The Charlotte News
Monday, April 16, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Tel Aviv, Israel, that 12 French-type Ouragan jet planes had spearheaded an air parade of Israel's military strength during its eighth anniversary celebration of independence in Haifa this date. Highly placed Israeli military sources had reported the previous day that a newer jet plane, the French Mystere, would make its appearance during the parade, but none had been on display and there was no official confirmation of the report that 12 of those planes had actually been delivered to Israel. The military sources had stated the previous day that those planes would somewhat balance Egypt's acquisition of Soviet MIG-15 jets in a cotton bartering transaction from Czechoslovakia. The Ouragans had never been displayed publicly in Israel previously, and were shown along with the British-made Meteor jets, taking part in the aviation section of a two-hour military parade reviewed by President Izhak Ben-Zvi and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, along with Army chief of staff, Maj. General Moshe Dayan, and thousands of spectators.
U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold was scheduled to arrive in Israel the following day to continue his peace mission, an effort to quell the conflict between the Arab states and Israel. The border area had been comparatively quiet this date, but was still uneasy in the wake of the Secretary-General's first week of efforts at persuasion of both sides to reach a peaceful settlement of recent hostilities. An Egyptian spokesman charged that Israel had violated the Secretary-General's newly invoked cease-fire eight times during the previous 48 hours, the spokesman indicating that Israelis had fired into the Egyptian-held Gaza Strip five times the previous day and that two Israeli planes had flown over the Strip for five minutes on Saturday. They claimed to have kept their word with the Secretary-General and refused to return the fire. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion set the theme of the somber observance of the anniversary in a broadcast the previous night to the nation, warning that if war were to break out, "our enemies will meet the power and heroism of our defense forces which will give back to the aggressor two blows for one." In Cairo, speaking before newly graduated Army officers, Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser declared that Egypt was surrounded by "enemies who try to degrade our honor. We are united in one line and our policy is aimed at achieving our own welfare. Egypt now looks to its armed forces of the main power which will defend her." Egypt and Israel had agreed unconditionally to stop shooting, except in self-defense. Mr. Hammarskjold had left Cairo the prior Saturday, following initial talks with Premier Nasser, saying that he had accomplished what he had set out to do, and would confer this date with Lebanese leaders before proceeding to Israel the following day.
The President this date vetoed the farm bill, and would provide a nationwide address via radio and television this night to explain his veto. In the message accompanying the veto, the President had said to Congress that the high price support bill "would do harm to every agricultural region of the country and also to the interests of consumers." The bill would have returned farm price supports to a 90 percent fixed rate of parity for one year, eliminating the Administration's flexible price supports. Congressional supporters of the measure had conceded that there was no chance for enactment of the bill over the veto, requiring a two-thirds vote in both houses. The veto message indicated that the Administration would take four actions under existing law "to improve farm income" at present, that it would impose price supports on five basic crops, wheat, corn, cotton, rice and peanuts, set at a level of at least 82.5 percent of parity, which the President said should ensure national averages of wheat at two dollars per bushel, corn at $1.50 per bushel, and rice at $4.50 per hundred pounds, while price estimates for cotton and peanuts were not provided, that for the current year, the support price of "manufacturing milk"—that being used in the making of butter, cheese, ice cream and other manufactured dairy products as distinguished from milk sold for beverages—would be increased to $3.25 per hundred pounds and the support price of butter fat increased to 58.6 cents per pound. In addition, more than 400 million dollars of the Agriculture Department funds, "where assistance will be constructive", would be used to strengthen the prices of perishable farm commodities for the ensuing fiscal year, and, finally, the President had urged the Congress to enact his soil bank plan "as promptly as possible" and before the fall seeding, the plan having been part of the vetoed bill. That plan was designed to provide Government subsidies to farmers not to farm acreage with crops which were in surplus.
