The Charlotte News
Friday, January 2, 1959
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Havana that advance spearheads of Fidel Castro's revolutionary forces had entered the city this date. Truckloads of bearded guerrilla fighters had rolled into Havana over the main central highway from the eastern provinces of Matanzas and Las Villas and had sped toward the former military headquarters of deposed El Presidente Fulgencio Batista at Camp Columbia. As the rebel forces advanced, Cuba's 6.3 million war-weary people had two provisional presidents, neither of whom occupied the chair vacated by dictator Batista, who had fled in the darkness of the New Year morning the previous day to the Dominican Republic. The streets of Havana had been tense and alive with expectation. The triumphant Castro partisans, who had seemed to emerge armed from nowhere the previous day to take over control of the capital, had kept a tight lid on the situation to prevent pent-up public emotion from creating a chaotic situation. The youthful, bearded Sr. Castro early this date had proclaimed former Judge Manuel Urrutia of Oriente Province as the provisional president of the republic, with his temporary government in Sr. Castro's native Santiago de Cuba, with the latter apparently intending shortly to move the government back to Havana. In the capital were the last vestiges of a shell of a government named by the junta, which Sr. Batista had left behind when he had fled. But that government had no control over either the Army or the police who presently received their orders from the rebel leaders installed at Camp Columbia in a suburb of Havana. The Castro troops entering Havana were unopposed, led by the Argentine physician, Ernesto Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos, two of the rebel chieftain's hard-fighting field commanders. A final showdown obviously was near, as Sr. Castro had announced this date that he would not accept what he called a coup d'état arranged by Sr. Batista and thus objected to the provisional government which purported to be headed by Supreme Court Justice Carlos Piedra. Sr. Castro claimed that Maj. General Eulogio Cantillo, who headed the junta left behind by Sr. Batista, had betrayed the revolution's leadership by letting the chief figures of the Batista Government escape from the country. While Sr. Castro's success in his 25-month rebellion seemed close to complete, he still had to bring his oft-proclaimed choice to Havana and install him in the presidential palace from which the dictator had fled. To do so, Sr. Castro had ordered a mass public demonstration in Havana's Central Park during the current late afternoon. The country would remain in a state of paralysis from a general strike ordered by Sr. Castro until Sr. Urrutia could take over in Havana. Sr. Castro had spoken just prior to dawn to a huge crowd in Santiago, the capital of easternmost Oriente Province, following a parade of orators who had hailed his leadership and his selection of Sr. Urrutia. He said that the road to Santiago, occupied the previous day after the defending garrison had surrendered, had been a long and hard one. He called Santiago "the strongest fortress of the revolution" and said that its triumph was being crowned by making it the provisional capital for some 12 hours, until he and Sr. Urrutia could go to Havana. His supporters controlled all communications, and every radio broadcast referred to Sr. Urrutia as "provisional President of Cuba."
The last enunciated platform of Sr. Castro had called for the nationalization of American utilities and the sugar estates in Cuba, having published his program in 1955 while in exile in Mexico. It had also called for the confiscation of all properties acquired through "corrupt government", the distribution of 30 percent of all industrial and utility enterprises to Cuban workers, a public housing and rural electrification program, liberation of Cuba "from the egotistical interests of half a dozen businessmen", a speed-up of industrialization and increased social security. The rebel leader had never doubted that he would win the victory over dictator Batista. Now at age 32, Sr. Castro was a professional rebel who had been in revolt most of his life. He had been involved in revolutionary movements in the Dominican Republic and in Colombia. On July 26, 1953, he had led a bloody but unsuccessful attack on an army barracks in Santiago and for that attack, had been sentenced to 15 years in prison. He had been freed when Congress granted political amnesty to political prisoners and had then fled to Mexico where he began plotting the campaign which resulted in the New Year's Day victory for the revolution. He had returned to Cuba in December, 1956 in a leaky Mexican yacht with 81 armed followers, landing on the coast of Oriente Province. He had struck when and where he could, disrupting communications, burning sugar cane fields, ambushing small Army units, kidnaping, sabotaging transportation and carrying on a war of propaganda. Despite defeat repeatedly, he kept up the fight and many times the Government had announced extermination of the rebels to be imminent. But the size of his ragged army continued to grow, with arms and equipment having reached him from sympathizers in the U.S. and other countries. His movement continued to gain momentum in spite of repeated losses and the opposition of Government-dominated labor unions.
