The Charlotte News
Monday, December 10, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Vienna that police and troops had imposed rigid new controls on the rebels of Hungary this date to enforce martial law, proclaimed by Premier Janos Kadar's desperate Government, with it appearing that the regime had embarked on a campaign to eliminate the last vestiges of resistance. The unhappy nation, torn by revolt, strikes and Communist repression for nearly seven weeks, had been cut off from communication with the West for more than a day, except for broadcasts from Budapest Radio. The Communist regime had ordered military trial for a variety of offenses punishable by death, and had dissolved the major workers' councils which had tried to negotiate for Hungarian freedom. The Vienna telephone exchange would not accept calls for Budapest, saying that there was no contact. Telephone service between Budapest and Moscow had resumed on a limited basis, but Associated Press correspondent Harold Milks had reported that his attempts to telephone the hotel where Western newsmen were staying in Budapest or the home numbers of Hungarian resident correspondents had been met with the reply that the numbers were out of order. One Western diplomatic mission in Vienna had said that its only word from Budapest since the communications blackout had been a message at 6:00 the previous night that "all was quiet" in the capital. Word had seeped through that police were controlling traffic strictly in the Budapest area in an apparent effort to halt the movement of any anti-Government groups or arms for them. Premier Kadar had ordered summary military trial for persons suspected of murder, manslaughter, arson and robbery, looting, damage to public plants and utilities and all attempts at those crimes, as well as for illegal possession of arms, ammunition and explosives, with the penalty for conviction being death. Five weeks earlier, 200,000 Soviet troops had struck with similar suddenness to crush the military phase of the country's rebellion, which had begun with peaceful student protests on October 23. Though probably long planned, the action had come as if in swift retaliation for the calling of a general strike by the Budapest Central Workers' Council, which had been trying without success to negotiate with the Kadar Government for the aims of the rebellion. The Council's notices, ordering a nationwide strike in protest of arrest of workers' leaders, were to have been posted in factories early the previous morning. A half hour after that scheduled time, the Government had cut telephone communications with the outside world, with the same blackout imposed on the Sunday five weeks earlier when the Red Army tanks and artillery had begun their all-out attack to smash the rebellion begun October 23. Figurehead President Istvan Dobi had decreed martial law in a message read to the nation over Budapest Radio the previous night, declaring the Central Workers' Council illegal, that all district and county councils were likewise illegal and that they must cease activities immediately.
At the U.N. in New York, the U.S. and 15 other nations asked the General Assembly this date to condemn the Soviet Government for violating the U.N. Charter by depriving Hungary of independence and the Hungarians of their rights. The resolution called on Russia to "make immediate arrangements for the withdrawals, under United Nations observation, of its armed forces from Hungary and to permit the reestablishment of the political independence of Hungary." The Cuban delegate, Emilio Nunez-Portuondo, who had been particularly outspoken about the Soviet action in Hungary, said that he would introduce a resolution within a few days to put the Assembly on record in favor of Russia's suspension or expulsion from the organization if it continued to disregard Assembly resolutions regarding Hungary. He said that his resolution also would call for the ouster of the Hungarian delegation from the Assembly, adding that he would vote for the 16-nation resolution, even though he found it not strong enough. The story notes that there was no chance that the Assembly would suspend or expel Russia even it if it were to adopt the Cuban resolution, as such action could be taken only on recommendation of the Security Council, on which the Soviets, as one of the five permanent members, had a unilateral veto. Nevertheless, the Cuban delegate believed that the Assembly ought go on record with the declaration that Russia deserved suspension or expulsion. The Assembly could eject the Hungarian delegation, however, as the Big Five veto did not apply in the Assembly and only the latter body could withdraw a delegation's credentials. The Soviet Union and Premier Kadar had ignored or rejected four previous Assembly resolutions adopted since November 4, when Soviet troops had returned to Budapest after initially effecting an apparent withdrawl in response to the rebellion, had then installed Premier Kadar as the puppet leader and begun bloody reprisal against the widespread revolt against Communism. The previous resolutions had called for withdrawal of Soviet troops, an end to deportation of the Hungarian rebels and admission of U.N. observers.
