The Charlotte News
Saturday, February 14, 1959
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State Dulles had cancer and would continue on leave from his post while undergoing radiation therapy. The President, after visiting Mr. Dulles at Walter Reed Hospital, said that he had asked for the thoughts and prayers of all of the nation that the results of his operation and the further course of treatment would be successful, and that to allow him time for that purpose, he would continue on a leave of absence. The announcement came shortly after the President had spent 37 minutes at the Secretary's bedside. A medical report issued afterward said that when Mr. Dulles had been operated on for hernia on Friday morning, a small "nobular implant" was removed from the hernia sac and had proved upon examination to be an "adenocarcinoma", a small cancer. The medical announcement also said that the fluid removed at the time the hernia sac was repaired was found under the microscope to contain "free cancer cells". The announcement said that no further surgery was contemplated and in the immediate future, radiation therapy would be utilized. The cancer described as adenocarcinoma was the same kind for which Mr. Dulles had undergone surgery when a cancerous portion of his lower intestine had been removed on November 3, 1956. The President's statement had been issued by White House press assistant, Anne Wheaton, and the medical report had been given by State Department press officer, Lincoln White. The President had disclosed that during his visit he and Mr. Dulles had talked over the Secretary's condition with the doctors. He had said that while he was with him, his doctors had discussed with them their findings of the existence of malignancy, not fully determined as to extent, but certain to require further treatment. He said that the Secretary was resting well. His immediate response to the hernia operation had been very satisfactory, according to the doctors.
In Havana, it was reported that Fidel Castro had become Cuba's Premier this date with wide powers to speed up the social revolution militarily achieved on January 1. The 32-year old military commander assumed the administration of a country still restless following two years of civil war and confronted with serious economic and diplomatic problems. His first task would be to curb threatened strikes, especially in the vital sugar industry, and find jobs for the half-million unemployed in a work force of 2.2 million. Another issue facing him was the fate of Cubans who took asylum in various foreign embassies in Havana following dictator Fulgencio Batista's flight in the dawn of New Year's Day to the Dominican Republic. Cuba's revolutionary regime had branded Batista supporters as ordinary criminals. The refusal in approving safe-conduct passage for them out of the country had led to disputes with several Latin American governments giving them refuge, including Argentina, Mexico and Chile. Sr. Castro had the assurances of retiring Premier Jose Miro Cardona, 56, that he would have "the opportunity to select his collaborators freely." In moving to the political front, Sr. Castro took a step which many felt was leading toward the presidency.
At West Terre Haute, Ind., it was reported that a sandbag dike in the city and ice jams near Delphi stood uncertainly this date amid rain and unusual warm weather along the flooded Wabash River, it being anyone's guess as to whether the dike, breached once and quickly patched early this date, would continue to hold against the rising Wabash backwaters out of West Terre Haute, from which 150 families had already fled. Light rain had helped to raise the Wabash to 24.6 feet by daybreak, instead of the expected 24.3. The Weather Bureau said that the rains would likely end before nightfall but that there might be some heavy thundershowers before that time. More rains were forecast for Monday. The rain and warm temperatures, in the 40's and 50's, left the outlook on upstream ice jams so uncertain that dynamiting had been postponed for the present. The state adjutant general said that there definitely would be no dynamiting along an eight-mile jam north of Delphi before early the following week. He indicated that the combination of rain and warmth had raised the threat of a mass movement of the long ice jam if dynamiting were started. Big blocks of ice, some as big as an automobile, could threaten Lafayette.
In Ashland, Ky., it was reported that a fire had burned through an old apartment building "like an acetylene torch" early this date, leaving 11 dead and one missing, with eight other persons injured. Among the victims had been six members of the same family, including an expectant mother who had jumped from a window of the second floor and then died after giving birth to a still-born son. The fire, called the worst in Ashland's history, had broken out at 1:00 a.m. and had quickly cut off the only exit, a stairway at the front of the reconverted theater. People had begun jumping from windows almost immediately, according to a taxi driver who had discovered the blaze. He said that he had seen seven occupants standing at windows in the rear of the building, but they had disappeared when a section of the ceiling had apparently fallen. One of the 20 occupants of the structure said that he had awakened when the fire "flapped the rug at my door like wind. I heard a woman's scream but was unable to tell where it was coming from. Then I smelled smoke." His wife and sister had jumped to safety and he and her brother-in-law had been brought out by firemen. The coroner said that the missing person was a 14-year old boy, believed to have spent the night with his father, who was among the victims.
