The Charlotte News

Friday, April 16, 1948

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Paris, the 16 recipient nations under the Marshall Plan and Western Germany formed themselves into a permanent organization of economic cooperation to assure efficient use of the 5.3 billion dollars appropriated by Congress for the first 15 months of ERP. The new council elected Belgian Prime Minister Paul-Henri Spaak as its chairman. Representatives of France and Britain were named to other leading posts. The chairman of the conference, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, stated that the organization would be open to all European countries which would genuinely subscribe to the aims of the organization.

The second special session on Palestine convened at the U.N. to determine the fate of the partition plan approved by the General Assembly the previous November 29. The Security Council was considering a resolution to call a truce in Palestine.

Dr. Jose Arce of Argentina was elected the new president of the Assembly to replace retiring Dr. Oswaldo Aranha of Brazil.

In Palestine, Jewish forces claimed to have captured the village of Saris between Kastel and Latrun on the highway from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, along which the critical supply convoys to Jerusalem's 100,000 Jews were dependent for travel and which were regularly being attacked by Arabs intent on driving out the Jews.

Jewish sources continued to claim victory the day before over forces of Fawzi Bey Al Kaukji, though Arab sources continued to be confused as to whether they had surrounded the Jews or been surrounded and routed, as claimed by the Jewish sources.

In Vienna, British and American officials reported that the Russians had completely blocked off road traffic between Vienna and the U.S. and British air bases. An alternate route through the Soviet zone, being used in the meantime by Americans going to the American base, had likewise been blocked this date. Russian soldiers at checkpoints stopped all vehicles and demanded to see identification cards.

General Lucius Clay, military governor of the U.S. occupation zone in Germany, denied reports that he had ordered a sortie over Berlin by a squadron of B-29 bombers visiting Germany.

Don't worry. That's just a cover to relax the Commies. They're getting ready to drop the Big One any day now.

In Rio De Janiero, an explosion of an Army arsenal, which killed 23 persons and injured 100 to 200 more, was declared by the Federal Police to be the work of Communists, aimed at creating another situation as that which had rocked Bogota for five days the previous week. The police said that the Communists had intended to kill the Brazilian War Minister who was at the arsenal less than an hour before the blast, delayed in detonation for unexplained reasons. Twenty-six Communists had been arrested thus far. The Communist Party had been outlawed in Brazil.

In Greece, a reliable informant said that the Greek Army had launched its spring offensive against the guerrillas in the north. Details were unavailable, but the troops were believed operating in the mountainous region of Mt. Oiti, Vardoussia, and Ghiona.

In Rome, campaigning for the Sunday elections was set to end at midnight to allow for the 32-hour cooling off period before the polls opened. Some instances of violence dotted the country the previous night.

In Tokyo, after 419 sessions, the longest trial in history, the International War Crimes Tribunal heard the last of the prosecution's rebuttal argument and began deliberations in the trial of former Japanese Premier Hideki Tojo and 24 other Japanese wartime leaders, for whom the death penalty was sought in each case. They were charged with waging aggressive war from 1928, after the signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war, through the Japanese surrender in August, 1945. A verdict was not expected for a couple of months.

In the Senate, the bill to appropriate money for a 70-group Air Force appeared to be set for rough going after passing the House by a vote of 343 to 3 the previous day, favoring the approach recommended by Air Secretary Stuart Symington, a Democrat, and rejecting the draft and universal military training urged by Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, a Republican. Senator Styles Bridges, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said that he had not made up his mind whether to support the measure. Senator Chan Gurney, second ranking Republican on the Committee, expressed a similar view. Most members of Congress appeared to favor the expanded Air Force over the temporary draft and universal military training.

The New York Democratic delegation commended President Truman, effectively committing themselves therefore to his support at the convention.

President-elect Harold Stassen was flying to Florida to line up that state's 16 Republican delegates for the convention.

James Farley, former kingmaker to FDR and former DNC chairman, said in Richmond that he believed the Democratic Party would not disintegrate along conservative and liberal lines, but would stay as one party. He said that he believed that Henry Wallace, who might receive as many as seven million votes in November, was doing a disservice to his party and the country by running as a third-party candidate. He also hoped that the convention would find a way to heal its rifts and perhaps provide a stronger candidate than the President for the November ballot, that Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia was the most acceptable to the Southern conservatives of the party.

