The Charlotte News
Tuesday, July 3, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson had been accused by one Democratic Senator this date of making a "false statement", and the Secretary had said in response that he was "due an apology" from Senators, in exchanges before a subcommittee investigating air power. At one point, in a wordy exchange between Senator Henry Jackson of Washington and Mr. Wilson, the latter had said to the Senator, "You can't put words in my mouth." Mr. Wilson was in his third day of questioning by the Senate Armed Services subcommittee, chaired by Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri and on which sat Senators Jackson and Sam Ervin of North Carolina. The Secretary testified that he had not ruled out a new increase in production of long-range bombers, pending a new look at the program in the fall, a statement made in the face of criticism by Democrats regarding Administration air policy. Senator Ervin had insisted that the Secretary's testimony of the previous day had indicated that he would not be bound by the judgment of Congress when it voted him additional funding for the Air Force, but the Secretary said that he had not stated that he would not pay any attention to the expressed will of Congress. Senator Symington had said that, based on his understanding of what the Secretary had testified, the subcommittee reserved the right to challenge the Defense Department's view of what executive session testimony should be released to the public, indicating that the Secretary's statement was false. The Secretary said that he was due an apology after explaining his use of the word "phony" in connection with the Air Force funds which the Senate had added to the defense appropriation. He had particularly directed to Senator Jackson the suggestion that it would not be out of order for certain Senators to apologize to him, with Senator Jackson responding that the Secretary's difficulties in Congress stemmed from his own statements, indicating that when the Senators had assailed him for using the term "phony", no member of the Republican Party had sought to defend him. Senator Ervin had added: "Men very rarely regret saying too little."
Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon said this date that it was the President's "clear obligation" to tell the country quickly whether he intended to remain in the presidential race. He said that the domestic and foreign affairs of the country were too critical for people to be kept in doubt much longer as to whether the President could regain his full vigor so that he could assume the full and not partial responsibilities of his office. Senator John Sparkman of Alabama, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 1952, said that a second term would be "bad for the President, bad for the country and bad for the world." He added that he doubted that the President ever could be more than a "part-time President". White House press secretary James Hagerty said the previous day that he had not seen anything rescinded in connection with the President's February 29 announcement that he was available for the Republican nomination again. Senator William Knowland of California, the Minority Leader, said that he had not talked with the President since his June 9 operation for ileitis but believed the President would continue to run.
In Gettysburg, the President, for
the first time since his surgery, had gone to his putting green and
taken about 20 practice shots. He had also undertaken some paperwork
and conferred for an hour with staff, thereafter signing nine bills
from Congress. One bill said that bombs had been dropped
inadvertently on the summer retreat of Pope Pius XII and provided a
damage award of $964,000 for the mishap occurring during World War II. The President had also
arranged to see Air Force chief of staff, General Nathan Twining, the
following Thursday or Friday, to receive a personal report on the
General's recent visit to Moscow to observe the Soviet air show. A
major decision announced the previous night indicated that
Vice-President Nixon would visit President Chiang Kai-shek of
Nationalist China. The following day, the Fourth of July, would be an
uneventful day for the President, in his fourth day of convalescence
at Gettysburg after leaving Walter Reed Army Hospital—the first three days of which, it might be noted, coincided with the 93rd anniversary of the battle, this date commemorating the fatal Charge of the Confederacy toward the little copse on the hillock, where the California Memorial had since been erected at the Bloody Angle
In Berlin, it was reported that the Communist Polish rulers of Poznan, where riots had erupted the previous week, had put on trial the first of the rebel workers jailed in the wake of the three-day revolt, with a responsible Communist official arriving from Poznan having stated that the workers were taken from prison and put before secret police courts, adding that the police trials were only for "secondary" violators among the hundreds of rebel workers jailed by the security forces. He said that he was aware of no executions thus far and had been in contact with Polish officials while in Poznan. It was also being reported that purges were taking place of Communist officials for not having taken stern enough steps to prevent the uprising. Two Danish businessmen, who had arrived in Berlin from Poznan during the morning, had told newsmen that the terrorized city was full of rumors, one being that some executions of workers had taken place as early as June 29, the day after the revolt had begun. One added, however, that they had never heard anything to confirm those rumors and that Poznan was a place where one could pick up any kind of rumor at present. Other Western businessmen arriving in Berlin from Poznan said that they had heard nothing of executions.
