The Charlotte News
Tuesday, June 28, 1955
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Government decided this date to drop its 2 1/2-year old perjury case against former State Department Far Eastern adviser Owen Lattimore, with Attorney General Herbert Brownell making the announcement. He said that twice the U.S. District and D.C. Court of Appeals had dismissed the key counts of indictments, based on Mr. Lattimore's testimony in 1952 before the Senate Internal Security subcommittee, and that therefore it appeared impossible to proceed on the five remaining perjury counts. Mr. Lattimore had been accused of lying by his denial that he had been a follower or promoter of the Communist line. U.S. District Court Judge Luther Youngdahl had described the accusations as "formless and obscure", too vague to enable the mounting of a defense, and so had thrown out the charges, twice upheld by the Court of Appeals, though reinstating certain of the counts. The most recent ruling had been on June 14 by an en banc vote of 4 to 4, thus allowing the lower court decision to stand. The Government had been left with the choice of appealing to the Supreme Court or going ahead with the attempted prosecution of Mr. Lattimore on the five remaining counts, which his attorneys had described as "trivia". The Government decided to drop the case.
In Bonn, West Germany, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer warned the Bundestag this date that the Russians were preparing East German youth for a civil war against West Germany, indicating that they faced a standing army of 150,000 Germans trained by the Soviet Army. A bill was pending to authorize the Government to call up the first 6,000 volunteer soldiers during the summer for training, and Chancellor Adenauer had intervened after a leader of his Christian Democratic Party had assailed the bill and warned that Christian Democratic members would not support it in its present form. The Parliament was determined to place civilian controls on the new German army, to be part of NATO, with the opposition Socialists and some members of the four coalition parties making up the majority charging that the three-paragraph law did not provide safeguards against a resurgence of German militarism.
Secretary of State Dulles said this date at a press conference that the Russian failure to discuss German reunification at the coming Big Four summit conference, to start on July 18 in Geneva, would cast doubt on Soviet sincerity anent easing international tensions, that any realistic effort to promote peace had to include work on German reunification. He said that Russia appeared to have lost interest in reunification, based on remarks made by Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov the previous week at the San Francisco conference to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the founding of the U.N. Mr. Molotov had spoken of the East-West division of Germany as being likely to continue for a long time. Secretary Dulles stated that he deplored that attitude and that if the Soviets really desired to advance the cause of peace, they would discuss Germany at the summit conference. On other topics, he said that the shooting down of the U.S. Navy patrol bomber by Soviet fighters over the Bering Sea the previous week appeared to have been a "trigger happy" incident, not something which represented a "considered policy on the part of the Soviet Union". He said that he had told Mr. Molotov in San Francisco that Russia ought pay the full cost of the loss of the plane and reparations for injuries to seven of the 11 members of the crew, but that he did not yet know what the total bill would be nor how the claim would be pressed. The U.S. and Russia appeared to be deadlocked, he stated, regarding Russia's idea of holding a Far Eastern conference, which would include Communist China as a participant, following the Geneva summit conference, with the U.S. also favoring participation of Nationalist China. He did not rule out the possibility of holding direct talks with Communist China on some matters. He also stated that the U.S. would give sympathetic consideration to a visit to the U.S. by Yugoslavia's President Tito, who was currently being courted by Russia, coaxed to return to the Moscow fold from which he had departed in 1948.
In Seoul, Jim Cary of the Associated Press reports that South Korea's military chief, General Lee Hyung Keun, had predicted this date that the Communists would launch a new Far Eastern war by 1958, probably in Korea. He predicted that it would be worse than the war of 1950-53. He said that his country now feared airplanes, not tanks, that North Korea had seven air divisions and 40 airbases built in violation of the 1953 Armistice. North Korea had no air force and only two usable airfields at the end of the war, and were not supposed to add to their forces extant at the time of the Armistice. He raised figures which had been obtained from two Communist pilots who had defected from the North to the South the previous Tuesday, landing at the Seoul airport.
The President this date signed a bill increasing the pay of more than a million Federal employees by 7.5 percent, or an average of about $325 per year. It and other increases in Federal pay increased the total budget by 1.25 billion dollars, 328 million of which was for the million Federal employees' pay increase. The bill covered 983,000 classified Civil Service employees throughout the nation, and 90,000 others in various Government agencies under separate pay systems.
