The Charlotte News
Friday, November 2, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from the U.N. in New York that the General Assembly, in an unprecedented emergency session, had voted 64 to 5, with six abstentions, early this date for an immediate cease-fire in Egypt, with the 76 nations of the Assembly thus adopting a resolution introduced by Secretary of State Dulles, also urging that Israel withdraw its forces from Egypt and that Britain and France not introduce their forces. Only Britain, France, Israel, Australia and New Zealand had voted against the resolution, while Canada, South Africa, Belgium, Laos, the Netherlands and Portugal had abstained, with Luxembourg having been absent. The entire seven-nation Soviet bloc had voted with the U.S. for the Dulles proposal, as had all 20 Latin-American nations and the 23-nation Asian-African group, plus Scandinavia. Weary from an all-night meeting, delegates had expressed doubt privately that the three nations would comply, as they had argued that their military operations had to be carried out to reach their objectives. Should they fail compliance, the expectation was that a further proposal would be introduced for stronger action. The resolution provided for the Assembly to remain in emergency session pending compliance, with no time set for the next meeting. The special session had been called by the Security Council after British and French vetoes in the Council had killed U.S. and Soviet resolutions calling for the withdrawal of the Israeli forces. It was the first special session ever held under the "united for peace" resolution, sponsored by the U.S. and adopted in the 1950 General Assembly to bypass the Soviet veto in earlier situations. It required a two-thirds vote of the Assembly to bypass the Council.
In London, it was reported that Israel this date announced occupation of the entire Gaza Strip and claimed other victories in ground action against Egyptian forces. The French Defense Ministry said that Egypt's Air Force had been rendered "completely out of fighting condition" by repeated poundings from British-French air forces. There was no word of a ground invasion by British or French forces, but a French spokesman in Paris said that the combined force on Cyprus was increasing steadily. Martial law was declared throughout Egypt this night, with President Gamal Abdel Nasser assuming all the extraordinary powers of a military commander. Egyptian Army headquarters announced this date that a fishing vessel sunk by British-French air bombardment had blocked the southern entrance to the Suez Canal. A spokesman at Israeli Army headquarters in Tel Aviv said that the surrender of Gaza City, Egyptian headquarters for the Gaza Strip, had occurred after an eight tank-led Israeli task force had smashed into it. The surrender placed the entire Strip in Israeli hands and ended a 24-hour fight for the region. Israeli troops the previous day had captured Rafah, the only other major center in the Strip. The Strip, a 25 by 8-mile finger of land separating the southern end of Israel from the Mediterranean, had long been a center of Israeli-Egyptian border troubles. Elimination of commando bases in the area had been one of Israel's announced objectives in its current thrust into Egypt, which had begun the prior Monday. The British Air Ministry in London said that Royal Air Force heavy and medium bombers had been keeping up their nonstop strikes against the Egyptian airbases this date and that none of their aircraft had been reported missing. The Israeli spokesman said that fighting in the central Sinai desert was "progressing satisfactorily".
In Budapest, it was reported that tension gripped the city this date in the wake of fresh Soviet troop movements into Hungary. But Premier Imre Nagy's Government had sought to minimize the gravity of the situation, a Government spokesman saying that no new Russian troops had entered Hungary after an estimated two Soviet divisions had moved across the border from Russia the previous day, indicating that the situation which was "extremely grave" the previous night had "relaxed" this date. But the people of Budapest waited anxiously to see if more Russian troops would again enter the country. That movement had occurred in the wake of the Premier having made an announcement that Hungary was pulling out of the Warsaw Pact and claiming neutral freedom from any power. The Government prepared to resign this date and make way temporarily for a small "inner cabinet" of experts under the Premier, who informed the U.N. of the Soviet military movements and placed Hungary under U.N. protection as a neutral country. Soviet Embassy representatives assured the Premier that the troop movements were only re-groupings and not intended as aggressive action, indicating that their forces had ringed Hungarian airfields to ensure evacuation of wounded Soviet soldiers and dependents. Russian families were seen leaving the Soviet Embassy during the night. The Italian Ambassador called on the emergency session of the General Assembly the previous night to do what it could to answer the appeal of Premier Nagy. Secretary Dulles endorsed Italy's statement and voiced hope that the Security Council would keep the Hungarian case urgently before it. Reports had circulated in Budapest the previous night that the Government had to restrain Hungary's Air Force from going into action against Russian armor camped around the Budapest airfield. News of the Soviet action appeared to unite the people more closely behind Premier Nagy. Workers' delegations said that a general strike had been called off because they were satisfied with the tough stand which the Premier was taking against the Soviets, and Budapest residents had gradually returned to work in response to appeals from the trade unions.
