The Charlotte News
Thursday, February 3, 1955
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Moscow, the Soviet Government had announced this date a 1955 defense budget which was about 12 percent higher than the previous year's budget, presented to the Supreme Soviet and calling for expenditures of 112 billion rubles, an increase of about 12 billion over that of the previous year. It indicates that the ruble was presently worth about 25 percent of an American dollar. The Soviet Finance Minister had told a meeting of the two houses of the Supreme Soviet that their main task in the sphere of international relations was strengthening the cause of peace but that nothing had occurred in the international situation which would give them the opportunity to reduce their defense capacity and so they would have to spend more to promote further strengthening of their military forces. In terms of American dollars, the total Soviet defense budget was about 28 billion, compared to 34 billion dollars proposed by the President's budget for the coming fiscal year. Experts on the Soviet Union said that its Government price-fixing policies, coupled with Government control of industry would permit it to build up its armed forces inside the overall defense budget figure which had been announced, with such items as education, social welfare, and physical culture also probably covering defense functions, with some U.S. experts estimating that at least half of the Russian budget went directly for military expenditures. The total Soviet budget for 1955 was set at 589.5 billion rubles, compared to the previous year's overall budget of 563 billion, nearly twice the overall U.S. budget.
In Paris, the French Government of Premier Pierre Mendes-France was in grave danger of falling this night, as Radical Socialist René Mayer had told the Premier, a fellow party member, that he would vote against him in the current debate on the Premier's North African policies, probably meaning that the tenuous coalition majority in the National Assembly would crumble. M. Mayer received tremendous applause in the Assembly as he spoke against the policy, including several followers of General Charles de Gaulle, who had also supported the Premier in the past. The Premier was expected to call for a vote of confidence sometime prior to midnight, which would require him to resign if he were to lose the vote, which would probably come early on Saturday. The Government had been accused the previous day in debate of both going too far and not going far enough in offering greater self-government in North Africa, with several Communist deputies charging it had done too little, while other speakers, primarily from the extreme right, insisted that trouble in Algeria had been fomented by the Government having shown weakness in the French protectorate of Tunisia, where negotiations for local self-government had dragged on for many months.
Spencer Moosa of the Associated Press reports from Taipeh that the previous day and night, Nationalist Chinese bombers and outpost island artillery had hit Chinese Communist land targets, at Amoy and Tateng, a few miles from Nationalist-held Quemoy, as well as shipping, along a 350-mile oceanic front from Formosa Strait northward into the East China Sea. There were no reports of Communist Chinese action in response. In the meantime, the plan to evacuate the Nationalist civilians and soldiers from the Tachen Islands, 200 miles north of Formosa, appeared to be hanging in the balance this date because of U.S. reluctance to provide clear-cut guarantees for the protection of the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu. The evacuation plans therefore seemed to have reached a stalemate, such that if the U.S. did not reconsider its position, the Nationalists would press for reconsideration of the whole matter of evacuating the Tachens and instead take a fight-to-the-death stand there. A knowledgeable source had indicated that the U.S. had first agreed to assurances regarding Quemoy and Matsu, but then retracted that offer. Observers believed that the U.S. was not bringing the situation to a head because of possible moves elsewhere to persuade the Chinese Communists to allow a pullout from the Tachens without challenge, avoiding thereby the risk of a clash between the Communists and the U.S. Seventh Fleet.
The House Armed Services Committee this date approved a bill extending the draft for four additional years, by a vote of 32 to 0, voting for two changes in the present law but keeping intact the basic requirements that all men of 18 1/2 years of age would be subject to induction for two years of active service followed by six years of reserve duty. The recommended changes were that any young man joining the National Guard before turning 18 1/2 and then serving continuously until age 26 could not be drafted, whereas current law made such an individual subject to the draft until he was 35, plus recommending that anyone serving after September 16, 1940 for six months or more in one of the branches of the armed services or 24 months in the Public Health Service, would not be subject to induction except in the event of a war or national emergency declared by Congress. The latter change was made to make sure that young men who served in the armed forces but were discharged with less than two years of service would not be called for a second tour of duty in peacetime.
In Raleigh, a large appropriations headache continued to build this date for the General Assembly's Joint Appropriations Committee, asked to approve an appropriation request totaling nearly 22 million dollars more than that recommended by Governor Luther Hodges and the Advisory Budget Commission for the ensuing biennium.
