The Charlotte News

Saturday, April 14, 1956

ONE EDITORIAL

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Cairo that U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold had left the city this date with the optimistic statement that he had accomplished in his peace mission what he had come to do. Maj. General Edson Burns, the chief U.N. truce supervisor, said that the Secretary-General expected to get a closer look at the Egyptian-Israeli border situation with a brief stop at Gaza in the Egyptian-held Gaza Strip. He was en route to Beirut in Lebanon, where he had established his headquarters. Before leaving Cairo, the Secretary-General had talked again for 30 minutes with Egyptian Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser and for more than an hour with the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Mahmoud Fawzi. His mission appeared to have succeeded in effecting at least a temporary cessation of the smoldering situation in the frontier, as both Israel and Egypt had given him written assurances that they would refrain from hostile acts, though Israel had excepted acts in self-defense. Quiet had generally prevailed since the prior Thursday when there had been a brief aerial exchange of border fire. Egypt was said to have given further assurances that it would remove Arab commandos from Israel. Israel had accused the commandos of killing 14 Israelis and wounding 32 during the previous week. Mr. Hammarskjold, who was expected to spend a month conferring with Arab and Israeli leaders, was scheduled to go to Israel on Monday, following a weekend of staff work in Beirut. He said that he had sent Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion a message asking for further assurance that his nation had given orders to stop the shooting across the border, saying that Egypt had promised to issue such orders. He was expected to take to Israel a plan to withdraw troops of both sides about a third of a mile back from the border. Premier Nasser had originated the idea the previous summer and had received endorsement from the U.N. Security Council, with the plan at the time having been rejected by Israel, but unconfirmed reports out of Cairo now said that Israel had agreed to the plan in principle. One of the most dangerous aspects of the frontier situation, in the opinion of many observers, had been the heavy concentration of troops there over the previous six months.

Meanwhile, five scattered new incidents had been reported by Israel, although relatively quiet since Thursday. At a point close to the Jordanian border, the Israelis had reported that an Israeli shepherd had been ambushed and wounded by a shot fired early during the morning, that five Israeli soldiers had been injured by a land mine east of the Gaza Strip, that shots had been fired at an Israeli police vehicle near Meron, close to the Syrian border, with no one injured, that a child had been wounded in the Israeli section of Jerusalem by a shot fired from the Arab section, and that a shooting directed at a group of Israeli workers had occurred in the central Jordan valley.

The Navy this date commissioned its mightiest ship yet, the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Saratoga, bigger, faster and more powerful than any ocean fighting vessel afloat. It was the second ship to be launched out of the class of carrier with the U.S.S. Forrestal, but had advances over the latter ship. Both were 60,000 tons, but the Saratoga, at 1,039 feet in length, was three feet longer than the Forrestal, and also was swifter and more potently equipped, with its 250,000 horsepower engines having the highest propulsion force of any ever installed on an American vessel, about the equivalent of a hundred locomotives. Its top speed was secret, but it cruised at an average of about 34 knots, the equivalent of a little more than 38 mph.

Representative Chet Holifield of California, a member of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, said that there had been some encouraging developments toward realization of an atomic-powered airplane, but no promise of immediate success, that there might be a breakthrough in a couple of years or that it could be seven years, that no one knew the timetable.

Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said this date that Congress should enact the new Government health care plan for the wives and children of servicemen, in basically the same form as that which had already been approved by the House. The Committee had completed public hearings the previous day on the Administration-supported bill, and Senator Russell said that he expected the Committee to act on it promptly. The bill provided that immediate families of men and women of the armed forces had a right to free or virtually free health services. Previously, they had been treated only to the extent that facilities were available. Patients would receive many free services, but would pay nominal outpatient fees, and the first $25 of major hospitalization costs. The Defense Department, supporting the measure, had testified that it would provide dependents with better health services than were presently available from any private group plan. The Department had set the maximum cost of the plan during its first year at 76 million dollars. The House version had authorized the Department to require maximum use of military facilities before paying for civilian care, a feature which the AMA and American Hospital Association had opposed, demanding that dependents have complete freedom of choice between military and civilian care.

In Fulton, N.Y., a letter from Marine Private Charles Reilly of Clyde, one of the six Marine recruits who had drowned in a swamp near the boot camp at Parris Island, S.C., during a forced march by their drill instructor the previous Sunday night, had told of his being punished for drinking a bottle of pop. The letter had been dated April 8, the day of the tragedy, and was made public the previous day by a lifelong friend of the dead Marine. Private Reilly, 18, had written that a drill instructor had made him drink 19 bottles of pop as punishment, after he had been caught drinking a bottle in the post exchange, where it was available for purchase but recruits were forbidden from consuming it. His funeral was to be held this date in Clyde in western New York.