In Richmond, it was reported that the Supreme Court this date had directed the U.S. District Court in Richmond to order admission of black children to Prince Edward County schools on a racially nondiscriminatory basis "with all deliberate speed", the same phrase used at the conclusion of the implementing decision in Brown v. Board of Education, decided the previous May 31. It reversed the ruling of the District Court of May 7, 1952, which had upheld the School Board's right to provide separate but equal school facilities, under the now discarded precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson, overruled in the original Brown decision of May 17, 1954. The decision also awarded the plaintiffs in the case nearly $3,000 in costs and directed recovery from the defendant School Board. Recently, the Board of Supervisors for Prince Edward County had voted to withhold approval of school operating funds for the coming school year, in an attempt to circumvent the Brown implementing decision. The official policy of Virginia's public schools for the coming year provided for segregated classes.
Emery Wister of The News indicates that when some 27 Air National Guard pilots would take off on the first leg of the Ricks Trophy race on Saturday, a Charlotte flier, Capt. Charlie Carmichael, would be among them, at the controls of an F-86 Sabre jet. He was the commanding officer of the 156th replacement training squadron, an auxiliary of the 156th Fighter-interceptor squadron in Charlotte. He would compete against jets from 26 other Air National Guard wings across the country, in the race from Ontario, Calif., to Detroit. He was scheduled to depart for California the following day in his Sabre jet, with another captain and a mechanical engineer flying in a jet trainer to provide support for the Sabre during the flight, to be stationed at two intermediate fields where he would land for refueling, which was to take only two minutes and 49 seconds at each stop, with the crews having undergone special training for the task.
Harry Shuford of The News indicates that the Board of County Commissioners would bring up the controversial question of additional pay for police officers who appeared in court on their own time.
Julian Scheer of The News had arranged a contest for children 10 or younger with freckles, wherein the boy and girl with the most freckles would each receive a prize, and the child with the most unusual freckle would also receive a prize. The contest would be held on July 7 at Freedom Park, and more could be read about it in Mr. Scheer's column on the second front page of the newspaper this date. If you have freckles, you will not wish to miss it. It appears, however, rather discriminatory. Freckle-faced children only.
On the editorial page, "Lineberry, Whitley, and a Tradition" indicates that the selection of Joe D. Whitley as the new successor as County Police Chief to Stanhope Lineberry had been a family affair, unnecessary to look outside local law enforcement. Both Mr. Whitley and the other possible successor, Henry Severs, had been highly qualified for the post and were excellent officers. The County Civil Service Board deserved commendation for the wisdom and speed with which it had discharged its responsibilities in appointing the successor.
It indicates that it was certain that Mr. Whitley would fill the shoes of his predecessor with distinction. He had the recommendation of Mr. Lineberry and had served on the force for 18 1/2 years, working his way up through the ranks, was the immediate past president of the North and South Carolina Law Enforcement Association, and a graduate of the FBI National Academy.
It finds that Mr. Lineberry had kept the County police free of politics and that most County residents wanted that job continued, believes that Capt. Whitley, "an earnest and dedicated law enforcement officer", would carry on that tradition with "skill, honesty and determination."
"All-American in Spirit and Result" indicates that the following day the tenth postwar Soap Box Derby would take place in Charlotte, that there would be one winner and many losers, but that, in terms of character-building, there would really be no losers at all. It would produce additional stories of "manhood" on the part of boys, just as previous Derbies had done.
In the months of constructing a car, the boy probably obtained his first feeling of self-reliance, performing an engineering feat and a financial miracle.
The previous year, boys from many communities had converged on Charlotte for the race, strangers who had suddenly become friends and sometimes long-term buddies. Webster Jones of Greenville, S.C., who would return for the race this year, had won the hearts of everyone when he had given his award to a Charlotte boy whose racer had broken down during the race. Sonny Bankhead of Hamlet had failed in four previous attempts for the local championship, and had been a victim of a bullet wound in his hand a month before the 1954 race, forced also to race with new wheels, but had won the admiration of all by winning the race and proving a fine ambassador for the city in the finals at Akron, O. David Smyth, who had lost the local race to Sonny, just as he had done in 1953 when he had lost to his brother Alex, had rushed to Sonny's side to offer congratulations, despite it having inevitably been painful to have come in second two years in a row.