In Charleston, W.Va., it was reported that six persons had been killed early this day when their car veered off U.S. 21 about 2 miles north of Sissonville and plunged into the Poka River. State Police reported that the bodies had been recovered but not identified, that there were two women, three girls and a boy in the car. The accident had been witnessed by persons in the car driving behind the vehicle. The driver of that car had told the police that she and her two sons were driving behind the other car, which had an Ohio license plate, and the front car suddenly had veered off the highway and gone into the swollen river. State Police and wrecker crewmen had been unable to locate the car in the early morning darkness, but soon found the wreck and the bodies after daybreak.
Bob Slough of The News reports that two persons had been killed and five injured in two separate wrecks the previous night on rain-slickened Statesville Avenue in Charlotte. A five-year old boy had been killed in a five-vehicle wreck which also injured five others. The wreck had been triggered by a tractor-trailer truck which had hit the rear of a car, which in turn was knocked into the path of a second car, as the truck traveled on and hit the rear of a third car and finally hit a parked car.
John Kilgo of The News reports that the chairman of the North Carolina Board of Paroles, George Randall, was bitterly opposed to any type of habitual criminal law for the state. He said that he thought the law was an unnecessary evil, that it dealt with human lives. He was aware of the problems of police and understood why some favored such a law, but said that many police officers did not want it. Many men changed in prison, he said, some of them having been taught to steal by their fathers and so it was not human to throw them in jail for life. "Why punish a man for life because he makes four mistakes? Let me tell you something. You have a lot of prominent and outstanding citizens in Charlotte today who have been convicted of four felonies. Some of our worst criminals have come out of prison to become outstanding citizens. You know 80 percent of our parolees make good." Mr. Randall, a former FBI agent for five years, said that he did not think the habitual criminal law would help reduce the crime rate, saying that figures had proven it to be the case. He said that there had been men sentenced to execution who had come off death row and made excellent citizens. He cited, for example, a man who had killed a police officer. "This boy grew up in a home with a nagging mother and a drunken father. The father used to make the boys go out and steal so he could buy liquor with the money. At nights they wouldn't even let the boy sleep in the house. They would lock him out. When he was 14, they ran him away from home. He got into several scrapes with the law and then he committed the crime of crimes—he killed a policeman. He was sentenced to die and he was on death row for eight months in Raleigh. And then the Governor gave him a life sentence instead. A few years later the sentence was reduced further. This man was a real leader in prison. He worked hard and developed into a real man. He was released not long ago and now he is a truly outstanding person in his community. He married a fine girl and has a good job and is a leader in his church." He said that each case had to stand on its own feet, that some felons deserved to rot in prison and would do so, while others deserved a chance to make good. He said that prisons were different at present than they had been several years earlier. Medical reports showed that some men changed when they reached the age of 30 to 35, and that it was not human to punish a man for four mistakes he might have made along life's long and tedious road. "If we can save a man and make him a good citizen, that's what we want to do."
In Charlotte, throngs of people ringed the Carolina Motor Club during the morning in the last-minute rush to purchase 1959 North Carolina license plates. An editorial below treats of the problem.
