Site Ed. Note: "The Polish Sucker" presents a position, set forth at least once before, on March 20 in "Poland Plays Wolf", which would definitely change with the realization of that which Cash accurately predicts, a prediction accurate by the simple expedient of accepting that Mein Kampf set out exactly what Hitler intended to do. After all, as even Hitler knew, one could not say less than what was expressed and expect Nazis to understand it.

Here a couple of samples from the Struggler, the first being a reminiscence from his youth in Vienna under the rule of the Hapsburg throne and that most deadly menace to Germanism in Austria, as he saw it, Archduke Ferdinand, and his Czech wife of a "morganatic marriage":

One must always watch out, you see, for those worldwide Jew dictates from Lucifer--such as, Thou shalt not kill.

If it sounds from these excerpts as if Hitler chose his friends only so long as they were good to eliminate his enemies, thus to become then his new enemy to enable him to attract to himself new friends with whom to eliminate the old ones, and thus..., well, you pretty well have read his book quite thoroughly.

Unless the public liability of dime taxicabs be guaranteed in a satisfactory manner, the City Council is undeniably within its rights in revoking permission for them to operate. Even the taxi-men themselves, we take it, will admit as much, and admit further that in the past their injured passengers have not always been able to collect damages awarded, especially if those damages amounted to anything.

Lacking such responsibility, the case against the dime taxis is open and shut. There persists within us, however, a suspicion that the oft-repeated, but never proved, charge that the taxi drivers are procurers of trade for prostitutes and speakeasies, may have something to do with the Council's attitude, which by the way is unanimously opposed to letting them stay in business.

If that is the way of it, the Council should go slowly. It is not yet the fashion in this country to condemn whole sources of livelihood because somebody says that they have unsavory connections. There are laws against procuring, just as there are traffic laws, and if they are violated, there are punishments prescribed. But men accused of crimes have the right to insist on trial and to defend themselves against specific indictments. Rumor and "they say" have no standing in court, and ought not to have in the Council chamber.

Governor Philip La Follette of Wisconsin describes the philosophy of his new National Progressive Party as being, "the right of a free people to work, and by their work to add to the wealth of the country." It sounds a little like Henry Ford or even Dr. Hoover, but, by the record, we shall have to assume, of course, that it means something very different from what they would mean. If the La Follette leopard has not turned into a kangaroo, the new party is going to be far out to the left in its program.

What is most interesting about this is its effect in more clearly shaping up the political picture in our time. With La Follette on the left Mr. Roosevelt will stand for the center, though he is in reality a great deal left of the center as we used to think of it. And on the right? Well, to name a man at random, let's say it will be represented by such a man as Lewis Douglas. Mr. Douglas does not at all represent the right as we have known it in the past, certainly. For a business man, he is a liberal. In Herbert Hoover's time, indeed, he would almost have been labeled a radical. Nevertheless, it is our guess that he is as far right as anybody can be and still have any chance of surviving in the new American politics. The whole center of gravity has shifted tremendously towards the left, and such rightists as Herbert Hoover are now almost as anachronistic as archaeopteryx.

Taxation according to ability to pay is one of the dogmas of the American system, yet in this year's tax bill, the tax on liquor has been raised from $2.00 a gallon to $2.25 a gallon. The price or quality of liquor has nothing to do with it. Eighteen-year-old Bourbon retailing at $5.50 a quart and raw sugarhead selling at $1.00 a quart pay the same tax to the Government. That tax works out to a little more than 55¢ a quart.

As a result, the overalled fellow who goes by the liquor store Saturday night and plunks down his buck for a quart of Crippled Creek is paying a 55 per cent Federal tax, whereas the man in the big house on the hill who sends his chauffeur by to pick up a case of Old Smoothie is paying a Federal tax of only 10 per cent. One is getting eleven parts tax and only nine parts whisky; the other, two parts tax and eighteen parts whisky.

Somehow, it doesn't seem fair, any more than it seems intelligent, since the dollar-a-quart birds are likely to know where they can get moonshine at $2.00 a gallon, tax-free.

Site Ec. Note: For an example of one of FDR's popular radio fireside chats, read the text of the April 14, 1938 installment, "On Economic Conditions".