The Agriculture Department this date estimated that the 1956 cotton crop would be 13,303,000 bales of 500 pounds gross weight each, 150,000 bales higher than the November forecast of 13,153,000 bales, against a production the previous year of 14,721,000 bales and a ten-year average between 1945 and 1954 of 13,098,000 bales. The estimated crop was well above the goals set by the Department of ten million bales, the Department having imposed acreage planting allotments and marketing quotas in an attempt to limit production. Cotton stocks, including huge Government-owned supplies, were at an all-time high. Because of Government-financed export programs, however, the Department had forecast that the cotton stocks which would be held a year hence would be sharply reduced.
In Clinton, Tenn., the integrated local high school had reopened without a problem this date, with eight black students, four boys and four girls, walking together back to classes, albeit as one of the students planned to move away with her family. Three police cars had cruised the area briefly and then returned to normal duties, with no indication of there being racial disturbances which had caused authorities to close the school the previous Tuesday after the School Board had sought from Attorney General Herbert Brownell Federal assistance in enforcing the previous court order to integrate the school. Students of both races appeared in a jovial mood and authorities said that about the normal number of white students had also reported for the reopening of classes, with approximately 800 students enrolled at the school. A few minutes after classes had been resumed, 16 white men and women were scheduled for arraignment in U.S. District Court in Knoxville on charges of criminal contempt for violating an injunction issued the previous week against interference with orderly integration. The Tennessee Federation for Constitutional Government, a pro-segregation organization, had announced in Nashville on Saturday that nine lawyers who agreed to help in the defense of the 16 defendants included Attorney General John Ben Shepperd of Texas and Attorney General Eugene Cook of Georgia. The nine black students enrolled at the high school had been staying away from classes for nearly two weeks, except for a brief period the prior Tuesday, before the Anderson County School Board ordered the closing of the school. The students had remained at home on November 28, demanding the Board's assurance of their personal safety after a series of incidents involving harassment by white students, climaxed by rock and egg-throwing. The Reverend Paul Turner, a white pastor of the large First Baptist Church in Clinton, had escorted six of the students to school past a jeering crowd of bystanders, and had been assaulted the previous Tuesday by some of those bystanders. In his sermon the previous day, Reverend Turner said: "Here in Clinton, we are not against segregation or against integration. But we are positively against the disintegration of the body politic." It had been after the attack on the Reverend Turner that the Board had ordered the school closed. Within 24 hours of the closing, Federal marshals had arrested the 16 defendants on charges of committing "one or more" of various acts in violation of an injunction originally issued during the disorders of the previous August at the beginning of the school year. The U.S. District Court in Knoxville had made the injunction permanent on September 6, forbidding any person in Anderson County from doing anything which might interfere with peaceful desegregation of the school. As stated in the note accompanying the September 3 report on the situation, Edward R. Murrow's "See It Now" program, to air on January 6, would explore the Clinton High School integration from its inception to apparent peaceful conclusion.
