The Charlotte News

Friday, June 24, 1955

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from San Francisco that Secretary of State Dulles, addressing the U.N. delegates assembled during the week to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the U.N., told Russia in blunt language this date that the way to end the cold war would be to stop using force against other countries and cease supporting subversion, saying that seven points were not needed to end the cold war, that only that one was sufficient. He referred to a seven-point program to end the cold war outlined on Wednesday by Soviet Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov. The Secretary said that he spoke with the full confidence and concurrence of the President, after the President had stated to the delegates the prior Monday that the Secretary would speak this date "on appropriate elements in the foreign policy of this nation." He agreed with Mr. Molotov that several problems had been settled recently, but stated that they would have been settled years earlier but for the Communists. He defended NATO and other regional organizations, which Mr. Molotov had blamed for much of the trouble at present. He took up the issues which Mr. Molotov had listed as having been solved, indicating, for instance, that the Korean War had been ended in July, 1953 only after the U.N. forces had repelled Communist aggression. He said that he found it strange to have that now referred to as "proof of the peace-loving character of the aggressor and its supporters." He said that if the latter had their way, the celebration at present would be the fifth anniversary of the demise of the U.N. He also cited the Indo-China armistice of July, 1954, saying that it had been reached only after the U.S. and other nations had made it clear that continued fighting might call for collective action within the framework of the U.N. The Secretary also said that the Austrian treaty, signed in May, should have been signed years earlier, delayed while the Soviets exploited the economy of the country for a decade. He acknowledged that relations between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia had been improved recently, but stated that they had been bad in the first place only because Yugoslavia had broken away from "an alien yoke". He also mentioned the recent Soviet overtures to West Germany and Japan, which had occurred, however, only after years of abuse and hostility toward those countries by Russia. He then listed five major problems which he believed ought be tackled at the Big Four summit meeting in July, though not listing them specifically as agenda items. The story does not enumerate them.

Marvin Arrowsmith of the Associated Press, traveling with the President in New Hampshire, indicates that the President's "teaser" suggestion, that he might seek a second term, had focused close attention this date on his tour of the state, the first state to cast its vote for him in the 1952 primaries. Late the previous day, in a speech in Concord, he had surprised his audience, estimated at 15,000 persons, by saying that he was eager to find out for himself that which his chief of staff Sherman Adams, former Governor of New Hampshire, had often boasted of the state, saying that it was one of the "serious reasons" for his visit. He also said that people often asked him what his ideas were regarding how long he would like to be in residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and that he liked to say that it would be as long as it took Governor Adams to finish up his series of lectures on New Hampshire because he did not seem to be a third of the way through them yet.

The Public Health Service, agreeing with an opinion expressed by a panel of medical experts in testifying the previous day before the House Commerce Committee, said, in a statement issued to the Committee, that it continued to endorse the manufacture and use of the Salk polio vaccine. There was no word yet on how soon additional supplies of the vaccine would become available. A spokesman for the Health Service said that no further meetings were scheduled for the current week, but that it was possible to clear the vaccine through a telephonic conference. Members of the Committee generally stated that they were impressed that there was essentially no disagreement among the medical panel on the effectiveness of the Salk vaccine, that there was only some dissent regarding the desirability for additional safety, but that overall, they generally regarded the existing vaccine as safe. The medical panel had concluded that the Mahoney virus, one of the strains which produced the deadly Type I, or paralytic, polio, ought be replaced with the less virulent strains for the safety of patients. The Health Service generally endorsed the overall statement by the medical panel, including the latter advice.

In Buenos Aires, El Presidente Juan Peron worked on a new Cabinet this date after telling the Argentine people that he was remaining in office only because they needed him. He said that he feared the consequences that his selfishness would bring on the nation should he leave the Government. He made a nationwide broadcast the previous night only hours after his 16-man Cabinet had resigned in deference to allowing El Presidente to re-shuffle the Government as he wished, in the wake of the attempted coup led by the naval air forces the previous Thursday. Diplomatic sources in Montevideo, Uruguay, predicted that the new Cabinet would be composed mainly of military men and that at least four existing members would not be reappointed.

