The Charlotte News
Tuesday, January 27, 1959
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Moscow that the Soviet Union had started to produce ICBM's in series, according to Premier Nikita Khrushchev this date, stating: "If the Soviet Union can launch a rocket hundreds of thousands of kilometers into outer space, it can launch powerful rockets with pinpoint accuracy to any part of the globe." He had not elaborated on what he meant by serial production. He made his statements at the opening of the 21st congress of the Soviet Communist Party in the great hall of the Kremlin, saying that the Communist countries now "stand at the head of all progress." In a review of Soviet achievements in science, including jet aviation and rocketry, he had declared: "The Soviet Union has started the aerial production of intercontinental ballistic missiles." Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy had stated on January 22 that the Defense Department did not believe that Russia had an ICBM capable of operating against the U.S. and also discounted reports that Russia would have 300 of them by 1960. After Mr. McElroy's statement, Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri had said that the U.S. had successfully test-fired ICBM's, but was not going into full production of them because the Administration would not spend the necessary funds. More than 1,500 delegates from throughout the Soviet Union and Communist parties in 70 other countries had applauded vigorously the Soviet Premier's statements. Mr. Khrushchev had stated that a key task in the Soviet Union's new seven-year economic plan was to bring an end to the cold war and a lessening of international tension, but also called on his people again to catch up and surpass the leading capitalist countries in per capita output, to "ensure the Soviet Union's triumph in the peaceful economic competition with the capitalist countries," and to "strengthen further the economic and defense might" of the Soviet Union. Although he said that expansion of heavy industry would still have priority, he promised the Soviet people a substantial increase in the standard of living as a result of the increase in the country's economic potential, further technical progress in all economic areas and a "continuous growth of the productivity of Socialist labor." He said that the Soviet people had reached "such summits" that they now had the chance to enter a "new important period of development, the period of extensive building of Communist society."
Another U.S. moon shot attempt was in the works for the latter part of February, according to NASA and the Army. They were hopeful of launching an Army Juno rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida and sending its payload past the moon into orbit around the sun sometime during a six- or seven-day period beginning around February 26, but the final decision would not be made until about a week ahead of the scheduled launch. In the period beginning around February 26, the moon was in its monthly swing around the earth at its closest point for about six days. Neither NASA nor the Army would officially confirm the plan. The main objective of the attempt would be to learn more about the extent and intensity of the belts of dangerous radiation, the Van Allen Belts, which began several hundred miles above the earth. In previous studies with Explorer satellites and Pioneer space probes, the radiation appeared to exist in two doughnut-like belts around the earth. In general, the experiment would be similar to the last one launched by the Army the prior December when Pioneer III had gone to a height of about 68,000 miles, not quite a third of the distance to the moon. The new Army probe would be tiny compared with Russia's highly successful Lunik satellite, but it reportedly would be a giant regarding scientific worth. If all were to go well, the 13-pound satellite would travel past the moon after a 34-hour trip. The Russians had hurled their large space probe into an orbit around the sun on January 2 after four U.S. efforts had failed. The best U.S. effort had been the Pioneer I of the Air Force, which had traveled 71,300 miles on an October 11 attempt to go into orbit around the moon.
In Havana, it was reported that the defendant in the second showcase trial for alleged war crimes, had been convicted before dawn this date and sentenced to death before a firing squad. Three of Fidel Castro's officers had deliberated for 39 minutes and found former Army Captain Pedro Morejon guilty of assassination, homicide and robbery. The defendant heard his fate after a trial of more than ten hours, staged in marked contrast to the previous week's opening spectacle in the 17,000-seat Sports Palace. On this occasion, the scene was Army Headquarters outside Havana and the courtroom only held 200 persons. There had been no floodlights, television cameras or radio microphones, as in the initial trial. The crowd filling the room occasionally applauded when the prosecution scored a point, but there was not the Roman Colosseum atmosphere which had accompanied the conviction the previous week of former Maj. Jesus Sosa Blanco, also sentenced to death by firing squad, currently appealing to a higher tribunal, his appeal to be heard this date. A high spot in the second trial had been the sudden appearance of Maj. Camilo Cienfuegos, head of the revolutionary forces in the Havana area. The latter, one of Sr. Castro's closest associates, had dramatically proclaimed that if Sr. Morejon were not executed, he would shoot himself. He described the defendant as "the most bestial killer in the world." The defendant raised his hands, joined them together as if in prayer, as his sentence was announced. Otherwise, he showed no emotion before the guards led him out. As with Sr. Sosa Blanco, he was expected to appeal the sentence to the Superior Military Tribunal. The most damaging testimony against Sr. Morejon had come from a farmer's widow, having told the court that the previous April 26, the defendant and two carloads of soldiers had come to her home, shot her husband, machine-gunned one of his brothers and then taken another brother and a cousin into the street and gunned them down, none of whom had been rebels. She singled out the defendant from three persons on the prisoners bench, the other two having been guards also dressed in prison garb. It was not yet known when the third show trial of former Lt. Col. Ricardo Luis Grao would begin.
