The Charlotte News
Tuesday, April 10, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State Dulles and 14 Congressional leaders this date had discussed the grave Middle East situation, including the possible use of U.S. forces there. House Republican Leader Joseph Martin of Massachusetts said to reporters following the meeting that no request for authority to send U.S. troops was contemplated at present. Senate Minority Leader William Knowland of California said that Secretary Dulles had reviewed the Middle East situation but that "no legislative action was requested". Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn of Texas and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas declined to say much more than that they had been briefed by Secretary Dulles on the Middle East. The meeting had the atmosphere of an emergency session, as news reports told of bloody fighting between Israeli and Egyptian troops in Palestine. The President, vacationing in Augusta, Ga., was keeping in close touch with the situation, with staff indicating that he had talked by telephone with Secretary Dulles during the morning. The President had issued a statement late the previous day saying that the U.S. would observe its commitment within "constitutional means to oppose any aggression" in the Middle East.
In Augusta, the President called this date for speedy Congressional approval of a six-point program to bolster the "power for peace" through attracting more U.S. youth into a military career, saying in a statement that only when the country had created a military career service which could compete with the attractive opportunities available in civilian pursuits would the country be able to stop the wasteful losses from the armed forces and attract individuals to those services. He made the statement in two identical letters, one to Vice-President Nixon and the other to Speaker Rayburn.
In Parris Island, S.C., a Marine
Staff Sergeant, Matthew McKeon, 31, of Worcester, Mass., had taken a
group of 75 recruits on Sunday night into a swampy marshland
bordering the base for training, and five had drowned and another had
disappeared. He said this date that he had made the night march "to
teach them discipline". General Randolph Pate, the Marine Corps
commandant, said at a press conference that the sergeant did not have
authority for disciplinary matters or for scheduling such a march,
indicating that it was "most unusual" and the first time he
had heard of any such thing happening. Maj. General Joseph Burger,
commanding general of the base, also stated that the march was not
scheduled. General Pate said that he believed the Marine Corps could
handle the matter without a Congressional inquiry. The sergeant said
that the words "I'm sorry" could not express to the parents
how he felt, because he could not find words to express his grief. He
said that he had led the platoon to the water and had gone in first,
had gone out a little distance and then traveled parallel to the
bank, that it was no excuse that he had not been in the area
previously and did not realize the stream was a tidal stream or that
it was unusually deep for that area. He said that the platoon had
followed him into the stream and he had noticed that some had gone
too far out and so he ordered everyone out of the water, seeing that
some were in distress and started toward them, bringing one man back
to shore and then started back for others, one man having grabbed him
for assistance and they both had gone down. He had struggled for some
minutes to get that man out of the water, but the man had fought
wildly and had gone limp, after which the sergeant could not find
him. He then swam toward a group of about four or five men, but found
the tide too strong and they had disappeared. He said that he was the
last man out of the water and that some of the men had undoubtedly
died trying to save others. General Pate said that the court of
inquiry would seek to ascertain whether the sergeant had acted for
the purpose of discipline, stating that he was a junior instructor
who had a good reputation with his seniors as a drill instructor,
with a fine past record in the Navy and Marines. He had been assigned
to Parris Island the prior February, about the time that his platoon
had gone there to begin training. General Pate also stated that the
system of recruit training used in the Marine Corps, as taught at
Parris Island, had withstood the test of years of combat experience,
and that the conduct of the Marines in the wars fought by the country
had demonstrated that they were rightly known as superbly trained
fighting men, that over 192,000 recruits had completed training at
Parris Island since the beginning of January, 1951. He asked that the
history of the Corps be remembered and that no premature opinions be
formed regarding modification to the system of training until a full
evaluation
By grimly sardonic coincidence, this episode
A national "Operation Alert 1956", a war drill to rehearse what might occur in a nuclear attack on 76 U.S. cities, would be held the following July 20 to 26. The President, the armed forces, and the Canadian Government would participate, according to an announcement this date by the Office of Defense Mobilization. It would be a combined civil defense and Government-evacuation exercise, similar to but larger than the one conducted the previous year. Among the 76 areas affected would be 63 population centers in the U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Canal Zone and nine airbases and four installations of the Atomic Energy Commission. The drill would assume that 52 areas would be hit by single bombs, 24 by attacks by between two and five bombs each, with the San Francisco-Oakland area to be assumed to be hit with six bombs during a second attack two hours later. The Canal Zone, Puerto Rico and Hawaii would get no warning time, while the continental U.S. would have advance warning ranging between one hour, 40 minutes up to three hours, 50 minutes. The drill would assume that bombs would be dropped ranging in destructive power equivalent to between 20 tons and five million tons of TNT. The President and Cabinet officers would evacuate Washington at the time of the warning signal, along with chosen "key" Government workers, ranging from agency heads to stenographers.
