The Charlotte News
Saturday, April 13, 1957
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senator James Eastland of Mississippi had stated he could not divulge why his Internal Security subcommittee had publicly linked Canadian Ambassador to Egypt E. H. Norman with Communism rather than handling the matter quietly through diplomatic channels, indicating also that the subcommittee had followed the course it had for "a sound reason", that there were facts involved which he could not disclose publicly. The Senator had told the Senate the previous day that Canada "has a very fine and efficient government" and had been "zealous" in protecting itself against Communism. The Canadian Government had protested the subcommittee's action in making public testimony which linked Mr. Norman with Communism, leading to his suicide.
There had been no regular mail deliveries this date and most post offices were closed for the weekend, as a result of Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield's orders for cuts in mail delivery service pending additional funding to support the Postal Service through the end of the fiscal year. The House Appropriations Committee had recommended an additional 41 million dollars to maintain the service, and the recommendation would go before the full House on Monday, with the Senate prepared to enact legislation as soon as it received a bill from the House. The Postmaster General had said he needed 47 million dollars to sustain full service.
In Portland, Ore., the trial of Portland District Attorney William Langley, accused of deliberate failure to prosecute gamblers, was approaching its conclusion this date. If convicted of the misdemeanor charge, he would be removed from office and could be fined. Mr. Langley was also under indictment on six other charges, including perjury and conspiring to take a bribe and obstruct justice, each of which was a felony. His was the first case to come to trial in the year-long investigation of vice and charges of corruption in Portland, with some 30 others under indictment on about 50 charges. The matter, as it related to labor racketeering, had been included in the investigation by the Senate Select Committee, chaired by Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, investigating racketeering in labor and management.
Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia pledged this date that a Senate investigation of the country's financial condition would be "strictly nonpolitical", indicating that the study by the Finance Committee which he chaired would regard rising interest rates, revenues, credit, taxes, and public and private debts. The Committee had voted unanimously the previous day to begin its inquiry, and the Senator said it would start as soon as a staff could be assembled. Some Democratic members of the Committee stated privately that the inquiry would center on what they called the Administration's "tight money" policies.
In Boston, former British Prime Minister Anthony Eden, reportedly in "good heart and spirits", was scheduled to undergo his fourth operation in as many years this date for removal of a tube placed in his bile duct in 1953 to relieve an obstruction.
The President had been asked to declare a major disaster area in the southeastern North Carolina counties hit by a tornado earlier in the week, after Governor Luther Hodges had wired the request the previous day in a move to obtain Federal aid for the areas. The Governor stated that the preliminary estimate of damage was 2.5 million dollars. He had assured a delegation from Robeson County, where the town of Pembroke had sustained heavy losses, that all possible State aid would be forthcoming.
In Bakersville, N.C., a jury deliberated for 20 minutes the previous day before finding a bill collector not guilty of the attempted rape of a deaf-mute housewife, accepting the defense that the woman had been mistaken in her identity of the defendant as the man whom she said had forced his way into her home the previous July and attempted to assault her in a bedroom while she was alone in the house. The defense offered witnesses who testified that the defendant had been elsewhere during the time of the attack.