President Eisenhower the previous night had stated that his Administration had chosen "a path of honor" in the Middle East crisis by refusing to "condone armed aggression", as he spoke to an overflow crowd in Philadelphia's 16,000-seat Convention Hall. He said that because he had picked the right path, he was "undisturbed by the strident voices of those few who seem to be seeking to turn world events to political profit." The President had also spoken the previous night via television and radio to the nation, replying to sharp criticism from Adlai Stevenson regarding the Middle East situation. The Philadelphia speech was his last of the campaign and responded to Mr. Stevenson once again on two other issues, without naming him, saying that Mr. Stevenson had advocated "a design for disaster" in calling for ending of hydrogen bomb testing and proposing that thought be given to ending the draft. The crowd in Convention Hall had shouted, "No, no," when the President had asked whether the country would feel safe or secure at present if in the past it had ceased to perfect its military weapons and abandoned the military draft. He then called it a "design for disaster", not a formula for peace. He praised the rebels of Hungary and Poland, and said that there was grave concern over efforts by the Soviets to suppress the people of Hungary by force, that if it were true, it was "a black day of sorrow." There had been reports from Budapest that reinforced Soviet troops had seized all Hungarian airfields in what Budapest Radio called a fresh Russian invasion.
Mr. Stevenson, in addresses this date in Cleveland and this night in Detroit, was stressing that the war in Egypt should have been averted by the President, having first set out the argument in a Buffalo, N.Y., television address the previous night. He stated in Cleveland that the "breakdown of the Western alliance" may have encouraged the Russian forces to re-enter Hungary. He called upon the Government to support Hungarian Premier Nagy's plea that the case be taken before the U.N. General Assembly to ensure an immediate "full hearing for Hungary." He said: "Tito had the united and strong Western democracies to turn to for aid. Can the trembling new freedom in Hungary turn with confidence to us—to the Western powers—torn with dissension over the Middle East?" He went on to say that the Communists had always been quick to exploit disunity in the free world, and he hoped that the free nations could make it clear that they stood united and would cheer when the hour of liberation from the Communist nightmare struck.
Vice-President Nixon,
whistle-stopping through Pennsylvania this date, with talks scheduled
for Greensburg, Johnstown, Altoona, Huntington and Lewiston, had
lauded the President for "his handling of the Middle East
crisis." He was scheduled to make a nationwide CBS radio and
television address from Hershey this night. He is simply trying to
win the nation now with an implied offer of free chocolate
Senator Estes Kefauver had spoken at rallies in Sharon, Newcastle, Beaver Falls and Washington, Pa., assuring his audiences that Mr. Stevenson would be elected because "nothing has been done by President Eisenhower for distressed unemployment areas, or for the farmers."
In Sabinal, Tex., two armed robbers fled from a bank with $17,200 the previous day, despite a spunky cashier having one of them trapped in the vault for a brief period of time. About six hours later, police had apprehended the two men in a motel at San Angelo, 200 miles to the north, and were still questioning them this date. The men were found with nearly $17,400 in their motel room. A cashier at the bank related that they had entered at mid-afternoon, carrying paper sacks, one of them shoving a gun through the window at him and saying: "Fill it up. This is a holdup." He, four women employees and three customers were then herded into the vault. While one of the men was inside the vault attempting to open the safe and the other was in front of the building, he had closed the vault door. His partner had heard him shouting from inside and threatened to harm the women if he did not let the other robber out, and so he did.
Ann Sawyer of The News tells of County Commission chairman Sid McAden being expected to recommend to the Commission on Monday that the election on the school bond issue be held on January 5 instead of December 8, indicating that New York bond attorneys had ruled that there was insufficient time to include it on the earlier ballot.
In Lhasa, Tibet, porters expressed thanks for tips by sticking out their tongues, hissing, and touching their heads to the ground.
