The Charlotte News

Wednesday, January 22, 1941

FOUR EDITORIALS

 

Site Ed. Note: In "Peaceful Man", we discover what "new world order" means. Voila!

Sea Story

They Always Make the Most Interesting Reading

The toll was a great deal smaller than a single Nazi bomb sometimes takes in a London Street. It was, indeed, smaller than the automobile takes in the United States every day. But the story of the sinking of the fishing schooner outside Boston Harbor was still one which the newspapers of the nation featured over such matters as the conference of Hitler and Mussolini.

Reason was, of course, that it dealt with the sea and men struggling against the sea for their livelihood and--in the end--their lives.

The challenge of the sea is probably the greatest in man's physical environment. And it is certainly the most dramatic. Not even the coming of the airplane and the challenge of the air has changed that. An airplane may be lovely to look at as it drifts through the void but it produces no such thrill as the sight of a ship moving out to sea. And reports of naval battles get far more eager reading them those of the air battles.

Fishing vessels are frail little craft, as the fate of the Mary E. O'Hara serves to remind. And men who confront the resistless might of the northern seas in such eggshells have to have the basic human virtue, courage, in the very highest degree.

 

Boy Soldier

At 88 He Had Become the Youngest Confederate

It was a pathetic thing Captain W. B. Kidd said just before he died:

"I am the youngest Confederate in the Carolinas, as they are all dead I knew but me."

He was 88, which meant that he was just 13 when he joined up in 1865. A candid man, he did not let his imagination enlarge upon his experiences as some old soldiers sometime do. He was a big fellow, he said, for his age and his service consisted of digging trenches to hide the little remaining Southern gold and silver from Sherman's raiding army. His mother even continued to boss him around like the little boy he was and wouldn't let him carry a gun except to hunt rabbits and squirrels.

When the cadets marched into battle at New Market a veteran band played "Rock-a-bye Baby." Or so the legend says, though it has been denied that the old nursery rhyme had been set to music at the time.

Anyhow, it might have been the theme song of a large portion of the confederate army in the last days, for by that time it had become in large part a child army. That is why so many of them have survived into these times. But even the youngest are passing rapidly now--will be altogether gone in another year or two.

The little boy who dug ditches on cold Winter days and dreamed of hunting rabbits or perhaps potting a Yankee with his rabbit gun has become a wrinkled little old man lying quietly in his coffin. Peace to his ashes.

 

Peaceful Man

Mr. Matsuoka Indulges in Crocodile Tears

Japan's Foreign Minister Matsuoka of is full of concern for the United States and civilization. He is afraid, he says, that the entry of the United States into the war would bring Japan in, too, and that the result would be a long and dreadful war which would destroy civilization.

All this, of course, is merely another Axis-designed threat to frighten the United States out of its determination to aid Britain. And it is accompanied by another observation which clearly states the alternative to this nation's will to insure a British victory.

"Establishment of a new world order, the goal of the powerful triple pact (among Germany, Italy, and Japan)," says Matsuoka, "if only given time, will surely be accomplished."

It is precisely because the United States believes that to be true that she is out to aid Britain.

The proposed new order is one under which the world will be organize on master-slave lines for the benefit of Nazi Germany and its satellites, Italy and Japan. It is the order which Japan has been trying to establish in China by murdering Chinese women and children, and which Hitler and Mussolini have been trying to establish in Europe by murdering the women and children of a dozen nations, including the English. And it is an order which would utterly disrupt the peaceful trade of the United States and in the end destroy its domestic economy.

The order is in fact no order at all but anarchy in which the rule of brute force is the only law. It represents the opposite of civilization. And what Matsuoka is really demanding is that Japan and her fellow gangsters be allowed to destroy civilization in order to avoid a war in which civilization might be destroyed.

 

Not Inflated

The Price of One Thing, At Least, Is Going Down

One thing at least the boys who profess to be afraid that we are heading for inflation don't have to worry about these day--the price of cotton. With everything else creeping up, it continues a slow but melancholy decline.

Reason, of course, is the loss of the European market, save for England which is not buying as much as it used to. Domestic consumption is increasing. In the Summer it broke all records for a single month. The figure was 775,473 bales, as compared with 650,123 bales in December, 1939. Exports, however, were down to 107,375 bales, as compared with 806,720 bales for a year ago.

Foreign and domestic consumption is for December, 1940 came to 882,847 bales. Foreign and domestic consumption for December, 1939 came to 1,456,843 bales. And that represents a decline in total consumption of 573,996 bales.

This is of the greatest seriousness for the whole South. The Administration's policy of pegging the price of the staple is holding off the facing of the problem at present, but as defense expenditures go up that may have to be abandoned, in part at least. And in any case the policy is certainly not a desirable one for the long haul.

Most serious thing about the case is that there is reason to doubt that the South can recover each European market after the war is over. And if it can't recover it, then it is manifest that the whole economy of this section is going to have to undergo radical change. Domestic consumption may be further increased by more or less artificial methods. But it is certain that the domestic market can never absorb the total crop now grown.

 


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