The Charlotte News
Thursday, July 4, 1957
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports from Moscow that Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev
and his policies of peaceful coexistence abroad and government
decentralization at home had emerged victorious this date in the
largest Kremlin upheaval
In Geneva, U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold said this date that the world was in its most nearly normal period of peacetime economic activity since the end of World War II.
In Tel Aviv, a Zionist official confirmed this date that Prime Minister Nehru of India was prepared to act as a mediator to bring about peace talks between the Israelis and Arabs.
In Cairo, Egypt said that 16 had died this date in the wake of elections for the National Assembly, pledged in advance to carry out Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser's policies.
In Vienna, it was reported that Rumania's ruling Communist Party this date announced the ouster of two leading members of its Politburo.
In Marseille, two American sailors remained missing this date after a flash fire on a harbor boat which spread to the U.S. aircraft carrier Lake Champlain. Three American seamen and a French longshoreman had died in the blaze the previous day.
Near Orangeburg, S.C., a Carolina Scenic Trailways bus containing 35 passengers had overturned in the early morning fog 12 miles southeast of the town this date, with four persons admitted to the hospital.
The National Safety Council estimated that traffic deaths for the extended holiday weekend lasting 102 hours, ending at midnight Sunday, would reach 535, which would establish a new record if reached, with the current record being 491, set during a four-day period during the July 4 holiday in 1950. The death toll the previous year on July 4 had been 137. Council records showed an average of 95 traffic fatalities per day during the first five months of 1957, lower than the previous year's high rate. An Associated Press survey during a recent non-holiday period lasting 102 hours showed 347 traffic deaths, occurring between Wednesday, June 19 and midnight on Sunday, June 23. Starting at 6:00 p.m. the previous evening, the period's first reports of accidental deaths showed that at least 17 persons had been killed in motor vehicle accidents, with five drowned and four others dying in miscellaneous mishaps. No deaths had yet been reported from fireworks. The average was below the Council's estimate in the early hours of the holiday.
In Nags Head, N.C., a 19-year old sailor became the state's first fatality of the holiday early this date when a speeding car had gone out of control and overturned.
American families in Japan had spent a quiet Fourth of July, with U.S. Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II acting as host to American and Japanese dignitaries at an Embassy reception. In South Korea, the U.S. 24th Division paraded in reminder of Independence Day for North Korean Communist armies, just across the narrow demilitarized zone. At Juneau, Alaska, a five-foot high replica of the Liberty Bell was to be struck 181 times, once for each year since 1776.
In Philadelphia, Thomas Jefferson had noticed in his account book that at 6:00 a.m. on the morning of the day on which liberty from England was proclaimed, it had been "pleasant", with the temperature being 68, the wind from the southeast, a nice summer day, with Philadelphians thinking little more about the date than that. John Marie, a Paris tailor who had newly moved to Philadelphia, promised in the papers that he could clean clothes without "the unnecessary trouble of ripping and washing." The Pennsylvania Evening Post considered the most important news of the day to be plans for the upcoming county election, with no mention being made in its four pages that the Continental Congress was even in session. (The newspaper's publisher and editor did not want to get strung up by John Bull as seditionists to the state, after all, for their two cents' worth on the subject—which if ye haven't got, a pair o' ha'pennies will do.) It had been such a quiet day that the Pennsylvania Hospital did not make a single entry for a death, birth, admission or discharge. Mr. Jefferson's account book had also included the price of a doll for his daughter and the payment for a "barometer, a thermometer, and one violin string". He ate breakfast that morning at the City Tavern, "the most commodious hotel" in the colonies. He had then gone to the State House, afterward named Independence Hall, for the regular session of the Continental Congress starting at 9:00 a.m. Mr. Jefferson's draft of the Declaration which started, "When, in the course of human events…" had been rewritten, cut and polished, with the Congress having made 39 changes, including omission of his condemnation of the slave trade. It was the evening of the day before all of the amendments had been passed and the Congress moved on to other business. The final copy had gone to printer John Dunlap for reproduction, with no public announcement of what had occurred in Congress on that day.
In Gettysburg, the President was spending the Fourth of July at his farm home. The White House had announced earlier in the week that he had decided against spending the holidays at the farm, but he had changed his plans the previous night. He was accompanied on the 85-mile flight by Maj. General Howard Snyder, the White House physician. First Lady Mamie Eisenhower was already at the farm.
