The Charlotte News
Friday, July 24, 1959
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports from Moscow that Vice-President Nixon had told Premier Nikita
Khrushchev face-to-face this date, in a public debate
In Geneva, it was reported that Soviet and Western foreign ministers had begun discussing the terms of a possible Berlin truce agreement in a secret session of the Big Four foreign ministers conference this date, but Western informants had said that they had made no progress. It was the first time since the second phase of the conference had started two weeks earlier that Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko had been willing to engage in an exchange of views regarding the problems directly involved in a truce instead of insisting on priority for his proposal for creation of an all-German committee. Nevertheless, U.S. officials said that progress in the procedure of the conference did not mean anything because Mr. Gromyko still insisted on the West having to accept his committee proposal in some form before he would make any firm agreement to suspend the Soviet threat to West Berlin. With the conference's eighth week nearing an end, British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd had taken a far more positive view of achievements this date than Secretary of State Christian Herter and French Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville. The Soviet Union and the Western powers, Mr. Lloyd had told Mr. Gromyko, had already succeeded in laying down the broad outlines of a Berlin agreement, covering such matters as limitation of forces and armaments in West Berlin with a pledge of no Communist action against the city for a fixed period of time, the Soviets having offered 18 months. Mr. Lloyd said: "I believe that it should be possible here or at some other meeting, perhaps at another level, to get final acceptance of this interim agreement."
The President had signed this date a 3.556 billion dollar foreign aid authorization bill, 353.2 million dollars, or 10 percent, less than recommended originally by the President. There was every indication that Congress would cut deeper into foreign aid in the forthcoming foreign aid appropriations bill to provide the actual funding for the program through the end of the 1959-60 fiscal year. The bill signed this date set maximum limits and defined policies. The biggest cut was an authorization for military arms to allies, with Congress having set the limit at 1.4 billion dollars instead of the 1.6 billion which the President had recommended. It also directed that for a two-year trial period, military foreign aid would be treated as part of the U.S. defense budget rather than as a separate item. Congress had also authorized only 155 million dollars, instead of the recommended 200 million in the fund for the President to spend in the event of unforeseen contingencies.
In Henderson, N.C., eight members of the Textile Workers Union of America had received long prison sentences on Thursday following their convictions the previous day for conspiring to dynamite facilities of the struck Harriet-Henderson Cotton Mills the prior May. The eight had included Boyd Payton, the Carolinas director of the union, who had led the long and often violent strike. The Superior Court judge sentenced Mr. Payton to between six and ten years at hard labor, saying: "I hope all of you gentlemen will someday come to understand that the law is bigger than you, bigger than the union, bigger than any organization. The good people of North Carolina will not tolerate anyone holding themselves above the law." Mr. Payton's aide, Lawrence Gore, and Charles Auslander, of Spray, N.C., a minor union official, also received between six and ten years at hard labor. All eight defendants had been convicted on the counts of conspiring to blow up an office building, the boiler room and a substation feeding power to the South Henderson plant of the mills. Of the other defendants, four had each received 5 to 7 year terms and one had received a 2 to 3 year term, the latter being Malcolm Harrell, one of the three younger defendants at 23. Notice of appeal was given by all eight defendants by their lawyers. The judge, who had a reputation for being hard but fair, told the defendants and their lawyers: "We need unions in the United States. We do not need an union or union officials who think and act like they are above the law. Fear has run rampant in Henderson and Vance County the last few months. I don't know who caused it, but it must end right here." Appellate bonds were set for each of the defendants, with the most, $25,000, set for the three defendants with the longest sentences. The judge told Mr. Gore, "According to the reputation I got when I was down here before, you are the man in charge of the violence in Henderson." The judge had presided at previous strike-connected trials. The State had primarily relied on informant evidence from a union member, an unemployed mechanic, who had infiltrated the group and provided tape recorded statements of the defendants planning the explosions to the State Bureau of Investigation. The transcripts of the taped statements, however, were not admitted into evidence by the judge because of sustained objections by the defense to extraneous matter contained in the statements, despite the heart of the statements, admissions by the defendants, being allowed under an exception to the hearsay rule, ordinarily prohibiting out-of-court statements sought to be admitted into evidence for the truth of the matter asserted.
