The Charlotte News
Wednesday, April 18, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from London that Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin and Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev had arrived this date "jaunty and full of smiles", extending a hand of friendship to Britain and the rest of the world, with Premier Bulganin stating to a crowd of cheering, jeering and laughing Londoners at Victoria Railway Station at the start of their ten-day official visit, "We all have to live together on one planet." Prime Minister Anthony Eden stepped forward to shake hands with the Russian leaders as they stepped from the express train which had brought them from the port of Portsmouth. In the nearby packed streets, thousands of Britons, in holiday mood, cheered, laughed, and booed. Mr. Eden made a speech of welcome, saying, "In greeting, I express the hope that we shall, by our work and by our decision, improve relations between our countries and our peoples." Mr. Bulganin, smiling broadly, then stated: "We offer our greetings to Her Majesty's Government and the British people. The Soviet people have a deep respect for the British people and revere their cultured and scientific achievements. The Soviet Government seeks to have friendly relations with Britain, as well as the United States, France and other countries. The social and political systems in our countries are different, but provided there is reasonable understanding of the fact that we have to live together on one planet, differences in political structure should not be a hindrance to us living as good neighbors cooperating actively to improve our relations." The two Soviet leaders would be entertained at tea by Queen Elizabeth at Windsor Castle, and then provided a whirlwind tour of the country, most of the time remaining in conference with Mr. Eden and his top advisers. The main topics of discussion would be German reunification, disarmament and the crisis in the Middle East, with special attention to Russia's declaration the previous day, that it would join other nations to keep the peace in that region.
The House Judiciary Committee, by a Southern-led vote of 14 to 13 the previous day, returned the pending civil rights bill to its subcommittee on civil rights, which arranged to meet this date to reconsider the matter. The motion had been made by Representative Edwin Willis of Louisiana, and Representative Tic Forrester of Georgia had promised to fight when the legislation was again before the full Committee, presumably the following Tuesday, with neither predicting, however, that the bill would not be approved. The Committee chairman, Emanuel Celler of New York, said that he was "making every effort, bringing all possible pressure" to get the bill out of the Committee the following week, and said he expected to succeed.
In Newark, N.J., it was reported that in the New Jersey primary of the previous day, Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee had gone down to resounding defeat in delegates won, the most serious setback he had suffered since the start of his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. President Eisenhower, without opposition, had received a firm endorsement from Republican voters. Returns from 3,472 of the state's 4,155 precincts showed that the President had received 266,558 Republican votes to Senator Kefauver's 99,397 Democratic votes, with 1,681 write-in votes registered for Adlai Stevenson, who was not on the ballot. An unpledged Democratic Party organization slate of delegates, however, headed by Governor Robert Meyner, had swamped the delegates won by Senator Kefauver, with the organization winning 63 delegates, or 31.5 votes at the convention, while the Senator won only one delegate, and in the remaining eight delegate contests, the organization was leading. For the Republicans, the President had won 38 delegate votes, facing only token opposition from three "conservative" and undesignated candidates. Senator Kefauver had campaigned intensively for six days in New Jersey, making his final appearance the prior Sunday, but the tactics of handshaking and meeting people which had served him well in New Hampshire and Minnesota had failed in New Jersey. His campaign manager said that the Senator had performed a great service for the people of the state, showing great political courage by coming into the state, and that the people had given him a good vote, that by no means had it been a defeat for him, as the highly organized Democratic machines in 21 counties had been too much to overcome. Neither the President nor Senator Kefauver had received as many popular votes as they had four years earlier in the state, with the President, following a hot primary contest with the late Senator Robert Taft, having polled 390,591 votes, nearly half of the total votes cast by both parties, and Senator Kefauver having received 154,964, also running then unopposed. The latter had not contested for convention delegates at that time and received only three delegate votes from the state on the first ballot at the convention. Prior to the primary, he had predicted that he would win at least ten delegates or five convention votes. The Democratic state chairman said that the results were as they had anticipated, that they had wanted to elect a full slate of unpledged delegates because they felt the party had to be interested in selecting the strongest possible candidate at the convention, stating his belief that the Democrats would elect the next President.
In Charlotte, re-emphasis on the feasibility of combining the City-County School Board headquarters arose this date before the City School Board, the members of which said in a brief discussion of the matter that plans for expansion of City and County governmental facilities ought not bar construction of such a combined administrative unit.