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover this date, in a speech prepared for a national conference on parole, said that it was "ill-advised" to grant parole and probation to hardened criminals, pointing out that 63.8 percent of prisoners confined to Federal institutions in 1954 for sentences of more than a year were previous offenders. He said that he appreciated the fact that for every flagrant mistake in parole and probation, there were scores of cases reflecting "dynamic reformation and rehabilitation". He clarified that he was only speaking of the "ill-advised" parole and probation, which were rotten apples tainting the whole barrel, that probation and parole had a salutary place in the penal system generally to provide reform. He also said that 11 of the 18 FBI agents who had been killed in the line of duty had been slain by ex-convicts who had been granted parole, probation or some other form of clemency. He submitted a long list of major crimes in which parolees had figured, including the 2.5 million dollar Brinks holdup in Boston six years earlier. Some 600 state and Federal specialists in penal and probation work were attending the conference, called by Attorney General Herbert Brownell, to examine ideas to establish uniform practices in the field of clemency. Chief Justice Earl Warren, former Alameda County, Calif., District Attorney and California Attorney General, had told the group the previous day that there ought to be "public awareness of the fact that the parole of a prisoner is not an act of coddling", that it was an extension of the state's effort to assist the wrongdoer in re-establishing him or herself in society.
A foundation for closer coordination of agencies in handling Charlotte's juvenile delinquency problem was set forth this date, after an unprecedented conference called by Mayor Philip Van Every, who appointed a committee to study the situation and develop recommendations for greater cooperation between various agencies on the issue. Wallace Kuralt, superintendent of the Welfare Department, the judge of the Juvenile & Domestic Relations Court, Charlotte Police Chief Frank Littlejohn and Mecklenburg County Police Chief Joe Whitley would comprise the committee. It had been brought out at the meeting that during a five-year period covered by a police list of 93 youngsters who were repeat offenders, 5,000 cases had been handled by the Juvenile Court, with less than two percent therefore of those having been recidivists. Mr. Kuralt had said that 41 of those 93 were under 12 years of age and legally could not be committed to a corrective institution, also indicating that of the 93, two had superior mental capacity, 47 were normal and 32 were subnormal, with nine being "feeble-minded". Other figures showed that five of the parents of the 93 repeat offenders had genuinely been concerned about their children, with eight being indifferent and 80 showing inadequate interest.
In Laurinburg, N.C., a 54-day bid to raise 3.5 million dollars had begun this date with serious speeches in a carnival-like atmosphere, before an estimated crowd of 1,500 on tent-covered grounds of the First Presbyterian Church, all as part of praise for Laurinburg and pep talks for the new consolidated Presbyterian college to be located in the town. Governor Luther Hodges was scheduled to speak during the afternoon. Speakers indicated that the primary use of money from the new drive would be for three million dollars worth of buildings, that Laurinburg would raise 1.5 million in its drive to obtain the school, and the transferred assets of the consolidated schools would roughly amount to another 1.5 million. The schools to be consolidated were Flora Macdonald College of Red Springs, Presbyterian Junior College of Maxton and Peace College of Raleigh.
Dick Young of The News indicates that additional costs for the perimeter homeowner after annexation of his territory by the City of Charlotte would range between $1.50 and $140 annually, disclosed in a long report on an annexation study just completed by the staff of the City-County Planning Commission, a report scheduled to be formally considered by members of the planning board at a meeting the following morning, after which it would be transmitted to the City Council. We look forward to reading voraciously every line of that.
