The Catholic Times

Paper Scores
Governor's
Prejudice

VATICAN CITY-(Radio. NC)-

Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas, accused of calling out the National Guard to prevent racial integration in the state's schools in defiance of a federal court order, has been sharply criticized by L'Osservatore Romano.

The Vatican City daily stated in an editorial that no one who upholds or enforces racial discrimination should be allowed to "exercise political rights." Still less, it added, should he be eligible for public office.

It recommended this, it said, to prevent repetition by United States officials of acts harmful to the country's good name and the prestige of law, such as that which opposes racial discrimination.

L'Osservatore went on to criticize Governor Faubus for not accepting as final the judgment of the U.S. Supreme Court making racial integration an inviolable principle throughout the nation.

-The newspaper set forth the following reasons as justifying.its recommendation:

1. Racial discrimination con-
cerns an "act of passion which
is inconceivable and cannot be
excused in the middle of the
20th century."

2. The Arkansas episode took
place in a nation which fought
in the greatest 'of all wars and
with the costliest of sacrifices
in the name of freedom and de-
mocracy and explicitly against
racial discrimination of any
kind.

3. Those who uphold racial
discrimination have not faced
the fact that Negroes also took
part in that war.

The editorial also noted that
communists claim for propa-
ganda reasons to be highly
scandalized by the recent events
in Arkansas. it commented that
"those who profess political
hatred to the point of blood-
shed among peoples of the same
race should not be scandalized
by those who do not know how
to conquer hatred between dif-
ferent races."