The Charlotte News
Monday, February 16, 1959
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.S., Britain and France had proposed to Russia this date a wide open big four conference on Germany, with East and West German advisors present. The proposal had been made in notes delivered in Moscow and scheduled for release in the Western capitals within a few hours. West Germany had sent a parallel note to Russia. The Western powers had turned down Russia's January 10 proposal for a 38-nation conference to write a German peace treaty which would isolate and neutralize the divided country. The Soviet peace pact project had been called "stupid" by Secretary of State Dulles at a recent press conference, indicating that it would not work. The call for a foreign ministers meeting had been worked out in diplomatic conferences by the State Department and representatives of the British, French and West German governments. They represented a counter-proposal to the Soviet peace conference proposal. At the same time, it constituted a serious bid to obtain negotiations started with the Russians regarding Germany. It was aimed to get talks going ahead of Russia's deadline for a new Berlin crisis. The Russians had threatened to turn over control of East Germany, and the access routes to West Berlin, to the East German Communists in May. Among officials in Washington, and in other Western capitals, there was a strong expectation that the Soviets would agree to a foreign ministers meeting of some kind, perhaps after bargaining regarding time, place and participants. The Soviets might insist, it was thought, on inclusion of Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Senate Democrats promised this date a full measure of cooperation with the Administration on foreign policies during the illness of Secretary of State Dulles. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson said, after a conference with Foreign Relations Committee chairman J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, that Democrats would do everything they could to help keep Administration foreign policies intact. Senator Johnson said: "It will be the policy of the majority to advise and consult with the Administration in every possible way in an attempt to help them develop a strong, positive foreign policy." Senators John Sparkman of Alabama and Mike Mansfield of Montana, other members of the Committee, had made similar pledges in separate interviews. Mr. Dulles, in Walter Reed Army Hospital, would start this week a series of radiation treatments for cancer, the new malignancy having been announced on Saturday, discovered after a hernia operation which Mr. Dulles had undergone the previous day. The State Department said on Sunday that the condition of the Secretary "continues satisfactory". During the day, the Secretary had talked for about 15 minutes with Acting Secretary Christian Herter, who had returned on Saturday night from a South Carolina vacation. The latter told newsmen that he would accept appointment as Secretary if the President asked him to do so, but said that the President had not sounded him out in any way about replacing Mr. Dulles. The President had said on Saturday that Mr. Dulles would continue on a leave of absence which he had obtained to undergo the operation and said that he would be in close touch with Mr. Dulles constantly. The doctors meanwhile had given Mr. Dulles a fighting chance to recover enough from the cancer to remain on the job at least part-time. They took the view that it was still too early to tell what course the illness might take, especially in a man of his strength and willpower. Although Mr. Dulles would be 71 in the current month, he had resumed a full work schedule after a cancer operation in 1956 and had battled off other illnesses since then. The doctors noted that recent advances in medical science had brightened hopes of cancer patients. If radiation treatments did not provide good results, other methods could be attempted, according to the doctors. But there was no thought at present of any further surgery. Although the illness would complicate his preparations for several allied conferences during the spring and for eventual negotiations with the Soviets, there was no indication that it would bring any change in U.S. foreign policy.
Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois said this date that the previous Democratic-controlled Congress had increased the drain on the Federal treasury by 3.783 billion dollars, stating it in reply to the claim a week earlier of Senate Majority Leader Johnson that the prior 85th Congress had cut appropriations by 5.66 billion dollars below the President's budget requests. Senator Dirksen's prepared speech had marked another round in the growing political debate over who the spenders were and who the savers were. Senator Dirksen had conceded the accuracy of Senator Johnson's figures, as far as "appropriations" cuts went, but he said that they fell far short of telling the whole story about economy in government. He said that standing alone, they could only leave the impression with the average citizen "that the President is a spender and that the Congress is an economizer." He said that a rounded picture required inclusion of increased spending obligations not handled by appropriations, the cost of retroactive pay raises, spending programs vetoed by the President, and the delay of Congress in increasing postal rates for which the President had asked. Senator Dirksen said that those and other actions of the 85th Congress "apart from the strictly appropriations bills are what might be called the back door approach to the treasury." He said that the Republicans were "determined that the whole story shall be told and that every effort to bypass the Appropriations Committee or to mislead the people about the budget will be vigorously exposed." He also said that it was evident that "the nation overwhelmingly favors economy in government and a balanced budget."
In Jerusalem, Israeli Sector, it was "reliably" reported that Premier David Ben-Gurion of Israel had rejected a U.N. proposal for a survey of Israel's border troubles with the United Arab Republic.
In Tokyo, it was reported that Capt. Suteo Ishida had been named naval attaché to the Japanese Embassy in Washington.
