The Charlotte News
Saturday, October 22, 1955
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Denver that the President had undergone thorough new examinations by some of the nation's leading physicians this date, as he began his fifth week of hospitalization from his September 24 heart attack. Dr. Paul White, the Boston heart specialist, had joined the presidential staff of doctors at the hospital after flying in from the East, accompanied by Col. Thomas Mattingly, a heart expert at the Army's Walter Reed Hospital in Washington. Dr. White had scheduled a press conference for later in the day to make a public report on the President's progress and give his latest estimates of prospects for his complete recovery. A medical bulletin had reported that the President was feeling "refreshed and in his usual jovial mood" after a good night of sleep of about nine hours. Dr. White brought with him a small cardboard carton containing coffee which he said had been given him as a "present" for the Eisenhowers. The President had conferred for 25 minutes the previous day with Attorney General Brownell, but the latter said that there was no talk of politics.
In Fort Benning, Ga., in a prepared address for delivery to the first annual meeting of the Association of the U.S. Army, Lt. General James Gavin, Army chief of research and development, stated that responsible thinking by military and civilian leaders had been and still was that there was no "easy way to win wars, no super weapon to guarantee victory," but that the "potentialities of Army-developed guided missiles with nuclear warheads for battlefield use stagger the imagination." General Maxwell Taylor, Army chief of staff, in another prepared address to the same body, said, "The Army, with a variety of weapons, is able to act with due regard to the postwar conditions which the military operations will create." He indicated that the Army had the job of "picking up the pieces, so to speak, too often after wars to be able to think in terms of purely military effects of weapons systems."
In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov said this night that he would disclose at the coming Geneva conference of foreign ministers, due to start on October 27, whether he intended to relinquish his post, after being asked the question by an Associated Press correspondent. He appeared reluctant to discuss his plans in further detail. Mr. Molotov had said recently in the Communist magazine that he had erred "dangerously" in a major speech the previous winter by suggesting that the Soviet Union was not yet a full-scale Socialist nation, prompting immediate speculation that his confession meant that a change was imminent in the foreign ministry.
In Des Moines, Ia., Adlai Stevenson, addressing the Midwest Democratic farm conference meeting, expressed support for a return to fixed 90 percent of parity price supports for basic farm crops, prompting some party leaders to say that Mr. Stevenson had gained the initiative at the conference, while others said that they were supporting New York Governor Averell Harriman for the presidential nomination and Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee for the vice-presidential nomination. In his first major political speech of the fall, Senator Kefauver also attacked the farm problem, with falling farm prices as the Administration had supported flexible price supports. Governor Harriman was planning to make a major address on farm issues this night.
Meanwhile, former Vice-President Henry Wallace said in New York that he favored President Eisenhower for the presidency in 1956 "to further the cause of world peace." He expressed the greatest admiration and respect for Mr. Stevenson, Senator Kefauver and Governor Harriman, but said that Mr. Eisenhower "represents more than any other man in the world hope for peace," that such outweighed other considerations.
In New York, California Governor Goodwin Knight said that he would be a favorite-son candidate for the Republican nomination in 1956 if the President did not seek re-election, intending thereby to keep a hold on the California delegation at the convention in that event.
In Saarbruchen, in the Saar, pro-European and pro-German forces hurled accusations of trickery at each other this date as each tried to curry favor with voters before the following day's plebiscites. Premier Johannes Hoffmann of the Saar said, "No lies and insults are strong enough to silence the truth," as he made a final appeal to vote for "Europeanization". The German Homeland League, which encompassed the three parties seeking the Saar's return to Germany, countered with an appeal for discipline because "no one can doubt the victory of the German parties." Each side called the other "traitors", with the Hoffmann forces accusing the pro-German groups of betraying both the Western European Union concept and West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer who backed it. The pro-German parties accused their opponents of betraying their German homeland and making the Saar "a colony of France". Voters would cast their ballots on the matter the following day, with the results determining the fate of a proposal by the seven-nation WEU to "Europeanize" the Saar. If the vote was in the affirmative, it would become the first embodiment of a united Europe, a supra-national state smaller than Rhode Island and with a population of between 900,000 and a million, containing the industrial heart of Western Europe. The region would continue its close economic ties, including a customs union, with France and its control of its own internal government. But foreign relations and defense would pass from control by France to a neutral high commissioner appointed by the WEU. If the vote was in the negative, the status quo would continue, meaning political autonomy but an economic relationship with France.
