x 0 3 7 s rm RR Re = Nor - Page 4 THE DALLAS POST, DEC. 28, 1972 A Greenstreet News Co. Publication | EDITORIAL On Crime Law and order. It’s a loaded slogan, fraught with Thissa 'n Thatta We have all, at least all but the very young, just about completed a trip around the sun and are about to start another one. Some of us strengthened my belief that I am right on the matter of firearms. Just think what would have happened to that old girl if she didn’t sirable than preventing automobile accidents from skidding on ice, but I would think that the average Joe would be more apt to listen to Meanwhile, I can point out that I bet on the won't complete the next trip, but there willbe. have the gun and the guts that went with it. the statistics on the subject : : ye foi 3 : : : : : : cept in the backward state of Massachusetts. visions of muggings in the alleys and riots in the some new passengers getting aboard as we Another item which recently caught my eye I have been consistently in favor of these I have also noted that there seems to be a +, = streets. But if recent studies of crime and its favel, 30 when 2071 comes, here wil nd 2nd which convinced me that my thought pro- studs and a recent slithering on my ice- growing body of opinion in agreemggiwith .. Bl wo prevention are to be believed. th ki 1 vidi doubt be more mouths to feed than In.1978 an cesses are working at least part of the time, covered driveway, which was controlled by my thesis that capital punishmen® if re- wi Ey ved, the kinds of criminal also more people on earth to disagree about ope dlined “STUDDED TIRES REDUCE the scratching of tire studs, convinced me stored, would save the lives of many humans 5 res activities most frequently committed do not always more things. And each one will be sure he or. (yy aNCES OF ACCIDENTS” and: appeared more than ever. The Duchess and I were just while taking the lives of a few, who could . - 1 involve physical violence. Yet the h : she is right and the rest of the world is wrong. ~~. 40 Sunday edition of a local newspaper. It taking off for a short trip and, but for the hardly be called humans when guilty of such -- “ga Tdi] : arm to the _ Take me for instance. Every week I have = went on that the police departments of a num- studs, would have landed downhill, off the crimes as political assassinations, kid- .. po Individual may be as great or greater in the long issued a weekly notice of my stand on the per of New Jersey communities made a sur- driveway and had to shout for a tow truck. nappings, murder or other heinous crimes. .. go run. perplexities of modern life i Just pho vey last winter and found that by the end of Seeing is believing. ; They wouldn’t be missed. ig cit every hi Som Shay ene wre the survey, with over 100 accidents investi- course I hate bragging and remember Human sentiment and human sympathy, co! : my remarks but didn wi } at : ’ : : k MA $1 TO Everyone, for example, who has experienced iL For that. ‘of Course. os 15 nobody conds gated, more than 900 of them had happened to ny little Pennsylvania Dutch grand correctly directed, are fine qualities, but pr : ; : g : cars without studs. In Maplewood, of 220 once told me that ‘Self-praise there comes a point when sentiment and sym- .«, ob shoddy home improvement work or who has never me, I'll 'be out of a oy WE Ty tung accidents investigated, only 14 were trace- stinks”. I have not forgotten that, but the pathy for the unworthy becomes a detriment nu received mail-order goods paid for in advance, or average hasn't heen wo bad in the Nght of pie to cars with studs. temptation to bring the subject up, at least to clear thinking. : ha ad events and I might just as well get up on my ; : OT: once a year was i or ; 3 ; i i y It may well be that the voices in PennD y as irresistible and I just had to : who has had f dulently billed teleph 1 i {i and bout it y : EID ¢ ? J Well, here is a happy New Year to anyone 4 2¢ Irauaulently billed. 