Bob Clark of the Associated Press reports from Havana that armed Cuban rebels had fired this date on the Havana Post building and arrested three Associated Press staffers covering the city's post-revolt convulsions. Those herded out of the building at gunpoint had been George Kaufman, chief of the Havana AP bureau, a Cuban national; Larry Allen, roving AP correspondent who had been covering the Cuban revolution; and Harold Valentine, AP photographer from Miami. The rebels for some reason had allowed Mr. Clark to remain in the office, which he had reached after a trip from Miami just as the Cubans were ordering the three detained men downstairs. Mr. Allen had said that the rebels had told the group only that they were taking them to jail for questioning. All three men appeared haggard and shaken from the effects of rifle fire which pockmarked the building and shattered glass only a few minutes before a "26th of July" squad invaded the AP offices on the Post building's second floor. Mr. Clark had arrived in the morning after a relatively tranquil ride through Cuban countryside from José Marti Airport, where a charter plane had brought him along with a reporter from a Miami television station and a reporter from the Wall Street Journal bureau at Jacksonville, Fla. The two others had left him at the Post building and planned to seek lodging at a hotel. They had already been turned away by Hotel Nacional, which said it could not take care of them. Guests at that hotel said that they were eating only sandwiches which were brought to their rooms and that there was no table service. Much of Havana appeared in a holiday mood, with crowds joyriding in automobiles which flew the Cuban flag and many Havana residents loitering on curbs watching for excitement which still flared up at points in the downtown area. Barricades prevented motorists and pedestrians from going to the waterfront. But on the road from the airport to Havana, usually a race course for daring motorists and taxi drivers, only a light stream of traffic was moving. He finds that in an ironic twist, many telephone poles still carried posters urging election of Rivera Aguero, who had fled into exile with Sr. Batista. Men brandishing a variety of small arms which ranged from modern hunting rifles to beat-up Krags of the Spanish-American War period prowled the streets in automobiles, directed traffic at intersections, and stood guard behind sandbags and other makeshift barricades at many points. Mr. Clark had seen a few men in National Police uniforms, who used to be encountered often on the streets during the Batista regime, the few whom he did see, however, now wearing black and red "26th of July" arm-bands over their left sleeves.
The revolution in Cuba had sent hundreds of supporters of dictator Batista scurrying for cover in the U.S. and the Dominican Republic. Planes, including that of the fallen dictator, a yacht, an auto ferry and even a converted PT-boat, had carried the refugees from Cuba. A Cubana Airlines plane had brought 92 persons from Havana to New York's Idlewild Airport, the pilot indicating that he had taken off at gunpoint. He said, "I wasn't a good friend of Batista, and I didn't want to help Batista's men out of the country." Police forced back a horde of angry, shouting sympathizers of Sr. Castro who sought to get at the Cuban crew members of the airliner. Refugee-laden planes from Havana had also landed at New Orleans, Miami, Jacksonville, Key West, Daytona Beach, and West Palm Beach in Florida. At Linden, N.J., scores of Cubans sympathetic to Sr. Castro had converged on the airport following a radio report that the ousted chief of the Cuban security police would land there, but the plane they sought had never appeared. The brother of Sr. Batista, Francisco, had arrived at the Palm Beach airport among a group of 47 refugees, who included the wife, son and daughter of President-elect Andres Rivero Aguero, who had also fled with El Presidente. Five hundred supporters of Sr. Castro had demonstrated in Miami when a group of refugees had landed in a Cubana Airlines plane. Two of the children of El Presidente, ages four and six, had landed in New Orleans with 52 other Cuban refugees. Three other children, ages 17 through 25, had landed at Jacksonville in a plane which also carried 54 refugees. Two other of his eight children, ages eight and 11, had been sent to New York on Tuesday.
In New York, it was reported that world sugar futures had dropped sharply this date in heavy trading following the collapse of the Batista Government.
