The Charlotte News
FOUR EDITORIALS
Five
Switch
The Neutrality Bill given 16-to-7 approval by the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee yesterday lays down the much better, safer policy than (a)
the Hull Bill, which the Senate committee killed 12-to-11 in the last session,
or (b) the existing law. Hence the committeemen's action is not such an
about-face as it might first appear, since they were voting on different
measures.
But it is interesting all the same to list the switching Senators. They
are:
George (D) of Georgia, Van Nuys (D) of Indiana, Reynolds (D) of North
Carolina, Gillette (D) of Iowa and White (R) of Maine.
Three of these Senators--Reynolds, Gillette and White--are said to have
voted to report the bill out while reserving the right to vote against it on
the floor. In other words, not liking the legislation, they are guiltless of
inconsistency in the first and second committee actions because they only want
to give the Senate as a whole a chance to pass on it.
But hold! That first committee vote was not on the merits of the
neutrality bill proposed but to postpone consideration of the question
altogether--in fine, not to let the Senate take it up. And in that light they
are shown up as completely inconsistent.
Mr. Hitler's dizzy war of words goes steadily on. From Berlin we are told
over and over in a constantly rising uproar that Nazi planes have destroyed
British warships, and that the German air force is about to take the mastery of
the sea away from England's ironclads. In England, the British Admiralty shrugs
it off as mere poppycock.
What the truth about this may be we don't know, but it is possible to guess.
The British have hitherto steadily followed the same policy they followed in
the last war, of immediate announcement of all sea disasters they have
suffered. And so when they tell us that they have suffered no damage at the
hands of the Nazi planes, we are inclined to accept it in the absence of clear
proof to the contrary.
What is stranger than these air stories, however, are the stories Mr.
Lochner of the Associated Press has been sending out from the Siegfried Line.
The Associated Press is a great stickler for accuracy, and Lochner's
professional reputation is at stake; hence it seems incredible that he would
willingly lend himself to German propaganda. Is the man working, as it were,
with a gun in his ribs? Or is he being shown a carefully prearranged stage
exhibit?
In any case, his stories are certainly incompatible with all the
dispatches we have got from elsewhere, including Luxembourg, and Switzerland.
That soldiers who are not engaged in active fighting should trade across the
lines is not unbelievable; they did the same thing in the last war. But that
the whole Western Front is absolutely quiet, and that no damage is to be seen
anywhere--that simply cannot be fitted with the picture we have been given.
It's considerably more than an honorary, hand-shaking job Robert M. Hanes
has got in his elevation to the presidency of the American Bankers Association.
By ordinary, banks go their separate ways and handle their separate businesses
with a fine disregard of the tie that binds them into an association
representing astronomical assets. But these, of course, are not ordinary times.
To the contrary, they are gravely extraordinary, and before President
Hanes' one-year term is up it may be that the question of banking policy will
be quite as momentous as the question of standing armies and fleets, say, or
the question of war or peace or whatever.
If it should so devolve, then the ABA would become a policy-making agency
of the first importance, its president a man on whom much responsibility fell.
And though it is the ABA's law of succession that brings Bob Hanes to the top
at this particular juncture, no better choice could have been made.
As the classicists would put it, "he is eminently qualified,"
but a more familiar expression, which we may use just among ourselves, is that
he's got what it takes.
Our columnist, General Ironpants Johnson, in his column for Wednesday
delivered himself of the following blanket pronouncement:
They [the American soldiers in the last war]
were told that they were fighting for international decency as boiled down to
Mr. Wilson's Fourteen Points. They [the American Legionnaires in session at
Chicago] look abroad and see every one of those points repudiated by their
associates, as well as their enemies, in the World War.
The Fourteen Points were:
1 -- Open covenants openly arrived at. (Record: Regularly violated by
everybody.)
2 -- Freedom of navigation for all nations on all seas. (Record: Observed
by everybody saving case of war. Not observed by the United States in last
war.)
3 -- Removal of economic barriers and establishment of equal trade
conditions. (Record: Immediately repudiated by all nations after last war, with
the United States showing the way by establishing highest tariffs in history.
Attempt by Mr. Hall to reverse trend since 1933. England and France originally
uncooperative. In last two years have shown increasing willingness to make
concessions.)
4 -- Reduction of national armaments. (Record: Applied only to Germany at
Versailles. But some honest efforts to cut down and limit made later, as in
Washington Naval Treaty. England knifed more recent proposals by U.S. and
Russia, because of fear of Germany, Russia. Is today weak in comparison with
Hitler because she long played along with us on this idea.)
5 -- Impartial adjustment of colonial claims. (Record: Went into ashcan
at Versailles.)
6 -- Settlement of questions affecting Russia, then in the middle of
revolution. (Record: Discreetly abandoned by everybody, including U.S., after
some highly painful experiences.)
7 -- Restoration of Belgium, then occupied by German army. (Record:
Belgium was restored.)
8 -- Restoration of invaded portions of France and return of
Alsace-Lorraine. (Record: Duly fulfilled.)
9 -- Readjustment of the frontiers of Italy. (Record: Readjusted with
large additions of territory and population, though she failed to get all she
had expected under secret agreements with England and France.)
10 -- Autonomy for Austro-Hungarian peoples. (Record: Creation of
Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, independent Hungary, revision of other boundaries,
partly aimed at this problem. Success not great.)
11 -- International guarantees for the Balkan states. (Record:
Czechoslovakia and others got guarantees from the League of Nations, and
France--which proved worthless in the showdown.)
12 -- Sovereignty for Turkey, autonomy for the non-Turkish Syrians,
Mesopotamians, Arabs, Egyptians, under Turk rule. (Record: Turkey retained
sovereignty. Other peoples taken over as "mandates" or
"independent states" by England and France.)
13 -- An independent Polish state. (Record: Made good to the hilt. Poland
established as independent state. England and France now fighting Germany for
restoration of that status, among other things.)
14 -- Formation of an international association of states. (Record: The
United States turned thumbs down on the League of Nations. Result: it never
functioned as intended, collapsed into a mere shadow, useful only as a stalking
horse for Realpolitik. Whether it would have worked had the United States gone
in, no one knows. Plainly, however, it had no chance to work without the United
States, since its primary weapon, the application of the economic blockade to
an aggressor, was impossible to use without the participation of this country.)
So those old boys at Chicago can "look abroad and see everyone of
those points repudiated by their associates... in the World War," eh? If
they can, their vision must be nearly as thaumaturgically cockeyed as General
Ironpants' own.
Framed Edition
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.