The Charlotte News

Thursday, November 10, 1938

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: We include the below also from the editorial page of this day:

(Ed Wilson Mann, in a Letter to the Editor Dare County Times)

My grandfather's brother Sammy Mann built up close to my grandfather Neddle, and I can well remember Uncle Sammy--how he looked and dressed. He liked to dress as in his young days. He wore a black long tail cutaway coat, fancy vest, high top boots of thin leather all shined up nicely, and a high top silk beaver hat, and his walking cane. He liked to talk and often told of the changes that would come. Such as means of travel and the mode of living. People only thought it funny yet his vision was correct.

Many times he has said that he well remembered when people could walk on a fence rail from Croatan to Roanoke, across the Sound that was down about the marshes, because there were so many small islands near each other, one might go from one island to the other, is the way I understood it.

By Maude Waddell

Robert Rice Reynolds wasted no time in moving to prove that we were right in predicting that, given another chance in the Senate, he'd make North Carolina proud by setting up a record as the greatest tourist ever heard of since Hercules went out into the Milky Way. One day he waited, and then, sure that his traveler's checks would be forthcoming for six years more, took ship--today is boldly blasting the stormy Atlantic bound for England, France, Spain, Italy, Albania, Bulgaria, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, destroyed Czechoslovakia, swaggering Germany, and if he can get in, Mr. Stalin's "points east."

Robert Rice says he is going "to make a survey of economic social and political conditions in Europe." Hah! Ain't he a card?

But, invaluable as Robert's survey will be to the nation and to North Carolina (which is simply burning down to hear his findings), it is still as a marathon tourist that we most greatly value and honor him. Twenty-five thousand miles--that roughly is the Gargantuan itinerary he has cut out for himself, to be accomplished by December 22. Add that to the hundred thousand or so miles piled up in his first term when he was just getting into form--turn your eyes upon the probabilities for the next six years--and, ah, masters, how proud is the Old North State going to be! "First at Bethel, farthest at Gettysburg, last at Appomattox, the biggest towel mill on earth, and the travelingest man that God ever made!"

George Earle was less than sporting when he wired Republican Arthur H. James, who is to succeed him as Governor of Pennsylvania:

But for all that, there is grim truth in his words. Time was when a Governor of Pennsylvania, like the Governor of any other American state, could count on happy years in office, with nothing much to do but look wise, walk sedately, dine well and with decent manners, review parades, and receive the admiring plaudits of the crowd. But all that passed with the roaring 1920s. Being Governor of any state at all is a tough assignment these days, and being Governor of Pennsylvania--ah, masters, what a headache that is!

In Pennsylvania are the greatest steel, coal, oil and railroad barons of the country, great textile interests, among the chief banking interests of the land; John Lewis, the nucleus of his CIO, the United Mine Workers, mighty CIO steel and textile unions; great AFL unions, including those of the railroads and oilfields, prehensile Republican politicians and contractors demanding reserved seats at the public trough: prehensile Democratic politicians and contractors, boiling mad at having been shoved out of reserved seats at the public trough; a vast WPA and relief army; grasping Pennsylvania Dutch farmers out to get their'n. And the task of trying to reconcile all these, doing anything on earth that will not bring the great part of the pack howling down upon one's ears, is enough to scare the daylights out of a Disraeli, which Earle certainly wasn't and James probably isn't.

Site Ed. Note: North Carolina, too, had its Mooney of the time, jailed labor organizer Fred Beal, convicted in the Gastonia Luray Textile Mill strike melee with police of murdering police chief Aderholdt. (See, e.g., "Jacob's Voice", March 24, 1938, "Superfluous", June 9, 1939, "Strange Doctrine", June 15, 1939, "Beal Case", July 14, 1940.)

Seldom in American political history has an administration managed to avoid severe losses in the off-year election of its second term. It was generally conceded that in Tuesday's Congressional election the Democrats were going to suffer a setback. The only question was, how much of a setback?

The present House of Representatives (435 seats) contains 328 Democrats, 88 Republicans, plus a few scattered he Progressives, Farmer-Laborites and vacancies. In the next House, with eight contests still in doubt, the Democrats will have 256 members, Republicans 166.

In the present Senate (96 members) there are but fifteen Republicans, as against 75 Democrats and a few hybrids. With two elections still in doubt (which look as if they might be divided), the next Senate will contain 23 Republicans, one or two of whom are of the Progressive persuasion, and 67 Democrats, ten or twelve of whom are anti-Administration.

Well, the Republicans made progress, to be sure. But they didn't make enough to brag about or to call the tune of legislation. The Democrats still have an ample majority in the House and a majority, though less ample, in the Senate. Unless many synthetic liberal Democrats are emboldened to divide the White House, it looks like two more years of the pattern of the last six.

Jew-baiting that only serves as a convenient red herring for Hitler and an outlet for German brutality, also is an escape mechanism for Adolf and his people. Before they made the mistake of attempting to run over France in 1914, the Germans had convinced themselves by paper calculations and mass hysteria that they were by destiny invincible in battle. And ever since Adolf's rise, they have been again trying to make that conviction fit with the facts.

Tuesday at Munich Adolf spent 75 minutes proving to his own satisfaction and that of his shrieking audience that Germany was never actually defeated but collapsed only because the "enemy within"--the Jews numbering one per cent of the population --betrayed her. Then he added that the collapse would have been averted "if destiny had put me in the place I am now holding."

That is a very soothing little myth for Adolf and his people. But it is only a myth and an exceedingly dangerous one. The Jews had nothing to do with Germany's collapse. She collapsed because she was beaten to her knees, and had nothing to do but surrender. She was beaten by guns and bayonets and her soldiers were on the run. And far more was she beaten, as Adolf himself once candidly confessed because of the "pitiless" thrust of the American economic machine, geared to war purposes. Neither killing all the Jews nor elevating Adolf could have saved her. On the contrary, the employment of Adolf's methods would certainly have insured that, instead of the mild treatment she got, she would have been overrun and totally destroyed, as old Clemenceau wanted. And as for Adolf himself, he would be rotting in his grave. The nations hungered for a gallows victim then. They hesitated at the Kaiser, who after all was hedged about with the divinity of kings. But they would not have hesitated at Adolf.