In Newark, Senator Estes Kefauver, visiting in advance of the New Jersey Democratic primary the following day, said that he had gained strength during the previous week and predicted that he would win "all over the state". The Senator had conducted a one-day tour of the state the previous day, somewhat dampened by rain and fog. At stake were 72 convention delegates from the state's districts plus at-large delegates, with each delegate having a half vote in the nomination process. Voters would choose between delegates pledged to Senator Kefauver and an unpledged slate proposed by the regular Democratic organization. Before he had left the previous Wednesday, following five days of handshaking and speech-making in the state, the Senator said that he planned to capture between 16 and 20 of the district delegates, telling a Newark audience the previous night, however, that they were much stronger than before, though offering no prediction as to how many of the delegates he now thought he would win. Governor Robert Meyner, who headed the party organization slate, had taken no sides in the contest between the Senator and Adlai Stevenson, saying that he favored the idea of an unpledged delegation which could decide for itself at the convention which candidate to back. The Senator had a friendly meeting with the Governor the previous week—as further recounted below by Drew Pearson—and had indicated that the will of the voters had been thwarted in 1952 because he had received 54,694 votes when he ran unopposed in the primary but that the unpledged New Jersey delegation had voted instead for Mr. Stevenson at the convention, giving Senator Kefauver only three votes on the first ballot. The Senator had concentrated on that theme the previous day, telling 400 persons in Jersey City that if they voted for him and his delegates, they would know who they were supporting, that if they voted for the uninstructed slate of the party organization, they would be leaving that decision to someone else.
The President would be unopposed in the Republican primary, where 38 delegates were at stake, each of whom would have one vote at the convention in San Francisco in August, and state party leaders said that they would all go to the President, though the slate was technically unpledged.
In Washington, former Army Lt. Aldo Icardi came to trial this date on charges of falsely denying that he had plotted the World War II slaying of his superior, Maj. William Holahan, behind enemy lines in Italy. The indictment charged the defendant with perjury, but the effect of it was to accuse him of directing the slaying of the major during a daring cloak and dagger mission. The defendant, a Pittsburgh real estate broker at present, had appeared before a House Armed Services subcommittee on March 26, 1953, generally denying any knowledge concerning the disappearance of the major in December, 1944, and the indictment charging perjury had resulted from that testimony. The deceased had been a lawyer in civilian life and had headed what was known as the "Mangostine mission". The Italian-speaking defendant, then 23 and known for his daring, had been second in command of the unit. A former sergeant of Rochester, N.Y., and an Italian partisan who had operated under the resistance, also were along during the mission. They had parachuted 100 miles north of battle lines near Lake Orto on September 26, 1944, and Maj. Holahan had last been seen alive on December 6. Investigation into his disappearance had begun after the war and was stepped up after recovery of his body from Lake Orto in November, 1950, with an autopsy finding that he had been poisoned and shot. A Defense Department memorandum issued in 1951, accusing the defendant and the former sergeant, Carl Lo Dolce, of complicity in the slaying, and both had been tried in absentia by an Italian court and convicted of murder, with the defendant having been given a life sentence and Mr. Lo Dolce, sentenced to 17 years, although increased by five years by an appellate court under Italian law. The Congressional investigation had ensued.
In Birmingham, Ala., it was reported that a tornado passing through the outskirts of the city had killed at least 21 persons and injured more than 200, leaving 400 homeless. A Red Cross official had said that the winds the previous night had destroyed more than 100 houses clustered on hills west and north of the city and had done damage to hundreds of other houses. The director of the local Red Cross said that they had counted 21 bodies thus far and that there might be others, that most of the dead had been black people. About 150 persons had been admitted to local hospitals, some having been treated and released, but most having been retained for treatment. A severe thunderstorm with hail and wind gusts up to 60 mph had hit the devastated area the previous night while relief operations were in progress, and most of the dead had been discovered in the wreckage left in the wake of that storm, including a 30-year old mother with her three-year old son in her arms and her eight-year old boy sprawled nearby. Another tornado had struck at Huntsville, causing heavy damage but no known injuries. Tuscaloosa, Anniston, Centreville, Montgomery, Dothan and Mobile also had high winds.
