The Charlotte News
Saturday, January 3, 1959
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Moscow that the new Soviet cosmic rocket would hurtle past the moon and become "the first artificial planet and satellite of the sun," according to Moscow Radio this date. The announcement that the rocket was expected to go into orbit around the sun came as it soared about three-fifths of the distance to the moon, far beyond that ever reached before by a man-made object. The rocket would miss the moon by between 3,750 and 5,000 miles. Jubilant Russians already were calling the new rocket "Lunik", and students had marched through the streets in celebration, some firing flares. The cosmic rocket had let loose a sodium cloud to simulate a comet's tail in the early morning hours. The Moscow Planetarium said that bad weather had prevented a photograph of the comet tail but a Soviet scientist reported that a central Asian observatory had been able to capture a picture. The radio broadcast said that the rocket, which had been launched the previous day, was still on course and had traveled 141,000 miles, not providing the time when that information had been received. The moon was presently about 219,000 miles from the earth and the sun was 93 million miles away. The Soviet Government predicted that the rocket would reach the vicinity of the moon in the early morning hours of the following day, but the expected time of arrival in the area of the sun was not announced. American scientists had said that such a rocket probably would be burned up in the sun, when talking about an earlier American moon shot which was planned to head toward the sun. The Soviet announcement indicated otherwise, and the Kremlin expected its rocket to survive the fierce heat of the sun, but did not say how that was to be done. There was no indication of how long Soviet scientists expected the rocket to survive. The director of the Moscow Planetarium had said earlier that it remained uncertain what the fate would be of the rocket, describing it as a "very great success", especially since it was much heavier and had traveled much farther than American attempts. The Russians said that the rocket's scientific apparatus was working normally. The radio said that the temperature on the rocket's surface was between 15 and 20 degrees Centigrade, 27 to 36 Fahrenheit. The Soviet Government had said that it would try to put men on the moon in a future expedition, from which other flights farther into space could be launched. A top Soviet scientist, the director of the Sternberg State Astronomical Institute, said that he considered the rocket "a true last rehearsal for the real cosmic journey… A stage toward interplanetary journeys has been really achieved…" The 85-pound U.S. Air Force moon probe Pioneer I had reached 71,300 miles before errors of the launching angle and propulsion speed had caused it to fall back into the atmosphere and burn up. The Russian satellite, according to Moscow Radio, weighed about 3,239 pounds without fuel. The Russians had long discussed setting up space stations in orbit around the earth as the launching point for travels farther into the solar system. The weight of the moon rocket indicated that they could now send up a vehicle large enough to carry a man. But the Government did not specify when it would set up an expedition to the moon. Even before the rocket had time to leave the earth's atmosphere, the Soviet Government had proclaimed it "the first successful interplanetary flight." They described the space device as a multistage rocket with a Soviet flag and the legend "U.S.S.R., January, 1959" in the nosecone. There was no mention of the overall weight, including the first stages which had burned out and dropped off to allow the 3,239-pound final stage to go into space. It was said to contain 796.5 pounds of instruments, but its dimensions were not provided. The report said that the rocket had reached "cosmic speed" of 7 miles per second, necessary to achieve an orbit around the earth, and later had reached "second cosmic speed", fast enough to reach the moon and possibly the sun.
Alton Blakeslee, Associated Press science writer, reports from New York that the satellite might orbit the sun for millions of years and could tell scientists what space was like at distances of one or several million miles from earth if its radio was strong enough. Those had been the goals of the Army's Pioneer III moon shot of a month earlier, that rocket having risen only to 66,654 miles. The new rocket gave the Soviets not only tremendous prestige but it could gather invaluable new knowledge about space. Depending on its orbit, it could potentially circle the sun for perhaps millions of years and one day might again come close enough to earth to be tugged home again and burn up in the atmosphere. It would likely come close enough to the moon to provide significant information about it, carrying instruments to probe the moon's magnetism and radioactivity. Scientists had wondered whether the moon possessed a strong magnetic field generated by a hot, fluid core, as the earth's magnetism apparently was. During its flight, the Soviet rocket was reportedly measuring cosmic rays, the gaseous material in space, radiation streaming from the sun and encounters with meteors. It could supply data on regions of space never before reached.
