The Charlotte News

Wednesday, February 2, 1955

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President, at his press conference this date, said that the cause of peace had been served by the country having made it clear that it did not intend to allow Formosa to fall to international Communism, that the resolution approved the previous week by the Congress regarding Formosa insured against miscalculation by the Chinese Communists regarding American determination. He said that there was no commitment to use U.S. ground forces in the defense of Formosa, but declined to go into details as to how the country intended to protect Formosa and the Pescadores, the focus of the resolution. He refused to say whether the offshore outpost islands held by the Nationalists, Quemoy and Matsu, would be defended if the President determined that a threat to them would pose a threat to the security of Formosa. In so declining, he said that he would not provide a blueprint for the Communists. The press conference, filmed for possible later use on television and in theaters, covered a wide range of topics, including his stalled nomination of Judge John Harlan to the Supreme Court, saying that the delay was unfortunate but that he would not criticize Congress for it. He also touched on the Dixon-Yates utility combine controversy, regarding its contract with the Atomic Energy Commission, saying that he did not intend to withdraw his previous order allowing the contract, despite Democratic opposition in the form of a resolution adopted by ten Democrats of the joint Atomic Energy Committee, calling for cancellation of the contract, with the President pointing out that the resolution had passed on party lines. He also said that he had no present plan to rescind his proposed cut in Army strength, despite misgivings voiced by Army chief of staff General Matthew Ridgway, when the latter had testified before Congress that the proposed cut would jeopardize American security "to a degree". He said that General Ridgway did not have overall responsibility for the nation's defense, as did the President, and that his decision to cut Army strength by 140,000 men had not been altered. Regarding censorship, the President said that he did not see how anyone could call filming of his press conference and subsequently releasing only portions of it for use on TV and in theaters censorship. He said that he understood that about 28 minutes of the first Presidential press conference to be filmed, that of January 19, had been released for public viewing.

Senator John Sparkman of Alabama, chairman of the Foreign Relations Far Eastern subcommittee, said this date in an interview that the U.S. would have to consider the possibility of yielding some small Chinese Nationalist-held islands to Communist China if the country followed through on U.N. efforts to work out a cease-fire in the area of Formosa. He said that if Communist China were to accept the U.N. invitation to participate in the Security Council talks regarding a truce, the least of their demands would be that the Nationalists give up Quemoy, Matsu and the Tachen Islands, all considered covered by the Formosa resolution passed by Congress the previous week. But Senator Sparkman said that the Administration's attitude toward defending those islands remained "foggy". He said that if those islands were necessary for adequate defense of Formosa, then the world ought to be told that the U.S. would fight for them, and if they were not essential, no American blood should be spilled over them. Some Republican members of Congress who had met with the President the previous day came away with the impression that any attack by the Communist Chinese on the offshore islands would result in immediate U.S. counter-moves, and Senator William Knowland of California, the Minority Leader, said that he would fight any move to give those islands, or any other Nationalist-held territory, to the Communists to obtain a cease-fire. He said that an amendment to that effect of a resolution, which would put the Senate on record as backing Administration moves to seek a cease-fire through the U.N., would be proposed should Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota renew his attempts to get the Foreign Relations Committee to approve the resolution, the Committee having delayed the previous day consideration of it for a week on the insistence of Senator Knowland and others. But Senator Humphrey said in an interview that he would bring it up again the following Tuesday and would fight against amendments because they might include reservations that the Administration would not want, saying that the President had proposed the cease-fire and that the Senators had been led to believe that he would not favor appeasement of Communist China, that, personally, he would be willing to trust the President to work out an "honorable cease-fire", but that it appeared that some of the Republicans would not. When the President was asked at his press conference about Senator Knowland's statement that the Humphrey resolution, supported by Senator Walter George of Georgia, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, would constitute a blanket endorsement of appeasement, the President expressed unfamiliarity with the matter, suggested that the Senators were expressing their own personal opinions, and that he desired to think it over before saying anything further about it.

Fred Hampson of the Associated Press reports again from Taipeh that Nationalist warplanes had launched new strikes this date at Yikiangshan Island, taken by the Communists the previous week, and that Nationalist refugees had told of how Communist bombers in turn had brought civil activities on the nearby Tachens to a virtual standstill, that the bombs fell all over the islands and there was no place to get away from them. The official Formosan provincial newspaper had said that 40 children who were slated for evacuation had been killed on Sunday when Communist bombers hit one of the Tachen islands with firebombs. A U.S.-built transport had landed 538 civilians this date, many of whom were children, at the northern Formosan port of Keelung, only a small portion, however, of the 15,000-man garrison and 15,000 civilians who remained on the islands enduring the bombings. Nationalist bombers had flown through intense antiaircraft fire in their strike at Yikiangshan, according to official reports, and the Nationalists said that all had returned safely. As the U.N. awaited response from the Communist Chinese Government to the invitation extended by the Security Council for it to participate in discussions of the proposed cease-fire in the Formosa area, Communist Chinese activity in the area of the Tachens continued almost round the clock.

A cluster of tornadoes ripped a swath through the mid-South's "tornado alley" the previous day, flattening scores of buildings, including two schoolhouses, and leaving an unofficially estimated 30 persons dead and 100 injured. The twisters hit five small communities in Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama, with all of the deaths reported in Mississippi in thinly populated areas of the northwestern rim of the state, 27 having been killed near Commerce Landing, about 30 miles south of Memphis. At least two of the dead had been schoolchildren killed while attending elementary school. A teacher at the school was also killed.

