The Charlotte News
Monday, April 1, 1957
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the investigation by the Senate Select Committee looking at corruption within the Teamsters Union had spurred demands that Congress act to safeguard the rights of the laboring man, as voiced during the weekend by Republican and Democratic Senators, as well as by Secretary of Labor James Mitchell and by the Americans for Democratic Action. Proposals ranged from greater protection of "democratic processes" within the unions to closer policing of union funds. There had been some talk that the Senate probe might build a fire under a drive for enactment of more state "right-to-work" laws, which outlawed the union shop, adopted by 18 states thus far, with the possibility also raised of a Federal right-to-work law. Debate arose over whether the disclosures from the Committee would set back the labor movement, as voiced by Senator Irving Ives of New York, a member of the Committee, and by Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, though a view disputed by Secretary Mitchell. Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, chairman of the Committee, said the previous day that he would not, as a result of the hearings, simply undertake to pass laws of reprisal or punishment, that there was clearly a need established for Federal legislation to ensure the democratic processes within unions and to ensure the security of their funds so that they could not be dissipated, misappropriated, stolen or diverted to any other purpose than for the union. Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, a member of the Committee, said that legislation was needed to put some teeth in the Taft-Hartley Act provisions dealing with union reports on their finances. Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois said that he favored public disclosure of union welfare and pension funds "to clean up this mess." Secretary Mitchell said on a television program that a bill put forth by the Administration to allow publication of union financial reports would again be pressed during the current session, having lain dormant the previous year. The ADA, which had met in Washington during the weekend for its tenth anniversary convention, had adopted a resolution urging a bill to require full public disclosure of all transactions involving union welfare and pension funds, also calling for "forthright enforcement of laws punishing embezzlement of union funds." Both Secretary Mitchell and Senator Ives had indicated concern that the Committee's probe might provide impetus to state right-to-work laws, with Mr. Mitchell voicing opposition to such laws, saying that he believed employers and unions ought have the right to bargain for some form of "union security". The Committee was presently in recess for about two weeks to undertake a search through evidence of the details on which Teamsters president Dave Beck had refused to testify during the previous week, having taken the Fifth Amendment on most of the Committee's inquiries regarding his finances, alleged to have provided him personal benefits of some $320,000 from Teamster funds.
In Tehran, sources close to the Iranian Government had said this date that Prime Minister Hussein Ala had told associates that he would resign as a result of the desert bandit massacre of three Americans a week earlier on Sunday, it having now been determined that the wife of one of the two American aid workers, who had been killed on the scene by the bandits, had been found dead, after it had been believed for a week that she had been kidnaped to be sold into slavery. The informants said that the Prime Minister's resignation would be announced the following Wednesday after the departure of West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, presently in Iran as a guest of the Government, to prevent embarrassment to the Chancellor. The sources said that Dr. Menucheher Eghbal, vigorous president of Tehran University and a court minister, close associate of the Shah, would be proposed as the new premier. The change reportedly was to give the Government a stronger hand in dealing with banditry and tribal defiance of the Government. Earlier, the U.S. had announced that the Point Four program in southeast Iran, where the attack had occurred, had been suspended until the killers were caught. The killed American men had represented the program. Iranian troops and police on foot were still pursuing the killers over mountain rocks of the desolate, isolated section of southern Baluchistan. The battered body of the murdered woman was flown to Tehran, and street crowds had watched silently as a flower-banked ambulance carried her remains from the airport to the mortuary. Her body had been found, shot to death, the previous day two miles from the desert spot where her husband, the other aid worker, and two Iranian males had been ambushed and killed. Iranian police said that local tribesmen had led them to her body. The discovery had been made only a few hours after the Interior Ministry had reported receipt of a message from the notorious bandit chieftain, Dadshah, saying that the woman was "quite safe and unhurt" and offering to release her if he would be allowed to go free, in response to which, the Government had given him an assurance of amnesty. Police reports indicated that he would probably be captured soon, that four of his eight-man band had deserted him and that the other three had been fleeing with him on foot, with the country in which the pursuers were searching being described as too rough even for camels or horses. Police said that they had engaged the fugitives in a gunfight on Saturday.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., arrived in Rome this date from New York to visit U.N. special agencies in Europe.