In Charlotte, as reported by Julian Scheer of The News, a State Representative of Charlotte, Arthur Goodman, praised this date the testimony of the Charlotte detective before the State House Judiciary Committee, as reported two days earlier, regarding the increased frequency of sexual deviancy in the community, requiring passage of a proposed bill, sponsored by Mr. Goodman, to make punishment much more severe for sex crimes involving children under 16 years of age. He said that he thought the detective had done a very good job and had made a favorable impression on the Judiciary Committee. He disagreed with many people in the community who had contacted the Police Department to complain about the testimony as giving the community a "black eye".
Also in Charlotte, an officer of the Southeastern Jurisdiction of the Methodist Church said this date that the Church's courts and all parties concerned had exercised "fairness and patience" in dealing with the minister, described in an article on the front page the previous day, who had been suspended the previous July 8 for intemperate language and "unministerial conduct". The minister had said that the decision, upheld by the Southeastern Jurisdiction's court of appeal two nights earlier, was a "monstrosity", claiming that his publication, "One Methodist Voice", which claimed that the Methodist Church favored Marxian economic principles and that particular Methodist ministers were engaging in Communist activities, had been the object of the decision, seeking to silence it. A spokesman for the Southeastern Jurisdiction said that the Methodists resented the minister's insinuations that Methodism was tied to Communism in some manner. The charges against him had principally stemmed from the publication of the tabloid. The Southeastern Jurisdiction said that freedom of opinion and action was a "precious heritage" of Methodist ministers, as were "queer and unusual personalities" which had adorned the ministry in every age, nevertheless "making a definite contribution by their unfettered thinking and speaking", that wide latitude was permitted and encouraged within the liberty of the Methodist pulpit. But, it continued, personal liberty should not turn into "personal defiance of peace, the establishment of order and the discipline of the church." The minister said that he would appeal the one-year suspension to the Judicial Council, the supreme court of the Methodist Church, attempting to clear up several points of Church law "for the good of the denomination".
Also in Charlotte, an Atlanta Methodist minister and his wife, visiting for the Southeastern Jurisdiction meeting, had been struck by an automobile and knocked to the street early this date, with the extent of their injuries not immediately known, but police officers reporting that neither was seriously hurt by the motorist, who had failed to yield the right-of-way to pedestrians.
In Los Angeles, a sporty convertible
belonging to blonde starlet Voluptua
A flow of arctic air extended over
broad areas of the nation this date, from the Mississippi Valley to
the Atlantic Coast, bringing the most severe cold to the Northeastern
section of the country, with New York City and other Eastern cities
reporting the coldest weather of the season, with temperatures at
zero in metropolitan New York, and an unofficial low of -38 reported
in a village in northeastern New York State. New York City had
received the previous day its heaviest fall of snow yet for the winter, at 3.7 inches,
and had its first zero temperature in the previous
seven years, a new low for February 2
In Charlotte, there was a chance of snow or sleet by the weekend, with a new storm moving up from Texas and a mass of cold air coming down from the North, such that the two fronts could produce snow when they met.
On the editorial page, "An
Investment in Better Protection" tells of the City Council
having granted the Police Department's request for 18 additional
officers, needed to provide the growing community the protection it
had to have "against the virus of crime
It agrees with Mayor Philip Van Every when he said that the people were due all the protection which was "sensible and reasonable" and hopes that the city would not again lag behind in its addition of police personnel to patrol the growing city.
"Action Needed on Job Classification" indicates that the Mayor had urged members of the City Council to take favorable action on a plan for immediate salary increases for municipal employees.
It finds that the City had an obligation to its employees to complete its job classification program which had been instituted at the start of the current fiscal year, the prior July 1, but which had lacked sufficient finds for the full increase in salaries called for by the new system, such that only half of the salary increases had been authorized for the current fiscal year. It favors instituting the full program for the remaining months of the current fiscal year.
"Opportunity To Learn about Cancer" indicates that there was much to be learned about diseases which were the most feared, one of which was cancer. Researchers and practitioners were discovering techniques which decreased the danger of cancer to those who would guard against it, and, if afflicted, submit promptly to qualified medical expertise. Afflicted persons were discovering daily that cancer need not cause the dread that it frequently did, as had the late Reverend Daniel A. Lord, S. J., whose message of hope and confidence is reprinted on the page this date.
It indicates that the Mecklenburg unit of the American Cancer Society would begin this night a series of three panel lectures on cancer in Ovens Auditorium, located in the Presbyterian Hospital Nurses' Home, with the general aim of providing basic information on the nature of the disease, the place and time of its diagnosis and treatment, the problem with it at present and the role of the ACS in raising funds for research. Outstanding members of the medical profession would be present. The program would continue for the ensuing two Thursday evenings and it urges attendance.
