The Charlotte News
Monday, November 12, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from London that Egypt had agreed to permit entry of the U.N. police force immediately, according to U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold this date, indicating that the first units, presently assembled at a staging area near Naples, might enter the following day. Canadian Major General E. L. M. Burns, commander of the force, was talking in Cairo with Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser and Foreign Minister Mahmoud Fawzi when Mr. Hammarskjold had made his announcement in New York. The latter had indicated his intention to leave by plane the following day for Cairo to discuss details with the Egyptian Government, and would also inspect the Italian staging area, presently occupied by units from Denmark, Norway and Colombia, totaling about 200 troops. The Cairo talks of General Burns and Mr. Hammarskjold might determine whether the shaky ceasefire between the Egyptians and troops of Britain, France and Israel could be made permanent. Eventually, troops of 16 nations were to be represented in the U.N. police force, from which all of the Big Four powers were excluded by the U.N. Charter as permanent members of the Security Council. Burma this date had withdrawn its offer to contribute to that force, its Government indicating that it had received no response to its offer. The Egyptians had imposed the condition that their sovereignty would have to be respected for admission of the U.N. force, and had also sought assurances that the British, French and Israeli forces would withdraw immediately from the territory they had overrun during the hostilities, which had erupted two weeks earlier, and that the police force would be based in Egypt only temporarily. The single biggest snag to the entrance of the U.N. police force to Egypt appeared to be the question of where they would be stationed, with Britain and France having made clear by halting their invasion that they expected U.N. forces to take up posts within the canal zone, indicating that they would not withdraw all of their forces until the U.N. troops arrived, while Egypt apparently anticipated that the U.N. force would be stationed along the Israeli-Egyptian border, from which the Israelis had launched the attack into Egypt.
Meanwhile, both Russia and Communist China had issued new threats to send "volunteers" to help Egypt rid the British and French "aggressors" from its boundaries. At Beirut, the heads of five Arab states had met in a top-secret meeting to discuss the whole Middle East situation, with reports emerging from the meeting that the leaders of Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia would discuss not only the British-French invasion but the threat posed by the rapid spread of Communist influence in the region.
In New Delhi, it was reported that the prime ministers of India, Burma, Ceylon and Indonesia were discussing the Egyptian and Hungarian conflicts for more than two hours this date, with a communiqué issuing at the conclusion of the session indicating only that the group had met to discuss questions and would meet again the following day. An Indian Government spokesman said that the conference might continue through Wednesday, that the ministers would probably issue some resolutions at the conclusion of the meeting. Prior to the meeting, Indian Prime Minister Nehru had declared that U.N. supervision of free elections in Hungary was not right, indicating that he did not know all of the details of the proposal for withdrawal of Russian troops from Hungary and U.N. supervision of elections there, but believed that the supervised elections part of the resolution was not right. The position was consistent with India's stand regarding proposals for similar supervised elections in disputed Kashmir and Goa. India had voted against the U.N. resolution regarding Hungary, surprising many in New Delhi, according to the independent Times of India. If, according to the newspaper, India agreed with the withdrawal of Russian troops but not the U.N.-supervised Hungarian elections, it should have abstained and not cast a negative vote. It had been the only non-Communist country to vote against the U.N. resolution. Both India and Ceylon were important Asian members of the British Commonwealth, which had been split by the British invasion of Egypt.
In Munich, the West German and French newspapers were airing charges that Radio Free Europe had stirred up the Hungarian revolt, and that by promising outside help, had kept the fight going after all had been lost. The information director of Radio Free Europe, Frank Abbott of Louisville, had said that the charges were false, that the broadcasts had presented nothing except objective news and commentaries, never inciting anyone, and that they could prove it. A West German Government spokesman in Bonn had said this date that an investigation had been started of the broadcasts to Hungary during the revolution to see if they were "provocative", with tapes of the broadcasts being studied. Radio Free Europe was a giant radio network supported by private American donations and manned primarily by exiles of Communist-ruled countries of Eastern Europe, with the announced goal of providing the truth to the peoples behind the Iron Curtain. Michael Gordey, a correspondent for the Paris newspaper, France-Soir, had just returned from Budapest and had written this date: "We heard a lot of false news about what was going on inside Budapest. We also heard on Radio Free Europe, broadcasting from Munich toward the satellite countries, programs whose impassioned tone and desperate calls to revolt certainly did a lot of wrong. During those last days, numerous Hungarians told us: 'These broadcasts have provoked bloodshed.'" Similar criticism had come from several West German newspapers. But Mr. Abbott insisted that they had never urged anyone to revolt and had never promised outside help.
