The Charlotte News

Saturday, August 17, 1940


FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Now, this here bit in those first couple of lines of "A Career", about that ol' Arkan-saw, (that's what you call a pun), the one that goes, "Fooled me once, shame on, shame on you, fooled me, can't get fooled again," (leastwise that's the way we done heard it from some feller down the road here not knowin' which away he was to goin' 'cause he wudn't no local), has us to thinkin' awhile about what-not and so forth and takin' the studies on all of it. That is, as to what a certain well-known politician said t'other day.

No, we're not talkin' 'bout the Obey G. Juan Canobe comment and about how all the trial lawyers are corruptin' the doctors' lovin' with their womens folks. Though that sure do have us cogitatin' as to what the feller meant when he was sayin' that. We reckon he was tryin' to fool us.

But what we have on our minds here is what the other feller, his pal, said about if you was to elect them other fellers, that we'd like as not wind up attacked.

Now that got us to thinkin'.

By our best recollection of things--which sometimes ain't too good, we admit--we was sure thinkin' that this feller had some kind of high position when last we was attacked.

And sure enough, when we done looked that up in the Funk & Wagnall's that we got down there at the dry goods store, (and we got us a good durned price on that thing too, best money ever spent, brought it right home, put the whole durned set on the washstand in the parlor for all to see), we figured out that what we was thinkin' was right in fact, turned out as right as rain on a summer hog. That feller, the same one, was sittin' right there in the White House cellar when we was last attacked. Now, ain't that a teller?

Now, all that got us to thinkin' some more. What is he talkin' about?

But now, look here. Look right here and don't you go lookin' away, now

Now we looked up the attack back 'ere in early 19 and 93. Had a picture and everything right there in the Funk & Wagnall's. And we seen that it was some feller named Ramzi Yousef who done it. And Yousef was a pal of this feller who done encouraged the last attack.

And then the people up there, you know who we mean, they had them a memo about a month before the attack that said that this feller, they thought, might be gonna attack real soon, like maybe even in a month. But they didn't know where.

Now, they said that. We heard 'em up there before Congress right there, sayin' that very thing.

Wait a minute. We got to think on it all a minute. It's bogglin' our mind.

Yousef done attacked once and Yousef was a friend of the other feller who came back and attacked twice. And they thought the other feller might attack in a month but they didn't know where.

But we thought all along they knew where Yousef attacked.

And then we heard, what got us even more confused than ever, was that also the same feller that was goin' around warnin' ever'one not to vote for anyone but him and his pal because otherwise we'd be attacked, had gone and said to a Senator just in the last month or so somethin' about goin' to Ramzi Yousef. At least, that's what we heard.

But Ramzi Yousef in jail for awhile. Has been for several years now.

Now if the feller was talkin' to Yousef about not votin' for the other fellers, why would he be sayin' to the Senator about goin' to Ramzi Yousef?

You see what has got us confused here? It don't make no sense.

If they already knew that Yousef had attacked and they knew where Yousef had attacked, and then they knew that a friend of Yousef might be about to attack, why didn't they know where a friend of Yousef was about to attack maybe?

Would that not make some sense to Yousef?

So, havin' thought about this awhile, we reckon that we come out 'bout where we started four years ago. We would just like to tell these fellers that, well, maybe they ought to go to Ramzi Yousef.

Dry Hazard

Our Necks Are at Risk To Preserve an Empty Law

Out of the incidental but by no means negligible evils involved in what is quaintly called prohibition is illustrated by what happened on North College Street Thursday evening.

A liquor-laden car, which was being chased by the police, crashed into a car occupied by a family on its way to church. Both machines were pretty well demolished, but by a miracle nobody was seriously hurt.

This sort of thing goes on constantly. And inevitably. For under prohibition men engaged in the transport of liquor are already outside the law. Moreover, that circumstance means that only men of the desperate sort will be found driving the stuff in. And such men obviously do not at all mind risking the necks of innocent people in their attempt to escape.

Every time you drive out on the road in this "dry" section, you run a risk you do not run in territory where the fiction of prohibition has been abandoned in favor of more rational methods of liquor control--the risk of having your life snuffed out by one of the speeding maniacs, or, for that matter, by the pursuing cops. And every time you step out into the streets of Charlotte, you run this same risk.

Ah, but the benefits gained by prohibition more than balance out the mere sacrifice of an occasional innocent life? What they may be somehow escapes us. All the figures indicate that "dry" Charlotte is almost as notable for liquor consumption as for murder.

A Career

A Man Changes His Tune But Loses Just the Same

Maybe it proves nothing but that the people of Arkansas got tired of looking at the same face all the time. Maybe it proves that you can take the Ozarkers for suckers once or even twice but not a third time. Or maybe it proves the New Deal sentiment out in those parts is still strong and that the Roosevelt men don't like men who suddenly turn against the President. We don't know. But the story of Carl Bailey is interesting, anyhow.

