The Charlotte News
Monday, April 20, 1959
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Geneva that it was disclosed this date that the President had made a personal appeal in a letter to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to take the nuclear test suspension talks out of their present deadlock. The letter from the President to Mr. Khrushchev was referred to at this date's meeting of the three-power conference, and was understood to urge serious Soviet consideration of a Western proposal for a step-by-step approach to the problem of ceasing atomic and hydrogen weapons tests. The disclosure of the letter had been made as if by accident by a Soviet spokesman. U.S. Ambassador James Wadsworth refused to confirm or deny it, but later, Western sources made it clear that the letter had been mentioned. There was no indication of when the letter had been written. The Western step-by-step proposal had been made April 13 after an Easter recess. Under the plan, the three powers would first cease nuclear tests on the surface of the earth, underwater and in the atmosphere to a height of 31 miles. The problem of banning underground and outer space testing would be left for later negotiations. The disclosure of the President's personal appeal had come at a time when there was increasing speculation that the problem of a nuclear test ban might be taken up during the foreign ministers conference opening in Geneva on May 11. France was taking part in that conference but was not represented in the nuclear test ban talks. Up to the present, Soviet delegate Semyon Tsarapkin had given a negative response to the step-by-step proposal, having clung to the position that agreement was still possible in the three-power conference for a suspension of all types of nuclear testing.
In Washington, a citizens group told Congress this date that there was a "giveaway philosophy" in foreign aid which encouraged waste, extravagance and corruption at home and abroad. It criticized military aid on the ground that "if war comes there is a strong possibility that to survive, many of our allies will elect neutrality lest they be incinerated." The criticism had come from the Citizens Foreign Aid Committee during testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Spokesmen for the group were its chairman, Walter Harnischfeger, the president of a corporation bearing his name located in Milwaukee, and the organization's national director, retired Army Brig. General Bonner Fellers. The group, which said it was not isolationist, earlier had asked that foreign aid be cut in half at present and abolished within three years. The Foreign Affairs Committee was hearing testimony on the President's 3.93 billion dollar foreign aid program. The group had argued before that NATO forces were not an effective war deterrent. General Fellers said "excessive expenditures for conventional weapons, meaning the Army and the surface fleet, which cannot be decisive against the enemy, or extension of aid to doubtful allies who can be blackmailed into neutrality lest they be incinerated, and the global diffusion of our effort are all a waste of means which could spell our doom."
In La Paz, Bolivia, it was reported by the Government this date that the leader of Sunday's short-lived revolt had committed suicide after his rightist uprising had been crushed. At least 22 persons had been killed and more than 50 wounded in the course of the attempted coup. The Government of the poverty-stricken nation said that Oscar Unzaga de la Vega, head of the Falange Party, had taken his life on Sunday night at a house on the outskirts of La Paz where he had hidden. His bodyguard had also shot himself to death. President Hernan Siles Suazo announced the defeat of the Falange Party members who had tried to seize the City Hall on Sunday, had attacked an Army barracks and marched on the Government radio station and municipal offices. Government forces had broken up the attacks and then had begun to clean up of the rebels. Many of the wounded had been reported as bystanders caught in the crossfire between Government forces and the insurgents. Scattered shooting was still being heard, but rebels were reported to be turning in their arms. Two insurgent leaders had been captured and a Government radio station said that the President had declared a state of siege, modified martial law, throughout the country. There were no reports of trouble outside the capital and the Government said that it held control of all provincial capitals. Official reports from Cochabamba and Oruro had said that peasants and workers had joined the Government militia in controlling those cities. The Falange Party was the main opposition to the President's Nationalist Revolutionary Movement, which had led a successful revolution seven years earlier and had won more than 80 percent of the vote in national elections in 1956. The President, in a broadcast on Sunday night, said that the revolt had been planned by Sr. Unzaga and Carlos Victor Aramayo, whose large tin properties in Bolivia were nationalized in 1952, the latter presently living in Europe. Nationalization of the tin mines and land reform had been the two primary planks of the President's party program, but the tin nationalization particularly had not produced the prosperity which the party had anticipated, the country's economic position having worsened steadily despite considerable U.S. aid. Tin miners had struck twice in the previous six weeks in protest against higher commissary food prices, which the Government had ordered at the urging of the International Monetary Fund.
