The Charlotte News
Monday, May 4, 1959
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Panama that the panic involving a wealthy aristocrat, a famous ballerina, a nightclub owner and a boatload of Cubans desperately seeking to produce a Castro-like revolution in Panama, seemed to have settled down. The Cuban invaders had surrendered the previous weekend, ending the immediate threat to President Ernesto de La Guardia's Government. The peace team from the Organization of American States had announced on Sunday night that the threat to Panama was over. President De la Guardia, elected for a four-year term in 1956, remained fairly popular with the people. But some members of his Administration were not, and there was discontent and talk of a change. The talk had turned to action several weeks earlier when some dissident students had visited Cuba and asked for help from some of Sr. Castro's veterans. There were reports that wealthy Roberto Arias, who came from a family of presidents, had been financing some sort of uprising. His wife was British Dame Margot Fonteyne, one of the most famous ballet dancers west of Moscow. The Government had found a witness who said that she had taken pictures while Sr. Arias and some men had raised some arms cached in a rowboat at the bottom of the Gulf of Panama. Sr. Arias had eluded Government forces and finally taken refuge in the Brazilian Embassy. The frustrated Government meanwhile arrested Ms. Fonteyn and then, following 24 hours of questioning, shipped her out of the country. Then a band of Cubans had landed at an unlikely place called San Blas Peninsula on Panama's tropical Caribbean coast. Inspired with the idea of liberating yet another country after winning their own civil war, the young Cubans had taken over the headlines but hardly anything else. Plagued by misfortune, the invaders had landed at the wrong place and three members of the party had been drowned during the landing attempt, among them the Panamanians who were supposed to lead them. Cesar Vega, a Cuban nightclub owner with a record of unsuccessful revolutionary activity, had been left in charge of 89 invaders, almost all of whom were Cubans. Sr. Vega, in his late 30's, said that the invaders had expected the people of Panama to stage strikes and demonstrations and rush to volunteer for the revolution, but none of those things had occurred. The Government of Panama was nevertheless alarmed though the 3,000 men of the National Guard could have easily dealt with the 89 invaders holed up in the village of Nombre de Dios.
In Tallahassee, Fla., most of the 2,800 black students at Florida A&M University had stayed away from classes this date as part of a "passive resistance" move designed to focus national attention on the mass rape of a black coed of the University by four white males the prior early Saturday morning, the student having been taken from a car containing two black couples, parked near the campus after a dance on Friday night. In small groups, the students milled about the campus this date in orderly protests, as had been a mass meeting of an estimated 700 students the previous night. Student leaders said that the strike was part of a week-long protest movement to draw attention to the rape case "so that justice will be done." The four males charged were formally arraigned on rape charges this date and the prosecutor said that they would be held without bail pending referral of the case to the next grand jury which would convene on June 1. There was speculation in the Legislature that the case might have some effect on a move by Governor LeRoy Collins to abolish the death penalty in capital cases, including rape. The bill thus far had been tied up in a House committee and legislators interviewed this date had been about equally divided on whether the rape case would help passage of that bill. Demands had mounted from black groups for vigorous, fair prosecution of the four individuals, quoted by the sheriff as having admitted the crime. Placards reading "double standards of justice must be eliminated" and "it could have been your sister, wife or mother" had been held up during a Sunday night rally of several hundred hymn-singing, praying, Florida A&M students. A deputy sheriff said that he had found the 19-year old female student, bound and gagged, still in the car of the armed assailants when he had arrested the four males at gunpoint early on Saturday morning. The ages of the four ranged between 16 and 24. The maximum penalty in Florida for a rape conviction was death, but no white man had ever been sentenced to death for the the rape of a black woman.
Senator Hubert Humphrey predicted this date that at least four convention ballots would be needed to name the Democratic presidential nominee the following year. He stated in an interview that the convention, which would open on July 11, 1960 in Los Angeles, would be "a really open convention, the way it looks now." He said he had still not decided whether to become an active candidate for the nomination, but indicated that his recent swing through the West had encouraged him along those lines. The week-long tour, interrupted when he had to rush back to take part in Senate consideration of the labor bill sponsored by Senator John F. Kennedy, considered at present the front-runner for the nomination, included speeches and conferences with Democratic leaders in Washington, Oregon, California, Utah and Wyoming.
