The Charlotte News
Thursday, May 14, 1959
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Geneva that the Western powers had proposed to Russia this date that divided Berlin be made a united city under Big Four guarantees, as the first step in a sweeping package planned to unify East and West Germany and begin global disarmament. The four-phase Western program had been introduced in the fourth session of the Big Four foreign ministers conference as the Western response to Russia's demand that West Berlin be made a free city. It also countered Premier Nikita Khrushchev's call for a peace settlement with divided Germany. The proposals provided for successive disarmament measures, including an initial limit of 2.5 million men in the armed forces of the U.S. and Russia, and leading eventually to limitation and possible withdrawal of all foreign troops from Germany and neighboring areas. It would unify Germany in 30 months and then there would be free elections by the united Germany to join either NATO or the Warsaw Pact, or to adopt a neutral policy. Whatever the choice would be, the major powers, Germany and other European countries would take steps to avoid any change in the East-West balance of power and could enter into agreements against aggression. Western leaders had long expressed confidence that Germany would align with the West. As a package, the plan had no prospect of any serious consideration by the Soviets. Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko had already rejected it as a "tangle" of unrelated issues. But parts of it, especially the Berlin proposal, conceivably could lead to some bargaining. Berlin, in the first phase of the package, would be united by "free elections to be held through all Berlin under supervision" of either the major powers or the U.N. The United States, Russia, Britain and France would keep their troops there until the final German peace settlement provided for in the fourth phase. A city council would be responsible for administering the whole city under the general supervision of the Big Four, but the powers could intervene in city affairs only by unanimous vote. How that arrangement would affect East Germany's capital in East Berlin had not been stated. The West had made a compromise approach to Russia's demand that East and West Germany had to negotiate reunification directly between themselves. It proposed in the second phase the creation of a mixed German committee of 25 West and ten East Germans to make plans for increased contacts between the two Germanys and to draft an all-German electoral law.
In Washington, the Army conducted its 19th launch of its Jupiter intermediate range ballistic missile this date and said that the weapon was now "ready for operational use" and that it had "successfully traveled" the planned distance of 1,500 miles from Cape Canaveral. The announcement meant that the missile, built in competition with the Air Force Thor, could be delivered to the Air Force troops which would use it. While a weapon itself might be ready for operational use by troops, it did not mean necessarily that the whole integrated weapon system, including supply and maintenance, guidance, instruments, and launching sites, were also assembled and prepared for combat firing. The same confusion had arisen recently over the question of whether the Air Force Thors shipped to England for use by British troops were "operational". The Army announcement said that of 19 Jupiter weapons fired, 17 had been launched as part of developmental work and two used in scientific space probe shots. It added that "only a single launching out of the 19 has been considered unsuccessful." That apparently referred to a test on October 9, 1958, in which the missile had been destroyed deliberately 32 seconds after launch because of technical difficulty. Under the Defense Department's assignment of roles and missions to the service, the Army was barred more than a year earlier from using the Jupiter IRBM which it had developed. Instead, the Air Force was assigned the use of both its own Thor and the Army Jupiter.
In Tokyo, it was reported that the Dalai Lama's older brother, Thubten Jigme Norbu, had arrived by plane this date en route to India for reunion with his brother, saying that he planned to return to the United States, where he had been living. He had fled Tibet in 1951 after the Communists had taken over.
In Lakehurst, N.J., one crewman had been killed early this date when a Navy blimp had crashed into a hangar while attempting to land in a dense fog. Six crewmen had been hospitalized and several others had suffered minor injuries. The wreckage had been wedged in the hangar roof 150 feet above the ground. Rescue workers had clambered over the roof and removed the injured crewmen who had been trapped in the blimp's gondola. Names of the dead man and the injured had been withheld by the Navy pending notification of next of kin. The blimp had been returning from a routine 21-hour anti-submarine patrol early in the morning and was making a radar-controlled instrument approach through fog which had blanketed everything for more than 100 feet away at the time of the crash.
