The Charlotte News
Tuesday, January 20, 1959
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President this date said that the nation faced a grave choice, either self-discipline to prevent damaging inflation or Government controls which were "alien to our traditional way of life." He had sent to Congress his economic report, the third and last of the major annual messages. It announced a virtually full recovery from the recession, forecast record income and production for 1959, and held out hopes of tax reduction reasonably soon thereafter. It sought 31 laws to help "assure a vigorous growth of our economy." The message clearly had been intended as an alarm bell to rally labor, business and consumers to unite with the Government in defending the value of the dollar. Wage increases which would run ahead of increases in output per worker, according to the President, would push up prices, hurt sales and impair American competition in world markets. Thus, excessive wage costs obstructed the creation of new jobs, endangered the jobs of those presently working and, "in short, they are, in the end, self-defeating." He appealed to industry to redouble its efforts to hold the price line and "wage a ceaseless war against costs." He urged consumers to shop carefully for price and quality. (If you see it's an expensive piece of crap, just don't buy it, even if some Trumpistadore says it's the best ever in the history of the world.) The President called on Congress, for the third time in two weeks, to abide by the spending cuts in the 77 billion dollar budget which he had sent to the Congress on Monday for the coming fiscal year. He told the Congress that it would be the "most important single step in discharging the Government's responsibility to help preserve the stability of prices and costs through the prudent management of its own affairs." If Government and common spending could be matched in the ensuing year starting July 1, and if tax collections were swollen by the expected growth of incoming business profits, then, according to the President, "a significant additional step in tax reduction and reform can be taken in the reasonably foreseeable future." More directly than in the past, the President aimed his exhortations at unions entering wage negotiations. "Leaders of labor unions have a particularly critical role to play, in view of the great power lodged in their hands. Self-discipline and restraint are essential if reasonable stability of prices is to be reached within the framework of the free competitive institutions. If the desired results cannot be achieved under our arrangements for determining wages and prices, the alternatives are either inflation, which would damage our economy and work hardships on millions of Americans, or controls, which are alien to our traditional way of life and which would be an obstacle to the nation's economic growth and improvement." The President reported that national output had climbed to a rate of 453 billion dollars annually in the last quarter of 1958, a record in dollar terms, but not quite up to the pre-recession peak when discounted for the 2 percent price increases during the year. The economic message had been based on studies by the President's Council of Economic Advisors, headed by Dr. Raymond Saulnier. The President had a long wish list for legislation, mainly an emphatic repetition of requests made in the State of the Union and budget messages, and of measures he had sought a year earlier which the Congress had not passed. He urged that Congress add a fourth national economic policy, reasonable price stability, to the three-fold goal set forth in the Employment Act of 1946, which had committed the Government to policies which would maintain maximum employment, purchasing power and production. He laid special stress on a demand for what he called overdue reductions in farm price supports. The program was costing nearly 5.5 billion dollars in the current year, according to the President, while still failing to prevent tremendous surpluses.
Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts this date unveiled a new labor-management control bill which he said was specifically aimed at practices of such figures as Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa. In a speech prepared for the Senate, he called the measure "a strong, effective reform bill which would virtually put Mr. Hoffa and his associates out of business." The new bill was similar to the Kennedy-Ives bill which had passed the Senate 88 to 1 the previous year but had died in the House. That measure had been co-sponsored by Senator Irving Ives of New York. The bill's key provisions would set up an election democracy code for all unions, require public financial accounting by unions, fix criminal penalties for mishandling of union funds or books, and make some changes in Taft-Hartley sections objected to by both labor and management. Senator Kennedy emphasized in the speech that "this is primarily a labor-management reform bill, dealing with problems of dishonest racketeering. It is not a bill on industrial relations, dealing with the problems of collective bargaining and economic power." He said that he hoped that Senators would not confuse the issue on reform by seeking to attach to the measure their pet proposals for changing Taft-Hartley. Instead, he promised that a labor subcommittee which he chaired would bring to the floor later during the year a second bill dealing with Taft-Hartley revision after the problem had been studied by a panel of experts. He stated: "So let us avoid these unnecessary controversies now and let us also avoid, in considering this measure, unnecessary partisan politics or uninformed or deliberate distortions. Otherwise it should be clear from last year's record, no anti-rackets bill at all will pass." He had introduced his bill ahead of that of the Administration, which was being assembled by Secretary of Labor James Mitchell, and also another measure to be sponsored by Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, chairman of the Select Committee investigating misconduct of labor and management. Both of those bills were expected to contain some provisions unacceptable to labor. Top labor leaders were expected to go along with the bill being put forth by Senator Kennedy, just as they had done the previous year. Senator Kennedy said that his bill would make it illegal for the Teamsters or other union funds to be paid to hoodlums or to be risked in improper deals without knowledge of union members.
