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Page Two THE DAILY TAR HEEL. Saturday April 22, 1C1 Alan Goldsmith Czech Control .AWAW WAWAV: W&t Bail? wc I. ..W.VAW."AV .v. v. w v.v t 7771 xVs sixty-eighth year of editorial freedom, unhampered by restrictions from either the administration or the student body. The Daily Tar Heel is the official student publication of the Publica tions Board of the University of North Carolina. Richard Overs treet, Chairman. All editorials appearing in The Daily Tar Heel are the personal expres sions of the editor, unless otherwise credited; they are not necessarily represen tative of feeling on the staff, and all reprints or quotations must specify thus. f! is P April 22, 1961 -. -.n-.v vr--- .-,.-. w.-l-.".-.- v r-iiv-..-.-'... -.-.-.-.".-.".-.-li"..-.' .'A- V . A . -..--. .-.w.v",V'''.'. .W.V.N .'-. V,'.'..V.' Volume LXIX, Number 145 Docs The Law Apply Only "When Convenient For Some? The recent decision to require identification cards for admittance to Graham Memorial-sponsored free flicks has resulted in some con troversy as to the validity of the decision. The ruling has the effect of barring any person who is not a student here including faculty, townspeople and University em ployees from the showings. The prime consideration for the move was a state law that bars the University from competition with merchants. Regardless of other considerations, the law had to be complied with. It is probable that pressure was brought to bear either by the local Merchants' As sociation or by one of the theatre managers here. The number of non-students who attended the free showings had grown recent ly, particularly during the picket ing of the local theatres. This not only had the probable effect of draining business from the local commercial theatres, but also sometimes deprived students of seats. Since students pay for the showings through student activi ties funds, it was necessary to give students first call on the available seats. Although the ruling was neces sary, it does have unpleasant over tones, not the least of which is thai it bars faculty members. We feel sure that no students would ob ject to admitting faculty members, and can see no reason for the local managers to object even though one of them has shown a propen sity for objecting to things lately. There has been some alarm voiced that the ruling concerning the free flicks would also affect the showings by the Chapel Hill Film Society, since the. laws gov erning competition would seem to apply to this group also. There can be no possible way to put any re striction on this group since it is not University sponsored, and its only connection with the Univer sity is that it pays rental to the administration for the facilities in Carroll Hall. Fortunately, the Film Society cannot be affected by any kind of pressure to restrict its member ship. One of the strange things about the film ruling is that it occurred right in the midst of a situation that would seem to warrant more attention than the supposed com petition with local theatres. No one seems particularly concerned with the fact that the University con trols the public utilities in Chapel , Hill -phones, electric power and water. Certainly we do not hear any one suggesting that these facilities be supplied only to students. It seems to us that the law is being invoked only where it is convenient for certain individuals. We wonder who it could be? Blind Allegiance Hides Trutl: The following editorial, titled "Twisting U.S. Minds" was clipped from the Charleston, S. C. News and Courier. A ILS. Army general is in trou ble over his efforts to combat com munist propaganda among troops overseas, and thereby hangs a tale. Let's face it: anybody who takes an aggressive role in fighting Reds is liable to attack. Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker, commanding the 24th Infantry Division in Germany, is the officer now under the word guns. The charge against him is that he used material from the John Birch So ciety, a right-wing organization that has stirred a great furor in this country. He also is accused of having criticized leftist elements in government and in the press, both printed and broadcast. The News and Courier knows no more about Gen. Walker and mate rials used to indoctrinate the troops than what has appeared in Associated Press dispatches. We note, by the way, that Gen. Walker was the commander of paratroop ers who occupied Little Rock dur- n 11 if. if. w i i if II M rz B -a mar CeeI WAYNE KING Editor Lloyd Little Executive Editor Marcaret Ann Rhymes Associate Editor Jim Clotfelteh, Bill Hobbs News Editors Sue an Lewis Feature Editor Harry W. Lloyd Sports Editor Chuck Wrye. Asst. Sports Editor John Justice, Davis Young Conutributing Editors Tim Burnett Business Manager Fichard Wkineh -Advertising Manager John Jester... Circulation Manager Charles WHEDBEE..Subscription Manager The Daily Tar Heel is published daily except Monday, examination periods and vacations. It is entered as seco;ad class matter in ths post office in Chapel J till. N. C, pursuant with the act of I larch 8. 