The Charlotte News
Tuesday, June 16, 1959
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Geneva that Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and Secretary of State Christian Herter had met unexpectedly this date at Mr. Gromyko's request to discuss the final phase of the Big Four foreign ministers conference regarding Berlin. There arose immediate speculation among Western diplomats that Mr. Gromyko might have some new proposal to impart either to break the East-West deadlock over Berlin or some way to wind up the conference. Earlier, Mr. Herter had met with British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd amid reports that the Western powers were split regarding the problem of a summit conference following the foreign ministers meeting. Britain had been reported to be urging U.S. and French consideration of accepting a summit conference with Russia even if the present conference ended in failure. The Soviet Foreign Minister had gone to Mr. Herter's villa. In another conference crisis the previous week, Mr. Herter had gone to Mr. Gromyko's villa. The Russian Foreign Minister had been accompanied by the chief of the American section of the Soviet Foreign Office. Mr. Herter had been accompanied by Assistant Secretary of State Livingston Merchant and U.S. Ambassador to Moscow, Llewellyn Thompson. The Western allies were reported to be making an 11th hour attempt to reach a stopgap accord regarding Berlin after Mr. Gromyko had most recently proposed a one-year extension of the deadline for the Western allies to remove their troops from West Berlin, unanimously rejected by the Big Three Western foreign ministers as another ultimatum.
In Washington, it was reported by the Defense Department this date that a Navy patrol plane had been attacked by two MIG jet fighters over international waters of the Sea of Japan the previous day and that one of the crew had been seriously wounded. The incident had occurred about 85 miles east of Wonsan, North Korea. The first reports received in Washington had not made clear whether the U.S. plane had returned fire. Neither had those reports identified the attacking planes by nationality. The MIG's were Russian-type planes used by the Soviets, the Communist Chinese and the North Koreans. The Pentagon announcement said that radio reports had indicated that the jets had attacked without warning, firing tracer ammunition. They were thought to have been two in number and had made six firing runs and followed the P4M U.S. patrol plane to within 50 feet of the water as the plane took evasive action. The skies were clear and the ceiling was unlimited, according to the announcement. A tailgunner in the U.S. plane had been seriously wounded as his gun was knocked out on the first run, the only casualty reported. The attack had been initiated at an altitude of 7,000 feet, having taken place in the early afternoon on Tuesday, Japanese time. The Defense Department said that the P4M had been on a routine training patrol, based out of Iwakuni Marine Corps air facility on the Inland Sea of Japan's Honshu Island. The announcement said that skillful handling by the lieutenant commander who was the pilot had enabled the badly damaged plane to land safely at Miho Air Force Base on Honshu.
In Charleston, Ill., it was reported that a berserk gunman, who had held his half-sister hostage this date while a force of lawmen had ringed his house, had laid down his arms and walked out without firing the gun. The 22-year old man had also released his half-sister, 34, without harm. The end of the standoff around the white frame house had come after a lawyer talked with the man for about ten minutes explaining his rights. Law enforcement had been preparing to blast the house with teargas. Authorities said that they believed that the man was giving them the run-around and might keep the community in turmoil for hours. He had held his half-sister hostage for 17 hours. The strategy was aimed at forcing a gun duel to the death with a Charleston, Ill., police captain. In an interview with a reporter for the Decatur, Ill., Herald & Review, conducted through the screen door of the bungalow where the gunman was under siege, the man said that all he wanted was the police captain, blaming him for "three-fourths of my troubles" and his parents for the other fourth. He said that they had never spanked him when he needed discipline, that they had always called the police and the captain usually was the one who had responded. "You can't raise children unless you discipline them yourself—not call the police to do it for you."
In New York, the Board of Higher Education the previous night had voted to raise the salaries for the 2,600 faculty members of New York City's five municipal colleges, with the current salaries having a maximum of $15,400 per year for full professors and $10,900 for associate professors. Those salaries had been raised by $600. Assistant professors, presently receiving a top rate of $9,500, would receive an additional $400. Instructors, who received a maximum of $8,400, would get $300 more.
