The Charlotte News
Tuesday, May 12, 1959
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Geneva that the Soviet Union this date had demanded that two of its Communist satellites, Poland and Czechoslovakia, be invited to join the Big Four foreign ministers conference. The demand had been expected and the Western foreign ministers had been ready for another wrangle with Russia's Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. Secretary of State Christian Herter, British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd and French Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville had been reported firmly agreed to reject the Soviet demand. In announcing the move to seat Poland and Czechoslovakia, the Soviet press officer had said that "the Soviet delegation proposes the full and equal participation of both delegations in the conference." A solid allied front of the previous day had beaten back Mr. Gromyko's drive to give Communist East Germany full and equal membership. East and West Germany were limited to the role of advisers, though given the right to speak on issues if all Big Four representatives agreed. Western diplomats said that Mr. Herter, Mr. Lloyd and M. Couve de Murville wanted to keep the conference basically limited to the four powers. The three were represented as willing, however, to allow Poland, Czechoslovakia, Italy and possibly other countries later to participate in discussion of questions of immediate interest to them. Russia's unfolding long-range strategy apparently was to maintain heavy pressure on the West at present, and in a prospective summit conference to get them to accept Communist domination of East Germany and all of Eastern Europe. The Western Big Three foreign ministers and West German Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano had met at the office of Mr. Herter at noon this date for strategy talks in advance of the afternoon session with Mr. Gromyko at the Soviet minister's Palace of Nations. Then, Mr. Herter had a luncheon engagement with Mr. Gromyko at the residence.
In London, it was reported that Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had said this date that Britain was getting ready to enter the satellite field. He said that Britain might send satellites into orbit either with the cooperation of its British Commonwealth partners or with the U.S. He told Commons: "We therefore plan to send to Washington a team of experts to discuss possible Anglo-American cooperation. We are also opening consultations with other Commonwealth countries." He said that British experts were studying the possibility of adapting as satellite projectors military rockets presently under development in Britain.
In Little Rock, Ark., it was reported that a hastily formed citizens group this date had filed petitions seeking the ouster of three segregationist school directors who a week earlier had voted to dismiss 44 teachers, principals and secretaries. Dr. Drew Agar, chairman of the committee to Stop This Outrageous Purge, said that signatures of 9,603 voters had been gathered on the petitions for an election to recall the three members. Approximately 6,200 signatures were needed to assure the election. The movement was directed against Ed McKinley, Jr., president of the Little Rock School Board, and members Ben Rowland and Robert Laster.
In Raleigh, Governor Luther Hodges had ordered National Guard units into strike-harassed Henderson this date after violence had flared to a new peak of intensity around the Harriet-Henderson Cotton Mills on Monday night. Within minutes after the Governor had announced the decision, State Adjutant General Capus Waynick, head of the Guard, had begun flashing the word to various Guard units to move into Henderson. The latter, who declined to specify which units would move, estimated that the first group of Guardsmen, a Greensboro military police unit, would be en route to Henderson within two hours. The Governor emphasized that sending the Guard did not mean martial law in Henderson, indicating that sufficient Guardsmen would be sent "to enforce the law and assist law enforcement officials who still have the basic responsibility to maintain law and order." The Governor's statement came after the mayor of Henderson had issued an appeal for Guard units to assist hard-pressed local police and after the Governor had conferred with him and other local and state officials. The Governor had served notice the previous week when he had withdrawn Highway Patrolmen from Henderson that fresh outbreaks of serious violence would result in dispatch of Guardsmen to Henderson. The Governor's decision followed fresh outbreaks of violence around the mills on Monday night. Rifle shots had been fired and rocks had been thrown at cars as workers were departing the mills. Early in the morning of this date, a dynamite blast had extensively damaged an unoccupied nursery building at one of the mill plants.
