The Charlotte News
Monday, May 7, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Paris that NATO's "Three Wise Men", Canada's Lester Pearson, Italy's Gaetano Martino and Norway's Halvard Lange, set out this date on their historic mission to reshape and reinvigorate NATO to combat Russia's new trade-and-aid program. They were seeking to counter the efforts of the Soviets with various proposals for political cooperation and economic aid to win over the neutral third of the world to the side of the West, with one of the ideas being a U.S. proposal for creation of an "Atlantic cabinet" or Cold War general staff to unify the West's global policies. Secretary of State Dulles, before leaving for Washington after four days of meetings with NATO foreign ministers, told the three men that they were entrusted with the most important task since NATO had been founded. They had been dubbed the "Three Wise Men" by British Foreign Minister Selwyn Lloyd, and they had been set up as a committee in response to a call by Secretary Dulles for an "ideas" drive to defeat Communism in the contest for the hearts and minds of the neutral peoples of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. They were to report back to the NATO Council of Foreign Ministers prior to December after consulting with the member governments. Mr. Lloyd, after returning to Britain, said that while NATO would remain primarily a military alliance, there was no reason why it should not take the offensive in propounding political ideas throughout the world. Mr. Pearson had conferred the previous night with Lord Ismay, NATO Secretary-General, regarding the possibility of setting up a European headquarters and secretariat for the three-man committee. The three left for their respective capitals to obtain approval from their governments for their new duties. Mr. Dulles had told the NATO Foreign Ministers Council that he and President Eisenhower favored a panel of Atlantic nation leaders who would sit in almost continuous consultation to iron out differences among the allies and harmonize their economic and political attitudes toward the rest of the world.
Also in Paris, President Tito of Communist Yugoslavia had arrived this date for a six-day visit and received a red carpet welcome from France's top officials, including President René Coty and Premier Guy Mollet. Strict security measures were in place. At the palace, the President pinned France's Military Medal on Tito in recognition of his World War II heroic defense of his country against the Nazis.
The Administration, through John Hollister, the director of the International Cooperation Administration, the foreign aid program, had told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this date that the Administration's proposed 4.9 billion dollar foreign aid appropriation, designed to provide allies with "advanced weapons", was vitally important for maintaining the free world defenses against a "Communist military build-up", presenting "augmented dangers". He said that as part of the program, about 195 million dollars was allocated to NATO nations and that other funds would be allotted later following more study of how allies could make the best use of advanced weapons. He did not indicate what weapons would be included in the program for the ensuing fiscal year. He also advocated the program of the President seeking authority to make advance commitments for up to a decade of foreign economic aid up to 100 million dollars. He stated that of the total sought in the current year, three billion dollars would be for military aid and that much of the nearly two billion in nonmilitary aid would go to projects closely related to defense. Prior to the hearing, the Committee chairman, Senator Walter George of Georgia, said that he doubted the country would accept as a permanent policy anything less than equality with Russia in long-range bombers, referring to a statement made by the President at his press conference the prior Friday in which he said the U.S. did not have to keep pace with the Soviets in the specific field of intercontinental bombers as the country had adequate striking power from other military resources.
In Tel Aviv, Israeli police and troops ringed the Arab village of Taibeh, near the Jordanian border 15 miles northeast of the city early this date and placed the community under curfew. They were searching for villagers believed to have helped Arab commandos, according to Israeli officials, who had crossed the border from Jordan the previous day and blown up an uninhabited house in a village, with the village guards having opened fire during the incident, with no casualties reported, the first such incident in Israel in 48 hours, following the departure of U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, who had completed his Middle East peace mission. Two villagers had been detained after the search of Taibeh.
A report from aboard the U.S.S. Mt. McKinley in Bikini Atoll, indicates that cautious hydrogen bomb testers had again postponed firing Shot Cherokee this date, with the acting scientific test director for Joint Task Force 7 saying that the test might take place on Thursday, local time, Wednesday within the U.S., but also said that he would not be surprised if it were delayed until May 15. It had been tentatively scheduled for the following day and then for Wednesday, with weather conditions blamed for the postponements.
