The Charlotte News
Thursday, November 13, 1958
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Berlin that West Berliners had breathed more easily this date because Russia and its East German followers had appeared, for the moment, to have more growl than bite. The tipoff had come in a press conference on Wednesday held by Premier Otto Grotewohl of Communist East Germany, attended by several hundred correspondents. Most of them had expected some kind of dramatic follow-up to Premier Khrushchev's demand on Monday that the Western allies give up West Berlin, a capitalistic thorn 110 miles inside Communist East Germany. Many correspondents thought that Premier Grotewohl had been trapped by the Soviet Premier to announce that the Russians were giving the East Germans control over allied military traffic in West Berlin. The allies preferred Russian control because it permitted them to avoid recognizing the East German regime. Premier Grotewohl had said that he knew that the correspondents expected something sensational but said that they would not get it from him. Instead, he gave them two hours of Communist verbiage about peace, German unification, the Berlin situation and the possibility of negotiations to get Soviet troops out of East Germany. Throughout, he had given the impression that he might have received his instructions from Moscow and so when he mentioned negotiations about Soviet troops, the correspondents assumed that they had scored a sensation after all.
In Geneva, the ten-nation technical conference on prevention of surprise attacks, including the Big Four, had failed again this date to agree on an order of business. The delegates had met for an hour and 15 minutes.
In Tunis, Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba had said this date that his Government had contacted Communist Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia concerning the purchase of arms.
In Jerusalem, Israeli Sector, it was reported that an extensive spy ring, believed to be operating for Syrian intelligence, had been uncovered in an Arab village in northern Israel, according to police sources this date.
In Tokyo, it was reported that a Japanese parliamentary crisis had eased this date amid speculation that Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi would reorganize his Cabinet and trim his demands for power to control leftist demonstrations.
Attorney General William Rogers said this date that he had ordered a grand jury investigation regarding whether the recent arrest of black ministers in Birmingham, Ala., had violated their civil rights. Mr. Rogers said that he did not know exactly how soon the grand jury would begin its work, but that it would begin as soon as possible and would be convened in Birmingham. He told a press conference that his call for a grand jury investigation had followed the refusal of Birmingham's Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor, to discuss the matter with FBI agents. He said that Mr. Connor also had instructed members of the Birmingham Police Department not to discuss the case with FBI agents. The Attorney General also announced that the Justice Department was considering recommending to Congress the enactment of new civil rights legislation, some of which bore on the school desegregation controversy. Legislation under consideration, he said, touched on recent bombings of synagogues and schools. The previous day, the President's Civil Rights Commission, authorized by the 1957 Civil Rights Act, announced plans for an open hearing in Montgomery, Ala., beginning on December 8 regarding alleged denial of voting rights to black citizens. That could lead to a clash between the State and the Commission, as the Commission had said that it would subpoena all of the witnesses and records which it needed. Alabama Attorney General John Patterson, the Governor-elect, had told the state's voter registrars that they did not have to turn over registration records to Federal representatives.
In Chicago, a strike of some 36,500 UAW workers this date had shut down International Harvester Co. plants throughout the nation. Picket lines had been reported orderly as the strike went into effect early in the morning at 15 plants. Last-ditch efforts to avert the walkout had failed the previous night after Federal mediators had huddled with management and labor officials. Earlier the previous night, one of the Federal mediators had met with company and UAW officials and said that there was no hope of averting a strike. Union and management representatives, however, planned another session this date in the early afternoon in an attempt to settle the contract dispute. The UAW approved the strike after the company rejected the union package proposal for a new contract to replace the one which had expired on August 1. Since that date, UAW members had continued to work under an extension of the old contract. The UAW vice-president and director of its agricultural implements division said that International Harvester had rejected union demands for contracts similar to those formed in the automobile industry. Specific union demands had not been reported. A spokesman for International Harvester said that the principal stumbling blocks were union insistence on retroactivity to August 23 of any new agreement conditions and inclusion of employees working at company parts depots and transfer houses. He said that the company insisted on dealing locally with non-production employees in such depots. But the union and the company were in agreement on the amount of the annual improvement wage, a 6 1/2 cent hourly wage increase or a 2.5 percent increase, whichever was greater.
