The Birmingham News from Birmingham, Alabama • 10

Man With Problems Shadow On Che Birmingham Netos Withdrawal of the International Committee of the Red Cross from prospective inspection of Cuba-bound cargoes to insure that no more offensive weapons are shipped into the island further complicates an already muddled situation. Americans more than ever ask in bewilderment: Whats going on? Many The News included never believed such Red Cross inspection would fulfill President Kennedy's explicitly stated demands for removal, with verification in Cuba, of any Castro offensive capability. At first this appeared the major peg on which the administration was hanging its policy hat. Now even that peg is gone. What is left is a jumble of stories about meetings and talks and rumors and reports which leave Cuba Stand average citizens whose full support is the single most important need of the President shaking their heads in total confusion.

All they know is that the Russians say. and we seem to agree even though our personnel never even boarded Russian ships to make sure, that some 40 missiles have been removed from Cuba. They do not know if any, and if so how many, remain as some Cuban exiles claim. They do know that bombers capable of reaching LL S. cities are still there, that Castro says he wont give them up, that Russia has shown no inclination to reclaim them and that although the administration says the bombers must go it has given no hint of what it will do to force their removal.

All this uncertainty after a time becomes intolerable. The President was specific and firm in his original television appearance, and the country immediately and unanimously rallied behind him. That unity has been deteriorating in the vagueness which since has enveloped the matter. One man, and only one man, can get things back in focus again President John F. Kennedy.

No spokesman, no high administration source quoted in news reports can do the job. The President himself, for the sake of the American peoples minds and for the clarification of this nations policy beyond shadow of a doubt, once again should go before the people to restate our position or spell out and explain any changes in it. TUt Htws Alger mss i Appearance May Work In Nixon's Favor Clarence B. Hanson, Publisher Victor H. Hanson, n.

Tice President, Assistant to Publisher Vincent Townsend, Vice President. Director of Sales E. L. Holland, Editorial Page Editor John W. Bloomer, Managing Editor Victor H.

Hanson, Publisher, 1910-1945 Wednesday, November 14, 1982 Abusing Law For Politics Defenders of the city commission form of government still don't believe election results. They apparently think the battle is still on. Consequently there is an arrest of the editor of the Birmingham Post-Herald because of an election-day editorial. In that comment, the Post-Herald principally dwelt on a news blackout at City Hall ordered by Mayor Arthur J. Hanes.

The editorial did say that such blackout was another good reason for changing the form of government. The state code. Title 17, Sect. 285, does forbid electioneering on election day. Code reference does not mention newspapers.

But the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution does state that no law shall be passed abridging the freedom of the press. Every lawyer in town will recognize the constitutional question. The arrest should surprise no one. On election day Commissioner Connor said, I have always understood that nobody is permitted to politic on the day of election.

I wonder why the editor of the Post-Herald. Mr. Jimmy Mills, would violate this law with an editorial calling for citizens to vote for the mayor-council form of government. But Mr. Connor was asked if he would swear out a warrant and he replied no, that would be sour grapes.

What now takes place is a small boys backyard drama staged by those who refuse to accept the mandate, of the people as 1o their Birmingham government. This arrest, and any others which could come, are more evidence of a drag on the city, an emphasis on the petty as against paying attention to big needs of our community. It should make most citizens happier than ever that the decision to change has been -made. JFK Time To Repeat Some Jimketin In The News and hundreds of other papers of the U. S.

yesterday there was a story by The Associated Press Jack Bell. It began: Many members of Congress are off and winging again to far away places. As usual, taxpayers will foot most of the bills for visits to Paris, Berlin and other intriguing world spots. Also In The News was a report from our own Washington bureau in which it was reported that Rep. Armiijtead Selden was one of a group of congressmen in South America to visit Peru, Chile and other Latin nations during a five-week tour.

