The Charlotte News
Monday, December 3, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from London that British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd had said in Commons this date that Britain and France had decided that they could now withdraw their forces from Egypt "without delay" and that they had instructed the allied commander in chief, General Charles Keightley, to seek an agreement with the U.N. commander, General E. L. M. Burns, regarding a timetable for the complete withdrawal, taking into account the military and practical problems involved. He declared, amid opposition Laborite jeers: "Given good faith on all sides, it can be carried out in a short time." He stated that U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold would promote negotiations as quickly as possible regarding the six requirements set out in the U.N. Security Council resolution of October 13, which would keep the Suez Canal out of national and international politics, regarding talks in New York between the Secretary-General, Mr. Lloyd, French Foreign Minister Christian Pineau and Egyptian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Fawzi, and regarding the Secretary-General's proposed basis for negotiating a new regime for the Suez Canal, based on the six requirements of the October 13 resolution. Mr. Lloyd said that he believed they would reach an agreement providing adequate guarantees that the six requirements would be met. The six requirements were that there would be free and open transit through the canal without discrimination, that there would be respect for Egypt's sovereignty, insulation of the canal from the politics of any country, fixing of tolls to be decided by agreement between Egypt and the canal's users, a proportion of the dues to be allotted to development, and disputes to be settled by arbitration.
In Augusta, Ga., the President and Secretary of State Dulles believed prospects for peace in the Middle East were now "reasonably good", according to the Secretary at a press conference. Mr. Dulles, returning to the job after a month of convalescence from intestinal surgery, had made the conclusion after a two-hour review of the general international picture with the President the previous day. He said that anyone who believed the danger of war in the Middle East was as great at present as it had been a month earlier had to be "far gone in pessimism". He said that both he and the President believed steps were necessary to bolster NATO, which they agreed had been strained as a result of differences between the U.S. and Britain and France regarding the Middle East crisis. They also agreed that there was need for "unity and strength" of that alliance to check Soviet action in Eastern Europe, particularly in Hungary. He said that the President was particularly concerned with strains and dangers which flowed from persistent disregard by international Communism of the principles and pleas of the U.N., including its denunciation of Soviet ruthlessness in Hungary.
At the U.N., the Hungarian Government this date accepted the offer of the Secretary-General to visit Budapest, but specified that the visit ought be "at a later date appropriate for both parties." At the same time, the puppet Communist regime again rejected the demands of the General Assembly for the entry of U.N. observers to Hungary to investigate the situation there. The 79-nation Assembly was meeting to consider a resolution, sponsored by the U.S. and 13 other nations, to allow the entry of U.N. observers to Hungary. The resolution noted deep concern at the failure of the Soviets to withdraw their troops from Hungary and the deportation of Hungarian citizens. It asked the governments of Hungary and the Soviet Union to communicate with Secretary-General Hammarskjold by December 7 their consent to receive U.N. observers. Hungary had responded that it remained of the opinion that permitting U.N. observers to enter Hungary would violate its sovereignty and would be contrary to the principles of the U.N. Charter.