In Washington, 33 U.S. Attorneys from 14 Southern and border states were assembling this date, at the invitation of Attorney General Brownell, to discuss what they ought do about laws in those states requiring racial segregation on public buses, in light of the recent summary affirmation by the Supreme Court of the ruling the prior June by the special three-judge panel of the Federal District Court in Browder v. Gayle, holding, 2 to 1, that segregation of intrastate public buses in Montgomery, Ala., violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, in accordance with the principles enunciated in Brown v. Board of Education. Mr. Brownell had said that the conference would consider and decide "upon measures most appropriate to secure observance of the Constitution and laws by carriers and all others who may hereafter require segregation of white and colored passengers on common carriers." The Federal prosecutors summoned to the closed session were from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
In Vancouver, British Columbia, it was reported that a Trans-Canada Air Lines plane carrying 62 persons had vanished during a violent windstorm over mountainous south central British Columbia the previous night and was believed to have crashed, potentially becoming the worst commercial aviation disaster in Canadian history. A ground search party was investigating reports that lights had been seen on Sumas Mountain, three miles west of Abbotsford on the Trans-Canada Highway, 43 miles east of Vancouver, with residents of the area having told the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that they had never seen lights on the mountain previously. The airline continued to list the plane as only "overdue", but the public relations director of the airline said that there was "absolutely no hope" that the plane was still in the air, as it would have exhausted all of its fuel early during the morning. Weather conditions had been pretty bad around the time of the last radio transmissions from the plane, seeking permission to descend from 8,000 feet to a lower altitude, with the wind up to gale force and very gusty.
Jim Scotton of The News reports that weekend arrests in Charlotte of alleged members of two rings of thieves might, according to police this date, include several more local persons who had purchased merchandise at bargain prices, reasonably knowing that it had been stolen. Warrants had been issued for 12 men whom police charged with larceny, embezzlement or conspiracy to commit same, accused of being members of the two rings which had stolen automobile tires, freezers, refrigerators and other appliances from local firms, the value, according to detectives, possibly reaching as much as $100,000. The detectives said that the merchandise had been stolen from two Charlotte firms with the help of the juggling of books by insiders. Some truck drivers had been taking extra merchandise along when they made deliveries for the victimized firms, the extra merchandise then being dropped off at various locations for pick up by the thieves at night. The merchandise had been resold by the ring members as slightly damaged and so available at bargain prices. It had been purchased by persons in Mecklenburg, Gaston and Lincoln Counties at ridiculously low prices. Detectives said they had received several calls from people who believed they had bought the stolen goods and the detectives recommended that anyone who had bought the goods contact the police to save embarrassment later. The detectives did not know how long the ring had been operating, but believed it had been in existence for several years, with other firms possibly having been victimized. The police had begun the investigation weeks earlier when a Gaston distributor said that local service stations were buying tires much cheaper than the wholesale cost. The first arrest had been the prior Saturday afternoon and the police had rounded up 11 men by the previous morning, with the 12th man having voluntarily surrendered at police headquarters the previous day.
A 21-year old Charlotte housewife had been named to the National Safety Council's 1956 list of victims of the nation's oddest accidents. She had been driving alone on Highway 29 between Concord and Kannapolis near the Jackson Training School when she lost control of her car and plunged down a 50-foot embankment, coming to rest beside a railroad track, at which point a fast passenger train bore down on her car, cutting off about 17 inches from its front end. She said that she had never lost consciousness but had not been doing too much thinking at the time. She had escaped with only a broken arm and a few bruises, though her broken arm had caused her constant trouble, having lost use of it, though an operation and physiotherapy had helped to restore its movement. She felt lucky to have escaped with her life. The piece reports that other narrow escapes around the country included a man from Milwaukee who walked away uninjured after his car swerved off a highway and he then stepped out to survey the damage, at which point he fell into a 50-foot limestone quarry, breaking his arm. A man from Woodland, Calif., had been driving along when a woodpecker, a family pet, which had been sitting in the lap of his son, suddenly started pecking at the driver's head, causing him to lose control, with the car leaving the highway and rolling over twice, with neither the driver nor his son hurt, and the woodpecker having found a tree. In Dallas, Tex., a woman investigated a noise in her bedroom, reported to her husband that there was a car in his bed, the car having missed a turn in a skyscraper parking garage next to the hotel where they lived, leaping 6 feet through space and crashing through the wall of the third-floor bedroom, with no one having been injured. After ten years and 750,000 miles of accident-free driving, a man of Maywood, Calif., had been given an award by his insurance company for safe driving, but had to accept the award in the hospital, as he had broken his leg in a fall down a flight of stairs at his home. No one had been injured when four cars had piled up in a collision near Des Moines, at least until a patrolman investigating the accident had slammed his car door on his finger. A woman who was an author and big game hunter had survived six African safaris without injury, but in the calm of her trophy room at her home in Chicago, had tripped over a lion's head and broken her arm, the lion having been shot by her husband without incident. They have neglected to mention Ralph Kramden's safety award as a bus driver during the year, ultimately receiving the award from a judge with whom R. K. had an accident, the fault for which was disputed, on the way to receive the award.
