The Charlotte News
Monday, September 24, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.S. had assured Britain and France this date that it would support their decision to take the Suez Canal dispute with Egypt to the U.N. Security Council the following Wednesday. Secretary of State Dulles had said during a radio and television discussion of the crisis the previous night that he supported the move, which he believed could lead to a peaceful and just resolution of the crisis, provided Egypt wanted a peaceful solution. He also said that he would suggest to Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey that the present freeze of Egyptian funds in the country would be broadened to prevent the payment of canal tolls directly to Egypt by American ship operators, instead to be paid into blocked accounts in the U.S., designed to bring U.S. policy on that point into line with that of Britain and France. He said further that U.S. vessels going through the canal should hesitate a long time before taking a Soviet pilot on board, that the Egyptians had been hiring some Soviet pilots and no ship captain could know whether the pilot so employed by Egypt might also be a spy for the Soviets. He further indicated that the danger of war regarding the canal had not ended, but believed it had been reduced by the recent moves of the Western powers. He said that he opposed use of military measures except possibly as a last resort, but did not believe they could go on forever asking people not to resort to force, that it would depend on whether it was possible to get an acceptable settlement with Egypt, thus far not possible in such a way to have international peace and justice. In response to the questions of reporters, he said that the users' association which would hire its own canal pilots would collect tolls and make its own payments to Egypt, provided Egypt agreed, offering the possibility of arranging a practical day-to-day system of getting ships through the canal, an arrangement which the Secretary believed would help the U.N.
From Panama, it was reported that
Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza
Adlai Stevenson this date had launched an all-out attack on what he called a "dangerous drift in foreign affairs", while the President worked on a major farm address scheduled to be delivered the following night. Mr. Stevenson, switching his campaign aim to the Administration's foreign policy, said that the Government had to "stop bluffing our enemies, boasting to our friends and misleading our people at home." The President arranged to devote part of his time this date to working on his second major campaign speech, a nationwide radio and television talk from Peoria, Ill., scheduled for the following night, in which he was expected to counter the recent Stevenson charges regarding the farm issue. Mr. Stevenson told a rally in Tulsa, Okla., that the "dangerous drift in foreign affairs" could not be stopped by pretending that all was well while Communist influence was spreading everywhere, while North Africa was in rebellion, while the guns were loaded in the Formosa Strait, when the Russians had a foothold in the Middle East for the first time, when the Suez Canal lifeline of Western Europe was in peril for the first time, when Arab nationalism was rampant and Communism was its ostensible protector. Mr. Stevenson was on a 6,790-mile tour of the Western, Midwestern and Southern states, announcing a new tour to start the following week, which would take him by plane, train and automobile to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. White House press secretary James Hagerty replied indirectly to Democratic charges relating to the President's health, saying that the President was "feeling fine and looking fine", back on a full work schedule. He said that the President was expected to have a general pre-election checkup in around mid-October. It had been one year exactly since the President's heart attack.
The New York Times said this date that the President appeared to have lost strength in the farm belt. In a dispatch from Des Moines, Iowa, the newspaper said that it had taken a sample poll from among crowds gathered at the National Plowing Contest at Newton, Ia., when the President had spoken the previous Friday, followed by Mr. Stevenson the next day. The poll had shown that 10.6 percent of those who said they had voted for the President in 1952 said that they would shift to Mr. Stevenson in the current election, that 13.4 percentof those who said they had voted for the President in 1952 now said that they were undecided. A team of six Times correspondents who had taken the poll found no farmer who said that he was for Mr. Stevenson in 1952 and was now for the President. They found a handful of 1952 pro-Stevenson voters who said that they remained undecided. The newspaper said that the principal reasons given for the loss of strength by the President were lower farm prices and resentment against retention of Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, while the major issue still working for the President was "peace", with the feeling among farm families being that the President had ended the Korean War and kept their sons at home.