In Havana, it was reported that thousands of bearded guerrillas had marched into the city this date ahead of the imminent arrival of rebel leader Fidel Castro. Victory celebrations had begun in the streets and streams of men, women and children began joyful demonstrations, shouting "Long live Fidel Castro". Castro and his designated temporary president, Judge Manuel Irrutia, had been reported flying from the provisional capital of Santiago in eastern Cuba and were expected at any moment in Havana. Between dawn and noon, it had been estimated that more than 6,000 of Sr. Castro's fighting men from eastern provinces had already reached the capital in jeeps and trucks, with more on the way. All of the Cuban people everywhere and all of the nation's radio and television systems and newspapers had hailed Sr. Urrutia as the new temporary chief executive. Apparently, the rebel movement intended to pin down security before either Sr. Castro or Sr. Urrutia entered the city. Thousands of troops, police and civilians had taken up strategic positions around the capital to guard against the remnants of supporters of former El Presidente Fulgencio Batista, who had fled to the Dominican Republic to take up exile. Thousands of Cubans who had stayed behind locked doors after long hours of rioting, looting and other disorders, had burst into the bright sunshine cheering the rebels wherever they appeared. The general revolutionary strike was still in effect but some stores were furtively passing out food supplies to customers. Meanwhile, hundreds of U.S. citizens had fled the capital in specially chartered planes and ships arranged through the American Embassy. The Embassy emphasized, however, that no effort to evacuate all nationals was contemplated and no instruction had been given for anyone to leave. Once Sr. Castro arrived and Sr. Urrutia was publicly proclaimed and installed as provisional president, the victorious insurgents were expected to end the general strike quickly, as the effects of the strike were beginning to be felt by a nervous and excited population.
In Taipei, Formosa, the Chinese Communists had begun this date the first artillery duel of the new year with Chinese Nationalist troops defending the Quemoy islands.
In Cairo, a newspaper said this date that recent clashes in Iraq between Communists and Arab Nationalists had taken one life and injured at least 168 others.
In Seoul, South Korea, American military purchases were expected to total 30 million dollars during the one-year period ending June 30, 1959, according to an announcement this date by the U.S. Army.
In Manila, it was reported that Prime Minister Abdul Rahman of Malaya had arrived this date on a five-day state visit which tied in with new Philippine plans for closer ties with Asian nations.
The Associated Press reports that thus far during the extended New Year's holiday period 226 persons had died in traffic accidents, 41 in fires and 60 in miscellaneous accidents. The number of traffic fatalities threatened to break the record for a similar four-day holiday two years earlier, 409. The National Safety Council appealed to drivers to hit the brakes and curb the toll—though not abruptly as suggested by the piece, as that could only produce more accidents, especially on the piling up freeway. It had predicted 390 automobile fatalities for the 102-hour holiday which would end at midnight on Sunday. An unexpected rash of highway deaths late on Friday night had put the pace ahead of a corresponding count two years earlier. The Council feared that the combined Christmas and New Year total would likely result in nearly 1,000 automobile deaths. Some 594 Americans had lost their lives during the four-day Christmas holiday the previous week. Two years earlier, the Christmas weekend had recorded 706 automobile fatalities, which, combined with the New Year's figure, came to an all-time high of 1,115 deaths. A non-holiday survey by the AP for 102 hours between December 10 and December 14 had shown 341 traffic fatalities, 106 from fire and 105 from miscellaneous accidents.
In New York, it was reported that
the search for a newborn baby stolen from a Brooklyn hospital had
shifted this date to Manhattan, where a young blonde woman had
aroused a druggist's suspicion by asking for a bottle warmer. The
infant girl had been taken from St. Peter's Hospital the previous
night shortly after birth, and a bleached blonde about 30 years old
was believed to be the kidnaper. The proprietor of a drugstore on
Manhattan's East Side had told police that a blonde woman between 25
and 30 had entered the store in the morning this date and asked for
the bottle warmer, indicating that she had left and driven away in a
pale green foreign car after being told he had no warmers in stock.
