The Charlotte News
Thursday, October 17, 1957
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from the U.N. in New York that the U.S. worked urgently this date on a proposal designed to ensure that any U.N. inquiry into the Middle East crisis would look at the role played by the Soviets. New Zealand's Sir Leslie Munro, president of the U.N. General Assembly, meanwhile, called a meeting of the Assembly's 17-nation steering committee for the following morning to begin the first round of debate on the problem. A spokesman for the U.S. delegation said that Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., was conferring with his aides during the morning regarding ideas which the U.S. would advance on how the U.N. inquiry should be conducted. U.S. sources said that the U.S. would be prepared to offer its own ideas on the composition of the investigating body and its scope. The probe had been proposed the previous day by Syria, apparently acting in coordination with the Soviet Union, as both said that an attack by Turkey on Syria appeared imminent. The U.S. spokesman said that the U.S. welcomed the proposal and expressed hope that it would clarify "who it is that threatens peace in the Middle East." The meeting of the steering committee was delayed until the following day after some key delegations, including that of Turkey, insisted that they would not have time to receive instructions from their governments before that point. The committee was expected to urge that the full 82-nation Assembly take up the Syrian-Russian charges on an emergency basis, bypassing debate in the political committee. Diplomats predicted that the Assembly would begin debate on the issue early the following week. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, in a letter to Mr. Munro, charged that the Turkish general staff, working with U.S. advisers, had made plans for an attack on Syria immediately after the Turkish elections set for October 27. Mr. Gromyko proposed that U.N. members raise a force to meet any such threatened attack and indicated that Soviet forces would take part. He also endorsed the Syrian demand for a U.N. commission to investigate the situation on the Syrian-Turkish frontier and recommended that it be instructed to report within two weeks of its creation.
In Damascus, it was reported that the Syrian Army had been placed on alert this date and the Cabinet was reported weighing a general mobilization in the crisis arising from the charges that Turkey was planning an attack. A Government spokesman disclosed the alert, but said that it amounted only to a cancellation of leaves for officers. The spokesman denied an Egyptian Middle East News Agency report, circulated in Damascus, that a state of emergency had been declared. The spokesman said that the leaves had been canceled a few weeks earlier, then later relaxed for awhile and now had been reinstated. The cancellation of leaves and the order of all absent soldiers to report to their units would be tantamount to a state of emergency. But the spokesman declared that there was no mobilization or even partial mobilization of the Army. Two Cabinet members, who declined to be identified, told reporters, however, that the Cabinet was considering a nationwide mobilization. Turkish Minister Adnan Kural met with the acting Foreign Minister, Kalil Kallas, and delivered him a note from his Government, which was understood to deny the Syrian charges that Turkey planned a "premeditated action" against Syria. The joint Syrian-Egyptian Army command had been holding day and night meetings. Syrian forces, estimated to total 50,000 men, had recently been bolstered by the arrival of Egyptian troops at Latakia.
In London, the British Foreign Office called this date for "a period of calm" in the Middle East to permit relaxation of tensions, with the spokesman for the Office indicating that Britain did not believe there was any danger of Turkish aggression against Syria.
In Bonn, West Germany, German Socialist leaders joined their brothers in other Western European countries this date in brushing off Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev's invitation to work with the Communists for peace in the Middle East.
Also in Bonn, the West German Government this date postponed a decision on whether to sever diplomatic relations with Communist Yugoslavia, a decision to be made the following day.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that, contingent on the weather, Sputnik would be visible over Charlotte the following early morning. For the present, clouds and rain were in the forecast, but if the skies cleared, Charlotte residents would be able to see the satellite as it passed over the city, without the aid of any special instruments. The satellite would be as bright as a third or fourth magnitude star, and observers would also be able to see the third stage of the firing rocket and, perhaps, other "debris" which was also following the orbit. Mr. Scheer, who would later work for NASA during the manned space program, advises taking a position fairly high, if possible, to have the best chance of seeing the satellite, at a location where the horizon could be seen unobstructed, away from city lights. A map is provided for your convenience, showing that the satellite would be just across the way from the Barringer Hotel and to the northwest. So, it would appear that the obvious best location from which to observe it would be from a room in the Barringer. The satellite would appear as a white object similar to a star, about 25 to 30 degrees to the left of North Tryon Street. It would move from the observer's left to a place directly overhead and then to the right, traveling from northwest to southeast. There had been a report during the week that two local youths had already seen the satellite and that the location and time had been unofficially confirmed by local astronomers. It had also been observed in the Greensboro area during the week. Forest Selby, a leader in the Charlotte Astronomy Club, told the newspaper this date that the club would have 13 observers with monoculars, having the power of a strong telescope, tracking the satellite. The observers would provide their reports to a man on the scene at the moon watch station at the rear of the Mint Museum. The local group had a special code number, no doubt 007, to give the telephone company to enable it to have a direct line to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass. Once the satellite was spotted, the direct line would be utilized to report directly to the Observatory, where experts would add the observation to reports from 70 other official lookout stations across the nation. The local moon watchers had been cooperating with the Observatory during the International Geophysical Year. The local experts had recorded the sound of Sputnik, its radio beeping noise, but would be concerned only with visual tracking on this occasion.
We saw it from our front yard one night, down next to the swamp, probably looking for a place to land nearby. Did you see it? In just a couple of weeks, the 1958 Fords will arrive at the dealership early and about 20 of them will be parked in our backyard, safe from prying eyes, and we will have our pick of the litter in which to play all day long. Did you? There are many perquisites attached to living next to a swamp, even if you do have to guard against the snakes on warm days and learn not to squeeze too hard the snake eggs you find in your sandbox, lest you get a startling surprise. Better to play inside the hundreds of new Fords, safe from the snakes.
