The Charlotte News
Thursday, May 7, 1959
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from New York that John Murray, official of the Pittsburgh Steelworkers Union, said this date that the union was "eventually going to win its demands even if we have to strike to do it." The director of the union's District 16, and a cousin of the union's late president Philip Murray, said that the public and industry were underestimating the union's solidarity and determination to gain a sizable wage increase and other concessions. David McDonald, the president of the Steelworkers Union, and R. Conrad Cooper, the chief negotiator for U.S. Steel Corp. and the industry, had agreed to quit airing their differences at joint meetings with reporters after they had mixed it up some at such a session on Wednesday. Mr. Cooper confirmed reports that the industry was working on a plan to counter any union divide-and-conquer strike strategy. He said that if the union were to strike only one or a few industry producers, the others left operating might, under the plan, share any excess profits with the strike-bound firms. He also hinted that steelmakers were considering shutting down in a common front if any one or a few were struck. He said that the industry was considering all eventualities while hoping to reach a peace pact with Mr. McDonald ahead of the present contract expiration on June 30. While both Mr. Cooper and Mr. McDonald reflected the surface cordiality which had marked their joint meetings with newsmen since negotiations had begun on Tuesday, the union president made it clear that he was unhappy with the industry's mutual aid strike plan, accusing the industry of provoking strike talk. That had led to an exchange between Mr. Cooper and Mr. McDonald, still cordial but yet pointed, as to which side had been responsible for past steel strikes. The evidence of growing tension had also been reflected in the Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. and Kaiser Steel Co. negotiations with the union, as both had hit snags, quitting early after what Mr. McDonald later described as "procedural difficulties". Both bargaining sessions had been set to resume this date on a calmer note.
In Baghdad, Iraqi authorities this date released an Italian airliner with 29 persons aboard after holding it for 27 hours, the plane having taken off for Beirut and Rome. The Baghdad representative of the Alitalia airline said that the plane did not have the required permission to fly over Iraq and had landed in Baghdad the previous day on radio instructions from the Baghdad airport's control tower. He denied an earlier report that the four-engine airliner had been forced down by Iraqi fighters. The passengers included four Americans and the plane had been on a flight from Tehran to Beirut, Athens, Rome and London. In announcing earlier that the plane had been forced down by Iraqi fighters, the Alitalia headquarters in Rome had said that the Iraqis had charged that the plane had violated Iraqi airspace. The airline said that while the plane was not scheduled to land in Iraq, the airline's planes had permission to fly over Iraq along a certain corridor. The pilot of the plane said that he was under the impression that it was permissible to fly over the country during daylight hours. During the previous two months, however, airlines had been forced to secure individual permission for each flight over Iraq.
In Damascus, Syria, a newspaper reported this date that rebel tribesmen of northern Iraq had killed 30 Iraqi soldiers and wounded 80 the previous day in an attack on an Army convoy.
In Lisbon, the Portuguese Government this date revealed a plot two months earlier against dictator Antonio Salazar and said that 22 civilians and nine Army officers had been arrested.
In Sydney, Australia, it was reported that Billy Graham said this date that he was feeling fine but intended to curtail his non-crusade activities upon return to the U.S. in mid-June. The evangelist said that he was going to resign from a number of executive boards and organizations and would concentrate on speaking at the crusades and in study preparing for them. He said that his left eye, with which he had had trouble since February, was almost back to normal and that he could read with it. He had drawn a total attendance of 1,458,000 in Australia and another 335,000 in New Zealand since the beginning of the crusade. With a dozen more Australian meetings left, the total attendance appeared certain to top two million. Church of England Bishop R. C. Kerle, chairman of the crusade in Sydney, said that it was "the biggest thing that ever happened in the church history of Australia. Ordinary people are talking about religion. Church attendances have greatly increased." The evangelist's 22 meetings at the Sydney showground had attracted 730,000 people, with an average attendance of 33,600, described as the largest he had ever drawn anywhere. Crusade headquarters announced that there had been 46,365 "decisions for Christ". The evangelist said that his next major crusade in the U.S. was scheduled for Indianapolis in October. He said that he hoped to return to Australia and New Zealand in two or three years and then to move from island to island in the South Pacific holding meetings. When asked by a reporter whether he had ever considered entering politics, he replied that he had no intention of entering the political field, that he believed he could make a better contribution to the world in his present work. After a pause, he had added: "The only thing that would alter me would be an extreme emergency in the world in which I would be asked to take a position of responsibility in which I felt it my duty to accept."