In Memphis, the City decided to build its own electric plant rather than accept power from the controversial Dixon-Yates utility combine, the move supporting the backers of TVA, who had bitterly opposed the arrangement between Dixon-Yates and TVA. The President, who supported the contract, had nevertheless stated at a previous press conference that he would like to see Memphis build its own plant. There was no immediate comment regarding the City's action by any representative of the Administration. The contract was designed to provide electricity for the Memphis area, replacing TVA electricity which was used in two nuclear plants, at Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Paducah, Ky. TVA had said that by 1958 it would not be able to meet that area's power demands and had asked for Congressional authority to build a new steam electric plant, rejected by Congress. The Administration had said that the Dixon-Yates plan to build a 107 million dollar generating plant across the Mississippi River from Memphis would take care of the power problem without requiring Federal loans. Under the plan, Dixon-Yates power would be supplied to TVA's public power in Memphis and the Atomic Energy Commission would pay the bill under a long-term contract.

In Raleigh, State Attorney General Harry McMullan, 71, died this date after having suffered from a heart ailment for several years. He had been the Attorney General since 1938 and remained active to the end, having attended the previous day an organizational meeting of the Advisory Committee created by the Governor to study school desegregation. His physician said he died of a heart attack while in bed at home and, when discovered, had been dead for several hours, with his wife absent, at their home maintained in their hometown of Washington, N.C. He had attended public schools in Edenton and received his law degree at UNC in 1905. While practicing law in Washington, he had represented Beaufort County in the State Senate in 1929 and was the County Attorney there for seven years. He had been appointed State Attorney General by the late Governor Clyde Hoey in 1938 after the resignation of his predecessor to become an associate justice of the State Supreme Court. He was first elected to the post in 1940.

Also in Raleigh, studies on the local level of problems arising from Brown v. Board of Education were the first recommendation of the state's new Advisory Committee on Education. Following a lengthy meeting with Governor Luther Hodges and Attorney General McMullan, the Committee said the previous day that the people of the state were faced with grave problems, "whether and how the public school system of this state can be preserved." The Committee had been named earlier in the week by Governor Hodges and promised to direct its major effort to the solution of the problems. It initially recommended that each administrative school unit "as soon as may be practicable, make a thorough study of the varied local problems" in each district regarding segregation, seeking the factual information necessary to the elucidation, assessment and solution of those problems. In so indicating, it used phraseology present in the May 31 Supreme Court implementing decision in Brown.

Dick Young of The News indicates that steps had been taken by Charlotte school officials to initiate a study of desegregation in the City schools, with the City School Board having authorized appointment of such a committee at its meeting of June 8, and in its first report to the Governor's Advisory Committee on segregation had recommended that local school units "make a thorough study of the various local problems" arising from the Supreme Court decision in Brown. Thus far, there had been no public announcement of the appointees to the committee and efforts to reach Dr. Herbert Spaugh, chairman of the School Board, had been without success during the morning. The Board had also given approval to retention of extra legal counsel and clerical assistance if necessary. The Board had reiterated its policy statement of a year earlier regarding their desire to comply with the law as outlined in the Brown decision.

Emery Wister of The News indicates that Mecklenburg County Police Chief Stanhope Lineberry had been appointed chief of plant protection for the Nike missile plant of Douglas Aircraft Co. in Charlotte, having announced at the same time that he would retire from law enforcement as of August 1. His successor as chief had not yet been named.

Harry Shuford of The News tells of what might happen if one were in the central shopping district of Charlotte in October when the civil defense test evacuation would occur.

Erwin Potts of The News finds, in interviewing people on the street in Charlotte, that they were divided in their opinions on whether ambulances should obey normal traffic laws when responding to an emergency call. Of 13 persons interviewed at random, six said they believed the ambulances should observe the laws, while three favored modified regulations, and four were against any regulations on ambulances, per the present law, which required that ambulances first notify the City Police of their emergency. The inquiry was prompted by a recent incident, as recounted in an editorial, in which an underage ambulance driver had caused a collision with a vehicle after running a stoplight, killing one person and seriously injuring another.

In Charlotte, the head of the National Association for the Advancement of White People, Bryant Bowles, arrived this date at the airport, almost 24 hours late for an appointment with the pro-segregation organizers in the city. Only reporters were on hand to greet him, as a four-man welcoming committee had given up almost an hour earlier.

In Salisbury, England, a three-year old wandered out of a buttercup field this date, none the worse for his three-day sojourn alone in the wild Salisbury plain.