And, despite warm temperatures, with highs in the low 70's during the previous three days, there were only 12 shopping days remaining until Christmas
On the editorial page, "Charlotte's Straitjacket Must Be Shed" quotes from the "Master Outline for Charlotte, 1949" by the City Planning Board, that the transition of Charlotte from village into town and from town into city had been aided by outstanding leadership, but was essentially a growth in which the pattern had been cut to the cloth and expansion often following the path of individual preference.
It indicates that the notion that Charlotte's population growth might one day push the city limits into Gaston and Union Counties was not an idle flight of extravagant fancy. For since 1768, powerful natural influences had spurred the community's expansion by geography, abundant water reserves and a hardy pioneer stock. In recent years, the momentum toward growth had been increased by powerful economic factors, causing Charlotte to become a giant community with problems to match.
It finds the trouble to have lain not in the expansion but in the chaotic way it had taken place, that while the suburbs had increased and the open spaces on the city's periphery had been built up, the city limits had only been extended haphazardly, with the result that the metropolitan community lacked unity and cohesion.
The cost of government was rising inside the city, and outside the city dozens of new communities were arising, promising "country living" at low cost, while destroying the countryside and hiding the costs, with many fringe areas having inferior services and lacking in overall governmental machinery to provide adequate conveniences. It finds the lesson to be that haphazard expansion was wasteful, socially inconvenient and economically unwise, born out of ignorance and shortsightedness. The alternative, it finds, was efficient, effective municipal planning and the orderly extension of city limits and city services.
It finds that Charlotte had a strong, useful tool in its two-year old City-County Planning Commission, under the direction of W. E. McIntyre, setting forth plans for the city to keep pace with progress and its growing population, representing the best insurance against internal decline and a crisis in municipal management. Implementation of those plans to extend the city limits in an orderly fashion was still subject, it finds, to reasonable debate, but some perimeter residents had already vowed to resist any attempt at annexation, regardless of method. It finds that shortsighted and unrealistic, that natural forces had caused Charlotte's growth in the past and natural forces still compelled its continued growth at present, with expansion being necessary for the good of all.
Thus, certain boundaries had to cease to be barriers and certain individual interests had to be subordinated to the common welfare through the flexibility of 20th Century democracy.
"The Moreland Case Can't Be Won" tells of News sportswriter Sandy Grady having reported on the case of N.C. State freshman basketball player Jackie Moreland, providing six assessments of him by coaches, other athletes and publicists, a player whom no one could stop defensively, who also played well on defense and could star anywhere. He was also an "A" student.
But he had committed to Centenary College in his home state of Louisiana after signing letters of intent with N.C. State, Texas A&M and Kentucky, before being convinced by State's athletic personnel, including then-assistant coach Vic Bubas, later the successful head coach at Duke, to leave Centenary and enroll at State, which he did. Then, some unnamed person had cried foul, and the NCAA began investigating reports that State and Texas A&M had used financial enticements, including $1,000 in cash from State and two new cars from Texas A&M, to lure him, eventually filing rules violation charges against State, prompting inquiry as to the facts behind the charges from the newly installed Consolidated University president William C. Friday and N.C. State chancellor Cary Bostian, both meeting a wall of secrecy from the NCAA, which refused to reveal the facts, claiming confidentiality.
