The Charlotte News
Thursday, August 16, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports from the Democratic convention in Chicago that a shift within
the North Carolina delegation to Adlai Stevenson this date had given
the former Illinois Governor 690 votes
Governor Luther Hodges of North Carolina had been asked by Mr. Stevenson to second his nomination at the convention this date, raising the Governor's political stock considerably. Mr. Stevenson had made the request early this date and the news was announced to the North Carolina caucus by national committeeman and future Senator B. Everett Jordan—who would be appointed to his Senate seat by Governor Hodges in 1958 following the death of Senator Kerr Scott. The North Carolina delegation burst into cheers when Mr. Jordan informed them of the news. Governor Hodges would speak on behalf of the nomination of Mr. Stevenson during the afternoon. He would be one of several Democrats who would make seconding speeches. The previous day, former Governor Stevenson had come to the delegation's caucus to express his appreciation and single out both Governor Hodges and Senator Sam J. Ervin for their work at the convention. He said he felt at home with the delegation. (Mr. Stevenson's sister and her husband lived in Southern Pines, N.C., where Mr. Stevenson often visited, as he had for several days the prior April.) William Joyce, member of the California delegation, had dropped in on the North Carolina caucus during the morning, telling them that Governor Hodges was gaining in national stature every day. Governor Averell Harriman and Senator Hubert Humphrey also had both spoken briefly to the group, with Senator Humphrey indicating a desire for "compliance" with Brown v. Board of Education, "not compulsion".
William Peacock and Jack Bell of the
Associated Press report that the Democrats, safely past a possible
fight over civil rights, were sailing happily this date in the the
formalities of naming Mr. Stevenson as the nominee, with tensions
swept away and a gaier mood prevailing among the delegates. No one
any longer doubted that Mr. Stevenson would be the repeat nominee of
the party. The Tennessee delegation had announced that Governor Frank
Clement, who had delivered the keynote address to the convention on
Monday, was withdrawing as a favorite-son candidate, but that
delegation was delaying announcing where its 32 votes would go until
its caucus on the floor. Governor Averell Harriman was insisting that
he was still in serious contention and had sent a telegram to all
chairmen of state delegations, indicating that he had just talked
with President Truman and that they were determined to fiight through
to the nomination this night, regardless of rumors to the contrary.
But to the delegates, the only remaining unanswered question was who
would be Mr. Stevenson's running mate
Ed Creach reports for the Associated Press that former President Truman had never intended to perform a favor for Adlai Stevenson by trying to keep him from getting the nomination, but had, in fact, done so. He explains that four years earlier, when President Truman had stumped for Mr. Stevenson after his nomination, and the latter had lost, there had been those who held the view that the Democratic ticket would have been better off had Mr. Truman remained quiet. Mr. Creach says that he had been on Mr. Truman's 1952 whistle-stop campaign and that while he had drawn a lot of cheering crowds along the way, he had also attracted many catcalls and some tossed eggs in a few places. Rightly or wrongly, he indicates, there were many people to whom "Truman" was almost a bad word, a symbol of corruption, Communism and cronyism. There were millions of others who believed no such thing. But in the view of most of Mr. Stevenson's advisers, the President had, for all of his good intentions, done the nominee no good in 1952 with his endorsement, as in the eyes of many, Mr. Stevenson had thus become the candidate of Mr. Truman. During the current year, Mr. Stevenson did not have the same problem, thanks to the opposition by Mr. Truman. The nominee could go before the voters as his own man or at least not as Truman's man, something which Governor Harriman could not have done if Mr. Truman's fight to get him nominated had been successful. He finds that another boost which Mr. Truman may have given to Mr. Stevenson was calling him a "moderate", seeking by that label to bury him, but actually helping him with voters who had thought he was very liberal four years earlier. Any benefit which Mr. Stevenson might reap, ironically, from the opposition from the former President could be lessened if the latter decided to let bygones be bygones and to wage an all-out campaign on behalf of Mr. Stevenson, but at present, he appeared not to be in the mood to do so and the people around Mr. Stevenson were not in the mood at present to press him to do so.