He described her as being about 5'3" tall and weighing about 110
pounds, that weight, however, not coinciding with the description of
the blonde seen leaving the hospital in a furtive manner, who was said
to weigh about 140 pounds. The infant had been placed in a bassinet
in a fourth-floor nursery adjoining the maternity ward along with
eight other babies. The father, a lawyer, had seen his child for the
first and only time late at night and then had kissed his wife and
started home. The baby was discovered missing a few minutes later and
police had located the father and rushed him back to the hospital
while the search was being conducted. He finally had to break the
news to his wife in the wee hours of the morning, some three hours after the kidnaping. (Incidentally, it brings to mind why the original form of the various tenses of "kidnap" had but one "p", not the latter form utilizing two, as the former version emphasized the original basis for the word, to take a child by the nape of the neck or collar and haul off with him or her or "nap" them, in the early British phraseology, whereas the more recent double-p version suggests the taking of a child, or other person, while napping, as in the Lindbergh case. Thus, we use here the original form as did the press of the time, "kidnaped", "kidnaping", no doubt, in following traditional phonetic soundings, originally pronounced with a long "a" in England of old. The change in favored spelling in the last few decades since the 1970's, when all was hip disco, probably developed because of some editor or reporter who specialized in the arcane becoming overly impressed by Robert Louis Stevenson, neglecting to realize that novelists, oft bereft of any ready heavy reference work at their side for the sake of mobility while writing by the dim of candlelight or gas lantern and perhaps not duly checked by editors of an eager publisher to put out product, or perhaps too carefully checked by same or their legal journeymen ready to rest on professional argot, often wound up with variant spellings of words in earlier times based entirely on soundings rather than regular dictionaries of the time, ergo, you get argot in place of the original language, meantime, stripped of its readily apparent origins, leading only to obfuscated confusion, such as that of the blonde who naped the infant in the instant case, wanting desperately to make it her own for not being able to reproduce, or perhaps simply identifying too closely with Miss Marilyn Monroe wading in the pool
In Shelby, N.C., it was reported that a 24-year old former football star home for the holidays from Appalachian State Teachers College had killed himself with a rifle on Friday at his parents' home. The coroner ruled the death of the former halfback a suicide and said that no inquest would be held. The man was working on his masters degree in physical education and left a four-page letter for his father, according to the coroner, with the contents of the letter indicating that he was depressed. During high school, he had starred for Barium Springs Orphanage and at Gardner-Webb Junior College had earned letters in football, basketball and baseball. After graduating from Appalachian in 1957, where he had starred in football, he had returned in November to teach in the physical education department.
Bob Slough of The News reports that a man from Shelby had perished in a flaming oil tanker early in the morning after his truck had hit a parked car and rammed in the side of a new building on Independence Boulevard and East 5th Street in Charlotte, the crash having touched off a spectacular blaze of flaming gasoline and oil, burning out the building and demolishing a late model car. Damage to the building was estimated at a total loss of $50,000.
In Midland, Tex., it was reported that a 35-year old man had staggered into police headquarters the previous day and placed a dollar bill on the counter, stating "Gimme a pack of cigarettes." A police sergeant took a closer look at the man and promptly locked him in the city jail on a charge of drunkenness.
In Cranbrook, British Columbia, a resident who had gone "fishing" to see what had stopped up his toilet tank to prevent it from filling with water, had found an eight-inch trout, dead, inside the valve.
On the editorial page, "Who Is the Council Trying To Kid?" indicates that the City Council was guilty of outrageous pussyfooting on the question of unionized policemen. It was against Jimmy Hoffa's Teamsters, but that it regards as being akin to being against boll weevils, Asian flu and the common house fly. But on the central question, whether it would give aid and comfort to a police union of any description, it had been shamefully silent, which it finds unfortunate.