In Sydney, Australia, it was reported that evangelist Billy Graham was resting this date at a vacation beach 25 miles north of Sydney after a strenuous opening week in his local campaign. He would hold his next meeting at the Sydney Showground the following night. One official said that attendance had totaled 257,500 in Sydney during the first eight days of the crusade, with about 17,000 persons having made "decisions for Christ".
At Deer Lodge, Mont., it was reported that iron discipline had been imposed this date following the 36-hour hostage-taking episode at the Montana State Prison, following the end of the standoff on Saturday after armed National Guardsmen had stormed in during the early morning hours to foil a convict escape attempt, rescuing 21 hostages. The National Guard continued on duty at the prison. The soldiers and prison guards had begun a search of the prisoners on Saturday, within hours after the uprising had been quelled. Two convict ringleaders had died in the action, which had ended the worst prison incident in years. The deputy warden had been killed late on Thursday. The warden ordered the convicts to their cells, without privileges, and provided sandwiches and coffee to them in their cells. He said that he expected to conduct extensive inmate interviews to pinpoint the cause of the violence which had begun on Thursday. Three members of the State Attorney General's staff were present at the prison to determine whether criminal charges would be brought against any of the surviving rebel inmates. The Attorney General commented on Saturday that the prison offered 19th Century facilities for 20th Century hoodlums. Governor J. Hugo Aronson noted that Montana was planning construction of a 10 million dollar institution on prison ranch property nearby. An estimated 15 convicts were said by officials to have planned and executed the revolt. The warden described the rebellion itself as a clever cover for the prisoners' efforts to tunnel to freedom, an effort which had failed when the diggers had run into an underground concrete slab. The troublemakers, he said, had been isolated and were given a change of prison clothes, a bucket and a mattress. He said that discipline was firm and tight but fair. One of the two ringleaders killed during the final assault was believed to have been digging when National Guardsmen had burst in under cover of bazooka, rifle and machine gun fire.
In Cincinnati, a 23-year old woman, who police said shot and killed her two young daughters, was in critical condition in a hospital this date after an unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide.
In Charlotte, the County Commission this date got its first idea of what the proposed County office building would look like, as an architectural firm unveiled a scale model of the new building at the Commission meeting this date. The 100 by 200-foot modern structure would be built on the block immediately behind the courthouse and would be connected to the courthouse by a 30-foot wide pedestrian bridge rising 15 feet above 4th Street. Specifications of the building called for four full floors with a half basement and a cafeteria on top of the building, for a total of 88,000 square feet. Renderings are included.
In London, it was reported that Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had taken refuge in the peace and quiet of London this date after a hectic weekend in the crowded countryside. He had opened his country home to visitors, at a shilling per head, the equivalent of 14 cents. It had been a sunshiny Sunday and more than 4,000 sightseers had tracked mud into his home, trampled his daffodils, crushed his grassy lawns and driven the Prime Minister into the woods. The money had gone to one of his wife's pet charities. Mr. Macmillan was sitting in his living room when the first paying guests rushed in, one woman gasping, "Let me shake your hand for saving England." She was followed by others. The Prime Minister retreated to his spacious grounds and the sightseers pursued him. He hurried down the garden path but a number of young boys asked him for his autograph. He fled into the garden and a man said, "Mr. Prime Minister, I want to tell you what's wrong with England..." He headed for the woods and after two hours, returned, at which point the crowds resumed the chase. He dashed into his cookhouse and his pursuers found him sitting near the sink in his stocking feet, whereupon he snapped, "This is my day off, and it's getting to be a bit of a bore. I don't mind opening my house, but I'm not opening myself."