In New Orleans, a team of University of Minnesota surgeons reported to the American Heart Association at its 28th annual scientific meeting that since March, 1954, a total of 43 children had undergone surgery with the aid of "controlled cross circulation", a procedure by which the patient "borrowed" the heart and lungs of a donor lying alongside the patient in the operating room, so that surgeons could operate on the patient's heart in a bloodless state without endangering the patient's life, the donor providing the oxygenization of circulating blood to the person undergoing surgery. Dr. H. E. Warden and several colleagues said that two-thirds of the 43 children had survived the procedure and now had comparatively normal hearts, that most of the operations were for defects of the muscular wall separating the right and left chambers of the heart, and that a simple mechanical pump helped transfer blood from the patient to the donor so that it could pick up oxygen in the donor's lungs before being returned to the patient's arteries. They said that life could be sustained during the procedure with only one-eighth to one-fourth of the usual volume of circulating blood. In some cases, they reported, the human donor could be eliminated in favor of reservoirs of compatible oxygen-rich blood. In another report to the meeting, Dr. Mario Stefanini of Boston reported encouraging results in attacking clots in blood vessels of the legs, abdomen and eyes with a chemical enzyme derived from bacteria of the streptococcal family.
In St. Louis, the American Dietetic Association said, through its food and nutrition experts, that there was a lot of misinformation about diet, that eating olives and oysters, for instance, would not make one more virile, that eating a thick steak after a strenuous afternoon on the football field was not the answer to providing more protein in the diet, that sassafras did not thin the blood or cheese cause constipation, among other myths which they sought to dispel. They were appalled by the amount of phony food beliefs accepted by many Americans. They said that milk, potatoes and bread, of themselves, were not necessarily fattening and that fruit and fruit juices could be. Nor did they accept that fish was brain food or that fresh pork in summer would cause illness, that celery was good for the nerves or that garlic pills helped memory. The Association's community nutrition section had drawn up a list of groups responsible for spreading misinformation about food.
In Kampala, Uganda, it was reported that King Mutesa II of Buganda, a province of British East Africa, better known to his friends as "Freddie", who had been exiled to England for two years, had been permitted earlier in the week to return to the throne. But a beauty who appeared as a nude in London's edition of Folies Bergere had flown into the province on a one-way ticket on Wednesday and announced that she was "Freddie's guest". The previous day, another British beauty had also arrived to visit with Freddie, until immigration officials descended on her hotel, and it was hinted that she may have departed for Dakar in French West Africa. The King was reuniting also with his wife and young son.
In Memphis, the garbage truck driver who had placed a watch in layaway status more than 11 years earlier for Christmas, 1944 and had not yet paid it off, said, in an interview with a columnist of the Memphis Commercial Appeal, that it did not seem that long, adding that he still hoped to claim the watch by the coming Christmas. A newspaper reader had sent $10 to the newspaper to be applied to the balance due, which was $162.44, after he had paid off through the years $283.92.
In Brockton, Mass., Alfonso, a lightweight boxer at only 70 pounds, had, the previous night, gotten drunk visiting local pubs, consuming his favorite beer. He tried to wander alone down one of the main streets of the town, but wobbled, weaved, stopped, leaned against a utility pole for support and finally collapsed. Spectators called the police, who classified him as a drunk and took him home. This lousy bum should be made to pay off that watch. He is an utter disgrace to humanity and the boxing profession.