In Atlanta, the police, while on routine patrol around a wooded area, were credited with uncovering a new hate organization, "The Black Raiders", rescuing a man being whipped by four members with a leather strap. The four men were placed under arrest for assault and battery. The victim had already been beaten so severely that his blood vessels had burst. The four men, said the victim, had indicated that he was not properly supporting his family. The race of the men involved is not provided.

The Chief of Police said that he believed that the group was similar to the recently disbanded Columbians, a racist, anti-Semitic offshoot of the Klan.

A third of the nation's coal miners remained idle pending the outcome of the contempt case against John L. Lewis and UMW for not calling an end to the strike prior to the previous Monday, a week after service of the order that the strike be terminated. The court had the matter under submission until Monday.

In Beverly Hills, the wife of James Roosevelt accidentally took the wrong pills on her bedside table for her cold and overdosed on sleeping medication, had to be taken to the hospital, was okay.

In Red House, N.Y., a man on the Allegany Indian Reservation had his house wired for electricity in 1928, only just got it hooked up because of a problem with getting the permission to have the lines cross the railroad tracks.

That could be dangerous though, as those trains sometimes jump the tracks.

In Jamestown, N.Y., lightning struck a cow, causing it to fall on a man who was milking it at the time, pinning him under its body as fire erupted in the barn, also caused by the lightning. The man's employer rescued him and he suffered no injury. The cow, however, was dead.

Well, if you were her calf, you would be sad, too.

In Pinehurst, N.C., Louise Suggs and Grace Lenczck were headed on Saturday to the finals of the North and South Women's Golf Tournament.

On the editorial page, "Europe's Fate Hangs in Balance" discusses the coming election on Sunday in Italy as being the most important in a foreign country in history. It proceeds again to explain why that was the case.

If the election turned out as it appeared it would, in favor of the Christian Democrats, led by Premier Alcide De Gasperi, and rejecting the Communist Party of Palmiro Togliatti, then, it suggests, the credit belonged to General Marshall and "others like him" for putting forth the Marshall Plan.

The piece, as well as many of the syndicated columnists of the time, appeared to forget the signal election in Germany in 1932 and 1933 which brought Hitler to power, obviously eclipsing in importance this election in Italy. But often, an event occurring contemporaneously, the outcome and import of which are yet to be determined against developing events, takes on added stress and shoves for the nonce that which ought be observed in the long pull of history, even that which has occurred recently, to the background.

The piece also ignores the President in giving its credit. One cannot provide accolades to a Secretary of State without also according credit to the President, without whose imprimatur, no foreign policy obviously would be implemented. That was especially true of President Truman, who had already gotten Secretary of State Byrnes to step aside after some troubled relations for his being too independent of the President in making public statements without first clearing them with the White House.

Part of the problem suffered by President Truman was one of public perception, in plain-spoken and somewhat halting contrast to the dynamic forthrightness and cheery optimism characteristic of the public persona of President Roosevelt. President Truman came across to many as a pretender to the throne, falling short of his predecessor. But in policy, in actual results, one can historically make a good case for President Truman as an effective President, albeit under less societally stressful conditions than depression and world war during his eight years in office. That he kept the military hawks at bay who wanted to wage a preemptive nuclear strike against Russia and avoided thereby a prolonged and indefinite world war is to his lasting credit.

Whether President Roosevelt could have done any better under the particular psychological conditions extant worldwide and the rebuilding requirements of Europe after the war is questionable. Perhaps, his style was oddly more adept at handling Stalin and the Russians than was the more abrupt and prideful approach adopted by President Truman, oddly, because President Roosevelt was of patrician background, President Truman decidedly a son of the middle class, and Premier Stalin of peasant background. But the relative abilities to deal with the Russians effectively after the war is merely speculation and largely a function of the mood of the West and self-induced fears in the U.S. of itself, promulgated to a large extent in the latter case by politically avaricious Republicans eager to regain power.

Certainly, the Eisenhower Administration and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, with his strategy of "brinksmanship", demonstrated no significantly greater aptitude in dealing with the international situation than had the Truman Administration and Secretaries of State Byrnes, Marshall, and Dean Acheson. It was, when boiled down, a sticky wicket of barriers of language, culture, and want of mutual understanding, leading to societal paranoiac complexes on both sides, bordering at times on collective psychosis. That a world conflagration was avoided was the miracle of our age perhaps, testimony ultimately not so much to man's sanity as to his collective desire not to commit suicide—thus far, anyway.

