Still, service on the Southern was behind the times, more reminiscent of the Gay Nineties than 1945. The Charlotte station badly needed replacement with a modern facility and had for twenty years. The Southern had proposed an upgrade in 1926 but the City Council had, for reasons unknown, denied the permit.

It was acceptable for the Richmond Times-Dispatch to urge the voluntary end to Jim Crow practices of racial segregation in public facilities, but, the editorial continues, Federal compulsion would never work. Only the South itself could end the practices voluntarily following further advances of blacks in all areas of the society.

So, it relegates the proposal to the same category as anti-lynching laws and anti-poll tax laws, that they would not succeed in passing.

Of course, it was a common view of the time and cannot be considered racist in origin but simply pragmatic. W. J. Cash, in The Mind of the South, had said as much in cautioning that Federal anti-lynching laws, while desirable in the abstract, would only serve to stimulate "trigger-quick dander" of the Southern racists and lead to violence.

And that old violence did resurrect itself and ensue when Brown v. Board of Education was decided in 1954 and 1955 by the United States Supreme Court, ordering the desegregation of public schools with "all deliberate speed". It led to the violent latter fifties and sixties, oddly culminating in the near fatal shooting of reactionary segregationist George Wallace in Laurel, Maryland, as he ran for President in May, 1972, a principal plank in his platform then still consisting of preaching against cross-town busing to achieve racial integration of schools.

But through all the racially stimulated violence and, we believe, even that contributing to, if not the primary factor in, the assassination of President Kennedy, who boldly did more to advance the cause of positive race relations in the country than any of his predecessors, had it not been for the changes wrought by the Supreme Court, the lower Federal courts, and the Federal Government, both at the Executive level, from Presidents Roosevelt through Johnson, and within the Congress, especially the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, preceded by the 1957 Civil Rights Act, also aimed at insuring the right to vote in Federal elections unimpeded by violence or intimidation, the changes would never have come voluntarily. As President Kennedy, in promulgating the Civil Rights bill in June, 1963 reminded, a hundred years had passed since the Civil War and yet in some areas of the South men and women, for the color of their skin, could not vote, obtain decent work, go to schools of choice, sit in buses and public accommodations, in theaters, and restaurants, or stay in inns free from the scourge and stigma of segregation.

The change had to come, and the change was for the betterment of all of society, not just blacks in the South or blacks in general, but for the dignity and freedom of American life for all, free from the creeping disease of discrimination.

While perhaps some marginal progress had been made in the decades since the turn of the century, it was an utter absurdity that in 1961, such conditions as still persisted in much of the South remained extant in terms of segregation and the racial discrimination which went hand in glove with it, working in combination to demean and hold in place economically and socially human beings because of the color of their skin. And once a person with black skin can be demeaned, then so can anyone else, quite subjectively, who is deemed by the self-anointed royalists not to be fit for their neighborhood or worthy of any job commensurate with their knowledge or skills, finally to be unfit for receipt of any of basic benefits which are necessary for survival in a society, all rationalized on the basis of being deemed unfit by the royalists.

And, there are still the slow among us who yet have not that basic understanding of humanity, or who refuse to accept that they are inherently neither better nor worse than any of the rest of us by mere dint of birth or birthright.

Yet, slowly, by increments, day by day, we collectively make some measurable progress. At least, we have grown enough, it would appear, not to shoot each other or lynch literally each other over these differences, at least not to the degree as in the past.

Yet, despite this high number of deaths from the war, the traffic accident deaths, 23,800 in 1943, were about the same as those killed in the war in 1943. And that in a year of strict rationing of tires and gas and lowered speed limits. About half as many deaths had occurred at home on the highways during the war as in the war itself. The editorial then provides the death toll on the highways year by year since 1937.

The piece finds daunting to consider what turn these statistics would take when the brakes of war were released and the cars returned in full strength to the highways, with bright, shiny new ones primed and ready for speed, replacing the old clunkers of 1941 and earlier. It suggests that the future casualty lists from the highways might make it seem that the war had never ended.

The situation had persisted in this manner for two years, remarks the piece, and it was time to effect more coordinated planning.

Mr. Colmer of Mississippi joined the debate and asked whether it would make a difference if a man in a war industry were to strike and his local draft board said he had done so in the best interest of the war. Mr. Kilday then terminated the exchange.

The scientists working feverishly in the desert at Los Alamos, New Mexico, would, within six months, terminate, with extreme prejudice, the exchange on such legislation altogether.