In Budapest, it was reported that the Soviet-Hungarian war was coming slowly to an end, with the Soviets having crushed the resistance of ten million Hungarians equipped with obsolete weapons, the war having been lost but the revolution not defeated. The present government of Premier Janos Kadar was only too anxious to emphasize that it had nothing in common with Stalinism and its Hungarian representative, Matvas Rakosi, presently believed in Russia, although Hungarians were not convinced of the claim of the Premier. He had made desperate efforts to persuade other politicians, non-Communist as well as Communist, to join his "revolutionary" Government, but had no success in doing so thus far. His Cabinet consisted of only six members, snubbed by everyone, including Communists and politicians who had been considered loyal fellow-travelers in the past. No one could forgive the fact that the Premier had returned "riding a Russian tank". He had become the first secretary of the Communist Party in Hungary when Erno Geroe had been expelled by the masses on October 25, two days after the revolution had begun. He had also been a minister of state in Premier Imre Nagy's Government until November 1 when, as he said, he and other members of his present Cabinet could not tolerate increasing signs of "white terror".
In Vienna, it was reported that the overwhelming power of Russia's huge military machine had moved relentlessly this date against the last pockets of Hungarian national resistance, with the only major part of it remaining inside ruined Budapest being at Csepel Island, site of the nation's largest industrial complex, where workers had barricaded themselves in one of the large Danube island factories and continued to resist determined attacks by Soviet armor. Other pockets still held out in the Budapest suburb of Ujpest, in Dunapentele, south of the Csepel Island area, and at Pecs, near the Yugoslav border. Occasional shooting had also broken out in Gyder province, especially along the roads leading to Austria, and in the Vac area north of Budapest. The last of the rebels were fighting cold, hunger and despair. Premier Kadar, the Soviet-installed puppet, admitted in a speech via Budapest Radio that groups of rebels were still holding out in cellars by day, emerging at night in larger groups for hit-and-run attacks, but that he believed "all Budapest remnants of the counterrevolution will be liquidated" within 2 to 3 days. Rows of worker houses had been shattered by the Russian effort to root out the nationalist remnants, with a children's clinic having been wiped out and hospitals set afire, as Russians, to eliminate a single rifleman, would direct a full barrage from tanks, machine guns and automatic weapons to destroy an entire building. Correspondents returning from Budapest said that the city was in the grip of indescribable horror, more horrifying even than they had observed during World War II. By the best available estimates from Western correspondents returning from Budapest, 20,000 or more Hungarians had died in the attempt to break the grip of Soviet Communism on their country, while the Russian dead had been placed at between 4,000 and 5,000, with the wounded numbering about 50,000 Russians and Hungarians. Hospitals were so crowded that litters carrying the wounded were directed to cellars and garrets, all crammed with the suffering. Doctors in one of Hungary's largest hospitals had been operating for two days without the aid of anesthetics.
In Karlsruhe, Germany, Otto John, former head of the West German intelligence organization and sometimes called "the man with the thousand secrets", this date told a five-judge tribunal of the Federal Supreme Court, trying him for treason for allegedly disclosing State secrets and denouncing agents of his office to the Russians, that he had been subjected to "psychic torment" during his 17 months behind the Iron Curtain and that he had "nothing to fear" now. He had been imprisoned in West Germany since he had slipped back across the border from the Iron Curtain nearly a year earlier. He recounted his personal history before the court, telling of how he had become a member of the anti-Nazi underground during World War II and had made a dramatic flight to Britain after the abortive attempt to assassinate Hitler, that it had been on the tenth anniversary of that date, July 20, 1954, that he had gone into Soviet-occupied East Berlin. He had returned 17 months later with the help of a Danish newspaper correspondent, claiming that he was drugged and abducted into the Eastern sector. He had been head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a domestic intelligence agency of West Germany which spent two million dollars per year to combat Communist and neo-Nazi subversive activities. The largest question facing the court was what had motivated Mr. John to cross the border. The prosecution contended that he had gone voluntarily while Mr. John argued that he had been coerced. Three weeks after he had entered East Berlin, he had announced at a Communist-sponsored press conference that he had defected to fight for peace and against the revival of militarism and Nazism in West Germany. The trial, expected to hear from a hundred witnesses, was expected to last about a month. Since West Germany had no death penalty, life imprisonment was the maximum sentence he could face, but few West Germans expected such a severe penalty even if he were convicted.