Samuel Lubell, who, over the years, had made an exhaustive study of the voting patterns of every county and major city in the country since the Civil War, having developed a technique for interviewing people regarding their election choices, provides the first of a series of articles on the 1956 election, indicating that throughout the country, a sizable shift back to the Democratic Party was underway by one-time supporters of FDR and former President Truman, those voters having bolted the party in 1952 to vote for General Eisenhower. He finds that the break was heaviest in the farm belt, where even those farmers who had never had any use for FDR said that they would be voting for the Democratic ticket in November because "the little farmer is being squeezed out and no one in Washington cares." Of all the farmers to whom he talked in eight Minnesota and Iowa counties who had favored the President in 1952, a third were changing their votes, while others were still undecided, representing enough of a shift that Adlai Stevenson could win both states. In the suburbs and cities, the President was holding up much better. While in some worker neighborhoods of Chicago, San Francisco, Des Moines and Detroit, he was losing half of the one-time Democrats who had voted for him in 1952, in cities such as St. Louis, Rockford, Minneapolis and Milwaukee, his losses were far lower and were offset partially by a shift to the President among those who had favored Mr. Stevenson four years earlier because "the depression we were afraid the Republicans would bring hasn't come." Others who had worried that "a military man might plunge" the nation into war, now believed that he was the best bet for peace. He indicates that if one balanced the urban and rural showings, the net picture was of a more closely fought election in 1956 than four years earlier, with the President still holding the edge, albeit one which could be eliminated if the Democrats got all the campaign breaks. He indicates that it was the third time he had made the effort to report a major election campaign in true grassroots fashion, ignoring what the politicians were saying and going directly to the people, that because of the lateness of the conventions, his survey had been ongoing even before the candidates had been selected. As in 1952 and 1954, he had selected the most sensitive voting areas in the country, urban and rural precincts the shifting of which determined the outcome of previous elections. He had then gone into each of those communities, ringing doorbells and talking to voters of various types from all across the socio-economic spectrum. He indicates that much had been written of the so-called "apathy" and "complacency" of voters, but that in the 14 farm counties and 15 cities he had visited thus far, he found no such indifference, that people were less excited than in 1952 when the Korean War was still raging, and the vote undoubtedly would be smaller, but interest in the current election was still running far higher than during the 1954 midterm elections.
Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson had undergone surgery this date for a "benign prostatic condition" according to a Pentagon announcement, and the 66-year old Secretary was expected to be back at his office in about 20 days.
In New Orleans, it was reported that Hurricane Flossy, packing 100 mph winds, had swept toward northwestern Florida this date, leaving three men reported dead and 42 missing after it had lashed near southeastern Louisiana. The New Orleans Weather Bureau said that the storm, sixth of the season, was centered about 80 miles southwest of Pensacola and moving toward the east-northeast at about 12 mph, with movement expected to continue toward the east-northeast, bringing the storm center between Pensacola and Apalachicola in Florida during the afternoon or this night. The Red Cross in Biloxi, Miss., had said that it appeared that there was no further threat to Mississippi's Gulf Coast. The wind velocity was estimated at 100 mph near the center of the storm and gales extended outward 150 to 200 miles from the center. The Weather Bureau said that a dangerous situation was created because the hurricane winds could suddenly shift and cause a rapid rise in the tide to about eight feet, a condition existing between Pensacola and St. Marks.
In San Bernardino, Calif., it was reported that firefighters battled this date to ring a "firestorm" which had destroyed at least 20 homes and burned more than 8,500 acres of brush and timber near the Lake Arrowhead mountain resort. The firestorm could generate its own intense winds and had swept through the park summer home tract, about five miles east of the lake in the San Bernardino Mountains. A U.S. Forest Service spokesman said that the area was still "too hot" to inspect closely but that at least 20 homes had been destroyed. Some 1,500 firefighters manned 18 bulldozers, 60 water tank trucks and fire hoses in an effort to hold back the flames from the Cedar Glen area, near the northern tip of the lake. Seven crop-dusting biplanes and a war surplus Navy torpedo bomber had planned to continue dropping water and chemicals on the fire.
