The Charlotte News
Monday, December 17, 1956
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Budapest that the Hungarian workers' sitdown strike appeared to have ended this date in the city and the provinces, as lack of coal and power continued to hamper production. Work had resumed at an electrical equipment plant which was the center of a new wave of slowdowns and sitdowns the previous week, in protest of the arrest of two leaders of the Budapest Central Workers' Council. The two leaders had not been released by the Soviet-supported Government of Premier Janos Kadar, but the threat of hunger and winter cold appeared to have broken the strike. An Hungarian Army lieutenant barred Western correspondents who sought to enter the electrical equipment plant to talk to some of the 6,000 workers, the officer indicating that the plant had been declared a military area occupied by Hungarian troops and police. There were also reports of widespread guerrilla activities across the Hungarian countryside and large-scale desertions by Russian troops, though those reports were being discounted in Budapest. But most Western observers agreed that the Russians had lost the satellite and that Hungary would never return to the subservience to Moscow which had characterized the regime of the Stalinist leader, Matyas Rakosi.
At Gettysburg, Pa., the President talked this date with Prime Minister Nehru of India, staying at the President's farm overnight for more intimate private talks on matters of concern to both nations. A motorcade of nine cars had transported the two leaders from Washington, 80 miles away, for two hours. The weather had been sunny and mild, "typical Eisenhower weather", according to one old-time resident of the community. The Presidential party had stopped briefly at the gates of the farm to permit photographers to take pictures, then moved into the grounds. The basic aim of the talks was to achieve closer relations and better understanding between the two countries, rather than working out any specific agreement. Prime Minister Nehru had arrived in Washington the previous day and had spent the night at Blair House across the street from the White House. The President had called on him in the early morning for the trip to Gettysburg, as about 200 spectators gathered to witness the departure. The Indian Prime Minister had recently entertained Premier Chou En-lai of Communist China and was expected to report to the President that Chou had sincerely expressed a desire to clear away antagonisms between Communist China and the U.S., with Prime Minister Nehru desiring acceptance by the U.S. of Communist China to the U.N. and eventually diplomatic recognition of it. And, no, the limousine was not headed to 437 River Street.
In Trenton, N.J., police had determined that two church fires and attempts to start blazes in two other churches early the previous day had definitely been the result of arson. The historic First Methodist Church had suffered about $200,000 in damage in the most severe of the fires. The smaller blaze had caused an estimated $500 of damage to the First Born Living Church, about 1.5 miles distant from the Methodist Church. A police detective captain had said that police had found gasoline ignited in two other small churches close to the original fire. Four persons had suffered minor injuries and four others had narrowly escaped injury or death when a metal dome and roof had collapsed in the two-story Sunday school section of the First Methodist Church. The church had been founded in 1722 and was the denomination's oldest in New Jersey and third oldest in the country. Firemen had prevented flames from reaching the main portion of the church, erected in 1895. Its congregation numbered 1,400. The fires at the two smaller churches had fizzled out and damage had been minor. At the Church of the Living Bible, gasoline had been poured and ignited in the rear vestibule, but had died out after blackening a door. At the State Street Methodist Church, a half-gallon jug of gasoline had been hurled through a window and a chair set afire. Casts had been taken of footprints discovered behind the First Methodist Church, with the detective saying that the arsonists had scaled an iron fence and entered the rear of the church, where footprints were found under the fence. The prosecutor's office was continuing its investigation. A police lieutenant had indicated that he believed the fires were the work of a "religious fanatic firebug". Nine months earlier, St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cathedral had been destroyed in a three million dollar fire, taking the lives of Monsignor Richard Crean and two women housekeepers, a fire still listed as suspicious.
In College Park, Md., two bandits had kidnaped a young bank teller and his wife early this date and held them captive for nearly 6 hours, while the robbers watched television, then forced the teller to give them an estimated $20,000 from the night depository, having then fled in the bank employee's car. An FBI investigation had immediately been launched. The teller's wife had become hysterical from the ordeal and cried that it could not be true, that it was like a fairy tale. No one had been harmed in the holdup. The two bandits, one described as tall and the other short, had abandoned the car two or three miles from the bank, according to the FBI. So if you see a tall man weighing between 180 and 190 pounds, with dark brown hair and eyes, heavy eyebrows, wearing a tan overcoat, light gray suit and brown hat, in his late 20's, traveling with a short man, 5'6" tall, weighing about 155, and appearing to be about 30, with black hair, brown eyes, wearing a gray overcoat and a blue pinstripe suit, be sure and call the police, as, undoubtedly, they are the pair for whom they are looking.