In Cincinnati, O., fire had swept upward from a basement stairwell through a three-story apartment building this date, killing eight persons, seven of whom were children, and injuring three others as they leaped from the burning building. The dead included a 26-year old mother and her five children and two children of a 19-year old mother who was injured in the blaze. The apartment comprised half of a square block unit of three-story brick buildings, atop a hill overlooking Cincinnati's downtown area. The fire chief said that the stairway had been a funnel for the blaze, with the fire having shot up the stairway, cutting off any escape route for the occupants, with the heat having broken the glass in door transoms, spreading the flames to the living quarters, eventually obtaining a draft through a broken skylight through the roof. The fire had erupted in the apartment where the mother and her five children had died, but no ultimate cause was given for the fire.
A survey conducted by Dr. Henry Ogden of the LSU School of Medicine had shown that medical students were more prone to have recurring headaches than any other occupational group, while farmers were the least susceptible. It was one of the most extensive surveys ever made of the causes and distribution of headaches, showing that "over 60 percent of the general population" had headaches. People who were divorced or separated from their spouses were more prone to have them than those happily married. People with no education at all were the least susceptible among groups having varying degrees of education. The study was part of an exhibit at the opening of the 50th anniversary meeting of the Southern Medical Association. Freshman and senior medical school students were questioned to obtain data on the headaches of college students, with the finding that more than 80 percent had headaches, more than even business executives, of whom 77 percent complained of the malady. Next on the list were professional people, at 70 percent, housewives, at 69 percent, clerks, at 68 percent, salesmen, at 58 percent, manual laborers, at 55 percent, and farmers, of whom 50 percent complained of headaches.
John Cornelius, president of the American Heritage Foundation, this date had telegraphed congratulations to The News for its work in getting out the vote, telling publisher Thomas L. Robinson that it was "an inspiring demonstration" which would hearten the friends of freedom everywhere. The News had won a National Heritage Foundation citation in 1952 for its campaign to register people and get out the vote.
On the editorial page, "Local Politics Need More Competition" tells of a strange political hybrid growing in Mecklenburg County, having most of the disadvantages of a one-party system and almost none of the advantages of a two-party system, but being neither, rather a sort of one-party system with an escape hatch for occasionally disenchanted Democrats, but with no real opening for full expression of Republican beliefs.
The protest vote against the Democratic principles had not been strong enough to make the Democratic Party vital, with widespread community participation, or to establish the Republican Party as a viable challenger. The just concluded campaign suggested that the present situation carried a strong potential for development of a genuine two-party system in the county, and that the Eisenhower popularity had obviously guided many voters to the few Republicans running.
But it finds that there had to be more at work than that to have accounted for the vote of the lone but attractive Republican candidate for the General Assembly, Charles Coira, having obtained success through an active grassroots organization with the aim of sending a Republican to Raleigh, with his appeal having been based on straightforward criticism of some of the actions of the Democratic Legislature.
It finds that the first faltering steps toward a two-party system in the county had already brought government closer to the people, with Mr. Coira having gone out among the people, prompting his Democratic opponents to do likewise.
It asserts that the hybrid form might eventually develop into a strong two-party system, with both the community and each party profiting from it, gaining strength from contested viewpoints and providing the community a choice of candidates and political programs. It finds a little competition in politics to be a good thing, but a lot of competition even better, and that Mecklenburg County needed more of it.
"Here Lies Bela Szabo, Hungarian Hero" tells of a rough-hewn headstone with the words crudely inscribed on it: "Bela Szabo, Oct. 25—Nov. 4, 1956, Killed by a Soviet bullet while fighting for a freedom he never knew."
His final resting place was in a secluded wood or off a seldom-traveled road, far removed from the eyes of the Russian wards whose brutality had ended his life. It indicates that for countless others like him, there would be no decent burial or headstone to record their heroic deeds against Soviet oppression. They were the mere children and teenagers who had joined the rebel force in which the minimum age was ten, fighting against the Soviet tanks with Molotov cocktails and brickbats. Yet the young Hungarian patriots had constituted a substantial part of the rebel forces in the uprising in Budapest.
