Friday, June 22, 1956

The Charlotte News

Friday, June 22, 1956

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that a 46-member committee working on arrangements for the Republican national convention in San Francisco, set to start August 20, began work this date on the assumption that the President would run again, though there was no expectation that the President would provide any definite word on the subject to the committee as he was recuperating from his June 8 surgery for his attack of ileitis. It was anticipated that the group would debate a proposal to shorten the convention from four days to three, on the basis that there would be quick approval of a renewed Eisenhower-Nixon ticket. San Francisco businessmen had contributed $150,000 toward convention expenses and the City had provided another $100,000, and wanted the convention to maintain a four-day schedule for the sake of business. The committee was also considering who would deliver the keynote address, with several women reportedly being considered to establish a precedent. Senators Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts, Everett Dirksen of Illinois and Representative Charles Halleck of Indiana were among the legislators mentioned as possible keynoters, while Governors Christian Herter of Massachusetts, William Stratton of Illinois, George Craig of Indiana, and Arthur Langlie of Washington were also proposed. In addition, former Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay, running against Senator Wayne Morse for the seat in Oregon, had also been proposed, as had U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.

Democrats meanwhile announced plans for their nominee at the mid-August convention in Chicago to conduct an active whistlestop campaign during the fall.

Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson issued an order directing that military officers on duty in Government departments in the Washington area shed their uniforms on July 1 and wear only civilian clothes while on duty. The order had thrown the Pentagon into some confusion, with an official having stated privately that strong opposition to the order had already developed among service officers and that they had communicated that feeling to the White House. Junior officers and reservists who had put $500 into uniforms they apparently would not need, now facing the prospect of having to purchase civilian clothes, were especially perturbed. Defense Department officials said that they were trying to get in touch with Secretary Wilson to obtain an explanation for the order and to find out whether he was insisting that it had to be carried out. Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana had told a reporter that he understood that the idea behind the order was to try to play down the role of the military in the Government and the extremely large number of personnel in evidence in Washington. But he added that he believed it would be a mistake, as there ought be a daily reminder of the influence of the military in the Government. Pentagon records showed that 10,949 officers were assigned to departmental service out of a total of 20,387 officers in the greater Washington area.

In Warren, O., a 37-year old truck driver, who had gone berserk after a quarrel with his wife the previous night, had shot and killed his two sisters-in-law and a teenage girl he did not know, according to sheriff's deputies, wounding another man and then escaping as he sped over a rural area in an automobile, gunning down his victims in three separate locations. The body of the girl, who had been kidnaped while sitting with two boys in a parked car, had been found this date in a ditch along a lonely road northwest of the town. A manhunt for the perpetrator was now taking place, centering in an area about 15 miles west of the town, after the man's 1949 car had been found abandoned along a country road. An earlier tip had led State Highway Patrol officers and sheriff's deputies to a farmhouse about 20 miles from that latter area, but they had found no evidence that the man had been there. All authorities in Ohio and neighboring states were on alert, with the man reportedly armed with a foreign-made pistol, possibly a German Luger. The man had gone to the home of a sister-in-law to see his wife who was staying there and the wife, upon seeing him, locked the doors and then locked herself and her children in the bathroom. When the sister-in-law walked into the living room from a bedroom, the man had shot and killed her, firing through a window in the front door. He then forced a man off the road, shot him in the upper forearm and began beating him when the injured man struggled into a field, managing to escape back to his car and fleeing the scene, with his boy, who had also been in the car, having fled on foot and found later, unharmed. The man next went to the home of another sister-in-law, where he fired two bullets through the door, killing her. The man had been released on $300 bond on June 19 after his wife had signed an assault and battery complaint against him, with a deputy sheriff having stated that when he was released, he had said it would be the last time they would get him alive, stating, as he pointed to the deputy's gun, that he had "one of those, too." Though, by his picture, more resembling Rick Nelson than James Dean, he may have been the archetype for Charles Starkweather 18 months hence, in Lincoln, Neb. Speaking of whom, did you know that the latter reportedly was knowingly going blind at the time of his rampage? at least so said his father. Nobody has ever pointed that out in subsequent movies and reports, more concerned with the savagery of young Charles than anything which might potentially explain to a degree, though obviously not excuse, his desperation. But whether fact or fiction, it would be so reported at the time of his apprehension. Anyway, another truck driver would come to Charlotte in a few days.