Charles E. Wilson, former president of General Electric, in the fourth entry in the "Lenten Guideposts" series of articles, set to appear each day for the 40 days of the Lenten season, indicates that thousands of people crisscrossed back and forth through Washington's Union Station on a morning in 1944, as for weeks, and months, one thing had been in people's minds, invasion of the European continent by the Allies. He had stood there on the morning of June 6 waiting for a friend and scanning the faces of the commuters as they poured out of their trains and into the station. There was no announcement on the loudspeaker or Extras shouted by the newsboys, no visible source of the news, but suddenly the scurrying and crisscrossing had stopped and the loud hum of a thousand conversations had ceased as the news passed from friend to friend, from stranger to stranger: "What is it? What's happened?" with the answer having come: "The invasion's begun… They're landing in Normandy." A hush had fallen over the waiting room and he was aware of little things, the soft tread of the few people still walking, the stream of sunlight which fell into the waiting room as it did in a cathedral. He saw a woman in the station drop to her knees and fold her hands in prayer. Near her, a man did likewise. Then another and another, until all around him, people were kneeling in prayer before the hard wooden benches of Union Station. The quiet had lasted for no longer than a few minutes and then, slowly, the woman who had knelt to pray had risen to her feet and the man next to her had also risen, cleared his throat and walked away rapidly as if he felt sudden embarrassment. Within seconds, the station was alive with movement and talk again. But for those who had witnessed the hush, Union Station would always have a special meaning, having been there the day the railroad station in Washington had become a house of worship.
In Chillicothe, O., it was reported that the big mystery in the city at present was how a 92-year old spinster had parlayed her meager earnings as a telephone company clerk into a fortune of 2.5 million dollars. Before she had died the previous January 20, her neighbors had known her as a thrifty woman who wore patched dresses, lived alone in a modest frame home and hated to spend a dime. They knew that she had money, perhaps $100,000, perhaps double that, but even her nephew and niece, to whom she had left the major share of her huge estate, had been flabbergasted at the final amount. The bulk of the estate was in securities except for the woman's home, according to the estate's co-executor. An inventory filed in probate court listed the estate at $2,456,946. The co-executor said that after deduction of taxes and fees, the two chief beneficiaries each would come into a trust fund of about $700,000. The co-executor said that the two heirs would only be allowed to draw an income from that fund of about $20,000 to $30,000 per year. Her nephew in Dayton had indicated that she had good brokers and saved for a rainy day, possibly explaining the huge amount. She may have also been playing the horses on the side.
On the editorial page, "Textile Leadership Can Point the Way" indicates that per capita income would continue to be a major, galling concern in North Carolina for many years. The current General Assembly had heard from Governor Luther Hodges in his biennial message, including a proposal for a state minimum wage law, which, nevertheless, faced an obstacle-filled course to passage. Behind the maneuver for 75 cents per hour as a minimum, which still excluded great numbers of people, was a bootstrap-lifting plan for a better economy. But some floundering on the lower national levels of income averages would continue. The wage measure itself was too restricted to move the state swiftly toward the "unlimited opportunity" mentioned by the Governor.
It finds that industry, itself, could bypass the cautious thinking of the Legislature. The state's agricultural interests were in a massive, decades-long time of transition from tenant farming to mechanization and the concentration of the economic power build-up was away from the land. Thus, little help could be expected from the state's farms.
In the textiles industry, prices were fluid, as textiles were sensitive to many forces. Domestic policy change caused fluctuations and a governmental hand raised in friendship to Japanese trade brought "anguish only duplicated by wrestlers caught in an abdominal stretch."
The top employer in the Carolinas was textiles and if the looms were to grind to a halt, the effect would be staggering. If a two dollar per hour wage minimum were declared, there would be a purchasing-power boom. A recent fact had been the reported rise in wage minimums to $1.25 per hour on a scattered textile front. Statisticians had estimated that a rise of 13 cents per hour for Carolina's textile production workers would result in a weekly wage increase of 2 million dollars. A tarnishing note in that story was that while some workers would have a raise between 12 and 25 cents per hour, the worker who received $2.25 at present might find his rate remaining static, and while the minimum wage might rise, the present average of $1.45 per hour for 220,000 production workers in North Carolina textiles might not rise much at all.
North Carolinians had to have more income before additional state taxes could be levied. If the $1.25 minimum in textiles were to become statewide, it would be a good thing, but average wages had to rise also. Increased payroll costs would force higher prices for finished products, but the trend had been for the consumer to pay that price. Automobiles were a good example. With the population spiraling upward at a rapid pace, more customers were available every year.