This was one of the junkets referred to by The APs Mr. Bell. It would be naive to argue that some such trips are not just that junkets, trips paid for by taxpayers but often out of counterpart or foreign funds banked overseas as a repayment for U. S. aid) during which VOICE OF THE PEOPLE Hoiv To Finance Bomb Shelters? We have been trying to think, plan and try to figure a way to provide a shelter for our family.

It is not the first time have thought about it or tried to do something about it. For a year now we have tried to plan for such an emergency. But then, as now, we run into the same problem. That problem is finance. Friday, Oct.

26, 1962, I spent the day calling and checking on cost and construction of fallout shelters. Also checking with bank and other agency which supply loans for such shelters. The cost was so high that it would take almost half of a years wages to provide one. 1 do not expect the government to give money outright to the American people for shelter. But some fund should be made available as a loan.

Our government talks of survival and what we should do to be prepared for such an emergency. But there are many who work hard and whose income still will not provide for this. What hurts most is when I look at the two children I have and I ask myself why? How, Mr. President, are we supposed to provide survival for our loved ones? We, the nation, send so many billions of dollars to other countries under the program of foreign aid. Why not an American aid program? Could not some of that tax money that is such ready cash for the foreign countries be made available to the American people? MRS.

MARY VIRGINIA MURPHY, 232 13th N. East Haven Estates. Barnett Ami Cuba My congratulations to Gov. Ross Barnett of Mississippi for his courageous stand against federal intervention in the matter of how schools and colleges shall he run, who shall be admitted and who we shall associate with. Gov.

Barnett was elected to do just this and I believe that he was doing what a vast majority of white citizens and many Negro citizens wanted him to do. When the federal government with the blessings of an unwise court, sends in federal marshals and troops to enforce involuntary integration untold harm will always be done to the chances of the Negro race being helped. The Negro's opportunities will be set back not advanced. The Kennedy. the NAACP, the Northern reformers" are not interested in the education of the Negro.

They are only interested in integration and the Negro bloc vote. Anyone with any judgment knows that nobody will get much of an education under these circumstances. The Negro race is being "bilked, deluded" and driven away from his real friends, the Southern whites. He should wake up. The President has at last acted firmly about Cuba and placed the blame exactly where it stands upon Russia, so my congratulation to the President, his advisors, the congressional leaders and last but not least to a great American.

Adlai Stevenson, our delegate to the for calling the Russians hand on this Cuba missile buildup. At last, Ihe President is attending to the real world issues, that have needed attention for a long time, instead of mpd-dling in the South. G. C. MOORE.

P. 0. Box 335, Columbiana. What Did Sparkman Mean In Comment? I am curious to know exactly what Sen. John Sparkman meant the other day when commenting on the Cuban crisis to Hip Birmingham Rotary Club he said.

The U. S. must protect its vital interest hut never take a foolishly hard line which would pash America into nuclear war. President Kennedys first firm stand against the Communist missile build-up in Cuba sounded to me like a foolishly hard line." It seems to have averted a nuclear attack for Ihe time being. If Sen.

Sparkman advocates an avoidance of the foolishly hard line toward the Communist-Cuban situation in the Congress, lets hope most of the members dont agree with him. If they do. we'd better get our bomb shelters ready and prepare to be bullied and threatened from now on. MRS. E.

M. TURNER, 2513 Mountain Woods Drive. A School Query I quote below verbatim a mimeographed note brought home by a 7-vear-old girl from one of our rural grammar schools: "Mother, In case of a nuclear attack, whom do you want to walk home with your child There is not to be more than four in a group the fifth one will he the leader. If your child is not to walk home, wherp would you like your child to meet you Please write instructions on back and sign. Is this a ridiculous off-shoot of bureaucracy or have I lost my sense of perspective HASKINS WILLIAMS, P.

O. Box 391. Is Legitimate the congressmen generally have a fine time. Business on some of these trips may wind up virtually last on the agenda. But the Bell story could be indicative of a too-easy assumption that nothing but pleasure is the aim of congressmen on such tours.

