North Carolina Newspapers

Page Two THE PILOT—Southern Pines, North Carolina Friday, October 13, 1950 THE PILOT Published Each Friday by THE PILOT. INCORPORATED Southern Pines. North Carolina 1941—JAMES BOYD. Publisher—1944 KATHARINE BOYD Editor VALERIE NICHOLSON Asst. Editor DAN S. RAY General Manager C. G. COUNCIL Advertising Subscription Rates: One Year $3.00 6 Months $1.50 3 Months 75c Entered at the Posloffice at Southern Pines, N. C., as second class mail matter Member National Editorial Association and N. C. Press Association “In taking over The Pilot no changes are con templated. We will try to keep it as good a paper as Nelson Hyde has made it. We will try to make a little money for all concerned. Where there seems to be an occasion to use our influence for the public good we will try to do it. And we will treat every body alike.”—James Boyd, May 23, 1941. Dr. Graham Speziks On September 22nd, Senator Frank Graham, now once again “Dr. Frank” to most of his fel low North Carolinians, made his farewell speech to the Senate. This is customary, but Dr. Gra ham’s speech was different from most others. It contained not only the usual tribute to his colleagues but words of subtle and forceful warning. “This statement,” said Dr. Graham, prefacing his remarks, “will be a record of facts, as I re- "call them, which tell their own story of loyalty to the things for which America was founded, to the substance as well as to the form of our Americanism;” he goes on: “I would be lacking in candor if I did not ex press the hope that the present hazard of the smear will not cause any of us so to fear the free impulses of the human spirit and voluntary enterprises and associations of Americans in humane causes that we stay safely on the side lines and refuse to take part in the struggles and the hopes of the people for a fairer world.” Following a paragraph in which he gives chapter and verse of the record of his staunch fight against all forms of oppression, whether here or abroad, individual or governmental, he continues; “1 have run the risk of taking sides in the midst of events which could not wait for certificates of safety.” Wherever freedom was threatened, wherever generosity was needed, wherever justice was thwarted Frank Grahami “took sides.” He took sides and in doing so in curred the treatment accorded so many in the long struggle for humanity. Those who firmly believe that the sidelines is no place for Dr. Graham, and that he will shortly be called back into the game, may find assur ance in a sentence from a recent Charlotte Ob server -editorial. After quoting copiously from the Graham speech, the Observer says: “This newspaper has never doubted Dr. Graham’s loyalty or his integrity.” We would not atteihpt to interpret the silent conviction of an editor’s mind: whether or no this one “doubted” we can- , not say, but that the Observer encouraged doubts in others, if it did not voice them, is a matter of record. We may well call this, expres sion, then, a change of heart. If the Graham speech can 'so change the heart of this state paper, there is hope that it will do far more. We are told that Dr. Graham’s character made a deep impression on his colleagues in the Sen ate. It is not too much to hope that his farewell plea stirred in their hearts a greater realization of their obligation to answer the call to duty, to turn a deaf ear to selfish interests and preju dices and to stand up courageously against at tacks by smear and innuendo. In fact, in the inspiration of Frank Graham’s words rings a clear call to all Americans to be ready to run risks and to take sides, come what may, in the struggle for a fairer world. Taking A Chance They say when an editor is hard up for ma terial he always turns to the weather. As these lines are written, Monday morning, the reverse is true: the air teems with weighty questions which demand editorial comment, but it teems so much harder with sunshine and bird song and the smell of pine needles that the weighty questions are asphyxiated. For the time being. And not a bad idea. Come to think of it, Na ture doesn’t hkve many bad ideas. Barring rain or drought at the wrong times, winds that occasionally get out of hand, and the ornery thermometer that goes down when it should be going up and vice versa, to the grief of peach farmers and early gardeners; barring those few cataclysms, Nature behaves right well. At least in these parts and especially, we’d say, at this time. Editorial writing for -the Pilot, or for any weekly with^ a flatbed press such as ours, is a hazardous business. With no apology, we admit that it poses tests that call forth the courage of lions, not to say the foolhardiness of rabbits. Take this matter of the weather: our editorial is written on a Monday when the most ideal conditions prevail. It is just the day when you crave to get on your horse and take a slow snoozing wander out through