ustxtxb_obs_1958_06_20_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

‘Compassion Without Terror’ Is Sentiment AUSTIN Some little time has passed since the Atomic Energy Commission, on the basis of evidence proved false, deliberately denied the United States could detect nuclear tests in Russia. An underground test at Nevada, said AEC, could not be detected at a distance greater than 235 miles ; but the truth is that it was detected more than 2,000 miles off. On March 31 the Soviet Union announced the suspension of hydrogen bomb tests. The leadership of the American government called the move propaganda and let the world believe Russia wants the human race to stir , vive more than the United States does. Ever since Adlai Stevenson declared in the 1956 campaign that hydrogen tests should be suspended and for this act of conviction was castigated as soft on communism, citizens have been suspect if they challenged the wisdom of the secrecyprotected policies of the government on weapons and weapon-testings which can lead to unthinkable holocaust. Because the FBI is somehow associated with the fanatic fear of internal subversion, people have fallen silent on its works, too. Who in public life rises to defend capitalist Cyrus Eaton as he condemns the FBI’s snooping and police-state style surveillances ? A free thinking American’s reward in 1958 is the comment of the House Un-American Activities staff chief that he is “classified . . with Menshikov and Kruschev.” One would almost conclude Americans have forgoten that their greatest native names include the same Henry David Thoreau who refused to pay taxes to a slave-supporting government. Early this year, however, in the New England tradition, four men decided to sail a 30-foot ketch, “The Golden Rule,” into the United States hydrogen bomb testing area in the Pacific to protest the present nuclear tests. Fall-out from these tests has already caused several thousand human deaths in the world and no one knows how many children will be born of sickly bone. The use of the bombs in war would be the mass murder of innocents. THE FOUR MEN were Albert Smith Bigelow, a Quaker, a former Navy lieutenant commander, once the housing commissioner of Massachusetts, and the father of two daughters ; William Reed Huntington, a Harvard graduate, a Quaker, and the father of three; George Willoughby, a political science Ph.D., a conscientious objector, and the father of four ; and Orion Sherwood, a science teacher, a Methodist, and a single man. They set out once but had to come back for repairs. On April 8, Elinor Ashkenazy, who was helping the project with publicity in Pasadena, Calif., wrote: “We spoke to Bert Bigelow last night on the Golden Rule ship-toshore telephone. Their position then was 23 degrees latitude and 134 degrees longitude. Almost half way to Honolulu. `They told us, ‘We are distressed and disappinted that the President did not seize the opportunity offered by Russia to discontinue nuclear tests…. We are all bitterly disappointed.’ ” Before leaving the crew members had written President Eisenhower, “We hope our presence in the test area will speak to that which is deepest in you and in all men : that all men are capable of love.” They said they acted in the belief that each individual is sacred; that as individuals, groups, or nations, “our action is destructive if it violates the ancient concept of the oneness of man” ; that love redeems. “The outcome of such an arms race will be global warthat is, suicide. [Yeti most men who favor ending the tests remain silent.” Bigelow, writing “Why I am sailing this boat into the bomb-test area,” said these things about his civil disobedience against nuclear tests : “Why? Because it is the way I can say to my government, to the British government, and to the Kremlin : `Stop! Stop this madness before it is too late. For God’s sake, turn back.’ “I am going because, as Shakespeare said, ‘Action is eloquence.’ “I am going because war is no longer a feudal jousting match ; it is an unthinkable catastrophe for all men. “I am going because it is now the little children, and, most of all, the as yet unborn who are the front line troops. It is my duty to stand between them and this horrible danger. “I am going because it is cowardly and degrading for me to stand by any longer, to consent, and thus to collaborate in atrocities. “I am going because, however mistaken, unrighteous, and unrepentant governments may seem, I still believe all men are really good at heart, and that my act will speak to them.” WHAT was the government to do ? An executive order was issued WASHINGTON The betting odds in Washington are that Sherman Adams, for five years guardian of the presidential gate, correlator of White House decisions, the man who requires cabinet members to check with him as to what they have discussed with the President, will have to retire as “Assistant President.” The secret evidence piled up in the House legislative oversight committee is too embarrassing. It includes the fact that Bernard Goldfine paid other hotel bills for Sherman Adams. The $2,000 tab he picked up at the Sheraton-Plaza in Boston was just one case. There is the case of a $1,300 hotel bill paid for the assistant president at Plymouth, Mass. Then there is the case of Adams’s clothes. Committee probers have checked with the tailor who fits both Goldfine, the millionaire textile manufacturer, and Adams, the immaculate presidential assistant. It develops that Goldfine paid for most of Adams’s clothes. He even presented Adams with a vicuna coat. When Sam Faber of the Faber tailoring firm in Boston was asked by this column how much money Goldfine had paid for Adams’s clothes, he replied : “It’s a very delicate matter. I can’t discuss it.” There is also evidence that Goldfine paid for some of Mrs. Sherman Adams’s clothing at Jordan-Marsh, Boston’s most exclusive store. On some occasions Goldfine and Sherman Adams came along on these shopping trips. There is also evidence that Adams intervened at the Federal Trade Cornmission where Goldfine faced a criminal case. It was dropped. The National Association of Wool Manufacturers also has informed its members that Adams got in touch with the Tariff Commission with a view to getting more tariff protection against foreign imports. Members of the association say that it was the same Benny Goldfine, one of the biggest woolen manufacturers in New England, who got Adams to intervene. All this follows so much Republican castigation of Democrats that it’s believed Eisenhower