The Charlotte News
Friday, May 8, 1959
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President would refuse to go to a summit conference if the Russians carried out their threat to turn East Berlin over to the East German Communists and would take the same stand if the Soviets signed a separate peace treaty with the puppet East German government. Any such unilateral Soviet action in the ensuing few weeks would wreck the Big Four foreign ministers conference, set to begin in Geneva the following Monday. The American position had become known authoritatively a few hours prior to Secretary of State Christian Herter's scheduled take-off for the pre-conference strategy talks with the British and French foreign ministers. Mr. Herter had already served notice that the Russians had to match concession for concession to end the danger of war. Even as he arranged to leave, the three Western allies were reported already arguing with the Soviets over where to sit to discuss the German deadlock. In Geneva, Soviet diplomats insisted that the talks take place around a round table, and Western diplomats were holding out for a square table. (Pie are square...) Despite pressure for a summit talk regardless of progress at Geneva, the President was reported to insist that the foreign ministers had first to make concrete gains in easing the Berlin crisis and other German problems. Informants said that it meant that the mere agreement at Geneva on a time, place and agenda for a summit meeting would not be sufficient to convince the President that such a meeting with Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev would be worthwhile. Mr. Herter outlined the country's position for the East-West talks starting on Monday in a nationally broadcast address on Thursday night.
The President's Budget Bureau had been accused this date of "a stupid attempt … to cover up" Government liabilities by refusing money to build up the Civil Service retirement fund. The House Appropriations Committee had included the criticism in a formal report sending to the House for a vote the following week a bill appropriating 6.4 billion dollars to finance a score of federal agencies for the fiscal year beginning July 1. The total was 252.3 million less than the President had requested and more than 4 million less than the same agencies had been provided during the current year. The largest allotment was 5 billion dollars for the Veterans Administration, which was given all except 9.2 million of what it had requested. The Committee had cut 145.3 million dollars from new funding requested by the various agencies and ordered returned to the Treasury 107 million of unobligated carryover money which the General Services Administration had requested to purchase critical and strategic materials for the defense stockpiling program. In a report written by Representative Albert Thomas of Texas, the Committee said that the Budget Bureau had refused to approve a Civil Service Commission request for 773.7 million dollars to finance the Government share of payments to the Civil Service retirement fund. Because of past failures of the Government-paid share of fund benefits, the Committee said that the fund was deficient by over 20.6 billion dollars. The Committee did not add anything to the bill to meet the extra payments, noting that it had done so the previous year and that the President had vetoed that bill. The President said at the time that the fund had adequate money to meet current needs. The Committee said that the budget, insofar as it attempted to reflect true Government costs for the year, was understated by the amounts of the Federal payment to the fund.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald Quarles, an engineer and businessman, the second ranking civilian in the Pentagon since 1957, had died unexpectedly this date at age 64. His chauffeur had been sent to his home to drive him to an early morning television broadcast but had been unable to rouse him. A relative and officials were then summoned and efforts made to revive him, but apparently he had been dead for some hours. The cause of death was not immediately known. He was alone in his home at the time. His wife was in Chicago. He had attended a dinner on Thursday night and friends said that he had shown no sign of illness when he had left at 11:00 p.m. He frequently had been the acting civilian chief during absences of Secretary Neil McElroy and had been mentioned as a possible successor to Mr. McElroy, who had announced he was leaving his post late in the year. The President, after being notified of the death, ordered flags on Federal buildings to be flown at half-staff. The President issued a statement expressing shock and "a keen sense of personal loss", extending sympathy to Mrs. Quarles and the family. He had been a personable man, slightly built at about 140 pounds, with graying hair, dressing conservatively and looking younger than his years. He had been born in Van Buren, Ark., on July 30, 1894, the son of a dentist.