In Chicago, it was reported that New Jersey heiress, Jacqueline Gay Hart, missing since Wednesday, had run up to a policeman in Grant Park early this date and sobbed out hysterically that she had been kidnaped in Newark, N.J. Police and agents of the FBI had immediately begun a check of her story. A Chicago deputy chief of detectives indicated that no discrepancies had been found in her story recounting being a prisoner of two kidnapers. He said that if she was acting, "she's a hell of an actress." She was the 21-year old daughter of Ralph Hart, executive vice-president of the Colgate-Palmolive Co. She had provided a distraught, rambling account of two days of terror since she had bade farewell to her 25-year old fiancé at the Newark Airport and then vanished. The FBI chief in Chicago said that the Bureau was "conducting a large-scale investigation to see whether any Federal law has been violated." Ms. Hart's arms had been bruised and there was a dark welt under her left eye, with her hair having been disheveled and her grey sheath dress showing only wrinkles of long wear. She said that she had been seized by a man at the airport as she was about to get back into her own car, when she was shoved into another car where a second man had bound and gagged her, then pushed her to the floor where she was covered with a blanket. A long automobile trip followed, during which she had been kicked sharply in the sides whenever she stirred. She related that she was confined in a bathroom for several hours before being placed in the car again and eventually pushed out in Grant Park. The Chicago detective said that the story appeared incredible at first, and he then questioned her in harsh terms, demanding to know whether it was a hoax or a publicity stunt. She had said that she would not do such a thing to hurt her parents and replied firmly that she loved them too much. The detective said he had gone over her story 20 times and there had been no discrepancies, that she had offered to take a polygraph. He said that the Chicago police would step out of the investigation after she had been reunited with her father, who had flown to Chicago from Newark, turning the case over exclusively to the FBI. She told police that her captors had discussed making "a lot of money" through the kidnaping but then decided to get rid of her because she was "too hot". She said that during nearly a day and a half of continuous driving, she had been fed a diet of candy bars, and had not been sexually molested. She said that she felt certain that she would be slain, but had been powerless, being gagged such that she could not plead or scream and that with the blindfold, she could not even cry. She said that she had never gotten a good look at the kidnapers, who had taken a 1.75-carat diamond engagement ring, an amethyst ring, a gold bracelet and a gold brooch from her. During the long period in which she laid in the automobile, she said that she heard sounds when the car paused, which she took to be dropping of coins into an automatic toll road collection box. She said that she thought the bathroom where she had been confined was a room in a private home in Chicago.
In Bassett, Va., it was reported that an ex-convict had been accused of the early morning slaying of a Henry County man and his infant daughter, and the wounding of the adult victim's mother, shot while cradling the infant in her arms. The sheriff said that the man who had done the shooting with a .30-.30-caliber rifle was 28 years old and had been recently released from the Lewisburg, W.Va., Federal reformatory after serving 30 months on a whiskey conspiracy charge. The sheriff said that the man had been due in Franklin County Court this date on a charge of assaulting his wife. The sheriff said that the slain man and his wife had left their cabin to walk to their jobs at the Bassett Furniture factories and that about 150 yards down a dirt road, the assailant had stepped from behind a clump of bushes and said: "It's been a long time." He then fired once with the rifle and the man fell dead. His wife fled back to their home with the assailant in pursuit, dashed inside and locked the door, screaming to her mother-in-law to run, and herded her three oldest daughters out the back door. The woman's mother-in-law dashed into a front bedroom and grabbed the infant, eight months old. The assailant had by that point broken in through the front door and confronted the older woman and the infant in the bedroom, firing once, killing the baby and wounding the elder woman. Her daughter-in-law had reached the safety of a neighbor's home with her other three daughters. The elder woman was reported in "fair" condition in the Martinsville General Hospital and police were still searching the area for the assailant. Bassett Furniture was located in central Virginia near the North Carolina-Virginia border.
