Page TWO
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1960
“Quack!!”
ILOT
Southern Pines
North Carolina
“In taking over The Pilot no changes are contemplated. We will try to keep this a good
paper. We will try to make a little money for all concerned. Wherever there seems to be
an occasion to use our influence for the public good we will try to do it. And we wiU
treat everybody alike.”—James Boyd, May 23, 1941.
Attention Turns to School Attendance
There are signs that North Carolina’s ap
palling apathy over many years on the matter
of school attendance may be changing.
On the Moore County scene, the county
board of education has employed a retired
school teacher as attendance officer to work
only with the Negro schools in which the at-
tenndance problem is said to be more acute.
In the West Southern Pines schools, where
the attendance problem appears to be not so
acute as in the big consolidated Negro schools
of the county system, efforts have been made
to get chronic truants back in school and keep
them there. And Southern Pines school offi
cials see a possibility that the local school dis
trict might employ, at some time in the fu
ture, if the need is seen, an attendance officer
for all the schools.
North Carolina has had a compulsory school
attendance law since 1914, but it is common
knowledge that it has not been enforced. It is
also widely known that, in some rural areas
of the state, there was eveij pressure for NOT
enforcing a law that would take out of the
fields the many useful hands and backs of
children in various agricultural tasks.
What more and' more people of the state are
now waking up to is that illiteracy may pay
off temporarily in cheap labor, but in the end
it is a major stumbling block in the road of a
state’s progress—econoiriic, cultural and oth
erwise.
Within the past few weeks, as pointed out
in a recent editorial on this page, the state
was shocked to read that one-fifth of the per
sons applying for driver’s licenses can’t read.
And there was speculation as to how this han
dicap might affect traffic safety on modem
express highways with complicated signs that
must be read to be understood.
The General Assembly has turned down,
again and again, requests for funds to set up
a state-wide system of school attendance offi
cers—reflecting the apathy or out-and-out op
position to the matter in, rural areas which
dominate the Legislature. 1
Moore County’s employrrent of a Negro at
tendance officer is an instance of a local ef»
fort to partially solve this state-wide problem.,
and as such it is praiseworthy, but the matter
could and should best be solved at the state
level. If the state has to depend on local ef
forts, there will be little or no action for years
in the poorer counties which are usually the
ones in which school absences and school
drop-outs are the highest.
We offer this as a primary matter for the
attention of the 1961 General Assembly.
‘On His Merits as a Human Being..
For the past 27 years, the National Confer
ence of Christians and Jews has sponsored a
nation-wide observance of Brotherhood
Week. The President of the United States is
Honorary Chairman and millions of Ameri
cans are participating this week.
Brotherhood Week is only a part of the
work of the National Conference which is a
civic organization engaged in an educational
program for better human relations 365 days
of every year. It enlists Protestants, Catholics
and Jews who—without compromise of con
science of their distinctive and important re
ligious differences—work together to build bet
ter relationships among men of all religions,
races and nationalities.
NCCJ’s work has been called ‘‘as American
as the 4th of July.”
'The purposes of Brotherhood Week, accord
ing to Dr. Lewis Webster Jones, President of
the National Conference, are to give people
an opportunity to re-dedicate themselves as
individuals to the ideals of respect for people
and human rights. “We try to dramatize the
practical things that people can do to promote
understanding and realization of those ideals.
Brotherhood Week is essentially a campaign
against the prejudices and bigotries that dis
figure afnd distort religious, business, social
and political relations.”
Dr. Jones urges people to do more than give
the principles of brotherhood mere lip service.
“By getting to know the other fellow, the one
who has a different creed, race or national
origin than yours, by understanding his view
point, his ambitions and goals, you will find
old prejudices disappear. You’ll find that we
are all one family made strong and great by
the very differences that so many times di
vide us as individuals and groups. You’ll learn
to accept or reject a person strictly on his
merits as a human being and not h^ecause he
happens to be different from you.”
Tliese words follow pertinently the revela
tion in a letter in last week’s Pilot that the
blessed water in the font at St. Anthony’s
Catholic Church had been defiled on at least
three occasions. While this is an extreme ex
ample of bigotry—one which is expressed in
physical action, like the painting of swastikas
on synagogues—it is, in essence, no worse than
the verbal expressions of religious and racial
intolerance that one hears with shocking fre
quency even from supposedly intelligent per
sons.
The answer to the problem of intolerance,
for an individual or for a community, is amaz
ingly simply and sure; “. . . to accept or reject
a person strictly on his merits as a human be
ing. . .” ^
Family Troubles in the Courts
We continue to be impressed with the need
for a domestic relations court that would serve
the entire county or, if necessary to make pos
sible the financing, this county and one or
more other nearby counties.
It is not that the judges of courts in Moore
County are not doing a good job handling do
mestic relations cases. We think they are—in
some cases not only “good” but outstanding.
