March 25, 1956

Paul’s book of Romans probably did more to shape Christian theology than anything else written. To the early Christians he was a hero, a martyr, a man who gave his life for his ideals, a great and good man. Some, perhaps many, modern analysts do not accept his religion or give him a place in the succession of philosophers. They point out that his work does not have the inner integrity demanded of philosophy today. But he is a massive figure in church history and in any examination of Christian origins he cannot be ignored.

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The following is a quotation from one Tom Savit, and whether you agree with him or not, his statements are always thought-provoking. He says, “Recent prosecutions for subversion in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and other states were based on what people read, statements made, and meetings attended. Today in the U.S. you do not have unlimited right to read what you want to, say what you want to, and to assemble with fellow citizens. Communist practices have made great gains among American enforcement agencies.” Is this true?

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One hears a great deal these days about its being unfair to ship munitions to this country or that. The issue in the matter should be clear enough, namely, that it is not right to ship munitions to any people, i.e., sending them the means to kill and maim human beings. It would seem that the U.S. in supplying the means of death to any people is an accessory before the fact of the greatest crime of which humans are capable. In effect, the U.S. by so doing is condemning to death unknown persons convicted of no crime.

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Since your reporter is not a movie fan, any evaluation of movies that he passes on to you is likely to be that of third persons. So it is with this one, “Picnic,” which seems currently to be one of the favorites. Dr. Harold Scott of Salt Lake City … says about the move, in part and largely in paraphrase:

“The film pushes the old theme of romantic love, physical attraction, being the proper basis for marriage. The film had the audience breathlessly hoping that the gal would run away and marry the incompetent numskull with the big biceps, and that’s what she did to the satisfaction of the audience…. There are an estimated 160 million people in the U.S., nearly half of which are males. It is irrational to hold that any woman must fall into the arms of the first male of no prospects because she is physically attracted to him … [This is] thoughtless marriage philosophy exploited by contemporary magazines and dangerous films like ‘Picnic.'”

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Two articles in as many magazines currently on the newsstands are worth calling to your attention. One appears in the April 3 issue of Look, entitled “The South vs. the Supreme Court.” It is a symposium of viewpoints about the segregation issue, ranging all the way from the most pro- to the most anti- segregationist. It is a 23-page report you cannot afford to miss if you are interested in understanding something of all sides of this rather torrid issue involving human rights.

The other article appears in Time, and like most articles in that magazine, is so phrased to create as uncontroversial an effect as possible. It is entitled “The South,” but the contents all deal with Senator Eastland of Mississippi, the perhaps self-appointed spokesman for the pro-segregationists.

From reading both articles, you will get, not a thorough, but a somewhat penetrating insight into the cauldron that is boiling throughout the South, producing a ferment among white and colored alike.

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At sundown tomorrow, Jewish families throughout the world will begin a candle-lit meal with a prayer: “Praised art thou, O Lord our God, ruler of the universe. Out of love Thou didst give us … seasons of joy and this … our festival of freedom.”

The occasion will be the meal of worship and story telling and song. It is the start of the Jewish Passover, which has been described as the first great uprising against the institution of slavery. Moses began it with his cry, “Let my people go.” Dr. Abraham Feldman of Hartford, Connecticut, president of the Synagogue Council of America, sees that rebellion as the start of a long, still unfinished march, for the promised land of human dignity. The Passover celebration includes symbolic foods, psalms, devotions, and laughter. Mostly it is telling the “Haggadah,” the passing from father to son of an ancestral lesson in liberty. It has been going on for more than 3,000 years, and is the oldest continuously kept ritual. This Jewish heritage of freedom is stamped on many pages of American history, beginning with the Pilgrims. In the American Revolution, many colonial patriots shouted an angry “pharaoh” at the British. The tradition will be emphasized at synagogue services on the first and last days of Passover, with rest from work on those days. In between will be a week of fasting on unleavened bread and gifts to the poor.

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Coinciding with the Jewish Passover observance is the Christian season of Holy Week, marking the death and resurrection of Christ. Today is Palm Sunday, and Christian churches will begin a week of special services to commemorate what is known as the “Passion of our Lord.” Passion in this sense means pain, affliction, or torture. The services and worship pass through Maundy Thursday, the night of the “Last Supper” of Jesus and the 12 disciples … through Good Friday, the day of the crucifixion … and reach their climax on Sunday, Easter, the day of resurrection.