The remaining convention schedule, as printed on the page, would be that in the afternoon session this date, to start at noon, the roll call of the states would occur to nominate the candidates for the presidency, with the night session to have the balloting on the nominations. On Friday, in the afternoon session, there would be balloting on the candidates for the vice presidential nomination, with the night session to have addresses by former President Truman, and by both the vice-presidential and presidential nominees, followed by benediction and adjournment.
After the vote this night, bestowing the nomination on Mr. Stevenson on the first ballot with 905.5 votes, he made an announcement to the convention that he would depart from tradition and have the delegates select his running mate.
The President disclosed this date that interstate highway projects, to cost more than 800 million dollars, had been approved since the Federal Highway Act had gone into effect on June 29. The new program called for 33 billion dollars worth of roads to be constructed over the ensuing 13 years. In a statement, following a progress report from Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks, the President said that prompt state action would help alleviate the great deficiencies in the highway systems and would convert the authorized Federal funding into usable roads at the earliest possible time. He said that he was pleased at the early progress of the program, and that one state, Missouri, had already awarded contracts totaling nearly four million dollars for the interstate system improvements, utilizing both old and new funds.
At the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, the 17-year old Charlotte youth who had made a missile in his basement, which the Army had indicated would be fired at the base the following Tuesday, had the plans scrapped by the Army after a series of preliminary tests which had begun the previous day. Charles Kuralt of The News had been assigned to temporary duty as part of his Army Reserve status to cover the testing and possible firing of the rocket, but had now been forbidden by public information officers at the Arsenal from filing stories on it. The News had protested that ban with officials at the Pentagon, who promised to investigate. It indicates that the experts were quite serious in their testing, having put the rocket through the same rigorous laboratory examinations the previous day that they performed with the nation's largest missiles. The commanding general of the Arsenal ordered two more scientists to the lab to give their opinions on what had been developed, but the experts were baffled and scrapped the firing.
Charles Kuralt, in the first of a series of articles on the subject, reports that people at the House of Prayer for All People had a song which went: "Daddy Grace is a holy prophet,/ An Angel and a holy man,/ He has the key to the Kingdom,/ Has it always in his hand…" Mr. Kuralt finds that they believed that message and that to thousands of black people in Charlotte and to a million others worshiping in flimsy tarpaper shacks and air-conditioned temples from Buffalo to Tampa and Norfolk to Los Angeles, Bishop Charles Manuel (Daddy) Grace was the Prophet Elijah who had come to prepare the way for the Lord. In 67 cities, his followers showered him with dollar bills and fanned him with palm leaves, covering his path with roses, whenever he came to town. The following month, he would celebrate his 30th anniversary in Charlotte, and would be chauffeured into the city in a custom-built Cadillac on the second Sunday in September, as he always was, and the location of his visit on S. McDowell Street would be a month in recovering. As he explained it, "I am all people's man. I'm the boy friend of the world!" He would ride up 4th Street atop a former Navy landing craft to the big house a few doors down from the $225,000 red, white and blue Charlotte church he had dedicated two years earlier. The neon sign in front of the two-story frame house, always kept vacant except for the four or five days which he spent there each year, would express the views of the congregation with a sign: "Welcome, Daddy Grace!" To his followers, he could do no wrong. When the Government had indicted him in 1934 for paying only $41 in tax on a $190,000 income, the case was eventually dismissed because the House of Prayer was a church and therefore out of the reach of the Government. When he was charged with violating the Mann Act in New England, based on the testimony of a 20-year old girl pianist, the case was dismissed by the Court of Appeals. His flock had justified the affair by saying, "Joseph, too, was arrested for violating the Mann Act." (The Act forbids transportation of a woman across state lines for immoral purposes.) Several rival prophets, Father Divine, Prophet Jones, Bishop S. C. Johnson of the General Assembly of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith, Inc., had accused him of living in sin with his female "angels". He shouted to his "children" that those were "lies!" and they shouted back, "Amen!" At present, Federal tax agents were preparing a case against him for some of the six million dollars he had allegedly stored up against a rainy day, but would have to face some of the sharpest lawyers in the country, which Daddy Grace bragged of having. Mr. Kuralt indicates that he viewed himself as the creator, the builder, and the dictator, that when Prophet Jones had "lied on him" in Detroit the previous month, he had just brought him out, taken down the Jones sign from the Detroit tabernacle and painted the building red, white and blue. He had done the same thing to Father Divine in Los Angeles. But nowhere had "Sweet Daddy" built his Houses on a more solid rock than in North Carolina, having them in 16 towns across the state, including Dallas, Mount Holly and Matthews, with half a dozen tiny missions in Charlotte. Pardon us for thinking it, but he sounds quite a bit like Sweet Daddy Trump, at least to the latter's nutty followers, the perception of infallibility being the first sign of the signs following that a cult exists. We have to follow that with an apology, of course, as we were always raised to believe that it is quite impolite to mock the retarded.