Knowl^ge of human nature, sternness tem
pered with mercy, and the ability to tell when
witnesses are ljung—all these qualities of the
experienced judge are of tremendous value
in dealing with, cases involving husbands,
wives and children, cases which often would
challenge the wisdom of Solomon himself.
Our point is one we have made before: the
ordinary lower courts which handle these
cases—abandonment and non-support, assault
between husbands and wives, trouble between
parents s!nd children—do not have facilities
either to investigate the cases deeper than
courtroom testimony reveals the facts or to
follow whatever judgment is rendered with
counseling and supervisory services.
Ideally, of course, the domestic relations
court should work closely with a psychiatric
clinic in which the overwhelming hostilities,
immature emotions and other tangled person
ality defects seen in these cases could, in some
cases, be relieved enough to make a more
normal life possible. i
Visits to a courtroom should be part of
everyone’s training in citizenship. Most per
sons leading orderly lives, and acquainted
mostly with others living in this manner,
can not realize the incredible messes in which
some of their fellow human beings get them
selves involved. Not out in public, but right
at home.
And the same folks come back into court,
again and again, suspended sentence or not.
Often, the situations end with the father or
husband going to the roads, at which point
the Welfare Department—which meap money
out of the pockets of all of us—must take over
and support what remains of the family.
Though it is often true that the family is
better off with the father on the roads, it is a
sad commentary on the skill and compassion
of our society that this must so often be the
only solution to domestic strife and turmoil.
vN
iARWN^
CONCLUDING MR. HARSCH'S ARTICLES
Can ^New Foreign Policy* Succeed?
Though many parents appear to be beyond
redemption (and we suspect that, in the right
guiding hands, they might not be so lost as
they appear), society’s concern must be with
the children—the future, for, unless they are
helped, the pattern may be repeated, multi
plied, in their own lives, in a decade or two.
We would like to see the county commis
sioners dig into this matter, find out what the
problems and the possibilities are in looking
toward a domestic relations court. Is there
demand or need for such a court in nearby
counties?
Every study of delinquency and other social
ills stresses the priihary importance of the
family as the unit that bolsters social stability.
Should we not do everything possible to pre
vent. or at least to ease, the disruptions of
family life? i
Welcome, N. C. Symphony
The Pilot welcomes to Southern Pines the
North Carolina Little Symphony and its con
ductor, Dr. Benamin Swalin. \
The orchestra’s stay of two or three days
here include playing for Negro school children
of the county this afternoon at West Southern
Pines; the regular concert tonight at Weaver
Auditorium; and a concert for white school
children tomorrow morning at Aberdeen.
Some one who has not attended a children’s
concert presented by the North Carolina Sym
phony could hardly imagine the unique qual
ity of these events—the enthusiasm, the par
ticipation, on the part of the children, and the
skill and vigor of the music’s explanation and
presentation on the part of Dr. and Mrs. Swa
lin and the orchestra. Thousands of children,
all over the state, are thus being introduced
to good music in a way ,that arouses the kind
of interest that could remain with them for
the rest of their lives.
We commend tonight’s concert especially
to older students who are admitted at a spe
cial rate. The rate applies to season tickets
for this and other attractions presented by
the Sandhills Music Association and to admit
tance to individual concerts.
Tonight’s program, which features two so
loists, seems unusually interesting. We urge
our readers to attend.
Th» Pilot, by special per
mission, has b^n printing a
portion of a Christian Science
Monitor series of articles by
Joseph C. Harsch on what he
calls "the new Western for
eign policy"—a graduaL
groping attempt to make
some sort of adjustment with
the Soviet Union. Mr.
Harsch's final article, in
which he evaluates his find
ings, appears below:
Any reader who has followed
this series this far wiU have
guessed, correctly, that the writer
has avoided as long as possible
the unavoidable effort to draw up
an assessment of the new for
eign policy’s chances of success.
It has a flaw in its origin. 'The
greatest danger to its success
comes from that flaw. It is the
logical end result of the 1953 de
cision to cut back the United
States arms program. But that
decision did not spring from a
negotiated arms reduction agree
ment or from a calculation that
Moscow would respond. It sprang
from a desire to cut the budget
and acquire a chance to cut taxes.
The sound way to cut an arms
budget is to negotiate with the
rival armed state and then hon
or the agreement. To cut first and
then negotiate is to remove the
element of inducement from the
rival’s position. Moscow has had
no inducement to meet cut by cut.
Moscow’s advantage has been op
the side of refusing to agree.
Washington went on cutting re
gardless. The result is that the
new foreign policy is based not
on strenngth but on weakness.
The question is whether this is
a fatal flaw.
Two Arguments
There are two arguments sup
porting the proposition that the
flaw is not fatal—both interest
ing, neither conclusive.