In Hull, England, it was reported that refusal by dockworkers to unload the dusty cargo of a Soviet ship had started a strike which had spread over Hull Harbor this date. Cargoes of 40 ships were untouched. The dock labor board reported that of a force of 4,057 dockworkers, 2,990 had gone on strike.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that the "Big Four" new members of the City Council would no longer refer to themselves that way, as the label was misleading, unfair and untrue. At a meeting of the Council the previous day, the voting of the four was indistinguishable from the "Little Three" incumbents, and the new members said it was the way it was going to be henceforth. One member of the new group, Gibson Smith, had told the newspaper this date that he resented the continual reference to the so-called "Big Four" and thought that the other new members also resented it. Two of the other three agreed and the fourth member, mayor pro tem Herbert Hitch, was out of town. The four had run for the first time the previous spring as the "Better Government" group, the label "Big Four" having been applied to them by the newspapers when it appeared they were sticking together as a team in their initial voting. Mr. Smith said that the label implied that they were just rubber stamps for one another, which was not true, that they were not voting together on issues, whether right or wrong, but were individuals who had their own ideas and own philosophies, that they had never agreed to vote as a bloc and that each would vote and had voted according to his own conscience.
Jerry Reece of The News reports that Mecklenburg County schools were fighting a running battle with "bootleg students" from neighboring counties, with County School officials calling it "a continuing problem". The problem was that students from neighboring Union, Cabarrus and Iredell Counties were attending Mecklenburg County schools. According to the assistant superintendent of the County Schools, some students had "legitimate" Mecklenburg County addresses, although living in other counties, as some of the rural postal routes continued into neighboring counties, for instance, that out of the Matthews Post Office ran into Union. Others had falsified their addresses to attend Mecklenburg schools. Those students usually slipped across the border via a back way and then walked out and caught Mecklenburg school buses on the main highway. The assistant superintendent said it was hard to find out which students were from outside the county, that they would have to call every student in and ask where the person lived and then would not know whether they were being told the truth. Other ruses were also used, perhaps the most clever having been reported the previous day by County School superintendent J. W. Wilson to the County School Board, relating that a Union County family had asked him about sending their children to Mecklenburg schools and were told that it could not be done, whereupon they asked what would occur if they moved to Mecklenburg, and he had told them that if they were legal Mecklenburg residents, then naturally their children could attend the local schools. Mr. Wilson had said that had been the last he had heard of the matter until just before the end of the school year when he received a phone call from a Union County parent who had been forced to take his children out of a Mecklenburg school and wanted to know how the other family sent their children there. The County school officials had checked the matter and found that the first family had moved a trailer into Mecklenburg and stated it as their residence.
John Kilgo of The News
reports that County Police had responded to the question of whether a
bear was roaming Mecklenburg County by saying, "Nah, it couldn't
be."
Maybe it was some sort of doppelganger
In Hollywood, it was reported that
George Reeves, who played Superman on television between 1952 and
1958, had committed suicide this date, with the precise motive not
yet determined. Friends said that Mr. Reeves had been discouraged
about not getting other roles after the "Superman"
In New York, it was reported that a
Philadelphia society woman had departed by plane the previous day for
Brazil to hunt for jaguars. The 26-year old woman wanted to learn to
kill the jungle cats with a spear. She had been accompanied by a
69-year old veteran white hunter in Brazil's Mato Grosso jungle
On the editorial page, "Dixie in the Court of Public Opinion" finds that, as determined by several newspapers removed from the scene, the South was on trial in the Tallahassee, Fla., case involving the rape of the black Florida A&M University coed by four white youths, ranging in age from 16 to 23. Those newspapers had opined that there was only one way for the South to be "exonerated" in the court of public opinion, that being for the four youths accused of the rape to be sentenced to death in the electric chair, that "social justice" demanded it.
"The synthetic John Browns shed their ink valiantly. Contemplating Harpers Ferry, they could afford to deal in bold assumptions." It finds that seldom had the nation been treated to a more chilling example of pious oversimplification, as virtually every news story from Tallahassee had trumpeted the incidental information that no white man had ever been executed for rape in Florida. Some Southern newspapers had joined those outside the region urging the jury to deliberate in the light of what "outsiders" would think. It was suggested that the South's honor had to be defended.
It finds that the South's honor had not been at stake in Tallahassee and neither had the South been on trial. The four youths stood before the bar of justice, involved in an ugly case but one which should have been decided on its merits. It was not a question of white justice, black justice or social justice, but a question of how a jury of the defendants' peers would decide and how a judge would rule and whether the four would be punished for their crimes.
The all white-male jury had convicted the four, as some had confidently predicted they would not, but recommended mercy, thus excluding under Florida law the death penalty, with the sentences to be determined by the court later.
But the post-mortems of the trial continued to stress some mystical form of regional guilt.
The Poplarville, Miss., case, wherein a black man accused of raping a white woman had been snatched from his jail cell by about nine white men disguised behind masks and hoods, taken several miles away to Bogalusa, La., and there murdered, had provided another case in point, where the cry had also been raised, "The South is on trial." It finds it like saying, "Society is on trial," when a child misbehaved or that actors were no good because John Wilkes Booth had shot President Lincoln.