At Fort Pillow Prison Farm in Tennessee, it was reported that the shrieks and thuds which heralded a prison riot had caught officials by surprise. The well-planned uprising the previous night had been cued to start with the routine whistle which signaled the approach of lights-out. First, a flurry of thrown shoes had smashed every light bulb on the second floor of a dormitory. A telephone operator said that he had heard the noise and had gone to see what it was, as his desk overlooked the front entrance to the dormitory, thinking it to be either a break or a riot. The prisoners, some of whom were armed with knives, had made no effort, however, to escape, as negotiation was their goal. Two guards had been taken by them as hostages without a struggle as dormitory guards were not armed except with billy clubs. Within minutes, the rioting prisoners had blocked the doors and windows with bunks and mattresses, to block possible teargas projectiles. The 130 men who staged the riot were strengthening their barricades this date and threatened to kill the two guards if officers rushed the building, demanding a conference with State officials on prison farm conditions. The State commissioner of institutions had flown in from Nashville to confer with leaders of the revolt and after several talks with them, said that negotiations had bogged down. He said that the prisoners at first had agreed to accept solitary confinement as punishment for the riot with the State agreeing that their "good time" credits would not be impacted. Before the agreement could be finally settled, however, the inmates had increased their demands to no punishment at all, plus insistence that their conditions be broadcast via radio. The new conditions had been rejected and the State commissioner said that the inmates had withdrawn behind the barricaded front door, one of them shouting, "Come in and get us." (Whoever said that forgot to add, "… coppers.") The commissioner said that the inmates would not dictate conditions, indicating, "If we can't control those boys, we will have to close up and quit. They're going to come out, one way or another. We can't let prisoners run the prison." Regarding complaints that the prisoners had to work long hours in the fields and often doubletime to and from, he said, "We're not running a country club here." He had been ordered to the scene by Governor Buford Ellington the previous night, a few hours after the prisoners had seized the dormitory.
John Kilgo of The News reports that 70 additional police officers would be needed to patrol Charlotte when the city limits would be extended on the following January 1, according to Police Chief E. C. Selby. The latter had told the three-man Civil Service Commission during the morning that the hiring of the new officers ought start immediately. Advertisements for applicants to fill the jobs would begin soon in local newspapers and also in newspapers in Greensboro and Columbia, S.C. The Chief said that between 20 and 25 men could be trained by police at one time and that it took seven weeks to complete the training. That meant that it would take about six months to train all 70 officers and the new city limits would be extended eight months hence. They hoped to start the training of the first group in July. The new area to be annexed was 33.2 square miles and City Police presently patrolled 31.6 square miles with 266 officers. There were 550 businesses in the perimeter area at present and more scheduled for construction. There were 11 schools in the area and 28 beer and wine outlets, and the Chief said that the business establishments would have to have special protection at night, with the beer and wine outlets being potential trouble spots which had to be patrolled. He also noted that the schools would cause certain traffic problems which would have to be worked out. County Police and State Patrolmen who presently patrolled the perimeter area had reported 317 traffic accidents and 12 fatalities in the annexed area the previous year. The City-County Planning Commission estimated that the population of Charlotte on January 1 would jump to 210,000 from its presently estimated 168,000. The Chief said that it was an urgent problem and that he was afraid they would have a hard time finding 70 qualified men in such a short time. The starting salary of the 70 new men would run about $250,000 per year.
Dick Young of The News reports that a program of public improvements had been outlined this date by Mayor Jim Smith for the new municipal administration which had taken office the previous day. He had listed the projects and enterprises, not necessarily in order of their importance and preference, which he hoped would be carried out during his second term. Completion of the grade crossing elimination program, which had already moved through its initial stages, was among the projects mentioned. The next stage consisted of raising the tracks of Southern Railway 14 feet so that underpasses could be constructed at W. Trade Street and W. 4th Street. Widening of the underpasses at W. Morehead Street in W. 6th Street, as well as the widening of the underpass on E. 4th Street were included in the program. Among the first things to be tackled was the 1959-60 budget and funds had to be found to provide for municipal services in the perimeter area for a half year. The present budget called for more than 12 million dollars and chances were that the new budget would have to be increased. A study of the job classification plan had to be continued with a view toward rectifying inequities, according to the Mayor. Part of it would be a system of car allowances for City employees using their own vehicles. The 12 points of the Mayor are summarized in a box.
A youngster of Russell Springs, Ky., had requested of Governor A. B. Chandler to reduce school terms to three months per year. The Governor had replied that when he was a boy of about the same age, he had the same idea, but had later realized "the more education I could get, the better off I would be."
On the editorial page, "Mecklenburg Must Do Itself a Favor" indicates that the county's miserably housed social agencies had to be rescued from the effects of 25 years of neglect, and that it was a moral imperative facing the community as the capital funds drive of the United Community Services shifted into second gear. Plans had been shaped and goals had been established, with 600 volunteers having fanned out over the county to make their calls in an effort to reach a goal of $880,000.
