Newspapers / The Pilot (Southern Pines, … / Nov. 23, 1950, edition 1 / Page 2
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Page Two THE PILOT—Southern Pines, North Carolina Thursday* 23. 1950 THE PILOT Pxiblished Each Friday by THE PILOT. INCORPORATED Southern Pines. North Carolina 1941—JAMES BOYD. Publisher—1944 KATHARINE BOYD Editor VALl^IE NICHOLSON Asst. Editor DAN S. RAY General Manager C. G. COUNCIL Advertismg Subscription Rales: One Year $3.00 6 Months $1.50 3 Months 75c Entered at the Postoffice 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. Thanksgiving Day In such a world as ours today, it is not easy to settle down to enjoy Thanksgiving Day. There is a feeling of snatching at the moment; the very words of gratitude take on a desperate note of urgency. That first Thanksgiving Day, so many years ago, seems to have little relation with today’s holiday under the shadow of dis aster. Perhaps part of this feeling is due to our childhood ideas of that first American Thanks giving. There were pictures in our schoolbooks of the colonists seated in their comfortable kitchens before tables loaded with good things. There was a deceptive air of simplicity about those pictures and the stories. Yet it is true that their blessings seemed more clearly manifest to the first Americans, than ours do today, just as their dangers were more direct, or seem so. In the intricate web of the horror that hangs over the world, with all its tension, so that we feel as if we were living on the edge of a volcano that might erupt at any moment, we find ourselves believing that this is worse than anything the world has known before. Not so, of course. We need only stop and think seriously for a moment of those first voyager-s to America, to see things in clearer proportion. These simple people, from the little villages and farms of England, unused to hardship or adventure, starting out in tiny unwieldy ships to cross an uncharted ocean to an unknown des tination, had need of courage as ^eat as any man’s. We would do well to think of them. Courage then and now is the same, and there is just as much of it today. The spirit of those brave first Americans is in the earth and the rocks and the trees and the green grass of our land, and in the. hearts of our people. That is something to be thankful for. We must be thankful, too, that the freedom they sought and foimd is still ours today. We know its value and are ready to maintain it against' all odds; against those either in our country or outside it who seek to destroy it. We must give thanks, too, as our ancestors did, for the bounty which this rich earth provides and we may be especially grateful today that we can share what we have with those less for tunate and, with it, help to build the peaceful defenses of the world. That, too, is in the tradi tion of the first Americans, who invited the In dians to share their feast with them. And that must have taken courage. Thankfulness for a past that helps us to face the future; that is what remembrance of the first Thanksgiving brings: a realization, in hum ble gratitude, of what we owe to that bright company. In the example of their courage, in their de votion to the high cause of freedom, in the humbleness of spirit with which they offered . their thanksgiving, we may find the inspiration to face a future which surely is not darker than the future seemed to those first Americans so many years ago. A Grave Abuse of Privilege Are members of Congress abusing their “fretnking” privilege, and are the abuses so great as to warrant abolishing their 158-year-old pre rogative? The question is raised in an article by Richard L. Neuberger in The New York Times Magazine, and the information he offers on'this issue— bitterly debated in the Second Congress, which gave its members the right to send free mail, and in several subsequent ones—merits the attention of every thoughtful voter. Gravest abuse, according to testimony before the House Committee investigating lobbying, is the habit certain members have of putting their franks at the disposal of private organizations propagandizing their own special point of view. Of such is the Committee for Constitutional Government. It is putting it mildly to say that many—^perhaps most—Americans disagree with its purposes. But there is testimony that it has been allowed to drop 40 million pieces of free mail into letter-boxes during the last four years. 'The Committee insists that the correct figure is eight or ten million. Even so, as Neuberger points out, the Post Office is out some $300,000. This is especially interesting in view of the fact that the Committee for Constitutional Gov ernment uses a great part of this free mail to decry governmental expenditures and services, and what it calls “deficit financing.” On the surface, it wages a bitter fight against govern ment taxation of the people for services to the people; yet it unhesitatingly uses the people’s tax money to get its own message across. This was done through the cooperation of a member of Congress, who overlooked his duty to the people in behalf of the large corporations who back the Committee for Constitutional Government. Kind of a vicious circle, isn’t it! The Drives Are Startiiig ■With the advent of winter, the drive season is on. Several have already been held and we may look forward to the usual long series of appeals through the mail and in person that stretches out through the winter and on into the late spring. There is no doubt that to many the pros pect is depressing. It is depressing not because most of us are not in strong sympathy with these causes that are being urged so eloquently , but simply for the human reason that it is such a bother. 'When to that reaction is added an inescapable convic tion that there ought to be some way of avoid ing all the duplication of effort involved, with so many good able citizens working their head.'