He began his career by setting up as a great New Dealer and Humanitarian. His heart bled and bled for the common people, according to his own account of the matter. And the people seemed to believe him, for four years ago they elected him Governor. In the next two years--the length of the term--he kept on talking largely about his vast zeal for the people. But the dispossessed and desperate sharecroppers out that way got little real relief from his administration, and his machine failed to get behind a movement to repeal the poll tax, with the result that it failed.

Nevertheless, he was elected for a second term. And again he kept on being the loud New Dealer and the Humanitarian until he decided to run for a third term. Then, apparently thinking that he perceived that the New Deal was on its way out, he suddenly changed his tune and waged his campaign on the line of denouncing the New Deal and the President as having ruined the country.

Yesterday when the vote for the Democratic nomination was totaled up, Homer Adkins, former internal revenue collector of the state, had 121,057 votes and Mr. Bailey had only 93,640. For one reason or another the voters of Arkansas had decided to retire him to private life. The nation will survive his loss.

Exit Unions

Mr. Bullitt's Definition of Fascism Seems Obscure

Maybe the Petain Government of France isn't Fascist, by Ambassador Bullitt's definition, but it would be interesting to know precisely what that definition is.

The dispatches from Vichy now indicate that labor unions are to be suppressed by a "co-operative" system under which labor and employers will belong to the same guild and the Government will decide all disputes between them. That is the Mussolini system.

Looking at the fact that the Government is headed by Petain and Laval, and backed by Flandin, the munitions fat cat, it might seem that disputes will be automatically decided in favor of the employers. And so, beyond doubt, they will be for awhile. The 72-hour week promises to be fastened around the neck of French labor for good. And wages will in all probability be fixed, as they are fixed in Italy, purely with regard to the minimum which will keep the breath of life in the laborer and his family.

But it would be a mistake to suppose that the scheme will eventually work out into one operated for the benefit of employers. The history of Fascism and Nazism shows plainly that in the end the employer loses his rights as thoroughly as labor. Fritz Thyssen is the classic example. But there are no happy employers in Germany or Italy, even when they haven't rebelled. Their control of their factories, etc., is at best nominal.

In the end, the Fascist system always decides all questions, not for the benefit of employers but for the benefit of the state, which in the last analysis means simply the gang of politicians, civil and military, who control the government.

Italian Game

Mussolini Seeks To Scare Greeks, Confuse British

What the sawdust Caesar of Italy is up to seems to be an effort to confuse the British as much as possible and maybe to find an opening somewhere which will give him a set-up which he will dare attack.

Ten days ago he was supposed to be actively embarked on a campaign against Egypt with the ultimate purpose of taking over the Suez Canal and lands beyond. But apparently he had no real confidence that his bandy-legged soldiers would come to anything but a bigger and better Caporetto in any open and fairly equal fight with the tough and seasoned British troops stationed there. And lately we have heard no more about the Egyptian enterprise. Instead he is concentrated on the conquest of British Somaliland, a relatively unimportant area. And now he is picking on Greece.

His piratical submarines have fired on and sunk two Greek warships, and his airplanes have bombed two others. Signor Gayda, his mouthpiece, charges indeed that the British did the sinking in an attempt to embroil Greece in the war. But Signor Gayda spends most of his time in concocting fiction.

Is that to say, then, that Mussolini is actually trying to pick a war with Greece? Perhaps, but it does not seem likely, though the matter may easily get out of his hands. He itches to grab Greece and Jugoslavia, of course, and above all to lay his hands on the Dardanelles. But Turkey is bound by treaty to fight in defense of Greece, and the Turks are excellent fighting men--particularly in the kind of mountain territory where the campaign would have to be fought.

Far worse from the Italian standpoint is the fact that Russia also wants the Dardanelles and is determined that Italy shall not have the straits. More than that, she has made herself a protector of Jugoslavia and has made offers to Greece. Any overt attack on Greece by Italy might well throw her into war not only with Turkey but with Russia also.

It is not likely the tough boy will risk that. What he is up to now is probably an attempt to scare as much out of Greece as possible--the island of Corfu, say, and an agreement to abandon British protection and close Greek harbors to the British fleet.

At the same time, he may be seeking to draw off a good part of the British naval strength from the patrol along the Libyan Coast, with a view to getting more troops and supplies through and prosecuting the Egyptian campaign if the Nazi attack on England should fail to beat the English to their knees.

If that attack does fail, the Nazi-Fascist combination must somehow break through and seize the oil wells of Mosul if they are to continue the war next year. Rumanian oil wells are quite inadequate to Germany's needs, to say nothing of Italy's--and it is likely that reserves have been pretty largely spent. The conquest of Egypt is the first step toward that goal.

But it is perhaps not really probable that Italy will attempt it until the approach of Winter releases German troops to lead the assault.

 


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