Capital fund-raising had become the most pressing problem for UCS at present and it finds it the community's responsibility to come to the rescue with the same depth of generosity which it had always demonstrated in time of great need, which was just a way of doing themselves a favor.
"Geneva Is Not a Bargain Basement" indicates that the Big Four foreign ministers had accepted the inevitable the previous day at Geneva when they had agreed to seat East and West German delegations. The days of World War II when the Morgenthau Plan had proposed to obliterate Germany as a nation were gone, and whether it was liked or not, "the German question" was back and still had the ominous sound it once had, but in a different way.
When Bismarck or Hitler had held the
leadership of Germany, "the German question" was a question
of all-swallowing nationalism
However brutal their way of doing so, the Soviets had indeed made East Germany a Communist "fact" and it was a fact which would have to be contended with at Geneva.
For a long time, the American position had been that free elections were the price of German unification, a condition unacceptable to the Communists, as East Germany as a police state with a small population would be destroyed by free elections. It indicates that if a solution of the tension in Europe lay along the line of a neutralized and united Germany, the price would probably have to be paid by the West of recognizing how Russia felt about East Germany.
As a result, it finds that Geneva was no bargain basement, that the price was high and the negotiations to relax tensions in Europe could go on for years before the necessary swaps could be made. It also finds, however, that communication was important and it prefers years of haggling in the diplomatic realm to ten minutes of missile warfare.
Would it were that the
drunk-with-power current regime in Washington in 2026 understood that
basic principle. Drunks, especially drunks coming of age after the
Cold War, rarely do. They like action
Incidentally, the actual U-boat 147, as referenced in the linked episode above, was sunk on June 2, 1941, the same date by coincidence that W. J. Cash delivered the commencement address at the University of Texas in front of the Main Building. The proverbial rap-rap-rapping monkey wrench is another "south, SOUTH, southward" matter from a different theater of the war in 1941. Or was it really very different in its ultimate motivations?—the enslavement of other sovereign territories and acquisition of their mineral wealth on the pretext of social Darwinism, survival of the fittest, "strength through joy", an unleashed restraint from social and civilized norms to accommodate the warlords' quest for power through programmed, brainwashed loyalty, in the case of Germany, the putsch through the hazed drunken ire
Yet another coincidence occurs in this saga in that author Clay Blair, who, with his wife Joan, had chronicled in 1976 in The Search for JFK young John F. Kennedy's trip to Charlotte on the weekend of February 8-9, 1941, preceding the publication on Monday, February 10 of W. J. Cash's The Mind of the South, ostensibly to meet with a female instructor at Queens College who was a prospective ghost writer for his father's memoir, also would 20 years later, in 1996, author this book, in which he related briefly of the voyage and sinking of U-Boat 147, the linked preview unfortunately omitting the relevant page at 307. Again bearing in mind that Jonathan Daniels—subsequently an assistant press secretary to FDR, elevated to the role of press secretary just two weeks before the President's death and son of Josephus Daniels, Ambassador to Mexico from 1933 until October, 1941, who was "chief" to the President, who had been, in his first Government job, his assistant when the elder Mr. Daniels was Secretary of the Navy under President Wilson—was co-sponsor, along with Blanche Knopf, of Cash for the Guggenheim Fellowship which took him on the fateful trip to Mexico City in June, 1941 for a year to write a novel about the South, we have suggested that there may have been more to the peripatetic lifestyle of young Mr. Kennedy than merely seeking "interesting people" to meet, which may have led to his obtaining the position in 1941 working for the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
It must be kept in mind that the O.S.S. was not formed until June, 1942 and there was no formal, dedicated intelligence-gathering service per se at the time, only the FBI, which primarily was focused only on domestic operations, with very limited numbers of foreign-stationed agents in Latin America, ONI, and the Army G-2, the latter two organizations being primarily limited by their very nature to analysis of intercepted intelligence, especially cryptanalysis, rather than intelligence gathering. The Office of the Coordinator of Information was established on July 11, 1941 when President Roosevelt appointed eventual O.S.S. chief, William Donovan, to head that agency, which eventually, the following spring, morphed into the O.S.S. The CIA was not formed until 1947. Thus, it stands to reason that the Administration during this crucial period, especially after the President had declared a national emergency on May 27, 1941, would have relied on informal intelligence-gathering and analysis thereof by persons trusted by the President and those trusted by those in whom the President implicitly reposited trust, such as sons of trusted Ambassadors or former Ambassadors and those who were trusted by them, especially persons with journalistic skills and thus also the "cover" to infiltrate the inner circles of the intriguants and the ingrained training and integrity to report the findings objectively and accurately to the Administration.
