The Charlotte News

Thursday, December 29, 1938

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Yes, far cheaper to supply hope and the R of rehabilitation, rather than the retrograde Fuhrer talk of greater and more stringent, draconian punishment, unto death and beyond, for lesser and lesser crime, yea, for innkeeper violations, only in the end to encourage by it all only the R's of recidivism, retrograde retribution, and ruined lives, to stimulate that fuhrer talk the more, both of convict and new potential victim down the line.

But try to get the Fuhrer to listen.

He and she know best.

ҚҜҖ.

Just like that below. Arrrigins.

So, you figure it out. But do it quick. For Titanic season is coming close at hand again, and sooner than ye think. The wine country is under water as the Russian River o'erflows it banks--e'en to Assyria. Texas is blistering and burning in the heat of winter.

The miners mining the coal die again in a methane explosion.

Though the families of those who died there may not wish to hear it now, those miners in truth, we venture, went to a better place than the black pit in which they daily toiled, probably for generations. The true miracle will come to those with faith, those who understand the light--maybe now, maybe later. Perhaps, it will come as a letter from the other to thou, which falls from a pile of letters serendipitously to the floor. Pick it up and read it, and you may find what we have found. That life goes on, the true miracle, despite all the darkness, all the attempts to end it, on this side of the river. But, perhaps, from that deep black pit we need to emerge to the day and see something else, some other means of power to our shops and taverns and playhouses and houses and cars and trucks and planes, what not. A bituminous story, as another mine of a similar name in Russia beheld a similar fate just at the same time in the same plane, just a few miles away.

Ever thought about the fact that once the Polar ice melts, the entire physical plane of balance of this ovate crust on which we ride will be thrown from its present center, and sooner than the planet itself might normally and naturally adjust, as in gradual changes, advance and recession, in past?

What happens to an object in flight when its woof is warped suddenly? Ever seen a football shot while in flight? How about a watermelon? A bird? A plane?

Hurling further and further and further from the sun, maybe never to return again?

Okay to break the law as long as you admit it, 'ey?

Just a little domestic spying, just a little, just on those whom we secretly say need it--just like ol' King George, 'ey?

Ay, there's the rub.

Meanwhile, a little rub and pat and it's time for the Peach Bowl.

Whatever.

Whether the first scene below that which is below is something other than the product of the function of silver plates being re-used, or composited o'er afterward to make some secondary statement, or truly some figment of the other side captured by a Daguerre Luna silverdunderplate, coated in iodine vapors, tincture of Mercury, fixed in Sol--we couldn't say. The day was too hot, the sun too bright, for us to have seen it clearly, as on the beach. Besides, we were looking away.

But we count 19 soldiers atop that wall, beside that long street.

How many do you count?

Regardless, there it is--three umbrellas, crossed 8x's on the loose, and the birth of a nation, by those who couldn't see, born of a little actor who wanted desperately, but couldn't write worth a damn, for he never looked inside himself, through the mirror, rather only to that far-flung imagined wrong from without, causing him his deep-seated pain.

By the way, truly, that wasn't plywood there, boy, riding the swinging Door of Nixie. They didn't have plywood then, you dope. Just some 2x's nailed to joists.

We know. We saw it.

That was, after all, only 140 years ago. How young do you think we are?

You made a terrible, fatal mistake in your plan there, therefore, truly you did.

Soaked props and a little sun-strained warpage, bending beneath the weight over time, combined in some tap-tap steps atop it all in the noonday sun, and Nature takes its course.

Didn't you know that?

But, oh, nevertheless, what a pity, as you said. Why if it weren't for the little colored boys who normally did your packing for you being reassigned to lay down plywood over those old 12x timbers there, you wouldn't have needed to hire the Rabbit at all, would ye?

None of this would have happened.

Just a little plywood was the blame for it all; truly 'tis so.

Dodging the See Atop the Wall, Next to the Big D Cuppola, Stage Right, From the Left

Children Shade Monkeyman; Overseer Treeman Peers the Notch; Fiery Cross Burns Again

Polar Glass Overlaying Crops; Nixie Dodging; Shears Do the Trick

And a Pillowcase on a bed where he lay wears a cross, a death-head's steer, Right Corner, Left of Center.