In Culver City, Calif., a woman said that she was 105 years old and a bit disappointed because her doctors would not allow her to have sausage and hotcakes at her birthday party the previous day, with sausage not being on her diet according to the doctor, who said that she insisted on eating the wrong things.
On the editorial page, "City Must Make Public Service Inviting" indicates that as the Hoover Commission was winding up its work on the survey of Government operations, a newsman had asked a question of former President Hoover, that of the Commission's 314 recommendations, which would he want most to be adopted, with the former President having responded that he would pick the recommendation for setting up a senior civil service, as Government could not be any better than the men and women who enabled it to function, with the greatest problem being to get the type of men and women the Government needed and to maintain them in service. He stated that there was at present a turnover rate of about 25 percent annually, that as soon as civil servants showed ability, they were hired in the private sector, meaning that the Government retained the second best. He had recommended that civil service be made so attractive, so secure, so free from frustrations, and so dignified, that the right kind of men and women would make it a career, establishing the Government which the country needed.
The piece indicates that he had been speaking of Federal Government service, but that his words applied equally to local government. It finds that Charlotte was at present facing the same type of challenge, needing to attract and maintain municipal employees of great skill and ability. Notable vacancies had occurred in the City's Engineering, Fire and Police Departments, and replacements had been increasingly hard to find. In some instances, efforts to lower employment standards had been attempted, with a move to eliminate the high school graduation requirement in the hiring of policemen and firemen, which it finds to be only a negative move which would weaken rather than strengthen civil service.
It posits that the answer lay in a more honest and constructive approach to the problem, and bolstering the prestige and rewards of municipal service. It suggests a thorough survey of the municipal pay scale, something which the City Council had properly requested.
It indicates that in the past, Charlotte's municipal employees had been excellent and that everything ought be done to maintain that fine record, ensuring adequate pay and employment standards so that it might be done, as every citizen benefited from efficient management of public affairs, finding it little wonder that the nation's greatest expert on government economy, Mr. Hoover, had picked a plan to strengthen civil service as his favorite proposal.
"The World's Long Ball Game Is Over" suggests that as when a ball went bad anything could happen in the game, so it was with nations. The world, figuratively, had been playing with two balls since World War II, with the strings of pacts, alliances and agreements wrapped around the inner solids of Russia and its satellites, as well as Britain, France and the U.S., with those solids having now cracked and the balls having gone bad, with the game ongoing for the previous decade now over. The teams were intermingled and with a fight ongoing, anything could happen. The fight had to be stopped before any pattern could be restored. The U.N. was the umpire.
With the Security Council having failed, because of the veto of Britain and France, to halt the invasion of Egypt by Britain, France and Israel, the General Assembly had been summoned to act. By a two-thirds vote, it could do what it wished to restore peace, irrespective of the Council veto. Its greatest weapon was world opinion, rapidly mobilizing on the side of peace, but not unanimously for Egypt or completely against the invading forces.
Canada, for example, had ended arms shipments to Israel, but it finds it unlikely that it would act or talk strongly against Britain. The U.S. was for peace and would speak for it, but it was unlikely to attack its estranged allies, regardless of what the Government said about standing by its pledge to aid victims of aggression. To do so in the Middle East at present would enlarge the Soviet influence in that region, made possible by Egypt's provocation of its invaders, Egypt having received arms from the Soviets.
It posits that moral force brought to bear by Britain and France could have forced Israel to withdraw from Egypt. But instead, the two nations had flown in the face of world opinion and staked the remnants of their prestige on the one desperate act of invasion, with any victory they might win being hollow, though preferred by them to withdrawal and the ultimate blow against their Middle Eastern power and prestige. Thus, it concludes that the invaders would not withdraw from Egypt willingly.
The three nations had already flouted world opinion, the U.N.'s most ready weapon, and any U.N. military force would have to be mustered from the opposing camps of the U.S. and Russia. It regards the U.N. as the world's only hope for ending the war, but without the Western alliance, the hope it provided was very weak. Western solidarity not only provided the free world's leadership, but had been the basic strength of the U.N., itself.
"When the ball goes bad, anything can happen."