"Dr. Crane's Ode on a Literary Shame" indicates that Dr. George Crane, author of the syndicated column which appeared daily in the newspaper, struggled every day to cast out the devils of worry for his many readers, but the previous week had sought to play the great poet John Keats off against one of his correspondent's inferiority complex regarding her taste in poetry, finding herself unable to grasp the purpose of such poetry as "Ode to a Grecian Urn", preferring Edgar Guest.
He had reasoned: "Poets who understand the gamut of human emotions and depict them beautifully in rhythm are doing a much greater service than poets who gloat over any inanimate object, even though it is an exquisite 'Grecian Urn'."
It finds that Dr. Crane's opinion on poetry was as worth debating as its own would be on what might cause Titan rockets to misfire, but said something about ordinary taste in English language. Edgar Guest, who was the idol of Dr. Crane, had written warm-hearted, homely and harmless jingles which echoed familiar and comfortable sentiments. An example was: "It takes a heap o'living to make a house a home." It finds that by that standard "Ode to a Grecian Urn", the "sylvan historian" and "foster-child of slow time", sounded overpoweringly "high-brow" to Dr. Crane, who believed that the lines were cynically conceived by poets to dazzle readers and used in turn by readers who professed to like them to "ritz their neighbors".
It disagrees, finding that the language of the odes of John Keats to sound no more out of place to the common reader of his time than the magnificent prose of the King James Bible sounded to ancestors who read and quoted it every day. "Now Keats knuckles under to Guest and the King James knuckles under to 'translation into today's idiom.'"
It finds that diction and imagery such as that of Keats, Shakespeare and the King James Bible, which once had a solid basis in the diction and imagery of the street, was lost to the modern reader, leaving Guest greater than Keats. But if that were true, as Dr. Crane and his correspondent would believe, it shudders to think of the "poetry" which would eventually topple Guest.
"Education Note" indicates that a recent study of academic standings in an Idaho high school had shown that not a single straight-A student owned an automobile and that only 15 percent of the B students did. Of the C students, 41 percent had cars while 71 percent of those receiving D's and 80 percent of those flunking were car-owners.
It indicates that it was not sure what it proved but that parents might wish to take note, that if their child had to have something to drive, the safest thing to get was a mule.
A piece from the New York Times, titled "The Rose-Kin Come to Bloom", indicates that first had come the shadbush, its bloom "like a shimmering white mist in the woodland, breathtaking in its beauty. Then early pears came to blossom, virginal as white chiffon in moonlight, each tuft of bloom set in a richness of silver-green leaf. Now the apple trees unfold their pink-tinged buds and glorify the hillsides and the pristine valleys, pink and white and dawn-sweet against the chorus of greens that means mid-May. Soon the chokecherries will hang out their fat fluffs of frothy blossom. And then the pink pasture roses will glorify fence row and meadow margin, sweet as June and lovely as a smile; wild roses, the only ones that still carry the family name."
And it goes on, concluding: "Adam may have eaten the apple, but in May we can be sure that Eve wore apple blossoms in her hair."
In any event, in this episode, Ms. Blossom, a fit candidate for immersion in Magaville, USA, would be found, but only after exploitation in emulsion by the shamus, reminiscent of "Doghouse Reilly" on the hunt for Eddie Mars. It may have been just a spray job. But, it was only 30 minutes long, less commercials, and thus not conducive to excessive somnolence. But should not have Ms. Blossom had flowers in her hair?
Drew Pearson indicates that Secretary of State Christian Herter was ignoring the advice of subordinates at his first big conference in Geneva, as they urged him to dominate the conference. He would not. He had decided to bow to French Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville and allow him to speak for the West. Mr. Herter's advisers considered it a mistake, but Mr. Herter had said that it was better to let France, a smaller country, lead instead of the U.S.
He finds the best diplomatic advice to have been given was that to Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, who had instructions to be polite, cordial and agreeable. Without budging from any basic policy, the latter hoped to continue the present policy of "smile". Premier Nikita Khrushchev had his heart set on a summit conference and wanted nothing to disturb it.
