The Charlotte News
Wednesday, December 19, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Bremerhaven, West Germany, that the U.S. transport General Leroy Eltinge had taken aboard 1,750 Hungarian refugees this date to begin a sealift to the U.S., set to arrive in Bayonne, N.J., on December 29. American Red Cross workers had brought about a transformation in the refugees from appearing frightened when they left trains from Vienna, becoming laughing, singing tourists subsequently. The Red Cross representative in Bremerhaven had spotted a badly out-of-tune piano aboard ship and had it tuned, immediately after which a refugee had begun playing it and hundreds of Hungarian youths jammed around him and sang at the top of their lungs. It was the third major movement of Hungarian refugees bound for the U.S., with military transports set to sealift 5,500 by the end of the year, with nearly 10,000 others being flown by U.S. military planes from Munich. The remaining 21,500 refugees being admitted to the U.S. would travel by commercial airlines. The first trainload of 850 refugees had arrived at dockside before dawn, with the U.S. Army musicians greeting them with "O Come All Ye Faithful". A second train carried 900. In the dining room aboard ship, elaborate breakfasts had been served, bringing tears to the eyes of many Hungarians. The menu included such items as fresh orange juice, as many eggs as they wanted, bacon, cereal, jam, sweet rolls, coffee and milk.
In Washington, at a press conference before the National Press Club, Indian Prime Minister Nehru said this date that he had provided the "thinking" of Communist Chinese Premier Chou En-lai to the President, including the Communist view that it was time for the U.S. to make a friendly move toward Communist China. The Prime Minister told the 45-minute press conference that his talks with the President had shown him that the U.S. policy was not as rigid as he had previously thought and that it might apply to the attitude toward Communist China, but said that he could not say so specifically. He said that he believed the U.S. and Russia were "not far apart" regarding problems of how to establish a worldwide disarmament system, with the great difficulty between them being a lack of confidence, and the most urgent need being measures to create that confidence. He said that he believed the changes which had occurred in the Soviet Union since the death of Joseph Stalin in March, 1953 had been fundamental and that the "post-Stalinist policy cannot be suppressed." He said that he doubted that any Communist country could ever become a parliamentary democracy like the U.S. or India, but that he thought "other forms" of democracy which would express the popular will would "almost inevitably take shape". He expressed hope that ten Americans still held in Communist China would be released but said it would be "embarrassing" to talk about the problems of those Americans in any detail as the matter was for another government and that what he might say of it might be untrue. The press conference was broadcast by CBS television and radio and NBC television.
In Moscow, Professor Orest Stephen Makar had shied away from interviews with Western correspondents this date regarding his defection from the U.S. the previous day, but his Russian-speaking wife had confirmed that they had abandoned their U.S. citizenship to live in Russia. The former St. Louis University professor, described by the newspaper Soviet Russia as "one of the world's foremost experts on aerial photography", exhibited a frightened air when the Western correspondents encountered him in a hotel hallway after his wife told them he was away. She had confirmed the accuracy of the Soviet news reports the previous day that they had surrendered their U.S. citizenship via a letter to the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm. St. Louis records showed that the professor had entered the U.S. in 1949 and that his work had included employment in 1952 at Holloman Air Force Base, Alamogordo, N.M. Both he and his wife had become naturalized citizens in St. Louis. Soviet Russia had quoted the professor as saying that he had switched allegiance because the Soviet Union had a big headstart over the U.S. in his specialty, the science of geodesy. He had decided to go to the Soviet Union while a member of the U.S. delegation to the eighth geodetic congress held some months earlier in Stockholm. He said that he had used an invitation to lecture at the Royal University in Stockholm as a pretext to leave the U.S. with his wife, as any attempt to travel directly to Russia would have immediately placed him under suspicion.
