The Charlotte News
Monday, February 23, 1959
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Havana that revolutionary firing squads had shot nine more former soldiers and policemen of the Batista regime this date, extending the unofficial total of war crimes executions to 325. Among the dead had been former Lt. Valeriano Dupeyron Silva and three troopers convicted of torturing and hanging four University of Havana students who had been sympathizers with Fidel Castro's rebels, in an incident alleged to have occurred four days prior to the New Year's Day flight of dictator Fulgencio Batista to the Dominican Republic. The four had been shot at Pinar Del Rio, in western Cuba, along with three other men convicted by revolutionary tribunals. Two former policemen, a lieutenant and a patrolman, had been executed at La Cabana fortress in Havana. The trial of Lt. Col. Ricardo Luis Grao, 45, charged by the revolutionary government of being one of "the top three" war criminals, had gotten underway at La Cabana. The two others, Maj. Jesus Sosa Blanco and Capt. Pedro Morejon, had been executed. Like them, Col. Grao was accused of murder and other misdeeds during civil war campaigning in the easternmost Oriente Province. Meanwhile, the tourist business had decidedly picked up. Hundreds of persons arrived from Miami to take advantage of a three-day package special offered by Cuban Airlines and hotels. Miami University and high school students were in Havana for a Cuban holiday the following day and had hit it off well with the bearded young rebel soldiers. A lot of the visitors had their pictures taken with the soldiers. Economically, the coffee stabilization institute had announced a sharp drop in coffee production. The present crop was 484,000 quintales, that is, 100-pound bags, under the previous year's total of 690,000.
At Fort Bragg, N.C., it was reported that General George C. Marshall had weakened this date, with his condition remaining serious. In a medical report on the 78-year old General, his attending Army physician said that he showed an indication of an involvement of the pituitary gland, which had complicated his treatment. The doctor explained that the complication concerned the feeding of the General, which previously had been by intravenous solution and through a plastic tube into his stomach. He had recently suffered a second stroke, after having suffered an initial stroke on January 15, and also had a mild bout with pneumonia, which the doctor said was now under control.
In Berlin, N.H., it was reported that a 20-man band of snow-experienced men had searched the Littleton area this date for two doctors who had disappeared on Saturday on a 70-mile mercy flight from Berlin to Lebanon. The group, wearing snowshoes and carrying survival gear, had included two doctors who were members of the Dartmouth Outing Club which had several other crews standing by in case they were needed. Some 40 aircraft also had flown over the area seeking any trace of the two doctors, one being an experienced pilot and instructor at Dartmouth Medical College and the other being a member of the Dartmouth Medical College faculty, last seen in their Piper Comanche aircraft on Saturday afternoon. The search had been prompted by at least a half-dozen reports, according to search coordinators, that a small plane had been heard around Littleton on Saturday. That area, just west of the White Mountains, was fairly flat and there was an abandoned airstrip there. The ground searchers also dragged two toboggans with them in case they found the two doctors who had come to Berlin on Saturday to treat a heart patient. Grave fears were expressed for the men as the temperature in the area dropped well below zero on Saturday and Sunday nights and was only two above zero this date. Guards posted on Sunday night said that they saw no sign of any outdoor fires in the mountainous region. Authorities said that it would be difficult to survive outdoors for more than 24 hours. Some 20 Air National Guard and Civil Air Patrol planes and two helicopters had scanned the area. An estimated 40 Civil Air Patrol groups and numerous volunteers plowed through the deep snow for any sign of the men or the plane. The missing plane was equipped with the latest type of radio equipment but no distress signals had been received. The plane had enough gasoline for two hours of flying time when it had taken off on Saturday and run into snow squalls.
In Corpus Christi, Tex., it was reported that a man and his young family, marooned for three days the previous week on a tiny beacon in the Gulf of Mexico, had lived to tell about it. The 23-year old man had written a pathetic little diary to let relatives know what had happened to them, saying that he knew that he and his wife and three children would die there within sight of the shore. He said that he had written the diary so that when they found their bones, they would know what had happened. He and his family, including three children ages 10 months, two years and three years, were recovering in a hospital. Crewmen of a passing shrimp boat had snatched them from the tiny navigation light on Saturday afternoon. They had scrambled onto the light, just 7 miles from downtown Corpus Christi, on Wednesday after their 26-foot cabin cruiser had broken up in heavy seas which had lashed Corpus Christi Bay.