In the Carolinas and around Charlotte, a weekend storm had settled down to a mild breeze this date, having hit with the fury of a hurricane, striking hard at the Charlotte area, although with few reports of damage. WBTV had been off the air for an hour the previous night after lightning had struck power lines between the station and the transmitting tower on Spencer Mountain. The Weather Bureau reported that wind had blown in gusts of up to 55 mph the previous night, with .98 of an inch of rain in three hours prior to midnight and 1.35 inches having fallen during the 24-hour period. The Bureau said that the storm had borne little relation to the tornado which had struck in Alabama. Although a shower or two was still possible this date, clearing and cooler weather was forecast, with the low predicted at 53 during the morning and the high at 65 in the afternoon, and a low of 43 in the morning the following day, with another 65-degree high in the afternoon.
In Raleigh, it was reported that the mailman had delivered 50 bulky bags containing an estimated 150,000 to 175,000 State income tax returns this date, the deadline for submitting Federal and state returns. A special unit had been set up by the State Department of Revenue during the day to handle the extra workload, and would continue into the following night and through Thursday night, putting in overtime without additional pay, including into Saturday and Sunday, to get the returns processed. The assistant revenue commissioner said that the Department was expecting to receive State returns from between 825,000 and 850,000 taxpayers, compared with slightly fewer than 800,000 the prior year, estimating that through the prior Saturday, about half a million returns had been received.
Dick Young of The News reports that City Manager Henry Yancey this date had come up with a plan for additional municipal offices at considerable savings, that a quadrangle plant on the present City Hall square would take care of the needs of the City Government for 100 years to come. Recently, a committee from the District Bar Association had suggested to the County Commissioners that they purchase additional property off Fourth Street at the rear of the Courthouse and the City Hall for construction of additional courthouse and city hall office buildings. Mr. Yancey said that his idea would be to use the property presently available on the square and save money at the very outset.
In Okeene, Okla., the best weather in five years had brought out a record crowd for the annual Rattlesnake Roundup the previous day, and snake hunters had made one of their best catches in the 17-year history of the event, local Jaycees having said that 2,457 rattlesnakes, having a total weight of 2,841 pounds, had been captured alive with forked sticks and specially-constructed snake-catchers. The crowd of 25,000 had come from 22 states and three foreign countries, including nearly 1,000 members of the International Association of Rattlesnake Hunters. The biggest snake caught had been 70.5 inches long and weighed five pounds, captured by the teenage son of a veteran local hunter.
In Paterson, N.J., police received a call from a woman who was upside down in a restaurant telephone booth, asking for rescue, saying that she had dropped a coin on the floor of the booth, had bent over to pick it up and that her feet had gone out from under her. Police did not identify the woman.
In Dallas, Tex., two pet monkeys had opened the door of their cage in a locked liquor store, triggered a burglar alarm and entertained passersby. They had upset a bottle of gin but, according to the owner of the store, had done no harm, as they were both "teetotalers".
In Monte Carlo, actress Grace Kelly and her nervous fiancé, Prince Rainier III of Monaco, had gone through a rehearsal this date for their marriage ceremony, set to take place the following Thursday, after a civil ceremony on Wednesday. Ms. Kelly, who would, following the marriage, automatically become a citizen of Monaco, was reported to have a strained look on her face and the Prince had bitten his fingernails during the rehearsal. They were probably trepidatious of the rattlesnakes and the abstemious drunk monkeys in denial.
If you want to improve your memory,
turn to page 1-B and read the fascinating series by Sigmund Blomberg,
"Improve Your Memory". But if, in paging through the
newspaper to get to the column, you lose track of the page number
On the editorial page, "J. B. Ivey: Tulips and Testimonials" tells of Mr. Ivey's 75th anniversary in retailing, as founder of the largest department store in the city. The tulips at his home were blooming and so were the testimonials to the value of his contributions to the community.