1870. Subscription rates: $4 ler semester. $7 per year. The Daily Tar Heel is a subscriber to the United Press International and utilizes the services of the News Bu- i teau of the University of North Caro lina. Published by the Colonial Press, Chapel Hill, N. C. II II m m i S5 4si ing the race crisis of 1957. Gov. Faubus of Arkansas criticized him then, so this is not the first time Gen. Walker has found himself embroiled in a battle of words. The general does not need our shield. Our comments today con cern the irony involved in attacks on anti-communism. Leftist spokesmen are well or ganized. Let any person in a posi tion to hurt their cause raise his voice and instantly a chorus of smears arises. These spokesmen have access to every organ of com munication: press, pulpit, stage, institutions of learning you name it, they'll find it. They invoke such time-honored phrases as "freedom of the press" and "academic free dom" as though they were proprie tors of the Bill of Rights. Any at tempt to put a spotlight on com munist thought and influence brings a flood of well-drilled pro tests. Though the public is gain-' ing experience in this field, many otherwise intelligent and patriotic citizens still are fooled. They can not tell the difference between Red and red-white-and-blue. The work of years lies behind this atmos phere of confusion in our country today. Once it was relatively simple to explain what it means to be an American. Today, to hear some people tell it, American principles are un-American. We do not know any more about the activities of Gen. Walker than does the Courier. We do feel, how ever, that the editorial, by innuen do, does one of the things that is so abominable about the Birch So ciety. It labels anyone who speaks against extreme rightiest doctrine as pink, communist, or commun ist duped. Such insinuations cer tainly do not help to clarify the situation any more than do the charges against Maj. Gen. Walker. The real danger is that any movement Birchism, communism, McCarthyism will obscure the constitutional freedoms and let blind allegiance, to a movement hide rational inquiry. ut What If Yur Didn The world is cheering Russia's achievement of putting Major Yuri Gagarin into orbit and bringing him back to earth in one piece. And well it should, because this was indeed one of man's greatest triumphs over nature. But it is interesting to con template just what the Russians might have done if the "first man in space experiment" had failed. Just for a moment suppose that the heroic astronaut had re turned to the earth dead on ar rival. Admittedly this is a morbid thought, but it certainly is not beyond the realm of possibility. Before the historic flight ac tually took place there was a re port from a certain Communist newspaper in London of a riot quite so successful recovery of an orbited astronaut. It was reported that the astro naut had been recovered alive but was too sick to comment on his flight. OF COURSE the world has re jected this premature announce ment. But since we are dealing with what might have happened let us go a little farther with our supposing. Suppose then that this first re port were true and what's more that the astronaut had died shortly after his recovery. Now look at the position this leaves Russia in. Here they have a dead astronaut on their hands plus a world-wide report that they had launched a man into space and had recovered him sick but alive. What could they do? Well, since one astronaut looks pretty much like another as far as the world is concerned, they could just substitute a very healthy live one for a very un healthy dead one. THEN TO MAKE things look really good they could send up another missile and then an nounce shortly afterwards offi cially that they had successfully launched an astronaut into space and recovered him alive and in excellent condition. Of course then they would deny the first report and supply the grinning, very much alive astronaut as proof. Now that is what we would have to call mak ing the most of a very bad situa tion. Getting back to reality once aagin, it has been interesting to note that there have been some discrepancies in Russia's report of the "actual" space achieve ment. Major Gagarin reported his ob servations on what the earth looked like while he was orbit ing around it. Now this made very interest ing news; especially since one of the scientists in charge of the astronaut prjoect had stated that there was no way for a man to see out of the missile launched since there were no peep holes. There was also some disagree ment between scientists and as tronaut on just how ht got back to earth. OF COURSE THERE is really no sense in going into these con tradictions. If Major Gagarin said he saw something up there, he saw something. And it really doesn't matter just how he got back to earth, just so long as he got back. Besides if we started doubting the validity of Russia's great achievement, we might be son sidered poor losers. And in this day and age when our nation and the rest of the free world's future is at stake, there is nothing worse than a poor loser. So let us swallow both our pride and what the Russian's tell us hook, line, and sinker. REFLECTIONS A few years ago the French franc was trs malade and a strict regimen was prescribed to make it well. Now the French are worried that the franc, while