It concludes that industry in general and textiles in particular could lead if they were willing to invest in their people, and, it finds, North Carolinians were people worthy of investment.
"A Solution To Save Basketball Players" indicates that chilled winter blood had turned hot recently in Winston-Salem with the outbreak of a free-will forum during a college basketball game, in which many opinions had been delivered with the closed hand. Moderators had about five minutes of difficulty separating panel members, who had become quite enthused with the prospects of crocking some unsuspecting athlete from behind before the discussion period had ended. Coaching staffs had to have been agonized when actual fighting erupted as it had during the UNC vs. Wake Forest contest Thursday night. (We note that the Winston-Salem Journal told of the freshman rout by Wake Forest of UNC, with Wake led by its future star Len Chappell and backcourt ace Billy Packer, who would lead the Demon Deacons eventually to two ACC tournament championships in a row in 1961 and 1962, and to the national semifinals in 1962, while UNC's less than stellar freshmen class had featured Donnie Walsh, Yogi Poteet, Jim Hudock and Peppy Callahan, first names recalled without help, letting you know how far back we go in the UNC memory banks—so don't mess with us, young whipper-snapper, for we would learn to read in the following fall after having suffered through illiteracy prior to that time, including when they had us locked in a little cage for awhile, which we still recall with rueful bitterness, perhaps explaining why we, early on, became drawn to the sport of cagers.)
"Out there on the floor runs a pack of young men worth, conservatively, a million dollars. Figure it on the total gate in games for three years of any young man's varsity life." It suggests that something ought be done to protect that investment, with one solution possibly being the employment of a cargo net, such as used by freighters. At the first sign of trouble, players would be drilled into instant assembly and the net lowered, with its gangling passengers pushed aboard. The teams, each in their separate nets, could be swung aloft, far above the milling of fans, who would be left alone to pummel each other. The solid gold cargoes would be out of harm's way and could let off enthusiasm of their own by dropping a few basketballs on the heads of spectators.
The ultimate solution in such cases is to eject all players of both teams, declare a forfeit, determine the winning team to be that of the opposition to the team on which the player who throws the first punch is a member, and on top of it, have the NCAA declare any such player throwing the first punch to be disqualified for the duration of the season. That would nip fisticuffs in the bud rather quickly. Oh, but you say, there are sometimes provocations verbally in the heat of battle which cause punches to be thrown, one player calling another's heritage into severe question. But if you are going to represent a college or university on the athletic courts or fields in NCAA competition, you have to have control of your emotions and not allow people to get under your skin.
We recall being told of an incident one time involving recently deceased former UNC player Mike Cooke, who, circa 1964, while being hooted by fans behind the UNC bench, calmly took his paper cup of water, in those days before Gatorade bottles, and nonchalantly tossed it back over his shoulder, hitting some of the jeering group of fans in the face. That is a much better way to blow off steam than to resort to fisticuffs, as some of his teammates and former teammates had learned the hard way back in 1961, resulting in a mess for the institution and its basketball program for a few seasons thereafter after some amateur with no head-coaching experience, given to being hung in effigy, was made coach to replace Frank McGuire.
In any event the problem still occasionally persists, as exampled recently between St. John's and Providence. Of course, those boys up that way sometimes need to be placed on a leash.
"Razzle-Dazzle" finds that the way to meet the Soviet challenge in education had been indicated by the fact that during 1957-58, a candidate for the degree of Doctor of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, had submitted his dissertation on the subject: "The Development of A Functional Approach to the Teaching of Sports In the Pre-Service Education of Physical Education Majors at the University of North Carolina With Special Reference To Football."
"Do We Need This Last-Minute Rush?" finds the annual mob scene at the Carolina Motor Club being underway, which happened every year about the same time. Since February 15, the deadline for new license tags, fell on a Sunday, motorists would have until midnight on Monday to attach their new plates. All of it had been carefully explained many times in the daily press, but every year at the time of the deadline, the plate dealers faced a crowd which looked like the last great buffalo stampede.