In New York, the FBI arrested four men in connection with the alleged theft of top-secret oil exploration maps which a Government attorney said were "worth millions", the maps, according to Federal authorities, having been stolen from the Pittsburgh offices of the Gulf Oil Corp. by an employee who wanted to sell them to pay off gambling debts to New York racketeers. The arrests had occurred the previous day following a raid on the office of the U.S. Tackless Corp. in the Bronx, where FBI agents said they had recovered many of the oil company's geological and seismographic maps. Among the four arrested on charges of transporting stolen property across state lines was a 70-year old well-known Texas oil and natural gas promoter, who had denied any connection with the alleged theft of the maps. Also arrested was a 32-year old man who had already been in jail awaiting sentence for attempting to extort more than a half-million dollars from the late financial manipulator Serge Rubinstein. Federal officials said that the Texas promoter had been a former partner of Mr. Rubinstein during the early 1940's, but that the two connections to Mr. Rubinstein were coincidental as far as they were aware. If convicted, each of the four men could be sentenced to ten years in prison and a fine of $10,000. The theft of the maps had been discovered by Gulf a year earlier when the company discovered that lands it had surveyed in the Southwest were being bought by wildcat operators before Gulf could take leases on them, prompting the company to hire private detectives to watch the few trusted employees who had access to the maps. The FBI had evidence that a small portion of the maps had been offered for sale for $500,000 and that another set of three maps had been offered for $50,000, though neither of the sales had been completed. Authorities said that the ring had also set up drilling operations in the Southwest and sought directly to cash in on Gulf's oil surveys.
In Angola, Ind., it was reported that a 40-year old eccentric man had surrendered quietly in his cluttered home at Ray early this date after a grudge shooting which had killed one neighbor and wounded two others. The sheriff said that the man had taken a four-year old girl with him after wounding her parents in their bed. The girl had been found terrified but unharmed in the man's home. A neighboring farmhand who had squabbled with the man over an eviction died a few minutes after he had been found sprawled in the doorway of his home, with rifle bullet wounds in his head and chest. The girl's parents had been found wounded in their bed, the woman critically and the man listed in good condition. No formal charges had been filed against the man pending completion of the sheriff's investigation. The sheriff said that the man was a "mental case" but indicated that he had never been under treatment for a mental disorder. When arrested, he was wearing pillows strapped to his back and chest, with neighbors indicating that he had been wearing them for more than two years.
In Asheville, a cancer victim, who drew on her failing strength to go Christmas shopping for her loved ones from an ambulance stretcher, would be unable to see them open their presents, as the 33-year old mother of four had died in her sleep in a hospital room the previous night. Doctors had told her that she probably would not live through the holidays. A worn, dog-eared prayer book was found beside her in the bed. She had requested the previous Monday that she be carried to a downtown Asheville store so that she could shop one last time for her children and those she loved. A store had opened its doors and had all its clerks at work 30 minutes early to greet her. The story of her final shopping trip had prompted response from two continents, with more than 15,000 cards and letters having been received in her last days, many from children who enclosed coins and asked her to buy something for her own children. Many contained prayer books, religious symbols and messages of cheer. Some letters had come from faith healers who said that they could cure her. She had died in her sleep the previous night and a nun at St. Joseph's Hospital said that her death had been "most peaceful". The nun said that the woman had never thought of herself during her illness and had been one of the most selfless persons the nun had ever known. She had become ill about two years earlier and she and her family had been aware for several weeks that she was dying.
Charles Kuralt of The News
tells of the Christmas season having come to town this date, with
50,000 schoolchildren having begun a two-week holiday vacation at the
close of classes during the afternoon, lasting until January 2.
Hundreds of college students also began coming back home to spend the
Christmas holidays. Queens and Davidson Colleges had dismissed
classes the previous day and all branches of the University had
closed this date until January 2. (In those days, the fall semester
did not begin until after mid-September and so fall exams did not
take place until after the holiday break.) Motor clubs had reported
this date that they were planning trips at the greatest rate ever,
with hundreds taking winter vacations. The Carolina Motor Club
reported that it was mapping about 20 post-Christmas automobile tours
to Florida per day. Bus, rail and air reservation clerks were
punching tickets in their sleep and anyone hoping to squeeze in a
last-minute trip would find themselves up against a traffic jam of
national proportions. Stores in Charlotte were jammed with shoppers
In Philadelphia, Pa., the post office reported that false teeth biting into a pear had tumbled out of a damaged gift package of fruit and bottled flavorings. Even the veteran chief of the section had been shaken, saying that if a person worked there long enough, they would have to figure that some of the Santa Claus helpers were off their rockers. He said he had packed up the teeth, the pear and whatever else was worth keeping and returned them, with his curiosity unsatisfied.