In Clinton, Tenn., it was reported that a barrage of shotgun and rifle fire from three locations in the woods had halted a convoy of coal trucks headed for TVA's Kingston Steam Plant the previous night. Three sticks of dynamite had been hurled, but had not exploded. No one had been injured, but Anderson County deputies said that bullets had struck the radiators of two of the seven or eight trucks and knocked them out of commission. The damaged trucks had been repaired and all had completed the journey to Kingston late the previous night. The ambush was the latest of a series of violent incidents reported in East Tennessee since the United Mine Workers Union had begun trying to organize non-union coal operations in the area. The trucks involved in the previous night's incident were owned by non-union operators of small strip mines. Officers said that the three dud sticks of dynamite had been found on one of the trucks after the shooting had stopped. The truckers reported that they were fired on from three locations and that four or five shots had been fired in each incident. No one had seen the assailants. The violence had come a week after two dynamite explosions had occurred in downtown Jellico, on the Tennessee-Kentucky line, destroying two coal tipples and damaging much of the Jellico business area. Those blasts had not been solved. The UMW had denied any part in the violence.
In Raleigh, it was reported that the State House Education Committee this date had killed one of the pet proposals of Governor Luther Hodges, the incentive plan aimed at getting counties to boost their support of the public schools. By an overwhelming voice vote, the Committee had given an unfavorable report to the incentive plan legislation following a motion to give the bill a favorable report had attracted only nine votes. Under the incentive plan, the state would have put up ten million dollars per year and divided it among the counties which increased their support of the schools. The plan was recommended by the School Finance Study Commission and was strongly endorsed by the Governor. On Wednesday night, the Governor had made a last-minute plea for the plan in a radio address, saying that he was willing to have the plan adopted on a contingency basis at the present legislative session to get the principle adopted and that details of financing to put the plan into effect could then be worked out later. The plan, however, had fallen by the wayside because many legislators had considered it a step toward shifting support of the schools from the state back to the counties. The Governor repeatedly asserted that such was not the case.
John Kilgo of The News reports from Huntersville that three men had been killed early this date when their pickup truck had collided with a Southern Railroad freight train about two miles south of Huntersville. The three men, employees of the Mecklenburg County School system, had been riding in a County-owned truck. County police officers said that the truck apparently had pulled into the crossing directly in the path of the train which was headed south.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that the new members of the City Council had held their first "secret" meeting, an innocent affair, according to them, and said that it was a shame that only the new members could be present. The meeting had been held on Sunday evening in the office of one of the new members, on the day before they were sworn in. One of them said this date that the two incumbent members and Mayor Jim Smith had been invited to attend but for various reasons, only the five of them had. Mr. Scheer explains how the meeting had come to be.
On the editorial page, "The Invisible Barriers Must Be Erased" finds that the proposed unification of the law enforcement agencies of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County to be in the common welfare, and had to be subordinated to individual interests. County Police Chief Joe Whitley's opposition to the plan was understandable as he was proud of his department and its accomplishments. But modern Mecklenburg differed from that of years earlier. It was characterized more than ever by a single community of interest and its problems would be solved more intelligently if they were considered as related parts of an integrated whole. That could only occur when barriers ended and provincialism disappeared.
The policing problem in metropolitan Mecklenburg was not logically divisible anymore by political subdivisions. Those lines would always lag behind the actual urban limits, which, in general, coincided with the limits of the area requiring intensified police protection. The metropolitan community was actually growing, not Charlotte itself. The city limits merely split an area which had practically the same policing problems on one side as on the other.
To argue that any change would be one for the worse was gloomy defeatism. The ability to improvise and accomplish revolutionary things in an orderly way, to alter governmental structures to meet the changing needs of the people, was basic in a democratic society and was a saving grace.
"Let Henderson's 'Occupation' Be Brief" indicates that there had been no cheers when the North Carolina National Guard had gone into strike-torn Henderson, as the merest cheer would have added insult to injury. It finds that no one could quarrel with the facts of life in that unfortunate community, as there was terrible anger there and the threat of violence lurked behind every shrub. Guardians of law and order, armed and alert, were necessary to protect lives and property from ruthless mischief.
But it finds it a civil dispute with civil roots. The presence of uniformed Guardsmen, steel-helmeted and toting M-1 rifles and .45 Colt automatics, clashed harshly with American experience and traditions. It was particularly a sorry sight for Southerners, who were perhaps more sensitive than most citizens to bayonet-brandishing.
It finds that it was to be hoped that the show of military might in a civilian community would be brief and that the soldiers would exercise great care and prudence in keeping the peace, being equally protective of the rights of all. The Henderson strike had already left an ugly scar on the North Carolina psyche, requiring considerable treatment. People would know that the treatment had begun when the troops could be removed and the responsibility for maintaining the law could be returned to civil authorities, where it belonged.