A Motor Club official had admitted it was bad public relations when people were herded into a long line. It questions why that should be at the deadline each year, indicates that one workable plan would be to have plates bought in alphabetical sequence, eliminating the last-minute rush, with the sales force having no more than a month as an idle period. More time in which to purchase the plates would not be needed, as personal deadlines would occur each week, eliminating the last-minute rush.
A piece from the Daily Oklahoman, titled "Low Cars and High Prices", indicates that in a country motorized to the present extreme, the dreamboat of the future was naturally a never-failing subject of public interest. Thus, speculation was always rife concerning possible innovations of the future. There was talk of porous fabrics in seat cushions for individual air-conditioning, of automatic magnetic guidance systems built into superhighways to permit "no hands" driving, (God forbid), rear mounted aluminum block "pancake" engines for the near future, (enter a few months hence the Corvair, to be followed eventually by the Volkswagen Types 3 and 4), rear-mounted gas turbine engines using low-grade gasoline or diesel fuel for the distant future, and a single "joystick" lever to control steering, braking and acceleration.
Increasingly dismayed present-day customers might nevertheless feel that what the future held was hardly as urgent as what the present held. It finds it no exaggeration to say that a six-foot occupant trying to emerge from the backseat of nearly any 1959 model American car would literally have to crawl on hands and knees should the car happen to be parked alongside a ten-inch curb. It finds that a lot of motorists would prefer an ordinary running board and a body frame far enough off the ground to make a running board feasible, with optional equipment including a saddle for the ever-growing transmission hump down the middle, where the man in the middle perched, side-saddles for the ladies, as minor suggested amenities, preferable to the imagined improvements of the future. "What the American auto obviously needs above all is a higher frame and a lower price."
But then, just as Zorro jumps astride his horse, Messrs. Stuart Bailey and Jeff Spencer could not, you know, daddio, like jump over the passenger side door and slide over coolly into the driver's seat to make haste in beating a path to the next private eye gig, somehow, in the case of Mr. Bailey, missing the gear shift in the console of the T-bird, just as Zorro always managed to land in the stirrups rather than crushing his tender parts on the saddle. No doubt, there was more than one serious injury to those who tried to emulate this Hollywood derring-do. Maybe it was why Ford moved the gearshift from the center hump to the steering column after the 1957 T-bird.
But we digress…
Drew Pearson indicates that Democratic Senators were gingerly discussing in the cloakroom's of the Capitol whether they should stage a fight against the confirmation of one of the most potent members of the President's Cabinet, Admiral Lewis Strauss, nominated to be Secretary of Commerce. The battle over him had not hit the headlines yet, but was possessed of as much dynamite as anything the Administration had faced in the prior three years. The dynamite included the issue of Wall Street domination, secret nocturnal meetings, conflict of interest, a possible criminal violation, and whether the Administration had deliberately deceived the public over the biggest electric power contract in American history.
If it had not been for an alert night watchman at the Atomic Energy Commission, probably there would be no thought of investigating the Admiral and his qualifications to become Secretary of Commerce. Everyone entering and leaving the Atomic Energy Commission had to be checked in and his name registered. On the night of January 20, 1955, the AEC guard had carefully noted in his visitors' log that "Mr. Wenzell left by the back door carrying a large envelope." That had referred to Adolphe Wenzell of the First Boston Co., which helped to underwrite the famed Dixon-Yates Power Co. as a private utility to offset the Tennessee Valley Authority. The fact that the alert AEC guard had recorded the secret nocturnal conference Mr. Wenzell had with Admiral Strauss, then head of the AEC, had provided the tipoff to one of the worst conflict of interest cases faced by the Administration. It had blown up the entire Dixon-Yates deal, forced the cancellation of the contract which Admiral Strauss had given to Dixon-Yates, and caused a suit in the Federal courts for several million dollars. It also put the President in an extremely embarrassing position, as he had just stated at his press conference that Mr. Wenzell "was never called and/or asked about a single thing about the Yates-Dixon contract." Then suddenly, it was shown by the record of the AEC guard in sworn testimony that Mr. Wenzell not only had conferred with Admiral Strauss about the Dixon-Yates contract, but had been planted inside the Budget Bureau for months for the express purpose of putting across the deal.
