Does Report Reflect Our Morals ?

nk^AY. YOU EXPLAIN IT!

It should be source of concern to a!I Americans that the Presidents Crime Commi.'.sion sees a need for relaxing criminal laws dealing v.ith illicit ex, gambling, drinking and abortion becau.-^e of changing attitudes among American people.

In its second of nine reports the commission cie-lared such laws are not enforced becaus4 citizens do not want them enforced. It added that a great deal of time of law enforcement agencies is taken up in dealing with such case.? v/hen the time could be much better spent on matters threatening public safety.

While, sTateinents of the oommi'.'ion should 1 e of concern, the findings of the commiss'on v.hlch led to it-- conclusion.* should be of much greater concern to the American people. They clearly p-hnt to a breakdown in the moral fibre of the natinrs fitizenrv. They suggest that a= a realistic approach there should be an effort to enforce only these

nions Open T o Slander Suits

By WILLIAM A. SHIRES

Reflector Raleigh Burean

R.VLEIGH In may be a .aoidmark decision affec:-ing i.jel law in labor cases, t.oe State Supreme Court ha.-BOW heid tna: un.ons may be sued for libei and .slander in state courts under certain conditions.

.And it ha.s ruled, apparently for the first time, that state law grants to labor unions the same qualified privilege enjoyed by a political party chairman who charges election fraud.

This, in effect, grants union.? a degree of immunity qualified but not absolute.

WILLIAM

SUIRES

It puts the burden on the employer not only to prove malice in such cases but to show actual damage. This can be done, the court said, by greater weight of evidence a-to malice and because the reputation of an employer or its products are assets of a business as truly as are its building and machinery. Malicioas Damage For malicious damage to such assets as its credit, its business good will or in its relation with employes, the court said the corporate nature of a firm is not a bar to its recovery of damages from the wrongdoer.

At the same time, it said *mere vituperation and name calling in labor disputes is not sufficient basis to sustain libel.

Even where the plaintiff is an individual, some thickness of skin is required of him by the law in the realm of labor disputes, just as in battles in the political arena, it said.

Lake Writes Opinion The decision is contained in a 20 - page opinion written by Associate Justice I. Beverly Lake handed won virtually unnoticed in a batch of opinions last week.

Li It, Lake der-es that labo.'-unions ai-e cloaxed with abs> lute privilege against libe..

Tnere is nothing inherent in t.he nature of labor union which confers upon it a privilege to slander or to'libel. he wrote. But he drew a fine line as to absolute privilege and qualified privilege, finding that protection from liability to suit attaches by reason of the setting in which the defamatory statement is spoken or published.

"The privilege belongs to the occasion, he said.

Denies Absolute Privilege For example, Lake wrote, a judge, legislator or administrative official when speaking and writing "apart from and independent of the iunctioris of his ofiice IS liable for slander or libel under the same principles as any other individual.

In union organizing campaigns, he said, the public interest in free discussion of the issues involved is not sufficient to clothe the union with an absolute privilege, such as enjoyed by a member of the legislature in a debate within legislative chambers, or a witness or a judge in the trial of a law suit.

Justice Lake cited prece-^-ent in the celebrated libel suit by Zeno Pinder of Madison County against the former State Republican chairman, William E. Cobb of Morgan-ton, in which qualified privilege was extended to statements in good faith by a political party chairman charging misconduct.

We now hold that the de-fen.se of qualified privilege extends to statements spoken and published in good faith by a lalwr union in the course of (an organizing or m e m b e r-ship) campaign. . . .

In Reasonable Relation Lake added that qualified privilege extends only to communications made in good faith and with reasonable relation between the unions objective and its statements.

Also, when a false statement goes beyond insulting language .. .is a positive charge of conduct in specific instances and is made with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for whether it is true or false, damages may be recovered.

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litvvs which have popular .-upport and ignore those that seem to be out of vogue with the times.

Ha.? the nations attitude reached the point where illicit sex should be considered fully within the law and within the code of conduct expected of It- citizens?

>hould gambling and proititution be legalized, a.? the C'^mmi.'.'ion intimate^, except in ca^es where they are organized and controlled business activities?

In a sut^.-equent report will the commission suggest that because so many citizens cheat on income taxes the law.? against larceny, embezzlement and petty theft be removed from the books? Or that de.'truction of property should not be against the law .-ince it seems too many people this day and time have so little respect for the property of others?

We seriously doubt the commission's recommendation.? regarding changes in the laws will be adopted. Even so, the report should cause American citizens, individually and collectively, to look carefully at the moral code which now prevails among them.