In North Carolina, the day was a holiday for all except a skeleton crew in business and governmental offices, with the primary exception being the State Highway Patrol, out in full force to try to hold down traffic fatalities. Otherwise, people celebrated at home in their backyards or at beaches or the mountains. Only one holiday death had been recorded in the state the previous year, but in 1955, there had been 19 fatalities during the three-day period. Special observances included the annual pony penning in Ocracoke, a high occasion for natives and visitors to the Outer Banks island. Don't miss it...
In Winston-Salem, everyone agreed that Charlotte was the biggest city in the Carolinas. Greensboro had started congratulating itself on June 30 when it claimed that an annexation of surrounding territories had increased its population from 87,000 to 119,000, proclaiming itself the second largest city in the Carolinas, bigger than Winston-Salem. But the president of the Twin City Chamber of Commerce cried nonsense, indicating that a national research publication, Consumer Markets, had listed Greensboro at 87,000 before annexation, making it 109,000 after annexation, less than the 115,800 in Winston-Salem. Sales Management, however, had listed Greensboro at 90,600 before annexation, thus giving it 112,600 after annexation, and listed Winston-Salem at only 111,100. The report concludes that everyone was waiting for the 1960 census.
In London, Hal Cooper of the Associated Press reports that a blushing male jury had been called upon the previous day to weigh one of the most perplexing questions of the year, whether a girl in a tiny bikini was less nude than a girl in a G-string when posed in a cageful of lions. A 23-year old showgirl had raised the issue in a lawsuit against the tabloid Daily Sketch, accusing the sheet of saying, or implying, that she was nude when she was in fact wearing a bikini with sequins on it. She sought damages. A few weeks earlier, one of the "nudes", that is, women dressed in G-strings, had failed to show up for the big lion cage number in the show "The Nudes of Paris" at Southampton. The complainant, wife of the show's producer and mother of a 17-month old daughter, agreed to take the missing girl's place. The Sketch had applauded that spirit and carried a story titled "Mother Takes Nude's Place in Lion Show". The complainant indicated that it gave the impression that she appeared unclothed, whereas in fact she had worn a bikini and bra. She added that in her view, it would be highly immodest for a young mother to appear in a G-string. The judge said that all he knew about a G-string was that it was the lowest note on a violin. The woman's counsel explained that in show business a G-string was an article covering the absolute minimum of a showgirl. The judge then inquired as to the meaning of a bikini, which the lawyer described as a kind of swimming suit which covered more than the minimum, introducing a G-string and a bikini into evidence. The newspaper's lawyer responded indignantly: "It is rather ridiculous, rather monstrous—in fact complete nonsense—that she should ask for damages for a statement that she appeared posed as a nude, when she appeared very largely naked, dressed in a bikini." The judge said it was up to the jury to determine the difference in modesty between the G-string and the "partial covering afforded by the bra and V-shaped drawers called the bikini." The jury determined that the woman had no just claim against the newspaper and should pay the costs of suit, roughly the equivalent of $4,200. The woman said afterward, "Oh, well, that's life—and I'd rather be in the lions' cage than in that courtroom." But remember that it was a jury question and so did not mean necessarily that newspapers henceforth in Britain could get away with referring to women who appeared in public in a bikini as "nude".
In Hollywood, Zsa Zsa Gabor, the glamorous Hungarian, would be seen this date on NBC television's "Matinee Theater", playing the role of Benjamin Franklin's girlfriend. Mr. Franklin had written in his memoirs of a Madame Brillon, a vivacious lady of the French court who had helped him plead the cause of the new American republic. Ms. Gabor claimed that she had done extensive research for the part and found that Mr. Franklin, then in his 70's and a widower, had fallen heavily in love with the young French woman. She said that he had written in his memoirs of how he and the woman had played chess while she took a bath. "She was crazy about baths and Ben was crazy about chess," remarked Ms. Gabor. She said that the producers of the drama had nixed the bathtub scene, however, adding, "Chess is not so popular nowadays." Whether Mr. Jefferson's purchase of a violin string was that noted above and whether he later sent it to Mr. Franklin, perhaps, to aid him in his chess was apparently not contained in his memoirs.
Starting Monday, the News would carry a series called "The Bald Boy" by Elmer "Fat Boy" Wheeler, which it promises was the "most hilarious—or maybe you should say, hair-ilous—feature of the year." Mr. Wheeler was the master salesman who had done such a great job in making fat boys live and love it, and was now turning his talents to bald boys, adding glamour and dignity to baldness, basing it all on his own experience and observations. "Elmer's failing hair will tickle you, we promise." As the original fat boy, he lost 40 pounds in 80 days, receiving 2.5 million letters in the process, but had also begun losing his hair, and so had become the champion of the Bald Boy. It says that before Elmer was finished, the bald fellow might not want any hair. That sounds like another one you won't want to miss.