In Princeton, N.J., three persons had died this date in a fire which had destroyed a one-story frame structure at a home for the elderly maintained by the Christian Science Church, with at least one person hospitalized and several others treated at the scene, the fire having apparently started from a woman smoking in her room. The estimated damage amounted to $100,000. The structure, built in 1928, had been scheduled to be demolished within a short time.

Ann Sawyer of The News indicates that A. G. Brown had won his long-running dispute with the City regarding his building of businesses on his land, zoned for residential use only, after a Superior Court judge had found this date that Mr. Brown had started his construction before the City's perimeter zoning ordinance had gone into effect on January 2. The City had contended that Mr. Brown had violated the special ordinance by not allowing the specified yard space, but the judge said that he would have been violating the ordinance only if he had not started the construction before the ordinance became effective. Mr. Brown said that he was surprised that the judge had agreed with him, that if he had ruled in favor of the City's position, he would have nevertheless begun construction again during the afternoon, but given the favorable decision, was headed to the mountains for the weekend and would begin construction early the following Monday morning.

J. A. Daly of The News reports that the prospects had brightened this date that Wachovia Bank & Trust Co. of Winston-Salem, which had large operations in Charlotte, would soon merge with Fidelity Bank of Durham, with Wachovia's home office reporting this date that the merger negotiations between the banks had progressed to the point where separate meetings of the boards of directors would be held on June 27 to take action on the proposal. John Watlington, Jr., senior vice-president of Wachovia in Charlotte until a few months earlier, was now president of the bank, and E. S. Booth of Durham was president of Fidelity, which had capital stock of $500,000 and assets in excess of 30 million dollars, having recently reported a surplus of 2.25 million dollars and undivided profits and reserves of $364,000. Wachovia, in its most recent statement, showed assets of 427 million dollars, with capital at 5.5 million dollars, surplus at 21.69 million and undivided profits at a little more than one million dollars, a combined capital account totaling 28.2 million dollars.

Charles Kuralt of The News reports that parents who wanted polio vaccine for their children could get it presently in the county, as there was plenty available for anyone under 20 years old, with the supply expected to last until fall barring any unexpected demand. Polio season was now underway during the summer and if parents felt that they could not afford to pay private doctors for the vaccine, costing between four and five dollars per shot, they could get it administered free at the Health Department, at child health stations, numbering about 30 in the county, or at special neighborhood clinics. There was no test of financial need conducted by the Health Department. The Federal Government provided the vaccine. It was also available free to expectant mothers on the advice of their physicians. No appointments were necessary except at special clinics which provided the vaccine only to large groups of children. It was available to children between the ages of six months and 19 years. Three shots were recommended, though it was believed that two would be sufficient to provide a considerable degree of protection, with the first two shots to be spaced a month apart and the third shot to come seven months later. It was estimated that about 50,000 youngsters in the county had not been inoculated, with about 35,000 having been provided the shots the previous year, about 10,000 of whom having received their vaccine through private doctors and most having been in the age groups of 5 to 14, most of whom were between five and nine.

Helen Parks of The News indicates that evangelist Billy Graham had set August 24, 1958 as the date he would begin the Charlotte Crusade for Christ, with the site expected to be at Freedom Park over a two-week period. He had originally planned to bring his Crusade to Charlotte the following year, but because of prior commitments, had postponed it until 1958.

On the editorial page, "Peddlers of Prejudice Have a Price" tells of County Police Captain George Stephens having told the Charlotte Jaycees that the purveyors of hate literature in the community, recently prosecuted under local ordinance preventing such distribution through the mails, having been in the business to sell hate for money.

