EDITORIALS
Never Forget That These Editorials Art The Opinion Of One Man,
. ■ .; 1 • »■ And He May Be Wrong.
The Mess In Africa
Except for the terrible individual trage
dies suffered by thousands of people—
black and white—The Mess In Africa 'would
be the laugh of the century.
' A weary old Congo chieftain, recently di
vested of several hundred wives, summed
up the problem by admitting that freedom
bad be^n given to his people before they
(were ready for it. On the surface he may
have been moaning the loss of his wife
servants, but with equal certainty he was
bound to have understood the philosophical
incapacity of his people for freedom.
But this aged chieftain’s complaint gives
,gise to an even more profound philosophical
question: When will his people be ready for
freedom?
■ Anthropology and archaeology each in
dicates that homo sapiens first reared up
<on his hind legs somewhere in Equatorial
Africa. It is also undisputed that civiliza
tion fifst flourished along the shores of the
(Mediterranean in areas contiguous to this
same area.
' remaps geography Had some part m
/confining civilization in Africa to the Med
iterranean shoreline, and in more recent
/times to the range of the white man’s camjp
(fire. But the saime seed of civilization when
/planted on the north shore of the Med
iterranean—among savages even more
i fierce than the Africans—spread like a wild
(fire, across Europe in all directions and
finally across the Atlantic to the Western
Hemisphere. ;
While a thousand years of ferment was
/bubbling and foaoping over into- the far
reaches of the world, Africa, the cradle of
ptankxnd remained pre-historic until this
very day. Not a tribe in Africa made use
of the wheel—or even copied the wheel af
ter being exposed to this most basic toed of
civilisation. Cannibalism remained their
<rntor answer to protein-starvation because
ip the midst of protein plenty no tribe of
(age to village if the next village’s basic in- '
(terest was in eating its neighbors. Occa
sionally a more shrewd chieftain would tie
a few families together into a loose con
federation based always on absolute auto
cracy for that chieftain.
Into this political heritage enters the
missionary white mam, with his religious
and political absolutism. With food and
(kindness and medicine he tracts a bandfull •
of these simple savages. The more apt of
these is sent to further bis education a
broad.
Those. Who return come back laden with
an intolerable burden. Pride in their race
cannot be squared with the abyss that lies,
between his father and the outside world.
iSome such heavily laden young men threw
off their yokes of outside education and
become more native than before. Others as
pire to the political catchwords of which
ever nation they went to for an education.
These are the Lumumbas, the Kasavubus,
the ■Mobutos. They are children playing a
dult games. The outside world snickers be
hind their backs as they strut and posture
upon the United Nations stage. Their own
world fears and distrusts them. Civiliza
tion in the Congo has been restricted .to rifle'
range and beyond the Law of The Jungle
is Supreme, as it has been since time be
gan.
White civilization required something
near 12,000 years to reach .the levels of
freedom and responsibility that are the
fundamental requisites of representative
(government. ji
' Black civilization with the example of the
Whites spread Before them may Be aide to
Shorten this evolutionary process, but k
icannot be done in a day, or even in one or
foro generations. Habits, superstitions are
not so easily shed. Something lies between
It., ..■tjukV, AMtkn' Ail yint— ~
The Gold Problem
the ste
tural n
Foreign
ft a r
year 'he
years, while a%rw—^
ultimately there has to
ir.ig day. This applies to
dividuals. f
Now in its last days the Esenfcower Ad
ministration is exhibiting its absolute in
capacity for intelligent action by thrashing
around with a handful of absurd suggestions
for stopping the growing gold imbalance.
Now with operational inter-continental
missiles at least claimed by the aimed
forces the need for huge establishments of
troops abroad is ended. The European gar
risons of American troops could not possibly
atop a non-atomic blitz, by vastly superior
Russian numbers. The presence of. Ameri
can troops in Europe and the Orient are
not deterrents militarily; they obviously are
economic drags on our own nation /and in
the arena of international diplomacy they
are exhoitritantiy expensive.