"A Good Man for a Crucial Post" tells of a non-career man who was nevertheless aptly suited for diplomacy having been named by the President as Ambassador to India, former Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, who had lost his 1954 re-election bid to former Vice-President Alben Barkley. The post had been vacant for several months since the transfer to Washington of North Carolinian George Allen, who had followed the popular Chester Bowles as Ambassador to India.
Mr. Cooper had been a consultant to Secretary of State Acheson under President Truman and had been a delegate to the U.N. during the Truman Administration, exhibiting a grasp of foreign affairs equal to that of many career diplomats, and, it ventures, he ought be speedily confirmed for the post.
A piece from the Washington Post & Times-Herald, titled "The Idol Smasher", indicates that it appeared that Richard Aldington, having been thwarted in his efforts to have his biography of Lawrence of Arabia published in English either in Britain or the U.S., had translated it into French and had it published in Paris under the title Lawrence, L'Imposteur, a title calculated to make the late Colonel Lawrence's still numerous and influential friends more outraged by the author than ever.
Mr. Aldington sought to prove that Lawrence had nothing to do with fomenting the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Turks, an important factor in General Allenby's victory in the Middle East. He also discredited most of the other exploits attributed to Lawrence. It indicates that when the general tenor of the biography was first divulged about a year earlier, Lawrence, himself, as the newspaper had pointed out at the time, had already admitted as much. But no one had credited his repudiation of the legend which had grown up around him and ascribed it to his modesty and dislike of publicity. Similarly, people would be loath to accept Mr. Aldington's findings, as once a myth had been created, people were reluctant to part with it, probably attributable to the fact that popular myths were rarely deliberate fabrications but rather products of the collective imagination.
It posits that men became heroes not
so much because of their private characters or their concrete deeds,
but rather by becoming accepted symbols of national genius or of
universal human values. As Goethe had once observed, the heroes
served the people as mirrors which reflected back to the people their
own fondest aspirations. It was because the people desired their
heroes to be brave and noble that they delighted in reading of the
god-like Achilles
Drew Pearson tells of writing a column suggested by his wife this date, regarding a recent speech by General MacArthur, in which he had said that war was no longer an instrument of national policy. As Mrs. Pearson had pointed out, the newspapers had not devoted much space to the speech, stressing his stand against the U.N. and collective security. While Mr. Pearson disagrees with those stances, he agrees wholeheartedly with the General's concept that the next war would end civilization and that the only remedy for it was people-to-people friendship.
He says that as long as there were police states upsetting the peace of the world, there had to be police action orchestrated by the U.N. to stop them. He finds that the Organization of American States was working particularly well as a regional mutual defense organization authorized by the Charter, having taken quick action regarding the war which had been brewing in Costa Rica, sending it back where it belonged, inside Nicaragua. He points out that the OAS operated on a high diplomatic level, while operating at the level of the peasants and peons were certain religious groups doing a wonderful job, having witnessed in Bolivia the previous fall how the Catholic Maryknoll Fathers and the Methodists had gotten out and worked with their fellow man.
P. D. L., writing in Highway Highlights, tells of men, given their competitive tendencies, driving automobiles often as if they learned the skill on the football fields of the public schools. He finds men to be better drivers than women, but, nevertheless, often losing the game of life and death which they played on the highway.
The National Safety Council had reported that in 29 states where the records were available, women were involved in only 8 percent of all fatal accidents, while doing 14.5 percent of the driving. During World War II, a national women's magazine had reported on traffic accidents in a Midwestern state, finding that men had 2.85 accidents for each million miles driven, while women had only 1.79. The same magazine had canvassed traffic authorities and found that by a ratio of 2 to 1, they rated female drivers as being as good as males or better. A study by the director of the driving laboratory of Iowa State College showed that women between the ages of 16 and 33, and between the ages of 41 and 53, had fewer accidents or traffic violations than men in the same age groups, while men had a slight edge in the 34 to 40 age group and over age 53. It had found generally that women were troubled by timidity, lack of strength and poor distance judgment.
Recently, in Massachusetts, a State legislator had hinted that women should pay higher insurance rates, but the registrar of motor vehicles had pointed out that not a single woman had to appear before him during the year and that his four hearing officers all agreed that women were in the minority in cases handled.