The Los Angeles Examiner reported this date that it had been informed that Russia would seek to hit the moon with rockets on November 7. The newspaper's science editor, Christian Clausen, had written that the information came from a European scientist "who has talked to rocket experts who escaped from the huge Russian rocket and missile base at Peenemünde in Germany." The name of the scientist was not provided in the report. The reporter said that his source had told him that the Soviets would aim three of their huge rockets at the moon from a launching base on the Caspian Sea, "the same spot whence the Red satellite was sent aloft." He said that the scientist had also informed him that if at least one of the rockets hit the moon, the Russians would announce their success to the world, that if all three missed, the Russians would say nothing, but would fire three more rockets and make an announcement if at least one hit the target. If the second series also missed, the Soviets would return to the drawing board and make new calculations. The first moon rockets would be unmanned, according to the report, "but if they are successful with their first vehicles, the Russians plan to send animals and then men to the moon." He said that the scientist had told him that schools had been set up to select men and women from the Russian Air Force to make a trip to the moon and to teach them how to live there. November 7 would be the 40th anniversary of Vladimir Lenin's accession to power in Russia, blessed with a full moon on that date. That is good, as it would be much more difficult to hit the little slice of green cheese during a waning moon, when most of it is eaten by one of the space cats.
In Moscow, the Red Star reported this date that the Soviet ICBM would be a peaceful missile, not meant for aggression, despite the claim of the Russians that the missile could strike any point in the world.
In St. Joseph, Mo., a 14-year old boy was on trial for murder of his father, a furnace installer, having also fatally shot his mother, his 11-year old sister and a six-year old brother, for whose deaths he was charged but not yet presently on trial, and had wounded his retarded 11-year old sister, with an I.Q. of 63. The latter sister was at the Missouri School for the Mentally Handicapped, and, according to its superintendent, liked to tell everyone there how her brother had shot her. The superintendent said that her language indicated that she came from a family of "turbulence and violence". The defense attorney for the boy had opened the case by calling a brother of the deceased mother, who testified that "instead of trying to teach the kids something, she tried to beat it into them." The shooting spree had erupted on a Sunday afternoon, March 31, following a family row at the home over the boy's desire to use the family automobile after Sunday school, a request which his father had refused, at which point the boy asked his mother for his hunting knife, but she said that she had thrown it away, whereupon the boy went into a rage and committed the shootings, according to his juvenile officer relating the story the boy had told him. The family had nine children in all.
It is too bad that "Zorro"
The editorial page is here. "U.S. Faces Risk of War in Near East" indicates that the warning the previous day of Secretary of State Dulles regarding the danger of an attack on Turkey by Syria and the Soviet Union had "slashed across the nation's consciousness like a razor stroke." It finds it only the latest in a series of rude jolts to public complacency, and that if it alerted the nation to the seriousness of the situation in the Middle East, it had also alerted the Soviets to the depth of U.S. determination to stand by its international commitments at any cost.
Secretary Dulles had not hesitated to point out to the Soviets that such an attack on Turkey would not leave Russia as a privileged sanctuary, that he had implied that the U.S. was willing to risk even a nuclear war to protect its interests in the Middle East.
It finds that the peril which the nation presently faced had been the result of U.S. diplomacy in the region, brought on by the movement of Syria into the Soviet orbit and the virtual collapse of the Eisenhower doctrine, designed to provide aid from the U.S., if requested by a nation in the region, to ward off external aggression. It suggests that the present situation, however, had to be faced bravely and honestly, without regret for what had already taken place. For Turkey was the right flank anchor of NATO defense, holding the strategic Dardanelles as well as some of the mountain barriers which protected the Middle East against land invasion. Its airfields, leased by the U.S., provided bases, in case of war, for attack against the underbelly of central Russia. But with Syria under Communist domination, Turkey was presently threatened from the south as well as from the north.
Despite the talk of war, the U.S. Government was reported to be relatively calm, as it believed that Soviet bluster concerning Turkey was merely part of the Kremlin's propaganda campaign to make the most of Russia's current "position of strength". It suggests that while that might be true, the stakes were too high for the game to be taken lightly, and that the U.S. had no choice but to maintain a firm and determined position in the region, as it had to be clear both to U.S. allies and its enemies that peace was the nation's objective, and equally clear that peace could not be bought at any price, that some things were worth fighting for, as the alternative would be slow strangulation.
"Who Packed It?" briefly indicates that critics of the Supreme Court's "new liberalism" often blamed former President Harry Truman for packing the Court with liberals, the piece counseling instead to look at the record, finding that the Truman appointees, Chief Justice Fred Vinson, deceased since 1953, and Justices Harold Burton, Tom Clark, and Sherman Minton, the latter having retired a year earlier, had each ranged from the right to the far right in their legal jurisprudence, whereas two out of the four appointees by President Eisenhower, Chief Justice Earl Warren and Justice William Brennan, were liberals—actually with a third appointee, Justice John Harlan, grandson of the only dissenting justice in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, the case which had established the "separate but equal" doctrine, overturned in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, tending toward liberality on civil rights issues, joining the unanimous implementing decision in Brown in 1955. The fourth appointee, the most recent, Justice Charles Whittaker, was too new to the Court to have established a track record, and is completely ignored by the piece, which assumes there had only been three Eisenhower appointees, Justice Whittaker having replaced retiring Justice Stanley Reed, an FDR appointee, earlier in the year. The fifth and final appointment by President Eisenhower would occur the following year, when Justice Burton would retire, replaced by Potter Stewart, who would be a moderate on the Court through his long tenure until 1981. The other current members of the Court were FDR appointees Justices Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and Felix Frankfurter.
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