In Washington, it was reported that New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller would be the guest of honor on June 11 at a lawn party of the Capitol Hill Club, a group comprised primarily of conservative Republicans.
In Westbury, N.Y., it was reported that a large industrial building being erected by scores of workers had collapsed with a roar shortly before 11:00 a.m. this date and at least one man had been killed with a number injured and an estimated 20 still trapped in the wreckage. Hundreds of rescue workers had rushed to the scene and torn at the mounds of twisted steel girders and splintered planking with bare hands in an effort to free the trapped laborers. For a time, shrieks and cries had arisen from the rubble, lying on the floor of the one-story building. Giant cranes were sped to the scene to hoist heavier segments and permit rescue teams to crawl underneath. It was believed that a steel girder in the roof had given way, causing the avalanche of steel and wood to cascade downward. The structure was to have housed an electronics firm. There had been no fire.
In Bridgeport, Calif., it was reported that two mountain climbers had fallen to their deaths at 13,000 feet in the High Sierras, according to a rescue party which had radioed to the town this date. The leader of the rescuers said that the bodies had been located near a quicksilver mine 80 miles east of the town. The bodies were identified as males, 53 and 65-years old, both of Southern California, who had been missing since the previous Friday. The undersheriff of Mono County said that the men apparently had lost their footing and fallen into a crevice, and then had frozen to death. The bodies had been partially covered by two feet of fresh snow. Both men were said to be experienced climbers and had told friends that they expected to climb the 13,145-foot Boundary Peak and return to their starting point, Bishop, the previous Sunday, that when they had failed to return at that time, a search had been initiated by ground parties and the Civil Air Patrol.
In Monroe, N.C., the president of the Union County branch of the NAACP, Robert Williams, had challenged this date the right of the national leadership of the organization to suspend him from office for urging blacks "to meet violence with violence". He had made the statement regarding violence after the acquittal in Monroe on Tuesday of a white man charged with attempted rape of a black woman. The jury, including a black member, had acquitted the man on a charge of assault with intent to rape. In the same court, a black man had been convicted of attempting to assault a white woman. He had earlier been quoted as saying, "If it's necessary to stop lynching with lynching, then we must be willing to resort to that method." He said that he had received no adverse reaction in Monroe to the statement. Mr. Williams had been suspended from his office on Wednesday by an announcement from New York by Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the organization. Mr. Williams said that Mr. Wilkins was "talking through his hat. The members of our chapter voted me in as president and only they can vote me out. We have certain rights as a local chapter and I have not violated the NAACP's national constitution." Further action on the suspension would be considered at the NAACP's board of directors meeting in New York on Monday. The statement of Mr. Wilkins had said: "The NAACP does not and has never in its history advocated the use of violence. We have fought against lynching from the first day of our organization 50 years ago, and we repudiate any pro-lynching statement by one of our officers, regardless of provocation." In Charlotte, Kelly Alexander, the state NAACP president, said that the statement of Mr. Williams was "strictly not in line with the policy, procedure or philosophy of the NAACP."
In Charlotte, it was reported that two young men, armed with a pistol, had held up a service station on North Tryon Street at noon this date. A County patrolman said that the bandits had held the pistol in the back of the station operator while they had taken about $90 in cash from his billfold, had then thrown the man into a restroom and locked the door, making their getaway in a 1952 or 1953 black Oldsmobile. Local police and State Highway Patrolmen had been combing the county looking for the two men during the afternoon. One of the officers said that the men had pulled into the service station at noon and ordered two dollars worth of gas, had given the operator a five dollar bill and followed him to the cash register, at which point one of them asked the operator about some soft drinks and then pulled a gun and stuck it into his back with orders to "hand over your money". The robbers had then taken all of the money from the man's billfold but did not bother with the change which was in the cash register. The man had remained locked in the restroom for about ten minutes and then had poked a hole in the door with a mop handle and freed himself, called the police, whereupon they had arrived minutes later. Three police cars had been in the vicinity of the service station at noon but none of the officers had seen the getaway. You would think by now that some one of these characters would come with more original lines in request of money, such as, "Be it pleased to beg your pardon, monsieur, but would you be so kind as to do your devoirs to me and my friend and pass your billfold into our hands posthaste,"—anything to avoid the old B-movie lines they keep reciting over and over again, quite monotonously.