In Havana, it was reported that jammed into a prison normally housing 150 inmates were 561 followers of former dictator Fulgencio Batista awaiting trial on "war criminal" charges. Some probably would go free and others would be executed before the firing squads. The prison was inside La Cabana Fortress on a hill overlooking Havana, not far from historic Morro Castle. The prisoners, including police, military and informers under Sr. Batista, were housed in large cells with interiors similar to quonset huts. Armed guards patrolled the 20-foot walls. Escorted by two unarmed guards, the party of U.S. newsmen had been given an unhindered visit to the cells. The prisoners were reluctant to talk. Finally, one young prisoner had said that he would speak English "because what I say now the guards may take back to the prison director." Other prisoners gathered and began airing complaints. The two escorts drifted off to chat with other prisoners playing cards and they seemed to be on good terms. The English-speaking prisoner, who identified himself, said that he was born in Havana, had been a military college cadet who had joined Batista's police two years earlier. He said that the only crime he had committed was to arrest some rebels and that he had neither struck nor hurt anyone. He complained that the food and accommodations were bad and that there was little or no medical attention. The prison commandant had denied that claim, saying, "They eat exactly the same food as the prison officials, rice, beans, bread, beefsteak and dessert. The doctor comes several times a day." He agreed that the prison was jammed far beyond normal capacity but said that it could not be helped. Another prisoner, a former policeman, claimed that all he had done was "to arrest those who were putting bombs in theaters and other public places. Those arrested had court hearings, even defense counsel. On the other hand, the rebel tribunals are all made up of rebels. This is Russian-type justice." A former Army captain awaited trial on charges which he would not reveal, saying that he had a wife and two children but would rather be shot dead than see the country under the hammer and sickle, alluding to the oft-repeated charge by the Batista regime that Sr. Castro's movement was communist. Three Roman Catholic priests had come to visit the prisoners every day to comfort them, according to the English-speaking prisoner. He said that he was not afraid because he spoke the truth.
A piece by Roger Greene of the Associated Press questions whether a few ounces of lethal germ crystals could wipe out the population of New York City and even annihilate all life on the North American Continent, whether plague germs could be spread by an enemy to touch off a nationwide epidemic, whether enemy planes or saboteurs could destroy the country's crops and livestock, reducing the land to starvation. The truth about gas and germ warfare was shrouded in secrecy and mystery. The previous May, NATO had warned in an official report: "The Russians are capable of waging biological and chemical warfare on a large scale." But U.S. policy on the use of those weapons was top secret, according to the Pentagon. One high Pentagon official had stated: "We're scared to death even to mention germ warfare." One man who presumably ought to have the answers was Maj. General Marshall Stubbs, chief of the Army Chemical Corps. It had taken seven weeks for the Pentagon to approve a newsman's interview with the General and the event had turned out to be little more than a handshaking formality. General Stubbs said frankly that he would like to clear up many points of confusion but had been ordered to observe strict silence. A written question had been submitted to the Pentagon asking if the U.S. had enough biological warfare weapons at present to combat the enemy if they were to use them first, and after 25 days, a reply had come back: "The Chemical Corps has the capability in biological warfare." Mr. Greene indicates that in such an atmosphere of secrecy, it was little wonder that the most lurid distortions and conflicting statements about germ warfare went virtually unchallenged. Dr. Brock Chisholm, director-general of the U.N. World Health Organization, said that scientists had discovered a substance so deadly that 7 ounces would be enough to kill all of the people on earth. An Army pamphlet, No. 8-12, titled, "What You Should Know about Biological Warfare", had stated: "No kind of biological warfare could kill or sicken every person in a large area or city. Talk of one ounce—of toxic material—killing millions is silly." The British Medical Journal said that two or three drops of nerve gas on the skin would kill within 30 minutes, that one drop in the eye or a tiny amount inhaled as vapor could kill in a few minutes. Mr. Greene also lists other conflicting reports on an inside page.