It indicates that prejudice in the world abounded. "Moslems distrust non-Moslems. The French distrust the Germans. In South Africa, it is said that the English are against the Afrikaner, both are against the Jews, all three are opposed to the Indians, while all four conspire against the native blacks. In Hungary, the saying is, 'An anti-Semite is a person who hates the Jews more than is absolutely necessary.' Some time ago in the West Indies it was customary for natives to hold their noses whenever they passed an American on the street. Only a dozen years ago, during World War II, the English said, 'The only trouble with the Yanks is that they are over-paid, over-sexed and over here.'"

It finds that such prejudices were likely unavoidable and that some people could not live without them, as it hurt them more to have an idea pulled than to have a tooth pulled, but that when someone tried to provide prejudices in an encapsulated form and charged for doing so, it created anger because it exploited human emotions in an extremely distasteful way. Plenty of such dispensed hatred was presently occurring as it was a big business with a ready market of suckers. It indicates that sample copies of hate literature turned up in the newspaper's mail every week, cheaply printed, horrendously written and full of absurd drivel, all for a substantial price.

Expressing prejudice was protected by the First Amendment but there was a danger in people acting out their prejudices. "Human emotion can be an explosive thing. To tamper with it—for a fast buck—is in a deep sense immoral."

"Where Did They Put Those Issues?" comments on the letter from Solicitor Basil Whitener to the newspaper appearing the previous day, regarding his desire to debate his opponent in the upcoming runoff primary for the 11th Congressional District seat being vacated by Representative Woodrow Jones. His opponent, Ralph Gardner, had refused the invitation to join in the televised debates at various locations across the district.

It indicates that it knew nothing of the particulars except that every campaign appeared to have a debate on issues, but wonders where Mr. Whitener and Mr. Gardner had secreted them. An advertisement in the Shelby Daily Star had indicated that Mr. Whitener had accused Mr. Gardner of failure to pay his poll tax, and a few days earlier, Mr. Gardner had accused Mr. Whitener of some shenanigans regarding their expense reports for the initial primary campaign.

It finds that a runoff election tended to victimize the candidate and the voter, as there was awareness that a small increase in votes was needed to put either candidate across, inducing the tendency of each candidate to make an issue of every single point, especially those in the category of mud-slinging, and that the only cure for it was a determination of the candidates to rise above it or of the voters to react against it.

It wishes both candidates success at getting at the issues, whether the debates would be televised or not. It suggests that a start might be for each candidate to begin telling what he would do if elected to Congress, rather than "raising Cain about what the other has done in the past."

Whether the item at the bottom of the column, culled from the New Orleans States, appears merely by coincidence, or was placed with a modicum of sardonic deliberation, with deniable subliminalization in mind, for possibly some insight to Mr. Whitener obtained from local experience with him, is not known. In any event, he would win the race and serve in Congress through 1969.

"Elegance Is Not Mr. Truman's Baby" tells of former President Truman having recently received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University, and having made it clear before the ceremony that because it was in Latin, he had received a written translation of the speeches in advance.

It finds a debate in Parliament the same day particularly interesting, as there had been a suggested amendment to a bill referring to "a hotel", to make it read "an hotel", with Lord Faringdon commenting that he took the matter seriously, that while it was desirable to avoid "excessive preciosity", it was also a mistake "to throw the baby of elegance out with the dirty water of the precious." He eventually won the debate, and the piece finds it affording a sharp contrast with Mr. Truman's Missouri English, suggesting that Lord Faringdon would never term anyone a "squirrelheaded general", but might become so involved with preciosity that he would forget the hotel keepers. It finds the contrast to suggest the need for a language lend-lease program, with Mr. Truman able to make good use of a little preciosity and Lord Faringdon, of some lessons in plain talk.