In Washington, it was reported that in the opinion of a boy, 8, of Waterbury, Conn., a large part of what he had seen in Congress was pretty "boaring", having written his impressions for Representative John Monagan of Connecticut after his recent trip touring the capital. His report had said: "First we went to the Smithonion Insttood, that was very interesting. Then we got to go to the Pan American Union, that was very interesting too. I'm not sure that I know the next one but I think it's the National Gallery of Art. Then we went to the U.S. Capital and that was boaring. Then we went to the hotal. What a boaring day! Next day we took a lemoseen, and went to all the inportant buildings, like the Senate Office Building. And next day we left! Among the other things we saw and did was the Jefferson Mamorial, and inside that was the statue of Thomas Jefferson and some statements he made. And most of all the Lincoln Mamoria and in it was the statue of Lincoln. And on the wall was the Gettysburgs Address, and another statement he made. And I went in the White House but I couldn't see white all I could see was feet. And what I forgot to menchen was what I saw in the Smithonion and that was Linburgs plane the first plane to cross the Atlantic Ocean. And theres one other thing I did not mension was about the doom of the unknone Soldger and the changeing of the gards, that was interesting. And most important of all was I eat dinner with Seniter Dood, and Congressman John Monogen."
Meanwhile, perhaps as a foil to the youth's boredom, the second page reported that Prime Minister Fidel Castro of Cuba, in Washington, had appeared the previous day on "Meet the Press"
And if that did not conquer the young lad's idle hands syndrome, he could always resort to Miss February
On the editorial page, "Smith and 'Better Government' Ticket Offer Charlotte Best Hope for Future" indicates that Charlotte's destiny would depend, in large part, on the kind of people the citizens sent to City Hall in the coming municipal election. A record of past community achievement was not enough. It was an era of transition and challenge and Charlotte could not look back only on its great past, but needed also to look forward to the future.
"In the leaders of tomorrow, there should be no shackles on the mind or spirit, no rigid patterns of thought, no iron conformity. This is a time for resourcefulness and vigor. It is also a time when the new must be mixed with the old to build a richer, happier, sounder community than was ever thought possible before."
It expresses the belief that the four candidates running for the City Council under the "Citizens for Better Government" banner would, in combination with incumbent Mayor James Smith, offer Charlotte the best possible hope for the future. It names Gibson Smith, S. Herbert Hitch, G. R. Babcock, and Brevard Myers as the four individuals best qualified for the Council and commends them, along with Mayor Smith, to the voters.
"It'll Take $5 Million To Calm Them" recommends not coming to the new U.S. Senate Office Building looking for a balanced budget, as things were unbalanced in Congress at present.
No sooner than the Senators had begun to occupy the new building, complaints had begun, one being that the public address system roared forth in a voice loud enough to frighten the dignitaries "half out of their nepotisms". Another was the rubber tile floors, which resounded and were slippery. Two employees had gone to the hospital shortly after the building had opened. Garage ramps tilted too sharply such that the Senators' Cadillacs were dragging their tailpipes behind them. The mail chute system wanted to keep letters to itself, and louvered panels to private offices allowed secret conversations to be heard, some, it hopes, to newsmen, as it was about the only way to obtain a decent story in Washington in current times.
Changes had been computed to cost more than a million dollars, which it regards as not too bad for a building which cost 25 million, especially for a touchy group which included the minority Republicans.
It was noted that there was an additional four million dollars, however, involved for the Senate's own version of New York's Lexington Avenue Express, the subway which ran from the office building to the Senate wing of the Capitol. But it did not go far enough and requests had been made to build a new tunnel under the Senate wing steps. The steps had to be removed in any event as they were slowly sliding into an underground cavern, probably a forgotten corridor of the Pentagon.
The 5 million dollars-plus needed to correct the faults and keep the Senators from walking in the rain would be little more than 20 percent added to the base investment.
It indicates that it had in mind, by comparison, the percentages of additional cost to complete the Charlotte Auditorium-Coliseum complex after the original bond issue, which it had been trying to forget for the previous four years.
"Our Irreverent GIs" indicates that Count Wolfgang Dietrich Hugo Maria von Korospatak had renounced his title and become a U.S. citizen in Washington. The native Hungarian had revealed that in serving with the U.S. Army, his name had been changed to "Pencil Nose".