Speakimg of invisible barriers and deployment of National Guard and military troops to civilian areas, as well as damage to the pscyhe of the populace by same, this story
"Play-Time" indicates that an official Air Force publication had pointed to toys as an excellent way of getting adults interested in national defense and aerospace activities. Since parents did most of the toy-buying, it was reasoned that almost every citizen could be propagandized through the toy industry. It suggests that if the Treasury Department would just issue toy money to pay the bill, everyone could get on with the game.
"At Last? Been That Way for Years" indicates that the Greensboro Daily News was nearly popping a gallus with pride because Winston Churchill, just before a BOAC jet had carried him back to London, had "at last vindicated the South in an area where he reigns supreme." His parting words had been: "I will now say goodbye to you all." The Daily News had said, "'you all'—as Southern as cornbread."
It indicates that it might be pure cornbread and that it was glad to hear it from an acknowledged imperator of the language. "The South does indeed stand vindicated—but 'at last'? Not so, sirs." It indicates that Mr. Churchill might reign in the South, but not supreme. English was the King's English or the Queen's English by birthright, presently belonging to Queen Elizabeth. "But lest the faint-hearted Confederates from Guilford should go aflutter at this reminder, we hasten to advise that good old 'you all' has been melodiously threaded through the Queen's speeches for a long time, though at last hearing she had yet to elide to the more authentic 'y'all.'
"Yes, you all, the South is vindicated by the highest seal of authority. But not 'at last.' It's been that way for years."
"More Problems Yet" quotes from an editorial in the New York Herald Tribune: "State Department legal adviser Loftus Becker urged before the United Nations committee (on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space) that first priority must be given to setting the rules on liability for damage resulting from space activities—which may be crucial as soon as the satellite re-entry problem is solved. He also suggested that the United Nations take jurisdiction over the moon. Another still unresolved question is the fundamental one of whether space is to be considered res nullis or res communis—that is, claimable by the first nation there, or unclaimable and free to all."
It indicates in response: "And to think we were worried about Geneva!"
A piece from the Daily Tar Heel, the UNC student newspaper, titled "Death—A Spade & a Shovel", indicates that the previous Thursday night, Donald Quarles, Deputy Secretary of Defense, had died in his sleep, and on the following day, Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy had gone on television to issue the required statement. For 3 1/2 minutes, the Secretary had stumbled from one euphemism to the next, climaxing with what it regards as a classic line: "We are all just as sorry as we can be that Don Quarles failed to wake up this morning after his night's rest."
The piece indicates: "Failed to wake up, indeed! Donald Quarles is DEAD, you simple Republican businessman jerk."
It indicates that traditionally, the country had worshiped youth, vigor and "progress", while at the same time pretending that old-age, infirmity and death were the end results of other societies, not that of the United States. But the comment by the Secretary it finds to have been the ultimate debasement of the dignity, meaning and splendor of death. It indicates that all deaths were unique and at the same time, equal, that were Nikita Khrushchev to fall over dead the following day, it would mourn him for what he was and was not. In the same spirit, it mourned the death of Mr. Quarles. "And while it is probably permissible for Neil McElroy to assist in the hatcheting of this country's preparedness program, it is not permissible for him to deprive a human being named Donald Quarles of his final dignity."
It indicates that Mr. Quarles had been recently tagged "Mr. Missile Gap" by Joseph Alsop. It mourns Mr. Quarles as a man, not as a public servant. "And when the missile gap finally eventuates in the destruction of these United States, we can just hear Quarles and Neil McElroy explaining to St. Peter how it all happened: 'The United States isn't dead—it just failed to wake up this morning.'"
Drew Pearson finds it highly unusual that a Congressional committee had given a witness the kid-gloves treatment, it having been both interesting and unusual that the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee had allowed Dr. Edward Teller, the semi-father of the hydrogen bomb, to set his own terms for testifying for two hours. He had then made a statement in defense of the confirmation of Admiral Lewis Strauss as Secretary of Commerce, and after almost no cross-examination, had departed. If the Senators had been less worshipful of Dr. Teller, he suggests, they might have discovered some interesting facts.