In Atlanta, the mother of a five-year old boy said that she was "growing frantic" over the failure of her divorced husband to decide whether to permit an operation which could save the boy's life by removing his remaining eye, to attempt to eliminate the malignant spread of his cancer. His left eye had been removed two years earlier, but then the malignancy had spread to the right eye. His mother pointed out that on September 12, doctors had said that a few days of delay in reaching a decision about the operation would not matter, but that it had now been ten days and her divorced husband, a 33-year old machine operator, still had not made a decision, having opposed the operation initially on the ground that he wanted his son to retain his sight as long as possible but later saying that he would announce a decision after the morning service at an Atlanta Baptist church the previous day. But he had not appeared at the church and later said that he still had not reached a decision. Doctors said that they had to have the consent of both parents before performing the operation, even though the mother had been awarded custody of the boy by a court. Meanwhile, the boy had received a new cowboy outfit from neighbors who had taken up a collection and also had received a telegram from Roy Rogers, indicating that a gun, a holster and a picture of the cowboy star were on the way. The boy's favorite pastime was playing cowboy.
In Charlotte, voters in the county probably would go to the polls on December 8 to vote on a five million dollar school bond issue, after the chairman of the County Board of Commissioners had suggested the date after being informed by the local government commission that the election could be held 40 days after approval on September 8 of the Pearsall Plan, which had amended the State Constitution to allow for public tuition grants to students for attendance at private schools and for a local vote by school units to abolish their public schools.
In Louisville, Ky., a 72-year old man, who had developed his running speed as a pioneer prohibition agent, had died the previous day. When he had been 45, he said that he could run 100 yards in 11 seconds.
On the editorial page, "Politics:
New Suits and Old Patterns" indicates that the influence of
advertising on politics was nowhere more apparent than in the
adjective division of the charge and counter-charge department, with
speechwriters indicating that everything was "new" in the
current campaign year. There was a "new" Stevenson
advocating for a "new" America, a "new"
Eisenhower promising a "new" Republican Party, and even a
"new" Nixon, whose line had not yet been fully
explained—nor would it be even anent the "new" Nixon of
1968 and beyond. (On Saturday, you had already learned all about the assistant plumbers
It finds that there was more than rhetoric in the adjectives, as each of the men had donned a new campaign suit, but one upon close examination found to be made of cloth cut from the old pattern. Though their roles were reversed from 1952, Messrs. Eisenhower and Stevenson were partaking of the same quality of newness, a willingness to play politics and to be identified with it. Whereas both men in 1952, the President through inexperience and Mr. Stevenson through temperament, appeared to draw back from the coarser qualities of the professional politicians, resulting in Mr. Eisenhower having been accused of running like a dry creek and Mr. Stevenson, of offending the party hierarchy and thus losing the vigorous support of the precinct workers, at present, Mr. Stevenson had taken the professionals into his camp and was now talking their language, with his comments on ending the draft and regarding farm price supports carrying strong partisan overtones, while talking also about sounder money and lower taxes almost in the same breath. Double-talk on the stump was as old "as the outs trying to get in", but it was new to Mr. Stevenson.
It suggests that he deserved correction for his errors, but hardly the bitter censure which he had received in some quarters for playing the political game. There had been some righteous criticism regarding his suggestion of ending the draft being an encouragement to neutralism abroad, which could occur, but no more probably than had Mr. Eisenhower's proposal to free the satellite nations during the 1952 campaign had stirred vain hope among the Iron Curtain population and fear of a war-like America among the European allies. In the meantime, Mr. Stevenson retained his bent for speaking to the idealism of Americans and for seeking unity.
