The Charlotte News
Thursday, December 26, 1957
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Moscow that the Russians had pressed their own ideas for a peace plan this date while sharply attacking the Western proposal for a foreign ministers conference to take up disarmament. Foreign diplomatic missions in Moscow were studying a seven-point plan approved by the Supreme Soviet the previous Saturday, a copy of which had been given to all foreign delegations the previous day with the request that it be relayed to their respective governments and parliaments. The plan largely paralleled letters written to all U.N. members by Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin just prior to the December 16-19 NATO summit conference in Paris. Communist Party newspaper Pravda said this date that the Monday night television report on the NATO conference by the President and Secretary of State Dulles had been "a cold war sermon behind the mask of peace." It expressed sarcastically appreciation for the U.S. leaders' condemnation of war, but added, "One seeks in vain for constructive realistic proposals to back up these words of peace." It dismissed the NATO proposal for a foreign ministers conference as an attempt to ram through a disarmament agreement on Western terms, and said that those terms were unacceptable to the Soviets because they were in no way conducive to disarmament. It indicated that the only type of talks on which NATO had agreed were talks based "on the notorious position of strength policy of the United States." It added that if there were a foreign ministers conference, it would become a forum for more accusations against the Soviet Union. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko had made a speech to the Supreme Soviet which appeared to reject the idea of a foreign ministers conference. But he proposed "a special session of the United Nations or an international conference on disarmament… This could pave the way for a summit meeting." Secretary of State Dulles had all but rejected the proposal in the report to the American people the previous Monday, presented with the President. The President had called on Soviet leaders for "clear evidence of Communist integrity and sincerity in negotiations and in action" to ease world tension.
In New York, former President Truman this date had said to newspapermen during his morning constitutional in a steady rain that while he had hoped there would be a policy statement in the Monday night speech of the President and Secretary Dulles, no such statement had been made, "just a lot of State Department gobbledygook". He was spending the Christmas holidays with his daughter, Margaret Daniel, and her husband, Clifton. He said that the idea of the recent NATO conference in Paris was to re-establish agreements between the NATO powers, but "in Dulles's report there was no statement of policy to be pursued to meet the situation. I think I was about as thoroughly bored with Mr. Dulles as the President was."
The New York Times reported this date that the Army was reviewing the cases of every soldier discharged as a security risk between 1948 and 1955. When earlier findings appeared too harsh, the nature of the discharge had been upgraded or the security label removed. Changes had been made in almost half of the cases reviewed thus far, but many former soldiers receiving undesirable discharges were not eligible. The Army had undertaken the program voluntarily and the men impacted generally knew nothing of the review unless the Army decided to improve their discharge.
In Honolulu, it was reported that the Navy had given up its search the previous day for more survivors of the "flying radar station" airplane which had crashed into the Pacific the prior Monday, 25 miles north of Oahu. The Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard surface vessels and planes had combed the area for two nights and two days before abandoning the search, with officers indicating that there was no hope of finding any others beyond the three officers and one enlisted man who had already been rescued early Tuesday, found near the site of the crash. The plane had crashed at sea while on a training flight as part of the early warning detection system. Survivors said that most of the crew had been trapped inside the plane. Two bodies had been recovered early Tuesday and the 17 other crew members were presumed to have perished. It had not yet been determined what had occurred to cause the crash.
In Johannesburg, South Africa, more than 1,000 Africans were treated in the city's nonwhite hospitals the previous day for Christmas Day assaults.
In Colombo, Ceylon, floods and heavy winds had killed more than 100 persons and left 250,000 homeless during the previous three days.
In Taipei, Nationalist Chinese warships had sunk three of four Communist gunboats in a ten-minute engagement off the Communist Chinese coast this date, according to Navy headquarters.
In Jakarta, Indonesia, the Government said this date that it would guarantee the security of non-Dutch businesses in the country. In a nationwide radio broadcast, the Information Ministry said that recent Government moves to take control of Dutch-owned businesses would be restricted to the Dutch.