In Oshima, Japan, two young lovers had embraced and then leaped into the mouth of a famous suicide volcano of prewar days, but wound up in a hospital, severely burned and bruised, but alive. They had decided to commit suicide when they learned that the female of the couple was suffering from bone tuberculosis. They had landed about 30 feet below the lip of the volcano on the edge of the molten lava, at which point their urge to commit suicide had faded, and the male of the couple placed the female on his back and tried to find a way out of the crater, three hours later managing to scramble to the top where rescuers then completed the task.
In Monte Carlo, Prince Rainier III and actress Grace Kelly would sail on their honeymoon, after their marriage April 18, to the Isle of Capri, Naples and Rome, and perhaps go on to the Greek islands, with the highlight of the trip being a stop in Rome on April 24, where they would receive a gala reception from the Italian Government and diplomatic corps. The following day, the couple would have an audience with Pope Pius XII, to be greeted at the Vatican with ceremonies reserved for heads of state.
Dust storms had diminished in the southern plains this date, with the gusty weather moving eastward, bringing rain and snow into the lower and middle Mississippi Valley, with snow having fallen in eastern sections of Kansas and Oklahoma and drenching rains having doused wide areas of Arkansas, Mississippi, eastern Texas and Missouri.
On the editorial page, "City-County Building Is Clearly Needed" finds that the five-story modern new office building for City-County government, as proposed to the County Commission the previous day, was much needed, if the functions of government were to be performed with maximum efficiency and economy.
The only regrettable factor involved was an apparent lack of communication between the joint committee which had formulated the plans and the City and County School Boards, which were seeking a separate appropriation for a separate building. The joint committee had recommended that the school administrative offices be housed in the new office building rather than in an expensive separate structure.
It finds that the joint committee's recommendations ought be implemented as soon as practicable.
"The Schools: Years of Uncertainty—I" finds that years of uncertainty in education in the state were about to begin and that before they would conclude, the public school system would be changed radically, if not abandoned completely or at least partially. It might be desegregated completely or partially or remain segregated for reasons other than color. No one knew what would take place, but there would be change.
The upcoming special legislative session during the summer would provide the initial thrust for that change, with the purpose being to keep the public school system and to maintain it in a segregated state. But since the Supreme Court had ruled that segregation by race was unconstitutional, the Legislature would seek to continue segregation by means which it hoped the Federal courts would find legal.
The State Advisory Committee on Education, which had released its recommendations and report the previous Thursday, had recommended two changes to the State Constitution, which would be taken up in the special legislative session, one to permit school systems to vote to close their public schools, and the other to allow payment from the State of tuition costs to private, nonsectarian schools for students who did not wish to attend desegregated schools.
It suggests that the Committee had the alternative of recommending that the state form a system of free private schools, and abandon the public schools, but also notes that that it would probably not have survived tests in the Federal courts, which had held, for instance, in the case of primary elections, that trying to privatize them, treating political parties as private clubs, was still considered state action because of the fundamental nature of the vote, protected by the 15th Amendment, and thus had been struck down as unconstitutional.
It indicates that the following day, it would take up the problems of the tuition grant plan.
"Keep Law Enforcement out of Politics" finds that the announcement the previous day by Attorney General Herbert Brownell of the Administration's proposed civil rights legislation had been good up to a point, that the Justice Department did need a new division to handle the increased number of civil rights cases. But it disagrees with the proposal to have a bipartisan commission assigned to investigate individual grievances, as it took the matter out of the judicial realm and placed it in the political realm.
It finds that in so recommending, the Justice Department was essentially passing the buck to the political inclinations of a bipartisan commission, finding that ridiculous as it would be an open invitation to emotionalism of the worst sort.
It concludes that legal matters ought be confined to the courtroom rather than released into the "rowdy arena of politics."
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Fads and Spare Tires", tells of Dr. Emory Bogardus, dean emeritus of the University of Southern California's graduate school, having listed among contemporary fads two-tone automobile paint jobs, filtered cigarettes, tortoise shell glasses, high fidelity record players and spare tires mounted outside the trunk. He explained, "Fads are the expressions of persons seeking ways of becoming individualistic."