It finds that State could not win the case, regardless of whether the NCAA would finally rule that the staff had or had not broken NCAA rules, as "the professional sports mania on Tar Heel campuses clearly has distorted the precedents and principles of higher education." N.C. State, it finds, measured its regard for young Mr. Moreland by the extreme length of his legs and arms, not his academic prowess, but there were other measurements which needed to be applied to the aims and objectives of universities, including academic records, adequate facilities and teacher pay, the real tasks for president Friday and chancellor Bostian.
It concludes that the only way to win the case was to close it and allow the two university administrators to get back to their business.
Parenthetically, UNC chancellor Robert House, about to retire, had urged the ACC, as a means to eliminate or reduce the temptation toward surreptitious payments to recruits, to adopt a grant-in-aid program, that is athletic scholarships, but had failed to convince the league as a whole to go along, though five of the eight, excluding Virginia, Maryland and South Carolina, had formed a "gentlemen's agreement" on the issue, that having been left up to each league to determine.
Mr. Moreland would eventually transfer back home to Louisiana Tech in 1957, where he played for three years, then entering the NBA, playing for the Detroit Pistons between 1960 and 1965, before concluding his professional career with the New Orleans Buccaneers of the ABA, from 1967 to 1970. He was then diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer and died in 1971 at age 33.
N. C. State, Kentucky and Texas A&M were disciplined by the NCAA for violations regarding his recruitment, though not to the extent originally indicated in the planned four-year suspension of State, all three of the programs having been placed on probation and Mr. Moreland declared ineligible for a year to play at State, leading to his transfer to Louisiana Tech, from which he graduated with an engineering degree.
Hey, it's a game, dummy. At the end of the day, compared to the real business of a college or university, graduating scholars who carry with them practical and theoretical knowledge of the world as it is, as it was and as it might aspire
"When Time Won't Stop in December" indicates that a year always came down to December, in which, like grandfather's clock, it stopped, with the end of the line being always cold and dark, where everyone had to get off, ready or not.
It finds it no way to run a universe. "To man, who must run 365 days to re-catch the cold he started the year with [apparently leaping over the fact that 1956 possessed 366 days], philosophers preach the virtues of optimism, and onwardism and upwardism. Man listens, coughing into his overcoat collar, and tries to understand how he could have run so far, so fast, and still wind up being put off the train at the end of the line where it is always cold and dark."
But it was important that one did not miss the train and so man always deboarded in December. It suggests, however, that someday a person with a disorderly mind would rebel, believing that April or May was the time to stop and start the year, and after brooding about it for several years, not wanting to be thought radical or nonconformist, hoping that the Council of the Calendar would first reform the year, would say to a fellow commuter, while passing through the green, smiling land of April, or maybe May: "Let's end the year here. It is such an optimistic, happy place, and I am feeling good, and ready to tackle a new year." The other person would then assent, and thereafter, a year would always end in April or May, with the New Year's celebratory toasts to be drunk with pink lemonade.
Amid the toasts, however, it should provide caution, while on the subject of ending a year in May rather than in December, as to the pitfalls
A piece from the Goldsboro News-Argus, titled "The Cock Crows at Dawn", finds something interesting if sad about a story from Oklahoma City regarding neighbors wrangling over a rooster crowing at dawn, with the woman who owned the rooster having been brought to court on a civil complaint of maintaining a nuisance, with the plaintiff contending that her sleep had been interrupted and that she suffered frustration and nervous tension as a result.
It finds that between the two women, the complaining party was the more to be pitied as the world was too much with her, finding that it was not the rooster's clarion call which bothered her but rather her reaction to it, being only a symptom of hypertension and nervous fatigue. Otherwise, it finds, the call of the rooster would be a thing of loveliness, as some of the writer's most nostalgic memories were connected with boyhood in a small town where everyone maintained chickens and at every dawn an old rooster on some distant horizon would raise a call that all was well, picked up and resounded far across the town by other roosters. "It was so natural, so true, so comforting to hear the roosters call there in the breaking dawn."