Dick Young of The News reports that there was unanimous approval by the Council this date of the plan proposed by City Manager Henry Yancey for expansion of the municipal government's plant on City Hall Square, and that the suggestion for housing the proposed Health Center in one of the additional wings had been taken under consideration.
Mr. Yancey was instructed by the City Council this date to take action to remove street corner shrubs blocking the view of motorists, after one member of the Council proposed such a check, mentioning the additional hazard to children when school was out during the summer and the view at street corners was obstructed by tall and overhanging bushes and shrubbery.
Harry Shuford of The News indicates that City Council member and former Mayor Herbert Baxter this date had announced plans for meetings of perimeter area people on the controversial subject of annexation. Current Mayor Philip Van Every pointed out that town hall meetings might be good, but that they could not please anybody in an audience by telling them that they were going to raise taxes.
In Chapel Hill, a police captain stated this date that he expected to arrest some UNC students for theft and damage to property at the police station, after conferring with Ray Jeffries, assistant to the University dean of student affairs, who had promised to cooperate in the apprehension of students involved in an incident at the station on Monday night, following the arrest of a student on charges of drunk driving, when friends of the student came to post his bond, and, according to the police, set a wastebasket on fire, ripped out the wires to two telephones, and stole a revolver, a number of traffic tickets, fingerprint rollers and fountain pen sets. The captain said that most of the stolen articles had been returned the previous day. What's the problem?
In Nottingham, England, a British court declared that a catfish, with strong business reasons, might lawfully pose as a halibut, as three magistrates had declared that a fishmonger was free to go on peddling his catfish as "mock halibut", despite it insulting the denizens of the deep and the Mississippi River at one fell swoop. He had been hauled into court by a Nottingham food inspector, saying that he had spotted the fishmonger selling catfish as "mock halibut fillets", denouncing the practice as a description "calculated to deceive his customers". The inspector snapped his fingers and up had stepped an assistant carrying a tray with four fish on it, three halibuts and one catfish, the latter of which the inspector picked up and waved at the magistrates, asking, "Hideous, isn't it?" The defense attorney had then snapped his fingers and his assistant stepped up, bearing a can of mock turtle soup, asking whether anybody supposed that there was real turtle in that soup. The chairman of the magistrates, who was looking a bit green around the gills, interrupted to ask: "Could we have the fish removed? It is a little strong." A policeman then removed the fish and defense counsel then asked the inspector whether it was not true that it was a long-standing custom to sell catfish as Scotch fillet, rockfish or even Scotch halibut, to which the inspector admitted that it was so. Defense counsel then concluded by saying that catfish was a perfectly good and edible fish, with the only thing wrong with it being its name, submitting that the defendant had no case to answer, with which the magistrates agreed, dismissing the case along with the fish and taxing the inspection department with the equivalent of $29.40 in court costs.
In Monte Carlo, actress Grace Kelly was married in a civil ceremony to Monaco's Prince Rainier III, making Ms. Kelly now Princess Grace of Monaco, a 370-acre realm. A religious ceremony in the Roman Catholic Cathedral would take place the following day. Both bride and groom had answered "oui" in faint but distinct voices as the Minister of Justice of Monaco asked them the standard marital questions in French, after which he declared, "Your serene highnesses united by the ties of marriage." First, how did he know that they were "serene" and, second, why did he have the temerity to suggest that they were both high?
On the editorial page, "Estes, Adlai and the Crying Towel" suggests that if the two "'po' mouths'", Senator Estes Kefauver and Adlai Stevenson, were running at present for the Democratic nomination in North Carolina, there would be nothing to do but vote for "confident and capable" Jim Tatum, head football coach at UNC. And if the two candidates continued their game of "'get under the underdog'", "Sunny Jim" might go on to sweep the convention and wind up "holding skull practice in the Indian Treaty Room."
At Aberdeen, N.C., during the visit of Mr. Stevenson with his sister, he had been asked about the upcoming Florida primary, responding: "Senator Kefauver, I understand, has indicated he thinks he is ahead. I'm going to do my level best to overtake him." Regarding the California primary, he said that he confronted "serious difficulties and large obstacles".
Meanwhile, Senator Kefauver, in Miami, had stated, regarding the Florida primary, "Adlai's way out front … everybody's against me … especially those old political bosses."
But coach Tatum had laid it on the line recently at a football smoker at the Charlotte Country Club, saying that the future was full of glory and victory for UNC. He said they were were glad they faced a tough schedule, as the bigger they came, the harder they fell. It suggests that Mr. Tatum sounded to the world like former Georgia Governor Eugene Talmadge telling a campaign crowd, "I'm gonna sweep this state from Rabun Gap to Tybee Light." To the cynics who said that Mr. Tatum could not come through on his promises, it asks whether the President had balanced the budget.
