The Charlotte News

Thursday, February 27, 1941

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Aye, and while the filibuster is a troublin' sort when we'uns be in the majority, 'tis a bit of a slick salver when we're not. Point in case comes in judicial appointments. Ye see, when ye in the minority or in the majority and ye block the President's federal appointments for fully eight years, then what's good fer the goose be quite so for the... well, ye know the rest.

And now they complain when the un-elected fellow gets his just deserts? O contrare.

There may come a time to eliminate the filibuster, but this is not it. On that no doubt both sides will share.

Like as not, 'twill be ne'er. For fribustiers plundered the coast of the linas of Car' such that we obviously ne'er got over it e'er, neither ere nor right heyere.

Ye e'er been t' Eire?

And if ye ha' or if ye ha'n't, "Add Whistles" may be something to read with regard to a universal problem, the notion of accommodating others during normal hours of waking for most people. And even though those hours may be other than the norm, still the notion of relative quiet with unnecessary noise maintained at a minimum throughout the day and night. Last we heard it expressed best it was something on the order of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". And we have heard that the Cash family had in their parlor as the time-tick spring-gear of choice, while Cash came of age, none other than a Swiss cuckoo. The Swiss have always seemed to us an interesting people, given to peace while maintaining reasonable prosperity within their own Alpine borders, and perhaps it is as simple as the notion of having around them cuckoo clocks. For such an elaborately carved, cute, and curious device always tends to serve as a reminder that measuring time, while a reasonable necessity of life in society to preserve reasonable security and, not incidentally, to aid in ordering memory of history so that we are not condemned to repeat the worst episodes of it, is nevertheless a cuckoo. Time is a cuckoo. It does not truly exist except as measured by the passing of day to night and back again, the turn of the seasons from plowing and planting to harvest to rest and around again, the spin of the planets around it all, and so on and so forth. But we measure it nevertheless, in atomic precision these days, with our own chronometers, sometimes bank-rolled on thousands of dollars, all for the foregoing reasons. Yet, we should also, by the same token, maintain in mind the concept that time thus measured artificially can, if taken to extremes, become a Master of our minds and bodies and ultimately thereby become the real Deil. After all, as they always say in excuse, he made the trains run on time. But, in truth, no one would have been served the less if the trains had been late or, indeed, if they had not run at all. There is more truth to the notion than we might at first realize in the idea that Jubal Early was late...

It Enables the Minority to Defeat Majority

What is going on in the Senate already clearly shapes up as an essential filibuster. Merely, it hasn't been announced as such as yet and the formal device of seizing the floor and holding it is still held in abeyance.

But Wheeler, Nye & Co. are endlessly repeating themselves--endlessly going over the same arguments which the country has heard ad nauseam already many times over. Yesterday Nye did say one new thing--new for him. He said flatly that "the dictator-President" had already entered the United States in the war. If that is so, then Gerald P. Nye stands convicted of treason out of his own mouth. For in that case he is undoubtedly giving aid and comfort to the enemy under the rigid definition of the Constitution.

Nevertheless, the extra delay might be compensated for if it should result in the people demanding and getting the abolition of the right of filibuster.

It has no place in a democratic country and democratic procedure, and merely represents a device whereby the will of the minority undertakes to defeat the will of the majority in matters where the will of the majority should rightly rule--by refusing to let them come to a vote. The claim that the filibuster is necessary to protect minority rights is false. It is the business of the courts to protect those rights as defined and guaranteed by the Constitution--and in general they discharge that duty well.

The will of the people in this case is unmistakable, despite the floods of Nazi and Communist money and propaganda turned loose to try to make it look otherwise. But if the attempt to defeat it results in the destruction of the filibuster, all will be well.

Campaign Involves Great Risks for His Army

If the Nazis are actually entering Libya in any force and plan to take over the Italian campaign, it may mean any of several things.

It could mean, for instance, as rumor has had it, that the British have already sent several divisions to Salonika and that Hitler is desperately attempting to create a diversion and force them to withdraw and return to Libya again because of their fear for the safety of Egypt and the Suez Canal.

Or it could mean simply that he is eady to take any risks to prevent the British Army from going to Salonika at all and acquiring a toehold on the Continent from which Germany might eventually be invaded through the back door.

Or, again, it could mean that his ego is overcome with the childish desire to show that he can succeed where Mussolini failed, and still thinks it is March, 1940.

In any event, it is a long gamble. It is not likely that he can transport men and supplies by sea and more successfully than Mussolini did. Almost certainly, the men he is sending in must cross from Italy by plane and be supplied by plane. That means that the British inevitably will have a great advantage in equipment.

Man for man, the Australians long ago proved themselves as good soldiers as the best of the Germans, and their fanatical devotion to their cause is as great and far better rooted than that of the most brutal of the Nazi Storm Troopers.

Finally, the British have had many months of toughening to the grueling conditions of warfare in the desert, whereas the Nazis have come directly out of the Northern Winter. The last indeed makes an attempt on Libya by Hitler definitely an act of the greatest risk.

Factories No Longer Need Them To Arouse Workers

With pain in his voice, a man we know protests that the anti-noise campaign ought to be extended from automobiles and their horns to include factory whistles. Every morning they wake him up at five or six, he says.

And then he can't go back to sleep because he has to go to work at seven, and is afraid he'll oversleep if he falls into the heavy slumber that follows a too-early awakening.

Come to think about it, there is very little reason why whistles should be blown in these times. When the cotton mills first began to grow up in the South, a whole village was usually dependent on the factory. Starting time was very early. An alarm clock had not been heard of, and many houses had only one clock--a huge affair displayed in the parlor or hall--or no clock at all.

But all that has changed. The poorest house now has its alarm clock or can have it, at any rate--for they are to be purchased at anything from fifty cents up.

And there is really little more reason why a cotton mill or a factory of any sort should blow a whistle to arouse workers in the morning than that a business office should do the same thing. And they undoubtedly do disturb many people, the nature of whose work requires them to sleep later than the rising time of the factory workers.

A lot of the noise and consequent nerve-strain of modern living proceeds simply from habit and can be eliminated without injury to anyone.