Site Ed. Note: ...And did you know, as we are informed in "Hooey and Its Uses", that "Aryan" is simply a derivative of "Iran"?

Although the editorial below, re-printed on this day's page, was not included in the list offered in the early 1960's to Joseph Morrison by The News as being one which Cash had contributed prior to joining the regular staff in late October, 1937, it hath a familiar ring and likely is one of Cash's pieces, especially since he was contributing several in like mode on the foreign situation during the period. In any event, for completeness, we include it.

(From The News of July 15, 1937)

What apparently lies behind Japan's sudden move in China is the fact that the Nanking Government has been steadily stiffening its resistance to "peaceful penetration" for several years now, and swiftly acting to mould its old loose armies into an efficient modern war machine. The reports indicate, indeed, that the Japanese effort to swallow the dragon is rapidly binding the Chinese people into a united whole, and generating a spirit of strong nationalistic patriotism among them. Tokyo seems to have concluded that the time has come when it must take a strong stand and once and for all nip this thing in the bud, if it is not to be defeated in its aims.

Will its demands, which are tantamount to requiring the Chinese to give up the last vestige of claim to northern China, be met? No one can answer with certainty. But for the first time, it is possible to say that they may not be. Already, in truth, we have seen the spectacle of the Chinese replying with counter-demands, a hitherto unheard-of thing in Sino-Japanese relations. And it may happen tomorrow that China may actually stand up in the world and challenge the little brown man whom it was wont to hold in such abysmal contempt.

Will that mean war? Probably, but not certainly. For war with China would be a very dangerous business for Japan. Her armies are still better than the Chinese, but not nearly so much as they once were. Moreover, there are four hundred million Chinamen, all of whom have learned to hate the Japanese name. Yet more, Japan is poor, and cannot afford a long and indeterminate war, as this one might well be. And finally--if she ever bogged down in the thing, Moscow would be practically certain to avail itself of the opportunity to strike from behind...

[Note: Japan isn't yet really bogged down but the going grows heavier and heavier. And if Russia doesn't yet strike from behind, it is probably because of the fear of Germany in her own rear. --Editors, The News.]

On July 1, the Federal Government began a new fiscal year, its sixth under President Roosevelt. In every one of those six years the Government has spent more than it took in, and it is frankly stated that this year is going to see another whopping deficit rolled up.

The report of the Treasury for the first twelve days of the new fiscal year bears out this prospect. During that brief period the Treasury--

Took In... $122,165,650.97

Paid Out... 237,987,935.57

Hold on everybody! Here we go again!

The National Conference on Street and Highway Safety in Washington this week momentarily laid aside the automobile and took up the bicycle. The bicycle, wailed the speaker, "is here--here, there, and everywhere. It's driving us crazy. Policemen don't like to arrest ten-year-old boys for riding through a red light, and judges don't like to fine them." But...

With our usual forehandedness, we have perceived the gravity of the situation long before the NCSHS got around to taking it up, and we have even gone into it closely enough to have written a model ordinance governing the bicycle in traffic, which we have offered without any charge whatsoever to the City of Charlotte. The City has never actually adopted this ordinance, but to all practical purposes it is in effect. The cops enforce it rigidly and the bicyclists observe it.

This is the model ordinance, in the form of an amendment to the traffic code:

What Jake Newell was getting at in his broadside of yesterday about corruption at the ballot box, was, we surmise confidently, two things: (1) that a Democratic Party which allows or promotes this corruption deserves to be turned out of power, and (2) that the Republicans ought to be turned in.

Insofar as the first goes, everybody who actually believes in decent government and the preservation of the democratic system is bound to agree. It is notorious and common knowledge that the charges he made are generally true. The absentee ballot is a brazen scandal, the registration books are nearly everywhere loaded up with the dead or phoneys, multiple voting and the buying of votes are pretty common. And whenever honest Democrats try to do anything about it, the same old party track defeats them. Moreover, when there is an investigation by the State Board of Elections, it invariably fails--probably, as the Republican member, Mr. Hall, was saying yesterday, not because the board was unwilling to do the decent thing, but because, under the election laws as they are written, it can't. And certainly, any party which refuses to clean out this mess deserves no better than a kick in the pants.

