The Charlotte News
Friday, October 25, 1957
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Air Force officers who had conducted "Project Far Side", the effort to launch a rocket from a balloon to altitudes between 1,000 and 4,000 miles off Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific, expressed the belief this date that one of the rockets launched had gone slightly more than 4,000 miles into space. Under questioning at a press conference, the officers also conceded that "technologically", it might be possible to use somewhat the same system for sending a rocket to the moon within the ensuing year. They insisted, however, that such a mission was not the purpose of the six tests in the series of experiments. One of the officers, a colonel, told newsmen that he would guess that the 4,000-mile altitude might have been surpassed "by a few hundred miles." But he and another colonel insisted that exact data still was being compiled and that until it was complete, there could be no precise altitude given. The two colonels gave their replies about altitude reluctantly, repeatedly indicating that the figures still were being tabulated. A reporter had noted that the original announcement on the project had said that the range of the rockets had been specified at between 1,000 and 4,000 miles, and that the Air Force had said the previous day that the sixth and last of the scheduled tests had been successful, asking whether that meant that the rocket had gone to an altitude of 4,000 miles, to which one of the two colonels said that one could conclude that it "completed its mission successfully". The two officers said that the Project had been planned more than 18 months earlier and denied that the Russian launch of Sputnik on October 4 and the pressure from the Pentagon to catch up with the Russians had anything to do with the series of tests, which had ended on October 22. They said that about $750,000 had been spent on the project thus far and that they were provided authority to spend up to about a million dollars. The project was now concluded, but one of the colonels said that the accounting on expenditures was still being made.
On the basis of available information, the rockets which had been fired during the six tests could not become satellites, as they were apparently fired straight up, whereas in the launch of a satellite, the rocket which slung it into space first had to rise straight up but then its trajectory curved such that it would fly parallel to the earth at a pre-designated altitude. When the final rocket fired, it would shove the satellite forward and then jettison it at a critical speed so that it would obtain an orbit. If the satellite or final stage rockets were shot forward at only 10,000 mph, gravity would pull them back to earth, but if the satellite or rocket were fired at 18,000 mph, they would achieve balance with gravity, which would then produce the orbital path around the earth.
At the Missile Test Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., a missile, which appeared to be the Air Force Snark, was fired this date in the latest launching during a week marked by unusual test activity, presumably in response to the Russian launch earlier in the month of Sputnik.
Secretary of State Dulles and British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd, meeting in Washington this date, began the final round of the current talks aimed at rallying allies to meet the challenge of Russia's expanding power and aggressive diplomacy, with one obvious purpose for the late morning session being to review a communiqué which their aides had been drafting for submission to the President and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, with the two foreign ministers also confronted with determining the maximum agreement possible at this point on American-British pooling of scientific research and development of atomic weaponry and missiles. The communiqué of the two heads of state would be the first joint response from the major Western allies to Russia's "Sputnik diplomacy", which was considered to include the aggressive actions in the Middle East following its successes in rocket technology. It was generally anticipated that despite official efforts to play down the subject, the official communiqué would necessarily deal with that topic and probably would reassert British-American intentions to protect Western interests in the Middle East. The President and Prime Minister Macmillan had arranged a midday meeting with Paul-Henri Spaak, Secretary-General of NATO, with the purpose of the meeting of the two heads of state designed not only to serve American and British interests but those of the allies as well, as the session with Mr. Spaak demonstrated. The final talk between the two heads of state would take place this afternoon, with the Prime Minister set to depart for Ottawa, Canada, late in the afternoon following three days in Washington. He would meet in Ottawa with Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker before returning to London. British and American diplomats who had begun the conference with predictions that it would end with a brief and largely meaningless statement of pious generalities, were now saying that the communiqué of the two heads of state had grown in length and significance, indicating that the President and Prime Minister had succeeded in reaching a greater degree of agreement than their advisers had originally thought possible. Prime Minister Macmillan was reported to have advocated a greater emphasis on economic programs for the Middle East, apparently a long-range approach to solving basic problems in that region, while offering no key, however, to resolve the current crisis in which Russia was charging before the U.N. that an American-sponsored Turkish plot was afoot to attack Syria imminently, prompting Russian threats of military action in response should such an attack come to pass.