On the editorial page, "Lineberry Kept Politics Out" tells of the impending retirement of Chief of the Mecklenburg County Police Department, Stanhope Lineberry, indicating that he had run a clean department, free of politics all down the line to the newest patrolman, and the result had been one of the most respected police organizations in the country. He had done what few police chiefs had managed to do during his 16 years as chief, not only keeping out politics but also having the force remain free from accusations of any serious offense.

It finds that Mr. Lineberry, in addition to his strong sense of duty, had a natural charm which undoubtedly had made his tasks easier. It concludes that with his coming resignation, the community and law enforcement would suffer a loss.

"Practice: The Heart of Civil Defense" finds it laudable that the Federal Government had undertaken "Operation Alert" the previous week to prepare the Government and the public for the potential of a nuclear attack, also finds the planning of a local alert in the ensuing few months equally advisable. For most communities would not know at present exactly what to do in such an emergency, as most of the civil defense efforts to date had been merely paper charts and warning words. There was no substitute for practical experience in preparing for such an event.

The Charlotte test would move an estimated 50,000 people from the downtown area, to be hauled by rail and road to points at least 15 miles away from the center of the city. It would cause a lot of inconvenience and confusion, but that would add to the hard experience to be derived from the exercise. It urges giving complete support to the local civil defense organization, both from the city and county governments as well as from the people. It hopes that the time, money and work would be spent in preparation for an attack which would never come.

While moving 50,000 people sounds like a lot, it is actually no more than a good-sized football crowd on a Saturday. Big deal. We have participated in such evacuations many times, even amid a few well out of their cups. Thus, if you have also, you have participated in civil defense preparation, not including being out of one's cups. Look upon those as war casualties...

"Censorship Rears Its Ugly Head" indicates that some North Carolina communities were reviving movie censorship, that in Greensboro, a dispute had arisen over "Blackboard Jungle", with a five-man "Board of Public Amusements" having assessed whether it should be shown in Greensboro, having decided to let it be exhibited. But the film was giving rise to censorship efforts in other sections as well.

The movie had recently completed a long run in Charlotte and the piece finds the story to be an unpleasant case history of an idealistic teacher's efforts to tame juvenile hoodlums attending public school in a large U.S. city, believes it not for delicate eyes and ears, with the only message discernible from it being that schools probably should spend more of their time teaching good citizenship than the regular course work. It does not recommend the film for anyone with tender sensibilities, nor anyone seeking a hard lesson in the philosophy of education. But it would also not recommend that it be banned.

It indicates that censorship was dangerous, that while pornographic and obscene films were beyond the pale of toleration, there were laws to deal with that kind of fare, and, it posits, they should be enforced. But shifting responsibility for taste and moral influence from the movie industry to agents policing films for general release was another thing. Such efforts were usually characterized by fear, hypocrisy, intolerance, ignorance, confusion and, often, sheer stupidity.

The same applied to literature, with book banning dating back to 387 B.C. Plato had once suggested that the works of Homer ought be edited for "immature readers". As late as 1954, The Decameron of Boccaccio had been ordered destroyed as "obscene" by a magistrate's court in England, though reversed on appeal. In Henry David Thoreau's hometown of Concord, Mass., The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain had been banned by the public library, labeled "trash, suitable only for the slums."

The new edition of Banned Books, by Ann Lyon Haight, recounted one of the silliest manifestations of the age of censorship, a ruling established by the Post Office Department in 1931 after Elmer Gantry had been banned in Boston, prompting the publishers to protest, whereupon the Government retaliated by upholding the postmasters as censors. The New York post office banned the catalog which merely listed the book. A Manhattan bookseller issued another catalog in 1944, listing 100 books selling at 49 cents, with the post office refusing to handle the list until two titles, Candide and Droll Stories, were eliminated.

The most disturbing examples of movie censorship had occurred in Memphis, which had long had a censorship board to forbid the exhibiting of films which were "inimical to the public safety, morale or welfare." Until the State Supreme Court had reversed it, the Memphis board had banned "Curley" only because it showed white and black children playing together. It had also censored a nightclub sequence featuring Lena Horne in Danny Kaye's "A Song Is Born". It also banned "Stromboli" with Ingrid Bergman and "City Lights" with Charlie Chaplin, only because the censors disapproved of the private lives of the stars.