He indicates that the most interesting one was that the scientist occupied a vague status with the Government and the University of California so that he could simultaneously accept retainers of $1,000 per day as a consultant for private industry, including General Dynamics. In the 1959 edition of Who's Who, Dr. Teller listed himself as being with the Government's Livermore Laboratory, located about 50 miles from the University of California in Berkeley, and yet an inquiry at the Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, in charge of the Livermore Laboratory, during the week had brought the information that Dr. Teller was no longer with the Government, but with the University of California. An AEC spokesman explained that the severance from the Government had been arranged so that the physicist could avoid any conflict of interest in taking fees from private industry. A summary of Dr. Teller's income, received by the Senate Committee as an afterthought when Senators had failed to question him on it, showed that for the previous five years, he had been receiving fees from private industry, running as high as $25,000 from General Dynamics in one year, $22,000 from General Dynamics in another year, though in the current year, he had received only $1,250 from the defense firm. Significantly, General Dynamics Corp. had received a contract from the AEC to build a gas-cooled atomic reactor and was about to receive another. The firm had hired Dr. Frederic de Hoffmann, Dr. Teller's long-time close associate, and had placed him in charge of gas-cooled reactors. It had also hired C. Arthur Rolander, an attorney assigned by Admiral Strauss in the purge trial of Dr. Robert Oppenheimer. Mr. Rolander was presently the Washington attorney for General Dynamics. That firm had also hired Everett Hollis, the former public relations man for Admiral Strauss.
He finds that it formed an interesting pattern of people who had worked for the AEC but who now worked for General Dynamics. The list was topped by Dr. Teller, who had all the atomic know-how of the Government at his fingertips, and who presently earned private consulting fees from General Dynamics. Yet, until recently, he had listed himself as being employed by the Government's Livermore Laboratory. Just where his public interest ended and his private interest began appeared difficult to ascertain and repeated phone calls by the column both to him and to Dr. de Hoffmann of General Dynamics had failed to obtain an explanation, neither having been available for comment.
Two weeks before the Panama invasion, the House Merchant Marine Committee had asked the State Department about reports that an invasion force was preparing to endanger the Panama Canal. The State Department had replied: "The situation is dormant." At that time invaders were on their way to Panama.
The President had about given up hope that the Russians had any of the 11 American fliers missing in Soviet Armenia since the prior September. The President was now inclined to believe that the men were dead and that the Russians were telling the truth when they said that the bodies had never been recovered.
With the Democrats presently planning for the 1960 presidential campaign, they still owed $500,000 on the campaign to elect Adlai Stevenson in 1956.
Joseph Alsop, in Geneva, finds that the initial squabbling regarding the shape of the conference table, whether round or square, had provided a fair measure of the character of most of the rest of the debate which could be expected at the foreign ministers conference. While the setting was very beautiful, the conference, itself, was likely no more than a very bad public joke, though not a joke because of the reality which lay behind it, impacting everyone worldwide.
The Soviet Ambassador to France, Vladimir Vinogradov, had visited Premier Charles de Gaulle shortly after the recent special congress of the Communist Party in Moscow, the Ambassador having made that congress his pretext for asking to be received by the Premier. He had thus spent about 20 minutes belaboring that congress while the Premier silently and somewhat ominously listened. Finally, the Ambassador unveiled his actual purpose, asking the Premier what he thought about Berlin, to which Premier De Gaulle replied: "Free access to West Berlin is a vital Western interest, for which we shall fight if need be. If we have to fight, no doubt we may all die; but so will you!" It caused the immediate withdrawal of the Soviet Ambassador and summed up the Berlin crisis in a nutshell, indicating that the Western position in Berlin was a vital interest. As British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd had said in Washington, "If Berlin goes, what next?"
But there was no way to defend the vital Western position in Berlin except by being ready to fight for it, and if the West were to fight for it, it would be almost impossibly difficult to limit the war. Such was the real choice. Many people, including Mr. Lloyd, had been looking for a way around that choice and yet the choice was the underlying reality of the conference.
Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and his delegation were present to find out, if they could, whether the Western nations really were ready to fight for Berlin. If they concluded the contrary, as they might, there would be no end to the concessions which the Soviets would demand. Nothing other than proven Western willingness to fight for Berlin would promote the type of compromise which would be acceptable to the West.
It was suspected that the Western foreign ministers were present also to find out whether they were willing to fight for Berlin. Premier De Gaulle might have made up his mind, as he appeared to have done. West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer might have made up his mind also. But there was a question as to what the mind of President Eisenhower was and above all the mind of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Those questions would have to be answered apparently as the conference continued and later on, at the summit conference.
