The Charlotte News
Tuesday, September 30, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Little Rock, Ark., that the four closed high schools remained closed this date and signs had been placed on their campuses reading: "This school closed by order of the federal government." The attempt to open the high schools as private but segregated institutions had been halted officially during the morning when the head of the operating corporation which was to fund the schools, declared that the injunction granted by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals to the NAACP against such reopening had made it impossible. Governor Orval Faubus commented: "As long as the people stand firm, a way will be found to preserve our traditions and educate our children." He said that other means of providing education would be explored. He believed the action of the Federal Government was illegal, and that if the injunctive action was made permanent, it would make their efforts more difficult, but not impossible. Only a handful of students, most of whom were boys, and a few black employees of Central High School had been present during the morning when the head of the operating corporation called off the opening of the school. He said that the Government and the NAACP had to take full responsibility for the lack of educational facilities for the students and that "it is quite evident that they are ready to sacrifice the educational opportunity of 4,000 students to satisfy their consuming desire to mix the races in our school, public or private." He would not answer questions or indicate what the corporation planned to do next. (He sounds very much like the Speaker of the House during the six-week Republican shutdown of the Government, blaming Democrats when Republicans control all three branches at present.) Shortly after he had read a statement to the press, a school guard sought to prevent the 4 by 6-foot sign from being erected on the campus of the high school. A brief struggle had ensued and the workman who sought to erect the sign started to leave, but an employee of the high school came out and told the guard that he was supposed to put it up. The sign was then replaced on the campus. The only female among the few students who had shown up at the school in the rain for awhile then departed, saying: "I think it's terrible. We just want to go to school." One of the corporation's directors said: "It's like a chess game. We made our move. They made their. Now all we can do is wait." No, all you can do is to reopen the school and allow the seven black students, among a 2,000-student enrollment, to enter, dummy. It is really very simple, except in the land of Nod.
At the U.N. in New York, Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold announced this date that the U.S. and Britain had agreed conditionally to withdraw their troops from Lebanon and Jordan. He said that the U.S. had promised to complete the withdrawal from Lebanon by the end of October if the situation improved sufficiently. He said Britain would begin withdrawing from Jordan in October and would complete the withdrawal as early as the situation allowed. He made the announcement in a 30-page report to the General Assembly regarding his recent Middle East peace mission. He said that he had appointed a special representative to work out the arrangements to facilitate the troop withdrawals, and that the representative, a U.N. undersecretary, was presently in Amman, Jordan.
In Beirut, Lebanon, a general strike enforced by sporadic shooting and bomb explosions, had virtually paralyzed the capital this date. The walkout had been instigated by followers of former President Camille Chamoun, who had re-entered the political arena only seven days after retiring as the pro-Western President.
In Nicosia, Cyprus, Greek Cypriots began a strike this date, protesting Britain's plan for partnership rule on the Mediterranean island. Greek Cypriot laborers laid down their tools and shopkeepers closed their doors.
In Athens, it was reported that British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had told Archbishop Makarios this date that Britain was willing to consider the exiled Cypriot leader's independence plan as part of a final settlement of the Cyprus dispute.
In Taipei, Formosa, the U.S. was reported to be planning to give the Chinese Nationalists C-119 Flying Boxcars and big new landing ships to increase the transmission of supplies to the artillery blockaded offshore island of Quemoy.
In Tokyo, it was reported that Communist China this date had rejected a British protest of Communist China's new 12-mile territorial waters limit, indicating that the note was an "unreasonable intervention" in China's sovereignty. The unilateral declaration went well beyond the internationally recognized three-mile limit and sought to embrace Quemoy and the Matsus, to justify firing on supply convoys to the islands.