In Chapel Hill, N.C., it was reported that UNC football coach Jim Tatum, 46, had died on Thursday night, succumbing to a highly contagious virus—which would later be identified as a rickettsia disease simliar to typhus and Rocky Mountain spotted fever, a lice-, flea-, or tick-borne illness. Feverish and delirious, his poisoned body had been covered with a red rash, as he fought during his last downhill hours valiantly and virtually alone, as only his doctors had been permitted at his bedside in the isolation ward of the North Carolina Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill. When he died, his wife had lain ill at home, apparently suffering from the same viral infection—subsequently determined in August upon her release from the hospital likely to have been Rocky Mountain spotted fever. She had taken a turn for the worse this date and was taken to the same hospital. Shortly after admission, the hospital said that her illness remained undiagnosed and it expected to have a report from her doctors later in the morning. Mr. Tatum had been visiting in Canada with his friends, coaches Clyde "Peahead" Walker of Montréal and Frank Howard of Clemson, when he had been called home after the death of his sister the previous week. He had been hospitalized with the virus the prior Saturday and since then, his condition had worsened rapidly. Physicians said that the virus had "overwhelmed" him, impacting such vital organs as his liver and kidneys. Because they could not be specific, they performed an autopsy on his body. Always the center of controversy, coach Tatum had returned to his alma mater four years earlier, succeeding fired coach George Barclay, wanting to rebuild the school into a national football power. Always talkative and jovial, he had soon become embroiled in a controversy with the student newspaper over the professionalism of college football. In Winston-Salem a few weeks later, coach Tatum had made his now-famous rebuttal to the Daily Tar Heel, saying: "It is a sad occasion when academic leaders don't have a sufficient education in athletics to realize the benefits athletes receive from the field of sport. I don't think winning is the most important thing—I think it's the only thing." He had first come to the University in 1931 from his home in McColl, S.C., and played football under then-coach Carl Snavely, achieving All-Southern Conference status. He graduated in 1935 and followed coach Snavely to Cornell University, but later returned to North Carolina as director of freshman athletics, becoming head football coach during his first stint in 1942. He then entered the Navy and served as an assistant to Don Faurot at the Iowa Pre-Flight school and then had become coach of the Jacksonville, Fla., Naval Air Station. He had gone to the University of Oklahoma in 1946, guiding that team to the Gator Bowl, then moved the following season to the University of Maryland, where he spent nine years as head coach, his teams winning 73 games against only 15 losses and four ties. His teams there had played in the Orange, Sugar and Gator Bowls and in 1953 had been named national champion, and coach Tatum had been voted Coach of the Year. He had in three seasons thus far only achieved moderate success at UNC, with an overall record of 19-17-3, each of his previous two teams having had a record of 6-4, albeit the best records since 1949 under coach Snavely at 7-4, with no team having had a winning record between 1950 and 1956, inclusive, the best of that period having been coach Barclay's 4-5-1 and 4-6 records in 1953 and 1954, respectively, when Steve Belichick, father of the current UNC head coach, was his assistant. In subsequent hindsight, 1957 and 1958 would, incidentally, seem like golden years, as, save for the ACC co-champions, Gator Bowl victors of 1963, who finished 9-2, they would be the only winning seasons until 1970. (The problems with Carolina football did not start recently, and a lightning strike yesterday in Clemson did not help matters.) Mr. Tatum had entered a coma during the previous afternoon and had not regained consciousness the previous day, dying at 10:40 p.m. The funeral would be held the following morning at the Chapel Hill Methodist Church.
The sports page presents more on coach Tatum's death and reactions to it.