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The Rev. Jules Jeannard has resigned as Roman Catholic bishop of Lafayette, Louisiana. The 77-year-old prelate figured in a racial integration dispute last year when two women were excommunicated after a third woman had been beaten. She taught white and Negro children in religious classes. The two women were later restored to the privileges of the church. Bishop Jeannard retains his title because Pope Pius XII has made him a titular bishop. He will be succeeded by auxiliary bishop Maurice Schexnayder, of Lafayette. Bishop Jeannard gave poor health as his reason for resigning.

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The Negro boycott of city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, has become a famous skirmish in the Southern segregation feud. The question is whether the boycott weapon will be used more widely now, creating a serious economic situation throughout the South. In Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina, the use of economic weapons by both whites and Negroes is growing into a real problem. And it is present to a lesser degree in Georgia and Louisiana. Organizations on both sides – the pro-segregation citizens councils and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People – refuse to take responsibility for the boycotts. Ford dealers in some Mississippi towns have complained they are losing white customers because the Ford Foundation has supported civil rights movements. The Falstaff Brewing Company made a public announcement last year that it had nothing to do with the NAACP. Business had fallen off after word circulated that the company made contributions to that organization.

The merchants are caught in the middle. One merchant says his business would have been ruined had he not supported the local citizens’ council, and now his store is being hit by a Negro boycott. In Montgomery, the boycott, which has cost the bus company some $100,000, has not spread to other economic levels. Negroes still trade in stores run by whites, and no apparent wholesale job losses are reported to have occurred because of their action. However, in north Mississippi, where most Negroes are plantation workers or own small businesses, those who have worked for integration have been refused credit and fired from jobs.

Orangeburg, South Carolina, experienced the longest boycott. It started last September when 20 Negroes signed an integration petition. Both whites and Negroes have suffered, but the boycott continues. One white leader says, “No matter what they do, we’re not going to let them come into our schools.” And that would seem to be a real concrete idea – permanently set and fixed.

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Nine Protestant church leaders who made a 10-day tour of Russia have returned to the United States with the view that religion is dying out in the Soviet Union.

They point out that the Russian government no longer persecutes the church, but that the Russian church leaders have a narrowly confined view of the church’s function. A joint statement issued by the Americans says the Soviet church leaders regard their function as that of saving souls and preparing people for the next world, and that they show little concern for the social or intellectual life of their people. It was the prevailing assumption, the statement said, that science involves reason; religion involves feelings. The American churchmen believe the greatest usefulness in establishing relations with Russian churchmen could be in encouraging the Russians to practice more aggressive Christianity.

While the churchmen may be entirely sincere in their belief, it is difficult to see how, under present circumstances, Russian churchmen could, in their words, practice a more aggressive program. Anyone familiar with the history of the Russian Orthodox Church under the tsars knows full well that it was used widely as a means of bolstering and maintaining the then status quo. How much of this remains in the thinking of the present church leaders as a result of their pre-revolution heritage is unknown. However, it is pretty certain that any churchman in Russia today that dared criticize the existing social and economic order would pretty soon find himself in trouble with a government that brooks no criticism….

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With the coming of Easter week starting today, the most sweeping change of Roman Catholic ritual in 400 years goes into effect. The entire Catholic liturgy of Easter week has been revised by decree by the pope. The reforms are designed to make the ancient Easter rites more meaningful to the modern generation. The new ritual provides for greatly increased participation by the congregation in acts of worship formerly carried out mainly by officiating clergymen. In parts of one service, English will be used instead of Latin. Hours of service have been changed too. Those of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday have been changed from morning to evening, to make it easier for working men and women to attend.

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National leaders of four Protestant organizations for college students are holding a two-day meeting at Chicago to discuss plans for merging. The groups are the Congregational Christian Churches, the Evangelical and Reformed Church, the Disciples of Christ, and the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. A spokesman says the college students in the four groups, numbering about 300,000, likely would be more amenable to merging than their elders. And that by merging they could sponsor more effective campus programs through united efforts.

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At Sarasota, Florida, the unique drive-in church is building a new building. A $185,000 V-shaped structure is being built behind the outdoor pulpit which the Rev. B.L. Bowman now uses to preach to his congregation on wheels.