In New York, it was reported that the Supreme Court had been asked to affirm that radio and television stations were immune from libel actions for broadcasting defamatory statements by a political candidate who demanded equal time to that of his opponents.
In Terre Haute, Ind., it was reported that activity along the flooded Wabash River had moved southward this date as National Guardsmen had fought to save a levee near Oaktown, about 40 miles south of Terre Haute. Meanwhile, the crest had passed at West Terre Haute and only a small crew of volunteer workers remained on the scene to patrol the levee. Upstream, a huge ice jam remained near Delphi, but thawing temperatures during the weekend had dislodged some of the large chunks and sent them floating downstream. Governor Harold Handley had ordered 64 National Guardsmen to the Oaktown area the previous night at the request of the sheriff. A supply of 10,000 sandbags also had been sent to the area. The sheriff said that an old levee along the Wabash had been sagging and he feared that it would give way at any moment. The levee was 4 miles west of Oaktown, and thousands of acres of farmland and several farm homes would be flooded if the levee gave way. A temporary dike of sandbags had held firm at West Terre Haute the previous day against another small rise in the swollen river, and it appeared that the worst of the flooding was over at that point. But the Weather Bureau said that it would be about two weeks before the Wabash fell below flood stage at West Terre Haute. It was anticipated to go below flood stage at upstream points sometime during the current week. The flood had caused 150 families to flee their homes at West Terre Haute and about 1,600 families upstream. Most of the upstream families, however, had already returned to their homes to begin cleanup. Governor Handley and other state officials had taken a first-hand look at some of the flooded area and the big ice jam the previous day. The Governor had urged local officials to get the debris cleared from the streams as soon as possible to prevent worse flooding after the spring thaws.
In Melbourne, Australia, it was reported that a two-mile long queue of people had waited up to four hours to attend evangelist Billy Graham's opening meeting the previous day of a 16-week Australian campaign. But thousands had to be turned away when Melbourne's largest stadium, holding 8,000, was packed to capacity. On Tuesday, his meeting would be filmed for a one-hour presentation on American and Canadian television networks. The evangelist was delighted with his opening crowd, saying it was larger than those he had attracted in his London and Berlin crusades. He addressed 3,000 people who waited outside the stadium in the rain before the main meeting had begun. He talked from the back of a truck, and in a nearby temporary building, 2,500 others unable to obtain entrance to the stadium had watched the service over closed-circuit television. Inside the stadium, he told his audience that American eyes were on the Australian campaign and that a successful one could mean a spiritual awakening in America, with an impact on the entire world. He obtained 622 "decisions for Christ" at the meeting, according to organizers of the crusade. He was welcomed at the opening session by Lt. Governor Sir Edmund Herring of Victoria State and by heads of all leading Protestant churches. He would hold 25 meetings in Melbourne.
In Maxton, N.C., it was reported that a 35-year old Laurinburg man had been shot to death and a Highway Patrolman wounded as they struggled for a pistol in pitch black darkness on a muddy field on Sunday night. The Highway Patrolman had been shot in the left hand and said that he had attempted to arrest the man on charges of drunk driving and driving on the wrong side of the road, when the man had eluded him and raced off behind small store buildings on Highway 74 on the east side of Maxton. The officer was hospitalized at Laurinburg and his condition was described as good. The time of an inquest would be determined by his recovery. He said that he had met a weaving car on Highway 74, turned about and halted the vehicle, which contained the man in question and an unidentified woman. He attempted to put the man in his patrol car, but the man had broken away. He grabbed the man and forced him into the patrol car, but just as he was preparing to drive away with him, the man jumped out and fled into a field, 75 to 100 yards off the highway behind store buildings. The two met in the darkness, with the man grabbing the officer's service revolver and in the struggle, the officer attempted to choke the man with his right hand while holding one end of the pistol with his left. The weapon had discharged and one bullet had penetrated the officer's hand and two bullets had entered the other man's shoulder. There were no witnesses to the struggle. The officer's holster had been torn loose and after the struggle, investigators had found his blackjack on the ground at the scene of the struggle.
