The Charlotte News

Monday, June 27, 1955

TWO EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Taipeh, Formosa, that, according to the Nationalist Defense Ministry, Chinese Communist MIGs had shot down a T33 jet training plane near the Matsu Islands, within two hours after Communist jets had attacked an unarmed commercial amphibious plane, with the training plane crashing into the sea ten miles south of the island group after two such planes had been attacked in the area. The pilot was not recovered. A U.S. Army officer aboard the commercial plane, a Catalina twin-engined PBY, had been earlier reported as wounded in the attack, but the pilot of that plane said, upon arriving in Taipeh, that none aboard had been hurt. Newsmen were barred from approaching the Catalina when it landed at the airport until after the American was taken away in a jeep, not appearing to be injured. Newsmen then inspected the plane and saw bullet holes in the left wing and left float, plus damage to a wing spar. It was the first reported instance of Communist MIGs appearing south of the Nationalist-held Matsu Island group. The American officer was a member of the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group on Formosa.

In Seoul, the South Korean Government charged this date that Communist North Korea had built up an air force of 580 planes, part of which consisted of jets, in violation of the July, 1953 Armistice, having three divisions of MIG-15 jets, a fighter-bomber force, 15 airbases in operation and two more under construction. South Korea attributed the figures to two North Korean air force pilots who had fled the North the previous week and landed in Seoul. They reported that the air force had 500 pilots and 25,000 men, with more being trained in Communist China by Russian advisers, and more planes set to be delivered by rail. At the time of the Armistice, North Korea had no air force in operation and no airbases which could be used for warplanes. The Armistice forbade any increase in forces over those in existence on July 27, 1953, the date the Armistice was signed.

In Washington, by a decisive majority, the nation's wheat farmers voted for tight controls on the following year's crop in return for a Government guaranteed price averaging $1.81 per bushel, causing Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson to set aside a proposal that the farmers seek broader markets at home and abroad by offering the grain at considerably lower prices than would prevail otherwise. Over 328,000 wheat farmers had taken part in the Saturday referendum, requiring a two-thirds majority for passage, voting by a majority of 77.5 percent to continue the marketing quotas for the next year, designed to hold wheat production at roughly 30 percent below postwar peaks. About one million wheat farmers had been eligible to vote.

In Nuremberg, evangelist Billy Graham addressed his latest revival meeting crowd in West Germany the previous night, with police estimating attendance at 65,000, including about 9,000 U.S. servicemen and their families. At the conclusion of the sermon, some 6,000 persons, including 1,200 Americans, stepped forward to make their "decisions for Christ". The event was held at the former Nazi party rally grounds. Rev. Graham's last meeting in Germany would be at Dortmund the following day. He said that he had been invited by the Manhattan Protestant Council to conduct a crusade in that city and would discuss it with them upon his return to the U.S., but that it could not occur before 1957.

In Twentynine Palms, Calif., a 67-year old man told of surviving being stuck in the desert, with temperatures reaching 120 degrees, after the jeep in which he and three companions had been riding had sunk in the sand causing its differential to break, carrying water but no food for their intended half-day journey into the Amazon Valley of California. One of the group, 45 years old, had set out on foot at nightfall to try to reach the highway, about 15 miles away, but his sun-blackened body was discovered by rescuers two days later, about five miles from the location of the jeep, where he had died of exposure and thirst. The oldest of the four, 75, had ventured away from the group and began running in circles, dying a few hours later. They had walked to a dry lake bed about three miles from the jeep where they believed they could be spotted more easily, and eventually were, by a civilian plane which dispatched a helicopter to take the two survivors to a hospital in Needles.

In Rutherfordton, N.C., testimony before a coroner's inquest had disclosed that the 18-year old sailor had been running a fever when killed the previous Tuesday by a truck, the driver of which said the sailor had been lying in the middle of the road, occurring some 15 hours before he was supposed to be wed. He had been inoculated at the Jacksonville, Fla., Naval Air Station in preparation for overseas assignment. The truck driver was absolved by the coroner's jury.

Dick Young of The News tells of the appointment of a three-man committee to study integration in the public schools in Charlotte, as announced by the chairman of the City School Board, Rev. Dr. Herbert Spaugh, the committee having been authorized by the Board in a meeting of June 8. The chairman of the committee was J. P. Hobson and the other two members were Douglas Aitken and Al Bechtold.

Ann Sawyer of The News tells of the Board of County Commissioners having unanimously endorsed Henry Severs, current head of ABC law enforcement in Charlotte, as the new County police chief to succeed retiring Stanhope Lineberry. The appointment was expected to be made later this date.

