With Deliberate Speed

"The way they are treating my people down South, the Government can go to hell," trumpeted Jazzman Louis Armstrong, and announced that he was withdrawing from a U.S.-financed trip to the Soviet Union. Nightclub Songstress Eartha Kitt was of like mind. "The country is angry, and it will take a long time to settle down," she cried. "You can't have a strong country with a nitwit like that for President." And Harry S. Truman of Independence, Mo. told friends: "If this had happened when I was in the White House, I would have had Faubus in Washington in 24 hours." Added his wife: "He would, too. It might not have been the right thing to do, but he would have done something."

Bess Truman expressed a popular sentiment: in frustration at the continued defiance of the U.S. Government by Arkansas' Democratic Governor Orval Eugene Faubus, the cry echoed across the land for the Eisenhower Administration to "do something." But the emotional swelling ignored a central point: the Administration was indeed doing something --as it should be done. It was keeping the issue of Little Rock integration off the political stump and in the courts of the U.S. There last week Orval Faubus lost the showdown.

Policy Is Policy. Implementing its 1954 school-desegregation decision, the U.S. Supreme Court called for "all deliberate speed" in integration, and it named the judges of the federal district courts as its agents for seeing that the order was carried out. It was in that capacity that North Dakota's Judge Ronald Davies sat last week in Little Rock. It was in line with the policy set forth by the Supreme Court that the Administration fought its battle in the courtroom, and not with such grandstand stunts as having President Eisenhower fly to Little Rock and lead Negro children by the hand through the National Guard lines (a notion suggested by Democratic Senators Hubert Humphrey and Paul Douglas).

A top Justice Department official explained the reasoning behind the Administration's policy. "From my experience in the law," said he, "it is well worth taking some time to prove you are legally right before going ahead. If we take a little time to do it right now, we will save years in the long run in carrying out the

Supreme Court mandate. Little Rock isn't our only problem in desegregation. We are involved in this thing all over the South. If we rush this thing, people will think we cannot prove our case. They will think we are unfair. That would make it easier for the next fellow to defy the law."

Law Is Law. "The posture of ihe law on any given day may be bad," said another Justice official. "But law is law. Faubus had a right to have those National Guard troops around the school until a court ruled otherwise. You can't go into a community where everybody is against you and force integration because you want it. But if law and order are on your side, the community will end up on your side. There is a native tendency among Americans to be law-abiding."

The process of justice was allowed to take its orderly course, and it ended with Orval Faubus withdrawing his militiamen from Little Rock's Central High School. That done, the President of the U.S. could throw the power of moral suasion into achieving peaceful integration in Little Rock. "I am confident," said President Eisenhower, "that they [the people of Little Rock] will vigorously oppose any violence by extremists . . . I am confident that the citizens of the city of Little Rock and the State of Arkansas will welcome this opportunity to demonstrate that in their city and in their state, proper orders of a U.S. court will be executed promptly and without disorder."

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