Former President Truman this date, in New York, celebrated his 75th birthday, voicing a wish for peace and happiness for all the people of the United States. Newsmen, singing, "Happy birthday, dear Harry," had presented him with a surprise birthday cake before he had even had breakfast. Obviously pleased, Mr. Truman mustered up two puffs and blew out the candles, and had the crowd of reporters and photographers sign a card accompanying the cake, then proudly took it upstairs at his hotel to show Mrs. Truman. When asked if he had a birthday wish, the former President said, "I wish for peace and happiness for all the people of the United States." He also said that he wished for "another boy in Margaret's family," referring to his daughter, Mrs. Clifton Daniel, who was expecting her second child. True to his reputation as one of the walkingest and talkingest former Presidents the country had ever had, he then set out for his morning constitutional. He said that he was looking forward to another 10 or 12 years of life but laughingly remarked: "I may fool everyone, as I did lots of other times." He said he was raised in a family with lots of energy and that most lived long lives. (He was very much right on target, as he would live until December, 1972.) Asked if he thought that he had made any mistakes in his 75 years, he said: "I made plenty of them. I'd be sprouting wings if I hadn't. Nobody can live without making mistakes. The only thing you can do is try to remedy them." He said that he had lived a "hectic life but a happy one," and that he would not change any of it if he could. He subsequently amended that to make one exception, that he would have gotten married sooner, having been 35 when he wed Bess. As for the world, he said: "I am an optimist and I believe that some day we will have a happy world… The outlook for our country is just as great as it ever was, and I wish I could live another 50 years to see the progress of the free world." As for his career as President, he said that he thought the greatest decision he had made was in ordering U.S. troops into Korea. He intimated that the decision to use the atomic bomb on Japan in August, 1945 to end World War II had been purely a military step while in the case of Korea "the whole United Nations were involved." He also asserted that both President Eisenhower and former President Herbert Hoover were his friends, even though he disagreed with them on political matters. He said that reports that he feuded with President Eisenhower were just "damned lies", adding, "We have always been friends."
In Tallahassee, Fla., it was reported that four white males charged with raping a black student of Florida A&M University had pleaded not guilty at their arraignments this date. A moan had arisen from the gallery crowded with black observers, as the men entered their pleas. The outcry was quickly suppressed by a call for order by the court. The trial was set for May 27. The sheriff had announced previously that all four had confessed to the mass rape. One of the court-appointed defense attorneys objected to the early trial date, saying that he needed more time to prepare his case, but the judge had overruled the objections. Pleas of the four males, including a 16-year old, had been delayed for about an hour while attempts had been made to provide them with attorneys. None of them had lawyers of their own at the start of the proceedings, although the wife of one of them had arranged for an attorney for him. The gallery was packed with black spectators and the courtroom floor with white observers. One black person had taken a seat among the whites before the court opened and two deputies had ordered that man to the gallery, to which he excused himself without objection. The deputy said that the man had told him that he had not realized that blacks customarily sat in the gallery. The four defendants had filed in the courtroom silently and lined up before the bench, scarcely able to be heard as they answered when their names were called. They would remain in jail without bond pending the trial.
In San Francisco, a coed, answering a plea for help of a male swimming companion, had swum into the Pacific Ocean the previous day and tugged ashore a fellow student who had been fatally wounded by a shark. Both had been students at San Francisco State College and were both 18. The male youth, who had died 2 1/2 hours after the attack, had first warned the young woman to retreat to the beach, yelling: "It's a shark! Go back! Go back!" But when he had cried for help, the young woman swam out 50 yards and pulled him to Baker Beach, just west of Golden Gate Bridge. He was still conscious but incoherent when he was sped to Letterman Army Hospital, where he died of shock and loss of blood, despite emergency surgery. Doctors said that his left arm had been nearly ripped from the shoulder and he had deep gashes on his neck, right arm and back. The two students had gone for a late afternoon dip on an unusually warm day and were treading water when the youth screamed his first warning. The young woman, from San Francisco, said that she had seen a heavy dark body break the surface near her companion. Tying the end of a nearby fisherman's line around her waist, she plunged back into the surf. She saw her companion struggle, unable to make any progress, though a good swimmer, causing her to realize that he must have been hurt badly and that she could not leave him. When she reached him, he informed her that it was a shark. There was blood all around them, she continued, and the first thing she thought was, "God, help him." She was scared and did not know what to do but knew she could not leave him and so finally told him that the only way she could do it was if he lay still on his back, lying back and relaxing. He did not scream after that, though she indicated the pain must have been awful. The deceased youth had been a freshman studying business and finance and was the son of an investment broker of nearby Corte Madera. His parents were at his bedside when he died. He was believed to be the second known fatality from a shark attack in California coastal waters, after a 17-year old boy had been killed by a great white shark at Pacific Grove, 120 miles south, in 1952. Several vicious, but non-fatal attacks, had been recorded.