In Warren, O., a man who had killed three people, had met with a violent death at the hands of police, lifting fear from the residents of the area which had persisted during the course of a 12-day manhunt. Clutching a Luger pistol he used to kill two of his sisters-in-law and a third female, a teenager, whom he did not know but had kidnaped along with her boyfriend, he had toppled from a tree, unconscious after being hit by two officers with two bullets to his brain and shotgun pellets to his arm, dying five hours later in a hospital early the previous night. The 37-year old truck driver told some of his story to his brother-in-law, to whose home patrolmen had tracked him, telling him that he had three bullets left in his pistol and would make his brother-in-law drive him to Warren so that he could kill his common-law wife and another brother-in-law, which would leave him one bullet for himself. His anger at his estranged wife who had sworn out a warrant against him for assault had begun his tirade which resulted in the three murders. Three State Highway Patrolmen closed in on the brother-in-law's house three miles west of Warren, acting on a tip that the suspect was seen entering the brother-in-law's car at a dairy store. The patrolman who eventually killed the suspect said that the brother-in-law came to the door, nervous and shaking and told him that the suspect was not present, then walked outside past patrolmen and went to his car, where he informed another patrolman that the suspect was going out the back door. At that point, the patrolman who initially shot him spotted him walking away with his back turned, carrying his pistol, and told him to drop his gun or he would blow his head off, and when the suspect did not answer, he shouted again, at which point the man started to turn and pull his gun up, and so the patrolman shot four times and heard another patrolman's shotgun go off at about the same time. His brother-in-law said that the first thing the suspect had asked him was how many people he had killed. When his wife got the news of his capture the previous night, she said that she was glad that they had caught him as she was afraid he would hurt others. But she added that because he would now die, that hurt too, as he had been nice to their kids when he was in a good mood.
Near Superior, Wisc., a 14-year old boy, well-bruised and slightly abashed, had nothing to say this date about his harrowing slide down a 100-foot waterfall, after trying to help a friend loosen his bathing suit from a rock the previous day, then slipped down the rocky slope of Manitou Falls in Pattison State Park. His mother said that he was lucky he was not killed and that her son had little to say about the experience at the waterfall, where she said he had no right to be in the first place. He had been pulled to safety by lifeguards after his friend, also 14, had summoned them from a nearby beach.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that the chairman of the Charlotte park board this date had confirmed a story in the newspaper the previous day which had revealed that the new Park Center would cost nearly $450,000, some $90,000 over the money allotted for it. The chairman said that the cost of the building would be borne by the insurance money from the old Armory-Auditorium and funding from the park board. Promoter Jim Crockett, who would bring wrestling to the Center weekly, and other promoters who agreed to occupy the building 35 times per year or more, would pay a fee of $150 if they paid six weeks in advance for each night of use, while a commercial fee of $200 for Charlotte residents and $275 for out-of-town promoters, would help to improve profits from the operation to an amount over the $10,000 received in the last year of operation of the Armory-Auditorium, which would help defray the overrun in costs.
Dick Young of The News indicates that the Park & Recreation Commission had an adjusted cash balance of nearly $249,000 at the end of the fiscal year, as reported during an emergency session of the park board at the new Park Center during the morning, but that the operating surplus had been reduced to $40,000 by unpaid expenses, prior commitments and recommended reserves. The special session had been called to provide a public explanation for the financial operations of the board, but was shifted from the new air-conditioned recreation offices on the second floor of the Park Center to the main floor where folding chairs were set up for the audience and folding tables placed for the board members at which to sit and face the audience. (Tea and cookies will follow.) The change was made because of the large presence of newspaper reporters, radio and television technicians and the expected public audience. This here's serious stuff.