John Kilgo of The News reports that a 21-year old man was alive this date because he knew how to relax, something which he said he had learned in the Army. The previous day, he had been driving a heavy farm tractor on Moore's Chapel Road on his way to do some plowing. He said he wanted to smoke and he had to stand up on the tractor to get to his matches, that when he had stood up, it was about all he had remembered. He knew that the tractor had left the road and thrown him into a field. He was lying on the ground when he saw the tractor about to run over him and that he could not get out of the way in time and so just relaxed every bone in his body, as they had taught him in the Army. He said that the rear wheel of the tractor had run over his stomach and chest and at first he thought his back was broken, but did not know what was wrong. He said he did not remember doing so, but he had gotten up and walked to the ambulance under his own power. He was taken to Memorial Hospital where X-rays had been performed, finding that no bones had been broken. He had just received bruises and had cut slightly one arm. He said the doctor had told him that he must be as strong as iron inside not to have any broken bones after the tractor had run over him. He said he had another answer, that being luck, that he was "just lucky". Now he was relaxing in a hospital bed, where they would keep him for a couple of days, though he was in a hurry to get home. He said he had not slept much the previous night, not because of pain from the accident but because the nurses had worried him to death, sticking his arm four times with a needle.
In Bombay, India, a woman, replying to glowing praise of women's ability during a debate in the City Council regarding whether city administration ought be handed over to women, had declared: "If men, in a chivalrous mood, hand over the city's administrative duties to women, only God could save it from ruin."
In Hollywood, it was reported that
striking members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees
and Technicians had picketed the Moulin Rouge in Hollywood, location
of the tv Emmy awards the previous night, but had observed niceties
of dress. Invitations to the program had specified black tie. Three
of the pickets, carrying "unfair" placards, had been
dressed in tuxedos, complete with black homburgs and black ties.
There was no disturbance when members of the Academy had crossed the
picket lines, but one of the Emmy winners, Bill Wallace, had to send
his wife in to accept his award for best live camera work on "An
Evening with Fred Astaire"
Incidentally, to any in Los Angeles who might be challenged to a duel by Jack Sprat, take heart from this episode
On the editorial page, "The Docs Should Leave Textbooks Alone" finds that of all the sacred cows in the academic pasture, textbooks were probably least worthy of halos. But it also finds that the books could not be as bad as they were being portrayed by many non-academic groups, most recently the North Carolina Medical Society at its meeting in Asheville. In a committee report adopted by its house of delegates, it called for members to protest at the local and state levels against "a propaganda line undermining respect for the Constitution … that socialism affords the only solution to our economic problems … creating the impression that reform is possible only by establishing a new social order…" It found that the "radical and objectionable" line of propaganda was being drilled into the unwitting minds of North Carolina youth by public school sociology and history books.
It indicates that it could be more enthusiastic for the Society's crusade if it had urged the outright abolition of high school texts and the substitution for them of documents and standard, scholarly works of commentary, for at the higher planes of education, the textbook had a limited place and was "too often the cumbersome crutch of the spoon-fed mind, often ill-written, often thrust upon the student to fill the gaping hole left where better books and methods have been abandoned."
But it could not see it as subversive. It indicates that much of the attack on American history textbooks mimicked the work of an Indiana pedant, Prof. E. Merrill Root, who believed he knew the "proper" interpretation of American history, that if a given book diverged from his ideas about history, he blacklisted it as subversive and totalitarian or worse. "For him and for the self-appointed vigilantes who are his followers there is no complexity in the unraveling of history or sociology. No historical event has more than one legitimate interpretation—which leads one to wonder why the original participants ever split into factions in the first place."