Max Muhleman of The News reports that Charlotte timber broker and racing star Curtis Turner had this date disclosed that his proposed 1.5 million dollar racetrack would be built on a 550-acre tract of land bordering U.S. Highway 20 north of Charlotte, just inside Cabarrus County. The name of the track would be the Charlotte Motor Speedway and its directive body would be known as Charlotte Motor Speedway, Inc. Mr. Turner had been elected president of the corporation the previous day in a meeting which paved the way for work on the track to begin immediately. He estimated that the oval asphalt track proper would be completed by October 1 and that the speedway's first race would be staged in the spring of 1960. Plans for initial speedway construction included 30,000 covered grandstand seats, 15,000 along each straightaway. Those along the main straightaway would be built so that another deck could be added on top, since the corporation was seriously considering football facilities in one corner of the track infield. Mr. Turner explained the construction of the track itself would be carried out as quickly as possible since negotiations were nearly completed with Ford Motor Co. to lease the track beginning in October for winter testing purposes. Ford previously had carried out its winter testing for all divisions on a track in Arizona, but was anxious to bring the project east. Mr. Turner said that Ford's Detroit proving ground was not usable in winter months because of ice. Vvvv-rooom...
In St. Paul, Minn., the crazy clock crisis was near the hour of decision this date. The State Supreme Court reportedly would tell Minnesota's three million citizens what time it was within a day or so. About half of them were on Daylight Savings Time, but did not know whether it was legal. The others were on Central Standard Time, an hour earlier. Some northern Minnesota counties had gone in for "Wildcat" time, shifting to keep up with fast-time Duluth. A new term, "creeping fast time", was appearing. Farmers in one county were threatening to sue to keep the state on Standard Time. Three weeks earlier, a number of county boards in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area had voted to go on fast-time on April 26, acting under a 1957 state law which gave large city areas local option to determine it. The Twin Cities theater owners protested, claiming that the local option law was abrogated by a later 1957 law giving the Governor power to set dates for statewide fast-time. The State Supreme Court had issued a temporary restraining order directing the area to stay on Standard Time, but that was ignored. Now the Court had to rule on whether its ban would become permanent. Governor Orville Freeman was sitting tight. The Legislature, he said, ought decide what time it was going to be because the old law would expire on June 30. The Legislature had not decided the matter and two days earlier, the House had put forth a bill legalizing fast-time in 22 northern and eastern counties. But the Senate Rules Committee had said that it should be guided by the Court. In the meantime, the Twin Cities area, Duluth and a couple of southern Minnesota "islands" were on fast-time. Caught on the line of scrimmage between the Twin Cities action and the court ruling, the University of Minnesota had stayed on Standard Time and set its classes an hour ahead. Let's see now, does that mean you can sleep an hour longer or have to get up an hour earlier? We're confused and so will just skip classes today to afford time to figure all of this out, as it will be an educational experience bar none.
Speaking of Ford and fast-time, not to mention Gophers, this episode
In Belgrade, Yugoslavia, a martial record holder had died at 65. The Serbian man had been married 27 times according to Belgrade newspapers. They had not reported how many of his marriages had ended in divorce.
On the editorial page, "The General Assembly Does Its Duty" indicates that the passage of the state's first minimum wage law the previous day had been an act of statesmanship and social responsibility, adding generously to the luster of the most progressive state in the South and providing the General Assembly's 1959 record with an enduring mark of excellence.
While the minimum wage of 75 cents was modest, guaranteeing a worker who worked 40 hours per week only a weekly wage of $30, $1,500 per year, that was 12.5 percent above the state's 1958 per capita income of $1,333. Even that modest adjustment would boost the purchasing power of an estimated 55,000 people in the state by a total of 16.5 million dollars per year, benefiting the whole economy. That would occur despite many exemptions, some of them it finds unwise, written into the law by the State House. There, the fearful voices and discordant pugnacities of opponents had reached radical peaks of fatalism, lacking critical analysis of the facts of life in an industrialized society. A prosperous future for the state simply could not be built on a base of low-wage economy.
It finds that it might be a mistake to suggest the stirrings of conscience to be a flowering liberalism, although it finds liberal values had been involved. But the actual success of the minimum wage law reflected something more basic, hard-headed practicality and rational faith in the resources and resourcefulness of a growing state. It was the spirit which had arisen so often to save the state from the ruts of reaction.