In London, it was reported that Britain's gold and dollar reserves had dipped sharply by 145 million dollars in December, the first fall in 15 months.
The Comptroller of the U.S. currency this date issued a call for a statement of the condition of all national banks at the close of business on December 31.
In Honolulu, it was reported that the Navy search and rescue center had reported early this date that help was on the way for the storm-tossed crewmen of a sunken Japanese fishing vessel 135 miles northwest of Midway.
In London, it was reported that a British Overseas Airways Corp. Britannia had landed safely on three engines at London airport this date after turning back about 1,000 miles over the Atlantic. The plane had been bound for New York and San Francisco, developing trouble in one propeller control.
The Associated Press reports that traffic deaths across the country during the four-day New Year's holiday were occurring this date at a rate which could exceed the record for a New Year's holiday of a similar duration. More than 40 hours after the start of the 102-hour holiday period, the death rate from highway accidents was slightly more than four per hour, and if that pace continued throughout the holiday, the record of 409 deaths set in the four-day New Year's weekend of 1956-57 would be exceeded. Traffic deaths during the previous year, estimated at 37,000 by the National Safety Council, had averaged about 101 per day. But the slaughter on the highways since the start of the holiday period at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday had topped the daily traffic toll in 1958. The holiday would officially end at midnight on Sunday. The Council had said that the weather was bad and the toll was bad, and that the toll was proceeding at an alarming rate, appealing to every driver to realize that the individual had to hold speed down and be doubly careful. The Council urged motorists in the stormy areas to drive with extra caution and to hold speed down to emergency conditions. In the one-day New Year celebration the previous year, 160 persons had lost their lives in traffic accidents, the highest total on record for a one-day New Year's holiday. By comparison to the previous week's Christmas holiday, the traffic toll was much lower, but safety experts said that the New Year toll always had been lower than at Christmas, mainly because there was less long-distance travel. The final toll in the long Christmas weekend had been 594 traffic fatalities, 93 killed in fires and 97 killed in miscellaneous accidents.
In New Orleans, it was reported that the Coast Guard had resumed search by helicopter this date for three New Orleans teenagers missing since the prior Wednesday when they had gone on a hunting trip at Shell Beach, having rented a skiff from a fishing camp early in the morning on Wednesday and not having been heard from since.
In Tokyo, it was reported that 30 passengers and crew of an airliner had a narrow escape from death this date when a new bridegroom attempted to blow the plane apart, the attempt having failed and the bridegroom having leaped into the sea, committing suicide. A spokesman for the All-Japan Airways said that the confectionery wholesaler, 31, had sought to blow up himself and the plane by detonating 25 sticks of dynamite in the plane's lavatory. He said that the man had failed and opened the plane's door, then jumped to his death in the inland sea in southern Japan. The spokesman said that the dynamite and a burned-out fuse had been found in the lavatory and that two more sticks of dynamite had been found in the man's luggage, commenting that it had been a sheer miracle that the dynamite had failed to detonate. The plane, en route to Osaka from Oita, had been flying at about 2,500 feet when the man jumped into the sea. He and his 19-year old bride had been traveling to visit their relatives. Police and Government aviation bureau officials had been unable to discover the motive for the suicide. His bride also was unable to provide any coherent account of her husband's actions. The couple had boarded the DC-3 at Oita on Kyushu Island, and the plane had aboard 27 passengers and a crew of three. The Maritime Safety Board was searching the area where the man had fallen, but had found no sign of his body. A 22-year old stewardess aboard the plane said that she was filling a cup of water when she felt a strong wind at her back, looked around and saw the man falling out of the door. She said that the man had gone to the lavatory three times and that on the second occasion, she heard a popping sound, believed that it was the door closing, but now thought that it must have been the fuse exploding. The airline said that the man, after the plane had taken off, complained of feeling ill and had paced up and down the aisle, apparently had opened the door while a stewardess was getting a cup of water for him.