^ off over and over again every year to accom plish the same thing: raise money for good works, there comes a compelling desire to see if something can’t be done about it. There appears to be a general feeling that the Community Chest idea is not the thing. It has, apparently, been tried and abandoned in other towns the size of ours. Is there anything else that could be done? Would it be possible, for instance, to have our O'wn version of the Community Chest, a purely local affair? We wonder how many people would be willing to figure out what they gave to all drives last win ter and give it all, either in one fell swoop or pledged in monthly installments. It is, of course,, too late to start any new scheme this year, but might it not be possible to try out such a plan next year? It should not be difficult for the different organizations to pool their records and find out the entire annual contribution made by each individual to local drives. If an appeal were sent out on that basis before the drives started, those who responded with the full amount of their previous contri butions could then be elimiiiated from future appeals. Because, of course, to start with, there would have to be future appeals. Such a rev olutionary plan could not be expected to work the first time it was tried. It would not prevent the individual organizations from holding their drives, appealing to those who had failed to con tribute. Perhaps this plan is impractical: it is offered more with the idea of getting the ball rolling than as a carefully thought-out suggestion, but in view of the annoyance over the endless drives freely expressed by a community which has al ways shown itself to be extremely generous, it seems as if something ought to be tried. Even if we have to go on with the individual appeals, there are, we submit, a few things that could be done to make them less annoying. One is to screen the lists more carefully. We have received recently, four identical appeals from the'same organization. ’Two were mailed to our home address, one was mailed to our office address and one was brought there by hand. This represents a waste of money and is, surely, very bad psychology; by the time we got the fourth appeal we were exasperated enough to wish fervently that we had not sent our money to the first one. Futhermore, the annoyance of having can vassers come to a place of business is consider able; this also, we believe, is bad psychology. We have heard complaints about it over and over, many calling it a “hold-up.” Drive chair men may say that this system works, but some thing that builds up mounting antagonism can not be considered successful. Two Good Speeches Last week two speeches were made that were important. In Europe John O. Rogge, distin guished United States attorney, appeared be fore the so-called Peace Conference, now in con vention there, and told them exactly what he thinks of the policies of Soviet Russia. It is, of course, just what all Americans think: that the trouble in the world today can be laid directly at Russia’s door. In the same week, Senator John Cabot Lodge, Jr., U. S. delegate to the United Nations, stood up out at Lake Success and made a similar statement. He said it appeared to be the Russian idea that any action directed against a non communist nation was permissible; that it was, in fact, considefed in the nature of a crusade and therefore could not be called an act of agression. This, Lodge stated, was ridiculous. As long as Soviet policies were based on such a false premise, reasonable peace, he said, would be impossible. Calmly but very forcefully, the U. S. delegate urged Mr. "Vishinsky to go back to Moscow, lay the truth before Stalin, and se cure a reversal of policy. To read these two speeches is to feel a glim mer of hope. We have suffered under a bar rage of words of late welcomed, perhaps, be cause far better to have words than shells, but nevertheless confusing and frustrating.. Our ears have rung with “communism” and “dem ocracy” and the cliches praising or denouncing each. These two speeches stand out among a very few which maintained a calm and reason able plane. John Rogge was speaking to a gathering many of whom were pacifists; undoubtedly many more were communists. In the light of that fact, we submit, Rogge’s speech may have been im mensely valuable. He has penetrated an iron curtain of sorts when he spoke to such an audi ence. It simprised them, we are told; at its close there were boos and catcalls but there was also scattered but violept applause. The speaker had been an assistant attorney general, the prose cutor of the famous subversive activity trials: what he had to say was important; the fact that he chose to go before such a gathering, risking considerable trouble, was significant. The Lodge speech was a model of persuasive, yet hard-hitting argument. It may make no obvious impression but it will be impossible for the Russians wholly to disregard it. We submit that we need more of this sort of reasonable action today. There has been too little of it. A Family Prayer for Thanksgiving Day By Robert Louis Stevenson L. <ORD, behold our family here assembled. 'We thank Thee for this place in which we dwell; for the love that unites us; for the peace accorded us this day; for the hope with which we expect the mor row; for the health, the work, the food, and the bright skies that make our lives delightful; for our friends in all parts of the earth .... Give us grace and strength to forbear and to per severe . . . Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, in all oiir inno cent endeavors. If it may not, give us strength to encounter that which is to come, that we be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving to one another. Grains of Sand Who is This? She lives in Southern Pines . . . She gets her big thrills these days out of tending the beautiful plants and shrubs about her home . . . She plays a rip-roaring game of canasta, but says her bridge game is terrible . . . She works hard on benefit events for her church, is interested and generous in church and community affairs. Few know that she was once a child ballerina . . . That as a teen age dancer she led the Metropoli tan ballet... And danced at bene fit events with such stars as Fred Astaire and George Murphy . . . It was as she danced one time with Murphy that weak boards in the stage floor broke, and the dancers crashed through . . . 