He indicates that President Roosevelt had developed a change in policy with respect to Britain during the previous two years since the Casablanca Conference in January, 1943. At that time, the President had given Churchill carte blanche control over the military situation in the Mediterranean. The Prime Minister then informed the Turks that they would have to do business with Britain on all levels, politically, economically, and militarily. The President had not authorized this expansive view and he became upset with the Prime Minister regarding the expanded interpretation of the agreement. Yet, the President did nothing to try to correct the problem and, in consequence, the British controlled all aspects of the Mediterranean operations.

At Tehran, in November-December, 1943, the President still did not intervene in the negotiations between Stalin and Churchill regarding the spheres of influence in the Mediterranean and Balkans, control of the Balkans going to the Soviets and that of Greece and the Adriatic coast of Yugoslavia to the British.

The President appeared to believe that the peace plan of Woodrow Wilson had gotten into trouble by too much intermeddling on his part in the settlement of the post-war boundaries of Europe. So, the President had remained on the sidelines, expressing more interest in the establishment of an American naval base in French Indo-China, possession of strategic islands in the Pacific, and maintenance of cooperation between the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

But when the British shot Greek civilians in the conflict with the ELAS/EAM, and Prime Minister Churchill vetoed Count Carlo Sforza as the Foreign Minister for Italy, then ordered British tanks to surround the Belgian Parliament, the President changed his mind.

So, suggests Mr. Pearson, the President at the Big Three conference would seek to establish the machinery to provide liberated countries the opportunity to form democratic governments unimpeded by the occupying forces.

The ultimate plan, after the dissolution of Supreme Allied Headquarters following victory, was to establish a tripartite governing occupation force of Germany. It was not yet determined, however, whether the force would be divided into separate zones or be coextensive with one central government manned by the Big Three.

Before this occupation government could be established, Supreme Allied Headquarters would control the initial occupation. But little or no planning had been done for coordination of United States agencies in the process.

Though the military manual demanded that no Nazis be retained in policy-making positions, policy-making was not defined. In Aachen, two Nazi industrialists were running the place under the American occupation. Such a situation opened the door frighteningly for the Nazi underground to appeal to the German masses and impoverished Europe as a whole. They could contend that the American occupation forces could not restore democracy and that democracy was feckless and incapable of resolving the ills of Europe.

The conservatives' belief that the ten million soldiers in uniform returning to civilian life would with ardor support their efforts was little but a pipe dream. The men returning from the service wanted jobs first and foremost.

The apparent motivation of the conservatives was to create discord in society, to cast one group against another for their own political benefit, and to destroy the labor movement.

Hitler had to know that, militarily, the war was lost. But he seemed to be operating from the assumption that Germany could position itself as had Russia at the end of its fight in World War I after signing with Germany the Brest-Litovsk treaty, which stripped Russia of much of its Eastern European territory. Russia had then made certain that no strong coalitions were established within Europe so that civil wars within the various border states could enable Russia to re-emerge. Russia had directed its counter-revolutionary activity against the Social Democrats because that party held out the greatest promise of an order in Europe satisfactory to the masses.

Hitler understood that, after the war, the people would be hungry and desperate, and that right and left wing forces would form out of this chaotic milieu. The goal of Germany would be to prevent any middle force from forming which could bring about compromise. The Fuehrer and his minions would seek to prevent any orderly demobilization and disarming of Germany. The great German hope was that the Russian and Anglo-American troops would be impelled to loggerheads by political and propaganda traps set by the Nazis deliberately to ensnare each camp in opposing positions, to foment war between them. Hitler believed that in that state, Germany would be called upon to assist the West in defeating Russia, thus re-establishing the military might of Germany.

While Ms. Thompson admits that Hitler had not directly expressed these notions, they were implicit in what he said and accounted for his continued confidence in the face of sure defeat. She concluded that, far from being fanciful, "it holds the nucleus of reason."

To foil such plans, she offers, the Allies had to come together to formulate a program to effect lasting "pacification and consolidation" of Germany to prevent revolutionary movements from arising.

Did Ms. Thompson again hit the nail pretty squarely on the head in terms of predicting what the surviving Nazis, including those who managed to shed their Nazi identities among the thousands of refugees cramming the roads of escape from the Russian armies, were in fact able to accomplish from within West Germany during the post-war period, nearly creating the atmosphere and the fact of nuclear confrontation over Berlin? Was everything so clear as it was presented at the time in black and white, East and West? Was there not a middle player, thought to be moribund and vanquished, who was still very much alive and well and functioning on the scene, sometimes in high positions within West Germany or within intelligence organizations of both East and West, once Nazis, sometimes Nazi war criminals? Did these functionaries, by nurturing false and malicious rumors of the alleged nefarious activities and intentions being practiced supposedly by each side against the other, not create much of the confusion and chaos which nearly led to World War III?