Herb Score, Cleveland Indians ace pitcher, who had been blinded by a batted ball in May, 1957, provides a Mother's Day letter in which he recalled the high points of his struggle for recovery, as this date's entry in "Lenten Guideposts", the fifth in the series of 40 such entries during the Lenten season. In the letter to his mother, he said that after nine months of marriage to his wife, one of the things he had learned was that women liked to be appreciated in many ways. "During those long weeks in the hospital there was time to think, and I saw a few things I didn't before. My memories went way back, and some were on the humorous side. Remember when I was a toddler and would open the icebox when we lived on Long Island and I'd snatch out an egg because it was the nearest thing to a ball, and I'd throw it in the air and yell: 'Ball! I play ball!'" When he made an error, his mother would patiently clean up the mess on the floor and then find a real ball for him. When he got old enough to start throwing a real ball, they had at first settled on tennis balls against the side of the house, which he would do for hours on end, his mother never complaining, though he had cracked the mortar outside and rattled the dishes all over her shelves inside. Then the day had come when his parents had separated and his mother had to support the kids, his two sisters and himself, by herself. "We all did what we could, but you bore the real big load, and as I look back now, Mom, I still don't know how you managed." Baseball had been his one big love. He had made the high school team and his mother had insisted that he play in the afternoons when he should have been working. He wonders whether he would have been in the major-leagues at present if she had not done that. All kid athletes loved meat, but his mother had heard that steak was one of the best body-builders and so they had it a lot, though probably his mother had to do without new clothes to pay for it. She had given him the middle name, Jude, after the one who helped those who tried to do what was impossible. The remainder is on an inside page.
Bob Slough of The News reports that wrecks of cars happened at frequent intervals in Mecklenburg County, that during the previous year, they occurred at the rate of 14 per day. Damaged personal property had been close to 1.5 million dollars, with medical expenses for the 13,344 people hurt, time lost on jobs and burial expenses, causing the cost to be in the multi-million-dollar bracket. Forty-five people had died as a result of the accidents. Mecklenburg County Police had investigated 766 traffic accidents in 1958, injuring 300 people and killing another 25. Charlotte Police had investigated 4,300 wrecks, which injured 13,044 and killed 20 persons. It had been essentially the same story in 1957, when Mecklenburg County Police had investigated 744 accidents, in which 18 persons had died and 288 had been injured. Charlotte Police had investigated 3,847 accidents, in which 20 people had died and 11,050 had been injured. Only the figures changed and they tended to climb from year to year. A County Police captain said that the solution was through three areas, law enforcement, education and engineering. Police in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County the previous year had charged an estimated 21,000 people with moving traffic violations. Traffic engineers were continuously working on improving traffic patterns and roads were being improved. Education of drivers was a big task. The police captain said that one of the most difficult things was to find a new traffic safety theme, that if they beat the same drum over and over, the people became tone deaf. Educating the driver was a must in traffic safety planning. Mr. Slough says that one could have a perfect driving record over 25 years, give the proper signals when turning and never exceed the speed limit, keeping one's car in perfect condition, and then one day run off the road and hit a tree, a simple mistake which anyone might make, but it could be one's last mistake. Simple solution: Don't daydream or fall asleep at the wheel. Not just anyone can veer off the road and hit a tree. One could, on a slick morning, hit a patch of ice and slide into a tree, but that scenario is not included in the example. And, if one is mindful of the possibility of patches of ice around, one would adjust one's speed accordingly, so that hitting the tree would not result in any serious damage or any injury to anyone.
John Kilgo of The News reports that Dinah the dog had its day in County Recorder's Court during the morning, parading into the courtroom "as pretty as you please and showed herself off as evidence right in front of the judge's bench." Dinah was a blue tick coon dog and its owner said that it was worth $300. Dinah and its owner had gone coon hunting on Friday night, February 6, and when the owner was ready to come home, Dinah was chasing a coon. The owner said that when a good coon dog was chasing a coon, she did not quit. So he went home, leaving Dinah and another hound to go about their business. He said he knew that the two dogs would come home when they got through chasing the coon. The dogs had started home the next morning, but it had taken Dinah a little time to get there. Two men had spotted the dog running loose and they picked it up and put it in their car, not touching the other dog. The men and Dinah had gone to Mount Holly where the men, who had a few drinks, decided to spend the night in the car, curled up with Dinah. The police chief of Mount Holly had seen the men and tossed them in jail, leaving Dinah in the car. The next morning, one of the men had paid the fine and he had taken Dinah and taken off, deciding to let Dinah out of the car, at which point the coon dog had found its way home. A county patrolman was able to arrest the men after they were seen by a passing motorist putting the dog in their car. Police had to go to Bryson City to bring one of the two men back for trial. This date, the two men and Dinah had appeared in court and the judge, who knew the nature of men and dogs, told the men: "Some folks love their dogs enough to kill for stealing them." He then assessed both $50 fines and costs, and six-month suspended sentences.
On the editorial page, "Can a Point of No Return Be Fixed?" indicates that the persistent pressure for an habitual criminal law in the state had produced much heat but little light. Law enforcement officers who were fond of quick and easy solutions to the problem of chronic offenders were understandable, but legislators had a larger interest and a somewhat broader responsibility, and so would not surrender so easily to the pessimistic view that at a certain point, people were automatically beyond redemption. State and local police officials, however, believed that the point could be fixed at the fourth felony conviction, after which the offender was sentenced to life in prison.