In Boston, it was reported that the new RNC chairman, Senator Thruston Morton of Kentucky, had said this date at a breakfast meeting of the Massachusetts Republican State Committee with the finance chairmen of city and town committees, that there were two major issues for 1960, the big one being the fact that "Communism hasn't spread in the world in the last 6 1/2 years" and the other being that the country had emerged from the recession and that there were "more families with incomes of more than $6,000 a year and more with incomes of $10,000 than ever before in our history". He said that a comparatively small shift in voting patterns from 1958 to 1960 would bring a Republican victory in the next national election. He said that Republican candidates for Congress had received 45 percent or more of the popular vote in 23 states in 1958, that in the 1946 election, Democratic candidates had polled only 44 percent of the vote cast outside the South, but had nevertheless won the national vote in 1948. He said that he was sure that none of the Republicans would ever forget that latter election, after Governor Thomas Dewey, the Republican presidential nominee, had been predicted by nearly every poll to come out on top in that election, right up to election eve. He said that the DNC chairman at the time had also been a Senator, that having been Rhode Island Senator J. Howard McGrath, and so one could do both jobs. Senator Morton said upon arrival in Boston the previous day that effective control of union racketeering would be a top issue for Republicans in 1960. In a talk with newsmen, he listed three factors which he said would unify the party nationally, those being the Administration's record of reduced Government costs and "fiscal responsibility", the fact that "something must be done" about labor racketeering, and the Administration's record of containing the spread of Communism without U.S. troops firing a shot.
In Vancouver, Wash., it was reported that the body of a little girl, found bobbing in a Columbia River slough, had provided a probable solution this date to the baffling mystery of the missing Martin family of Portland. The body, discovered Sunday, had been identified as that of 11-year old Susan Martin, having been in the water for a considerable amount of time, according to the coroner. It may have been submerged since the December 7 disappearance of the family, including the father, the mother and three young daughters, including Susan. Police, who had run down scores of clues in the five months since the case had first developed, believed that the car belonging to the family had plunged off the highway into the Columbia River or one of its tributaries. The body of Susan apparently had floated free from the wreckage in the spring current and had been washed to a backwater slough. The dentist for the family examined the body and said that he was certain it was that of Susan. The body was clad in clothing which friends and relatives said Susan had been wearing on the day the family had vanished, and that a coat she was wearing belonged to her 13-year old sister. The family, after telling friends that they were on their way to the woods to obtain Christmas greens, had climbed into their white station wagon on Sunday morning, December 7, and driven east up the Oregon side of the Columbia River to Cascade Locks, where Mr. Martin had purchased a small amount of gasoline, after which they disappeared. As indicated earlier, the exact whereabouts of the missing vehicle and the other members of the family remained hidden until last year in 2025, when a diver located the car near the Cascade Locks, and it was eventually dislodged from 66 years of silt which had nearly buried it completely, and brought to the surface. The theory is that they lost their way and ran into the river. No foul play is suspected.
In San Francisco, Federal authorities reported that shortages in a Long Beach bank in Southern California which might exceed 3 million dollars, had resulted in charges against a businessman from San Rafael, near San Francisco, for complicity in the embezzlement. The businessman, 40, was held on a $100,000 bail. He operated an appliance business in Los Angeles and in Sebastopol, near San Rafael. FBI agents arrested him at his San Rafael home on Saturday and said that he was implicated by a suicide note left by the assistant vice-president of a Long Beach branch of the U.S. National Bank of San Diego. The man had shot himself on Saturday morning. The man in San Rafael was brought before a U.S. Commissioner and charged with "aiding and abetting" the other man in the misapplication of $20,000 from the San Diego bank on March 20, 1959. We trust there was some other evidence beyond just the suicide note implicating the man, as that would suggest a fairly easy way for a person bent on vengeance to take down another against whom the suicide might hold a private vendetta. The dying declaration, however, would be admissible as against an objection for hearsay, as an exception to the hearsay rule.