Jonah Shoots the Masque with a Gourd Above His Head; But the Lord Nevertheless Spared Ninevah

An Olde Deale, like an Olde Mobile.

And so it is Twelfth Night, 2005, the eve of the Epiphany, as we read The News of merely Fifth Night, 1938. To all those born this day, Happy Birthday. Heck of a thing always to be just on the eve of that Epiphany, huh? Though, perhaps better than the alternative, as they say...

And the results of the Rose Bowl are in finally last night, on the eleventh. Longhorns beat the Trojans 41-38. A real nail-biter it was. We flipped the remote switch just in time to see the last 30 seconds of each half, after napping in between. Thus, we saw the whole game in the space of 60 seconds. Must have been our autronic alarm clock in play. Ah well, congratulations to the Langhorns, the Austinians. We always liked Austinia. Reminds us some of Pulpit Hill whenever we're out that way. And, indeed, the Langhorns' captain these days got some training once upon a time there by the Bell Tower where the Spartans play. So, he has, no doubt, in his bag, a little, at least, of the best of butter at his command.

And last night, we had the strangest dream...

Requiescat in pace.

Relief of Politicians

It's positively astounding, this fraternal feeling successful politicians have for unsuccessful politicians. Neither Elks nor Masons nor Knights of Columbus ever went to such lengths of succoring some brother who had met with adversity.

Take C. B. Deane, the former Register of Deeds in Richmond County, who ran for Congress against W. O. Burgin of Lexington. A nip and tuck contest, it was fought through two primaries, the State Board of Elections, and the courts all the way up to the Supreme Court and down again, finally having to be settled by compulsory arbitration. Burgin was declared the winner, but Deane seems, strangely, all of a sudden, not to care if he wasn't going to be a Congressman.

The reason for his complaisance was disclosed yesterday. He got the promise of a job, which turns out to be something with the Wage & Hour Administration.

In other words, to put it bluntly, here was a politician--and only a potential politician, not an arrived politician, at that--who'd been solaced out of the public treasury. And that he may make an acceptable public servant is beside the point. He was hired solely because by running for office he had been admitted into the fellowship of the politicians.

Speaking of vested interests...

Business Is Business

Senator Pittman undoubtedly told the truth the other day when he reported that the American people don't like the Government of Japan--or at least that we don't like that Government's adventure in China. Our own Government is reported, indeed, to be trying to figure out a plan for retaliation upon Japan for the closing of the Open Door in China. And there have been widespread boycott movements in this country against the purchase of Japanese-made goods.

But how it all works out is admirably demonstrated in two small items in today's Associated Press report. One of them chronicles that the Japanese have negotiated a deal for the purchase of five American freighters "for transportation of (American) military supplies and industrial machinery to China." The other is that the U. S. Chamber of Commerce announces that, after Canada, Japan this year sold the United States more goods than any other country in the world!

Business, in short, is business. Deplore and resent the rape of China and the closing of the Open Door though we do, yet it is profitable to sell Japan "military supplies and industrial machinery"; and so we sell her. And sympathize with boycotts though we may, yet a bargain is still a bargain, and if Jap goods are cheaper, as they often are, why, we buy 'em.

In Terms of Taxes

"The finest schools and colleges, the most intelligent and social-minded judges, and the best trained social workers are of little avail so long as there are home and economic conditions in a community which may lead to delinquency.

"Killing a few Dillingers and Floyds and jailing a few Kelleys and Capones without treating the social problems that produce them will not put an end to crime. Probationary treatment simply means discovering, if possible, the hidden motive or causing factors of delinquency, with the loss of dealing in a humane way with the individual instead of the offense."

Thus Harry Sample, State Probationary Director, in his report on the first fourteen months of the operation of the discretionary probation law in North Carolina.

