The Charlotte News
Thursday, July 2, 1959
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Senate this date had voted for a two-year, two billion dollar program of foreign development loans to be financed by direct appropriations from Congress, a compromise, offered by the Democratic and Republican leaders, of a hot issue which had developed between the Administration and influential members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The Senate had accepted the compromise by a voice vote. While the total amount was greater than the President had advocated, the Democrats yielded to his view that the funds ought be handled as appropriations, subject to Congressional review. Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and others had wanted a five-year, five-billion dollar program to be financed by simply authorizing the foreign aid administration to borrow the money from the Treasury. The President had originally proposed a one-year, 700-million dollar loan program, but had indicated that he would go along with a larger program based on direct appropriations. Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, the Republican Minority Leader, had presented the Administration viewpoint in contending that the borrowing plan amounted to "backdoor raids" on the Treasury. The compromise had washed out a scrap which had seen the Administration with a 48 to 42 initial vote on Wednesday night.
In Vatican City, it was reported that Pope John XXIII appealed this date to the leaders of rival nations to "try every approach" for peace because a war with nuclear weapons would destroy victor and vanquished alike. The Pope had also appealed for Christians to unite, urging the press, movies and television to counteract what he called a spreading tendency toward falsehood and immorality. "Truth, unity and peace" were the subjects of his first encyclical letter to the bishops since his coronation eight months earlier. The encyclical had begun with the Latin, "Ad Petri cathedrum", meaning "Near Peter's chair". It was dated June 29, the feast day of St. Peter, and was released for publication this date. The pontiff had warned that if nations did not aim at "fraternal unity which must rest on the precepts of justice and be nourished by charity, conditions of gravest crisis remain. As a result, all prudent men complain and grieve that it seems to be uncertain whether the same events are moving toward the establishing of a solid, true and genuine peace, or are slipping in complete blindness toward a new and frightful warlike conflagration. We say in complete blindness: a new war breaks out, nothing else will await or confront all peoples, (such are the dreadful armaments which our age brings into play) but appalling destruction and ruin; and this, whether they are victor or vanquished. Why prepare death dealing weapons against our brother? Already there has been enough strife among men. Already too many cemeteries of those fallen in war cover the earth's surface and solemnly warn that all should be, at long last, brought back to harmony, unity and a just peace."
In Covington, La., it was reported that doctors had said that Louisiana Governor Earl Long, working restlessly day and night on fourth-term campaign plans, might have a slightly failing heart. One of the four doctors attending the 63-year old Governor, said that he had a slight heart failure the previous day. There was no indication that the Governor had suffered a coronary attack, according to the doctor, but the doctors were concerned about his condition and had stayed through the night at his motel headquarters in Covington. The Governor had suffered a heart attack in 1950. Earlier, he had announced plans to adopt a 14-year old youth he had met while they were both patients at the mental facility in Galveston, Tex., with the boy's parents having granted their consent for the adoption. The youth had been hospitalized with a high blood pressure condition. The Governor, in the midst of a separation suit from his 58-year old wife, Blanche, said: "He got to likin' me and I got to likin' him… I've always wanted to have a son. Well, I wanted a daughter, too, but I can't chaperone one under the present circumstances."
In Brussels, Belgium, Eddy Gilmore of the Associated Press reports that Prince Albert of Liege, heir presumptive to the Belgian throne, had this date married a beautiful blonde Italian princess who had broken down with giggles midway through the glittering church wedding. The 21-year old bride had been asked by Joseph Cardinal Van Roey, the officiating clergyman, "Have you come here of your own free will to engage in marriage?" to which she had replied in French, "Oui," and then suddenly halted, giggled and could not go on. She blushed, raised her left hand to her lips and finally smothered her laughter. Her solemn 25-year old groom, kneeling to her right before the primate of Belgium, had given his bride a sympathetic look, which seemed to steady her. With only an occasional faint trembling smile, she completed the long ceremony performed amid medieval pageantry and splendor in the Roman Catholic collegiate church of Sts. Michael and Gudule. When she had taken communion, she had broken down and cried, her long hands once again flying to her face. The groom, younger brother of bachelor King Baudoin, had been grim and nervous through the long ceremonies which had begun with a civil marriage service in the Brussels royal palace. The political rancor which had changed the arrangements for the wedding, originally scheduled for the Vatican with Pope John officiating, had been pushed into the background. As the couple rode in an open car along the procession route from the palace to the church for the religious ceremony, the bride had waved gaily and the crowds cried for "Paola! Paola! Paola!", the bride's given name—apparently having a different meaning from "payola", soon to rock the rock world and radio station deejays.