It suggests that the doctors stay out of that debate, as they would no doubt flare up if the National Education Association, also one of their targets at the Asheville meeting, suddenly resolved to purge certain standard medical texts. Books were of public concern, but their merit or demerit had finally to be left to the experts to judge, just as the task of interpreting history called for trained historians.
It questions who was foisting those books on children, if, indeed, they were subversive, whether it was the State Textbook Commission or perhaps the school teachers, finding the prospect absurd. But if the constitutional system was being undermined by subtle and alien teachings, someone had to be responsible. "By implication, the indiscriminate attacks on textbooks hold the hard-laboring teachers and schools of the state up to derision and imputations of disloyalty."
Atencion, residents of Magaville, U.S.A.
Of course, most of those people have never read much beyond the vanity publications, comic books or the type of fare one sees at the grocery store checkout stand, not the source of any relevant or good information, only a one-way ticket down the old rabbit hole.
Speaking of which, it should never be forgotten that President Kennedy was assassinated by gunshots allegedly fired from the Texas School Book Depository, wherein the textbooks for the Texas public schools were warehoused. Query whether that site was selected, not only for its tactical advantage, the surrounding echoing properties making the source of sounds hard to detect with precision, and its nearby tall buildings, but also because it fit well symbolically that which was being communicated by this singularly reprehensible act of violence, not only against John F. Kennedy, but the whole of the country whose President he was.
Come what may, let that tragedy never beset the country again. For even those who vehemently disagreed with the President's politics, of whom there were many at the time, especially in the South by 1963, were left alternately under a cloud of suspicion or in complete disarray for decades afterward, arguably even to the present day, at least as long as the generation which was alive on that day remains living. It is a day, more than any other in American history since the end of World War II, which must never be forgotten.
You fools and reprobates in Magaville who would seek to ban books because they do not reflect your neo-Nazi ideology, while in the next breath giving lip-service to the memory of President Kennedy, only to avoid being cast as you are, haters of this country—as was demonstrated quite thoroughly on the grounds of the White House this date in June, 2026, in the most disgraceful display of activity ever transpiring on those hallowed grounds, contrary to every tradition of this country, full of cheap, gaudy commercialism and grifting by the White House occupant—, do not, perhaps cannot, comprehend the extent of your hypocrisy. Symbolically, those people who were present burned down the White House, as surely as did the British in 1814. It will take a strong Democrat winning in 2028 to begin to rebuild it, along with the Constitution, which the current occupant has thrown in the trash, precisely because he hates this country and everything for which it stands, wrapping himself in the hollow, meaningless piece of bunting he waves so ostentatiously on the people's lawn for the moment he transitorially occupies, to try to excuse his hatred and find a home among the scavenging reprobates who form his small constituency of cultish acolytes.
He thinks he is very cute, substituting President Biden's official portrait with an autopen, on full display as he walked like the midget he is with some nondescript individual out of the White House to the grandstand reminiscent in gold and glittery drug-induced coloration of an Evel Knievel stunt platform at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, thereby in one stroke attacking every single person among the 81 million who voted for President Biden against this thief and subsequently convicted fraud, in 2020, wisely to be rid of the dictator who had led the country down the primrose path into the worst pandemic in its history, exacerbated by his insouciance in the opening months of it, claiming that everything would be open again and just all right by Easter, then by Memorial Day, then by July Fourth, then by Labor Day, then… the while with his ardent believers eschewing and even actively rebelling against the precautionary practices of social distancing and wearing of masks, sometimes to their fatal peril or that of their family members or others who might encounter them. Cutesy-wootsy.
The bulk of the people of this country despise this man, as is evident from every poll being taken these days. Yet, to eliminate him from the landscape would only bring on worse, as the law of unintended consequences would, no doubt, take hold and make the fever-pitch of these neo-Nazis and Klansmen who support this idiot the stronger for decades to come following any form of martyrdom, no matter how small and insignificant it might be.
"This 'Happy Warrior' Can Still Serve" indicates that no banquet was complete without a ghost and that one who would serve nicely for the new City Council's round of merrymaking would be former Mayor Herbert Baxter, who had been defeated for re-election to the Council in the municipal election on Tuesday.