On the editorial page, "Stevenson Could Be Unity Candidate" indicates that at the recent Southern Governors Conference, the idea had been floated of a Southern coalition candidate and a Southern-influenced party platform for the Democrats in 1956, but remained too abstract to convey any real meaning. The idea had actually come from newspaper stories which had attributed to Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson the concept. Nevertheless, the governors had talked about it all week and wanted someone to define what such a Southern coalition would be.
In 1952, the South had coalesced around Senator Richard Russell at the convention, but his candidacy was beclouded by the regional label and would be so again if his name were to be placed in nomination again, which it finds unlikely. Thus, it appeared that Adlai Stevenson would be the best bet for a candidate around whom the South could rally. Presently, he had two leading opponents, Senator Estes Kefauver and Governor Averell Harriman, with the former having more support in the West than in his native South, and the latter being a Fair Dealer. Other potential candidates, such as Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma, Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri, and Governor Frank Lausche of Ohio, did not have the public stature and popularity attributed by the opinion polls to Mr. Stevenson. And politicians would want a winner.
Mr. Stevenson had shown independence of judgment and moderation which appealed to Southerners fearful of candidates bound slavishly to the Truman Fair Deal, and a hinted endorsement of Governor Harriman by former President Truman would make Mr. Stevenson all the more attractive to many Southerners.
It concludes that if the strongest candidates to emerge were Mr. Stevenson and Governor Harriman, the South probably would deem the former not only acceptable, but worth fighting for.
"No Feather for Ellender's War Bonnet" finds that one of the cleverest essays penned by the recently deceased William T. Polk had compared George Washington's 1787 statement, "Let us raise the standard to which the wise and honest can repair," to Theodore Bilbo's 1934 comments about an opponent, that he was "a cross between a hyena and a mongrel begotten in a Nigger graveyard at midnight, suckled by a sow, and educated by a fool". Mr. Polk had been documenting the decline of Southern politics.
It finds that the South was on the way back from the late Senator Bilbo but had not quite reached the Washingtonian heights of decency and wisdom. It cites to Senator Allen Ellender's denunciation of Governor Averell Harriman of New York, saying that the latter would "give away the Indian chief on top of the Capitol dome" if he became the Democratic presidential nominee. It finds that his suspicion of Governor Harriman's respectability was exceeded only by his ignorance of the Capitol dome, which actually had at its top the 14,985-pound bronze Statue of Freedom.
We like the little doors
"Ortega & Revolt of the Masses" tells of Spain's Jose Ortega y Gasset having thumbed his nose at both the Communist intellectuals who had branded him a fascist and at the high priests of Spanish fascism who had branded him an arch-villain, as well at the monarchists, who had labeled him a traitor. He had died at age 72 during the week in Madrid, in the sixth year of his "armed truce" with Generalissimo Francisco Franco.
It finds that the world had lost one of the great thinkers of the 20th Century. Years earlier, he had seen a new kind of mass-man emerging in the world and saw the dangerous possibility that he would supplant the individual. To the consternation of both Communists and fascists, he had taught that the masses were essentially evil because they tended to crush everything which was different, individual or select.
It suggests that in an age when nonconformity or dissent was subject to some suspicion, he had an important lesson to impart to America. When he had visited Aspen, Colo., in 1949 to attend ceremonies observing the 200th anniversary of the birth of Johann Goethe, he had spoken of the need for constant soul-searching and civilization: "I do not recall that any civilization ever perished from an attack of doubt… Civilizations usually die through the ossification of their traditional faith, through an arteriosclerosis of their beliefs."
It concludes that it was a pity that his voice had been stilled, but finds that the echoes of it would be heard for a long time.
"Waiting Is Hazardous in N.C. Politics" reflects back to 1951 when Dr. Henry Jordan was contemplating whether to run or not for the gubernatorial nomination against the late William B. Umstead, and then again whether he would now run against Governor Luther Hodges in 1956. He had decided in January, 1952 not to run and so Mr. Umstead had been elected Governor, having defeated in the primary Hubert Olive, who was deemed too cold and too fresh to do the job.
