The Charlotte News
Sunday, May 26, 1940
FOUR EDITORIALS
First Again
Charlotte Captures Murder Crown for First Quarter
Just as we have constantly been prophesying, Charlotte ran away with the honors as the most murderous town in this country during the first quarter of this year. At least, that is, if we are to measure it by such towns as are listed in the Uniform Crime Report of the Federal Bureau of Investigation--places of 100,000 or more people.
In the first three months of the year, Charlotte had ten murders--all Negroes--eight men, two women. As against that, our old perennial rival for the killing crown, Atlanta, could muster only nineteen for nearly three times our population. Atlanta, we suspect, is beginning to go soft.
And as for Nashville, one of the two contenders which crowded us hardest for first place last year, it seems certain that it has already gone soft. Nashville, with a population which is at least one and two-thirds that of Charlotte, scored only seven killings in the three months. Miami, the other disputant for the title last year, did better--ringing up eleven murders. But it still hopelessly trailed.
As for other ancient contenders--Memphis, once easy champion, got only thirteen for three times our population; Birmingham a niggardly eleven; Dallas thirteen; Fort Worth a measly four. Richmond could achieve only three, Norfolk two.
Chicago, the wicked, had 48 for four millions. Sodom-on-the-Hudson 54 for seven millions. Which indicates that Charlotte is gaining all-around. By ordinary it holds a superiority over Chicago of six to one, over New York of eight to one. In the first quarter of the year, its superiority over Chicago was nearly ten to one, over New York approximately twelve to one.
A Grand Dragon Indulges In A Brash Claim
Grand Dragon Ben E. Adams of the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina informs the world that "President Roosevelt's efforts to blot out the Fifth Column in America are in line with what the Klan has advocated for years."
To which there is only one possible answer. It is, Oh, Yeah?
The Ku Ku Klan has indeed long been hollering about an Alien Menace. But the President's proposed measures against the Fifth Column have nothing to do with this attempt to loose wholesale hate against aliens indiscriminately. What is wanted is simply to bring to heel the dangerous elements among the aliens. The great body of the aliens in this country are loyal to it.
Moreover, there is actually far more danger to us from the native Fifth Column, existing and potential, than from the aliens. And no organization has done more to create that Fifth Column than the Kukus.
The things which create native Fifth Columnists, realized or potential, are exactly the same things out of which Nazism was created: racial hatred, intolerance, the belief that violence and brutality are justifiable means of venting the spite created by these emotions. And it is precisely these things that the Klan busily inculcates into its members.
Every Klucker is a ripe candidate for conversion to Nazism, whether he suspects it or not.
Doc Goebbels Comes Through With What Was Expected
Dr. Goebbels is coming through with the old razzle-dazzle on schedule.
When the Nazi gang stormed into Holland and Belgium, bombing for horror, machine-gunning refugees and burning everything to the ground, it was a foregone conclusion that an effort to turn attention away from all this and to justify it would not be long in appearing.
Thursday Doc Goebbels called in the American reporters and with tears in his voice told them that the British troops were such cowardly curs that they had been using women and children refugees as shields, with the result that the highly chivalrous Nazi soldiers perforce had to hold their fire.
That, you see, is supposed to make us forget about eye-witness reports of Miss Anne Morgan and others as to how chivalrous to refugees the Nazis have actually been in practice.
Friday he practically broke down and sobbed as he broke the news that British and French fiends had deliberately bombed and machine-gunned ambulance units plainly marked with the Red Cross. That, you understand, is supposed to make us forget the reports of Miss Morgan and others, the death list of American ambulance drivers machine-gunned on the roads of Belgium and France by the gallant Nazis.
And now his agents tell Mr. Louis Lochner that a "dashing officer" succeeded in snatching the Brussels Foreign Office files the day the raid began. And that the "revelations" contained therein will make the world "prick up its ears." But not unless the world has got its logic so screwy that it blames a man for advising the cops when he sees a gang of known murderers, thieves, and incendiaries lining up outside his gate.
Evidence for Dave Clark That Chapel Hill Is Healthy
Hocus, pocus, dominocus! A simple presto change and out of this hat we lift, of all things, an egg--a spoiled egg.
That egg is symbolic, and serves a purpose.
* * *
Dave Clark's statement in today's News, returning to the perennial fray with Frank Graham, leads off like this:
"I read with interest the report which T. M. Pridgen made after his visit to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was especially interested in his statement that while there were radical forces on the faculty, they were balanced [easily overbalanced, Tim opined] by the activities of professors interested in conservatism, but he failed to mention any who did battle against the efforts of those interested in atheism, Socialism and Communism."
Just how, we'd like to know, would a conservative faculty-member go about battling the efforts of his fellows whose politics ran to radicalism? Would he organize a Red hunt with Martin Dies at its head? Would he seek to impose counteractive convictions upon "immature minds" in his classes? Would he act the agitator and get ugly about it?
Hardly any of those courses. To the contrary, he would go on his own way, perhaps quietly cold-shoulder the trouble-maker. And the aggregate of this conservative, unexhibitionistic state of mind would be the over-balancing Mr. Pridgen was talking about.
What Mr. Clark seems unable to get into his head is that the watchword of an institution devoted to intellectual freedom is "believe and let believe."
* * *
Ah, but that egg!
That egg represented the sort of counteraction to radicalism that Dave evidently would like to see active at Chapel Hill. It was thrown not by a faculty member, to be sure, but by a student. Nevertheless, it was a rotten egg, and it splattered on one who was taking part in a student anti-war demonstration, which we suppose is radical, which certainly ties in with the dearest desires of dangerous radicals.
The peace rally came to a turbulent halt. Frank Graham rose from his seat in the audience and without saying a word, looked angry reproof. Things quieted down. A leader of the demonstration against the anti-war demonstration rose up to ask that every speaker be given the privilege of speaking his piece, whatever it was, and the pageant resumed.
And in next day's Daily Tar Heel, Lee Wiggins, lonely student radical in Chapel Hill and sponsor of the rally, made this nifty observation:
"There are two ways to argue. One is with argument: the other is with eggs. When you don't have any argument, you use eggs."
Most conservative indication of all, however, lay not in the throwing of the egg but in the thinning of the crowd. In the beginning, smelling fireworks, it numbered hundreds. But as the anti-war program went heroically on, the audience wearied and departed in droves. In the end, indifference prevailed--and that, we surmise, is the surest antidote for radical poison of any kind.
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