In Richmond, Va., the collapse of Virginia's massive resistance laws in the courts the previous day had raised the question this date whether segregation would be breached in public schools before a new anti-integration program could be formulated. Two separate court decisions on Monday, one by a Federal District Court and the other by the State Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional a package of laws designed to circumvent integration in the public schools. In the 5 to 2 decision of the State Supreme Court, the package of anti-integration laws passed by a special session of the Legislature in the summer of 1956 was held to violate Virginia's Constitution. Under the provisions of one of those laws, Governor J. Lindsay Almond, Jr., had closed and seized control of nine white public schools the prior September as the state moved to prevent court-ordered integration. The Governor planned to give a radio and television report on the school crisis this night. Contributing further to the demise of the massive resistance laws had been the ruling of a special three-judge Federal District Court in Norfolk that the school closing statute violated the U.S. Constitution. The state court ruling was not appealable and its effect was to return to local control nine closed schools in Norfolk, Charlottesville, and Front Royal. Only in Norfolk had school officials demonstrated sentiment to reopen schools quickly. Some 13,000 students had been displaced by the school closings. The chairman of the Norfolk School Board said that it was "interested in educating the children of Norfolk." He said he personally felt that their first obligation to the children was to get the schools back in operation in an orderly manner at the earliest practicable date. The Charlottesville School Board had met with the City Council to discuss the school problem and had deferred action pending an opinion from the City Attorney. The Warren County school superintendent said that the Board would "stand fast until we have an opportunity to discuss the matter with our counsel." In Arlington County, across the Potomac from Washington, the School Board directed its attorney to ask for a stay of the Federal Court order of the prior September, which had ordered the admission of four black students to Stratford Junior High School. The Board indicated that the decision would be appealed to the Supreme Court if necessary.
In New York, it was reported that
disc jockey Peter Tripp
In Charlotte, police had raided a house early this date and seized two slot machines and a quantity of barbiturates. Officers placed three men and one woman under arrest and were holding them for questioning during the morning. No charges had yet been filed against the four by noon. Police also had seized three bottles of paregoric, an insulin syringe, and a bottle of green and white pills. The captain of detectives said that he would not know what type of pills they were until they were tested by the lab. Also found in the house were several electric razors and about 2,000 white cards with a phone number printed on them. One of the men picked up refused to let police fingerprint him during the morning, telling officers that it was against his constitutional rights. Details of how the raid was conducted were not yet available. Police said that three of the persons picked up were persons who had been in Charlotte before. The man who had refused to be fingerprinted at first told police that he was from Philadelphia but then later told them that he was from Charleston, S.C. He was placed in jail while the investigation continued during the afternoon. Three FBI agents had worked with police on the case.
A man of Temple, Tex., a lecturer on memory training, had amazed audiences across the nation by correctly calling the names of as many as 400 persons following a mass introduction. The previous day he had notified the PTA of Sinton, Tex., that he would be unable to fill a speaking engagement, that when he had made the engagement several weeks earlier, he had forgotten that it was the date of his wedding anniversary. Did he have a coin to flip?