That had been against the law, punishable by a jail sentence, though no conflict of interest cases had been prosecuted by the Administration.
Walter Lippmann finds that the physically ailing Secretary of State Dulles would once again come out on top, carried through his ordeal by his tremendous stamina and the knowledge that he was at the moment the "indispensable man". There had been times in the past when things were at the end of a chapter, and he could have, with grace and dignity, made way for a younger man in his position, but not at present. It was a time when things were moving toward a climax, after which the world might be very different, and he, himself, was at the climax of his career.
He finds that there was no one else in the Western world who had authority, comparable to that of Mr. Dulles, to lead the complex negotiations regarding Germany and Europe. If the West moved, as it had to do, from a policy of standing pat to one of negotiation and compromise, the personal leadership of Mr. Dulles would be the best guarantee that flexibility was not flabbiness and that a strong and tough hand was in charge. The Russians would make no dangerous mistakes while he was present, and the nation's allies would be much less apprehensive.
He finds that one question, the answer to which, if known, would enlighten the whole situation, that being why Moscow had opened up the Berlin and German questions at present rather than perhaps two years hence. The Russians knew well that German opinion was evolving and the refusal to negotiate on a realistic basis by aging Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of West Germany would not be adhered to by his successor. In two years, Mr. Dulles would be out of office, and until recently, there had been no difference between his position and that of Chancellor Adenauer. Moreover, in two more years, there would be a marked shift in the balance of power, provided the Russians believed the same thing as Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri and others. Thus the question arose as to why they were in such a hurry at present.
Mr. Lippmann ventures, based on hints and inferences, that they regarded the position in East Germany and perhaps also in Eastern Europe as precarious and potentially explosive. They were deeply concerned about West German rearmament which would have been achieved in about two years. When he had asked some people he had seen in Moscow why they were worried so much about West German rearmament, when they could annihilate West Germany with their intermediate range missiles, the stock answer was that they feared an armed Germany backed by the U.S. But he does not believe that to be the whole explanation of their fear, guessing that they had no illusions about the discontent of the East Germans, thus fearing that the East Germans, when they saw a strong West German Army less than two hours away, might be tempted to start an uprising in cahoots with officers of the West German Army. If that were to happen, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union would be involved, as "the fat would be in the fire".
He finds that there was an ever-present and growing danger of revolt in Eastern Europe which would entail Soviet intervention in the manner of the Hungarian revolt in late 1956 and would unavoidably result in a great war. The Russians were undoubtedly worried about that prospect and truly responsible men in all of the Western capitals were equally worried. Only those who had more emotion than they had imagination and foresight took the view that an East European uprising would be just what the free world wanted.
It was the impending danger in Eastern Europe which made it imperative to move toward German negotiations. For the best and perhaps the only way to avert the danger was to move toward the beginning of reunification of the two Germanys. He posits that the Kremlin should be made to understand that the West approached the coming negotiations, not with the intent to provoke an uprising in Eastern Europe, but to find an alternative to it.
Robert C. Ruark, in Moroto, Uganda, indicates that he had been in the region for about a month, having just come from the northern frontier, which was a "vast, rock-strewn desert, stripped by dry riverbeds, parched in the smiting sun, and peopled by nomads who use camels as beasts of burden and may travel 5,000 miles a year in search of the one precious commodity, water." Those people, the Boran, the Sambaru, the Rendille, the Turkana, lived in sketchy huts of palm leaves and in occasional small settlements called mayattas, which were made of clay, cow dung and thorns, and were burned when the families pushed on with their cattle, consisting of camels and goats.