It begs to differ, indicating that the dictionary defined a fad as a "custom which people follow for a time with exaggerated zeal," finding it therefore to be something which was not individualistic but rather followed by the crowd. It might start out as something individualistic, but once the crowd picked it up, it was simply a matter of conformity. If a fad was really rugged individualism, then all good Americans ought to be in favor of it.
It concludes that the answer might be that a fad began when a few individuals wanted to be individualistic, but only became a fad when more people joined in and made it a mass effort, in which case, everyone could support a fad until it became one.
Drew Pearson tells of former President Truman having been asked whether the current Congress would be a do-nothing Congress, as he had described the 80th Congress, controlled by Republicans, during the 1948 presidential campaign. His response was that one could not tell until the Congress was over. Representative Kenneth Keating of New York did not agree, claiming that the current Congress was getting nowhere fast.
Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson disputed that notion, pridefully pointing to the fact that the Congress had passed 412 bills, even if 220 of them were private bills which helped members of Congress get re-elected but which did nothing for the general public. Moreover, the other bills were not major bills. As Congress had returned from the Easter recess, it appeared to outside observers that Mr. Keating and his fellow Republicans were correct, as the current Congress was on its way to doing not much of anything.
Mr. Pearson suggests the reason for it was that Senator Johnson, who had done a great job as Majority Leader the previous year, was now handicapped by his heart condition, having suffered a heart attack the prior July 4, and had to return to Texas to rest every two or three weeks. He suggests that just as the country could not be led by a part-time President, the Senate could not be led by a part-time Majority Leader. Furthermore, House Speaker Sam Rayburn, one of the great legislators of the time, was getting old and was worried about the long illness of his sister, and so had been absent from Washington a lot. He had been trying to keep the peace within the party, which had Representative Adam Clayton Powell of Harlem on one side, and race-conscious Georgians and Mississippians on the other.
The result had been that the school construction bill was stymied in the Rules Committee of the House, thanks to Congressman Howard Smith of Virginia. Mr. Rayburn could obtain enough votes to get it out of committee and to a vote on the floor, but he had stalled, not wanting to inflame tempers and tear the party apart with the debate over segregation. Friends of blacks, as Congressman James Roosevelt of California and Richard Bolling of Missouri, had persuaded many members of the House that segregation should not be mixed up with the school construction bill and that the amendment proposed by Representative Powell to bar Federal funding to any school district which remained segregated, ought therefore be defeated. Under those conditions, the bill would probably pass.
Regarding civil rights, a bill to protect the voting rights of blacks had made some progress in the House Judiciary Committee and would probably reach the floor for a vote, but a similar and broader bill in the Senate, sponsored by Senator Thomas Hennings of Missouri, had little chance of passing because of a likely filibuster.
Regarding Social Security, Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia and the Administration were allied in trying to block reforms to provide pensions to disabled workers of 50 years, reduce the pension age for women from 65 to 62 and extend pension benefits to more white-collar and professional workers. Despite the opposition by Senator Byrd, however, that bill would likely pass, as it had already passed the House.
Regarding highway construction, the Democrats initially had fallen for the propaganda issued by the trucking lobby and put the cost of highway construction as much or proportionately more on the ordinary motorist as on the trucks. Republicans had taken advantage of the "Democratic stupidity—or obeisance to the lobby—and changed" the bill, but legislative wrangling was now occurring over another lobby-sponsored provision, to reimburse telephone companies for their facilities which were displaced by the widening of highways.
Regarding minimum wage revision, the one-dollar minimum wage had just gone into effect on March 1, but there was an attempt to raise it to $1.25, and that would be unlikely to pass during the current session, the block in the House being Labor Committee chairman Graham Barden of North Carolina, who could not be budged. The Senate Labor Committee chairman, Senator Lister Hill of Alabama, would permit minimum wage hearings, but would not allow the bill to get beyond the talking stage.
Regarding public housing, Senator Herbert Lehman of New York was pushing a bill to provide 600,000 low-rent public housing units in three years, plus an ambitious program of low-cost loans for the middle-income brackets. Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana had introduced the Administration's housing bill, which provided for only 35,000 public housing units the following year. Mr. Pearson indicates that a compromise, closer to the Capehart proposal than to the Lehman version, probably would be reported to the Senate, and in such form would have a good chance of passing, provided it did not get tangled in the segregation issue.