In Seaside, Ore., it was reported that two boys, one injured by a 35-foot fall, had been pulled up a rugged 100-foot cliff from an Oregon beach the previous night in an after-dark rescue race against incoming ocean tides. The two had lowered a rope and climbed down the face of the rugged cliff to the beach below, but had been unable to climb back up on the wet rope. One of the boys, 17, had climbed almost to the top but had then started sliding, slipping faster and faster and finally falling the last 35 feet, suffering an injured shoulder and a cut hand. The other, 18, had remained below. A couple leading a hiking party in the rugged coastal area some 20 miles down the coast from Seaside, had seen the boy fall and signaled that they would go for help. A 16-man rescue party had reached the scene and a doctor was lowered in the darkness, saying that they had arranged that he would use the boys' rope as a signal but had lost it in the dark going down. He and the two boys were then stranded, which had become apparent to the rescuers above, who lowered a State policeman halfway down, spotting the three with a high-powered flashlight and relaying their hand signals. The injured boy, in a basket litter, and the other boy, along with the doctor, had been pulled up safely. Just as they got the basket to the top, it had become hung up, according to the doctor, but they were able to swing it around enough to jar it loose and get the boy up. The doctor, a veterinarian, was the last to be pulled from the beach, just as the tide had begun closing in on the narrow strip of rock and sand. The injured boy was taken to a hospital where he was reported in good condition.
In Las Vegas, Nev., it was reported that an airlift of tents and food had begun this date for 700 migratory workers camped near a stream 65 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Governor Grant Sawyer the previous night had declared a state of emergency because the workers were without food or housing. The workers had come to the radish, onion and tomato fields at Moapa a month early because of a boll weevil invasion of cotton fields in Arizona. They were camped out without work, waiting for the harvest. Air National Guard planes loaded Army tents and the Red Cross, religious and civic groups had organized food donation drives for the workers. The State health director was flying to Moapa to investigate the possibility of an epidemic from bad water. The workers were getting all of their drinking water from a small creek.
In Henderson, N.C., it was reported that stone-throwing, the tipping of a car and a bombing had begun another week of work at strike-wracked Harriet-Henderson Cotton Mills this date. Police had arrested one man, a striker, in connection with one outburst of early-morning violence and hinted that other arrests would be made during the day. The total number of workers returning to the plants since they had been reopened the prior Monday had reached about 275 by this date. Management had issued a weekend warning which, in effect, told employees to return to work or risk losing their jobs. The third bomb blast since the reopening had occurred during the wee hours of the morning. Police said that some sort of explosive had been set off in front of the home of a plant electrician, but no one had been injured. Two other explosions had occurred the previous week. In another pre-dawn incident, the home of another male employee had been stoned. Police said that eight or ten window panes had been broken. As the plant gates had opened this date, several automobiles carrying returning strikers to work had been stoned. The sheriff said that some 30 strikers had rushed the automobile driven by a man who managed to squeeze past them and get inside the mill gates. Another man's car was turned on its side and then set upright. Neither the driver nor his two female passengers were believed to have been injured. The man arrested had been charged in connection with that incident. The normal area troop assignment of about 20 State Highway Patrolmen had been available in the strike-bound area. Between 400 and 500 members of the two locals of the Textile Workers Union of America had attended a meeting on Sunday in the Vance County Courthouse, and the regional director had told the members not to be fooled by the announcement of the president of the Mills that striking employees would lose their jobs if they did not return this date. The strike had begun the prior November 17 when negotiations regarding a new contract had broken down. Officials said that the bone of contention was management's insistence on elimination of a provision calling for arbitration of disputes between workers and management. The mill employed 1,200 people.
