The Charlotte News

Tuesday, December 25, 1956

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Christians everywhere had tried to make the day a holiday of peace and good will, while in much of the world, it had been the saddest Christmas since World War II, with unrest, hatred bred by revolution and war or spreading economic distress touching Europe, Asia and the Holy Land. Church bells had pealed in Bethlehem, but only a comparative handful of pilgrims had made their way past the guns and barricades of the divided Holy Land to be present during the age-old reenactment of the birth of the Christ child. The whole Middle East was restive in the wake of the Israeli and British-French invasions of Egypt in the wake of Egypt's seizure of the Suez Canal on July 26 and the ensuing failure to resolve that crisis diplomatically. The British rulers of rebellious Cyprus had let girls go to Christmas parties but had placed their escorts under curfew. Rebellion on Sumatra raised tension in Moslem Indonesia. On Austria's border with Hungary, Christmas trees shining across snow fields guided refugees to freedom. In Hungary, the people sought to find a little Christmas cheer for their children, mindful that the hardest of times were ahead, facing the prospect of mass unemployment and cold as a result of drastic shortages of coal, in the aftermath of their rebellion against Communism begun on October 23. Roman Catholic and Protestant churches in Budapest had been crowded for Christmas Eve services and the Communist radio broadcast a recording of "Silent Night", startling listeners, as never before had the Communist regime recognized Christmas.

At the U.N. in New York, U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold ordered two of his top assistants away from their Christmas dinners to Cairo this date, in the hope that they could prevail on Egypt to stop blocking clearance of the Suez Canal. Mr. Hammarskjold had directed his executive assistant and the deputy undersecretary to leave late this date to confer in Egypt with retired U.S. Lt. General Raymond Wheeler, directing the canal clearance operations for the U.N., and Canadian Maj. General E. L. M. Burns, commander of the U.N. police force. A U.N. spokesman said that all three men would discuss with Egyptian officials all points at issue regarding clearance of the canal. Meanwhile, Egyptian objections had virtually stalled a combined force of British, French and neutral salvage vessels which had been assembled by General Wheeler to remove from the waterway the 47 or more ships which the Egyptians had sunk when Britain and France had invaded the canal zone. Three British and French salvage vessels had been reported at work clearing two sunken ships from the harbor at Port Said. But that was a secondary task since a channel already had been opened through the harbor. Otherwise, the salvage fleet stood idle and General Wheeler admitted that he was waiting for Egyptian permission to continue the job. The Egyptians reportedly had agreed that clearance work could begin as soon as the British and French forces had withdrawn, which had been completed during the weekend. But the previous day, Egyptian authorities had said that the U.N. ships could not begin the clearance operations until Israeli forces had pulled back into Israel, a process which the Israelis had indicated would take several weeks. The possibility also existed that the Egyptians would block the salvage fleet until the Israelis quit the Gaza Strip, a portion of Palestine which Egypt had occupied since the 1948 Palestine War and which Israel had declared it would not return to Egypt.

In Moscow, it was reported that the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee the previous night had ended its first meeting since the Hungarian revolt with a 4,000-word communiqué which made no mention of the satellite nations. Instead, the select group which ratified the policies of the Kremlin leaders had called on the Soviet people to eliminate bureaucracy and inefficiency, to increase their standard of living. There was not even a year-end announcement that the Soviet people would get more consumer goods in 1957, there having been speculation that such would be promised. Unofficial reports circulated that the Central Committee would meet again in January to take up problems of foreign policy and relations with the satellites. There was also a possibility that further decisions had been taken at the session and would be announced later. Only one minor personnel change had been announced, that Dmitri Shepilov had been released from his duties as one of the eight secretaries of the Central Committee so that he could give full time to his job as Foreign Minister. The communiqué had also announced that the sixth five-year plan had been returned to the Supreme Soviet for revision, with the Committee indicating that some quotas were too high and that building of new industrial plants ought be slowed down in some areas. The 1956 production plan had fallen short in the areas of coal, metal, cement, lumber and housing, with the Committee blaming mismanagement, poor planning and improper allocation for "urgent problems and serious deficiencies which had arisen," a usual excuse. But the Committee said that production in heavy industry had risen 11 percent above the quota and in the light consumer-goods industry, 9 percent above the plan.

