The Charlotte News

Thursday, May 28, 1959

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President this date had told Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko that "a measure of progress" had to be made at the present Geneva East-West foreign ministers meeting if Russia wanted a subsequent summit meeting. The President had so expressed himself during a half-hour White House meeting with Mr. Gromyko and Secretary of State Christian Herter, British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd, and French Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville. Mr. Gromyko, without commenting on the President's call for progress, had described the session as "a very pleasant and useful conversation." M. Couve de Murville and Mr. Lloyd had described Mr. Gromyko's comment as "a tripartite declaration", thus saying in light humor that it was also their comment. In a formal statement read to the press by White House press secretary James Hagerty, the President expressed the hope that the Geneva meeting "would lead to a better approach to the solution of the problems confronting us in Europe." Mr. Hagerty said that the President had stressed the need for peaceful solutions to the problems of Germany's future and other issues presently being debated. He added: "The President likewise expressed the hope that on their return to Geneva the foreign ministers would be able to achieve that measure of progress which would make a subsequent meeting of heads of government desirable and useful." Although he spoke to all four of the foreign ministers, the President was primarily aiming his remarks at Mr. Gromyko. He had been, in effect, reaffirming his determination to reject a meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev unless the Soviets demonstrated good faith at Geneva by offering reasonable concessions to match the proposals of the West. The President was understood to have talked calmly with no effort to pound the table or to get tough with Mr. Gromyko. He was reported to have stressed to him that the world was watching developments at Geneva, hoping for an easing of international tensions. Mr. Hagerty had added informally that at the outset of the meeting, the President had taken the occasion to thank the foreign ministers for the respect they had shown to the memory of former Secretary of State Dulles in coming to Washington for his funeral services. A newsman had asked Mr. Hagerty whether the statement meant that the President regarded a summit meeting at present as neither desirable nor useful and he replied that he did not believe that was what "the English says". In reply to another question, he said that he did not know whether Mr. Gromyko had brought any message from Mr. Khrushchev to the President.

At Cape Canaveral in Florida, two monkeys had returned alive this date from a space ride in the nosecone of an Army missile, the Army having announced that both monkeys had been recovered alive and unharmed from compartments in the nosecone of a Jupiter missile fired from the Cape, the rocket having climbed to an altitude of 300 miles and flown at speeds up to 10,000 mph. The female monkeys, dubbed Able and Baker, were the first living creatures known to have ridden into space and returned alive. The feat represented a major breakthrough in the U.S. effort to put a man into orbital flight. Scientists said that instruments attached to the monkeys showed that they suffered little ill effect from the stresses of launch. Only the bare announcement that the monkeys had survived had been contained in the initial report received by the Army from a Navy ship which had recovered the nosecone near the island of Antigua, 92 minutes after the Jupiter had been launched. Technicians explained that the delay had been the result of the need to undo a mechanical maze in opening the passenger compartment. It had been known previously through radio signals from the nosecone that the monkeys were alive and well a minute before their landing. But for the last minute, signals had failed, an occurrence not unusual as a rocket dropped below the horizon. One important scientific check had failed because of telemetry difficulties. Instruments had recorded and relayed information on heartbeat and breathing rate. The rescue operation had been carried out by a fleet tug in the recovery area with two destroyer escorts. The nosecone had been reported to have come down within ten miles of the recovery ship in the selected area, 30 to 60 miles north of Antigua. Project directors said that poor radio communications with the tug had contributed to the delay on word that the monkeys had survived. Will a tickertape parade follow in New York City to honor these brave little girls? Or will the typical anti-simian prejudices relegate them to historical anonymity, along with their other cousins who have contributed mightily, but without memorial, to the advancement of humankind? Only the future may tell the tale. Is it not time to erect on the White House lawn, at long last, the statue of the quintessential Ape? Call it Citizen Cain.

