The Charlotte News

Wednesday, July 5, 1939

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Cam Shipp, editor of the book-page, weighs in on the Library dispute, declares: Turn it up to 451° .

To be or not to be...

'Twas and is anyway.

Let's Be Logical And Burn Schools As Well As Books

Dear Sir:

Since the vote of our good folk was a plain "Nay" when we got our chance to have a say on books at the polls, and since our will is law in the land of the free, it seems to me that it would be both sound and wise now that we have made up our minds, to go the whole hog. We do not want books, and we have said so with no shade or hint of doubt. We know that boys and girls learn strange new things from books, not at all in line with what the old folks taught, and we think that what was good for the old folks is by all odds good sound thought for our own boys and girls. It does not make sense for them to ask for more than we had.

Since this is so, and since that is how we have cast our vote, let's first start a huge fire, for all men to see, and burn up all those books. It would be fun for the home-folks I know. And then we can take the next step.

We must see that our boys and girls do not learn how to read books. Think of the hard cash and tax we can save there! In all good sense, since we have had our say and made it plain, let us be wise and quick now: let us put to the torch all roofs where books are kept, and all fools who try to tax us out of house and home to pay for these bad things we have said we do not want or need. Why, in the name of all that we now stand for, teach boys and girls to read and write when as I have said, we do not want them to read and write?

While there is yet time before they start back in the Fall, let us show that we can act in good faith. It is not fair, when all is said and done, to teach the young to ask for things which we are dead set they must not have.

To the torch, men, with all books!

Tar and flame for the birch-men

Charlotte.

If That Story Is True This May Be FR's Strategy

Hard on the story that Mrs. Roosevelt has said in private, "My husband will not run again under any circumstances," comes another to the effect that the President has about decided to patch up his differences with Bearcat Garner and let the latter have the nomination, so as to present a united party front to the Republicans in 1940. The first story is conceivably true, for Lady Eleanor, usually close-mouthed enough, has sometimes chosen to speak out about the White House in "private," and the evidence gathers that the President faces a bitter and uncertain battle if he does decide to seek nomination and election again. But that second story!

If there's anything reasonably certain about the future, it is that the nomination of Garner will make the election of the Republican a foregone conclusion. Maybe he could beat Hoover, but that is exceedingly doubtful. To be sure, if the President has his eyes on a return to power in 1944, that would be right down his alley. But the Texas Bearcat, in the process, would be made over into a plain old alley cat.

Youth Organizations, All Out To Save Us From Ourselves

With all the furious aplomb of John L. Lewis walking out of an AFL convention, representatives of fourteen of the 135 organizations participating in the American Youth Congress yesterday hit the aisles. Trouble was that the congress would specifically resolve against Communism along with Fascism and Nazism, as it had been challenged to compromise instead on a pledge to uphold "the democratic way" and "to oppose all undemocratic tendencies and all forms of dictatorship."

This would seem to cover Communism as we have known it in our times and seen it practised by the bloody Russkys. But we sometimes wonder, old fogey-like, if this country's own special plague isn't over-organization. Note ye that the American Youth Congress--O Youth!--is made up of 135 participating organizations, every last one of them, in all probability dedicated to saving the world or at the least their own particular sector of it. And it has been our painful experience that where you have any great number of persons organized for saving purposes the result is inevitably bound to be something awful, like Prohibition or the New Deal. And no fun and all.

France Swaps Property That Didn't Belong to Her

France, after negotiating for more than two months, has finally succeeded in wangling a mutual Mediterranean defense treaty with Turkey. But for it she paid the price of handing over to Turkey the Sanjak of Alexandretta, since the World War a part of the mandate of Syria. Which is to say--well, we said it on April 9 in this fashion:

Well, and did France first secure that consent before handing over the territory? Not at all. The League didn't, as a matter of fact, even attempt to demand that it do so. But the Syrians did, bitterly. For the Sanjak contains the celebrated pass called the Syrian Gates, and represents to Syria exactly what the Sudetenland did to the Czechs. Moreover, the Syrians did not trust France's new promises to guarantee the rest of their country, for they remember that she gave that same promise to the Czechs when the Sudetenland was handed over. But their protest was calmly ignored.