In Montgomery, Ala., former State Circuit Court Judge George Wallace, who had defied the authority of the U.S. District Court which had ordered him to turn over voting records to the Federal Civil Rights Commission for two counties within his former bailiwick, his judgeship having expired recently, was acquitted of contempt the previous day. Mr. Wallace had insisted that he had disobeyed the court order despite the court's ruling that he had substantially complied with the order and had actually helped the Commission in obtaining access to the voter registration records via the grand juries to which Mr. Wallace had turned over the records instead. Mr. Wallace, always defiant, said: "They were defied and backed down. This only shows that if you resist them and back them to the wall, they will hunt any way to back away." The U.S. District Court Judge, Frank Johnson, had ruled the previous day that because the grand juries had made the records available for examination to the Commission, Mr. Wallace had carried out the effect of his order and had only pretended to defy the court. He said that from all appearances, Mr. Wallace had retained control of the registration records after giving them to the grand juries in the two counties, Barbour and Bullock. Mr. Wallace, himself, had actually notified agents that the records would be made available, according to the judge. He thus dismissed the contempt charge. Mr. Wallace had lost in the Democratic primary to present Governor John Patterson the previous spring and was expected to be a likely candidate for the office in 1962, or for the Senate the following year. Mr. Wallace, 39, said that he interpreted his acquittal as a vindication of what he called his militant stand against the Commission and its inquiry into black voting complaints.
In Americus, Ga., a Federal judge called for written briefs in a civil rights suit against Terrell County registrars involving black voter qualifications. The judge heard oral arguments in the suit filed in September by the Civil Rights Commission, seeking court orders to end alleged discrimination against black voters. The suit particularly sought an order to end the alleged discrimination against five college-educated black citizens, four of whom were schoolteachers. Attorneys for the registrars had asked the District Court to dismiss the suit on grounds that the 1957 Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional and that the action had been brought illegally. The judge listened to oral arguments at the previous day's hearing on the motion to dismiss and then asked for written briefs.
In New York, the month-old baby boy who had been kidnaped the prior Thursday had been found alive and well early this date in the apartment of a Puerto Rican couple. The baby had been ill with a cold when it had been abducted. The 25-year old woman had admitted taking the child from its home explaining that it was a replacement for her husband after she had a miscarriage ten days earlier. She and her husband had three children ranging in age between six and nine. She said that it was because she had lost her own baby that she had to make it up to her husband. At first she denied stealing the baby and claimed that the infant in their three-room basement apartment was her own. Her husband was so convinced of her truthfulness at first that he supported her story. The mother of the infant had been taken to the apartment and, weeping with joy, identified her baby from a mark on his neck. The 31-year old mother also identified the woman as a person who had given another name to her as she had directed her to a larger apartment in The Bronx to view as a replacement for the cramped one and a half-room quarters in which she and her husband lived, leaving the infant with the woman as she had gone on a wild goose chase to visit the nonexistent apartment. When she returned home, the baby was gone. The two women had struck up an acquaintance at a hospital the day before, where the mother had taken her baby for treatment of a cold. Police said that the woman who had taken the child would be charged with kidnaping. Hundreds of police and FBI agents had examined scores of worthless tips in an effort to locate the child.
In Houston, a six-year old boy was the envy of the neighborhood gang this date as he told about a police chase marked by gunfire at speeds up to 115 mph. He told newsmen that he was scared during the chase, and then returned to sipping a soda pop brought by a deputy sheriff. He said that he was better off from the experience by about 50 cents in nickels and dimes. A 23-year old neighbor said that he had picked up the boy in front of his home while the youngster's mother was away and had taken him for a ride. The deputy sheriff spotted the car, reported stolen, and gave chase. The deputy said that he had fired two shots at the car and finally cornered it after a 15-mile ride with speeds hitting up to 115 mph. The man was charged with automobile theft. The little boy said that the man had given him the money so that he would be his friend and that they could work together to get away from the cops. He said that the cops were not after him but rather the man. The man told newsmen that he did not know why he had taken the youngster along, indicating that he had never intended to harm him.