It indicates that the South was a large region and contained many different types of people, was not all Tobacco Road, turnip patches and magnolias dripping with molasses. "It speaks with many voices—some strident, some calm. But there are Southerners who abhor racial injustice and who are trying to do something about it. They are succeeding, too, for the Poplarvilles are becoming fewer. There were 52 lynchings in 1915. There were only 11 between 1948 and 1955 and there has been just one since. They will continue to speak out against evil and somehow manage to correct it."
It concludes that it was easy enough for the "synthetic John Browns to nurture arrogant assumptions of superiority from a safe distance", easy for them to say, "You are all guilty!" It finds it easy, but also wrong.
"Democrats: Trumpet, Thorn & Whoosh" indicates that Senator Thruston Morton of Kentucky, RNC chairman, had sliced the air with a whoosh when he had attacked the meeting the previous weekend of the Democratic Advisory Council, saying that the greatest service it could render at the meeting was to disband and that he was sure Senator Lyndon Johnson, Senate Majority Leader, would agree.
The Council, which had such party leaders as Adlai Stevenson, former Secretary of State under President Truman, Dean Acheson, former President Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt among its members, had indeed suffered adversities. No one could claim that it spoke truly for all Democrats of the nation, nor even for a majority in the South. The Congressional party leadership could only view its periodic statements on party goals and issues as a thorn, and at best as a trumpeting in the distance which was irrelevant to their problems.
As power was currently parceled out in the parties, with a clear division between the "legislative" parties and the "White House" and governors mansion parties, a single mouthpiece seemed a bit exotic. The Republicans had recently announced the formation of a "Committee on Program and Progress", appearing as a cousin to the Democratic Advisory Council, though the Republicans claimed it was not, but rather had the aim of clarifying public debate in its small way.
Americans were aware of the way their national parties seemed to vaporize and even vanish between elections, and had always wanted them to stop that seasonal disappearance. The desire was not esthetic alone. The power of a party dissipated even in office when it ceased to have at least one strong "voice" and became instead a Babel.
The Democratic Advisory Council had fallen a good deal short of being a clarion voice, satisfactorily reflective of all elements of the party, not vanquishing Congressional leaders such as Senator Johnson and House Speaker Sam Rayburn. But the abundance of its critics might indicate that it was having an impact, even if it might be riding the trend of the future.
A distinguished political scientist, Stephen Bailey of Princeton, had endorsed the Council's idea as one pillar which would strengthen the American party system, having done so in "The Condition of Our National Political Parties", an important study just issued by the Fund for the Republic. In it, Mr. Bailey wrote: "The Democratic Advisory Council has already shown what can be done to give greater substance to the Democratic image. It has not yet demonstrated its full power to stimulate robust social criticism and widespread public debate on issues of national consequence. But there is no reason why it or its Republican counterpart, if formed, cannot eventually accomplish these ends. If this should come about in tandem with the development of more responsible party power in the Congress, we will have taken giant strides towards a desired goal: harnessing creative thinkers to judicious action."
It suggests that without other reforms, advisory councils would never become powerful clearinghouses for party ideas and that they should not if it meant stifling dissent. But they would serve a function by flushing public issues from pigeonholes in the Federal system, into which they sometimes wandered.
"Isn't This about When We Came In?" tells of problems reflected in headlines collected by Representative Peter Frelinghuysen, Jr., of New Jersey, including "Labor Bill Likely To Hold Congress", "Early Adjournment Not Probable", "Senate Inquiry Termed 'Political Racket, a Public Circus'", "Balanced Budget Urged for Sound Credit", and "Geneva Conference Quits until October".
If one thought they had a fresh, contemporary aura, they should not, as they had been clipped from a newspaper from June 12, 1934. It finds that if there was a moral, it was probably the one jotted down nearly 150 years earlier by Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel, the German philosopher, which went something like, "We learn from history that we learn nothing from history."
Bob Fain, writing in the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, in a piece titled "Lost Pleasures", finds pity for the poor youngsters of the present growing up in a world devoid of the old-fashioned rural party line. There were still party lines, but eavesdropping had become a matter of luck. One could pick up the receiver about any time and find someone talking, but there was no selection involved as in earlier times.
When the phone had been on the wall and everyone had a certain number of rings, life had been exciting and full of promise. When one heard two long rings and a short one, as opposed to three long ones, one knew who would be answering the phone, whether Mrs. Dull or Mrs. Tellitall, the latter always attracting listeners.
There was a high point and a semi-high point on the line, the latter being the long ring used to arouse "central", and the true high point being the long-distance call. The rings were short and impatient, and long-distance calls were no trouble for an experienced eavesdropper to spot, often getting out of bed for them.
