The Charlotte News
Saturday, November 20, 1954
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from London that the Soviet Union had given strong indications recently that it was planning to set up an East European security system in answer to NATO, and it was believed that Marshals Georgi Zhukov, Vasily Sokolovsky and Konstantin Rokossovsky, all of whom were World War II heroes, were presently working out the details of such a new alliance, in which they would play leading roles. The Soviet Union and its satellites had signed mutual assistance treaties and trade agreements, but as far as presently known, Eastern Europe had no formal, binding military alliance placing war resources under a single command. British officials said that Moscow's current propaganda line was practically expressing the Kremlin's plans, which those officials believed would materialize at a conference on November 29, the date which the Soviets had proposed to the European nations and the U.S. the previous week for holding an international conference to discuss European security, an invitation which most Western powers had said they would decline, while the U.S., Britain and France said that they would not enter direct talks with the Soviets until the Paris agreements, regarding rearming West Germany and incorporating it into NATO as a sovereign nation, had been ratified by the parliaments of the signatories. Soviet satellites, however, were accepting the invitation to the conference, with Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Albania, East Germany and Hungary having approved the idea and declared their readiness to participate in a European security system. Finland had also accepted the Soviet invitation, but only on condition that the other invited nations participate. The Warsaw Pact would be formed the following May.
At the U.N. in New York, Western sponsors of the President's "atoms for peace" program had rejected an 11th hour bid by India to expand talks on the program to include additional nations, with some Western diplomats predicting that the 60-nation Political Committee would approve the plan unanimously, possibly by Monday. The resolution was virtually assured of Soviet support. India had been complaining throughout the debate on the program that the seven-power resolution placed the underdeveloped countries in the position of being asked to approve a closed-door agreement, but there was no support for their proposal to expand the number of nations to participate in the conference.
In Taipeh, Formosa, Chinese Nationalist and Communist warplanes had exchanged fire this date in the area of the Nationalist Tachen islands off the mainland, 200 miles north of Formosa. Three Communist bombers escorted by fighters had dropped three bombs on the Nationalist-held Pisha Island, wounding two persons, according to the Nationalist Defense Ministry. The planes had escaped under intense anti-aircraft fire. Earlier, Nationalist warplanes had bombed and strafed Communist gun positions on Toumen Island, a Communist outpost 14 miles northwest of the Tachens. All of the Nationalist planes, despite facing anti-aircraft fire, had returned safely to base, having struck primarily at gun emplacements from which the Communists had been bombarding a small Nationalist island, five miles to the south at the doorstep to the Tachens. The raid had been the latest in a series of aerial attacks which had begun November 1, when the Communists had bombed the Tachens, their first air attack on Nationalist territory. Developments since that time had convinced the Nationalists that the Communists were planning a major move. The previous day, the Government news agency of Formosa said that the Communists had moved 11,000 paratroopers and 120 transport planes to mainland positions opposite the Tachens.
Senate Majority Leader William Knowland of California said this date in an interview that the U.S. "must not permit" the Nationalist-held islands off the mainland coast of China to fall to the Communists, as it would open the way for a Communist assault on Formosa itself. He said that the U.S. should continue to provide logistical support for Quemoy and the other islands, but that if it should develop that the Communists were mounting a major offensive to move into the Pacific to seize those outposts for the purpose of an assault on Formosa, such a move could not be permitted. He said that theoretically, the loss of Quemoy and the Tachens would not necessarily be a fatal blow to Formosa, but the psychological advantage which the Communists would gain all over the world would be tremendous. He said that he believed that if the Communist Chinese were made aware that the U.S. was prepared to fight to defend the offshore islands, they probably would not attack. The President and Secretary of State Dulles had not made clear what the policy would be with regard to the offshore islands, while continually confirming that the policy would be to fight for the defense of Formosa proper. The subject had reportedly been argued extensively within the Administration. Senator Knowland said that there had been suggestions that the Nationalists withdraw from the outpost islands to consolidate their forces on Formosa, but he said that it would be a "fatal policy" which would lead to eventual loss of Formosa, itself. He said that he believed the Nationalist defenses would make Quemoy "a tough nut for the Communists to crack."