Bob Slough of The News, in the second of a series of articles on the state's juvenile court system, its origins, operations and deficiencies, reports that the state was one of 19 states having both independent and non-independent courts handling juvenile cases, with six counties, Buncombe, Cabarrus, Gaston, Guilford, Mecklenburg and Wake having domestic relations courts which heard and decided juvenile cases. Hendersonville, Hickory, Mount Airy, Burlington, Rocky Mount and Wilmington had juvenile courts under a provision of the law which allowed juvenile courts in cities with a population of 10,000 or more. Three counties, Forsyth, Durham and Richmond, operated juvenile courts with persons other than the clerk of court serving as judge. In those courts, a juvenile who had gotten into trouble with the law received a hearing from a court which specialized in family and delinquency problems. But in the other 91 counties, the juvenile court was a separate part of the Superior Court, with the clerk acting as judge under current statutes. Judges of the six independent courts were appointed for a two-year term, but the statutes did not require that they devote full time to the duties of judge. No specific qualifications were required by the statutes. The non-independent courts handling juvenile cases were a separate part of the Superior Court, but the judge of the Superior Court was not the judge of juvenile court. The clerk of Superior Court was automatically the judge of the juvenile court unless the clerk agreed or requested in writing that the county commissioners appoint some other person. Thus, the clerk of court was performing the job of judge when actually elected by the people for another duty. The law provided that the clerks of court serving as juvenile judges were to be compensated by the county commissioners for their additional work as juvenile judge, but most counties made no special compensation for the duties. Statutes granted the juvenile courts the authority to handle delinquent, dependent and neglected children. The juvenile court decided also which parent got the child in a custody dispute and decided whether or not a child was abandoned for purposes of adoption. Four judges had responded to a query as to what the system needed, one, a judge of the Cabarrus County Domestic Relations Court, having said, "What I'd like to see is a state-wide detention arrangement, with maybe four counties joining together to support a home." He said that expenses would be low and that the four-county detention home would be more practical than the present arrangement. Statutes required that juveniles not be detained in jails where they could come into contact with adult prisoners. But many counties did not have enough cases to justify maintaining a detention home separate and apart from the jail system. Cabarrus was such a county and juvenile detainees were placed in a room adjacent to the jail, the judge explaining that they did not have enough cases to warrant expenditure for a detention home, that they might only have one case in three months in which a juvenile had to be detained. He also cited the need for more facilities for black boys and girls at state training schools, indicating that they had three boys awaiting admission to a training school and one had been waiting for about three months, indicating that it was one of their biggest problems. A judge of the Buncombe County Domestic Relations Court had said that more probation officers and detention facilities were major needs of the juvenile court system. He also said that more room at training schools was needed for blacks and that more regional schools established for half-way cases were necessary where the children needed to be placed in an institution for perhaps a five or six-month period for study. The judge of the Greensboro-Guilford County Domestic Relations Court said that the most pressing need of the juvenile court system was adequate training school facilities for black girls and boys, and that next in order was well-trained probation officers. Another need, probably greater than any others, he commented, was something between the state training school and the boarding school arrangement, indicating that they had children for whom they could not find appropriate boarding homes, that they needed to be out of their homes but did not need to be sent to training schools. A counselor for the Gaston County Domestic Relations Court indicated the need for diagnostic centers "where you could send the child for psychological evaluation so you could determine what is best for the child." Only the people of the state could fulfill those needs.
In South Orange, N.J., it was reported that a 12-year old boy was trying to ram a metal pole into a small vent of a Lackawanna Railroad tank car filled with 10,000 gallons of kerosene and in doing so, the pole had hit a 3,000-volt overhead power line, hurling the boy to the ground and cutting off the power in the neighborhood, though without explosion. It must have been a hair-raising experience.
In Minneapolis, a man with a suspended driver's license was commuting by plane to the Minneapolis workhouse to serve a 30-day sentence which permitted him daytime freedom. When he finished work, he took a cab to the airport, climbed into his plane and a few minutes later, landed on the ice of the lake beside which the workhouse was located. In the mornings, he reversed the procedure. Authorities said it was perfectly legal.