"One To Go" indicates that in opening spacious off-street parking facilities the previous day on the site of the burned-out freight terminal, Southern Railway had contributed much to Charlotte's civic progress and suggests a note of thanks in order. It also suggests that the railroad could do itself and Charlotte a favor by replacing its "outrageously obsolete passenger depot" with more fitting facilities.

A piece from the Green Bay (Wisc.) Press-Gazette, titled "Song That Lived 100 Years", tells of "The Little Brown Church in the Vale" having given pleasure for a century, written in 1856 by William Pitts, a rural school teacher near Evansville, Wisc., albeit having been another seven years before he summoned the courage to sing it in public and to send it to a publisher.

The song had been inspired by his trip to Fredericksburg, Iowa, to visit his future wife, when the stage had made a stopover at Bradford, where Mr. Pitts took a walk and was inspired by the beauty of a particular spot on the street, which, unknown to Mr. Pitts, had already been selected for a future church.

When he returned to the site seven years later, he was astonished to learn that a church had been built on the site and that it was painted brown because the congregation could not afford better paint. No one had known of the song. Mr. Pitts sung his song for the first time publicly at that time and in 1864, took a position at the Bradford Academy near the site. He entered Rush Medical College in 1866, and in 1868 received his degree as a doctor of medicine, returning to Fredericksburg, where he practiced for the next 38 years.

Well, what if his song originally was titled "The Little White Church in the Vale"? Who's to know? And wouldn't the brown color have come from bare clapboards and not paint? as there is no usual difference in cost of paint for it being brown, unless it was returned paint sold at a steep discount, because someone wanted a deeper or lighter shade or because the paint did not match an existing application. And would not whitewash have been the cheapest form in 1860 or so, ye know, as in Ben painting the fence? It seems problematic.

Drew Pearson indicates that city folks sometimes wondered why the farmer was confused, bewildered and angry, indicating that the manner in which Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson had backtracked, flip-flopped and reversed himself on the question of the soil bank provided one reason why that was the case. He proceeds to list nine such flip-flops, the first being the Agriculture Department's sending of official letters to Congress the prior July 27 effectively vetoing the soil bank as impractical and too costly, with the second flip-flop being the President having then proposed the soil bank in his January 5 State of the Union message, that despite previous opposition, Secretary Benson then had chided Congress in March and April for being slow in passing the soil bank program, that on May 29, as the President had signed the soil bank bill, Secretary Benson had announced that the Department was moving immediately to put the soil bank program into effect, with the fifth flip-flop being that at a press conference two days later, the Secretary had further announced that price-supported crops could be plowed up if not too far advanced and that payments would be made for them under the soil bank program—which Mr. Pearson notes was adoption of the plow-up program originated by Henry Wallace during the New Deal days, a program which Secretary Benson had repeatedly ridiculed. Secretary Benson had further explained that farmers were to call at local Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Committees to enter into agreements with the committees for soil bank payments.

The sixth flip-flop then came on the following day when the farmers called at the ASC committees, only to find that there were no contracts and no instructions as to whether they were qualified to participate, causing the upset farmers to fire back at Washington, with it eventually turning out that the Agriculture Department attorneys had been still studying the law on the matter and that it would be two or more weeks before instructions could go to the local farm committees. The seventh flip-flop had occurred on June 4 when Secretary Benson had stated that farmers who would lose crops because of drought and flood would receive no soil bank payments, as the program was designed to reduce surpluses. The eighth flip-flop had occurred on June 8 when the Secretary was called to the White House, with aides there telling him, in the absence of the President who had gone to the hospital for his ileitis, that he would have to reverse himself, and later that day he had done so, issuing a statement that payments of six dollars per acre would be made for wheat lost through drought, wind or flood. The final flip-flop was at a press conference called by the Secretary to explain that there had been no flip-flops.