This could be a very distasteful maligning of motives of all such men. Congressmen do deal with matters relating to the many nations. While it is not suggested that a three, four or five-week tour will make experts of congressmen, it is at least possible that talks, even during social gatherings. with representatives of other peoples will help our congressmen understand problems better. Mr.

Bell, for example, referred to the fact that several of the congressmen were in Berlin on a limited-period special duty as reserve officers. Obviously permanently stationed men in Berlin would roll out a red carpet most of us know the realities of such a situation. Still, isnt it possible that congressmen better may understand the Berlin situation through such a visit? As for Alabamas Mr. Selden, few congressmen have been more diligent about informing themselves as tq the Latin American problem of Communist infiltration. Mr.

Selden may have some pleasure on his trip, but it was just such previous tours in Latin America that whetted his interest in Cuba and have helped make him a staunch advocate of a vigorously firm policy on that island. Let us not fall into a too-easy cynicism as to all such foreign journeys. We can keep an eye on the ledger sheet and results without it. A Word From Mississippi be met by every thinking and responsible citizen. Each of us, said the vice chancellor, can do his part to keep Mississippi on the right track by engaging in some clear thinking and by standing for law and order in the councils of the home, the church and the community.

In situations involving deep emotions and understandable resentments, the citizens obligation grows to prevent any opportunity for small, often organized groups to create havoc. This can only be done by a clear public and official resolve and by evidence of unity in such intent on the part of the vast majority of good people. The vice chancellor of the University of Mississippi, Dr. Alton Bryant, Spoke bluntly last week to the Jack-ion Junior League. He said that there were faceless ind nameless individuals who were fising gome students at the university pawns.

He referred to some continuing use of firecrackers and what Pr. Bryant called unseemly conduct. These people, said the vice chancellor, are encouraging attitudes and fiabits which will produce lawlessness nd disregard for order in every area ef our life. The remedy, said Dr. Bryant, is to his off-the-cuff criticism of the press generally.

but he had had no sleep in 48 hours and was tired and defeated. Some Presidents of the United States have been known to blow their tops in private, but somehow Nixon wasnt protected from himself that day and said to the press what he shouldnt have said in public no matter how much it pained him to keep silent. A break for Mr. Nixon, however, came last weekend. The American Broadcasting Co.

put on Alger Hiss as one of the speakers in a TV program entitled The Political Obituary of Richard M. Nixon." This brought protests by wirg and letter. It stirred up the friends of the former vice president and helped to make clear to many disinterested observers that Richard Nixon is still paving the penalty for having been a vigorous anti-Communist. Ever since Mr. Nixon served on the House Committee on un-American Activities.

there has been, moreover, a determined movement originating in California to abolish that committee. Also, there has been a continuous campaign to get an arch foe of communism. J. Edgar Hoover, out of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hits MaHe Mistake AS FOR ALGER HISS, he made a mistake in going on the air.

He merely revived memories of his own case. Though he protests again his innocence, the fact remains that he had a jury trial and made an unsuccessful appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. He served a term in prison for his perjury. The American Broadcasting Co. had a right, of course, to put him on telev ision and, while some observers may consider it to have been poor judgment to do this, the broadcast may boomerang in Mr.

Nixons favor. For the incident has publicized and emphasized that a man in politics who fights communism often has an unceasing handicap. Other things, of course such as the dissension inside the Republican Party in California contributed to Mr Nixons defeat, and his record in fighting communism didn't get him enough votes to overcome the handicap. Richard Nixon is a fighter. He may never win high office again, but he owes it to his country to continue the battle against Communist intrigue and against Communist infiltration of the press, the church, the colleges, the labor unions and other American institutions.

For the Subversive Activities Control Board and the FBI bogged down by all kinds of technicalities in the law and in court decisions cannot possibly alert public opinion fully to the dangers presented hy the few but powerful groups of Soviet-inspired tacticians inside America. BY DAVID LAWRENCE WASHINGTON MAYBE RICHARD NIXON has nine political lives after all. Things looked pretty hleak for him the other day after his defeat for the governorship of California. But now Pravda, the leading Soviet newspaper in Moscow, and Alger Hiss, convicted perjurer, have rejoiced at Mr. Nixons defeat.