In Charlotte, it was reported that a 22-year old Greensboro welfare worker had received a 12-month suspended sentence this date for trying to hire a Charlotte detective to kill the wife of the man she loved. She had pleaded guilty to soliciting to commit a felony, which was a misdemeanor. A detective told a crowded County Recorder's Court that the woman had, on November 15, told him that she wanted a fatal accident to happen to the wife of a former State Highway Patrolman. He inquired as to why she wanted the woman killed and she had told him, "For your information, I love the guy." The 12-month sentence had been suspended on condition that she pay court costs, remain law-abiding for three years, keep the sheriff of Guilford County informed as to her whereabouts, report monthly for one year to the probation officer and permit that officer to visit her home, remain under the care of a doctor for two years and observe a curfew for one year at 10:00 p.m. The detective said that the Police Department had become involved through an informant, and thereafter on November 15, a lieutenant had met her at the Charlotte bus station, where he, the informant and the woman then drove to the Harding High School parking area where the informant had left the car and the woman had paid the lieutenant $500, explaining that it was his security that he would be paid later.
The News "Spotlight Series", which had thus far included "Stars over Bethlehem", "The Truth about Eddie and Debbie" and "The Wars of Frank Sinatra", would next, beginning Monday, focus in five parts on "Contests—The Winner Wonderland", written by Alfred C. Roller, a feature writer for the New York World-Telegram and Sun, looking at the more than 25 million Americans who had entered 600 different contests, winning more than 40 million dollars worth of prizes and money. The series would ask whether the contests were on the level and whether the judges honestly and fairly read all of the entries, as well as whether an amateur stood as much chance as an avowed "pro" to win.
In London, it was reported that a
three-month old puppy had swallowed a pair of nylon stockings and
gotten a stomach ache. A London veterinarian had operated and removed
the stockings without a single tear in them. The owner of the dog and
the stockings vowed never to wear them again. In 1959, it was obvious
that anything went. But could the dog still run
On the editorial page, "The South Pauses To Analyze an Idea" indicates that Henry Adams, surveying his Southern classmates at Harvard during the middle of the 19th Century, had lauded the Southerner for his temper, force and humor but noted portentously his "inability to analyze an idea." Many Southerners had suffered from a current and, in some quarters, popular idea making the rounds unanalyzed at present, that being the idea of "closing the schools" rather than complying, even moderately, with Brown v. Board of Education and its progeny. Failure to scrutinize the idea carefully had already produced closed schools in Virginia and Arkansas, just since the previous September.
One Virginian, Dr. Lorin Thompson of the University of Virginia's graduate school of business administration, had defied Mr. Adams, dissecting the idea of defying the Supreme Court with great care. Southerners who had not done so, not only in Virginia but in North Carolina and the rest of the South, would, it reasons, do themselves justice by examining his conclusions. He had asked what would be the difficulties and consequences of dismantling public education, observing that the technical snarls alone would be potentially baffling.
Capital investment in the state system of public instruction was "big business" and if a state wanted to liquidate that investment, its primary duty would be to the bondholders who claimed mortgages on the plant and equipment of the public schools. In Virginia, that amounted to about 200 million dollars worth. He had wondered whether plant and equipment could be sold for full cost value, let alone its replacement value. Who would want to purchase chalky backboards, well-carved school desks and school buildings? He had asked whether the proceeds would be enough to retire the bonded indebtedness used to build the schools, without an increase in taxes. He had also questioned what would befall teachers and school administrators, that they would likely remove to other markets where public education remained stable. The siphoning off of such teaching talent would likely have an adverse effect on the state and it would take considerable time ever to replace it.
He had also indicated that the mechanical process of collapsing a public school system "would result in the public giving away a substantial part of the investment it has made over many years for public school facilities."
Regarding private schools, he questioned whether tax refunds would be large enough to enable parents of moderate income status to educate their children. Under the present system, he had noted, parents paid not only while their own children were in school but over the course of a lifetime, and it was over that long range that the cost and expenditure equaled out. He questioned whether the interests and curriculum of a private school, primarily aimed at college preparation, accorded with the interests and aims of the three quarters of the youngsters of 18 who did not plan to go to college.
He had further questioned how long it would take to accredit new private schools.
