The Charlotte News

Friday, August 9, 1940

FOUR EDITORIALS

 

Site Ed. Note: "Bull Ring" suggests that the sort of nonsense being bantered about today in August, 2004 in the current presidential election campaign with regard to Senator Kerry's record of combat in Vietnam is nothing new in American politics. It is indeed "unforgivable" to raise such unseemly notions as attacking a man's combat record--and it should not be forgotten come November 2.

Let them who can without question say they have faced bullets in combat quibble over who got the deepest, foulest, and most bravely attained wound or who fought with the greatest and truest grit in any given incident, if such a debate is at all cathartic to them.

But for the larger part of the voting mass, the question is greatly begged, for most have never faced combat or bullets. Few seem to have even considered what it really would be like to spend months at a time under threat of imminent death or maiming. Those who lived in this country through the height of the Cold War, especially the precipiced days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, can at least imagine the scene perhaps better than those who have never consciously hidden from themselves for a time such threat of immediate annihilation until it no longer becomes conscious. Absent such an imminent threat, the threat of terrorism being too remote and random to count much more than the fear of being struck by lightning, most today struggle day to day to earn their bread and gain some semblance of something usually elusive, happiness. Bullets and Bouncing Betties are of little concern.

And, besides the disconnect to average daily life today, of course, the issue thus posed presently is not really what Mr. Kerry did in combat on the Song Bai Hap but rather what he said in 1971 in a Senate hearing before the Foreign Relations Committee. We would suggest to veterans who still find that problematic that they might conscientiously consider just how many of us might have died in Vietnam had it not been for the courageous acts and words of veterans like Mr. Kerry who forced the Congress and the nation to listen to their grievances, grievances born not merely of shallow phrases amid peace symbols but of actual combat experience. While the debate thus joined should not be viewed in a vacuum or it neglected that many things had already preceded this demonstration in Washington in 1971, including Kent State and Jackson State and the suspension of classes at many colleges and universities in the late spring of 1970 to protest the war and the killing of the students protesting the bombing of Cambodia, the demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and anti-war demonstrations throughout the country between 1967 and 1971, the fact that veterans of the war would demonstrate in large numbers, throw away their medals, and then testify of atrocities was notably symbolic at the time and grabbed the attention of the nation--especially that of an older generation steeped in memories, perhaps by then imperfect memories, of a seemingly more united, more honorable time during World War II--in a way that previous demonstrations had not.

No longer could the older generation turn a deaf ear and refer, without some palpable awe, to the younger war protestors as merely spoiled brats or cowards or "effete snobs" or "bearded weirdos". This was different--this was to be taken seriously. They were the men who had been there and had fought and lived to tell the tale now in Washington. And one of their number who had volunteered to go and returned a decorated hero was now speaking for them, had been asked by a member of Congress to speak for them, had been asked by his fellows to speak for them.

Perhaps, for analogy, one can reflect on the episode portrayed in The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara, in which Joseph Bucklin of the 2nd Maine Regiment of 120 mutineers said to Joshua Chamberlain, "Colonel, we got grievances. The men elected me to talk for 'em."

Grievances. It seems to us there is a part of the Constitution which says, "Congress shall make no law ...abridging ...the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." It is among the principal rights for which men fought and died to establish this country and in several wars since to maintain it. If men who fought bravely for their country in war could not exercise the right without vilification in 1971, then who among us could enjoy a free exercise of that right? And if some quibble that the Constitution only forbids the government from making a law limiting the free exercise of the right, and that free exercise of it does not mean one can do so without expecting public censure, now and forever more, then we counter: what good is a right freely exercised if to do it means forever the mark of Cain, the traitor, the quisling--or if what is said is only the easy thing, the palatable thing, the thing for which all applaud and issue praise?

As Joseph Bucklin said, "I'm tired, Colonel. You know what I mean? I'm tired... We ain't gonna win this war. We can't win no how because of these lame-brained bastards from West Point, these goddamned gentlemen, these officers..." [Emphasis in original.]

