern public schools." He'll say anything. For he is a nut.
Robert Ford of the Associated Press reports from Little Rock that the city was tense and fearful this date while the greatest states' rights struggle since the Civil War swirled through it. Governor Orval Faubus had thrown his reserve power into the momentous conflict the previous day when he ordered all Little Rock high schools closed as of Monday, the day scheduled for the fall term to begin. He had acted because Central High School had faced some limited integration in classes for the second straight year, having been ordered by the Supreme Court decision of the previous day to admit seven black students who had attended the prior year. He stated that in closing the school, he sought to prevent violence which would result if integration continued. He had done so only hours after the Supreme Court decision had been announced. The closure would affect all four Little Rock high schools, including the all-black Horace Mann High School, and would then open Central and others as private schools with State-paid tuition. The Governor appeared to believe that the state could thus avoid forced integration because no orders had applied to private schools. The Legislature two weeks earlier, meeting in a special session called by the Governor to address the situation, had provided the Governor power to close schools faced with forced integration. An 1875 law made the use of public school facilities by a private group legal. Minutes after the Governor had signed the bill to close the schools, he accepted a summons in a lawsuit filed in state court by an outspoken segregationist attorney for a woman who was a segregationist but did not want the schools closed, that suit questioning the constitutionality of the bill providing for closure of schools. The timing of the suit had led newsmen to believe that it involved more than met the eye, but they were unable to determine its exact meaning. Meanwhile, one member of the School Board had resigned, saying that it was because he felt he no longer could effectively serve education, indicating that the Supreme Court's ruling "acted in complete disregard to the social customs of the South… The court indicated an unwillingness to consider local officials." Public officials in the city who in the past had shown no hesitancy in expressing their views, had suddenly begun issuing no comments to questions posed by the press. The corridor of the U.S. Attorney's office was barred by a newly installed gate. The only Federal District Court judge in the state had announced that he would return to Little Rock on Monday, having been holding court in other parts of the state. About 150 Federal deputy marshals from throughout the nation, some newly recruited for action in Little Rock, held lengthy and mysterious conferences and briefings in the Federal Building in the city. Many wore Western hats, traditional headgear for a marshal. Talks with persons in stores, on the street, in cafés and elsewhere had revealed fears that worse trouble than the previous year could be expected if Central High School were again integrated. The ruling by the Supreme Court that integration had to proceed immediately, no matter how violent the opposition, appeared to be the expected decision in official circles in Little Rock. Government officials in Washington clung to the hope that there was strong sentiment among white people in Little Rock for public school education of their children, even if it meant limited integration.
On the editorial page, "The Supreme Court and the Schools: Operation Successful but Patient Died" finds regrettable the Supreme Court's decision of the previous day, affirming the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals and reversing the District Court's allowance of 2 1/2 more years before continuing desegregation at Central High School in Little Rock. It indicates that, based on legal principles, it was justified, but that there were larger and more complex considerations, as the Court was not merely dealing with pawns on a chessboard but with men filled with passionate convictions and an accumulation of resentments. "Tradition, environment, a sense of guilt, fear, misunderstanding and anger have all contributed to the regional tragedy."
It finds that there were no quick cures, for the wound was too deep, that the condition could only be treated through forbearance and restraint on the part of doctor and patient, which would take time and patience on both sides. It suggests that perhaps Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas had gotten closest to the heart of the problem when he had written in a brief filed with the Court in the case: "We are confronted here with a problem, novel and unprecedented in the history of our country and extraordinarily complex. In our congenital optimism, we Americans believe, or affect to believe, that social questions of the greatest difficulty may be solved through discovery and application of a sovereign remedy that will forever dispose of the problem. Yet all this flies in the face of human experience… I would suggest, then, that the problem of school integration in Arkansas is more likely—bearing in mind that flesh and blood is weak and frail—to yield to the slow conversion of the human heart than to remedies of a more urgent nature."
It finds that the Court had applied a remedy without any discernible sympathy for the facts of life in the South and it fears that the harshness of that remedy would set in motion a chain of events which would do great harm to the cause which it championed while endangering the cause of public education in the region. It suggests that the effect of the ruling was not limited to Little Rock but applied to the entire region a strict, impatient and uncompromising interpretation of the Brown v. Board of Education decisions of 1954 and 1955, with the latter having ordered school desegregation everywhere to be implemented "with all deliberate speed", with the Federal district courts becoming the ultimate arbiter of what that phrase would mean in particular circumstances.