The board of directors of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce would meet the following afternoon at the Chamber's office to consider recommendation by the executive committee regarding a candidate for the position of executive vice-president, to succeed James Glenn, who had resigned recently from the Chamber and was now senior vice-president of the Union National Bank.
Julian Scheer of The News tells of a dead man having received 366,752 votes for the office of North Carolina Secretary of State the previous month. Grover C. Robbins, a Republican from Blowing Rock, had died on June 24, but his name had never been withdrawn by the Republican Party and ballots bearing his name had been printed two months after his death. The winner of the race, incumbent Thad Eure, had polled 737,266 votes. Mr. Robbins had been a prominent developer in the state and owned the famous scenic attraction, Blowing Rock, and his death was covered widely in the state press. The chairman of the State Board of Elections, when contacted by the newspaper, said that he had not been aware of the situation. Mr. Robbins had carried 13 of the state's 100 counties, including his home in Watauga County. He had received 23,176 votes in Mecklenburg, compared to Mr. Eure's 40,344. The state chairman of the Republican Party said that he thought the State Board had been notified of the death of Mr. Robbins, but that he had not notified them, believing that Boone's James Holshouser, presumably the father of the future Governor to be elected in 1972, to be the first Republican Governor since Reconstruction, had notified the State Board. The chairman of the Board said that according to state law, votes cast for a dead candidate were still officially recorded, unless a successor candidate had been placed on the ballot or a successor candidate named by the party, in which case the votes for the deceased candidate would count for the successor. He said that he could not recall another such incident in the state's history, although there had been candidates who had died or resigned between the primary and general elections. Mr. Eure said that he did not know that Mr. Robbins had died until after the general election—indicative of the heavy campaigning for the office from which Mr. Eure would eventually retire in 1989, after 63 years in the position, as the longest continuously serving public servant in the country's history.
And, despite continuing unseasonably
warm temperatures in the area, having reached a high of 70 the
previous day, 68 this date, and 65 as the expected high the following
day, there were now only six shopping days left before Christmas
On the editorial page, "In the Age of the Team, a Huddle" indicates that in times past, many North Carolina members of Congress had viewed the executive hierarchy of the state with little more than detached condescension, something which Governor Luther Hodges, who it finds was an organizer of rare talent and a team-man par excellence, wanted to change.
For the first time in memory, a North Carolina Governor was inviting the state's entire Congressional delegation, including the two Senators, to an elaborate love feast with the heads of State departments, agencies and institutions, set for occurrence the following day at the Governor's mansion, where about 15 agency heads would be present to provide brief talks explaining their needs and problems, particularly those which relied on Federal funding.
It finds it a happy and necessary plan, that however much states' righters might deplore centralization, it was a fact of political life in the country, resulting in state and Federal interests being closely and delicately allied. The state had to look to Washington for many things, including a return of an occasional tax dollar originally rooted out of tobacco farmers from Edgecombe County or a manufacturer from Mecklenburg.
Now, a Congressman spoke, or ought to speak, for the state, including the Governor, the State Highway Commission, the Department of Public Welfare, the Employment Security Commission and the average North Carolinian. Members of the Congressional delegation might differ with the Governor and other agency heads of the state, but they ought be fully aware of the problems and needs of State government, with a tighter partnership being good for everyone.
"Onward & Upward with the Economist" finds that the upward trend of the consumer price index published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics had economists more hornswoggled than housewives, unable to agree on terminology to describe what was occurring, with the resulting gobbledygook resembling "a Shinto nightmare of semantics."
The commissioner of labor statistics had pointed out that there was not "runaway inflation" and that the index had not "blown its top", nor was there a "rolling adjustment", an "inventory correction" or properly a "seasonal alteration". The financial experts of the New York Times had stated that it was not an "adventitious non-recurring phenomenon", preferring to call it the "first genuine break away from a sidewise movement."
Meanwhile, Russia had been experiencing what the Soviet Academy of Science said was a "Spad".
It finds that as the science of measuring human appetites for goods and services, economics was shaky enough without playful word games which changed faster than hat styles among women, that in recent decades, the country had survived a depression, a recession, a boom, a leveling off, an easing off, a lull, drop, a dip, a slip, a correction, an upsurge, a slowdown, a rolling adjustment and a whatnot. Now, they were apparently in the grip of a sidewise movement, avoiding an adventitious non-recurring phenomenon while "apparently experiencing something like walkaway (not runaway) inflation."