On the editorial page, "The Clatter That Echoed in Tarheelia" indicates that the legal framework of Virginia's "massive resistance" movement had collapsed with a great clatter the previous day and the lesson had not been lost on North Carolinians. First, it had to be apparent that the Supreme Court had meant what it said when it had banned racial segregation in the public schools as unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education. Second, the Constitution would not be amended, Federal legislation would not be enacted, and Brown would not be reversed to permit segregation by law in the South. Third, legal barriers set up by states to defy Brown and its progeny were doomed from the start.
North Carolina had taken much abuse from both Northern and Southern extremists for its so-called "token" compliance. It finds that a better term, in the words of the Supreme Court, was "good faith implementation of the governing constitutional principles." Considering local conditions and social sensitivities it shared with all Southern states, North Carolina had made an admirable and wholly defensible beginning. It had, in other words, made a prompt and reasonable start toward full compliance. The collapse of massive resistance in Virginia and the terrible toll it had taken, with nine of Virginia's public schools, with a total enrollment of 12,729 pupils, having been closed, indicated that North Carolina had to continue to follow its honorable course of action. Any reversal at present was certain to backfire, the verdict of both history and common sense.
"If Inflation Imperils Us, Let's Be Candid" indicates that in the State of the Union message, the President had proclaimed that there was one great question before the nation: Can we keep our free institutions and procedures and yet survive the challenge of a crafty dictatorship? It finds it a fair statement of the American dilemma. But it wishes that the President's budget message had indicated clearly that he believed what he had said. It indicated that the President's economy-minded friends of the Budget Bureau, the stag dinners, and the putting greens had sold him completely on the idea that "inflation", not survival in the power-race, was the principal problem facing the nation.
It comments that the President's economy-minded friends might be correct, that inflation consorted uneasily with political stability, with the history books offering many tales of woe for governments which had let their currencies degenerate. It also finds that the President ought forthrightly proclaim his own conviction and that if he honestly believed that the dollar, which might or might not be bolstered with a hard-won surplus in the new budget, was in grave danger, then he should proclaim it. If he honestly believed that the danger from a depreciated dollar was greater than the danger from Russian ICBM's and atomic-powered planes, than the nation's under-funded education or its choked and degrading slums, then he should proclaim it.
It indicates that if he were so candid, he would begin his budget message without hedging and would say at the start: "Inflation is our greatest danger. We must attempt to head it off with a budget surplus. And given this, we may be able to spend a bit here and there on other needs—such as our missile program, federal housing, education, highways, and mutual security."
It opines that it would be a frightening sort of candor and perhaps, considering the widespread belief in the country that inflation was not the primary challenge facing it, it was best that he cushion his belief to the contrary. The budget message as he had presented it had the advantage not only of stilling fear by its ambiguity on the relative importance of economy and security, but also of making a thorny political bed for the Democrats in Congress. Having ill concealed his feeling that the major threat was inflation and not Russian power, the President was in a perfect position. When the Democrats appropriated more money than he sought in fields such as defense and housing, he could rise up in piety and smite them as spendthrifts.
It thus concludes that it had to applaud the sheer genius of the President's budget message. "The ancient geometers who labored to square the circle achieved not half so much."
"Don't Go 'Way" indicates that a reader wrote to ask when the big quiz shows, such as "21", would be back on television. It indicates that when the viewers realized that the gunfights in TV Westerns were also fixed, those quiz shows would return.
"But Why Must They Wander Far Afield?" indicates that it was not clear why North Carolinians were stereotyped as placid and unadventurous, but they were. Even so, two of its neighborly numbers had popped into the headlines during the weekend, both as close to the big adventures of the day as they could be.
As Fidel Castro's bloody revolution continued in Cuba, it had developed that one Neil Macauley, 23, of Columbia, S.C., was riding his bandwagon and would even accept firing squad duty.