The state owed much to the three House members who had introduced the bill and fought against terrible odds for its passage, Representatives Sam Burrow of Randolph County, Steve Dolley, Jr., of Gaston County, and Frank Patterson, Jr., of Stanly County. It also owed a large debt of gratitude to their allies in both the House and Senate who had guarded it well against the most ferocious lobbying onslaught aimed at any single piece of laudable legislation during the current session. It was equally indebted to Governor Luther Hodges, who had battled for a state minimum wage as early as 1955, and also recalls that his predecessor, Governor William B. Umstead had recommended such a law in 1953, to the dismay of certain of his arch-conservative admirers.
Minimum wage bills had been introduced and defeated in at least seven biennial sessions of the Legislature, and in the current year, as in the past, the crucial test had been in the House. A single vote had enabled it to get out of committee, cast by the chairman, Ed Wilson, perhaps the most important single vote of the 1959 session.
The previous day, a vote of 42 to 6 in the Senate had represented the final triumph for a necessary instrument of progress.
Since the Governor at the time lacked the veto power, the passage of the bill in both houses of the Legislature meant that it became law.
"Sir Winston Tries To Tip-Toe in Vain" indicates that Winston Churchill evidently was not the type of man who could tiptoe in and out of the country without waking everybody to his presence. Whether stealthy or private in his visit, the public eye was fixed on him, and he had been front-page news every day.
He had been followed by reporters since his arrival in Washington, to the White House, to Walter Reed Hospital to visit with ailing former Secretary of State Dulles and former Secretary of State and wartime General George Marshall, with the former Prime Minister's magnetism not wearing out in the process.
Though no official word had come
regarding the purpose of his visit, theories had abounded, some
saying that he had defied his doctors, who had told him to remain
home, to whisper a kind of international swansong into the
President's ear. It finds it no doubt that the U.S. could use his
advice and it made for high drama to think that it might be true. But
it prefers to think of him as a visitor with nothing more pressing to
do than smoke cigars and drink brandy, swap a few war stories with
the President and other friends. It indicates that if he had listened
very carefully to his doctors, it would have been the first time as
he was notoriously reckless with his health, and if there were not
dozens of books, speeches, pictures and acts of political maverickry
by which to remember him, he would be remembered as the scornfully
anti-puritan octogenarian who gave the following formula for a long
life: "Eat a lot, drink a lot, and sleep a lot—preferably
in the daytime
"A Modest Proposal for the Summit" notes that it had been reported that a certain doctor in Algiers might shoot Premier Charles de Gaulle, who by turn, said that Algeria might soon be "pacified". It finds that even for persistent tastes in exotic politics, it was a bore.
It finds that the word from France was not all dull, and was for once more elementally French than either Premier De Gaulle or the Army. In the catacombs of the Paris subway, where the news was hot, the wine-growers were after the National Committee of Defense against Alcoholism, a ghost from the administration of Pierre Mendes-France, which had since 1954, pestered the Parisians about the perils of their daily wine quota, accomplished by plastering the subways with signs which read: "Never more than a single litre of wine per day… Don't sink into alcoholism."
Recently, the wine growers, with their tolerance at an end, had denounced the propaganda as "unpatriotic, subversive, and bad for business." The Minister of Agriculture, M. Houder, had been instructed by the Cabinet to "harmonize" the interests of the wine growers with those of the anti-alcohol lobby. With French wine growers complaining of "under-consumption", it appeared to be time to unveil the plan for world amity proposed by a brilliant friend over a brilliant bottle of Loire wine the previous summer. Suitable to solve both "under-consumption" in France and the over-consumption of political worries of a short-tempered world, his idea was a sort of Marshall Plan with French wines, whereby it would put choice bottles of wine at nominal cost on tables everywhere, hoping that the balms of the nectar would make everyone think more of the vineyard and less of the more secular political issues.
It finds it a modest proposal, pointing out its most obvious virtue among many, that Premier De Gaulle was said to hope that he could be the instrument by which East and West could solve their grievances. All believed in the heat of a May afternoon in Charlotte that it would be the old man's chance, and at that very instant when diplomats were laboring dryly to draw up the agenda for the prospective summit meeting.