The House Appropriations Committee this date recommended 38.848 billion dollars in new funding for the Defense Department, cutting nearly 400 million from the amount requested by the President for the coming fiscal year. The Committee told the Army and the Air Force to cease their bickering over who had the best missiles and called for a general tightening on defense operations, also speaking of a growing Soviet military threat. It appeared to side with the Army in its missile war with the Air Force by boosting Army funding and cutting Air Force funding for missiles. It approved funds to increase the Strategic Air Command, to shore up the Navy's anti-submarine warfare program, and to expedite work on atomic airplanes. It disapproved the President's plans to reduce the strength of the National Guard and the reserve forces but had gone along with his figures for active military manpower. It refused the Navy's request for 260 million dollars to build a new super aircraft carrier and voted to authorize the President to keep the big retaliatory bombers in the air around the clock if necessary to prevent their destruction on the ground during a sneak attack. Those and other actions had been included in a bill which the Committee had sent to the House floor for debate the following week.

The Committee also cut 162.7 million dollars this date from a favorite Air Force project, the Bomarc missile. But the Army, a rival in many missile areas, was given hard sought extra money to spend on development of a missile defense against ICBM's. The Bomarc, the Air Force's anti-aircraft missile, suffered a reduction of more than a third in the 447.3 million requested for it. The Committee voted to give the Army the full 95 million for which it had asked for its competing Nike-Hercules anti-aircraft missile. The Committee report made public this date said that the Bomarc reduction was made "in a further effort to focus attention upon the necessity for an early decision on the air defense missile controversy. Billions of taxpayers' dollars are involved. It is time to re-examine what we are getting for our money." It noted that the Bomarc, still not fully operational, already had cost 1.9 billion dollars.

In London, it was reported that Britain this date had swept away important controls on a wide range of dollar products, that for the first time in 20 years, the British were free to "Buy American". An announcement from the Treasury said that 17 different categories of American goods would now be free from import control on June 8. They ranged from canned foods to radio sets and shoes to ships and airplane engines. (How about pigs which flew?) Additionally, American manufacturers would for the first time obtain a share in the global quotas which the British imposed on 14 types of imports, ranging from sporting goods to watches. Five other categories of American products remained on import quota, but the quotas were increased. Those categories were motor vehicles, dried fruit, fresh citrus, canned pineapples and other types of canned fruit. A Board of Trade statement said: "The effect of the measures will be a further substantial reduction in discrimination in the operation of our import controls against Canada, the United States and the rest of the dollar area. Over the range of goods affected, dollar imports will in future receive the same treatment as imports from Western Europe—that is, in most cases, freedom from control." The relaxation was a follow-up to two other liberalization measures during the previous year. The previous September, the British had dropped all controls on dollar imports of machinery, newsprint and canned salmon. In December, they had made the pound sterling a convertible currency for foreign holders, meaning that an American who owned pounds could turn them into dollars or any other currency desired.

A report from the newly carried New York Herald Tribune News Service indicates that the 25 million dollar new Senate Office Building, already plagued by everything but locusts, had a brand new problem, dancing mail. At first, all of the mail chutes in the white marble building had been stuck, but had been repaired. Now, one of the chutes had developed suction so powerful that when a letter was placed in it on an upper floor, it was snatched from the hand and plunged to the sub-basement where it hit the fancy mail conveyor belt at such a high speed that it bounced off. An aide to Capitol architect J. George Stewart had confirmed that the strong down-draft in the chute was sending letters leaping off the conveyor belt, or in some cases, bashing them in. He said that the trouble had been diagnosed as "negative air pressure" in the sub-basement of the new building. The architect's office was now attempting to figure out a way to pump more air into the sub-basement to "equalize the pressure" with the rarefied atmosphere of the Senators' offices and hallways on the upper floors. A reporter, who had called on the superintendent of construction of the new building and asked to see the leaping letters in action, had been told that it was quite impossible as they had shut down the conveyor belt for repairs and that the mail was dropping in cardboard boxes in the basement temporarily. The Senate had recently voted $70,000 for "modernization" of the new conveyor belt, and apparently the belt was out of action because of that fact. Senator Allen Ellender of Louisiana had asked why the modernization had not been thought of before the conveyor belt had been installed and the Capitol architect replied that the cost of redesigning the belt would have been the same regardless of when it was done and that remarkable strides had been made in mail chutes and other postal facilities in the previous few years. Despite the remarkable progress in mail chutes, the architect's office had confirmed that the chutes in the new building had to be opened and repaired because mail was jamming up, caused by the rough edges inside the chutes. The office denied one published report that mail was ending up in the Senate cafeteria instead of the sub-basement, after an inspection had shown that mail was flowing through a chute into the kitchen near a soup cauldron, though not into it.