Then on Sunday, a German-born North Carolinian from Wilmington, Karl Hertle, 28, had caused a bomb scare at the Russian Embassy in Washington, where Mr. Mikoyan was staying. Mr. Hertle said that he had an invention to discuss with the Soviets but that police officers had taken his briefcase to an empty lot, fearful of a bomb, when it contained only papers.
It thus wonders why Tar Heel adventurers and inventors wandered so far afield when there was work to be done at home. In Raleigh, they were worried about squeezing the capital press corps into town without building a shanty on the front porch of the Capitol. It sounded like a job for Mr. Hertle. State Representatives Carl Venters and Addison Hewlett were reported to be locked in combat for the speakership of the State House. Mr. McAuley apparently had a relish for coups d'état and that sort of thing and one of the gentlemen could probably use him.
"Anyway, if the usual resources fail, it is good to know that we have the vinegar of extravagance in us."
"Try It and See" indicates
that C. A. Paul, a columnist for the Greensboro Daily News,
formerly of The News, had said that one could get eight
different meanings by placing "only" in eight different
positions in the sentence: "I hit him in the eye
It indicates that if the reader had just believed it, the person could have saved several minutes.
G. E. Mortimore, writing in the
Victoria (B.C.) Daily Colonist, in a piece titled "Faces
and Mashed Potatoes", indicates that something was wrong with
him because he did not like Brigitte Bardot's face. From the neck
down, she looked like a healthy girl, but her face was "the kind
of thing that stares at you from police posters
While they called it sexy, to him, her face, as viewed in still photographs, did not speak of the mating urge but rather of illness or fatigue. "She appears to be ready to pitch forward at any moment and go to sleep with her face in the mashed potatoes."
He indicates that millions of girls cried out with admiration at the sight of Elvis Presley's slack-jawed, vacant leer and they were not just kidding, as he had questioned some of them and they meant it.
He finds that faces might not be true gauges of character but he suspects that there were some things to be read from them. The message he picked up from Mr. Presley and Ms. Bardot was that they were faces of young people who were pampered, self-centered and excessively pleased with themselves. "They are the faces of large, inert children, lacking in purpose or curiosity about the world.
"The sight of such faces, glowering from screens and magazine covers, sends blood racing through young veins. Millions of adolescents want to love Bardot or Presley, or be like them. Do those faces truly reflect what is in the teenaged heart?
"If so, we might as well drop our defenses and invite the Russians to take over now."
We might suggest in 2026 that there is no real issue to be taken with representations in popular media as long as proper parental or teacher instruction in school is casually offered, not dictated, to indicate to those callow, impressionable youth the difference between fiction and reality and that the demonstration of the fiction is to instruct against and not glorify the untoward reality, whether of the past or present.
At the same time, when one sees in 2025 and 2026 a bunch of insane Trumpistadores following their Leader, as with Nazis following Hitler, just as on January 6, 2021, cosplaying with real guns and impacting, even fatally, real lives in the streets of our cities, deemed by the neo-Nazis to be run by Commies, too free for their deep-seated psychoses to tolerate, it is time to reflect on how far those fictional images of the untoward have through time seaped into the subconscious of nitwits who belong on the theater stage rather than the world stage. Had Hitler and Goebbels and their insane pals confined themselves to third-rate burlesque, the world would have been saved the most destructive war in world history to date.
Trump obviously did not learn the lesson properly and has sought to use that flipped reality, the very definition of insanity, to achieve power in the most demagogic and abusive way, appealing without apology to the most base common denominator among a given populace, the bitter, the alienated and disenchanted, using the young and undereducated as their messengers and errand boys and girls, given broader voice than their closet by Fauxx "News", ready to place blame on whatever scapegoat to whom the Leader has ascribed blame for all of their common troubles, now having subdued and emasculated the Republican Party to the extent that he wishes to achieve the ultimate power of life and death over everyone in the world, to whom, in his twisted and deluded fictional version of reality, he appears honestly to believe that he, personally, is perceived as their "Daddy", their Caesar, their Saviour. There is usually only one way finally to restrain such a megalomaniac who has surrounded himself with other frustrated megalomaniacs.