In Greenville, S.C., it was reported that the illicit liquor industry had gone underground in the area, as officers had unearthed a 30 by 70-foot underground room in the Hillside community in lower Greenville County on Saturday. The underground room had its own electrical generating equipment and a television set, along with distilling equipment capable of producing several hundred gallons of liquor every four days. The underground room was reached through a trap door in a barn and along a 25-foot tunnel. We have to wonder if they watched the pilot for that new series, "The Untouchables", to start regularly in the fall, on their tv set while engaged in their operations.
John Kilgo of The News reports that two men, one holding a snub-nosed revolver and the other a switchblade pocketknife, had robbed the owner of a Charlotte dry cleaning plant this date of between $500 and $600. The owner said that the two men had bound him to a tabletop and made off with the cash early in the morning. The dry cleaning plant was located about two blocks east of Johnson C. Smith University. He said that he was in his business reading a newspaper when the two men had walked in and asked for a bundle of dry-cleaning, whereupon he had gone to the back to obtain it and when he returned to the front, one of the men was holding a gun on him and said, "Just be quiet and nobody will get hurt,"—another one of those original lines. He said that the two men had then walked behind the counter and opened the cash register and taken all of his silver and then jerked his billfold from his pocket, obtaining between $500 and $600. He had not resisted them at all. He said that the two men had taken him to the back room where they forced him to lie down on a table and bound his arms and wrists to the table with a piece of heavy rope. He said that the older man with the gun had not wanted to hurt him but that the younger one with the knife was "out for blood", having said after they had tied him up, "We've got him tied up now, so let's just cut him up." The older man then said: "No, let's don't hurt him. The cops don't look for you as hard when you don't hurt a man." The only thing they had done to him was to hit him in the stomach with their fists. He had been discovered by a customer about 25 minutes later. They had told him to remain quiet, and he had been compliant for awhile but then started hollering. He said that he had requested that the ropes on his wrists be loosened somewhat as they were cutting off his circulation, but that they had just looked at him and did not loosen the rope at all. He said he had never been that scared in his life. He said that the older man was about 40 and the younger about 16 or 17. The robbery had taken place about five blocks from where a grocer had been robbed and killed about three weeks earlier. The victim said that all he could think about during the ordeal was the way that the grocer had been cut up right up the street several weeks earlier.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that local political experts could not agree on a prediction of the finish in the following day's local general election race, that odds were one-sided that the "Better Government" ticket of four candidates would waltz in for City Council, but the other three seats appeared up for grabs, with a dark horse, Jim Whittington, having been picking up strength in recent days following his eighth place finish in the primary. Mayor pro tem Herman Brown had also been gathering some votes since his surprisingly weak 10th place finish. There were also three incumbents in the race.
The temperature in Charlotte had reached a near record of 93.1 degrees the previous day, with a low in the morning this date of 63, and a high of 90 predicted for this date and 92 for the following day. Bundle up, as it is cold.
On the editorial page, "Charlotte Must Say It with Ballots" finds that for two years, Charlotte residents had viewed City Hall with either contented witticisms or discontented criticisms, but that was now over and the time had come to put up or shut up.
The polls would open at 33 points the following day in Charlotte and every eligible citizen who gave a hoot about sound government would have an opportunity to express themselves in the most forceful manner which democracy provided. It urges voting and again produces its list of recommended candidates for City Council and for the City School Board.
It indicates that voters might agree or disagree but that every citizen able to exercise the privilege ought do so the following day.