It finds it a medieval view and one which was in conflict with the more enlightened correctional theories of modern penology. It indicates that Western society had come a long way in penology during the previous several hundred years. Only a few hundred years earlier, death was the penalty for speaking against the Articles of the Christian Faith, for three failures to attend Sunday services, for robbing a store, for killing any domestic fowl without the consent of the governor general and many other acts which appeared minor in modern times. Corporal punishment had lingered into the 20th Century. In 1959, capital punishment by the gas chamber, hanging or electrocution was ordered to pay debts to society, but not so much as previously. It finds that there was more maturity and practicality about such things at present.
"We believe in laying a stern and restraining hand upon those who need it to keep them from committing more crime. But we also believe in doing our best to find and correct conditions which have led these unfortunate people down the wrong path and in helping all who can be helped to find and fill their proper place in a society that is too civilized to seek revenge."
A few other states had enacted the "three-time loser" laws, but in so doing, had merely thrown up their hands and yielded to desperation and defeat. It cautions that it does not suggest that a convicted felon ought be placed back on the street with a gun in their hand, that there should be imposition of as much restraint as necessary to keep the person from committing more crime, but also in the process giving the offender as much help as possible, psychiatrically and otherwise, toward restoration as much as possible to a normal life.
It finds that presently, penal and correctional institutions were woefully understaffed with competent psychiatric help, that rehabilitation programs were not anything like what they ought to be and that it was a great and challenging field for law enforcement officers in which to interest themselves. It suggests that it ought be their great crusade, that salvaging human lives would bring more soul-stirring satisfaction than banishing them to society's junk pile. It suggests that it was not the quick and easy way to solve the problem of chronic offenders but it was the right way.
State Prison director William F.
Bailey, who it finds was a wise and humane man, had expressed a
civilized view of the proposal recently when he said: "I would
never like to see the human race reach the point where it loses
complete hope
The current year would see, in June, the execution in Nebraska of Charles Starkweather, convicted of one first-degree murder of a 17-year old boy, with evidence, including admissions, albeit with considerable inconsistencies and back-filling, of ten other homicides, beginning on December 1, 1957, and concluding in the ten-day murder spree in Nebraska and Wyoming in late January, 1958.
The year would conclude, just prior to Thanksgiving, with the cruel murders of four members of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, with the manhunt for the killers stretching into the new year of 1960. When finally caught in the early days of 1960, the accused and eventually convicted slayers, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, would be sentenced to die by hanging, a sentence eventually carried out in April, 1965. The latter executions, vividly depicted by author Truman Capote in his novelized account of the murders and subsequent manhunt, trial and deaths of the killers, In Cold Blood, would, in part, lead to reevaluation of the equal applicability of the death penalty across the states and across various crimes and defendants, culminating in 1972 in Furman v. Georgia, which overturned, under the Eighth Amendment, the statutory methods by which the death penalty was being exacted, ultimately requiring revision of state statutes to eliminate, to the extent possible, subjective standards of its imposition varying from state to state, which had resulted in great disparities and inequities based especially on the race and socio-economic and educational background of the accused. Eventually, in 1976, the death penalty would be restored on the basis of revised statutes, as held in Gregg v. Georgia, remedying the disparities found in Furman, providing uniformity of application usually by specifying special statutory circumstances under which the death penalty could be imposed. Eventually, in 2008, in Kennedy v. Louisiana, the death penalty was deemed violative of the Eighth Amendment when invoked for any crimes against individuals other than homicide, as distinguished from crimes against the state, such as treason, terrorism, etc.
We must pause to note the truly sickening comments we sometimes read beneath "crime videos" appearing on YouTube, which more often than not appear not only ill-informed regarding humanity and the law, but also as to a basic orientation to reality, one geared toward a milieu of authoritarianism and thus accepting of anything put forth by law enforcement as being indubitably cloaked in solemn truth until proved beyond any reasonable doubt, and then some, otherwise, cynically thus flipping the burden of proof in American jurisprudence to place it always on the accused to prove his or her innocence or be damned. For no one is accused by law enforcement except the guilty.
As an example of such a video and accompanying comments which we ran across just yesterday, we cite one labeled "How McDonald's Helped Catch an FBI Most Wanted Fugitive", supposedly providing clickbait bodycam footage from three smalltown Wisconsin police officers questioning and detaining a man whom they believed resembled a man on the FBI's ten most wanted list, whereupon, after refusing to identify himself, he, according to their version of events, not entirely clear at all from the video provided, resisted being handcuffed and, in the process, supposedly reached for the gun of one of the officers, was then zapped with a Taser, subdued and eventually charged and convicted of three felonies, all rooted in the detention.