In Pittsburgh, Pa., it was reported that an escaped convict, sought in an all-night manhunt for the slaying of a sheriff, had stumbled from his hiding place in a wooded section at dawn this date and meekly surrendered to police. The 50-year old man was still wearing the handcuffs he had been wearing when he broke from a moving police car the previous afternoon after the shooting of the sheriff of Northumberland County in Pennsylvania. Wearing a muddy T-shirt and soaking wet blue trousers, he stumbled out of a foggy, wooded area just as a posse of about 150 police officers prepared to flush him out. When he emerged from his hiding place with his arms held high in surrender, scores of policemen and newspaper photographers and reporters rushed down the hillside and converged on him. When a police officer asked him if he knew what he had done, he replied, "Well, I guess he's dead." He also said that he was sorry for what he had done and protested that he had not meant to kill the sheriff, whom he said was his friend. He immediately was taken to the spot where he had hidden for nearly 14 hours in a heavily wooded area located in a marshy area at the foot of the slope and later to the Allegheny County jail. Police had been unable to ascertain what he had done with the gun which he had used to kill the sheriff during the course of a scuffle for the sheriff's .38-caliber revolver in the backseat of the police car, after which he had fled on foot. The sheriff and a friend had been transporting the prisoner from Northumberland County to Western State Penitentiary in Pittsburgh, a distance of about 200 miles, and the sheriff's friend had been driving with the sheriff sitting beside him and the prisoner in the back seat. The driver said that the man had lunged forward, grabbed the gun from the front seat between him and the sheriff and the latter had jumped in the back of the car and the two had begun scuffling. He had stopped the car to assist the sheriff and opened the back door to help, at which point, the prisoner shot the sheriff and said, "I'll shoot you, too."

In New York, it was reported that Dolores Gray, the leading lady of the Broadway musical "Destry Rides Again", playing a dance hall hostess, had been singing to the shy sheriff played by Andy Griffith when a backdrop curtain had caught on fire the previous day at the matinee performance with about 1,500 persons in attendance. She said that when she spotted the flames, she had nudged Mr. Griffith and neither of them had moved, that she just kept on singing louder and louder to drown out the noise backstage. Flames had curled up the curtain for about 20 feet and smoke had begun billowing about the Imperial Theater. Loud noises had come from backstage as fire extinguishers were rushed into action and a few persons in the front rows got up to leave. Ms. Gray, who had been softly singing "Anyone Would Love You", belted out an encore and practically all of those in attendance remained in their seats. The stage manager appeared and assured that it was only a little fire and that there was no danger, that they would resume the show within a few minutes if the audience would step outside and wait. The audience did so and when they returned to their seats, they patiently watched the cleanup operations, as plenty of mops were needed because the stage was covered with two inches of water. Backstage crews had the fire extinguished before firemen had arrived. After another 20 minutes, Mr. Griffith entered for his next number and before starting his song, "Once Knew a Fella", he told the audience in his sheriff's drawl: "We are ready to carry on again without stompin' and hollerin'." He received an ovation but it did not equal the one received by Ms. Gray when she came on next to sing "Fair Warning".

On the editorial page, "Textbooks: All Rant and Little Reason" indicates that the efforts of a group of self-appointed intellectual vigilantes to "rid the schools of their socialistic textbooks" reminded of a political yarn which was making the rounds in Charlotte. A dyed-in-the-wool Dixiecrat had been attending a meeting at which several speakers were outlining their views about the Supreme Court, Northern Democrats and the NAACP. When all of the oratory had completed, a friend asked, "Well, what do you think now, Lem?" The Dixiecrat shot back: "Think? I didn't come here to think. I came here to holler."

It finds that there had been much hollering about "socialistic" textbooks and the manner in which they were selected but little thought on the matter. It offers as example the legislation sponsored by Lenoir County State Representative Rachel Davis to place a layman on the State Textbook Commission. It was not an innocent or constructive approach as implicit in the measure was censorship, even if covert and oblique. Its legislative journey had been accompanied by the wildest collection of passionately irrational fears about socialism, communism and things which went bump in the night encountered in the state since the heyday of Joseph McCarthy. The bill had been mercifully put to sleep in the House Education Committee the previous day.