In Charlotte, Albert St. Clair, 44, general manager of Southern Railway's Lines East, had died early this date in a local hospital after suffering a heart attack on June 22. He had risen in less than 20 years from apprentice to the position he held when he died.
In Raleigh, the Highway Patrol swore in 25 new men the previous day, among the second half of 50 authorized by the 1955 General Assembly, bringing the total force to 581 officers and patrolmen.
In Lambertville, N.J., two letters to the City commissioners had caused confusion, one from the State Highway Department denying the city's request to lower the speed limit on a route through town from 40 to 25 mph as a safety precaution, while the other, from the New Jersey Attorney General, had asked the Commission to cooperate with the state's "slow down and live" traffic safety campaign, both letters having been received the previous day.
In London, it was reported that
Bessie Braddock, M.P., might be known henceforth as "Two-Gun
Bessie, the Pistol Packin' Mama", a 200-pound Labor member of
Parliament from a tough district in Liverpool
Maybe that's a good idea for some
good Democrat in the U.S. House, to counter the blithering idiocy of
a few members on the other side of the aisle, the far right side, one
notably from Georgia and another from Colorado, who revel in
brandishing AR-15's and other such weapons of murder in campaign ads
for appeal to morons who vote for such morons, while one of them,
meanwhile, proceeds to feel up her date in a Denver theater and get
tossed for that and her otherwise reprehensible, superannuated adolescent conduct vis-à-vis
the other patrons. At least, she did not wave her guns around in the
theater, apparently wanting to stimulate her date to wave his
And that goes also for another
idiot, the Foxxy Lady from North Carolina, who made a speech recently
on the House floor, in which she was all up in arms because the
Department of Education nixed funding for such educational courses as
the art of hunting, to preserve the "his-torical her'tage"
of hunting and gathering, probably also including berry-picking
Someone needs to ask these gun-toting crackers, making peaceful life difficult for all law-abiding citizens, what "well organized" militia it is to which they belong and provide such sterling examples to the young and callow who have not yet formed adequate means of social adjustment to enable understanding of a basic precept of life, that everyone, sooner or later, must get stoned, and then simply laugh it off or make the best of it otherwise, without resort to violence in response, that everyone has the primordial instinct left over from hunter-gatherer days to kill, an instinct which society, when operating properly, must, for the good of all, suppress or funnel into worthier pursuits. We were always taught that government service included working for the benefit of all people, not making exception to try to get political enemies killed by promoting gun usage as a means of "protection" against the hostiles, the gov'ment of the other party.
On the editorial page, "Put Colleges on Full-Year Schedule" indicates that Dr. J. Harris Purks, Jr., director of the new State Board of Higher Education, had said that North Carolina colleges could increase their capacity by 20 percent if they operated during the summer months on the same basis as they did during the remainder of the year, with 15,000 more undergraduates capable of being accommodated in the summer without reducing special programs for teachers.
It finds it a sensible solution to a growing problem and that if the rush of college-bound students continued, the limited summer school concept ought be junked in favor of a full academic quarter during the summer, which had occurred during the postwar period between 1945 and 1949, working well to accommodate the glut of veterans entering or completing college under the G.I. Bill. At that time, the veterans had nearly overwhelmed the University at both the Chapel Hill and Raleigh campuses, with veterans anxious to complete their degrees, thus attending classes year-round, practically making an extra quarter out of summer school. The Greater University had accommodated them with a regular slate of courses.
It indicates that while North Carolina summers could be torrid, it was never too hot for eager scholars. (Ho ho, ha ha… Your brain slows to molasses...)
Experts saw in the years ahead no decrease in the number of scholars or in their eagerness. At present, there were 8.6 million youths of college age and 13.2 million of grade school age, and in a decade, there would be not only more students of college age but more wishing to attend college, and many educators believed there would not be enough room for all of them unless colleges and universities doubled their current size in the meantime. Like other states, North Carolina would have to put increasing amounts of money into higher education, but, it ventures, they could ease the burden by using present facilities more economically, and Dr. Purks had suggested an excellent way to do that.