It was reported from St. Joseph, Mo., that if one were in the city on Sunday and wanted a beer, there would be no trouble buying it, but that purchasing a sack of peanuts to nibble on or a package of cigarettes, was a different matter. A new City ordinance governing business on Sunday had been adopted recently by the City Council, drafted by the City attorney and his staff of five to liberalize an old blue law which had said in effect that merchants could not sell and people could not buy or play on Sundays. The new version exempted businesses which provided emergency, necessary or recreational services, including hospitals, hotels, service stations, drug stores, theaters and restaurants. But drug stores could sell only medicines and grocers could sell fresh produce, dairy products and soft drinks, but not packaged foods such as peanuts. Service stations could sell only gasoline and oil. Legally, one could not buy tobacco in any form, or matches. One could buy oil for one's car, but not an oil filter. One could purchase a soft drink or an ice cream bar at the movies, but not popcorn. One could purchase 3.2 percent beer, as restaurants were exempt and Missouri law required all taverns to serve food. A clever restaurateur had gotten around the tobacco ban by boosting the price of a glass of milk from a dime to 35 cents and throwing in a package of cigarettes as a bonus. The new law caused no public concern until the previous Sunday when the City attorney, acting on orders of the City Council president, had ordered police to enforce the new ordinance. They had done so and five persons had been arrested for selling various items, such as a bottle of ketchup. All had been released on bond and their cases had been continued. The citizenry had been outraged. Hastily, the Council had begun looking for a way to modify the new ordinance. An informal meeting, closed to the public, had been called to discuss new plans and it was reported that the five members of the Council, who had approved the new ordinance unanimously, had agreed to modifications. Irritated by the public criticism, the City attorney resigned as did all of his assistants. Thus far, only the Council president had defended the ordinance in public.
On the editorial page, "Henderson's Strikers Were Betrayed" indicates that the central tragedy of the Henderson strike at the Harriet-Henderson Cotton Mills had been the betrayal of the Textile Workers Union of America's rank-and-file by its leadership. The conviction the previous day of the eight union men charged with plotting to dynamite key installations of the struck mills had demonstrated vividly the nature of that betrayal.
When the leaders of any cause violated the rules of civilized conduct and resorted to raw criminality in the name of that cause, they defeated whatever high purposes their followers might have. Principles became soiled and the cause itself tended to be discredited in the eyes of honest people.
It finds that the chilling fact was that Henderson's strikers had been cruelly victimized by men who had been tested and found lacking in the essential qualifications of responsible leadership, that by their rash and unreasoning acts, they had made suspect the issues and principles upon which the strikers had gambled their jobs and futures. Men and women who were no doubt completely innocent of any wrongdoing were suffering at present and would continue to suffer because they had trusted too much the wisdom of unwise men.
It indicates that strikes were never very pleasant, but that they could be conducted without hoodlumism. Henderson's dynamite conspiracy, together with many acts of violence committed during the long and bitter dispute, had produced a dark chapter in the history of labor-management relations in the state. Hoodlumism was the rule rather than the exception. Those responsible for it had served their cause and their community poorly and deserved little mercy.
"Let Charlotte Set Example for Others" indicates that the book was not closed on the July 9 chemical explosion in Charlotte and it should not be. Fire Chief Donald Charles had reacted the previous day to criticism of his flimsy report about the explosion with promises of more study, more data and, possibly, more recommendations. It finds the chief's decision to be gratifying, that a lesser man might have filed and forgotten the whole matter. But until the unfortunate chain of events leading to the explosion was fully understood and until adequate safeguards against similar events were prescribed, the community could not rest easy.
Charlotte had a great deal of up-to-date equipment for use in emergencies, but too often there were large gaps in the city's facilities for preventing emergencies. It was a familiar condition, as according to some recent statistics, the average U.S. city had fewer policemen than average European cities of the same size. But the average U.S. city had twice as many firemen as its European counterparts and paid three times as much for firefighting equipment. Yet the per capita fire losses were higher in the U.S. than those of any European country because most European countries put somewhat greater stress on preventing the occurrence of fires.
It finds that ordinances alone were not the complete answer, that enforcement was of equal importance and Charlotte's record of enforcement had lately been imperfect.