In Waterloo, Ia., a 26-year old mother early this date had stabbed her two sleeping children to death, wounded her husband and then severed her own jugular vein, according to the chief of police. The mother was near death in a hospital, and her husband, a clerk in a wholesale hardware firm, was in fair condition. The two daughters were ages two and nine months. A third child, a four-year old son, was unhurt. Police said that no motive had been found except that the mother reportedly had been in a disturbed condition recently.
In Chicago, a former high official of a bank prominent in the Orville Hodge financial scandal in Illinois the prior year had been kidnaped and shot to death the previous night on the South Side. Police said that the former chairman of the board of the bank, 61, was dragged into a car as he departed a friend's home and his body was discovered in a nearby vacant lot a short time later with a .45-caliber bullet wound in his head, with the body apparently having been thrown from the car. According to an eyewitness to the abduction, the victim had shouted that he would give the five or six men anything they wanted if they would leave him alone. A detective stated without elaboration that the motive for the murder had not been robbery. The man had been under Federal indictment charging misappropriation of bank funds and making false entries in bank records, scheduled for trial in September. Also charged were his brother, an attorney and his son-in-law. The bank had been where State Auditor Hodge had cashed more than $600,000 in fraudulent State checks. The crimes alleged against the victim and his co-defendants had occurred between January, 1953 and March, 1956, before the Hodge scandal, but had come to light during its investigation.
In Newark, N.J., a student pastor who had once been convicted of murder, mounted the pulpit of the East Side Presbyterian Church the previous day and laid bare his past. With tears in his eyes, he stood for a few minutes facing the congregation. The previous Wednesday, New York Governor Averell Harriman had announced that he was freeing the man from lifetime parole restrictions. In 1937, he had been convicted of the murder of a 27-year old Brooklyn woman. Now married, he was the father of two young children. In his sermon the previous day, he repeated an earlier statement that he took "the rap" for an uncle who had later died in the electric chair for heading a Philadelphia murder-for-insurance ring. While in jail, he had become an assistant to the prison chaplain and had begun his studies for the ministry, taking correspondence courses and entering a Bloomfield, N.J., college and seminary upon his release from prison in 1952. He was scheduled to graduate in the current month and had already received six calls from Presbyterian pastorates. Until the Governor's announcement, only a few friends and relatives were aware of his past. The previous day, he centered his sermon on the 22nd chapter of Genesis, verses 1-19, dealing with God's command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, and God's repudiation of the act when Abraham prepared to carry it out. He said that his tragedy had given him the opportunity to turn to God, and that for 20 years he had waited for that day, asking to be given a chance to prove he was not the man he was painted to be.
In Raleigh, Governor Luther Hodges reiterated this date that he believed the Legislature could find revenue to provide "substantial" pay increases for teachers and State employees without levying new taxes, indicating in a press conference that he would confer with legislative leaders during the week on the subject. He also said that reapportionment legislation, presently before the Legislature, had the "best chance" it ever had of passing, that he had talked to several of the legislators who said that they wanted to do something about it, having reminded them that it was only a matter of time until public opinion would force the Legislature to do something on the matter. He also stated that he thought the idea behind legislation to curb the power of county registrars of voters to administer literacy tests to prospective voters was good and that the bill was consistent with the state's "moderation in trying" to handle racial matters "in as fair a way as possible." He said that he thought a resolution asking Congress to pass a law which would require tobacco manufacturers to state on their labels whether their products contained "homogenized" or reconstituted tobacco was "all right".
The Mecklenburg County Commission would ask the Federal Government to make Mecklenburg a gift of the 2,300-acre U.S. Naval Ammunition Depot on York Road, with indications being that a portion of the land would be used for school purposes.
Julian Scheer of The News indicates that State Representative Jack Love had requested a public hearing on the Charlotte annexation bill, enabling legislation for which was pending before the Legislature. Mr. Love was an opponent of the proposed annexation and had requested the hearing for Raleigh on April 11, with no date yet set. The pending bill called for a vote of City residents and residents of the areas to be annexed, to occur on June 17 in a special local election, and if a favorable result occurred, annexation would go into effect at the end of 1959.