In Washington, French Premier Pierre Mendes-France and Secretary of State Dulles worked together this date on a joint communiqué which would likely provide the extent of the agreement they had reached during the Premier's visit.
In Zürich, Switzerland, a spokesman for the Swiss Foreign Office said this date that authorities, at the personal request of Hermann Field's sister, were keeping his whereabouts secret. The Cleveland architect had recently been released from prison in Communist Poland, after spending the prior five years under a sentence for allegedly spying for the United States, after he had gone to Poland in search of his brother, Noel, who had disappeared behind the Iron Curtain in 1949. It was speculated that he would soon be joined in Switzerland by his brother, who had been released by the Hungarian Government recently, along with his wife. Noel Field had been an employee of the State Department.
In Oak Ridge, Tenn., the Government was nearing completion of two large atomic plants, costing about one billion dollars, which had already greatly increased the nation's production of fissionable U-235 for atomic and hydrogen weaponry, serving as additions to existing installations at Oak Ridge and Paducah, Ky. A third facility presently under construction near Portsmouth, O., would add further to the U-235 output. The Atomic Energy Commission had declined comment on progress on the construction program, but it had been learned reliably that the Oak Ridge and Paducah facilities were in their final stages of construction, while construction on the Portsmouth facility was projected to be two years along on a four-year schedule. When the Oak Ridge facility was completed, it would consume 16 billion kilowatt hours per year, whereas the current facility used 11 billion kilowatt hours to produce electricity for the entire state of Tennessee in 1952. A pound of U-235 contained the energy equivalent of 2.6 million pounds of coal.
In Washington, nearly 2,000 key Federal employees were participating in an exercise to test escape plans from a mock atomic attack, and were "operating" the Government from 30 emergency headquarters sites within a 300 mile radius of the capital. The President remained on the job, but arranged to take part in the drill by communicating with some of the emergency offices from an underground bomb shelter. All ten Cabinet departments and a score of other agencies were putting in a six-hour day at secret rendezvous points in at least four nearby states to test the continuity of government under such an enemy attack. All except one of the agencies, an unnamed exception, had picked out emergency sites from which they would operate if and when orders were ever made to evacuate the capital, with the other agencies having stored important records at or near the rendezvous sites in a repository unlikely to be the target of enemy bombers. The sites were resort and college towns, plus other communities within occupied Federal buildings in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina, possibly elsewhere. All were within 80 miles to the west and north of Washington and 300 miles to the south. The operators of hotels and other accommodations near the secret sites had been provided letters of understanding advising them that the Government would take over and pay for use of their facilities should an actual emergency arise. The present task did not involve such takeovers, and each agency would pay for the transportation of its own employees.
Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon said this date that a resolution to censure Senator McCarthy would be re-offered in the new Congress in January if necessary, but believed that the American people would demand a vote by the present Senate, which had to occur prior to adjournment on December 24. Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota, a friend of Senator McCarthy, likewise indicated in a separate interview his anticipation of a censure vote before the adjournment, while also saying that, if necessary, it would be taken up by the new Senate in January. He said he believed that Senator McCarthy would be glad to get the matter behind him. Senator Arthur Watkins, chairman of the six-Senator select committee which unanimously had recommended censure, said that he would not speculate on whether the resolution would be reintroduced in the next Congress if it failed to reach a vote prior to adjournment, but said he believed it would get to a vote. Because Senator McCarthy was in Bethesda Naval Hospital regarding an elbow ailment, the Senate stood in recess until November 29, at which time it would resume its debate on the matter.
In Chicago, a man had brought three hogs into his home to give them better care prior to their entry for competition in the International Livestock Show, keeping them in his basement in the Beverly Hills residential district on the Far South Side. Two years earlier, when the man had some hogs in his backyard, neighbors had complained to the health department and the pigs were moved to a nearby farm. The man said that a man's home is his castle and that one could do anything one wanted in one's home as long as it was not immoral. The livestock show was scheduled to open on November 27.