He also had his heart set on coming to the U.S. The previous week, when the U.S. Ambassador to Russia Llewellyn Thompson had called on the Soviet Premier to discuss the 11 missing American fliers, Mr. Khrushchev had remarked that since Vice-President Nixon was coming to Moscow to open the American Trade Exposition, he wished to know what the U.S. would think about his coming to New York to open the Soviet Trade Fair at the New York Coliseum. Mr. Thompson had sidestepped the matter by saying that he would have to consult the State Department, but, offhand, explained that it would be difficult because of the problem of protecting Mr. Khrushchev. In Moscow, he pointed out, the Kremlin could clamp down a light security guard around Mr. Nixon with no complaints from irate citizens, but that in New York, people were accustomed to demonstrating and did not like cordons of police.
Mr. Pearson indicates that on March 29, 1956, he had written a letter to Mayor Robert Wagner of New York City urging that Stephen Scopas was not qualified to be a city magistrate. Mayor Wagner had gone ahead and appointed him anyway. The previous week, the Mayor had called for his resignation after Judge Scopas was arrested for selling babies. He had worked out a way of disposing of Greek refugee babies at prices up to $2,800 per baby and had sold 21 such babies for a total of $53,800 while sitting as a magistrate.
He indicates that the cartoon which former President Truman had liked best in his library was by Herblock, showing railroad ties smoking. The caption read: "TRUMAN JUST GAVE A LITTLE BACK PLATFORM TALK." Margaret Truman's favorite cartoon was one of her father crossing Pennsylvania Avenue with the caption: "THERE GOES MARGARET TRUMAN'S FATHER."
Joseph Alsop, in Geneva, finds that the real test of Secretary of State Herter was about to begin, after he had made his debut at the meeting of the four Western powers in Paris to patch up their disagreements, preliminary to the foreign ministers conference begun the previous day. After that debut, both Paris and London had rung with praise for the new Secretary, and Bonn also reportedly had joined in. Mr. Herter's pleasant manners, his easiness as a colleague, his firm grasp of the problems at hand and his thorough knowledge of the massive dossiers behind each problem had been the chief points noted. But against those entries on the positive side there was a major entry on the negative.
One unfavorable comment behind the scenes was that he had not imposed himself and was not the chief. Mr. Alsop finds it ironic and significant that the other Western allies would have felt happier and more at home had Mr. Herter been less nice and more bossy. Even among the unwavering admirers of former Secretary Dulles, none had chosen to describe the latter as a "nice man". As a negotiator he was too domineering, too crafty and too ruthless to be described as "nice". But even the many Western leaders and officials who formerly had detested Mr. Dulles now looked back with nostalgia to his domineering ways.
The Western leaders had found it convenient to be driven to do one thing or to oppose another by Secretary Dulles and then to go home and complain about his "rigidity". Mr. Dulles had thus served the alliance as an exoskeleton, acting as a kind of external stiffening which relieved other backbones of undue strain. That quality was missed in Mr. Herter at the Paris meeting.
In his quiet, polite, considerate way, Mr. Herter had worked as an equal among equals, earning general commendation for his knowledge, clear views and tact. But working as an equal among equals was not really what the others wanted. Furthermore, the chances were that Mr. Herter could not safely continue that approach in Geneva, where the patched-up differences among the Western allies were bound to wear thin, if not disintegrate completely. Six months had passed since the beginning of the Berlin crisis without producing any solid Western agreement on any really critical point.
There had been agreement on what to say and how to say it at the outset in Geneva, but after all the meetings and working parties and position papers, there was no real agreement on how far to go in offering concessions to the Soviets or on what counter-concessions to ask, or on what to do if the Soviets were not satisfied with the concessions which were offered. He finds it an inherently dangerous situation which could become more dangerous if it were not cured soon. Because of the special American role in the Western alliance, it was up to Mr. Herter to persuade or dragoon the committee approach to unite on a planned course. The main disagreements lay between the British on the one hand and the French, West Germans and Americans on the other.
Given that line-up, Mr. Herter could choose between two tactics, transforming the present tacit accord between the French, West Germans and Americans into a detailed understanding involving solid commitments and then tell the British of the committee decision and that if they did not like it, then they could leave the responsibility and risks to the other three. The other tactic was a middle course between the ideas of the British and those of the French and West Germans, working in the manner of Mr. Dulles to impose his own views on everyone else. Either way, a point would be reached when Mr. Herter would have to be authoritative instead of pleasant.
He indicates that those who had known Mr. Herter longer than his new allied counterparts had little doubt that his amiable exterior concealed more than enough iron to pass that sort of test. He was likely wise not to have tried that test in Paris, but the fact remained that the test had yet to be passed.