It suggests that he would exit laughing but that it would not be the same at City Hall without him. For years, he had been the city's prime mover of progress, having an adventurous spirit and possessed of an audacity and boldness of vision which could only be described as Gargantuan. Both as Mayor and as City Councilman, he had done his darnedest to make Charlotte grow.
It indicates that it was not to say that he had always been correct or that his instincts had always been reliable. He had been essentially an "idea man" who was liable to give the details of implementation only a lick and a promise. Furthermore, he shared with other members of the old City Council certain traits which eventually caused the public to lose confidence in City Hall's leadership. Yet his cheerful faith in the perfectibility of a city would haunt the new administration for a long time and furthermore, the "happy warrior" of municipal politics still had much to give the community and its people.
It suggests that the new Council taking office on Monday would be wise to name him to one of the more important municipal boards or commissions when an appropriate position came open.
Speaking of elections, we just heard one of these fast-talking wind-up dummies, so mindless that they are truly pitiful, as one might find pity for a stray, whining, smelly dog on the street in search of companionship for just a moment, on some podcast yammering on in echo of His Highness's bizarre and groundless claims of "election fraud" in the June 2 California primary because Magaville candidates cannot win there, suggesting the most anti-democratic scheme yet. He thinks that Mikey Johnson, come November after the midterms, should refuse to seat any member of the California delegation who cannot show that they were leading at midnight on election night. In other words, when the Republicans inevitably lose the House—and increasingly likely, the Senate as well—the way to attempt another coup, similar to the failed attempt on January 6, 2021, to avoid the final downfall of Magaville, is to cheat by projecting this false claim of "election fraud" and preventing the seating of validly elected Representatives, in accordance with state law not in conflict with the Constitution, from the largest state in the union, ignoring the properly certified mail-in votes postmarked on election day but received later, within the legal timeframe of seven days.
The idiot who voiced this patently unconstitutional proposal thinks that the "courts wouldn't touch it because it's a political question". Think again, stupid. Besides being mindlessly anti-democratic, your suggestion, a full-blown Nazi maneuver from 1932-33, would miserably fail in the courts, as the Representatives certified by the several states, elected in accordance with their laws not at odds with the Constitution, including the Fourteenth and Fifteeth Amendments, must be seated under the Constitution, as long as they meet the requisite criteria stated in Article I, Section 2, which trumps any House rules by virtue of the Supremacy Clause. The only exception might arise when there is some personal ethical issue regarding a particular elected Representative or a properly contested election.
Article I, Section 5 literally says: "Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members..." But the Fifth Amendment provides that no person may be deprived of life, liberty or property, including a duly elected right to hold an office, except by due process. The Fourteenth Amendment provides that all persons in the United States are entitled to due process and equal protection of the laws, and the Fifteenth Amendment provides to all citizens the right to vote, requiring that even rational legal impingements on the fundamental right to vote must fall when restricting that right, such as by cuttng off artificially the time of receipt of election ballots by mail after the fact of the election held under established, constitutional laws. While Article I, Section 4 provides that the state legislatures determine the "Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives", it also provides that the Congress may "by law" alter those regulations. In other words, only by law, duly enacted before the election in question so that all would be reasonably apprised of any new law regulating their conduct, could the Congress alter state regulations regarding elections of Senators and Representatives.
Otherwise, a crooked House or Senate majority with either veto-proof numbers or an equally crooked President of the same party, could simply pass byzantine laws intricately designed after the election to overhaul state laws which disfavor the party's continuing majorities and thus permit it to remain in power despite overwhelming losses in the elections held under existing state laws. It could not do so by the wave of Mikey's magic wand or the stroke of His Highness's Sharpie, which the Magaville residents are so fond of conjuring up from their childhood fantasy dreams inspired by the opening each week of Walt Disney's "Wonderful World of Color" on Sunday nights. Rules of the House or some fiat of the Speaker or a committee chair cannot defeat the laws of the states regarding elections of Senators and Representatives; only laws passed by both houses and signed into law and which comport with the Fifth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments can trump state laws regarding elections to Congress.