In Raleigh, it was reported that Governor Luther Hodges had said this date that the state ought retain its constitutional provision for a "general and uniform system of public schools". In another comment on the revised constitution proposed by a special study commission, the Governor said that he did not think it "sacred" that the state should restrict its governor to one term and refuse him the veto power. He quickly added, however, that "Under no condition would I be interested in succeeding myself as Governor" if the Constitution were amended to permit a second successive term. The Governor said at his weekly press conference that he would reserve comment on the rest of the Constitutional Commission's recommendations until he addressed the General Assembly in about two weeks. The 1868 State Constitution would not be revised until the new Constitution would be ratified in 1971, although without the provision abandoning the one-term limitation, abolished in 1977, or allowing the governor the veto, finally permitted in 1996.
In Melbourne, Australia, Protestant church leaders this date hailed evangelist Billy Graham's week-old crusade as a big boost to the city's religious life. Anglican Archbishop Frank Woods and the American evangelist had made a good impression on the clergy, and the public had responded in "the most remarkable way". Since the prior Friday night, more than 125,000 people had heard the Reverend Graham preach at three meetings in Melbourne's open air Music Bowl. Some 70,000 people had turned out on Sunday and nearly 400 had required first aid for effects of the 93-degree heat. The president of the Methodist Church of Australia, Dr. A. H. Wood, said that his church was heartily supporting Dr. Graham and that they were extremely grateful for what he had done, that his movement had brought a greater response than expected. A Presbyterian leader said that the evangelist had a great preaching power and persuasive ability and was bound to make a profound and lasting impression on both religious and non-religious sections of the community.
John Lewellen, in this date's edition of "Lenten Guideposts", indicates that in Chicago during the 1930's when the Depression was still ongoing, there had been a theater jammed with job-hunters, a WPA dramatics project screening talent for "The Hot Mikado", a musical with an all-black cast. In the crowd of applicants was a large black woman with an anxious face, Mahalia Jackson. She was not worried about her singing ability, but was worried about being in a theater. Since early childhood, she had been taught to believe that singing in a theater or nightclub was wrong. But an elemental force had driven her to that place, against her principles and moral judgment. She was hungry. For months, her only income had been from singing gospel songs to church audiences at a dime for admission or passing the plate. She was the last to be called and she sang magnificently, "her great silver voice full of faith and yearning." She walked home and felt sure she had won, but there was no gladness in her heart. She needed the money and her husband and friends needed the food that it would buy. But she knew also that if she accepted the part, she would be violating her own principles. She prayed to the Lord for help, asking that if it was not His desire for her to sing the part, to give her a sign. When she got home, her husband ran out to meet her to give her the good news, that he had landed a job selling insurance policies from door to door for 20 cents per week. But to Mrs. Jackson, it was more than a job. It was a sign from the Lord, proof that He would take care of those who kept the faith. When the WPA people called to tell her that she had won the audition, she had astounded them by turning down the part. In the 25 years since, despite numerous offers having since run as high as $10,000 per week, Mrs. Jackson never had sung in a nightclub or in any place not appropriate for sacred music. And she had never gone hungry. The career of the world's greatest gospel singer, as the critics called her, had begun obscurely 47 years earlier on a Mississippi levee near New Orleans. Her father had been a dockworker and a barber who served as a minister on Sunday. Her mother had died when she was four and from then on she had been raised by her uncle and aunt, who had no children. Economic necessity had made her leave school after the eighth grade and go to work. When she was 16, she moved to the South Side of Chicago, joined the Greater Salem Baptist Church, and promptly had become the featured singer in a quintet which toured various churches throughout the Baptist convention. She said, "Even when I was just a little kid you could hear my voice up and down the levee!" She knew hard times in Chicago, working as a hotel maid and later packing dates in a factory for $7.50 per week. The rest of the piece is on an inside page.
In Galesburg, Ill., it was reported that a psychologist, Dr. Harry F. Harlow of the University of Wisconsin, had told a Knox College audience this date that psychologists did not pay enough attention to love, at least professionally. He said that love had "a vast interest and fascination for human beings" and was not "the exclusive property of adolescents and adults." He was doing research work on love for the National Institutes of Health and said that he had concentrated primarily on what it meant to babies. Baby monkeys, he said, loved a soft, warm, smooth-textured surrogate parent device which provided a handy feeding arrangement, if they were introduced to it early enough in life. But he said that there was a lot more to love which could stand exploration by scientific means, indicating that the trouble was that psychologists were accepting a "guesswork" valuation of love.