In Washington, N.C., 55 persons had been hospitalized the previous night after eating barbecue, and an estimated 250 others of the 2,200 at the barbecue had been made ill by food poisoning but were not hospitalized. The Beaufort County health officer said that the food poisoning had been caused by bacteria similar to those from a cold or an infected sore. The barbecued pork had been prepared by eight to ten barbecue establishments in the area and had been served in a high school lunchroom and gymnasium at the annual barbecue which raised money for the school band. Those made ill suffered stomach cramps, nausea and vomiting.
In Paris, a 31-year old man arrived in court the previous day, charged with theft, a half day before his court date. On the way, he had been flagged down by a police officer for driving without his lights on, could not produce registration for the car, finally admitting that he had stolen it, saying that having several hours to kill in the capital before having to appear in court, he swiped a car.
In Windsor, England, Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh celebrated their seventh wedding anniversary this date, spending the weekend at the royal lodge with their two children, Prince Charles and Princess Anne.
On page 7-A, general manager of The
News and former editor, J. E. Dowd, reviews the latest book, King of Comedy, by
former News writer Cameron Shipp, an autobiographical sketch of
Mack Sennett
On the editorial page, "Schools in Transition" reviews Schools in Transition, the second of four projected volumes based on a massive research project funded by the Ford Foundation's Fund for the Advancement of Education. The first volume had been The Negro and the Schools by former News editor Harry Ashmore, since mid-1947 of the Arkansas Gazette, that book to be consulted by the Supreme Court during the following winter and spring in advance of the implementing decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The new volume was edited by Dr. Robin Williams, Jr., a native of North Carolina who had been professor of sociology at Cornell since 1946, and by Margaret Ryan, associated with Dr. Williams at Cornell. The book had been completed after issuance of the initial Brown ruling the prior May 17.
The new volume detailed recent experiences in 24 communities bordering the South, in which transition was occurring between segregated and integrated public schools, showing varied results. While not necessarily applicable to all towns and communities, it suggests that the findings ought prove beneficial to school and government officials, as well as to parents who were anxious to alleviate the problems associated with adjustment to integration.
The work had found that violence had attended integration in only one community, Cairo, Illinois, where, unlike most of the communities studied, there had been no attempt to prepare for integration, no liaison between white and black groups, no community leadership devoted to orderly acceptance of the anti-segregation law of the state. Newspapers and radio had been uncooperative, and teachers and students had been given no advance preparation for the change to integration. Rumors had replaced facts while the community prepared for disorder, tripling its police force. Disorder had resulted, though no blood had been shed. Desegregation had, however, occurred and the turmoil ceased, with the community reluctantly settling into a new pattern.
Dr. Williams and Ms. Ryan had found generally that in those communities in which there was a tradition of intergroup relations and in which during the previous decade such organizations as a mayor's friendly relations committee or human relations committee had been active, the transition had appeared to occur with relative ease, with press publicity and public discussions helping the process, along with school officials consulting with parents. On the other hand, indecision and procrastination by school officials had complicated the problem, as had piecemeal attempts at desegregation by desegregating only part of a community's schools.
Early resistance to desegregation had frequently broken down because the opponents had little in common, it having been found that children of both races were not bothered by the change as much as were their parents. Some black teachers opposed the change because it might mean a loss of their jobs, or at least a loss of work for extra pay for guiding extracurricular activities such as coaching and drama direction. White children accepted black teachers without difficulty, often with enthusiasm, in one community. In another instance, many white students had withdrawn from a school where a black principal had been installed, but who proved, in the end, so popular that within a few months all except three students had returned to class.
There had been a tendency on the part of whites to attribute the local call for desegregation to "outsiders", and yet in Elkhart, it had been an outsider, a woman from the NAACP, who had spoken before an interracial group and enabled both races to cooperate.
Organizations which had smoothed the transition included the Little League baseball teams, a group composed of teachers, social workers and community workers, and "All-Out-Americans", composed of grade school children of both races who worked together on extracurricular projects.
The authors of the book had concluded that when desegregation occurred, there would be "hurt feelings among children, Negro and white …, hectic days for school officials and parents." Nevertheless, they suggested, where desegregation had been attempted, the typical outcome had been its eventual acceptance, with the transition taking place in most of the 24 communities studied with smoothness and lack of any open friction, the public schools sharing the same experiences found in Southern universities which had been integrated, that in nearly all of the instances, the difficulty and tension actually experienced had been less than that which had been anticipated and predicted.