Maybe you won't like the doctrine. Maybe you believe that men are good or bad according to their unconditioned choice, and that environment has nothing to do with it. Maybe you insist that the criminal must be punished early in order to vindicate the moral law, and that any other approach to the problem is mere "coddling."

All right. But out of the 1,355 persons the State has sought to save by giving them a second chance and as far as possible a better environment--less than eight per cent have broken the terms of their probation. More than that, the 92 per cent who have so far made good, have 1,791 dependents, and have earned $191,285.54, of which $124, 868.09 was expended for actual living expenses for themselves and their families. Mr. Sample says that if they had been sent to prison, the State would have been out the cost of maintaining them, and that, in addition, some social agency, maintained by taxes, would have had to assume the care of most of these dependents.

That is, before you plump too hard for "hell, hanging, and calomel," you might do well to feel your pocketbook.

Wolf! Wolf!

"Prime Minister Chamberlain's " 'peace with honor' seemed more than ever to have achieved neither. An increasing number of Britons ridiculed his appease-the-dictators policy, believed that nothing save abject surrender could satisfy the dictators' ambitions.

"Among many Frenchmen there arose a feeling that Premier Daladier, by a few strokes of the pen at Munich, had turned France into a second-rate power. Aping Mussolini and his gestures and copying triumphant Hitler's shouting complex, the once liberal Daladier at year's end was reduced to using parliamentary tricks to keep his job."

Thus Time sums up the present outlook in nominating Adolf Hitler for the Man of 1938. And goes on:

"During 1938 Dictator Mussolini was only a decidedly junior partner in the firm of Hitler & Mussolini, Inc. His noisy agitation to get Corsica and Tunisia from France was rated as a weak bluff whose immediate objectives were no more than cheaper tolls for Italian ships in the Suez Canal and control of the Djibouti-Addis Ababa Railroad."

But Time, we suspect, overlooks something. It is not only that Daladier is reduced to parliamentary tricks to hold on to power, not only that Mussolini is bluffing for slight gains for himself. It is also, we guess, that Mussolini, at the instructions of Hitler, who has made quite plain that he wants to Daladier kept in power in France and will regard his displacement as a hostile act, is also bluffing to the end of so frightening and arousing Frenchmen that they will not dare give vent to their suspicions of Daladier, will not dare risk elections and parliamentary fights, but, on the theory that a time of danger is no time to change horses, will close ranks solidly behind Daladier. And that Daladier is reduced to playing ball with the scheme, to pretending to think that there is a serious threat to Tunisia and Corsica, a threat of war--that the whole business of sending warships to Djibouti, mobilizing the Foreign Legion on the Libyan border, etc., is a solemn piece of hocus-pocus designed to befool the French people, to the double end of keeping Daladier in power at home and preparing the French mind for the concessions which Daladier has quite probably already assured Mussolini he is willing to make when the time is right.

Proof by Bumble

The evidence of the proposition we have just laid down in the above has been strong enough all along. The dispatch of only two tiny warships, which the Italian Red Sea fleet could sink within 30 minutes, for instance. If M. Daladier had the slightest belief that Mussolini actually contemplates action, such a course would be insane--the opposing of a pistol to machine gun.

But what really lights the whole business up is the AP's dispatch this morning. It reports that "sources close to the Government" of England say that Bumble "personally will ask Premier Mussolini to stop boasting about Italian intervention in the Spanish Civil War." [Italics ours.]

The same Associated Press has reported that the spearhead of Franco's new offensive in Catalonia is 30,000 Italian Blackshirts--i.e., troops of the regular Italian army. But Bumble, you observe, does not even propose to protest that, though under the agreement entered into nearly a year ago, Mussolini gave his solemn promise to remove his troops from Spain.

Bumble is only going to protest Mussolini's loud boasting about the fact that they are there. For that, you see, is for Mussolini to embarrass M. Daladier with one hand while he succors them with the other. And above all it is to embarrass Bumble personally, since it is Bumble who fathered the whole policy which M. Daladier follows--to embarrass his whole scheme of blinding the British and French people to plain facts, and preparing them for another Munich.

 


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