Walter Lippmann regards the President's decision to continue to run for re-election in spite of his surgery two weeks earlier after an attack of ileitis, indicating that the main issue was not the President's life expectancy, as the Vice-President would take over in the event of his death, but rather the issue of whether he could count on his energy and personal powers over a period of four years. For at present, the Constitution made no provision for the President becoming an invalid or failing in his powers—as the 25th Amendment subsequently would provide in 1967. (Of course, at that time, there was no Fox "News" or its functional equivalent to make mockery of that process, whether it might arise in the case of an aging Republican or an aging Democrat, taking the attitude of it being a Democratic frame-up in the case of the Republican and a Democratic snowjob in the case of the Democrat, actually making jokes about that very serious process and leading a substantial portion of the public into ultimate ignorance on the point. In point of fact, of course, every President is vulnerable from the day he or she steps into office, becoming the target of potential assassins as well as the potential for succumbing to natural phenomena, most visibly so during the 2020-22 pandemic. No one can be assured that they will survive four years in office, as everyone knows who was alive at the time of the assassination of President Kennedy, the youngest person ever to be elected to the office, following the oldest to that point in time. Speaking of which, incidentally, this new evidence tends to ride a freight train through the old single-bullet theory and thus that of Lee Oswald as the sole assassin, as there was insufficient time for two bullets to have been fired by the same gunman, taking a minimum of 2.3 seconds between shots, in the approximate two-thirds of a second to a full second interval between the first reaction of the President as he emerged into view from behind the Stemmons Freeway sign as viewed in the Zapruder film at frame 224, just after the point at which the Warren Commission surmised that he had been hit for the first time while hidden from view from the Zapruder camera, at between frames 210 and 223, and Governor Connally being hit in the back at between frames 235 and 240, thus dependent on the theory that one bullet made both wounds, exiting with near simultaneity through the front of the President's throat and then entering the Governor—that theory containing manifest flaws with which we have dealt elsewhere herein, not the least of which was that, as evident in Zapruder frames 230-235, Governor Connally continued to hold too long his Stetson hat with his eventually shattered right wrist, necessarily shattered by the same bullet for the single-bullet theory to be sustained, after the President began visibly to react at frame 224, that interval having been at least two-thirds of a second with the film advancing at 18.3 frames per second assuming a fully wound camera, for the bullet to have been the same bullet which had hit the President in the throat, whether an entry wound as described by the Parkland doctors or a wound of exit as concluded in the Bethesda Naval Hospital autopsy, after the wound had been obliterated by the incision to make the tracheostomy performed initially in the trauma room at Parkland. In short, the time interval between the reactions of the President and the Governor, each exhibiting involuntary signs of being wounded, was too long, with the bullet transiting at about 1,800 feet per second, to have been caused by the same bullet and the interval was too short for both wounds to have been made by the same gunman firing twice. The same bullet would have produced simultaneous reactions of the two men, with far less than 1/18th of a second interval between the two wounds, thus visible in the same frames of the film, without an interval of 12/18ths or more of a second between the President's reaction and that of the Governor. It is reasonable to assume that the intact bullet now described by Secret Service Agent Paul Landis as having been found immediately on the top of the back seat next to the trunk lid, is Warren Commission exhibit number CE399, the so-called "pristine bullet" which the Commission contended likely hit both men. It is either that bullet or another bullet which never appeared in evidence, as there was no other nearly whole bullet before the Warren Commission. Regardless, its location, as described by Mr. Landis, indicates that