"Dr. Spaugh's 30 Years of Service" indicates that the newspaper joined a multitude of his other friends in extending congratulations and good wishes to the Rev. Dr. Herbert Spaugh, whose 30th anniversary as pastor of the Moravian Little Church on the Lane would be observed the following day.
He had been more than just a pastor since coming to Charlotte to organize a Moravian church in 1924, as his interest had been widespread and his influence had impacted many areas of community life. To members of his congregation, he had been a forward-looking pastor. To those who read his column in the newspaper, which had appeared since 1933, and in 40 other Southern newspapers, he had been a warm friend and wise counselor. His original column, which appeared once per week, had been so popular that it became a six-day feature under the title, "The Everyday Counselor". To the community at large, he had been a servant, holding many positions of trust and responsibility, none of which he had failed to undertake. He had served as a longtime member and present chairman of the City School Board, as state and local chaplain of the American Legion, as the district and international chaplain of Civitan, as the president of the Charlotte chapter of the Red Cross, president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Ministerial Association, a member of the governing board of the Southern Moravian Church, founder of the Charlotte chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous, and in many other capacities. He was also instrumental in organizing the annual Easter celebration in Charlotte. He was gifted as a musician and had organized the Charlotte Boy Scout band, which later developed into the city's public school music system.
The following day, the congregation of the church would dedicate property on Moravian Lane, another tribute to Dr. Spaugh's leadership as a pastor, in that the property was not encumbered by a loan. It congratulates him on his 30 years of service to the church and community and hopes that he would have many more.
"Change" indicates that only 19 months earlier, the three highest offices of the state were held by Senators Clyde Hoey and Willis Smith, and Governor William B. Umstead, but that all three had since died, with Senator Alton Lennon having replaced Senator Smith, who the following week would be replaced by Senator-elect Kerr Scott, who, along with Senator Sam Ervin, sworn in as the replacement for Senator Hoey the prior June, would be the state's two Senators in the new Congress, while Governor Luther Hodges, as Lieutenant Governor having succeeded Governor Umstead, had become the state's chief executive officer. They were, respectively, a farmer, a former member of the State Supreme Court, and an industrialist, forming a more liberal group than their predecessors.
During the time when that transition had occurred, the Supreme Court had issued its May 17 decision holding that continued segregation in the public schools was unconstitutional. The compression of those events within such a short time had caused it to reflect on how rapidly times and man changed and how Fate sometimes took charge.
A piece from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, titled "Love's Labor Lost", indicates that the dispatches informed that Russian Communism was currently aiming its biggest guns at clock-watching stenographers, deploring their primping at the rate of eight hours per month during office time.
It suggests that it might be reasonable to predict that Moscow was on the threshold of its greatest victory in its crusade for people-reform, finding that the stenographers ought be easily discouraged from paying too much attention to their faces or the clock, as there did not appear, by the reports, too much interesting to do in Moscow after work hours.
Drew Pearson indicates that it had been just a short time earlier that only one president of a foreign country or one member of a royal family visited the U.S. in the span of four years, listing some of the previous examples of rare royal or head of state visits prior to World War II. But now, things were quite different, with heads of state often visiting one right after the other, along with royalty.
Recently, the Queen Mother of England had been in the country, at the same time as the Prime Minister of Japan, upon whose departure, the Prime Minister of France had arrived, followed a day later by the Chancellor of Austria and the prime ministers of Norway, Sweden and Denmark, plus a Danish prince.
During the Administrations of Presidents Hoover, Roosevelt and Truman, a prime minister rated a night's visit at the White House plus an official dinner, but now only rated a lunch. Royalty used to be greeted at Union Station by the President in a top hat, but now they were greeted by the Vice-President without a hat.