It indicates that it could take each year and provide similar examples, but that it added up to the same thing, that the All-American Soap Box Derby was All-American in spirit and results. It hopes that the best boy would win the race the following day and offers congratulations to those who would not for a job nevertheless well done.
"A Good Committee Gets a Tough Job" tells of the recently appointed committee in Charlotte, consisting of three men, assigned the task of studying racial integration in the City schools and making recommedations, finds it an orderly step toward judicious solutions to the many problems posed by Brown v. Board of Education and its implementing decision of May 31.
It indicates that all members of the committee were devoted to the community and were impressed with the seriousness of the matter they were charged with studying and on which making recommendations. The chairman, J. P. Hobson, had remarked that it was the "gravest matter ever to face a public body." It finds that the attitude would translate into diligent work, in line with the opinion offered by the State advisory committee on segregation appointed by Governor Luther Hodges, that studies at the local level were essential to producing a sound program for the future of the schools. The State committee and the local committees would, no doubt, profit mutually from their efforts.
It concludes that the City School Board of Education would be looked to by the community to render a plan consistent, insofar as possible, with the wishes of the citizens and within the spirit of the law.
A piece from the Richmond News
Leader, titled "The Real David Crockett", indicates
that it was time to set the record straight on the real Davy
Crockett, asking parenthetically whether the reader had ever heard
the tune
It finds it difficult, however, to put the record straight on Mr. Crockett, as with any other folk hero, such as Paul Bunyan or John Henry, for Mr. Crockett had been a man of tall tales, whether he or someone else had related them. He had been somewhat vague about dates and never let a fact interfere with a good story. So it was no wonder that members of Congress and others still debated his actual deeds.
Representative Charles Jonas of North Carolina had disputed the fact that he was "born on a mountaintop in Tennessee", as the song went, rather that the place where he was born on August 17, 1786 was then a part of North Carolina. Mr. Crockett had written that he was born in a cabin at the "mouth of Lime Stone, on the Nolachucky River."
It goes on relating biographical facts of Mr. Crockett, his marriage and their having three children, two boys and a girl. After his first wife died, he married a widow who had two children after her husband had been killed in the Creek War in which Mr. Crockett had also fought.
His humorous and homely manner had enabled him to get elected first to the Tennessee Legislature in 1821, re-elected two years later, then elected to Congress in 1827 and again in 1829, before losing in 1831, with Mr. Crockett attributing the loss to the fact that he had refused to wear President Andrew Jackson's dog-collar, voting against a bill to move five tribes of Indians to territory west of the Mississippi, which he believed would violate treaties made with the Indians. He was then elected again in 1833, though still being ridiculed as the "coonskin Congressman".
His Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee was published in 1834, with help from his friend Thomas Chilton "to classify the matter". The manuscript had not been in Mr. Crockett's handwriting, but "every sentiment and sentence in it" had been his, according to Mr. Crockett.
In late 1835, he had departed Tennessee for Texas, where he hoped to make a fortune for himself and his family. He met his heroic death the following year in the siege of the Alamo by Santa Anna's men, but no one knew the details. As one historian had written: "Thermopylae had its messenger of defeat; the Alamo had none." (The well-known lament is of disputed attribution, incidentally, with the most credible being that it was coined by General Thomas Green of North Carolina, who volunteered for duty in Texas in 1836, writing it for a speech commemorating the battle, delivered in 1837 in San Antonio by General Edward Burleson, also originally of North Carolina.)
It
concludes that in 1955, stories of Mr. Crockett's career, like accounts in
earlier years, had fused fact with fiction
Drew Pearson indicates that the public did not get the full significance and detail of the previous week's debate which had annihilated Senator McCarthy when he sought to force the President to discuss liberation of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary at the Big Four summit conference scheduled to start on July 18 in Geneva. It had been, notes Mr. Pearson, one of the most significant debates within the previous decade, demolishing the isolationist wing of the Republican Party and driving a bulldozer over certain parts of the Republican platform. It was stated in the press as a victory for the President, but was more of a victory for Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson. The Republicans did not want to vote on the McCarthy resolution, not wanting to have to vote against their own party member, a fact of which Senator Johnson was quite aware, seeing that he had an opportunity to get Republicans to repudiate their own platform, knowing thereby that they would have to give up calling Democrats Communists. And so he had forced the vote.