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, indicates surprise that Clare Boothe Luce's crack about Senator Wayne Morse having been kicked in the head by a horse had aroused surprise. "From certain of his antics in recent years, I would have thought him to have been hit on the head by a cow, like the fellow in Joseph Mitchell's book. Perhaps Mrs. Luce was confused in her analysis of what is wrong with Mr. Morse."
He indicates that it was not a political piece but rather a literary critique, as former Ambassador Luce had written a play, "The Women", which had "more lady-doggery in it per square inch than anything I've read or heard. Our gal Clare is the undisputed mistress of our times of the delicate art of cutting folks into shreds. Mr. Morse's hide is not the first she has tacked to the barn, and possibly will not be the last. This time she nailed it by severe lady-like refusal of the post to Brazil, playing the part of dutiful wife beautifully."
He says he had always personally admired Mrs. Luce as a lady of charm, wit, intelligence and professional skill, who had done an excellent job as Ambassador to Italy, as she had done "excellent pobs as a playwright". He also admired puns in two languages, and the Roman gag when she had been appointed was that "the Russians were dead sore because now the Luce (light, in Italian) was coming from the West instead of the East." Since Senator Morse came from the West, he suggests that he could reverse that pun.
He finds that the Senator's lamentable lack of caution in taking on a pretty, blonde lady with a brain like a steel-trap and a tongue with a razor edge removed him from serious consideration as a legislator with a future if the female vote was considered. He says that in his mid-40's, he had learned never to engage in warfare with slight, blonde women. "An asp is not as big as a cobra, but my money is on the asp."
He indicates that no one had ever won anything fighting a woman, that he had been battling his wife for possession of his pants for 21 years by the following August and had only scars and no pants. "The trouble with women is that they have a built-in advantage. They can turn tears on and off like a spigot, and nothing is so frightening as a weeping woman. You can't hit them, but the classic motif of Maggie belting Jiggs over the skull with a rolling pin compresses the heralded arms of womanhood."
He indicates that the more he had thought it over, Mrs. Luce had been wrong when she said that Mr. Morse had been kicked in the head by a horse. "He wasn't even hit on the head by a cow. When Morse took on the Dean of The Women he had been hit on the head by an elephant. Mrs. Luce's ladylike rejection of the ambassadorship may be possibly compared to Mr. Morse's own ladylike exit from the Senate next polling time."
Whether the Senator's head was swimming, he does not say, but, as with many things, Mr. Ruark would be proved wrong in his prediction. Senator Morse would be re-elected in 1962, although being defeated by Republican Robert Packwood in 1968 by a very small margin, largely over Senator Morse's opposition to the Vietnam War.
A letter from J. R. Cherry, Jr., indicates that he was glad to read in an editorial that the editors were "sad" to learn that the Russian Army Chorus and Dance Ensemble had been barred from the country by the State Department, as he was glad of that fact and suggests that he was not alone, that the bereaved families of 11 dead airmen, who the previous year had been ruthlessly gunned down in an unarmed plane by Russians over Armenia, also were likely glad of the fact. He indicates that whether or not the Russians were "first rank" in music and dance was beside the point, that the rulers of Russia were unprincipled rogues and cutthroats of the lowest rank and it followed that any so-called "cultural" or "civic" individuals or groups were hand-picked by the political Kremlin cutthroats to enter the U.S. for the one purpose of "softening up" Americans and throwing them off guard by deception and camouflage, thus furthering the Communist goal of world conquest. He finds that if Americans would subordinate that goal to the pleasure and entertainment which might be derived from viewing performances of Russia's cultural groups, it was facing moral and intellectual bankruptcy and deserved the self-destruction which it invited, that answering that question in the negative meant that there was true will to survive.
Mr. Cherry, as usual, is his nutty self, unable to distinguish purely cultural pursuits from political ones. There was plainly no attempt to infiltrate the American mind through purely cultural entertainment, any more than there was the reverse when American entertainers went to Russia. The object was to engage in cultural exchange in the hope that such would soften the attitude of the cold warriors in the Kremlin by the realization of the humanities at work in the culture of the U.S. and vice versa regarding the hawks in the U.S. Mr. Cherry, obviously, unfortunately left aside the humanities when he got his good educational opportunity at UNC in the late 1940's, instead choosing then to be obsessed with his fellow students and whether they were professed Communists.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.