"It Figures" quotes William Glover from an Associated Press dispatch: "[Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Archibald] MacLeish, who started out as a Yale quarterback and captain of water polo, talks in simple unpedantic terms."
It indicates that in water polo, "it's be brief or drown."
A piece from the Denver Post, titled "Keep It Special", indicates that every Monday, when it returned to its desks to pick up the thread of events and tried to force intelligent comment out of cold typewriters, it reflected briefly on what a wonderful day Sunday had been, and then on to other things.
It had not occurred to it in a long time to write an editorial about Sunday, indicating that it was a Special Day, a day for feeling reverent, in and out of church. "It's a day for feeling love, for things like sunshine and our fellow human beings. It's a day for special dinners, and family outings, and loafing around not doing much of anything, in a special Sunday sort of way."
It indicates that it had taken it for granted that everyone, even the poor souls who had to man the emergency stations, the hospitals, the drugstores and the movie theaters, felt that way. But now it had read that representatives of Denver supermarkets and the clerks union had been dickering over pay schedules for the extra work necessary in the event the supermarket operators decided to remain open on Sundays. It hopes that they would change their minds. While it recognizes that there was some inefficiency in leaving those stores idle one day per week, there was a certain amount of inefficiency which distinguished human beings from machines.
It indicates that it did not take a bluenosed view and did not wish any legal prohibitions against opening on Sunday but did not think that people went to church on Sunday because they could not go shopping. It hates to see any development which tended to make Sunday more like the other six days of the week. "As long as Sunday remains different, we say thank Heaven for it. If we don't all keep it holy, we can all keep it special."
Now, on Sundays, we have professional kick-boxing on the lawn of the White House to recognize the inherent solemnity of the one day of the week supposed to be devoted to contemplation, if not strict devotion to the Lord's work. Certainly, having such an event on the White House lawn is very solemn and conducive to deep contemplation about spiritual and religious matters, though only in a backward form to that intended by the Bible and most recognized religious leaders, that being to find in such an event quite sacrilegious and damnable activity, especially with the imprimatur of the man, regardless of how stupid and disgraceful, degenerate and demented he might be, who is the chief occupant at present of the White House. Nothing like it has ever previously transpired in our history since 1789, whether on Sunday or any other day of the week. Let us hope, once this Monster is finally out of our midst, that nothing like it will ever again darken the White House lawn or interior or any other Government building.
One thing we can say for certain about the Big Event, it did not violate the First Amendment's recognition of the separation of church and state in the Establishment Clause, unless, of course, this so-called "sport" which was being celebrated at great expense to taxpayers for a select few number of people, recognizing that this "sport" is followed by very few people generally, is regarded as a religion unto itself for those who do follow it, apparently with great religious fervor, just as with their sacrilegious dedication to His Highness, quite apart from the first commandment which indicates, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." It might be noted to the idiots on the far-right in the country who clamor for a "return to god in government" that the first commandment might be one of the reasons underlying the Constitution's separation of church and state. Think about it, for a change.
Was it in keeping with the spirit of Sunday and the Sabbath in Christian religion to hold such an event, one which honored the birthday of the Monster? In any event, we give him and his vaunted event, and all of those who participated in it, our Rockefeller salute, indeed a double Rockefeller salute.
Drew Pearson, in Independence, Mo., indicates that a guided tour through the Truman Library by the man who had so vigorously molded American history was a fascinating experience, as he knew every picture, every memento, every book in his library, and kept up a running fire of humorous, caustic commentary about men and events, like rolling back the pages of history. He had taken the tour shortly before Mr. Truman's 75th birthday and the former President had talked rapidly, saying: "We played a little joke on Winston Churchill. He didn't realize the picture [to which he pointed] was taken standing in front of a painting of the old U.S.S. Constitution defeating the British Guerriere in the War of 1812. It's one of my most prized possessions." Mr. Pearson indicates that when he had deciphered Mr. Churchill's scrawled inscription, he understood why, as it read: "To President Truman whose decisive strike against aggression in Korea turned the fortunes of the free world to sure hope of peace."
Nearby was a collection of Presidential trophies, including a bear's foot, canes from various Democratic conventions, souvenir plates featuring Mr. Truman's picture, and the replica of a heavy chain. The former President referred to them as "just a collection of tripe, except for that chain. My father used one like that to haul logs in the early days of Missouri."
