The Charlotte News
Friday, July 5, 1940
THREE EDITORIALS
Appeasers
American Munich Men Should Be
Exposed Now
Dorothy Thompson, in her column printed on this page today, charges
flatly what has been intimated before, that certain American industrialists and
"popular leaders" are already making up to the Nazis with a view to
using their power to persuade this country that the Nazis are really pretty
good fellows who are quite sincere in their vociferations that they have no
designs on the Western Hemisphere, and all they ask is
"co-operation," in the shape of loans with which to buy American
goods, and build a perfectly lovely world in which all men will live together
in peace like nice little Nazi brothers.
The identity of some of these men will be easy to guess for anybody who
has observed what has gone on in this country in the last six years. But the
American public should be explicitly informed by Miss Thompson and other
publicists who are able to lay their hands on the evidence as to the identity
of every one of them.
These men are of the same stamp of appeasers as Pierre Laval and Pierre
Etienne Flandin and their industrial backers in France, and Stanley Baldwin,
Samuel Hoare, Neville Chamberlain and their industrial backers in England. And
what they propose for us is a scheme just as fatal as the schemes which led up
to and culminated in Munich. The motive behind their action is essentially the
same motive that lay behind appeasement in Europe--the greed of gain or power.
But some of them are also probably sympathetic with the Nazi idea as such.
Adolf Hitler's plan for taking us is well set forth by Miss Thompson. In
brief it is to allow us to sleep until he has had time to fully prepare
himself, to establish himself solidly in Latin-America, to let his propaganda,
aided by that of his American "respectable" allies, get in its full
effect, and then to back a Nazi revolution in the United States with whatever
force is necessary--which will be much if he succeeds in his aim of getting us
to relax our defense preparations.
The value of Adolf Hitler's assurances and promises is well known. He
swore over and over that he had no designs on the Rhineland and on Austria
until he took them. After taking Austria, he assured the Czech minister and
British minister at Berlin that he had no designs on Czechoslovakia. After
Munich, he assured the world that he had no designs on the rump state of
Czechoslovakia. After his occupation of that rump state, he declared in a
public speech that he had no quarrel with Poland, and recalled the ten-year
non-aggression pact signed with Pilsudski in 1934. After his invasion of
Poland, he assured the Scandinavian nations and Holland and Belgium that they
had nothing to fear from him, kept on repeating that assurance until he invaded
them. A promise or an assurance by Adolf Hitler that he has no designs on a
nation or a territory is the most absolute proof that he does have such designs
and that the nation which believes him and acts on the belief is committing
suicide.
It is incredible that the American appeasers do not know this. And if
they do, then the name for them is a good deal more unpleasant than appeaser.
But if they are deluding themselves, they are just as dangerous. Their scheme
plays the Nazi game to perfection. And whether they intend it or not they are
engaged in the betrayal of the American Republic into the hands of the Berlin
tyranny.
Nor are they to be pooh-poohed away as of no importance. They undoubtedly
have powerful sources of publicity at their command. And they have powerful
arguments addressed directly to the greed and fear of everybody in the country.
To the farmer, they will hold out the promise of the disposal of all surpluses,
of being able to sell all he can grow at high prices. To the laborer of
constant employment at high wages. To all business men of fat profits. And to
all who might have to fight if war came, to their fathers and mothers, to
sentimental pacifists, the prospect of peace.
All that will turn to ashes in the end, as anybody who knows what the
Nazi regime is and what it proposes will understand. Farmer, laborer, business
man, peace-lover, will be reduced eventually to slaves in a slave economy which
will be a mere satellite of Berlin. Freedom will be wiped out. Even the loans
from our Government will have to be paid out of the pocket of every American.
But it is doubtful if the people generally yet understand that. And the immediate
prospect offered will be very alluring. It is probably the single greatest
danger we face.
And the best way to deal with it is to head it off, to smoke out these
appeasers before they get going, name them to the public and expose their plans
and motives.
Country Escapes Lynching Despite
Hate Campaigns
According to the report of Dr. Patterson, president of Tuskegee
Institute, there were no lynchings in the United States during the first six
months of this year.
Before we conclude too much from that, however, it is just as well to
remember that there was no lynching in the first six months of 1939, either.
But by the end of the year the score was three, two of which were accounted for
by Florida and one by Mississippi.
Nevertheless, when all this is said, the outlook for the ultimate
complete disappearance of lynching is now increasingly hopeful. The three last
year compared with six in 1938, eight in 1937, and twenty in 1935. Moreover,
the period in which there have been just three lynchings actually extends from
October 11, 1938, down to the present--nearly 21 months.
How great an advance that is can be measured when we remember that in
1892 the score was 165, mostly Negroes lynched in the South, and that even in
the 1920's the score regularly ran in the neighborhood of twenty each year.
What is perhaps most encouraging about the matter is that the record for
this year and last was set up in face of increasing activity on the part of the
Ku Klux Klan and organized campaigns by demagogues to stir up racial hatred.
There is the chief danger that the tendency may again be reversed. But at least
we can take the comfort that such campaigns have so far not been effective.
The Nazis Grow Hot for Law and
Chivalry
The great zeal of the Nazis for international law and chivalry is a
wonderful thing to see.
They coolly set out upon a career of conquest like that once pursued by
their barbarian ancestors. To that end they turn themselves back into barbarians.
They tear up not only the treaty of Versailles but Locarno, the Polish
non-aggression pact, their pact guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium, a dozen
others.
They overrun and destroy the Governments and civilizations of their
neighbors. They systematically murder the leadership of those neighbors, and
enslave the people. They invent a system of war under which the killing of
women and children is the head and front of the attack. They deliberately
stampede refugees into the paths of armies. They practice piracy and murder on
the high seas by sinking passenger vessels without warning. They deliberately
bomb and machine gun hospital ships, ambulances, with the Red Cross painted all
over them.
They openly profess cruelty as their prime principle. They openly laugh
at the notion that they are bound by any law, including that of humanity.
But they roar against the English action in destroying the French fleet
so as to keep it out of their hands as an "incredible outrage to
international law," and "the blackest act of treachery ever
recorded." They squeal that Mr. Churchill who ordered it is a
"knave," a "dog," a "hog," and that the British
are duty bound to hang him in Trafalgar Square. And confess by their rage that
it was their purpose to violate one more promise, that given to the
French that they would not use the French fleet against the British.
And the moment bombs begin to fall on German soil, they start bleating
about the "brute English" who bomb women and children, hospitals.
It is, you see, the Nazi doctrine that the Herrenvolk have a right
to murder and enslave us at will, but to hit back, to balk or spill a drop of
blood of the holy Master Race--that, masters, is a violation of international
law and beastly unchivalrous.
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