The megalomania on parade is no longer simply a cute pun
Drew Pearson provides the inside story of what had happened behind the scenes regarding the seating of Little Rock's segregationist Congressman, elected in the November midterms, Dr. Dale Alford. It was also a story illustrating why the Republicans had a better chance than some realized in the 1960 election, despite the recent Democratic landslide. Following the House Elections Committee having voted against seating the Representative-elect on the ground that he was a "stuck-in" and not a write-in candidate, Congressman Wilbur Mills of Arkansas had begun pulling wires. Mr. Mills was worried that he might be euchred out of Congress in 1960 by Dr. Alford's close friend, Governor Orval Faubus. Arkansas would lose one House seat in the 1960 census and the Faubus-controlled Arkansas Legislature could put the bite on the district of Mr. Mills. So the latter had laid down an ultimatum that either Dr. Alford would be seated or Mr. Mills would challenge the seating of three Northern Democrats, Adam Clayton Powell of Harlem, under indictment for income tax evasion, William Green, boss of Philadelphia, on trial in a Federal contract fraud case, and Tom Lane of Massachusetts, who had served time for income tax evasion. Mr. Mills had delivered his ultimatum to Speaker Sam Rayburn, who in turn called in Congressman Thomas O'Neill of Massachusetts, future Speaker and chairman of the subcommittee investigating Dr. Alford. The Speaker appealed to Mr. O'Neill to let Dr. Alford be seated, saying that he did not want to see the party torn apart. Mr. O'Neill in turn had called a meeting of Northern Democrats in the office of Democratic floor leader John McCormack of Massachusetts, and while they were meeting, Southern Democrats met in Mr. Rayburn's office. By telephone, they negotiated an agreement that Northern Democrats would merely go through the motions of probing Dr. Alford and then would let him have full rights as a full-fledged Democrat.
Secretary of State Dulles had blown hot and cold regarding Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan, who had won over so many moguls of big business during his ten-day tour of the U.S. At first, Mr. Dulles was cold and aloof, dropping remarks that Mr. Mikoyan had arrived at an "awkward" time and that he would "try" to see him. But once they had talked, Mr. Dulles had warmed up to him and Mr. Mikoyan also liked Mr. Dulles. Mr. Mikoyan had hinted that Russia would agree to a fair settlement of the German question in return for an invitation to Premier Nikita Khrushchev to visit the White House, thus ingratiating himself to Mr. Dulles. The latter was so pleased at some way out of the Berlin impasse that he invited Mr. Mikoyan to cut short his Western tour and confer with him and the President in Washington during the weekend, the reason why Mr. Dulles had let drop at his press conference that German unification could be accomplished without a free election. That had caused such a chain reaction, however, that Mr. Dulles had staged one of his reversals of the type which complicated the Formosan crisis. The minute the Secretary appeared to be warming up to Mr. Mikoyan, the German, British and French ambassadors had begun phoning the State Department to check on what was happening.
Joseph Alsop indicates that the U.S., Britain and France were now committed to the use of force to maintain open all means of access to West Berlin by land and by air, if the need were to arise. Prior to Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan's return to Washington from his nationwide tour, discussions of the so-called "contingent plan" for the defense of Berlin had taken place between Deputy Secretary of State Robert Murphy and the British and French Ambassadors, Sir Harold Caccia and Herve Alphand, respectively. The broad commitment of the Western Big Three had been the first result of those discussions. If maintained, the commitment foreclosed the easy way out which was taken in 1948-49, the first time access to West Berlin was barred, resort to an airlift to circumvent the land blockade. In part, the easy way out had been rejected because a second resort to an airlift would amount to acceptance of the Soviet right to impose a land blockade at will and would therefore amount, in and of itself, to concealed acceptance of a considerable defeat.