So things are looking up for the former vice president. In Soviet terminology, they are always burying Americans of today and tomorrow, and here is what a United Press International dispatch on Monday said: Moscow The voters of California bur-4 ied forever Richard M. Nixons ambitious dreams of becoming president. Pravda reported to Soviet leaders yesterday. The newspaper said All the forces of the most rabid reaction rallied around the former vice president, but even ex-Presi-dent Eisenhowers endorsement of him did not give him the support of the working people of California.

THERE ARE COMMUNISTS in California not in large numbers, but they are active and influential in some labor unions in defense plants and in other places. Most powerful, however, among the forces aligned against Mr. Nixon are many of the so-called left-wingers throughout the country who are not Communists at all but who somehow cherish the deepest resentment against him because he has helped to expose the influence of communism in America. As a member of the House Committee on un-American activities more than a decade ago. Mr.

Nixon played an important part in bringing about the conviction of Alger Hiss, a former State Department official. The charge against Hiss was that he lied to a Grand Jury when he denied that he had turned over any State Department documents to Whittaker Chambers, a Communist agent who later defected and confessed. Ever since that episode, the insidious attack on Nixon has continued in various forms. The name Tricky Dick was invented, and many an innuendo was printed in the press to convey the impression that the former vice president was an unscrupulous man in politics. Many a person who read such comments believed them because there was no effective way to rebut the implications.

Denials on specific points were disregarded. Blew His Top IT IS NO SURPRISE, therefore, that Dick Nixon blew his top when the California election was over. He felt he had again been the victim of the same kind of tactics. Certainly he made a mistake in A Case Of Alsophistry? Columnist Joe Alsop on this page today gives the GOP weight in achievements in the South while noting a Democratic improvement other places despite such as Rockefeller, Romney and Scranton wins. Points may be appended footnote-wise.

Alsop notes four House seats gained net by the GOP exactly equal four new seats picked up in the Smith. That South includes Texas, Tennessee. North Carolina, Florida. In the latter three Republicanism is not really new. Those states are not the South in some respects, not in 1962.

Texas was last in the all-Deniocrat column House-wise in 1952; so was Florida; North Carolina last was in it in 1950. Tennessee long has had Republicanism. Mr. Alsop does correctly assess as significant the number of people voting Republican in various parts of all the South, even though failing to carry their candidates. Yet, here.

Mr. Alsop may be attributing more Republicanism to such vote than he should: the question is whether anti-Kennedy Democrat feeling equals frue, Republicanism. Mr. Alsop notes that except in Selden Diligent SOUTHERN STRATEGY GOP Gains In Dixie May Alter Shap presidential years. Republicanism simply disappeared in the South, thus recent voting indicates a substantially further advance.

It is not to take away anything from the Republicans to suggest that much of the vote, in such cases, was an equivalent of a presidential year vote. Rut the columnist, whose brother was a GOP gubernatorial candidate in Connecticut, rightly suggests that recent sentiment could mean Kennedy trouble in 64. ll is probably established in many minds that the South, including the Deep South, is ripe for a Republican presidential candidate if he is the right kind. This has been shown already in a number of states. To be balanced in over-all GQP assessment, however, is the matter of how deeply such feeling can or will run, into other office levels.

Alsop produces a now well-known thesis that Republicans may consider writing off the Northern Negro vote, playing to the South, via states rights emphasis. That could be a realistic, hardnosed political gambit. Alsop suggests GOP national strategists may feel tempted to Goldwater strategy of using this as a base for winning the White House. But to do this, they would have to overturn GOP progressive" strength manifest in Rockefeller. Scranton and Romney.

