The Charlotte News
Saturday, June 22, 1940
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: Compiegne is the place outside Paris where the strutting
egoistic frame of Hitler gave the terms of surrender to France's aging
President in a railroad car--the same where the Kaiser had been forced to sign
the Armistice with France November 11, 1918 and from which
"humiliation" the then young Corporal Hitler took his later marching
orders. From the Beer Hall Putsch to the Chancellory on a one-third plurality,
the burning of the Reichstag, to the Ghettoes and camps, the Night of Glass, to
Austria, Czechoslovakia, pacts with Stalin and Mussolini, to Poland, Norway,
Holland, Belgium, and now to within the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe de
l'Etoile, his splendid moment of perfect Vengeance realized--at last and
finally. As with most such perfect Vengeance, however, it would be his last.
Terms
We Translate Them for Easier
Reading
A little translation is necessary to the full understanding of the
general terms laid down at Compiegne yesterday. Thus:
"Germany therefore does not intend to give
the armistice conditions or armistice negotiations characteristics of
aspersions against an enemy so brave."
There had just been a reference to "Gallic baseness." And the
speech itself translates this way: "we could of course quite justly taunt
you with cowardice on the ground that you were broken so easily. But we shall
be generous and pretend that you were brave." It is a typical picture of
what a German understands by "chivalry." He must always have his
boast and at the same time attempt to paint himself as a decent man controlled
by civilized instincts instead of the barbarian ones which are naturally his.
The purposes of the German demands are:
1 -- To prevent a resumption of the fight.
France is to be disarmed for good and all, laid helpless before the
barbarian.
2 -- To offer all Germany all guarantees necessary for contributing
continuance of the war against Great Britain, which Britain forces on
Germany...
That is, France is to be forced into the ignominious and disgraceful
position of helping to defeat her late ally.
3 -- To create pre-conditions for formulation of the new peace...
That is, the reduction of France to the status of a rump slave state,
governed by a government "acceptable" to the Nazi hog--which is to
say, one made up of Nazis stooges taking their orders from Berlin.
This Story Ought To Be Fully
Investigated
Friday the Topeka, Kansas, Capital quoted ousted War Secretary
Woodring--he departed from his office in fuming anger--as having recently told
friends:
"There is a comparatively small clique of
international financiers who want the United States to declare war and get into
the European mess with everything we have, including our manpower.
"They don't like me because I'm against
stripping our own defenses for the sake of trying to stop Hitler 3,000 miles
away. Eventually they will force me to resign."
"Small clique of international financiers" has a most familiar
ring. It is exactly the phrase everybody from Adolf Hitler to Coughlin has used
in Jew-baiting. And the rest is just as familiar. It echoes of the old cry that
Wall Street got us into the last war. And of the cry which the Republicans and
other anti-Roosevelt forces are now cooking up--that the President is plotting
with dark forces to get us into a war which, we are sure, is none of our
business.
Did Woodring say this? If so, the public has the right to demand that he
stand forth and confess it, or if he didn't that he deny it. And if he did say
it--well, the American people also have the full right to demand that he name
these "international financiers" forthrightly and pronto, and that he
make known at the same time just how they have been plotting to get us into war
and if with Franklin Roosevelt.
If there is a plot the country is entitled to know it. If there is no
plot--and we are confident that there is none--the country is entitled to have
the story shown up for a falsehood and the identity of its authors revealed.
Which Is Most Comforting To
Conqueror Hitler
Adolf Hitler has specifically said that he means to take over Latin
America once Europe is his, and reduce the United States to a Nazi satrapy. In
Latin America his agents are busy about the job. The Brazilian Government is at
this moment making up to Hitlerism. Uruguay has just uncovered a gigantic plot
to take her over. Mexico is notoriously in danger, and so is Guatemala.
And in the East Japan spurns American offers of closer relations, loudly
turns to the Axis. An iron ring is being drawn around the United States.
If England falls, we shall quickly face the choice of quietly
surrendering Latin America, and eventually ourselves, to be Nazified--or of
trying to fight off attack from two oceans. It we are to have any chance to
succeed against that attack, the British Navy will have to be withdrawn to this
side.
Yet, in the face of the plain fact, cow statesmen scream and storm on the
floor of the Senate that the President of the United States is trying to get us
into war and that he ought to be forced to resign!
And why? Because the President faces the facts and does his best to help
England to win, so that the peril will be averted from our own door. Because
the President appoints to his Cabinet two Republicans of the highest
intelligence, integrity, and dignity.
The main part of the uproar of course is simply due to the outrage of
professional politicians over the fact that the game is not being played
according to their rules. The Democratic politicoes are raving mad at seeing
two such splendid pieces of work handed to Republicans when there were so many
"deserving Democrats" about. And Republicans have blood in their eyes
because the two nominees have violated the good old role that you never have
any truck with a President of the other party and always plaster him, even
though it means the wreck of the country.
But with men like Gerald P. Nye it is not so much as a cross-grained
determination to stick to a position once taken, no matter how idiotic it has
been revealed to be. Does Gerald P. Nye believe Adolf Hitler when he says that
he has no designs on the Western Hemisphere? He does not, for Nye is no
simpleton. Yet he keeps on thundering about "keeping us out of war."
It is a combination of wish-thinking and stubborn willfulness.
Gerald P. Nye is no Fifth Columnist. But, with his fellows in the Senate,
he is a Sixth Column, worth two million assorted Fifth Columnists to Adolf
Hitler. For their deeds and words perfectly bear out what Hitler has said of
democracies, that they are incapable of rising above petty motives and fuddled
thinking at times of peril and coming to the rational decision which is always
indicated by the facts.
Framed Edition
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