In Budapest, there were reports of new fighting between Hungarian rebels and the Russian Army in the countryside. The reports had spread by word of mouth and were heard by Western diplomats, indicating that sizable bands of guerrilla freedom fighters were battling from forests and hills both in northern and southern Hungary. Pecs, a center of Hungary's coal and uranium mines, was named as one of the principal redoubts of the rebel holdouts. Communications between Budapest and Pecs were broken. Some rumors in Budapest had it that shooting heard there the previous day had been artillery fire on Hungarian attackers, with another rumor indicating that Russians and Hungarians were fighting in the Buda section of the capital during the morning. The Government-controlled Budapest Radio, however, explained that the firing had been an artillery salute at a burial ceremony for Russian soldiers killed during the rebellion. None of the reports could be confirmed, some of them having apparently arisen out of lack of confidence in the Government-controlled radio and newspaper. People in Budapest displayed their disgust with the Communist Party newspaper by burning stacks of them in the streets the previous day. But many still bought the newspaper because it was the only one which provided information on the Olympic Games in Melbourne, Hungarians remaining ardent sports fans despite their troubles. The population appeared not to have heeded calls, made through leaflets the previous week, to conduct new strikes. Western correspondents had visited the Csepel iron and steel works during the morning and found chimneys smoking and production ongoing, albeit in haphazard fashion, with the consensus of opinion among the workers being that they had to live and could earn money by merely showing up at the plants. More streetcars and buses were observed to be running, but the population's enmity toward the Soviet-imposed Government of Communist Premier Janos Kadar was evidenced in many ways, with an inscription chalked on the wall of a downtown public lavatory reading: "None of the Communist Party." Reliable reports reaching Vienna said that guerrillas in the Mecsek Mountains and around Lake Balaton were attacking Soviet units nightly, with the Russians said to have sent one of their most energetic commanders to the region to track down the insurgents. Thousands of Hungarians in Budapest were going through cemeteries trying to identify their dead among the unclaimed bodies from the Soviet-crushed revolt, with hundreds of simple black wooden coffins, their lids open for identification, scattered about the graveyards.
In Clinton, Tenn., the Anderson County School Board had told the Federal Government this date that it had reached the end of its rope in trying to enforce racial integration at Clinton High School and was seeking help. In a letter to Attorney General Herbert Brownell, the Board said that it might become necessary to close the school within five days unless the Government came in to enforce a Federal court integration order. The ten black pupils still enrolled at the school had remained away from classes since the previous Tuesday after reporting that white students had thrown rocks and eggs at them. None of them had shown up for classes this date and no disorders had been reported as classes were resumed for the week. The principal stated that he believed that the black students would stay out during this week. The high school was the first State-supported school to be integrated in Tennessee. Anderson County had no high school for black students, and parents of the black students had indicated that they would turn down a School Board offer to transport the students to a black high school in Knoxville, 20 miles away. Originally, there had been a dozen black pupils admitted under the Federal court order. The ten remaining pupils had demanded that the Board provide them assurance for their personal safety. They had been admitted to classes on the prior August 27, which was followed by a week of increasing crowds and disorders, climaxed by arrival of State troopers and National Guardsmen during Labor Day weekend. The Federal District Court in Knoxville had ordered the integration on the previous January 4.
In Shamrock, Tex., a gunfight which had started in Oklahoma wound up with the death of a 19-year old member of a posse and two officers wounded, ending in the Texas Panhandle the previous day with the capture of a gunman dozing near his dead half-brother. The 21-year old man captured told officers that he had shot his 32-year old half-brother in the dark, thinking that he was part of the posse which had surrounded them. A Texas Ranger said that he had shot the deceased half-brother when he had blasted at a figure in the brush with a sawed-off shotgun. Officers said that the deceased had a number of aliases and a long arrest record in the Southwest and on the West Coast, while the younger half-brother apparently had no record and one alias. The men had been trapped near Shamrock on Saturday night in a 1,200-acre area of scrubby brush on a ranch belonging to the slain posse member's father. Officers had surrounded the area while planes dropped flares and flew in bloodhounds, which led mounted officers to the pair at sunrise. The younger of the half-brothers was sitting up, dozing, with an empty whiskey bottle nearby, and put up no resistance to arrest. His half-brother was lying about 30 yards away, dead. The chase had begun on Saturday at Texola, Okla., after the automobile in which the two men were riding hit another car and sped from the scene. A deputy gave chase and the two men fired back, nicking the deputy's chin. He then radioed for backup and another deputy and a patrolman of Shamrock saw the car on a dirt farm road and gave chase. The two men had leaped from the car and started firing with a rifle and pistol, whereupon the officers left their car and returned fire with shotguns.