it would be highly unlikely that it was the bullet which was theorized to have fallen out of the Governor's last wound, that of his left thigh, nearly intact—however improbable that scenario appears given its necessarily circuitous path—, unless the bullet was moved several feet backward in the limousine in the confusion of removing the President and the Governor, not impossible but also not likely as it appeared as a nearly whole bullet, not just a fragment, conveying an improbable scenario, even in the frantic haste of the moment, whereby a whole bullet would have been tossed aside blindly and deposited some four to five feet rearward on top of the rear seat. If it was a bullet which fell out of the shallow wound in the back of the President, never probed in the autopsy for a through path to the throat wound, then it, of course, also at least calls into question the theory that the throat wound was necessarily one of exit, potentially confirming the initial observations made by the Parkland doctors that it appeared as a small, round wound of entry, about 3/16 of an inch in diameter, notwithstanding the flimsy, purely subjective observations made by the Warren Commission that the threads on the shirt and a nick in the President's necktie opposite the neck wound appeared to be protruded outward, consistent with a wound of exit, akin, when brought down to cases, to reading tea leaves. Threads on clothing may very easily be changed in orientation by simply moving the items around, as was necessarily done hastily with the President's shirt and necktie at the initial point of receiving medical attention. That, of course, leaves the problem that if the throat wound was one of entry and not exit, there is apparent absence of an exit wound from the throat wound. Aside from exotic theories regarding dissolving bullets, it is conceivable that a bullet entering the throat, slightly below the Adam's apple, fragmented into the subsequently inflicted upper head wound—or wounds emanating from the front and back at nearly the same time—, and did not exit cleanly from the President, thus leaving no subsequently discernible exit pathway, though not consistent with the above-linked 1969 testimony from the Clay Shaw trial of autopsy doctor, Col. Pierre Finck, who said that he and the other autopsy doctors observed bruising consistent with a path between the back wound and the neck wound. It is also possible that the pathway was the opposite of that concluded by the Commisssion, that is through the throat and, after being deflected slightly to the left by hitting bone—try feeling that area of your neck with your finger—, into the back, not quite fully exiting the back wound initially. That would appear consistent with the President staring directly at the position of the Zapruder camera at the moment he emerges from behind the sign and begins raising his hands sharply to his throat in reaction to a wound. The Zapruder camera was positioned on top of the wall in front of the pergola, above and to the right of the President, a vantage point from which a shot to the throat could have been made with the described resulting pathway. The Warren Commission conclusions admitted expressly of a lot of conjecture, as would always be the case when examining multifaceted evidence arising at once, entailing multiple bullet trajectories, bullet identification, pathways through solid bodies, multiple wounds, and multiple eyewitness accounts, all having to fit the multi-angled photographic record of an incident, all compounding to produce some inevitable confusion, not susceptible to clear conclusions, whether posited for one assassin or more than one, an indefinite conclusion which lends much more credence, and film, to a predetermined mindset of conspiracy, however small, than the product of an individual. The presence of the open umbrella in front of the Stemmons Freeway sign and the motion of the man immediately across Elm Street, visible at Zapruder frames 218 through 255, first clapping and then exaggerating a backward movement of his arms after he breaks off his clapping, while looking away from the President, though immediately opposite the limousine just as the shooting had commenced, only add, among many other things, including the nearly empty space of the Plaza on the other side of the street, absent the shoulder-to-shoulder line of people on the Depository side before the sign, to the notion of such a predetermined mindset, one carefully designed in advance, as if by a director of an amateur film.)