But about Jake's second proposition we still have our doubts. Maybe the Republicans would pursue purer ways, for a while, anyhow. But there is certainly nothing in the record to make us confident of it. Does anyone forget that the whole pattern of Democratic corruption in the South was laid in Reconstruction? That it was precisely the fact that the GOP was defrauding Southern white men of self-government by every corrupt device known which first set up the notion among otherwise decent men that crooked methods of voting are justified against your enemies? That is no excuse for electoral frauds which still endure, but it is a valid explanation.

The Italian pronouncement about the Jews is typical of the pseudo-science which fascism everywhere sets up to bolster its claims. As a matter of fact, all competent ethnologists hold that there is no such thing as an Aryan race. There is only an Aryan group of languages, which are used by peoples of the most diverse ethnic characteristics, and, ironically enough, that group of languages originated not in Europe but in Asia. The word Aryan is merely another form of the word Iran, which is the native name of Persia.

The Italian pseudo-science, however, goes further than any has before attempted and abolishes history. The notion that large bodies of men have entered Italy in historic times is a myth, it says. That is, that the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Visigoths and Ostrogoths, the Huns, the Vandals, the Lombards (giving name to the largest district of Northern Italy), the hosts of the Byzantines, the Gauls, the Alani, the Suevi, the Normans, the Franks, the Saracens, and the armies of the French kings never existed.

The Italians assure us, indeed, that this nonsense is not put forward by way of beginning a persecution of the Jews but merely "to keep the record straight." And since there are only 47,000 Jews in Italy, it may be so. But it is to be remembered that Jew-baiting is an enormously useful red herring for dictators when their plans go agley. And it looks ominously as though Mussolini, having observed Hitler's success in using it to divert attention from the Czechoslovakian embarrassment, were preparing the ground for its use as needed.

"Uncle Sam as a Realty Dealer" was the topic of a speech which a visiting Atlanta realtor made here a day or so ago, and in it he told of the Government's direct or contingent ownership, headed by its $3,000,000 stake in HOLC, of real estate to the enormous value of $9,000,000,000. He only scratched the surface.

The land area of the 48 states is nearly two billion acres. The last report on how much of this the Federal Government owned in fee simple is two years old, but even at that time it was 449,171,995 acres. To get some idea of how much land this is, pray observe that the whole state of North Carolina contains only 31,193,000 acres. In other words, the Government owns as much as fourteen North Carolina's.

National forests, parks and monuments, Indian reservations, military, naval and miscellaneous reservations accounted for most of this acreage. Subsequently, the Government has been extending its park holdings. Resettlement has been buying large tracts for model homesteads and converting submarginal land into forests, the land banks have been foreclosing on farms, FHA has been lending billions on city real estate, a considerable part of which it may someday have to take over. Altogether, it seems safe to assume that of the nearly two billion acres of land in the continental United States, the Government owns a fourth outright and is taking more all the time.

Henry Wallace yesterday hinted that the United States would attempt to regain lost foreign wheat markets even at the cost of government subsidies on exports. He said that during the 1934-36 drought, when this country exported very little wheat because of short supplies, many other wheat producing countries expanded production.

The "1934-36 drought period" your foot! It was that, all right, but it was also the period of Mr. Henry Wallace's AAA and flat subsidies to farmers for not producing wheat. And it was the combination of that policy with the ironic niggardliness of nature which produced the unparalleled shortage and lost us the foreign markets. Well, and on the same page where we find this story we find another where mention is made of the fact that Mr. Wallace has been supplying the farmers of North Dakota with grasshopper poison free of charge. Which reminds us again that Mr. Wallace spends a great deal of money each year fighting the rust and other things which, like the grasshoppers, tend to cut down the wheat supply.

You see how it all works out, don't you? First, you pay the farmers a subsidy not to produce wheat, with the result that they lose the foreign market. Then, while you keep on paying them a subsidy not to produce wheat, you pay them another subsidy to help them get the foreign market back. And in between all that, you subsidize them in all sorts of efforts which inevitably mean the production of more wheat upon which to pay them an export subsidy.

Site Ed. Note: ...Now that Port Hudson's gone, what, oh what, Scarlett, are we gonna do? What, oh what? Next, they'll be trompin' right through heya, headed all the way to the sea. Best girdle ourselves up, pack away the farthingales, and look to tomorra. Look to, m'Lady, look to.