'The instep of one of her dancing feet was crushed, ending her career at the age of 15. Well, it may have ended that career, but later she started an other . . . She entered the real estate business in her home state of New Jersey . . . Her father was a state legislator and when he died she was nominated to suc ceed him . . . She never cam paigned, but was elected that time and many times after, till in all she had served 17 years in the state legislature. During that time she worked hard on bills to improve working conditions for laboring people . . . And succeeded in many of them. She is of French descent ... Do you know her? Driving too fast is one sure way of going to jail. Driving too slow can get you there, too. Highway Patrolman H. F. Deal stopped a car on suspicion on US Highway 1 a few miles north of here one day early last month. He asked the driver for his license and discovered he didn’t have any, put him in jail, checked the li cense number and found that the car, a 1939 Ford, had been report ed stolen in Buncombe county. Last week the patrolman went to Asheville to testify in the case against Charles Ballew, charged with auto larceny. Probable cause ,was found and Ballew, who had just completed 30 days in Moore for driving without a license, was bound over to superior court. “What caused you to be suspi cious of the car in the first place?” we asked the patrolman. “Was he speeding?” He pondered a minute, then said, “Well, no, not exactly. Mat ter of fact, he wasn’t going but 35 miles an hour. I could tell it wasn’t a car from around here, and the ones passing through are generally going a lot faster than that. “So I thought I’d better ask him some questions.” The new dance specialists at the Carolina, Miss Jane Paige and John Sharpe, pulled a new angle in the Pine room last Tuesday night. It was called “The Cham pagne Hour.” Volunteers from the audience danced their own choice of dances with Miss Paige and Mr. Sharpe, and then were lined up on the floor for the audience to applaud as each name was called. The winners were Mrs. L. Aguil era of Cuba, who danced a Cuban rhumba with Mr. Sharpe, and that indefatigable dancer. Judge A. W. Lytle, who did a samba with Miss Paige. Each got a bottle of cham pagne! And then Mrs. Aguilera and the Judge teamed up in their own demonstration of the rhumba and samba. Miss Paige says they plan to continue this novelty on Tuesday nights, provided, of course, that they can still get supplies of that fizzy stuff. From Sam Ragan’s column, Ral eigh News & Observer; Roy Wilder’s recent story on the visit of Thomas Wolfe’s mother to New York in search of supposed ly lost manuscript recalled to Ben Dixon MacNeill a letter that Mrs. Wolfe wrote to Maxwell Perkins, the novelist’s editor. MacNeill is pretty sure that the letter never has been published, but be recalls Perkins reading the letter aloud to a group at the home of Struthers Burt in Southern Pines “one eve ning around New Year’s after Look Homeward hit the market.” In the group were Struthers and Katharine Burt, James and Kath arine Boyd and MacNeill. “Mrs. Wolfe denounced Perkins for printing her disavowed child’s scandalous attack upon her,” Mac Neill recalls. “She threatened him with libel suits, slander prosecu tions and disowned her son.” At the end of the letter, however, Mrs. Wolfe added a postscript. ‘The P. S. said that sne, Mrs. Wolfe, had some lots, both Mr. Perkins or to anybody knew or might hear of.” The Public Speaking DID NOT RESIGN To the Pilot. Your attention is called to 1 news item in the Pilot dated November 1950, under the head ing of “With the Armed Forces.” order to serve with the Sigr Corps, etc. For your edificati^ I am submitting the following: qualify can submit applica for Regular Army service schools conducting training in the Mili tary Occupational Specialties (MOS to the GI’s) that they pos sess or are striving to possess in the units to which they belong. Cpl. Joe Warren, being a member of this local unit, and still remain ing as a member of this unit, did submit a request lor schpoling in the MOS that he wished to pos sess in this unit. To do so he had to meet the qualifications required by the National Guard Bureau. Upon meeting these qualifications he was sent by this unit to the Regular Army Signal Corps school at Ml. Monmouth, N. J., for a course in Radio to last eight, I re peat, eight months, at the end of that time he will return to this unit fully trained in the MOS he is striving to attain. During this eight months he never loses his identity as a member of this unit, always wearing the famous shoul der patch of the “Old Hickory” 30th Division, a division once call ed by the German high command in World War 2 as “Roosevelt’s SS Troops.” The aforementioned training is part of an overall plan of the National Guard Bureau to train key personnel in their du ties, as the present policy of the Department of National Defense is to bring the National Guard to a high peak of training and pre paredness. Now to get to the crux of your news item concerning Cpl. Joe Warren. He did not resign from this unit. He is stiU a member of this unit and will remain so dur ing his schooling and'upon his re turn from that schooling. It is the wish of this command that in the future that any further news items concerning the local National Guard Unit or local Na tional Guardsmen, as pertains to their duties ,be cleared through the local battery headquarters, which are easily accessible to the Pilot staff. Such erroneous re ports as the above news items re ferred to, take all the credit away from the National Guard school program which is a. program ac cessible to all National Guards men, and does no good in our re cruiting efforts that offer school ing to potential Guardsmen. Sincerely, JAMES L. IRVIN, 1st Lt. Arty Conunandmg L. V. O’CALLAGHAN PLUMBING & HEATING SHEET METAL WORK Telephone 5341 PETEK LIND HAYl comedian: '*! fou\ what mildness roeans\ made the 30-Day Test y thon oni ettief Cl KYLE MocDONNELL, star\ of television: *‘1 smoke! mild Camels. 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The Pilot (Southern Pines, N.C.)
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Nov. 23, 1950, edition 1
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