I ■ I
I
EDITORIAL & FEATURE PAGE
'Just a Minute, Buster'
Chapel Hill News Leader
Before We Write Sant-
m
L^ing With The News in Chapel Hill, Corrboro, Qhn Letvwc and Surrounding Areas
VOL. II NO. 100
MONDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1955
Policies And Coaches
“We are not going to bargain for a coach
who wants to set the policies. We will set
the policies and be sure he conforms.”
This declaration by the president of Rut
gers University indicated he realizes his in-
situation exists for educational purposes,
and is not to be run by or for football
coaches, or aggressive alumni, or the writers
of anonymous letters who think an educa
tional institution is degenerating when it
fails to have a winning footbalf team.
Rutgers is another university which is go
ing through the agony of electing a new foot-
b;dl coach. If New Jersey papers are like
North Carolina ones they will add to the
agony by giving more space and headliaes
to tlie merits of coaching candidates than
to the merits of educational leaders, systems,
or procedures. '
Rutgers is fortunate in not being obliged
to think about a new president at the same
time when it must be thinking about a new
football coach. Hence it may be spared the
spectacle that has been witnessed in North
Carolina, when a prominent daily newspaper
tops its first page with an 8-column headline
proclaiming an impending change of coaches
at Chapel Hill. A change in educational ad
ministration would certainly not receive the
same attention or black ink.
The Rutgers president is a bold man. Ad-
ministratidns have been dynamited for less.
No doubt alumni and footbaill fanatics
would grant, for the sake of argument, that
Rutgers should have the aim of turning out
educated people, but no doubt they would
also contend that the pursuit of education
should not interfere with football.
Must Scarcity Be The Goal?
It is characteristic of the mos,sgrown think
ing at Washington that in the face of down
going pork prices, it can devise nothing bet
ter than give-way^ programs, or artificial re-
strictions on production like less acreage or
pig killing.
One would think that in a world whose
peoples are not fed, and where even in rich.
America little children go hungry to school,
a bountiful crop of pigs and other foods
would be hailed with cheers and big head
lines. Instead, such crops are greeted with
long faces and received like calamities.
Such is the state of affairs that results
from “the economics of scarcity.” From this
distance it would appear to be more nearly
like the economics of lunacy.
A country does the right thing by its peo
ple and by other nations when it produces
in abundance everything wanted by the hu
man race and distributes these goods where
the need is most evident. '
If every country followed this program to
the limit of its ability and resources, poverty
and its sisters, disease and crime, would be
on the way out and the flourishing econom-
ics of abundance would replace the jaun
diced economics of scarity.
There is no soundness in an economy
which is pointed toward scarity and pov-
erty. Scarcity, it is true, raises prices, but it
also sends more and more children to bed
hungry. And hunger brings on rebellion and
violence.
If the administration at Washington lis
tened less to the counsels of scarcity and
worked out a way not only to produce but
to distribute the gushing production of good
things of which America is capable, it would
lift the U. S. into genuine world leadership
instead of letting it grope in the dark.
Balthasar, Gaspard,
And Melchior
Tax Help For The Little Man
The United States Government allows the
oil companies to claim a 271^ per cent oil
depletion allowance before taxes are figured.
T.hi? is separate from the exemptions allowed
tliem I'o'- eOs.sf oUexploration and drilling.
d'hornas L. Stokes, the columnist, points
out that these sums saved can be spent on
electing men to Congress tvho will be sure
tp protect this gigantic subsidy handed to
corporations already swollen with money
a subsidy estimated at more than $700 mil
lion a year.
.Meanwhile Uncle Sam reaches into the
pockets of a girl secretary and out of her pay
of ,Sj5r, ai week, extracts $7 or $8 in income
tax.
This inequity and unfairness on the part
of the Ihiited States Government has two
results: more concentrated power
hands of the oil companies ancJ more pinch
ing on the part of wage earners in order to
meet a slanted tax policy. :
Yet we are not
hearing
an\
with
from i hardship ancl tedium, but what it was we do not know unless
the orators of either party about ihis tax ’ it was to add to their store of knowledge or to increase their
tilting for the relief of the fiPir' and. well prestige.
in the
heeled.. . U i cl
Senator Wal ter George of Tia. beChsion-
ally speaks of tax reduction for, the stnall .
people, yet even he is silent oil the;.loving ,
way the United States Government liasAyith !
those corporations that come to it beeseech-
ing for tax help.
Candidates for ail positions are beginning
to multiply. It might be a good idea to ask
each one of them, from presidential candi
date down: Do you favor lighter taxes for
the little man and woman?