In the end, it appeared that all the talk was simply about things costing more.
"They Say That Nice Guys Finish Last" finds that the thought of Jackie Robinson going on the field with the hated New York Giants during the 1957 baseball season would be enough to send the Flatbush faithful of Brooklyn into deep shock, as "the most valorous gladiator of modern Dodger history" had been traded, a fact bad enough in itself, but going to the Giants being catastrophic.
It finds that he would probably be greeted the following season by lines which had once described Jack Dempsey's entrance to the boxing ring: "Hail! The conquering hero comes,/ Surrounded by a bunch of bums."
It suggests that professional baseball had no heart or sentiment. It had tolerated Lou Gehrig in his fatal decline, but Babe Ruth had finally been traded, and the previous summer, the New York Yankees had booted out Phil Rizzuto with only three or four weeks left in his farewell season.
Mr. Robinson had made baseball history with the Dodgers, as well as social history, breaking the color barrier in major league baseball, living hard to do it. He was now older and grayer as an athlete, but had looked fit in 1956, "square of shoulder, springy of tread and a devil on the base paths." His success story had been Brooklyn's success story and it urges that the club should have allowed him to bow out as a Dodger, that it had not, made baseball a little poorer and sentimental fans a little sadder.
"The Post Office and Saint Nicholas" tells of letters pouring into the post office addressed to Santa Claus, though some had not been accepted by parents for mailing, instead hidden away, while others were being taken directly by the children to the postmaster, anxiously awaiting answers.
It wonders what happened to those letters, with there being several alternatives, that mail planes dumped all of the Santa Claus letters in the general vicinity of the North Pole, that there was a Post Office clerk who wrote nice, non-committal replies and signed them Santa Claus, that the letters were returned, stating that there was an insufficient address and that the writer should try the South Pole, that the letters were sold at public auction to toy manufacturers who examined them for fresh ideas, or that they were sent to various members of Congress who wrote nice, non-committal replies over the signature of Santa Claus.
It finds it was likely that the Post Office adopted none of those methods, but it had not asked because, whatever the reply would have been short of actual delivery, probably would not have been liked.
A piece from the Washington Post & Times-Herald, titled "Mustering out the Fauna", tells of the U.S. Cavalry a few years earlier having turned in their horses, saddles and sabers, in exchange for trucks, jeeps, and the tools which went with them, exchanging their manuals on the School of the Trooper for learned texts on the anatomy of automotive engines.
But not until recently had the last mule-powered field artillery battalion been converted into an "airphibious firing unit", which was to be transported between difficult terrains by helicopter, which it finds probably to have been regarded as unbearable by old Army mule-skinners, "whose blasphemous eloquence in all Indo-European languages, including the classical Greek," had long been proverbial, and who therefore knew what the Pentagon obviously did not, that the new descriptive name of their outfit ought to have been the "aerobious" or "aerobic" artillery, that which could live in the air.
Now, it appeared that even the Signal Corps was getting rid of its carrier pigeon service on the idea that anything a bird could do, an electron could do better and faster. It also wishes that the Washington starlings, by order of the chief of staff, could be mustered out of service.
It concludes that the only form of animal life of any value to national defense was humanity, which also might become obsolete soon for war-making, such that people could look forward to the happy day, as envisioned by British Maj. General Fuller, when battles would be fought exclusively between machines in the outermost reaches of space.
In terms of mustering out the flora, this program
Drew Pearson indicates that the full story of how the U.S. had permitted British and French relations to deteriorate to their lowest point since 1864, and the part which U.S. oil companies and certain State Department officials had played in it, had not been told and probably would not be until either a Senate committee subpoenaed the documents or the State Department issued a white paper some ten years hence, as was the custom. He indicates, however, that from unimpeachable sources, he had gathered highlights and details of the story.
The man primarily in charge of U.S. policy at the current time had been Undersecretary of State Herbert Hoover, Jr., with Secretary of State Dulles, then recovering from a cancer operation, assisting him from time to time, though always concurring with Mr. Hoover in his anti-British, anti-French policy, appearing personally bitter against both countries for going into the Suez Canal zone without consulting Mr. Dulles. Mr. Hoover, according to his associates in the State Department, appeared to share the anti-British attitude of his father, the former President, who had once been excoriated by Justice Joyce of the British High Court of Justice for taking possession of the title deeds to a Chinese mining property "by main force". Mr. Hoover had not abstained from handling matters affecting oil companies, as was customary to avoid a conflict of interest.