the fields and woods; or, for those benighted souls who prefer it, this is just the weather to take out your new clubs and lick the tar out of your neighbor’s tar- heels, or Yankee groundgrippers. But the paper comes out the coming Friday and that’s when the editorial will be read. By that time, for all we know. Nature may be in one of her spit-in-your-eye moods. Horses will have their backs up, ready to buck at the first dry leaf whirled across their path by an icy wind; out on the golf courses, players will be blowing on numb fingers and furiously hurling their shining irons into the lake after the balls that preceded them there, the air blue with golfing curses, than which, we are told, there are none bluer. And there you are: we write on Monday, if not on Sunday. The sun shines, the air is mild. the woods are a glory of autumn colors, all is serene: Nothing too frightful has occurred in Korea; President Truman is back from another trip on the S. S. Williamsburg; our new senator has survived the murderous glances of those members of our old senator’s clan who attend- ✓ ed the lawyer’s convention in Pinehurst last week; the Chamber of Commerce is all sweet ness and light, the Town Board ditto; Mr. Mon- tesanti is stiU working for a bus station, Van Sharpe is still in the throes of legal procedure, the Moore County wing is still “not quite ready to open”. . . and the Pilot editor is once more taking a chance and writing about Sandhills weather for Friday readers on Monday morn ing. Stop, Look and Listen! As these lines are written on Sunday evening, columns of South Korean troops are advancing deeper and deeper into North Korea; a few American units are starting to follow. And still there has been no word from the other side. To say that the American public is uneasy is to put it mildly. There has been general admis sion that we have to go on and settle things in Korea as best we can, but little thought, to all appearances, as to how the settling is to be carried- out and what it will involve. As we look at the map of that region and think of the ad vancing troops, we admit to a severe qualm. Are the North Koreans going to do a Braddock on us? Are the escaped soldiers of their armies now lying in wait somewhere in the mountain fastnesses ahead, ready to descend upon the troops from the South and cut them to pieces? We were pushed into the Korean campaign by the suddenness of events. Warned, as we were, though oj^ly mildly, that trouble was due to start there, we nevertheless made no plans to cope with it: the decision to fight was > taken dh a few hours’ notice. Our action has paid off brilliantly in the unifying of the UN and the rebirth of UN and US prestige. Never theless we are still in the same fix: the initiative lies in the hands of our opponents. There is much criticism of the delay at the 38th Parallel, -^which, so the critics say, “will allow the enemy the chance to re-group his forces.” But this enemy is not the kind that regroups forces. The armies that almost drove our men into the sea faded away and only a comparative handful of men surrendered, but surely much of the material they had with them was captured r certainly they were not able to drive tanks and lug big guns back up into North Korea. They will not “regroup” without the things they need to fight with, but guerrilla fighters do not need to regroup and they do not need much to fight with, either. As our troops discovered when they were fighting the Japs in the jungle, a sniper with a tommy-gun can hold a column at bay while his brothers sneak in behind it to cut it off. As General Braddock found out up in the woods of New York state a moving column of thousands is at the mercy of a comparative few. To go on into North Korea is to run the risk of getting bogged down in a bottomless morass of guerrilla warfare. This is the sort of thing that involves more and more troops and is al most impossible to bring to an end. We should stop smd seriously consider if it is possible to avoid getting further embroiled in the continent of Asia, where the end is uncertain and where we shall be committing a dangero and increasing number of our scarce divisions and supplies. The Lodge Proposal Senator Lodge’s suggestion that the UN forces shall be augmented by a sort of Foreign Legion composed of anti-Communist refugees has great possibilities. It is an idea to fire the minds of all fighters for freedom and democracy and its propaganda value in the satellite countries should be great. But having said that, and one could say a great deal more in favor of it, it is impossible to deny that to put this idea into effect presents many problems. In the first place there is the grave risk that Communists will be able to infiltrate into such a force; the job of screening them will be a tough one. Furthermore, and even more important: “anti- Communist refugee” is a very broad term. It covers all sorts