The politicians who wanted President Eisenhower to run again were relying on the doctors as having provided an expert verdict on the President's fitness to carry the burdens of the office for a second term, and thus the doctors were being pressed to make a highly speculative prognosis beyond mere life expectancy and recovery from his prior heart attack and the recent attack of ileitis.

Mr. Lippmann goes on to indicate that the system was more defective than it needed to be and could be remedied to avoid the worst circumstances, as had been exhibited in the stroke of President Woodrow Wilson in 1919, 18 months prior to the end of his term, and in the two and a half months of recovery by President James Garfield following the assassination attempt, which eventually proved fatal. He suggests that the established practice ought be that when the President became ill, the Vice-President would take over until the recovery of the President, as there was little doubt that the Constitution so intended. The President could invite the Vice-President to take over his responsibilities during such a recovery process and then have it tested in the Supreme Court. Again, the 25th Amendment would take care of those contingencies.

Marquis Childs indicates that leading Democrats in the Senate were accumulating data to support their charge that the Administration, for reasons of economy and neglect, was permitting the Soviets to take the lead over the U.S. in air power, a line which would figure prominently in the fall presidential campaign as Democratic Senators would vote against foreign aid so that the saved money could be used to build up the Air Force.

During the first five months of the year, the Air Force had taken delivery of only eight B-52's, the intercontinental jet bomber which was to replace the nearly obsolete B-36 and to serve as the mainstay of the Strategic Air Command. Until long and intermediate-range missiles were developed, SAC, equipped to deliver atom and hydrogen bombs, was considered the primary deterrent to war.

Leading critics of Administration air policy considered the lag in deliveries to be shocking, particularly as it coincided with a Senate investigation into lagging air power which ought stimulate defense administrators to greater efforts. While Secretary of the Air Force Donald Quarles did not confirm the figures which the Senate Democrats had, he indicated that they were not far off while placing a less gloomy interpretation on them, indicating that the lag was the result of the need for perfection of an alternator, one of the specialized motors which would power the electronic equipment on the B-52, after a faulty alternator had exploded the previous winter, severing gas lines and causing an explosion which resulted in the destruction of a B-52 and the death of its crew. Even though B-52's were produced on schedule, they could not be accepted without the approved alternator, and until officially accepted, the airplanes could not be incorporated into the new wings with all of the highly specialized training entailed.

Secretary Quarles had cited an Air staff policy report setting the optimum number of B-52's at 20 per month, expressing confidence that the figure could be reached by the end of the current year. SAC commander, General Curtis LeMay, who had called for an additional 3.8 billion dollars in spending, had testified that only about 50 B-52's were operational, a long way from the 600 in the planning stage, with each plane costing eight million dollars.

Department of Defense administrators and Senate critics of the program were sharply at odds, with Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, having written to Secretary Quarles, asking him to say what disposition he would make of an additional 1.5 billion dollars added to the Air Force budget. Secretary Quarles had replied that he would favor spending only 375 million of the amount for building additional bases to disperse SAC planes to make the force less vulnerable to enemy attack and for stepping up the B-52 production program to the optimum of 20 per month. The balance of 1.125 billion would be kept for contingencies which might arise, with the Secretary having implied in his letter that most of it would be carried over for the budget of the following year. But to Senator Russell and other Democratic Senators, it appeared as a rebuff, given the rising superiority of Soviet striking power, interpreting the Secretary's reply as effectively indicating to them to mind their own business since he was prepared to spend only about a fourth of the increase.

Mr. Lippmann concludes that there was politics on both sides of the dispute and that it would be extraordinary if such were not true in a presidential election year, that what troubled the average citizen, given the headlines about Soviet superiority and lagging U.S. production, was where politics would end and security would begin.

A letter writer indicates that prior attempts by letter writers to obscure the Deism of Benjamin Franklin by inference and innuendo, suggesting that he had entertained religious convictions resemblant to "the orthodoxy and dogmatism of Judeo-Christian supernaturalism, could issue only from the ill-informed, ulterior motivated, or literary dishonesty." She indicates that in his autobiography, Dr. Franklin had clearly stated that he had quit the Presbyterian Church in 1734 and had never returned to it, disdaining sectarian doctrines because they were "'dry, uninteresting and unedifying.'" Because he had proposed that prayers be said in the Constitutional convention, it was erroneously contended by "superficial minds" that in later life, he had virtually embraced Christian theology, while it was evident from his personal writings and contemporary historical facts that the proposal had been advanced with a purely political and diplomatic objective. At the age of 84, he had formulated his religious beliefs for Ezra Stiles, president of Yale, stating: "I believe in one God … that he governs the universe by his providence… As to Jesus of Nazareth … I have, with most Dissenters, some doubts as to his divinity." She concludes that his God, like that of his friend Thomas Paine, had borne no resemblance to the Christian Trinity, and had only signified the agreement of certain propositions rather than the presence of any idea.

The same writer had written on the subject on June 12.

A letter writer from Forest City thanks the newspaper for providing the names of Charlotte's deceased persons in its out-of-town editions, indicating that until a year earlier, she and her family had been residents for 13 years and were thus interested in that information.

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