In New Orleans, the New Orleans States reported this date that Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams had spat at the name of the late Senator Robert Taft of Ohio because the Senator had not helped him get out of the Marines during the Korean War. He was quoted by the States as having said: "You think Senator Taft was a great man? Well, here's what I think of him." According to the sports editor of the newspaper, Mr. Williams had then spat on the floor of the lobby of the airport shortly before departing for Sarasota, Fla. He had also stated that Senator Taft had been afraid even to try to do anything for him, but that he would not have minded going to bat for some other guy. Mr. Williams was in New Orleans with the Red Sox the previous day for an exhibition game with the Class AA New Orleans Pelicans. The sports editor had asked Mr. Williams whether he had any resentment toward the Marine Corps, which had interrupted his baseball career twice, calling him up for service initially during World War II and then again in Korea, responding: "You're damned right I do. Resentment against the Marine Corps and the whole damned government." He also stated his resentment against President Truman, stating that "the whole damned thing is phony." When asked whether he was in the Marine Reserves, he said that he was definitely not, that when he had gotten out the last time and they had given him a chance to pick up the discharge paper, he had grabbed it.
In Hollywood, actress Lana Turner's 13-year old daughter was reunited with her mother early this date after the daughter had wandered alone through the slum section of Los Angeles rather than return to school. Juvenile officers had said that three men had been following her down Main Street when a motorist had given her a lift which ended at a police station. Officers said the girl had exited a taxicab the previous night while en route back to her exclusive girls' school, telling a school friend that she was not returning. School authorities had called her mother, who called her father, who called the police, and the latter had broadcast a missing persons report shortly before the girl was located.
She had probably encountered some mischievous, frustrated science instructor at the school who tried to hypnotize her into participation in her science experiment, performing evil deeds against the other girls and some of their male suitors, who sang "Puppy Love", involving sucking the blood from them.
On the editorial page, "Now's the Time To Plan School Merger" urges that it was time for a decision on whether to consolidate the Charlotte City and Mecklenburg County school systems, now that the matter was being actively considered.
A meeting of the Chamber of Commerce this night would bring together City and County school administrators, PTA leaders and interested citizens to provide necessary inspiration for the merger. It urges that it was a job which had to be done and that there was no reasonable alternative. The people in metropolitan Mecklenburg County had given every indication that they were ready to follow enlightened leadership toward that progressive move.
The move toward annexation could not occur without raising serious operational problems for both of the present separate school systems, as there were eight County schools within the perimeter area to be annexed, and three County schools closely adjacent to the proposed line, which would lose approximately half of their present pupils. Additionally, 43.7 percent of the total taxable value for the support of the County school supplement lay within the perimeter area, and annexation would reduce the County school system's income from that source from $320,000 to $180,000, and yet within the same area, the County school system would lose only a third of its pupils.
It finds the community indebted to the Chamber for bringing those matters into clear focus, that a report adopted by the Chamber's board of directors had observed that a common school system for all of the county would have completely eliminated all of the problems which they encountered in the course of their study. It thus finds it apparent that consolidation of the school systems was a public necessity and that the hour of decision was at hand.
"Read Any Good Platforms Lately?" quotes from the Democratic national platform of 1956 in which there had been a pledge to provide tax relief for small and independent businesses "by fair and equitable adjustments in federal taxation which will encourage business expansion, and to apply the principle of graduated taxation realistically to such corporate income." No dissent had been raised to the plank, at a time when the Democrats were charging Republicans with having been "made captive to big businessmen of small mind."
It finds that the nation had now been treated to the distasteful manner in which a party could make mockery of its promises and serve its virtue on a shingle to the same "big businessmen" whom it had damned on the hustings. For in the only opportunity the Senate was likely to have in the current session to bring some tax relief to small businesses, the Democratic leadership had unabashedly sided with the large corporations.
Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, who had battled courageously to make the plank meaningful, was now out in left field of his party with his amendment, which would have reduced the tax rate for corporations earning less than $225,000 per year from 30 percent to 22 percent, and would have taxed at a 22 percent rate plus a surtax of 31 percent all earnings above $225,000, a one percent tax increase for the larger corporations, with 98 percent of all corporations to have benefited under the proposal, with a total tax reduction of 400 million dollars—as further explored by Drew Pearson this date.
Under the proposal, lost revenue would have been made up by a tax increase on the larger corporations, plus would have benefited the Government by 20 million dollars in new revenue.
In the roll call vote on the amendment, 15 Democrats and five Republicans had voted against it, such that it lost by a vote of 52 to 33. The press had reported that the Democratic leadership had worked openly in cooperation with White House lobbyists to defeat the amendment.
It concludes that the 1956 Democratic platform had turned "a little yellower in the files", that its brave words had been forgotten, and that it was doubtful that they would be remembered again until 1960.