In Gastonia, N.C., two women pedestrians had been killed the previous night when struck by an automobile, and a third woman had escaped serious injury, with the driver of the vehicle, 17, an unemployed carpenter's assistant, being held on a charge of double manslaughter. The two women had been headed home after a night shift at a local textile mill, and the third woman who was injured was returning from a visit in Belmont. The young driver told Highway Patrol officers that he did not see the women until it was too late to swerve, saying that his speed had been 35 mph. Patrol officers said that both of the deceased women had been thrown about 45 feet. The youth had picked up his mother and another woman at another textile mill and was headed home at the time of the accident.
In Pocatello, Idaho, a woman told police that she had been walking through a subway under a street when she felt a hard blow on the back of her head, and, turning around, saw a boy who looked about 12 years old with a rock in his hand. She asked him what he thought he was doing and he said that he was sorry, that he thought she was someone else, turned and strolled away.
On the editorial page, "Mr. Truman: The King of Contradiction" indicates that if contradiction was a virtue, Mr. Truman ought be king, that he had shifted his stances numerous times since arriving at the Chicago convention, leaving behind his long-professed neutrality regarding the Democratic standard bearer and the party platform.
He had made a mild civil rights statement, then advocated to a passing reporter punitive legislation against the South. He had come to the convention with the idea of encouraging the party's will to win in November, but had then stuck a "can't-win" label on the probable nominee, Adlai Stevenson. He had been shaking hands with a well-wisher when Eleanor Roosevelt had uttered "the few words of wisdom the convention has heard so far—her warning against too much reliance on party elders and her plea for imaginative thinking and planning by the new leaders of the party to meet new issues and new problems that have arisen since Mr. Truman 'retired' to Independence."
It indicates that had he heard the words of Mrs. Roosevelt, he would have helped himself and the party, but as it was, he could claim no credit for any Democratic victory in November, yet had to receive partial blame for any defeat.
It finds that Mrs. Roosevelt and Mr. Truman afforded an interesting contrast. Whereas she was encouraging more recognition and responsibility for Democratic leaders elected during Republican years of control, and supported Mr. Stevenson as the choice of the new leaders and their efforts to update party philosophy and programs, Mr. Truman, as Walter Lippmann observed on the page this date, was courting the past, with himself as his partner. It finds the battles he was waging had already been won, as his program was largely the Republican program at present. His endorsed candidate, Governor Averell Harriman of New York, was a hand-me-down, whose main effort had been to sell himself to Mr. Truman rather than to the public.
It expresses confidence that if Mr. Truman ever let the dust settle, historians would rank many of his achievements as the acts of a statesman, but that his performance at the convention would not be one of those achievements.
"The Building Boom's Solid Foundation" tells of Mecklenburg County having undergone a phenomenal housing boom, with a 40 percent increase in units during the previous five years, the process providing civic lessons along the way regarding the need for extended planning and zoning for the bulging perimeter area of the county and the need for local authorities to continue their admirable support of such a program.
Six months earlier, while the new houses were being built, there had been a postponement of enactment of a subdivision control ordinance, despite enabling legislation by the General Assembly having been passed a year earlier. Finally, after three weeks of delay, the ordinance had been enacted, and since that time, the City Council and planning and zoning authorities had been working together, with noticeable public support for proper controls on physical growth.
The building boom was continuing and new neighborhoods were springing up, along with complementary shopping centers, stores, and service stations.
It indicates that haphazard growth was the start of slums, with such growth evident in many of the large cities at present, that Charlotte had the tools to restrict such growth and to plan for expansion, and was presently using them.