A Poor Man's Romeo And Juliet
By ROY C. MOOSE
Departing from their usual
practice of presenting successful
Broadway shows, the Carolina
Playmakers in their latest pro
duction, “Blood Wedding,” by
Frederico Garcia Lorca, have at
tempted to present an experi
mental tragedy that has failed
both times when produced in
New York.
One might say of “Blood Wed
ding” as a play what T. S. Eliot
said of Hamlet, “the play is most
certainly an artistic failure.”
As in the case of Shakespeare,
Lorca’s material seemed to be
far inferior to hi.^ geniusi In
deed, the whole essay on Ham
let by Eliot could be applied to
“Blood Wedding.” The plot of
the play is based upon an actual
incident in Spain,, two men of
rival houses fighting for the love
of a girl—a sort of poor man’s
Romeo and Juliet story.
‘a
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Linguistic Gap /
The genius of Lorca in “'Blood
Wedding” is in the superimposi
tion on this frail framework of
the folk material—customs, su
perstitions, etc.—of his native
Andalusiaj, the upe of symbol,
the lyricism of his poetry. And
the failure of “Blood Wedding”
in English is due directly to the
failure of these essentials to
bridge the linguistic gap from
Spanish to English.
What we have in English is a
half prose and half semi-poetic
play that communicates the de
notation of the words and sym
bols and not the connotation.
Thus, in the process the deeper
and more significant meanings
are lost on an Anglo-Saxon au
dience. The result is something
comparable in drama in Keats’
cold pastoral in poetry.
dark river” and has given us
little bit of water.”
The first two acts are very
static, and it would take super
human actors to make something
out of those acts. Only the third
act catches that emotional !(in-
terest and sympathy so neces
sary to tragedy; we can appre
ciate the first two acts only in
tellectually in the dramatist’s
working out of symbol, lyric, and
native materials. The sustained
interest in the “star-crossed”
lovers is missing; and the fact
that Marion Fitzsimmons by her
more experienced acting ability
ran away with the show as the
Mother, made the play only more
chaotic.
They may have hhcl a professional motive for they were
Magi, whence comes tlie word magician. Tlie biblical die-
tionaries snrmi.se they were po.ssibly followers of Zoroaster,
or they may have been dealers in occult matters. The Cath
olic Cyclopedia, that timele.ss compilation to which a thous
and years is as one day, says, “they probably crossed the
Syrian desert lying between the Euphrates and Syria',
reached either Haleb (Aleppo) or Tudmar (Palmyra), and
journeyed on to Damascus and southward by tvhat is now
the great Mecca route."
They had only the Christmas,star to guide them'. It must
have been very large or lustrous to convince them that it
contained a summons they must obey. It may have been
a' conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, which aticient astro
nomical records say occurred aboup that time; or the star
may have been a nova, flaring up for a time and then go
ing out. At any rate, it seemed to move through the heavens,
as stais often do, until it came to a stop. Below it lay the
child who might be destined to be the king.of kings, or the
Messiah of ivhom the Jews had told them. From their
baggage, dusty and worn after days on the highways, they
brought out their gifts—gold, frankincense, and mvrhh.
The gold
It is with this hairier to com
munication that the actors were
struggling in vain all evening.
In fact, the English version gives
little evidence that this play is
one of the most important in the
twentieth century revival of
poetic drama; it is especially an
important forerunner of the
poetic dramas of Eliot. But here,
Lorca, the heroic martyr of free
dom of the poetic cognoscenti
of the thirties, fails to shine
through. He has attempted,
as
Against Odds
Thus the actors struggled
valliantly against overwhelming
odds. Mrs. Fitzsimmons gave a
tour de force of acting technique,
the greatest since her legendary
Lady Macbeth; yet even she
seemed to produce passions and
emotions without true feeling.
What flaws there were other
than the problems of the play
itself can be attributed primarily
to the director. For instance, he
should never have permitted Mr.
Morgan to play the Bridegroom,
the surviving son of a proud and
noble family, as a hillbilly from
Tennessee.
Mr. Sonkowsky was appro
priately bursting with passion,
but one felt that he was still
playing his great role in “The
Crucible.” Not until the third
act did he grasp the poetic form
of the play.
Marion Rosenzweig as the Beg
gar Woman was admirable, and
Robert Thomas as the Modn was
quite good. But the center of
the controversy, the Bride,
may have been in the form of thin plates
beaten between skins, which was an accepted currency any
where, or it may have been in melted ingots weighing a
talent apiece. .4 talent was about to8 pounds, worth, say,
between .'Siy,ooo or ,|20,ooo. The frankincense was com
monly u,sed in the Middle East for ritual purpo.ses while
the myrhh was a resinous substance yielded by a desert
plant regarded as holy.