Dr. Jordan was now talking with friends, making noises as if there were a burning question in his mind. If he tossed his hat into the ring, he would be a formidable foe for Governor Hodges and if he decided against it, the field would be wide open for a score of the politically ambitious. It suggests that he would likely not be able to beat Governor Hodges but that it would provide for an interesting race.
It indicates that Disraeli had once said that everything comes to him who waits, suggests that maybe it was so in the 19th Century in England, but not so in modern politics in North Carolina, where most old pols subscribed to the advice of the Confederacy's Nathan Bedford Forrest: "Git there fustest with the mostest."
A piece from the Richmond News Leader, titled "Equinox in Lower Suburbia", indicates that with October being present, had come "the ringing of a bell, fragile, shrill and unnoticed", that of "the hookey-tookey man, the ice cream man, forlornly wending his way through lower suburbia." But now, unlike the summer when children were all around him, he was alone and forsaken. Now, children slept and rose according to the light, not the clock. Once more the mothers had the upper-hand, with sunrise and sunset on their side.
"Gone are the early dawns and tardy sunsets when the ice cream man could roll in triumphal impunity about the town, pursued by wails of 'I wanna pop-sickul' and 'I wanna nicecream sandwidge.' Now windows are shut and children are asleep. It is autumn, and it will soon be winter, and the voice of the hookey-tookey man calls in vain."
Does your mama cry 'n' scream, "Trouble," 'crost the land-bridge?
Drew Pearson tells of having sat beside Carlos Davila as he lay dying, with his eyes seeming even "brighter because the sockets were deep, his face drawn, his body emaciated." He had been sick a long time and did not appear as the "dapper little ambassador who had solved a world-famous social controversy" by escorting Dolly Gann, sister of the Vice-President, to dinner ahead of Alice Longworth, wife of the Speaker of the House. At the time he had been Chilean Ambassador to the U.S. On his wall were pictures of Secretary of State Frank Kellogg congratulating him on the final settlement of the Tacnia-Arcia dispute when Chile and Peru had been on the verge of war, with troops mobilized and skirmishes having taken place. Ambassador Davila had proposed a few common sense ideas, had arranged a cooling-off period, gotten the two countries trading together, and gradually they had become among the best friends in the Americas.
He had now become the head of the Pan American Union, which had faded and even more so when Sr. Davila had died at age 100. "But the parrot in the palm tree in the patio seemed just as cocky, just as unconcerned as the children who played in the street outside." He had seen directors of the Union come and go and watched diplomats gather to prevent war in the Chaco, and the previous winter had summoned 21 ambassadors to meet all night to stop a war between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, which he had managed to stop.
Mr. Pearson recounts that he had gone to the White House in 1940 to get a plane ride to take Sr. Davila's wife, who was dying of cancer, back to Chile, her native land. And now he saw her widower dying of the same disease, laying "very quiet while the final football scores droned in through the window and children played outside in the street."
Charles Poore, writing in the New York Times, asks, "What is the South?" says that three books which had just been published brought three views of its changing and enduring patterns as seen through the eyes of the creative artist, a blithe tourist, and a happy critic, William Faulkner, Emily Kimbrough, and H. L. Mencken, respectively. He says that what was learned from each was all the more convincing as the three writers told almost as much about themselves as they did about the South.
Mr. Faulkner's new book was Big
Woods, a collection of his best hunting stories, "The
Bear", "The Old People", "A Bear Hunt"
and "Race at Morning"
Ms. Kimbrough's book, So Near and Yet So Far, was a chronicle of the Hokinsonian safari to New Orleans and Cajun country beyond, having apparently taken place after the last presidential election and seemingly "conducted with a sort of light-hearted ferocity". The ladies of "Task Force K" had descended on the French Quarter "like an army with banners" from Byrn Mawr, tasting practically all of the menu items from the restaurants and exploring thoroughly the antique shops, venturing into the country where they explored sugar mills and shrimp fleets devotedly. "They admired the grill work of old manses as enthusiastically as they grilled one another. They attended rural dances, rode back bayous in a mail boat of small charm and immense age, toured New Orleans harbor on the mayor's yacht, went down a salt mine, declined a helicopter trip to offshore oil operations, and had trouble with the locks of hotel and motel lodgings. They had the time of their lives, and Miss Kimbrough's book will probably swell tourist traffic to the South alarmingly. Viva Task Force K!"
