Monday, Oct. 23, 1939

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Turkey, increasingly an editorial subject for Cash in these days, had fought since 1918 to establish a modern state out of the old Ottoman Empire. It remained neutral in World War II until February of 1945 when it finally declared war on Germany and Japan. Relations with the Soviet Union became strained in March, 1945 and Turkey participated in the founding of the United Nations in the San Francisco conference of the summer of 1945. Turkey, together with Greece, received U.S. aid after the war under the Truman Doctrine and then sent troops to fight in Korea alongside Americans. Turkey became a part of N.A.T.O. in 1952. Turkey's only important role since in international relations came in 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis when the Kennedy Administration, having initially balked at the notion, secretly agreed to remove nuclear missiles, albeit superfluous missiles, from Turkey, in the last minute exchange with Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev to achieve a diplomatic solution to the two-week standoff over the presence of offensive-range nuclear missiles in Cuba and thereby avert war and the potential for nuclear disaster.

And in "Pelley's Books", we find that Pelley's weren't quite as mystical as Prospero's, but, as Cash nevertheless maintains, he was equally entitled to have them without the threat of unreasonable searches and seizures.

Success In Which Should Give Us A Warm Satisfaction

Two thousand campaign workers can't--well, make it fail. Matter of fact, counting everybody, there are somewhat more than two thousand persons who are taking an active part in the Community Chest campaign to raise $125,965 for the support of its thirteen dependent agencies. The quiet advance solicitation has already commenced, and beginning tomorrow the public generally will be given an opportunity to contribute.

The raising of this sum is going to take pretty intensive work on the part of the campaigners, generosity and understanding on the part of contributors. It isn't an enjoyable proceeding from either point of view, and there's no use pretending that it is.

To the contrary, it is simply a job that has to be done, and done more or less personally. The exigencies of the time and the complexities of our modern industrial civilization have made it necessary that charity be organized and standardized. The old-time satisfaction of giving directly, being rewarded by express gratitude and a warm feeling of having played the Good Samaritan, is gone. Nowadays, we employ trained agents to administer in our stead to the poor and needy and the misfits, and that has to be. For otherwise the relief of their wants is left to chance and impulse.

Nevertheless, there's a satisfaction that remains. It is the satisfaction that comes to the community when it has met its obligation to its social and welfare agencies. The self-same satisfaction, that is, of having done its duty. The satisfaction of having reached a goal which it has set for itself.

We sincerely hope that attainment will be this community's satisfaction when the campaign comes to a close.

A List of Our Own Would Make Alarming Publicity

Among the effects of William Dudley Pelley, a proprietor of the fascistic Silver Shirts whose office is in Asheville was searched at the order of the court, was found a strange assortment of literature. Some of it was simply crackpot, such as a small book entitled, "No More Hunger," authored by W. D. P. himself.

Some of it was probably libelous, as "Our Secret Political Police," with a reference on its cover to J. Edgar Hoover of the G-Men; and some of it had a treasonable sound, such as files devoted to the "Early Life of Hitler" and "Civil War Financing."

Mr. Pelley's fancy seems to have run pretty strongly to the lurid and revolutionary, unrelieved by comedy or simple entertainment. But we would be the last to condemn a man on the strength of his taste in reading or the catalog of his library.

Suppose, for instance, that our own editorial bookshelves were searched and titles made public by some unfriendly source. "What Is Communism?" by Comrade Earl Browder would certainly look bad, even though at one time its unholy presence was counteracted by "The Red Network," Sister Lizzie Dilling's masterpiece in which she put down as subversive anybody who had ever entertained the notion that capitalism was not the best of all possible systems.

"Mein Kampf," by A. Hitler, would get us the name of Nazi-admirer, but again the antidote may be cited--"The Story of the Constitution," by the Hon. Sol Bloom. And so on through a weird list of treatises that are useful and, indeed, essential in any sanctum, but which offset one another much as "Oh, Yeah?" a cynical little post-depression collection of the predictions and prophecies of the Hoover Administration, would seem to be sarcastically lifting its eyebrows at "Public Addresses of Franklin Delano Roosevelt," as though its debunking was yet but surely to come.