The child lay in a crib at Bethlehem. The ancient artists
were fond of depicting the scene as the Magi knelt before
the parents, Mary and Joseph, and asked the privilege of
pre.senting their gifts. Gentile de Fabriano paints only one
of the three men as elderly and bearded; the other two
ajre shaven and young—in fact, the third man is pictured
as distinctly youtliful and richly dressed.
1 he visit of these .Magi to Bethlehem created a marked
social sensation. Nothing like them had ever before been
.serni in this luimdrum village. They were believed to be
kings. W'hen Herod, ruler of Judea, heard about them, he
was alarmed lest they be heralds of the Messiah that might
stir up the Jews and make them hard to govern.
The wise men were warned of his suspicions and advised
to go home by different route. So they departed southward
by Beersheeba, never realizing they would be the heroes
of a story tliat tvotdd be told e\ery Ghristmas for
a thousand years.—P. R.
si.
Washington Post
By SIDNEY SWAIM ROBINS
Shortly before the new state
of Eire was born, the Irish party
then in the lead made an agree
ment with the British government
by which they got a good many
concessions. Eamon de Valera
spoke up and said: “There is not
a clause in the agreement which
give.s Ireland what she wants.”
Somebody in this country piped
up: “No, and the only clause that
could do that is Santa Claus”. Of
course if they wanted not only
to be free but to “live happy
every after”, that might have
been an overdraught even on
Santa Claus’s powers.
We don’t want to ask Santa
Clause for too much. Once I got
an apple-core and a switch in
stocking for just asking Santa to
make another little trip on Old
Christmas. At the time, it seemed
an. idea to try out. But I have
been a little careful ever since.
« « *
It is not so much the children
who offend, for Santa knows they
are led on to ask. And it is no
use standing on the sidelines
and wishing the children them
selves would be inspired to ask
for some chares to do and a bun
dle of sticks to make something
out of, so they could stand back
and gloat over achievement.
The real miscue is when we
grownups take God for our Santa
Claus, pray him to wash up our
n’arriages stick G"'
Plenty our’
in t e
Peace on earth
“ntead
bright st;;;«'.
grumbler ,,
'happiness which th!."’'
guarantees us
“What the r ' .«
you
I"®" »« ha„ 7*'
yourself.”
7
At that, B. p
than the
-- to brit
The road to it is a
make more and "
pie happy.
tt peace is an partofi*
as ^surely it jj, ^
The more I travel a™
great country, the;;;
“hy kind people
b find phiiosophe
saying that is the
about us. But is ,
Christmas were
liinic
reafee how many pe„p|(^
happy, for want of
We are talking ah,
world now. Hungry pe„,
rt. and with an awfj
^tart in life! Ik„e,oae
“an once, ex-schookead
said that what makes p(,
iS being happy.
!p.
Chips That Fall
Letter To The Edi
itor
To The Editor:
There is no Christmas story more exciting to the imag
ination than that about the three wise men who came from
the east to worship the infant Jesus. Their names are given
as Balthasar, Gaspard or Caspar, and Melchior. And one
of them was a Negro or Ethiopian, says the legend.
Legend is what xve Iiave mostly to rely on. In the New
Testament, Matthew alone tells the story. iMark, Luke, and
John omit it; perhaps they n^ver heard of it.
Fhe three wise men are supposed to have come from
among the Medes, a priestly caste, in Persia, but they might
have come from Egypt. In either case their journey must
have- been a long one, perhaps 1000 miles or more, and'
toqk months to. carry out, since they probably travelled
with the slow help of camels and donkeys.
There must have been some compelling motive to in
duce them. t(i embark on such a long journey, attended
Had it not been for his
auto safety belt. Highway
Patrolman Tom Winborne,
xvhose car was caught in a
triple wreck lately at the
junction of the Glen Len
nox and Durham roads, be
lieves he would have been
in a hospital or wmrse.
“The door on the driver’s
side was thrown open,” he
says “and had I been thrown
out I’d have gone under my
own car or probably .in .the
path of one of the other vri
hides.y
As to the bother ■ ofi; jjtitJ
ting the belt on* and- pIT»;;fre,l
said:' “The first day ;ar 'twflj
ye.i but it gets to be as rqrri
tine as putting ;ba and re*
moving your pverpoaM^ 'AjM
There ate two ways to
keep alive these days: (i)
Walk; (2)'Wear a safety belt
inside your car. Wiilborrie’s
test shows such a belt should
be a'n automobile e.ssential
in a day when the highways
are dotted with irresponsi
ble, lunatic, or drunken
dris'ers.