Actually, voting, once qualified by age and residency, is a right, not a privilege requiring a license, but the exhortation is the important thing. Magaville residents these days, however, wish to make it not only a privilege but one so narrowly constricted that few deemed to be the unwashed will be able to navigate the sticky wicket of requirements in Republican counties of Republican states where local registrars will be permitted whimsically to strike people, i.e., Democrats, deemed insufficient in meeting the subjectively established criteria, that is "something does not smell right here, must be illegal and so let's investigate"—until the matter is moot after the desired conservative Republican wins the election, after sufficient numbers of "Dumocrats" have been prevented from voting by us smart fascists.
"Let the State Gamble on Certification" indicates that State Representative Grace Taylor Rodenbough's House subcommittee on teacher certification was still pondering in Raleigh the "advice and counsel" of the North Carolina Education Association. During the week, the subcommittee would reveal its recommendations.
It finds that any recommendations which would drastically improve the quality of teaching, such as a requirement that all teachers have degrees in some field of art or science, would cause a convulsion in every schoolhouse in the state, for good reason. Yet, some thrust had to be made to crack down the fences which education schools, teacher colleges and accrediting associations had erected around the profession, often to the disgust of those within it. Those fences reached heights of absurdity, especially at the high school level, with the rule that liberally-educated college graduates, otherwise qualified, could not teach without courses in methodology. Those courses were not necessarily mumbo-jumbo, and no one quarreled with the insistence of professional educators that there be employed certain classroom finesse and know-how apart from knowing the subject matter. Yet, many potentially good teachers, lacking the required courses in classroom skills, were left out.
It finds that when the burgeoning student bodies would in time subside, it would be time for picayune efforts at "classroom psychology", but until that point, it was worth the gamble to inject a few teachers into schools who would be baffled by undisciplined brats, but might know enough about math, history or English to catch someone's interest.
"No Leave for the Red Army Chorus" indicates that it was sad to learn that the Russian Army Chorus and Dance Ensemble had been barred from the country by the State Department, despite the realization that it would have never played in Charlotte anyway. Notwithstanding a strong case by Nikolai Danilov, the deputy minister of culture, the Department had turned him down with the reply that Soviet Army uniforms on stage might disturb people.
It supposes that they might appear in sport shirts, but the quasi-military bearing of the company was part and parcel of its tradition, and its discipline in performance was another hallmark which would suffer without the uniform.
The Red Army Chorus was an unusual organization, professional but without its members being in the Army. It got its name from the financial support given it by units of the service.
Ed Sullivan had recently presented a Russian dance group and after exciting gymnastics, a loud but indistinct audience remark had brought an icy stare from Mr. Sullivan. It had been the only incident and that ensemble had appeared for "The Partisans" in Cossack dress with some carrying arms. That had probably been noted by State Department monitors and might be part of their case regarding the Army Chorus.
It indicates that there might be a fringe element who would attend performances just to hurl epithets, dead cats, moldy cabbages and the like. But it finds it difficult to believe that there were many theatergoers who could not remain resolved in basic politics and ideals while accepting another country's culture.
It recognizes that in music and dance, the Russians were inventors and pioneers of the first rank, no matter what they were wearing, and one did not have to be aligned with Soviet theories of government or who did what first, to recognize that excellence.
A piece from the Richmond News Leader, titled "Memories of a First Love", finds a publicity release from Fortune Magazine to produce dreams of an old love. The Illinois Institute of Technology had recently conducted a poll to nominate the "100 Best Designed Products of Modern Times" and Fortune chronicled the results of the poll. The Olivetti Lettera 22 portable typewriter had led the list. In 100th place was the Gilbert Erector Set, designed in 1909. In between were several familiar items, a Parker pen, the 1953 Studebaker coupe, the 1940 Lincoln Continental, a Singer vacuum cleaner, and a Leica camera. But in 14th place had been the 810 Cord of 1936, stirring memories for the writer.
The car had great impact in its time for the generation which reached its majority in the Twenties, groaning with responsibilities when the Cord had entered the scene. For the generation since World War II, sports cars had been the fascination.