These clickbait artists, busy ginning up false hopes among the desperate and retarded, really need to return to their former jobs doing telephone sales or whatever it was, or at least take a college-level civics course from an accredited institution of higher learning, or maybe audit online a constitutional law course from a reputable institution, at least to get a taste of how complicated it gets to read the Constitution bit by bit, sentence by sentence, without factoring in the whole document, and stop wasting people's time with nonsense bred from last night's overindulgence in the wine and beer while they watched Der Fuehrer's garish presentation honoring himself at large taxpayer expense in a show no one save morons wanted to see or saw. "Oh, oh, oh, oh, look at the fighters kicking each other and grabbing each other in those tender places. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh... Pass the nuts. What did that boy say after he won? Oh, ho, ho, ho. That's so hilarious, like Joan Rivers... Bet Mel got a kick out of that. Is there a line on that? Call in and see."
"Selling America Abroad" quotes from Variety: "The American entertainment
world—particularly motion pictures and music—is doing a
better job indirectly in selling democracy in America to European
nations than the U.S. State Department is accomplishing directly.
This is the opinion formed by indie producer Herman Cohen, just
returned from eight months abroad… Cohen produced two films in
England, 'Horrors of the Black Museum,' and 'The Headless Ghost,'
"Charlotte's Bold Experiment Paid Off" indicates that the remarkable Junior Achievement program had completed its first year of operation during the week in a blaze of deserved glory. More than 250 teenagers from a half dozen City and County high schools had gained actual business experience in 16 miniature corporations which they had organized and operated themselves. The youngsters had been counseled by 52 volunteers recruited from the city's business community.
It finds that it was a bold experiment in education, allowing youth who would become the future leaders to gain down-to-earth experience in the same problems which real business organizations faced in a capitalistic society. It provided them an early taste of actual business situations and an early appreciation of the meaning of "risk capital". As their small companies prospered or floundered, they gained keen insight into the responsibilities and rewards of enterprise and initiative.
It finds that the organization's first year in Charlotte was a notable success and there had been enthusiastic response from young people, businessmen and educators alike, that the experiment had proved itself and the program ought be continued with increased support from Charlotte business leaders.
"Defense by Name" indicates that those who were casual readers of the newspaper's women's section would be delighted to learn that it was "National Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Cloth and Furniture by Savage Moths Month". It suggests that the best defense was to bash the anti-cloth cannibals with the group's rolled-up title.
A piece from the New York Times, titled "The Miracle of the Bud", indicates that the earth now teemed with the unseen miracle of new roots groping downward and young shoots reaching for the light of the sun, but that all around, in plain sight, was the equal miracle of the buds. "Out of the buds, so countless and so commonplace, come this world's green leaves, its wealth of bloom, its surging growth of twig and branch and stem. The miraculous surrounds us now."
And it goes on a way, looking at nature now in spring, concluding: "Watch the beech tree feather out in green gauze. See how the birches achieve catkin and shimmery green of heart-leaf. See the astonishing way a hickory unpacks its pink-sheathed buds, putting the magician to shame for his parsimony. Look, and know the miracle of the bud, the wonder-packet of green life."
It all just keeps going 'round
Drew Pearson indicates that previously, the American military had discounted the danger of accidental explosions. When the Danes had refused to permit a U.S. atomic submarine to enter the harbor at Copenhagen, the danger had been discounted. Now a complete reversal had been made and an atomic submarine, it was admitted, could blow up and spread radioactive poison, as could an atomic bomb, a rocket or a missile. The greatest danger was from smaller warheads, such as those carried on short-range missiles, the Corporal and the Honest John. Unfortunately, they were not only the easiest to misfire but were handled by the least skilled personnel.
Air Force strategists had now admitted that danger and also believed that the time had come to warn the American people of it. The reason for the reversal was the fear that an accidental explosion might panic the nation into war. Should a bomb explode accidentally, the public could be panicked into believing that it had come from Russia and nuclear war could be set off in a matter of minutes. Some berserk soldier or scientist could detonate a bomb which could bring about war, or some Soviet scientist, with a grudge against the Kremlin, could launch a missile against the Kremlin which might be blamed on the U.S. Those were the dramatic problems faced by Pentagon strategists in considering man's will to survive.