It chooses, however, to forgo the usual adjectives in describing a great person and leader in the community, as the world was full of "great" people and yet it seemed not to have changed appreciably for the better, with the legacy of such persons being uncertain. It is content therefore to say that he was "a man, a citizen and a leader in the highest sense of those terms, and that he has changed things for the better in this community." The specifics were well known, but anniversaries afforded the opportunity to repeat them.
He had come from the cotton fields around Shelby to control the department store chain, which had a combined annual sales volume of 22 million dollars. He had little working capital to start, but an abundance of energy, imagination and faith. His first store in Charlotte had opened in 1900, with 1,500 square feet, while the present store, when additions were completed, would have an area of 225,000 square feet. The stores in Charlotte, Asheville, Raleigh, Greenville, S.C., and Orlando and Daytona Beach, Fla., provided jobs, payrolls and services to their communities.
But it indicates that the man was greater than what he had built, "a success with serenity." A strong moral force pervaded his story, as he had been an active leader in his Methodist church, making great philanthropic contributions to the community, and so it counts it a privilege to salute him on his 75th anniversary in retailing. It also wishes him a happy 92nd birthday, to occur the following June 8, "and an old age full of contentment after these middle years are over."
"Recreation: Now Is the Time…" finds that in the improvement of recreation facilities in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, there was no substitute for the direct drudgery of labor and the dreariness of thought, that the spadework had already been done with a vast and comprehensive survey made by a private firm, with recommendations made by the presently defunct City-County Recreation Study Committee. It finds that there had been flaws in the report and that perhaps some of the proposals had been overly ambitious, but it had presented an overall view of the whole range of opportunity, spotlighting obvious needs if Charlotte was to keep pace with the challenges of its sudden growth.
It urges that it should not be filed away and forgotten, as had been the fate of similar surveys, that a sizable investment had already been made and it would be tragic if it came to naught. It was not necessary to adopt blindly all of the committee's proposals and spend large sums of money indiscriminately, as the recreation needs of the community had to be maintained in perspective based on budgetary constraints. But the study committee had indicated that some of the recommended measures would require neither additional funding nor legislative enactments.
It would take much labor and thought to sift through the recommendations and separate what could be done at present from what could not be done, and it urges that the task had to be started at present and not delayed.
"Lobbying Laws Need Tightening Now" indicates that whether the Congress deserved a "do-nothing" label for the session would depend on the final record, but that thus far it had not done enough about the lax laws concerning lobbyists and campaign contributions.
Two months earlier, Senator Francis Case of South Dakota had provided to Congress the opportunity and responsibility to resist improper efforts to influence legislation, when he reported the improper attempt by a lobbyist for the oil and gas industry to offer his campaign $2,500 while the natural gas deregulation bill was awaiting his vote. While the Senate had investigated the matter, it was not yet clear whether their aim was at Senator Case or the lobbyists who had sought to bribe him.
A select investigating committee had confirmed the Senator's suspicion that the offer had been purposefully made to influence his vote on the bill, but after condemning the lobbyist and the oil firm executive who had supplied the contribution, the committee had complained of "some difficulty in determining the nature of the complaint" by Senator Case.
The piece finds it an apparent effort to belittle the Senator, who had been right and had been the reason for the committee's recommendation that the lobbying and corrupt practices act be amended to restrict such lobbying activities. If the acts were strengthened along with those covering campaign contributions, the Senate also would need the results of a broader investigation which was scheduled by the committee chaired by Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, which had also developed out of the incident involving Senator Case. It posits that the second committee ought to get down to business as soon as possible so that the laws could be strengthened before the fall presidential campaign, and suggests also that perhaps the committee could find a well-deserved word of praise for Senator Case, who had seen his duty and done it.
A piece from the Rocky Mount Telegram, titled "Do You Enjoy Sermons?" tells of a woman having told her minister at the church door that she had enjoyed his sermon, after the people before her had said the same thing, as had the people behind. It prompted the writer to think about the subject of "enjoying" sermons, whether a good sermon was something which was supposed to be enjoyed, whether a preacher seeking to interpret Christianity and raise the standard of human conduct would really want someone to enjoy his sermon. The phrase had been so overused as to become trite and meaningless.