It finds that the Hungarian revolution, short-lived and ill-fated as it had been, had proved once again that it was not necessary for a person to experience freedom before yearning for it, intuitively understanding what it was to be oppressed.
The Soviets would do all they could to prevent news of the true nature of the Hungarian revolt from reaching behind the Iron Curtain, and would rewrite history to try to prove that the revolution had been fostered by "Western imperialists". But the story of such young people as Bela Szabo, shouting defiance in the face of impossible odds, would live and would spread by word of mouth, if by no other means, to every corner of the satellite empire, to be told repeatedly until becoming a legend. From the revolution which never reached fruition would grow new hope, as it had proved that one of the mightiest armies and most extensive propaganda machines the world had ever known was incapable of crushing the desire for freedom, even among the youth who had never experienced it.
"Freedom is precious to those who have it. To those who do not, it is priceless."
"Nuclear Scientists to the
Rescue" indicates that American scientists were answering with
admirable clarity and forthrightness the challenge to speak out on
what it regards as perhaps the most serious issue to emerge during
the 1956 presidential campaign, control of nuclear weapons to avoid
contamination of the atmosphere through continued atmospheric testing
of the hydrogen bomb. It finds that the scientists would likely
continue to be heard when the sounds of the campaign had become a
distant memory—as borne out by our fortuitous reference in the note following the prior Wednesday's editorial on the need for prayer for peace, to the
October 27 and 29, 1961 Winston-Salem Journal, bearing with it the continuing concern with increasing radioactivity in the atmosphere from nuclear testing, though the inclusion was intended to highlight the standoff of that
time, exactly one year before the climax of the Cuban Missile Crisis,
between U.S. and Russian tanks across Checkpoint Charlie at the Berlin Wall, seeing eyeball to eyeball at the time before
finally blinking, as would the Russian ships delivering the missile
assemblages to Cuba the following year, after initially passing the
blockade line and causing great consternation as a result in
Washington, before finally, as Secretary of State Dean Rusk would
exclaim, blinking, to everyone's relief, and turning around. With the
news of the tank standoff had been the additional fortuitous
information conveyed on that front page of October 27 by the caption
below the picture of Adlai Stevenson during a hunting trip, by then
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., who would a year hence, on October 25,
unveil at
the U.N. the critical aerial reconnaissance photographic evidence of the presence of offensive missiles in Cuba during the
1962 crisis, having indicated to great effect, given his usual
statesmanlike demeanor, that he was prepared to wait until hell froze
over to receive his answer from Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin as
to whether Russia was installing the missiles. Walls
The piece refers back to its October 23 editorial, in which it had suggested that scientists had an obligation to enter that debate, thus finds it particularly gratifying that such a notable sense of social responsibility was being demonstrated by the scientists. For instance, Dr. Ralph E. Lapp, a distinguished nuclear physicist who had spoken to Charlotte's Executive Club earlier in the year, had said recently: "There is no question that we could detect any large explosion. The testing of a single bomb does not decide the arms race. It is only a single cog in a large gear which is part of the military machine. A bomb test requires several years to be converted into an engineered military weapon and stockpile. The proposal to cease tests is a first step toward meeting the ultimate problem of our day, namely, limitless destruction."
Dr. Arthur Compton, a nuclear physicist who was the former chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis and had been involved in the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb during the war, had stated, however, to the contrary: "We must defend ourselves. To maintain our freedom, we must continue testing hydrogen bombs. Safety lies at the present moment, as I see it, in making it dangerous for people to start a war."
The executive board of the American Federation of Scientists had urged that there be an international agreement to halt the testing, providing hope to millions that broader pacts to limit armaments could then be reached. Dr. Lawrence Snyder, president-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, had stated: "We can all agree that nuclear warfare might well lead to universal death… The present weapons-testing programs present a double threat. First, the genetic damage from fallout and from radioactive vapor, and second, the threat that continued testing may progress to actual warfare."
Dr. Evarts Graham, professor emeritus of surgery at Washington University, had said: "Strontium 90 can affect children yet unborn. This fallout material has a profound genetic effect that could continue for several generations. It causes deformed bodies and abnormal mental development. This is the most important thing before humanity today. Every person in the world may be affected if enough bombs are exploded."