In more eloquent language, it was a similar message which Mr. Kerry had for Congress in 1971 on behalf of his fellow veterans against the war. And the policy message was correct in terms of criticism of continuation of the war so that the slow process of Vietnamization of the ground operations could take place, on the notion that the process of slowly forming a complete army from the sepoys would ultimately carry the day and win the war against the North and Viet Cong. United States involvement did end finally with the Paris Peace Accords of January, 1973, and its "honorable peace" as Mr. Nixon proclaimed it--a cease-fire intended to do what the Geneva Accords of 1954 failed to do after the defeat by the North of the French, to unite the country in peace. But Vietnamization during Nixon's first four years in office, after he promised a "secret plan" to end the war during the 1968 campaign, had cost over 20,000 American lives and left another 82,000 wounded.

Although the number of casualties had been steadily declining since the high watermark of the war in 1968, the numbers remained grossly disproportionate to the willingness of the people to continue to support the war, to continue to send their sons to the killing floor, especially with no end in sight. Four More Years was the chant.

Further complicating the politics and divisiveness of the time was that the Nixon Administration appeared to be edging cynically to an end to our involvement only just in time for the 1972 election. Even in mid-1971, the cry was heard from shills for the Administration, "Just another year and a half and we'll be out." And, indeed, it turned out that way. Even if the Accords were delayed for three months, the end of military call-up had occurred in the fall before the election.

And underlying all of this time was a growing concern over the undercutting of civil liberties in the country, the covert infiltration of groups against the war, both peaceful and militant, including Mr. Kerry's group, by the FBI and the CIA during its domestic spying years, all at the behest of the Administration, all designed to root out "Communists" and "agitators" and "thugs, you know, real thugs--maybe use the Teamsters on 'em"--our citizens, most young and in college.

The Huston Plan. The break-in at Brookings. The Plumbers. The infiltrators. The Nixon "short hairs", the "sons of Tricky Dicky". One could usually tell who they were by their fruits, not by their hair. Some still had the Wildroot; some didn't. Some still do.

We remember visiting a campaign stop once in 1972 where Mr. Nixon spoke. Appealingly, he spoke in melodious nimiety, his art. As with most places he visited in those days, though this stop was in a Southern state he would carry overwhelmingly, there were hecklers, this time on the sound tower near where he spoke. How they had managed to get up there, we couldn't tell you. Maybe the organizers believed it was kind of like Woodstock in little and that Mr. Nixon was the star act. Some of them had long hair to be sure; some didn't. Most of the crowd on the tarmac down below had short hair; at least one didn't. Mr. Nixon, never able to resist the opportunity by then it seemed, abruptly stopped his speech about this and about that, and stated something on the order: "Now, I want you to look over here. Look at these long-haired hoodlums over here heckling us. These bums need to go out and get a job. Well, now, look over here at this crowd here, all of you. These are the real Americans..." The cheers of the crowd drowned out most of the rest, but somehow one felt honored to be among the real Americans, regardless of the length of hair one sported or whether shaving during the previous several months had been abandoned, or that it was silent continual protest to a war. It was nice to be in the neatly parsed division, divided at last from those scruffy old bums over there on the tower resembling Woodstock. Division. We were the real Americans. Our President had so informed us. We were the Lost Colony Found--at last.

The Vietnamization policy, as Mr. Kerry predicted in 1971, was one not only costing continued loss of life but one which ultimately was doomed to fail. The cease-fire was short-lived. On April 30, 1975, 27 months after the U.S. ended its official involvement, and four months after North Vietnamese forces invaded the South, Saigon fell and the war ended with Vietnam united under the communist government at Hanoi--just as it well might have been nineteen years earlier had President Diem and the Eisenhower Administration allowed the scheduled elections under the original Geneva Accords.

Some two million Vietnamese civilians died in the South and another two million in the North. There were 224,000 South Vietnamese troops killed and 1,170,000 wounded. About 1.1 million Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers died in combat between 1954 and 1975.

Of the 58,193 U.S. military personnel who officially died in Vietnam, (which includes ten thousand non-combat deaths), 35,481, or 60%, did not vote for their commander-in-chief or their representatives in Congress. They were under the voting age of 21 at the time. Another 9,705 were just 21.

Of the dead, 50,312 or 86% were enlisted men, below the rank of officer; 17,672 or 30% had been drafted, (plus an undetermined number of would-be draftees who volunteered to avoid draft into a branch selected for them).