It indicates that the old feeling had returned some months earlier when the writer was a guest in a little motel on the outskirts of Williamston, N.C. "While the world was still covered by Stygian darkness, an old rooster, sure of his position, raised a happy cry. It was repeated from all points of the compass. In the twinkling I was transported back to boyhood."
He indicates that Goldsboro had become such a city that "no longer does anyone anywhere, even on the edges of the place, keep chickens."
He imparts that in the court case in Oklahoma, the judge had ruled that the nerves of the city people had to be protected and that the old rooster had to be quieted, ordering the owner to make it take a perch at night close to the roof of the henhouse, such that when it sought to stretch its neck, it would have insufficient room to do so and not have the room to crow.
The writer finds, however, that since cruel and unusual punishment is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, crowding a rooster into a close perch so that it could not stretch its neck and issue its call of nature amounted to such. "How could you, judge?"
Drew Pearson indicates that important plans for the State of the Union and inaugural addresses by the President were presently being formed in Augusta, Ga., and in Washington, with those plans indicating a break with the past, particularly with the isolationist wing of the Republican Party, which he regards as being as drastic as anything which had occurred during the first four years of the Eisenhower Administration. The President planned a global program to recapture American prestige and power in the Near East, the Far East and in Europe, taking the form of a spending program more expansive than anything of which the Administration had ever previously considered, greater probably than the original Marshall Plan of 1947 under former President Truman. It would include guarantees to Near Eastern states against attack by filling the economic vacuum in that region and in Asia caused by adjustments of outmoded colonialism, ultimately costing a lot of money, to be spent on irrigation and various improvements to raise the standards of living of Asiatic and African peoples. At the same time, the President planned to revive tarnished ties with old allies, France and Britain, planning to put the whole program under Governor Christian Herter of Massachusetts, who was being brought into the State Department in January—eventually to succeed Secretary John Foster Dulles at his death in 1959. Mr. Dulles would be given little or no chance to meddle with the new program.
To prepare for the program, the President had brought in General Robert Cutler, former secretary of the National Security Council, having originally sought to have in the role his former chief of staff, General Walter Bedell Smith, who had served as head of the CIA and as Undersecretary of State during the Truman Administration. General Cutler was presently holding meetings in the State Department, preparing for the new foreign affairs offensive. Also assisting was Vice-President Nixon, a former isolationist whose job was to win over the isolationist wing of the Republican Party.
White House advisers were not unaware that a huge spending program of the type would be viewed as "Globaloney", the label which then-Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce had applied to the views of former Vice-President Henry Wallace in 1943 in her first major speech before Congress, (at page 761 of the Congressional Record, midway down the right-hand column, the third, not the fifth), referring to his views, as set forth in the March, 1943 issue of American Magazine, regarding especially his prospect of post-war United Nations "Freedom of the Air", also applying the same pejorative label to the Roosevelt and, subsequently, the Truman foreign aid programs. They also would recall the "milk for every Hottentot" criticism which had also been hurled at Mr. Wallace. (The missing Time pieces from the 1943 note, incidentally, are now here and here, respectively, with a follow-up from 1943 here. If you encounter such a missing Time link in the future, just type in "content." before the rest of the link and you will be magically transported to the original linkage. And, at least the Blonde did not countenance Trumpie-Dumpy-Do-Ville, as with some of the new Hair of the past few years, and so we give her credit for that.)