It indicates weariness with the primary struggle between Mr. Stevenson and Senator Kefauver, that they sounded almost as much like football coaches as did Mr. Tatum a politician. It tells of being particularly tired of Senator Kefauver axing dead dragons, the political bosses, and dares him to name one, as he was well aware that there had not been a political boss in the country worth his salt since he had beaten Boss Ed Crump in Memphis in his Senate race, that Carmine DeSapio, the present Tammany Hall leader, was such a "kitty he can't even deliver his own district to Averell Harriman at the convention."
It indicates that it was not intending to suggest that some voters were not sorry to see the bosses go, that there had been a Texan who, when asked by political pollster Sam Lubell to indicate for whom he had voted in 1952, had replied that he had not voted since Senator Huey Long of Louisiana had been shot, as he was his man. It suspects that Senator Kefauver was as much disappointed at the demise of the bosses as anyone, that if he could hit a boss and make him holler, he might be as confident as coach Tatum. "Until the candidates and the coaches get back into character, we're sticking with Sunny Jim."
"Individual Liberty: The Quiet Revolution" suggests that a quiet revolution was underway in the field of individual rights and national security, that the Congressional witch-hunts were history, with only a few backstage comments having been heard from the celebrated Commission on Government Security, which had received many headlines when created in 1955. The Federal courts had meanwhile made constitutional history in a series of recent decisions, reinforcing the individual liberties of Americans and reemphasizing that the Bill of Rights meant what it said.
Secret informers and denial of passports had been exposed to judicial scrutiny and, more recently, the Supreme Court had ruled on the constitutionality of the Immunity Act of 1954, which had provided that in matters involving national security, a witness, despite asserting the Fifth Amendment privilege, could be compelled to provide testimony in exchange for immunity from criminal prosecution, the law having been upheld by a seven to two majority. It finds that case to have been an important development as it settled in a calm, cool atmosphere a matter which had created a great deal of unnecessary political heat when "Fifth Amendment Communists", as Senator McCarthy had often described them, were fashioned into a burning issue by the McCarthyites. It also reiterated the significance of the Fifth Amendment and made the abuse of its invocation in a way which would hamper rather than further the cause of justice more difficult in certain important areas of government. At the same time, the Court had not weakened the basic foundations of the Amendment, simply finding that the Immunity Act fell within the Constitutional guarantee of it, as it obviated the self-incrimination which the Amendment was designed to prevent.
Justice Felix Frankfurter had stated for the majority: "Too many, even those who should be better advised, view this privilege as a shelter for wrongdoers. They too readily assume that those who invoke it are either guilty of crime or commit perjury in claiming the privilege. Such a view does scant honor to the patriots who sponsored the Bill of Rights as a condition to acceptance of the Constitution…"
The piece comments that the "patriots" to whom he had made reference included those of North Carolina, who, at Hillsborough in 1788, had refused to have anything to do with a Federal Constitution which contained no Bill of Rights, a stubbornness of which North Carolinians could be justly proud.
It concludes that after the shouting had ended and the emotionalism had died down, the voices of wisdom could again be heard, that one of the beauties of the democracy was that given a temperate climate, such voices would always triumph.
"Swing: The Man Who Hired a
Hall" indicates that on page 6 of Downbeat magazine the
previous week, there appeared a story about the death of Frank
Dailey, billed as the entrepreneur of the Meadowbrook, who had died
at age 55. The editorialist indicates that it kindled memories "for
those who haven't Brubecked
Mr. Dailey had struggled to keep the Meadowbrook open when the swing band era slumped following World War II, with bands soon afterward only playing on weekends, while western music and banquets filled the hall on other nights.
Mr. Dailey had died still personally unknown to millions, but with a name as familiar to "aging ex-jitterbugs as the band leaders who had a whole nation tapping its feet to the beat—before swing gave way to bop and bop gave way to an odd kind of whoop-and-holler called rock 'n' roll." His death had made page 6 of the music magazine but had hardly been granted a line elsewhere.
That old sound is no longer, like, happening, daddy-o. You're in with the out-crowd. It's all the San Francisco Beat
Eric Sevareid, from a CBS broadcast, the piece titled "Babel on the Potomac", indicates that every four years around the current time, he considered it his humble duty to serve as "medium between the political tongue and the voters' inner ear—to translate what the candidates call 'plain speaking' into the plainer truth", offering the service free of charge.