It finds that, without doubt, Adlai Stevenson's most important single contribution to the campaign had been his insistence on making the hydrogen bomb a subject of discussion, insofar as future testing, and indicates that the issue had to continue in debate, that it was too important to put away and be forgotten, that the present was the time to impress statesmen of the urgency of the situation.
Again, it would not be until August, 1963 that, during the Kennedy Administration, the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty would be formed between the U.S., the Soviet Union and Britain, mutually agreeing to halt testing in the atmosphere and undersea of nuclear weapons. It would arguably become, along with the promulgated and eventually passed 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the most important contributions made by the Kennedy Administration during its short tenure of less than three years, albeit continued under the Johnson Administration, at least until the end of the fourth year.
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Who Wants To Be Seasick?" indicates that with the new Mayflower still being readied for a voyage from Plymouth, England, to Plymouth, Massachusetts, word had come from Québec that a replica of the vessel in which Samuel de Champlain had crossed from France to Canada 350 years earlier was to be built to repeat that voyage.
It finds that just when travelers were mindful that even modern liners were not unsinkable, likely recalling the collision and sinking of the Andrea Doria the previous July, the revised passion for cockleshells and seasickness was a bit puzzling, suggesting that surely there were more comfortable and impressive ways of observing historic occasions.
But it finds that the 17th Century sailing vessels did seem preferable to Thor Heyerdahl's Kon Tiki and other rafts on which contemporaries had set out across the ocean. It indicates that it liked the ocean and occasionally wished that they could be supplanted to quieter times, but that such wishes were for more comfort and assurance, not less, eschewing any rowboat in a storm.
It concludes that "every man to his taste", especially since no one had appointed it Admiral of the Ocean to enforce its own rules against its own notions of foolhardiness. "Or has the workaday prudence killed our appreciation of adventure and publicity."
The piece likely had been written prior to the recorded episode on the front page of the previous Thursday, regarding the two young men from Laurinburg, N.C., who had set out on a fishing expedition out of Corncake Inlet in North Carolina on October 27 and wound up drifting for 12 days without food or water, winding up hundreds of miles from their starting point, 125 miles off the Georgia-Florida coast, with one of the two already dead and the other having nearly, but not quite, given up hope before being spotted finally by a ship. The report did not explain what caused their misadventure with the Albatross.
Drew Pearson tells of the biggest war scare to hit Washington since Pearl Harbor having occurred with the receipt early the previous week of the note from the Soviets threatening intervention against the French and British in the Suez Canal crisis. It had caused the Administration to place on alert all atomic bomber units, to disperse warships so as not to be targets, as had the been the case at Pearl Harbor, to cancel amphibious training maneuvers off the southern Atlantic coast and place in a preparatory state the carriers U.S.S. Forrestal and Saratoga, as well as other key ships, and to call an emergency meeting at the White House to determine whether Russia was serious about its threat to use force, including launching of rockets against England, to halt the war in the Middle East.
Undersecretary of State Herbert Hoover, Jr., who was Acting Secretary while John Foster Dulles was in the hospital, had been the most worried of all at the meeting, reporting that 150 out of 300 Russian divisions had been placed on ready-alert, that the borders of Poland had been sealed, that Russian troops had been placed on the Iranian border, and that four new Red Army divisions had been deployed to Hungary, making a total of 100,000 Russian troops in that country. Extra troops had been made necessary because the Red Army units already in Hungary had refused to fire on the Hungarian rebels. The Kremlin had initially pulled four divisions from Rumania to enter Hungary, but when rebellion then smoldered in Rumania, they were returned and four new divisions sent directly from Russia. U.S. intelligence had also reported that the Red Army in Hungary was under the personal command of President Eisenhower's wartime friend, Marshal Georgi Zhukov, though taking orders from the Kremlin. Those in control in the Kremlin appeared to be Anastas Mikoyan and a new figure, Mikhail Suslov, a member of the Presidium.
British intelligence had also reported that the British had destroyed a large number of Russian MIG's recently arrived in Egypt, with one British report placing the number at 35, while another had it at 48. The British had also reported that they had sighted some Soviet Bisons on October 30 flying over Egypt, the Bison being the new Russian jet bomber, equivalent to the U.S. B-52.