On the editorial page, "Traffic Safety Can Be a Reality Only with the Public's Support" indicates that 45 people had died and 1,764 injured in Mecklenburg County the prior year in 5,066 traffic accidents, resulting in damage to personal property of about 1.5 million dollars. The trend in those figures was upward.
It finds that it was a personal thing involving everyone, as traffic accidents in 1958 had amounted to about one for every 20 vehicles on the roads. Fortunately, something was being done.
Public demand had led to the formation of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Safety Association, which appealed for funds as its volunteers sought its initial budget. Its founders realized that they would be amateurs in a professional game. They believed in the need for traffic safety, but they knew that they had to employ full-time professional help to organize, plan and execute a program which could be of use in keeping people alive. Businessmen comprised the Association's board and they could not match the time needed for the presentation. Broadly, the program was for driver improvement, pedestrian protection, safer streets and better vehicles. Another important factor was that all of the diversified voices for safety would be heard through one informed office.
It finds that the Association would have an important function as a lobby in City and County government, that it would have the facts of the problems and the solutions and could tell officials what had to be done and the expenditures needed for it. It aspired to reach the heart of the traffic safety problem.
There were 45 people who would be glad to broadcast the program at present, but could only be mute testimony to its need, as they had died in traffic accidents the previous year.
"The Absentee Ballot: A Cancer To Kill" indicates that it was discouraged at news from Raleigh the previous week, involving the civilian absentee ballot and the apparent reluctance of the Legislature to move against it, once again. The absentee ballot was still used in general elections in the state and was an open sore because it had been the major source of voting scandals.
There had been strong indications in the past of election fraud linked to buying and selling of absentee ballots. An ugly example had been in 1954 when the State Secretary of State, Thad Eure, charged that absentee ballots had been sold for as much as $85 apiece in a tight county sheriff's race. Compared to the total vote, it had been a minor matter, but even with this suspicion of fraudulent ballots, losing candidates would raise a cry heard across the state. The resulting publicity was always bad and hurt politics in turn, which could not afford to be hurt.
The absentee ballot served a purpose for the serviceman, which it finds ought be its limit. The inherent evils of retaining it otherwise were too great. The rotten apple would continue to contaminate the election barrel through the use of those ballots. It finds it politically foolish to retain the provision and the death of the absentee ballot would do much to maintain the public's confidence in its delegates.
"Electronics for the Classroom" comments on the news story the previous day from UCLA that Dr. Evan Keislar had invented a teaching machine which could teach algebra to sixth-grade pupils.
It finds it a fiendish device, that even at the college level, dealing with mature students, such a teacher would graduate a mass-production class of automatons which would not need to think for themselves. There would be no English professors who liked to relate tales of Paris in 1918, no math teachers to brighten a dark winter day with a discussion of skin diving as a hobby, no banter, no wit, no process of learning how to think.
It finds that there was one bright
thought in considering that monster
"Life in America" relates that a woman arrested in Bedford, Ind., recently had been charged with salting her neighbor's shrubbery so that it would not be as pretty as hers.
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Country Boys, Take Heart!" refers to a News editorial titled "Mecklenburg's a Country Boy at Heart", finding it indicative of a split personality, the clash between country and city in a community which was a "real metropolis" but still had a country boy's heart. It finally finds it to relate back to a sense of insecurity or guilt complex.
Charlotte was soon going to entertain members of the General Assembly, and was assuring the country boys among the membership that there was no need to fear the big city, its temptations or its wiles. Nothing would happen, according to The News, to those legislators "east of the Haw" who had always suspected "that Charlotte is the abode of the damned (including scalawags, carpetbaggers, deadend kids, modern Republicans, libertines and would-be cigarette taxers)". It assured that it was merely the country boy who had grown too big for his overalls and had to import a few Yankee tailors to produce new britches.
It finds that the whole piece had been buttering-up of the country boys east of the Haw and that it would take more than words to win them over. It suggests that it might help to pilot them through the elephant jungle and give them a whiff of Sugar Creek, to tell them how sharply Charlotte's cotton acreage had been cut, and allow them a look at extensive farm operations along Highway 29's new bypass.
