Page TWO THE PILOT—Southern Pines, North Carolina THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1961 North Carolina Southern Pines ... .ak,.* over Th. Pile. change, are :.o°2 r“caar.rr.spaSr:rsr^r-Ji St a.. ..a treat everybody alike. —James Boyd, May ' , • Plea for a Straighter Course It was Adlai Stevenson’s disagre^ble duty last Friday to announce to the^ Gen eral Assembly of the UN that the United States would feel itself obliged to r^i^e nuclear testing unless a treaty testing, with controls, was signed. Furth ermore, the testing would be conducted in the atmosphere. Arthur H. Dean, heading the U. b. disarmament commission, comment^ “This is a very difficult position for th United States to be in.” Nothing could be truer. It is, and it is a very difficult position, and a sad posi- Uon%r the people of the UnM States to be in. Just this very move has been feared by many who have again and again deplored the follow-the-leader role play ed bv this nation. , When the Soviets broke the ban and exploded their first small bomb, people held their breath hoping that we would not follow suit. It had been stated often and firmly by the President and spokes men for the Admmistration that this nation had no need to test; we had ail the bombs we needed. But when the Russians started, our tune began to change. We did prepare to test, though underground, with, of course, the noble implication that we would not pollute the atmosphere—as Russia was doing—by testing in the air and spreading more radioactive fallout; and, anyway, we didn’t need to. As re cently as early last week in their pleas to Khrushchev not to explode his 5u- megathon bomb, U. S. spokesmen have been saying that there is no sense to such a test, that it can have no military value. Now Mr. Stevenson is forced to inform the U. N. Assembly that his country “is obliged in self-protection” to prepare to make tests in the atmosphere as well as underground. Next thing we know we * will reverse ourselves again and start saying that, after all, there isn’t so much dapster froih fallout; This is a sickening way for this nation to operate. It is as if the United States were on a treadmill one pace behind the Soviet Union, obliged inexorably to do whatever the Russians do; including tell ing lies. What is this about testing? Have we enough bombs already or havent we. And, if there is something to be gamed by testing, so that we ought to keep on, will it_or wont it—outweigh the loss of con fidence in this nation by her own People as well as the rest of; the free world, not to mention heightening international tension and, even more/the further dark ening of that deadly cloud of radioactive poison already hanging over the earth. We do not for a moment doubt the President’s conviction, often voiced, that intelligence and the persistent courageous use of it is the only way to find a way to save the world from destruction. But there are increasingly powerful grimps arrayed against him. Powerful members of the Atomic Energy Commission, the Pentagon and the conservative wing of the opposing party have up with the Radical Right, that well-fi nanced band of unsavory fanatical fire- eaters clamoring for “a show-down, as they call it. The President is under terri fic pressure, greatly increased, m course, by the infuriating tactics of the Russians, and the difficulty of finding out, for sure, whether they act as they act, and say what they say, to panic the West or sim ply to boSter up their prestige with China and the Communist regime. Between those forces the President is in a bind. It will take all his skill and fortitude to keep his head and proceed m what he knows is the only way. But he must climb down off the Soviet tread mill. He must call .a halt to gyrations m policy or at least let his people into the reasons behind them. He must stop ing them one day that we don t need more bombs and, the next, that we do. Domestic Cases Pose Challenge ments. We have further suggested that The case of the 18-year-old boy who was in court at Carthage on Monday, for the second successive week, charged both, times with assault and battery on his mother, would challenge the resources of any society and the wisdom of any judge. Here is a youth who has already served two terms in prison camp, both arising, from incidents of domestic strife, who has been sent to one or more state mental institutions from which he has consis tently escaped, who last week was as signed by the judge of the Carthage court to a state Training School for Boys at which, it turned out when he got there, he could not be accepted because the school does not take any boy who has ever been in prison; and who finally, this week, received a suspended sentence on condition that he go to live with a relative in another town and get a job. The Moore County court seems to have done all that it could and to have acted with commendable restraint, leniency and compassion in each of the instances in which this boy has been brought before the court—but the observer of these in cidents through the years is contrained to wonder if, with all its resources, the State of North Carolina could not pro vide some service, some guidance that would rescue this boy from behavior pat terns that point toward eventual disaster for him and possibly other persons. The Pilot has on a number of occasions noted that it is well nigh impossible for judges of the lower courts in small com munities to deal effectively with domes tic relations cases when they do not have at their disposal skilled investigative and guidance personnel to follow up on judg ^‘Just Keep Your Eye On The Little Green Pea, Folks...”, Crains of Sand Live an