"The Accolade for Eisenhower" tells of Radio Moscow having labeled General Eisenhower as "Churchill's man" during the war and that his coming to power in America would not bode well for the country or other countries.

The piece takes exception to the suggestion and finds that General Eisenhower was nobody's man and that his coming to power during the war had resulted in winning it for the Allies, including Russia. It also contests the Moscow contention that the General had professed "reactionary views", when no one yet knew his political views even in America.

It further protests the program's contention that Americans had been willing to "sacrifice" Truman for Eisenhower because of international political and economic difficulties, saying that the President's forcing "social revolution" down the throats of Americans, refusing to consider the concept of world government, and "other equally inept moves", were his own decisions.

It concludes that the best support General Eisenhower could receive was an attack such as that made by Moscow Radio.

"Hornets Buzz Gaily Tonight" tells of the baseball jargon incorporated into the sports pages as the Charlotte Hornets had their home opener this night at Griffith Park in Charlotte. The Washington Senators had provided their farm club with one of the better minor league ballparks in the country, named for Clark Griffith. The city, in return, had given the good teams produced since 1938 good support. Their new manager, Joe Bowman, it says, was welcome along with the team, whether they captured a pennant or wound up in last place in the Tri-State League.

Play ball!

A piece from the Roanoke Times, titled "Right and Wrong", informs of a group of citizens recently gathering at the birthplace of Booker T. Washington in Virginia to form plans for raising money, with a goal of five million dollars, to provide blacks with industrial training. It was a peaceful meeting, without inflammatory rhetoric.

The piece contrasts it with that of the NAACP, meeting also in the name of Booker T. Washington, with its executive secretary Walter White haranguing the primarily black audience, condemning the leaders of Virginia, starting with Governor William Tuck, the leader of the Southern revolt against the President for his civil rights program, and including Senator Harry F. Byrd, who was being touted as a possible replacement for the President on the Democratic ticket. Mr. White found them to be "perpetuating bigotry and putting their own welfare ahead of that of the nation."

The piece believes that the latter approach served no good purpose, but only inflamed racial prejudices and prompted backlash, that legislation could not undo the ingrained prejudice and racism so long prevailing in the land. It believes that such rhetoric would set the cause of blacks back fifty years.

We disagree. Mr White was right. If not then, when? Sooner or later, something had to be done. President Truman finally got the ball rolling in the right direction. That it chafed against the positions of comfort of both the dyed-in-the-wool racists and the comfortable "moderates", such as Senator Byrd, was not surprising, and, in the end, though it would take much wrenching of society to accomplish, would prove salutary.

Having said that, we urge that the contemporary trend against freedom of speech, seeking to punish actively those who state their minds, is a hallmark of Fascism. It is certainly nothing akin to that which Dr. Martin King, Jr., would have supported. It disserves truth, dignity, and democracy. Either debate the matter freely and condemn it openly and then leave the person uttering the malapropism to ponder, or be quiet. But do not punish for expressions of speech. Such only serves to distract from the more central, substantive issue of advancing human relations generally in the society. Slapping down someone for uttering a racial epithet only encourages closet racism of a worse variety, driving it underground, tending then toward violence for want of open debate, quashed from its inception by those who wish to chill free speech. Say what you please, but act in accordance with decency and humanity and nothing more may be asked of the citizen.

It is the action, not the words, with which we are concerned. Follow the people who wish to punish speech and you will soon find yourself under their despotic foot, no matter how friendly and soothing their voices first seemed. Usually, you will find, they were never that friendly in the first instance to anything vaguely resembling democracy but are using superficial matters to get the gullible on their side, until the copperhead snake can rear back and bite.

We do not punish speech in this country, informally or formally, unless it is defamatory or actually communicative of a clear and precise threat to bodily safety of a particular individual.

Again, if you don't like the rule, move to Argentina.

We don't like a good measure of what we hear and read either, but we have to tolerate it. That is not to say you cannot openly criticize it in the frank language you may choose.

If someone calls you a "nigger" or the equivalent, retort simply with "nice to make your acquaintance, suh, honky Klansman" or the equivalent, and walk away with a smile.

Drew Pearson tells of the principal financial backers of Harold Stassen, presently considered the new leading contender for the Republican nomination following back to back victories in the Wisconsin and Nebraska primaries. They were primarily Minnesota businessmen, including John Pillsbury, head of Pillsbury Mills, W. L. McKnight, head of 3M, Henry Bullis, head of General Mills, and others whom he lists.