Mr. Pearson indicates that the President had been brought around to his present thinking, according to friends, by the facts that Secretary Dulles had recently been ill and in Walter Reed Army Hospital, during which, the President had realized for the first time the badly deteriorated state of the nation's foreign policy, as well as by the last days of the campaign, when the President had listened to the speeches of Adlai Stevenson, criticizing the Administration's foreign policy, getting under the President's skin. The President realized, partly as a result of that criticism and partly as a result of two near-escapes from death during his own heart attack of September, 1955 and the ileitis attack of the prior June, that his place in history would be decided within the ensuing four years and that he had a lot to accomplish during that time.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop find that the upcoming 85th Congress would give a rougher time to Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson and Secretary of State Dulles than given them by the 84th Congress, especially in the Senate, where the Democrats, for the first time, were in a mood to take on the Eisenhower Administration regarding both defense and foreign policy.
Secretary Wilson was especially likely to have an unhappy time with the new Congress, provided he remained in his position. The previous summer, Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri had conducted an inquiry into the relative U.S. and Soviet air power, taking testimony both from the civilian officials, such as Secretary Wilson and Air Force Secretary Donald Quarles, and from those with operational responsibility, such as Air Force chief of staff General Nathan Twining and Strategic Air Command head, General Curtis LeMay. Although the civilian heads had sought to put the best face possible on matters, the net effect derived from the testimony had been devastating. Based on the national intelligence estimates accepted by the Administration, the testimony had demonstrated that the Administration policy of reducing Air Force appropriations had permitted the Soviets to take the lead in four of the five principal categories of air power, including strategic air power.
The Alsops indicate that for reasons which remained mysterious, Adlai Stevenson had never used those facts in the campaign, instead, having killed off the issue by his stand urging abolition of hydrogen bomb tests and of consideration of elimination of the draft. Yet, the issue was not dead.
Senator Symington and his staff were presently working hard on a report summing up the facts and their meaning from the previous hearings, a report which would be issued to coincide with the State of the Union address and the budget message by the President in January, to serve thereafter as the basis for further hearings with Secretaries Wilson, Quarles and others before the Armed Services Committee, chaired by Senator Richard Russell. The latter was expected for the first time to permit publication of those subsequent hearings, subject to necessary national security censorship. The witnesses would thus be forced either publicly to repudiate the testimony of Generals Twining and LeMay or to defend a policy which permitted the Soviets to attain relative air superiority over the U.S. The Alsops regard it as surely an unhappy prospect for Defense Department officials.
They find almost equally unhappy the prospect facing Secretary Dulles, as in the previous Congress, Senator Walter George, now retiring, had been the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, serving as a shield for Secretary Dulles. But in the new Congress, the Secretary would face on that Committee some of the sharpest critics of the Administration, such as majority whip Mike Mansfield of Montana, bitterly critical of the Dulles foreign policy, J. William Fulbright of Arkansas and Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota. They note that Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, "another sharp mind", was slated to be appointed to that Committee—a subject with which Doris Fleeson had dealt on November 27. In addition, the Alsops indicate that the new chairman, aging Senator Theodore Green of Rhode Island, was no fool.
They point out also that during the previous election year, Democrats had been chary to challenge the President's prestige and of being charged with "playing politics with foreign policy", those fears now gone in the President's last term in office. Obviously, thoughts of the 1958 midterms and the 1960 presidential election would play a part in the newly aggressive mood of the Democrats regarding foreign policy and defense policy. As a result, there was, for the first time, serious discussion within the Administration of appointing leading Democrats to head defense and foreign policy posts, with the name of David Bruce, former Ambassador to France, having been frequently mentioned in that context.
They posit that any serious effort to restore the old bipartisanship regarding foreign policy would be quite useful, but indicate that partisanship was not the basic reason why Secretaries Dulles and Wilson would face a rough time in the new Congress, rather because of the fact that the Administration's policy of "lucking it through on the defense and foreign front", which had worked well during the first four years, was no longer working at all— presumably referring to the current crises in the Middle East, regarding access to the Suez Canal, and in Hungary—, making it certain that the defense and foreign policies would be the overriding issue in the coming years.