healthy enough itself, may be making people sick. So Paris is cleaning all banknotes with a special dis infectant "rendering inoffensive all the microbes and bacteria with which they could become inr fested in the course of their cir culation." This is certainly a splendid idea. And it's just the antithesis to the U.S. policy of doctoring the money while cleaning the people. . . . MJR Ha HP mi ft-'" vvivfp ii'fi Hi Jit BUS WADE WELLMAN Flying Saucers: A Postscript Saturday morning, April 15, I mounted the stairs to the offices of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, 1536 Connecticut Avenue, Wash ington 6, D. C, for my first visit. There I had the pleasure of a meeting with Major Donald E. Keyhoe, the Director, and Mr. Richard Hall, the committee sec retary. For more than four hours I scrutinized NICAP's evidence, with a sense of awe at the tre mendous amount of information that has been collected there and a feeling of mounting amazement that the Air Force had been so successful in repressing the facts. ALL OF NICAP's information now comes from civilian investi gaors, since the military investi gations are channeled into Proj ect Blue Book, the official USAF agency, which is now so tightly sewn up that it would take a battering ram to break down the secrecy wall. NICAP is making an all-out effort to persuade Congress to take up the problem. An im mense amount of information has been given to Congressmen, some of whom express astonishment at the refusal of the Air Force to be honest with them. Congressional support has been a see-saw affair, but House Majority Leader John McCor mack is strongly urging the House Space Committee to give public hearings at this session. SOME CONGRESSIONAL in vestigations have been made be hind the scenes, but the failure so far to gain public hearings is partly due to NICAP's lack of publicity. So far, the only national pub licity we have had has been through Major JCeyhoe's book, Flying Saucers: Top Secret. This book, through not as well-known as it deserves to be, has made a intelligent readers, notably on Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, the fa mous Swiss analyst. Jung, a NICAP member, had formerly argued that the UFO's were psychic projections. Last summer, however, upon reading Flying Saucers: Top Secret, Jung wrote to Major Keyhoe that the book contained sufficient evi dence to demonstrate the physi cal reality of the saucers. At NICAP's offices I examined Dr. Hermann Oberth's letter of April 22, 1957, in which the world-famous rocket expert claims that the saucers, or a con siderable number of them, origi nate from Tau Ceti. Strangely, Oberth's evidence has not been published, though he said he would release it upon returning to Germany. I also read several letters to NICAP members from Dr. Don ald H. Menzel, the foremost UFO debunker of American astronomy, and blinked with astonishment at the fiercely ill-tempered and smugly egotistical trend of his correspondence. AT PRESENT AND for the indefinite future the silence policy is unanimous in the USAF echelons and information is con cealed by two rigid censoring orders, JANAP (Joint-Army-Navy-Air-Publication) 146 and AFR (Air Force Regulation) 200-2. How much the Air Force knows is purely speculation, but most investigators at NICAP suspect strongly that the beings behind the saucers are quite indifferent to mankind and are studying the earth out of scientific curiosity. Their strange behavior pat terns, along with the peculiar gy rations and other maneuvers ob served in the UFO's (Unidenti fied Flying Objects), would sug gest that their pilots have an alien psychological make-up. Moreover, a more advanced race probably has a longer life span than that of humanity, and the surveillance which to us seems so long and intimate may be a less serious matter from their viewpoint. On balance, their motives and actions probably cannot be judged from human standards. NICAP HAD A FEW more surprises for me one was the authentic photograph of a flying saucer taken by a civilian pho tographer on board a Brazilian IGY ship in 1958. I studied the photograph with interest; it showed a disk with a fairly distinct dome, the type so often reported by eyewit nesses. The authenticity of ths snap shot is formally attested by the Brazilian government, but in this country most of the genuine photos, still or moving, are hid den behind the Air Force bar rier. At eleven-thirty I left the of fices to catch my bus home. In the four and a half hours of dis cussion I had been forced to re adjust many cherished opinions, but one thing was as certain as the rising moon: the secrecy will break. Even if Congress takes no action, the Air Force has walked this narrow wire for almost as long as the wire can endure with out snapping. Whether there is a net below remains to be judged. Chapel Hill A fter Dark With Davis B. Young i y As so correctly pointed out in this week's Time Magazine, there are an appalling number of dis crepancies in the accounts of Yuri Gagarin's epic journey into the realm of the great beyond. Gagarin talks about the view through the porthole, while So viet scientist Anatoly Blagon ravov says he saw what he saw "by radio." Did Gagarin's ve hicle land, or did he