It says it had not consulted any of its friends in the ministry, but suspects that most would welcome and appreciate some more thoughtful comment, even welcoming some constructive criticism, such as "I've heard you do better," or "I disagree with your sermon," anything to indicate a thoughtful reaction.
It finds that some ministers did not deserve to be told that their sermons were enjoyable, as some were dull, imposing a strain on the congregation afterward, as it confronted the pastor, as to whether or not they should lie at the church door. It concludes that whether the sermon was good, bad or indifferent, it deserved more careful thought and comment than most were giving it.
Drew Pearson tells of Governor Robert Meyner of New Jersey having been, in 1953, relatively unknown when he entered the gubernatorial race, making appeals to Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee to make some speeches for him, which the Senator did. The Senator had dug into the files of his organized crime probe and picked out some interesting facts about New Jersey racketeering, some of which was linked to Republicans, and delivered hard-hitting speeches which helped to elect a Democratic Governor in New Jersey for the first time in 15 years. The previous week, Senator Kefauver had returned to New Jersey seeking delegates for the Chicago convention in August, but was not receiving reciprocity from the Governor. The two men had some friendly meetings, but the Governor, while saying he appreciated what Senator Kefauver had done for him in 1953, had stated that he could not help him in the primary, set to occur the following day.
Mr. Pearson regards it as one of the most important primaries, as Senator Kefauver would be attempting to keep his lead over Adlai Stevenson, which the former had established in Minnesota, while on the other side, the Governor, who had endorsed Mr. Stevenson, would be seeking to maintain his own prestige in his home state by taking delegates away from Senator Kefauver, delegates who were unpledged but who would probably go to Mr. Stevenson because of the control by the Governor.
Likewise, John Kenny, former Mayor and boss of the old Frank Hague machine in Jersey City, wherein Senator Kefauver's crime investigation had unearthed quite a lot of corruption and crime, would be out to protect his machine, and was quite opposed to Senator Kefauver. The latter had attracted large crowds, one of the biggest having been in Jersey City. In Newark, they were so enthusiastic that the mayor, who had planned to remain neutral, congratulated the Senator. But Mr. Pearson questions whether that enthusiasm could be translated into delegate strength, a test of the local leaders in the state as to whether they could be any stronger than the local leaders in Minnesota, who had been uniformly for Mr. Stevenson.
He indicates that it was now possible to report more of the details on the secret conference between Secretary of State Dulles and the bipartisan Congressional leaders regarding the threatening war clouds in the Middle East. Mr. Dulles had said that the President had requested that he brief the Congressional leaders on the seriousness of the situation, saying that one thing which disturbed him was the cabled reports from U.S. embassies in Cairo and Tel Aviv that both Premier Nasser of Egypt and Prime Minister Ben-Gurion of Israel had become increasingly hostile toward one another, whereas previously they had been receptive to suggestions for peace. Another disturbing part of the Secretary's report had been that Russians were organizing Moslem troops behind the Iron Curtain, apparently to send so-called "volunteers" to help the Arabs, just as the Chinese "volunteers" had been sent into Korea in late 1950 after General MacArthur had penetrated north to the Yalu River. The Secretary said that the State Department was watching the situation very closely.
Marquis Childs, in Portland, Ore., tells of the top Republican Congressional target in 1956 being Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, with the President even said to be taking an interest in his defeat, as his most blunt and outspoken critic. The personal intervention of the President had placed Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay into the fray to defeat Senator Morse.
