The Charlotte News

Saturday, April 22, 1939

FOUR EDITORIALS

Then, lo and behold, one day, in the midst of his voyeurism, he sees this curious thing across the way. His neighbor, a swarthy Mediterranean type, has an argument with his young housekeeper, shoving ensues, the housekeeper turns up missing, there's freshly dug earth in the garden, and then the nosy neighbor and the even nosier dog, and...

What's that?

No, no, I don't think anything like this has ever been done before. It's called "Flash in the Window". Great title, don't you think?

It Guarantees Prosperity; It Menaces Our Stability

To hear the House debate it, the bill (passed yesterday and sent to the Senate) to extend the President's extraordinary monetary powers contains, according to the point of view, the main hope of our prosperity and the chief threat to our stability. Merely by passing this bill, its protagonists swore, the welfare of the farmers would be assured as certainly as the sinister financiers would be restrained from getting their hooks on the swag once more. On the other hand, those opposed insisted that the President wants to retain his authority for reasons that bode no good to the country. One man came close to charging that the White House has deliberately prolonged the state of emergency in order to have the fun of playing fireman-save-my-child.

With such irreconcilable opinions colliding in mid-air, we find it nice for once to be partly on the fence. The bill has three sections: to extend the President's authority to devalue the dollar a mite further; to continue the stabilization fund; and to authorize the purchase of domestic silver at prices above its market worth.

The last, of course, is an outright subsidy, a sop to the silver-mining states, and so may be dismissed as simply political and therefore not susceptible to a sensible settlement. And as for the other two, the President, while wanting to retain his power to devalue the dollar, promises that he won't use it; and nobody seriously contends that the stabilization fund should be abandoned at this crucial point in world affairs. So, you see, the theory of the debate was really out of proportion to the substance of it.

A Man With A Case Wants Us To Believe Too Much

There seems to be only one hole in the contentions of Representative Reed, Republican of New York, relative to the "merit system" as applied to postmasters.

He instances the case of a postmaster of Chautaugua in his state. That worthy, it appears, was in office when the "merit system" law went into effect July 1, 1936. Twice he failed to pass civil service examinations with a grade high enough to place among the first three applicants--a grade which, under the terms of the law, he must make in order to be eligible to hold the job. Nevertheless, he was continued in office, and still a third examination was ordered, for the obvious purpose of trying once more somehow to get him over the jumps. Then, fortunately, one of the applicants had become too old to be eligible, and so in the third examination old Try-and-Try Again got by--and there he sits today, quite legally postmaster.

On the basis of that and other cases, Representative Reed says that the Democrats are obviously making a monkey out of the law--that civil service is only a new and polite false face put on the ancient game of politics--that postmasterships still remain jobs which are given to the boys who work hard at garnering votes. And not a word of that are we inclined to dispute.

But the hole remains--a great gaping hole which leaves us feeling sadly that there is no balm in Representative Reed, after all. It is this: that he plainly wants us to believe that the Democrats are the only people who would act like that, and if we just returned the Republicans to power, everything would be pure again.

She'll Probably Sign Up With Russia Soon

The announced desire of Britain to make no positive agreement with Russia to revive the Triple Entente until after Hitler's Reichstag speech next Friday is probably based in part on the hope that the mere threat will have as salutary effect as the fact. But that seems exceedingly doubtful.

But the delay is probably more due to the necessity of persuading Poland to agree to the alliance than to anything else. Her reluctance is understandable enough. Two-thirds of her territory belonged to Russia at the beginning of the last war, and, save in the abortive Treaty of Brest Litovsk (under which it was handed over to Germany) Russia has never fully waived her claim to it. Moreover, Poland has been one of the favorite fields for Red propaganda, and there is great danger that a Red army in Poland would be used as a vehicle for reviving and intensifying that propaganda, which has been ruthlessly suppressed by Beck & Co.

Nevertheless, it's not likely that she will refuse the alliance in the end. She is not in quite the desperate position of Rumania--which has had to agree to the alliance which she likes as little as Poland, for the obvious reason that Hitler could gobble her up at will if she didn't. Poland is strong enough to fight her own battles for a while. But her only chance of final victory would depend on the power of Britain and France to win in the West. And to win in the West, the Russian legions will be imperatively needed on the Eastern front. For Poland by herself is not strong enough to occupy a sufficiently large portion of the German Army, or to keep Hitler's forces from overrunning the Balkans and seizing the supplies needed to enable him to go on fighting indefinitely.

She may have to be given guarantees by Russia, backed by guarantees from Britain and France, before she agrees. But in the outcome, Poland is virtually certain to agree. For her choice ultimately is simply one between the risk of the Russian danger and the certainty of the German danger.

How One Who Had Committed The Perfect Crime Fastened The Noose Around His Own Neck

Mr. Aurelio Marco Tarquinio was too smart for himself. He could not sit quietly and wait for doom to pass him, unnoticing. The aspect of her terrible face fascinated, hypnotized him. Until Thursday Mr. Tarquinio was a little-known Baltimore resident who had once run a tavern in that city and who more lately had been working for the Bethlehem Steel Company out at Sparrow's Point. Now Mr. Tarquinio is en route to the hot seat.

Mr. Tarquinio killed his housekeeper, a former Georgia girl. Killed her in the night, when nobody knew about it save a little dog next door which howled all that night and the next. Having killed her, Mr. Tarquinio took her body to the cellar and dismembered it. That night he buried part of it in an old abandoned cesspool in the corner of his little back garden. Next day he told his neighbors that she had "run away again." The neighbors saw no reason to doubt it because she had run away before. And Mr. Tarquinio seemed on his way to becoming the man who had just committed the perfect crime. The woman had an ex-husband in Georgia but she wrote to him only occasionally, and when he got a letter back marked with the notation that she had moved, he thought nothing of it. A piece of flotsam. Her disappearance would have excited no comment or inquiry.

But Mr. Tarquinio could not leave well enough alone. The night of the murder he had done a curious thing. Instead of burying all the body, he had kept out a hand, a part of a leg, and the torso. And now he made his first mistake: instead of proceeding at length to bury these also, he took them out and threw them down a sewer. Next day he spaded his garden over and over again. The neighbors wondered a little at his excessive zeal, but after all he was a man who greatly loved flowers.

Then a boy of eight lost a rubber ball in the sewer, went down to get it, came back crying that there was a hand down there--and Baltimore's police and newspapers had a new and thrilling murder mystery. Still Mr. Tarquinio was safe enough. All sorts of missing women were being reported, but apparently it did not even occur to Mr. Tarquinio's neighbors that the victim could possibly be the housekeeper. And yet, Mr. Tarquinio was restless. Maybe, maybe, maybe--somehow. So he decided to beat the danger to the draw and himself report that the woman was missing. He did. The police went out looking for a man he said had gone away with her--couldn't find him, and decided to look over Mr. Tarquinio's premises--found a pair of bloody pants, observed the spaded garden, began to dig in it.

Mr. Tarquinio had gone out and hunted doom to earth for himself.