In St. Louis, jury selection began this date in the conspiracy trial of Matthew Connelly, former secretary of former President Truman, and Lamar Caudle, former head of the Justice Department tax and criminal divisions during the Truman Administration. Mr. Connelly had a deposition transcript from the former President. Harry Schwimmer, an attorney, was also a defendant in the trial, with each of the three having been indicted on a charge of conspiring to defraud the Government in a tax evasion case by providing preferential treatment with the hope of personal gain. The attorney for the defendant had represented the individual in the tax evasion case. Meanwhile, in Washington, Ellis Slack, a suspended Justice Department official, complained to Attorney General Herbert Brownell this date that he had been threatened with prosecution in a new criminal case unless he said that he participated with Mr. Caudle and Mr. Connelly in a conspiracy to obstruct justice in the St. Louis tax case, referring to it as "attempting blackmail" and denied knowledge of any conspiracy. He said that he had not been subpoenaed as a Government witness in the St. Louis trial. Through his attorney, he said to Mr. Brownell that it was a "common weakness of prosecutors to believe in the existence of facts supporting their theories of guilt. But this is no excuse for attempting blackmail, sir, and I suggest with all solemnity that the time has come for you, now informed of the facts, to curb zealots who discredit the department." He had been named as a co-conspirator but not as a defendant in the indictment returned the previous December against Messrs. Caudle, Connelly and Schwimmer.
In New York, a 60-year old handyman and sailor, sought for questioning in the fatal shooting at a church on Saturday night, had surrendered to the district attorney this date. He had vanished after a fatal sniping assault at St. Dumitru's Romanian Orthodox Church. Police had found a rifle and ammunition in the man's room in the building across the street from the church, wherein there was a window which commanded a perfect view of the church vestibule. The church warden had been killed and five persons had been wounded, albeit with only minor injuries, as bullets hit the crowd of worshipers outside the church for midnight services. Police had earlier described the man who had surrendered as a disgruntled individual known in the neighborhood as being "against everything". He had come to the U.S. 30 years earlier from Rumania. No motive had yet been established for the shooting. It was not known whether the church warden had been the intended target. One of the worshipers was a former Rumanian Princess.
In Raleigh, State Attorney General W. B. Rodman said this date that school officials had expressed the feeling at four meetings he had attended on the prior Thursday, in Charlotte, Asheville, Hendersonville and Bryson City, that the public schools in the state ought continue to be segregated as in the past, that the purpose of the meetings had been to discuss problems of how to continue to operate the public schools, with everyone trying to make it clear that their problems were local. In the industrial area of Charlotte, for example, the problems were different from those of Wadesboro, a rural area, requiring different solutions to segregation. The problems of Mecklenburg County outside the city were different from those within the city. He said that there was agreement that the special session of the Legislature to be called by Governor Luther Hodges sometime during the summer ought restrict its work to handling legislation dealing with school segregation, and that he did not anticipate that session lasting longer than a week to ten days.
Ann Sawyer of The News reports that the president of the Charlotte Bar Association this date had urged the County Commissioners to take steps quickly to obtain property for additional courthouse facilities before it was too late.
In Los Angeles, the husband of a wealthy Bel Air matron who had disappeared a year earlier, now, himself, had disappeared the prior Tuesday night, after being the subject of a police and grand jury investigation in the disappearance of his wife. He had taken a divorcee, his close friend, to dinner on Tuesday night in a 1949 maroon coupe, found abandoned the previous day on a Santa Monica street with a bullet hole through the windshield. His friend said that she had not seen him since he left her following the dinner and that she was worried.
In Tokyo, a telephone linesman paused during his work underground to look out of a manhole, at which point he was killed by a passing taxicab.
Near Cleveland, a rock 'n' roll troupe
and a truck driver had engaged in dissonance early this date at the
Ohio Turnpike's Middle Ridge Plaza west of the city, with the truck
driver having been knocked unconscious and treated for bruises in a
hospital, after an encounter with a busload of 74 entertainers,
including Bill Haley and his Comets, the Teenagers
The same rock 'n' roll troupe would
come to Charlotte on May 29, to appear at the Coliseum, with a story
indicating that it might supply Charlotte with its answer to
professional boxing. They were sockin'
On the editorial page, "End This 'Marriage of Convenience'" finds that the statements by Governor Hodges on April 30 and May 3, encouraging in the first speech having a penal system which made "every reasonable effort to treat prisoners fairly and rehabilitate them for a useful life" back in society, and in the second, urging separation of the Prison Department from the Highway Commission, outlining in both the challenge and opportunity before the state.