The assurance by Chief Charles that the policies of other cities in dealing with dangerous chemicals would be surveyed was welcome, but it urges that Charlotte need not be satisfied with standards of prevention practiced elsewhere if they were somewhat less than perfect, that the city would perhaps have to set the example for other communities to follow.
"Eisenhower Takes a Forthright Stand" indicates that one of the few advantages of the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution was that occasionally it enabled a lame duck President to say unpopular things, as a person could not be elected to the office more than twice. That which the President had said at his weekly press conference was that it was silly to talk about tax cuts until something was paid off on the national debt.
As an approach to economic realities at a time when the President had dogmatically assailed "spending" and when the Democratic majority in Congress was trying to pull gold rabbits out of purely imaginary revenue hats, that would do very well. Logically, the President, who had enlisted all of his energy recently in a fight against inflation, had no choice but to nix the idea of tax cuts. The budgetary troubles of 1959 could be traced, in part, to the discriminatory tax cuts of 1954 which had proved short-sighted, as the public demand for adequate defense expenditures and minimal public services required revenues which were not in the Treasury.
But if the President had spoken forthrightly about tax cuts, he had given the wrong reason. It was desirable to begin to pay off the public debt if possible, as interest charges alone amounted to 8 billion dollars or more of the budget. The blunt truth facing the Federal Government at present, however, was that the revenues were not large enough to do the kind of job which the Government was trying to do, either abroad or at home, either in the field of defense or in such necessary domestic tasks as education and urban renewal. As the national income rose, it would become necessary, if present needs continued, to look for new sources of revenue. Tax cuts for the purpose of political boodling and vote-seeking were anything but the way to find them.
"Be Proud If You Paid a Nickel-Plus" indicates that Charlotte residents who had paid Exchange Club members fancy prices for copies of this date's newspaper had bought a great deal more than a newspaper, also purchasing a share in one of the community's finest and most useful organizations, the Charlotte Life Saving and First Aid Crew. All profits from street sales by the club's "newsboys" would go into the volunteer rescue squad's badly depleted equipment fund.
The whole project, it indicates, was a heartwarming exercise in human mercy and the newspaper was particularly proud to be involved. The Exchange Club had earned the community's special salute for its continuing interest in the rescue squad's problems and for its vigorous efforts to raise the funds necessary for essential equipment. The rescue squad was doing an essential job and doing it well. Over the years, it had compiled an outstanding record of service in emergencies of every description, often involving fortitude and dedication beyond the call of duty, and every penny raised from the newspaper sales this date could be put to good use. It indicates that if the reader had contributed, that person also could be more than a little proud.
A piece from the New York Herald Tribune, titled "Southern Possums, Stay Home!" indicates that although a Southern animal by tradition of song and story, the possum population continued to increase in the North. It was instanced in recent summers by many baby possums seen crushed on upstate highways, where their casualties competed with those of infant rabbits and roly-poly woodchucks. A possum, big or small, was particularly vulnerable on the road, as it was slow-moving, given to evening strolls and moonlight meditation. Trees and Virginia woodlands were not thronged with the thunderous activity of Northern automobiles. A possum did not know what it was in for when it set its pointed nose toward the Pole Star and planned to live where there were cooler nights and fewer hounds.
A possum was no beauty in form or profile, but it had one distinction, being North America's only marsupial. An Australian kangaroo could carry around a single peekaboo offspring, but a possum could have in its maternal pocket as many as a score of infants, each beginning life no bigger than a honey bee and struggling, in survival of the fittest, for what were but 13 nursing bottles for 20 tiny mouths. At four weeks old, a baby possum stuck out its head from the pouch and at eight weeks, it was ready to shift for itself. But it was still too much of a toddler to be good at dodging cars.