When Joseph Cotton had been Undersecretary of State during the Hoover Administration, he had disqualified himself from handling any problem affecting the Dillon Read investment firm, financier of the Arabian-American Oil Company, because Mr. Cotton had been the attorney for Dillon Read. When James Forrestal had been Secretary of Defense, he had disqualified himself from Middle East oil decisions because he had been president of Dillon Read.
But Mr. Hoover, though an oil diplomat for years, having been the oil companies' ambassador to Venezuela, Chile, Peru, Brazil and, more recently, Iran, working on behalf of his company, United Geophysical, retained at one time or other by most of the large oil companies, had not disqualified himself. He had also been a director of Union Oil of California, which had arranged a prospective merger with Gulf Oil, with Union selling 120 million of its 25-year debentures to Gulf, to be converted into Union common stock, thus giving Gulf a 22.4 percent interest in Union, resulting in control. An estimated 92 percent of Gulf's crude oil reserves were in the Middle East, consisting of 22 billion barrels, with only two billion barrels of its reserves in the Western Hemisphere. Gulf was controlled and largely owned by the Mellon family, whose founder, Andrew Mellon, had been Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Coolidge and Hoover, with the Mellon and Hoover families having been close. Gulf Oil had been strongly impacted by the Suez crisis, as its stock had dropped 20 points as a result of investors' fears that its huge Arabian reserves might be jeopardized.
Despite those connections, Undersecretary Hoover had not disqualified himself from State Department decisions impacting oil, instead making most of the major Middle East decisions after Mr. Dulles had become ill, at least until the President had gradually begun to take personal control, after becoming alarmed at the drift. It had been primarily Mr. Hoover who had set forth the policy that no oil could be shipped to England and France to make up for that cut off by the Suez crisis. All during the crisis, his State Department associates said that Mr. Hoover had been adamant in his determination to appease the Arabs. During a crucial nighttime conference at the White House on November 5, a day before the election, Mr. Hoover had warned that Russia planned war, having been so panic-stricken that the entire multibillion-dollar oil reserves of the Near East would fall into Russian hands that the Strategic Air Command had been alerted and all ships with atomic installations ordered to sea.
CIA director Allen Dulles had finally calmed Mr. Hoover's fears and persuaded the President that Russia was only bluffing. But on that election eve, primarily the result of Mr. Hoover's panic, the President had rushed stern messages to Prime Ministers Anthony Eden and Guy Mollet, demanding that they cease hostilities in the Suez.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop find that there was no doubt that there had been at least a partial breakdown of the authority of the Soviet regime, not only within the foreign Communist parties and in the satellites, but also within the Soviet Union, itself. Since the Hungarian revolt, there had been increasing amounts of breakdown. For instance, a candidate for the member of the Presidium in Moscow, the most important woman in the Soviet Union, Yekaterina Furtseva, had addressed a meeting of workers at a ball-bearing plant where a strike had taken place, something previously unheard of in Russia, during the initial part of the Hungarian revolt. She had told the workers of the need for discipline and production, and a voice from the back of the hall had shouted "and how much money do you make?" Thereafter, she was hissed, booed and laughed at, forcing her to leave the platform, pale and shaken.
A Russian-speaking Briton, traveling in southern Russia, had gone to the opera and taken the last seat in a box, whereupon the other occupants of the box began chatting with him, and after the opera, all concerned had gone to the home of one of them, where foreigners were almost never greeted by Soviet citizens, with a private, spontaneous protest meeting then having formed in which all of those present had put forth their bitterness against the regime, in the presence of an unknown foreigner.
The most extraordinary particular incident had been reported in the London Sunday Times by Alexandre Metaxas, a reliable Russian-speaking journalist, who had just returned from several months in the Soviet Union, reporting that Communist Party head Nikita Khrushchev had recently sought to address a youth meeting, and instead of booing him, the youths had applauded him so long and loud that he was not able to speak at all. Mr. Khrushchev had been aware of the derisive intent of the long applause, but could do nothing about it. Mr. Metaxas had set forth facts showing that the revolt in Hungary had been the death knell, not only for Mr. Khrushchev and Premier Nikolai Bulganin, but of the Soviet system itself as it had operated during the previous 15 years, with the existing system visibly disintegrating.