In Cairo, anti-Western slogans and banners had greeted this date an African-Asian peoples' conference of some 400 delegates from about 40 countries and colonies. Students carried one banner which read: "Down with Eisenhower Doctrine"—the Administration's policy of aiding, upon request, any Middle Eastern country which was being threatened with Communist aggression.
In Seoul, South Korea, Francis Cardinal Spellman had given $15,000 to Korean charities this date, the money having been collected at churches in his New York diocese and from other Roman Catholic groups.
In Los Angeles, a fire had begun in a shed and then spread to two huge piles of used tires covering a square block at the Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. plant this date. The fire was quickly contained.
In Auckland, New Zealand, it was reported that Edmund Hillary was racing toward the South Pole this date, trying to become the first to reach the Pole overland since 1911. He had radioed this date that he was "hell bent for the South Pole—God willing and crevasses permitting." He reported that his small party had about 500 miles to go. Mr. Hillary and sherpa Tenzing Norgay had been the first to climb Mount Everest in 1953. Dr. Vivian Fuchs of Britain was leading a party from the South American side of the continent in the first attempt to trek across the Antarctic, and the two parties were expected to return together to Mr. Hillary's base camp near McMurdo Sound on the New Zealand side of Antarctica. There had been speculation that the two teams were engaged in a race to the South Pole, but supporters of Mr. Hillary denied the rumor. Dr. Fuchs was commanding both his British team and the New Zealand team of Mr. Hillary. A Christmas dinner consisting of two joints of meat had been delivered by plane to the Fuchs party about 500 miles from the Pole.
In Houston, a high school freshman was shot to death in front of his home the previous night and police were seeking five unidentified youths who had fled from the scene in an automobile. The 15-year old boy had been struck in the forehead by three .22-caliber bullets, dying 45 minutes later in a hospital. Three 15-year old companions said that a teenager had stepped from a car carrying four others and shot the boy with a rifle. They could provide no motive for the shooting.
In York, S.C., two brothers from Spartanburg remained hospitalized this date after they were injured the previous day in a freak explosion of a bag of firecrackers. The boys, 17 and 13, had been injured in the explosion at the home of an aunt, when the bag of firecrackers exploded in a bedroom. The younger of the two boys suffered ruptures of both eardrums and lacerations of one arm while the older suffered one ruptured eardrum, abrasions and lacerations of both legs. Their mother said that the boys had gone into the bedroom to count the firecrackers, given them by an uncle. The older of the two boys saw one of the firecrackers "spewing" and shoved his brother back before the bag exploded. The uncle, in another part of the house, had been thrown across the room but was uninjured by the explosion.
In Montclair, N.J., a man entered his children's bedroom on Christmas morning to find two of his little girls dead, ages two and nine months, apparently having suffocated during the night when a radiator valve had blown off, filling the room with steam. A third child, 3, had escaped death by having been taken into the parents' bed.
In Concord, N.C., the worst downtown fire in 12 years had done an estimated $100,000 worth of damage to a commercial building early this date. There was no one in the building at the time and the cause of the fire remained undetermined.
In Pageland, S.C., it was reported that a man poorly disguised as a woman had flashed a nickel-plated revolver and staged the first major holdup in the town's history during the morning. His whiskers had shown behind his woman's veil, and he and a partner had fled with between $1,200 and $1,400 in small-denomination bills, the Christmas Day receipts of the grocery store, one of the larger in town. One of the proprietors said that he knew that the man was not a woman, despite his dress, because he could see his shoes.