Mainly, however, the airlift concept had been rejected because the whole city of Berlin simply could not be supplied by airlift any longer. As previously reported by Mr. Alsop, the Soviets had now installed radar-jamming apparatus to prevent radar-guided air landings in Berlin. In addition, Berlin now had a vastly greater supply requirement as a living city than had the dead city of 1948. Thus, despite all of Berlin's huge reserves stocks, it could not be sustained for much more than 18 months by an airlift limited to daylight and fair weather landings.
It was a great gain for the policy of Secretary of State Dulles that the weakness of the easy way out had been faced by Berlin's guarantors. The Secretary was grimly determined to defend free Berlin even if he had to die in the breach. His attitude was plainly indicated by his choice of Deputy Secretary Murphy to carry on the discussions of the contingent plan with the British and French Ambassadors. Mr. Murphy, General Lucius Clay and Aneurin Bevan, then a member of the British Cabinet, had been the oddly assorted trio who had fought in 1948-49 for a tank column to break Joseph Stalin's Berlin blockade. President Truman had been entirely willing to follow the policy proposed by General Clay and Mr. Murphy, who was then General Clay's political advisor. But in 1948, the impassioned pleas of General Clay and Mr. Murphy for a tank column were equally passionately resisted by the Joint Chiefs, although at that time the U.S. still had a monopoly on nuclear weapons. The result was the resort to an airlift and Mr. Murphy still believed it had been a cardinal mistake, despite the success of the airlift in relieving beleaguered Berlin.
According to a report, the passage of time and the total collapse of the American nuclear monopoly had not altered Mr. Murphy's views about the right way to respond to an attempted blockade of Berlin. On this occasion, Mr. Murphy, the advocate of a tank column, had the solid support of the Joint Chiefs. He also had the new and irrefutable argument than an airlift would not work any longer because of the Soviet radar-jamming apparatus. Facing that unpleasant fact was the hardest step to take. It was only a first step. Discussion of the contingent plan for Berlin had begun in Bonn after the Paris NATO meeting. The center of discussion had then been transferred to Washington and yet only the most languid effort to reach agreement had been made until Secretary Dulles had returned from his vacation. When the one-man State Department was fully functioning again, Mr. Dulles observed a serious gap in his situation. There was no finally agreed contingent plan for Berlin's defense and Mr. Dulles then gave Mr. Murphy the task of filling that gap.
That was the reason why the broad commitment by the Western Big Three to preserve West Berlin had not yet been "staffed out" in detail. There were many different ways, times and places to respond to the type of challenge which Premier Khrushchev had threatened. It was even possible to conceive a response by a limited airlift. Such an airlift would supply the allied garrisons in the city and would be accompanied by the promise to send a tank column should the civil traffic to Berlin become interrupted by the East German government.
That way of dodging a challenge to the right of Anglo-Franco-American military traffic to use the roads and railways was obviously vulnerable to salami tactics and that expedient thus was sharply opposed by Mr. Murphy and Mr. Dulles.
Meanwhile, the State Department had let it be known that all the long talks with Mr. Mikoyan had produced no sign of any softening in the Soviet position on Berlin. Against that background, with the "staffing out" process still to be completed, the decision already taken about Berlin had been a very solemn matter.
Doris Fleeson indicates that the politician of the month in the U.S. was Mr. Mikoyan. The scope and smoothness of his operations were the talk of Washington. Their climax had been his conference with the President in the White House the prior Saturday. Mr. Mikoyan had gone into those critical negotiations with the air of success, particularly in the business and finance world from which the President derived much of his own strength. There was evidence that the President had noted with misgivings Mr. Mikoyan's deepening impact on the American public, while the previous midterm elections of November had given unmistakable indications of eagerness to get off the dime and to go places.
In his National Press Club speech, the President had tried to reduce speculation about new policies and progress in U.S.-Soviet relations. He cautioned that the most which could be expected from a visit such as that of Mr. Mikoyan was better mutual understanding and some real probing of the motives of both countries, the President having specifically mentioned the Berlin question.