J. A. Daly of The News indicates that the latest edition of The Springs Bulletin, a widely distributed publication of Springs Cotton Mills of Lancaster, S.C., had indicated that tariffs on Japanese cotton goods had been lowered by up to 48 percent, enabling Japan to win the textile war. The South's textile industry regarded the reduction of the tariff on American imports of Japanese cotton goods as a "textile Pearl Harbor". The State Department's representatives at the Geneva reciprocal trade agreement conference had approved the reductions, with formal approval subsequently provided in Washington. Textile industry management of the South were quite upset when State Department representatives described the benefits of the tariff reduction as "relatively minor" for Japan. The American Cotton Manufacturers Institute found the State Department announcement to be "dishonest reporting". The tariff reduction would become effective on September 10. Japanese wage scales were as low as nine cents per hour.

Emery Wister of The News tells of a three-eighths-inch ice coating covering the floor of the new Coliseum, as four skaters tested the rink for the first time to determine whether there were any rough spots which might show up, finding it "as smooth as a baby's cheek". The pipes beneath the concrete floor cooled it to 12 degrees, and then water was sprayed on it to form the thin ice coating at 18 degrees.

In Charlotte, the ancient sport of cockfighting, illegal in the state, had resulted in two arrests late the previous day, when County police had discovered a cockfight in progress at a tenant farmer's home off Concord Road. The officer had come upon the cockfight by accident, while looking for a man wanted on a house-breaking and larceny charge, reporting that the fight between two game roosters had been in progress in the yard of the house. About 14 people had been leaning over in a circle on the ground, and the officers first thought that they were gambling, but as they approached, they saw that they were watching a couple of cocks fight. He said that the spectators included seven adults and seven children.

It would have been better on ice.

On the editorial page, "Plane Incident No Defense Test" indicates that the shooting down of a U.S. Navy plane in the Bering Strait of Alaska by a Soviet MIG fighter jet might actually have been valuable to the U.S., as it tended to blunt the current Soviet propaganda campaign aimed at casting themselves as apostles of peace.

Secretary of State Dulles, in his statement at San Francisco before the gathering of delegates for the tenth anniversary celebration of the founding of the U.N., had the previous week shown the current Russian overtures for what they were in light of history, reminding the world that Russian aggression had brought on the armaments race and the international tensions which the Soviets professed to want to relax.

It suggests that the incident involving the shooting down of the plane underscored what Secretary Dulles had stated, and negated everything which Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov, Premier Nikolai Bulganin and Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev had claimed in the name of peace.

It finds Senator William Knowland's analysis of the event, as a deliberate Soviet attempt to test Alaskan air defenses, not reasonable, believes there was no test involved, that merely a fast Russian plane came across a slow-moving Navy plane and decided to shoot it down, probably the result of a trigger-happy pilot who was not yet fully aware of the change in Russian strategy on the world stage. It asserts that it could have served no other purpose than to embarrass that strategy and to warn the West before the Big Four summit conference, scheduled to start on July 18 in Geneva. It suggests that the conference could now proceed in its proper perspective as a meeting at which the peaceful allies were seeking to have the Soviets, a freshly proved aggressor, prove by their actions that they truly wanted to "stop the gangsterism", as the incident involving the shooting down of the plane had shown again.

"Conservatism's Disjointed Splendors" finds that conservatism, as a social philosophy, had been erected anew in the country, no longer in the cobwebbed corner, rejected and ridiculed "as a kind of aboriginal evil". Now, it was liberalism which was being pushed aside by millions of people, with the new cause being appropriately called the "New Conservatism".

Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., had recently discussed that counter-revolution and political philosophy in The Reporter, declaring that "fashionable intellectual circles now dismiss liberalism as naïve, ritualistic, sentimental, shallow." But he also found the New Conservatism to be "the politics of nostalgia," irrelevant to the times, "the wrong doctrine in the wrong country in the wrong century directed against the wrong enemies."

The piece finds that the New Conservatism could not be dismissed that easily, that conservatism and liberalism were two great democratic traditions, with liberalism, defeated in the 1952 presidential election, having been given time to mend its theories and refurbish its ideas, while conservatism had already begun to do so.