John Jamison of The News reports of an escaped Hungarian freedom fighter, on the first anniversary of his arrival in Charlotte, having said that they were the most satisfied couple in America. He and his bride had reached Charlotte six weeks after their escape from Budapest, as friends and relatives had been killed before Communist bullets in the uprising. They now felt that it had been a long time earlier, as so much had occurred in the previous year. He worked for an aircraft company and his wife worked for a textile engraving company and they made enough to live on, living in a one-bedroom house built for a child's playhouse behind a home owned by a doctor. His job was to make plexiglas canopies and cockpits for airplanes. He said that he was a fighter pilot during World War II and flew Messerschmidt 109's for the Axis. He had organized a soaring club in Charlotte to fly sailplanes and they were having their first big meeting this night at their house. The Civil Aeronautics Administration had given them a permit to fly sailplanes and they hoped to be soaring in the spring. He said that they would not return to Hungary under any circumstances but hoped things would improve enough for their parents to get out. He said that he had spent 5 1/2 years in a Communist prison. He had been an officer in World War II and afterward was declared an enemy of the people and a spy. He had been released a month prior to the revolution in 1956 and could not see any possibility of driving the Russians out, indicating that the people were afraid. He said that the revolution had completely destroyed their spirit and they lived week to week, eating, sleeping, working and nothing else. When they received mail from their parents and friends, they did not talk about politics, but he believed they had no hope. He said he did not believe that their parents were in danger at present, but the future remained uncertain.
In London, Queen Elizabeth, who had
been criticized by one of the lords the previous summer for what he
had called a "pain-in-the-neck" speaking style, had won
praise for her first televised Christmas message
On the editorial page, "Peace and the 'Balance of Terror'" indicates that an opinion sampler had obtained little response from a 73-year old farmer he had met in West Texas, who said: "I do my chores, read my paper. The rest of the world can go to blazes."
It finds that a man of 73 probably figured he was beyond surprise, having been born not long after the Civil War and weaned during a financial panic, having lived through two world wars, a depression, recurrent outbreaks of hysteria and fanaticism, now with the advent of countless inventions and unprecedented prosperity. Though the particulars might have changed, what he read in the newspaper at present was the same old story of trouble, and so he did his chores and let the rest of the world go to blazes if it wished.
Unfortunately, it indicates, most Americans could not make that sort of an accommodation with crisis, as they were up against the type of threat which the farmer could never have comprehended, lacking the assurance of a future for their children, which the man had even in the leanest of years. But now, America was no longer immune to physical destruction. "Prudent Americans felt fear in this Christmas season that this has come to pass, a fear that was not quite submerged in the gay appurtenances of the holidays, nor quite eased by the tired words of tired politicians and diplomats."
Americans, rather than using the unfashionable word "fear" would likely say they were concerned over the shabby state of civilization, but it was actually fear that they felt and it was that fear on which now rested peace, the "balance of terror" compounded by atoms and missiles.
General Omar Bradley the previous month had said to the St. Albans Convocation: "Our plight is critical and with each effort we have made to relieve it by further scientific advance, we have succeeded only in aggravating our peril. As a result, we are now speeding inexorably toward a day when even the ingenuity of our scientists may be unable to save us from the consequences of a single rash act or a lone reckless hand upon the switch of an uninterceptable missile. For 12 years now we've sought to stave over this ultimate threat of disaster by devising arms which would be both ultimate and disastrous. The irony can probably be compounded a few more years, or perhaps a few decades. Missiles will bring anti-missiles, and anti-missiles will bring anti-anti-missiles. But inevitably, this whole electronic house of cards will reach a point where it can be constructed no higher. It may be that the problems of accommodation in a world split by rival ideologies are more difficult than those with which we have struggled in the construction of ballistic missiles. But I believe, too, that if we apply to these human problems the energy, creativity and the perseverance we have devoted to science, even problems of accommodation will yield to reason… I confess that this is as much an article of faith as it is an expression of reason. But this, my friends, is what we need, faith in our ability to do what must be done. Without that faith we shall never get started. And until we get started, we shall never know what can be done… When are we going to muster an intelligence equal to that applied against the Sputnik and dedicated to the preservation of this Satellite on which we live?"
He had expressed the hope "that we can somehow, somewhere, and perhaps through some as yet undiscovered world thinker and leader, find a workable solution."
The piece suggests that the solution when found would be the same one offered the world by Christ and that the task of that undiscovered leader would be "to teach men to take out of mothballs the humane weapon he had always possessed but seldom used—reason."