Things had been informal on the party line and if one felt like butting in and saying, "Who's sick?" the listener would be told. A person could ask questions of the two people talking, tell the story the way the listener had heard it, or, in extreme cases, change the subject. There were no secrets.
"Ah, those days are gone forever. Thank goodness."
Drew Pearson indicates that a significant secret meeting between Admiral Lewis Strauss and Atomic Energy Commission chairman John McCone had taken place recently to discuss whether the Admiral could be confirmed as Secretary of Commerce, with members of the White House staff present. The Admiral confessed that his hope of confirmation looked dim. Since he would not tolerate the humility of defeat, he had considered the possibility of having his name withdrawn. That had brought vigorous opposition from other persons at the conference, pointing out that the President had stuck out his neck by saying that he would not withdraw the Admiral's name. One of those present had asked how they would break the news to the President. The final decision was that a superhuman effort would be made to swing wavering Senators into line and apply pressure on others to change their minds. The meeting had preceded one of the most intensive personal lobbying campaigns ever seen in the Senate, so intense that Senator Howard Cannon of Nevada had suggested a Senate probe, saying that he had heard of the most severe and coarse pressures being applied on individual Senators.
Mr. Pearson presents part of the lobbying pressure. Out of the blue, much-revered Baron Robert Silvercruys, Belgium Ambassador to the U.S., had received a phone call from Admiral Strauss. The Baron had nothing to do with American politics but happened to be married to the widow of the late Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut, who played a key role in developing the hydrogen bomb. The latter had written a 5,000-word letter to President Truman urging development of the bomb, but when Baroness Silvercruys had asked permission to publish the letter, Admiral Strauss had refused, claiming credit for the hydrogen bomb himself. Some critics had pointed out that publication of the letter would have refuted that claim. The Baroness had not hesitated about giving Senators her views on Admiral Strauss when asked.
In his surprise phone call to the Belgian Ambassador, Admiral Strauss had indicated that the Baroness had been very aloof to him of late, but he understood that the Baron was retiring soon and he wanted to know whether he would like to be president of Studebaker Motors, as they needed a man like him. The Ambassador was retiring after a long and distinguished career, but did not feel like trading his wife's feeling toward Admiral Strauss for a job.
At UMW headquarters, Admiral Strauss had called in person on John L. Lewis, head of the union, to urge him to swing the two West Virginia Senators into line. The Admiral argued that he was the man who had placed an embargo on residual oil imports into the U.S. which had been hurting West Virginia coal. Mr. Lewis had promptly gotten busy and sent word to Senators Robert Byrd and Jennings Randolph of West Virginia to change their votes. They had been opposed to Admiral Strauss's nomination, but now Senator Randolph was in favor of it and Senator Byrd was wavering.
Joseph Alsop tells of a conversation in the embassy of a neutral country with exceptional experience with the Kremlin in one of the capitals behind the Iron Curtain, the subject being the Berlin crisis. The ambassador had asked what America's intentions really were, being reminded of the President's declaration that he "would not give an inch". At that, the ambassador had laughed lightly and remarked that he was not asking about the announced American policy, but about the real American policy. The reply was that the President had meant what he said, whereupon the ambassador blanched with alarm and stated: "But if your President really means what he says, in God's name why does he not act as though he meant it? In the Kremlin they judge by acts, not words. They may misunderstand. They may go too far. And then there will be a real danger of war that can destroy us all."
Mr. Alsop describes it as his single most vivid memory of a European journey not lacking in vivid experiences. What the ambassador's reaction had implied to a seeming statement of the obvious had in turn been confirmed by many other observations, including that of Poland's Foreign Minister Rapacki and Hungary's Communist boss, Janos Kadar, on down, the Hungarian and Polish leaders and officials whom he was permitted to see having made it plain that they did not believe that the President was in earnest about "not giving an inch" on Berlin. The smug, superior, incredulous smiles of the two or three Soviet diplomats to whom he was able to talk had implied the same thing in a more infuriating manner.