There will be two auditoriums and a second-floor pulpit in the new building, but the minister says that does not mean he’s abandoning drive-in services. It means only, he says, that some people like to leave their automobiles to attend church and his drive-in will be able to accommodate them as well as those who prefer their cars. The idea for a drive-in church, patterned after drive-in theaters, was dreamed up by the Rev. Bowman while he was chaplain in World War II. Similar churches have been organized since.

 

 

 

March 11, 1956

One of the things that is as true of a society as it is of an individual is its scale of values, and perhaps as far as society is concerned this is nowhere reflected better than in the compensation it gives for various kinds of services rendered to the community. A rather unusual (I hope) instance of this comes in an item from Springfield, New Jersey, where it is pointed out that while school teaching may have its own rewards, garbage collecting there is more profitable financially. Garbage truck drives, under a new contract with the city, are paid $114 for a 40-hour work week, while teachers, with a big investment of time and money to obtain qualifying college degrees, start teaching at an annual salary of $3,300. This spread over a 52-week year, for teachers must eat during the summer too, means a weekly income of $64.44. After a lifetime career of teaching, they can earn a maximum of $5,500 annually, or $105.76 per week, about eight dollars less per week than garbage truck drivers now receive. Of course this reporter will admit to some partiality in the matter, but looking at it objectively, and giving garbage collectors all the credit which they so richly deserve in helping keep the community clean and healthful, it seems more than incongruous that a community will value services connected with garbage more highly than they do services devoted to helping develop the minds and abilities of children.

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We hear a great deal these days pro and con about the influence of comic books and strips upon the behavior of juveniles. The fact is that nobody knows just what the over all effect of reading these materials is. Moreover, to use the term “comic books” in an evaluative sense, indicating they are bad, is greatly to oversimplify a complex problem. There are comic books and comic books. Some of them deal with high ideals, integrity, deeds of heroism; while others are what most of us would call trash.

However, there is something relatively new in David Crane’s comic strip, though he follows in something of the soapy footsteps of other vocational do-gooders. David Crane is a minister and it is understandable that the contents of the strip are largely of a religious flavor. He deals in a serious way to promote religious tolerance among all faiths, particularly the Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant ones. Incidentally, the idea for the strip was considered and rejected by syndicates other than the one who now runs it, Hall, as too controversial. The creator of this strip is one Winslow Mortimer, a Canadian-born artist living at Carmel, New York. Winslow goes to a Methodist church, collects guns, and is aided by Hartzell Spence, son of a Methodist minister who wrote One Foot in Heaven. Between these two creators they have a problem as old as literature itself, namely, how to make the good as interesting as the bad.

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It is true that we live in dangerous times and have some reason to be reoccupied with “security.” But in an equally dangerous time Benjamin Franklin, whose 250th anniversary we celebrate this year, wrote, “They that can give up essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” In the midst of the Civil War, Lincoln spoke of “a new birth of freedom.” And Washington’s farewell addresses stresses not the guarding of state secrets but the enlightenment of public opinion. Many citizens today believe that national security measures should be directed against overt acts such as treason, espionage, and sabotage. A phrase like “conspiracy to teach and advocate” is meaningless. And as for the oft-used word these days, “subversion, ” it is too slippery a word for the law, too vague, too fraught with emotion to serve as a proper legal or ethical standard. When the late Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson was U.S. attorney general, he warned that there are no “definite standards to determine what constitutes a ‘subversive activity,’ such as we have for larceny and other legal terms. “Activities,” he goes on, “which seem benevolent and helpful to wage earners, persons on relief, or those who are disadvantaged in the struggle for existence may be regarded as ‘subversive’ by those whose property interests might be burdened or affected thereby. Those who are in office are apt to regard as ‘subversive’ the activities of any of those who would bring about a change of administration.”

And Judge Learned Hand also criticized the increasingly common resort to the term as a question-begging word. He said, its “imprecision comforts us by enabling us to suppress arguments that disturb our complacency and yet congratulate ourselves on keeping the faith as we received it from the Founding Fathers.… All discussion, all debate, all dissidence, tends to question and in consequence to upset existing convictions; that is precisely its purpose and justification. He is, indeed, a ‘subversive’ who disputes these precepts and seeks to persuade me to substitute his own.” Hence, any sort of challenging or probing thought, any intelligent effort at social change, may be construed as ‘subversive.’ Veritably, we seem to have arrived at the position of the character in Alice in Wonderland, where to some people, whenever they use a word it means whatever they wish it to mean.