"An Old Story with Underlying Sadness" tells of picking up the newspaper at the end of the day and reading it carefully, for it was late and there was only time left to read of politics, foreign affairs, local government, hurricanes, baseball and fashions, until the eyes fell on a story which had been written a hundred thousand times before, but drew the reader to it, as it was local in origin.
The story told of several communities in Burke County which were rallying around a family in need of help, a young member of that family needing an expensive operation. The people of Drexel, Morganton and Valdese had undertaken to collect money for the operation and had gathered $2,500, far more than the average budget would allow.
It reiterates that it was an old story, having recently occurred in Florida when a youngster had been about to face an operation which would leave him blind, inducing the nation to pray for him.
"The story, the reclining reader says in the darkness of a Charlotte evening, has been written a hundred thousand times before—the same story of good and warm-hearted people offering help. That's why, he says, it is—even in its underlying sadness—a good story."
A piece from the Richmond News Leader, titled "How Snug the Dog", indicates that as a dog grew, the dog's bed became smaller, with the cardboard house used for the smaller dog having come to cramp the bigger dog's style, such that it became incumbent upon the male of the household to go out and obtain a new bed for the adult dog, with instructions to obtain one of the new wicker beds, whereupon the writer did so, finding the bed expensive but appearing to be built stoutly so that it would last the entire lifetime of the dog, and so the purchase was made.
Upon bringing the new bed home, the dog sniffed it, grunted with pleasure as it sank into the resilient cushion and went back to sleep contentedly. The dog's owners, seeing that the dog was happily sleeping, then went to bed. But in the morning, they found the dog at the same location from which they had awakened it to place it in its new bed, sound asleep on the sofa.
Drew Pearson, in Chicago, tells of it being the day of the convention when each delegation would get its brief moment before the television cameras to announce its vote for its candidate to become the next President. It was also a day when rumors could be heard regarding any candidate and when one could start a rumor and within an hour, have it repeated back to the originator of it as the gospel truth. He assesses how each candidate lined up at the start of the balloting.
Adlai Stevenson was definitely in the lead and he and Senator Estes Kefauver had a friendly, firm alliance, Senator Kefauver having been working day and night to swing his own former delegates to Mr. Stevenson, after the Senator had withdrawn from the race two weeks before the start of the convention and released his delegates, albeit with the recommendation that they vote for Mr. Stevenson. There was no commitment from Mr. Stevenson to Mr. Kefauver for the number two spot on the ticket.
Governor Averell Harriman had put up an heroic fight, but it was one which was uphill, and he believes that former President Truman, who had been Mr. Harriman's strongest backer, having endorsed him just prior to the start of the convention, would throw his support to dark horse Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri when the chips were down. The former President had once referred to Senator Symington as "Little Lord Fauntleroy" when Mr. Symington was head of the RFC and was firing Mr. Truman's friends from the staff during the time of investigations into influence peddling regarding mink coats and freezers. But now, Mr. Truman and Senator Symington were friends.
Senator Lyndon Johnson was conducting an astute holding operation, wanting to pick the vice-presidential nominee and put his assistant, Jim Rowe, in as national chairman, in return for which he would give the Texas delegation to Mr. Stevenson. Senator Johnson and Speaker Sam Rayburn did not want Senator Kefauver on the ticket under any conditions, would take any other person, and if Mr. Stevenson did not accept that package from Senator Johnson, the latter would continue his holding operation and try to throw his support to Senator Symington.
He says that was the way the players lined up before the start of the nominating process this date, in a game where there were no ground rules and where anything went and where the stakes were the presidency.
Mr. Stevenson had received some blunt answers during a private huddle with Sam Rizzo, chief of the Wisconsin delegation, who had asked the candidate whether he wanted to carry Wisconsin in November, to which Mr. Stevenson replied that of course he did, and Mr. Rizzo then said that he should therefore put Senator Kefauver on the ticket and remain, personally, out of Wisconsin, in which case the Democrats could carry the state. Mr. Stevenson had replied that he did not operate with a gun at his head.