of people, the ones who will be fighting for a democratic government and those who don’t want a democratic government at aU. The latter crave only a return to the old fascist rule, or whatever it happened to be, when they themselves were top dogs. That there are a great many such among the refugees from Communism is self-evident. Free Europe and Britain are flooded with people, in telligent and charming, or vindictive and calcu lating, who were driven off their estates when the Communists took over. The old regimes and their supporters in all lands where Russian in fluence is now strong were thrown out and have been, very naturally, waiting for the day when they could get back in. They hate the Commun ists, but they hate the liberals and the Social- • fsts and the middle-of-the-roaders almost as much, and all of the latter hate them, as being those most responsible for what has happened. Esprit de corps would be slow ta develop in a force made up of such extremes. And Besid political extremes there are of course, the ra cial antagonisms: the old feuds between Croats and Slavs and Czecks and all the rest, not to mention the language difficulties involved. The common cause of fighting Communism will draw these people together, but there will be many difficulties to be overcome. That is not to say that-the Lodge plan should not be tried. The idea of a UN army made up of refugees from Communism is an inspiring one. Its propaganda value, alone, is incalculable. It could form that positive approach, that fight FOR instead of AGAINST, that is needed to turn the UN into a great liberating force, a true Cru sade for Freedom. Jewish. t)P*s Find Haven in Israel By agreement between Israel and the International Refugee Organ ization (IRO) of the United Nations, some 3009 displaced persons (1600 institutional cases plus 1400 dependents) will now find new homes in Israel. Here a Jewish refugee of German origin, suffiering from heart disease, is escorted up the gangplank of an I»:i'aeli ship docked at Naples by a Palestinian nurse and sailor. lEO will pay $2,500,000 to Israel to hefn finr^nce five institutions for aged refugees. Grains of Sand Introducing our private Brag Column, about Southern Pines kids off. at various schools and colleges. . . When you hear from them, let us know what they’re doing. . . If they get elected to an office, make a team, join a frater- n ity, act in a play, sing in a cho rus, or whatever. Everybody wants to know, in cluding the other kids off at school, many of whom take The Pilot and scan it eagerly for news of their friends. As a starter—Bobby Harrington has made the varsity team at the University of New Hampshire, after playing on the freshman team last year, and made a touch down in his very first game, against Champlain two Saturdays ago. . . Johnny Beasley did so well in an English test given all en tering freshmen at Duke, that he was permitted to skip a grammar course and go directly into Eng lish Lit. .. Frances Canneron danc ed in a talent show for new stu dents at Guilford, and won ring ing applause . . . Mickey Nichol son has made junior varsity cheer leader at Appalachian State Teachers college, which she des cribes as the “bottom rung” from which you may climb to the ccrv- eted position of varsity cheerlead er. . . She also won first prize at “little-girl” costume party for the freshmen (about 200 of them) and was crowned the Queen. Friday is the day when we find out the things that we did wrong in the paper. . . Mostly these things are our fault, sometimes not. . . Our mind plays tricks on us, and then the mechanical ar rangements of publishing a paper can play tricks too. Last week the wrongest thing we did was thinking we had the story about CpL Henry Bradford in the paper when we didn’t, at all. Lots of people were looking for it, and we were happy as any body that Henry, “missing in ac tion,” had been found to be a prisoner of war. We wrote the story for the state papers, as we knew it should go to them at once. . . Then our mind let us believe we had it written for our own, too. . . It’s the one story we wouldn’t have intention ally omitted for anything. Our mind also let us believe we had a complete list of the A & P employees in the paper, in the story of the opening of the new supermarket. . . But we inadvert ently omitted the names of two, and we offer our apologies to Thad Marks and Edmund RoMn- son. stock men. . . They’re the ones who keep thfe shelves so beautifully in order, besides per forming a number of other use ful chores about the place. . . Here’s an extra salute to Thad and Ed. For other omissions, we don’t blame our mind, blameworthy though it may be in the other cases. . . When Mrs. Bessie Cam eron Smith does an extra good job and gathers in social news by the bushel it overflows her page . . . When the final four pages are being put together, there is often more news in type than the space that is left will accommodate. . . For extra important news, and the “jumps” of front page stories, sometimes a handful of “person als” have to be lifted out, to make room. Mrs. Smith has usually gone home by then, and can’t defend herself. . . There isn’t any choice as to which items come out, and they all turn up in next week’s paper. This time of year it’s especially difficult to fit in all the news. . . The “season” is beginning, doz ens of people are coming back to I town after a summer in the north, 'organizations are resuming after Uhe summer recess. . . So much happens we just can’t get it all, I and we don’t have time to write jail we do get, and what we do I get crowds the paper to over- I flowing. 