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A report recently by an army psychiatrist alleged that American prisoners of war neglected their own sick in prisoner camps and were not equipped to resist communist propaganda. Editorial comment on this report laments that the home, school, and church had not given these boys the support of religion and a knowledge of Americanism.

Without being cynical one may well consider that typically American Protestantism teaches no primarily human solidarity, but a salvation of everyone for himself. Those who behaved, as Dr. Mayer is alleged to have said they did, reacted perhaps in accordance with the religious thought in most of their churches.

As for the schools teaching Americanism, unfortunately today, in some, perhaps many, communities, teachers avoid such controversial essentials of real Americanism as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights for fear of arousing the ire of some pressure group. One need read only the “Houston Story,” what has been taking place the last few years in Los Angeles schools, in some in New Jersey, and elsewhere to realized that perhaps some of the shortcomings with respect to teaching an understanding of Americanism may be due to the community climate in which teachers operate.

All of us would agree that home, school, church ­– all should coordinate their activities to the end of producing the best possible, all-round citizens. Neither will do its jobs perfectly, under the best of circumstances, but most shortcomings in homes, churches, and schools have their causes, and it might be well for us all to examine closely those causes before jumping to an assessment of blame.

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Today marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Kent School by the Rev. Frederick H. Sills, priest of the Episcopal Church and member of the Order of the Holy Cross. To mark the event, the entire family of Kent will attend a morning service of prayer, Holy Communion, and sermon at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. The entire student body, the faculty, and the Kent School Glee Club and Choir will attend, along with a large body of Kent School alumni. The preacher will be the Right Rev. Horace W.B. Donegan, bishop of New York.

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New York: Nine Protestant churchmen are on their way by plane to Moscow for an 11-day good will visit to the Soviet Union. The trip is sponsored by the National Council of Churches. Spokesman for the group is the Rev. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, president of the National Council. Before taking off, he said there will be inter-ecclesiastical conversations to increase mutual understanding and good will between Russian and American Christians. He said the delegation will meet with Soviet government leaders if they are invited.

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A demonstration of Christian integration in churches will be held in New York City a week from today. At the morning service a group of 100 white members of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church will attend the Church of the Master of Harlem. And 100 Negro members of the Harlem church will attend services at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church. The integration demonstration is intended to show – as one minister put it, “that we are not Christians at arms length,… and that true brotherhood draws no color line.” The idea for the exchange of the two groups was proposed by Dr. John Paul Jones, minister of the Union Church of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

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New Bedford, Massachusetts: The executive board of the Greater New Bedford Inter-church Council has recommended that its 48 member churches hold a joint mass prayer meeting in sympathy with the Negro bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. The prayer service will be held on the evening of March 28 at the Union Baptist Church in New Bedford. A resolution passed by the council says the colored segment of the American population is being denied rights declared by the U.S. Constitution.

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New York: A film with a religious theme, “A Man Called Peter,” was the biggest money-maker of 1955 for the studio that made it. Geoffrey Shurlock, director of the motion picture industry code administration says the picture grossed more than Marilyn Monroe in “The Seven Year Itch” and Clark Gable and Jane Russell in “The Tall Men.” The film, “A Man Called Peter,” is based on the life of a Protestant minister. The screenplay was worked out by three people – a Roman Catholic, a Jew, and the widow of the central character, Mrs. Peter Marshall, a Presbyterian. Shurlock says another religious film, “The Robe,” ranks second only to “Gone with the Wind” as the biggest money-maker of all time.

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Los Angeles: The 400th anniversary of the death of Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, the religious teaching order of the Catholic Church will be observed today. Taking part in honoring Loyola will be some 600,000 alumni from 28 Jesuit colleges and universities, and 45 high schools in the U.S. Festivities are scheduled in 150 major cities. A Mass will be said at Loyola University in Los Angeles, and similar functions in other cities will be either televised or broadcast by radio.

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New York: The National Council of Churches has taken a stand against the sale of radio and/or television time for religious programs. The council contends stations and networks should give the time free as a public service. It is difficult to see the logic in this, but that is what is reported.