A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled "To the Maiden Aunt", indicates that while spring marriages were busily taking place, the sainted old unmarried aunt was left out. "The deer lady is the recipient of a billion cruel jokes for the snide edification of a parcel of smart-alecks. Even if she is almost as essential to the program of local salvation as the various Mesdames Dionne, too many of us feel about our sainted aunties the way a fisherman does about a golfer, living but superfluous."
Yet 40 or 50 years earlier, the aunt was the flowering epitome of hope and rapture, certainly in her adoring father's eyes. He was afraid that some rascal would steal her away and so at the dainty seminary, they braced her, laced her, starved her, pinched her face, cut holes in her ears, and scorched her hair, filling the burnt offerings with bits of barbed wire, called pins. The early martyrs had suffered hardly more than the dear old auntie did for the sterling lad whom she would enthrone with unending bliss.
In the cruel interim, she often had to nurse her declining father or care for the younger children. Someone had to teach the school or wait on the boarders. Sometimes, too much was expected of mortals. Sir Galahad did not come to town often. A lot of boys had gone to Oklahoma and many had not come back from World War I. Some aunties were too delicate and one or two were even perverse. "The shocking truth is that the things we plan for don't turn out to be just so, always. So, amid the incipient jubilation, let us smile understandingly or shed a tear discreetly for our precious unmarried aunt, the dear lady Oliver Wendell Holmes called, 'The sad, ungathered rose on my ancestral tree.'"
Drew Pearson indicates that the House Rules Committee had met in closed session the previous week to vote on whether the housing bill, containing two billion dollars in mortgage money for the building industry and for slum clearance, would be released so that the rest of the House could vote on it. One vote could keep it bottled up in committee such that 435 other members would have no chance to vote. There was silence as the Committee had met, but in the back of the minds of six Democratic members had been a conversation held the previous January with Speaker Sam Rayburn.
Congressman Chet Holifield of California had gone to Mr. Rayburn in January to urge that the hold of the Rules Committee on all legislation be loosened so that one vote could not prevent the entire House from voting. A new Congress had just been elected at that time and fresh members, full of zeal and determination to make the democratic process work, had just entered the House. Mr. Holifield urged Mr. Rayburn to revise the rules, indicating that it was "a complete perversion of our time-honored system", giving two men far too much power over the other members of Congress. He found that the Rules Committee sought to write legislation, not merely schedule the order of voting on it. He had spoken eloquently and Mr. Rayburn had listened. Finally, the latter said that he would give Mr. Holifield his assurance that any reported legislation would clear the Rules Committee and that if it did not get through the Committee, then Mr. Rayburn would help Mr. Holifield obtain a 21-day rule to get it out of the Committee. He added that Congressman Howard Smith of Virginia, chairman of the Rules Committee, who had ridden roughshod over colleagues to bottle up bills, would have to "play ball like everyone else", that no one was bigger than the Democratic Party.
But at the previous week's closed-door meeting of the Rules Committee, Mr. Smith called for a vote on the housing bill and voted to bottle it up, with the vote having been tied 6 to 6, with all four Republicans voting to keep it in the Committee, along with Mississippi Congressman William Colmer. Now, a bill affecting the entire building industry was stymied and gathering dust, with a lot of Congressmen looking to see whether Mr. Rayburn would keep his word.
Premier Charles de Gaulle of France had sent a warning to President Eisenhower that the pro-Communist takeover of Iraq was a worse threat to world peace than the Berlin crisis, suggesting that Nikita Khrushchev might have deliberately stirred up the trouble in Berlin to divert attention from the Middle East.
The actual reason why Meade Alcorn had resigned as chairman of the RNC was because he wanted to be Postmaster General and the President would not fire Arthur Summerfield from that position.
Bill Blair, the efficient assistant to Adlai Stevenson, had tipped off Democratic leaders privately that Mr. Stevenson would accept the presidential nomination again in 1960 if it were offered.