In Detroit, Chrysler Corporation automobile production had been paralyzed this date by a strike of 8,000 office workers represented by the UAW. The strike had grown out of the failure to arrive at a new contract. Picket lines forced Chrysler to close all eight assembly plants, but the company said that 17 supplier plants remained in operation, some of them only partially. A total of 48,800 workers had been idled by the strike. Chrysler had a total of about 95,000 employees, 70,000 of whom were UAW members. Most of the Chrysler automotive operation was in the Detroit area. Those not on strike were salaried employees who were not members of the union, employees engaged in government defense projects, workers in air conditioner factories, and such. Negotiations on a new contract had come to a halt on Tuesday when the UAW white-collar workers had walked off their jobs. No date for resumption of negotiations had been set.
In Chester, N.Y., State police said that the president of a company being picketed this date had shot and killed an organizer leading a wildcat strike for the Interstate Industrial Union, an independent union affiliated with the National Independent Union Council of Jersey City, N.J. The circumstances of the killing at the Chester Cable Corp. were not immediately disclosed by the police.
In Lincoln, Neb., 15-year old Caril Ann Fugate testified in her own behalf the previous day for the first time at her trial for first-degree murder of 17-year old Robert Jensen. She was charged with aiding and abetting her erstwhile boyfriend, Charles Starkweather, already convicted in May of first-degree murder of Mr. Jensen and sentenced to death in the electric chair. She had testified that she had pleaded with Mr. Starkweather to spare the lives of Mr. Jensen and his 16-year old girlfriend, Carol King, and that Charles had told her to "shut up". In all, Charles had admitted to 11 murder victims, including his first on December 1, 1957, a young service station attendant. The other ten of the murders had taken place in late January while he was accompanied by Ms. Fugate, including her mother, stepfather and baby half-sister. Appearing poised in the witness chair, Caril had told the jury that she expected at any time to become one of Mr. Starkweather's victims. She denied during direct examination by her defense attorney that she had helped Charles in any way accomplish the death of Robert Jensen. It had been alleged in the first trial that Charles had directed Mr. Jensen and Ms. King into an abandoned storm cellar in Bennet, Neb., and then shot both to death. But it had also been alleged that Caril had held a shotgun on the two as they drove at the direction of Charles to the location of the storm cellar, and that she then motioned with the gun to Ms. King to get out of the car. Caril said that at all times during the killing spree, she wanted to get away from Charles but that "he always told me if I ever got loose my family would be killed." In fact, her mother, stepfather and baby half-sister had already been killed by Charles before they had ever left the family home on January 27. Caril, however, claimed not to have known about that fact and instead continued to believe what, she said, Charles had told her, that a third-party was holding her family and that they would be killed unless she did as she was told. She said that while they were driving with the young couple to the storm cellar she was afraid that Charles would kill them all. She said she had pointed the shotgun at Ms. King and told her to get out of the car at the direction of Charles, but had said to her in a low voice, so that Charles would not hear her, "You better get out so you won't get hurt." She claimed that she had asked Charles again not to hurt them and he told her to shut up. She said that she observed Charles and the couple walk away into the darkness from the car and she had just "sat there scared stiff". Minutes later, she had heard shots, at which point she started crying because she thought she knew what he had done, that he had shot them. When asked by her defense counsel why she did not run away, she said: "I couldn't move after I heard the shots. I was froze stiff." Most of Caril's post-arrest February 2-3 statement, given 4-5 days after their arrests on January 29, had been read into the record by the prosecution in its case-in-chief, except for about 15 pages which the court had excluded pursuant to defense objection for undue prejudice outweighing its probative value. The statement, while having substantial inconsistencies both logically and factually, internally and vis-à-vis the other evidence, had been given without benefit of counsel or the admonitions later required by Escobedo v. Illinois and Miranda v. Arizona, decided in 1964 and 1966, respectively, by the Supreme Court.
In New York, it was reported by the New York Journal-American that John Randolph Hearst, 49, publisher and son of the late publisher William Randolph Hearst, had died this date in the Virgin Islands. Details of the death were not immediately available.
Incidentally, we wholly agree with Sgt. Garcia, that Sr. Rico should not become gobernador de California, now, or in 1963, by which time Sr. Rico would declare that la prensa ya no podrá molestarle más.
On the editorial page, "During Practice It Was Hard To Hear" finds that every fall some new wrinkle was added to the technique of college football, whether "scouts" looking at the plays of future opponents, strategists chalking up diagrams "which yield not even to those of the longest haired economist in complexity", or coaches talking with "spotters" by walkie-talkie on Saturday afternoons.