In Raleigh, because of increased enrollment, five State-supported colleges, East Carolina College, Appalachian State Teachers College, Greensboro A & T, Western Carolina College and Pembroke State College, said that they needed more buildings to take care of their students and to meet their needs in the ensuing few years, seeking the previous day from the Joint Appropriations Committee increased appropriations totaling nearly ten million dollars more for the ensuing biennium than that which Governor Luther Hodges and the Advisory Budget Commission had recommended. Of the ten million dollars sought, about 8.5 million would be for permanent improvements and the balance for their operating budgets.

Donald MacDonald of The News tells of Charlotte residents having complained to law enforcement and court officials this date about reports from Raleigh that a local detective had testified before a State House Judiciary Committee the previous day in support of a bill to deal with sexual psychopaths, saying that Charlotte had become a "mecca" for sex deviates. The detective, who headed the Charlotte Youth Bureau, had told a reporter this date that he was misquoted on use of the word "mecca", but continued to insist that sexual offenders created serious problems in Charlotte. He said that now, however, they were doing something about the problem and so it was in the news. Several people had complained to the police chief that Charlotte was being given "a black eye" from the reports, painting a lurid picture of the city. Police Chief Frank Littlejohn said that the city was no worse than any other city of comparable size, and that since it was the largest city in the Carolinas, there was naturally more sexual deviation than in other cities in the Carolinas. He said that the report made it seem, however, that they had a park where such sexual deviates congregated, but that such a notion was ridiculous, that since the formation of the Youth Bureau, they had taken more action in cases involving sex offenses or attempts to commit same than they had ever done before. The local Juvenile Court judge expressed concern about the report that three persons, an oil company executive, a State employee, and an Army Criminal Investigations Division officer, had been, according to the Charlotte detective's testimony, arrested in the previous few days on charges of sexual deviancy and held for arraignment in Juvenile Court, pointing out that three persons had been arraigned before the court in the previous two months on sex-related charges, but not during the prior few days. At least two of the city's psychiatrists also expressed concerns about the reports of the testimony of the detective, one saying that he believed sexual deviancy was no more prevalent in Charlotte than in other cities of comparable size and that sexual deviates were "essentially sick", the other psychiatrist, president of the North Carolina Neuropsychiatric Association, saying that he had not yet been informed of the proposed bill and thus could not comment.

Helen Parks of The News indicates that at the meeting the previous night in Charlotte of the court of appeals of the Methodist Churches Southeastern Jurisdiction, a Georgia Methodist minister had been given a one-year suspension, calling the action "a monstrosity". He had been suspended the previous July 8 after a church trial had found him guilty of "un-Christian tempers, words and actions" and "imprudent and unministerial conduct", the trial having heard from 62 witnesses over the course of six days. The preacher said that the whole thing was an attempt to stop his paper, titled "One Methodist Voice", in which he fought against Communism and published the beliefs of 90 percent of the Methodist laymen, claiming that he could take some of the primary Methodist literature from a period of years and compile from it the basic economic beliefs of Karl Marx. When asked whether he was sometimes called the "McCarthy of the Methodists", he replied that his circumstances might be comparable to the way Senator McCarthy had been treated, catching "the firetruck instead of the firebug", even though the firetruck, he admitted, might sometimes injure someone on the way to the fire; but the end, he believed, justified the means. He had been given a sabbatical leave at the 1953 conference and at that time, his publication was condemned and the conference expressed complete confidence in the Christian integrity and patriotic loyalty of the church brethren who had been attacked by the paper. He admitted to having pointed out some of the churchmen by name whom he claimed taught the economic theory of Karl Marx. Those Methodist radical leftwing Commies support the integration of the poor little schoolchildren. If that ain't Karl Marx, what the hell is it?

Emery Wister of The News indicates that a photographer had crawled into a hole with the groundhog this date and that therefore there were no pictures of the groundhog or the weather man, that the groundhog had come out of his hole and had stayed quite awhile before the sun came out and scared him back in, that there would therefore, according to legend, be six more weeks of bad weather. He relates of having thought that the weather forecaster might call on the groundhog for some assistance this date, and so had picked up a photographer and headed for the weather station at the municipal airport, where they spotted the weather man hoping to get a glimpse of the groundhog. So the photographer, who had hoped to get a picture of the weather man catching his glimpse of the groundhog, prepared to take the photograph, only to discover that he had the wrong shutter in his camera—presumably meaning the wrong lens or film speed as cameras do not have interchangeable shutters—, and so could not take the picture, going back to the airport and crawling into the hole with the groundhog, where he would continue to be for six weeks, regardless of the interim weather. Mr. Wister says that in the meantime, one should look for some warm, cloudy weather for the ensuing two days, with the high this date of 60 and the low the following day of 34.

In Long Beach, Calif., an 80-year old man and his bride were honeymooning at home this date after a 600-mile round-trip by ambulance to Las Vegas to be married, with the man lying on a stretcher during the ceremony after he had suffered a hip fracture a week earlier. He married his 62-year old nurse and housekeeper, after the Long Beach license bureau had turned his application down the previous week, with the chief clerk explaining that the rejection had only been temporary until the man could produce a doctor's certificate regarding his physical condition. Instead of obtaining that certificate, he paid an ambulance firm $300 to obtain the quickie Las Vegas marriage—apparently, at the time, a community not too concerned about the potential spread of social diseases, because, as the saying goes, what happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas.

On the editorial page, "Big Job Ahead for Civic Tailors" indicates that if proposed perimeter zoning and subdivision control bills before the General Assembly at present were not approved soon, fast-growing Charlotte and its suburbs would face difficulties in adjusting, facts of which the planning experts had been aware for many years, while political timidity had prevented progress.