"If fear provokes the use of that weapon, fear will have been a beneficial part of this Christmas season in America. For there is one thing certain. If man merely does his chores, reads his paper and says the rest of the world can go to blazes—it will."
"The High Cost of Not Raising Hogs" indicates that Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson could no more avoid public wrath than Congress could guarantee good growing weather for the wheat belt, as he was both the inheritor and preserver of too many "necessary evils" thrust on him by politics and pressure groups.
Recently, a letter from a man in Louisiana had indicated that a friend in a nearby parish had received a $1,000 check from the Government during the year for not raising hogs, thus deciding that he intended to go into the business of not raising hogs. He had asked for the Department of Agriculture's advice on the type of farm which was best suited to not raising hogs and the best type of hogs not to raise. He said he would prefer not to raise razorbacks, but would be just as glad not to raise Berkshires or Durocs. He continued that if he could obtain $1,000 for not raising 50 hogs, then he would assume he could obtain $2,000 for not raising 100, that he planned to operate on a small scale at first, holding himself down to about 4,000 hogs which he would not raise. He added that the hogs would not eat 100,000 bushels of corn and he understood that the Government would pay farmers also for not growing corn and so he would receive money for not growing the 100,000 bushels which he would not feed the hogs he was not raising.
While it finds that Secretary Benson would survive the joke, the economy might not survive the real situations which had spawned the joke. Mr. Benson had not personally manufactured the current trends in farm legislation, as they had been building over several decades, but at some point, the public would realize that there was no future for the farmer or for the country in the type of high scarcity payoffs, plowed-under crops and puppet strings from Washington which had so often characterized agricultural policy in the past. "And that's no joke, Mr. Benson."
A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled "'The Occoneechee Kid'", indicates that once to have socks made by one's wife had been a sign that personal economic prosperity was not good. The homemade shirt was all right from the neck down, but the collars looked as if they had been shaped on a honeysuckle vine, and homemade suspenders could not stand up to those bought in the store.
It finds that a lot of rich men in the state at present had formerly been known as the "Occoneechee Kid", as a good cloth flour sack had been just right for homemade drawers, and Occoneechee was a popular brand of flour, although there were also the "Pillsbury Wonders", "Red Band Boys", and "Self-Rising Demons". Eventually, however, all of them were grouped as "Occoneechee".
"But, the 'Occoneechee Kid' evidently had a firm foundation. Today, as he swings triumphantly into his green cottage in suburbia, even an astute observer could not tell him from the man of childhood affluence who was not only born to the manor, but also to such lavish trappings as the union suit and b.v.d.'s."
The question for our time of regularly thoughtless and trite quick-speech on the airwaves, full of shortcut initials for too complex terms to recall, is whether the Occoneechee Kids were iconicy.
Drew Pearson, in Rabat, tells of King Mohammed V of Morocco having granted him the first audience he had given to any American since his extended tour through the U.S., and that during the course of the audience, the King had asked that his special Christmas greetings be extended through the column to the American people.
While Mr. Pearson had taken the Harlem Globetrotters and a patriotic group of New York entertainers on a tour of U.S. Air Force and Naval bases, the King had been engrossed in a multitude of problems which had accumulated during his three-week absence from Morocco, among them the war between his country and Spain.
Mr. Pearson had asked him of his chief impression from his visit to the U.S., to which he responded: "I was impressed with the friendliness of the American people. They were most cordial and gracious to me, my daughters and all of my entourage. I was also impressed with the diligence of the American people, both your officials and the workers. In the past, my ancestors had excellent relations with the United States. Unfortunately, they were disrupted for a time by certain problems, but now I am happy that we are close together again. I hope that many Americans will visit Morocco and learn to know it… I wish you would extend through your newspapers my Christmas greetings to the American people. I should like to extend my greetings to all people and especially to the American people who have been so kind to me. Will you please give them that message?"