Does the commi.-sion report really reflect accurately prevailing attitudes of the people of the ration today? If they do, the nation may have reached the stage in its moral decline that there is little point in worrying about the laws and the future anyway.

How We Got In

Vietnam Fiah

By JAMES M.ARLOW

WASHUfs'GTON' fAP) -How did we ever get into the war in Vietna.m? There are a lot of arguments about it. But the Senate Republican Policy Comimittee's staff repo.'t could have done a far better job e.xplaining the origins than it did.

This report was supposed to provide Republicans with material for discussion in t h e hope they could reach agreement on what position to take.

It did anything but. Almost immediately, instead of discuss i n g Republicans began arguing.

The reports main point Is that the Democrats, under Presidents Johnson and John F. Kennedy, and not the Republicans under President Dwight D. Ei.senhower, are the ones who sent U. S. fight-ins men into Vietnam.

Thai's true, but its far from the whole story. The American involvement was a slow proces.'. beginning with aid and ending with men. Presidents Eisenhower and

This Date-40 Years Ago Today

By FOY H. DUNCAN May 10, 1927 Memorial Day Well Observed

Memorial Day was well observed in Greenville today with the most elaborate program in years. . . .The days program consisted of a parade in exercises in the auditorium of East Carolina Teachers College, where Hon. F. C. Harding delivered the principal address. .Mr. Harding extolled the merits of that federal officer from Pitt County, Bryan Grimes and dec 1 a red him to have been one of the outstanding figures in the war between the .North and the South in this section of t h e state. The tribute came during the presentation of a portrait of Mr. Grimes to the local high school, it being a gift to the schools by the descen-dents of the Pitt County Confederate leader . . . Only twelve of the nineteen surviving warriors responded to the annual roll call of the Bryan Grimes camp at 10 o'clock this morning. Hoary and bent with age, these veterans carried smiles of happiness on their faces, and took part in the days activities as if they had been called out on some joy tramp sixty odd years ag*o, when they were in their prime of young manhood. . . .

Two Hundred Killed and Eight Hundred Injured In Series Of Tornadoes

Missouri and Arkansas hard-dcst hit of the seven states visited by storm.

First Dahlia This Ve?ir

Dr. E. P. Spence brought to the Reflector the first dahlia yesterday morning. He says he has a thousand in bloom.

Blue Stretches of Stormy For Two French Aviators For Two French Aviatoors ' The * bhie- strettHres -of- Wr e -stormy Atlantic are being combed forMie missing aviators, Captain Nunges.ser and Cali, 23 hours overdue at New York on the flight from Paris. Combined facilities of sev^^ eral nations used in vigilant watch of high seas.

Harry S. Truman, too, were part of the process.

In 1950 the French, without promising the Vitiiaamese freedom after holding them in colonial bondage almost 100 years, had been fighting for four years against Ho Chi Minh, a lifelong Communist, backed by Vietnamese Communists and no doubt non -Communist Vietnamese intent on driving out the French.

By then the Chinese Communists had taken over all of mainland China. In 1950 the Korean War began. Truman began a policy of giving the French aid. This aid eventually cost billions of dollars.

Trumans constant theme was that the Communists were trying to take over the world. When he became president in 1953, Eisenhower coi^ tinued the Truman aid policy. He shared Truman's fears about the Communist int e n-tions.

He was particularly afraid that unless stopped, commu-n i s m would gobble up all Southeast Asia. He explained it in a couple of ways. One was the domino theory: that if Vietnam fell to communism, the other Southeast Asian nations would follow. He put it another way: that Vietnam was the cork in the bottle.

He said he was bitterly opposed to sending U. S. troops into Vietnam. He said he would try to make sure it didnt happen. And under him it didnt happen. But he also said something else.

No matter how^ the struggle may have started, he said, it has long since become one of the testing places between a free form of government and a dictatorship. Its outcome is going to have the greatest significance for us, and possibly for a long time in the future.

In 1954 Ho Chi Minh's forces forced the French into surrender. At Geneva the two sides agreed Vietnam should be divided into North and South, with Ho Chi Minh run-fContinued On Page 6)

Strength For Today

By EARL L. DOUGLASS THE BETTER HARMONY The man who plays the cymbals may not seem to have a very important part in an orchestra, but a symphony without the discordant clanging of a cymbal somewhere in it would lack much of the majesty it is intended to have.

Some time ago I watched the cymbal player who sat motionless throughout an exquisite number until almost the very end. Then, as all the instruments were swelling into a grand crescendo, t h e cymbalist arose, poised h i s cymbals, and just at the right moment clashed them together and sent across the mounting harmonies the peal of sounding brass. It was not a tone; it was a disharmony, but it made all other harmonies more significant.