If one had graduated from high school in the spring of 1936 and had been driving for only a couple of years and a little car crazy, "oh, gentle masters, imagine the 810 Cord! It burst upon the motoring public with a bold and hearty arrogance no stock car has achieved before or since. Two years earlier, Chrysler and De Soto had unveiled their unfortunate 'Airflow' models, but where these had provoked curiosity, the Cord commanded awe."
It had not only been a front-wheel drive car, which Cord had pioneered in 1929, but also had a step-down interior, a low silhouette, a steering column gearshift, with a V-8 engine able to reach a top speed of 115 mph, 13 years before Cadillac in 1949 could match it in horsepower per pound of fuel delivered. In the center of its dashboard, below the tachometer and oil pressure gauge, were four rheostat controls for adjusting the mix. The headlights were retractable, though one had to crank them up and down. It sold for $2,695 FOB Auburn, Ind., and only a few of them, relatively speaking, had ever been sold.
Errett L. Cord, who had been the wonderboy of the automotive industry during the 20's, had supervised Gordon Buehrig's design of the 810 and saw the machine through production, but then had resigned from the company and moved to Los Angeles. He was now 61, having a couple of years earlier won election to the Nevada State Senate.
The writer had driven an 810 only once, during the summer of 1936, the car having belonged to an older boy's father and neither the father nor the boy had proper reverence for the machine. In less than three months, the boy had wrecked it, reducing "the beautiful thing to shapeless junk, and walked away from the accident grinning. The next day we gazed upon the ruins, and wept hot tears to think that Keats was wrong. A quarter of a century later, it is comforting to reflect that Keats was right after all. The beauty of the 810 Cord—beauty in the eyes of the boy who beheld it—indeed endures; it never will pass into nothingness."
Drew Pearson indicates that there had been some interesting but forgotten contrasts in the voting lineups between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate recently, with some of those who had once aligned with the late Senator Joseph McCarthy presently charging McCarthyism. The previous week it had been Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, the Minority Leader, who had defended Clare Boothe Luce with his memorable slip of the tongue: "Don't beat an old bag of bones." The vote on the confirmation of Mrs. Luce to be Ambassador to Brazil had been 72 to 11, prior to her resignation from the post shortly thereafter because of the controversy with Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, who was one of the 11 dissenters.
Six years earlier, Senator Dirksen had voted with 11 Senators against a top career diplomat, Charles Bohlen, to become Ambassador to Russia.
Mrs. Luce had been a political appointee whereas Mr. Bohlen had given his life to the foreign service. Nevertheless, when Senator McCarthy had led an attack against Mr. Bohlen, Senator Dirksen not only was among the 11 dissenters but had gone out of his way to claim that career Ambassador Hugh Gibson had denied a letter he had signed in support of Mr. Bohlen.
Another twist of fate had seen Admiral Lewis Strauss, who had rushed in ahead of Senator McCarthy to purge Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, defended by Republicans who had suffered from McCarthyism. Republican Senator Clifford Case had almost been defeated by the McCarthy wing of the Republican Party in New Jersey and yet he was vigorous in rallying to the defense of Admiral Strauss to become Secretary of Commerce.
When Dr. David Inglis, president of the Federation of American Scientists, had dared criticize Admiral Strauss for his crackdown on Dr. Oppenheimer, Republican Senators had practically jumped down his throat.
Few high officials of the Eisenhower Administration indulged in McCarthyism, the outstanding exception being Admiral Strauss when he had been head of the Atomic Energy Commission. But when a scientific colleague of Dr. Oppenheimer had dared criticize Admiral Strauss, presently up for confirmation as Secretary of Commerce, Republican Senators had sternly accused him of McCarthyism.
Senate colleagues had been kidding bachelor Senator Warren Magnuson of Washington that if he were only a married man, he would not be hopping around with his foot in a cast. Washington was the only state with two bachelor Senators, both handsome, able, and aloof from the ladies. Senator Henry Jackson had been living in an apartment in Georgetown and Senator Magnuson maintained bachelor quarters at the Shoreham Hotel. Recently, the latter was preparing a snack for himself when a large can of salmon fell from a high shelf and hit his instep. He did not pay too much attention to it at first, but later found that the salmon had broken three bones in his foot. A friend had chided that if he were a married man, he would not have been cooking his own supper and would not have broken his foot.