It suggests that satisfactory prison reform could not be possible until the separation of the prisons from the Highway Commission. That "marriage of convenience" was no longer convenient or respectable, hamstringing the prisons with the Commission's political controls, a backward system which no other state tolerated. Despite the 1955 Legislature having given additional administrative autonomy to the prisons, the prison director, William Bailey, remained under the Highway Commission's fiscal direction.
The mass use of prison labor on the highways was inefficient and costly, and had limited value in rehabilitation. The primary problem lay in finding other useful work for prisoners, suggesting that resolution of that problem was the principal task for state authorities presently studying the feasibility of the separation. Other states had separated highway boards from the prisons with good results. The Wisconsin system had recently received the compliments of Governor Hodges.
It concludes that new penal concepts were badly needed in the state, geared to the needs of prisoners, society and the taxpayers, and that it should be a focus of the 1957 General Assembly, with the first step being dissolution of the unhappy marriage between the Prisons Department and the Highway Commission.
"A Fashion Brief for Ike Likers" indicates that one of the manifestations resulting from the long name of Dwight David Eisenhower was its forced contraction into "Ike" to fit into newspaper headlines, chummy political chats and simple answers. The phrase "I like Ike" enabled people on the street to provide quick answers to virtually any question regarding current government policy. Furthermore, it rhymed and provided a sense of security to those uttering the phrase.
But it finds that it would not last as Ike likers would have to brace themselves for the fact that the rhyme was changing. As a pre-campaign service to such people, it lists new novelty clothing and political buttons, with the latter now saying such things as: "I Still Like Ike", "Let's Back Ike", "Back Ike's Program", "We Want Ike Again", "Win With Ike", and "For The Love Of Ike Vote Republican".
The gadgetry and clothing included a beer can opener adorned with fake jewels spelling out "Ike", ladies' fans which bore the phrase "I Am An Eisenhower Fan", raincoats bearing the slogan "Woman power for Eisenhower", pearl necklaces with dangling "Ike" pendants, elephants dangling from bracelets and brooches projecting the image of Ike and Mamie. Children's T-shirts had the slogan: "I'm Safe With Ike".
Bumper stickers included: "Don't Bump A Good Man Out Of The White House".
Thus, it finds that "I like Ike" would no longer suffice, that the response would have to be more involved, echoing some of the above-noted expressions. It indicates that it could abide the new buttons, but not the other gadgets and clothing cluttering up homes, automobiles and people. It says it would retire in protest to the backyard while "Ike" "races about on auto bumpers, opens beer, picks up hot pots, and hangs around women's necks and the sweaty chests of the tee-shirt set."
It would not raise a verbal outcry but would produce its shotgun and blow to smithereens the first lightning bug which had on its tail, "Light Up With Ike!"
"The Battle of Words Is a Farce" tells of Washington newsmen insisting that there was a sign headed "Republican Achievements", which then listed something like: "Social Security extended. Health, education and welfare extended. Socialist trend reversed."
It finds it illustrative of a lesson in political semantics in which there were "good" words and "bad" words, a distinction which was artificial and largely without a difference. "Socialist" was a "bad" word, while "Social Security" was "good", while the fact that Social Security was somewhat "socialistic" did not appear to matter.
The imaginary and largely meaningless debate between "socialism" and "capitalism" involved abstractions omitting facts which might be subject to verification. It finds Democrats and Republicans equally to blame for the phenomenon, both having helped to create the imaginary battle of words.
Economists had helped, with British journalist F. S. Oliver having said: "The besetting sin of economists was their preference for argument over observation." Only a few of the "dependable" economic laws were actually based on controlled experiments.
Among both politicians and economists, the weapons were words, which were loaded, such as "welfare state", despite the Preamble to the Constitution ensuring that the Government had as one of its primary responsibilities the "general welfare" of the people—a favorite phrase of former President Truman. It indicates that any list of activities which was concerned with welfare or supplying needs at public expense had to include the public school system, land-grant colleges, the G.I. Bill of Rights, the Public Health Service, pure food and drug inspection, the Red Cross, community chests and the United Funds, the school lunch programs, old-age pensions, unemployment compensation, Federal insurance of bank deposits and other such activities. (It omits the considerable corporate welfare payments by the Government to needy corporations, as with the oil depletion allowance, at 27.5 percent in 1956, until finally reduced at the end of 1969 to 22 percent from oil and gas wells and 15 percent from shale, partially repealed in 1975 and eventually, in 1984, (see page 808 of the above-linked law review article), reduced across the board to 15 percent, where it still stands, albeit coupled since 1986 with a use limitation of the allowance to an amount equal to 65 percent of taxable income derived from the specific oil or gas property, formerly limited to 50 percent of net income.)