Dr. Thompson's analysis led him to the true crux of the matter, which lay elsewhere, that the fallacy of closing the schools, as a motto to be emblazoned defiantly across the South, lay not in execution but in consequence. "In the crushed dreams of ambitious youth, and the blockage of parents' hopes for their children, and the stunting of economic growth and mobility—and finally, and most horribly, in the unshakable tyranny of ignorance."
"How Do We Know It's on the Level?" indicates that the announced retirement of Ernest B. Hunter of the Charlotte Observer was being viewed with some suspicion. Veterans of a rowdier era in newspapering feared that it was another of the old dragon's tricks, that the very moment they thought they had beaten the Observer's Johnny-Come-Latelies to another major story, he would leap back into harness and filch their thunder with all of his customary cunning, very much like him.
"For Ernest Hunter is an editor of surpassing skill, a journalist of enormous brilliance and a competitor of unlimited resourcefulness. We don't mind admitting that during his long hitch as the morning paper's managing editor he gave us more than one good drubbing. But he could take it as well as he could dish it out and the period during which he directed our rival's newsgathering operations was an exciting time."
It finds that it was all good, clean competition for news and never malicious, that he had been known as a "tough" news executive, a crusty master of the rough-and-ready school of hard-boiled journalism. But beneath the hard-boiled shell was a warm and kindly man, a gentleman for whom it would always have great affection and tremendous respect.
"Yet we can still remember days when his retirement would have been considered an act of God. Even today we can't afford to get too careless. You see, we've been had before."
"Clear the Way for Progressive English" indicates that diagnosticians of the ills of the English language had found every type of villain, officials who wrote and spoke officialese, professors oozing with jargon, patois-loving Madison Avenue advertising men who specialized in breezy barbarity.
It had led columnist George Dixon to the dentist's office where he had found a new trend in dental vocabulary, indicating that one no longer felt "pain" but only "sensitivity and discomfort", that one's tooth was no longer "drilled", but rather "prepared", not then "filled" or "pulled", but "restored" or "removed". Even the command, "put your head back", had been softened to become "rest your head".
It decides that English was sick and wonders whether it was because it had outlived its usefulness. English was evolving from a conveyor of meaning into an absolute art form, like a classical symphony. In the future, it suggests, sound, rather than meaning, would become important. The best conversationalists would be those whose voices of gold, volume and infinite variety could produce everything from an ominous rumble in low C to hysteric shrieks, all in one sitting. "'Have you seen old George—?'" people will be asking each other in primitive sign language. 'He has the most entertaining case of laryngitis.'"
Henry Belk, writing in the Greensboro Daily News, in a piece titled "Old Medical Fees", indicates that in a term paper written by Dr. Richard W. Borden of Goldsboro when he had been a student in a history course taught by Dr. Hugh Lefler at UNC in 1948, the author had learned what doctors charged for their services in Goldsboro a century earlier. The paper had been titled "Three Centuries of Medicine in North Carolina: 1600-1900". It contained the statement: "Dr. W. H. H. Cobb, a native of Wayne County, pursued his medical studies at the University of Virginia, and the University of Pennsylvania, from which he was graduated on April 18, 1861; he was at that time assistant surgeon of the Goldsboro Rifles and was appointed assistant surgeon of the 2nd Regiment of North Carolina State Troops the next year. Dr. Cobb served with his Regiment throughout the war, being present at the surrender at Appomattox and returned to his home to find the seal of the University of Pennsylvania ripped from his medical diploma by a Yankee soldier's bayonet. He built a prominent practice in Goldsboro and was later president of the State Medical Society and was one of the founders of the Tri-State Medical Society, of which he was twice president. Dr. Cobb was the progenitor of a succession of physicians and his family, which has been unbroken in its honor and service to Wayne County and North Carolina. It is of interest to note the 'fee bill' as adopted by the Wayne County Association of physicians of that day. The 'fee bill' used by Dr. Cobb has been preserved: Reducing fractures, $5.00; excision of tonsils, $2.00 to $5.00; normal obstetrical cases, $10.00, for every hour of detention beyond 12 hours, $1.00; leaching, $1.00; extracting teeth, $.50; ovariotomy, $100-$500; Caesarian section, $250.00."