In Caracas, Venezuela, a woman whose note on a syrup bottle had inspired a trans-Atlantic marriage offer, had gotten her first look at her divorced suitor the previous day and apparently that had been enough, saying she was not going to marry him but would stay in Venezuela and look for a job. The 36-year old man, a balding tailor, had found the woman shy and a bit skeptical when he boarded the ship and embraced her. The woman sniffed when the man shrugged off the matter of another wife and two children in Italy, indicating that he had obtained a Mexican divorce before answering the woman's note. He told newsmen, "I am here because I am free, and my conscience is clear." When asked about a Venezuelan girlfriend, he said that she was "no problem". The woman said that she wanted a little time to think things over and a short time later had left with two men, one said to be her cousin and the other said to be representing a cousin. The woman was employed at a bottling works near Vignola, Italy. Working on an order for a Venezuelan firm, she had attached a note to one of the bottles saying that she would like to visit the South American company. The man had found the note and started a correspondence, eventually proposing. The woman's departure had caused pictures of her and the man to appear on Italian television screens and a woman in Sicily claimed that she was the man's wife. Whether the man's surname, Mule, added to the woman's revulsion is not indicated. She had obviously not been enchanted by Robin Goodfellow to be enamored of an ass. Would it were that about 30 percent of the American public could claim likewise vis-à-vis El Presidente, who also currently presides, by his own claim, over Venezuela.
If little Mr. Mutt-Pucker and his mutt-pucking minions and cohorts do not stop in their obvious attempt to create a police state in the areas of the country which they wish to control electorally and cannot, seeking to chill the populace unpopular with the regime into not voting, you are going to have a sure-enough revolt in the country commensurate with the unprecedented effort to subvert and overthrow the Constitution, including now even arresting and charging reporters not favorable to your regime with crimes for merely reporting the news which you want blotted out, as in Communist countries, as in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, Mutt-Pucker
On an inside page appears the second in the Spotlight series on murder in the country, its root causes and some of the suggested remedies for the growing trend in the society, by Dr. Ralph Banay, well-known criminologist and former head of the psychiatric clinic at Sing Sing Prison in New York.
There were 8 million stories in the
Naked City, but nothing quite resembling this one
On the editorial page, "Juvenile Courts: Checkered Good & Evil" indicates that very little other than sound and fury had come from Union County's "kissing case" in which two black boys had been sent to Morrison Training School for lack of alternate facilities to house them, but that the jolt of international notoriety from the case ought serve to turn the state's eyes to the checkered good and evil in its juvenile justice system.
As the current series in the newspaper showed, it was at its best where larger cities had taken advantage of state law to set up regular juvenile or domestic relations courts. It was at its worst in less densely populated counties where the clerk of court legally and traditionally put on the robes of juvenile justice. What it amounted to was a strange contraption, about 90 percent of which was stuck in the horse-and-buggy era, where clerks of Superior Courts were saddled, without extra compensation, with the job of making sure that children, who wandered at an early age outside the law, had some chance to be rehabilitated and take their place later as law-abiding citizens. Ninety-one of the state's 100 counties suffered from that problem. Mecklenburg was not one of them, but the problem extended over all except six counties and a few larger towns, which had built their own courts.
As long as the present system's abuses were tolerated, the state would continue to invite trouble, laxness with procedure and harmful notoriety. At the root of the abuses lay the lack of uniformity. Clerks of Superior Court in most cases were deeply involved in regular duties and thus did not have the time or resources to devote to judging juvenile cases. Many clerks lacked the basic training for handling delinquents, though they were victims of the system. The clerks were often too busy to keep adequate records and many cases were dispatched hurriedly, without careful inquiry into family conditions and background or psychological deficiencies in the juveniles who had broken the law. But the fault did not lie in the courts alone. The facilities for taking care of juvenile delinquents, both before and after hearings, fell short of what was needed.
State law properly prohibited children from being detained in jails where adults were also detained. Informed spokesmen were emphatic that a system was needed for boarding, where children could be placed into custody while awaiting the gathering of information on their cases and the hearings themselves. Training school vacancies seemed to be scarce. One judge had informed the newspaper that he had requested, but had not received, four needed vacancies.