The grimly increasing year by year death toll directly correlated with the rising tide of dissent in the United States over the war: From 1956 through 1962, 77; 1963, 118; 1964, 206, (Gulf of Tonkin incidents reported August 2 and 4, the second of which never occurred, the first being an attack on the U.S.S. Maddox); 1965, 1,863; 1966, 6,143, 29,992 wounded; 1967, 11,155, 56,013 wounded, (in November, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara resigns the cabinet and Clark Clifford is appointed in his stead); 1968, 16,592 (the largest death toll in one year during the war; by 800,000 votes, Nixon defeats Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, also promising an honorable peace in Vietnam, but hampered by Johnson's war record, after Johnson drops out of the race in March to concentrate on the Paris Peace Talks and ending the war, and after anti-war candidate Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles after winning the California Democratic Primary on June 5), 87,388 wounded; 1969, 11,616, 55,390 wounded; 1970, 6,081, 24,835 wounded; 1971, 2,357, 18,109 wounded; 1972, 641, 3,936 wounded.

And of course the statistics for the wounded only tally the physical wounds.

Of the many veterans of that war with whom we have had contact over the years, we remember many and many stories from them. Many stand out, such as the one where a soldier went to sleep in the jungle while on patrol and woke up to find his buddy's face no longer existed but blended somewhere with the mud. In 1972, he told us that we could not leave that place without victory because to do so meant that his buddy died in vain. He didn't, of course. Other stories persist, too. But one in particular we always remember. His name was James. James had grievances. He had gone to war as a boy, a normal boy, carefree, humble, sober, said those who knew him. He fought for a year and came home. James had changed. He drank; he took drugs. He tried to work but he couldn't hold a job. His arm had been blown up pretty badly at one point though you couldn't tell it now. It had healed. But he had a steel plate in it and it gave him problems. He went to the V.A. about it but they merely gave him some more drugs and sent him on his way. The years went by and by 1977 or so, James was living in the Park, a few blocks from where he grew up. He heard voices. They were after him constantly. They taunted him. The arm still hurt. He couldn't work. He drank until he was never sober. He went to the V.A. when the voices let him get there. But it did no good. The pain was still there, even after the drugs. So were the voices. Only the alcohol brought him laughter, nonsensical though it was to a sober listener. James had grown up. After a time, we lost contact with James. That was many years ago. He stopped dropping in on us unexpectedly, always without an appointment, always without sobriety--sometimes to talk, sometimes just to have a place to sleep it off for an hour or two, away from the voices. We hope he is well, but we fear he isn't.

Lyndon Johnson died January 22, 1973, five days after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords, five days before their effective date, in many ways, the last American death from Vietnam.

To dig it up again in a divisive rather than healing context, as is presently being done in this presidential campaign by the veterans attacking Mr. Kerry, is to desecrate the graves of all who died, those who died fighting the war and those who died trying to end it, those who still die slowly with their wounds, physical and psychological. It is dishonorable service to the country which threatens to overshadow that which they provided so honorably so long ago. We suggest healing, not more division.

Division fails to take into account the question of what could have been had not groups like Mr. Kerry's and individual citizens throughout the land had the forthrightness to speak out against the war and eventually force the issue to the Administration and Congress to end the war. Would it have otherwise dragged on for one, two, five more years? To what end? How many more would have died? Did the result in Vietnam strengthen the cause of Communism in the world? Did the domino theory, the chief reason for waging it, prove valid? Was Mr. Kerry not completely correct in 1971? Did he and his fellow veterans against the war not help to save many untold numbers of lives by aiding an earlier end to the war than might have occurred without them? Would many more Jameses have returned home to the Park?

Some of the latter day criticism of the anti-war movement among some veterans perhaps comes from a psychological complex, a certain kind of guilt carried about participation in the war--a guilt that is not one properly possessed. In the law of this country and in the law of nations there is always recognized the concept of self-defense and defense of others. In war, that concept is carried to its obvious extremes and it is why we must at all cost avoid war when possible, not seek it out. But when one is fired upon, one is expected to fire back in time of war. When your fellows are being shot down and maimed, you are going to shoot and maim to avenge it. It is a natural human reaction to an abnormal set of circumstances. There is little choice otherwise but to be killed. Guilt should have no place in such a theater of the absurd. But persistent guilt, rationally held or not, ultimately leads to denying culpability to avoid insanity, and thus sometimes to intense feelings of resentment toward anyone who is perceived as causing the feelings of culpability. For the sensitive to feel culpability is to feel anger, at the circumstance which put them there in the jungle, or at the circumstance which caused the feeling of culpability over their time in the jungle, or at themselves. Either way, it is not properly possessed. It is guilt which belongs in the cleansing waters of time. The water which washed the beaches of Vietnam in the sixties, the water which flowed through the Songs, the water which floated the paddies, is elsewhere now. Just as the water of Dunkerque in 1940, of that at the beachhead at Normandy in 1944.