According to reports in Portland, the alarm had been sounded by Ralph Cake, former Republican national committeeman from Oregon, who had phoned White House chief of staff Sherman Adams to say that a private poll had shown that only Secretary McKay could defeat Senator Morse, that call to action having come only a few days before the final date for filing in the Oregon Republican primary. Secretary McKay had no intention of running for the Senate and had begun to congratulate himself that he would not be drafted for the undertaking. But he was summoned to the White House and the President encouraged him to run, and Mr. Adams finished the job of convincing him that it was his loyal duty, and so he filed in the Republican primary, a day ahead of the filing deadline, with the Republican leaders in Oregon having been given no advance notice of the fact. A consequence of that lack of coordination was a feeling of resentment among some Oregon Republicans, as the candidate who had been tapped to run against Senator Morse had been Oregon Governor Paul Patterson, who had dropped dead of a heart attack at a meeting at which strategy was being charted, prompting several Republicans then to enter the race. Two of those, a Portland lawyer and a former member of the State Legislature, had considerable backing, but the lawyer agreed to get out of the race when Mr. McKay declared his candidacy, while the other man, Philip Hitchcock, refused to withdraw, pointing out that he had made commitments around the state and had accepted contributions on the assumption that he would go through with his campaign to the primary.
The two Republican candidates had made a gentlemen's agreement that they would avoid attacks on one another. A third Republican in the primary race was a member of the State Legislature, who had gained renown for helping to abolish the state's milk marketing law with its rigid quota system. Mr. McKay had the organization support and most of the money, but Mr. Hitchcock's chances were not discounted given the present questioning mood of the voters. He had begun as a logger, had developed his own logging firm, had become a leader in the Presbyterian Church and later head of the Oregon Council of Churches, was presently business manager of Lewis and Clark College in Portland. His views on vital issues, such as public power, were less conservative than those of Secretary McKay.
The supporters of Senator Morse said that Mr. Hitchcock would be harder to beat than Mr. McKay, if only because with the former, the issues would not be so sharply drawn. Mr. McKay, however, had a statewide reputation, having been twice elected as Governor, and had a folksy ability to pick out of almost any audience in the state a half dozen familiar faces and address them by name. His wife, a famous cake-baker, was rated as one of his chief assets.
Mr. Childs indicates that if only
because of the incessant Democratic attack seeking to fix the label
of "giveaway" on Mr. McKay, he was vulnerable, and with
Senator Morse being a dynamic campaigner, he would try to keep the
Secretary constantly on the defensive. While the Secretary, one of
the state's most successful Chevrolet dealers before entering
politics, had not wanted to run for the Senate, he now wanted
passionately to defeat Senator Morse. If only because the Senator had
switched parties, he was regarded by orthodox Republicans as a kind
of cross between Jack the Ripper and
The President's popularity would weigh in the balance, and researchers were busy digging up the Senator's attacks on the President to use as ammunition for the Secretary's candidacy, and had come up with strong language proving that the Senator had not qualified his criticism, with one quote being: "President Eisenhower is the most dangerous man who will ever have occupied the White House." Mr. Childs observes that such a claim took in quite a lot of territory, past and future.
But Mr. McKay was also talkative and the Democrats expected to come up with quotes of their own from his past, which would be used as well.
He concludes that one thing was certain, that Senator Morse's record could not be rewritten, that both as a Republican and later as a Democrat, he had repeatedly voted for New Deal policies on public power, conservation of public lands and labor. He posits that it would be the real test for the voters in the state, who were almost evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats.
Doris Fleeson tells of the President's golfing vacation in Augusta in the midst of an international crisis in the Middle East not being popular in Washington or with U.S. allies abroad, who were being openly critical, with a sharper edge to the jokes and widespread uneasiness in the cloakrooms at the Capitol.
The attempted cover-up for the White House vacuum in the form of the conference with Congressional leaders by Secretary of State Dulles had not been successful, the Secretary having told the leaders nothing substantive that they did not already know from their reading of newspapers, and they had regarded Mr. Dulles as being political in his motivations and so would not follow him in any event.
It had for long been taken for granted that the President was not concerned with the details of his domestic program, giving his Cabinet and the independent agencies unprecedented autonomy, and even showing temper at times in being expected to know the various details of their policies and practices. By what amounted to tacit consent, the politicians and people generally had all but ceased to hold the President domestically accountable in the same way they had held Presidents Hoover, Roosevelt and Truman to answer. She posits that probably the major reason for that latitude was the nation's prosperity, with the exception of the farmers, and full employment. As things were going generally well, complaint appeared superfluous.