All of those reports had caused fear among the top U.S. leaders that with the British and French busy in the Suez, their home territories, left virtually undefended, might be attacked.
At the emergency White House meeting, CIA director Allen Dulles had calmed the official fears, reporting that Russian policies in the satellite countries had backfired so disastrously that the Kremlin was trying to save face by waving the big stick in other areas, arguing that the Red Army leaders were too realistic to start a nuclear war.
Walter Lippmann indicates that it was not yet clear that the Soviet notes to Britain and France were what they appeared to be on their face, a threat of Soviet intervention in the Middle East. At one point, the notes said, "We are fully determined to crush the aggressors and restore peace in the East through the use of force," with the "we" seeming to refer to the Soviets, though that remained unclear. If so, it presented an ultimatum without a specific timetable.
But when the notes had been disseminated for publication, the Soviet Foreign Office said in answer to questions raised by reporters from the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune that the "we" referred only to the U.N., meaning that there would be intervention only with U.N. approval, which had not been provided.
The two interpretations were vastly different and it appeared that the Soviets intended the two interpretations, with the ultimatum designed for popular appeal in Russia, without making a commitment which might precipitate a world war by promising to "crush" U.S. allies, inevitably drawing the U.S. into any such conflict.
He indicates that the words could not be dismissed as sheer bluff. There had been a deep challenge in both the Middle Eastern and East European crises of recent weeks regarding the vital interests of the Russian empire. Had the Hungarian rebellion succeeded and spread to other satellite countries, the result would have surely been not Titoist neutral nations but rather anti-Communist, anti-Russian revolts. Had Britain and France succeeded in toppling Egyptian Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser, they would have eliminated the center of Soviet influence in the region.
In the view of the Russians, Eastern Europe had been for more than two centuries of vital interest, and for at least a century, the Middle East had been an object of Russian imperial ambition. Under the late Joseph Stalin, as a result of the European war against Nazi Germany, the Russian imperial power had become the master of all of Eastern Europe. Under the successors to Stalin, following his death in March, 1953, Russia had for the first time in history succeeded in winning a place of power in the Middle East. During the previous few weeks, the postwar gains of Russia had been placed in jeopardy and for the previous week, Moscow had been reacting violently to that situation.
He finds ominous signs that the leaders in the Kremlin might not stop with the subjection of Hungary, with less promise than prior to the start of the October 23 revolt that there would be stabilization of Russian intentions anent Poland. He finds storm warnings against which the U.S. had to take precaution, using strong measures against U.S. and Western propaganda which might be treated by the Soviets as provocation or pretext for intervention. The U.S. should also do all it could to reassure the Russians that they had nothing to fear regarding their security in the Poland of Premier Wladyslaw Gomulka.
Regarding the Middle East, he finds that the Soviets would find ways to intervene, but short of that which could ignite world war. They would use the Suez crisis to expand their influence over Premier Nasser and his followers in the other Arab states.
He concludes that the notes to Britain and France the previous week were probably not intended as an ultimatum within its full meaning, but were notice that the Soviets intended to act in the Middle East and would aim to be the dominant power in the settlement of the crisis.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop contrast the President with the way he was at his initial election in 1952, finding that the Presidency and his September, 1955 heart attack had left their marks on him, one of his intimates having said that he had "grown up" in the intervening four years. The Alsops agree that he had become much more politically savvy since winning the 1952 nomination after a bitter fight with the Taft wing of the Republican Party, producing in him a kind of lack of self-confidence and angry frustration, both characteristic of political immaturity.
In 1952, they find, he had an exaggerated view of the importance of the professional politicians, always asking for advice from them and almost always taking it, as one close to him had recounted. The person had cited the instance in which he had dropped a laudatory reference to General Marshall from a speech delivered in Milwaukee, at the instance of Senator McCarthy, who had called General Marshall a "traitor" for his advice in 1946 to President Truman that a coalition government be formed in China between the Nationalists and Communists to avoid a Communist takeover. General Eisenhower did not want to omit the reference but followed the advice of the professional politicians.
That frustration had the effect of causing him to explode in temper over small things on occasion after he became President, but now he had remained calm throughout the 1956 campaign, with one exception, when he had blown up because he thought it stupid to have his initial campaign speech in Gettysburg as a strict political appeal to the party faithful. He still listened to advice because he believed in staff work, relying especially on RNC chairman Leonard Hall and White House chief of staff Sherman Adams. But the President always had the final word and no one thought of disputing it.