So long as a platoon of American troops
iS in Japan, Germany or Korea they are
a propaganda foil for the Russians. If we
Two More Inequities
Two news items o€ this week—one from
Kinston and the other from Elizabeth City
point again to deliberate inequities that are
being visited upon un-resistkig taxpayers,
i The state board of education has ap
proved a community college for Elizabeth
City and will use state funds to supplement
money being voted by Pasquotank Oountians
for this college—state funds to which tax
payers in every township in North Caro
lina contribute. •> "
In Kinston the city school board has found
in searching for policy on city school
transportation that, insofar as the state
school board is concerned, there is no po
licy. •
An intenmin report to the Kinston school
board Mbnday night revealed these “po
licies” on transportation:
- 1. All rural Schools have transportation
furnished to students living more than 1%
miles from their school with all funds sup
plied from the state school board. v
2. Six towns now provide .transportation
for some of their students. „
i 3. To some of these six towns the entire
cost of this transportation is paid by the
estate board of education.
4. To others of these city school systems
the cost of the operation is split between
thfe school district and the state board of
education. ' ,
5. And finally some of these city school
districts pay the total bill, with no help
from the state board of education.
For a city school board, to find its way
through such a bureacratic jungle is next
to impossMe. For the individual taxpayer
to find morahty in this octopus-like “poli
cy” is beyond possibility.
imerican white society would fail the same
■lest, tat percentage-wise any fair analysis
iwouM support this claim.
Democracy and representative govern
ment are no more possible in the Congo, or
in the rest of Equatorial Africa than in a
to ctje. . •:
They are NOT ready for freedom. When
they w.H be ready lor- freedom depends
upon too many imponderables fo? a- speci
fic guess, but certainly not until mass
ixrsrg&Lfi&tf f
gold memo and serve at the same time
the incalculable propaganda service .of
leaving Russian military might exposed and
unexplainable from East Germany to Ndrth
Korea. .
A move of this kind, coupled to a search
ing re-appraisal of the foreign aid pro
gram would yield tremendous savings tor
the taxpayers and put the" national budget
and gold balance on safer ground:
PERSONAL •
PARA6RAPHS
. BY
■ JACK RIPER
There is an old saying that the squeak
ing wheel gets the greaste. In government
this is a particularly apt expression. For
the past five year® I have .been' “squeak
ing” about school busses for -the Kinston
Grade School District. Now at least a com
mittee bas my .squeak under studyt and I
■hope that, a “little grease” Will be applied
in the next school budget.
At present all 100 of the rural school
systems in North Carolina have school
busses, but only six of the 70-odd city
school systems have busses and not more
than one or two of these receives any help
from the state school board for the expen
ses of their busses.
.Why people so generally volatile.as North
Carolinians have stood for this gross in- ■
equity this long is completely beyond my
understanding. No one has the slightest'
objection to paying taxes to aggpqnt school
busses for rural school children, hut when
in city systems ta great percentage of pu
pils live just as far from their school as
the rural students there is absolutely no
.good reason why they should not get the
same kind of transportation.
Over the years since I began complain
ing about this situation a few people have
begun to join in the fight. Both Dr. Rachel
Dayis and Cameron Langston this spring
pledged their support for city school busses.
Afore and more parents who are hard hit
by the cost of keeping two automobiles are
getting into this act.
Now the City Parent-Teacher Associa
tion Council has endorsed the idea, and bas
offered to lend all support it can to toe
'solution. Some members of toe school board
agree that a program of public school
transportation is not only a necessity, but
is a basic ethic which cannot he denned a
student who lives on, for instance, the
south side of Cunningham Road, while his
cousin' who lives on the north side of bunn
ingham Road, is hauled to and from the
county schools.
There is another side to the problem in
Lenoir County, Every year the busses from
the rural system probe; deeper and deeper
Into the Kinston Graded School district.
There are two reasons for this: 1. the re
quests of parents who are seeking fr^e
transportation for their children and 2. The'
understandable desire of rural school prin
cipals to increase-the enrollments of their
school since they get an additional # per
month added' to their paycheck for each
teacher in their school. /