Meanwhile, the President took the position of being above the fray of politics, an attractive appearance, but he had nevertheless learned to play the game and was playing it. Even while promising a "new" Republican Party in the image of his views, he maintained a hands-off approach during the Wisconsin primary, where the Old Guard had fought desperately to replace Senator Alexander Wiley with a McCarthy-backed candidate who appeared to be an isolationist, notwithstanding the fact that the Senator was one of the President's most faithful foreign policy supporters. Senator Wiley recently had won renomination, but without a word from the White House, recalling the coyness of FDR.
It finds that despite half-truths in Mr. Stevenson's speeches and the President's tacit endorsement of such misstatements by his lieutenants in rebuttal, both parties were the better for having the two candidates as their leaders. Both could be counted on to talk straighter than their predecessors and to appear, even in their new political suits, as Americans first. It suggests that the signs thus far in the campaign indicated that it would be saner than four years earlier, and if Mr. Stevenson continued to correct former President Truman and Vice-President Nixon's divisive Red-scare tactics would be absent, "neighboring Democrats and Republicans may even get through November on speaking terms."
"Charlotte Youth: Attractive Scenery" tells of the school safety patrol having come of age, indicating that there had been a time when to be selected as a safety patrol monitor or hall monitor meant that the student was a teacher's pet, to be ganged up on as soon as the teacher was not looking. It indicates that it was speaking as a voluntarily retired safety patrolman who had once had an altercation with three classmates over whether they could cross the road against the writer's orders. (Eight years hence, we were standing duty every morning and afternoon at our school's crosswalks and never encountered any such recalcitrance among the crossers, none having ever crossed us in that way, indicative, we suppose, of a much more refined group of crossers or a time of less rebellious attitude on the part of students than in the turbulent 1930's, to which the writer apparently refers.)
It notes that there was plenty of evidence that things had changed, which it observed every morning on the way to work in the proud bearing of patrol boys and girls on duty, indicating that it had, since the start of school, not seen a single child with so much as a toe in the street or with so much as a frown at being subjected to the care of the patrol members. It finds the students going to school to be the community's most attractive scenery, indicating that there was order, progress and alertness in the world. "If there are delinquents in the groups we pass, delinquency wears a handsome face and a reasonably quiet manner." It finds the patrol members and the other students to be rather important people and that the ones it saw looked as if they realized their importance and how to discharge it.
There you are. Don't believe everything you see and read about all of the revolution and rebellion taking place in the 1950's and 1960's. Look to the nation's crosswalks for preservation of the state, a good indicator of law and order in the minds and hearts of the supposed revolutionists. Every morning, we dutifully assisted our fellow patrol boy or girl in unfolding the triangular flag and raising it along the aluminum pole to its height, unfurled in the breeze, except, of course, during inclement weather, and every afternoon, upon finishing patrol duty, we dutifully assisted our fellow patrol boy or girl in lowering the flag and refolding it into its specially formed triangular shape—representative of the checks and balances afforded by the three branches of government when not thrown awry by undue executive authority, egged on by lobbying organizations, weighed against the legislative or judicial branches or vice versa—and stowing it then away in the office, until the next school day. Order, in accordance with protocol and the law.
"Make Safety, but Don't Talk about It" indicates that in Dearborn, Mich., a year earlier, the Ford Motor Co. had launched a novel and noble experiment regarding the safety of its cars and trucks, equipping the 1956 models with devices which laboratory tests had shown would substantially reduce accident deaths and injuries. The effort was to try to sell safety as the automakers had been in recent years selling increased power, styling and luxury features. A Ford advertising campaign was undertaken to focus on the safety features, and underplay power and new styling. But the experiment was now over, as it had failed.
A Ford advertising executive had said that safety was not an "action theme" and did not appear to create "an emotional urge to buy". General Motors had believed as much all along and had stuck with conventional advertising regarding power and style.