While most of those activities fell within the ambit of "socialism", most were enthusiastically supported by the American people, even though not socialists. There was, in fact, no system of pure capitalism, with the U.S. economy a mixture to afford economic efficiency. There was government ownership and private ownership, plus labor unions, management associations, cooperatives and nonprofit organizations, such as colleges, churches and foundations.
Abraham Lincoln had once said: "The legitimate object of government is to do for a community whatever they need to have done, but cannot do for themselves."
Drew Pearson tells of former Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland, who had been defeated in 1950 by the current Maryland Senator John Butler, following a campaign in which, at the behest of Senator McCarthy, a composite photograph was circulated showing him supposedly shaking hands with American Communist leader Earl Browder, after Senator Tydings had headed a committee investigating the charges of Senator McCarthy made in February, 1950, that there were various numbers of "card-carrying Communists" within the State Department. Former Senator Tydings was running in the Democratic primary in 1956.
Mr. Pearson tells of Senator McCarthy having called upon his Chicago Tribune friends for campaign funds of $10,000, which had been collected from Texas oil tycoon Clint Murchison and his wife, enabling circulation of the faked photograph of Senator Tydings.
FDR had sought to defeat Senator Tydings in 1938 during the purge of disloyal Democrats who had not adequately supported New Deal policies. Senator McCarthy, however, had succeeded where President Roosevelt had failed.
Mr. Pearson indicates that regardless of what would happen in the primary election, the events of the previous two years since the Army-McCarthy hearings of spring, 1954, followed by the Senator's censure by the Senate the following December, had served as vindication to former Senator Tydings. In addition, Owen Lattimore, the former consultant to the State Department on Far Eastern policies and John Hopkins professor, who had been smeared by Senator McCarthy as a Communist and then indicted for perjury when he denied any sympathy with Communism, had now been cleared after the Justice Department had said in court that it had no case against him. Edward Lamb, a Toledo radio and television station owner, who had been smeared by the FCC as a Communist, had now shown that the witnesses accusing him were making up their stories, one of whom having been convicted of perjury. Jacob Burck, a Chicago Sun-Times cartoonist who had been accused by the late Paul Crouch of being a Communist, had been exonerated, while Mr. Crouch, who had been a professional witness for the Justice Department and had also sought to smear Aubrey Williams, a former youth administrator, and Clifford Durr, the brother-in-law of Justice Hugo Black, had been so discredited that the Justice Department had dropped him. Abraham Chasanow, who had been dropped by the Navy Department as a security risk, had been rehired by the Navy with an apology. Annie Lee Moss, who had been called before Senator McCarthy's Investigating Committee and charged with being a Communist, had since been rehired by the Army. Dr. Ralph Bunche, the accomplished diplomat who had been investigated by the Justice Department for seven months, had been cleared.
While not all of those cases had been attributable directly to Senator McCarthy, his tactics had created the "terrorist atmosphere" in which, in some cases, Attorney General Brownell had almost outdone him, and which had caused Dr. Vannevar Blush, president of the Carnegie Institute, to warn two years earlier: "The Eisenhower security system has dropped the morale of scientists so low that our world leadership in atomic research is in danger."
Mr. Pearson indicates that the statement was prophetic of the fact that the Soviets now appeared to be ahead of the U.S. in hydrogen bomb research and might be ahead in development of guided missiles to deliver them. He suggests that the damage which had been done during the time of McCarthyism might not be known for some time. Meanwhile, it would be interesting to see how the people of Maryland would vote on one of the few Senators who had the courage at the time to stand up against McCarthyism, and was defeated for his efforts.
A letter writer says that in the last paragraph of News music critic Edwin Bergamini's review of Giuseppe Verdi's Aida, he had asked, "Isn't there some way this production can be repeated?" He says that the question had occurred to many who attended a packed Ovens Auditorium performance of the opera by the Charlotte Opera Association the previous Tuesday, finding it "the peak of excellence, the utmost in skillful, sensitive performances, the most enchanting in music brought to an appreciative audience that showed its delight by its unrestrained applause and the 'bravos' that resounded again and again." He urges a repeat performance.