Joseph Alsop indicates that the delay of two days between the announcement of the resignation of Secretary of State Dulles and the naming of his successor, Acting Secretary and Undersecretary Christian Herter, had underscored the fact that the President wanted to keep the resignation announcement centered on Mr. Dulles rather than sharing the stage with his successor. Thus, the President had made remarks about the other men other than Mr. Herter whose qualifications deserved to be examined. That had cast an inevitable cloud of doubt on the degree of confidence to be accorded the successor, underscoring the uniqueness of the position of Mr. Dulles.
In foreign affairs, until his cancer had begun, Mr. Dulles was effectively president of the country in fact, though not in name. In the most critical situations, his recommendations had never been questioned. That had produced some strange results, given the personal way in which Mr. Dulles conducted business. Since no one except Mr. Dulles had the authority to deal with any major problem, no problem was ever attended for which Mr. Dulles had no time. Despite his industry and self-discipline, Mr. Dulles could not make one day grow into two days and thus only the most urgent problems were seriously undertaken.
The results of that system were most clearly visible in the strategically crucial Middle East. In times of acute tension, during the first Jordanian crisis, for instance, and during the Lebanese crisis, all of the Secretary's efforts had been focused on the Middle East. But U.S. Middle Eastern policy had been, with rare exceptions, crisis policy rather than a continuing policy. At present, Mr. Alsop believes it fair to say that the U.S. had no Middle Eastern policy, though the problems in the Middle East indicated that one was badly needed. Decisions were demanded by the rapid increase of Communist power in Iraq. That had produced the increasingly bitter quarrel between the Iraqi leader, Brigadier Abdel Karim Kassem, and Egypt's Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had begun denouncing communism as another form of anti-Arab imperialism.
British Middle Eastern policy was desperately concentrated on protecting their oil-rich holdings in the Persian Gulf. Thus, the British were at first delighted by the Nasser-Kassem dispute. They thought that Kuwait and the other Gulf Coast sheikdoms would be safe as long as the leaders of the two principal Arab states were busy arguing with each other. For a long time, therefore, the British Foreign Office had smiled approvingly on Brigadier Kassem and refused to believe in his surrender to the Communists.
In recent weeks, however, the evidence of total Communist domination n Iraq had become too great to ignore. The very fact that Premier Nasser and Brigadier Kassem were so violently at odds had meanwhile given an opening for a bold Middle Eastern policy. But the British were too weakly situated and too dependent on Middle Eastern oil, such that they dared not think about a bold Middle Eastern policy without the lead coming from the U.S.
The face of the globe was dotted with other, quite comparable though less acute situations. Secretary Herter could not do some things which Secretary Dulles had done, if only because he could not hope for a comparable amount of power from the President. But perhaps he would do what Mr. Dulles had not done, that being to organize the State Department to begin a new, preventive approach to all of the potential or probable trouble spots in the world.
Cuurently, with "little Marco" the Spineless leading the State Department, U.S. foreign policy is being dictated plainly by only one man, His Highness, the reincarnation of Herr Hitler. Now der Fuehrer, not content with only one unnecessary and unilateral war with Iran "over there", wants to start unilaterally another war 90 miles off the coast of Florida with Cuba and arrest Raul Castro, the 94-year old brother of Fidel, an invasion discarded by Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, in times when Cuba posed a genuine threat, during the latter part of the Eisenhower Administration and especially during the Kennedy Administration, as lunacy based on the consequent destabilzation of the entire Caribbean and Latin America generally, not to mention the pledge to Russia of non-invasion to resolve the eventual October, 1962 missile crisis which brought the two Cold War powers to the brink of irreversible nuclear confrontation. Now, these amateur nutbags in the White House in 2026, bent only on dominating headlines each news cycle to keep Magaville's collective mind off other matters, not only whether the head loony might be a pervert who molested an underage girl at some point in the past, as one such female claims, but moreover the current crisis in affording groceries and gas, gas and groceries and every other necessity of life in a spiral of unprecedented, unmitigated inflation purely the result of the will of a sitting U.S. head of state, as he tries to blame alternately President Biden or President Obama for every problem which he has created for the American public from his bumbling attempts to fulfill a fantasy checklist for all of his billionaire buddies while doing his best to insulate himself from any accountability for his actions into his remaining future, and establish himself as a "great man" in history, in reality the worst U.S. charlatan ever foisted on the world landscape, a failure at life, a failure in governance, all while his obeisant Republican leaders in Congress sit by idly and watch and smile with bobble-headed, robotic approval, too scared of political reprisal from the Godfather of Soullessness to lift even a slight voice of disapproval, having seen what happens to those who do, just as when such a gripping complex froze opposition within the Third Reich to der Fuehrer.