In Paris, a nationwide strike began this date in the midst of what newspapers were calling the most serious political crisis in France since World War II.
In Memphis, Tenn., former Senator Kenneth McKellar, a top figure in the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations, had died this date at 88.
In New York, a U.S. District Court judge this date set November 4 as a tentative date for trial of Jimmy Hoffa, president-elect of the Teamsters Union, on perjury charges. Mr. Hoffa's ascendancy to the presidency, however, had been stayed by another U.S. District Court judge in Washington pending the outcome of a lawsuit brought by 13 rank-and-file members of the union who contended that the election at the recent Miami Beach convention had been rigged to load delegations with Hoffa delegates.
The Senate Select Committee investigating misconduct in unions and management heard this date from a vice-president of Sears, Roebuck & Co., Wallace Tudor, who accused Nathan Shefferman and some executives of Sears of "disgraceful" unfair labor practices against labor union organization efforts at the Sears stores in Boston in 1953. Mr. Tudor testified that those were "glaring exceptions" to the overall history of Sears in dealing with its 205,000 workers, indicating that most of the company's employees believed that they were "better off than employees of competitors, whether organized or not", as he then described employee benefits they received. The Committee was presently investigating relations between employees and Mr. Shefferman, who had been described during the hearings as a specialist in "union busting". The Retail Clerks Union had attempted to organize Sears stores in the Boston area in 1953, and Mr. Tudor told the Committee that the handling of that situation involved "a series of mistakes highlighted by widespread use of pressure and coercion, discrimination against employees for union activities, favoritism, intrigue and unfair labor practices." He blamed Mr. Shefferman's firm, Labor Relations Associates, Inc., and "certain company personnel" for the practice, stating further that the actions on the part of company personnel had been "inexcusable, unnecessary and disgraceful" and that a repetition of those "mistakes" would not be tolerated by the company, indicating that the fact that their employees were at the time and presently receiving wages and benefits "far in excess of employees in competing Boston concerns, whether organized or not," in no way had justified what had taken place.
As indicated, we had at this time all to ourselves the Tudors and the Fordors for 1958, safe from the prying eyes of you and you, all models of which we saw and experienced about two weeks before you did, unless you were, perhaps, one of our neighbors, able thus to peer into our secret garden in the backyard, for which we did not even charge admission—perhaps, who knows? a gift from Mr. McNamara of Fordor fame, for our generous contributions, free of charge, through the years, to their design department, that is, until the Italians took over the job with a Tudor, built on the chassis of the car we first conceptualized, those organized thieves.
In New York, Albert Anastasia, 53,
one of the top overlords of organized crime in the country, had been
slain this date by two masked gunmen as he sat getting a haircut at
the Hotel Park Sheraton, the killers escaping by car through the
crowded streets of mid-Manhattan. Mr. Anastasia had once been reputed
as the "Lord High Executioner" for the old Brooklyn ring
known as "Murder, Inc." He had walked into the barbershop
and sat down, telling the barber that he wanted to have his hair cut,
whereupon the barber placed a large white apron over him and started
work with his scissors, at which point, the two gunmen walked into
the shop and without a word, began firing at Mr. Anastasia, with one
witness recounting that about six shots had been fired. The two
gunmen then fled through the door by which they had entered, as Mr.