He thus explains that when a candidate's supporters said that he was a "man of the people", he meant that the candidate was also born in a hospital, that the phrase, "I am not a candidate for vice-president," meant "I gotta keep my presidential bandwagon rolling until after the first ballot," that "I am in this fight to the finish," meant "The law sets the election day and I can't do a thing about it," that when he said, "We must return to the principles of our forefathers," he meant "Things must've been simpler in those days," that when he said "I intend to hew to the line, let the chips fall where they may," he really meant that he intended to put his shoulder to the wheel and let his voice be heard, that when he said, "I can't tell you what a pleasure it is to get back home with you folks and away from that Tower of Babel on the Potomac," he was really saying "if I get licked I can always open an office in Washington." He concludes that if the candidate said, "A vote for me is a vote for the American way of life," he actually meant, "I ain't running in Southern Rhodesia."
He hopes that it would prove a guide through the season for voters and that he might even expand it from time to time if things became more confusing than they already were, "a contingency that scarcely bears contemplation."
Drew Pearson indicates that plans were under discussion to have Marshal Zhukov, the President's wartime co-commander in Germany, visit the U.S. the following September or October. Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev and Premier Nikolai Bulganin had been discreetly hinting that they might like to visit the U.S., a suggestion met with rebuffs by the State Department, viewing it as a poor political strategy in an election year to have such high-level Soviet sightseers, also posing a security issue as it would be difficult to protect the two from the many refugees and White Russians in the U.S. But when it was hinted that Marshal Zhukov might like to come, there was a more favorable reaction, as he was considered the rising strong man in Russia and the visit of an Army man who was not an active Communist would sit better with the American people, plus would further the idea that the President, through his wartime associations, could lead the country toward a Russian-American peace.
He finds that the worst egg which the DNC had laid in a long time would occur the following Saturday night when the largest Democratic dinner of the year was expected to be held in a half-empty armory, that instead of making money for the Democrats, already in debt, it would place them in the light of failing to honor a great Democratic hero, former President Woodrow Wilson, and of being woefully incapable of matching RNC chairman Leonard Hall's triumph when he had collected three million dollars at Madison Square Garden for the President the prior January 30. The reason for the fiasco had been that the dinner had been scheduled for April 21, but it would have competed with the Margaret Truman wedding, which top Democrats would be attending in Independence, Mo., also at a time when Minnesota Democrats were holding a national dinner on the same night, when Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee was speaking with Senator Wayne Morse in Oregon to launch the beginning of his own Oregon campaign, as well as that for re-election of Senator Morse, and on a date when the President was speaking before the American Society of Newspaper Editors in their concluding dinner in Washington. He informs that as of the current writing, 800 tickets were sold for the armory, which sat 3,000 people, leaving approximately 2,000 empty seats while the Democratic speakers extolled the virtues of President Wilson.
Walter Lippmann tells of Secretary Khrushchev and Premier Bulganin being expected to arrive in London this date, amid considerable change since their visit had been initially suggested during the Big Four summit meeting of the prior July, as the question then had been whether, how and when diplomacy might resolve the deadlocked issues from Germany through Formosa to Korea, with the understanding having come out of Geneva that even though the great nuclear powers could not agree on a German settlement, a Chinese settlement, or a Korean settlement, they would not go to war about them, whereas now the Soviets held the keys to peace and war in the Middle East.
He posits that peace could be maintained provided the Soviets would act to maintain it and that war was probable should the Soviets connive at war by refusing to prevent it. No one had known the previous July that it would be the principal business to be discussed when Messrs. Bulganin and Khrushchev came to London, but it now overshadowed every other subject.
Because the situation in the Middle East was so critical and the responsibility of the Soviets so clear, the coming talks might become momentous, in the nature of a showdown on what the Soviets intended, on whether they wanted the future of the Middle East to be determined by peaceful negotiations or by war. The great undecided question of policy was whether, on the basis of the prevention of an Arab-Israeli war, there were to be broader negotiations about the region.
The alternative was for the U.S., Britain and France to take their own measures, despite the Egyptian-Soviet axis, to maintain the status quo. He finds that a disagreeable and dangerous alternative, but that the choice between the two alternatives did not depend on what the West would like but on what they would learn from the two Soviet leaders when the questions were put to them.