In Tallahassee, Fla., city buses were again rolling with black passengers, but the status of segregated seating remained in doubt. Boycotting black riders had returned to the buses the previous day for the first time in seven months and sat where they pleased. The Tallahassee City Commission had directed the City's Transit Bus Co. to enforce racial segregation, but lawyers for the Commission indicated uncertainty as to what would happen in the ensuing few days. The bus company said that it would seek court determination of whether a Federal ruling which had integrated the city buses of Montgomery, Ala., the previous week applied to the Tallahassee franchise and to invalidate Florida's segregation laws, as it had Alabama's segregation laws. The Reverend C. K. Steele, president of the Inter-Civic Council, which had led the boycott as a protest against segregated seating, said that his first reaction to the bus company's announcement was that it "seems to be a rather prudent move." He said that he thought favorably of it at the moment. Black leaders had ridden buses the previous day, sitting where they chose, while most of the buses had been lightly patronized with state capital offices and white and black universities closed for the holidays. The manager of the bus company said that he pulled a white photographer from one bus as the cameraman attempted to take pictures of black passengers seating themselves.

In Montgomery, Ala., city buses were operating on a curtailed holiday schedule this date as white and black passengers continued their adjustment to desegregated seating, begun the prior Friday. The previous day, a 15-year old black girl had been beaten, but not seriously hurt, by several white men near a bus stop after one of the men had reportedly shouted, "Don't ride the bus any more." It had been the most serious racial disturbance since a Federal court order banning continued bus segregation on the municipal public buses had gone into effect the previous Friday. The girl said that two men from one car and three men from another had joined in the attack on her. She had cuts and bruises about her head, but had not gone to a doctor because she said she was afraid. The beating had been confirmed by a white bus passenger, who said that he saw the victim on her knees holding her arms over her head to protect herself.

In New York, police intensified an all-out search for the so-called "Mad Bomber" this date, following discovery of a homemade explosive device in the city's huge public library. A library page boy had by chance discovered the bomb the previous day in a second-floor telephone booth, after dropping a coin on the floor, stooping over to pick it up and then noticing the bomb wrapped in a maroon-colored sock and affixed to the telephone box by a magnet. Unconcerned, the 19-year old boy completed his call and took the pipe-type object to some fellow page boys for scrutiny, before he finally threw it out a rear window of the library, out of fear that it might be a bomb constructed by the Mad Bomber. It had landed in a clump of ivy in Bryant Park, did not explode and no one had been hurt. The event, however, soon turned the heart of Manhattan into a storm of excitement and activity, bringing police swarming to the scene. Mindful of a series of bomb-threats and explosions in public places for the previous 16 years, police cleared the park and the surrounding area of all vehicular and pedestrian traffic for an hour and a half. A section of 42nd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues had been tied up and clogged with Christmas shoppers. Sixty policemen, led by some of the department's highest ranking officers, had converged on the scene, and a bomb squad placed the missile, measuring some 5 inches in length and 4 inches in diameter, into a truck. The truck was then driven to an empty lot some distance from the library where it remained under guard. Police planned to move it to Fort Tilden in Rockaway, Queens, for dismantling this date, when traffic was reduced. It would remain under observation for 72 hours and if it had not exploded by that point, it would be dismantled by bomb experts. A cursory examination had led police to believe that it was the same type of object which had been placed since 1940 in dozens of theaters, bus and train stations and other public places, some of which devices had exploded and caused injury. Police had ordered a search for the Mad Bomber on December 3 after the bombing of a Brooklyn movie house, where six people were injured. Police believed that the bomber was a psychopath, mad at the world.