Anastasia slumped down in the chair, dead. The piece indicates that
it was a typical gangland ending for him, a person whose name had
been linked to almost every type of crime on the books. He had beaten
the electric chair in five different murder cases and was reputed to
have had a hand in at least 30 murders. He was repeatedly implicated
in rackets which obtained millions of dollars each year. But only one
charge had ever stuck, that being carrying a concealed weapon. He was
described as an associate of such underworld figures as Frank
Costello, Joe Adonis, Al Capone and the Moretti brothers in the
national crime syndicate formed in 1934, with Murder, Inc., being its
strong-arm affiliate. When informed that he was marked for execution
after a fallout with some of the other organized crime kingpins, he
had said: "That's a lot of hooey. God will take care of those
people that talk like that." A florist who worked in a shop next
door to the barbershop had frantically telephoned police
headquarters, and in a matter of minutes, the hotel was swarming with
officers. The florist said that there seemed to be about three
flurries of shots and that "it sounded like one shot, then a
pause, then two or three shots, and another pause, and then two or
three more shots—about six in all." A doctor, who was the
first to examine Mr. Anastasia's body, said that he was hit at least
three times, in the head, the back and the hands. Police said that a
.38-caliber pistol and an automatic were carried by the killers and
that the .38, believed to have been the weapon which actually killed
him, was found in a corridor near the 55th Street entrance to the
hotel. By the time reporters had arrived, they could see the
apron-draped body of the victim stretched out on the barbershop
floor, as shown in a photograph as the doctor examined the body. The
startled barbers had been unable to provide police with a clear
description of the assailants. Mr. Hooey
Whether, incidentally, the wise guys who ordered the hit had read in TV Guide for the week a synopsis of an upcoming tv show
Ann Sawyer of The News reports that when students were informed of a possible plan for school year-round as an answer to overcrowding and lack of sufficient teachers and facilities, the nearly universal cry from students was thumbs-down. They wondered how they would get a suntan during the winter, when they could go swimming and play tennis, and wanted their vacations when their friends were also on vacation. They also believed that it would not be fair to students or teachers who had to attend during the summer because it was so hot. But one first grader was so wrapped up in his teacher and school that he said he would be glad to attend all year. The concept did not mean that students would literally go to school 12 months of the year, but that the nine-month school year would be staggered in different sessions for different students, a concept which one 10th-grader at a private parochial school approved, indicating that businesses would not be swamped at one time by students during the summer looking for temporary employment, providing students better chances for jobs. One 12-year old said that other people could go to school in the summertime if they wanted to, but that he "ain't", prompting his mother to correct his grammar. An eighth grader said that she would not mind going to school in the summer. A dozen mothers polled on the matter showed that six favored the year-round school while six did not. Teachers looked at both sides of the issue. Well, where do you stand on this important, earth-shattering concept? Those of us who went to split sessions in the first grade, attending half the year for four and a half hours in the morning, without a break, and the other half of the year four and a half hours in the afternoon, possibly might see both the upside and the downside of such an arrangement. It did provide more solitude in the mornings while collecting acorns from beneath the big oak tree, unimpeded by other interlopers scrounging for same. But during the winter months, it also meant that no sooner than one got home from school, darkness began to descend, limiting play time after school with one's associates. Generally speaking, we recall it as being rather isolating in its effects, when your other playmates were attending a different session and you were left all alone to fend for yourself, in either the mornings or the afternoons. It did, however, afford more time for you to play on the hi-fi your older brother's records, while taking excessive care not to leave behind any tell-tale scratches, holding each only by their edges between the palms of the hands, or, preferably, the tips of the opposing index fingers, as you were taught—even if a couple of the older, smaller ones, including a 78 rpm recording of "Hound Dog", wound up at some later point being the centerpiece of an impromptu game of Frisbee with one of your rowdier roustabout colleagues conducted inside on a rainy day, after your brother was safely tucked away in college and thus had long since stopped listening to Elvis.
The editorial page is here. "Can There Be Too Much 'Security'?" suggests that too few Americans were concerned about dying of leukemia or bone cancer at age 20 from nuclear fallout, the reason for the apathy being that they were being denied access to vital information on atomic energy and the effects of radiation and fallout.