"Ominous Disappearance of a Dateline" finds that the disappearance of the Moscow dateline from the news was almost as ominous as appearance of those from Cairo and Tel Aviv, that for days, Kremlin leaders had squirmed under the eyes of the world as Soviet crimes against Central Europe had been exposed. The whole structure of Kremlin propaganda was now full of holes. Under pressure of the righteous rebellions in the satellites, the Soviets were even admitting their error and apparently easing domination over the slave states to some extent. Anti-colonialism had been the fashion popularized in the Middle and Far East by Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev and Premier Nikolai Bulganin.
But now the publicity cycle had been broken and the world was looking toward the Suez crisis, thereby withdrawing from the rebels in Poland and Hungary their only outside support, which was world attention and sympathy. In addition, the Kremlin could twist the British-French invasion into a precedent for returning Communist troops to Hungary, the only satellite attempting a break with both Russian and domestic communism. It suggests that, conceivably, Russia would continue relaxing its iron fist so as further to dramatize the invasions of Israel, Britain and France into Egypt. But it was not likely, as tyrants liked more material profits, and Moscow had a talent for profiting on trouble.
A piece from the New York Times, titled "Phileas and Nellie", indicates that many years earlier, when a mile had been a mile and anyone who had been as far as Liverpool could make a living delivering travel lectures, Jules Verne had written a book titled Around the World in 80 Days, with elements of the plot found in a current movie which, by coincidence or otherwise, had the same title. It suggests that M. Verne might have had movies in mind when he had written his books, having introduced travel by elephant, a beautiful lady, a phlegmatic but not unsusceptible Englishman, a faithful but flighty French valet, a daredevil train going across a tottering bridge and a dramatic twist at the end.
But then had come Nellie Bly, whose biography, perhaps by coincidence, had recently been published. She had been quite pretty two generations earlier, had beaten Phileas Fogg's imaginary record of 80 days with her actual record, traveling around the world in 72 days, plus a few hours. Games had been named after her.
It indicates that now anyone could fly around the world in whatever time it took and not only was that person not welcomed by a brass band on return but the neighbors did not even know or care that the person had been away. "Do we have more fun than Phileas Fogg? Do games get named after us? Unhappily, no. Progress is wonderful and, as was said on dismal occasions during the late war, we have had it. But it costs something; something has been lost."
Drew Pearson says that Senator Lyndon Johnson, who had once suffered with the nickname "Lyin' down Lyndon", had spoken for 40 minutes at a meeting of Texas Democrats at Lockhart, Tex., without mentioning the name of Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson, that only at the end of the talk, when the contributions were being added up, had he remarked that it would help put Mr. Stevenson on television. Mr. Pearson imparts that the omission of the Stevenson name had been so remarkable that Republican papers in Texas had commented on it.
The Texas grapevine now suggested that Senator Johnson had his eye on the presidential nomination for 1960, as if one heart attack survivor could make it, so could another, Senator Johnson having suffered a heart attack on July 4, 1955, 2 1/2 months before the September 24 heart attack of the President. The Senator had recently circulated all over Texas a reprint of an article by Holmes Alexander praising the Senator and knocking Adlai Stevenson, with the ironic fact being that the anti-Stevenson propaganda had been paid for by money collected for the Stevenson campaign, though Mr. Stevenson had not known about it.
Liberal Democrats in Dallas would vote for Republican Congressman Bruce Alger as a protest against the race-baiting of the Democratic candidate, Henry Wade—District Attorney of Dallas, who would preside in 1963 over the initial investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy and who would later be the nominal defendant in Roe v. Wade. Mr. Pearson indicates that they would probably re-elect Mr. Alger and that it might also swing the state to the President.
Every speaker whom Senator Johnson had brought to Texas had talked about the farm problem, despite the fact that Texas farmers were ready to vote for the President. The Senator had confided to Bill White of the New York Times that if the President came to Texas, it would vote Republican, and the President had taken the tip and gone to Texas. (Actually, as reported on the front page the prior Tuesday, though a Texas trip had been planned for the current week, it had been canceled by the White House because of the Middle East crisis. The Vice-President had visited Texas on several occasions.)