A possum's ability to play dead was proverbial, but that clever avoidance of fate did not save it from death on a Northern highway and it had never sufficed to keep a possum from occupying a Southern platter, surrounded by yams and gravy. A New York State countryman remembered eating possum which had been found hanging by its tail in an apple tree suspiciously near a farm chicken house. The possum could live to be eight years old and that particular possum must have attained maturity as his tabled texture was tougher than that of a senior Leghorn rooster. "Perhaps it takes a diet of persimmons to make a possum good eating. Persimmon trees are scarce on northern farms—as migrating possums are likely to discover, if they and their children survive motor hazards."
First we have the baby quail
crossing the road and now we have the baby possums. Someone at the
newspaper appears to like stories about baby animals trying to cross
the road. Next, our pity will be solicited for the suicidal woodchucks
Drew Pearson indicates that the inside story could now be told as to how Immigration commissioner Joe Swing and Communist-hunter Julian Sourwine had Fidel Castro's escaped Air Force chief, Maj. Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz, taken away from the State Department until they could exploit him for their own purposes. Their conspiracy had resulted in sensational headlines which had severely damaged Pan-American relations. It also had given Sr. Castro an opportunity to blast the U.S. for interfering in Cuban affairs when actually the U.S. had remained meticulously out of them.
He indicates that what most North Americans might not realize was that Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, chairman of the Internal Security Committee, was unpopular with dark-skinned Latin Americans not only for advocating white supremacy but also for championing the Dominican Republic's dictator, Rafael Trujillo. Thus, when Maj. Lanz had testified under Senator Eastland's auspices, it had played right into Sr. Castro's hands. The major happened to be against all dictators, whether it was Sr. Castro, under whom he had once fought, or Sr. Trujillo, whose kind he had fought against. But being innocent of American politics, the major was easily hoodwinked by Senator Eastland's agents. The result had been that by reminding Latin America that Senator Eastland had praised dictator Trujillo lavishly in a speech to the Dominican Legislature, Sr. Castro was able to discount the sincere young major's testimony.
Before he had fled from Cuba, Maj. Lanz had used Associated Press correspondent Harold Milks as a go-between to inform the U.S. Embassy of his plans to defect. His half-brother, Sergio Diaz Brull, had sailed into Havana harbor in a sailboat to pick him up. The brothers had loaded a small arsenal of weapons aboard the boat before casting off, and they had been accompanied by the 19-year old wife of Maj. Lanz and a faithful friend. They had an anxious moment at the docks when a Cuban patrol helicopter had hovered overhead and then settled down less than 20 yards away, but the crew of the helicopter apparently had been interested in something else. Upon their arrival at a Miami oil dock, Sr. Brull had promptly called the customs office, which had notified immigration authorities and when they discovered the Cuban wetbacks included Sr. Castro's former Air Force head, the district immigration director in Miami had sent word to commissioner Swing in Washington. Army intelligence officers, who had been tipped off by the military attaché in Havana, had also shown up. But upon orders from General Swing, a West Point classmate of President Eisenhower, the immigration authorities had whisked Sr. Lanz away from Army intelligence and held him incommunicado aboard a yacht.
The State Department, which was supposed to handle international matters, had been kept in the dark. Instead, General Swing had called Senator Eastland's Committee and reported the arrival of Sr. Lanz to its counsel, Julian Sourwine. Recognizing the headline value of such a prize witness, the latter had arranged with General Swing for the witness to be turned over to the Committee. The following day, a Committee investigator, had shown up in Miami with a subpoena. The former Cuban Air Force chief was eager to cooperate with American authorities and had no idea that the Committee simply wanted to exploit him for headlines. Now, sick of all the fanfare, Sr. Lanz had fled again, to seek a quiet life in Texas.