At first glance, the report of the American Newspaper Publishers Association's radio committee might look like a far-fetched bunch of sour grapes. Citing the President's use of radio for his fireside chats as a precedent which, in future years, might encourage dictatorship, the report declares:

We would blush with shame for our brothers of the fourth estate, whose mortal lock on Presidential utterances radio has tampered with, were it not for one fact that many people are likely to overlook. That is, that radio stations and broadcasting companies are licensed by the Federal Government, and that these licenses are revocable at will. Obviously, the President of the United States has every right to use the radio if he chooses, and for a President like Mr. Roosevelt, with his superb voice and diction, it is a natural affinity. But just as obviously, the Federal Government possesses the ultimate authority to refuse the same medium to the wrong crowd. It is well known that the Federal Communications Commission has not hesitated to play politics in the granting of station licenses. It follows that there is some danger, however remote, of the commission's exerting indirect political censorship over what shall go on the air.

A free radio is almost as essential to democracy as a free press and free speech. In fact, without a free radio, freedom of speech would be abridged.

Thus one of Hitler's chief stooges in the Government of Germany.

The fellow did not elaborate, but what he meant is all too plain. Probably the most contemptible and at the same time the most idiotic role in Europe is being played by the Polish Government. For it is unquestionably playing hand in glove with Hitler in the hope of grabbing some measly portion of Czechoslovakia for itself.

That is contemptible because for a hundred and fifty years Poland held its head up as the world's chief example of a nationality unjustly oppressed and destroyed by its more powerful and hoggish neighbors. Half the poetry of Europe in the Nineteenth Century is devoted to tears for poor, bleeding, mistreated Poland. But, now having had its independence handed back to it on a platter, it yearns and pants to play the hog on its own account.

And the policy is idiotic for the very good reason that it amounts to Poland's sticking her head into the mouth of the lion which once bit it off before and which quite clearly has promised to bite it off again. It was Germany, precisely, which organized the various partitions in Poland, and Adolf Hitler, in Mein Kampf, leaves no doubt that, once he has absorbed Czechoslovakia, he means to absorb Poland next.

When it happens, the world will know better than to shed any more tears for Poland.

Site Ed. Note: Cash often cited Professor Charles A. Beard, even though a noted isolationist, for his views on foreign affairs and the military. Cash respected Beard even as he disagreed with most of his position. (See on the book-page, replete with a few of our mistranscriptions, (pardon us, Mr. Cash), which we shall leave uncorrected for reasons of our own, "Beard Urges Isolation for U.S.", October 15, 1939)

It is fair to judge a man's motives by the rule he applies to others. And since Senator La Follette boldly charges that the big naval program is a scheme of President Roosevelt's to divert attention from internal troubles, we may very well remember that the Senator hails from Wisconsin, a state heavily populated with Germans (or rather, with German-Americans, with the power to vote for or against a Senator), many thousands of whom are strong partisans of Hitlerism and active opponents of American naval expansion as a potential threat to the dream of Hitlerism.

That is not to say, however, that there may not be a good deal in the doctrine which the Senator takes from Dr. Charles A. Beard, that there is "a tendency for armament to increase as business activity declines, increasing the possibility of war, but diverting attention from distressing economic conditions at home." Most authorities on war agree that this is so. And there is Germany--and Italy--and, to a considerable extent, England to lend the theory support. But this is a very different thing from saying that the President is cynically drumming up the naval program for the primary purpose of diverting attention from the recession.

The plain fact is that when business conditions are bad in the world, the possibility of war is inevitably increased. Probably the Germans themselves have turned to arming for wars of conquest, not so much because Hitler schemes to divert attention from internal ruin, but because of the very drive of that ruin itself. But their arming for such conquest, like the arming of the Japs and the Italians, increases the danger of war for everybody, including ourselves. And that being the case, it seems the merest common sense that we should make sure that our navy is in condition to deal with whatever foe or foes it may have to face. And naval officers have unanimously testified that it is not in such condition now.

Mr. Roosevelt is probably glad enough to have foreign affairs absorb as much attention as they do at present. But his naval program is satisfactorily explained on the basis of his concern for the national safety, without any resort to hypotheses of sinister calculation.