In Pasadena, Calif., the country's
most distinguished robin, George, had made his last migration, settling
permanently in Pasadena. He had migrated by way of a Buick driven by
his caretakers, a couple, accompanied by his bodyguard, Duke, a
shepherd dog. He had been in the public prints often, originally
having come from Ohio, falling out of his nest in 1952 as a
fledgling, when the female caretaker had rescued him when he was
about to die, giving him whiskey and water from an eyedropper. George
then decided to stay close to the supply of bourbon and traveled
everywhere with the couple, spending the winters in the South,
traveling to Washington for the fishing season and into Canada and
Alaska. During a Canadian trip, he had swallowed some bonded Canadian
whiskey and chirped for more, averting a possible international
situation with the overworked pun that "you can't fly on one
wing." A year earlier, the caretakers had adopted another robin,
Washington, found with a broken beak, the woman indicating that it
was touching to see George feed Washington his own food and whiskey.
Disaster had struck the previous week, however, as Washington had
been hopping about the yard in search of a snack when a stray cat
charged from the bushes, causing Washington to streak for a window
which was closed, resulting in him breaking his neck and falling to
the ground. George, according to the male of the caretaker couple,
was now drinking alone and was very depressed. He said that they
might resort to Alcoholic Abstinence because George liked liquor too
well and he could not have a stewed robin around the house
The temperature is dropping a
little, with the predicted high this date being only 57, as only four
shopping days remain until Christmas
On the editorial page—there being no edition on the microfilm for December 18—, "The Guilty Must Judge Themselves" tells of N.C. State having been disciplined by the NCAA for recruiting violations regarding freshman basketball player Jackie Moreland, while UNC had been forced by the ACC to forfeit nine football games, of which it had won only two and tied one, because second-string end Vince Olenik had played in those nine games under the name "Vince Olen" after having transferred from Temple without being listed as a transfer student, though the conference stated that it had no information that anyone at the University had foreknowledge of the matter. (Guess it's a blessing in disguise that they did not have a stellar record. Florida State in 2023 thinks it got a rough deal...) Yet, seldom had individual virtue, the piece finds, been so loudly proclaimed in the ACC, with school officials blaming the problems on "the system".
It finds the excuse "nonsense of the most outrageous and illusory sort", that colleges engaging in dishonorable practices during recruiting were victims of nothing other than their own bad deeds, that moral lapses could not be excused based on immorality which was popular or profitable or because of "the system", as the individual institutions had created that system.
It was tantamount to proclaiming that there had been no under-the-table deals, that athletes had not lied and cheated to receive benefits and that coaches and alumni groups had not applied improper pressures. To maintain that the system was to blame was to suggest that institutions were powerless to make their own destinies, that they shared in the dubious benefits of the system but none of the responsibilities.
The system could not be reformed until the colleges which created it did so, requiring initiative and individual responsibility by the guilty institutions. The NCAA and the ACC, by periodic finger-waving and wrist-slapping, could not do the job, and the remiss schools needed to start by admitting that they were wrong, that the situation was bad and that something would be done to remedy it. Then, "the system" would take care of itself.
"Amid Yawns, a President Is Elected" tells of North Carolina's electors having cast their 14 votes for Adlai Stevenson during the week, suggesting that some might have been tempted to swing their votes to the President, which would have been an outrage, "but a neatly legal outrage at that." For it was the privilege of electors, not the voters, to choose presidents, the popular election of November 6 having merely allowed the electors to know whom the people favored for the office.
It indicates that the electoral college had survived in its present anachronistic state because electors almost always had been guided by the popular vote. "But to say it has done little harm is no argument for perpetuating it. The college as presently constituted has within it potential for real trouble. And, in practice, it never reflects accurately the popular choice between candidates." It indicates that a proportionate division of North Carolina's 14 votes on the basis of the popular vote, would have been seven-plus for Mr. Stevenson and six-plus for the President. A similar proportional allocation in all states would have produced a considerably larger electoral total for Mr. Stevenson than the college would actually provide him.