One day prior to the vote, Senator Johnson had forced Herbert Hoover, Jr., the acting Secretary of State, to testify against the McCarthy resolution, which required the President to demand the liberation of the satellite countries. Mr. Hoover did not want to testify, but Senator Johnson insisted. Senator McCarthy had read the Republican platform to his colleagues, which called for the liberation of the satellite nations. Senator Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa rebuffed his old friend, Senator McCarthy, saying that he did not agree with him that "by and large the Democratic members of this body are in favor of appeasement in respect to Communism." Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana, who had voted to defend Senator McCarthy during the censure proceedings the prior December, wanted to know from Senator McCarthy when the President, the Secretary of State or the Republican Congress had failed to live up to their obligations and in what way they had appeased or done something which would provide comfort to the Communists. Senator McCarthy then turned on his old friend, saying that the Korean Armistice had amounted to appeasement, and that giving up the Nationalist-held Tachen Islands off the coast of mainland China had been appeasement, as well as giving up North Vietnam had been appeasement. He added that a further example of appeasement was what the Senate was presently encouraging. Senator Capehart responded that Senator McCarthy had only taken what Undersecretary of State Hoover had said the previous day and made it a part of the resolution, prompting Senator McCarthy to tell him to "try to be quiet" while he answered. Senator Capehart then said, "I do not like to have the Senator accuse me and other Republican Senators." Senator McCarthy again shouted to him, asking him to be quiet.
Senator Johnson interrupted the heated exchange to ask that the Senate get back to a vote on the resolution. The vote followed, 77 to 4 against Senator McCarthy and for the President, providing Senator Johnson's device for debunking the Republican charge that Democrats were sympathetic to Communism.
Stewart Alsop, in Moscow, indicates that on the previous week there had been a display in Moscow, on the morning before the afternoon reception for Prime Minister Nehru of India, of between 150 and 200 of the newest type Soviet jet aircraft, including numerous large turbo-prop bombers of the type believed in the West capable of refueling in midair, large numbers of two-engine medium bombers, known in the West as the Badger, and large numbers of fighter aircraft, including the advanced type, known in the West as the Farmer.
The large four-engine bomber, known in the West as the Bison, was not observed, but flights of a dozen or so of that aircraft had been observed on more than one occasion since the May Day overflights, alarming the West with the progress made on large, intercontinental bombers. Flights of the new jet planes, either in the morning or in the late afternoon, had become almost routine in recent weeks. They were presumably in preparation for the display of Soviet air power scheduled for Red Air Force Day, the date of which had not yet been set, but expected to take place on a Sunday early in July. None of the new types had been flown since the May Day overflights, but it would not be surprising if new Soviet aircraft models of advanced design were on display on Air Force Day. It was possible that the delta-wing aircraft, of radical design and revolutionary performance, might be flown, but that was pure speculation, as was any attempt to discern the reason for the overflights.
He indicates that what was sometimes overlooked in Washington was that the flights were witnessed not only by a small number of foreigners but by millions of Soviet citizens in Moscow, impressing upon the people that the peace would never be broken by the Soviet Government, only by foreign aggressors, with the overflights providing a way of further convincing the people that the Government had the means to prevent that from occurring.
He suggests that the Soviet Government had to be aware that foreign observers witnessed the overflights, with the idea being conveyed that if the West wanted to get tough, they could get tough, too.
He indicates that the planes being flown represented a genuine triumph of Soviet technology, and that it was impossible to guess the economic cost of that achievement. The resources of Russia were quite great and could be concentrated to achieve a single end in a way which was quite difficult in the U.S.
Once the Soviets obtained the nuclear bomb, it should have been obvious that their resources would be concentrated on an efficient means of delivery.