That is a powerful opposition. Alsop says a Rockefeller-headed GOP ticket would be weak in the South unless perhaps Goldwater were the GOP vice presidential nominee. He calls this a fine point. It is not so fine that the South will be misled. Does anyone truly think the Southern voter would conclude a Rockefeller In the White House would pay heed to a Goldwater as vice presidential advisor on liberal matters? The South knows about vice presidents.

look at Lyndon. Which is not even to mention the probable unreality of Rockefeller making an arrangement with Gold- BY JOSEPH ALSOP WASHINGTON NOW THAT JUST about all the election returns are in, they make a clearer pattern than they did last Wednesday. It is worth having another look al this pattern, too, for it just possibly foreshadows rather important basic changes in the shape of American politics. Broadly leaking, the Democrats did very well indeed in the Northeastern states. (They got more votes than anyone expected in the Midwestern states.

And on the Pacific Coast, they scored a potentially decisive gain in California, where Richard Nixon's defeat by Gov. Pal Brown may well mean a decisive California movement into the Democratic column. These are the reasons why the election has to he adjudged a victory for President Kennedy, despite important Republican gains like the narrow win of George Romney in Michigan and the impressive victory of William Scranton in the contest for the Pennsylvania governorship. Of Politics This is the development that the right-wing Republicans like Sen. Barry Gold-water have always been praying and planning for.

Under- the guise of stales rights. they have always taken the kind of stand on racial desegregation that pleases Southern Democratic voters. The Republican right-wingers have, furthermore, contended quite bluntly that it was no use for the Republicans to he generous to the Negro voters because the Northern voting Negroes were solidly and overwhelmingly Democratic which they once again proved lo he in this election In sum. the so-called Southern strategy that Sen. Goldwater advocates fnr his party must look considerably more tempting to Republican leaders today than it looked two weeks ago.

GOP Temptation THIS FACT WILL automatically influence. or warp, many other Republican calculations For instance, a Republican ticket headed by Gov. Nelson Rocketdler of New York will he decidedly weak in Ihe Smith, unless Goldwater in the second place balances Rockefeller in the first. Rut these fine points are less important for the moment than the main point, whieh I that the Southern strategy will he majr)r Republican temptation 6 crats. While the number of dependable Kennedyiles increased by three or four members, the Republican House representation also increased by four members.

The Republican increase in the House exactly equals the number of new House seats the Republicans took in the South-one each in Tennessee. North Carolina. Texas and Florida. And this points, in turn, to the most interesting element in the election's pattern. The South, to put it bluntly, was the one region where the returns indicate a substantial upsurge of Republican strength.

In Kentucky, with ils ancient Democratic tradition, Sen. Thruston Morion was re-elected hy a generous majority, whereas he just squeaked In last time, when he was on the same ticket with President Eisenhower. Hill Squeaked By IN THREE OTHER elections in the South, the Republican nominees lost, but they gave their Democratic opponents an uncomfortably close run for their money. In Alabama, veteran Sen. Lister Hill, one of Ihe most likable men in Congress, was re-eleoird hy a margin of only atxnil 4, non voles, or 50.8 per cent of the statewide total.

Despite great persona! strength with the folks hack home, Sen. Olln Johnston of South Carolina won only 57 per cent of the statewide vote against a Republican contender who tried, and failed, to compensate for his obscurity by his shrillness. In Texas, finally, former Secretary of the Navy John Connally took the governorship by an unimpressive mnrgin, with only 54 per cent of the statewide vote. Until very recently Ihe Republican Party In Ihe Soulh simply disappeared except in presidential elections. The figures this year therefore indicate a substantially further advance of Southern Republican strength since 1980.

when President Kennedy lost four Southern states Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia to former Vice President Nixon, while a Dixiecrat ticket took Mississippi. Suppose this Southern Republican trend continues and deepens, as seems entirely possible if not downright probable. In that case. Ihe President In 1984 will find himself facing a difficulty of the gravest kind. Canl Count South INSTEAD OF A solid remaining base of Southern electoral votes, the President will not be able lo eount with eerlainly on any Southern stale except perhaps and Georgia And he will therefore have In make up his neten.lal loo in Ihe South with a major sweep in the North.

it is provocative.