Doris Fleeson indicates that
Vice-President Nixon's mission to Moscow might not prove to be the
best show on earth, but was the biggest of its kind—implying
that there was a certain circusy
Its size would be a problem even in channels worn smooth by practice, as it entered a police state where practically everything was an unknown quantity, including, for the vast majority, the language. But apparently the Vice-President had found it impossible to say no to anyone whose presence or potential support might prove helpful to him in his race for the presidency. The result was to stretch the rules normally governing such expeditions so that the party was decidedly a mixed bag. The press group included writers who had not spoken to each other for years. Two biographers of the Vice-President were aboard, along with Jinx Falkenberg, representing her husband's public relations firm. There were female reporters to cover Mrs. Nixon and the fashion show at the Trade Fair. Less than a third were what reporters themselves would call working stiffs, obliged to meet any daily deadlines and concentrate on the political and foreign policy aspects of the trip.
Veteran observers had been reminded of the Wendell Willkie campaign train in 1940, an all-time high for interesting confusion. Mr. Willkie had thought that everyone was his friend and welcomed them aboard, with most people who accepted being his friends, but by no means all friendly with one another, especially when the travel facilities had proved inadequate or uncomfortable.
The Vice-President had personally briefed the party on the arrangements and had entertained them in his home in Washington prior to departure. The State Department had supplied him with escort officers for members of the President's committee on the Trade Fair who would be in his immediate entourage. He had with him also his Marine and Air Force aides and Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover, the Navy's atomic expert, who had been invited on the basis that Mr. Nixon would be inspecting Soviet atomic developments.
The President had insisted that all of it added up to a "ceremonial" journey. It was accepted in Washington as the launching of Mr. Nixon's campaign for the presidency, a major effort to convince the country that the conduct of foreign policy could safely be entrusted to him. That was a major gap in Mr. Nixon's experience, as it was in nearly all of the visible candidates who had succeeded the passing generation of men who had directed World War II and its cold war aftermath. There were, in fact, painfully few experts on Russia, which was the reason why Secretary of State Christian Herter had proposed to bring Charles Bohlen back to a policy-making position in the State Department.
The big gamble of Mr. Nixon's trip was the fact that the real newsmaker at present was Nikita Khrushchev, and to call him unpredictable, she indicates, was an understatement. The Vice-President had said that he realized that was so but believed that the worst he could get out of the situation would be a sympathy vote at home should Mr. Khrushchev behave badly toward him.
The political winds were blowing coolly from both the White House and the Kremlin on the take-off of Mr. Nixon. The President himself had proved to be the "authoritative source" who had blanketed the Nixon story on the front pages and airwaves with strong statements of the Eisenhower views on matters foreign and domestic. Soon afterward, the President had taken the occasion of his press conference to remind the public that the Vice-President could not be a negotiator in Moscow but was repaying the ceremonial visit in the U.S. of Soviet Deputy Premier Frol Kozlov. The President had been polite about the importance of Mr. Nixon, but he had carefully outlined the Vice-President's "constitutional position" under which he had no executive power.
In Moscow, Premier Khrushchev had told Western reporters that he was puzzled by Mr. Nixon's aims in coming to Moscow. The Communist Party newspaper, Pravda, had also complained that the U.S. was launching a provocative new anti-Soviet campaign, which did not add warmth to Mr. Nixon's reception.
To achieve the picture of a strong and decisive President at the helm of the ship of state, Mr. Eisenhower had opened up in an unprecedented manner at an unprecedented dinner for the 16 reporters regularly assigned to the White House. The impression left by their stories was that the President was boss and wanted everybody to know it.
The change of mood in Moscow was as clearly manifest. Genial Mr. Khrushchev was now snarling in the manner outlined in the prescient warnings of former New York Governor Averell Harriman, who had returned recently from a visit with him.
She indicates that such tangled threads were not quickly or easily unraveled. Curbstone opinion in Washington was that both the Vice-President and Mr. Khrushchev had given somewhat too much evidence of being eager to talk about substantive matters to suit either the White House or the Western foreign ministers presently meeting in Geneva. Exactly what Mr. Nixon had said in his pre-departure briefings was difficult to check, for the briefings had been informal and confined to his entourage. But stories emanating from them showed him to be highly self-confident and talking freely about preparations going far beyond the demands of ceremony. One headline had suggested that the Nixon-Khrushchev talks would be a "little summit meeting". That could not possibly pass muster with the President, who the night before had authorized stories from his dinner table that he had all but written off a summit meeting. The President said that he did not think Mr. Khrushchev really wanted the summit except on his own terms and was only trying to split the Western allies.