It suggests that the full opinion of the Court, to be released later in the month, ought spell out appropriate detailed guidelines for Federal judges to use in interpreting "with all deliberate speed" in local desegregation cases and provide local communities, such as Charlotte, an idea of what constituted good faith and deliberate speed, reflecting in the process sympathy for the South and its people and the human problems they bore. "There must, of course, be justice for all men—but justice with mercy and understanding and wisdom."
It advocates that the Court had to give the South as a whole the time and flexibility it needed to adjust, regardless of the particular situation in Little Rock, and if it did not, the attempt to apply the uncompromising remedies to the entire region would be "tragic for all concerned."
Otherwise, each Southern state would face the dilemma outlined recently by North Carolina Attorney General Malcolm Seawall: "I know that the Supreme Court has said that denial of the right to attend public schools may not be made on the basis of color or race. At the same time I know that the Supreme Court cannot say to the State of North Carolina, 'You must have public schools.' And I know that if we in North Carolina should close our schools we would cut our own throats—economically, politically and spiritually. Our progress would come to an end, for progress comes through enlightenment."
It concludes that justice could be done and had to be done without forcing the South to make a sudden choice between fully integrated schools or no schools at all.
Again, the problem in its framing the issue that way was that no one was advocating "fully integrated" schools immediately, as no one in their right mind could suggest that one or two students at a given school, or seven or nine, as in the case in Little Rock in a school of 2,000 students, would constitute "fully integrated" schools. Yet, framing the issue in such a black-and-white manner enabled the forces of retrograde reasoning, those of the bedsheet-Bonzo brigade, to hold some color of probity on the issue, some moral ground which appeared staked out appropriately, when nothing of the type was the case.
The simple issue, when framed against the actual facts transpiring, was whether certain areas of the South seeking gradually, ever so gradually, to integrate schools by one or two or ten students at a time, until finally achieving some reasonable percentage of integration based on the percentage of minority presence in the community, through gradual acceptance of those students, would continue to do so, or be cowed from doing so based on violence and threatened violence by the most disreputable and retrograde voices in the community, those ignorant fools without much background, if any, imbued with education scarcely beyond high school, if that, even if occasionally urged on by such caustic voices as John Kasper, with a Columbia University degree behind him, those seeking to capitalize, either economically, politically, or both, through demagoguery, off the blind ignorance of the many or who, in some instances, were educated but plain crazy, simply wanting to make a name for themselves among some group somewhere, regardless of what educational and socio-economic level those people represented.
That was actually the proper framing of the issue, and had a rather obvious answer, especially when the students, themselves, by and large, with few exceptions in few places, were adapting to integration on a limited basis, just as students typically, of all ages, would accept any new student from outside the town or the region into their midst with little or no exception taken, save in the case of someone who was considered a "screwball", which would find that person somewhat ostracized whether local or from outside, whether a new student or known but who had slowly become screwballed, and even in those instances, typically, there were other students of the same category who would take that student under their wing and form an informal club of screwballs. Such is the socialization process generally in schools, whether public or private, and regardless of the grades in question. Even in college, to a lesser degree of selectivity, based on the idea that the college admissions officers had already undertaken most of the selectivity necessary to achieve a reasonably "normal" fellow student, even if sometimes a little abstruse in the abstract, such a socialization process goes on.
Joseph Alsop, writing from Taipei, indicates that "at first smell, the atmosphere here is not eye-of-warlike." The hope was that the Chinese Communists would finally be content with seizing one or more of the rocky islets, such as Tungting, which were not on the U.S. list of offshore islands which had to be defended. If that were the outcome, the crisis in the Formosa Strait would finally calm down into a relatively harmless exchange of propaganda and counter-propaganda claims.
But even if that were the outcome, no one ought forget that the U.S. armed services intended to use nuclear weapons to defend Quemoy and the Matsus, the present intention were the U.S. to be drawn into serious fighting, unless Secretary of State Dulles persuaded or forced the Pentagon leaders to change their plans.