In 1952, his primary and practically only speechwriter had been Emmet Hughes, formerly of Life. The Alsops note that, by contrast, Adlai Stevenson had five professional speechwriters in 1952. Mr. Eisenhower had regarded himself then primarily as an editor of the speeches prepared for him by Mr. Hughes. He disliked certain words, such as "challenge", and was pedantic about grammar, strongly resistant to use of the first person singular. Those editorial prejudices remained in the 1956 campaign, but the President had been far more the originator of his speeches than during the first campaign. Mr. Hughes and others would propose their own ideas, but the imprint of the President was much more indelibly fixed than in 1952. Part of the reason for that change was that the President was much more informed in 1956 than he had been four years earlier, when he had great gaps in his knowledge, especially on domestic issues. During his Presidency, he had acquired the habit of reading the newspapers more carefully than previously, even reading the letters to the editors, often drawing the attention of his staff to a letter which he found interesting. The Presidency, itself, had been a cram-course for him, as with every President.
They find that, moreover, the experience of the Presidency had provided him convictions which had previously been only vague theories, as well as confidence in himself as a political leader, lacking in 1952, concluding that it was what was really new in the "new Eisenhower".
Doris Fleeson finds that Northern Democrats were convinced that they had lost at least six senatorial races through the party's policy of appeasing the South during the previous four years. The policy had been insisted on by Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson and House Speaker Sam Rayburn, and their insistence had prevailed with Adlai Stevenson, DNC chairman Paul Butler and his predecessor Stephen Mitchell, who had become chairman in 1952 at Mr. Stevenson's request. The Northern Democrats bitterly pointed out that not only had they lost badly wanted senators but that Mr. Stevenson had profited hardly at all. The Southern leaders who had demanded the compromise on civil rights had failed to deliver the majority to Mr. Stevenson in five Southern states, Texas, Virginia, Florida, Louisiana and Tennessee. The border states of Kentucky and West Virginia had also been won by the President.
The Northern case rested on dramatically reduced pluralities in the big Northern cities and in less populous but key Midwestern cities, in the border states, in California and the South. The revolt in the cities had impacted Baltimore, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Indianapolis, Louisville, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cleveland, Boston, St. Louis, New Orleans and lesser known but important industrial cities of North Carolina, West Virginia and Tennessee.
The Northerners charged that the Democratic candidates for the Senate in those areas had thus lost, including George Mahoney of Maryland, Governor William Marland in West Virginia, Claude Wickard in Indiana, Richard Stengel in Illinois and incumbent Senator Earle Clements in Kentucky and former Governor Lawrence Wetherby of the same state.
She finds the Northern argument impressive but also not decisive because of the varied factors at work on the election in various regions of the country. It would, however, become a source of strife within the party's majorities achieved in both houses of Congress, with young, liberal leaders in the party whose aspirations for the presidency or vice-presidency had been greatly impacted by the revolution in the cities.
It was true that any political course through which a party gained bloc support stood to lose other support at odds with it. The Northern Democrats warned that with the loss of the big cities in the North, they would lose their chance for success in presidential elections, which were won or lost in the larger states. They would demand repairs in the party policy before defections in California and New York took those states further out of reach. She finds it the biggest and most difficult problem for the party heading toward the 1960 election.
A letter writer says he had heard in the previous few weeks two speakers on television regarding the Socialist Party, seeking to show the glories of socialism. He finds that in all nations practicing socialism, communism had also flourished, along with dictatorship, ignorance, enslavement and the loss of freedom, with unrest and war resulting. He finds the primary reason to have been the lack of religious freedom, to enable the pagan teachings to flourish. He finds the U.S., despite traitors seeking to destroy the Constitution and the American way of life, to be the best and greatest nation, because, he suggests, the forefathers had founded it on faith in God and religious freedom, with the Constitution guaranteeing under the First Amendment free speech, free religious belief, a free press and the right peaceably to assemble.
By the way, speaking of Adlai Stevenson, Winsen-Salem, and "Poor Ellen Smith"
Some element of serendipitous folk musicology must be derived, incidentally, from the fact that Elizabeth Borden's father and stepmother were murdered in their home
Framed Edition
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