Charlotte residents were likely not to stand by idly while their policemen were taken over by Mr. Hoffa's Teamsters or any other labor organization, as a policeman's role was too sensitive, too dependent on complete impartiality to be laid bare to union pressures. His allegiance was to the public, the common good and the general welfare and it was unfair to him or to the public to tamper with his essential neutrality and force him into a compromising position.
Other municipal departments had been unionized, but the presence of unions in less sensitive departments was not a good reason to expose law enforcement to improper influences. Of all the city's employees, a policeman had to be protected from even the remotest possibility of outside pressure if he was to perform his duties properly and receive the respect of the community at large.
It urges that the City Council recognize that fact and opines that if it did not, it would be serving poorly the community's best interests, as well as those of the Police Department.
"Castro Better Grab Hold While He Can" indicates that when exiled El Presidente Fulgencio Batista had arrived in the Dominican Republic, he had collapsed in a chair in a hotel coffee shop and while sipping coffee, had sent his best wishes to Cuba, showing no bitterness, according to reporters, regarding the revolution which had suddenly struck and driven him from Havana, along with most of his subordinates and generals.
Thus far, he had left an empty house behind, with Fidel Castro having his foot in the door, but even the latter not fitting the picture of the modern-day radical revolutionary, rather, as a law student and son of a wealthy planter, a relic from the band of middle-class professional men who had begun the French Revolution in 1789. It suggests that he would do well to make sure that he was not caught in the dilemma of his forebears of 1789, who had learned what Macbeth meant by "bloody instructions, which being taught return to plague the inventor."
Cuba was wobbling with instability after Sr. Batista, while departing, had set up a military junta which in turn had yielded to the senior justice of the Supreme Court and dissolved itself, a constitutional move. Sr. Castro, however, had refused to recognize the latter and thus rejected the constitutional mechanism for an interregnum. Meanwhile, anarchy reigned. Mobs sacked hotels, casinos, homes, ripped up parking meters for small change and generally raised havoc with the public peace.
It questions whether, when Sr. Castro insisted that the revolution had to be "completed" by the installation of his personal choice as president, it meant that anarchy would rule in the meantime, and that if there was resistance, whether it meant that the Communists who rode his coattails were to be given time to filch power for themselves. "Does it mean, finally, that Castro is so hungry for personal power that he will invite complete civil chaos? Batista may have been a dictator; but he was not blind to the dangers of anarchy and got out."
There was still a chance for Sr. Castro to join the constitutional forces and it suggests that he had better grab hold, for if he allowed the orgy to continue, he might find that the balance had turned from a revolt against Batista's dictatorship to a private party for mobs and adventurers with no ideals at all.
"Everybody's in a Dither about 'Spenders'" indicates that a new horror word had crept into American politics, "spender", a person who presumably was a politician who would not gladly lay down his life for a balanced budget. It finds it amusing to see politicians of all types running around in a great dither, lining themselves up with the "savers", led by the President, who seemed bent on making his lame-duck days the period of the great balanced budget.
The Congressional Democrats, according to Doris Fleeson, were thinking about putting department functionaries and brass who sought budgetary funding under oath to make sure that they really needed the money they claimed. RNC chairman Meade Alcorn and DNC chairman Paul Butler were also touting economy, with Mr. Alcorn hoping for all-out economy and Mr. Butler hoping for all-out expansion in the national economy, both emphasizing balancing of the budget.
Not since the 1932 election, when FDR and President Hoover had sought to berate each other with "spending", had there been such an orgy of frugality. It suggests that before long, a new investigator would arise in Congress and would subpoena "spenders" and those suspected of fellow-traveling with them, having to answer the question, "Do you now or have you ever advocated an unbalanced budget?"
Spenders would have to go underground and savers, who would form the vast majority, would need some mark of identification, and it suggests tiny tattoos on the back of the hand, giving them a rugged look so that they might qualify as "rugged individualists".
"Prosperity?" indicates that despite general prosperity during 1957, payments to individuals on public assistance rolls in the country had reached a record 3 billion dollars, higher by 2 billion than in the last year of the "Threadbare Thirties".