In Raleigh, attorney James Gilliland announced his intention to appeal the ruling the previous day by the State Bar Council that he be disbarred, after the Council adopted findings of a trial committee which heard charges against the lawyer of fraudulent and unethical conduct. Mr. Gilliland said he did not think they had enough evidence to support the charges and was confident that the final decision would be in his favor. His attorney indicated that the appeal would be made in Warren County Superior Court and that pending a decision, he would continue to hold his license as an attorney. The trial committee, composed of three lawyers, had cleared Mr. Gilliland on one of three counts, that his actions in the two other counts were "in violation of law and in direct violation" of the State Bar's canon of ethics. Mr. Gilliland had been the local solicitor in Warren County and had undergone severe political backlash after he had appeared the previous year in Charlotte on behalf of persons accused by HUAC, holding hearings in Charlotte, of being the top Communists in the state. Mr. Gilliland said he was performing the legal service for an old friend, one of the men who stood accused, and represented some of the others while there. Whether he was therefore singled out by the State Bar for disciplinary action for that connection was subject to speculation. The charges stemmed from his handling of a divorce case and a matter involving his operation of the Warren County debt collection office. In 1958, the State Supreme Court would rule that, under State law, Mr. Gilliland was entitled to trial by jury in a case of disbarment and remanded for such a trial. Eventually, he avoided disbarment, though remaining "controversial", but on October 28, 1963 would be killed by a bullet fired into his throat, found dead in a cabin which he owned in the woods near Warrenton, with his wife accused of murder in the case, nonsuited by the court, however, after presentation of the prosecution's case.
In Gastonia, three defendants were expected to have preliminary hearings in Municipal Court the following week on charges of possession of narcotics valued at $5,000 and possession of burglary tools which had been found in their car the previous day. Law enforcement had found 21 bottles of narcotics, 12-gauge shotgun shells and burglary tools, with the sheriff indicating that the narcotics included morphine, codeine, demerol, methadone, Pantopon and vials of other drugs.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that there had been some raised eyebrows locally over State Representative Frank Snepp's opposition to urban redevelopment. A bill had passed during the week, but Mr. Snepp was not happy about it. He also reports on other such snippets of local interest.
Mr. Scheer also reports that the
newsstands of the city were stocked with magazines which "would
paint the blush on the face of the proverbial 'know all, see all'
sailor boy." Some of the art accompanying racy prose made the
famous Marilyn Monroe nude calendar art look "as tame and
serene as Whistler's Mother", with many of the publications
within eyesight of youngsters. Newsstand dealers said that the peak
was over and the tide might be ready to subside. Parents had begun to
complain and Police Chief Frank Littlejohn was looking over the
publications, most of which emulated Playboy. Between pages of
semi-nude photographs were "spicy gems of literature", most
of which consisted of second-rate pieces of fiction by modern authors
or the best obscene literature from some well-known authors. There
were more than 25 such magazines arriving each month, and each had a
hefty circulation. They were distributed by two major news agencies,
Dixie News and American News, arriving by truck or rail, as some were
questionable for distribution through the mails. They were bundled
with Good Housekeeping, Parents, Newsweek
An open letter from the city editor of The News to the pledgemaster of the Delta Sigma Rho fraternity at East Carolina College in Greenville, N.C., certifies that two of the fraternity's pledges had hitchhiked the previous day to Charlotte, in accord with the pledgemaster's instructions, had slept in the City jail, just as they were instructed, and had gone by the newspaper office this date and asked politely to have their names printed in the paper, also following their pledgemaster. They had said that they were going to visit some nurses at the local hospitals and seek dates, photographs and even borrow some money, then were going to the Children's Nature Museum to have their pictures taken inside a cage with an animal, as also instructed. They said they had to hurry so that they could start hitchhiking the 285 miles back to Greenville in time to arrive by 6:00 p.m. Sunday.
On the editorial page, "Five Votes vs. The Power of Reason" discusses the failure in the State Senate of the separation of the prison system from the State Highway Commission, a principal goal of the Governor for the 1957 legislative session. The Committee on State Government had voted 5 to 3 to give it an unfavorable report.
It finds it not only a setback for the Governor but also for reason, as continuation of the merger between prisons and roads was political nonsense. There had once been a time when some relationship existed, but it had vanished when mechanized road-building equipment had come along and more modern penological principles began to be followed. Both agencies of government would be more efficient and cost the state less money in the long-run if they were separated.
As an independent agency, the prisons would have greater stimulus to find work for the prisoners in industry, farming and forestry, in addition to limited roadwork which could be continued under contract with the State Highway Commission.