'elephone calls or I Simaht OW obo. that are calling for prohibition of tire studs give into it. Maybe, if I'm still around a year who has been reading me. Just forgive me for. , vo who has had defective merchandise go unrepaired ake my conviction that firearms should are still of the opinion that preventing a from now, I will have to cite an article which wanting to be right and occasionally finding sel or unreplaced has been a victim of so-called pe be ho he pe il Salle negligible amount of road damage is more de- ~~ Will prove me wrong, just to be consistent. that I am. : tot in the hands of the bad guys. ave : ; : : : Ly a CO! “white-collar’’ crime. fulminated on that subject every now and 4 ol then and while the opposite viewpoint has Ge Seer p An 1 In According to one study on white-collar crime, been expressed editorially and otherwise EEE i _ nothing has turned up t i VW 7 7 these and other more spectacular examples— i i a erik me that Zz £ : 5 su . : 7 i Vi i including embezzlement, forgery and coun- _ And fortunately, there seems to be a con: | on o terfeiting—are among the most common and least siderable number of people he do agree wm SE = 5 2 me, so there have been no silly laws passed | ‘@QRetaliea LE 1 (UX NW. wre 7 > often solved crimes. After common theft, consumer disarming those who need protection from the | a Al fraud is listed as the second most frequent kind of lawless. So Mary Hilton, a 70-year-old widow, : o 9 i Tvs ats bt Datta ble t | is of Ww Sa thar : who lives alone in Pittsburgh was able to 1 crime perpetrated against individuals. We readily carry a gun. When, shortly before dawn, she S ga recall to mind a former editor who was ‘‘rooked’’ was attacked by a burglar with a knife, she : We ; : : V about two years ago when she paid a large amount was able foshoot him dead, dead, dead and is oe ; : ; ; now alive instead of a-knife pierced corpse. 7 7 is of money for roof repairs, which ended in her roof She was awakened by the sound of breaking : = being tarred—not repaired. glass, looked out the window and saw a few . : It | mo men near her back door. A few shots from her _ : sty The point is that while crime and the issue of five shot .38 calibre revolver sent them , | lat “law and order’’ are often narrowly conceived by Sevambling over 2 fence So he Wisphowed » } os coi . neighbor and started downstairs to see if _ a 7 on politicians, the kinds of crime actually committed anything had hg burgled. On the way down — NN] Lr z 7 a ou ” are much br : : the dimly lighted steps she saw a ski-masked PP —— Th 2 Wo 0 # v 7 = oader and much more subtle in their man approaching her with a butcher knife, oy x x > Xr 5 (i scope and in the damage they can do to the in- “I couldn’t. see at first”, she told police x - § t pe hots oN A i dividua ictim. i : : later.” I asked if it was Mr. Mitchell, my 72777 # . _ “i / ” _ id 1 victim This means in turn that public neighbor, and when he kept coming 1 fired ( : tT __ al — ; attitudes and professional responses toward crime He staggered out of the house and dropped / ice rn — __ 4 \ ( . . s . . ib (C77 Z 5 Z 4 a will have to adjust to accommodate this broader dead on the sidewalk, clutching the knife. He GW Al tans) a . 7 i 7 ‘ definition of cri proved to be a man named Isaac Johnson, . ji ” me. aged 20, who lived on the street. No charges . +. 80, IF YOU WANT TO KEEP YOUR CHICKEN LICENSES, YOU'D BETTER KEEP YOUR a were filed against Mrs. Hilton. i CHICKEN MOUTHS SHUT! ; : The slogans “‘crime in the streets” and “law and I enjoyed reading that because it : order’’ have too often served only to obscure the workings of crime and the criminal. It would be more useful by far to recognize that much crime doesn’t take place violently in the streets, and that some new remedies need to be adopted to deal with it. Harry S. Harry Truman was a farm boy from In- dependence, Mo., who was turned down by West Point because he couldn’t see well enough. His plans for a military career thwarted, he embarked on a series of less than colorful occupations. He was a timekeeper, a mail clerk, a bookkeeper, and a haberdasher. As far as his West Point rejection was concerned, he had the last laugh when he was discharged from service in World War I as a major; later, while serving in the reserves, he was elevated to the rank of colonel, and much later, of course, he was Commander-in-Chief. If Harry Truman’s piano playing was un- distinguished, his tenure in the presidency was not. He had his problems with Congress and so termed that assembly the ‘‘worst in memory.” Domestically, he was somewhat unsuccessful; but on an international level he made far-reaching decisions that ranked him high with historians of later decades. Among his achievements were the Marshall Plan, an extension of the Truman Doc- ~ trine which helped the war-torn European coun- tries to help themselves; the formation of the N orth Atlantic Treaty Organization; and implementation of the Point Four Program for underdeveloped nations. Mr. Truman had a gift for putting things simply 3 and, in the opinion of some, coarsely. No move was : so direct as his removal of Gen. Douglas MacAr- thur, who was anxious to bomb Communist