It finds that of all Government agencies, the Atomic Energy Commission had been the most abusive of the rights to information, having reversed the conventional military theory under which the press was permitted to publish anything not proscribed, substituting it with a rule whereby publication could not occur unless it was cleared by the agency. Thus, even non-security phases of the atomic program often were shrouded in unnecessary and unjustified secrecy.
The result had been that information which the public wanted and had a right to have regarding safety and the safety of future generations, either had been withheld or obtained only after much effort. It finds it gratifying, therefore, that the report on atomic fallout, which had just been released by the Government, gave official emphasis to the AEC's failure to keep the country adequately informed on the subject. (Hearings had been held on the subject before a subcommittee of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy during the prior May and June. The report of that subcommittee had been released in August, but the report to which the piece makes reference is that of the AEC's committee on biology and medicine.)
The latter report had noted: "Judging from discussions in the public press, it is not generally realized that the estimated damage [from fallout] is well within tolerable limits… The question arises in the minds of many thoughtful persons whether the number and the power of bombs exploded in the tests are being kept at the minimum consistent with scientific and military requirements.… The committee recommends … that appropriate steps be taken to correct the present status of confusion on the part of the public."
The piece recognizes that some secrecy regarding atomic testing was necessary, but that it ought be limited strictly to the sensitive areas. Thus far, the AEC's blanket ban on atomic information had accounted for a cache of 80 million documents in the Commission's classified files, and a great and growing fear on the part of perhaps many more than 80 million Americans. But virtually no progress had been made for the creation of "'a reasonable amount of intelligence and social concern on the part of the generation of living adults.'"
"Albert Camus: Welcome to the Club" finds that the name of Mr. Camus meant little to many Charlotte residents at present, though it would mean more in the future. He had received the Nobel Prize for literature and thus his fame would become more well-known, and, hopefully, increase his readership. "He is undoubtedly the most brilliant young literary craftsman to emerge from the chaos of post-war Europe."
Born in Algiers in 1913, Mr. Camus had been a teacher, a journalist, a theatrical manager and a leader of the French Resistance. During World War II, he had edited the important underground paper, Combat. He flirted briefly with the Jean-Paul Sartre "cult of existentialism" but had managed to become disentangled from it. His major novels, such as The Stranger, published in 1946, and The Plague, in 1948, had been published in the U.S., but sales had been modest, and even smaller sales registered for his significant philosophical work, The Rebel, published in 1956, an essay on man in revolt, still available in a paperback Vintage edition in some North Carolina bookstores in late 1957.
As critics had noted, Mr. Camus belonged to the admirable literary lineage which began with Montaigne. "He is a skeptic yet he is deeply concerned about the seemingly permanent crisis of the 20th century—man's acquisition of vast new powers over the natural world and his failure to acquire any more power over himself." It finds that his thoughts on that subject had ripened to maturity in The Rebel, showing how all revolutions had led to a reinforcement of the power of the state, how Hitler had based his regime on "irrational terrorism" and Stalin had based his on "rational terrorism".
"While acknowledging the 'historical reality' of revolt in man's nature, Camus teaches perhaps his most important lesson, a lesson that certainly has validity for these troubled times. It is that restraint is not the contrary of revolt. Revolt, he writes, carries with it the very idea of restraint, and 'moderation, born of rebellion, can only live by rebellion. It is perpetual conflict, continually created and mastered by the intelligence… Whatever we may do, excess will always keep its place in the heart of man, in the place where solitude is found. We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others. Rebellion … is still today at the basis of the struggle. Origin of form, source of real life, it keeps us always erect in the savage, formless movement of history.'"
It concludes that in an age of peril and uncertainty, Mr. Camus presented a balanced, sober outlook in the great tradition of French logic and finds him a worthy recipient of the Nobel Prize.
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