Jim Farley, former Postmaster General and DNC chairman under FDR, kingmaker who had piloted the nomination of Governor Roosevelt in 1932, had huddled privately with Mr. Stevenson's lieutenant, Hy Raskin, after former President Truman had endorsed Governor Harriman. Mr. Farley had told Mr. Raskin that the endorsement would not change ten delegate votes, that he had seen a pretty girl handing out Stevenson pins, who did not even recognize Governor Harriman walking by, sweetly offering him a Stevenson badge, to which the Governor had smiled and said, "No thanks, I am Ave Harriman."
DNC chairman Paul Butler had been withholding convention tickets from Harriman supporters, and in order to obtain the tickets, Harriman headquarters had advised several supporters to hide their Harriman buttons and go to the Stevenson headquarters for tickets, claiming that they were Stevenson supporters. The ploy had worked.
Marquis Childs, in Chicago, who, according to the editor's note, had written the piece before the favorite-son delegations had switched to Adlai Stevenson to avoid a deadlocked convention on early ballots for the nomination, tells of there being more than a likelihood that the convention would be deadlocked and that out of it would emerge a dark horse candidate.
He finds it to be the product of the effort of former President Truman, who had endorsed Governor Harriman, saying that he did not think Mr. Stevenson could win the general election and that Governor Harriman could, though having reportedly backed off that statement to a degree an hour later, saying that he was simply for Governor Harriman and not predicting any outcome if the convention nominated Mr. Stevenson, whom he said he would support actively if nominated.
Mr. Childs asserts that the power of decision or at least the veto power over the nomination and the platform had been seized by the conservative wing of the party and was being exercised by a skilled Senator Lyndon Johnson, who, if not, himself, a serious candidate for the nomination, though making all the gestures as if he were, he would be in a position to dictate to the Stevenson camp on the civil rights plank in the platform, on the vice-presidential nominee and other vital points. An uneasy feeling was beginning to circulate among the convention delegates that Mr. Stevenson had been stopped, spreading even to such staunchly loyal supporters of Mr. Stevenson as Speaker Sam Rayburn, who had been saying up until two days earlier that there was no doubt about the nomination of Mr. Stevenson. But now, along with many rank-and-file delegates, he was wondering who would obtain the nomination after as many as seven ballots.
The Stevenson strategists continued to assert that they had between 550 and 600 delegates, with 786.5 needed to nominate. Technically, that was true, as there had not been any great shift to other candidates yet. But a seepage had begun as a consequence of the corrosive doubt of Mr. Stevenson's ability to be elected. The small group of associates surrounding the former President, who had so much to do with getting him to endorse Mr. Harriman, had spread the poison that Mr. Stevenson would not carry any state which he had not carried in 1952, as echoed by Mr. Truman. Random delegates from at least 20 states, both those against Mr. Stevenson and those leaning to Mr. Harriman, were brought into Mr. Truman's suite by Judge Samuel Rosenman, former counsel to the former President, and in each case had indicated they were grassroots politicians who knew nothing outside their own state, but were certain that Mr. Stevenson could not carry their state as he was too highbrow and the farmers did not like him. That was what the former President wanted to hear since he had been opposed to Mr. Stevenson all along in the current campaign, though having supported him wholeheartedly in 1952, urging him early to run and being miffed only that he was reluctant to get into the race, awaiting draft by the convention.
The same technique was being used widely with the leading Democrats and with the heads of delegations, undermining their confidence that Mr. Stevenson could win. It was very hard for the Stevenson camp to counter that propaganda.
Those in the Harriman camp had no illusions that he could obtain the nomination or that, if he got it, he would have a chance to win. Mr. Rayburn had stated at a dinner with Mr. Truman that Mr. Harriman could not get a single delegate in the South and, outside of Oklahoma, would not get many in the border states. He said further that he could not win because he could not carry a single Southern state in the general election and that they would need the South in 1956 to win, unlike it had been in 1948 when President Truman had pulled out the upset victory over Governor Thomas Dewey.
As with others loyal to Mr. Stevenson, Mr. Rayburn was confused and somewhat bewildered, though still believing that he was the only candidate with a chance to pull the party together and possibly to win in November. But along with many other Southerners, he continued to be resentful regarding Mr. Stevenson's hasty sidewalk statement that he was in favor of upholding the Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Mr. Childs finds that if the apparent dissolution within the party was in fact a real erosion of support for Mr. Stevenson's strength, the most conspicuous beneficiary would be Senator Symington, acceptable to the South and having managed to offend almost no one.