Now, UNC coach "Sunny" Jim Tatum, in preparation for the following Saturday's contest with Notre Dame at South Bend, had played through loudspeakers canned crowd noise committed to tape, so loud that it could be heard by students two blocks away, at least in the athletic office. But it recalls that there were other buildings also within earshot where academics were being taught, including the zoology building, the English department, the chemistry department, plus North Carolina Memorial Hospital, the library, and two dormitories.
"We hope no one in the incidental buildings was overly disturbed, but then, again, perhaps no one had to use the phone," referring to the student worker who had said from the athletic office: "It's a real racket. I can hardly hear anything over this phone."
The effort would not pay off, as UNC would lose, 34-24, winding up 6-4 on the season after a season finale against Duke, losing 7 to 6. It would wind up as coach Tatum's last season of coaching, as he would die the following summer of Rocky Mountain spotted fever.
UNC, in concluding only its second winning season since 1949, the previous season having also wound up 6-4, would not again enjoy a winning season under Mr. Tatum's successor, the latter's assistant coach, Jim Hickey, until the 1963 campaign, his only winning season until being fired after the 1966 season. You spoiled younguns of the dumbshow seats who find 7-6, for instance, unacceptable, just do not understand that through which those who sat in the high ranges of Kenan before you suffered
Walter Lippmann, in the second of his series of four reports from Moscow, focusing in the first two on an interview he conducted with Premier Nikita Khrushchev, points out that the Premier, while his attitude toward West Germany and Turkey had been threatening, clearly was not thinking of attacking them first with military forces, as Mr. Lippmann had been able to detect that there was no doubt in his mind that the U.S. would intervene and no doubt that he regarded the U.S. as a military power to be treated with utmost respect. He had talked about what he could do to Germany and to Turkey, and indeed to England, France and Spain, but those were meant as the threat of an offensive-defensive in case the Soviet Union were attacked by NATO.
He gave credence to the possibility of the latter based on the contingency that if the U.S. found that it was going to lose the Cold War, it would likely resort to a hot war. That was not what he had said, but Mr. Lippmann had believed it was what he meant after a passage in which he talked about the American fear and hatred of Communism, saying that Communism was indeed a great danger to the U.S. as an ideology and doctrine, but not a danger as a military policy of the Soviet Government. The Communists did not want to shed their blood or the blood of others to extend their frontiers, and each country ought defend itself against Communism within its borders if it saw fit to do so. He also said that the Communists would cause the Americans more "trouble" each year, that the trouble would come from the continual "multiplication of benefits" received by the people of the Soviet Union.
He said that at present, the U.S. was the richest and most productive country in the world, but it was living "the last years of its greatness", because shortly, the Soviet Union would surpass the U.S. in productivity per capita. He had been referring evidently to the coming seven-year plan. When that plan would be achieved, the people of the poor countries would "be convinced by their stomachs." He emphasized that such was the danger, not Soviet hydrogen bombs.
He thus fervently held to the belief that if the Soviet Union forged ahead in technology and productivity, attracting to its orbit the old colonial territory of the European empires, the West would attack rather than lose the contest for world leadership. Against that type of preventive war by the West, "Mr. K" believed that he had found the solution with their intermediate range missile.
He indicated that in case of a general war, the NATO forces would arrive in Turkey too late for the funeral, adding in passing that the recent U.S. deployment of Marines to Lebanon was "playing at war" and that the Soviet Union would not concern itself with "fleas" such as Lebanon.
His central thesis was that the Soviet economy would in the near future surpass that of the U.S. in productivity per capita and that the achievement would cause the poor countries of the world to turn to the Soviets as an example and for material help. He had asked the Premier whether he believed that the Soviet system could be made to work in truly backward countries since the system called for a high degree of technological competence and also for administrative efficiency. He replied that 40 years earlier, Russia had been a very backward country and that Communism had already achieved much. Mr. Lippmann agreed but indicated that there had been great Russian scientists before the 1917 Revolution and Russia was not a backward country compared with many in Africa and some in Asia.
Mr. Lippmann did not believe that the Premier was willing to face that somewhat speculative question, and he had put an end to that discussion by insisting that Indonesia would do much better if it adopted the Soviet system, and that India could easily feed itself without limiting its population if it had the kind of government and the kind of current economy which was capable of enterprises such as the converting of the vast jungles of India into arable land. He was evidently considering his own grandiose plan to grow wheat in the virgin lands of Asiatic Russia and to use the fertile lands of the Ukraine for dairying and vegetables and more diversified crops. But he had never come to grips with the question of whether such grandiose plans could be carried out in countries with a feudal or tribal order.