On the editorial page, "The
Declaration of Independence" quotes verbatim the document
It is always well to keep in mind that while it provides the revolutionary spirit of the country out of which it was founded, it is not part of the law of the land, that being the Constitution and all of the laws under it.
"Raleigh's 'Rabbit Ears' Stand at Ready" finds that state officials had reacted with candor in disclosing the possibility that a conflict of interest might arise from the appointment by Governor Luther Hodges of Col. W. T. Joyner to be head of the new Highway Commission, with Col. Joyner having told reporters that it might arise because his firm represented the Southern Railroad, which was sometimes involved in litigation with the State Highway Department regarding rights-of-way. He said that in such a case, he would not sit with the Commission and would not represent the railroad.
The Governor said that he trusted Col. Joyner to do so, and the piece says it likewise trusted him to carry out the assigned task of the newly reorganized Highway Department to build necessary roads free from politics insofar as possible. Yet, it finds, the question had been proper to raise, demonstrating that lively skepticism thrived in Raleigh even under a remarkably popular and smoothly run gubernatorial Administration.
That skepticism had made a large contribution to the fact that the state had never had a major scandal in State Government. Governor Hodges quickly responded to criticism, direct or implied. "While his 'rabbit ears' have their irritating aspects to those who enjoy the rough-and-ready school of politics, they can be most beneficial in keeping his administration clean and efficient." He had said during the week that if he read in the newspapers or heard of anything which the new Prison Commission was doing wrong, he would tell them.
It finds in sum that a healthy political climate was prevailing in Raleigh and while the Administration was being watched, it was also listening.
"The Debt Owing to the Hungarians" indicates that 181 years ago this date, the American colonies had made their Declaration of Independence, and that eight months earlier in November, 1956, the people of Hungary had declared for their own freedom but had failed to achieve it.
It asserts that the Hungarians had given all they could in courage and sacrifice but that it had not been enough to resist the enslaving force of Russian troops and guns, resulting, in the end, in a new and even more enslaving oppression. It suggests that many Americans ought recall the struggle in Hungary when they considered Independence Day in America, as the fight by freedom fighters in Budapest was part of the same unquenchable thirst for freedom which had spawned the American Revolution. Their sacrifices had been a gift of new hope for all free men, with Americans, in turn, owing a great debt to Hungarians for having done so.
But the effort could not be paid directly through a liberation movement which would cause an even larger bloodbath, or paid by resolution of censure in the U.N., or by serving as a haven for Hungarian refugees. It indicates that the problems in the American conscience caused by U.S. inability to help the Hungarians when they needed it would remain for a long time. But part of the debt could be paid this date with a renewed determination by Americans to bear the burdens of world leadership until Communist oppression was lifted, providing at least an installment on the debt.
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Brainstorms in Cellophane", indicates that recently it had occasion to comment on the current phenomenon of the advertising world known as the brainstorm, a conference at which the participants said whatever came to mind in the hope that it would be useful. It now reports on a further refinement on the brainstorm, that being the packaged brainstorm, news of which had come via the Economist of London, which said that the packaged brainstorm was arranged by a research organization for the benefit of its clients.
It thus looks forward to the possibility of a "Kiplinger Washington Brainstorm", full of the "inside lightning, noisily thunderous, and, of course, neatly packaged for the trade." Likewise might come a "Brookings Institution Brainstorm", and Reader's Digest might want to issue a one-lobe, one-raindrop brainstormlet, for people of no particular intellectual pretensions who were also afraid of bad weather. "Newsweek will no doubt wish to sail its Periscope into the eye of the brainstorm and let us know what in tucket goes on there."
"Altogether, it looks like big doings to come, and we mean to rest up our brain so as to be ready for the onset of the cerebral monsoon."
Drew Pearson indicates that Loyd Wright, a Los Angeles friend of Vice-President Nixon, who wanted newsmen sent to jail for revealing unauthorized information, had just charged a group of national magazines, newspapers and columnists with being "purveyors of information vital to national security, purloined by devious means" which gave "aid to our enemies as effectively as the foreign agent." The Army's chief of information, Maj. General Guy Meloy, had subsequently informed Congress that he did not know of a single case where a newspaperman had "stolen or purloined secret military information". Mr. Wright had singled out Mr. Pearson as being among 19 well-known magazines, newspapers and writers, only mentioning Mr. Pearson by name. Thus, he wants to diagnose the columns to which Mr. Wright had referred and let the public decide whether they had given "aid to our enemies".