The result had been that appeals to safety among buyers would be played down and power would be reemphasized, to satisfy the public appetite. It finds, however, that inability to sell safety did not diminish the necessity for automakers to continue heavy emphasis on safety engineering, that because of the safety devices in Fords and those unadvertised in other makes, many accident victims remained alive. The $400,000 which Ford and Chrysler had contributed to the Cornell University crash research program of the prior year would continue to pay dividends, if lessons learned from it were applied to new models, as Ford had done with its 1956 models.
The advertising experiment had proven only that automakers could not profit by promoting safety devices, but there remained profit in saving lives even if those saved would rather talk about power "and scratching off in a cloud of wasted gasoline fumes."
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Tame, Fleecy and Mechanical, Too?" regards the poetry of Randall Jarrell, whose work could be found in the Kenyon Review, edited by John Crowe Ransom, and who had been named as a consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress, on which occasion he had made the statement: "Most modern poetry isn't modern any more. It is as simple and lyrical and romantic as poetry ever was. The new poets scan. They have rhyme and rhythm. The idea that they are wild and woolly is no longer true. Today the young poets are tame and fleecy."
It indicates that it was fine and that there should be no quibbling as to whether Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron were "wild and woolly" or "tame and fleecy", as it would be dodging Mr. Jarrell's well-made point. But it finds that he had said something disturbing when he indicated that Edna St. Vincent Millay had been the last poet read by young men to young women in canoes, that contemporary poets were not read but were heard on records, with Mr. Jarrell's chief job at the Library of Congress being to get more of them recorded.
It finds that poetry always had been meant to be heard, as it was song, but that it also had to be written, and it could not separate writing and reading, that if a person skipped reading, the fear was that soon they would also skip writing. It was thus a bit disturbed by having a record player rather than a book in the canoe. "And if we concede that the machine has an advantage after dark, what happens to the banjo?"
Well, we know what happens on the river down in Georgia, at least in fiction, when you get the canoe in juxtaposition to the banjo. You attract all types of strange creatures emerging from the woods to find out more closely, seeking an arrow as a direction pointer, as to what the city brand of music was all about, that of the "Buckhead Boys". Of course, Arthur Smith of Charlotte did not think much of it, that is the banjo music, for it having been stolen from him by the banjoist pluckers without attribution. But we digress from the topic at hand.
Drew Pearson indicates that apparently the Agriculture Department had underestimated Senator Kerr Scott of North Carolina and tried to slip him some phony figures on the soil bank payments the previous week. The farm-bred Senator suspected that the Administration might be trying to buy votes by rushing farmers their soil bank payments before the election, and he had asked the Department how much had been paid out in North Carolina, Mississippi, Minnesota and Iowa. The Department had furnished him figures which turned out to be a few million dollars short, and the Senator managed to obtain copies of the actual confidential figures, finding that when he compared the two sets, the Department had reported that Iowa had received 39 million dollars while the copies showed that the actual amount was 54.5 million, that Minnesota had been reported by the Department as having received almost 10 million, when the copies showed it had received 10.8 million, that North Carolina, according to the Department's figures, had received 3.7 million, while the actual figure was more than 3.9 million, and that Mississippi, according to the Department's figures, had received $609,000, compared to the actual amount of $749,000. The copies had also revealed that the farmers in 45 states thus far had collected nearly 261 million dollars for plowing under crops. Originally, their payments were supposed to have been mailed from Washington, but to squeeze the maximum political juice from the soil bank program, the Republicans had been providing the money personally to each farmer. He notes that Senator Scott, normally a patient man, had gotten upset over the phony figures and had sent his assistant storming to the Agriculture Department, where sheepish officials explained that they had made a "mistake".