Apart from the Somalis, who had gained their independence in Somaliland and would exercise it soon, those people were naked or semi-naked. A great many of them had never heard of Jomo Kenyatta, the old rabble-rouser, let alone Gamal Abdel Nasser, President Eisenhower, Cape Canaveral, orbiting spacecraft, guided missiles, the late President Roosevelt, the late Adolf Hitler, Social Security, or even a post office. A great majority did not even speak Swahili, the trade language on which Africa depended for communication, and certainly had never heard of Kwame Nkrumah and Ghana. That of which they knew consisted of goats, how to make multiple wives work, and where water might be scratched from a dry river bed, called a luga.
In that part of Uganda, they represented only the second safari since the old foot safari days of the vast elephant hunting. The natives they had just seen appearing naked, with the exception of ornaments, headdresses made of mud, dung and feathers, and an occasional spear, were the blackest Africans he had ever seen. He knew of one tribe around Lake Rudolph, the Elmolo, which numbered only 100 people and was dying rapidly because of a steady diet of fish and some quality of the local lake water having nearly deprived their bodies of phosphorus. Their bones bent like melting taffy, but they would not leave their lake.
Recently, his friend had pumped one of that tribe's ailing citizens full of antibiotics, a large dose of penicillin. The old gentleman had been dying to ward off the evil spirits, his relatives having killed a baby hippopotamus and had packed its head where it could look in on the prospective corpse. The prospective corpse responded to modern scientific treatment and everybody marveled at the fine job which the baby hippopotamus head had done to ease his ills.
An old skinner of Mr. Ruark's acquaintance had recently come off safari and gotten drunk. He had been robbed of nearly 3 month's worth of pay, 500 shillings, a small fortune. He immediately borrowed 150 shillings to pay a witch doctor to put a curse on the man or woman who had robbed him.
He indicates that what he was trying to say was that about 90 percent of the 200 million natives who inhabited Africa were no more prepared for what the West called democracy or freedom than they were prepared to build guided missiles. "A great many still have never seen a wheel, and it is a matter of fact that the African, before the white man's recent coming, never invented either a wheel or a plow."
A letter writer indicates that he had read with interest the editorial of February 11 concerning his opposition to the operation of a helicopter service by Charlotte. He asserts that government ought not do what private enterprise could do as well or better, consistent with views he finds to have been expressed by Adlai Stevenson and the President. He suggests that their journalistic talents would be better used if, instead of lambasting such naïve ideas as his, to examine the proposal more closely. He finds that the City Council had already spent $5,000 of the taxpayers' money for expenses in connection with the project and thus far, he had found no legal authority for the expenditure of public funds for the purpose. He suggests that if operation of a helicopter service from Charlotte was a sound business proposition, private capital ought be willing to risk the expenses necessary to obtain a franchise. City Manager Henry Yancey had said that the City did not intend to operate the service. He indicates that if the City were going to lease the franchise, then it ought be by competitive bidding. He finds that the editorial had made much of "obstructionism", but he finds that even the editorial's sarcasm could not rid him of the judgment that each matter which came before an elected representative ought be considered on its own merits or lack thereof.
A letter writer indicates that for some time he had been wanting to ask whether blacks who had been sworn in as policemen had the same privileges as white policemen when it came to recreational activities and if not, why. He also wanted to know why it was that when the City obtained new cars, the black policemen never got them. "Like I have always said, we have a self-correcting municipal government. Now, let's see how wrong I am."
A letter writer from Elkhart, Ind., indicates that Secretary of State Dulles had once more "roadblocked" the partial disarmament road to peace by insisting that the Russians block the road via the "veto" of partial disarmament. He finds it unlikely that the U.S. would permit a team of Russians to inspect U.S. military arsenals under partial disarmament to assure that the terms were being followed. But under "universal disarmament", the U.S. and the Russians would have nothing to hide militarily, and so it would be safe and proper for an inspection through an enforcement commission. He suggests a commission comprised of five representatives from the East and five from the West, with an 11th member agreeable to both sides. He believes that the whole matter of peace ought be sought, rather than going about it piecemeal, that universal disarmament later might be too late.
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