"It's Time To End the Big Stall" finds that it was time to stop stalling the nomination of Solicitor General Simon Sobeloff to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Only Mr. Sobeloff had maintained poise and a sense of humor amid the long pause in his nomination. Yet, he had managed to offend a large number of people, most of whom were Southerners, because of his supposed connection to Brown v. Board of Education, thus becoming persona non grata to many Southern politicians who charged that, as Solicitor General, he had been responsible for what had been called "Black Monday", May 17, 1954, the day the Brown decision was announced.
The piece indicates that it was not true, that he had not taken part in the original oral arguments on Brown, but had only argued for the Government in the 1955 implementing decision, in which he had argued only for gradual desegregation, a view which the Court had largely followed, consistent with the input from many Southern attorneys general. It finds it regrettable that much of the opposition to Mr. Sobeloff had come from individuals and groups who based their criticism, not on his qualifications, but on "unreasoning prejudice". His qualifications were good. He was a Maryland Republican who had served in the Administration of Governor Theodore McKeldin and had been chief judge of Maryland's highest court. As Solicitor General, he had served with distinction. President Eisenhower had, on several occasions, expressed faith in him, turning a deaf ear to demands that his nomination be withdrawn.
It finds that all of the opposition to him was not irresponsible, however, with Senator Sam Ervin, for instance, having contended that an unwritten rule of rotation had been violated in the nomination to the Fourth Circuit, because the judgeship being filled ought go to a native of South Carolina. It finds the validity of that unwritten rule dubious and that the way was also clear for a South Carolinian to be nominated to another position on the Fourth Circuit, as both Judges Armistead Dobie and Morris Soper had retired but were still serving, with Mr. Sobeloff nominated to succeed the latter.
It concludes that there should be no further delay in acting on the nomination of Mr. Sobeloff, which had been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee by a vote of eight to two. It had survived demagoguery and Mr. Sobeloff and the nation ought be spared further turmoil.
"The Palmleaf Fan and Fun in Church" indicates that the passing of the palmleaf fan from the hymnal rack was the subject of a cheerful obituary in the Atlanta Journal, causing it to recall the palmleaf as a means of cooling on warm Sunday mornings, even though not providing much air conditioning, while serving mischief on the back benches in a way no electric fan could.
It suggests that the short sermon had made the palmleaf fan obsolete, not the air conditioner. It had been a toy for juveniles in days when preachers got to the point a half hour before they came to the conclusion, a means to tickle the necks of plump ladies in the next pew forward, thus starting irrepressible laughter which it also served to shield. It also provided something on which to chew when the children began to feel peckish.
Adults had also found it useful, utilizing it to cover the mouth of the inevitable parishioner who could not keep his mouth closed while asleep, never awake after the first hymn, snoring uproariously, to which everyone was accustomed, except a wasp which buzzed into the parishioner's mouth one Sunday, ejected along with a quarter plug of Brown's Mule, an upper plate, a spray of tobacco juice, followed by three "Amen, brothers", just as the preacher was condemning the wicked and the idle. The palmleaf fan, behind which the parishioner snored, always had a picture of a funeral home ambulance on it and sometimes the parishioner sounded like a siren.
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "How Does a Mocking Bird Do It?" questions when a mockingbird slept, a question primarily centered on the male mockingbird, which appeared to participate in its mimicry all day long and then, whenever one awakened on a moonlit night, the mockingbird was at it again, perhaps in softer voice than in the daytime, but still showing no signs of weariness, fatigue or indolence.
Thus, it wonders how he did it and seeks an answer from knowledgeable ornithologists. "Won't this practice of staying up all day and all night eventually get such a tough hombre as the mockingbird? And if not, why not?"