A letter writer comments on the pending court-martial of the Marine staff sergeant accused of manslaughter in the death by drowning of six of his men after he had marched his platoon into a tidal stream adjacent to the Parris Island Marine base on the basis of teaching them discipline, with the Marines having alleged in the charges that he was at the time of conceiving the venture drinking vodka in the barracks. The writer indicates that the medical officer who examined him two hours after the incident had testified that he was in possession of his faculties but with a suggestive odor of alcohol on his breath. The mother of one of the drowned men had stated in an interview that she hoped the sergeant would get all that the law allowed. He faced ten years in the brig if convicted on all charges. The writer indicates that normally he was in favor of mercy, especially where there was evidence of repentance on the part of the accused, but could not find it in the instant case, believing it a "crying shame and disgrace that a young man can be forced into military service by draft and then forced by military code to obey without question a superior officer even though it costs him his life." He finds that the sergeant was not the only responsible party, but that the government and the citizens who permitted that sort of conduct were guilty before God and would be held accountable at the judgment. He finds that whoever had allowed Russian vodka to be imported and sold to the sergeant was guilty of murder. He prays that eventually every liquor, wine and beer advertisement would cease, that every brewery and liquor industry would close and that every drinking person would become sober, indicating that no nation could thrive at the price of "blood money".
A letter writer indicates that music was fine if it was decent, but that some of it was awful and that she would not want her child staying up at a rock 'n' roll show until all hours of the night, that if parents were Christians, they would want their children to have the best entertainment available which was clean. She indicates that if parents had given their children love and kindness, and encouraged them to live right, they would not have heavy burdens to bear in parenting.
A letter writer responds to a letter published on May 2 which had stated in part, "if you stack the Negro and white kids, from the nursery to manhood in the classrooms, playgrounds and buses like sardines in a can, you may as well tuck them under the same cover, in the same bed." The writer finds the previous writer to be more than 100 years late with his admonition, indicating "the white Negro (expectant) mothers were not frightened by a white sheet hanging on the line. This too, happened in a segregated society. Amalgamation is one of the oldest facts of history. The mingling of the races has been going on so long and so persistently that there are few, if any, pure racial types. Cultures and races have crossed until there is no important culture which one can call the product of a single race." She says that no reputable student of culture used race as a basic fact that, biologically, blacks were inferior to whites, as there was no adequate proof of such and its basic concepts had grown out of the practice of segregation, suggesting that it was the historic background of blacks which caused a low-caste position rather than an established inferiority.
A letter writer from Monroe indicates enjoyment of the series of columns by Sigmund Blomberg appearing in The News regarding improvement of memory through mnemonic devices. The writer says that he used such devices in teaching his students, teaching, for instance, the word "repetition" by urging his students to spell it in a certain manner which he thinks the best of all, syllabically, with the "tion" coming naturally to high school students, as with "rep", leaving only "eti" to learn in the middle.
A letter writer comments on the May 1 editorial, "The 'New' Klan: A Study in Fatigue", asking, "Who are you kidding, yourselves or your readers?"
A letter writer indicates that more than a million dollars per year was raised in Charlotte by organizations in the name of charity, thinks it a shame for the people of Charlotte to allow any person to have their household goods moved out into the streets, that the people who gave to those "so-called charitable organizations" ought to hunt up the people who needed help and see to it that they got it. "What crimes are committed in the name of charity."
A letter writer from Myrtle Beach, S.C., comments on a dispatch appearing in the newspaper regarding the establishment of a paper mill near Charlotte, indicating that if it would be anything like the one at Georgetown, S.C., they had better persuade them to remove it at least 100 miles, as Charlotte's Sugar Creek smelled "like sweet essence of violets by comparison." He says he had first smelled the plant at Ocean Drive, 50 miles away, and thought some large something had died or that all the septic tanks had gone on the blink.
You got that right. Just visit Canton on a warm afternoon.
A letter from the president and Christmas Seal sales chairman of the Mecklenburg County Tuberculosis & Health Association expresses appreciation to the newspaper for cooperating in its Christmas Seal Sale, which helped them achieve more than their fund-raising goal, indicating that the sale alerted the public to tuberculosis and helped each person to recall their own responsibility in the matter of fighting the disease.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.