Textbook selection was properly a chore for experts. Teachers knew best what was needed for a particular classroom and a particular grade. Nevertheless, it concedes that the laymen also had a legitimate interest in the adequacy and suitability of instructional materials. Furthermore, the extent of the layman's responsibility was a legitimate subject for public discussion, enabling, if done rationally, defining of issues in light of relevant principles and facts. But that had not been the pattern in the current debate. Someone would find or thought they found a passage in a textbook which could be made the basis of dispute and on the basis of the passage, opponents were aroused to condemn the whole textbook and then broadened the attack to all textbooks within the school system, then to the school system itself.

If a social change was involved, the textbook was frequently accused of advocating that change. As often as not, on further examination, it had been found that the a book in question was merely recording a change which had already taken place.

The state had long earlier worked out a workable and completely reasonable system for selecting textbooks, a partnership between trained professionals and interested laymen. The recommendations were made by a 12-member State Textbook Commission composed solely of professional educators. But the responsibility for selection of the textbooks rested solely in the hands of the State Board of Education, a public body made up almost entirely of laymen.

The efforts of the would-be censors were not only impertinent but insulting. Nothing could be more damaging to public education than a lack of rationality in that area. "A little more reason and a little less rant is clearly in order."

"Foreign Aid: Napoleons Aren't Enough" indicates that numerous "backward" nations presently subsidized by the U.S. tottered under military establishments which would have dazzled Napoleon when all of continental Europe had lain at his feet. Yet, beneath countless little Napoleons and their armies were economies so brittle that they might crack under the next strong wind from Moscow, Iran being a good example.

It is reminded in a comic and tragic way of shanties seen occasionally, gray and weatherbeaten, yet boasting a Cadillac in the front yard. Friends of the foreign aid principle were led to arch their eyebrows over the ludicrous top-heaviness of the program. The House Foreign Affairs Committee arched its collective eyebrows over the problem the prior Tuesday and had proceeded to cut some 250 million dollars from the 1959 foreign aid bill, 160 million of which had come from military aid. Fortunately, the Committee had added another 100 million to development loans.

The House Committee vote echoed a growing suspicion, as voiced by internationalists such as Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana, that American foreign aid missed the mark.

It suggests that foreign aid ought be hastily increased, but not as constituted at present, that to still the objections of those who could not or would not own the necessity for economic aid, the country had adopted a military emphasis about five years earlier which had grown larger every time Congress voted on a foreign aid bill. Two arguments had become familiar, one being that the building of military establishments among those countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America receiving aid would raise the standard of living of the people in a sort of "trickle-down" effect, and the other being that the U.S. could halt the Communist advance by armed encirclement. Neither explanation proved, however, to be the case. The surrender of total economic development for military development, advertised as so hard-headed, proved to be an illusion. The perimeter of the free world, it suggests, ought be kept in arms, but, like the threat of the nuclear deterrent, only provided a short-term expedient.

Without economic development on a scale equal to the Marshall Plan in Europe after the war, no plethora of little Asian and South American Napoleons would do the country much long-range good. So long as the "underdeveloped" countries leaned for their meager existence on the sale of raw materials to the industrial West, every economic downturn in the U.S. would deal them a blow which seriously jeopardized U.S. interests. When raw material markets suffered, little economies plummeted, giving place to the social and political whirlwinds which Communist provocateurs found helpful.

It finds that the nation had come to a point where in the field of foreign aid, being humanitarian was the best way of being hard-headed. Americans were morally imaginative enough to strike out against the frontier of poverty which bound two-thirds of the globe. But the nation liked to be able to show something for foreign aid expenditure. "The well fitted-out armies and Napoleons we have bought so far amount to little, when one looks beneath to the bleak lot and political uncertainty of the people."

"Chief Selvey: What Is the Verdict?" urges the City Council to come to an early decision about the Police Chief. The Council's well-publicized uncertainty about his reappointment had already damaged morale in the agency and a lack of confidence in the present Chief had been implied if not actually stated. A long delay, accompanied by the inevitable public speculation, could only worsen an already unfortunate situation. The great care and prudence with which the new Council was considering its appointments was, it finds, admirable, and it was not a matter which could be handled hastily.