in- stallations in Manchuria after Communist China entered the Korean Conflict. ‘No nation on this globe should be more in- ternationally minded than America,” Mr. Truman once said, ‘““because it was built by all nations.” That philosophy was behind all of the decisions he made while in office during what was for this country a very critical period. Mr. Truman described himself and his place in history best when he predicted that he would be “cussed and discussed’ for many years. In the final analysis, he was one of us. : TRB from Washington The first, Kissinger briefing on. Vietnam room was packed. A reporter sat on the brown carpet step under the podium. Kissinger began, “It is obvious that a war that has been raging for 10 years is drawing to a conclu- sion.” He immediately added, ‘We believe that peace is at hand.” Dr. Kissinger is short, rotund, chunky; curly brown hair; conspicuous glasses that glitter. He has humor (the proposed section of international supervision, he says, “will no doubt occupy graduate students for many years to come.”). He has owlish face, Ger- man accent, not disagreeable (says ‘‘chust” for “‘just’). ience and adept in presenting the views of Hanoi, Saigon, and of his boss, the President. We are getting out of the war, he implies, with honor; Nixon has pulled it off; after four years, Hanoi suddenly (October 8) made the key concession that we had waited for; it will not require overthrow of Thieu’s government. A reporter asks bluntly if this is an ele- ction gimmick? Kissinger earnestly denies it; the Communists, he says, set the deadline for agreement by October 31; and it is they, not we, who brought the discussion into the open. It is a moment of triumph. But Kissinger does not spread it too thick; he allows himself a few witticisms but keeps ebullience under control. As he finishes his presentation it seems appropriate to ask him whether the whole agreement could not have been | Footnotes . byJ.R. Freeman Holiday greetings reach newspaper editors in many forms, some quaint, some reward- ing, some nasty. But of all the people who sit down to scribe a note to this editor this year, none carried a message which grabbed our attention more than the one from Pennsyl- vania Insurance Commissioner Herbert Denenberg. His message came in the form of Christmas wishes, and reads: Merry Christmas and happy new year to the news media, and my hope is that you can report as true at least one of my wishes. My first wish is that everyone gets what they. de- serve. The other wishes are as follows: A no-fault insurance law with the trial law- yers, insurance industry and the legislature still smiling. The doctors and the lawyers going after each other again instead of after me. Public complaints about insurance rates being too low. The Pennsylvania Medical Society com- plaining to the governor that my rhetoric is colorless and that my policies are too passive. This'Sets hit back a second? ‘he spends some time answering; asks several times for a copy of Hanoi’s October 8th text. It is evident that America must not be allowed to feel its sacrifices were in vain. We admire him; what a moment! He leans on the lectern or sometimes puts hands behind him. And we ask what now remains? Well, there are technical issues, what clauses of the Geneva Agreement apply. It can all be settled “at one more meeting.” Kissinger’s lips purse into a half-deprecating and demure pout that is funny and attractive. We rush to catch deadlines, bearers of glad tidings. It will put the top layer on the Nixon landslide... So now it is two months later, December 16. The same press room. There is a thea- trical ‘quality to the entrance even now, though something has gone wrong. The ten- sion is acute. It is Saturday, but the room, with TV lights, is packed. What has happened in Paris? The Nixon victory is over and the American mood is euphoric. “I will give you as fair and honest a de- scription of the general trend of the negotia- tions as I can,” he begins soberly. He is more formal that before, more deliberate. “Settlement was always within reach,” he says, ‘‘and was always pulled just beyond our reach when we attempted to grasp it.” It was all the fault of Hanoi. Reporters’ faces catch the mood; it grows grimmer and grimmer. “The President,” he says, ‘‘decided that we should not engage in a charade with the American people.” He consults a red portfolio. Often there is a slight ‘elearing of the throat when confront- “ing a question. “We have an agreement that is 99 percent completed,” he tells a reporter, “we are one decision