The Secretary was convinced that a firm stand had to be made, but he was also convinced that everything possible ought be done to avoid engaging in a nuclear war for Quemoy. Yet, he would have his work cut out for him to prevent the use of nuclear weapons if his firm stand brought U.S. forces into the fight. As Mr. Alsop had pointed out in a previous report, the armed services had strong arguments on their side and had been significantly weakened for budgetary reasons, that weakness having been theoretically compensated for by Presidential directives authorizing the use of nuclear weapons in almost any kind of fighting. The defense planning based on those directives had significantly influenced service thinking. One was told that the tactical nuclear weapons "would really have to be used" for the simple task of interdicting the Communist airfields on the mainland which most directly threatened the offshore islands. Yet, the more numerous North Korean airfields had been perfectly interdicted with conventional weapons, despite the rule against attacks beyond the Yalu River during the Korean War.
One was told, with better logic, that it was "unthinkable" for American ground forces to confront the formidable Chinese Communist ground forces without using nuclear weapons. Yet the area of interest in Fukien Province was a natural land island, largely cut off from the rest of China by surrounding mountains and easily defensible once taken. An American landing in that province had not been unthinkable during World War II, had actually been planned, despite the Japanese armies in Asia having been quite formidable.
But the practice had developed that certain things could not be done, when those advocating those positions really meant that it would be too expensive or too painful to do the things. He finds it surely to be an extraordinary delusion to think that there would be anything inexpensive or painless about a nuclear war with the chief ally of the Soviet Union, when the latter already possessed a plentiful stock of nuclear weapons.
There were technical arguments to consider, one of which concerned the gain or loss to the U.S. of use of nuclear weapons if the continent-based Chinese forces were given by the Soviets similar weapons to use against the U.S. Another argument concerned the effect on the Western Alliance of a nuclear war over Quemoy. Yet another argument concerned the effect on U.S. nuclear striking power should the allies deny the use of U.S. overseas airbases for such a war and thus cripple 80 percent of the Strategic Air Command's squadrons which were equipped with medium-range bombers. He finds that those technical arguments were being lightly weighed and that all of the Pentagon thinking about the use of nuclear weapons in the present conflict was dominated by the belief that the nuclear striking power of the U.S. was still superior to that of the Soviet Union.
While that was true, the U.S. was nearing the end of its lead, though not yet reached, when defense plans would permit the Soviets to acquire an enormous superiority in nuclear striking power. There were strong indications that certain key figures in the armed services were not averse to having a nuclear showdown at present on the notion that it was inevitable and better to have it at present than later, which he finds a logical argument.
But he finds it illogical to suppose that if the U.S. were to surpass the present crisis regarding the offshore islands, it would continue to do so in subsequent crises. The Government and military leaders might tell themselves that they were going to be bold and firm in the future, but were lying to themselves, as they would not be and would not risk nuclear war even for much more important issues when the Soviets had been allowed to gain a commanding superiority in nuclear striking power.
"Any fool can foresee that much. At a minimum therefore, this offshore islands crisis is a glaring revelation of the bind we are in. It should also be taken as final proof of the need to make the greatest and most urgent efforts to escape from the bind, by radically altered and boldly expanded defense plans."
Walter Lippmann indicates that Secretary of State Dulles at his press conference had sent up a trial balloon, setting out a formula which was to extricate the country from its entanglement in Quemoy. But because he was so deeply entangled, he could not say clearly that what he wanted to do was to trade a withdrawal from the offshore islands for a pledge that the Communist Chinese would not use force to take Formosa. That would validate U.S. Formosa policy while getting out of the foolish and unpopular commitment to the offshore islands. But he finds there was no good reason to hope that the formula of Mr. Dulles could be agreed on, that apart from the Communist opposition to it, there was the prior fact that Chiang Kai-shek would almost certainly oppose it. He finds it improbable that Mr. Dulles could obtain authority from Chiang to make such a deal or even to make such a serious proposal. For at minimum, it would require Chiang to make very painful concessions, one being to withdraw his troops and abandon the offshore islands, which were the symbol of his intention to return to the mainland. The other concession would be to renounce publicly the use of force to return to the mainland, which was to say the fiction that the real China was in Formosa and that it would recover the rest of China.