A letter writer comments on a letter to the editor written by a policeman's wife on December 3, saying that she could never understand why a city the size of Charlotte could not pay its police officers a decent salary. She indicates that police officers decided to join the force for the same reasons people decided to become doctors, preachers, firemen or pursue other occupations, liking the work and believing in it. She indicates that some people said that policemen were crooked, indicating that if their salaries were more inviting, more people would apply for the job. She invites her fellow citizens to think of the warm and safe feeling they had when they went to bed at night, knowing that they only needed to call the Police Department if there were trouble. She wanted the facts to be published so that everyone could see why the policemen should be paid more, concluding that she was a housewife and the mother of three, two of whom might become policemen.
A letter writer finds that Charlotte and Mecklenburg County were fortunate to have two of the "best organized police departments in the state" but finds that they were underpaid and that all salaries ought be raised at once. He says that police officers had a hard time doing their duty while pleasing everyone at the same time, but that if it were not for them, their homes and lives would not be safe at night, and that they should be paid for the time they spent attending to court duty. He believes that such an arrangement would not be abused by the officers as their character and other qualifications were checked before they were employed. He urges the Mayor and City Council to get busy and increase police officer salaries.
A letter writer finds that since the people of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County had contributed more than a million dollars to the United Appeal, it would be interesting to know how much of the money would actually be provided to needy people. He indicates that in a Chicago newspaper, it had been reported that the staggering sum of 175 million dollars had been raised in the U.S. the previous year for charity, suggesting that there were different reasons why people gave so much, with many seeking credit on their income taxes while others gave under pressure and for fear of losing their jobs. He counsels that the American people ought wake up and start asking questions, as "organized begging" in the land of plenty was on the increase and if the money were given to churches, each church could care for the needs of the people near them.
A letter writer from Lancaster, S.C., wants every reader to remember a "pretty little blue-eyed five-year-old girl" during the Christmas season. She indicates that many had met the girl in person at Charlotte's Memorial Hospital, where she had been for much of the previous two years after a serious brain operation in the early fall, never recovering from it. She was now back in the hospital on the seventh floor and the writer does not know what could be done to help her get well, wants every Christian person to pray for her to be healed. The girl had spent part of her life with the writer's brother and wife while her mother worked in Charlotte so that she could do all she could for the child. She urges again to remember the little girl in prayers.
A letter writer from Guilford College remarks on a letter from the director of region 7 of the AFL-CIO, appearing in the December 3 edition, in response to the speech by Governor Luther Hodges concerning the tax structure of the state. He says that, according to the prior letter writer, the state's only labor trouble lay in its lack of unionization. He allows that the state ranked low by comparison to other states on per capita income, but questions whether it was the total picture. The state had the lowest number of organized union workers, with only 8.3 percent of the labor force affiliated with a national labor organization. He regards that as indicative of the state having free individuals in the workplace, believing that each time a worker joined a labor organization, the person gave up some of the basic freedoms hard-won, gradually turning over the distinction as an individual and becoming instead a part of the mass. He finds that union leaders, unable to produce any contribution to the nation's economy, attached themselves to the necks of labor as their so-called representatives, clinging like leeches, supported in their fine homes and big cars by the dues from the paychecks of the workers. He concludes that in the South, "the last vestige of the rugged American spirit that made this nation great" existed. "Ignore their honeyed words. Stand up for your rights as free men with God-given intelligence to reason for yourselves…"
A letter writer finds that radio programs had brought to life memories of the horrible event 15 years earlier when Pearl Harbor had been attacked on December 7, followed immediately by the full-bore entry of the U.S. to World War II. Amid all of the world tensions and threats of war within a single generation, they had witnessed a spiritual awakening, which he finds could be the forerunner of the world revival which the prophet Joel had proclaimed would come to pass in the last days. "The multitudes are hungry for the gospel message and the chief task and responsibility of Christians everywhere, is to press the battle with relentless energy for the great revival of which Joel speaks. The times are ripe for worldwide revival!"
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