That's what in international diplomacy is called power politics. But elsewhere it goes by a good deal harder name. Dick Turpin was hanged for practicing it on a smaller scale.

The Hull Proposal Wasn't That--But Neither Is Any Other Bill

When the isolationists tell you that the Neutrality Bill as originally drawn and sponsored by Mr. Hull--the bill that would have lifted the arms embargo against belligerents--did not contemplate true neutrality, they are telling you what is the candid and obvious truth. Legally, it would be neutrality, since in theory Germany and Italy could buy here as well as England and France. But the fact of the British Navy makes that only a theory. And what we would be doing would be letting England and France use our factories to balance the odds against dictator powers--quite legally, again; for, under international law, we certainly have the right to do just that without becoming a belligerent. But a neutral, in the full sense of one who takes absolutely no part on either side, we wouldn't be. Furthermore, Mr. Hull and his cohorts probably know it. They are using the name of neutrality merely as a cover for a policy which contemplates aiding our friends as against our enemies.

Do they then want to hurry us into European war? They certainly do not. On the contrary, they clearly believe that this is the very best way to keep us out. They believe that the United States will never sit quietly and see Hitler defeat England and France and become the master of Europe. They believe also that the longer the prospect of war lasts, the more chance there is of our landing squarely in the middle of it. And so they are proceeding on the theory of "here's a gun, let's you and him fight, and we'll see that you get plenty of bullets"--on the theory, that is, that, given full access to our resources, England and France will dispose of the little dictator quickly enough to avoid stepping in. And it sounds a little cynical, when so stated, but it ties in with the national will to stay out of war. And we think more realistically and correctly that the view of the isolationists, who proceed on the highly dubious theory that we would stay out of the struggle even though it meant victory for Hitler and the prospect of eventually ourselves having a war with him over Latin-America.

But the isolationists are quite right when they say that what is proposed is not neutrality. The only thing about that is, nobody ever is wholly neutral in any conflict--could not be. The arms embargo, for instance, was anything else but neutrality in the case of the Spanish War. In very great measure, it served the Nazi-Fascist cause and enabled Franco to win. And if the Senate retains the arms embargo passed by the House, it promises to be quite as unneutral on the other side as Mr. Hull's proposal was unneutral on the English-French side--to aid our enemies about as much as his bill would have aided our friends.

Which Is Not Quite Borne Out By The Facts

In the Charlotte News story about the local cops and the pedestrian yesterday appeared the following:

Which is fine, as stated. The pedestrian has no more right to disobey traffic laws than the automobile driver. And such practices as jay-walking and ignoring traffic lights are to be broken up by arresting the offenders and clapping stiff fines on them. They account, these practices, for a very large portion of the traffic accidents. But there is one great gaping hole in the statement nonetheless. We mean the calm assumption that "motorists are made to obey" traffic laws. In Charlotte they certainly are not. Yesterday afternoon we saw a Negro driver whip around the corner upon two pedestrians who were crossing with the green light, though they were already nearly halfway across--on the assumption, apparently that the sounding of his horn gave him right of way. They escaped whole by jumping desperately backward. There was a cop standing by, but he didn't even look up.

Whipping around corners at dangerous speeds, speeding across intersections, racing to beat the red light, ignoring the white line and blocking passage so pedestrians have to pass out into the stream of traffic, slipping the clutch so that the car which is supposed to be stopped continually inches forward, roaring up to intersections at high speed and slapping on breaks just in time to lurch to a stop--all these and many other practices are almost the rule rather than the exception here. And everyone of them endangers the safety of the pedestrian no matter how careful he is to obey the law. Careless pedestrians ought to be punished, yes--when the town begins to punish careless motorists.