And such is the function of the disharmonies of life. They make the harmonies more significant. Taken by t h e m-selves,' they fi-re nothing but crashing sounds, unpleasant to the ear. But. the .symphony of life would not he complete without them. Pain, disappointment and loss jire like the clanging sound of the cymbal s which add to the majesty of the symphony.

By ART BUCHWALD

AoDointment O:

WASHINGTON - The appointment of Lassie, the canine TV star, as special consultant to the administration's Keep .America Beautiful program has hit Washington like a bombshell. With the appointment of Betty Furness as special assistant to the President for consumer affairs, and now Lassie, President J o h n s on seems to have decided to recruit more television personalities to dramatize his Great Society programs.

The reason why the Lassie appoint.ment came as a surprise was that most political observers here in Washington believed Lassie wanted to run for governor of Caliiornia. Now that hes decided to work for the administration, he may have hurt his political chances

back home.

If the Keep America Beautiful campaign is a success, Mrs. Lady Bird Johnson will get ail the credit. But if it fails, Lassie will be the one who is in the doghouse.

Sources close to the White House revealed that there was a foul - up concerning the appointment of Lassie. It seems that the President, who has promised to appoint more women to high government positions. had ordered his advisers to find a female dog to head his beautification program. Only after Lassie was sworn in was it discovered that the TV star was a male. The discovery was made when Lassie was introduced to t h e Presidents male collie, Blanco, in the rose garden, and

assie

nothing happened.

There were raised eyebrows among litter bugs. too. over the appointment of Lassie as a beautification expert. Critics have pointed out that whereas Betty Furness never did her own shopping before becoming a consumier consultant (her cook did it all). Lassie has always had someone picking up his litter after him (usually a CBS vice - presl-dentj.

ART

BUCHWALD

Other Editors Saying snt Its Own Law

(Raleigh Times)

The Imperial Wizard of the KKK, a man named Robert Shelton of Tuscaloosa, Ala., made it plain Saturday in Richmond, Va., that the Klan, is outside and above and beyond the law.

During a Klan Rally near Richmond, the deposted Imperial Kludd, as the KKK calls its chaplain, was chased aw'ay from the rally, his car was rocked, pelted with bricks and stones and a rear tire was shot down, and the Kludd was threatened with death. Asked about the incident, Shelton replied that the Klan doesn't care to air our dirty linen. We have Klan laws and we take care of our own problems.

'Well, what happened to the deposed Kludd. George Dor-sett of Greensboro, isnt just a Klan problem. It also is a problem of the State of Virginia, for it is against Virginia laws to threaten to kill a man, it is against Virginia laws to damage personal property. .And, if the State of Virginia '.5 as vigilant in this case as it has been in other Klan cases recently, someone will oe brought into a court

of law.

Shelton's airy com m e n t about the Klan being outside and above the civil law is worthy of study everywhere. It is about as frank a statement as could be desired, and it should be a warning to all who wonder if the KKK really is a bad outfit.

In all its history, the KKK has been noted for its willingness to take the law in its own hands. It has been noted, too, for creating the kind of climate in which other misguided men are willing to take the law into their own hands. Because it has this history, the Klan should be fought on every occasion by every citizen who believes in law and order.

One other item about the Richmond rally should be worthy of note. Klansmen had predicted that 50,000 persons would attend, but only a b out 2,000 persons showed up, many of those just curiosity seekers. This small attendance, though, isnt a measure of the opposition the Klan merits from all good citizens. As long as there is even just one Klavern at work generating hate and violence, it should be opposed.

But Lassie's s u p p o r ters maintain that he's willing to learn everything there is about litter and that he's taking a trash course at the District of Columbia garbage dump to be filled in on his job.

This is not the first time that President Johnson has appointed a dog to his administration. There have been others, in the State Department. Defense, HEW and the post office. But so far this is the first dog associated with the beautification program.

The White House denied the appointment of Lassie was made to pay off a political debt. A White House spokesman said: Lassie was picked on his merits and he has the full support of the American Kennel Assoc. The PreH-dent knows he will make a contribution to the United States, and to show that the appointment was not merely for show, he is upgrading Lassie's position and will let him sit in on Cabinet meetings.

There may be some Senate opposition to Lassies appointment, mainly from friends of the billboard lobby, who feel that dogs have done more damage to billboards than anyone else. But Senate supporters plan to defend Lassie on the grounds that his bark is worse than his bite.

(Continued On Page 6)

Bonn's

?olicy

Course

By ROWLAND EVANS and ROBERT NOVAK

BONN The ^wd reaction to Lyndon Johnson and Charles de Gaulle at one point during the Adenauer funeral procession in nearoy Cologne reflects in part t h e new interrelationships of t h e Western alliance.