The Alsops indicate that there was no recognized authority on the Soviet Union in Washington prepared to go nearly as far as Mr. Metaxas, except possibly Secretary of State Dulles, who had strongly implied in a speech to the NATO meeting that the Soviet system was "cracking up". Experts, however, agreed that there had been a serious weakening of discipline, and that the Russian rulers were scared and in doubt as to what to do. Most of the experts also agreed that it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, for the Soviet bosses to reimpose the old iron discipline and return to the methods of Stalin and L. P. Beria, the latter the deceased head of the secret police. No one believed that there was likelihood of an Hungarian-style revolt in the Soviet Union, itself, under present conditions, but some believed that an attempt to "re-Stalinize" could actually stimulate mass uprisings, especially in the non-Russian territories which composed more than half of the Soviet Union.
The Alsops allow that the experts could be wrong, as no so-called expert had believed that a satellite nation could do what the Hungarians had done. One of the Alsops had spent a month in the Soviet Union the previous year and reported that which all Western experts there believed, that the mass of people solidly, if passively, supported both the regime and the Communist doctrine, with all of the evidence pointing to that conclusion. But thereafter, a letter had arrived from a Soviet colonel, who had recently defected from the Soviet Union, saying that the Alsop brother who had so reported, as with all foreigners in Russia, had been deceived by what the colonel called "Soviet two-mindedness", that the Soviet citizen developed two separate minds, one which was displayed to all foreigners and most of his fellow citizens, showing him a convinced Communist, passionately dedicated to the regime, while the other side, his real one, hated Communism and all of its works.
At the time, they recount, the colonel's statements appeared mere wishful thinking to which all refugees were subject, but they now believed that he might have been right, that "Soviet two-mindedness" was a phenomenon which would deeply affect the future course of world events.
Robert C. Ruark, writing from Palamos, Spain, tells of a correspondent writing that the public school year was six weeks too short and ought be lengthened from 9 to 10 1/2 months. But Mr. Ruark says that he would not endorse that concept, instead decries it, finds it a hallmark of creeping socialism. The correspondent was also upset about schoolchildren receiving ten days off for Christmas, a week for Easter, two days for Thanksgiving and one each for Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays, Election Day, Columbus Day and Memorial Day. "You'd think this bum had a clear title to the calendar and it was hurting him personally to parcel out a day off from algebra."
He says that when he had been in school, there was required attendance for only six months of the year around Wilmington, N.C., where he grew up. He regarded it as being too much time as it was. Then they added another month, then two and finally three to the school year, leaving practically no time for deviltry unless one cut classes to practice it. But cutting classes led to forgery of written excuses supposedly from parents, Mr. Ruark indicating that he sometimes still absentmindedly used his father's signature.
He indicates that the most important part of school had been getting out of it so that a fellow could develop his intellect unhampered by geometry, geography, English grammar, Latin and other subjects designed to stultify the thought process. He finds that a child's mind could not be overstrained during early youth, needed to be "free to caper and kick up its heels, not broken to harness."
The correspondent had indicated that by maintaining children in school longer each year, it would serve as a deterrent to juvenile delinquency. But Mr. Ruark thinks it pure rubbish, that he had learned more bad habits and met more undesirable people in school than he had ever come across out of it, indicating that he had practiced inhaling in the boys' restroom of New Hanover High, in Wilmington.
He also suggests that a young person's capacity for knowledge was limited by the time spent in its acquisition, that overextension of that time resulted in absentmindedness, resentment and an active rejection of effort to teach them, as no child learned much during the first two weeks after the summer holiday, nor anything for the last three weeks before summer vacation. He suggests that childhood was a precious thing, not a business, not entirely supposed to be practical or engineered according to the precept that adults knew best, as many times they did not, as he gleans from politics, the number of wars, divorces, and nervous breakdowns, and the prevalence of psychiatric treatment, alcoholism and suicide.
"Anything a kid can't learn in nine months you aren't likely to teach him in 10 or 11. Any other justification for extended education is a flimsy excuse to get the moppet out of the house and out of your hair."
A letter writer from Cerro Gordo, N.C., wants everyone who read the newspaper to remember her son in their prayers, indicating that he was 22, serving with the Air Force and sick most of the time, with doctors unable to find what his disease was. She says that everyone knew that God could heal and would heal when people prayed. She asks readers to send him get well and Christmas cards, that he was a good boy and that all who knew him loved him. She provides his name and address at the Air Force hospital in Amarillo, Tex.
A letter from two writers expresses appreciation to the newspaper for its editorial on the Dixie Housel Christmas Party, to occur on December 23, that it had helped tremendously.
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