In Detroit, it was reported that a young woman had been stabbed to death the previous night on a residential street in the same general area where a knifer had killed a young mother less than six weeks earlier. The 20-year old woman was stabbed and slashed 16 times. She was one of the ten children of a retired tool maker, and had died on the lawn of a home. A high school graduate and supermarket cashier, she had been killed at around 10:00 p.m. Shortly beforehand, police had answered a call in the area about a man reported to be brandishing a knife, but the man had not been found. The woman was killed on her way home after accompanying her boyfriend to his job at a bakery in the vicinity. Residents of the neighborhood had reported that they heard screams and then the girl's body had been found. The prior May 21, a 27-year old divorced mother of two had been stabbed to death while strolling alone at night about two miles from where the previous night's killing had taken place. At the dead woman's home, her father, 65, was frantic in grief and vowed vengeance against the killer, saying: "I'll see him on a slab. I'll cut him up in little bits. If I have to go to prison for life, I'll get the guy."
In Beaufort, S.C., it was reported that a Marine private, 24, had been sentenced to death in the electric chair this date for the rape of a 47-year old black woman. The defendant, white, was sentenced to die on August 14. If carried out, it would be the first recorded case in the country of a white man put to death for the rape of a black woman. That, by the way, cannot be calculated as a step forward in race relations. Rather, it is a step backward in human relations generally.
Ann Sawyer of The News reports that City and County School officials this date had said yes, no, and maybe to 14 suggestions for feeding needy hungry schoolchildren. The recommendations, primarily concerned with lunchroom operations, had been made by a Social Planning Council committee which had been studying the problem since the previous December. The recommendations were part of a major report to be turned over to the Social Planning Council early the following week. County Schools superintendent J. W. Wilson said that he would discuss the recommendations with the State supervisor and his own lunchroom supervisor. The City Schools superintendent, Dr. E. H. Garinger, said that he had suggested to William Van Allen, the committee chairman, that a subcommittee of the study group meet with the City School Board and others from the office sometime during the summer for a discussion of the report. The problem of hungry schoolchildren was greater in the City Schools than in the County. Mr. Wilson said that his principals, by the end of the school year, had reported that all but some marginal cases had been receiving lunches. The "big rub" in the City System, according to Dr. Garinger, was the estimated 1,200 children on the Aid to Dependent Children program. They received some money through the Welfare Department for lunches, but not a sufficient amount. Neither was there any check to see that the money was used for school lunches. The superintendent said that he believed the City could take care of 700 to 800 other low-income family children during the ensuing school year, provided the lunchroom operation was as good as it had been in the current year and if the voluntary contributions continued. As for feeding the Aid to Dependent Children, he said, "If we attempt to feed that group, I believe we would put ourselves out of business." Raising prices might help, but participation in the lunchroom program probably would be reduced, according to the superintendent. The newspaper had requested that both superintendents comment on each of the 14 recommendations made by the study committee and their suggestions and reactions are listed, most on a separate page.
Emery Wister of The News reports that the long July Fourth weekend would begin the following day and that before Sunday was done, over a score of persons might have lost their lives on Carolina streets and highways. The Carolina Motor Club estimated that about 12 persons would be killed in accidents in North Carolina and 8 in South Carolina, that the number might be less, but could be higher unless motorists drove with care and caution. To make certain of it, the State Highway Patrol was ordering all of its 600 men to duty, to be equipped with everything from tire jacks and fire extinguishers to pistols and radar. They are going to hit you on the head with the tire jacks and the fire extinguishers, should they run out of ammunition. Don't cross them.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that the City Sanitation Department's most loyal worker had been on the job for five years without pay. Kokomo worked hard every day from 7:30 to 4:30 and loved it, working the Myers Park section of the city off trash truck No. 22, having only missed a few days on the job. Kokomo's family background, mixed, had never been held against him, and he was one of the best-known and best-liked citizens in an area famous for snooty citizens. He belonged to a family but did not stay home much. Five years earlier, he had fallen in love with truck No. 22 and the men who worked from it, and started following them on their rounds through the Myers Park section. Each morning, he greeted the workers, took off with them, and returned home only at the end of the day. He could be seen daily trotting in front of the big truck, with his dogtags jingling—obviously a remnant of prior military service. Once per week, Kokomo took a slight detour and would go to a Providence Road branch bank and wait while the men cashed their paychecks. One of the workers said that he believed Kokomo knew that it was payday, even though he did not receive any pay himself. Hopefully, Kokomo will not launch on any killing spree.
In New York, it was reported that the Schmitt brothers' quartet of Two Rivers, Wisc., had won the quartet contest of the Lions International on Wednesday. The four brothers were from a family of 17 children, 11 boys and six girls.
On the editorial page, "It's the Duty of Schoolmen To Act" indicates that the duty to provide school lunches for Mecklenburg County's neediest children rested heavily on the doorsteps of two boards of education this date and needed to be recognized and accepted as such. In recommending that the City and County's School authorities ought shoulder the responsibility, a special committee of the Social Planning Council had reached a completely logical conclusion.
It would be a difficult task but one which was necessary, as hundreds of children ought not be permitted to go hungry each day in the two largest and finest school systems in the state.
The special committee, headed by attorney William Van Allen, had gone to work in December, 1958, at a time when the plight of hungry schoolchildren had been brought to the public's attention in a series of articles prepared by News education writer Ann Sawyer. The Social Planning Council had ordered the investigation. Mr. Van Allen's group had assembled, tabulated and correlated a mass of statistical data, soliciting and receiving the active cooperation of state and local school authorities, surveying the manner in which the problem was tackled in other areas. Its general conclusions were that it was entirely clear that a need existed and that the need had not been met, and that the responsibility for meeting the need rested with the school authorities. The committee had also made a number of constructive suggestions as to how the required number of free and reduced-cost lunches could be provided.
Mr. Van Allen and his colleagues had performed a distinguished public service and the entire community, it indicates, ought be grateful for their efforts. The problem, however, had not been solved, only defined and certain recommendations made. Significant progress would be made only when the responsibility for its solution was accepted and vigorous action taken. The community was anxiously awaiting those developments.
"Rowe Raced to Consolidation's Rescue" indicates that Oliver Rowe, the News 1958 "Man of the Year", was to thank for rescuing the City-County school consolidation plans from oblivion, that his one-man crusade in rural Mecklenburg the previous year had given the old idea the new life which it needed. On his own initiative, Mr. Rowe had spoken to virtually every PTA meeting in the County system, mobilizing support for merger. Later, he had pleaded the case for consolidation eloquently before several key city groups, notably the Classroom Teacher Association, whose members had been extremely reluctant to back the plan.
It had been Mr. Rowe who had sensed the peculiar significance of the perimeter area in the consolidation question and had been the first to argue that a bitter battle for possession of that vital area, to be annexed at the beginning of 1960, would result, unless it could be shared by both the City and County. He found that the only answer would be consolidation. He had no axes to grind and was not a member of either the City or County School Boards, although was tremendously interested in education and was a trustee of the Charlotte Community College System. In his long campaign, he was merely acting as a private citizen who recognized the public need and had fought for it.
He had allies at crucial moments during the crusade, including Richard Thigpen, Thomas L. Robinson, former publisher of The News, Lacy Ranson, Douglas Aitken, Earle J. Gluck and others. But when the chips had been down, it had been Mr. Rowe who had rushed to consolidation's rescue and had battled most effectively for it, earning the community's salute.
"The Petition that We'll Never Sign" indicates that the previous day it had received a letter from Robert Welch, chairman of the "Committee Against Summit Entanglement", asking the recipient as "patriotic leaders" to circulate pocket petitions which would urge, "Please, Mr. President, Don't Go."
From the fine print, it gathered that summit conferences were wanted by "appeasement-minded politicians" and opposed by "firm anti-Communist statesmen."
At the risk of seeming "unpatriotic" and "appeasement-minded", it was filing Mr. Welch's petitions in its wastebasket. For in the first place, the President had made no commitment to attend a summit meeting, as he and Secretary of State Herter and the State Department had said that the Soviets had first to provide evidence of a willingness to negotiate seriously and that the U.S. would not attend the summit under blackmail conditions. Surely, it suggests, those conditions were honorable enough for the stoutest "patriot". Thus, it did not share Mr. Welch's committee's wish to palsy the nation's diplomatic hand with advanced emotional pleas that "to negotiate is to surrender". It thus rejects the committee's view that allied diplomats were so soft-headed that they would be taken in by Premier Nikita Khrushchev and that the only possible Kremlin motive would be to trick the Western allies.
It rejects its suggestion that the President had to have the continuing "advice" of the Senate in any "constitutional" negotiations, indicating that Presidents had negotiated directly since George Washington had sought treaties with the Indians during the 18th Century. It rejects the suggestion that it was for the President alone to decide whether a summit conference would or would not take place, that the U.S. was part of the NATO alliance and the desires of its allies, who were scarcely hundreds of miles from the military threat of Russia, had to carry weight, as otherwise, the nation might as well retire in isolation. It also rejects the idea that the nation's foreign policy could safely be scored to a religious hatred of "the tyrants of the Kremlin".
It suggests that its urging of refusal to go to the summit on any terms, however favorable to the U.S., would provide the Soviets their biggest propaganda break since the cold war had begun. It also indicates that it was better to negotiate for years than to be cremated by the fires of an hydrogen bomb in 1.4 seconds.
It should be noted that Mr. Welch was the head and co-founder of the John Birch Society. He was from North Carolina originally and had graduated from UNC, having been admitted in 1912 at age 12, known affectionately by his fellow students as little "Bobby", better at math than philosophy. Today, you need not look far for the influence of his extremist views, as he would have to be considered a primary philosophical influence, to the extent that any philosophy enters into it, on Magaville, U.S.A., his mantra having been isolationism, America First, as his Nazi-sympathizing predecessors of the late 1930's.
"In Dog Days: Poetry Didn't Work" begins by reciting: "O, who can hold a fire in his hand/ By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?" It indicates that in the poetic flourish, presently 3 1/2 centuries old, William Shakespeare had wondered what poor mortals could do in 100-degree heat.
It had wondered, too. With his words in mind, it had launched into a day's regimen, after the way of the Hindu fire walkers, to put mind over matter, conquering the climate by thinking on cool images. At 7:30 in the morning, the sun was already high and hot on Sardis Road in Charlotte. "Coatless in the glare, we motored along. From a hill, one could see the Charlotte skyline over the woods in the distance, already white-washed in early sunlight. No frosty Caucasus this? Willfully, we let the mind gallop until suddenly those far-off skyscrapers, glistening, were not buildings at all but snowy mountain peaks. Thus inspired, we coasted dreamily along—until a 'Men Working' sign broke the spell. We swerved quickly to avoid a hole in the asphalt where yesterday's heat had melted it."
And it goes on until entering the News building… "Two eyes adjusted to the hard glare outside, the interior took on that peculiar, swimming dimness. Ah! we thought. Here we are, deep in a pool, where the sight of objects has the same shadowy dimness. We promptly tripped on a raised threshold. It was then that our ascetic resolve gave way. We decided that Shakespeare could have his poetry and his frosty Caucasus too. Somehow it seemed easier just to sit with a cool drink and swelter, to reflect ruefully over the poet's conclusion which we hadn't bothered to remember at the time: 'Oh no! The apprehension of the good/ Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.'"
Bill Vaughan, writing in the Kansas City Star, in a piece titled "Sherlock Is a Square", indicates that a British film company had enraged the Baker Street irregulars by announcing that its advertisements for a remake of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" would not mention the name of Sherlock Holmes. The company said, "Teen-agers think of Holmes as a fuddy duddy who appealed to their great-grandparents."
The piece indicates puzzlement as to why the producer would think that the name of Sherlock Holmes would drive the teenagers away and yet assumed that they would be attracted by a title so reeking of fuddy duddyism as "The Hound of the Baskervilles". It suggests that to a teenage audience, such a film might as well be "Lassie". If it were "The Hound from Outer Space", "The Thing in the Black Kennel", or "I Was a Teen-Age Hell Hound", then the show might do a little business at the drive-ins.
You're out of touch, daddio, for now it would need to be "The Hound Who Saved Tom Dooley from the Gallows Pole". All of that outer space jive is now old hat, as the folk movement is now sweeping the nation's youth. Get with it. No self-respecting folksinger would ever sing a song about outer space. Like, that is so unhip.
Maybe they could call it "The Hound of Zorro Rides Again to the Rescue", the episode
Drew Pearson indicates that Admiral John "Dutch" Will, a commander of the Military Sea Transport Service, had resigned during the week to become president of American Export Lines, the company which had hauled a considerable amount of Government freight assigned to it by the MSTS. American Export Lines carried about 65 percent of the Government's military freight to the Middle East, all of it allocated through Admiral Will's MSTS.
When the Admiral was asked about it, he admitted that the figure was probably correct, but explained that it was because American Export Lines was the major U.S. company serving the Middle East, adding that MSTS freight allocations were recommended by the American Flag East Coast and Gulf Shipping Operations and that MSTS merely accepted its recommendations.
Congressmen had been interested in the fact that an American admiral was doing business, even indirectly, with an important shipping line, and was now going to become president of that line. Admiral Will would be drawing a retired admiral's full pension from the taxpayers and at the same time would be paid well by the private shipping line which benefited from Government shipping, again paid for by the taxpayers.
Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter seemed to have it all figured out as to who his successor on the Court would be. As the oldest member of the Court, he had reached the retirement age some years earlier but was still clinging tenaciously to the bench, despite a coronary attack which had made him inactive for part of the previous winter. Supreme Court justices could now retire at full pay at the age of 70, and Justice Frankfurter was presently 77. According to Supreme Court intimates, Justice Frankfurter would resign after Henry Friendly, general counsel for Pan American Airways, was confirmed and firmly in place on the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. Members of the Wall Street legal fraternity wondered why Mr. Friendly had accepted appointment to the Court of Appeals, given his position in the hierarchy of Pan American Airways. It had now been learned that he had received assurances from Justice Frankfurter that after a brief service on the Court of Appeals, Mr. Friendly could probably be appointed to the Supreme Court. Justice Frankfurter reasoned that President Eisenhower was making all of his Supreme Court appointments from judges on the Courts of Appeals and that Mr. Friendly was Jewish, that Justice Frankfurter's resignation would thus call for the appointment of a Jewish judge to replace him, and therefore, with proper backing, the Pan American counsel would succeed Justice Frankfurter in about a year.
In fact, Justice Frankfurter would not retire until 1962, and President Kennedy would appoint prominent labor lawyer, Arthur Goldberg, in his place. Justice Goldberg would be induced by President Johnson in 1965 to resign from the Court to become Ambassador to the U.N., replacing deceased Adlai Stevenson, with President Johnson then appointing his old friend and personal counsel from Texas, Abe Fortas, to the Court. Justice Fortas, in turn, would be appointed by President Johnson to become Chief Justice in 1968, upon the announced resignation of Chief Justice Earl Warren. The nomination of Justice Fortas would be blocked by a filibuster led by Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and some of his segregationist pals, upset by having another liberal as Chief Justice—who would have been the third Chief appointed by a Democratic President since President Grover Cleveland appointed Melville Fuller to the position in 1888, the only others having been Chief Justice Harlan Stone, a Republican appointee to the Court by President Coolidge, elevated to Chief by FDR in 1941, and Fred Vinson, appointed by President Truman in 1946 at the death of Chief Justice Stone. That, by the way, remains the case to this date. The last time a Democratic President appointed a Chief Justice was in 1946. Wrap your head around that, little Magaville resident, historically challenged as all of you are.
And if you think that does not directly affect your daily lives, along with the glaring fact that, thanks to the manipulation which went on by then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2016 and again in 2020, rigging two appointments to maintain a Republican majority on the Supreme Court, ignoring standing precedents on Supreme Court appointments in each separate case, in 2016 when the Senate refused hearings on President Obama's appointee, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Merrick Garland to replace deceased Justice Antonin Scalia, and in 2020, less than two months before the election, when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, replaced by the rushed confirmation of Trump's third appointment, that of Amy Coney Barrett, there has been that Republican majority continuously since 1972 under President Nixon, you are sadly mistaken. Not for one moment in the last 54 years has there been a Democratic-appointed majority of the Supreme Court, even if that should have been the case by early 2021, had precedent served to guide the traditionally insulated nominating process rather than unprincipled politics.
Again, little stupid Magaville resident, wrap your head around it. You do not understand how the country works. It is not an autocratic kingdom with only lip-service paid to manipulated Constitutional procedures, that is, if we are to continue to have a country living under democratic principles and not Trump principles of unbridled corporate greed, corruption and ignorance of ethics and morality.
Walter Lippmann indicates that the latest Gallup poll continued to show a large majority for the President and almost as large a majority for the Democrats in Congress, with the President's popularity at 62 percent and the Democratic Party in Congress at 59 percent. While the poll was not infallible, in forecasting elections its range of error was never nearly so big that it would change the general conclusion, that at present, the country, as it had in 1956, would vote overwhelmingly for the President and for a Democratic Congress, as it had demonstrated in the midterms of 1958.
For 1960, the first question was whether the President's popularity was personal and specific to him or whether it was more generically "Republican" and thus could be inherited by Vice-President Nixon or Governor Nelson Rockefeller. There was no certain answer and one could only guess. Mr. Lippmann guesses that for the presidency there might well be a Republican majority brought together by two main popular beliefs and one political tradition, that the majority might believe that the Republicans were more likely to avoid war than were the Democrats and that with business booming, the Republicans were more likely to resist inflation and keep taxes from rising. The third was the circumstance that because the Democratic Party consisted of several different factions, it had a sure majority only in Congressional elections, as in those, each faction could vote separately, for example for segregation in Mississippi and against segregation in New York. Those separate votes for factional representatives, when combined in Congress, represented a large majority. But when all of those factions had to unite on a single candidate for the presidency, it was not certain that there would be a Democratic majority.
If it was a fact that there was a Republican majority in the presidential contest, it was obviously a fragile and precarious one. There were many more Democrats than Republicans and it meant that the Republican candidate had to attract while the Democratic candidate would have to repel many Democrats, about 10 percent of them. That was not easy for the Republican candidate if the Democrats were able to compromise their worst differences regarding civil rights and present a candidate who created confidence in his ability to conduct foreign affairs and did not frighten the taxpayers and those living on fixed incomes.
While there might be a Republican majority for the presidency, it could only exist when the Republican candidate could, as with General Eisenhower in 1952, attract Democrats. That was critical for the choice between Mr. Nixon and Mr. Rockefeller.
Mr. Nixon's greatest weakness was that, having been a bitter fighter against Democrats, he had acquired so many bitter enemies among Democrats such that unless by some turn of fate he were to become President long enough before the election to establish a new image for himself, he was the Republican who most certainly united Democrats against Republicans. That was why the Democratic politicians were generally hoping that Mr. Nixon would be nominated and were quite afraid of a nomination of Mr. Rockefeller. What they feared in the latter was his appeal, as shown in New York in 1958, to Democratic voters. In estimating Mr. Rockefeller's chances of being nominated, he asserts that Mr. Nixon had one enormous advantage, that it was dangerous for the Republican professionals to oppose him or even to wait too long to come out in favor of him because of the possibility that he might become President with all the patronage and power of the White House at his disposal.
The main problem for the Democrats was that the leadership of the party was in Congress and when that was the case, the capture of the presidency was secondary to retaining control of Congress. The Congressional leaders, not only Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson and House Speaker Sam Rayburn, but the old gentlemen who were chairman of most of the committees, were much more important and powerful with a Republican in the White House than they would be with a Democrat. There was in them therefore no urgency and passion regarding obtaining the presidency for the party. They could hear, with tranquility, the cries of the activist Northern Democrats who wanted to make a record so that they could carry the Northern states for the Democratic candidate.
What the Congressional leaders would want in the presidential candidate for the Democrats would be, first, a man who would not be a liability in any of the regions where Democrats were elected to Congress. After that, they would be looking for a winner and it was there that the national leaders outside Congress would have to exert themselves to overcome the bias of the Congressional politicians and to converge on a candidate who could win because he was fitted to be President.
Doris Fleeson indicates that Republican civil rights strategy was to pass a strong civil rights bill the following year. Majority Leader Johnson's aim was to pass a "moderate" civil rights bill at the current session so as to obviate a potential party-splitting fight on that issue in the presidential election year to follow. Republicans wanted the issue in the form they were working toward because they expected it to help them in the big states in the presidential election. The form was well-suited to both of their candidates for the presidency, Vice-President Nixon or Governor Rockefeller.
Democrats were not so united on the merits of the strategy of Senator Johnson. Liberals believed it was better suited to the Senator as a presidential candidate than to the party nationally. The South would go along because it regarded it as the lesser evil.
Tests of strength had begun in the current week and what might happen was difficult to predict because actually four, not the traditional two, parties were involved, the four being the Republican liberals, the Republican conservatives, the Democratic liberals and the Southern Democrats. It had never been easy during the current session of Congress to tell what side those groups would take, as all the legislation thus far had been a compromise rather than on a clear point of principle. Senator Johnson had proved adept at getting their "fustest with the mostest", but the temper of the Senate Democrats was hardening, as debate during the current week on the tax conference report had shown.
To get their way, Republicans would only need employ a judicious amount of foot-dragging and absenteeism in the key committee sessions, making it hard to obtain a quorum for consideration of bills. They could work on Midwest members in whose states civil rights were considerably less than a burning issue. Those methods were less obvious than the old open coalition with Southern Democrats, a union which had been becoming increasingly untenable.
Senator Johnson had a problem with the Democratic liberals, some of whom operated from strong conviction and all of whom had election problems in the area of minority rights. When the Senator had a bare majority to work with in the Senate, his arguments for compromise had seemed more impressive than they did at present, when the Democrats had an overwhelming majority. Senator Johnson could be expected to offer pledges to work for a powerful civil rights plank in the Democratic platform at the convention. He could do that because Texas would not be a problem for him at that point. In fact, it was generally believed that the platform shaped at the convention would have to be extreme before Senator Johnson would refuse to stand on it. But that prospect, in the view of many Democrats, was not an adequate substitute for a strongly liberal Congressional record.
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, notices that they were overrun by ants again and that the birds had gotten all the cherries. Meanwhile, he had been bitten on his thumb by a large lizard which the dogs had cornered and which he was helping to get over a wall, when one of the dogs had bitten him for helping the lizard. A low-flying songbird had decorated the brow of his father-in-law as the latter amiably sipped his mint julep in the garden.
He believes that the animals were going to take over again and if there were anything left after the big blast, it would not be wearing a slim-line suit and carrying a briefcase but rather wriggling, hopping, crawling, flying, leaping or slinking, and it would never have heard of either Nikita Khrushchev or Jack Paar.
Recently, a bear had been shot wandering harmlessly around Baltimore, but all of the forces of humanity had gathered together against the bruin, which had obviously escaped from a Senate hearing. They had used police dogs and expended 100 rounds of ammunition to exterminate the bear, an animal which most nearly resembled man with his fur off. "Some police force."
A poor alligator had been found swimming in a creek outside of Langhorne, Pa. Nobody thought anything about an alligator in Florida, but one had come north in search of integration and so a police sergeant had mowed it down with a rifle. "Democracy? Pfui!"
An invasion of large snapping turtles had recently invaded Norwalk, Conn., and anxious suburbanite mothers had again called the police fearing that their monstrous children might be consumed by the monstrous turtles. He assures that no self-respecting turtle would eat a commuter's child, but was rather the other way about.
Despite the fact that he had been bitten by everything from mosquitoes to a chipmunk which he had once tried to release from a steel trap, he was with animals all the way. "Dammit, they were here first, but now the suburbs keep creeping farther and farther into the country, and encroaching on the animals' territory."
He thus wants to be recorded as siding with the animals, birds and bugs, for in all the years, they had been able to teach humans humility "and if you don't believe it, Cobber, just say one word in the vicinity of Sydney, Australia. The word is: Shark."
A letter writer indicates that on his departure from Charlotte at the end of his assignment as an exchange teacher under the Government Teacher Interchange Program, he wanted to record the warm appreciation of himself, his wife and two children for the wonderful community acceptance they had found in Charlotte. He says that for the principal, faculty and student body of Harding High School, they had the highest admiration, personal and professional. They were leaving as determined protagonists for the country, especially of the South. "Educationally we have, I feel, come to understand and appreciate the genuinely democratic bases of your philosophies and methods. It is regrettable indeed that these bases are so little understood overseas. We have observed what a sub-leader in today's Charlotte News points out—that American education really does achieve a great deal in developing each person according to his special abilities and aptitudes, that it does engender practical democracy and freedoms, and that it does turn out warm-hearted citizens."
A letter writer says that he had been against school consolidation, as had been his wife, and suggests that if they did not "stop so much of this business we will see everything consolidated with headquarters in Washington with a bunch of crooked politicians telling the people what they can and can't do. It will be a hell of a mess."
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