Only a few trusted henchmen knew it, but a private agent was tailing Harold Stassen on behalf of Vice-President Nixon during the "stop-Nixon" drive at the Republican convention in San Francisco in August, with the mission to see what could be found out about Mr. Stassen, the organizer of that drive.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop tell of Adlai Stevenson and his large entourage having been in and out of Washington during the previous week, exuding confidence which appeared genuine, but also reminding that politicians who were underdogs exuded confidence "as instinctively as cows give milk". They had fashioned a formula by which they believed they could achieve the miracle of beating President Eisenhower, the formula entailing, as one historian in the entourage had put it, "the most energetic campaign in the history of the American presidency." Mr. Stevenson would follow a stringent schedule throughout the campaign, something which he appeared to enjoy, in contrast to his attitude in 1952, at that time asking plaintively whether he really had to do such heavy campaigning. Now, he understood that it was necessary to get his views across to the people, and to present a stark contrast between his vigor and the relatively sedentary President, who had suffered two major health problems during the previous year, his heart attack of the prior September and his ileitis of the prior June. Another purpose would be to identify Mr. Stevenson with local Democratic candidates and thus with the party.
The strategists wanted to stress the three-year Democratic trend in elections since 1952, culminating in the recent victory in Maine of incumbent Governor Edmund Muskie, who, two years earlier, had become the first Democratic Governor of that state in 38 years. One top Democrat had remarked that they would again take both houses of Congress, as they had in 1954, with the only question being whether the President could survive his party's defeat.
Every effort would also be made by Mr. Stevenson and his propagandists to identify the President with the Republican Party, with another part of the Stevenson formula being to press the issue of the "part-time President" resulting from his health issues, centering the attack on the Vice-President as a potential successor to the office during the ensuing four years.
The formula also called for making
full use of the Democratic Party's ambassadors to special voting
groups, of which the Democrats had many and the Republicans few.
Vice-presidential nominee Estes Kefauver would be that ambassador to
the farmers, among whom he was quite popular, able to display a
special brand of folksiness, which he would employ in nearly every
important farm county in the country. The chief ambassador to the
Catholics would be Senator John F. Kennedy
In addition, Mr. Stevenson had the support of a series of new Democratic governors, an asset he had lacked in 1952, including his chief rival at the convention for the nomination, New York Governor Averell Harriman, who was making a major contribution to the campaign. Even Ohio's Governor Frank Lausche, who had remained carefully aloof in the past, was now working hard for Mr. Stevenson.
The former Governor of Illinois also had more enthusiastic and energetic labor support than he had in 1952. He would center his whole campaign on presenting himself as the "champion of the people". He was aware, as he had not been in 1952, that the greatest asset which a Democrat had was the image of the party among important voting groups as being the party of the "little guys against the big shots".
Added to that would be the inherent advantages which any Democrat enjoyed, notably in the South, as there were far more registered Democrats than Republicans.
They conclude that, overall, the formula for victory appeared formidable, even though the President remained unquestionably the front runner, "but not to the point where the Republicans can afford to sit back happily on their haunches."
We note, parenthetically, that the News needed a new caricaturist, as Senator Kennedy's image resembles much more that of his younger brother, Ted, at present unknown to the public, much as President Kennedy would later remark that impressionist Vaughn Meader had captured more nearly the voice of the younger brother than his own, while that of Senator Kefauver resembles instead Steve Allen. The person did capture the likeness of Governor Harriman pretty closely. And, of course, no one really knew what Governor Lausche looked like, anyway.
Marquis Childs, en route along the campaign trail with Vice-President Nixon, indicates that the Vice-President during the first day of his punishing campaign tour had been met by a cheering squad, welcoming him home to his native California, prompting him to mount an improvised platform and respond with eager earnestness, his hallmark. He then held a press conference in a room in the airport for local reporters and newsmen accompanying him. He had already made a half dozen talks at the start of the trip in Washington and then in Indianapolis, plus a full length address opening his campaign. Yet, he quickly and unhesitatingly had replied to the questions put to him, ignoring the television lights which blazed in his face and the heat which caused him to sweat profusely, fielding the usual questions on the give-and-take of campaign oratory. Then a reporter had asked whether he could tell them "what Dick Nixon really stands for", and, after pausing, replying that the answer would take longer than they had at the moment, instead summarizing his beliefs as being very close to the philosophy of the Administration on both foreign and domestic policy.