"That's Uncle Sam's Trouble, Too" indicates that gobbledygook not only flourished in the halls of Congress but also grew wild and lush in the various Federal agencies around Washington, as exhibited in a mailing from the Department of Commerce, which had announced approval of "proposed amendments to the marketing agreement and order regulating the handling of almonds grown in California… An important amendment would liberalize the security provisions relating to deferment of surplus withholding requirements by allowing the use of almonds as well as commercial surety bonds and cash to be used as security in lieu of meeting withholding requirements during the first part of the season."
The mixed verbiage reminded it of Senator Sam J. Ervin's yarn about a husband who notified his lawyer that he wanted to divorce his wife, with the lawyer having raised the issue that the man had said she was beautiful, a fine cook and a model mother, the husband agreeing, prompting the lawyer to ask then why he wanted to divorce her, with the husband replying that it was because she talked all the time. When the lawyer inquired as to what she talked about, the husband answered: "That's the trouble, she never says!"
A piece from the Southern Pines Pilot, titled "A Big Tree Falls", indicates that to smoke out some squirrels, hunters in Chatham County had set fire to a poplar tree which stood some 200 feet tall and 21 feet in circumference, bringing it crashing to the ground after it had burned all night.
Amid the reminiscences about its demise had been the fact that another ambitious Chatham man, some 40 years earlier, had chopped off the tree's lowest limb, three feet in diameter and 60 feet above the ground, attempting to get a beehive which was in the limb.
It indicates that it had often thought about the men who had cut the vast acreages of virgin timber all over the country and in many locations, had left not a single original tree standing over the course of many miles, when one would have thought they would have left at least one as a memento or a curiosity or something majestic at which to gaze, or as an educational exhibit for posterity. But a tree was to be cut and the bigger the tree, the more savagely and more greedily it was to be attacked.
The Chatham poplar had been a tree that for some reason had been spared, despite apparently having been hollow such that 16 children had once fit inside it, but had now been felled as the price of smoking out squirrels. A man who had lived a mile from where the tree stood had said: "When I looked out … and saw that it was gone, it gave me a funny feeling. I've been seeing it all my life."
It indicates that it needed more people who got that "funny feeling" before the tree was gone and not after someone had set about wantonly and needlessly to destroy "the little natural beauty that is left in the world."
Drew Pearson indicates that one Republican campaign pledge which had been stressed prior to the 1956 election had been aid for small business, with the President having promised at Lexington, Ky., on October 1 that he would call for further help to small business with about a dozen specific recommendations for action, including special tax measures, and had again said on October 22 that he planned to ask Congress to provide small businessmen about 600 million dollars in tax relief.
The previous weekend, however, Republicans had lined up against an amendment to the tax bill offered by Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, which would provide 8 percent tax relief to small businesses netting up to $25,000 per year, with the final vote against the amendment having been 52 to 33.
Following the vote, Republican Senator Alexander Smith of New Jersey had rushed over to Senator Fulbright to apologize for his vote, saying that he was with Senator Fulbright on the amendment, but could not go along in the vote, as he had just received a call from the White House asking him to vote against the amendment as a personal favor, and he could not refuse. Another Republican friend of small business, Senator Edward Thye of Minnesota, stated that he also had received a call from the White House asking him to vote against the amendment, with that call reportedly having come from Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, while Senator Smith's call had come from White House chief of staff Sherman Adams.
Republican Senator Francis Case of South Dakota, who had courageously exposed the scandalous lobbying practices of the oil companies regarding the natural gas bill, had been one of the few Republicans who had stuck by their promises and convictions. When it came time to vote on small business, he was surrounded by Republican colleagues who demanded that he change his vote, but the Senator had stuck by his guns, saying: "I don't write letters one way and vote the other."
Another of the few Republican Senators who had voted for small business tax relief had been Senator McCarthy.
The amendment offered by Senator Fulbright would have provided small business a total of 600 million dollars in tax relief, the same amount proposed by the President on October 22, and the Fulbright proposal had been the lesser of several proposals offered by Senator John Sparkman of Alabama, which would have gone much further, but never even had a chance.
Senator Patrick McNamara of Michigan had remarked after the voting: "A modern Republican is one who talks like Franklin Roosevelt and votes like Herbert Hoover."
Cyrus Eaton, of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad and the Cleveland investment firm of Otis & Co., had a recent private conference with top Democratic leaders regarding Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, with Mr. Eaton urging a full Senate investigation of the Secretary, pointing out that he had not sold his stock in M. A. Hanna Co., which had appreciated by some 800 million dollars while he had been Secretary of the Treasury, and that almost everything the Treasury handled had impacted Mr. Humphrey's private interest in some manner.