The parade of leaders visiting the country was, to some degree, the result of accident, and, in part, bad management, but it all emphasized the world leadership role of the country. The way they were being herded in one door and then out the other, however, would not aid future foreign relations. For instance, recently, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali, had arrived while the President was still in Denver and was kept waiting as the President was expected to return, but then changed his mind, causing the Prime Minister to be taken on a sightseeing tour, jamming up the rest of his schedule. And then the President of Liberia arrived at the same time, carefully arranged to coincide with the midterm election campaign in an effort to help Republicans with black voters. While the Liberian President remained in the country, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of West Germany arrived on an emergency trip aimed at strengthening his hand with regard to the problem of rearming West Germany. While President Tubman of Liberia and Chancellor Adenauer were still in the country, the Queen Mother had arrived in New York.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop tell of Chiang Kai-Shek having bitterly criticized U.S. policy regarding Asia during the visit of Secretary of State Dulles on the prior September 9, telling the Secretary that the U.S. was afraid to make a stand anywhere in Asia, citing the Korean truce, the backdown from intervention in Indo-China, and the Communist shelling of Quemoy, which had just begun at that point. The Generalissimo said that if the U.S. did not soon take a firm stand, all of Asia would be lost, and with it, the world. When he was done with his harangue, Secretary Dulles was shaken, tending to dispel the notion held worldwide that Chiang was merely an American puppet.
Behind Chiang's anger was his supposed "unleashing" early in the Administration, an unleashing which was primarily phony, as after that point, U.S. aid was premised on a secret understanding that U.S. weapons would not be used offensively by the Nationalists against the Chinese mainland. The only actual element of unleashing regarded the offshore islands, Quemoy and the Tachens. Under the Truman Administration, U.S. arms had been supplied to those islands only clandestinely, through the back door, but after the "unleashing" since the start of the new Administration, arms were supplied openly and a serious build-up of the defenses of the islands had begun. U.S. representatives in Formosa encouraged that build-up and even took part in it, for example, intervening with the Nationalist Government to effect the removal of an incompetent general commanding the Tachen forces. The Nationalist Chinese, therefore, perceived a moral commitment by the U.S. to defend the offshore islands.
Prior to Secretary Dulles visiting Formosa, negotiations by the Nationalists sought an American guarantee to support Chiang in case of Communist attack, and those negotiations were still ongoing, but had hit two major problems. First, the Nationalists wanted a flat guarantee not only for Formosa and the Pescadores, which the Administration was willing to grant, but also for the offshore islands, which the President had refused. Second, the Administration, before giving any guarantee, wanted the Nationalists to commit to not attacking the mainland without U.S. consent, a natural desire to avoid the possibility of Formosa taking an offensive which would automatically involve the U.S. The Nationalists, however, completely opposed any such commitment, viewing it as an attempt to interfere with their sovereignty and to limit their right to return to the mainland. The problems thus caused among the Nationalists had created trouble with U.S. relations there, of which the Chinese Communists were aware.
According to Chinese Nationalist intelligence, Communist Chinese Foreign Minister Chou En-lai had made a speech in Peiping sometime earlier to a group of Communist officials, citing the split between Formosa and the U.S. as proof that in a showdown, the "American imperialists" would not support even their own "running dogs". Yet, the Chinese Communists had shown caution in their operations around the offshore islands, conducting probing operations only, which appeared to U.S. intelligence to be testing of American resolve. If that interpretation was correct, venture the Alsops, it appeared to confirm the view of Joint Chiefs chairman Admiral Arthur Radford and the majority of the Joint Chiefs, as detailed by the Alsops two days earlier, that an American guarantee to protect the offshore islands would probably deter a Communist attack. But even without such a guarantee, the Communists still had to be chary about any attack, as they undoubtedly remembered their own intelligence reports from 1950, that the U.S. would not intervene to protect South Korea from attack by North Korea.
Robert Warshow, in a condensed piece from the Partisan Review, tells of Charlie Chaplin and his desire, not dissimilar to that of most entertainers, for the audience to love him. But it had become evident that he did not love the audience in return, while Mr. Warshow recognizes that it was not the duty of any entertainer to make the audience love the actor.
The humble, lovable Tramp, with whom
the audience had fallen in love in earlier times, had disappeared
gradually, culminating in "Monsieur Verdoux"
He had implicitly embraced this rejection by America by having accepted the "World Peace Prize" recently. But, Mr. Warshow suggests, his change of attitude was also probably because he had given himself away as not being the simple, lovable comic figure.