Senator Johnson had a role which was "most congenial to his temperament and his political technique", loving "to exercise power with a tight-lipped, tight-reined inscrutability, leaving almost everyone, including his closest associates, to guess what his course will be until the last minute." On the first few ballots, if the predictions of such veterans as Mr. Rayburn were correct, Senator Johnson would show sizable strength, and would then play his cards close to his chest, able to determine whether he had a chance for the nomination. If he were to decide that he could not obtain it, he had the power to throw the nomination either to Mr. Stevenson or to his old friend and colleague, Senator Symington. Mr. Childs concludes that it was an enviable role for a person who liked to exercise power, the role of kingmaker in which Mr. Truman had thought he was cast.
Walter Lippmann finds that former President Truman had gotten himself into a strange predicament, whereby if he lost his fight to stop Mr. Stevenson for the nomination, he would have made a sizable contribution to Mr. Stevenson's chances of running against the President, for the latter would be free of the charge, unlike in 1952, that his election would mean a restoration and continuation of the Truman Administration. If the former President succeeded in stopping Mr. Stevenson, he would have made it certain that no Democrat could win in November, as it was hard to imagine the convention nominating Governor Harriman, which, in any event, could only occur after a divisive struggle, and it was even harder to imagine how the Governor could win in November.
He suggests that the legendary reputation of Mr. Truman as the smartest of all of the politicians was based on his unlikely victory in 1948, in defiance of all the polls and pundits. So substantial had become that legend that it was hard for Mr. Truman or professional observers to recall that after 1948 had come 1952, in which the Truman record had become the central issue. Many Democrats had made up their minds that no Democrat, not even Governor Stevenson, could make a clean break from the Truman Administration. Many Democrats had shifted their votes to General Eisenhower.
The former President appeared to believe that 1948 provided a formula for victory which could be applied repeatedly into the future, complaining in his memoirs that in 1952, Mr. Stevenson had avoided allowing Mr. Truman to run the campaign and be the principal speaker, appearing to think that had such been the case, Mr. Stevenson could have won. Now, he wanted to apply that formula to 1956. But 1948 had involved different circumstances, not repeated in 1952, and there was no reason to believe that they would again in the current year. In 1948, the Korean War had not occurred and it was much easier to give hell to Governor Thomas Dewey than it was to General Eisenhower, and it would be even more difficult for Governor Harriman to give hell to President Eisenhower.
Mr. Lippmann finds that the principal difference between Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Truman was that the latter was living in the past, while the former was living in the present, not only applicable to election strategy but also to issues. Mr. Truman was forever wanting to fight the old battles of the New Deal and the Fair Deal, and, regarding foreign policy, the Stalinist era of the cold war. But those days were before the Eisenhower era, before the Brown decision and before the death and degradation in Russia of Joseph Stalin, before the Big Four conference of July, 1955 at Geneva and the stalemate regarding the nuclear arms race. The domestic issues could no longer be solved by the old formulae of the New Deal and the foreign policy issues could not be solved by the old formulae and slogans of the cold war.
He regards the ensuing four years to be a period when old policies would have to be reappraised, revised and reformulated, and that the great virtue of Mr. Stevenson, as compared with other candidates in the race for the Democratic nomination, was that he was a man who was accustomed to thinking deliberately, carefully and thoroughly, not given to leaping to conclusions or satisfied with a rubber stamp opinion. He finds that a person of Mr. Truman's temperament believed that the capacity for deliberation was tantamount to indecision, though Mr. Stevenson was not indecisive. In 1952, he had been bolder and more decisive on more crucial issues than almost anyone who had ever gotten within sight of the White House. That capacity for thought had never yet been considered a fault in a statesman, and it remained no fault in 1956.
"The times we live in are very difficult, and we cannot hope to come through them successfully unless we think our way to them. The fact that Stevenson has brains, and that he knows how to use them, will—since he is so thoroughly available on all other counts that matter—count heavily in his favor."