Stewart Alsop tells of the Air Force having recently announced the successful launch of the Atlas rocket, the first potential ICBM, which had been fired to a distance of 500 miles the previous week. It had been in development since 1954 by the Air Force and the Convair Corp. and been dubbed the "beast" by the developers. But it was not an ICBM and he cautions that the fact had to be understood, lest the Atlas launch should lull the country into the type of complacency it had been enjoying before the two Sputniks had been launched on October 4 and November 3, respectively. One of the developers had said that the Atlas was "just a helluva big rocket", but a true ICBM was more than that. Getting the big rocket into space was only the first and, in many ways, the easiest part of the job in creating a true ICBM.
The developers still had to make the second stage missile to the large rocket and get it to separate at the right time hundreds of miles into space at unimaginable speeds. The separation would have to be so smooth that the second stage would then continue on its predetermined course without being deflected in the least from its target. The nosecone of the second stage then would have to reenter the atmosphere like a meteor, headed for its target, but without burning up from the friction as in the case of a meteor. The problem of getting the warhead within the nosecone down to earth involved the problem of "atmospheric reentry", of which the President had spoken on November 7 in a speech.
The President had been deluded into claiming in that speech that "our scientists and engineers have solved" the reentry problem, as shown by the nosecone of a Jupiter missile. But, in fact, the problem had not been solved regarding the ICBM. The problem of every entry concerned the speed at which the nosecone reentered, and the nosecone to which the President had referred in his television speech had reentered at less than 10,000 mph, whereas an ICBM, to achieve its range of 5,000 miles or more, had to travel at speeds greater than 15,000 mph, while the problem of successful reentry nearly doubled with every additional thousand miles per hour of speed.
Thus, that was another major problem which had to be overcome for there to be a true ICBM in the U.S. arsenal, in addition to perhaps the toughest of the problems, achieving accurate guidance. The range of destruction even of an hydrogen warhead was not unlimited, and to be truly effective, had to be brought within five miles of its target. To do so at a range of 5,000 miles was much more difficult than hitting the exact center of home plate with a baseball thrown from center field.
He indicates that it could not be ascertained whether the Soviet ICBM's already tested were wholly accurate or even that their warheads had successfully reentered. The U.S. was aware that the Soviet missiles, unlike the Atlas, were staged missiles with an "operational configuration", but the available evidence, including that associated with the Sputnik satellites, suggested that the Soviet ICBM's would be operational soon, if they were not already so.
Secretary of the Air Force James Douglas had expressed the hope before the Johnson Committee that he would have an operational ICBM before 1960. If that hope were to come true, those closest to the situation would be flabbergasted. They were more inclined to agree with General Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command, when he expressed doubts before the same Committee that the U.S. could never catch up with the Russians. The Atlas launch of the previous week could be taken as evidence that General LeMay's view was probably too gloomy, provided the country had the resolve to get down to work, but the Atlas launch was no more than that.
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, finds that engineers had displaced movie stars, bull fighters and jet pilots as the shining young knights of the moment. He indicates that in his youth, those who majored in textiles or engineering were in a lower social strata, generally attending a state's sort of trade school to learn how to mix a fiber or triangulate a piece of land. Engineers never had any fun, because they were always stuck in a lab.
Now, the Government was beating the bushes for recruits to learn physics so they could make bigger and better missiles which did not work. He finds the age of the slide rule to be present and that anyone who could not figure ballistics and outer space was kind of old-fashioned.
He suggests the institution of a U.S. Scientific School, whose students would be admitted on the basis of competitive examination without regard to physical standards.
He refers to his native state of North Carolina, where most of the females who attended college went to Woman's College in Greensboro and a majority of the scientists attended North Carolina State in Raleigh, while UNC in Chapel Hill educated those in the liberal arts, law and medicine, also accepting coeds, physicists, engineers, geologists, and journalists, while allowing most of the basic specialization, such as in textiles and teaching, to take place in either Greensboro or Raleigh. It had been a good system which had worked well for a long time and so he recommends it to other states.
Second Day of Christmas
Framed Edition
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