"Limelight", which had
been made during the years of Mr. Chaplin's disgrace and completed in 1952
just before his departure for Europe, was his apology as well as his
self-examination. He had called it, "The story of a clown who
has lost his funnybone." A famous scene
That which Mr. Warshow chronicles appears to have been a function of a generation of audiences who, once their minds were inured to silent movies, could no more make the transition to talkies around 1929 than some of the silent film stars of the earlier era, those silent film attendees who, starting as children and never much maturing as viewers, had perhaps never understood the inherent separation between art and the artist, that the two, for art to achieve any necessary objectivity to rise above mediocrity, cannot be the same, that the art ought be a conception from the objective mind of the artist, while the artist, as a person, must live as everyone else in a primarily subjective realm for the sake of individual day-to-day survival in a hostile world. By this point in the history of the movies, exacerbated the more by television where time compression, budget constraints, sponsors, and the press of a schedule left little time for art, that realization had not struck most people, dazzled by the gleaming stars and glamour of Hollywood, attending movies primarily for escapism and entertainment, not to be stimulated to thought as the flickers rolled by in the darkened theater, that being left to films imported from overseas for showing in small, independent art houses. Whether, without any longer much of the latter trade in existence to support such theaters, following the advent of videotape, movie rentals, and, eventually, the DVD and rent-by-mail and online streaming systems, what should have been a renascence for foreign films and independent American films given more to the artistic objective, that awareness of such a separation by audiences has advanced in time or regressed to much the way it was in the 1950's and earlier, is questionable. The typical mediocrity available on streaming services, for the most part, overwhelmed by special-effects junk, together with the typical, fascinated interaction with "celebrity news", the more salacious, the more followed with Pavlovian salivation, suggests regression for the most part, that the common denominator is increasingly winning the battle against any aspiration to a higher plane. That is not to say that movies should not have entertainment value, but pandering to the baser tastes of the mass audience for the sake of ticket sales and to the point of exclusion of anything more, has led to a movie industry largely producing these days nothing but unwatchable, cookie-cutter crap, shoot-'em-ups and car chases aplenty, for the most part drawn in the CGI studio, having nothing to do with acting or writing and less in common with art than with comic books, the self-congratulatory plaudits to itself proliferating in the annual presentation of awards by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences notwithstanding, in need, to be completely honest with itself, of a Best Crap Award in each category.
And, of course, that tendency toward a type of black-and-white, right-and-wrong, quickly resolved plot line, without complications or nuance, translates over time to reactions to reality in much the same way by audiences growing up with this crap, leading to the trend of getting people for this or that perceived slight, without reservation or regard to basic humanity, firing people abruptly for the most moronic of reasons, without thought, callously pandering to the loudest expressions of emotive opinion rather than giving more than lip service to objective thought. The best exponent of the trend politically is found in Trumpism, the idea that winning is the only value to be prized, necessitating therefore winning at all costs, destroying the opponent, as if an action hero in a third-rate movie. In that world, compromise and negotiation without artifice to gain the advantage is seen as weakness, appeasement of the "enemy", not even understanding any longer the basic gestalt in which they are operating, that international relations with an enemy in time of war is quite different from ordinary interaction with fellow human beings.
A letter writer from Gastonia urges feeling sorry for a textile worker from Elkin who had shot a doctor, suggests that he would not be able to obtain a fair trial, that it appeared he did not know that doctors were a "law unto themselves", that whatever they chose to say or do was deemed right, that if he made an error in his practice, it would take typically years for the complaint to be resolved, during which time, the complainant would be brought in and drilled by the medical board about why he or she was such a crackpot as to want to annoy a great and busy doctor who only sought to help the suffering.
A letter writer from Monroe finds that it appeared Mecklenburg County had three political parties, the newest one having been developed during the summer and fall of 1951, with the News and a radio announcer telling the people for whom they should vote. So now, the three parties were the Democrats who would stick to the nominee, the old-line Republican Party, and the "Dem-Ike-Jonacrat Party", the latter of which he thinks should be expelled from the Democratic Party at the time of the next primary as they were good Democrats but had been led astray. He adds that he had been a steady reader of the newspaper for over 40 years and finds it a great paper, though he could not agree all the time with the editors, urging them to keep it up, as he enjoyed spending the 30 cents per week.
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