The comments were crass and cynical, assuming uniformly that the man in question was in fact the man in the wanted poster which the cops had presented to the man, whereupon he immediately and credibly denied that it was his picture. Had the foolish commenters bothered to view the whole video through the end segment, they would have realized that he was not the man on the flyer, was not on the wanted list, and, indeed, apparently had no serious criminal history, at least none given by the video. The cops appeared to be focusing their attention on him merely because, as he put it, he was quietly eating as a paying customer inside the hick restaurant, having only made the mistake of choosing unwisely the fools from whom he received his victuals, as someone who worked there, no doubt aspiring to law enforcement, had phoned in the tip of the dangerous fugitive at large, just as they had been trained to do on "Cops", "America's Most Wanted", Fox Prop, Maria Bottleorumo, and all of that ilk of extreme rightwing programming from the last 35 years or so.
The cops in this instance, in bad need of additional training regarding how not to conquer boredom on the job, were merely picking on the man because of his status as a homeless person. He responded to their questions intelligently, without any hint of being the least bit under the influence of any intoxicant and so was not subject to any reasonable suspicion of public intoxication, the usual excuse for detaining a "suspect" who might be guilty of any one of thousands of crimes in their bin of "unsolved mysteries" and "cold case files". Nor was he loitering on the premises, another in the array of usual-suspect excuses for detention, as he had paid for his meal in the hick restaurant, probably owned by Alice. The unfortunate young man wound up serving about a month and a half of a six-month sentence, based entirely on charges stemming from the detention, it being unclear from the one-sided video as to whether he was convicted of any more than misdemeanors, and was then released without any detainers from other jurisdictions, was thus definitely not the man who was wanted by the FBI for some murder, the Bad Hombre who was subsequently arrested in Mexico about a year later.
The cops in this instance were just plain stupid, as anyone with a brain in their head could see that he did not match the wanted photo on the flyer, unless you happen to be a racist xenophobe who thinks that all people with facial hair appear Hispanic and are therefore suspects in heinous crimes, as Trump regularly promotes them, which, in Magaville, USA, is a foregone conclusion, as, in Smallville, Wisc., and other such places, a goddamn spic or nigger, or even white trash antifa, non-Magaville resident outside-agitator, better goddamn well have photo id. on him or her or be prepared to be killed or at least radically overcharged with some serious crime after being harassed, publicly humiliated, roughly detained, Tased and manhandled. Son-bitch is lucky still to be alive...
The fact is that they simply profiled and harassed the man and he had every right under the law to resist an unlawful detention and arrest, amounting to forcible kidnaping, for he had done absolutely nothing unlawful. He did not have to identify himself when they had no reasonable basis for detaining and questioning him in the first instance, as he was plainly not the wanted suspect, as any fool with eyes could see. Cops are supposed to have acuity of vision to be on the force in the first instance. We suspect that these officers knew better but decided to roust the man for being a smart-aleck and not giving them identification as they improperly ordered him to do. The case should have been dismissed by the prosecutor from the outset, once it was determined that he was not the wanted suspect. But, some jurisdictions have to make their fascist points with the fascist public they serve and protect, to maintain their elective positions and ensure that everyone is safe from rapists, murderers and molesters pouring in from Mexico because of Biden border policies.
Of course, Wisconsin is where the little teen vigilante want-to-be cop, Vile Kyle on the Prowl, with his AR-15 submachine gun, gunned down two men in cold blood and assaulted another before being hailed a "hero" by Trump and Magaville residents following his acquittal on homicide charges in Kenosha a few years ago during the Trump I regime. (We see where the Teepee people are still at it, trying to distinguish and justify Vile Kyle's 2020 actions as justifiable in some manner while managing to find ground to condemn Alex Pretti's actions in Minneapolis in 2026, though both carried weapons, the former illegally and openly brandished, Rambo-style, and used to kill, while the latter had his pistol legally, safely holstered and never once mentioned or brandished in any manner, but nevertheless finding Mr. Pretti's purely verbal protestant interactions, having nothing to do with force or threat of same, somehow to have provoked law enforcement sufficiently to justify his death at their hands, while Vile Kyle politely raised his hands in surrender to police after killing two innocent people, "respectful" thereby of law enforcement, a convenient bit of politically self-interested rationalization stretched so far back on itself as to suggest a contortionist's performative slip under a two-inch bar, to accommodate and amaze the Teepee podcast audience, so easily transfixed by that which they wish to hear and come to the well to hear, for which the Teepee people are infamous, the founder's previous reason for being, to lie like hell every day while raking in the chips amid the bits and pieces of proselytes' freedom to think independently of the Teepee.)