It urges that the reform was needed badly and that it would be tragic for the State Senate to allow five votes in committee to stand in the way of progress, urges the Committee to reconsider its action, or that the State Senate vote to override the report.
"Well, Maybe It's Worth a Chuckle" supposes that in 1959, a hurricane would smash the Eastern Seaboard and Congress would summon state officials to testify on the damage and needs within the various states affected. It supposes further that it had hit North Carolina and the heads of the welfare, highway and health departments had rushed to Washington to testify when the General Assembly was not in session and the Governor was somewhere in the disaster area, thus not seeking permission in advance, and upon returning to Raleigh, would be dismissed from office and fined $50 or jailed for 30 days, under a 1957 bill sponsored by Mecklenburg State Representative Frank Snepp, imposing such penalties for any State official testifying before Congress without the permission of the Governor or the General Assembly.
It indicates that the hypothetical was unlikely to occur as the bill would likely be defeated and that even Mr. Snepp did not take his proposal very seriously.
"Those Few-and-Far-Between Potations" indicates that the dry forces within the state complained frequently that the General Assembly was indifferent to their pleas, but State Senator Henry Vann of Sampson County had proposed adoption of a 16-line official state toast, which began: "Here's to the land of the cotton bloom white/ Where the scuppernong perfumes the breeze at night,/ Where the soft southern moss and jessamine mate,/ Neath the murmuring pines of The Old North State!"
It indicates that the proposal would probably pass, as it was in the grand tradition of what the Governor of North Carolina had said to the Governor of South Carolina, that "it's a long time between drinks."
"The Sensible People Have No Poets" finds that when T. S. Eliot had said that "April is the cruelest month", he had been the poet for philosophers and sensitive-souled galley slaves in kitchens and offices.
"But in between the lofty truth seekers and girls giddily dreaming April dreams, there is a very large group of eminently sensible people who have no poet." They believed wrongly that a hearty sense of proportion was protection enough against the pitfalls and portents which April hid behind its frilly skirts. As a result, the sensible man thought it was just as safe to sit on a park bench during April as on a warm day in December, never quite understanding why people laughed at him or why the wet paint sign was not posted where he could see it.
It goes on to provide some other things he did not quite understand, and concludes that having no poet, the sensible man did not believe there was anything special about April, that everyone else had simply gone crazy and that he would have to bear with them until they came to their senses. It finds that perhaps the sensible man did not need a poet after all, that his sliderule was safe enough measure of human conduct.
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Denise Deever", indicates that the British Army had announced to the House of Commons that it would no longer purchase panties for the Women's Royal Army Corps, whereupon a Labor member inquired sarcastically whether "this decision to deprive the women's services of their underclothing [is] part of your recruiting campaign." War Secretary Hare had replied that "we have given the ladies the right to buy the underclothing they themselves want."
It suggests that Rudyard Kipling ought be living to memorialize the male rhymes and rhythms of his Barrack Room Ballads in extension to the matter, which it assumes would, instead of Danny Deever, be about a WRAC named Denise Deever, and would go: "For they're stoppin' buyin' panties for the Women's Royal Corps./ They used to do it always, but they arrunt anymore./ They took off the huge expenses that the British Army bore,/ An' they're stoppin' buyin' panties in the mornin'."
Drew Pearson indicates that the State Department had told Polish negotiators bluntly to go to Canada for the wheat which they needed to feed their hungry citizens, despite plenty of surplus wheat being on hand in the U.S. Under the law, Secretary of State Dulles had to certify that Poland was a friendly nation before it was eligible to receive any surplus food. Mr. Pearson indicates it was a debatable point and a strong argument could be made that the people of Poland were friendly, even if the Government was Communist, albeit wanting to be friendly. But Secretary Dulles was concerned about political reaction at home if he were to support the Poles, but still did not wish them to return home empty-handed. He knew that other Soviet satellites were looking at the Polish negotiations and that if the delegation returned home without Western aid, it would place Poland at the mercy of the Soviets and probably destroy the present moderate Government.