A piece from the Washington Post & Times Herald, titled "Give Us This Day", indicates that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had decided that it had no time for the 400 special days, weeks and months of each year and would cease publication of its compendium of days which various manufacturers and publicists wanted the nation to remember.
It finds it a worrisome event as it meant that the American people might become ignorant and eat shirred eggs on Pancake Day, imbibe vodka on Temperance Day, and think small thoughts during Large Size Week.
The fate of the Chamber's catalog of days was still undecided and there was a chance that a commercial printing house in Flint, Mich., might continue to issue the booklet to remind the nation that a particular time was Expectant Father's Day or Honey For Breakfast Week. "But gentlemen, the calendar is groaning already. How about a year without any days at all to give us all a needed respite? Then we could return with freshened spirits to the observance of National Laugh Week and Idaho Potato and Onion Week. After all, was it an accident that the announcement of the Chamber's decision came in the edition published on Thanksgiving Day?"
Drew Pearson, still in Alaska, has his column written this date by his assistant, Jack Anderson, who indicates that Washington was presently crawling with outerspace czars who tripped over one another's authority, watched over one another's shoulders and generally got into one another's hair, one reason U.S. troops were handicapped in Alaska without missile bases, while Siberia across the way had missile bases.
He indicates that the latest appointment to confuse the missile business further was that of Herbert York, the Defense Department's new research czar, a post which had been vacant for several months without being missed. It only added to the scrambled missile-satellite eggs, however, which the President claimed to be collecting in one basket. The appointment of each new czar had been proclaimed as a move to stop inter-service bickering and speed up missile-satellite development, and yet the Pentagon feuding was not only as bitter as ever, but the new czars were presently bickering among themselves. They also brought in additional administrators, coordinators, and advisers who, in turn, had surrounded themselves with assorted assistants who would introduce new procedures, create new committees, and start new studies, as they had learned that their importance was measured by the size of the bureaucratic empires they could build.
All of that had added to the paperwork which had slowed rather than sped up missile-satellite development. The nation's missile management had become almost hopelessly encumbered with old and new rivalries, duplicated duties and overlapping authority. In addition to Mr. York, there were other czars who had jurisdiction over space projects, including the civilian space czar, Keith Glennan, who ran NASA and had been trying to take over all space operations in the name of civilian authority, with his biggest wrangle over the Jupiter team which the Army had refused to turn over to him.
There was also the military space czar, Roy Johnson, chief of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, who was trying to keep all space projects at the Pentagon, ordering the talking Atlas missile launched into orbit largely as a publicity stunt to keep his agency in the act. There was the military missiles czar, Bill Holaday, who was supposed to be in charge of all missiles but was so jealous of his authority that he tried to stop the Air Force from announcing that it had launched a 1,000-mile missile from a B-58 bomber in supersonic flight, simply because the air generals had neglected to consult him. There was also the science czar, Dr. James Killian, whom the President had brought into the White House to stimulate missile-satellite research, and who also had loose authority over the space program.
Each service also had its own set of missile, space, and research czars who vigorously resisted raids on their bureaucratic empires.
Walter Lippmann indicates that at the beginning of the new year, there were those who believed that the U.S. position in the cold war had improved and that in the end all would be well if the U.S. stood firm and persevered, thinking that time was on its side. On the other hand, there were others who thought that the balance of military power was turning against the U.S. and that in the underdeveloped regions of Africa, Asia, and South America, the tide was running against the U.S. They did not think that it was enough to stand firm and persevere, that it was necessary also to take bold and costly measures to turn the tide, that time was not on its side unless the U.S. made a prodigious effort in armaments, and the development of its own economy to support them, in a demonstration that there was a way, other than through Communism, by which the underdeveloped nations could overcome their weakness and master their poverty.