He says that in addition, one learned from the book that not all of the destroyed old manses had been burned by invading "Union varlets", that some had burned by themselves or with local help. It was also learned that the Cajuns had been surprised to hear that Prohibition had ended, as they had never known that it had begun. It also taught that one could not overestimate the breadth of Southern hospitality.
In a book compiled by Alistair Cooke, The Vintage Mencken, Mr. Mencken had a piece titled, "The Calamity of Appomattox", posing the question what would have happened if the South had won the Civil War, written for the American Mercury many years earlier. Mr. Mencken had decided that things would have worked out fine, as "by now the two Republics would be getting on pretty amicably," with the South "vaccinated against both Wall St. and the Liberal whim-wham." He believed that slavery would have been abolished long before the turn of the century, that "the triumph of sin in 1865 would have stimulated and helped to civilize both sides."
Mr. Poore concludes that it was all very well, but that a reviewer, "watching the endless cascade of books about the South splash across his desk, isn't sure that the South didn't win the Civil War anyway."
A letter writer indicates that he had lived in the state for many years but had missed many things during his residence, despite having visited the coast, the mountains, and attended the outdoor dramas. During the previous weekend he had enjoyed "the most glorious spectacle of all" as he and his family went to Blowing Rock and experienced the full color of autumn in the mountains. "At Blowing Rock we could look down from the roadside of a patchwork of brilliant color. The whole mountainside, instead of dying with the cold weather, looked even more alive than when they are green." They had then driven along the Blue Ridge Parkway to Linville Caverns, after having stopped at Grandfather Mountain, and returned to Charlotte by way of Morganton, arriving home at sundown. He says that for eight hours, they had felt that they were "in another world, an enchanted, thrilling world of high mountains dressed in glorious color." He recommends it to other residents of Charlotte, as it was only an hour away.
A letter writer from Monroe indicates that the "Ungodly and Un-American citizens' councils have become the pseudo-agents of Dixie-grown fascism. They are a dishonorable stigma that the nation cannot long afford to tolerate. They are anti-democratic forces of a tyrannical order, and they are destined to travel the road that leads to the burial ground of the tyrants." He finds them to be "collections of ignorant bootleggers and the anti-social traffic of schismatic subterfuge", "11th hour choruses organized to sing segregation's swan-song." He predicts that the citizens councils would unwittingly do the cause of democracy more good than a thousand Supreme Court decisions before they were finally rendered extinct, "for as the economic pressure becomes more acute and widespread, the nation will surely realize the need" for legislation to form a fair employment practices commission. "When the violence inherent in fascist organizations erupts, not only national, but world opinion will force the federal government to deal sternly with the southern insurgents. For the germ of liberty is at a heightened contagion when the blood of martyrs flows."
A letter writer says that during his three years of residence in Charlotte, he had heard officials of the city talk about the smoke problem, that they had once had a smoke engineer and then suddenly did not have one, but officials continued to talk about the problem and what they were going to do about it. He wonders why there was all the talk but no action. He indicates that every time he came to work on cool mornings, he passed through a thick smog which hung over certain sections of the city, which had to be terribly unhealthy and suggests it might be the reason there were so many colds and so much flu going around. He urges the people at City Hall to stop doing so much talking about the smoke and actually do something about it.
A letter writer from Nashville, Tenn., indicates that if the automobile manufacturers of the country really had a sense of responsibility to the public, they would reduce horsepower and/or place governors on all cars except for police and emergency vehicles, which would prevent going more than 50 mph.
But then, the hot-rodders would simply remove the governors, and there you are again in Speed City.
Framed Edition
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