It finds that the roots of the New Conservatism went back to the writings of Edmund Burke, John Adams, Alexis de Tocqueville, Benjamin Disraeli, Irving Babbitt and George Santayana, that the leading spokesmen at present were not the President, Senator John W. Bricker or any other American politician, but rather professionals such as Russell Kirk and Peter Viereck. Professor Kirk, in The Conservative Mind and A Program for Conservatives, had made some of the most powerful statements regarding conservatism in recent years, characterizing it as: "Belief that a divine intent rules society as well as conscience, forging an eternal chain of right and duty which links great and obscure, living and dead… Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of traditional life as distinguished from the narrowing conformity of equalitarianism and utilitarianism of the most radical systems… Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes… Persuasion that property and freedom are inseparably connected and that economic leveling is not economic progress… Recognition that change and reform are not identical and that innovation is a devouring conflagration more often than it is a torch of progress."

It finds that some of his objections to liberalism were well-founded, effectively attacking "totalitarian liberals", "muddle-headed liberals", and "do-good liberals". But it also finds that, just as many current practicing liberals had lost touch with the liberal tradition, many militant conservatives had strayed from true conservatism, including Professor Kirk.

It indicates that Ralph Gilbert Ross had sensibly written that to be effective, modern conservatism should be radical, that is primary and thoroughgoing, exposing illusions of the mass-mind and the sophistry of cheap politics, while having its basis in Greek thought, growing toward the future.

It opines that conservative revival would not amount to much without the imagination and skill to apply its principles to current issues in a way which would not only conserve but also create. It suggests that the conservative need not be reactionary and should welcome reform, not being dependent entirely on enduring traditions, suggesting that to entail such things as cannibalism, human sacrifice and slavery. The useful conservative could not be satisfied with things as they were, as doing so would also retain many of the follies which conservatives professed to despise. Neither could the conservative simply scrap everything and go back to the good old days, as long established trends could not be reversed overnight. The conservative would have to use the same tactic which liberals used, planning, as distasteful as the concept was to conservatives.

But it suggests that Plato had been a social planner, as had Aristotle, and legislation, itself, was a form of group planning. Edmund Burke, the chief hero of the New Conservatism, had not been a reactionary, but believed in the possibility and even the necessity of experiment, professing to "reform in order to conserve", which, it suggests, should be the motto of the New Conservatives. It finds that it would take more than Professor Kirk's statements on conservative thought to enable the New Conservatism to have lasting respect, that history was changed by events, not pretty words.

A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Clear It with Your Subconscious", tells of CBS radio reporter and commentator Eric Sevareid having stated in a recent broadcast that the advertisers were after everyone's last secret possession, their innermost feelings, their subconscious mind. Some examples were beer no longer being advertised as a health food because "motivational research" had found that people subconsciously thought of fat and waistlines, that cigarette holders no longer were emphasized in the ads because people were afraid they would look conspicuous using the device, that kitchen range manufacturers had been told to start calling their products "stoves" again because women were no longer the "efficiency-minded careerist dames of the 30's" and presently were subconsciously wanting "a warm-hearted stove again as a center of family life."

It suggests that the Hoover Commission had taken a similar approach when recommending abolition of the old Army word "mess", because, according to the task force report, such words when referring to the serving of food in the armed forces "conjure up the most undesirable visions of what is served therein. It is, therefore, believed that the word 'mess' should be eliminated from military use with reference to kitchens, galleys, dining halls or other facilities…"

The same type of editing was ongoing in nursery rhymes and even in the South's familiar songs, such as "Way Down upon the Swanee River". Some of the changes had come from the new concept of race relations, a few of which, it suggests, probably made sense.

But it concludes that overall, it provoked wonder as to what the world was coming to as it believes that "mess" described the average Army chow pretty well, despite the motivational research people and Herbert Hoover perhaps thinking that it would taste better under some other name, a belief which the piece doubts.

Drew Pearson tells of future New York Governor and Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller, whose family was one of the wealthiest in the country, having played penny-ante poker on the President's special plane while en route to San Francisco for the tenth anniversary of the founding of the U.N. On the plane with him were Congressmen George Miller, William Malliard, and Hubert Scudder, all of California, and, presumably Arthur Younger also of California, (though he refers only to "Younger of Ohio", by which name there was no such member). When the trip had concluded, Mr. Rockefeller had lost seven dollars, prompting Harold Stassen to remark that he would watch the stock market the following morning, as Mr. Rockefeller would probably have to dump a lot of stock to pay for his losses.