At the same time, however, Secretary Dulles, still sharp but appearing very tired, was telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in private session that he realized that new ground had to be broken on the German question, hinting as much at a press conference the previous week to the manifest uneasiness of the West German Government of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. The most Congress could presently do was to indicate sympathetic understanding of the situation, which its leading members professed to have, though in private being of the opinion that Mr. Mikoyan's success with the industrialists and bankers of the U.S. constituted the real burr under the President's saddle. They recalled, though it was generally forgotten, that the major impetus for recognition of Soviet Russia by the Roosevelt Administration had come from the same interests, tempted by trade and greatly helped by then-Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who had seen in trade the cement of peace.
The tour of Mr. Mikoyan showed that the Russians remembered that earlier era very well and also that they could sense the prevailing winds with the best of politicians. President Roosevelt's boon companions had been intellectuals, those of his brain-trust. Moscow's advance man had then also been an intellectual, Maxim Litvinov.
President Eisenhower spent his hours of ease on the playgrounds of business and financial leaders and if the Kremlin used the American system, Mr. Mikoyan's job would be as secretary of commerce. His easy entry into the sanctuaries of Wall Street and its equivalents in Detroit, Chicago and the West Coast was the counterpart of the lionizing of Mr. Litvinov and his British writer-wife by the pro-Roosevelt intellectual circles of the 1930's. Now, the intellectuals were more aloof, having been burned and thus dreading fire.
The handling of Mr. Mikoyan's tour commanded admiration in Washington, more particularly since the State Department was anything but cooperative at its start. The word was that Washington would follow, not lead, public opinion, and the Russians were largely left to make their own arrangements. An intense check yielded no trace of an American hand in it, not that of Madison Avenue. According to one insider, it had all been done by AMTORG, the Soviet trading group, and the Soviet Embassy. They, not Americans, had arranged that Mr. Mikoyan might dine and chat with Henry Ford II and others not readily available to their fellow Americans.
That same source had said: "We must get it out of our heads that these people lack our know-how in any major respect. When they really want something, they are enormously resourceful."
She concludes that it was hard to associate such skill with the vile and shabby face of Communism, but Mr. Mikoyan was giving a convincing picture of a political expert.
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, indicates that he was one of the trusting souls who believed what the doctor said and that when he told him to take something, he would do so. But it now seemed that perhaps a trusting nature was not a good thing and that maybe people should go back to the old Borgia days when everyone had his own food taster.
A couple of ghouls, masquerading as pharmacists, had been caught recently substituting penny cold tablets for an expensive antibiotic prescription. Charles Greenberg and Marvin Goldstein of Long Island had been fined $1,500 each and received a one-year suspended sentence, placed on probation for three years. The sentencing judge had described their behavior as "most reprehensible". Their fraudulent substitution had been discovered by a patient's doctor, who had prescribed an antibiotic for Asian flu and when his patient failed to respond to treatment, he had tested the pills and found them to be innocuous penny nothing-pills.
Mr. Ruark wonders how long the two had been getting away with that fraud and how many other people in the drug business had been pulling similar switches. He also wonders how many people might have died or at least been subjected to prolonged illness with ensuing complications because of the tampering with what might be called the most sacred trust in medicine, the faithful obedience to a doctor's dictate on behalf of the patient.
He opines that the crime as committed by the two was literally worse than armed robbery because there was always a chance that one might beat the robber to the gun and then call the meat wagon to collect him. The most charitable description of prescription-switching would be callous intent to kill, if need be, for a legal profit.
It was obvious that one could not carry a portable laboratory to test what was coming from the druggist. He could think of no punishment too severe for the two individuals, even if only to provide a deterrent to their conduct. The implications of the crime were much broader than might be indicated by a fine and probation. He supposes that the only way a proper sentence could be applied to the two would be if they became once more employable and started swapping pills around again.
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