As humorist James Thurber had written, he who hesitates was sometimes saved. At the same time, it counsels that it should not take a group of perceptive and intelligent men several weeks or several months to decide whether they thought a chief of police was worth his salt, and having decided, it ought not take any longer to notify the chief and the public of its decision.

"Life in America" indicates that a baby had been born recently in Wheeling, W. Va., already suffering from an active stomach ulcer. (One could posit that it was a product, somewhere in the eternal wheel of empyreal, ethereal ether, of a prenatal nervous realization and reaction to Wheeling having been the place where Senator McCarthy first issued his statement, per his random party assignment of topic at a Lincoln Day dinner, charging that at least 57 varieties of Red, card-carrying Commmm-munists existed within the State Department, or from the further fact that then-Senator Richard Nixon had flown into Wheeling immediately after his famous speech in defense of his millionaire-endowed $18,000 1950 slush fund, delivered in Los Angeles in September, 1952, after spending his nights there at the Ambassador Hotel, owned by the father of subsequent Army Private G. David Schine, to be greeted warmly by General Eisenhower as his "boy", after the early polling data showed that his speech had struck a chord of warmth and hearth in the average home viewer, believing, as many of them apparently did, in 1950 Oldsmobiles, black-and-white cocker spaniels and "Republican cloth coats", checkers in the country store by the pot-belly, not chess in the well-heeled parlor—not in Commie socialist grilled millionaire for breakfast as opposed to scrambled eggs, oh no, not those ramified sheep, only true blue devils. One could posit that, but we shall refrain this time, for the sake of the nascent youth.)

A piece from the Washington Post, titled "Stamped Out", indicates that the Lucky Strike green had gone to war and smoke had begun to pass through filter tips before it got into one's eyes and the fliptop box had become almost as important as its contents. But for 80 years, DeWitt Clinton had been the constant, if seldom observed, companion of smokers. Now he also was to disappear as unceremoniously as a worn-out advertising gimmick.

It says it would miss him, for not only had the firm countenance of the former Governor of New York on the blue tobacco tax stamp served to reassure the chain-smoker that all was right with his fresh pack, but Mr. Clinton's dour expression appeared to be warning youth of the perils tobacco might hold for them. It had almost seemed that he had tried one of the tastier brands and, contrary to the reassurances, had been dissatisfied. His disappearance on the tax stamp itself stemmed, like many other changes at present, from an unsentimental monetary decision. Tobacco companies had to tie up substantial amounts of working capital in stockpiles of stamps and after June 24, the companies would just pay the eight cents per pack Federal tax on cigarettes and other tobacco levies twice per month to the Treasury, and the liquor industry would also be able to dispense with some of its tax stamps on that date.

It finds that Mr. Clinton would likely disappear into the labyrinth of history books, where he would always have a place as the man whom James Madison had defeated for the presidency in 1812, as the early 19th Century Governor of New York who had helped to make the Erie Canal a reality and the man for whom an early American locomotive had been named. "Picture for picture, we prefer the locomotive."

Drew Pearson indicates that Senator Richard Russell of Georgia wanted to take a good look at the recommended promotion of Lt. General Emmet "Rosy" O'Donnell, in deference to a lady, Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, a quiet, conscientious member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who had put up an effective fight against having certain headlined Air Force reservists win promotions without doing their required training. Specifically, Senator Smith had objected to the promotion of actor Jimmy Stewart, American Airlines' John Montgomery, and other bigwigs who had failed to fulfill the training standards required of other less-publicized reservists. In opposing them, Senator Smith had collided with General O'Donnell and had won. The General had boasted that, as chief of Air Force personnel, he had kicked 66,000 men out of the reserves because their training was not good enough. Senator Smith asked, "In view of this severity, why are you promoting Brig. General Robert L. Smith, whose record isn't good enough either?" General Smith was the head of Pioneer Air Lines of Dallas and a good friend of Senator Lyndon Johnson, but had only one 15-day tour of duty in eight years. When General O'Donnell claimed that General Smith had just been on duty from December 10 to December 31, Senator Smith disputed it, whereupon General O'Donnell had implied that she did not know what she was talking about. But when his testimony came back from the Pentagon, General O'Donnell had deleted his answers as they would have made him look sick.

Senator Smith also pointed to the fact that John Alison of Northrup Aircraft had not been on a single 15-day tour of duty in nine years, and that J. B. Montgomery, who had retired to go with American Airlines, later with General Electric, would receive a big tax break if taken back into the Air Force as a reserve officer.