When General de Gaulle's auto passed by, it was greeted by cheers and applause. But any cheers produced by the passage of President Johnsons car were drowned out by the laughter among the good burghers of Cologne, amused by the President's Secret Service agents trotting along to keep up with the limousine.

The laughter probably was inadvertent, but several members of the Bundestag (federal parliament) who discussed the incident the next night agreed it could not have happened just a year ago. To them it was a symbol of the fact that West Germany is no longer the obedient vassal of Washington but is playing a subdued. discreet version of Gaul-list foreign policy.

The reasons are diffuse: de Gaulle's profound impact in promoting European nationalism, Washingtons long inaU tention to Bonn, the new German governments major drive for better relations with Eastern Europe, and certainly not least considerations of domestic G e r m an politics.

But whatever the reasons, German Gaullism is not causing U. S. policy makers to dance in the streets. They are disturbed, perhaps inordinately. by the still remote prospect of a Bonn government making its own deal with Moscow. Thus, Mr. Johnsons visit here revealed a U. S. attentiveness to German sensibilities not evident for sometime.

The President was at h i s most convincing in his private session with Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger the day after the funeral. Kiesinger w a thoroughly charmed by the President and quite convinced that in the future there would be more U. S.-German consultations. Indeed, he ordered a last-minute elimination of an unflattering reference to . S. diplomacy contained in a prepared statement to the Bundestag the next day.

But Mr. Johnson will be sadly mistaken if he thinks that a quick application of the LBJ treatment to the Chancellor * estores the old relationship. From the standpoint of German politics alone, Kiesinger will keep arms length from the President. In contrast to the early 1960s when German politicians argued over who was Washingtons favorite, a little tweaking of Unde Sams whiskers is good political tactics here today.

Mr. Johnsons relations with Ludwig Erhard, Kiesin g e r's stubbornly pro -American predecessor as Chancellor, are partly responsible. G e r man politicians grumble that t h e President treated Erhard like an errand boy and agree that U. S. insistence on German financial support for American troops here helped topple Erhard last autumn.

In fact. Kiesingers remarkable popularity today is in no small part a result of his exact reversal of Erhards role. It was Kiesinger^ who forced the U. S. to back down on the troop financing question.

(Continued On Page 6)

A Backloa Of Housina Demanc.

By ELMER ROESSNER

The home building industry has been in the doldrums for about two years. Now and then a slight increase in housing starts sends a flurry of hope through the industry, but it soon fades away.

Business Week, in a special report this w'eek, points out that because there will be 44 million more families at the end of the 1970s than there are today, there is bound to be a housing boom.

And the lag in home building today is creating an enormous backlog of demand.

The basic reason for the slowdown in housing is t h e scarcity of mortgage money. There are many limitations on mortgage interest rales, and this causes investors to divert ttieir investments from the mortgage market to other fields.

Some Possible Remedies

Dr., Paul S. Nader, New York University economist,

writing in the latest newsletter of Manufacturers Hanover Trust, proposes six steps to bring more money to the mortgage market. They are:

EL.MER

ROESSNER

1. The mortgage indust'-y can fight to end obsolete statutory ceilings. While it may appear as if a statutory ceiling protects the borrower from liaving to pay too much foe a home, in reality all sucli a ceiling does is to divert funds from housing, into other, more profitable outlets.

2. Efforts could be undertaken to make the FHA and VA interest ceilings more rea

listic and to bring them closer to actual market levels.

3. The development of flexible mortgage rates which move up and down with other interest rates could help to end some of the feast or famine nature of the mortgage market. If a borrower knows that high interest rates mean that he will be saddled with this high borrowing cost lor the life of his mortgage, he may wait to buy his home until interest rates fall.

If as interest rates drop his borrowing costs also will decline accordingly, he will become more indifferent to interest rate levels in planning the time of his home purchase. -....... - -......

Similarly, a flexible mortgage rate would help halt the overbuilding of homes that frequently occurs in periods of easy money.

Buy House, No Lot

4. The separation of t h e

land from the home so that an individual can buy t h e house without having to buy the land under it, holding this land instead under an extremely long renewable lease, is another possible program. Such a procedure would lessen principal repayment and thus enable people to affori higher interest charges . on their mortgages.

5. In the same way that the federal government has developed rent supple m e n t plans to help poor people live in higher quality apartments, a mortgage supplement plan could be developed.

6. Finally, the housing industry can help lessen the cydicaT nature of its operations by making tlie mortgage instrument more attractive through development of an effective secondary market for conventional mortgages and a private guafantee fund for conventionals.