On January 22, 1951, Mr. Pearson had reported the stenographic record of the talk between President Truman and General MacArthur in their mid-Pacific conference at which General MacArthur had said: "I hope to be able to have the 8th Army back in Japan by Christmas." Other quotes were also included. When the New York Times had published an almost identical story on April 21, 1951, using the same quotes, it had received a Pulitzer prize.
On January 31, 1951, he had published the partial text of a captured Chinese combat bulletin giving the enemy's secret estimate of American fighting ability. The report had been humiliating to the U.S. by pointing to U.S. inefficiency and lack of morale, but revealed nothing to the enemy, as the enemy had actually written it. It also pointed to weaknesses which the U.S. had to cure if it expected to win the Korean War. He indicates that the U.S. had always operated on the theory that it could not only take criticism but benefit from it.
On December 30, 1950, he had published extracts from General MacArthur's own intelligence reports regarding the size of the Chinese Army, at considerable variance from his own public statements regarding the size of that Army. In trying to construct an alibi for his retreat from North Korea, General MacArthur had stated on December 2 that there were about 500,000 Chinese troops in Korea, and on December 4, he increased his estimate to more than a million, while on December 15, he stated that "a bottomless well of Chinese Communist manpower continues to flow into Korea." Mr. Pearson had reported that the Chinese forces were nowhere nearly as great in number as the General claimed, resulting in the General's official denials. Thus, on December 30, he had published excerpts from the reports of General MacArthur's own intelligence head, General Charles Willoughby, estimating that on December 6, two days after General MacArthur's announcement that there were a million Chinese present, there were only 96,000 Chinese opposite the U.N. 8th Army. He had also published General Willoughby's report which indicated a lack of Chinese forces on the 8th Army front because of deep withdrawal by the 8th Army, and that it was evident that the enemy, lacking any degree of mobility, had been unable to regain contact. It meant that the Chinese, lacking transportation, had been unable to keep up with the fast retreat of the 8th Army.
Mr. Wright had stated that the report revealed secrets to the enemy, though it had been published a month after the enemy was aware of the "most ignominious retreat" in American military history, and despite the American people having not yet grasped the full import of that retreat. He notes that the report of General Willoughby had been published only after checking with a top Pentagon spokesman to make sure that no military security would be breached.
On April 30, 1951, Mr. Pearson had published an abbreviated exchange of cables between the Pentagon and General MacArthur in Tokyo, in which Washington had notified the General that it planned to promote General Matthew Ridgway, newly appointed Korean combat commander, to be a full general, and in which General MacArthur had opposed that promotion. The column had revealed nothing more than military politics.
On December 4, 1951, he had published the minutes of a meeting at the Office of Defense Mobilization, during which it had been argued that the production of refrigerators, automobiles and other consumer goods might have to be curtailed because of the war effort. He had quoted production head Manly Fleishmann as saying that if production of consumer durable goods was reduced more than an additional ten percent, it would be necessary to convert entirely to defense. That had revealed that the American public might have to tighten its belt, but gave no secrets to an enemy.
On May 17, 1952, after General Francis Dodd had been captured by rioting North Koreans on Koje Island, Mr. Pearson had published the teletype by General Omar Bradley which bawled out Generals Mark Clark and Charles Colson for letting the prisoners get out of hand. The riots had already been front page news and the fact that General Bradley had acted promptly and indignantly was healthy, he indicates, for the American people to know. Subsequently, on August 14, 1953, Mr. Pearson had received a letter from General Bradley as he retired as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, in which the General said that as he looked back over the previous eight years, he thought of the many times when Mr. Pearson and his assistant, Jack Anderson, had the interests of the U.S. armed forces at heart, "and in this way have contributed to my getting my job done."
Walter Lippmann finds that there was considerable resemblance between the way the President was handling the disarmament negotiations and his handling of the budget, having in both put forth a proposal and then embarked on a course while not having made up his mind about where he wanted to go. Mr. Lippmann suggests that in an orderly and rational conduct of government, the deliberation and making of a firm decision would have preceded the presentation of the budget and the sending of Harold Stassen to London to negotiate with Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin regarding disarmament.
In the case of the budget, it had taken nearly two months before it was reasonably clear whether the President was for or against the budget he had put forth, and only after much confusion and controversy had he begun to make it clear where he stood.