Julian Scheer of The News writes of North Carolina's scenery, as Governor Luther Hodges had proclaimed May as "See North Carolina Month". You may read of the short travelogue of memories down some of the forgotten back roads of the state for yourself. Much of the state, quite obviously, has changed quite radically since 1959, especially in and around the urban areas, but many of the locations attractive to tourists, in the mountains and along the coast, have not changed so much, except by the intrusion of nature and climate change, eroding some of the coastline and, in the wake of Hurricane Helene in 2024, changing quite a bit of the mountain scenery. You can explore some of those issues online for yourself.
But stop voting for Maga people who want to ignore climate change and ignore reality completely, unless you desire having a fundamental life change for yourself and your children and grandchildren, perhaps one which will be completely inhospitable eventually to human life on any level of which any of us have ever experienced in our lifetimes. Maga people, if you have not already realized it, are completely divorced from reality. They are crazy people.
Just yesterday, we heard this nut out of Texas, Cruzy-woozy-doozy, being interviewed, you remember, "Lyin' Ted", saying that the January 6, 2021 rioters at the Capitol were actually involved in a "peaceful protest" and that the bulk of them, therefore, were prosecuted through "weaponization" of the Biden Justice Department and thus deserve compensation out of the Trump "1776" "weaponization fund". Those are completely fanciful lies, as anyone would understand with eyes in their head who saw the video of the storming of the Capitol resulting from a purely fanciful lie that the 2020 election was "stolen", a lie conjured out of whole cloth by Trump, who is the biggest liar ever to reside at the White House, who cannot get through a day without telling lies and more lies to cover previous lies, even more so than President Nixon, who was quite a liar, at least for as long as his party would let him get away with his ruthless mendacity before promising to him enough votes to convict on pending articles of impeachment to force his resignation from office.
If you want to see more and fiercer hurricanes hitting areas never before hit in recorded history, keep driving that big, old gasaholic truck or other big vehicle and keep listening to the lies of Trump and his minions, which are gentle on your ears of the moment but hard on your long-term lifestyle, until you wake up one morning 20 or 40 years from now and realize only too fully, at your back door to the seashore in the piedmont, what you have done to your own environment, such that you can no longer drive down the road, because there are no longer any roads fit to drive down.
Keep it up and see for yourselves what completely irreligious things you are doing to the world around you, and stop professing the while to be "Christians", because you are anything but in your daily lives and behavior. Merely proclaiming yourself to be "Christian" does not mean you are one, as Jesus, himself, made plain, should any of you Magawumps ever deign actually to read the Bible and not just thump it, using it as a backdrop to damn to hell every "liberal" and every Democrat. Read Proverbs about the "liberal soul". Living profligately for yourself and the lives only of your family, without concern for your neighbors and the rest of world society, is not "good Christian living" but rather participation in the deadly sin of gluttony, getting what's yours and to hell with the rest.
Just where your stupidity ends and your craziness begins is hard to fathom. Both at once seem to be your raison d'etre when you wake up each day, asking yourselves how stupid and how crazy you can behave each new day just to make some personal enemy mad at you—certainly not Christian behavior.
A letter writer finds that many people were lost and did not know it, joining a church by signing a card and thinking that they would be saved. "The Bible says every knee must bend and be humble before God for forgiveness and there is no other way… Churches are filled today with members unprepared." She indicates that pastors who preached to please God instead of the church members would not be blamed for the lost souls, provided he preached being born again and having sins forgiven by the blood which Christ shed on the cross.
A letter writer from Southern Pines indicates that it seemed to many people in Moore County that the Governor should not use the State Highway Patrol as strikebreakers in Henderson. He thinks that the Governor may have smeared the name of the Patrol in the Henderson strike.
Framed Edition
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