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, says that, as an old sociologist, he had been intrigued of late about "Martini statesmanship". "We all know that certain forces exert certain pressures on certain groups—I think Oswald Spangler, or maybe Tim Costello, said that—according to time, tide and the baying of hound-dogs on moonlight nights."
He says that he was about to call for sobriety tests for statesmen, and wanted the U.N. to ban the martini for diplomats, especially Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, "the boar-coon of the Russians. So far as I can gather, he's been loaded ever since they kicked him upstairs."
He finds that it was all well and good for experts to say that the modern weapons were so horrible that no one would use them, but that did not take into account when someone was under the influence of straight vodka and gin, that one could not "spray enough vermouth into either beverage to smooth off the corners sufficiently to insure international amity."
He says that he was a great admirer of gin and especially the martini family, but now that he was "old and sick, sad and gray and ugly", he tried to keep his net intake down to two drinks before seeking food. "A Martini is a harmless, not to say delightful, house pet when kept on a leash and fortified by stout protein and starch, such as steak and Idaho potatoes. It will come when you call, look after the children, and change the records on the machine. But unleash him and he out-Hydes Dr. Jekyll's companion. He has a deceptive air of gentleness and seems to grow weaker whilst growing stronger, even as the Russians do. And all of a sudden—wham! You are not your own man. Svengali has taken over, and Trilby has done went away."
He suggests that more domestic battles had been born on the extra martini than ever had come from scotch, mint juleps, or "even such a nauseous mess as an Alexander."
That was why he was worried about Mr. Khrushchev, for one day he was going to "get up with that furry taste, clap hands to a spinning brain, down a couple of quick ones for his liver's sake, and then begin to brood. Martini hangovers are great brood-builders. He will knock off another six to clear his head, and then is very apt to feel so charged that he will go around pulling handles and pushing buttons. Boom!"
Well, Mr. Khrushchev, though not without great stimulation from the powers which then were within the Kremlin pushing his buttons, almost triggered such an event in October, 1962 when the Russians placed missiles with offensive capability 90 miles off the U.S. mainland in Cuba, within quick and deadly accurate reach of virtually every major city in the United States, certainly those along the East Coast. But, with the rope stretched taut and both sides staring each other down, cooler heads prevailed, thanks to President Kennedy having been at the helm of the ship at the time and having understood well basic human interaction with the Soviet leader, having dealt with him during the 1961 summit meeting in Vienna, acting contrapuntally to the lawyerly presentation by Adlai Stevenson at the U.N., setting forth the case against the Soviets for the world to see, justifying the blockade. And we were all able to go back to our daily lives, for better or worse, but at least not collectively dead rather than Red from a nuclear missile strike, the threat of which had never been more real, and never has been since those days.
Anyone who did not live through those days and who thinks that the world is more dangerous now than it has ever been is, indeed, not only not a very good student of history, but is incredibly naïve. Just because one, thanks to 24 hour news with the need to fill air time, hears and sees more about the ills, local and more widespread, at work in the world today, and sees each story repeated ad nauseam, does not mean that the world is truly a more dangerous place or in worse shape than it was 40, 50, 60, 70, years ago and earlier. It is, in fact, at least in terms of localized crime and international threats to well-being, a much safer place, both locally and abroad the world. The far greater threat to overall safety today lies in the realm of exhausted nature and the effects of worldwide climate change, ready to expel the human species for its greed and lack of cooperation, its failure actually to study during study hall, since the advent of the industrial revolution.
Sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Trumpie-dumpy-do, but you either have a faulty memory of the past, having perhaps eroded it with drugs or alcohol, or you haven't lived long enough to realize those basic truths or studied history assiduously enough to realize them vicariously. The utter horrors of World War II, for instance, have not been equaled since that time, and, for good reason, as the nations realized after that terrible war and the advent of nuclear weaponry at its end, provoked by the effort of the Nazis to develop that weaponry first, that the world could never go down that path again unless it wanted to commit collective suicide. Most people do not want to participate in such a futile venture. But there are some lemmings, tending to collect on the right side of the political spectrum, who seem very much determined to proceed off the cliff, indeed, appear eager to do so and take everyone with them who will follow. Their motto, like all dictators, is "our way or the highway". Get lost…
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