1 ' These are problems all papers have, big and small. . . And we just go along doing the best we can. . . Knowing all the while (with constant reminders) that for every single item, no matter how small, there are at least one or two people to whom that’s the most important thing in the paper that week. The knowledge that people feel this way about the news, even when sometimes we , let them down, is the satisfying thing about newspaper \trork. . . The thing that keeps us going, and loving it. The telegram which came to Mis. Henry Bradford from the Adjutant General’s office, telling her that her husband had been found, was delivered Sunday morning, October 1. . . Everyone was so excited that for a while nobody looked at the date stamp ed on the telegram. . . It was Sep tember 31, 1950. . . That wa's a startling discovery, kind of worri some too ... “I just know Mrs. Mann couldn’t have held it over a can’t,i address us care Foreign Le gion, North Africa—we’ve already shipped out. A Stern Warning. . The Youths Companion is authority for the following story: Sherman’s Army was within six miles of Fayetteville. Hurried ly the mayor called a citizen’s meeting composed only of old men—all others were in the army to consider the best means of staying Sherman’s advance. The meeting had hardly been called to order when old Mr. Hor ner, dressed still in the Revolu tionary style, raised himself on his cane in a very agitated man ner, and in a shrill voice said: “Mr. Mayor, we have no time to lose. I propose this: That we send at once to Mr. Hale’s print ing office and have him print ten thousand posters, to be distributed amid the Yankee army, telling them that they enter Fayetteville at the peril of their lives.”—(State Magazine) PIANOS Cole Piano Company Neill A. Cole Prop. Piano Sales and Service Phone 92-L Three Points Sanford Over the years, behind our counters, we’ve sold many kinds of accepted medicines and we’ve filled thousands of prescriptions for people of this community. We’ve helped measure out a lot of medical progress. We’ve seen new treatments and new drugs turn illness into health, despair into hope. ' This progress is more than statistics—it's people! And the people we know don't want it tampered with! Free America has no place for a bureaucracy that stands between people and progress, between doctor and pa tient, between physician and pharmacist. FREE AMERICA HAS NO PLACE FOR SOCIALIZED MEDfCINE! SANDHILL DRUG COMPANY Southern Pines, N. C. THE VOLUNTARY WAY IS THE AMERICAN WAY DRY CLEANING SERVICE PROMPT MODERATE D. C. JENSEN one more. Sandhills Music way you can unravel this? Re gards— Voit Gilmore, presi Sandhills Music association.” The Public Speaking a DEPENDABLE and PROMPT r 1 Laundry Service 1 Dry Cleaning Service • WET WASH • SUITS s • ROUGH DRY f • DRESSES • THRIFT-T • HATS : • BACHELOR SERVICE • RUGS t • FAMILY FINISH t 1 • DRAPERIES • Carter’s Laundry & Cleaners, Inc. Phone 6101 V Southern Pines. N. C. The Editor: Congratulations to the town on Clean-Up Week! Those responsible for inaugiua- ting and carrying through Clean- Up Week must be pleased as they survey the results. It is a great satisfaction to see yards cleared of rubbish, vacant lots harrowed, fences straightened, and the spar kle of clean windows. This season of the year is so lovely in Southern Pines, more and more folk are coming early to enjoy it. The well-kept, open- ed-up look of homes and streets adds immeasurably to the beau ties of the town. And certainly we residents like to see it looking its best and are proud when we hear it praised. Of course there is stUl work to be done in some spots. Perhaps the owners have been away or are waiting for the much needed rain to get their grass in. But it really takes little time or effort to tidy up, and each small job adds to the general effect. Most of all let us watch our trash cans—^be sure they are se curely covered, while waiting for the Disposal Truck, and taken in promptly when emptied. THE SOUTHERN PINES GAR DEN CLUB! Straight Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey FULL 4 YEARS OLD *2 10 PINT 86 PROOF. KENTUCKY STRAIGHT BOURBON WHISKEY. THE STAGG DISTILLING CO., FRANKFORT, KENTUCKY.