It agrees with Thomas Jefferson that freedom was not merely for the good or discreet, that it ceased to be freedom when it became the reward of merit or of virtue or benevolence. The assumption that a committee or an individual had the right to decide what others could see, read or know bordered on impertinence. It quotes William L. Chenery, who had written recently, "Life in a free land has proved, in the long test, that Americans are fit to be free." It concludes that censorship was a strange weapon in the arsenal of democracy.

A piece from the Kingsport (Tenn.) News, titled "Do Away with Girl Cheerleaders?" indicates that it appeared that the state of Tennessee might become the first state, and the University of Tennessee, the first university, to do away with female cheerleaders and have only male cheerleaders, the purported reason being that females were not getting the job done properly. It finds that excuse weak, but suggests that with females entering all manner of male pursuits, and with some males entering cake-baking contests and embroidery contests, they might as well also enter cheerleading.

But it suggests that it was probably going too far to have all male cheerleaders, that to the male audience, "a girl dancing and spinning around is much pleasanter to look at." It concludes therefore that it might be a horrible mistake to bar them.

Drew Pearson indicates that now that the RNC had greased the skids for the departure of HEW Secretary Oveta Culp Hobby and picked her successor, Marion Folsom, it could not get her to resign. She had originally threatened to resign over the problems encountered with the Salk vaccine, but had changed her mind and was now determined to see the vaccine through to the end. She had first spoken to the White House about resigning prior to the polio vaccine problem, having to do with her husband's ill health. And after being scolded by the President for her handling of the vaccine problem, she had threatened to resign, until her advisers warned that it would look bad for her to resign under fire, and so she decided to remain.

Top Republicans, however, complained about her statements, having minimized the vaccine problem when the papers were reporting that children were dying from the bad vaccine, and also for her associating those who were against socialized medicine with the vaccine mess, complaining that before it was over, she would have people believing that socialized medicine was a good thing.

Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson had been paying cheese subsidies not to the dairy farmers but to the cheese manufacturers, the farm support program having enriched a few large producers while the farmers had collected next to nothing. The whole idea of price supports was supposed to be to aid the farmers. The cheese scandal had been uncovered by House investigators, reporting in a confidential memo to the House Government Operations Committee that during March, 1954, the Commodity Credit Corporation had purchased approximately 180 million pounds of cheese at 37 cents per pound, and that in April, about 90 million pounds of that cheese had been resold to the original manufacturers at 34.25 cents per pound, the Government thus losing about 2.5 million dollars in the transaction, with the big cheese manufacturers making approximately three cents per pound profit on the deal, with the cheese never having even left the warehouses of the producers, having been only a paper transaction. Like most other farm policies, that program had been adopted with minimum advice from farmers, but after careful consultation with the cheese industry. He provides considerable detail of the advice received from several of the big cheese companies, including Kraft and Borden.

He concludes that 108 companies had sold the repurchased 86.6 million pounds of cheese, with each pound costing taxpayers three cents while also raising the price of cheese such that consumers would have to pay more for it at the grocery store.

Walter Lippmann discusses the effort of Soviet newspapers and magazines to apprise the public, through articles written by important military personnel, of the realities of the nuclear-air age, emphasizing that the decisive consideration was now surprise attack, a new phenomenon within the Soviet Union, while in Washington, it had been the acceptable assumption on which were based the two leading strategic doctrines ever since Pearl Harbor in 1941.

In the U.S., the minority of the military believed in preventive war, while the official doctrine was deterrent defense, which assumed that a sneak attack would not be delivered provided the retaliatory striking power of the Strategic Air Force were protected against any sneak attack. The two schools agreed that a sneak attack could be decisive and therefore had to be either forestalled or deterred.

The Soviet military articles had begun appearing following the public demonstration on May 1 of the new air power of the Soviets, with a sizable contingent of intercontinental bombers on display. An experienced observer of Soviet opinion who had read the articles believed they were meant to "readjust the thinking of Soviet military men" and "to warn the West".

Mr. Lippmann, while acknowledging that possibility, still finds it odd that the Soviet military experts would be indoctrinating Soviet military men publicly in articles which were known to be mailed to Washington, especially regarding the concept of sneak attack, posing a paradox. Mr. Lippmann thus hypothesizes that the general purpose of the articles was to apprise the Russians that their ancient security, based on vast bases and enormous masses of soldiers, had been destroyed by the new form of military art, that it was possible that the progressive military men and civilians who understood the new warfare believed it was necessary to re-educate the Soviet ruling class and that portion of the public which needed to be taken into account publicly. He suggests that they might be training their audience to support the negotiation of compromises, given that modern warfare was futile, with no winners in the end, only two mutually devastated nuclear powers.