Were the proposal of Mr. Dulles seriously made in a serious negotiation with Communist China, it would almost certainly mean the downfall of Chiang's Government, as it would inevitably lose the reason for its existence, and the mainland Chinese who were in Formosa would find themselves exiles from China and prisoners on the island, with no good reason that they would not make their peace with the Communists, accepting one of the tempting offers which reached them publicly and through private channels. For those reasons, he finds, the Dulles formula was not really a negotiating proposal but rather a debating position, good for public speeches suggesting the attractive idea that the Chinese civil war and the Chinese-American conflict could be resolved without shooting.
While it ought to happen, it could not occur because of U.S. entanglement which had engaged the country's honor with that of Chiang. If the U.S. were free of that entanglement, it could have a Formosa policy which, though unacceptable to Communist China, would command wide support in the country and in the world. The principle of U.S. policy would be that the island of Formosa was not under the law of the Japanese peace treaty as yet a part of China, as Formosa for many generations had not been governed from the mainland. If the U.S. were free, it could go to the U.N. and propose that Formosa be constituted as an autonomous territory, neutralized and demilitarized under international supervision, with a corollary to such a proposal being that the bulk of the mainland Chinese in Formosa ought be repatriated to the mainland and that Chiang and his lieutenants ought be provided asylum in some safe place.
Although such a policy would serve U.S. national interests in the area and would be respectable in the opinion of mankind, there was no hope that it could be adopted. Both Chiang and Mao Tse-tung would oppose it, and the U.S. was not free to propose what Chiang opposed.
There remained the question of whether the U.S. was compelled to do what Chiang demanded. Quemoy was besieged and blockaded and it was only a question of time before it would either have to be surrendered or evacuated, as the siege and blockade of it could not be lifted except by an attack on the mainland, which would precipitate, at the least, a local war. The alternative was for the President to break off the action, thus disengaging the country from the offshore islands and to use the power of the 7th Fleet to evacuate Chiang's troops. That would be a defeat and a retreat, but as compared with allowing Quemoy to be starved out or with starting a general war over it, it was the least of the evils. "For we must not deceive ourselves. There is no good way out of this dead end into which the President and Mr. Dulles have led us."
He recommends reading and pondering Winston Churchill's final conclusions in his book The Gathering Storm, as included in the chapter titled "The Tragedy of Munich", in which he had made the central point that the tragedy had lain in the fact that France and Britain had sacrificed Czechoslovakia at a moment when "honor pointed the path of duty, and when also the right judgment of the facts at the time would have reinforced its dictates." He had also said: "Those who are prone by temperament and character to seek sharp and clear-cut solutions of difficult and obscure problems, who are ready to fight whenever some challenge comes from a foreign power, have not always been right. On the other hand, those whose inclination is to bow their heads, to seek patiently and faithfully for peaceful compromise, are not always wrong. On the contrary, in the majority of instances they may be right, not only morally but from a practical standpoint. How many wars have been averted by patience and persisting good will! Religion and virtue alike lend their sanctions to meekness and humility, not only between men but between nations. How many wars have been precipitated by firebrands! How many misunderstandings which led to wars could have been removed by temporising! How often have countries fought cruel wars and then after a few years of peace found themselves not only friends but allies!"
It might be noted that nowhere in the chapter or in the volume did Mr. Churchill mention U.S. Ambassador to Britain, newly appointed to the post in 1938, Joseph P. Kennedy, and thus did not ascribe any significant role to him in charting the course which led to the Munich appeasement, ceding the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany in exchange for "peace for our time", resulting subsequently in Hitler being emboldened to take all of Czechoslovakia, followed by Anschluss in Austria, the phony plebiscite, taking from the equation Stalin by concluding in August, 1939 the mutual non-aggression pact with Russia, and finally, the strike on Poland to start the war on September 1, 1939, eleven months after Munich. We note it for the ultra-right revisionists through time who insisted in 1960 and beyond, that somehow because his father had been Ambassador to England at the time of Munich and had been a U.S. representative at the time of the discussions with Hitler, Senator Kennedy and later President Kennedy was inherently an "appeaser", transferred in the handy-dandy sleight of hand by which the right-wingers are known in every poker game, to the Communists during the cold war, following the President even into Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, when the mysterious umbrella, symbol of Prime Minister Chamberlain at Munich, had suddenly been opened just as the shooting began.
As we have fallen behind, there will be no further notes on the front page or editorial page of this date, with the notes to be sporadic until we catch up.
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