Senator Russell Long of Louisiana had done his best to defeat his fellow Democrats during a bitter, closed-door meeting of the Senate Public Works Committee, which had voted the previous week on the one remaining large undeveloped power site in the country, Hell's Canyon on the Snake River, of crucial importance to Oregon, Washington and Idaho as the only easily developed power site not already developed. The Administration had favored its development by the Idaho Power Co., while Democrats, except for Senator Long, had favored development of it by the Government, on the ground that rivers and works of nature belonged to the people and not to the private utilities. Senator Long, whose late father Huey had battled against the power companies, had voted with the power companies to approve the controversial Dixon-Yates contract with TVA the previous summer, while his fellow Democrats opposed it vehemently. During a secret meeting of the Senate Interior Committee the previous week, Senator Long had at first remained silent as six Republicans bitterly denounced Government operation of Hell's Canyon, including Senators Arthur Watkins of Utah, Henry Dworshak of Idaho, Eugene Millikin of Colorado, and Frank Barrett of Wyoming. Senator Thomas Kuchel of California was the only Republican on the Committee not to take a stand on the matter. All of the Democrats present urged development of the site by the Government, except Senator Long. Eventually, with Senator James Murray of Montana absent, attending the International Labor Conference in Geneva, acting chairman Senator Clinton Anderson of New Mexico produced a letter from Senator Murray asking that the vote be postponed until he had a chance to return, as Senator Anderson understood that with the opposition by Senator Long to Government development, the matter would be lost to the Idaho Power Co. without the postponement. At that point, Senator Long entered the fray and indicated that he would oppose Government development, urging that the vote take place immediately. Senator Dworshak did likewise.

In the end, however, the vote was postponed for about a week until the return of Senator Murray.

Stewart Alsop, in Moscow, tells of having been asked by several Russians in his initial days in the city that he write the truth about the country, but says he did not know the truth and so conveys two episodes which he had observed, which did not portray any truth and were not very important, but which he nevertheless feels were worth relating.

The first instance had occurred when it began raining suddenly and he and several Russians took refuge under a wooden awning, standing shoulder to shoulder, with Mr. Alsop sticking out in the crowd because of his light tan gabardine suit. One Russian spoke to him something incomprehensible and he had responded that he was an American and did not understand, at which point murmurings through the crowd began about the stranger in their midst, until finally one man in a dark suit said "peace", and then smiled, to which Mr. Alsop returned the same greeting. Then everyone smiled and nodded their heads in agreement. Finally, the rain stopped and everyone went their separate ways. He regards the response pattern as Pavlovian and not demonstrating any truth about Russia.

The second instance had occurred when he crashed a reception given by the Section of Heavy Athletics of the Committee of Sport and Physical Culture of Russia, in honor of an American team of weightlifters. Weightlifting was a very popular athletic event in Russia, even though no one in the U.S. was aware of the record-breaking American, Paul Anderson of Georgia. After awhile spent observing them, Mr. Alsop saw that the Russian weightlifters and the American weightlifters had begun to speak to one another through interpreters about their sport. Mr. Anderson had broken all records, even if the team had lost to the Russians. The Russians were thus quite interested in Mr. Anderson's strength and technique.

Eventually, there was a musical show coinciding with the event and a sleight-of-hand artist, as well as a Uzbekistan peoples dancer and a male vocalist. After the concert, a high official of the Section recited a lengthy address, with emphasis on the comradeship of peoples, and then there was a buffet with vodka and caviar.

"But the golden moment was never recaptured. Walking afterward in Red Square (the right one, this time) [after he had already recounted going to the wrong one earlier], it was tempting to believe that peace was assured because everybody under a wooden awning wanted peace or because weight lifters share a common humanity and a common interest in weight lifting. But alas, there are also such dreary matters as the world balance of power and the frightening difference between social systems. This difference is nowhere more obvious than here."

Robert C. Ruark tells of hearing of a Brooklyn automobile dealer having shipped 500 Chevrolets to Communist Bulgaria for the personal use of their government officials, which he believes was a severe Communist mistake, as the Communists were prone to brag about their automobiles and the American Chevrolets would quickly show them up as inferior.

He relates that Americans probably did not understand the perceived miracle of American automobiles abroad. There was no inferior American car at any point along the price scale. While Europe had its flashy sports cars, such as the Alfa Romeo, Pegaso and Mercedes-Benz, and the British had the Rolls-Royce, the common man's car, if he had a car at all, was a bug. A large American car in Europe still brought whistles when it passed, relating that his Studebaker still received a hearty "Ole!" in Spain, despite it being very old.

He finds it coincidental that the shipment of cars to Bulgaria were Chevrolets, because in some of the less developed countries, such as Kenya, where Communist propaganda was strong among the natives, the Chevrolet was the mark of tomorrow's affluence. He relates of having had a Kikuyu car watcher tell him that when the Russians would finally come and kick out the English, he would be called Bwana and would then be able to have a Chevrolet and a radio.