It finds that there was a good plan in Congress for reforming the electoral college, with the office of elector to be abolished, thus removing the chance for an elector to place his judgment above the popular will. Electoral votes would be divided according to the division of the popular vote. If no candidate then were to receive a majority of the electoral votes, the election would be decided by a majority vote of both Senators and Representatives voting as individuals. It finds it a much fairer system than electing the President by state delegations in the House, per the present Constitutional provisions when the electoral college majority was not reached. It urges Congress to approve the amendment to the Constitution and pass it on for ratification to the states.
That is so now more than ever—after we have seen the outcome in the 2000 and 2016 elections, and witnessed the appalling fake electors scheme in several states, with corrupt individuals having taken it upon themselves to try to supplant the state-authorized slates of electors after the 2020 election, with many of those fake electors now facing, quite properly, jail as a result of their attempted fraud and overthrow of the democratic process pursuant to the Constitution, based on wacky claims of a "stolen election", lost by the incumbent by a mere seven million popular votes and 35 electoral votes, with all contentions of fraud having been debunked even by experts hired by the incumbent's campaign to show the contrary. To anyone but complete idiots, there is a great difference between the occasional "faithless" elector, who, while charged with the duty by his or her state with casting their vote in accord with the state's laws and the outcome of the election, nevertheless casts their electoral vote for some other person, and someone who signs under oath a document claiming falsely that they are the chosen electors of that particular state when they are not.
"The Winter: All Brag and Bluster" indicates that winter would be present on Friday, a season which had never made good in the South and had exceedingly poor prospects. In contrast, in millions of places, such as in British Columbia and Montana, the season commanded respect, with people being careful not to cry outdoors for fear that they would ice up their eyelids.
But in Charlotte or Savannah, winter was a poor and perpetually puny relation, given to much rainy weeping, tolerated but never made to feel at home. Sometimes, ice spewed from red clay banks, and low water in a horse trough occasionally froze, but even as those minor miracles occurred, dogwood limbs showed summer green on their undersides, forsythia made yellow faces and wild onions marched greenly across meadows. "And camellias, of course, guaranteed a little protection, deliver the ultimate insult with profuse offerings of blossoms."
It indicates that in fairness, it had to be said that some Southerners tried to make winter welcome, making burnt offerings of firewood in gas-heated homes, cooking heavy stews to protect people against "the chill" in steam-heated office buildings, and giving presents of fur-lined gloves which made the hands sweat even on the "coldest" day. It concludes that winter was a guest, but mostly a pompous fake. "The bum oughtta be kicked out of the house."
But if you hain't got no winter, you hain't got no...
A piece from the Sanford Herald,
titled "A Very Delicate Thing", indicates that when Mrs.
Peacock walked into the gift shop, tail feathers grandly spread,
there had been some fluttering among the clerks as she was known to
be a most exacting person. She had gone to the counter where the
Christmas cards
Miss Goose had replied that she thought the cards with the bells were attractive and exclusive, that they could have Mrs. Peacock's name printed on them if she wished. But Mrs. Peacock shrieked: "Exclusive? Exclusive indeed! Repulsive is a better word, my dear. I would be ashamed to be identified with such litter."
Miss Goose gulped, being near tears, stating, "Perhaps you would prefer to examine what's here without my … er, interference."
Mrs. Peacock responded: "My good woman I indeed will not require your services. Please tell your employer that I am disgusted with both his goods and his assistants. These cards are really deplorable. They look either like carnival posters or the scribblings of imbeciles. Not one reflects a real understanding of the Christmas spirit that is tender and precious, you know, very delicate, very refined; these are gross. They have no feeling—not the true spirit at all." She then swished away.
Miss Goose did not move, musing, "No understanding, no tenderness, no Christmas spirit…" She looked very puzzled.
What's the big deal? Mrs. Peacock didn't like the crappy Christmas cards and was frank enough to tell the mealy-mouthed Miss Goose all about it. If you want a store to change its policies, you have to be candid and, if need be, cold, even at Christmas. Hell, what is Christmas for but to get people to turn over a new leaf in the New Year? For instance, tell old Santa Claus when he comes down the chimney: "Hey, fat boy, why don't you lose some weight? Every year, the same thing, eating up, obviously, half of the goodies stocking your sleigh before bringing them to the stockings of the children, leaving them with but a pittance of what they ought to get, making up your list of who's been naughty and nice just so's you can have the candy meant for those you deem naughty—blacklisting good people. Gluttony is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, old man with the gray beard. And get a haircut."