He proposes to leave to the experts the problem of what ought be done to maintain a military balance of power and instead define the central reason why, as things were presently going, the West was losing and the Communists were winning the contest in the underdeveloped nations, finding that the central reason was that the advanced and industrialized Western nations of North America, Western Europe and Australasia were growing richer while the underdeveloped countries, outside the Communist orbit, remained in dire poverty and, insofar as they were advancing, were moving very slowly. It was in that factual scenario that Communism was expanding, for the Soviet Union had succeeded in demonstrating that there was a way, though harsh and cruel, by which a country could be raised by its own bootstraps.
He indicates that roughly speaking, it was agreed that about 400 million people in Western Europe, North America and Australasia, measured in 1949 prices, had an average income per capita of not quite $900 per year, while in the underdeveloped nations, excluding Communist China, there were about a billion people who had an average per capita income of about $60 per year, less than a tenth of the average in the West. But that was only the beginning of the story. That enormous gap could be narrowed only if the underdeveloped countries were able to use modern technology in agriculture, mining and industry, but to use the modern technology there were needed technically trained men and capital. The technicians could be trained and could be borrowed, but the capital had to come from some place. At a rough estimate, the heavy basic industries, such as steel, required a capital investment per worker of about $20,000 more or less.
The West was able to save and invest productively about ten percent of its income per capita per year, coming to an average of about $90 invested per person in new plant and machinery, the reason why the Western countries were growing richer at an average rate of 2 percent per capita per year. That $90 which the West was able to save and invest was more than the whole income of the average person in the underdeveloped countries, the reason why they remained poor and were unable to do much about their poverty.
At that point, the Communist challenge became formidable, as Communism, as practiced in the Soviet Union, had proved that if the leaders were powerful enough and ruthless enough, the capital required for the new technology could be extracted from the work and the sacrifices of the people themselves. The tyranny of Joseph Stalin and of Mao Tse Tung was in its essence the method of capital formation of a backward people which did not have access to the capital markets of the wealthier nations. Thus, to avert Stalinism of one sort or another in the underdeveloped countries, it was imperative that the West provide the capital needed for the transition from backwardness to modern technology. If the richer nations would not or could not do that, they had to expect in the end to lose the contest for influence in the cold war.
"Let us be warned that while it is imperative and essential to maintain the balance of military power, Communist expansion in the underdeveloped countries cannot be contained by military means. If anyone doubts this, let him look at Iraq, which on the map is protected from the Soviet Union by the containing wall of Turkey and Iran. Yet it is obvious that Iraq cannot be protected against communism merely by standing firm in Turkey and Iran."
Joseph Alsop wonders who read the "Wind in the Willows" any longer now that children's literature had been homogenized, and what reader of that book remembered the wonderful description of the mole's return to his eligible country of residence. Late in the evening, the water rat and the mole were making their way across country to the dark fields after their terrible adventure in the Wild Wood. Suddenly the mole, who had left his home so long ago that he had all but forgotten about it, found his memory jogged by something familiar in the shape and smell of the earth. His friend, the water rat, was impatient and even rude, but the mole searched hither and yon until he found the lost front door. With the joy of the home, or, with the pride of the householder, the mole showed his friend his house, ransacked his cupboards for stores of food and drink and got supper on the table. "And so the wanderers are warmed and fed and enjoy a cozy evening, and the mole knows all the pleasures of being in his own place before he starts on his travels again."
Mr. Alsop indicates that after having traveled to Baghdad and Cairo, Beirut and Berlin, Amman and Paris, he had just returned home again, feeling like the mole in the book, that instead of a grim analysis of the previous year's grim events or a grim forecast of the grim challenges for the coming year, he suggests that maybe it was permissible to celebrate the New Year by praising familiar homely things. "Amid the ruins of ancient Jericho, amid the ruins of Western policy in the Arab lands, amid the tragic refugees in menaced Berlin," home was forgotten and the way there was almost forgotten also. Then quite abruptly and unexpectedly, the memory was jogged and recollection of home was too well-remembered.