He says that if he had been running an American overseas propaganda campaign, he would impress upon the natives that a poor man in America could own a Chevrolet and that nearly everyone who needed transportation had a car, whether it was a Ford or a Cadillac.

Perhaps, writer Rod Serling read this piece by Mr. Ruark and later decided to write a television script on the premise, with a twist on propaganda.

A letter writer indicates that as a black person, she shared "the terrible suspense" which she believed her Anglo-Saxon neighbors must have been enduring, as NAAWP head Bryant Bowles deliberated their collective destinies, suggesting that they had all been waiting two centuries for him to hold his big meeting recently in Charlotte, finding it a fitting climax for him to be deliberating everyone's fate a month after the annual celebration of the Mecklenburg Resolves of Freedom. She finds that there was a crisis of sorts in interracial relations at present, that it was not as simple as some said but also not as earth-shattering as others said, and believes that it would be resolved, and with the same courage and spirit which had produced the Resolves, not "by opportunists, lackeys, vagrants, and itinerants, who possess only one qualification—the audacity to deliberate our fate."

A letter writer from Lumberton takes issue with a previous letter which had contended that the separation of the races was the will of God. He first commends the writer for being honest in her confession that she was not educated. (How, incidentally, he deduces that the writer is female is not clear, as the letter was signed only with a first initial "E.", which, by Southern traditions of the time, would have suggested a male. Perhaps on Friday he had seen "Person to Person", but never mind...) She had pointed to Deuteronomy 23:2-3, wherein was stated that the "bastard" would not be allowed to enter into the congregation of the Lord, as her proof of her knowledge of the mind of God regarding segregation. He indicates that the term "bastard" was misinterpreted from that text, and in any event, the Supreme Court, in holding continued public school segregation unconstitutional, had not ruled on whether people should or should not be born out of wedlock. (In a way, the current Supreme Court majority did just that a couple of weeks ago, but we digress…) He suggests that the white man's racial record was against him being entrusted with the mixing of races, that whatever mixing had gone on in the past was the result of the white man's lack of self-control. He finds that high moral and ethical values would result from desegregation of the schools, that each race would still have its worthwhile contributions to make, while discharging a duty too long delayed. "In the deep and true sense of the facts neither race will concern itself as to the coarse acts that result into bastardly mixing of races. But instead, working cooperatively together to build a better America, a better citizen; in short, to bring the Kingdom of God on earth."

A letter writer indicates that in the Bible, God never spoke of "black" or "Negro", that those references came into being through some white people, that God had not segregated the human race, but rather the whites had. He says, as a black person, that blacks did not want to mix with whites, that all they wanted was equal rights, that God had not said that whites were superior to blacks. He thinks that everyone should try to do better and stop talking about what they would not do because they might end up doing the opposite, that the world was filled with too many hard-hearted people, that they should know that they would have to give an account of what they said and did. "Let's get something on our minds instead of mixing because one person can't stop the show."

A letter writer from Cheraw, S.C., appeals to friends of all the "honest white and colored who are opposed to this stuff that nine men have said is right, to mix whether we want it that way or not." He urges writing members of Congress to support Senator James Eastland of Mississippi in his efforts to have the Supreme Court investigated. He urges also investigating the NAACP and the executive department. He says they felt that something was "hidden that the people don't know of, about the whole rotten decision. It smells like a Commie is hidden somewhere. For the action that has been taken parallels Commie tactics. Three, four, nine or ten men telling millions of people what they have to do." He thinks "it's one of the rawest deals a people has been asked to comply with. Our homes and our children and whom we let them associate with is our business, not a group of men who, it seems, don't care anything about our wishes or our rights." He warns black people not to "wade out too deep. For remember, you stay in the Southland, and you have to have jobs as well as schools." He asks who furnished their jobs, "the agitators of the North or the white people of the South", urges that it be contemplated. He believes there were too many secret orders in the country doing things undercover. "And as for some of our sheriffs saying what they will do to the Klan, if the law officers would enforce the laws the people would not have to act." He says that they would waste taxpayer money to put a man in prison for being drunk while letting adulterers and non-supporters of their families go loose and violate other laws. He urges doing their duty and "the Klan or no other group will have to try and clean up some of the indecency that's going on in our country today." He concludes by urging church people to stop fishing or going to movies on the Sabbath.

You can prob'ly go on down 'eya and have yowase'f some chicken wid ol' Lesta on the Sabbath, 'cause he has a fam'ly-type atmospheya ev'ry day. And if you can't spend the Sabbath wid fam'ly, why who can you spend it wid?

Framed Edition
[Return to Links
Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News<i><i><i>—</i></i></i>Framed Edition]
Links-Date Links-Subj.