Drew Pearson, being on a Christmas tour of the Far Northern bases, has his column written by his junior partner, Jack Anderson, who indicates that the President, whose mother had once sold Bible tracts for Jehovah's Witnesses, was looking for a delicate way to clear his family name of that affiliation as he was sensitive about the fact that Jehovah's Witnesses did not believe in saluting the flag or serving under arms. At the same time, he did not wish to appear prejudiced against a religious sect. Both the President and his brother, Milton, had discussed the problem with spiritual advisers, but had not figured out how to disclaim Ida Eisenhower's relations with the Witnesses without offending the sect and perhaps stirring up charges of religious prejudice. Mr. Anderson imparts that the inside story was that Mrs. Eisenhower had been influenced in her old age by a nurse who belonged to the Witnesses, and, being Bible-minded, had cheerfully agreed to help them peddle Bible tracts. He says that both of the President's parents had been staunch members of a small sect called River Brethren, bringing up their boys to believe in the Bible, producing a reverent, if sometimes rowdy, household, with one teaching of the River Brethren having been that only adults should participate in the formal church organization. He regards it as explanation of why the President had waited so long to accept church membership, as two of his brothers had also waited until after marriage to affiliate with a church.
Secretary of Labor James Mitchell had told intimates that he would take a prolonged vacation in January and then make it permanent in February because he wanted to make more money.
Senator George Bender of Ohio, who had lost his bid for re-election in November, was angling for appointment as postmaster general, but the White House was trying to coax him to settle for a post on the Subversive Activities Control Board.
Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, champion of white supremacy, had called on Deputy Attorney General William Rogers, to become Attorney General in the second term and eventually Secretary of State under President Nixon, wanting from Mr. Rogers a small favor, indicating that Republicans ought to be grateful to Senator Eastland as he had given them five million votes.
The Hungarian airlift would cost the Air Force four times what the independent airlines had offered to do the job, with the President estimating that it would run around 12 million dollars, while the independent airlines had offered to fly all of the Hungarian refugees to the U.S. for 3.5 million. The Defense Department, however, wanted to make a grandstand gesture and so the independent airlines were turned down, leaving the taxpayers to pay the difference.
Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson was quietly digging out from under the mountain of surplus food which the farmers annually dumped on his Department. For the first time since he had become custodian of that annual avalanche, he was unloading food almost as fast as storing it, with the biggest accomplishment having been that he had sold every last pound of butter which had been in danger of going rancid in Government warehouses. He had peddled, bartered and donated food to almost anyone who would take it, giving it away to state governments for school lunches, to charities for foreign relief, traded some to hungry countries for strategic minerals and unloaded vast quantities on the armed forces and Veterans Administration.
Edwin Yoder, who had been co-editor of the Daily Tar Heel at UNC the previous year, now a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford's Jesus College, writes from Oxford that telling stories about teachers was a universal occupation, that he had heard one recently about a lady don at Oxford named Enid Starkie, a "formidable blue-stocking who was found by a student late one night sitting in an ancient, cobble-stone Oxford gutter." She had been hit, but not injured, by a truck and was sitting musing in her striped pajamas, all part of her total character, as she took pleasure in lecturing in French with an Irish accent, though she had never been to Ireland, and had been seen sipping during lectures from a pint of bitter beer "to make the flow of Gaelic French easier."
He finds that the "bizarre lady" was a telling symbol of Oxford's individualism, which he notes had to be set apart from the goldfish-eating of American bohemia, as it was not nourished by being seen.
He finds a corresponding serious side to such autonomy, which to an American, often discouraged at the sight of smothered self-expression at home, was refreshing.
He recounts of having sat in a chilly, damp lecture room at Oxford and hearing a lecturer explain that he was an anarchist and why. He finds that the system at Oxford drew its vitality from "dangerous" ideas. While no one tried to pretend that the earth was flat or guarded by serpents at its corners, there was no such thing as a discarded or "dangerous" idea, with every idea having its place in the surroundings, even if it would never leave the Oxford campus. It had been called the home of lost causes, but Mr. Yoder thinks that was a mistaken label, as the really impassioned causes were alien at Oxford, one having to go to London's Hyde Park and "the raw music of orators on free love and Marxism to find such causes." Orthodoxy might be imported to Oxford, but orthodoxies were seldom comfortable in an atmosphere where ideas of even the most hallowed lineage had to strain to demonstrate their own reason for being.