A Commerce Department employee was being interrogated by a loyalty investigator regarding a young lawyer in the Department, as to whether he belonged to an underground organization. The answer came that he did, the Speleological Society, whose members, he further informed on inquiry, studied caves and underground caverns—for the purpose of housing the War Department, if necessary, during the war.

He next tells of several countries in the U.N., dependent on American manufacturing and goods, having been directed how to vote the previous fall on the partition of Palestine, now being directed the other way, to their consternation and objection. They included France, China, Mexico, Colombia, New Zealand, Haiti, and Liberia. Nothing had hurt the U.S. more diplomatically than this reversal of position on Palestine. Even the British, though they might take positions contrary to the general will, were considered to be consistent and predictable.

He next remarks on the first trial starting of the Hollywood Ten, charged with contempt of Congress for failing to disclose the previous October before HUAC whether they were or had ever been members of the Communist Party or certain organizations, as the Writers Guild, which the Committee believed were Communist-front organizations. The general word was that six were Communists and four were not.

He cites a previous case two years earlier where Dr. Edward Rumely had been found not guilty of contempt of Congress because he had not "willfully" failed to disclose to Congress documents on financial backers of his Committee for Constitutional Government, backed by some big oil and cotton interests. Mr. Pearson suggests that it would be interesting to see whether the court would use the same definition of "willful", requiring "evil intent", which had enabled Dr. Rumely to escape conviction. The trial judge in the previous case was now on the D. C. Court of Appeals.

Marquis Childs observes that it would be another nine months before a Republican President would take office and that the road demarked by his predecessor would be one inevitably leading to war, which the successor would be bound to follow. Fear was breeding fatalism, both among Republicans in Washington and among the populace at large.

He ventures that a halter—shall we call it a tippet?—was being fashioned to be placed over the head—or 'round the craig, as 'twere—of the next President. Republicans were aware of it but did not know how to stop the inexorability of it.

John Foster Dulles, foreign policy adviser to Thomas Dewey and head of the peace movement for the Federal Council of Churches, recently had met with a group of journalists and urged the formation of a government agency which could meet Communist aggression, as that threatened in Italy, on a political level, rather than the current ad hoc efforts arranged on military strength. He said that the time for doing so was the present, that it might be too late nine months hence, that by then, the commitment to war might be frozen in place. Mr. Dulles counseled against, however, any effort by the President to meet with Stalin, as it would be viewed at the current time by the Soviets as a sign of weakness.

Mr. Childs suggests that a committee of non-political experts be named by Republicans—sounding a bit oxymoronic right off the bat—and then request that it be given access to documents on which foreign policy was being based. He suggests Hamilton Fish Armstrong, director of the Council of Foreign Relations, as the chairman of such a committee. Such a committee could reassure the public that the decisions presently being made were being checked by another group. It would form a kind of coalition government. But Republicans had responded unenthusiastically that it would have no power and would be bound necessarily by secrecy, thus could not fully inform the public.

Samuel Grafton discusses the sentiment prevailing among the American people during the Presidency of FDR. Agitation for socialism dropped to a 50-year low as new energy and purpose were brought into government. Labor advances meant few long-term strikes, and labor generally got along with the Government. Conservatives viewed the phenomenon, that which the country continued to enjoy since the death of FDR three years earlier, as indicating that the New Deal was an enemy to society and a stable way of life.

He then proceeds to offer more definitions. "Materialism" was a repulsive way of life followed by the Russians, the American view being that there would be insulation from it by the atom bomb.

"Stability" was a state of mind in which there was surety of lack of sudden change, to be achieved either by making everyone stable and secure, frightening to many for its need to make all boats rise, or by erecting a defensive wall around one's own stability, creating, however, a wide and general instability as a result. Nature generally forced the combination of individual and group security which usually worked to an extent.

"Conservative" referred to a person who worked generally to get passed laws which assumed that things were better when he was a boy.

"Chain Reaction" was a curious political phenomenon manifested among certain hot-headed publicists in any country lucky enough to have the atomic bomb, encouraging them to shout defiance to all opponents, making them then somewhat afraid, encouraging more shouting of defiance, followed by a cycle of more fear and defiance. "The result is an output of energy equal to that of the sun, expressed in oratory."

James B. McMillan presents, at the request of The News, the second in a series of four articles on world government, representing the Charlotte unit of the United World Federalists, favoring amending the U.N. Charter to allow for world government as the only way to achieve peace.