In 1971, the object was to end the war, not to cause resentment or culpability. Mr. Kerry did not name names in his quest to present a harsh truth to the Congress and the country, as some did in the McCarthy hearings of two decades earlier for a different cause. He was not there to compromise reputations. He was seeking an end to the fighting, a righteous cause in any time, in any theater. The atrocities he described second-hand may have been real; they may have been exaggerated. No one knows but those who were there amid the chaos which was Vietnam. The torching of peasant villages "to save them", as was the rationale offered by the brass, to root out the guerillas of the Viet Cong and their supply depots, was quite real. Men were sent into the jungle with orders and they carried out their missions. The Viet Cong and the children and peasant women were often one and the same. But the questions posed by Mr. Kerry in 1971 were how long must it go on and why must it continue. To what end?

There is a poem by a fellow who was, early on in the thing, a chief reason we began coming to these shoals we now call the United States. In 1587, while Kit Marlowe was busy composing Tamburlaine, the Great and Dr. Faustus and his fellow tavern attendee in Eastcheap, Will, was toying with the idea of becoming a playwright, (perhaps, as divined by authority from no lesser than Geoffrey Crayon, with ale being drawn for both by the lights of a fellow named M'Kash), as Francis Bacon sat in Parliament and contemplated his thoughts on Truth which would become his essays at the turn of the century, this well-favored fellow recruited a band of 117 soldiers and civilians who then sailed the wide ocean and, upon landfall, navigated their way through a rocky, dangerous inlet to an inhospitable, hot, humid, mosquito-ridden island called Roanoke, where some initial scant settlement had been undertaken two years earlier. With the mission desperate for supplies, a contingent returned to England, leaving the colonists behind. With England's navy at war with the Spanish Armada, no vessel could be spared for return until 1590. By then, all that was left of the colonists was a writing on a tree, "Croatoan", probably referring to a nearby tribe of Native Americans of the same name, now called Lumbee. Nothing was ever found of the settlers left behind. Some believe that they were massacred by the natives or died of starvation or both. Others find evidence in names and faces and the language of surviving members of the tribe which suggest that the settlers, starving, were taken in by the natives and nurtured, ultimately becoming part of the tribe. But regardless of what happened, what those returning to the island found, this hauntingly inauspicious, empty scene with carved letters on a tree, was the formative beginnings of our country. The resistance to settlement, the mystery and thrill of insouciance in a land inhabited by "savages", the harsh conditions, the myth, the tales of blunderbuss heroism in the attempt to tame the unconquerable wild, made the search for a new life in a new land the more appealing to those seeking adventure and escape from the conventions and class strata of Europe. We began.

The poem to which we refer is called, "The Lie". It goes:

Go, Soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless arrant!
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant:
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.

Say to the court it glows
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the church it shows
What's good, and doth no good:
If court and church reply,
Then give them both the lie.

Tell potentates they live
Acting by others' action,
Not loved unless they give,
Not strong but by a faction.
If potentates reply,
Give potentates the lie.

Tell men of high condition
That manage the estate,
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate:
And if they make reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell them that brave it most,
They beg for more by spending,
Who, in their greatest cost,
Seek nothing but commending:
And if they make reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell zeal it wants devotion;
Tell love it is but lust;
Tell time it is but motion;
Tell flesh it is but dust:
And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lie.

Tell age it daily wasteth;
Tell honor how it alters;
Tell beauty how she blasteth;
Tell favor how she falters:
And as they shall reply,
Give every one the lie.

Tell wit how much it wrangles
In tickle points of niceness;
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in over-wiseness:
And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.