The first is that negotiated arms
reduction is the most difficult
type of agreement to reach be
tween rival great powers. There
is no case on record of a signifi
cant arms reduction having been
achieved by prior agreement. It
is a fact that Moscow has follow
ed Washington in tactical arms
reduction, although not propor
tionately nor in all areas. It is
conceivable, although so far the
record gives little reason to ex
pect it, that Moscow will continue
to cut and someday might bring
itself down to the Western level.
The second argument is the
theory that fear of Western mili
tary superiority has been an im
portant element in Soviet bel
ligerency, that removal of genu
ine cause for fear is the necessary
first step toward that reconcilia
tion between East and West
which in these nuclear days is
the nearest we are likely to get
to a guaranty against use of the
v/eapons.
Hopeful Sign
Moscow had some reason to
fear when the West enjoyed a
nuclear monopoly and therefore
decisive military superiority. It is
a hopeful sign that as Moscow
has closed the gap and gone on
to superiority in certain types of
long-range weapons Moscow has
spoken with less hostility in its
voice. But Moscow has continued
to seek the superior weapons.
However interesting, these ar
guments are not conclusive
against the countertheory that if
Moscow ever should see a chance
to destroy the military power of
the West without massive injury
to itself, its leaders would feel
obliged to seize that opportunity.
If this should happen, the flaw
would indeed have proved fatal.
Whatever chance the policy has
of succeeding must derive rather
from the theory that while Wiash-
ington’s power has declined in
direct ratio to Moscow’s power,
Moscow’s position in the world
also has declined and that there
are new emergent reasons why
the men in the Kremlin must be
decreasingly interested in dam
aging the West.
China and Germany
Moscow may command newer
and longer-range weapons than
Washington, but Moscow no long
er exercises decisive control over
Communist China. And there can
be no serious doubt that Moscow
is genuinely alarmed over the
pace of West German recovery as
an industrial and political force
in the world.
Surely one reason; and perhaps
even the decisive reason, for
Premier Nikita S. Krushchev’s in
terest in “better relations” with
Washington is because he cannot
be entirely certain of the eternal
permanence of his fraternal ties'
with Peking. Surely one reason
the Kremlin has been so anxious
to woo France of late is because
Moscow counts on France to help
it keep Germany divided.
Traffic and Trees at Chapel Hill
(From Th® Durham Herald)
What puzzles us, down here at
the Durham foot of the Tarheel
Olympus which is Chapel Hill,
is how -seven—seven, mind you—
people who would like to cut
down a tree ever got into The 'Vil
lage. Our bewilderment wouldn’t
be quite as great if the folks who
have asked the Board of Aider-
men to cut (jown a venisrable elm
lived in Glen Lennox or Victory
Village. After all, in these times
of urban growth, even the most
distinctive of communities cannot
expect to assimilate immediately
all the newcomers into its atmo
sphere and traditions.
But how such arboreal icono
clasts ever got into the sacred
precincts of Ehst Franklin Street
and Battle Lane will never cease
to bother us. To think that this
heart of residential Chapel Hill
harbors those who put the con
venience of traffic above the
beauty of trees!
Now if it were Durham, or Ra
leigh, or Greensboro, or that me
tropolis Charlotte, the tree would
come down, and the cars would
go through. Motor traffic has long
since prevailed over trees in these
marts of trade, commerce, and in
dustry. But Chapel Hill has been
Other forces are at work in the
evolving politic^al and social life
of the Soviet Union which paral
lel the foregoing. The people have
a taste of consumer economy and
want more. 'There is a reviving
awareness of ancient cultural ties
with the West. Boris Pasternak is
recognized as a massive literary
figure both at home and through
out the West, even though some-
W'hat reluctantly recognized at
home.
Can't Be Sure
And none can be sure either
that the new policy is safe or that
it is likely to succeed. One must
wish there had been less weak
ness in its origins. The combina
tion of sturdy strength with a
confident willingness to make
peace is the most desirable pos
ture for a great nation. We never
yet have had the two components
in perfect balance and do not
now. However, neither has the
Kremlin.
There is an unfortunate grop
ing content in the policy. It can
hardly be called perfect. But it
does fit with the fact that Mos
cow, in its own fumbling and
also groping and imperfect way,
appears to be seeking to subject
the power struggle to some ele
mentary rules. The power strug
gle goes on. Western objectives
have been shortened, Moscow’s
have not. The shortening of our
objectives reduces the danger of
a nuclear war. Exchanges of visits
can reduce that danger further.
In that respect the policy may
well succeed.