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The president of the National Conference of Christians and Jews wants a hard-hitting presidential campaign based on the issues and unclouded by racial or religious bias. The group’s head, Dr. Everett Clinchy of New York, has warned that bigoted appeals for votes are contrary to several things: He names these as American principles, the American spirit of fair play, and God’s moral imperative for brotherhood. Dr. Clinchy declares, “Our people want the facts and what each candidate thinks about the issues.” He adds, “They don’t want this information clouded by racial and religious bias.” He says, “Let us reject all racial and religious bigotry from the 1956 campaign. Let us immunize Americans against this evil.”

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This year’s Jewish Youth Week will be held for teenagers beginning next Friday. Mrs. Sue Strassman of Scranton, Pennsylvania, says the aim is to focus attention on the role, achievements, and potential of Jewish youth in the growth and development of a creative American Jewish community. Mrs. Strassman is chairman of the National Jewish Youth Conference. This year’s theme is “Building a Bridge of Friendship between Jewish Youth of the U.S. and Israel.” The period will be marked by Jewish youth sabbaths, interfaith programs, cultural festivals, field days, forums, institutes, and rallies.

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Today is the day of response to Roman Catholic and Protestant appeals for charity for homeless and hungry persons in other lands. Catholic churches will gather offerings for “The Bishops Relief Fund,” which has a $5 million goal. Last year the Bishop’s Fund gave relief and services valued at almost $133 million to more than 32 million destitute men, women, and children. Relief supplies were distributed in 51 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America, without regard to race, color, or creed.

In the “One Great Hour of Sharing,” most of the nation’s Protestant churches aim for $11 million in funds for overseas relief. The Church World Service of the National Council of Churches also expects Protestants to send much food, clothing, and medicines to distressed persons abroad.

The annual “Passover Appeal” of the United Jewish Appeal is scheduled for Passover week, March 27 to April 3. This drive is for $8 million, also for programs of relief and constructive development overseas.

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A four-day ceremony starting today will mark the dedication of the most magnificent of the 12 Mormon temples. More than 50,000 Mormons are expected at the opening services of the temple in Los Angeles. Features of the $6 million structure include a huge steel baptismal font mounted on 12 life-sized oxen and a series of murals portraying the creation and history of the earth.

 

March 4, 1956

For several weeks news from Alabama has been plentiful and of the sort of which no state could be proud. First it was the Autherine Lucy case and segregation at the University, a case that is not yet settled. Your reporter steered clear of that one simply because this program had dealt with school segregation so much already.

Now, however, another racial fight has boiled over to the point where it cannot be ignored. Some months ago the Negroes of Montgomery, the state capital, started boycotting the city buses because of Jim Crow provisions requiring colored people to sit in the back seats. Apparently the boycott was pretty effective, for soon the bus company was yelling and trying either to get the force of government to whip the Negroes in line or to seek some grounds for compromise. The last compromise proposed was to set off a section in front of the buses for whites and another section in the rear for Negroes. The latter, quite naturally, refused this as any improvement over what they were staging the boycott about.

During the past week, someone at City Hall came up with an old anti-labor law of 1921 vintage, which forbade boycotts as restraints of trade, and under this law, over a 100 of the Negro leaders of the city were arrested and indicted by the grand jury, among the arrested being some 24 Negro ministers. Free on bond, the Negroes proceeded to church to hold services and to pray over their predicament. Interestingly enough, the spokesman for the group said, “This is not only a conflict between whites and Negroes; it is one between justice and injustice. Whatever happens, do not let anyone pull you so low as to hate them.” That is, indeed, magnanimity that only persons of deep spiritual convictions could display.

The governor, on his part, is seeking to get a bi-racial commission to see if a compromise cannot be reached. Whatever happens, it is unlikely that the colored people will be satisfied with less than justice, and there is no reason to see why they should be. Only bigotry, intolerance, and injustice have thus far been displayed by the powers that be, and there is no justice in any of these.

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The president’s passion for two-gun Western stories has been much publicized, and it is of course his own business what kind of recreational reading he prefers. Moreover, there is considerable evidence that he has spent considerable time, since his back to “full schedule” routine, in boning up on the heavier stuff in his office, or the tightly trimmed summaries of this stuff. However, as reported here some months ago, it is sometimes remarkable the things he is expected to know and which he does not. For example, at a recent press conference he was asked what he thought of Premier Bulganin’s statement calling for another “at the summit” conference of the Big Four. The president, with a straight face and quite casually, replied “That is one I missed.” Yet, it had appeared three weeks before and had turned up on countless front pages of the American and world press.