Senator McCarthy had been lying low in the current campaign, almost not heard from at all. Even Senator John Butler of Maryland, whom he had helped to get elected with Texas oil money, was trying to forget him. In South Dakota, there was a significant piece of McCarthyism inspired in part by Senator McCarthy's old friend, Mrs. Karl Mundt, wife of the South Dakota Senator, who was more pro-McCarthy than her husband. For the first time in years, a Democrat, George McGovern—future Senator and Democratic presidential nominee in 1972 against President Nixon—, appeared likely to win a seat in Congress from South Dakota, which had caused his opponents, led by Mrs. Mundt, to dig out a twisted version of a speech Mr. McGovern had given six years earlier suggesting that recognition of China might help to pull it out of the Soviet orbit and encourage it toward Titoism, now being used to paint Mr. McGovern as a Communist. Mrs. Mundt and her friends were spreading the impression that Mr. McGovern must be pro-Communist. Mr. Pearson says that the funny thing was that the American aid to Tito had been one of the major reasons for the current revolt going on behind the Iron Curtain, and the same could happen in Communist China.
Walter Lippmann indicates that as he was writing the piece, the Government of Imre Nagy in Hungary had offered the rebels immediate withdrawal of Soviet forces from Budapest, to be followed by negotiations for their withdrawal from all of Hungary. That would leave the Nagy Government in power for at least the time being, presumably until free elections could be held as promised.
He finds that, in substance, it amounted to an offer to the Hungarian people to settle temporarily on an advance form of Titoism, not an anti-Russian foreign policy but one free of Russian occupation troops and a popular front Government led by national Communists. Things had advanced so far in Eastern Europe that the Soviets would now be lucky to be able to settle for Titoism within the satellite empire. The Soviet chances of doing that appeared better in Poland than in Hungary, as in Poland, the national Communists, led by Premier Wladyslaw Gomulka, had taken the initiative in the national movement to rid itself of Russian domination, appearing to lead the movement and controlling it, while in Hungary, Premier Nagy had not led the rebellion, and instead of being a man like Premier Gomulka, who had ordered the Russians to retire to their barracks, had invited them to intervene. An internal peace under the Nagy Government would therefore be precarious, as it had been at his request that the Russian troops had been shooting down Hungarian protesters.
Mr. Lippmann ventures that the U.S. interest was that in the satellite orbit, Titoism should prevail without external political or military interference and that the national governments should be assisted economically to develop in their own way. He posits that it was in the U.S. interest because with Titoism taking root in Poland and, hopefully, in Czechoslovakia, Eastern Europe could not be used as a base for Soviet military aggression against Western Europe, improving substantially the security of the West. It was also in the U.S. interest to have Titoism among the satellites because either of the two possible alternatives was incalculably dangerous, one being a Soviet decision to reimpose Stalinism, which would entail substantial bloodshed and enormous danger of a European war into which the U.S. might be drawn, and the other, spreading rebellion which might go beyond Titoism and engulf it. If such rebellion spread to East Germany, as it might, it would almost certainly mean that in some way West Germany would be drawn into that conflict.
He indicates that if the true interest of the U.S. was that Eastern Europe, and particularly Poland, become independent, regaining national liberty while not actually breaking irreparably with Russia, then there were two primary lines of policy which the U.S. should take, one being diplomatic measures to convince the Russians that their security would not be threatened by an independent Poland, in which case discussion of a general European security pact ought be renewed, and the other being to make available to Poland, not only from the U.S. but from Western Europe also, enough economic aid to see Poland through the crisis of readjustment which lay ahead as it emerged from its status as a Soviet satellite, a difficult process. He suggests that the U.S. not only determine what economic aid would be needed but also how it would be provided, whether directly or through some international agency.
He posits that the world was witnessing the dissolution of the international structure of the postwar world, as the armistices of World War II had never become a peace settlement, leaving the world with two great centers of power, Russia and the U.S. The armistice lines of 1945, excepting only those in China, had become the political and ideological frontiers of those two worlds, and behind them the two great coalitions were organized. The postwar structure had been breaking down on both sides of the dividing line, and in the previous two years at a rapidly increasing tempo. The U.S. had become increasingly aware that the power and influence of the Western nations were declining, and was now seeing the same essential process inside the Soviet orbit.