■What I may think or say about
the. athletic situation at Carolina
will not amount to a tinker’s
damn, but I am- going to -say it
nevertheless.
In the first place, I think col
lege athletics belong to the stu-
. dents and the college authorities.
Why should an alumnus concern
himself about student life that
involves, or should, only the
rounding out of the student into
a whole man—a sound mind in
a sound body? Athletics or phys
ical culture is an essential phase
of making a man and should be
accorded academic standing, but
linder administrative and faculty
. controL •
Instead of being given its log-
ieal and. functional place in .cpl-
■ lege life, we haye permitted base-;-
baill, basketball, and especially
football, to get completely out of
control, with the emphasis head
ing up in the demand that the
colege miist put' out winning
teams at all costs. In basketball
’ the emphasis is on students of
height—giraffes,- as it were—and
rarely': on skill and talent; in
football'it is weight, brawn and
speed, and the country is combed
for students who possess those
qualifications, and scholarships
are granted upon those qualifi
cations, with the competition so
keen that the prospect shops
around for the top bid, which
controls the selection of [,
stitution to be honoreJi]
fortunate scholarship
grantee.
How anyone can g
the conclusion that any ail
cation or scholarship;
a legitimate part of the ej
■of the youth of the
yond my comprehendins t
ty. And when it is pe*
get to the stage tha
any cost” is the goal, sn|
with authority and 1 lilt
mon sense should take i
is really a “low low’.’
haye come to when the
at any cost” is the im
moral .offered the yoiitl
land by our . leading iii!
of learning.,
George Barclay is notftj
in the shameful workinjif
current, demand to-win,!
University and .the Stat{i!|
Carolina. This mania
abated before it is everlal
too late. .
Jphnff.EsI
Pittsbora,!
[espec
ing-f
secon
WANTED by STIl
Inj-l
fiity.
Ince—
USEDinil
ENTIIE FMil
In fact, matters have come
to the point that when one
is contemplating a trip, he
must realize he may not re
turn alive/ and when he
takes children aboard he
cannot protect them from
drivers who value speed, or
a drink more than they do
human life.
Driver's Clinic
(A question and answer coU
umn, pn . traffic safety, driving
and automobiles conducted for
this newspaper by the State
Department of Motor Vehicles)
imff
It
was noted ip passing
the other day that when a
\ ictim falls from a car wreck,
somebody rushes to pick him
up. That is the last thing
to be done. The next worse
thing is to put him in a car.
Two things to do: 1. Leave
him where he lies. 2. Keep
him warm with blankets and
coats until a doctor, ambu-
lance, or other expert help
arrives.
Q. Why should you not stop
within 100 feet of a wreck on the
highway?
A. For some unexplained rea
son many drivers delay braking
when approaching the scene of
an accident until they are right
on it, sometimes even skidding
into a vehicle or a person. Any
vehicle not actually needed at
the scene is an unnecessary haz
ard and creates a hazard for
other motorists.
The Remington
Ledbetter-Picl(3i
157 E. Franklin SI.
Phone 4611
SFE
A
body of opinion is
springing up which hopes
that Tatum will be invited
to be the next football
coach so that we can start
talking and thinking about
something else.” It is argued
that if the fanatics are not
allowed to have Tatum now,
they will fill future years
with compla'ints about any
other incumbent.
Q. What precautions are nec
essary to prevent an accident if
you have car trouble at night?
A. Get off the pavement as far
as possible, keep doors on the
traffic side shut, caution pass
engers to stay off the pavement,
turn on parking lights and do not
permit passengers to stand be
tween taillights and vehicles ap
proaching from the rear.
many
World milk production has not
increased as much as population,
and production of milk per per
son is under the pre-war period.
But The
f
Nicest
Chfistivo!
Cards
Cost
A Nickel
At The
iNTiMAlfJ
BOOKSHtlj
lol
)rc
LICENSE PLATES
as
the Bride says in the play, “a played by Martha Fouse lacked
some of that overpowering pas
sion found in Mr. Sonkowsky.
If there was a star of the show,
it was James Riley who designed
one of the finest and most func
tional sets ever seen on the Play-
maker stage. The use of lighting
on these sets to express the
mood contributed more to the
communication of what was go
ing on than the words of the
play. Mr. Riley is a man ready
for the professional stage; one
wonders just how long the Play-
makers can hold him.
Current license plates will be
valid until mid-February, 1956
the Motor Vehicles Department
reminds Tar Heel car owners.
Under a revised registration
schedule, new tags will go on
sale throughout the state Jan
uary 3 and extend through Feb
ruary 16.
PARTIES'
PLAN YOUR CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEARS
RANCH HOUSE-PHOI^