The Charlotte News

Monday, January 30, 1939

SIX EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note:

Thus, too, do hand in hand, in different ways, go the nursery rhymes of "Ring Around Rosy" and "Passage By The Tracks".

Incidentally, for a look at a blueprint and photograph and article on the house touted as cure-for-poverty dwelling, out of Fort Wayne, Indiana, all 450 square feet of it at ten bucks a month rent, see the full version of this day's editorial page, as well a Valentine Day's poem to hang on the wall of that home by the sea and the light of the moon, by the light of the moon by the sea, since there is no February 14 offering on the microfilm.

Now, when some of these days from somers is that boat a-comin' by agin?

The genius of bi-partisan government was never more clearly shown than in the lower house of Congress last week. It all started with the reading by Hon. Halleck, a Republican from Indiana, of a magazine piece by Hon. Barton of New York, likewise a Republican. Hon. Halleck thought Hon. Barton's piece worthy of inclusion in that vast catch-all, the appendix to the Congressional Record, and he so moved. "Withoutobjectionitissoordered," the Speaker rattled off. Up sprang Hon. Buck, Democrat of California. "I object," he cried, capriciously.

Then the fun began in earnest. Every time a Democrat would ask permission to expand and revise his remarks in the Congressional Record, a Republican would object. And vice-versa. And every objection meant so much space saved in the Record--at $60 a page. And the business of the Federal Government rocked along somehow, and constituents back home never knew what they were missing, and Mr. Morgenthau saved a few dollars for that day.

We tell you, mates, the two-party system has its points.

It is difficult to see what plausible ground Robert Rice Reynolds may have for ranting against the sale of American planes to France, save his fondness for the Nazi understrappers who were so flattering to him in the summer. France is not at war, and, unlike Japan, Germany, and Italy, she is not engaged in undeclared wars of conquest and the wanton murder of the women and babies of a neighboring state. Hence, there is no reason under our law or under international law why she shouldn't buy planes here. England has long been doing it. And Germany did it until a few months ago. Nor is there anything to prevent her doing it again if the manufacturers find they can fill her orders--despite the fact that it is generally believed that some of the planes she bought went to help Franco.

But our Government is very cordial toward France about it? Granted. But, certainly, there is sense in the argument that it is desirable to get our idle airplane factories going at full speed in preparation for our own air program. And France is to pay cash on the nail for everything she buys. But ah, we're blinking the fact that the Government is also plainly actuated by sympathy for a democratic nation, in danger from dictators? Not at all. We confess it. But what is the sense of pretending that that isn't the feeling of the nation? And what ground has anybody to complain so long as we show that sympathy only by allowing France to do what it has a perfect right to do in the first place, and what immediately serves our own interest? Must we also give up our rights to placate the Nazis and a Fascists?

Boss Hague might as well go on and give up. He got off badly enough in Judge William Clark's United States District Court. But he appealed and the Circuit Court proceeded to give him a heavier dose. Said that body in its decision:

"The function of the police at public meetings is not to prevent speakers from presenting their views, but to preserve order while they speak. Otherwise freedom of speech and assembly is destroyed.

"The cries of impending riot raised by the appellants (Hague & Co.) are not candid. In other words, Mayor Hague and his associates, reversing the usual procedure, troubled waters in order to fish in them."

After which good-humored exposure the Hague ought to know that the jig is up. But not he. He'll take it to the Supreme Court now, he announces. Which being so, we put aside all our rules and for once predict a decision in all confidence.

When the Hague gets through, he'll hear from the greatest tribunal exactly what he has heard from the lesser ones: that the Constitution of the United States still runs in Jersey City, and that the denial to Congress of the power to suppress free speech and free assembly inevitably denies it to all lesser authorities, including the Hague himself.

Our guess is that old Mr. Bumble will get what he asked for, and that in his speech today A. Hitler will come out again for "appeasement." The world is really not quite fair to Adolf. It continually accuses him of wanting to make war. But the Frankfurter Zeitung, once famous as a liberal sheet, knows better than that. Says it:

There you have it. Adolf is always ready for "appeasement." First, he makes a demand--for Czechoslovakia, for Austria, for the Ukraine, for colonies--whatever he happens to want next. Then he gets greatly upset by the threat to peace created by the fact that he hasn't got what he demands. And in the end he rushes in and gratifies Mr. Bumble, Daladier & Co. by saving the peace through having them to give him exactly what he asked for in the first place. So there is little doubt that he will make highly "constructive" gestures for "appeasement" today--probably by proposing that Mussolini be given Spain, Tunisia, and the mastery of the Mediterranean, and that he himself be given the Ukraine and the old colonies.

Probably the last thing Adolf intends is to make war, for if he made one the chances are that he'd lose it in the end and that Germany would be turned into a desert. He doesn't want that. He only wants to get everything he covets under threat of making a war.

The Administration's new scheme to make a gift of 4,000,000 bales of cotton, now impounded as security for loans, to Southern farmers, will no doubt meet with the warm approval of the farmers and tend to make them like it (the Administration) better than they have been doing for sometime now. But it turns the whole cotton program of the last six years into one of the most wonderful enterprises ever heard of since the owl and the pussycat went to sea in their beautiful pea green boat.

One of the chief arguments for this gift is that it will restore foreign trade. And it certainly needs restoring. For exports of cotton this year are off 45 percent as against last year. And the explanation given for that is that the Administrations loan policy has raised American cotton prices above the general world level, with the result that our growers can't compete.

But now, lookit: First the Administration makes fat loans for the precise purpose of raising cotton prices above the general world level. Then when it has raised them, it turns around and makes a gift of a loan by handing the cotton back--all to the purpose of again reducing prices to the general world level! And to complete the picture, it plans to attach a condition to the gift whereunder the farmers will be required to cut down their 1939 acreage in proportion to the size of the gift, so that next year there won't be quite so much surplus cotton and the price can be jacked up above general world levels again!

The young man's pants were long and loose and droopy. His shirt was dirty, as was his face under his short unbrushed low hair. He looked about six.

But his blue eyes were bright with interest and a whimsical Irish wistfulness as he stood at the corner where College Street ends against the railroad tracks. Below, four huge freight engines panted and smoked. One of them spouted into action, snaking a long train of empty flats around a curve toward a factory that lay beyond. A brakeman stood on top of a second engine waving his arms to direct the snaking.

"I think," said the young man with decision. "I think I'll go across there and climb up on the train and go away off somers!"

"Eh?" said the man who was standing there, too. "Eh? No, I don't think I'd do that just yet if I were you. Some of these days if you like. And maybe you can even get on a ship and go really far away."

"A ship? What's a ship?"

"A boat on the sea."

"Oh, a boat on the sea!"

He pondered that.

"Look," he said inconsequentially, "what I got for Christmas," and exhibited a scooter with the paint nearly gone.

A small girl with dirty legs and the curiously aged face of the children of the very poor went past, skipping.

"Wait for me, Sadie," he called after her, taking up the scooter.

"Well," he said, manfully, "well, I guess I won't go over there yit. But some o' these days," his eyes flashed deep blue with laughter, "a boat on the sea!"

"Some of these days," said the man after him, "a boat on the sea! You bet!"