What was the "fee bill" for the nostrum for being feeble
Drew Pearson, still in Anchorage, Alaska, indicates that the President, when first demurring against statehood for Alaska, had said that it would be difficult to defend it in case of war. He finds that when one traveled over its vast and largely uninhabited area, one-fifth the size of the other 48 states, one could readily understand why he was so worried.
This date, Alaska would become formally the 49th state, an integral part of the country and would have to be defended. The person primarily responsible for the defense would be Lt. General Frank Armstrong of Nashville, N.C., who had made history during World War II when he led the first daylight air raid ever made over Axis territory, and later had conducted the first heavy-bomber raid over Germany proper, dramatically chronicled in the book and movie, "12 o'Clock High". General Armstrong was a pleasant person with a slight drawl who had first served in Alaska in the days when military housing had consisted of improvised shacks, tents and Quonset huts. According to his description, he was a "sourdough". He liked Alaska, knew it and had flown up and down many miles of its plains, tundra and icy mountain ranges. He was presently commander in chief of all Alaskan forces with the Army, Navy and Air Force efficiently cooperating under him.
When Mr. Pearson had asked him what he thought of the President's worry about defense of Alaska, he was inclined to agree, saying: "All defense is difficult. It wouldn't be easy, but you've seen the layout of our troops. You watched them at work. You know they are on the alert day and night."
Mr. Pearson had agreed, having observed that morale in the Army, Navy and Air Force in Alaska was excellent, that the troops were in peak shape and the caliber of men and officers could not have been better. He had asked the General to explain why, if the defense of Alaska was so difficult, the size of his force had been cut the previous year, Mr. Pearson stating it to have been a mean question, because no military officer was permitted to challenge the budget given him by Washington. The General had diplomatically responded: "We took part in an overall cut. The entire defense budget was reduced and we had to bear our proportionate share."
Nevertheless, the fact remained that with the Russian planes concentrated only 56 miles across the Bering Sea from Alaska, with 14,000-foot runways constructed in Siberia, and with a new Russian IRBM base in Siberia pointing directly at Alaska, the strength of U.S. forces there had been cut by the White House, not by the military planners, and despite the President's own statement that defense of Alaska would be difficult.
He indicates that there were other matters which the General could not discuss, but which he had ascertained independently, the most important being that while Russia had already built IRBM bases in Siberia, the U.S. had not built equivalent missile bases in Alaska, that it had planned to do so, but missile production had been so slow and bogged down in Washington that the U.S. would not be ready to ship missiles to Alaska for several months to come. It meant that the Russian IRBM's, with a range of about 1,200 miles, could easily hit the prime targets in Alaska, while the longer-range missiles of which Mr. Khrushchev boasted to Senator Hubert Humphrey could hit U.S. Boeing and Douglas bomber plants on the West Coast.
It was no secret that the U.S. had approximately 30,000 men in Alaska and that the U.S. had an Army of 17 divisions, while the Red Army had 175 divisions. By the sheer numbers, the Red Army could parachute enough men into Alaska to overwhelm the courageous, highly skilled and relatively meager force of the U.S. As the President seemed to have in the back of his mind, it would not be too difficult to take the new 49th state.
Doris Fleeson indicates that liberal Republican Senators had decided to go for broke by nominating Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky as the new minority leader and Senator Thomas Kuchel of California as the new whip. There would now ensue a lively fight for the votes for the half-dozen moderate Republican Senators who were uncommitted to either the left or the right. The determined stand of the liberals had resulted in the possibility that conservative Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, thus far the strongest candidate of the rightist elements, might be dumped in favor of Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, who had come to the Senate in 1937 and had the greatest seniority among Republicans. In a tradition-minded Senate, seniority might tell the tale among the moderates.
The final choice for the liberals was between Senator Cooper and Senator George Aiken of Vermont, with little choice between them either in ability or distinction. The difference between them might have been in the fact that Senator Thruston Morton of Kentucky had announced that he would vote for Senator Cooper for their leader if he were the candidate, but otherwise would vote for Senator Dirksen. Senator Aiken had politely bowed out of the contest in favor of Senator Cooper.