He indicates that it was only prudent to begin thinking about the choice for the very good reason that Berlin seemed likely to be only the first round in a new type of East-West contest of will. That new type of contest had become predictable as soon as the Administration had decided not to maintain the Western nuclear lead.
Now, at the beginning of the missile gap, the Soviets were saying, in effect, "We find the Berlin situation intolerable, and if you don't change it to suit us, we will take measures you can only counter by using the weapons you have never before been willing to use." The Soviets would not be taking that position if the American lead had been maintained. They were now saying such precisely because the American lead had been lost. They were likely to say worse things as the missile gap widened and that was where things stood as of the present, which was why the nature of the choice anent Berlin needed to be faced and carefully considered.
Marquis Childs, in Geneva, indicates that the nearly insuperable obstacles in the way of any real discussion could hardly have been better demonstrated that in the tragicomic confusion in which the conference had begun. The West fully expected that the Soviets would try to make the Germans full partners in the conference and would haggle for several days over the status of the delegations from the two Germanys. But that they would insist from the outset that the conference ought convert itself from a four-power meeting into a six-power meeting had given the West a shock. They had agreed, or seemed to do so, that the East and West Germans ought be present as advisers to be consulted when called upon. The Russians had appeared amazed at the reaction in the West to their opening gambit, calling a hurried press conference of the Communist press to say that they had not meant to create any such reaction and that having made the pitch for the East Germans, they fully expected to carry on with the four powers around the table, which might be round or square, its shape of no great importance.
He finds that the two sides were speaking two different languages which were alien to one another in that they derived from different ways of life. Words which seemed to mean the same thing in Russian and English conveyed something quite different, and the West was forever being surprised that the Russians had apparently deliberately distorted the meaning of plain English. That had happened in other conferences and it promised to repeat itself in the present conference. If there were no other reason to believe that anything like an understanding would take not months but years, it was that language barrier which could not be bridged by interpreters and translation.
What had become apparent as Mr. Gromyko presented himself in his familiar role as the great stone face was that, while in some respects the outer surface had changed, the hard-core of Communist policy remained as solid as ever. After American pianist Van Cliburn, the Bolshoi Ballet and the stir over the "cultural exchange", there had been those in the West who had wanted to believe that Moscow was in the process of transformation. The first warning had come with Premier Khrushchev's threat of the eight hydrogen bombs to reduce West Germany to nothing and another eight to dispose of the rest of Europe. That had an ominous and familiar ring, recalling the days after the Suez Canal attack in late 1956 when the Soviets had put forth blunt letters to Paris and London threatening to rain down rockets on those cities. The Russian response was that it was no more than the West was doing by proclaiming the placing of nuclear rockets in Italy and other NATO countries.
The conference had thus opened with the cold war going full blast and Mr. Gromyko's opening move appeared as no more than a cold war tactic transferred to the conference table. But it did not mean that the conference was bound to end in failure or disaster. On the contrary, tactics to one side, the prospect, despite the snafu at the start, was for a limited agreement which would make a summit conference possible. Self-interest on both sides compelled the East and the West to at least a modest attempt at agreement on the most obvious issues, such as Berlin.
Chancellor Adenauer, in his stubborn determination to make the Russians pay the highest possible price for a summit conference, might exaggerate the Russian self-interest, the need to relieve the intolerable severity and harshness of Soviet life, and to make the promise of a higher standard of living at least partly true. In the popular desire to end the armaments burden and ease the long tension, the self-interest of the West resembled Soviet motivations.
He finds one conspicuous advantage at the start of the conference over previous meetings of the kind, that the public had been educated to expect not the millennium but at best only a small start on the long and painful road toward competitive and peaceful coexistence. Mr. Gromyko at the start might have helped it to harden the skepticism and thus he might have performed a useful service.
He finds that the choice was not between the millennium and despair, but rather between steady, patient negotiation through an interminable future and the awful period of letting the cold war rage unchecked.
A letter writer from Lancaster, S.C., finds that it was unusual to see an excellent advertisement for the United Steel Workers Union on the editorial page of the newspaper on May 7, without even the usual notation that it was an advertisement. He indicates that whether intentional or not, the Steel Workers Union ought provide a vote of thanks to the newspaper.
The editors note that the reader was regarding a Herblock cartoon which had kidded America's "threadbare" steel tycoons.
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