The nation's traffic deaths during the four-day holiday period had averaged nearly seven per hour since Friday at 6:00 p.m. and appeared headed to an all-time holiday record for an extended weekend. The total fatalities thus far had reached 528 in traffic accidents, with the record being 609 during the previous year's three-day Christmas weekend. The National Safety Council said that it expected the pre-holiday estimate of 660 highway fatalities to be exceeded, indicating that some 40 million cars would be on the streets and highways during the last 12 hours of the holiday. The overall accident total thus far had reached 644 deaths, including 32 from fires and 84 from miscellaneous accidents. Weather conditions over most of the country had improved the previous day and a clearing trend was indicated for most areas this date, after fog and rain had extended over wide sections of the Eastern half of the nation during the first half of the Christmas weekend, having created hazardous driving conditions. Safety experts warned of travel dangers, including winter driving conditions, a minimum of daylight and holiday drinking of alcoholic beverages. Leading in traffic deaths were the states of California, Illinois, Texas, Michigan, New York and Ohio, with three states, Maine, North Dakota and Wyoming, reporting no traffic deaths thus far. Traffic deaths across the nation through the first ten months of the year had averaged 106 per day, and an Associated Press survey during a non-holiday period of the same duration as the current four-day extended weekend, between December 14 and 18, had shown 500 traffic deaths.

In the Carolinas, 38 of the 50 violent deaths recorded since the start of the four-day holiday period had been in traffic accidents, with 27 of the deaths recorded in North Carolina and 11 in South Carolina. Other forms of violence had claimed nine lives in North Carolina and three in South Carolina.

Many stores across the two states were planning to reopen the following day with post-Christmas sales. But hundreds of state and Federal workers, and many in private employment would receive another day of leisure before having to return to work on Thursday morning. Churchgoers across the Carolinas had mostly stayed at home this date, but some churches held special services, retelling the story of the miracle of Bethlehem.

The weatherman had predicted clearing and colder weather across the two states following a pre-holiday siege of rain and warm temperatures. The executive secretary of the North Carolina Merchants Association said that the warm weather during the Christmas shopping season may have caused sales to fall below those of 1955. That is counter-intuitive, as one would deduce that warmer weather would induce shoppers to frequent the stores the more, given the absence of indoor shopping malls at the time and the consequent need to be out and about in the weather.

In Chicago, police in suburban Oak Park had been sent out the previous day to serve a warrant on a father accused of failing to support his family for eight months, but could not find him, finding, however, his wife and the couple's four children facing a bleak Christmas. The whole force had then played Santa Claus, delivering a Christmas tree, a turkey with all the trimmings, and a month's supply of groceries, milk, butter and eggs for the abandoned family.

In Pasadena, California, an elderly woman had sent her old clothes to the Salvation Army when she learned that her daughter was giving her a new wardrobe. Soon thereafter, the Salvation Army's Social Service Department had received an excited phone call from the woman's daughter, saying that her mother had forgotten that one of the donated dresses had her life savings of $800 sewn into the hem, whereupon the money was found and returned, with wishes for a very Merry Christmas.

In Albany, N.Y., Christmas had turned out to be a happy one for a family, after the mother had sent her eldest son, 7, on a grocery store errand, and, not returning, had sent her six-year old son to find him, neither then returning, at which point the mother had called the police. Both boys had come back home the previous day after spending Sunday night in parked vehicles.

In San Diego, a Christmas greeting card which had shuttled through the mails for 25 years was back in the hands of one of the two senders until the following year. Two women originally of Omaha, one since moved to San Diego, had been exchanging the card on alternate years since one of the women had been ten years old. The card showed a kilted Scotsman and asked for its return because it was "verra costly".

In Newport Beach, Calif., six families of Hungarian refugees would have a Merry Christmas if they reached Southern California in time to enjoy it, and if not, would still have a month of hospitality awaiting them, courtesy of a motel owner in the community. The owner of the local motel had invited the six families to spend a month there, free of charge, and the executive director of the Orange County Red Cross organization had made arrangements for the refugees to be flown to Newport Beach from New Jersey. The Newport Beach Elks Lodge was conducting a campaign to supply the visitors with groceries, and a cleaning establishment had volunteered to do their clothing, while a milk company had offered all the milk they could drink and a bakery had promised bread.

In Los Angeles, police had booked a man on suspicion of drunk driving, even though they had found him asleep in his car. The stock broker had gone to sleep with his foot on the accelerator and the car was found jammed up against the back of a truck parked at the curb, the car's motor racing and the rear wheels spinning. Police said it had been there for some time when the man was arrested the previous day. The tires on the rear wheels had been ground down completely and the whirling steel wheels had started sending off showers of sparks, according to the officers. That is being drunk to the steel rims.

On the editorial page, "On Earth Peace, Good Will Toward Men" quotes from the Bible story of the first Christmas, as related in Luke 2:1-20.