Shortly after that, Secretary of Statements, Mr. [John Foster] Dulles, created something of a world sensation with his chilling “Brink of War Interview” in Life magazine. Newsmen went to the conference with the president loaded with questions they hoped might unravel one of the major mysteries of American foreign policy. But the president was equal to the occasion. He simply said he had not read the article everyone else was discussing and debating, and besides, he said, Mr. Dulles was the best secretary of state he has ever known.

Your reporter’s guess, before that statement, would have been that the president had known at least one other secretary of state, but apparently he has not.

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And while on the subject of Secretary Dulles, it might be worthwhile in passing to observe that he is heading away for India and the Middle East, apparently in an effort to repair some of the damage done by his own pronouncements in recent months. Your reporter should like to suggest in all humility that as he flies the Pacific and Indian Oceans he ponder the significance of a recent dispatch of The New York Times assessing Indian public opinion. The Times points out that among Indians there is a real fear that the U.S. is bent on destroying the Soviet Union by war; that in spite of the talk about freedom and the American revolutionary heritage, this country is interested in independence movements only insofar as they affect the fight against the Soviets. That, they say, is why the U.S is a friend of the colonial powers. Despite the fact that there is much to criticize about our foreign policy – or lack of one – this Indian assessment is rather a harsh indictment, harsher than the facts warrant. Moreover, it is a wholly unrealistic appraisal of Soviet conduct and intentions. But Mr. Dulles has provided enough provocation during his tenure in the State Department to furnish a basis for Indian criticism of our foreign policy. It is difficult to picture Mr. Dulles performing great feats of good will in India, but it is not too much to hope that he will do his best to keep his celebrated foot out of his equally celebrated mouth while on this trip.

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One sometimes wonders why all the fuss because Senator Case was offered $2,500 that he didn’t accept. That sort of thing is common in American political life. The important thing is that the bill was passed and that it would take millions from the poor and give it to the gas barons. Eisenhower vetoed the bill with the explanation that it was a good bill but he had to veto it because of the attempted bribe. Can you see the logic of that? If he thought it was a good bill, he should have signed it. It is no better or worse because someone tried to bribe someone. One cannot help but wish the president would get different ghostwriters. Those he has sometimes make him say the most asinine things imaginable.

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Arnold F. Westwood comes up with a thought-provoking statement regarding the validity of religious experience. He says, “You see, no matter what we call it or how we want to look at it, the one thing we cannot escape is the validity of the religious experience. The religious experience is as natural as wanting to know how a machine works, as real as the sun on your back on the first warm day of spring, as welcome as an old friend. As long as there is a first time to hold your own child in your arms, as long as we put aside childish things and grow up, as long as we agree to live together with a mate, as long as we die, there will be religion. To be man is to be religious.”

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Anyone who wants to know what is going on in the fields of destruction of American principles, private steals of public resources, labor busting, violation of the principle of church and state, military plots, and most of the things about which the public should know, must dig for the facts, and spend considerable money also for releases from specialized agencies. He cannot get it from the newspapers, which are apparently helpless and dependent on the hastily-written and superficial wire services. Despite avowals occasionally to the contrary, there is considerable evidence to indicate that ours is by-and-large pretty much a one-party press, and that is not good in a nation that prides itself upon a two-party system.

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Not long before he died, Albert Einstein, whose genius was largely responsible for unlocking the door into the atomic age, wrote these poignant sentences:

“Our world faces a crisis as yet unperceived by those possessing the power to make great decisions for good or evil. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

It is doubtful if many informed, thoughtful men would disagree with this. We have gone far in accepting the material benefits, and damages, of science. We have taken halting steps toward thinking in realistic, scientific terms. Einstein saw, perhaps more clearly than any other person, that we are living in a perilous period of transition in which it is apparently too soon for world government and too late for anything else. And there are those who regard us, who plead for world government, as being subversive of our own national government. Association of a belief in world government with subversion is ridiculous. We who are citizens of Tennessee are also citizens of the United States, and we do not find the respective loyalties to each conflicting or confusing. There is no reason why one cannot be loyal to a world government ideal and at the same time be loyal to the United States. As a matter of fact, one could conceivably be a real reinforcement of the other.