In Augsburg, West Germany, U.S. Army Maj. General Derrill Daniel, commander of the 11th Airborne Division, had ordered every officer and man in his division restricted to their posts for the weekend because of a wave of brawls in German beer halls, involving some members of the division, saying that he had taken the measure "to protect the reputation of the division and to maintain harmonious relations with the Germans." It was the first time that a U.S. commander in postwar Germany had restricted an entire division to their posts as a disciplinary measure, the order pertaining to between 10,000 and 15,000 men. A spokesman said that disciplinary action against individual soldiers involved in the fracases had already been undertaken, but details of the incidents were not made public. German newspapers had reported that some of the incidents had involved both soldiers and Germans. General Daniel had said that the incidents were "damaging our reputation and endangering our relations with the Germans." He said that there was a small number of personnel within the division pulling down the reputation, prestige and casting reflections on the entire division.

In Augusta, Ga., the President, still on his week-long working vacation, was said by White House press secretary James Hagerty this date to have not yet decided whether he would veto or sign the farm bill passed by the Congress, but would announce his decision early the following week, possibly on Monday. The President and Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson had discussed the measure for more than two hours, with Mr. Hagerty afterward saying that the President still wanted to study all the technical details of the bill prior to making his decision. The President and Mr. Benson had both stated that they did not like the bill and Mr. Benson had termed it "unacceptable". There had also still not been any decision on whether the President would provide a nationwide television and radio address the following week to explain whatever action he might take on the bill. The President would fly back to Washington the following afternoon.

In Southern Pines, North Carolina Democratic leaders were planning to greet Adlai Stevenson when he visited the town early the following week to visit his sister, Mrs. Ernest Ives, for four days. He had originally planned to arrive this date, but friends had said the previous day that his visit had been postponed for a day. Governor Luther Hodges and other high state officials and party leaders had been invited to a reception and dinner for Mr. Stevenson on Monday afternoon, with the hosts for that meeting being the director of the State Department of Conservation and Development, William P. Saunders, and the State Highway commissioner, Forrest Lockey, to be held at a rural retreat of Mr. Saunders near Marston. The Governor had repeatedly endorsed Mr. Stevenson for the 1956 Democratic nomination. The only public function on Mr. Stevenson's itinerary was an "open house" in the Aberdeen school gymnasium on Monday evening, sponsored by the Moore County Stevenson-for-President Club. He was expecting to rest and work on campaign speeches during the remainder of his visit.

In Milwaukee, a strike of bus and trolley workers had continued this date, as Federal mediators continued a determined effort to resolve the strike, though efforts to arrange new settlement discussions the previous night had failed after both sides, though not refusing to meet, said they had nothing new to offer. The strike had begun the previous early morning, when 1,570 drivers and 530 maintenance men, members of division 998 of the Amalgamated Association of Street, Electric Railway and Motor Coach Employees, had walked off their jobs demanding more money.

In New York, doctors said that the eyesight of syndicated newspaper labor columnist Victor Reisel was failing and that the ensuing several days would be crucial in his fight to save his eyesight, following an unknown assailant having thrown sulphuric acid into his eyes in the early morning hours of April 5 after Mr. Reisel, 41, had left a Broadway restaurant.

Emery Wister of The News indicates that the Charlotte Municipal Airport manager this date had proposed a new parking plan, which would mean the end of free parking at the field, as he said they had to do something because of the number of cars being parked at the field having increased greatly during the previous few weeks, prompting many complaints that there were no spaces available. He was proposing that parking meters would be installed in all spaces in the main lot just in front of the building.

In Los Angeles, Carl Lamb had been chosen to head the local Lions Club.

For those who have not yet learned to read, Elvis had again come to town, this time unannounced and driving a nondescript Pontiac, causing all the girls to congregate around his car, inside and out.

On the editorial page, "Virginia Plan: Idle and Unfortified", a by-lined piece by Robert C. Smith, formerly of North Carolina, prize-winning staff writer for the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, tells of Virginia's Gray Plan having been "allowed to idle, unfortified, menaced by segregation extremists and the enigma of the courts." It was the only plan toward or away from desegregation which the voters of the state had approved, and yet one observer had remarked recently, "If the interpositionists don't get it, the NAACP will."