Regarding income tax cuts, no hearings had been held, except on measures to extend corporate and excise taxes which otherwise would expire automatically. There had been a lot of talk in Democratic policy meetings about a drive for tax reduction for the low-income brackets, but that talk had not yet been translated into action, with the chief difficulty being that tax measures had to pass through the conservative House Ways & Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee.
Stewart Alsop suggests that the President's subordinates might be so eager to protect his health that they were denying him key information, the only reasonable explanation for the President not being aware at his recent press conference of a communication, via the U.S. Embassy in London, from Prime Minister Anthony Eden that the situation in the Middle East had become so dire that hours mattered, pressing for joint decisions and action by Anglo-American allies. But at the press conference, though the message was undeniably conveyed to the Embassy, the President appeared sincerely puzzled by questions concerning the communication, saying that he was certain there was no recent communication with the Prime Minister regarding the Middle East, though they often spoke of the subject, and, in response to another question, that the British, if as reported were pressing for the U.S. to take a firmer stand on the Middle East, had not pressed him. He recalled, in response to a third question on the matter, specifically anent reports in the British press regarding the communication from the Prime Minister, that they must not have been referring to anything recent as the last communication with Mr. Eden had to have occurred sometime before the North American summit meeting held at White Sulphur Springs in West Virginia on March 24. He also suggested that the reports might concern some message which he had not received yet.
Mr. Alsop considers the responses mysterious, as the questions largely regarded information which had appeared in the Alsops' column a week earlier and had undeniably occurred. Mr. Alsop considers two possibilities, that the President was dissembling for diplomatic or other reasons, but concludes that he was not a dissembler by nature and his replies suggested that he was honestly puzzled by the questions. Another possible explanation was that the message had been bogged down in the bureaucracy of the State Department, but it appeared hard to believe that such an important message from a head of state would not receive high priority. Thus, he was left with the explanation that the President's advisers were keeping things from him.
He suggests that they were doing so even before his heart attack to avoid unnecessary pressure and worry for the President, but that since the attack, the tendency had been increased, laudable within limits, but limits which were passed when such an important message was either concealed from the President or its meaning muffled. The President had complained on occasion that those around him were overly protecting him, and Mr. Alsop concludes that a chief executive could not function properly if he was "wrapped in yards of cotton batting."
Marquis Childs indicates that in 75 embassies and nearly 300 consulates throughout the world, the U.S. had representatives, and that it was a sad reflection on the richest and most free-spending nation that those representatives were treated like poor relations who could not be trusted with the silverware.
The State Department had sought from Congress a million dollars for what was called the "representation allowance", in some circles derisively referred to as funding for "diplomacy by dipsomania" or the "whiskey allowance", while some columnists and commentators referred to it as the "Martini circuit".
But the fact of the matter was that diplomats had to entertain in their countries as part of their responsibilities. In major countries, the entertainment bill could be quite high when there were special functions ongoing, such as high-level conferences, during which dinner parties were held sometimes for as many as 1,000 guests, costing between $4,000 and $5,000, a third of the $15,000 personally allowed the ambassador out of the $21,900 for the major embassies, in London, Paris, and Rome. It meant that the ambassador in those posts had to be independently wealthy and dip into his or her own pocket for that entertainment. For that reason, no career foreign service officer, unless having a private income or a wealthy wife, could afford those posts.
In one capital visited by Mr. Childs during the current year, the U.S. ambassador was using an official limousine which was a 1951 model, while the ambassador of a power supported entirely by U.S. aid had arrived in a 1955 Cadillac. The ambassador for the U.S. was not complaining, but did believe that the contrast was striking.
He suggests that if the U.S. was to play a part in the power struggle and if it was in fact the richest and most powerful nation in the world, as it claimed, then reservations regarding the budget allowed for diplomats had to be put aside and trust and confidence placed in the men and women who represented the country overseas. Congressional parsimony with respect to the embassies thus needed to end.
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