He suggests that perhaps the indicators pointed in the wrong direction, but they seemed to be confirmed by Nikita Khrushchev's disturbing recent speech in Riga. Speaking specifically of Secretary of State Herter's refusal to give away the Western position at Berlin on Andrei Gromyko's word of command, Mr. Khrushchev had angrily said: "Even if the policy of positions of strength is irrevocably suffering defeat after defeat, the Western powers continue to stick to this policy. They wish to shun decisions on urgent questions aimed at relaxing international tensions and strengthening peace. But however these gentlemen may try, they are not able to blow a brave spirit into this bankrupt policy of positions of strength." Mr. Alsop finds it to have been another way of saying that the President was faking about "not giving an inch", which meant, if anything, that the President would risk war rather than surrender Berlin's freedom. By the same token, it was obvious that Mr. Khrushchev believed that the President was faking for two reasons, the first and major one being the unfavorable change in the balance of world military power which had been flaccidly accepted by the President and his Administration, and the second and more immediate one being the President's total failure to date to take any of the precautionary measures, either military or political, which the Berlin crisis logically demanded.
He finds that it did not mean that the Berlin crisis itself or the meeting at Geneva of the foreign ministers would necessarily end in disaster. By seeming not to be serious about Berlin, by encouraging a mood of corseted complacency in the U.S., by taking no military precautions of any kind, by going on with business as usual and budget as usual, the U.S. Government was multiplying the risks greatly. "If you seem not to be in a situation like the Berlin crisis, you really invite your enemy to occupy positions which you cannot tolerate, and from which he cannot easily retreat."
He indicates that he had a feeling that the Western allies would somehow get around the immediate Berlin corner, that feeling not yet based on much more than the old rule that "God takes care of drunkards and children, and the United States." It could still be hoped that the fact that the President really did mean what he said about Berlin would dawn on the Soviets before it was too late, and that perhaps they had been changing their minds during the weekend in Geneva, and if they were to begin to take the President seriously, there was an opening for an accommodation regarding Berlin.
It left the question of the next time and the time after that, however, with the balance of power still shifting in favor of the Kremlin. It would continue to do so until some years had passed and the missile gap was closed. "If we go on through all this period not seeming to be serious, the old rule about drunkards, children, and the United States will hardly hold good forever."
Vermont Royster, writing in the Wall Street Journal, finds it the season of commencement speeches and that if the speakers followed the usual pattern, many would be deploring the mess which the older generations had made of the world and exhorting the new generation to come forth and set things right.
It was true that things were not well in the world, and that the danger existed that the allegory of Adam would come true, that too poor in wisdom, humanity would destroy itself in an atomic holocaust by the very increase of its knowledge. Nor had the current generation been immune to decay. "In the realm of the spirit we have let many of the old values—the faith in the dignity and power of the individual man—wither under the preachment that Society is all and we must put our trust only in the State. We have often succumbed to the temptation to spend the nation's substance now for our own enjoyment and let the next generation worry about the long run. After all, in Lord Keynes' phrase, 'In the long run we are all dead.'"
So he would not prophesy for the next generation a tranquil life, as they might have great economic trials and might be called upon to die for other men's mistakes or crimes. It might be that humanity was standing on the edge of an atomic Dark Age.
But he wishes to suggest somewhat different thoughts. "The truth is, it was ever thus. In Alfred North Whitehead's words, all good things stand always upon the 'razors edge' between preservation and destruction. Western civilization, the idea of individual liberty, the concept of economic freedom that made this country rich and great, these things did not come to their present development by the road of tranquility."
However it might be romanticized at present on television, it had been no easy task to carve out the continent and it was unnecessary to be sentimental about the people who had done it to recognize that they too had their moments of despair and their prophets of doom. Even recently, the fathers and grandfathers of the new generation had interrupted their lives to fight two world wars against barbarism, and had somehow dug their way through a depression more cruel than any of the younger people could imagine. Those generations had done it with courage and with the faith that what they were suffering to preserve was something worth preserving for posterity.
The younger generation was going forth into a world which they had never made, but they had also come to homes and schools and an ordered way of living in freedom, in dignity and peace, which they had also never made. Though it was not the best of all possible worlds, it would serve. The country, thanks to others, had not fallen to barbarism, even if it still threatened. It had not thus far succumbed to the decay, even if it suffered from it.
"Like any commencement speaker, we will hope the new generation will do better. But if they are to do better, we suggest they will need a regard for their own posterity and the wisdom to preserve for the future what is good in their own heritage. And to tell the truth, we will be grateful if they do as well."
Mr. Royster had been the commencement speaker at UNC in Chapel Hill two weeks earlier.
A letter writer asks why Charlotte officials always had to import men from other cities to fill the most important offices, being the largest city in the state and having just as many intelligent leaders as could be found in any other city in the country. It had imported its last City Manager from a small town and then doubled his salary, had imported a smoke engineer from the North, which the city did not need, and now had imported from a smaller town than Charlotte, Burlington, the new Police Chief, Jesse James. He finds it a reflection on every citizen of the city that it could not manage its own affairs without importing men from outside the town and then doubling their salaries.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.