cannot let Adams remain. It was in Des Moines, Sept. 19, 1952, that the presidential candidate promised : “When it comes to casting out the crooks and their cronies, I can promise you that we won’t wait for congressional prodding and investigation. The prodding, this time, will start from the top.” Adams’s close relationship with Benny Goldfine broke just before Matt Connelly, who occupied the same forbidding American nationals from entering the 390,000 square miles of danger zone. The Golden Rule sailed from Honolulu but was taken in tow by the Naval forces of the United States a mile and a half from shore. A court order prohibited them from sailing again ; they sailed again ; they were taken in again; they were given suspended sentences. The tests are to proceed. Writes the Boston Herald : “They are . . . conscientious objectors whose profound idealism prompts them to protest against a policy considered intolerable. To do this, they have defied the Atomic Energy Commission, the Navy, and the federal courts. The institutions they have defied are all but unassailable ; and yet they have assailed them.” One wishes with them to rise up and cry out, to ride in the night and warn, to knock on the doors barring the rulers from the people and demand, demand, demand. One wishes the great to hear C. Wright Mills in the Nation : “The ethos of war is now the ethos of virtually all public thought and White House position in the Truman administration, will go to jail for accepting one overcoat and two suits of clothes from Irving Sachs, operator of Shu-Styles in St. Louis. A criminal tax case against Sachs was also involved. Connelly’s crime was to phone Lamar Caudle at the Justice Department. Connelly and Caudle go to jail June 22. THE WOOL PRODUCTS labeling act requires wool manufacturers to state whether their product is made of pure wool, reprocessed the latter being old clothes, sold as rags and rewoven. This labeling lets the public know just what it is buying. The terms of the law are strict, and if a woolen manufacturer continues to violate it he can be prosecuted criminally. Goldfine is a big-time operator. He owns the Northfield Mills at Northfield, Vt., the Lebanon Woolen Mill Corp. at Lebanon, N.H., and the Strathmore Woolen Co. at Boston. His political friends are as far-flung as his business interests, and he has also been friendly with Jim Hagerty, the White House press secretary who has been so vigorous in defending Sherman Adams. On one occasion Hagerty was dining in Goldfine’s private suite in the Sheraton-Carlton and when he became physically ill, Goldfine complained to the hotel management that Hagerty had been served poisonous food. Early in the new GOP administration, November, 1953, Goldfirie’s firms got caught selling a product labelled 90 per cent wool and 10 per cent vicuna, though actually they contained a large percentage of nylon. After Adams had called Chairman Ed Howrey of the Federal Trade Cornmission twice, the case against Goldfine’s mills was “closed” as of Feb. 5, 1954. A call from Adams is considered almost the equivalent of a call from the President. Adams’s assistant at that time was Charley Willis, son-in-law of Harvey Firestone of hte Firestone Rubber Co. ; Howrey had long been the attorney for Firestone. His was a purely political appointment. Congressman Wright Patman of Texarkana, Texas, has accused Howrey of reorganizing the commission to favor big business and then resigning to practice before the friends he had appointed. sibility I refer to the mute acceptance or even the unawarenessof moral atrocity. I mean the lack of indignation when confronted with moral horror. . . . “As a social and as a personal force, religion has become a dependent variable . . . the religion of good cheer and glad tidings. . . . Religion has become a willing spiritual means and a psychiatric aid of the nationstate. . . . “What vision of hell compares with the realities we have and do now confront?. .. . . . . Christian doctrine . . . cannot condone the murder of millions of people by clean-cut young men flying intricate machinery over Euro-Asia, zeroed in on cities full of human beingsyoung men who two years before were begging the fathers of of the family car for a Saturday night date. . . . “. . . Today compassion without bitterness and terror is mere girlish sentiment, not worthy of any fullgrown man.” R.D. violate the law. Apparently he figured his political influence made him immune. Four New York woolen firms complained shortly thereafter that he was violating the law again. As a result, Charles Canavan, FTC project attorney, received a report Aug. 10, 1954, from Robert Scott, FTC investigator in New York, that Goldfine once again was mislabeling. There followed a long investigation and a hearing. Several times this hearing, scheduled to be held in Burlington, Vt., was postponed because of the interest of the White House. Finally, a year and a half later, March 13, 1956, a full report was made, and project attorney Canavan recommended that the case be sent to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. In the interim, however, Adams had arranged for Goldfine and his son to meet personally with Howrey in the latter’s office. Afterward, Goldfine called Adams and, in front of FTC oficials, ostentatiously said : “I am over at the trade commission. I have been treated very well over here. Thanks for arranging the appointment.” ,He was treated very well. Canavan was only a career officer. His advice for criminal prosecution was ignored. Upper officials overruled him. The case against Goldfine was dropped. DREW PEARSON SCRAPPERS WASHINGTON If this column has given you the impression that all Texas politicians are timid and temporizing in the manner of Lyndon Johnson and Co. we’d like to correct that impression right now. At least two Texas congressmen, Democrats Wright Patman and Jack Brooks, are real scrappers, giving the Republicans some awfully uncomfortable moments. Patman is fighting to get a congressional investigation going of the way the nation’s large commercial banks have “profiteered,” before and during the recession. Brooks heads a special House committee investigating a $43,000,000 contract for expansion of a government-owned nickel plant at Nicaro, Cuba. One of the big names involved in some strange carrying-on is that of former Republican National chairman Leonard Hall. ROBERT G. SPIVACK PEARSON ON ADAMS GIFTS GO L D F IN E, however, THE TEXAS OBSERVER didn’t carry out his promise not to Page 3 June 20, 1958