There was now a direct division among the reduced ranks of Senate Republicans which the White House had sought to avoid through compromise. The White House had hoped that the liberals could be persuaded to vote for Senator Dirksen, accepting for themselves either the position of whip or assistant leader, or accepting, according to a proposal by Senator Morton, the chairmanship of the Committee on committees as a compromise. The latter proposal was supposed to have had its origin in the White House.
It had been also rumored that the liberals would nominate one of their own for minority leader and a member of the more conservative faction for whip. They had declined to do that, however, and the division now was between the more liberal and conservative factions.
The most remarkable aspect of the division was that it occurred during the declining years of the Administration. The more liberal group represented those Senators who best represented the philosophy on which the President had originally declared his Administration to rest. Yet, it had become apparent, particularly in the details of the 1960 budget thus far revealed, that the President had forsaken many of the liberal positions which he had earlier taken. That had left the more liberal Senate Republicans in the position of fighting not so much for what they conceived of as the Eisenhower program as for the future of the Republican Party.
Marquis Childs finds that the bellicose response by Washington, London and Paris to Moscow on the Russian proposal to make Berlin a "free city" had been perhaps inevitable, but for all the slam-banging over Berlin, there were those who believed that something almost like a happy ending could result. Despite the sternness of the stress placed on Berlin by Premier Nikita Khrushchev, he had given a clue in his discussion with Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota to a calculation deeper than the surface bluster, saying, as reported by Senator Humphrey in a briefing to top Government officials, as paraphrased: "You in the West have in NATO a military defense organization that has no purpose at all. We're going to defeat you not by fighting you in Europe but by giving economic help and guidance to the underdeveloped countries. That is what we are doing now and we're doing it very successfully."
Even when discounted as propaganda, it suggested an ulterior motive in his bluster over Berlin. First, Mr. Khrushchev could not be so deluded as to believe that the West would, in response to his belligerent demand, withdraw and abandon Berlin to some shadowy status as a "free city", as he was too much of a realist for that. Nor could it be assumed that the realist wanted to start World War III over Berlin.
A parallel with Austria suggested itself, as the first noises which the Russians had made in 1955 over a change in the status of occupied Austria had been angry, issuing the threat that the eastern part of Austria would be lopped off and given to the satellites. But a change had come abruptly, along with the first hint of a Big Four summit meeting, and to the amazement of most in the West, Moscow, following months of obfuscation and delay, had agreed to an Austrian treaty in May, with the Geneva summit conference following in July.
Thus, it could be surmised that after prolonged blasts and counter-blasts in April or May would come a foreign ministers' meeting to talk about Berlin, European security and Germany. The Russians would come to that meeting prepared to discuss disengagement in Europe with a chance for the two Germanys ultimately to be reunified. Those who had made that guess based it on the fundamental realism of the masters in the Kremlin. Their position in Western Europe had steadily deteriorated after more than a decade of effort, with the Communist parties there at the lowest ebb since the war. Walter Lippmann had concluded on the basis of his talks with Mr. Khrushchev and others in the Kremlin that they were no longer interested in Europe, that their focus had shifted to Asia, the Near East and Africa.
Mr. Childs suggests that one not need be an utterly naïve Pollyanna to believe that some benefit in the way of relaxed tensions might come from such a development as being foreseen, but that as a price for withdrawing and thereby opening the way to an ultimate solution of the German question, the Russians might exact stiff terms. That could entail a guarantee of the status quo in Eastern Europe, which was where Secretary of State Dulles and his repeated pledges to help the satellites regain their freedom might become an obstacle. But it had not been impossible in the past to find a diplomatic formula around obstacles at least as formidable, and it could happen again, particularly so when some of the satellites, especially Poland, held the belief that only in the acceptance of the status quo could there become a gradual relaxation of the Russian grip.
Mr. Childs admits that it might be nothing more than a New Year's pipe dream and certainly no bags were being packed for a still-improbable meeting of the Big Four foreign ministers. But at the same time the hopeful surmise was being seriously projected by those who knew a great deal about the tangled web of law, custom and force woven around Berlin.
A letter writer indicates anent
an article in the December 17 issue regarding
projected teaching of French
There had also been an editorial and a piece by David Helberg on the subject on August 2.
Ninth Day of Christmas
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.