It wonders whether the welcoming committee planned a chitlin strut, would have barbecue stands erected on Independence Square and install spittoons in public buildings, with the city and county fathers turning out wearing one galus.
It warns that the boys east of the Haw were the slickest hoss-traders ever seen and that any city slicker who sought to sell them the Navy yard or the Mint might wind up owning Pamlico or Albemarle Sound or an unbuilt bridge across the Alligator or Cape Fear Rivers.
"But, bless your little country heart, Charlotte, we're only small-city spoofing. We hope you and the honorables have a fine time together and that all principals at the hoedown get what they're looking for."
The editors note: "Y'all go
jump in the swamp
Drew Pearson indicates that Democratic leaders, stung by the President's evangelistic outbursts against the "spenders", were taking a sharp look at how the President practiced the economy he preached. Their findings revealed that he had been the most extravagant President in U.S. history. He had spent twice as much to run the White House as former President Truman ever had. During Mr. Truman's last year in office, his operating expenses had been $2,467,000, while President Eisenhower's during the fiscal year ending the prior June 30 had been $5,013,750. The President had also left the White House out of his fervent campaign to balance the ensuing year's budget. While he ordered everyone else to slash expenses, he had boosted the White House budget by $332,250. Mr. Truman had been able to get along with an office staff of 245, while President Eisenhower had added another 153 employees to the payroll. The latter had also increased the White House work crew from 62 to 71. Among their new duties were hunting lost golf balls, and keeping the squirrels off of the President's putting green. The cost of operating the entire executive office had soared even more spectacularly under President Eisenhower, including all of the octopus arms of the White House, such as the National Security Council, the Budget Bureau, the Office of Defense Mobilization, and the Council of Economic Advisors.
Mr. Truman had spent $6,703,000 on the whole works during his last year in office, while President Eisenhower's budget for the executive office during the current year had been $52,736,250. The following year, he was asking for $91,880,000. Of the increase, 89 percent would go to the newly created office of Civil and Defense Mobilization. But a full 5 percent would go to the same Budget Bureau which was supposed to enforce the President's economy edict.
Many of the President's little luxuries were charged to other Government departments and so did not show up in the White House budget. The two helicopters which transported him and his staff to Gettysburg on weekends were charged to the Marine Corps. Sometimes he made the trip in a light, twin-engine plane, kept at his disposal by the Air Force.
The President had not waited long after moving into the White House to get rid of President Truman's hand-me-down plane and order a deluxe new model for himself. The Air Force had paid 3.8 million dollars out of its pocket for the Columbine, which was decorated to suit the First Lady's taste. The previous year, the President had decided that the plane needed another restroom and running water, but the story had leaked before the new plumbing was installed, causing such unfavorable publicity that he had withdrawn the order.
Presidential launches, the Barbara Ann and Susie E., were maintained and operated by the Navy, one being dispatched to Newport, R.I., the previous year to ferry the President between the golf course and his vacation quarters.
The President had taken more vacations at taxpayer expense than any other President in history. His biggest year had been 1957, when he had taken 22 vacations, counting long weekends at Camp David and his Gettysburg farm. The previous year, he had been away from the White House 16 times and already in the current year, he had been on four brief vacations.
Doris Fleeson indicates that the Senate was seeing very little at present of Vice-President Nixon, with the Republican minority of 34 having little more contact with him than the entire Senate. The Vice-President was keeping busy cultivating the state party organizations which he hoped would nominate him for the presidency in 1960. When he was not doing that, he was concentrating on improvement of his position as a national figure, especially in the area of foreign policy.
With his new job as head of the President's committee on the problem of inflation, he might possibly emerge somewhat later as the principal Administration spokesman in opposition to the Democratic theory which was the present responsibility of Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois, who would speak as chairman of the Joint Economic Committee of the Congress.
The Vice-President also had plans for traveling abroad when times were more propitious, but in that area he would likely propose and the President would dispose.
Insofar as the work of the Senate, the Vice-President was little missed. The chance for his tie-breaking vote would rarely appear in the present session with 64 Democrats in the majority. Republican Senators were taking a detached view of the Vice-President's preoccupation with his personal ambitions, saying that he could not help them and many admitted they could not do much for him. That was particularly true of the 11 Republicans who were standing for re-election in 1960. Those unhappy few were besieged in many ways.