Mr. Childs indicates that it was that question which most often was raised by those who wanted to understand the success story behind the Vice-President. He states that to watch him in action was to sense that the key was action itself, and that beliefs, issues and ideas were subordinated "to the drive of a very powerful and highly disciplined personality." To embrace the President's philosophy and the "New Republicanism" had gone against his own conservative voting record while in Congress. Yet, the ardor of the embrace was indubitable, as demonstrated by the demanding tour and the praise he gave at every opportunity to the Eisenhower program of moderate social reform.
Mr. Childs offers that it was not action for the sake of action only, as Mr. Nixon well understood the techniques of mass communication in modern life. Perfection was quite important to the candidate, driving himself incessantly to perfect his performance. One person who had observed him quite closely said that he was almost always "on stage", and Mr. Childs observes that even when chatting informally, he was always front and center, seldom relaxing, with a sense of humor which was restricted to the limited uses which he made of it in his speeches. For all of his dedication to the party and his own career, he still had difficulty communicating, with his critics suggesting that he was still the college debater who could take either side of a question and champion it with the same skill, rather than having a true conviction.
But Mr. Childs suggests that the mistake that many of his critics and doubters made was to underestimate Mr. Nixon and his skill as a politician. "He has extraordinary ability, a keen analytical mind, a retentive memory that never misses a detail, and almost superhuman physical equipment." Yet, he concludes, the end to which he would devote those resources, aside from his own career, remained uncertain.
A letter writer from Monroe indicates that R. J. Donovan's Eisenhower: The Inside Story had apparently been intended as an appeal for "liberal" support of the President in the coming election, with the material for it having been supplied by the directors of the Administration, with Mr. Donovan stating that he had not manufactured any quotations. The President was quoted at page 249 as saying that he would not get in the "gutter" with Senator McCarthy, and at page 348, regarding the Geneva summit conference of July, 1955, that he wanted particularly his friend Marshal Zhukov to listen carefully to what he had to say, as he knew that, speaking soldier to soldier, he had never uttered a word which he did not believe to be true. On page 350, also concerning the summit, the President had told Premier Nikolai Bulganin and Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev that he was convinced that they were as sincere in their desire for peace as he was. The writer finds those to be illuminating quotations, showing that the President was imploring "the habitual Communist liars" to believe that he was telling the truth, and assuring the "blood-drenched Communist despots" that they were as sincerely desirous of peace as he was, having also said that he would not get down into the gutter with Senator McCarthy, whom the letter writer believes knew the Communists for what they were and had the courage to fight them. "In these quotations and in the warm smiles Mr. Eisenhower gave the Communists, one can read our appreciation of the Communist menace. No wonder the Communists smile."
A letter writer indicates that he had always taken pride in believing that the people of Mecklenburg County were as intelligent as people anywhere, but that nevertheless they had sent to the State Legislature in 1955 representatives who supported a bill making it extremely hard for them to express a choice of candidates for various offices, rendering a ballot which was now very confusing when seeking to cast a straight party vote. He says that he would not mark the straight party ballot but would circle the name of Representative Charles Jonas, as well as Charles Coria for State representative, as he believed the latter would not go to Raleigh and support legislation which would deprive any citizen of his God-given right to have his vote count for the candidate which he indicated as his choice.
A letter writer says that he had just finished reading that the city had spent several million dollars per year for the support of the schools and wants to know what the $3 to $12 per child went toward, not including the 25 to 35 cents for lunch money and $1 to $4 every other day. He says that if any such thing existed, to direct him to a free school.
He may have been spending some of that money on drinks stronger than the soft variety.
A letter writer expresses appreciation to the two women who had corrected the statement made by the city councilwoman regarding women of foreign lands or countries, that when one made wild remarks, they could hit someone in a tender spot, that if going back far enough, each person in the country could be traced to some foreign land and that the least the people could do would be to control their remarks, "for we may get into our own alley."
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