The Charlotte News

Sunday, September 18, 1938

SEVEN EDITORIALS

Distinctly, he said to the person who opened the door, "Good mawnin', how is you all?" It was early, but apparently he had started for the city hours before, this polite colored farmer, with his load of late Summer vegetables. So he rang the bell without hesitation, and brightly he spoke his "you all" to the singular person who answered it.

But he didn't, in spite of the conclusion a Yankee grammarian might have jumped to, mean to include in his friendly inquiry only the one he addressed. Not a bit of it. He was asking after the whole household--the health of the children, the disposition of the dog, the state of mind of the grown folks--in short, he was presenting his compliments to the entire establishment. And the establishment understood; but it's no wonder this manner of speech missiles the Yankees. Sometimes it is hard to explain--to a-Yankee.

There landed in New York this week, after a junket to Europe, a man whom the Senate Campaign Expenditures Committee ought to have been glad to see. Certainly the committee has business with him, for this man was Joseph F. Guffey, Senator from Pennsylvania, over whose signature a letter soliciting Democratic campaign contributions went out to 270,000 WPA workers in Pennsylvania.

This was a flagrant violation of the law against a Federal employee's soliciting, or receiving, political contributions from other Federal employees. The only point at issue is, did Senator Guffey authorize his signature? If he did, and we have heard no denial of it, the committee has an open and shut case against him. It won't be the first time he has been caught off base.

The Senate Campaign Expenditures Committee has shown some determination to get to the bottom of electoral malpractices. For example, it found that a little post-mistress in Maryland had violated the law by working for the nomination of the New Deal's Dave Lewis against Tydings, and very properly turned over the evidence to the Department of Justice. The principle of equal treatment for all, of high or low political degree, makes it imperative that the committee give Senator Guffey a dose of the same medicine if the diagnosis calls for it.

Frank Graham, president of the Greater University of North Carolina, signed this report and of course has been familiar for many years with most of the statistics in it. But it is an odd circumstance that the South, which can least afford it, is the center of the whole country for bargains in education, and that the three branches of the University under President Graham 's directions are educating something like two and a half Yankees for every ten Down Homers, and doing it at less than actual cost.

The Yankee institutions are not nearly so considerate. In spite of being richer, Eastern colleges charge much higher fees to their own and out-of-state students. The result is that a considerable Southward migration of college students takes place about this time every year, pointed evidence of which you may see by consulting the posters of football squads at Carolina and State. Only the sons and daughters of well-to-do Southerners go East for their finishing and they pay for it handsomely.

In itself, this exchange is desirable. The energetic Yankee set a fast-pace at Southern schools, and Southerners in the East are generally the cream of our crop. But North Carolina taxpayers catch it at budget time, when continually increasing enrollments and expanding college plants make larger appropriations necessary. And the balance of trade between the South and the East is further adversely affected, all because our Yankee friends charge what the traffic will bear. Down South we give away education that we can ill afford for our own people.

Monday at Nurnberg Lord Hitler sobbed and moaned aloud for the "right of self-determination" for the Sudeten Germans. And Thursday his sidekick in Rome went him one better by roaring for "the right of self-determination," not only for the Sudetens but also for the Hungarians, Slovaks, and Poles now dwelling in Czechoslovakia. More than that, the argument actually fetched some of the credulous over the world, in spite of the obvious fact that Hitler has no regard for the rights of the "minority" which is the Jew, and that Lord Mussolini is the worst oppressor of German "minorities" in the world today, and that Hitler doesn't give two cents about the Sudetens but only wants the territory they inhabit, for military reasons.

But Friday, Hitler seems himself to have stripped away the veil of pretense by advising Mr. Bumble of 10 Downing Street that he not only wanted to annex the Sudetens, but also to deprive both the majority and the various minorities in Czechoslovakia of the "right of self-determination" by taking over the direction of their foreign policy and economy.

It is one of the gaudiest reductio ad absurdums in history, and starkly reveals for the whole world to see the true extent of the Nazi-Fascist front's truthfulness and good faith. But it will surprise no one but the poorly informed or the willfully blind. For over and over again the Nazi and Fascist leaders have not only demonstrated but openly boasted that, after the threat of force, the chief weapon with which they mean to achieve their purposes is the hoax. And old Mr. Bumble fell for it.

A question on many lips during this frightful suspense over events in Europe has been, "What do the German people, especially fathers and mothers who remember the World War, think of sending their boys and young men back into the trenches?"

A sensible AP man in Germany, anticipating this unuttered wonder, set forth to find out. You may have missed his words:

Site Ed. Note: See the note accompanying August 25, 1939 for a sketch of the Japanese invasion of China in 1931 and its antecedents.