In any event, we have to wonder why we ever bothered to study and practice the law through many toilsome years only to have some online idiot, probably 12 or 13 years old, if that, or at least displaying that level of maturity and understanding, proclaim his or her absolute knowledge of the law-in-fact while setting aside in the process the Constitution and saying, in effect, to hell with justice and fairness as that is too soft and spongy 'cause it's best to err, if at all, on the side of caution when faced with an obvious desperado from somewhere south of the border, judging by the cut of the person's hair, length and style of facial hair and clothing, not suitable wear for hick restaurant personnel at the At-the-Ready 24-7, on duty, ever vigilant and prepared to take the field against the horde of threatening members of the public daily entering their midst with all kinds of "orders" directed at good American citizens. Hell, we don't need no badges. We don't got to show you no stinking badges.
In short, we are very tired of seeing such comments obviously inspired by Fox Prop and the like of the mainstream meteors. Hold your silly opinions for consumption in private company at Wally's What-a-Meal, while consuming those juicy postage-stamp sized nothing burgers, artificially flavored and colored fresh catch o' the day frozen fish delights, fried to greasy Sir Frankie Crisp French connections and no-milk shakes du jour, Donny's favorite ersatz meal, or at least inform yourselves fully before venturing them in a public forum in derogation of a person's rights, entitled to the presumption of innocence in fact, and to be free from libel, not just some afterthought expressed incidentally in obligatory statement of company policy by the gaggle of rabble-gabbers—that is, if you want to have any freedom left at the end of the day.
By the way, it was not a McDonald's, as there were no yellow arches in evidence, save maybe those of the cops, and no McDonald's would have advertised in its window such an un-American drink as a "Dulce de Leche Frappe"—though closer investigation of the latter point corrects us, betraying how long it has been since we set foot in a McDonald's, which in 1960 was a decent place to eat, at least relative to the prices, long before the Trump tariffs made meat, including hot dogs, wholly unaffordable, and long after its dead-on-arrival forerunner, Smoot-Hawley, helped to usher in Germaniacal Nazism, even if, in the latter instance, it was appropriately Congress, and not just President Hoover, who was responsible for that one. It is axiomatic that those who fail to study history, from the Days of McKinley, are condemned to repeat it.
"Labor Reform: Put First Things First" indicates that the rhubarb which had killed the Kennedy-Ives labor reform bill the prior year would be reenacted in the current year unless Congress would get a tight grip on its pugnacity. The reason, it finds, was that both the Senator's new bill and the one proposed by the Administration attempted to tackle two chores at once, to correct the type of extortion, bribe-taking and union strong-arm methods revealed in the McClellan Rackets Committee hearings regarding the Teamsters, and to amend the Taft-Hartley Act, which contained the ground rules for collective bargaining. It finds it too much to expect to resolve both problems at once.
Most Senators and Representatives agreed on the need for anti-corruption legislation. There was not much difference in the current bill proposed by Senator Kennedy and that of the Administration regarding the manner in which corruption ought be controlled as both would make misappropriation of union funds a crime, require democratic union elections, bar bribery of union officials by management or management "middlemen", require honest trusteeship arrangements between international unions and locals, and require unions and management to file detailed annual reports outlining union financial and trusteeship procedures, and other practices bearing on the activities prohibited by the bills. Where the bills differed greatly was in the manner in which the Taft-Hartley Act ought be changed, the Kennedy bill containing revisions favored by most unions and the Administration measure containing revisions favored by business.
The order of priority, it suggests, was obvious, that legislation to protect labor, management and the public from gangsterism was needed immediately and that nothing should stand in the way of obtaining a suitable law dealing specifically with corruption. An anti-corruption bill should be passed first and once it was out of the way, separate measures dealing with the Taft-Hartley Act could be considered on their own merits.
"A Smoking Pine Knot Needn't Blaze" indicates that there was a newspaper legend from the Spanish-American War period which told of a reporter who could not find any fighting and duly reported such to his stateside superiors, having received the reply: "You just write the news, we'll take care of the war." (That particular story was adopted in "Citizen Kane", attributed to Charles Foster, himself.)
It finds that on a smaller scale that might be the case in Fairfield County, S.C., where school consolidation attempts had brought a journalistic cry of "secession", a strong word even in a South Carolinian's vocabulary. The county appeared split on the issue of consolidating its five high schools into one. It suggests that there might be angry people who wished to join neighboring Richland County, but that until the picture evolved more clearly and all votes were cast, the case appeared to be a "smoldering pine knot with some elements of the press pumping madly at the bellows."
"The people cast into the news might find this sudden spotlight bright enough for them to take a less emotional stand before they tip over the applecart."