Drew Pearson tells of world Communism being at a crossroads, presenting the U.S. with opportunities which some diplomats never dreamed would occur in the current generation. In Italy, Pietro Nenni, the left wing Socialist previously cooperating with Italian Communists, had berated Moscow and announced that he was ready to join Western social democracy. For years, CIA director Allen Dulles had been seeking to figure out a way to win over Sr. Nenni. Eight years earlier, Mr. Pearson had sought to get Sr. Nenni into the Friendship Train reception—the train having provided postwar Europe with Christmastime food, clothing and toys in a gesture of aid prior to implementation of the Marshall Plan. But Sr. Nenni had stuck with the Communists. The previous week, however, he had taken a public stand against Communism, which Mr. Pearson suggests might pave the way for a solid democratic, Central-Catholic government in Italy, which he regards as the most important development since the end of World War II.
In Poland, workers and peasants were growing restive against Communism, after many among them had been shot down by a government supposed to represent and protect workers and peasants. For years, Polish-Americans in the U.S. had been encouraging such a movement, and since 1951, the Crusade for Freedom had been sending friendship and freedom balloon messages to the people of Poland, who now, overnight, had shown their mounting anger against Moscow with riots in Poznan.
In Czechoslovakia, riotous students had been demanding more independence and more freedom of study. The Czech people had been demanding to know why Communist leaders were being shot or hanged for emulating the independence of Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia and why the latter was now being fêted in Moscow. For five years, the Crusade for Freedom had been sending propaganda balloons across the Iron Curtain into Czechoslovakia and suddenly the Curtain appeared to evaporate, with Czech students going further than the fondest dreams of American propagandists.
In France, Belgium, Denmark and Britain, the Communist parties were in bitter rebellion against their local Communist leaders because they never had bucked the Stalin reign of terror. Maurice Thorez, the French Communist leader who had previously spent summer vacations as the guest of Stalin, would probably be booted out of office.
In the U.S., Communist leaders were so bewildered that they were almost running around in circles.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss the question of whether Joseph Stalin had been murdered in March, 1953, indicating that one of the two Alsop brothers, presumably Joseph, had a long talk with George Kennan about a week after the death of Stalin, Mr. Kennan, who, while in the State Department as chief planner during the Truman Administration, had developed the policy of containment vis-à-vis the Communist states, and had, in early 1953, just ended his tenure as Ambassador to the Soviet Union, had told Mr. Alsop that Stalin might very well become within a few years the chief ideological devil of the Soviet Union and world Communism, a prediction which had seemed strange at the time because Nikita Khrushchev and other Communist leaders in Moscow in the wake of Stalin's death, as well as important Communists elsewhere, were vying with each other to provide great tributes to the "great lost leader".
But now, in light of the recent denunciations from Moscow, led by Communist Party Secretary Khrushchev and others, Mr. Kennan's prediction about the future provided weight to his guess also ventured about the past, that the men around Stalin had murdered him, or at least had been implicated in his death. Mr. Kennan had no solid evidence that Stalin had been murdered, but he also had no evidence that he would be made into a devil subsequently, basing his guesses on the atmosphere present in Moscow and his own instincts, having vividly described that atmosphere as being one of fear and hatred of Stalin. He said that if Stalin had not been a madman when he died, he had been just this side of madness. Mr. Alsop adds that it was a judgment fully vindicated by Mr. Khrushchev's description of Stalin's last years. Thus, it seemed to Mr. Kennan a reasonable guess that his subordinates had done away with him, not only to save their own lives, but because the structure of Soviet power might be endangered by the dictator's near madness.
While there was still no proof that Stalin had been murdered, a rereading of Mr. Khrushchev's famous denunciatory speech, in which he labeled him a murderer, plus consideration of other recent events, led to the conclusion that conjecture about his murder appeared to be the missing piece of the puzzle, explaining why Mr. Khrushchev had made the speech, a question which had troubled all of the experts. Prior to the speech, Mr. Kennan's successor, Ambassador Charles Bohlen, and every other diplomatic observer in Moscow, had reported that the regime of Premier Nikolai Bulganin and Mr. Khrushchev was solidly entrenched in power and that for more than a year, a carefully planned process of chipping away at Stalin's reputation had been in progress, thus giving rise to the question of why Mr. Khrushchev should suddenly abandon the slow process and proceed to deliver a decisive blow to the reputation of the deceased dictator, freighted as such a denunciation was with inherent risks.