Robert Frost, the most famous of living American poets, had discussed poetry, politics and philosophy recently on "Meet the Press", transcribed excerpts from which are set forth, with the interviewers having been Lawrence E. Spivak, A. T. Baker of Time, Inez Robb of the Scripps-Howard newspapers, Norman Cousins of the Saturday Review, and Ned Brooks, the moderator. Because the excerpted portion is difficult to summarize, we leave it to you to read for the most part.
Ms. Robb had asked Mr. Frost about the line of poetry by T. S. Eliot, "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper," asking whether he agreed with the notion or not, to which Mr. Frost said: "It's not ended with a bang and there are only a few whimperers around, and it isn't ending. That's an extravagance of his: it's a very pretty piece of expression, isn't it? but an extravagance. He just meant that everything is in a bad way." She then asked whether he thought that the world was more likely to end with a bang in the atomic age or whether he was hopeful for it, to which he said he had money on it not ending, and then answered her follow-up question by saying that he was a betting man.
Mr. Cousins had referred to his poem, "The Courage To Be New", which began, "I hear the world reciting/ From the states of ancient men/ The brutality and fighting/ They will never have again;/ Heart-broken and disabled/ In body and in mind/ They renew talk of the fabled/ Federation of mankind," asking him whether it was his hope, to which Mr. Frost responded in the negative, that they were always talking of federation whenever they were in trouble.
Mr. Baker indicated that another contemporary poet had called the present the age of anxiety and asked how Mr. Frost would describe it, to which he responded that the U.S. was notably a nation anxious to be good and to be decent, that when he was in South America the previous year, he had found that they looked on the U.S. as an over-anxious nation and it was a nice way to look at it, that liking to be decent got the nation into a lot of trouble but it got out of it.
When asked by Mr. Brooks what he said to young poets, some of whom might have talent, when they came to him for advice, he said that he was rather cruel, telling them that while the country wanted artists, they had to have a "snout for punishment", that if they were "looking around for something to be brave about short of being shot, you know, or blown through the air at 600 miles an hour, why not try one of the arts?"
Mr. Spivak had indicated that he had once written or had attributed to him that he never dared to be radical when young for fear that it would make him conservative when old, Mr. Frost explaining that he had stated it to a woman he met in Pasadena, Calif., when she had inquired as to whether he was a conservative or radical, and that he had responded with the quoted statement and had "left her hung up on that." Mr. Spivak then said he could not let them be hung up on it and asked him directly which he was, a conservative or a radical, to which he responded that he had stayed pretty even about it from the days when he first heard of the haves and have-knots. Mr. Spivak then suggested that he might be a "conservative liberal", to which Mr. Frost said he supposed so, if they wanted to call him names. Mr. Brooks then suggested "middle of the road", and Mr. Frost gave the same response, with Mr. Cousins suggesting "maybe just Robert Frost", to which he said he guessed "just me. I tell you I'm very radical about education, for instance. You find a man radical in politics and conservative in verse. I can name an extreme case of that. Let's leave names out."
When asked by Mr. Baker whether poetry was a way to escape from the anxieties of the world, he disagreed, saying that "poetry is a way to take life by the throat."
When asked by Mr. Spivak whether the world was a better place in which to live than in earlier times or a worse place, he said he would not be able to say that it was any different and had written a whole poem about it, "The Lesson for Today", about a comparison between the bad times now and the bad times in Charlemagne's reign, concluding that he was not smart enough to know which was better. He said that most times were always a predicament, and that the world would always be a difficult place to save one's soul.
Mr. Frost would appear again on "Meet the Press" on March 22, 1959.
A letter writer discusses the role of the U.N. in the modern world, indicating that there had to be some kind of world organization to preserve the peace, but asks whether the nations could consistently "worship at the shrine of world peace until we give up some of our own desire for dominion", that nations should strive first to establish good faith and eliminate fear and that in such an atmosphere agreements could be made.
A letter writer recounts a story which appeared in a recent newspaper that the sight of a 12-year old boy in Milan, blind for five years from being sprayed with quick lime, had been restored by the eyes of a dead priest, through a corneal transplant soon after the death of Don Carlo Gnocchi, an Italian priest who had requested that his eyes be used in an effort to restore the sight of blind children. The writer suggests that everyone could give sight to the blind after they were dead because the question of age had no bearing on the donation of one's eyes, provided the tissues were healthy. She advises not to make the gift part of a person's will, as the eyes had to be used before the probate of a will, which would take time. She provides an address in Winston-Salem to which interested persons could write for further information.
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