In Lexington, N.C., four men from Kannapolis had been charged with an $11,000 robbery of a card game on November 21, the cases being docketed for a hearing during the morning on charges of armed robbery, the four men having been accused of holding up 16 men at a High Rock Lake cabin. The sheriff said that $1,430 of the money had been recovered and that the men accused had admitted to the robbery.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that Governor Luther Hodges this date had announced the appointment of Gastonia attorney Grady Stott as solicitor for the district, succeeding Representative-elect Basil Whitener. The move by the Governor would not lessen the efforts of Mecklenburg attorneys to obtain a solicitor named in the future from Mecklenburg County. The appointment was to a term which would expire at the beginning of 1959 and his successor would be elected by the voters of Gaston and Mecklenburg Counties. Mr. Stott was currently the solicitor of the Municipal Court in Gastonia and had practiced law in Gastonia for three years, was a graduate of Duke and a former professional baseball player.
Emery Wister of The News provides the first of a two-part profile of Jayne Mansfield, who liked mink, men and money, according to Mr. Wister, who was "mighty excited about this gal." You will have to turn to page 2B, however, for the feature story.
On the editorial page, "South as Much Mullet as Magnolias" quotes from William S. White in the New York Times Magazine that there was no longer any South of the type which had once been real, that though the magnolias and oleanders were still present, they blossomed only as plants, not scenting, accenting, signifying or illustrating a separate way of life.
The piece wonders when that earlier time had been, that the broader region was "rightly symbolized by the magnolia's hovering, heavy, saccharine scent, or by its conspicuous white blossoms."
It finds that everyone was writing obituaries for the "magnolia South", but it could not find the corpse.
"The 'separate way' was a living thing, and it is about gone. But it lived not only in the manor houses circled about with magnolias, and filled within by the fragile odors of antiquity. Separateness flowed through all the South, down cotton rows and wagon ruts, through swamps of sugar cane, over paths of slave quarters, around red hills and wooden-pegged shacks, and under the suction pipes of cotton gins. Separateness was a river of many odors. It smelled like resin dripping from a turpentine's pine as much as it did magnolias."
It finds that the odors, sounds and sights still constituted a separateness of the senses, "having nothing to do with politics, aristocracy or sociology, but only with touch, taste and smell, and the feeling of wholeness and of 'being home.'" The magnolia was still part of that, as was the white dogwood, the redbud and the tulip poplar, primroses, four o'clocks and paw paws. The mind could catch up with history and economics, but the senses lingered with the changeless things, achieving a separateness that was still marked Southern.
"Debts of Democrats Can Be Assets" indicates that one observer had noted that the elections had left disputatious conservative and liberal Democrats with only two binding ties, debts and Texans. Distaste for the opposition leader, which served as a thread of unity for Republicans during the years of FDR, did not serve the Democrats, as many of them, including powerful ones, also liked President Eisenhower. Payment of the debts would leave the Texans, Senator Lyndon Johnson and Speaker Sam Rayburn, to keep the party going. Although Adlai Stevenson would help restore the party's solvency, his voice would be heard little across the land. The Texans, who did not consult with him after titular leadership of the party had fallen to Mr. Stevenson in 1952, had less reason to do so now.
The accomplished political craftsmen, such as Senator Johnson and Speaker Rayburn, might keep the party together, but it wonders where it would be going. The New Deal, which they had once called their program, had now been swallowed up into the "new Republicanism", while Mr. Stevenson's "New America" had been filed away with his campaign speeches.
Senator Johnson appeared to accept the picture of a programless party, saying, "We are a good and reasonable group of men working for the good of the country without parties, labels or cliques."
It suggests that what was good for the country was the Eisenhower program as accepted or amended by the Democrats. That had to be the answer for the opposition party when it did not reach the White House, as election defeats, no matter how narrow, gagged the last chosen leaders of the out-party, and there was no spokesman who could engage in philosophical battle with the in-party while standing above the hue and cry of Congressional carpentry.