The Poles had sought 300 million dollars in U.S. aid and the State Department had offered 30 million, finally settling on 75 million after prolonged negotiations. But more important than the cash was the need for food, with Poland seeking 1.1 million bushels of surplus American wheat and planning to seek from Canada another 300,000 bushels.
Secretary Dulles did not want to offend the Polish-American voters in the country by turning down the delegation publicly and thus wanted the delegation to obtain their food supply quietly from Canada.
Counsel for the Senate Select Committee on racketeering within labor and management, Robert F. Kennedy, had broken with Senator McCarthy, who had originally brought him to Capitol Hill as assistant counsel to Roy Cohn for a short time on the Investigating Committee when Senator McCarthy chaired it in 1953. Senator McCarthy had been checking up on one of the investigators for Mr. Kennedy, when the latter heard about it and patiently explained the facts of the matter to the Senator. Later, Senator McCarthy had become embroiled in a hassle over his absences from the Senate, and in the heat of the debate, had announced that he had been busy investigating the investigator for Mr. Kennedy. The latter was so furious that he phoned Senator McCarthy and called him a liar, indicating, "If you hadn't known the facts, there might have been some excuse."
Many members of Congress denied reports that voters were demanding more pruning of the budget, reporting that there was little change in their mail, but that Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey had stimulated the U.S. Chamber of Commerce through his talk of another depression, and the Chamber, always opposed to social welfare programs and foreign aid, was now fooling Congress regarding the budget.
South Korea's President Syngman Rhee had protested to the British over their new shipments to North Korea, with the British having quietly begun trading the previous month with the latter.
Joseph Alsop, in Gaza, tells of an unannounced deal between U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, his assistant Dr. Ralph Bunche and Egyptian Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser under which the U.N. Emergency Force presently overseeing the Gaza Strip would be transformed into "Nasser's border guard". The Secretary-General had conceded to Premier Nasser that the U.N. patrols on the Israeli-Egyptian demarcation line would be accompanied by armed Palestinian police under the command of the Egyptian civil governor of the Gaza Strip, Maj. General Mohammed Abdul Latif, and that the Egyptian-controlled police would have the right to use arms against border-crossers while the U.N. elements of the border patrols would not have the ability to use arms. In return for the agreement, Premier Nasser had agreed to undertake internal mechanisms whereby Egyptian border-crossers would be punished by the Egyptian authorities.
The as yet unpublicized agreement, when published, would contain a statement by Premier Nasser positively condemning Egyptian border-crossings into Israeli territory, which would mark the first time he had done so.
On March 7, 1957, Israeli General Moshe Dayan handed over control of the Gaza Strip to U.N. General E. L. M. Burns, head of the U.N. Emergency Forces, with the world at the time generally expecting that the U.N. force would administer the Strip for an indefinite period of time. A military government section had been hastily organized for that purpose within the UNEF staff, with the basis for the expectation appearing to have been a commitment to Secretary-General Hammarskjold by the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Dr. Mahmoud Fawzi, that the Strip would be under U.N. administration until its future status could be settled by subsequent negotiation.
Premier Nasser, however, had not provided his personal endorsement to the promise of his Foreign Minister. And no one appeared to have given much thought to the probable meaning of the presence in Gaza of 220,000 passion-inflamed refugees from Palestine who were almost wholly controlled by Egyptian agents.
Thus, shortly after the inception of the UNEF control, the refugees began rioting upon orders from the Egyptian agents, with the non-shooting UNEF unable to control them. General Latif was then appointed as civil governor and had taken over the administration on March 13, though his authority had not yet been officially recognized by General Burns.
Mr. Alsop had gone to see General Latif and he appeared to have no doubts about his authority. Thus, the first stage of the transformation of the UNEF into an Egyptian border guard had been successfully accomplished, and the process would be completed by the new arrangement between Premier Nasser and Secretary-General Hammarskjold, to include an Egyptian-controlled armed element within the U.N. border patrol.