She had also uncovered the fact that actor Jimmy Stewart had taken only one 15-day tour of duty in 11 years as a reservist. General O'Donnell, nevertheless, had wanted to promote him to be Deputy Director of Operations for the Strategic Air Command, which required expertise.

After Senator Smith finished cross-examining General O'Donnell, he changed 43 of 49 pages of his answers to her, plus 5 of 6 pages in answer to Senator John Stennis of Mississippi and three out of three pages in answer to Senator Frank Barrett of Wyoming, all of which Senator Smith considered to be deceptive. She also suspected that General O'Donnell was responsible for news leaks from the Pentagon implying that she was upset because she was not made commander of the WAF's during the war.

Now General O'Donnell was up for promotion before Senator Smith's committee to become a full general and top air commander in the Pacific. Senator Smith was a quiet woman who was not likely to stage any forensics, but some other Senators were interested in General O'Donnell's erratic statements regarding the use of the atomic bomb. On January 19, 1951, at the height of the Korean War, the General had been asked whether he favored use of the atomic bomb and he had replied, as quoted by the New York Times: "I personally believe we should have cracked down and cracked down hard as soon as it was determined it was the Chinese Communist Army attacking us from across the border." He had then referred to the fact that the strategic bomber command was "designed to deliver the atomic offensive to the heart of the enemy." His statement had come after American officers had been cautioned about talking out of turn, and after Prime Minister Clement Attlee of England had made a special trip to Washington to confer with President Truman about irresponsible statements on use of the atomic bomb. American officers had been warned that the war in Korea was under the auspices of the U.N. and that they were not to sound off. Because of General O'Donnell's statements, he had been summoned to Washington and cautioned by General Hoyt Vandenberg, the Air Force chief of staff at the time, against sounding off again, General Vandenberg then saying, "Obviously he does not speak for the Air Force."

Since General O'Donnell was now to be put in full command of the Air Force in the Pacific, where a single bombing of the Chinese mainland near Quemoy and Matsu could lead to world war, some Senators were apprehensive over his tendency to shoot from the hip.

Doris Fleeson indicates that it was clear that the most which could come of the present foreign ministers conference was an agreement on the matters about which they disagreed—on its face a somewhat truistic statement. If any real decisions were to come from it, they would have to emerge from a laborious summit meeting attended by those with power of action. That was not what the President wanted, having hoped for a perfunctory meeting at the summit which would only need stamp approval on agreements made earlier at the foreign ministers conference. Instead, Geneva had been a purely propaganda exercise with its principal beneficiary appearing to be East Germany.

Since Geneva had left the main problems unsolved, the President had now to find a way to avoid the summit meeting or to decide where and when to hold it. With the Russians able to shut down the air and traffic routes to West Berlin at any moment, the former was hardly practicable. She finds a lesson, however, from the Geneva meeting, with its masses of diplomats, reporters, spies, tourists and propagandists, that a summit meeting ought be held in a place conducive to privacy, patience and contemplation. That had been in the mind of British Foreign Minister Selwyn Lloyd when he had suggested the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland as the locus. The enticement for the President in that proposal was the famed Golfing Greenes, the King's Course and the Queen's Course, and within a few hours drive, the famous St. Andrews Course.

There was little nourishment for Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in the suggestion of Mr. Lloyd, as he had been to England and had no known interest in golf. Mr. Khrushchev had eagerly accepted the idea of having the conference in San Francisco, birthplace of the U.N., but his hope of a triumphal tour across the U.S had been dashed by Premier Charles de Gaulle, who said icily that since the summit was to deal with Europe's problems, it ought be held in Europe. It was said in Washington that his real objection had been to the proposed exercise in public relations by Mr. Khrushchev.

Should the Russians prove adamant about meeting in the U.S., Mr. Lloyd had pointed the way to a solution, as the U.S. had a number of isolated but luxurious resort hotels large enough to contain the official entourages of an international conference, among them being the Greenbrier in Sulphur Springs, W. Va., the Homestead in Hot Springs, Va., and Sun Valley in Idaho. The greater seclusion of such sites would tend to remove one of the major problems accompanying Mr. Khrushchev's presence in the U.S., security for him and his entourage. Whether he realized it or not, that factor was as important to him as to his hosts.