It indicates that a movement to provide statutory recognition, a public salary and continuing access to Government information to titular party leaders had met with some popular approval, but none in Congress. Political parties were not bound to follow the leadership of men they offered to lead the nation. Lacking a national leader and divided by sectional conflict, the Democrats, it suggests, might find their debts a very comforting asset during the ensuing four years.
"Refugee Aid: An American Luxury" tells of the Red Cross having appealed for five million dollars to provide food, medicines and other necessities to the people of Hungary and refugees from that country, expecting to feed in Budapest 200,000 persons daily by the end of the year. Almost 100,000 Hungarians had fled into Austria to escape the Soviet tyranny.
It indicates that there was an opportunity for Americans to contribute individually to the care of 300,000 hungry and homeless people who directly or indirectly had arrested the spread of a new barbarism in the world, that their contribution to each American's security and future freedom could not be fully repaid, as they had fought for the freedom of all men. Thus, it suggests that it was a luxury for Americans to provide them with aid.
Whatever the U.S. Government provided would not be enough, as it was hampered by the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act and the type of blundering bureaucracy which had placed Hungarian refugees in the military barracks at Camp Kilmer in New Jersey, with a military leader to greet them.
It suggests that government, even at its best, was an imperfect instrument of communicating sympathy, understanding and gratitude, that thousands of gifts through the Red Cross, CARE or other relief agencies would best express the individual American's desire that hungry Hungarians be fed and the homeless housed.
A piece from the Toledo Times, titled "Wife's Signals Also Tell a Story", indicates that any man who had been married to the same woman for more than a year would understand what the research psychiatrist was getting at when he contended that wordless means of conveying information often were more effective than speech, with the man willing to accept the further contention that although wordless communication often took the place of speech, it more often reinforced, modified or even contradicted it, having had experience in all of those phases.
The man understood, for instance, that one type of glance from his wife's eye at a certain platter and then at him meant that he should urge the dinner guests to have more. He knew that another type of glance at the same things and in the same order warned him not to offer any more of that particular dish because there was no more of it in the house.
He was willing to give credit to the expert's statement that gestural language contained 700,000 distinctly different signals, but he could not understand how the psychiatrist could ever expect a dictionary of gestures to be written, as the largest English dictionaries defined fewer than 600,000 words, 100,000 fewer than the gestures they would be expected to describe.
While on the subject, this program
Drew Pearson indicates that the most sweeping review of U.S. foreign policy since the end of World War II was underway in the Presidential cottage which the President's friends had built for him just off the golf course in Augusta, Ga., wherein the President and Secretary of State Dulles were drafting the principal points of what might become an historic new policy which would reassert American leadership throughout the world. Secretary Dulles was working on the draft while resting at Key West, talking with the President several times by telephone to coordinate their work. Meanwhile, other foreign policy advisers, primarily the National Security Council and Vice-President Nixon, had been working on the same problem in Washington.
The basic issue facing the President and his Administration for some time had been whether to break from the traditional allies, France and England, and line up with the African-Asiatic nations which had once been colonies of France and England. The Afro-Asian advisers within the Administration were led by Vice-President Nixon, with support from U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. During his trip through Asia, Vice-President Nixon had become increasingly sold on the neutralist bloc, despite their flirtations with the Soviets and despite their desire to remain aloof from the rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It was a new approach for Mr. Nixon. When he had run for the Senate in 1950, his campaign had received heavy financial support from the China lobby and relatives of Chiang Kai-shek.
In New York, meanwhile, Ambassador Lodge had been siding increasingly with the Afro-Asian bloc, having lined up U.S. votes on the side of Arabs and the Nehru neutralists, whom the U.S. had once criticized during the Indochina negotiations in Geneva in 1954.
During the illness of Secretary Dulles, Messrs. Nixon and Lodge had been in a position to have their own way, but Secretary Dulles had agreed with them, as he was irked with the British and French for attacking the Suez without consulting the U.S., and probably would have gone just as far if not further than Messrs. Nixon and Lodge.