The UNEF presently occupied not only the Gaza Strip itself, but picket-like elements were posted at all the key points which blocked another Israeli advance into Egypt, completing the shield. Meanwhile, the Cairo press had ceased proclaiming that the UNEF would be invited to leave Egypt at the point when the last invader from the forces of late October and early November had departed Egypt. The question now was whether the new U.N. guard on the Egyptian border would become a permanent fixture.
Doris Fleeson indicates that the Senate was on the defensive regarding developing tension between Canada and the U.S. over security exchange information after the Senate had allowed its Internal Security subcommittee to fall into the hands of its staff, which was not noted for restraint and now, by the release of debunked information that Canadian Ambassador to Egypt Herbert Norman had been a Communist, leading to his suicide, the relations were strained between the two countries for the first time in generations.
The Senate believed it had to find the source of the release of the information and then develop procedures for its subcommittee to follow.
Following the suicide, Canadians had united to blame it on adverse publicity against Ambassador Norman released by the subcommittee. The subcommittee now was saying that the State Department had cleared the release of the information and had checked with the FBI and corroborated the truth of the statement linking Mr. Norman with Communism. But the Department had denied responsibility and the President had personally attempted to reduce the resulting friction with Canada.
But Canada refused to be appeased and threatened reprisal, thus leaving it to the Senate to resolve the problem regarding responsibility for release of the information.
The subcommittee had allowed its counsel, Robert Morris, to have a large amount of responsibility, and the chairman of the subcommittee, Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, had to have a major portion of the responsibility. Despite the Senator's personal intolerance of others, he would never start a major conflict with a friendly nation. Ms. Fleeson regards the source of his trouble as being his status as a wealthy Southern plantation owner who hated detail and found Washington lacking in congeniality, allowing his responsibility as a Senator to slip into the hands of Mr. Morris. The Senator had not been in town, rather in Mississippi, and had sought to stop his staff from passing the buck to the State Department and the FBI, but was too late as a staff member had already communicated the report to a news service.
The Senate was aware that it had a publicity-eager staff, originally recruited and organized primarily by the late Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada, and was continuing in the ruthless and insensitive manner of the Senator. The Senate had voted the previous January to provide $289,000 in appropriations to the staff, with only the Senate Select Committee investigating labor racketeering being allotted more, $350,000.
Ms. Fleeson concludes that the story of how the Senate's money and power was being used was on the front pages of all of the newspapers and the Senate had to decide what to do next.
A letter writer from Monroe indicates that after Canadian Ambassador Norman had committed suicide, Canadian Foreign Secretary Lester Pearson had declared that it was the result of "the combined effect of overwork, overstrain and the feeling of renewed persecution on a sensitive mind and not a very robust body." The letter writer indicates that the information possessed by the Senate Internal Security subcommittee had been made public only after Senator Arthur Watkins had personally checked with the State Department security office and received approval for release of the testimony and only after he and other members of the subcommittee had approved its release. He finds it as illogical to charge the subcommittee with the responsibility for the suicide of Mr. Norman as to charge the U.S. Government with responsibility in the suicides of three Hungarian refugees after they reportedly despaired of being allowed to enter the U.S. But the "liberal press" had taken advantage of the suicide "to show once again its unreasoning hatred and contempt for those Senators attempting to protect the internal security of our nation from the Communists." He attacks both the New York Times and The News, the latter regarding its editorial of April 10, for their stands condemning the release of the information by the subcommittee.
A letter from the publicity chairman of the Charlotte Garden Club thanks the newspaper for its cooperation in publicizing the Club's "Gardens on Parade", indicates that Charlotte was now called the Garden City of the Piedmont.
A letter writer believes that the planned new Medical Center building should be convenient to bus and other traffic, and that the proposed park site would so afford that convenience, more necessary than an unused park.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.