In the spacious entrance to the Library was a bronze bust of FDR and the table used in San Francisco on which the United Nations Charter had been signed in 1945.
Mr. Truman described as the "rarest picture of all", a gift from the Dalai Lama of Tibet, showing the latter, himself. Alongside was a scarf worn by the Dalai Lama, a picture of General Charles de Gaulle and another of President Bustamante of Peru.
Mr. Truman said that "the job of being President is really six jobs. And I tried to illustrate it with these exhibits. First, the President is the chief executive," pointing to a photo of a Cabinet meeting, a copy of the budget as big as a Manhattan phone book, which he had known completely when in office. "Second," he continued, "he's chief of state," showing photos of Prime Minister Nehru of India, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, the Queen of England, and President Aleman of Mexico, all being greeted by President Truman in Washington. "Then, he's domestic chief, legislative planner, head of his political party, and commander-in-chief of the armed forces," he continued as they passed four more exhibits. They paused before the photos of the top commanders of World War II, at which point Mr. Truman had said: "Omar Bradley was the best field commander in history. General George Marshall was the greatest planner. His plans won the war." Skipping over a photograph of General Eisenhower, he pointed to Admiral Chester Nimitz and said, "This man won the war in the Pacific, despite 'god'," pointing to a photo of General Douglas MacArthur.
Marquis Childs, in Bonn, West Germany, indicates that over the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany, with a population of 350 million (actually, 56.3 million, perhaps a misprint for "over 50 million"), there was an air of doubt and uncertainty "like the low-lying mists of the Rhine," the sense that nothing would ever be quite the same again. It was partly to allay that uncertainty that Secretary of State Christian Herter was stopping in Bonn for four hours on Saturday to have his first meeting with West German Chancellor Konrad Adenaur on his way to Geneva to begin the foreign ministers conference.
It might be better or worse in the future, suggests Mr. Childs, but the Germany of Chancellor Adenaur which had worked with such concentrated fury to rebuild after the war, was passing and even those who wanted most to deny the fact could not but admit that change was in the air and where it would end was anyone's guess.
In his recent announcement—subsequently withdrawn—to give up the chancellorship and accept the largely ceremonial role of the presidency, the Chancellor, 83, had no intention of surrendering power. On the contrary, by moving to the presidency, regarded as one of the shrewdest maneuvers in the career of the "Old Fox", the Chancellor intended to maintain his dominant influence over the policies of the Government and the direction of the Christian Democratic Party.
He indicates that although the odds were heavily against it, he might even succeed in putting his own man, Franz Etzel, in the chancellorship, but for all his skill and resourcefulness, he would lack the powers and the far-reaching patronage of the Chancellor's office. A large majority of Christian Democrats in the Bundestag who would elect the new chancellor at the end of the summer favored the Minister of Economics, Ludwig Erhard. While Chancellor Adenauer might be able to checkmate him, and no one minimized his cunning, Mr. Erhard seemed almost certain to be the next Chancellor—as he would be, albeit not until 1963 when Chancellor Adenauer would finally step aside. The ominous slogan, "Time for a change", was heard even in high places in the Chancellor's own party.
Mr. Erhard, with his great, glistening fat face, was a symbol of a prosperous, revived Germany and, as such, was far and away the party's best vote-getter. To sacrifice him to the Chancellor's opposition would seem to be a form of political suicide, yet in the curious politics of the Federal Republic, anything could happen.
Mr. Erhard was far from bursting with desire to change the Adenauer policies, having indicated that he would keep most of the Cabinet and, in particular, Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano, who had faithfully followed the Adenauer line even when abrupt shifts and sudden turns had caused him pain and humiliation. Nevertheless, there would be alterations. In the Foreign Office and elsewhere, new centers of authority were forming, prepared to accept the changes which the negotiations with the Russians during the spring and summer were almost certain to precipitate. As discussed in private, those changes were at a minimum acceptance of East German agents acting on behalf of the Russians regarding the access routes to West Berlin and the creation of a commission of East and West Germans regarding cultural and economic affairs looking eventually to free elections and unification. If that appeared as a long step toward the fact of recognition of the East German regime, at least in the transitional phase, then, according to the cautious progenitors of a new policy, that was the reality and it had to be accepted.
