The Charlotte News

Wednesday, February 5, 1941

FOUR EDITORIALS

 

Site Ed. Note: Take heed anthropologists and geneticists: in "Biology Note", W. J. Cash may have produced conclusive evidence of the missing link.

But then, we may have to look further and find some commonality in the double-helixed characteristics suggested in "The Leader". And that would suffuse credibility to the theory of Loren Eisley in The Immense Journey, that modern man descended from the Fish, phylum Hammericious, order Fascioconservitis, genus Messiupterus-Winkynodomniliteralassteruptorus, species oilyupavariciraqarabiasmilitarius. But you may call them Messio-oilyups, for short.

In fairness to the Fishes, however, we should report that Hamilton Fish IV, Ham Fish's son, served in Congress as a moderate Republican, a supporter of civil rights legislation and in fact voted in support of the impeachment of Richard Nixon in 1974. Ham Fish I, (the "Hamilton" having come from the patriarch's personal friendship with Alexander Hamilton), was a moderate Whig who served in the Senate in the early 1850's, was a moderate abolitionist, and later served as Secretary of State to U. S. Grant. Ham Fish III, the subject of Cash's repeated editorializations, lived to the young age of 103, dying only in 1991. Thus his Bundist-Firster ties of the 1930's and early 40's must have served him well for longevity. No one ever said Nazi sympathizers sometimes don’t live long. Witness the will triumphing Leni Riefenstahl, the chief Nazi sympathizer of them all, who at last report still lives and prospers in Germany at age 100, the old Nazi bag of bones though she is. Denial and professed stupidity are no defense. (As they say, live long enough… No one ever said either that people receive their just deserts in life though, on the eternal scales, hell may await them.) Ham Fish III, incidentally, having served as a captain in World War I, heading an African-American infantry company, was ordered at age 53 to report for duty at Fort Bragg, North Carolina on July 2, 1941.

The Leader

Fish Commands Where No One Else Wants To Be First

It is significant of the general bankruptcy of the isolationist-appeasement cause in the country, and of the low regard in which bitter-end partisanship is now held, that Ham Fish is the captain of the fight on the Lease-Lend Bill in the House.

Fish long ago set up a record as a man for whom his party came first under all circumstances. And the record also shows plainly that his professions of desire to aid Britain now are probably due largely to his fear of public opinion.

Before the war started, he praised Hitler on the floor of the House as warmly as Robert Rice Reynolds was praising him in the Senate. And like Robert and Borah and others, he insisted constantly that Britain was at least as evil as Germany, that there wasn't going to be any war in Europe, and that all we had to do was to stay at home and mind our own business.

Then two weeks before the Nazis invaded Poland, he suddenly went to Europe, closeted himself with Goering, and raced off to Norway where he attempted to crash a conference of the little powers and set up as a "peace-maker"--apparently on Nazi terms.

The conference showed him the door with scant ceremony. He came back and started playing isolationist all over again. He continues to enjoy little respect from his colleagues or the nation.

A Distinction

Which Ought To Be Kept In View In Wine Bill

Several more or less legitimate objections to the bill to outlaw fortified wines were introduced at the joint hearing on the measure in Raleigh yesterday.

Senator Brooks of Durham asked one of the sponsors of the bill, Reynolds of Buncombe, if it were intended to ban the sale of sherry and port, and Representative Reynolds said that he did not know.

[Beginning of sentence presently unavailable] larger wine companies said that his firm had no objection to wine control, on the contrary wanted very much to get rid of the synthetic products which were giving the industry a bad name--merely wanted to make sure the decent wines weren't caught in the drag net.

Obviously somebody who knows something about the distinctions between wines ought to be consulted in the framing of the bill. Port and sherry, when they are properly such, are wines which belong to the "polite drinking" category and do not lend themselves to swilling because of their relative high price, if for no other reason.

Trouble is that the market is flooded with stuff calling itself "sherry" and "port" which in taste and body is nothing but a mixture of water, burnt sugar, and grain alcohol--which acts on the drinker with numbing speed. It is this dreadful stuff, selling at 24 cents a pint, which Negroes and whites drink in vast quantities and which causes trouble. And it is obviously this stuff--and not the good wines--which the bill ought to be designed to suppress.

Music Boss*

Mr. Petrillo Successfully Hogties the Kicking Stars

Mr. James C. Petrillo's victory over the American Guild of Musical Artists was pretty complete, though the latter appealed. Mr. Petrillo is president of the American Federation of Musicians (AFL).

A remarkable man, Mr. Petrillo. He pays himself a hundred thousand smackers or so in his job. But to do that he had to have many musicians--maybe more than there were. All the musicians soon saw the light, and, lest there still be a lack, Mr. Petrillo thoughtfully made musicians of everybody who came near music. The boys who turn over records in juke-box places in many cities, for instance.

Mr. Petrillo, however, is a man who constantly seeks new fields for his services. And he found it in AGMA--a lordly outfit made up of famous stars like Jascha Heifitz, Lawrence Tibbett, Jose Iturbi, etc., as distinct from the obscure performers, orchestra men, accompanists and juke-boys who made up Mr. Petrillo's AFM.

Mr. Petrillo saw the light. If he could just make the thousand-a-night boys and girls join his AFM, then he would have a deadlock on bosses so ill-advised as to oppose his ideas of pay and working conditions for everybody, including juke-boys--since he could call the stars out on strike and wreck the show. So he turned the heat on AGMA.

The boys and girls of AGMA didn't like it, went to court. But they lost. They had to lose under the Wagner Act, which makes it quite legal for Mr. Petrillo to proselyte other unions by methods short of kidnapping and mayhem.

Biology Note

German Journal Makes Telling Point Against Darwin

From Time we cull the following:

In the German publication Natur und Kultur, ten authors launched violent attacks on the doctrine of organic evolution, accepted as an ABC fact by all biologists of standing in free countries. Gist of the German argument: Adolf Hitler and other splendid Aryans could not conceivably have evolved from ape men.

And to say the truth, masters, it does stagger faith in evolution almost--perhaps quite--to the breaking point.

Adolf does indeed show certain definite ape characteristics, as an inordinate love of chatter, exhibitionism, lousiness, etc. But the ape is on the whole a relative decent if somewhat silly animal, and in common justice it cannot be supposed that Adolf is to be explained by descent from ape-men.

To explain him on the basis of organic evolution you have to take up the position of the late Clarence Day's This Simian World and suppose all sorts of beast-men. For one thing, there would be the tiger-man. Adolf has all the native sadism and bloodthirstiness and lack of loyalty to the race which belonged to the great cat. And then there would, of course, have to be the fox-man, for who has been so cunning, so much the liar, save Reynard and Bre'r Fox? The lion-man would figure on only one score: the capacity to cluster jackals about him. The really important ancestry, we imagine, would be found in certain other lines.

Perhaps it is simpler just to assume his direct creation--by Auld Hornie.

 


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