Six of them were from the West and Midwest, where the Democrats had been making their most spectacular gains. They were resigned to the fact that one cause of that, Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson, would still be around during the 1960 campaign. Those six Senators were Thomas Martin of Iowa, Carl Curtis of Nebraska, Karl Mundt of South Dakota, Andrew Schoeppel of Kansas, Gordon Allott of Colorado, and Henry Dworshak of Idaho.
The three New Englanders were Senators Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, Margaret Chase Smith of Maine and Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts, each of whom had unhappy visions of a Democratic ticket with Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts in the first or second spot, acting as a magnet for voters of that region.
Two liberals, Senators Clifford Case of New Jersey and John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, completed the group. They were anti-Nixon in spirit and unquestionably would prefer to run on a ticket headed by Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York.
Whatever their ideology, Republicans in Congress were saying with increasing boldness that the President was no longer an issue politically, did not believe he could hurt or help in the 1960 election. Another factor which had the effect of diminishing the Vice-President's Senate role was the aggressive and expansionist manner in which the new Republican leader, Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, had taken hold. Like his opposite number, Senator Johnson, Senator Dirksen was taking full advantage of his perquisites and prerogatives, including lavish office space. Having no other visible expectations, he clearly intended to be a Senate man in the fullest sense of the word.
There was no question of hurt feelings or fresh chill in the situation in the Senate involving Mr. Nixon. He had always been regarded as a lone wolf by his Republican colleagues, cooperative politically but without personal warmth.
Robert C. Ruark, in Kaabong, Uganda, indicates that they had just set up shop in the north of Uganda, close to the Sudan, in a still-unspoiled part of Africa. They were only the second modern safari to pass through the area and permission to enter was quite difficult to obtain without very close scrutiny. It was a restricted area and he doubts whether very few Karamojans had ever been as far away as nearby Kitale, Kenya.
It was probable that as little was known of the Karamojans as of any tribe in Africa. They were big people, coal black, who still went about proudly naked as they had done 50 years earlier when an Englishman named Bell literally settled the country single-handed on elephant safaris. Mr. Bell had been a young man alone in an Africa which had just been born, an elephant hunter who had heard of the fabulous elephant herds to be found in the area. It was at a time when the Lado enclave was up for grabs and nobody knew for sure who owned what on both sides of the Congo. Slavery was rampant, and raiders had come in from Ethiopia to kill and loot. Mr. Bell, a white man alone on a foot safari with as many as 90 bearers, had been the first white man whom the fierce Karamojans had ever seen. What he saw was what they were seeing at present, huge, fierce-looking, completely naked natives, whose adornments were mainly ornate headdresses of mud and feathers, who carried spears and a small article of comfort, a wooden crest, which also converted into a stool. The warriors were enormously scarred and they wore accomplishment scars on both arms, on the right for men killed and on the left for women killed.
They warred on each other constantly, for pleasure, for women, for blood and for cattle. Cattle, as in much of Africa, was much more than money as a root of human evil. As a closed area, Karamoja at present was much as Mr. Bell had found it, except that it was not in the elephant country. Lions and leopards pestered the flocks and their dramatically naked warriors still swooped down on rival villages for raids, requiring the district commissioner to send a flock of Sakaris to teach a lesson to the raiders.
Considerable road-building was ongoing at present, coming as a shock that modern earth-moving equipment was being worked by completely stark savages. Occasionally a machine would rend a native, as one had done recently, just as recently a lion had gotten a herd-boy.
He finds it a strange and wonderful country, unlike the parts of Africa he knew best in Kenya, Tanganyika and the pants-wearing portion of Uganda. "A white face stands out as starkly as a lump of coal in a field of snow, and clothing after a while gives you an uneasy feeling that you're overdressed and somehow vulgar."
The people would give their dead, and often their dying, to the hyenas, to avoid moving the huts on which a curse fell if a death occurred inside. He supposes that if they traveled up country, the party could become the first white men whom some of the country folk had ever seen. They showed less curiosity about the white man in the old-fashioned way, and a complete lack of self-consciousness about their nakedness.