But there is no positive com
ponent in it yet to match in scope
or vision the Soviet purpose of
becoming the most modern and
powerful nation on earth.
our oasis, where mind has held
the priority over matter, where
trees have continued to take pre
cedence over traffic. So it is dis
turbing to realize that The 'Vil
lage has been infiltrated by those
who would dare to advocate such
profamation of the groves of the
Tarheel Academe. |
Can it be that so many of those
who come to drink of this Pierian
Spring have even at their tender
years become so dependent on
four-wheeled transportation that
they are unwilling' to give up
these 20th-oentury innovations
while they remain at the seat of
learning? And by so doing de
mand wider streets and more
parking spaces, even if it means
the destruction of elms and oaks
whose gracious shade Caldwell
and Swain, Phillips and Battle
and 'Venable once enjoyed?
'What a dilemma for the aider-
men of an academic community!
Yet it is a commentary bn our
times, that the charm of a com
munity attracts to it so many that.
some of the elements of that
charm have to be threatened with
destruction or even sacrificed to
make room for those who come to
take advantage of those very ele
ments.
Grains of Sand
Family Note
‘‘Heir Arrivals” as reported in
the News and Observer;
“To Mr. and Mrs. Philip Mount- t
batten: a boy, 714 lbs. born at
Buckingham Palace, Feb. 19.
Mrs. Mountbatten is the former
Miss Elizabeth Windsor.”
Lively Nature
The N. Y. Museum of Natural
History has established a “live
museum” as its newest project.
Small live animals are kept there
and small children come to look
at and sometimes pet them. ^
A lively task is a job at the Live
Museum. Here is ap excerpt from
the daily record kept by the cur
ator:
“Woodchuck built nest under
bureau after roaming around
some. Papers torn from bottom
shelves of Mrs. G.’s bookcase.
(PLEASE after this be sure to
lock cages securely.) Skunk now
weighs ten pounds; wormed. |||
Male blacksnake shed skin today.
Has finally eaten after fasting
since mid-Sept.; ate 8 mice. Ac
cepted bats; two musk turtles.
Cut skunk's toenails, shampooed
and fed him in preparation for
TV debut. Toads laying eggs well
in salamander’s tank. (Everybody
O. K.) Robin bathed. Treated
black snake’s eyes for infection.
Five young starlings: feed every ^
two hours. WATCH OUT. Female ®
chipmunk probably try to escape.
Use long-handled net. Three cus
todians returned young, milk
snake, gone a week. Found at In
formation desk (doubtless asking
way home). Much time lost chas
ing female chipmunk. Left black
snake’s cage door open to catch
her and HE got out. Finally re
covered in Stone Age Hall. Rob
in died during night.” ♦
Looking Fox Some Wood?
Says Ike: “Our defense deter
rent force’ is indestructible. . .”
and then does he wish he wasn’t
on television so he could reach
out and touch wood?
Peev
The Hunt Ball and the shindig
for the benefit of St. Anthony’s ^
took place the same night. ^
Perhaps there wasn’t too much
conflict of pulling power but it
does seem a pity that folks can’t
get together and schedule these
affairs for different times. In this *
case, the Hunt Ball is an annual
Washington’s Birthday weekend
event. Still and all, an events cal
endar would be a good idea. May
be the Pilot can pull itself to
gether and try, try again.
Just a little cooperation needed,
folks! Telephone us your dates.
Picnic In Room 20
Said Mrs. Bruce Nichols to Miss
Eleonora Sears: “Please come to
our picnic before the Hunter
Trials.”
Said Miss S.: “Fine. 'Where are
you staying?”
Said Mrs. N.: “At the Southland
Hotel. Room 20.” #
Said all the other 50 or more
guests, when Miss S. walked up
to the picnic at the Hunter Trials
Course, a little late and out of
breath; “'Where you BEEN?”
“Been?” came the reply, “Sit
ting in Room 20, waiting, for the
picnic, of course. How was I to—
know—” the rest drowned in
sympathy and merriment, with
the hostess arguing she really n
HAD said “out at the course,” and
the guest arguing she hadn’t.
That Big Little Trip
GRAINS confesses to a weak
ness for that Little Trip horse.
Looks as if all judges have a
weakness for him, too, the way
the ribbons come a-flying his
wav.
But he has a possible rival com
ing along and right in his own
stable, too. Pine Needles, a true
Tarheel, bo’n and bred, hyer in
the Sandhills, suh, is treading on
his heels.
Watch out next year. Little
Trip. Or your may get a big trip
instead of a ribbon!
The PILOT
Published Every Thursday by
THE PILOT, Incorporated
Southern Pines, North Carolina
1941--JAMES BOYD—1944
Katharine Boyd Editor
C. Benedict Associate Editor
Dan S. Ray Gen. Mgr.
C. G. Council Advertising
Mary Scott Newton Business ^
Bessie Cameron Smith Society
Composing Room
Dixie B. Ray, Michael Valen, Jas
per Swearingen, Thomas Mattocks
and James C. Morris.
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Entered at the Postoffice at South
ern Pines, N. C., as second class
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Member National Editorial Assn,
and N. C. Press Assn.