Regarding disarmament, the President had started the diplomatic exchanges with no actual agreement within his circle of official advisers and no adequate understanding with the allies, with his own mind still fluid. During the previous few weeks, with Mr. Stassen in London, the President had not acted the part of a statesman who had a policy but rather of a puzzled man who was thinking out loud. While disarmament was quite complicated and fraught with uncertainty and risk, there was no reason why the President had to enter the negotiations or had to send Mr. Stassen to the conference until he knew whether he was in favor of reaching the kind of agreement which might conceivably be possible. Mr. Lippmann suggests that he should have waited until he was ready, as there was no point in talking with the Russians if the President had not thought through his policy and if high officials in Washington were convinced that they had to nullify what Mr. Stassen was supposed to do. Having proceeded in that way was a good method of demoralizing the effort at negotiation. The question had arisen as to whether the President really wanted an agreement or whether he could presently persuade the Senate to ratify any such agreement.
He finds Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko to be wrong in saying, as he had the previous week, that the U.S. was using the disarmament negotiations as a "screen concealing its striving to continue and intensify the arms race." He indicates that the U.S. was not using the talks at all because the President and the Administration had a policy to which some were opposed and about which the remainder were not convinced. Unless the President could find a way to clarify and make firm the U.S. position, there would result from the talks either a treaty which the President did not really want or one which the Senate would reject, in either case blocking the path to an arms limitation agreement.
Mr. Lippmann had heard it said that such would not occur because if and when Mr. Stassen really started to negotiate about the details with the Soviets, he would find that they were quite unwilling to reach a good agreement regarding inspection and control. He finds that it might be true if the negotiations were genuine, but if the U.S. remained in its present position, with probabilities against ratification of a disarmament agreement, the Soviets could go very far in their offers without running the risk of having to make good on them.
He suggests that the U.S. should assume that the Russians did want an agreement and were prepared to pay a considerable price to get it, and that there should be clarification of the U.S. position and not count on the unreasonableness of the Russians to save the U.S. from the consequences of uncertainty and indecision.
Marquis Childs indicates that there was a growing feeling in the State Department that the U.S. Middle East policy was paying off, with even some Asian diplomats who had long been critical of Secretary of State Dulles and his policies now speaking cautiously of what he had achieved since the disaster of the Suez crisis the prior fall. That small beginning of confidence, Mr. Childs suggests, might come from the fact that Mr. Dulles had recently been saying to a few close associates that it was his present intention to retire as Secretary in February, 1958, when he would turn 70. But no one expected that he actually would do so.
While the situation at present was relatively settled, there were certain to be new crises which he would feel he had to resolve, and the President would want him to remain provided the Secretary wanted to do so. The relative calm at present in the region might prove illusory.
The Soviets, in providing Egypt with six submarines and the training of Egyptian crews to operate them, could shatter the relative calm. Also, Israeli ships were passing through the Gulf of Aqaba, which Egypt and Saudi Arabia had claimed as territorial waters, and the State Department had told the 11 Arab governments that the U.S. would back the right of "free and innocent passage" for the ships of all nations. A torpedo from an Egyptian submarine hitting an Israeli ship could touch off a new crisis. That threat had been the motive for the Soviet generosity regarding the submarines.
A second potential source for new crisis was in the continuing rebellion in Algeria, with the consequent drain on French manpower and resources, long threatening an outbreak of uncontrollable violence with great bloodshed on both sides. It also threatened an imminent crisis in French finances.
He finds that an indication of the
seriousness with which at least some Americans were beginning to take the Algerian crisis had occurred in a speech by Senator John F.
Kennedy, calling attention to America's failure to try to mediate
that war and the way in which it jeopardized the U.S. position in the
Arab world by linking the U.S. with French imperialism. The Senator
was sponsoring a resolution seeking the use of American influence to
help settle
A third potential source for a new crisis was the growing bitterness between India and Pakistan regarding the dispute over Kashmir, with a growing sense of inevitability of war in both countries. The Indians complained passionately that they could not meet the obligations of the latest five-year plan for industry and agriculture because they had to buy arms to keep pace with those provided by the U.S. to Pakistan as a member of the Baghdad Pact.
Ignoring for the moment those potential sources of crisis, Secretary Dulles could take considerable credit for the present relative calm in the Middle East. The Arab bloc was split and Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser's position was greatly weakened. The visit to Washington by King Saud of Saudi Arabia, which had been widely criticized at the time, appeared to have provided considerable dividends.
There were three kings involved in the Middle East situation whom Secretary Dulles had to handle, Saud, Faisal II of Iraq and Hussein of Jordan. While they were of great value, they could lose that value over time. Unless the miserable lot of the masses could be quickly improved, Arab nationalism, compounded with Communist promises, would make the status of those monarchies difficult, if not untenable, with three kings being not much help "in a game with the deuces wild."
Mr. Childs concludes that several unpleasant things could happen in the ensuing six months which could make Secretary Dulles decide to stay beyond age 70.
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