But while those thoughts might lighten the long air journey across the Atlantic, they were as nothing to the moment of arrival. Those who shared Mr. Alsop's house had been there for a very long time. Wise men constantly warned against making too strong attachments to material objects, but even a Buddhist monk had to develop an affection for his own, his very own begging bowl, at least after he had entered middle age. "For those with a jackdaw-like disposition, moreover, the objects they accumulate have commemorative value. That bronze recalls Siam in wartime, when the wisteria flowered in the courtyard and the Japanese were almost at the gates. Those candlesticks are symbols of the stirring days in Paris, when the Fourth Republic docilely climbed into the grave it had carefully dug for itself. In short, such things are not merely the furniture of one's life. They are even a kind of summary of one's life, mutely but comprehensively recording failures and successes, bad moments and good, in the manner of knots in the old Peruvian quipus or string-tally."
So each homecoming always produced the same surge of feeling, part true sentiment and part sheer sentimentality, and if the sentimentality and nostalgia and personal recollections could be separated by a psycho-chemical process, the residue of the surge of feeling even had a certain general meaning, for all of the private, intimate, human values which stood in deadly peril in the troubled world. "The peril has never been greater than at the New Year of 1959, and so one wants almost to shout, 'Let us rally to defend human values while we can!'"
A letter writer indicates that while driving along U.S. Highway 74 a few nights earlier, he had noticed a great number of cars with poorly aimed headlights, both bright and dim, with the newer models seeming to be the most at fault. He suggests that a safety program be initiated in the state to have the lights of every car checked and properly aimed.
That would be a good idea for the whole Trump Administration, which has, obviously, become so cross-eyed that it is literally quite insane all the way down the line, now invading foreign countries, kidnaping their leaders and waging open war, as surely as Hitler did at the outset of World War II, in the instant case based on the insane delusion that somehow the ghost of Hugo Chavez rigged the voting machines to steal the election of 2020 from Der Fuehrer, the Infallible One. This mess must be stopped, and the weak-kneed Republican leaders of Congress, responsible for it ultimately, must be deposed in the elections later this year in 2026. Otherwise, as time goes on in the next three years, we may no longer have a nation, because presently the convicted felon in the White House is completely insane, every bit as insane as Adolf Hitler was. One need only look at his eyes to tell that the man is not all there. He is a ball of hatred and self-aggrandizing conceit, masking his own personal and political failures with grand gestures of planned architecture, every bit as grandiose and ridiculous as the vaunted Germania of Hitler, claiming a great economy which serves only the very wealthy and his little pals, while marginalizing the rest of us, vindictively seeking the prosecution of his political enemies on fabricated charges brought by "prosecutors" appointed by him whose chief qualification is having won in the past a beauty pageant, all as he systematically plots and schemes to control the free press and all media through which it is disseminated, supplanting it with his fawning minions masquerading as "press", who, to achieve a pass, must first swear and then actively demonstrate allegiance to the will of the master, just as did Hitler and Goebbels, and now is invading sovereign countries without provocation, based on trumped-up claims, just as did Trump's hero, Hitler. We must be rid of this discordant, demoralizing mess in 2026.
A letter from J. R. Cherry, Jr., takes issue with an editorial appearing on December 20 applauding the possibility that UNC job applicants might not have to continue to answer the question on forms as to whether or not they were Communists or fellow travelers, indicating that the editorial had regarded the question as being "silly", one which nobody had answered affirmatively and therefore ought be dropped. He wonders how many North Carolinians thought it silly to include that question on the application form of anyone whose compensation they were asked to pay. And he goes on in that silly vein. He wants to be counted as an alumnus who emphatically believed that the question at issue was not silly, that the only silly thing was the newspaper's argument against it. "Your hostile, typically neo-liberal attitude toward what the trustees and the people have a perfect right to know for any public job applicant is summed up by that line from a French fable: 'That animal is very wicked; it defends itself.'"
A letter from the secretary-manager of the Better Business Bureau indicates that what the Bureau of Charlotte had accomplished in the previous year had to give credit where due, and it thanks the newspaper for its cooperation and interest shown in the many news items regarding the Bureau's activities, indicating that through some of the articles which had appeared, they had received hundreds of calls to the office and many dissatisfied business customers had been made happy.
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