"Cultural Note" indicates
that the current issue of Chapel Hill's Carolina Quarterly
contained a short story titled, "A Walk on the Stepped-on Side
with a Man with Golden Hair Growing out of a Golden Toe", by John D. Keefauver of the Monterey Peninsula Herald
A piece from the Florida Times-Union, titled "Touchiness in Dialects", indicates that a man described as a "Southern Will Rogers" ought be well received in nearly all circles. Such was the reputation of North Carolina humorist Ed Harding. "His talent for telling dialect stories is consistent with the Rogers characterization and is in the tradition of the South. For some of the nation's most celebrated dialect authors have come out of the South, namely, Georgia's Joel Chandler Harris and A. B. Longstreet, Tennessee's Roark Bradford, South Carolina's DuBose Heyward and Mississippi's Irwin Russell."
It finds that the proof that Mr. Harris had achieved a solid place in the literary hall of fame was in the fact that his Uncle Remus stories were being analyzed for all kinds of subtle meanings. The use of dialects and mimicry of speech accents was a sensitive business and the speaker had to choose his audience when using them.
Part of the trouble was that there were too many pressure groups, too many who were quick to take offense at a portrayal. The revival of "Porgy and Bess", based on Mr. Heyward's book, had brought out that black people had been offended by the way members of the race were depicted in it.
On the other hand, when "Green Pastures", an adaptation of Mr. Bradford's story, "Ol' Man Adam an' His Chillun", had been shown before a national audience, a number of Southerners had complained because all of the residents of heaven were depicted as black.
"So much of our sensitiveness is a joke anyway and ought to be laughed at. The more we laugh at ourselves and our foibles the better off we are. The nation needs more Ed Hardings, Joel Chandler Harrises, et al."
Drew Pearson indicates that the story of the heroism of Secretary of State Dulles could not be told in full for some time. He says that when he had been in Mexico for the inauguration of President Lopez Mateos, he reported that Secretary Dulles was suffering great pain, had two doctors standing by one night, but had gone through the ordeal of shaking hands with several thousand Americans at an embassy reception, plus the formalities of the Mexican inauguration, without letting anyone know how ill he had been. Back in Washington, Mr. Dulles had rested a few days and then flown to Paris for the meeting of NATO. The European statesmen who sat opposite him had no idea that they were talking to a sick but courageous man.
He returned to Washington to find his doctors amazed at his stamina and sternly warned that he would have to slow down, which he did for awhile, going to the West Indies and then returned to throw himself into the pressing problems of the visit of Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan and the Berlin crisis.
The President had argued with him and threatened to order him out of the State Department, finally decided that Mr. Dulles would never be happy if he were not at work. Mrs. Dulles had agreed. Most women wanted their husbands to retire after a certain age, but Mrs. Dulles, knowing her husband, knew that he lived only to plot the pressing foreign affairs toward the goal of peace and that if he retired, he would be restless, unhappy, and might not last long.
Shortly before he had gone to Europe the last time, his pains had started returning but he refused to be hospitalized. In London, he did not tell Prime Minister Harold Macmillan that he was ill and would have to undergo another operation. Nor had he told Premier Charles de Gaulle of France of the issue.
When he returned to Washington, he was wracked with pain and fatigue. Undersecretary of State Christian Herter had been in South Carolina taking warm baths for his arthritis, which at times made it difficult for him to walk. Mr. Dulles urged Mr. Herter to finish his treatments. Meanwhile, Mr. Dulles had gone to the hospital and continued to direct major State Department policy from his bed. His doctors had told him that the odds were very much against his returning to any active day-to-day direction of the State Department. But the dedicated Secretary was determined to settle the Berlin crisis. Fate had intervened and on Saturday, it had been announced that Mr. Dulles had cancer and would be forced to continue his leave of absence while undergoing radiation therapy.
Doris Fleeson indicates that once the status quo of the Berlin situation appeared to have been breached, suggestions for dealing with it along with the reunification of Germany and even the whole European position had been coming from sources high and low, afterthoughts having been pent up by inflexibilities on both sides. It was in marked contrast with only a short time earlier when all sides appeared bereft of ideas capable of producing hopeful change in the cold war. Some of the ideas presently being presented were useless on their face and some were even dangerous, but she finds that it ought be a good thing to get discussions going again, as talk was infinitely less dangerous than war.
On the theory that the position of Berlin could not be dealt with without also dealing with the whole question of a unified Germany, that notion appeared to be acceptable to the U.S., its allies and to the Soviets. It was also true that the question of a unified Germany could hardly be dealt with without bringing up the whole European position which it would deeply impact.
The practical difficulty of the situation was that if there was too great a task set for the upcoming meeting of foreign ministers, the meeting would be less likely to result in the kind of agreement which would settle the immediate problem, the future of Berlin. Planning an agenda which was big enough to encompass the possibilities while at the same time limited enough to fall within the practicalities would be one of the great tasks to be accomplished before there was any meeting held.