Joseph Alsop, in Paris, tells of reliable reports from Warsaw suggesting that U.S. policymakers would be unwise to take the new anti-Stalinist Polish Government too much for granted as a permanent feature of the Central European scene. He indicates that from the beginning of the Polish uprising against Soviet colonial rule, the task of the Polish "National Communist" leader, Wladyslaw Gomulka, had been as the task of Eliza crossing the ice.
When Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev and his party had made their surprise visit to Warsaw the prior November, their minds were nearly made up to "crush the Poles like flies", as Marshal Zhukov had subsequently said in a tone of evident regret. The price which had to be paid to avert an uprising similar to that which had taken place in Hungary in 1956 was Mr. Gomulka's promise of continued Polish adherence to the Warsaw Pact, which entailed continued stationing of Red Army troops in Poland.
The situation of Mr. Gomulka at present was less immediately critical, but was almost equally precarious in the long run, as he would probably be in deep trouble at present were it not for the fact that he had done so well in Poland's recent semi-free election. The so-called Natelin Group, the Stalinist faction of the Polish Communist Party, had actually hoped that the election would provide a strongly anti-Communist result, which they believed correctly would eventuate in the forcible re-establishment of the full Soviet colonial rule in Poland.
But Cardinal Wyszynski of Poland understood the danger and quietly had thrown the power of the Polish Catholic Church on the side of Mr. Gomulka, leading to his victory in the election.
Regardless, Mr. Gomulka's present problem appeared very grim, with the Polish anti-Communists to his right, including the vast majority of the Polish people, who admired Mr. Gomulka but hated his party, while to his left, there was the Stalinist faction in the Polish Communist Party, whose designs were strongly supported by the Kremlin.
Mr. Gomulka also faced a desperate economic situation in which Poland had been reduced by many years of Soviet colonial rule, providing him at once his great chance and his great peril. Based on one authoritative estimate, Mr. Gomulka had no more than a year to provide his people with a sense of increased well-being, and if he failed at that task, he would be defeated in a conflict between the Stalinists and the anti-Communists, leading to re-establishment of Soviet colonial rule in Poland, as the Kremlin would likely seize the opportunity of Polish trouble to help its Polish friends by means of the Red Army.
But if Mr. Gomulka succeeded on the economic front, his leadership would cease to be challenged, either from the right or the left, providing him room to deal with the Polish Stalinists, enabling the evolution of Poland to proceed peacefully, not toward Western-style democracy, but at least in a direction which would be bearable for the Polish people and distasteful to the Kremlin.
Presently, Mr. Gomulka was being both openly threatened and maintained on leading strings by the Kremlin. With the economic problem overriding all other problems, the Soviet economic aid promised to Poland was being given in trickles, on a day by day basis. For instance, wheat deliveries, according to an authoritative source, had to be rushed to the flour mills and the flour had to be rushed to the bakeries to prevent a bread shortage. By pulling on the leading strings in that manner, the Kremlin had encouraged Mr. Gomulka's recent concessions to the Polish Stalinists, which had alarmed the West.
The U.S. had the opportunity to cut those leading strings, but it appeared from Mr. Alsop's viewpoint that the U.S. was disinclined to grant Mr. Gomulka the generous economic aid which he badly needed.
He ventures, however, that a Government good enough for Cardinal Wyszynski ought be good enough for Senate Minority Leader William Knowland. And after all of the grandiose talk about "liberation", it appeared odd to throw away the remaining chance offered by the deep unrest in Central Europe. For if Mr. Gomulka actually succeeded in Poland, the position of the Stalinist regime in Czechoslovakia would become untenable, and such a success would also reverberate throughout Central Europe where Red Army troops were stationed, creating a permanently and explosively unstable situation.
Mr. Alsop concludes that the question was whether Senator Knowland and the Administration's policymakers, whom the latter so often intimidated, preferred to make cheap and empty "anti-Communist" gestures against Mr. Gomulka or to gain a major point in the world struggle against the power of the Kremlin.