That the Western foreign ministers would react sharply and suspiciously to any slight hint from Washington that they might be undercut was only natural. It was being recalled that while the late Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was alive, the Vice-President had not been allowed to orbit beyond the Iron Curtain. No one in Washington believed that the Nixon party would have assumed its present proportions had Mr. Dulles still been Secretary.
She reiterates that the trouble was that Mr. Nixon was involved with his reputation for ruthlessness and risk-taking where his own fortunes were at stake. She suggests that perhaps Secretary Herter was less affected by it than most, but that Europe was familiar with it and it had to be remembered that Premier Charles de Gaulle of France and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of West Germany did not want a summit meeting, one which was big or one which was little.
Marquis Childs indicates that in a concerted effort to remove Paul Butler as chairman of the DNC, national committeemen and state chairmen in virtually every state were being approached by adherents of Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson and House Speaker Sam Rayburn. The national committee would meet in mid-September and Mr. Butler could be turned out by a majority vote. While the storm he had stirred up with his continuing criticism of the Democratic leadership in Congress might have subsided by that time, the indignation over his tactics continued to spread.
One of the rapidly rising new powers in the party, Governor Pat Brown of California, had privately expressed the view that Mr. Butler had outlived his usefulness as chairman. By reason of the remarkable record the latter had written with the Democratic Legislature, in the aftermath of the landslide victory the prior November, Governor Brown's word carried increasing weight and he would be coming to Washington shortly to discuss the national picture.
As chairman of the foreign policy group on the Democratic advisory council, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson was known to feel strongly that Mr. Butler had helped to divide rather than unify the party. The advisory council had been Mr. Butler's idea, to help define the party's objectives and convictions. Senator Johnson and Speaker Rayburn had boycotted the council from the beginning, feeling strongly that the Democratic majorities in Congress had the responsibility for setting the party's record.
Against that background, the national chairman's broad hint on television that the Congress had better get going and write a liberal record, in accord with the mandate of the 1958 overwhelming victory in both houses, had opened old wounds. The resentment in Congress was by no means confined to Southerners and conservatives. Westerners, including newcomers such as Senators Gail McGee of Wyoming and Clair Engle of California, along with veterans such as Warren Magnuson of Washington, believed that recent tactics had helped only the Republicans.
It would take 55 of the 108 votes to be cast at the next committee meeting to fire Mr. Butler. Fully aware of the drive against him, he was confident that it would not succeed. As he saw it, he had made himself both the symbol and the spokesman for the liberal Northern wing of the party and if he were to be publicly fired after an angry brawl, it would be an advertisement to the country that the conservatives had taken over the party. The party would thus be gravely handicapped in going to the country the following year, as the Democrats could win only if they were for liberal and progressive policies as against the conservatism of the Republicans.
Mr. Butler had made an eloquent plea for his position, colored with the emotion that it was an important part of his character. The meeting in September would be, at least, a lively one, he promised. If controversy proved a party was alive and kicking, then the Democrats were out to prove again that they were the kickingest party that ever was.
But there was more hard-boiled reason why the odds were against Mr. Butler being replaced. With factionalism and rivalry over candidates, the national committee would be hard put to find a majority for another chairman and any such person would have to be so neutral as to be scarcely visible to the naked eye. Several suggestions were being made, such as by former President Truman, long a critic of Mr. Butler. But each man proposed had some tie with a presidential or vice-presidential ambition or was identified with past feuds.
A letter writer indicates that as she looked around she saw people piling up millions of dollars and that someday they would die, leaving it all behind, and yet they could use their money making thousands of people happy who were poor and needy. "All that we have belongs, not to us, but to God—and no one can fool God. We all ought to think now about what kind of a life we are leading and what life in the hereafter will be like. It's up to us."
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