It had been overshadowed by other news, but Wall Street bankers were maneuvering to push another money bill, described by Representative Wright Patman of Texas as one of the largest "Treasury raids" in history. The legislation was authored by Senator Willis Robertson of Virginia and Representative Paul Brown of Georgia, and would amend the Federal Reserve Act to enable private banks to lower their reserve requirements for loans and investments by another 9 billion dollars, in addition to the 5.5 billion already authorized. At present, the Federal Reserve System did not permit bank credit expansion beyond 3 percent per year, which, in effect, meant that reserve requirements could be lowered no more than 500 million dollars. Thus, a lowering of 14.5 billion would produce haywire inflation.
Marquis Childs, in London, finds it to be one of the miracles of political life that less than 2 1/2 years after the catastrophe of the Suez attack, "the gray Edwardian figure of Harold Macmillan should so dominate the contemporary horizon." He finds it hardly less than a miracle that, after so much had seemed lost after the debacle of Suez, there was now a buoyant and prosperous Britain.
Even the Labor opposition had such a healthy respect for the Prime Minister, who had come to office in the wake of Suez, that they did not rule out in an election to take place sometime in the ensuing year, a third successive Conservative victory, virtually unprecedented in British politics.
Prime Minister Macmillan was not inclined to minimize current difficulties which could not be concealed by the outward pomp and circumstance of success. He smiled wryly over the controversy set off by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery recently vis-à-vis the U.S. The cornerstone of the Prime Minister's foreign policy had been Anglo-American interdependence and he recognized that the relationship was at present a troubled one, but was also confident that events of the coming three or four months would put it right.
He hoped that the foreign ministers meeting in Geneva, to start May 11, would fairly amicably reach agreement on three or four main subjects to be considered by the heads of state at a summit conference, preferably in San Francisco the following August. He hoped that at the summit, agreement would be reached on a narrow zone of arms limitation on either side of a dividing line running through Berlin. It might be only 50 to 100 kilometers on each side of that line but it would be a beginning of a system of control and inspection, tied to an agreement on Berlin covering the status of the four powers. One proposal under consideration was to add both East German and West German representatives to the control commission. No one, in the Prime Minister's view, could expect progress on German reunification. Having gotten that far, the heads of the governments would agree before adjourning to meet again in December or January, and before adjournment, would decide on the agenda to be considered at that ensuing meeting. Beyond December or January would be, in the hope of the Prime Minister, a meeting the following June. The heads of government constituted a continuing body and between sessions, the foreign ministers would meet periodically and special commissions might also be named to work on the tougher issues.
If the Prime Minister had been impacted by cries of "appeaser" and "Munich" coming from the U.S. and Germany, he gave no sign of it, believing that his earlier mission to Moscow had been essential to prepare the way for negotiation and preventing Premier Nikita Khrushchev from signing a separate peace treaty with East Germany. The Prime Minister remained convinced that the Russians wanted to negotiate a settlement because they wanted an assurance of peace in which they could begin to make good on Mr. Khrushchev's promise to raise the Russian standard of living. To those who said that the Soviets wanted a settlement in Western Europe only so that they could strike out in other areas, such as the Middle East, Mr. Macmillan replied that it might be true, but that it could also be true that they wanted a general settlement. Nor did he regret having brought up with Mr. Khrushchev in their talks in Moscow the idea of a quota on inspections of suspected nuclear explosions. The Russians had taken that up as a counter to the U.S. proposal for an agreement limited to tests in the atmosphere. Mr. Macmillan's objective was to obtain a control system under a quota of perhaps 50 inspections per year, giving the West maximum assurance of security.