In the many cases where for reasons of age or the triviality of the offense, committing offenders to training schools was out of the question and there was no suitable uniform arrangement for probation. Often, juvenile court officials maintained no check on the juveniles who appeared before them.
Juvenile courts were unique, as in every case there was a strong chance that the lawbreaker could be completely rehabilitated. At ages under 16, there were no "hardened criminals", but often only children whose faults cried out for sensitive diagnosis and discipline. "Over most of North Carolina, we have neither."
"The Lonely Man from Cripple Creek" indicates that North Carolinians had taken scant notice when Lamar Stringfield had been laid to rest in his beloved Southern highlands recently, and to his friends in Charlotte, it had seemed to add a final touch of irony to a Tar Heel tragedy.
Mr. Stringfield had been a gifted composer but to his own, he was also an "outsider", somehow never able to come to terms with himself or with society, a classic example of what sociologists liked to call "the alienation of the artist".
Fame had come early when he was only 31 in 1928, awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his orchestral suite, "From the Southern Mountains". His creative output had been large in the following years, including orchestral suites, chamber music, piano solos, a cantata, a musical folk-drama, compositions for flute, violin, voice and piano, music for outdoor dramas, a ballet, and works for concert band. In addition, he had been a capable conductor and an excellent flutist and writer. But he had never received the public appreciation which should have come to him, particularly true in the area he called home, from which he had drawn much of his subject material and inspiration.
Just as Bela Bartok of Hungary had made use of folk material of Magyar, Slovak and Transylvanian origin, Mr. Stringfield had received inspiration from the traditional songs of the North Carolina mountains, immediately recognizable in compositions such as "Cripple Creek" from his prize-winning suite, "Moods of a Moonshiner", "Mountain Dew", "In Lindy's Cabin", "Mountain Sketches", "Legend of John Henry" and others. He had been taking native materials, seasoning them with creative genius and rendering them into high art.
It suggests that perhaps the people among whom he lived did not think it was important or perhaps thought that since he had not composed like Mozart, Beethoven or Wagner, he was not producing anything "significant". It indicates that if that was what they thought, then they could not have been more wrong, as civilization would be crystallized and remembered only through the creative artists who were at work at present. It suggests that they needed encouragement and understanding and most of all an audience if they were musicians. Mr. Stringfield had received precious few of those necessities during his later years. The result had been loneliness and isolation. The final masterpiece which was in him had never come, having been lost somewhere. It indicates that the loss was really that of everyone.
We might question to what degree Aaron Copland was inspired to compose the much more widely known "Appalachian Spring" of 1944 from Mr. Stringfield's earlier compositions, "Appalachian Spring" also having won a Pulitzer Prize for its composer.
"It Might as Well Have Been Spring" indicates that there was not a sign of a cloud in the sky as it surveyed the giant vault of October blue from the tips of his shoes upward and backward. "And up in the top of the tallest gum a brown, wizened, furry gumball chimed in with a fast jig, lest his small gesture be lost in the mass moving of green fronds."
Lying on the ground, it indicates, it wished it might have joined in the celebration, but had to be satisfied with knowing that it might as well have been spring.
A piece from the Franklin Press, titled "Size Doesn't Count", indicates that the old saw that everything was done better in a big city and also in proportion to the wealth of the city was a generally accepted fallacy from the public which was furthest from the truth. It cites as example figures cited recently by the New York Times dealing with New York City's school buildings.
More than a fourth of the schools were about 50 years old or older, the Times having provided a breakdown of the buildings which the piece provides, some going back to as early as 1851 and a total of 156 having been built prior to 1900, with another 112 built in the ensuing decade. One had been built in 1841.
It contrasts Macon County, N.C., which did not have a school building in use more than 25 years old. It suggests that the figures illustrated what common sense ought to have dictated, that sometimes the big cities did something better than the village, but sometimes the village did things better than the city, that size had nothing to do with it and wealth very little. "It all depends on the people who live there."
What about desegregation of those schools?
Drew Pearson indicates that Secretary of Labor James Mitchell, spurning appeals for a bipartisan labor reform bill, had brought pressure on Republican Senators behind the scenes to keep their names off the bill introduced the previous week by Senators John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Sam J. Ervin of North Carolina. Earlier, Senator Kennedy had invited Secretary Mitchell to cooperate in writing on a labor reform bill which would keep it out of politics, but the Secretary had replied that there would be "no moratorium on politics".
Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky was caught in the middle as he had already promised to join Senator Kennedy in sponsoring the bill. Senator Clifford Case of New Jersey had also expressed an interest in doing so. Then Mr. Mitchell had stepped in and pressured Senator Cooper and sent an emissary to see Senator Case, both finally bowing to the political ultimatum from the Labor Department. Senator Cooper explained apologetically that he was still free to vote for the Kennedy bill and Senator Case suggested that the bill be stripped of everything except anti-racketeering reforms, that amendments to the Taft-Hartley law should be handled in separate legislation.
Senator Kennedy had then found a Southern Democrat, Senator Ervin, to co-sponsor the bill and they introduced virtually the same bill which had passed the Senate the previous year 88 to 1, with only right-wing Senator George Malone of Nevada having voted against it and he had been defeated for re-election. But it would receive more Republican opposition in the current Senate because of the opposition of Secretary Mitchell.
Republican leaders were seeking to straighten out an embarrassing glitch in their plans for the sesquicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth in 1809, the problem involving the fact that one could not be in two places at the same time, as voiced in a closed-door meeting of House Republicans by Representative Alvin Bentley of Michigan, whose grandfather had founded General Motors. Mr. Bentley had reminded his Republican colleagues that they had helped adopt a resolution in the previous Congress calling for a large televised celebration on the House floor during the year, in which Carl Sandburg and other notables would honor Mr. Lincoln. Simultaneously, RNC chairman Meade Alcorn had urged Senate and House Republicans to be out of town making speeches, and Mr. Bentley wanted to know how many would be absent for the February 12 celebration in Washington. About 80 percent of his colleagues had risen and grinned sheepishly at each other. Even House leader Charles Halleck of Indiana had admitted that he had speaking commitments out of town. Mr. Bentley urged them to do something about it or they would look empty on their side of the aisle when the television cameras were turned on, with all of the Democrats present to celebrate a Republican President. Congressman Fred Schwengel of Iowa, chairman of the Lincoln Anniversary Commission, had been given the job of resolving the embarrassing dilemma. It might even be necessary to shift the birthday celebration to February 13 or Valentine's Day to get more Republicans back in Washington for the celebration.
Despite low priorities and lack of funding, the Air Force had successfully tested an atomic engine which could operate an airplane, though the engine was too cumbersome still to be installed in a bomber. The air generals were now seeking more money to reduce its size and weight as they foresaw a future fleet of atomic bombers patrolling the skies as flying missile bases. Thus, if and when the nation was kicked out of its bases in Morocco, France, and Spain, atomic planes could take their place. That had been the real purpose behind the launching of a 1,000-mile Bold Orion missile from a B-58 bomber in supersonic flight. Airborne missile carriers, powered by atomic engines and carrying 1,000-mile missiles, could patrol the skies indefinitely without refueling and could launch a missile attack from any point in the atmosphere.
Joseph Alsop relates of an incident in World War II at a forward airbase in East China when Maj. Rex Barbour had been brought back after having been wounded when shot down by the Japanese north of the Yangtze River, too badly injured to walk. He had been carried several hundred miles on the backs of Chinese guerrillas and had several narrow escapes from Japanese patrols.
Later in the evening, after several "kan peis" of the local white mule, someone said, "Rex, tell us about how you got the Japanese admiral," referring to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Japanese fleet in the Pacific. Though apparently tired of relating the story, he had nevertheless told it well, that the two little American fighters had come in on the flank of the big Japanese bombers and their six escorting Zeroes, just at the planned interception point over a steamy, palm-fringed South Pacific island. "One all but watched the grim fight against these fearful odds—the Americans' quick, deadly first attack, the two bombers flaming and falling, then fighters diving and twisting in the bright air, and the Zeroes also bursting into quick, hot flame, and the two American planes turning for home at last, their mission miraculously accomplished."
The major had finished: "But the man who got the admiral was Tom Lamphier. I was his wing man. He led the attack. We each got a bomber, but he took the first one, and the first one had Yamamoto on board." The same Tom Lamphier of whom the major had spoken for much of the remainder of that long-ago evening was again being talked about now in Washington at the highest level of the Government.
Primarily, he was being discussed because he was a very worried man and because he had attacked the thing which worried him with the same devil-may-care, go-for-the-lead-bomber determination that he showed when Admiral Yamamoto had met his end, that being the Administration's complacency about the missile gap, thus unlikely to be rewarded with the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, and the Distinguished Flying Cross, as was his last fight.
When Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri had been Secretary of the Air Force, Mr. Lamphier had been his Assistant Secretary and remained the Senator's close friend. In recent months, with Mr. Lamphier spurring on the Senator, he had desperately pressed for a cold, hard, new look at the changes in the military balance between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It had been a private effort and the failure of that effort had caused the Senator to speak out in public, with bitter eloquence, in the Senate the prior Friday. Twice earlier the private effort had failed. Senator Symington had seen the President to implore bold action to meet the challenge of Soviet progress in ballistic missiles. Twice, the Senator and Mr. Lamphier had also seen the director of the CIA, Allen Dulles, whom the President had told off to soothe Senator Symington. On the second occasion, which had been planned as a fairly grandiose briefing, Mr. Lamphier had declared that his own manufacturing experience had proven the dangerous over-optimism of the official estimates of Soviet missile output. He had known most of the secrets which were being withheld from the public because he was a manufacturer of ballistic missiles.
As vice-president of Convair, which made the Atlas ICBM, Mr. Lamphier also had an obvious interest in larger Atlas orders from the Air Force. According to many at the higher governmental level, Mr. Lamphier, therefore, was just "selling a bill of goods with his furious, worried talk about the missile gap." Mr. Alsop says that was one way to look at it, but the other way involved a snapshot from the forgotten past, the tragic picture of Winston Churchill and Sir Austen Chamberlain going to plead with Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin for British rearmament to match Hitler's rearmament and receiving a smug answer to their anguished and farsighted pleas. The two ways of looking at the situation were diametrically opposed and the choice between them deserved further investigation.
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, finds the traditional felt hat of the man to be an impractical article, "a slimsy bump on a pickle which is easy prey for any mild scirocco of more than five kilometers. Blue Cross is long-suffering, but how much continued punishment can it absorb from hat-chasers? Better a flat fedora than a fractured femur." Recently, he had been forced to give up his hat to the wind rather than suffer death along the highway.
The ordinary Homburg or snap brim did not protect the ears or nose from frostbite or protect the back of the neck. He regards it as costume jewelry and not functional headgear, "basically sillier looking than most of the confections worn by women. Very few men can wear a hat at all, especially these undented things with no brims, and bows in the back. I would say the gamblers, some cowboys, Mexicans, and Spaniards who live around Cordoba are the only living men who should be allowed hats, and all these hats have brims. The only politicians I recall who ever looked at home in a hat were Jimmy Walker, Ham Lewis, and John Nance Garner. The first was an actor, the second a ham, and the third a cowboy. The rest more or less resembled Happy Hooligan with his tomato can."
He says in conclusion that he would continue to cavil at the capricious whims of the Paris designers who had enslaved the "poor, dear fools who wish to look fashionable and ugly, too. But I got to stand down on one thing: For comfort, the babes have it all over us, and in that easily swayed little pigeon brain is a solid kernel of one thing: Comfort, summer or winter. And when all is said and done they don't look much sillier than anything male you see on Madison Avenue."
A letter writer indicates that in most democratic countries where the legislative body was elected by popular vote, the administration of government proceeded under the direction of the elected majority. He finds that there had just been an election in which the present Federal Administration had failed to secure the approval of the electorate and thus the present Administration was not representative of the present sentiment of the people, undoing the leadership of the present Administration and lessening the prestige of the foreign policy of the Government. He indicates that the Congressional committees on foreign affairs had to assume more importance and take a stronger position as a result of the "defunct efforts of Mr. Dulles and Mr. Eisenhower". They had to declare for an acceptable foreign policy backed up by satisfied allies and following the basic policy of the U.N., the least which the American people could expect. He suggests that a weakness of the State Department had been that the present Secretary apparently assumed that the Department was identical with his own personality, and thus was sometimes in Paris or London or the Philippines, on the high seas, in an airplane, or sometimes in Washington. He finds that the foreign policy of the country was progressively being weakened by the failure of Mr. Dulles in Egypt, in the Near East, from his personal unpopularity in Europe, his attempt to enforce the "Eisenhower Doctrine", together with the President's lack of leadership. He concludes that if the midterm elections meant anything, the nation ought begin to hear something about the international situation more definite from the recently elected Democratic representatives.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.