A letter writer from Hamlet asserts that the country could not take a chance of becoming involved in another war, where nuclear weapons would inevitably be used, that the weapons had already become obsolete for waging war. He finds that Adlai Stevenson and Senator Kefauver were doing a great service for people in making the continued testing and manufacture of those weapons an issue in the campaign. He asserts that the Republican Administration had done nothing to bring about an agreement among the nations to discontinue the manufacture and testing of those weapons. It was thus time for the people to decide whether they wanted to elect a party which would do something about the weapons, and urges that people voice their demands in that regard when they voted.
A letter writer indicates that listening to former President Hoover on television and having only one side of the political news to read in the two Republican newspapers in Charlotte, she feels forced to cry, "Enough", as had AFL president William Green in the January, 1931, (actually, February, 1933) issue of Nation's Business. She does not want her child or anyone else's child to suffer through a Republican-produced depression again. She urges that it was foolhardy to vote for anyone without knowing why, other than based on liking the candidate's personality, or at least the side of the personality shown in the campaign. She does not trust either the President or the Vice-President, and feels that anyone who could read between the lines of the news coverage in Charlotte ought reach the same conclusions. She believes that Drew Pearson had been speaking the truth when he said that Mr. Eisenhower had suffered an attack of illness during his recent campaign tour, leading him to cancel an important press conference and a much more important speech to the U.N., then becoming unavailable for at least 24 hours. She believes that the story that he was writing a speech did not ring true, as he had never written a speech of his own, finds it very doubtful that he could, and that everyone would like to hear the speech that he had written by himself which had been so important. But White House press secretary James Hagerty claimed that Mr. Pearson's statement was a lie, the writer finding that hard to believe, as it was known that Mr. Hagerty had handled the truth very carelessly at times. She asserts that Vice-President Nixon and the Republican Party were guilty of gross misrepresentation of facts. She believes that a vote for the President would inevitably wind up as a vote for Mr. Nixon, "an opportunist and conservative", with voters being misled once again by the superficial, with their apathy, complacency and gullibility being of great concern. She also finds laughable the whining which had been ongoing regarding the ballot at the state level, that the new ballot was to the advantage of the two-party system rather than only to Democrats, as contended by previous letter writers. She says she would cast her vote for Ben Douglas for Congress over incumbent Representative Charles Jonas, whom she had seen on television and heard on radio, and had yet to hear any positive statement on his voting record, with him always saying at the beginning of his messages that everyone knew of his record, then imparting how to mark the ballot for him. She did not like his voting record and finds it was not beneficial to the district. She urges stopping and thinking before casting a vote the following Tuesday, finds Mr. Eisenhower "such a conceited individual that he does not have the common courtesy, accorded to all mankind, to call Mr. Stevenson by his name." Yet, when his own sincerity was questioned, he would respond by asking incredulously and with umbrage what kind of a man the other person thought he was. She concludes that unthinking, tired, uninformed, apathetic and complacent voters might once again lead the country into chaos and that the Democrats would again be called upon to move forward and straighten out the Republican mess.
A letter writer from Cheraw, S.C., indicates that there were people who would ask what was wrong with Richard Nixon. He says he did not know what was wrong with the man by joining with the NAACP and that if that was the type of crowd one wanted to head the Government, then the person ought vote for him, but that he would not. Everyone knew the President's health was not up to par, that he was over age 65, and that the job was a man-killer. He asks why take the chance with Mr. Nixon, whom the Eisenhower Republicans did not like and whom no Democrat wanted either as Vice-President or as President. He says that Mr. Nixon had said that Mr. Stevenson's temper would get the country in trouble. While there was no longer a war in Korea, he believes that there was a war in the making in the South because of poor leadership of the Administration, as the Federal Government had no right to interfere with states' rights and if the Republican Administration were re-elected, it would be "a mandate for them to continue their policy of meddling in our state affairs."
Well, just wait until 1972, when you will have a choice between that Commie peacenik, McGovern, and that perennial friend of those radicals at the NAACP, Nixon, always visiting Harlem in his tours, leaving for you an inevitable choice to vote for George Wallace of Alabama, though by election day he will be confined to a wheelchair. Just remember the words to come of one of your probable compadres, as uttered on a country music station on the night immediately following the shooting of Mr. Wallace in May, 1972: "There gon' be a risin' up one these days
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