In the subdued quiet of the Cabinet room, Mr. Macmillan appeared to be a confident man. His power was nothing like that of the great Victorian Prime Ministers whose marble busts lined the corridors of the dingy brown brick citadel which was No. 10 Downing Street. But it was power of another kind, based in no small part on the confidence of long experience and grave perils endured. Mr. Macmillan, finds Mr. Childs, was a man who was not afraid to say that as between nuclear war and negotiation, he would take negotiation, despite two months earlier feeling that the odds were strongly on the side of nuclear war.
Doris Fleeson finds that the new era of quiet diplomacy for the U.S., which had begun with the appointment of Christian Herter as Secretary of State, had met its test at the Western foreign ministers conference in Paris, the meeting having begun with the clear possibility of disagreements among the Western allies but having ended surprisingly quickly and in an atmosphere of unity and amity which would surprise the Russians.
Mr. Herter had not attempted to dominate the conference and it would have been a betrayal of his character if such had been the case. His reasonableness and willingness to join in the give-and-take which made an agreement possible were given credit by his opposite numbers for much of the unity which had been attained. The result was not an American victory as such but a joint achievement, in which lay its strength. There had been an enormous premium placed on success at Paris, as the allies had been split before that meeting. West Germany had been supported by its unaccustomed ally, France, in its intransigent attitude on the whole question of Berlin and German unification. Great Britain appeared to stand alone in its insistence on a more flexible approach to the problem of finding workable solutions. The U.S., torn by its loyalties, hovered somewhere between those views.
Since the Geneva meeting with the Soviet Foreign Minister was less than a week away, some type of accommodation was imperative. The fact that a position which all of the allies were willing to support had now been reached did not mean that the West was any nearer an agreement with the Soviets. The package arrangement arrived at by the foreign ministers had already been declared unacceptable by the Soviets. Yet, firmness was now possible, as it would not have been were the allies still divided. A point had been established from which bargaining could be initiated.
The Western allies would at least be aided in the Geneva negotiations by the fact that the Warsaw Pact nations were divided on the issue of the future of Germany. Undoubtedly, that factor had persuaded the Soviet leaders to retreat from prescribing any ultimatum in their demands.
The foundation for the success at Paris had been laid by a working committee of diplomats which had been laboring in London, in itself a return to the traditional methods of diplomacy which Mr. Herter exemplified.
But Berlin and Germany were not the only questions which the Secretary faced. In oil-rich Iraq, Communist penetration threatened a vital economic and geographical U.S. position. CIA director Allen Dulles had proclaimed the extreme gravity of that problem.
There were also Formosa's bulwark islands of Quemoy and Matsu off the Chinese mainland, where the situation was admittedly unsatisfactory, but nothing was ever done to change it during periods of relative calm such as the present.
The question was presently whether Mr. Herter could galvanize all of the resources of his Department to deal with the whole complex of the problems or whether, like his predecessor, Mr. Dulles, he was a one-crisis-at-a-time operator.
A letter writer from Salisbury indicates that most Americans were out for some kind of a thrill which they had not had before, suggesting that it might be because of the monotony of modern living and the need to escape its boredom. Some had developed hobbies which provided the variety of experience desired, but he suggests that was only the case for about one out of 20 people. Social life was the remedy for a few others, including church life for some, but not very many. Living in the country was the answer for a few more, but the larger part of the public had yet to answer it for themselves.
In about a month, we're going to
trek down the block two or three houses here in Shelby and study the
brick mason laying the foundation for a carport, and thus satisfy our
need to fill time with learning by observation for two or three days,
spelling us from our daily routine of circling the house several
times each day, maybe 50 or a hundred times, as we keep count, while making up in our
head a kind of soap opera involving two couples as we proceed in our
orbits, a daily routine as long as the weather is accommodating. In
other parts of the day, we explore the basement, full of strange
gadgets and tools once employed by our grandfather, an old Underwood typewriter in a drawer of a desk, and in yet other
parts of the day, we might explore the garage, with its old auto
parts strewn about from Model A's and what-not, or walk in the
redolent garden of our grandmother in the backyard. We came across nothing quite so interesting, however, as the gadgetry and interplay of persons exhibited in this episode
Framed Edition
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