That had led Mr. Lippmann to the subject of China, about which he had heard from others in Moscow comments which varied between awe and anxiety at the rapid progress of the Chinese Communists. He had been told by Soviet citizens several times before interviewing Mr. K. that the Chinese rate of advance toward Communism was more rapid than that of the Soviets. He had asked the Premier whether, with the long Soviet-Chinese frontier, with the expanding population of the Chinese and the comparative emptiness of Siberia, he was not concerned about the future of Soviet-Chinese relations. He had indicated that he had heard that question before and dismissed it with some impatience, saying that those who took that view did not understand the nature of a socialist society. Mr. Lippmann had heard that same answer before from others in Moscow, but when he had asked those others to explain what they meant, they usually answered dogmatically that socialist states would not and did not go to war.
The Premier had a different line of argument, saying that in a socialist society there was no economic limit on productivity, as there was in the case of U.S. farm surpluses, which amused him considerably. He said that China had only begun to explore and exploit its natural resources, that there were in the north of China vast reserves of virgin land which could support a very much larger population.
He had been in no mood to admit that within the Communist world there were any of the conflicts which had haunted the rest of humanity since the beginning of history. He had for the most part a pragmatic and earthy temperament and was not much given to utopian speculation. But he had in him also the basic revolutionary faith that a new history had begun and that a Communist man was a new kind of man. Along with that, he had an infinite faith that technology and applied science could solve all human problems.
Regarding disarmament, the Premier, in talking about Turkey, had asserted that U.S. military policy in the Middle East was based on ignorance of the real military situation, especially on the idea, which he attributed specifically to General Norstad, that NATO could go to the aid of Turkey in the sense of landing forces there in time of war. He had been referring to the command of the short-range missiles and that had led him to say that all the talk about international inspection and control of missiles was "ridiculous".
He had paused to say that the Soviet Union had always believed that it was possible to detect nuclear explosions and that it was in principle agreed to work out a system of detection. But he then had turned to Mr. Lippmann and asked whether he had any suggestions as to how Soviet-American relations could be improved, to which he had replied that while there could be solid improvement, until and unless solutions were agreed to about Germany, the Middle East and Eastern Asia, the success of the coming conference in Geneva anent surprise attack would probably do more than anything else which was possible to relax the tension in America. He reminded the Premier that Pearl Harbor had a profound and lasting effect on the minds and feelings of Americans.
Mr. Khrushchev had replied that he understood that but that the psychosis was being kept up by American militarists to promote the manufacture of new weapons and thus to make profits. Mr. Lippmann says that in his own experience in Moscow, the belief was a universal dogma that profits were the compelling motive in American armament. Mr. K. had added with a somewhat mischievous smile that even soap manufacturers, such as Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy, former head of Procter & Gamble, seemed to make profits out of armaments. He said that the American psychosis in that regard was kept up because Secretary of State Dulles and the militarists would not otherwise obtain their appropriations from Congress. Like a snake with a rabbit, the American people were so scared that they gave the military all the money they wanted.
Against that background, he had returned to the question of inspection and control in relation, not to nuclear explosions, but to surprise attack and the reduction of armaments, asking why the Americans began with inspection and controls rather than beginning by taking seriously the Soviet offer of a treaty of friendship and non-aggression. Mr. Lippmann had responded that the U.S. wanted some tangible evidence that an agreement would be carried out. He had replied that the Soviet Union would not agree to inspection and control until confidence, presently lacking, had been established. He said that the U.S. wanted control first and Russia wanted confidence first. It made them suspicious that the U.S. wanted keys to their house before they signed the treaty of friendship. He regarded it as "elementary" that a treaty of friendship had to come before inspection and control.
Mr. Lippmann had asked him whether a treaty of friendship should come before a settlement of the German question and his answer had been that the treaty was a question of good will and that such never hurt the negotiation of other issues.
Mr. Lippmann indicates that the above concluded his report of the interview with Mr. K., reminding the reader that it was not based on a transcript but rather on his memory and notes taken by his wife and himself during the interview. It had covered all of the topics discussed in the interview and he had adhered as strictly as he could to the rules of the journalistic profession which called for report and interpretation of what Mr. K. had said, unadulterated by his own opinions. He indicates that in the two succeeding articles, he would set down some of his own views of what he had learned and observed while in the Soviet Union.
The next installment would appear on Saturday. The first had appeared on Tuesday.
As we have fallen behind, there will no further comments on the front page or editorial page of this date, as the notes will be sporadic until we catch up.
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