Two scientists, also concerned about the right to survive, had been testifying to the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee against the confirmation of Admiral Lewis Strauss to the position of Secretary of Commerce. They had helped to make the atomic and hydrogen weapons and were fearful that their handiwork would eventually destroy mankind. Senator John Pastore of Rhode Island, chairman of the Committee, had badgered them, hardly letting them finish a sentence before he fired a question, or usually a rebuttal statement in defense of Admiral Strauss. The man he was defending, the former head of one of the great investment houses of Wall Street, smiled. Senator Pastore was cocky and confident, as the son of an Italian immigrant, coming to his defense.
One of the scientists, Dr. David Inglis of the Government's Argonne Laboratory, fumbled for his words, trying to explain his fears of hydrogen warfare, indicating that the nation should have waited to make sure that Russia was really going to build the hydrogen bomb before going ahead with the project. He was obviously a man at home with scientific formulas but completely at a loss with words, especially when interrupted by Senators.
Walter Lippmann indicates that as the Geneva foreign ministers conference approached on May 11, there was a temptation to which all were subject, to apply too soon and too often the test of success or failure. He posits that the negotiations which had begun would last for a long time, perhaps for a generation. And in the course of that time, there would be many changes which could not be presently foreseen. What was being begun by the statesmen of the older generation would probably not be concluded until there was a new generation.
He finds that there was no present prospect that the negotiations would "succeed", if by that was meant that they would produce a final settlement of the German problem. But there was also no prospect that they would "fail", if by that was meant that there would be no more negotiations and following it there would be some type of mobilization for war. He counsels that the nations had to rid themselves of the rubber-stamp notions of success and failure, that the German problem was at present insoluble and that no theoretical solution of it would be worth a great war for either side, something both sides knew no war could settle. The world would have to live with the German question, producing as well as it could and from time to time a modus vivendi without any serious expectation of settlement. The German question lay in the fact that the German Reich, as founded by Bismarck in 1871, had been partitioned because of the defeat of Hitler. Berlin, which had been the capital of the old German Reich, had also been partitioned. The partition of Germany was the consequence of World War II and it could become the cause of a third world war.
People asked themselves whether a partition of Germany could have been avoided, an unanswerable question. What could be said was that the partition arose from the fact that the Red Army coming from the East, the Allied Army coming from the West, had met in the middle of Germany and they would not have met had Hitler not attacked Russia in 1941 and brought it into the war. They would not have met if the Allies, including the U.S., had been strong enough to occupy all of Germany before the Russians got there. The fact was, however, that they did get there and that the West got there and that was how Hitler's Reich had been conquered, within the pincers.
He raises the question of whether the partition was the necessary and inevitable result, again a contingent question which raised the question of whether the Soviets had from the beginning an intention to dismember Germany or whether they might at some point have settled for a neutralized and lightly armed united Germany while hoping that the German Communists would infiltrate the German Socialists and eventually rule the whole of the country. Another question raised was whether the Western Allies had been wise in thinking that the risk was so great that, instead of working for an evacuation of the Red Army, they insisted on the rearmament of West Germany and alliance with their own forces. He suggests that questions such as those were no longer real questions. Europe had outlived them and what was now being faced was the historic fact that there were two Germanys and two Berlins and that the German crisis of the present was the crisis of the adjustment of the great powers to the partition of Germany.
The adjustment would be a complicated experience, for the partition of Germany was as great an historic event as was the unification of Germany under Bismarck. The adjustment to that historic fact involved on both sides of the Iron Curtain some type of recognition of most unpalatable facts. On the Western side, it involved the recognition that there were two German states. On the Russian side, it involved the recognition that there were two Berlins and that West Berlin had to remain a part of the Western community.
The acceptance of those unpalatable facts and their recognition in legal instruments which were enforceable would be the core of the coming negotiations. The object of the negotiations would be a modus vivendi which, while it would recognize that there was in fact a partitioned Germany, kept alive the right and the hope of an eventual reunification.