He points out that in 1941, the North Carolina Legislature had passed the Humber resolution requesting Congress to form a federation of the world, and so the concept was not a radical one, had support from many prominent world and national leaders, examples of whom he provides.

Russia was opposed to the idea of world government as was President Truman. No one underestimated, he suggests, the difficulties in obtaining agreement on a world constitution but it had to be undertaken.

Time, of course, has demonstrated that another path was probably the only practical one to take, working within a slowly developing U.N. pursuant to its original Charter. There are simply too many varied peoples and interests, too many disreputable, despotic ideologies in the world, which would vie for and obtain representation in a world government for it ever to work. It increasingly is difficult to achieve any consensus on virtually any topic in the United States, that is, assuming that there ever was much consensus on anything of great import other than general adherence to the great compact embodied in the Constitution, even that being grudging at times in certain places.

World government, had it been tried, would have been quickly disbanded as unworkable, would only lead to disaster and rebellion within individual nations, probably finally to world war. Nationalism, like it or not, is embedded in the social fabric of each citizen of each country, if in varying degrees, and while too much nationalism of a prideful, spiteful nature is destructive, a certain amount can be salutary to promotion of peace. For no one in their right mind wants their country, their immediate environs, torn apart by war and violence, their lives characterized by constant and imminent threat to life and limb. Even a bird brain does not foul its own nest.

We note that the material to which we linked in the previous day's note under "Ford's Theater" promptly disappeared only a few hours after we established the link, despite that material having been present for two and a half years prior to our linking to it. What happened, we do not know. The organization responsible for the particular material has other Lincoln assassination material still at the same site, which we have always found to be stable in terms of preserving its links, and it is therefore a bit baffling. The material in question was a booklet of newspaper clippings from the Teens and Twenties of the last century, in which Jeannie Gourley Struthers set forth her first-hand account of what occurred at Ford's Theater the night of the assassination. Ms. Struthers appeared in "Our American Cousin" that night, playing the part of "Mary Trenchard", or actually Mary Meredith, as she explains the error on the playbill. We were drawn to the material by its reference to Helen Trueman, one of the few such references available in original accounts, who was also in the play, on the playbill listed as "Miss H. Trueman". Ms. Struthers stated that Ms. Trueman was still living at the time, in 1924, in Los Angeles. She had played the part of Augusta.

Ms. Struthers, listed at the time on the playbill as "Miss J. Gourlay", stated that she knew John Wilkes Booth personally and that he was well liked by the cast members, often visited them backstage, a sentiment reflected by others who testified in the trial of the alleged co-conspirators. During the play on April 14, she claimed that, while sitting down during her scene, she saw him enter the lobby of the theater and make his way into the balcony toward the entrance to the Presidential box, thought nothing unusual of it, but noticed that he appeared unusually pale—her thus claimed observation being somewhat difficult to understand in a darkened theater, illuminated only by gas-lit lanterns. As the scene in which she appeared, the "dairy scene" in Act III, Scene 1, concluded, she left the stage, had no part in the next scene, and while sets were being changed, heard the shot, thought it initially part of the play or a prank and then saw Booth jump to the stage, run past her position, shoving her as he went, tearing with his knife the coat of the orchestra leader as he fled by him into the wings and out the rear door to the alley where his horse awaited, held by Ned Spangler, an alleged co-conspirator subsequently convicted of same and sentenced to six years in prison, who worked at the theater and normally tended Booth's horse.

In another handwritten account summarized in the same sheaf of material, Ms. Struthers apparently stated, as has been fairly consistently stated as the point in the play when the audience usually laughed loudly and at which the derringer was fired at the President, that the shooting occurred toward the beginning of the second scene of Act III, after the words "you sockdologizing old man-trap", not inconsistent temporally with her statement in the newspaper articles.

Ms. Struthers also stated in the original piece we referenced that her brother and his friend had witnessed Booth and Spangler in a tavern next door to the theater consuming significant quantities of liquor not long before the assassination. This part of her account has been questioned as to its authenticity, as neither the brother nor his friend was called to testify at the military trial of the alleged co-conspirators. Neither was Ms. Struthers, as she was not a direct eyewitness to the assassination. Such an inference, however, ignores the realities of trials, that prosecutors and defense attorneys select evidence which is, to the extent possible, not overly duplicative and which represents the best presentation of particular parts of the case, so as not to try the patience of the trier of fact unduly or even weaken the case with contentious presentations, especially true before a military tribunal rather than a civilian jury. In any event, the fact that neither she nor her brother or his friend testified does not necessarily detract from the credibility of her story. It has been asserted that she was making up parts of it for the purpose of making more interesting a story which could be made into a film at the time, being promoted by a person who elicited her story, with the suggestion that Ms. Struthers's daughter might play the lead in a silent film. All of that, of course, is mere conjecture, and could be attributed to any witness in a notorious case as a motive for fabrication.