He had noticed a solicitude on the part of the few British whites who maintained the homa, the district commissioner, his assistant, the game ranger, and the isolated overseers of road construction. It was a highly paternalistic view of the Karamojan, similar to the solicitude of parents over children. The effort to maintain and preserve simple savagery in a changing world could be short-lived, given the present political stirring. He supposes that clothes, the Russians, and chaos would arrive at about the same time.
A letter writer from Lincolnton finds it hard to believe that anyone could criticize the Boy Scouts as harshly as a letter writer had on February 13. He finds it obvious that the previous writer knew very little about the Boy Scouts. He indicates that a boy had to be 11 years old before he could belong and he believes it was proper and right that the churches honored them on a given Sunday since at least some of the churches sponsored them. He indicates that the beginning of the Scout oath read, "On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country," placing emphasis on the fact that God was placed first. He says that Jesus had stated, "Suffer all little children to come unto me," and he knows of no better way for them to come unto Jesus than through the church of which Jesus was the head, whether a Boy Scout or not.
We might note also further, for the Bomerts and Booberts, couched routinely in their false piety, that they pay close attention to this date's "Lenten Guideposts", regarding Mahalia Jackson's reluctance to perform sacred songs in any venue inappropriate to the context—though we note that through time, she had somewhat relaxed that standard to accommodate television, as well as performance at the Newport Jazz Festival
Could you imagine, had he lived quite so long, the Republicans on the Senate Select Comittee investigating Watergate in 1973 having subpoenaed former President Truman, and, for good measure, former First Lady Bess Truman, in to testify about the former President's poker gatherings while in the White House and the rumors of his loose language and bourbon snifting during them, to try to cloud the primary issue over the conduct of His Highness, Mr. Nixon, caught on tapes of his own contrivance?
Well, now, listen hyere, Hunter Biden and the Biden crime fam'ly...
A letter writer from McColl, S.C., indicates that Robert C. Ruark opposed African independence, but finds his own words the most forceful argument for it which could be made. He indicates that in an article which had been published in the newspaper, Mr. Ruark had given his reasons as native ignorance, superstition and the low standard of living. The writer points out to readers, however, that those people had been colonial subjects of European powers for the previous hundred years. He indicates that if the European masters had not established schools to fight ignorance and superstition and had not drilled a well to help raise the standard of living or founded a medical center to improve health, it was about time that someone did. That would have to be the African, but he was powerless to improve his condition as long as he was chained by European colonialism. Only as a free man would the African be able to take his place in civilization alongside others.
A letter writer from Weldon, a minister, finds that a reprint of an address by State Attorney General Malcolm Seawell on February 19, in which he rapped the Southern Educational Fund, Inc., and the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee for the second time within a week, suggested that those organizations were responsible for the "kissing case" in Monroe and the voting case from Northampton County. He indicates that as the pastor of churches in Northampton County and of Louise Lassiter who had brought the registration suit, he knew that the origin of the voting suits were different from what Mr. Seawell would have the people believe. They had employed a lawyer to advise their church members and instruct them in the procedure of getting on the registration books. Not only were their members denied registration but their lawyer had been jailed, convicted and fined $500. Other indictments had been brought against him, because he had shaken a finger in protest of the registrar's rejection of their members for registration. Those indictments had placed them in court defending the rights of their lawyer. Meanwhile, their lawyer employed other lawyers and had begun the job of trying to remove the law which was disfranchising their members who wanted to vote. The struggle had carried them through the lower courts, a three-judge Federal court, and the State Supreme Court, before they had heard of the organizations criticized by the Attorney General. Any attempt to blame the suits on those organizations was without foundation. He indicates that to say that receiving help from an organization did not come from the Lord made no difference to those in need. "The devil might have brought it but the Lord sure sent it when it was needed most."
A letter writer from Salisbury finds that reading was the channel through which people were educated and that there was no substitute for the reading of books. It did not mean that a person read books while he was going through school and then stopped, but meant that he read books all of his life. He finds that it was taken for granted that a person would do about half of his reading in the field of concentration of the business he was in. But it also meant that the other half would be of a general nature, for he needed to be intelligent about many things in life where he had to be constantly making choices.
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