Tell physic of her boldness;
Tell skill it is pretension;
Tell charity of coldness;
Tell law it is contention:
And as they do reply,
So give them still the lie.

Tell fortune of her blindness;
Tell nature of decay;
Tell friendship of unkindness;
Tell justice of delay:
And if they will reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming;
Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming:
If arts and school reply,
Give arts and school the lie.

Tell faith it fled the city;
Tell how the country erreth;
Tell manhood shakes off pity;
Tell virtue least preferreth:
And if they do reply,
Spare not to give the lie.

So when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing,--
Although to give the lie
Deserves no less than stabbing,--
Stab at thee, he that will,
No stab the soul can kill.

--Sir Walter Raleigh

It is always easy to engage in after the fact finger-pointing and name-calling; it is a harder thing, but by far more salutary, to sort through the facts, all of the facts, in the context of the time in which the facts came to be, and realize thereby some truth, even if part of it or most of it is an ugly chapter in the country's history, even if part of it was a lie, or at least a legend or a myth. That is the way we learn; that is the way we continually set ourselves free. Not by division. The myth, the lie, the unadorned truth all eventually unite to form some fashion of our history, for all have equal validity in creating us. It is who we are as a people.

As Bacon said: "It was great blasphemy, when the devil said, I will ascend and be like the Highest; but it is greater blasphemy, to personate God, and bring him in saying, I will descend, and be like the prince of darkness; and what is it better, to make the cause of religion to descend, to the cruel and execrable actions of murthering princes, butchery of people, and subversion of states and governments? Surely this is to bring down the Holy Ghost, instead of the likeness of a dove, in the shape of a vulture or raven; and set, out of the bark of a Christian church, a flag of a bark of pirates, and assassins."

Heroes, wethinks, are always only human, but humanity at its best and doing its best to promote humanity, and, as much as possible, to unify in a spirit of mutual cooperation, under the worst of circumstances.

But--maybe, after all is said and done, Raleigh was just a "stupid get". When we read "An Intruder", we wonder. But then we stop and realize that the author of the editorial was also Southern, and not alone in his passion for truth. Merrily we march toward, ever closer toward, the mysteriously elusive, yet ever present, United States of America. The journey is long and arduous, but worth it.

Bull Ring

Senators Lose Sense of Manliness in This Row

The bitter gutter-level quarrel between Sherman Minton, Josh Lee & Co. and Rush Holt & Co. on the floor of the Senate should give all sober men in the country pause. For it indicates just how thoroughly hysteria, hate, and disunity are taking command of the scene.

The most preposterous charges are hurled all over the place. Yesterday we threw away a column by General Hugh Johnson, in which he broadly intimated that General Pershing is in his dotage, doesn't know what he is saying, and is being made a tool by a gang of sinister men behind the President who are plotting to take us into an entirely unnecessary war in order to get their idol re-elected again.

What is worse, men are believing and acting on such infernal nonsense and stubbornly refusing to yield an iota of their hate or to look a fact in the face.

On the other hand, the men who believe with the President are showing quite as bad a spirit. That they should feel impatience with an attitude which gravely endangers the nation is natural--we feel it ourselves. Nevertheless, such devices as attacking Rush Holt with the war record of his older brother--for whom he is nowise responsible--are unforgivable. As it is unforgivable, in the absence of proof, to pillory Holt before the nation as a Fifth Columnist, which is to say a traitor.

Blackguardism is no new thing in the United States Senate. But they used to do these things with a certain ultimate restraint. Old John Randolph of Roanoke called Henry Clay a combination of Black George and Blifil, a union of blackleg and sniveling Puritan hypocrite. And went on to observe that Mr. Clay shone with the putrescent brilliance of a rotten mackerel in the moonlight.1 For that they fought a duel. But in the showdown, Randolph, having been fired at, fired into the air and offered Clay his hand.

1 For more on mackerel and other fish, see "Hamming a Quotation", March 23, 1938.

So, what else is new, my little pussycat?

And there's something happening here; but you don't, what it is, do you, Mr. Gittes?

Its putrescence extends to high, high Heaven. All over the road; technicolor.

Query, was Highway 19, that for which control meant control of the Highlands and the Ho Chi Minh trail, Highway 61 turned upside down and backwards? Or is it the one which runs from Oneco to just beneath the Clavus on the Big Toe? Both? Only the Lay of the Lake may know.