In any event, the account of Ms. Struthers was interesting, especially as she noted Miss Helen Trueman, and whoever proceeded to relieve the site of the material has performed a disservice to scholarship. For the percipient accounts of an historical event, no matter how deserving of credit or lacking thereof, all serve to explicate the event as it has come down through history and to enable filtering of that which makes sense from that which does not, serving as an object lesson to make better citizens of us all, should we ever be faced with being either a witness to an untoward event or called upon to judge same as a fact finder. So, we hope that the material will be replaced, cannot fathom why anyone would suddenly remove it. We say again that if someone does not wish matter freely provided links and made the subject of comment, then, by all means, squirrel it away in a dim, dark recess of an exclusive library somewhere to which few, if any, have access in a practical manner. But do not place it on the internet, which is designed as a free-flowing communal experience of exchange of knowledge and views, first, foremost, and last. If you are the type of person who believes in locking up knowledge and information as exclusive and not in open debate, stay away from the internet, do not post anything, and continue to live in your own little world, apart from the rest of us, replete with your exclusive knowledge and information. But posting something, then withdrawing it as soon as someone might link to it, is not only annoying and wasting of time of others, but it suggests that you are posting it for some ulterior reason and then becoming quite concerned when anyone actually pauses to consider and read it, a reaction which is a little strange.

So, think before uploading and don't waste everyone's time by uploading material and then withdrawing it at some later date, destroying thereby links to the material and loosening the threads which bind the internet. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the material in question. One small part of it did make reference to a commercial auction of letters of Ms. Struthers, which had taken place in 1991, but we cannot understand why that would be of concern. In any event, we hope that the material might return under the same link as it presented a fascinating portrait, its validity or lack thereof to be discerned by readers, regardless of age, as with any information. Anyone who believes, for instance, that they can read the testimony of the witnesses at the trial of the co-conspirators and accept without question the credibility of each and every point of each and every witness, whether presented by the prosecution or the defense, is not very well skilled in how trials work or even how human nature works.

So, if we see that material of Ms. Struthers's first-hand account again, hopefully under the same link, we shall link to it later. It is not a great loss, but it was interesting as referencing uniquely Miss H. Trueman, leading more modern readers to ponder the inevitable interesting coincidence of names which that conveys, not because of any paranormal suggestion but for its implications in reality regarding subsequent events and the prompting in some of the untoward by just such coincidences of names, dates, locations and the like. The many parallels which may be found between the Kennedy and Lincoln assassinations, we posit, were, for the most part, though probably not in all instances, consciously intended as a way to distract from the inquiry into there being more than a lone-nut gunman, making any such references seem strange or lunatic. In other words, they were, by design, intended to lend a spooky quality to the fact of murder, to channel the investigation into the purely mundane, where "facts", that which are the usual forms of evidence, ballistics, blood, fingerprints, eyewitness accounts, autopsy reports, and the like, can always be carefully tailored and controlled to point to one conclusion, especially when there is no trial subject to ordinary rules of evidence and argument. But, many times, it is just such coincidences which unravel the whole untoward act and reveal the most likely participants and co-conspirators, in reality. Else, for instance, why make mention of John Wilkes Booth as a Shakespearean actor who had performed in Julius Caesar? Why make reference to anything regarding the unconscious or conscious mind, save the particulars in the visible, mundane world surrounding the act itself in any such case, including the psychological make-up of the alleged perpetrator? That which is coincidental, empirically verifiable as same, redundantly so, is probative to determine a mindset, a mind print if you will, as surely as are physical fingerprints, if not under the recognized rules of evidence, at least before the court of history, in which there never is a truly final verdict, at least not until the final tick of time itself.

Anyway, having said all that for the good of all, we trust, we find that the material is back online, as fresh as ever. Thank ye. Thank ye very much.

We note that the first performance of Our American Cousin, taking place at Laura Keene's Theater, 622-624 Broadway in New York, occurred, by coincidence, on October 15, 1858, the date of the last debate, held at Alton, Illinois, between Senator Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln anent the issue of slavery, during their race for the Senate seat.

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