He finds the fact that many doctrines had little more than a short and uncomfortable reign at Oxford to have been perfectly shown a few weeks earlier when Russian suppression of the Hungarian rebels had led to the disbanding of the small group of student Communists at Oxford, many of them having been students of Mr. Yoder's age whose attraction to Communism was "the tenuous magnet of youthful utopianism", their leader having been a distinguished scholar of Eton, "fresh from that bastion of English traditionalism."
He suggests that it was difficult to imagine that a little over 100 years earlier, Oxford had still clung to its medieval genesis from the Church and that the dons had to be ordained in its ministry, finding that if the present attitude toward religion remained respectful, the respect was almost purely formal. He can imagine how the English got their reputation for hypocrisy, as well in the area of religion as any other. Indifference and frank agnosticism appeared to be as stoutly entrenched in the mid-20th Century as the church ritual and the old cathedrals and college chapels.
His first trip to the celebrated Oxford Union, the debating hall where Gladstone and other greats of his stature had first shown signs of promise, led him to hear the religious question debated in typical fashion, with the question before the House having been whether it was "possible for modern man to be moral without religion." The bishop of Rochester, who in earlier years had served as librarian of the Union, a post presently held by Bob Evans, formerly of Chapel Hill from Durham, represented religion's side of the debate, with the undergraduates not at all daunted by his presence, the first undergraduate speaker stating that he took it that the members of the House would agree with him when he said that the Church of England was for those who were uninterested in religion, as the Conservative Party was for those who were uninterested in politics. Meanwhile, the bishop squirmed noticeably, and in his opening statement, read with real emotion from his notes taken from Plato. A student had cried out, "Out of context!" while others cried, "Shame! Shame!"
The bishop was attired in his garb for the House of Lords from which he had departed that afternoon, and Mr. Yoder found his argument for the binding necessity of religion to exceed that of his detractors by force of dignity if by nothing else, such that the motion before the House had been defeated.
He concludes that it was the way of
paradoxical treatment of orthodoxy at Oxford, even if in the
aftermath, affirmation might follow. The nonconformity had worked its
spell in the basic teaching process as well, as Oxford left concern
with fact primarily to the Americans and Germans, with the aim being
to hone the thought processes
Similarly, a philosophy essay did not concern itself with the philosophical method of Rene Descartes, but rather the attack or defense of his ideas. "Concern with the interplay of ideas is deceptive—since in fact before you can handle ideas, especially before you can attack or defend them, you must study long hours to understand them thoroughly.
"You may even have to think about them in Gaelic French."
Well, though we never had to think about them in Gaelic French, the process appears very much akin to what we studied in UNC's philosophy department during our four years as an undergraduate, having received a double dose of introductory philosophy and philosophy of religion from Professor E. M. Adams our freshman year, causing us to be hooked to the process of conceptual understanding rather than digestion so much of data and fact, even if some data and fact must be absorbed to tie ideas to the physical world.
We were intrigued by a poster on the walls of one of the classroom buildings freshman year, inviting students to apply for a year at Oxford in a special exchange program with UNC, and we were quite drawn to the notion, but, at the end of the day, chose to remain on home turf. Whether that was a good idea or one simply confined by the desire for security, thereby losing an opportunity at expansion of at least cultural, if not educational, experience, we shall never know—though we might approximate the knowledge by way of analogy to other experiences since.
Mr. Yoder died recently at age 89, on November 30, 2023.
A letter writer complains that 17 street railroad crossings were being cleared on the east side of the city while there appeared to be no relief on the west side, wondering when they would clear the railroad crossings on that side.
A letter writer urges people to give themselves conscientiously to Christ at Christmas, wishes a Merry Christmas to all and a happy New Year.
A pome from the Atlanta Journal appears, "In Which Is Revealed Another Angle Of Fisticuffing:
"If to fighting you resort
You may spend some time in court."
But if you only incite to verbal
retort,
Your speech winds up inside the
First's fort.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.