Inherent in the German temperament was a passionate desire for security, a guarantee and everlasting assurance. Chancellor Adenauer's deep-seated fear was that if the ties which bound Germany to the West and linked Berlin with the free world were altered even to a slight degree, all of the work since the end of the war would be undone. Then the restless German people would be freed to bargain for the highest stakes between East and West, with the inevitable end result of another and final catastrophe. Chancellor Adenauer was not alone in that view of the perils of altering any bit of that which had been erected during the reconstruction period.
From that perspective, the present interim phase was a crisis of confidence, not so much between Germany and allies such as Britain with a desire to ease the cold war, but among the Germans themselves. The haunting memories of the recent past of a Germany insensate and frenzied, although rarely coming into polite conversation in the present, were an omnipresent backdrop. No one was more aware of that than the Chancellor himself.
That distrust might be accentuated by Chancellor Adenauer's age and his reluctance to have his handiwork tampered with. In a more hopeful view, a safe bridge could be built between the Adenauer era and the future. Germany would remain within the framework of the West, even though that framework was somewhat altered, and the German people would develop a free society on sure foundations. That was the hopeful vision, but he advises not asking anyone in Bonn at the current time to say that it would occur.
Doris Fleeson indicates that a major purpose of the recent political travels of Senators Hubert Humphrey, John F. Kennedy and Stuart Symington was to search for cracks in the old support of Adlai Stevenson, which could be widened for their own benefit. Each had given the effort and each had to admit failure. Senators Humphrey and Kennedy had frankly courted the Stevenson aides of the 1952 and 1956 campaigns, without any luck. Members of that group were polite to all but were not joining any other aspirant to the 1960 nomination.
Senator Symington had been somewhat handicapped in the struggle because former President Truman, who appeared to be in his camp, was violently opposed to the renomination of Mr. Stevenson for a third time. The former President's support of Senator Symington often appeared to owe more to a desire for a compromise candidate to oppose Mr. Stevenson than any warm enthusiasm for the Senator. With the Stevenson cadre standing pat for the present, the three open Democratic contenders had been pitching their appeal increasingly to those elements in key states whose admiration for Mr. Stevenson had twice made him the party nominee. But despite occasionally fervent applause, their listeners continued to indicate to reporters and their own leaders that they saw no reason yet to give up on Mr. Stevenson. The latter continued to wish them all well and to say that he was not a candidate, the only possible position for him, committing him to nothing.
The result was that the hard-working Democratic contenders had still to find a reservoir of delegate strength. The South was off-limits and would be even more so when Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson carried out his plan to revive a civil rights bill. The possibility of deciding the issue in the preferential primaries worsened the previous week when Governor Pat Brown of California had become more vocal about his intention of going to the convention as a favorite-son and Governor Michael DiSalle of Ohio had begun to toy with the same idea.
A relaxed attitude, and perhaps less instead of more campaigning, might be indicated for the present leaders. Yet, they would be reluctant to lose any momentum which they had gained and all had other travels scheduled for the near future. One old pro insisted that all would be better advised to save their energies and let genial Jim Farley types peddle their wares for them until some break appeared.
For all of his impulsiveness, Mr. Truman had thus far managed not to commit himself openly to Senator Symington and against the others. But just as the Stevenson supporters revealed themselves by the help they refused to the other candidates, the old associates of Mr. Truman showed their hand with pro-Symington arguments. The former President seemed always to be reaching new peaks in personal popularity, but what that meant politically was open to argument. And some of his loyalists could be dangerous friends for the candidate they wanted to join.
A letter writer, the president of the local League of Women Voters, encloses a letter which she had sent to the County Commissioners, indicating that the League formally requested that an item be included in the County budget for 1959-60 for the purchase of voting machines for all precincts in Mecklenburg County. The letter indicates that it was estimated that 184 machines would be needed and that the cost would be approximately $1,800 delivered, with bids to be requested, a total cost of $331,200, which could be financed over time, as much as 20 years. As an alternative, the letter recommended that the citizens of the county be given an opportunity to vote to determine whether or not they were in favor of securing voting machines. It also asked that school boards be requested to provide space in all school buildings for storage for such machines as well in all public buildings used as polling places, to cost little and eliminate any problem of transportation of the machines.