Rate Of Foreign-Born Only Third Of Native

One of the favorite arguments of alien-baiters of the stripe of the Hon. Robert Rice Reynolds is that it is the foreign-born who are mainly responsible for the fact that we have the highest crime rate of any nation on earth.

That it was not true has long been evident from a great deal of evidence. Atlanta and Charlotte, for instance, have for a long while had the highest crime rate in the country, for towns with over 50,000 people, though neither has any considerable proportion of aliens. And the South Atlantic states, with the smallest proportion of aliens of any of the divisions of the nation, have a crime rate running to about five or six times that of the national average, and to nearly eighteen times that of the New England group of states, which have a large percentage of aliens.

But now comes even more positive proof. A study published under auspices of Public Affairs committee shows that: (1) fifteen out of every one thousand Negroes in this country are criminals; nearly six out of every one thousand native-born whites; and only two out of every one thousand foreign-born whites. The alien crime rate, that is, is only one-third that of the native whites. And alien-baiting is again shown up for what it is: a cheap device of cheap politicians to stir up the ignorant to the end of serving their own political ends.

What Attacking Turkey Would Mean For Russia.

How terrific a blow the Allied-Turkish treaty was to Germany may be judged by the puerile frothing now going on in Berlin to the effect that, in revenge, Russia is going to make a new Poland out of Turkey. Moscow is little happier, either, for, while it is careful not to indulge in open threats, it seems anxious to have the Turks believe the fee-faw-fum stories from Berlin.

What Russia apparently had in mine was the fastening of a pair of gigantic pincers on Europe by grabbing off control of the Dardanelles in the south and the Scandinavian peninsula in the north. Its dream is blasted, unless, indeed, Papa Stalin is actually playing with the idea of attacking Turkey. And if that is so, he is down with megalomaniac idiocy.

Turkey will be no Poland. Her own army is one of the best organized and equipped in Europe, and it is possessed of the same fighting spirit which once threatened to establish the Turkish flag over the whole West. And taking the Dardanelles is one of the most formidable naval tasks ever cut out for anybody, as Great Britain found out in 1915, when the might of her battle fleet was unequal to the job, and she had to withdraw after having suffered 130,000 casualties. Certainly Russia has no navy which can dream of accomplishing it, and the notion that airplanes could do it is a dangerous one.

On the other hand, if Russia moved against Turkey she could count on immediately releasing the British and French fleets from all worries about the Italian fleet. Indeed, such a move would almost certainly fetch Italy into the war on the Allied side at once. For the last thing on earth Signor Mussolini can want to see is Russia established on the Mediterranean. There would go his dream of turning the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean into his sphere of influence, and his Aegean possessions would be held, if they were held at all, only on Russian sufferance.

Worse, it would bring the Red propaganda machine right up to his backdoor, and it is safe to assume that he does not at all forget that Communism was rife in Italy when he came into power in 1924.

Not only the French and British Mediterranean fleets, but quite probably the Italian fleet, would move up at once to the defense of the Dardanelles, would pass on into the Black Sea and destroy the tinpot Russian fleet out of hand leaving the Russian armies no way of getting supplies and reinforcements save over the Caucasus, one of the most difficult countries in the world, and settling the Russian towns along the Russian Black Sea coast at the mercy of the ships and their guns.

Moreover, with the Mediterranean wide open, the French and British would be in position to transport great numbers of troops and large quantities of supplies direct to the Turkish ports.

Russia is almost certainly bluffing. She cannot rationally want any such conflict as that, has nothing to gain which would justify the risk. Chances are she is merely backing up Adolf Hitler in his efforts to secure peace--i.e., surrender--by making faces.