The Alsops venture that a collective sense of blood guilt could be a source of unity and in part explain why the "collective leadership" had worked successfully, contrary to many expert predictions in 1953. But such a form of guilt could also be a source of danger that blackmail would occur from a party to the secret, with there being two ways of dealing with such danger, one being that of Stalin, killing off those who were aware of the secret, and the other being to transform the act into a necessary and even laudable one.
The Alsops suggest further that certain passages of Mr. Khrushchev's speech also took on new meaning in light of the guesses by Mr. Kennan in 1953, for example, that Mr. Khrushchev had singled out V. M. Molotov and Anastas Mikoyan by name, indicating that even they would not have survived had Stalin lived. Mr. Kennan had surmised that Messrs. Molotov and Mikoyan were two men likely not implicated in the death of Stalin, though the latter had hated Stalin, but was a cautious man, and Mr. Molotov had retained complete devotion to Stalin to the end. Thus, the words of Mr. Khrushchev might have served as both a warning and a reminder, with a repeated message of Stalin having been a murderer, for murder was the natural retribution for a murderer.
The Alsops further indicate that there was a more recent mystery, as to why Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper, had published an article by American Communist leader Eugene Dennis, criticizing Mr. Khrushchev by name and asking why he and his colleagues had done nothing to prevent the crimes of Stalin. Such an article in the Soviet press had always been the prelude to an official answer, and they speculate that the answer might be that Khrushchev and his colleagues had done something drastic and decisive to curb the murdering tyrant.
They conclude that perhaps it would never be known for certain whether Mr. Kennan's conjecture was as accurate as his prediction, but at least he had thrown new light on the events which had shaken the whole structure of Soviet power.
A letter writer from Great Falls, S.C., finds that judging Republicans by their frequent statements pertaining to the presidential race, particularly those of RNC chairman Leonard Hall, caused a person to reach the conclusion that the Republican Party was bankrupt as far as having suitable candidates, without anyone to replace President Eisenhower, continuing to lean on him as a crutch, not paying any attention to the fact that he had suffered a severe heart attack the prior September, rendering him incapacitated for several months, and then, after claiming complete recovery, had become incapacitated again by his attack of ileitis on June 8. Yet, Republican leaders had been placing pressure on him to continue his candidacy, putting him in an embarrassing position in which he could hardly refuse to accept. The writer finds the situation pitiful and tragic, for if Republicans valued the President's life, they would have it in their hearts and souls that a man who had served his country well during most of his life and had achieved popularity and honor as no other citizen, deserved retirement. He could not endure or repeat the 1952 campaign in which he had been greeted as a military hero and during which the Republican Party had spent a fortune to prepare a well-planned propaganda program consisting of untruths directed at Democrats, accusing them of shielding Communists in government and of having thousands of security risks, while also participating in corruption. They were also accused of being the party of treason, with Republicans telling the people that a change had to take place. General Eisenhower had often told the people that voting Republican was the only trustworthy choice, and some had accused General Marshall, a close friend of General Eisenhower, of being disloyal for his advice to the Truman Administration regarding Communist China during his time as the President's special envoy in 1946. Meanwhile, candidate Eisenhower had never denied or disputed the claim, issued by the likes of Senator McCarthy. The Republicans had also made impossible promises to the people, which had not been kept. He concludes that the President had said not long earlier that no one person was indispensable, suggesting that he would prefer to retire, but that because of the pressure placed on him, he had accepted the invitation to run again, and if that pressure continued, it stood as an admission that the Republicans had nothing of importance with which to approach voters.
A pome from the Atlanta Journal appears, "In Which A Down-The-Nose Look Is Taken At Those Who Do Not Take Things Seriously Enough:
"Too much insouciance—
Results in a nouciance."
And action toward coups incipient,
Results in perps being sentienced.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.