The direction of State Department thinking had been demonstrated by the offer to have representatives of both the West and East German governments present at the meeting as attaches of official delegations. That had been followed with the suggestion that the same might be done for representatives of Poland and Czechoslovakia, a bland way to pull the tail of the Russian bear. There could be nothing more desirable to the governments of Poland and Czechoslovakia, as they were as vitally concerned as France in what would happen to Germany, as they were nearer to Germany than the Soviet Union, and for all the intimacy of their association with the Russians, they might have different ideas of where their interests would lie from the Soviets.
Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana had reminded the Senate that nine months earlier he had warned of the coming crisis in Germany. He said: "The question was never would Germany be unified. It was when and how Germany would be unified. We may now have begun to comprehend the 'when'; the actual process of unification is likely to begin this year. Only one question remains: how is Germany to be unified? Will it be by conflict, by negotiation, or by some mixture of the two? That is the question which is impelling us and the rest of the world towards the coming crisis in Germany."
Robert C. Ruark, in Moroto, Uganda, indicates that a man had come into their camp in Kinna in the Kenyan desert recently holding a note from the game warden which said: "Elsa, my tame lioness, has recently been released on the river at Duigie Kaite Rock, about a mile and a half below the crossing at the Kinna Tharake tract. Please avoid camping in that area, as Elsa is extremely friendly and might walk into the tent. Should she appear unexpectedly in a camp or at a car, there is no cause for alarm. She will merely make friends, in which case the best thing to do is give her a large piece of meat and quietly move away. Shots fired in hearing distance are quite likely to attract her, also. It would be much appreciated if you would kindly refrain from shooting any lions in the vicinity of the area described, as I am exceedingly anxious for Elsa to join up with a lion and there appears to be only one male here."
Mr. Ruark says that he did not wish to shoot any lions or lionesses but as he had seen four lions that morning, none of which had been Elsa, he became worried that he might not be able to distinguish Elsa, who only wanted to play, from some other lioness, and also how large a piece of meat he should carry with him at all times so that he could quietly go away from something weighing about 250 pounds, equipped with fangs and claws, wanting to make friends with him. He knew the senior game warden who had written the note and regarded him as a nice man and lover of all wild animals, but believed him a little shook up one night when Elsa had come home from a promenade to case the local lions and brought back a wild boyfriend into the tent.
Mr. Ruark had presented the issue of
identification to his companions and they arrived at no satisfactory
conclusion. He had always gotten along well with cats, including one
tame leopard, but it seemed to him that one could take cat-loving too
far, as a lion in one's lap was not a Siamese kitten. They decided
that they would all keep large pieces of meat handy in case Elsa
showed up and that they would not shoot any potential boyfriends, and
when a lioness had stuck its nose out of a bush recently, a friend of
his said, "My, what a large hyena
But as time had worn on, the meat they kept handy for Elsa had become gamy and they could only shoot so many things on a license and so they picked up the game warden's communiqué and reread it carefully, and when they came to the last part of paragraph three, they knew they had it made and packed up the tents, luggage, guns and other equipment and quietly moved away.
He says that as far as he knew, Elsa
still roamed freely and might now be knitting things for twins as
there had been a big male and four young cubs in the area. He thinks
it would be fun to learn some year how all of Elsa's romance on the
plains had turned out, but says they had better have a large piece of
meat handy because even tame lionesses had been known to get hungry,
and a hungry lion
A letter from Douglas B. Sterrett of
Charlottesville, Va., refers to the article, "Brown Mountain Light Mystery Believed Solved", appearing February 5, wishing to add
a few notes, especially since his name had been called into the
controversy at the end of the piece. He says that he had been detailed by the Geological
Survey sometime before 1915 to report on the Brown Mountain lights,
but that none of his notes were available, though he would impart
that which he could recall. An Episcopal minister, whose name was
forgotten, had led him out along Jonas Ridge and pointed out the
location of the appearance of the lights on the top of Brown Mountain
Maybe it's the restless spirit of the bride whose new husband was not as she thought, using a lantern to search the hills for the head of the groom she believed she married, after he was hit by the train and rendered crazy
A letter writer responds to a letter published February 12 regarding the question of which nation would reach the moon first, Russia, "a godless nation", or the U.S., a "Christian nation". She indicates that it was good to be inclined to think that all Americans were Christians and could conquer all. "If we will look around us we will see reasons for being afraid of the space situation. Is it a Christian nation that cannot keep from fighting each other to keep our races separated? To attend church on Sunday, and kick our neighbor in the teeth during the week for a few dollars, to enjoy luxuries while some starve—can we still feel God is exclusively for us?" She finds that in reality, perhaps Russia's success in going toward the moon was God's way of bringing people back down to earth. "Before we can be so sure of who will win this space race, let's first win this empty space of love for our fellow-men here on earth. Let's take a good look at ourselves."
Framed Edition
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