The pro-French and British group included advisers in the State Department and the National Security Council, who hated to see any break with the traditional allies. The chief leader of that group was the President, and his friendship with the British had gone back to the time of the war when he ruled that a British officer ought have a position opposite every American officer to promote complete Anglo-British cooperation. His London Guild Hall speech had been greeted as one of the great classics in outlining Anglo-American friendship. After the war, he had been presented with part of Culzean Castle in Scotland as a gift of the Scottish people.
While the policy discussions had been in progress, the Nixon-Lodge policy of Asia cooperation actually had been put to a test during secret talks with Prime Minister Nehru in India, taking place through the Indian Embassy in Washington, the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, and the U.N. The result of those talks had been a secret agreement that the U.S. would support the speedy withdrawal of British, French and Israeli troops from Egypt, in return for which, Prime Minister Nehru had agreed to denounce Russia for the Hungarian bloodbath, and had also agreed that Western investments would have to be protected in the Middle East.
A byproduct of the secret talks had been Prime Minister Nehru's invitation to visit Washington, which was canceled after the President's attack of ileitis on June 8. It was reported that the Prime Minister had been miffed when the President chose to undertake the strenuous trip to Panama to the Pan-American Conference instead of the much less strenuous scheduled talk with the Prime Minister in Washington. During recent conversations, some of the messages to Prime Minister Nehru had come personally from the President, and the Prime Minister was now reported to be much happier.
Doris Fleeson tells of the first test of Eisenhower Republicanism in the new Congress being the selection of a chairman of the conference of Republican Senators, succeeding retiring Senator Eugene Millikin of Colorado, forming, along with Minority Leader William Knowland and Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, the senior Republican Senator, the brain trust of the party. The latter two Senators were intimate personally and philosophically and were well to the right of the President. Thus, if the President were to have a spokesman within the inner circle, it would have to be the conference chairman. While the Vice-President presided over the Senate, he did not govern, only casting the deciding vote when there was a tie.
Senators identified with the Old Guard and others professing the President's moderate conservatism had all expressed a willingness to run the conference, but none thus far appeared to have any particular strength. By combining, the avowed Eisenhower Republicans ought be able to name the person, and the legislative test of the President as the prime moving force of the New Republicanism would not lag far behind.
With six liberal Democrats committed to pushing a civil rights program, the Republicans were going to have to go on record properly in some manner. The Democrats said that they would move to amend the rule to make it easier to break filibusters, leaving it to Vice-President Nixon to rule on whether that motion itself was debatable indefinitely, as the Southern Senators contended.
In a similar situation during the famous "80-Worst" Congress of 1947-48, Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Ohio, as the presiding Senator when there was no Vice-President, had ruled for the South. The usual combination of Southern Democrats and conservative Republicans had voted to uphold that ruling. Most observers believed that Vice-President Nixon, looking ahead to 1960 and his candidacy for the presidency, would cast his lot with the proponents of civil rights, leaving the question as to how many Republicans would join Democratic liberals to uphold such a ruling.
Theoretically, the number of Senators appeared to be present to sustain such a ruling, but the pro-Eisenhower Senators had not thus far proved a match for Senators Knowland and Bridges, and unless the President threw his weight behind it, the conservative coalition would probably rule. The President had in his corner the fact that a dozen Republican Senators would be up for re-election in marginal states in 1958 and he could give or withhold his blessing based on the support they would provide his program.
Democrats would be split on civil rights as usual, with Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson taking the South's part, having said he did not favor changing the rule on filibusters, likely to make it a personal point of loyalty to him among the moderates not to provoke the South with a last-ditch fight.