We note that, at least as to Winston-Salem, voting machines were in place and in use in the 1960 presidential election, and were stored at the schools which served as precinct stations during elections. (We recall it because we recall our parents waving to us in the school cafeteria during lunch, when they showed up to vote for Senator Kennedy on November 8, 1960.) We can also indicate that insofar as California is concerned, voting machines were not in use, at least in our precinct, from 1982, when we first voted there, through and including 2004, after which voting machines were in use for processing hand-checked ballots, submitted to the machine by the voter on the way out of the polling place. Starting with the pandemic in 2020, however, voters, as in most reasonable places in the country, were given the choice of either mailing in their ballots, to be machine-processed after signature verification and also confirmed by email to the voter as counted at his or her request, or dropping them off at convenient drop-off locations, typically within walking distance of an individual's residence. That made it much easier to vote, obviously to the consternation of Trump and his evil minions in the Republican Party, who always want to make it as tough as possible for Democrats to vote, as they are well aware that Democrats typically outnumber Republicans in party registration, certainly if including Democratic-leaning independents. It is definitely a method assuring far more accuracy, security and anonymity in voting than the old method of showing up at someone's residential basement to vote in a curtained booth, then dropping the ballot into a wooden locked box, with little or no assurance it would ever be counted, only a matter of faith, in days when California was dominated by Republican office-holders. (We note that during the last Republican gubernatorial Administration, we had our registration knocked off the rolls for the first time since we began voting in 1972 and had to submit on two occasions a provisional ballot, never confirmed as counted, with the explanation for it having been that people who had not voted in an off-off-year election had their registration routinely knocked off the rolls as being stale—whether it having been somehow informally challenged by a nefarious interloper bent on conservative politics, as we strongly suspect, some weak-minded little idiot trying to substitute his girly-man image seen daily in the mirror with a strong he-man counterfeit from behind the scenes, playing the role mentally of "The Terminator" with a cute little "hasta la vista, baby", never having been made known, typical of such sneaky little weaklings hiding in perpetual atavism, in extended post-natal care with their comforting bottle, no longer filled only with milk, behind mommy's apron-strings, in any event never happening during the Democratic gubernatorial Administrations since 2012. Cf. "Vigilantes, Inc.")
Nevertheless, we now have the current unconstitutional and patently illegal efforts in June, 2026 to chill people from voting by mail-in ballots, through the evil technique of issuance of an ukase by El Presidente that post office personnel will not deliver or process mail-in ballots across the states henceforth unless each of those several states supplies voter-roll information, an effort to exercise coercion to provide voter information to the evil one and his minions at the top of the executive branch currently, despite the fact that there is no rational relationship between mail-in voting and voter rolls in the states or any personnel needed beyond the usual vote-counting and vote-checking personnel procedures extant in the states to assure accuracy in the count—as consistently shown by ballot recounts by hand to be accurate at least to within a handful of votes, only significant in any event in a case such as Florida in 2000 where some 550 votes determined the outcome of the national electoral college count.
Anyone who thinks this is not evil or that it is some kind of justifiable tit-for-tat is blind beyond belief, or is going along willfully with this Nazi-attempted takeover of our Government. We say again that this demented nut at the top is a full-tilt Nazi and there is no other way at this point to look at him. He studied Mein Kampf. He ingested it, breathed it, and spews it out in every single statement he makes daily, always and invariably calling the competition, whether in his own party or, more typically, the Democrats, in broad strokes Communists, Marxists, Socialists, and Fascists, all at once, an idiotic statement in its premises. The same type of charges are made daily against any unfavorable press coverage which the crazy man receives. But it plays well with his little Nazi minions and Klansmen who support the old fool. He wants to be taken quite seriously, and those who are sensible will take him quite seriously as the Fascist which he is. He is out to destroy our form of government and replace it with a totalitarian autocracy ruled by billionaire corporate people who are willing to do obeisance to him as the authoritarian ruler. He is nuts, an old degenerate nut. If you do not see it, you had better check yourself, for you have fallen into the well of fascist authoritarianism, a dangerous, endless well in which to fall, one from which it is very difficult to gain extrication.
A letter writer from Henderson, the secretary of the North Carolina Chiropractic Association, Inc., indicates their gratefulness for the terrific coverage the newspaper had given the North Carolina Chiropractic Association Convention held in Charlotte between April 30 and May 2. Over 200 members had enjoyed reading the newspaper while in Charlotte, she indicates, and had agreed that the newspaper was really on the "go".
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