Since there could be no show without an audience, no one, including Mr. Khrushchev, would steal it, a fact which she finds ought commend itself to the fellow actors in the summit drama.

A letter from the executive secretary of the executive committee of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Council on Human Relations comments on an editorial of May 21, "Is There a Place for Carver College?" They indicate that it was true that in the past Carver had been providing for special needs of local black students, but those special needs had occurred for two reasons, that Charlotte College was closed to blacks and blacks received inferior training in their "separate but equal" schools. When Charlotte College was in fact open to all qualified students and when all public schools gave adequate training, there would be no "special needs" for black students. When the editorial had said that there was no more reason for closing Carver than for closing North Carolina College in Durham, subsequently North Carolina Central University, or Greensboro A&T, it indicates that those latter two colleges had been built many years earlier and that both were located in communities where there was no other public college for local students to attend, untrue of Charlotte. It indicates that it was not a question of closing Carver at present but whether there was a plan to build and equip a new Carver College, when the trend was definitely away from segregated education at a time when there was not enough money to build one first-rate institution. They also indicate that no one was suggesting that Carver be eliminated overnight but that a new building program would provide time for change of policy in favor of non-discrimination in education, as Carver would be maintained during a transitional period. They also indicate that an enlightened community as Charlotte should not need a "white" college and a "Negro" college, that the community ought provide the first-rate educational opportunities for all of the people, that the college curriculum would need be varied to meet the needs of individuals who had different talents and aspirations and that there were no special needs as such for either blacks or whites.

The editors note that in quoting out of context from the editorial, the committeemen had eliminated a pertinent sentence: "There are no racial bars at either Charlotte or Carver Colleges." If there were no special needs for blacks or whites, as such, there were special needs, they find, of individuals which could be best served in special ways.

A letter writer from Springfield, Mass., indicates that recently a magazine editor had expressed concern over the possible "explosion" should the world's population continue to increase at the present rate. A few weeks earlier, M. C. Chagla, India's Ambassador to the U.S., had told a convocation of Boston University students that if the population continued to increase, he did not know whether in 15 years there would be enough food to go around. The writer suggests that he might overlook his anxiety about a food shortage, as at present there were millions in his country who were hungry but need not be if there were irrigation and intense cultivation of the land and brotherly cooperation between Moslem and Hindu peoples to utilize all of the natural resources of that country. The shortage might also be curtailed if tens of millions of people there did not regard the eating of beef as akin to cannibalism. He finds it ironic to speak of food shortage in the U.S. when it was plagued by an overabundance resulting from an unwise farm price-support policy. If only part of the tens of billions of dollars presently expended in preparation for war and destruction of life and property were used to benefit mankind, there would be few ill-fed, ill-clothed and ill-housed persons throughout the world. He questions whether the country really believed the inscription on its coins and trusted in God, that if it did, he did not think it would be paying out a quarter of its income for vast material armaments and boasting of its material military and economic might. "We can have peace, but only on God's terms."

A letter writer from Salisbury indicates that at present it appeared that Senator John F. Kennedy would be the Democratic nominee for the presidency in 1960. He finds that he appeared to be overcoming the handicap of being a Roman Catholic and that his running mate ought be a man from a large and doubtful state. The Republican opposition would be terrific if the present prosperity continued and would be much fiercer if the Republicans nominated Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, which he finds unlikely.

Having quite adequately figured out the convention results a year hence in 1960, he now must ferret out who is behind the plotting against the leader; or is the plotting in reserve for some future leader? Perhaps some leader who is old while in office, someone who will fall and, like Booth, break a leg, or the present one? Stay tuned for next week, and, in the meantime, recall the motto of the State of Virginia...

A letter writer had read that Charlotte was getting ready to fire another police chief and asks the City Council to hire someone good enough to hold the job. He suggests J. Edgar Hoover, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, Vice-President Nixon, Jayne Mansfield, Adlai Stevenson, jockey Eddie Arcaro, Konrad Adenauer, former Charlotte City Council member and former Mayor Herbert Baxter, Catfish Cole, leader of the Klan in the Carolinas, or Drew Pearson. He bets that any one of them would at least last through the year, with the possible exception of Ms. Mansfield.

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