Friday, January 17, 1941

TWO EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: We learn from this day's News that the South Carolina Ku Klux Klan had obviously adopted some new liberality in electing its Wizards in vizards. It is too bad that the radio program featuring Flagon-Dragon Adams could not have been nationally broadcast at the time so as to put down scurrilous rumors regarding the unfair cast of the Klan's alleged racist and zenophobic views on things. We can only speculate on how then history might have turned out differently. With sadness and deep regret, we lay it out for you to read.

One Kuku Chief Turns Out To Be Right, at Last

A Greenville, S.C. radio station has a new fifteen-minute radio program for Sunday afternoons. It is called "The Klan Speaks," and naturally comes under the head of the educational activities of the station. Over it on a Sunday spoke Ben Adams, who wanted to be South Carolina's Governor and couldn't but he did get to be Grand Wizard of the South Carolina Kukus.

Dragon Adams devoted himself to some startling statements. For example, that all Klanpeople (sic) very carefully model their lives on that of Jesus Christ--which somehow sounds blasphemous. And that the Klan stands four-square for the principles of the Constitution. Someday we are going to have to look into that Constitution. All along we hadn't suspected that racial and religious hate were part of its principles.

However Dragon Adams did hit the nail on the head in one respect. He said that if you investigated these editorial writers who make unkind remarks about the Kukus, you would invariably find that they had foreign connections. It is true, and in the spirit of candor we must confess it.

Take the editor of the News, for instance--a man who has said very unkind things about the Kukus in his time. Fact is that his family immigrated to America from England and Ireland.

Or take the associate editor, another fellow who has been unkind to the Kukus. He has connections in England, Scotland, Ireland and Germany. And probably in the decadent Latin lands of France and Spain.

It might be said in extenuation that the last foreign ancestors of these two persons got to this country sometime before the American Revolution. The fact remains that both have foreign connections which we suppose is enough properly to horrify a man like Dragon Adams. Dragon Adams, we assume from his remarks, is obviously a full-blooded American Indian.

Hoover Favors Only Very Limited Aid for Britain

Mr. Herbert Hoover now offers himself to the country as The Great Mediator. He wants, he says, "to avoid much controversy and bitterness." However, he adds,

There is, in fact, not a whit of evidence that the President means "to give away" any American naval vessels. He has never given away any. Instead he got a staggering good price for fifty old ones which had been discarded by our navy long ago.

He may, indeed, wish to transfer some more vessels to Britain by way of insuring her victory and our own defense, but the bill specifically provides that this can be done only with the consent of the Naval High Command, which is primarily concerned with our defense and very jealous of the Navy's possessions.

As for sending ships into the war zones, it is likely that he will do it only if he is convinced that it is necessary to save Britain. Does Hoover propose to let her fall rather than do it? And as for using our ports for repairing British naval vessels, it is particularly the sort of thing Germany, Italy, and Spain have been doing for five years. It violates what used to be international law but which has ceased to exist long ago. And it is unquestionably in our self-interest.

The same thing applies to the seizing of Nazi-Fascist vessels now in our ports.

But these things involve the risk of war? They do, but against the proposed course is the grim prospect that we shall certainly have war--at home and against fearful odds--if England falls and Hitler gets the British fleet.

The whole of the Hoover charges add up to the insinuation that the President is plotting war. But if he is, then he is wasting a lot of time and effort. Regardless of the lease-lend bill, he can, as commander-in-chief of the Navy, jockey the country into a position where Congress will have to declare war whenever he desires it.