In Detroit, it was reported that UAW president Walter Reuther and Chrysler Corp. this date had failed in their second attempt in a week to work out a contract settlement in a marathon bargaining session. Mr. Reuther had emerged from a meeting lasting more than 18 hours, saying that they had reached a meeting of the minds but that problems concerning engineers, office workers and salaried employees still remained unresolved. He headed immediately for General Motors, the other Big Three automaker which still had not reached an agreement on a new contract. He said that the remaining problems at Chrysler could be negotiated by UAW's bargaining team. A Chrysler vice-president told newsmen that it was not settled, but they were very close and ought reach agreement sometime this date. G.M. faced a Thursday morning strike deadline set by Mr. Reuther, who wanted bargained gains from G.M. over and above those he had received in the agreement reached with Ford on September 17. The latter agreement was expected to provide a broad basis for both G.M. and Chrysler settlements, but Mr. Reuther stressed that the latter two companies had local plant problems which required solution before any full agreement could be reached. He expressed satisfaction with the fact that about 40,000 striking G.M. workers had heeded his call on Sunday to return to their jobs so that negotiations could continue without the suggestion of hit-and-run strikes which the company had charged had been masterminded by the international UAW. The union denied the allegation and recessed negotiations with G.M. for 48 hours until it could get the back-to-work directive before G.M. workers scattered across the country. The UAW said that only two plants in Ypsilanti, Mich., employing 3,900 workers, and a Buick-Oldsmobile-Pontiac assembly plant, with 3,000 workers, had voted against returning to work this date.
A photograph on the page depicts the
move of foundlings, ranging in age from two weeks to two years, into
the New York Foundling Hospital's new ten million dollar air
conditioned home, with the 275 infants having been moved safely one
block with the aid of 170 nurses, 30 sisters and volunteer workers.
It was one of the eight million stories in the Naked City
On the editorial page, "With All Deliberate Misunderstanding" finds that the decision by the Supreme Court the previous day in Cooper v. Aaron, holding that Governor Orval Faubus's attempt to close the four public high schools in Little Rock and reopen them as privately funded schools on a segregated basis would not pass muster under the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause, as a means of circumventing Brown v. Board of Education, in addition to the basic ruling made September 12, affirming the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals order reversing the U.S. District Court's grant of a delay in further integration until the beginning of 1960, demonstrated that the Court would extend no compassion to the South. The decision had set state officials straight on their duty to uphold "the law of the land" and dealt a blow to any evasive "private school" schemes. It had reiterated that the only possible interpretation of "with all deliberate speed", its statement in Brown's implementing decision of 1955, as the speed with which desegregation must occur, was that "a prompt and reasonable start toward full compliance" had to be made.
It finds it a tragedy which historians would be recording generations hence, that the Court did not understand the South's "peculiar social tragedy". The Court had recognized "obstacles" and "local conditions" with the necessity for some flexibility in overcoming them. But the flexibility, when defined, appeared to be rigid, amounting simply to what the Court called "a prompt and reasonable start toward full compliance."
It finds that the extent of any real or imagined flexibility was outlined in certain key sentences from the opinion: "… In many locations, obedience to the duty of desegregation would require the immediate general admission of Negro children, otherwise qualified as students for their appropriate classes, at particular schools. On the other hand, a district court, after analysis of the relevant factors (which, of course, excludes hostility to racial desegregation), might conclude that justification existed for not requiring the present nonsegregated admission of all qualified Negro children. In such circumstances, however, the court should scrutinize the program of school authorities to make sure that they had developed arrangements pointed toward the earliest practicable completion of desegregation, and had taken appropriate steps to put their program into effective operation. It was made plain that delay in any guise in order to deny the constitutional rights of Negro children could not be countenanced, and that only a prompt start, diligently and earnestly pursued, to eliminate racial segregation from the public schools could constitute good faith compliance. State authorities were thus duty-bound to devote every effort toward initiating desegregation and bringing about the elimination of racial discrimination in the public school system."
Thus, it finds that "good faith" was not enough, that it had to be "good faith compliance", and that the granting of additional time presupposed that a prompt and reasonable start toward full compliance had already been made. It finds that the rigidity of the Court's doctrine of "flexibility" had become even more apparent when it was noted that in Little Rock, where there had been good faith compliance, the Court had ruled against the School Board when it requested the additional 2 1/2 years to implement further desegregation.
It suggests that in refusing to temper its "coldly legalistic view" on a question which involved "anguish, outrage and passion," the Court had served its own cause badly and the cause of common sense not at all.
"Yes, General, There Is an Algeria" asks whether Premier Charles de Gaulle could play Santa Claus, as L'Express of Paris had presented a cartoon the previous week of a grouchy Steig-like, mustachioed Frenchman saying "non" to the Fifth Republic Constitution which Premier De Gaulle had proposed because, "I do not believe in Santa Claus". Eighty-three percent had voted for the new constitution in Sunday's national referendum, the new constitution to give France a seven-year presidency, a premier appointed by the president, and a National Assembly with powers of brokerage and lobbying sharply diminished.
It finds that the Premier had been given his bag of toys and told to bring cheer to the Republic, but it fears that some of the reindeer might balk. At the root of every headache was Algeria, and Algeria plus the Army yielded trouble. Alexander Werth had observed, "There is not a French problem, there is only an Algerian problem."
Algeria was a case of weird three-way vendetta between European settlers, the Army, and the nationalists. The Army, by tradition Catholic, monarchical, anti-republican, but by tradition also much concerned with the glory of France, wanted full "integration" of Algeria with France with full Moslem equality. When Charles X had annexed Algeria, it had been a desert waste. The supporters of the war against the nationalist rebels pointed with some justification to that fact, but though they had entered into a strange alliance with the Army officers, the fanatical European settlers would not tolerate the Algerian remedy, fearing the Moslems socially and economically, adverting, for instance, to what had happened in Indonesia when Dutch rule had withdrawn and colonial capitalists had been practically expropriated by nationalists.
There were rumors that the Sahara might be an untapped oil-rich region, and the myth was common among Frenchmen that the U.S. and Britain were poised, waiting for an opportunity to sell France down the river to the nationalists and get their hands on the oil.
When General De Gaulle had assumed the Premiership, Algeria, and with it France, had been tough assignments, still tough as he donned his red suit and received his bag of toys from the French voters. "Rumors of right-wing insurrection; budget troubles; bitterness and division—all at home—will continue to make it tough. Santa has his work cut out. We doubt it can wait until Christmas."
Drew Pearson indicates that allied diplomats were not advertising the fact but that they were daily becoming more concerned regarding the U.S.-Chinese deadlock, fearing that the rest of the world might be pulled into a war which the allies did not want and which was not of their making, but which they would have to fight. It was the reason for the secret conference between British Foreign Minister Selwyn Lloyd with Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. Mr. Lloyd had gotten nowhere, finding Mr. Gromyko unwilling to try in the least to influence the Communist Chinese. The fear had now spread to the President, himself, and he had made almost frantic pleas to Secretary of State Dulles to make sure that Chiang Kai-shek did not pull the U.S. into a war on the Chinese mainland.
It had been because of the President's concern that Admiral Harry Felt, the U.S. commander in the Pacific, had recently held a three-hour conference with Chiang, who had been threatening to wage a battle on the mainland alone if the U.S. were to make a deal with Communist China in the Warsaw diplomatic conference. The Admiral had cabled the National Security Council following the conference that Chiang was still threatening to go it alone. He reported that Chiang was threatening not only to attack the Communist Chinese shore batteries but also to invade the mainland, having told the Admiral that the Chinese people would hail his return as a conquering hero and join the battle to overthrow the Communists. Admiral Felt had reported to Washington that there was no question but that Chiang hoped to expand the Quemoy crisis into a full-scale war which would pave the way for his return to power.
That secret conference had been the backstage reason for the blunt announcement in Washington later that the U.S. was not unleashing Chiang to bomb or invade the Chinese mainland. The Administration found itself in the same position as the Truman Administration when, during the 1952 election, General Eisenhower had been criticizing President Truman for not unleashing Chiang.
He indicates that having played some part in first exposing Henry Grunewald, the mystery man who had been labeled a "fixer" during an investigation of tax cases, he feels the necessity to say a kind word for him in the wake of his death. He had first crossed paths with Mr. Grunewald while he was investigating the manner in which friends and agents of Pan American Airways had been listening in on the conversations of Howard Hughes, head of TWA, while the latter was in Washington. Mr. Grunewald and Lt. Joe Shimon of the Washington police had engineered some of the wiretaps. Mr. Grunewald was guilty of a lot of finagling, but the more Mr. Pearson had seen of him, the more he had become convinced that he was a small tool used by big operators. Yet, Mr. Grunewald had finally taken the rap. He had spent hours trying to get Mr. Grunewald to talk about the big companies which had employed him, but he remained loyal to the end and would not talk. He had tried to write his memoirs to make some money for his court costs, but the memoirs were valueless without the story of who had employed him. The story remained untold and with his death, would never be told. Certain powerful executives on Madison Avenue and Wall Street could now stop worrying.
He says that Mr. Grunewald had died lonely and without friends, though he had befriended many. When Richard Nixon had been running for the Senate in California in 1950 and needed money, Mr. Grunewald had sent his personal check for $5,000. But Mr. Nixon was not around to help him the previous week. The Vice-President had helped Congressman Adam Clayton Powell of Harlem to delay a tax prosecution because Mr. Powell had influence over the black vote. But Mr. Grunewald had lost his influence.
Mr. Grunewald was convicted of fixing a tax case, but the Supreme Court had set aside the verdict, and when tried again on the same charge, a hung jury resulted. Yet, the previous week, the Justice Department had notified Mr. Grunewald that he had to stand trial a third time, starting October 6. On the day he received the news, he suffered a stroke from which he had never recovered.
The Justice Department in the current Administration had hounded Lamar Caudle, former head of the Justice Department's tax division, who had received nothing in the way of gifts, and President Truman's appointments secretary, Matt Connelly, who had received two suits and an overcoat from a tax evader who a was convicted. Mr. Connelly was imprudent but had received far less than did Sherman Adams from Bernard Goldfine, who had not been prosecuted for his various tax arrears, violations of the wool labeling act and an eight-year delay in filing reports with the Securities & Exchange Commission.
Joseph Alsop, on Quemoy, finds the island to appear as a seaside resort, with the most damaged building, the hospital, having been designed for a peacetime resort hotel. He says the rule was that one ran across the beach from the old C-46 transport to the sheltering caves in the cliffs, but on this occasion, there had been no shelling, as the methodical Communists appeared to be accustomed to no more than one arriving plane per day and they had done their shelling for the plane which had arrived a little earlier. Thus, the runners slowed to a fast walk before the cliffs were reached.
Behind the cliffs, there was a moon landscape of bare and eroded gullies and draws, where the battalions had dug themselves, their guns, all of their weapons dumps, and living facilities into the cliff side. Any enemy who would gain the grimly enfiladed beaches would find a worse hell waiting for them behind the cliffs.
He indicates that the Quemoy landscape was doubly strange to those who knew China. On the one hand, U.S. aid counterpart funds had been used to plant innumerable trees on Quemoy. But wherever one went on the island, shelling was a background noise, even on a quiet day, always going on, with one of Quemoy's guns occasionally responding to the enemy shelling. Quemoy was as large an island as Hong Kong. The Communist artillerymen were quite inefficient, however, having been using air burst and super-quick-fused shells which did very little damage unless one happened to be in the immediate vicinity or they hit a fairly fragile structure such as a Chinese peasant's house. As a result, Quemoy looked pocked here and there, but did not appear badly hurt, even by the more than 150,000 rounds of enemy fire.
There were also other characteristic sounds and sights, for instance of a school of small amphibious landing craft, appearing as a stranded school of porpoises. They waited in a sheltered gully to lumber back across the beach to swim to their mother LST, which would replace those. There were also gun positions, which every visitor was shown, with the 155's housed in all but impregnable casemates. Then there were the villages, such as North and South Mountain, near the beach where the invading Communists had lost 15,000 men in 1949. Poor oyster fishermen, who also grew millet and sweet potatoes, lived there, but South Mountain also had its big houses built by returning immigrants who had made money overseas. It probably had not been a bad place prior to the shelling, but now it took five minutes to find a single civilian inhabitant. Most of the villagers were huddled in the damp tunnel-shelters. A young lieutenant had explained that many would emerge the following day, "when they have forgotten today's death." He said that they had not lost many, but it was bad enough that they did not dare go out for oysters or work the fields anymore.
He indicates that by conversations which were more or less casual and by visits which were more or less arranged, he had framed his accumulated impressions. "At length the visit draws to its close, the moment of the dawn takeoff for Taipei arrives. And this time there is shelling on the beach, but nothing much to worry about. And so one leaves with a sense of the human reality of this little, besieged, heavily-defended place that so many people who are comfortably distant from the human reality would like to treat as a pawn on a chess board."
A pome appears from the Atlanta Journal, "In Which Is Suggested A Formula For Domestic Bliss:
"If a husband's very wise
He'll submit to compromise."
But if his Lady M. puts on a guise,
He should likely fie, fie, fie.
As we have fallen behind, there will be 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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