The Charlotte News

Wednesday, March 29, 1939

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Whether it was the malagueña they danced in the streets of Madrid or the tarantella, we don't know. But likely it was the latter.

And The Rains Came

For weeks the country about Gainesville, Ocala, Winter Garden, Lakeland and points in Central Florida had lain parched without a drop from the skies. Came spinster Lillie Steate, 67, with the glad news that she could make it rain. All she had to do, she said, was to sit near a large body of water. She sat. But still it did not rain, for days. Miss Lillie sat on--and sat. Then one day there was a fleecy little cloud in the burning sky. And the next there was rain--torrents and deluges of rain. Curiously, however, it did not rain where Miss Lillie sat. "I didn't," she explained, "say it would rain exactly where I'm sitting." Maybe she didn't want to get wet.

Anyhow a little discrepancy of that kind couldn't stop a Dunedin, Fla., real estate company which sent her ten bucks in thankfulness. Maybe, it said, maybe it was so that it was bound to rain some time, anyhow, still--. But such skepticism, we confidently guess, will not be general. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is still the law of logic for most of the denizens of this great free land, as for those of all others. And hereafter, we bet you, Miss Lillie is going to make an awful lot of jack just a-sittin' by the great waters and a-waitin' and a-sittin' and a-waitin' for her magic to work, while the Floridians confidently scan the blazing blue for the coming clouds.

A Conquered People Dance

Much As The Germans Danced When They Knew They Had Lost The War

There have been few stories in the prints more pathetic than that of the Madrid population dancing in the streets and raising the Fascist salute as the armies of the renegade Spaniard, Franco, marched in as conqueror. For nearly three years, this man had invested the city with Italian and Moorish troops, hurled shells into it, continually bombed it. Hundreds of thousands of Spaniards rot in their shallow graves because of his deed in selling out to Mussolini and Hitler when what was intended originally as a simple coup to recover the old privileges of the army officers had failed. In all that town, as in all Spain, there were precious few families which had not had one or more members struck down by his hand. And among that throng in the streets were thousands who had seen women and babies murdered by his Italian and German bombers in the sky.

But they danced and shouted and sang and raised the Fascist salute. Because they were glad that he had won? Incredible! Less than ten per cent of the population of the place ever favored him. And as his murders have mounted that proportion must continually have dwindled. Moreover, he has turned Spain into a wasteland. Madrid itself, like a hundred others, stands a ruined city. The industrial establishments of all the country are destroyed. The cost of the war has climbed to 40 billions--which is thought the U. S. had spent 400 billions! A foreign tyranny is established on the soil of Spain. The foreign soldier will walk the streets as master. Staggering taxes, conscripted labor, brutal coercion--these are the appointed lot of Spaniards now. And it is not at all certain that they have gained peace, for if European war comes Spain will be dragged in along with Italy and Germany. Spaniards will have the glorious privilege of dying by the wholesale to confirm the yoke around their own necks!

Yet they danced. Because they were afraid not to, yes. But far more, no doubt, because of relief from the terror of sudden death from the sky or storming shells. Because of that and the joyous prospect of having food from Franco's relief kitchens. Precarious enough for both, certainly. Many of them stand to be butchered in cold blood. All of them will pay most dearly for their bread--if, indeed, bread can be counted on for long in this broken land. But for the time being--there was release. And so they danced and shouted and sang and raised the Fascist salute, quite as though they were glad in their hearts that the Fascist puppet had won. So, precisely, the Germans danced and shouted and sang when they knew they had lost the World War.

NO Law, It Says

So The House Passes An Anti-Free Speech Bill

The great drive to unload the blame for all our ills on a handful of aliens among us has moved into high gear. And the most dangerous threat to the American tradition at this moment wears neither Red shirts nor Brown. It sits under the great dome of the Capitol at Washington. And it calls itself the House of Representatives in the Congress of the United States.

In the press of foreign news it went largely unnoticed. But last week that House unanimously passed a bill providing for the summary deportation of any alien who advocates change in the form of the American Government. Not change by violence, mind you, but any change at all. The House actually rejected an amendment which would have confined the case to those who advocated fundamental changes. As the matter stands now, unless the Senate turns the bill down, any alien who suggests that we might do better to adopt a British system, or who so much as says that he thinks a six-year term for the President would be an improvement over four-year terms, will have to be shipped away, if the law is enforced, regardless of his sincerity or desirability as a potential citizen.

And this is no more than a measure to abolish, in the name of Americanism, the foundation stone of all true Americanism: the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights. For therein it is written that the Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. No law, mind you. Neither aliens nor any other group is exempted. And, write this down in your hat: if Congress can make a law violating the Bill of Rights as against aliens, it can make one violating it as against citizens. If it can make a law denying the freedom of speech to aliens, it can make laws denying not only the freedom of speech but any and all the rest of the liberties contained in the whole Bill of Rights as against any and all the rest of us.

Save Those Cheers

Before raising a cheer and calling in a great victory for economy, the little reader should look again into the House's rejection yesterday of a cool quarter-billion in farm relief. In the first place, the proposed appropriation was over and above the President's recommendations, which means that total expenditures for the impending fiscal year will still crack nine billions. There is not much hope for economy at that starting price.

In the second place, it was turned down by the House with only thirteen votes to spare, and the Senate, more than once this session, has reversed the other chamber's attempts at economy and, in the end, had its way. In the third and principal place, the appropriation lost not because of any wholehearted sentiment for economy but because the House liberal bloc, self-styled and aptly-styled, cannot strike up a trade of its voting strength for farm relief in return for the farm bloc's promise to go down the line for an extra $150,000,000 of unemployment relief.

Yesterday's victory for economy, in fine, was so precarious and so much a by-result of maneuvering to get a better whack at the Treasury that, altogether, it is hardly to be taken as the sign of a trend.

The Senate Backslides

The Senate at Raleigh, it turns out, couldn't resist the temptation after all. Having adopted the minority report of its Election Laws Committee and okayed the bill abolishing markers at the polls, it suddenly reversed itself to the extent of slipping in an amendment to allow "election officials" to mark the ballots.

Senator Folger of Surry, who fathered the amendment, explained apologetically that election officials are "men of good character, men of honesty, men of integrity." And so far as their private capacity goes, they may be generally so. But when it comes to their status as election officials--everyone knows that they are first and foremost party men, and that most of them are steeped in the tradition, born in Reconstruction, that the end of victory for the Democratic Party or the ruling clique in the Democratic Party justifies any means.

What this amendment really amounts to is an open invitation to the election officials to jump into active politics with both feet. "If you have the election officials with you, you won't need any professional markers," said Senator Lumpkin. "I'll elect any man in this room Pope under the terms of this amendment," said Senator Long of Halifax. But it was left to Senator Curtis from Buncombe, where they don't mince words, to sum it up. "It stinks to Heaven," he said. Inelegant, no doubt, but accurate.

 


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