But it had always been agreed that the President's strength lay in his worldwide prestige and international experience, with the nation giving him almost unanimous support on foreign policy, and from both Democrats and Republicans in the Congress. Democrats had said that he was pursuing internationalist policies which they had laid down, while Republican isolationists had been silenced in the presence of such formidable popularity. Such criticism as existed thus had been muted.
The change in Congressional temper was therefore a portent both for the final critical half of the legislative session and for the upcoming presidential campaign in the fall. For it was in the field of foreign policy that the President could not transfer his responsibilities or the symbolism of his office. Farm policy might be attributed to Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson, and responsibility for financial matters, to Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, but foreign policy was that of the President.
She acknowledges that external threats were helping to build up pressures in Congress, with the Middle East crisis involving the potential for war and a threat to U.S. strategic interests, while the politicians who wanted to win the election also knew that it had immediate domestic significance through the important Jewish vote in several pivotal states, including New York. They believed that even if the crisis could not be handled, they were entitled to at least the appearance of a sustained and ardent attempt at it, and the major criticism of the Administration was that it was not making a creative and imaginative effort to meet the change in tactics of the Soviets, seeking to woo the Egyptians and the other Arab states.
She suggests that the Communist consent to the military stalemate generally, while also making sure they did not fall behind in the arms race, had become a truism. All information channels were stressing that the Soviets were doing even better with their new economic offensive, having penetrated, in addition to the Middle East, Asia and Africa. During the current week at Geneva, they had invited Western Europe to look to Moscow for their needs when their U.S. foreign aid would run out. Meanwhile, no new policy or program had been offered Congress by the Administration, in the face of those mounting pressures. All present Administration proposals were only more of the same, economic aid entwined with military aid to bolster alliances which were conceived in 1950 and later to meet the Soviet military threat.
Robert C. Ruark, in Lae, New Guinea, tells of the district commissioner in New Guinea having said: "The Japs should have known about the cargo cult. They might have won the war—or at least New Guinea," then offering Mr. Ruark "another spot of tea", which they then had and proceeded to discuss primitive thinking.
It appeared that there were several cults in New Guinea, more or less led by a messiah, all based on the give-away principle, as used on television and in lotteries, that is, something for nothing. The cargo cult had come into vogue prior to World War II, when some chiefs had decided that the local natives were entitled to everything the white man had, including cars, radios, canned foods, cork-tipped cigarettes and the like, but the precious cargoes of those items had not arrived.
There had been several variations of that kind of thinking, one being that the ancestors in the great beyond would lower a great load of goodies from the sky, with another being that a boat would come loaded with the precious, heaven-sent cargo. Still another had it that if all of the natives destroyed every bit of their existing worldly possessions, they would be replaced with the modern gadgetry of the white man.
In one instance, 5,000 natives had destroyed all of their possessions and waited hopefully for refrigerators and machine-guns from heaven. One man had suggested that the failure of the subsequent arrival of the heaven-borne goodies had to have been a miscalculation between heaven and earth, and so he volunteered to have a word with his ancestors in the beyond to see where the foul-up was, whereupon he killed himself after saying that he would return in just three days with the loot, and, sure enough, three days later, the cargo ships, with cruiser and destroyer escort, had steamed into port, prompting the natives to believe that their messiah had come through with his prophecy.
Ecstatic, they had leaped into canoes and paddled out to meet the armada, which turned out to be the Japanese fleet, which, assuming that they were under attack by the natives, shot at them.
The district commissioner discussing the matter with Mr. Ruark said that the Japanese had never really known what a mistake they had made, that if they had any clue to what the cargo cult meant, they could have had New Guinea, but that after the shooting, the locals had gotten the Japanese mixed up with bad ancestors and heavenly vengeance, and were basically henceforth on the side of the West instead, with that change in attitude having been very important.
He then yawned and stretched and offered another cup of tea, which Mr. Ruark accepted, thinking about all the mistakes people made in wars.
Framed Edition
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