Walter Lippmann indicates that Secretary of State Dulles, upon returning to Washington from the Bermuda conference between the President and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, had sought to dispel any notion that there existed a British-American agreement on the policy to be taken with respect to the Middle East, even though there was no reason for anyone to suppose that there had been such an agreement. Yet, the fact that the President and the Prime Minister had chosen to meet in such a conspicuous way had been bound to create speculation, and in Egypt at least, to arouse suspicion that the two great powers, at odds since the previous November after the British-French attack on Egypt in the Sinai in response to the seizure of the Suez Canal, would now be acting in concert.
Mr. Lippmann wonders whether there were any real disagreements between the two nations at the conference, indicating that apparently there were not, though there were undoubtedly major differences of opinion as to what Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt intended to do and how he ought be dealt with, that almost certainly, the British had accepted American leadership in the making and conduct of policy regarding the Middle East, with no agreement as to what that policy would be out of several possibilities examined. But there had been assent by the British, never formalized in an agreement, that the President and Secretary Dulles ought manage the Middle Eastern policy, with Secretary Dulles having spoken of that role with personal authority at his press conference the prior Tuesday.
In the view of the President and Secretary Dulles, the U.S. role in the Middle East would be as the region's protector against the Soviets from the outside, and within the region, to be an impartial mediator and a friend to every nation, with little or no hope, however, of actually reaching genuine settlements within the region, whether it regarded the Suez Canal, the future of Jordan, or the Egyptian-Israeli conflict. The U.S. policy in the Middle East was to be, in actuality, to speak boldly and loudly about what was unlikely to happen, overt Soviet military aggression, and on the actual issues to zig and zag and somehow muddle through without any further shooting.
When Mr. Dulles had spoken of feeling a "cautious optimism" at his press conference, he meant presumably that there was a fair chance that for awhile, at least, there would be tacit arrangement to keep the hot issues below the boiling point. It might be guessed that Premier Nasser would have his way about the canal but, except for Israel, would not actually harm or discriminate against the ships of other nations. It might also be guessed that the U.S. would not build up serious military forces in the Sinai Peninsula which could threaten Israel, and that the raids against Israeli territory by Arabs from the Gaza Strip would not be organized on a large-scale. There was also a fair chance that neither Premier Nasser nor King Saud of Saudi Arabia would in fact interfere with the passage of ships through the Gulf of Aqaba.
Mr. Lippmann ventures that a new crisis might be stalled by saving face for Premier Nasser and by adding to his prestige without provoking Israel enough for it to use force. He suggests that it could be argued that it was the best which could be made of a bad situation, that the revolutionary movement among the Afro-Asian peoples which was being led by Premier Nasser could not be stopped by force or bought off by economic concessions, and that the local conflict in Palestine was insoluble within the current generation.
But it could also be argued that the best way to deal with the situation was not to muddle through, not to finagle and finesse, with the object of provoking no one and of placating everyone, for if the U.S. appeased Premier Nasser both regarding the Suez Canal and regarding his claim to belligerent rights against Israel, the U.S. would find itself much weaker in the next phase of Premier Nasser's revolution against the Western world.
A letter from a third grade class at Plaza Road School thanks the newspaper for sending its photographer to the class to take pictures of their circus, and thanks the newspaper for what it had written about their circus, indicating that many people had written them a letter and sent the picture to them from the newspaper. Their parents had liked the pictures also and Mr. Martin had been "a very nice photographer", and they wanted to thank him.
A letter writer indicates surprise that the newspaper would provide Robert C. Ruark space for his "stinging remarks to the American people". She says that she was a longtime widow, had raised three sons who had become staff sergeants, and a daughter who was a nurse, was not ashamed of any of them, as they had lived hard and worked hard, as had their mother. She says that she was not a religious fanatic, but had been raised by a God-fearing mother whose education had come mostly from the Bible and the dictionary, that she was a true daughter of the South, with both of her grandfathers having fought for four years in the Civil War, one as a clerk at a headquarters company and the other as an orderly in a hospital for the wounded. She says that she and her family had always had some Yankee friends, and was proud of that understanding, believing that misunderstanding was three-quarters of the trouble with the world. She indicates that if Mr. Ruark did not like the U.S., he could "just shake a leg", as he could not have any tar on his heels. As for a previous letter writer, who had also written in criticism of Mr. Ruark, she believes that letter writer was only showing that she was a real American. She concludes by saying that everyone should pray to understand rather than expect to be understood.
A letter writer indicates that on April 29, everyone in the community should vote for the three members of the Charlotte School Board who were coming up for re-election, as they knew the past and would be best equipped to lead the Board into the future.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.