Doris Fleeson indicates that Winston Churchill, 84, was in Washington for what might prove to be his last great act of statesmanship. Against his doctors' advice, he had made the trip so that he could talk with the President on the eve of the momentous conference between the Western allies and the Soviets. Their conversations were, in effect, a small, bilateral summit meeting of a special type, for undeniably, Mr. Churchill would have the President's ear to a degree which only a rare few could claim, the reason for his visit.
She indicates that it was true that while the President was in office and Mr. Churchill held no position in the British Government beyond his cherished seat in the 630-member House of Commons, that which he threw into the balance was not just past glory or long experience but an unqualified record of prescience which would be acknowledged by the West as long as freedom endured.
As a man who never hesitated to use power, Mr. Churchill had seen how much depended on the President personally at this juncture. Former Secretary of State Dulles would probably never leave Walter Reed Hospital. In Paris, Secretary of State Christian Herter had achieved a façade of allied unity, which was a considerable achievement but remained a façade.
She counsels that it had to be remembered that Mr. Churchill knew the President and it was apparent that the one-time political maverick was at present a dedicated Conservative, a supporter of present British Government policies and of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. It would not be the first time that Mr. Churchill had sought to point the way to the American people and their President in any way available to him. When he had felt that President Truman needed to be aroused to the danger of spreading Communist domination in Eastern Europe, he accepted an invitation to speak at a small Westminster College in Missouri and there at Fulton made his famous Iron Curtain speech in March, 1946.
At present, he lacked the staying power for any such enterprises and, in any case, conditions were different. The present President, Mr. Churchill's World War II associate and friend, had extended to him a personal invitation for a visit, and, cigar in hand and no doubt brandy in luggage, Mr. Churchill had flaunted his doctors' advice and made the trip. His central purpose appeared in his schedule. He had refused all invitations to speak, and the only events announced for his calendar were two stag dinners at the White House and another at the British Embassy. After three days in Washington, he would visit New York with his much older and closer personal friend, Bernard Baruch.
The Congress, which would happily receive him, had not yet had assurances that it would and it might prove difficult to learn what Mr. Churchill really said and what effect it had on the President.
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, indicates that he had always known that Bernard Baruch and he had something in common other than a love for quail hunting, that being genius, which often came from gout, usually afflicting the big toe. He says that he had gotten it at 33, while Mr. Baruch had been afflicted only at age 60.
Some new studies reported that a chemical circulating in the blood of the intellectual giants as a result of gout not only was indigenous to their talent but when the toe was really hurting from an excess of uric acid, they were stimulated to even higher intellectual achievements.
He inserts personal messages to Mr. Baruch, Frank Conniff, newspaperman, William Holden, actor, and Ray Ryan, oilman and real estate operator, indicating that Mr. Baruch had proven himself a genius while Mr. Conniff had been personally insulted by his superiors when he reported having gout and was told that on his dough, he had no gout, just a sore toe. Mr. Holden and Mr. Ryan had been pleased to learn that the three of them had been struck by the ailment some months earlier in Africa, it having been gout and not the stars which had accounted for Mr. Holden's formidable success as the highest paid actor in the world, and Mr. Ryan's tour de force as an operator in many industries, while Mr. Ruark had only a sore toe.
He was sure it was gout which had caused Mr. Holden and Mr. Ryan to purchase his favorite hotel, the Mawingo in Nanyuki, following a long intellectual session with Mr. Ruark and Ricardo Sicre of Madrid over tea and crumpets on a chilly African night. He demands free house room for Mr. Sicre and himself on the ground that it was on Mr. Sicre's safari that he had gotten the gout which made Mr. Holden and Mr. Ryan buy the hotel. "Selah."
A letter writer indicates that Sunday was Mother's Day and that for many, their mothers were just a sweet memory. She indicates that those mothers who were still present ought receive all of the honor they richly deserved. "A mother is the best friend you can have. She will stand by you always. Be good to her for one day she will be gone and it is then that you will miss her. May God bless every Christian mother on Mother's Day."
Well, let's not be so exclusive, as long as your following good Christian doctrine, and instead bless all mothers, regardless of religion. That commandment does say: "Honor your father and your mother that your days may be long upon the earth." It does not qualify the category by the conditional, only if Hebraic or Christian.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.