Say the secret wo-ed and win a hundred dollas: "Alas! how sadly is the scene changed since the roaring days of Falstaff and old Stow! The madcap roisterer has given place to the plodding tradesman; the clattering of pots and the sound of 'harpe and sawtrie,' to the din of carts and the accurst dinging of the dustman's bell; and no song is heard, save, haply, the strain of some syren from Billingsgate, chanting the eulogy of deceased mackerel."

 

Straws in Wind

State Turns To Taking Army Needs Seriously

This section of the country at least seems to be getting around to conviction that we need a large army in a hurry and to do something about it.

Mayor Douglas's plan for a special recruiting drive next Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, with new recruits being flown spectacularly to Fort Bragg, is an excellent way of driving home the need for men and speed, and is at the same time an indication of the danger in which we stand from Hitler.

And significant also is the fact that President Frank Graham announces at the University of North Carolina that the national defense program will be greatly expanded there. A new department of aeronautical engineering is to be established and plans look forward to the development of a large airfield for the training of fliers. And in addition the physical education program, which has been optional to all but freshman students, is to be extended to all students who are able to take it.

The last, indeed, is quite indicative of the change in thinking which is going on. For a number of years after the last war, physical education was required of students for at least three years in most institutions. But as time went on the students grumbled more and more against it, and for years it has been enforced on freshmen at most. The return of the notion that it is desirable for everybody emphasizes the rising realization that the ultimate strength of a nation must rest on strong and active bodies for its citizens.

 

An Intruder

His Ugly Head Is Far From Welcome Here

As if it were not enough to have more murders in proportion to population than any other town in the world, as if it were not enough that we have an underworld which is increasingly powerful and dangerous, now Charlotte is to have a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.

Mr. Joe S. Robinson, who is commissioned to organize the outfit here, hastens to assure the world that the Klan is a much maligned organization. "We believe," he says, "in the American Flag and the Lord Jesus Christ. Can there be any higher ideals?"

But a long while ago it was written, "by their fruits you shall know them."

And it has been pointed out many times that if ever fascism comes to America it will come in the guise of an organization professing allegiance to "the American Flag and the Lord Jesus Christ." That is exactly what the Christian Fronters, the Coughlinites, etc., profess.

But the plain record of the Ku Klux Klan shows that what it means by belief "in the American Flag and the Lord Jesus Christ" is:

The inculcation of racial hatred.

The inculcation of religious bigotry and intolerance.

The inculcation of the notion in the heads of stupid and vicious men that they have a right to take the law into their hands and force people to conform to their notions by violence.

The glorification of brutal sadism under the guise of moral and religious zeal.

In short, the Ku Klux Klan represents the antithesis of everything the American Flag and the Christian religion properly mean.

We can see but one cause for comfort. The outfit has so often been convicted of crime, has so often been shown to be a cynical racket designed to the end of lining the pockets of prehensile men, that it is almost inconceivable that it will get anywhere.

 

Verboten

But Adolf Can't Really Down Old Adam for Good

For a thousand years, Germany has been the home of beer. Its brews have been celebrated around the world. And whenever anybody has thought of Germany as a pleasant land, the beer cellars and halls have been figured largely in the reckoning.

But now beer is out in Germany. The burghers who have been accustomed to having their many glasses every evening must now content themselves with a revolting mass of "sugar, syrup, carbonated water and beer coloring," much like our own horrifying near-beer of the prohibition era. Adolf Hitler himself has decreed it.

So regimentation proceeds. The amiable side of the German character which comes out over beer is to be excised and the race is to be made wholly in the image of the dour and brutal ideal of Der Fuehrer. Men must no longer laugh.

And yet in the end it is probably a hollow victory. Der Fuehrer has won over the Demon Alcohol, as over the Continent. The German, however unlikely it seems at the moment, is ultimately human, and the old Adam will rise in him one of these days in protest that the world Hitler makes is intolerable. Adolf may make some admirers among the more rabid American prohibitionists, but its dollars to donuts that in the end the bootleggers will do him down just as they did Prohibition in the United States.

 


Framed Edition
[Return to Links-Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News--Framed Edition]
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.