A letter from the president of the Mecklenburg County Young Republicans Club suggests that the 1956 campaign should have removed any doubts as to the benefits of a strong two-party system in the state. He suggests that the bill designed to beat Representative Charles Jonas by rigging the ballot in favor of a straight-party vote had resulted from one-party control of the Legislature and the threat of retaliation which one of the top Democratic leaders was alleged to have made to the voters of Mecklenburg County for crossing party lines on the ballot, proving as repulsive to Democrats as it was to Republicans. He finds it obvious that the citizens of the state, regardless of party, were not proud of the progress made by the state, which for 54 years had been under the exclusive control of Democrats. He finds that a book, Sleeping Tar-Heels, by Dr. Roma S. Cheek of the Duke University department of political science, had listed North Carolina as 48th among the states in earnings for its manufacturing employees, 43rd in per capita income, 44th in bank deposits, 46th in the large number of pupils per teacher in the classroom, 45th in percentage of retail sales, 48th in public welfare expenditures and the highest of all states in aggravated assault crimes. He asserts that a strong two-party political system assured the voters that each party would put up for each office the very best candidates they could, while in a one-party system, those who were elected were often men who had nothing else to do. Such a system often led to injustices to a minority group, whether Democrat or Republican. State Senator Cutler Moore of Lumberton had predicted that the heavy Republican vote in the Piedmont and western counties of the state had killed any chance of reapportionment in the coming General Assembly of 1957, Senator Moore having indicated that he would vote against reapportionment because additional legislators from the Piedmont might turn out to be Republicans. The writer indicates that Mecklenburg and Guilford Counties, plus possibly some western counties, were entitled to increased representation in the Senate and that a strong two-party system would help to eliminate machine control. He urges those who believed in the basic principles of the Republican Party to register as Republicans.
We note that though the Tar Heels may have been sleeping on the gridiron in the season past, they would be able to claim by late March a number one status in at least one category across the national landscape, undoubtedly much to the consternation of some at Duke, starting with their initial victory of the season the following evening against Furman, with their star, Lennie Rosenbluth, breaking a school individual game scoring record, with 47 points—which would stand until December, 1964, when senior Billy Cunningham would score 48 points against Tulane, only to have that record fall the following season when Bob Lewis would score 49 against Florida State, both of the latter two games we heard on radio and without going to sleep, both occurring in the era before coach Dean Smith, starting in 1966-67, would find that balanced team play achieved overall season results which outshone those from individual stellar performances in December, still the creed of Tar Heel basketball.
A letter writer, director of region five of the AFL-CIO, indicates having listened to the televised speech of Governor Luther Hodges of the prior Thursday on the subject of streamlining the tax structure of the state, and was unable to agree with the Governor when he stated that the predominant industries, textiles, tobacco and furniture, were low-paid and required little skill in their operation. The writer says that he had come from the basic steel industry, which was generally regarded as highly paid, and that he did not believe the average steelworker had more skill and ability than the average textile, tobacco or furniture worker, that workers were paid in proportion to the amount of organization they had in an industry. He regards an unholy alliance between employers in the state as keeping workers from being paid decent wages, with even new industries entering the state being pressured to prevent them from paying decent wages. The textile, tobacco and furniture products of the state were among the best available and despite the low wages paid to the workers, the companies did not reduce their prices to North Carolina consumers. He concludes that the revision of the tax structure appeared to be aimed at relieving industry of its responsibility and placing the burden of taxation on lower and middle income groups.
A letter writer, who remains anonymous, discusses the proposed pay raise for City police officers, indicating that she was the wife of a policeman. She indicates that the 48-hour week which they worked, spending of off-duty time in court, working on holidays and the danger to which they were subject while in uniform all made them deserving of higher pay, especially with the rising cost of living. She says that she supposes the people of Charlotte would like to go back to the days when they had one officer and a bunch of trained men to serve under him, "or do they watch 'Gunsmoke' on TV?"
A letter writer says that each person had many blessings for which to be thankful and could find many kindnesses to perform, such as writing to a shut-in a cheerful letter or finding some way to help lighten a friend's load. She believes that the secret to happiness lay in giving one's self for others, advises putting Christ first in one's life, leading to happiness regardless of burden or sickness. "For with Him with you, you are never alone, and he makes your illness easier to bear."
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