Women were also quite capable of handling large commercial vehicles. In a Wisconsin State Truck Driving Contest the previous summer, a woman, who was not an entrant but who owned a trucking firm, had driven through the obstacle course and scored more points than any of the men in the competition.
He suggests that an advantage which women had, which might offset the males' superior strength, was that they appeared to have quicker reaction time, according to results of tests released by the Farm Bureau Insurance Companies of Columbus, O., in 1953, based on tests of 256 high school students, half of whom were girls and half boys.
Aside from those factors, the tendency of males to become involved in more serious accidents than women probably came from the males' mental attitude, with some driving instructors finding women to be better pupils than men, largely because of those attitudes. They indicated that men took driving lessons with a preconceived notion of their own competence, while most women were eager to follow the advice of the instructor. In psycho-physical testing of driver aptitudes, women were said to take the test more seriously and to strive harder than did males. Women were said also to strive to improve their driving ability throughout their lifetime, while men leveled off at an early age, assuming that they had mastered the skill.
He indicates that Emily Post had stressed "motor manners" as a safety measure, and suggests that another boon to safety might come from the aggressive male transferring to his driving more of the sportsmanship of the football field and less of the techniques of play.
Reverend Daniel A. Lord, S. J., writing in The Catholic Digest from July, 1954, having since died, as indicated by the above editorial, tells of having come to St. John's Hospital in St. Louis for his quarterly anesthetic and fulguration, the term used by his surgeon for the procedure of putting instruments deep into his bladder and with electric current, hitting the small but annoying growths, a procedure repeated for about six years. He emerged from the anesthetic and was relaxing peacefully in bed, when the surgeon came into the room with Rev. Lord's personal physician, to which he responded by guessing what condition he might have, suggesting half-jokingly that it was cancer, to which they indicated that it was, lung cancer.
They told him that they could not tell how long he had to live, that if he were young, his time might be short because the same natural law which made healthy tissue and cells in a young man grow fast, made wild tissues and cells also grow fast, a process which worked very slowly at Rev. Lord's age of 65. They also told him that he could continue with his normal life and work, that it was the thing to do, that if he came to regard himself as an invalid, he would hamper his treatment and accelerate the disease. They recommended normal work, seeing friends, eating well and restoring the weight he had lost through dieting, while also remaining cheerful and contented. They advised not to overexert himself and to obtain decent sleep and rest.
He indicates that he was writing the message of hope and confidence 3 1/2 months after receiving the diagnosis, having been kept in the hospital for a short period. He had been itching to get to his typewriter and write some books that he had long planned, but instead hit the road at his usual routine of talks and meetings. He found himself a little short-winded, a little quicker to tire, but thus far was living with cancer and found it a "gentle enough companion." He found the interest of the general public astounding, that cancer was big news, a great national concern and preoccupation of the press and public. The St. Louis papers had given his illness only the most general notice, but out-of-town papers and the news agencies wanted details regarding how he felt, what had occurred, when he was told the diagnosis and whether he considered himself an invalid.
He says that cancer actually appeared to incapacitate less than most fatal diseases, and that, loving his life, his work and his friends, he was grateful that he could cling normally and affectionately to all. He believes that the dread of cancer was vastly exaggerated, that people with it lived often long and sturdily, not causing withdrawal from normal routine. "Since we all must die, God seems kindly when He sends a messenger in advance with the general emphatic warning."
He suggests that everybody could use some time to prepare for the Judgment, that the realization that one had cancer sharpened one's whole outlook on life, made the earth more beautiful and the sky clearer and every moment precious.
He expresses gladness that the country was cancer conscious, but when reading that it was man's worst enemy, he was no longer so sure. He asserts that God did not allow enemies to prevail, but seemed to use the things dreaded to draw people closer to Him.
"And life seems sweetest when it melts gently in the Life that is our Eternal Promise."
A letter writer responds to a letter written by Charles Crutchfield, executive vice-president of the Jefferson Standard Broadcasting Company, regarding the change of name of Henry Street in Charlotte to Jefferson Place and the street number to be taken out of order to provide for number 1, for the new building being built by the broadcasting company. The writer disagrees with the position and agrees instead with the editorial on the subject, which had taken issue with the name change because of too many duplicate names of streets already in the community, making it hard for police and fire personnel sometimes to respond quickly to emergency calls. He asserts that Mr. Crutchfield could better serve the community and his customers by refraining from using his position to bring political pressure in such matters.
Framed Edition
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