parachute back to Mother Russia? Did Gagarin make the flight, or was he a fill-in for another Soviet cosmonaut who had returned to earth too injured to be viewed by the public? Was the London Daily Sketch correct in identify ing that other cosmonaut as Gennady Mikhailov? Was Ga garin in the air during the time of radio broadcasts in the Soviet Union tracing his progress, or had he already landed and the Russians just pursuing a game of national suspense. In an or bited flight of 89 minutes was it possible to fly over South Amer ica only 15 minutes after starting the orbit when that continent was the halfway mark in his journey? And then there is the question about how many cosmo nauts went out into space and are still out there, skeletons in space ships. This column represents the man in the street. We represent this man's skepticism over the Russian claims. We don't doubt that a flight was made. However, there are so many unanswered questions over Gagarin's claims that we doubt the Soviet reports. We want to know if that space ship had a porthole or a televi sion? We want to know if Gen nady Mikhailov also made a flight, or if indeed he made the only flight? We want to know how Gagarin went halfway around the world in 15 minutes and took 74 for the second half? Did Gagarin whirl through space, or was the only flight he made the one to the Moscow Air port for his reception? Somebody was out there. Was it Gagarin? Frankly, we're not convinced. Maybe Gagarin will get caught with his space ships down. Reveal Taciics NEW YORK (UPD Commun ist Czechoslovakia, in a scries of articles in an obscure party pub lication, has revealed the ana tomy of ths Communist takeover of a Democratic government. The story of the Communist seizure of power in Czechoslo vakia in February, 1948 is well known, but never before have the Communists themselves de scribed so openly and frankly the tactics of taking control. The Czech tactics have more than historical value, because Soviet Premier Nikita Khrush chev has stressed many times in recent speeches that a "peaceful transition" from capitalism to communism is possible in some cases without revolution. THE MEETING of the Com munist party world leadership in Moscow last November confirmed this in its communique. The Czech Communist articles, which appeared at wide inter vals beginning in 1957, made it clear that the Communists are holding up Czechoslovakia as an example for Western nations to follow. Jan Kozak, author of one of the articles, called on the work ers of these non-Communist na tions to take the lead in creat ing "a united and mighty anti imperialist popular movement." This is Communist talk for re placing elected governments with Communist-directed mob rule. KOZAK SAIL the Czech Reds used "pressure from above and pressure from below" to seize power. If this had failed, another article showed, armed force was in readiness. Pressure from above means full use of- the key government posts already held by the Com munists when the takeover cam paign begins. ....In Czechoslovakia, Commun ists held nine cabinet posts in the last coalition government. They exerted their pressure by organizing the army along Soviet lines, passing out seized German farmlands to party supporters, and retaining the local govern ments formed by the Soviet army in its liberation march. THE GREATEST SOURCE of pressure, however, was from the interior ministry, which con trolled the police, and which was in Communist hands from 1945. By the time of the takeover, the police force was led and largely staffed by men certain to support the Communists. The articles point up the fact that the force of arms played a decisive part in the Communist victory. "One part of the workers from the ranks of the partisans, the barricade fighters, and the units of the Czechoslovak corps formed in the Soviet Union became the nucleus of a new armed state apparatus," Kozak wrote. The second article, by Miro slav Boucek, tells how the Com munists formed their own tough private army to back up their political tactics. HE LISTED THESE steps in the buildup: "Factory guards" composed of hard-core Communists were organized. Communist Interior Minister Vaclav Nosek put his forces on alert. The army was confined to barracks by the interior minis try alert, and given "no chance of getting in touch with the re actionary leaders." A "people's militia" was formed from the Communist armed units, with political com missars sharing leadership. AT THE HEIGHT of the crisis, a convoy of trucks headed for Prague from the arms fac tory at Brno, escorted by police, with 1,000 rifles and 2,000 auto matic weapons. . The militia helped 80,000 persons demonstrate in favor of accepting the resignations while other units prevented anti-Communists from reaching the presi dential palace. On the final day of the crisis, Feb. 25, 1948, rifles were issued to factory workers for a march on the president's office. But this last act of pressure was njot needed. Benes accepted the resig nations and Communist power was assured. pi flu uPv'1 W
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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April 22, 1961, edition 1
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