At very least, he posits, the overflights ought bring a halt to Western smugness, especially that type occurring in Washington. The U.S. had a national habit of judging national power in terms of the number of automobiles per thousand of population, or even in terms of the elegance of plumbing. He indicates that there was no doubt that there were more cars in the U.S. than in Russia and that the plumbing was superior. "But a better index of true national power is to be found in the remarkable aircraft which now regularly appear in the Moscow skies."
Edsel
The Congressional Quarterly indicates that the Administration and Senator John W. Bricker were as far apart as ever in their feelings about Senator Bricker's constitutional amendment to limit the treaty-making power of the President. The Senator had sought to sugarcoat his current version of the amendment in an effort to make it acceptable to the Administration. It was the sixth version since he had first offered it in 1951, and was presently before the Senate Judiciary Committee. A spokesman for the Senator had told the Quarterly that the Committee ought report the amendment out in July, with floor action probably delayed until the following year.
Efforts to obtain a version acceptable to the Administration, through consultation with Attorney General Herbert Brownell, had not thus far been successful. The root of the controversy, as in 1954, was in the so-called "which" clause, the 1954 version having stated that international agreements "shall become effective as internal law in the United States only through legislation which would be valid in the absence" of international agreement. The 1955 version was the same, except that the words "which would be" were deleted. Some had dubbed the latter version the "which-less" clause. In any event, it had not convinced Secretary of State Dulles to support it. He had told a Senate subcommittee that the clause would harm the President's power to negotiate armistices and recognize foreign governments by executive agreement, sharing the executive power with Congress and upsetting the traditional balance of powers.
Both versions of the amendment would nullify any executive agreement or treaty which conflicted with the Constitution.
Senator Bricker had told the Quarterly that the President's conduct of foreign affairs had been in keeping with the spirit of his amendment, and that if it were approved, the restriction on the power of the President would be no greater than that which President Eisenhower had exercised, as he believed the President had respected the position of Congress. But the Senator feared that another president might negotiate a treaty which would invade the field of domestic legislation and states' rights, having consistently used as example the U.N. and various unproposed treaties.
The opponents to the amendment argued that the Constitution and its Bill of Rights were safe in the hands of the President and the Senate acting jointly on treaties, that no amendment to the Constitution was therefore necessary. They argued that executive agreements had been formed by Presidents many times and the attempt to curb that power would lead to chaos in dealing with other nations.
Senator Bricker predicted that his amendment would pass because the American people wanted it. A spokesman for the pro-Bricker forces, however, gave it a 50-50 chance of passage. But the Quarterly's assessment of a key 1954 vote showed that the chances might not be that good. That vote had occurred on a substitute measure offered by Senator Walter George of Georgia, which had missed the required two-thirds majority by a single vote. Of the 91 Senators who had voted at the time, 78 were still in office, while three others had announced their positions on it. Fifty-one of those 81, 29 Republicans and 22 Democrats, favored the amendment, while 30 opposed it, including 19 Democrats and 11 Republicans. The determining vote, therefore, would be with the 15 Senators who had been elected in 1954, with only three of those needed to defeat the amendment.
In addition to the Bricker amendment, there was one other Senate bill and two House bills, with 14 House resolutions, affecting the treaty power, all awaiting committee action.
A letter writer indicates that no race as a whole was all good or all bad, asks what the white man had that the black man did not. She says that she found within the white race honesty, dishonesty, integrity, intelligence, education, high position, beauty, health, wealth, illiteracy and illegitimacy, that the black race, of which she was a member, also had every such characteristic, that no race was stronger than its weakest member. She reminds that Christ had been born a Jew. She says that often white people talked about what their forefathers had fought and died for, while failing to mention that they had also been involved in miscegenation 100 years earlier. "Most of our white Negroes' origin can be credited to the fair states of Georgia and the Carolinas." She indicates that the inheritors of wealth, culture, social position and good breeding were not those who wrote letters of hate and bigotry to the newspaper's forum, that they had no fear of black people barging into their society, had been successful in keeping undesirable whites out of their social circles through the years and could protect themselves. She concludes by referencing the New Testament and indicating that Christ had said, "Whosoever shall receive a little child in my name receiveth me." She finds that the greatest thing in the world was love.
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