He suggests that it might be the reason for the reopening of negotiations between East and West by the Russians, given the overall stalemate in nuclear armaments. He suggests that the current phase was one of psychological rather than technological warfare, after the first phase had been U.S. development alone of nuclear weaponry, followed by the second phase in which Russia developed their own nuclear weapons. Now, with the stalemate, there were only two great military powers and unless one could disarm the other in a first assault, technically improbable, war between them would mean devastation and massacre without prospect of victory. The other great powers, Great Britain, Germany and Communist China, being without nuclear arsenals, were compelled to make avoidance of war the ultimate purpose of their policies. The two great powers, therefore, to avoid alienation of their allies and the uncommitted nations, had to continue to show that they were seeking a compromise.

He indicates that whether the motivation of the President in authorizing the recent Operation Alert, which entailed the assumption of a nuclear attack against 61 major U.S. cities and the necessity, therefore, to evacuate them, as well as setting up emergency Government operations in an arc around Washington, was to destroy all serious opposition to the coming negotiations at the Big Four summit conference to begin in Geneva on July 18, he does not know. He indicates that the exercise had demonstrated not only that there was no passive defense in the form of shelter and evacuation, but that, for all practical purposes, there could never be such a defense, that it was conceivable for the inhabitants of those 61 cities to go camping for a few days in the country in June, but that were an actual attack to occur in the middle of winter, with weeks upon weeks of evacuation necessary from the cities, it would be an entirely different matter.

He suggests that the lesson of the alert had been that when an attack on such a scale were to become feasible, as it was not yet, the only course would be to see to it that it would never take place, and to that end, he believes the exercise which should be repeated continually was protection against sneak attack of the bases and facilities of the Strategic Air Force, that as long as they were secure, the most effective defense possible was in place.

Doris Fleeson indicates that the President was making Republicans very happy during the week, as he was now acting as a candidate for re-election. During his one-day stay in San Francisco for the tenth anniversary celebration of the founding of the U.N., he had consented to receive a group of party leaders at breakfast and talked politics with them, impartially praising Vice-President Nixon, California Governor Goodwin Knight and Senate Minority Leader of California, William Knowland. Now he had departed for a tour of New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont, where he would make speeches, fish, dine and be generally agreeable with crowds of voters.

That area of the country did not often get to see a sitting President and because its electoral votes were few in number and were usually safely in the Republican column, neither party paid much attention to the area. But because the relations of the President to the Republican Party were not normal, with his Cabinet and staff of businessmen running the Administration to suit themselves, leaving the party organization on the outside, the trip to Republican territory was important to shore up bases for a run in 1956.

The party had not been able to establish normal patronage to the satisfaction of party leaders, with Republican Senators being told of appointments only after the decision had already been made by the President. The President had changed the direction of foreign policy, with Republican members of Congress powerless to interfere lest he get mad and refuse to run again in 1956.

She might have said, in more colorful language, that the President had the Republican Party by the stones and so their hearts and minds would have to follow, lest they would likely be defeated in 1956 in the presidential race, as well as in any hope of taking back either or both houses of Congress, relegated again to the twenty-year political wilderness. It might also be observed that Vice-President Nixon, ever desirous of the kind of public approval given to President Eisenhower, could never achieve it nor hope to do so, having not been a popular World War II general, seeking to substitute for that drawing power, as the years rolled on, the El Presidente form of politics to grab their hearts and minds.

Robert C. Ruark, in New Orleans, indicates that he was ordinarily not allowed to visit that city because of its bad influence on him, but that because his wife was in Spain or London or somewhere else, he could sneak off on the sly. He finds that the town never changed for him, unlike a lot of other things and places. He describes the several trappings to which he had become accustomed in the past and which still remained. He regarded it as the most relaxed town he had ever seen, with everyone on the street providing a hello and calling the passerby by name, asking how long they had been home, meaning in New Orleans.

He had never seen anything along Broadway except noise, crowds and fruit drinks stands, "but New Orleans at night or early morn still has more glamour for me than all the Parises and Romes combined."

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