away from a settle- ment.” What one decision? He has agreed not to divulge it, he says, but reporters conjecture: those Geneva accords to which the US gave consent promised one Vietnam, not two; but if ~ Washington accept that fact now then this is a civil war, not an invasion from the north, as the US has always contended; ‘our moral justification for intervention is wiped out. This all seemed a trivial detail back on Oc- tober 26, but now reporters sense the issue be- tween Kissinger’s lines: “We wanted some reference in the agreement, however vague, however allusive, however indirect, which would make clear that the two parts of Vietnam would live in peace with each other and that neither side would impose its solu- tion on the other by force.” Exactly! He keeps sidestepping reporters’ questions whether this is not the basic question in the war. A speechwriter int Mr. Nixon’s 1968 cam- paign, Richard Whalen (Catch the Falling Flag) quotes the President as saying, “There’s no way to win the war. But we can’t say that, of course.” In this instance, did Kissinger think he could slide over the diffi- culty? And did Mr. Nixon object? Nobody knows. But like an actor in a tragedy he re- peats his line, “The risks and perils of war, however difficult, seem sometimes more bearable to them than the uncertainties and risks and perils of peace.” It sounds like a translation from some sad old Roman histor- 1 Those ‘are the two scenes and what is the Washington mood now? Americans cejebrate Christmas but about Vietnam there £83 be- wildered—almost scary—silence. The “isap- pointment is solid. Mr. Nixon gave us peace, people seem to say; now it is snatched back; everything seems suspect; can we really be- lieve this new accusation that Hanoi is ready- ing another invasion? Sen. Javits, a Republican, called a press conference here last week; so many reporters appeared they had to shift rooms. He is a small, bald man; he sits far away at the head of the committee table; two huge mirrors re- flect each other across the room to infinity. Deep lines from nose to chin put a parenthesis around his mouth. He says quietly that the new bombing is a mistake. Behind him some- body has trimmed a twinkling Christmas tree. » ian. view, says so, too; the bombing is a mistake. Others join in. There are a few epithets; the election is over. Muskie is terse and grim: “When Congress returns in January,” he says, ‘‘it will demand an explanation;’’ We walk out of the old Senate Building. A choir in maroon cassocks fills the marble rotunda with songs of praise and hope about the Prince of Peace. Round the world shock and horror rise over Mr. Nixon's re- sumed bombing. But America is busy with Christmas and bombs are far off. Is a wave rising? I don’t know. But I feel certain that strange mood here, indeed. : y A subscription to the New York Times and the Washington Post for Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. The Pennsylvania Medical Society be- coming as forward thinking as the American Medical Association. The Pennsylvania Medical Society hiring Ralph Nader as executive director. Consumers participating in the legislative process in the same numbers and with the same aggressiveness as the doctors, lawyers, insurance companies and other special in- terest groups. The Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers Association becoming as concerned about ambulance chasing as it is about legal fees. The trial lawyers frankly admitting to the public that the no-fault bills they advocate are as phony as $3 bills. : An M.D. who is willing to admit a Ph.D. is a doctor, too. A politician who doesn’t get mad at someone who campaigns against him. An organization of trial lawyers that tells the truth about no-fault. decrease because hospitals have cut costs. A hospital that has answers to the health care delivery crisis other than demanding more money. An insurance company that comes up with a new idea on its own. President Nixon actually making something ‘‘perfectly clear.” A trial lawyer who doesn’t lose his cool when someone mentions “juicy legal fees.” The Pennsylvania Medical Society printing and distributing our ‘‘Shopper’s Guide to Surgery.” - Someone doing something to eliminate the shortage described by ~ George Befnard Shaw—there aren’t enough competent yeople to go around. T per year. Call 675-5211 for subscriptions. Editor Emeritus: Mrs. T. M. B. Hicks Editor: Doris R. Mallin Advertising Manager: Dan Koze RL rm me iy A Berm 2 cr NE A RA TR Tr Tos ee ————————————
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers