The Charlotte News

Tuesday, August 30, 1938

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: "The Harlan Deal" succinctly sums what may happen in a community which decides to secede from the country or the state in which it is situated, as a company town is sometimes wont to do, the over eager go-getters getting behind the company, and forgetting their high school civics lessons as just that, the stuff of high school dreamers, set away with the football jersey and homecoming crowns into the attic trunk of lost memories--

This is real life, mister, where all that stuff about the Bill of Rights is just so much gobbledygook, pronounced by politicians at election time. Bread and money, that's what we mean, mister. Bread and money. Your precious rights don't mean nothin' when we need that bread and money. And who's to provide that for us but old Tube Rose and his Company here? Always has, always will. Who's to do that better, mister? Will your Federal Bill of Rights do that? I don't see no Federal government except on the tv. They never come around here offering anything but the mail everyday. Rights? What little rights we have we owe to Tube over there.

The struggle, the same struggle which brought out the goons of Germany to become Storm Troopers, against age-old reality, goes on until finally it hits home, with a big club swung by a henchman of the slightly uphill knocking the lower in the head when he starts of a mind to strike against Tube for better wages and living conditions than the paucity and squalor and, finally, the breadlines into which they have been permanently set in caste will afford them.

The dreams come back then as not really so much the stuff of dreams but of the vague remembrance of the flipside of that which Tube offers, for the sake ultimately only of Tube and the Company, of which they are only but an interchangeable part like any other bit of fungible material in which Tube deals, that flipside being the independence of youth. Then, when the dream does come back, the Hotspurs among them calm for a bit as the blood-boilers down below begin to drop away in hunger and disgust, as another coffin arrives home on the doorstep by and by, to be buried along with the others of the past generations who didn't heed the warnings of that next past generation and figured that modern days don't play by the same rules as yesterday and before that. For we have all of this new gadgetry with which to overcome all of that, that with which the past generation had to contend.

But, being governed ultimately by the same base rules of Nature, that of the human and all its co-habitants of flora and fauna, the same cycles around, the same as that endured, albeit equipped variously with different material of wherewithal with which to cope against it, by all through time eternal back to the instant the dyes were fixed indelibly into the walls at Altamira, the same outcomes will inevitably occur whenever, wherever this struggle is waged, as it was in Harlan in the 1930's.

For in the end, Man, for all his reckless attempts to exceed his own inherent limitations, bred in him for a reason through time, does not finally escape the basic limits and rules of Nature.

And it is with those limits in mind that the basis of our Constitution is essentially drawn.

A Sporting Gift*

For all that it's torrid August, tonight our Hornets are playing Santa Claus to the poor kids of the city. Seventy per cent of the gross receipts goes to The News' Empty Stocking Fund as a nestegg for the annual Christmas campaign. The Asheville club too is chipping in its part, and that appeals to us as a piece of rare generosity. But it rather spoils what we had in mind saying about the Hornets.

What we had in mind saying was that, if there's anything to this "give and it shall be given unto you" guarantee, and there is, the Hornets stood a good chance of being rewarded with a victory which they could use very nicely. In fact, if the home club won and the Norfolk club lost, the two would be virtually tied for the top, with a Norfolk-Charlotte four-game series smack in the offing. But, of course, with the Asheville club giving too, neither will have a moral edge in the game tonight.

Even so, it's a mighty good turn the baseball people are doing for the poor children of the city. On their behalf and our own, we move a rising vote of thanks at some time during the game--say, along about the seventh inning.

Claim and Delivery

"Old Bluff and Blunder," reading from left to right, is what Edgar Brown, the third candidate in South Carolina's furious Senatorial campaign, delighted in calling Senator Smith and Governor Johnston. Some there were who suspected that Brown was planted in the game to divide the New Deal vote. But if that was so, the gentleman concealed his hand well--so well, indeed, that there appeared to be an imminent risk in the vigor with which he assailed Smith of his dividing that worthy's vote.

The statement he issued when he withdrew from the lists, after the Senatorial caravan had appeared and dispensed invective in every last one of South Carolina's 46 counties, gave no indication whatsoever as to his favorite between the two remaining contestants. He was all for South Carolina, but as between Cotton Ed and Olin he carefully let fall no slight hint. So Governor Johnston, just having been blessed by the President, though not by name, thought to force Brown to declare himself. He demanded a public statement. He got it, got it in the form of a blistering denunciation of himself and his whole political career. He started off with "insolent" and worked up steam.

Even so, the withdrawn Mr. Brown has still not taken sides between his two late opponents. Only one thing is certain: that if his estimation of Smith is no better than his expressed opinion of Johnston, Cotton Ed had best let well enough--and Edgar Brown--alone.

Cheers and Regrets

Both good news and bad news is on the menu today. Memorial Hospital's application for a $450,000 grant has been approved, and that, messires, marks the completion of the fourth phase in this concerted effort which began with preliminary work by the doctors, continued with participation by the Episcopalian boards and congregations, reached its point of greatest intensity in the campaign for funds under Mr. Wood's direction, and now has been approved in Washington. A fifth step remains to be taken--to carry the bond election.

Bad news is the County Commissioners' voting down for the second time the proposal to build an uptown auditorium without any outlay of public funds. A majority of the Commissioners appeared to have made up their minds, obliterating for the present any prospect of obtaining this fine new civic feature. It is keenly disappointing. Our local governments owe it to themselves and the people to get as many projects underway as possible, not only for their future usefulness but for the lift they would give to business immediately, which in turn would take some of the pressure off the relief budgets.

Even so, we are not discouraged. The idea of the hospital was firmly implanted in the community mind and, lo! the hospital is on the point of materializing. The idea of an uptown auditorium has been as firmly, though not as generally, implanted. It too will materialize some of these days--though not, in all probability, until the need for it has become acute.

The Harlan Deal

What has gone on in Harlan County, Kentucky, these past years, is beyond the credibility of people in the more polite communities. Murder, mayhem, kidnaping, corruption of the law, perjury--Harlan's misbehavior has run the whole gamut of the criminal code, the Ten Commandments and pure unadulterated viciousness.

Finally, Harlan's coal companies were brought to the bar under the provisions of a new invention known as the Wagner Act on the milk-and-water charge of refusing to bargain collectively. Conspiracy was also charged against numerous individuals and totally unlovely defendants, and in the trial of them, witnesses were intimidated, one was murdered, perjury flowed as freely as tobacco juice and the Government had to order agents to the scene to be sure of preserving order even in the courtroom itself.

For the Government to call off the dogs from Harlan now would be to condone, at the least to forget and forgive, what has gone on in Harlan. The National Labor Relations Board has dropped its Wagner Act charges, admittedly in consideration of the coal operators' agreement to sign up with United Mine Workers. The Department of Justice has not dropped its conspiracy charges, but it hasn't said that it isn't going to drop them. If it should, why, then it would warrant the indictment that all you have to do to obtain the remission of sins by the New Deal is to play ball with John L. Lewis.

No More Appeasement

Chamberlain's policy of "appeasement," which he extolled as a means of assuring the peace of Europe for at least a generation, appears to have been put away on the shelf. The dispatches from London today are pregnant with the sense of a change in the official British attitude. His Majesty's ministers met today in three-hour session, and the expectation, evidently well founded, is that they determined to stand toe to toe with Germany and prevent by any means necessary the carrying out of Hitler's notion to have a slice of Czechoslovakia and to go on where his fancy led from there.

Across the Channel in Paris, the French Ministry held a longer, equally determined session. It was decided to match Germany's menacing mobilization with mobilization along the German frontier. The key social reform of the previous Popular Front, the 40-hour week in industry, was revoked for the reason, primarily, that it was curtailing the supply of munitions, and likewise upsetting the French economy, at a time when the nation needs its fullest productivity.

And that Germany has an inkling that some new resolution motivates Britain, and in turn bolsters the courage of her ally, is easy to detect in the tone of the German press, which is no more than a mouthpiece for the government. The German press is deeply resentful. In fact, it is grousing its head off, and accusing the British-French entente of making mountains out of molehills. Be that as it may, it must be plain to all the world that Chamberlain's prior willingness to make molehills out of mountains was leading nowhere but to Italian and German dominance of the sphere wherein Britain used to reign supreme.

Site Ed. Note: While at first it may have looked like no appeasement was imminent, in fact behind the scenes, Britain's Ambassador to Germany, Neville Henderson, was urging the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, to do just that, as in this letter of August 22:

Dear Secretary of State,

I hope you don't think it over-insistent or over-presumptuous on my part when I telegraph and write to you so much about Lord Runciman and what he should do. But the stakes for which we are playing are too high to allow me to remain silent on a matter on which I feel so strongly. Besides it is my bounden duty to set before you the German case and their way of thinking and their machinations as I see them.

I feel so strongly also on the big British issue. Have we or have we not got to fight Germany again? The followers of the Crowe tradition in your Department argue and have long argued that it is inevitable. I regard that attitude as nothing short of disastrous. It may prove to be inevitable, but it seems to me a suicidal policy fatalistically to accept it as so. If we fight Germany this year or next over the Sudeten question, we shall probably beat her but it will mean that we shall have to go on fighting her again and again, until one day we may be ourselves beaten. It is the history of the United States of America over again. If it had not been for the Prince Consort, Palmerston and Russell would have plunged us into war with them over the Mason and Slidell case and the U.S.A. would never have forgotten or forgiven us. The cause was not a good enough one and thank goodness it is now unlikely that we shall ever fight the U.S.A. again.

It may well, in spite of all the croakers, be the same with Germany if we can avoid fighting them about such a bad case as the Sudeten. However badly Germany behaves, it does not make the right of the Sudeten any less justifiable. We are on the worst of wickets and to go into battle, without having our Empire behind us - and we surely won't have it wholeheartedly on such an issue - seems to me inconceivable. I think, in spite of the humiliation, that I would rather almost anything than that.

Never again are those blocks of Germans on Germany's frontier going to be misgoverned by Czechs as they have been during the past twenty years. That seems to me also inconceivable and we have no earthly or heavenly right to force them to be so. The Teuton and the Slav are irreconcilable--just as are the Briton and the Slav. Mackenzie King told me last year after the Imperial Conference that the Slavs in Canada never assimilated with the people and never became good citizens.

Moreover however badly the Germans behave, one must also condemn Benes and his military enthusiasts. Their position is quite untenable and as such one has immense sympathy for them. But I cease to have it when they try to behave like Samson and bring down the walls of the Temple to soften the bitterness of their own humiliation. Masaryk would have been great enough to appreciate the hard facts and make the best of them, but Benes is a small man. That is a fact. And now all depends on Lord Runciman.

What is Hitler going to do? When all, as in this country, depends on the decision of a single individual, one must be guided, under Providence, by one's own instinct and impression.

The German army has been told to be ready for battle (100 per cent) as it ever can be this year as from the middle of September onwards: i.e. prepared for all eventualities. The German are not philanthropists and in similar circumstances I expect we would have acted in the same way if we had as little faith as the Germans have in Benes' honesty or even ability in the face of his opposition to do the right thing, and if we were convinced, as the German are, that the Czech General staff wants a showdown now rather that later.

It is for that reason that I believed that it was useless to appeal to Hitler for a modification of his military arrangements. It is one of my duties to put myself under the German skin, if I can, and to report to you how they feel. Their whole experience of Benes is that he cannot be trusted and that whatever he may say, he always gets out of it. And they believe that the Czech military want war now when they believe that they can drag France and ourselves in rather than later, when the international position may be less favourable to them. That being the case if I were a German I would also be prepared for all eventualities, seeing that the Czech military are determined that no concessions shall be made to the Sudeten.

It stands to reason that Hitler himself must equally be prepared for all eventualities. But from there to say that he has already decided on aggressive action against Czecho-slovakia this autumn is, I think, untrue. He still hopes to get what he wants by peaceable means and what he wants now is a Swiss cantonal system for the Sudeten to enable them to live their own life and not to be harried all the time by minor Czech officials. That the plums thereafter will drop ripe from the tree into the German Reich is another question. Every German, however moderate, believes this to be inevitable in the long run and since in politics geography always has the last word, it is more than likely. But for the moment a quiet life for the Sudeten would, I believe, satisfy Hitler; but if Benes won't give enough, then he may lose all. It is Abyssinia over again with far less moral right on our side.

If Runciman's hand is being forced, so is Hitler's. He avoided a speech at Breslau where he was expected to speak by the thirty or forty thousand Sudeten who attended that festival. He cannot avoid referring to them in his speeches at Nuremberg, which comes just too early to give Runciman all the time he needs to make up his mind.

Consequently if Runciman has not spoken before Nuremberg, Hitler will have to do so. That is the point of my telegram No. 388 which I sent you yesterday and which was in fact based on your letter to Lord Runciman of August 12. It is, I fear, useless our saying to Hitler be patient, though I say it and will go on saying it to every German I see. The German retort is that we would not have been so patient ourselves during these past four months if the Sudeten Germans had been Ulstermen and Benes de Valera. Nor for internal reasons can Hitler be silent. What I anticipate him saying is something on the following lines: "We have trusted the English for four months although we always knew that Benes would never yield except to force. The English won't put the screws on, so we are obliged to do so. We mean business. It is this, that or the other for the Sudeten or nothing. If that is not Lord Runciman's opinion then I shall insist on a plebiscite and the full right of self-determination." He may even add that for the sake of world peace he is willing to hold his hand for a while yet but the end will be the same: that he will choose his own moment and that he gives us and the French full warning of that. And he may threaten the Czechs with worse in the future if they cannot see sense now.

Roughly that is the sort of minimum line I see Hitler's mind moving along. I cannot believe that he will do more if we tell him that we shall certainly fight him if he does move. But what do we gain? More postponement and a rising market. That is the policy we have been following for years, with our eyes tight closed to realities, to evolution and those geographical facts which always have the last word whatever we little humans do or say.

That is not defeatism. Defeatism to my mind is saying that we must fight Germany again, when there is still a chance and a big one that we need never do so. It is repugnant to me to run bad horses and back losing ones all the time. I would fight Germany tomorrow for a good cause but I refuse to contemplate our doing so for the Sudeten. If they were Hungarians or Poles or Roumanians or the citizens of any small nation, all England would be on their side. They are Germans, so we shut our eyes to realities and are influenced by other considerations, some honourable, some chivalrous but many egotistical or inspired by fear.

Yours in great haste,

Neville Henderson

On September 6 at Nuremburg, Hitler chose, instead of the Sudeten question, to speak about state-controlled art, and the language of architecture in particular, and culture generally in the New Germany where, he claimed, Nazism was not a cult or religion, but rather a "volkic political doctrine" in which the guiding philosophy was that of race.

This description, incidentally, was not unlike the way Cash summarized it within The Mind of the South: "In [the KKK's] essence the thing was an authentic folk movement--at least as fully such as the Nazi movement in Germany, to which it was not without kinship." Cash also, however, saw Nazism as a quasi-religious cult, out of the Viking folklore tradition, as well. (See, e.g., "War and Peace", May 10, 1936)

What it was, of course, in the end, after all was said and done, was hell brought to earth, with all the fire and brimstone attendant with it.

The proof of the endowment of a true artist is always to be found in the fact that his work of art expresses the general will of a period. Perhaps that is most clearly shown in architecture... The religious mystical world of the Christian Middle Ages, turning inwards upon itself, found forms of expression which were possible only for that world--for that world alone could they be of service. A Gothic stadium is as unthinkable as a Romanesque railway station or a Byzantine market hall. The way in which the artist of the Middle Ages, of the beginnings of the modern world, found the artistic solution for the buildings which he was commissioned to create is in the highest degree striking and admirable. That way, however, is no evidence that the conception of the content of life held by the folk of his day was in itself either absolutely right or absolutely wrong; it is evidence only that works of art have rightly mirrored the inner mind of a past age. It is therefore quite comprehensible that insofar as the attempt is made to carry on the life of that past age, those who search for solutions of artistic problems can still seek and find there fruitful suggestions. Thus one can easily imagine that, for instance, in the sphere of religion men will always work backwards to the form-language of a period in which Christianity in its view of the world appeared to meet every need. On the other hand, at the present moment the expression of a new view of the world which is determined by the conception of race will return to those ages which in the past have already possessed a similar freedom of the spirit, of the will, and of the mind. Thus, naturally, the manifestation in art of a European conception of the State will not be possible through civilizations, as, for example, the civilization of the Far East, which--because foreign to us--have no message for our day, but will rather be influenced in a thousand ways through the evidences and memories of that mighty imperial Power of antiquity which, although in fact destroyed fifteen hundred years ago, still as an ideal force lives on and works on in the imaginations of men. The more nearly the modern State approaches to the imperial idea of the ancient World-Power, so more and more will the general character of that civilization be manifested in its influence upon the formation of the style of our own day.

National Socialism is not a cult-movement--a movement for worship; it is exclusively a 'volkic' political doctrine based upon racial principles. In its purpose there is no mystic cult, only the care and leadership of a people defined by a common blood-relationship. Therefore we have no rooms for worship, but only halls for the people--no open spaces for worship, but spaces for assemblies and parades. We have no religious retreats, but arenas for sports and playing-fields, and the characteristic feature of our places of assembly is not the mystical gloom of a cathedral, but the brightness and light of a room or hall which combines beauty with fitness for its purpose. In these halls no acts of worship are celebrated, they are exclusively devoted to gatherings of the people of the kind which we have come to know in the course of our long struggle; to such gatherings we have become accustomed and we wish to maintain them. We will not allow mystically-minded occult folk with a passion for exploring the secrets of the world beyond to steal into our Movement. Such folk are not National Socialists, but something else--in any case, something which has nothing to do with us. At the head of our program there stand no secret surmisings but clear-cut perception and straightforward profession of belief. But since we set as the central point of this perception and of this profession of belief the maintenance and hence the security for the future of a being formed by God, we thus serve the maintenance of a divine work and fulfill a divine will--not in the secret twilight of a new house of worship, but openly before the face of the Lord.

There were times when a half-light was the necessary condition for the effectiveness of certain teachings: we live in an age when light is for us the fundamental condition of successful action. It will be a sorry day when through the stealing in of obscure mystic elements the Movement or the State itself issues obscure commissions... It is even dangerous to issue any commission for a so-called place of worship, for with the building will arise the necessity for thinking out so-called religious recreations or religious rites, which have nothing to do with National Socialism. Our worship is exclusively the cultivation of the natural, and for that reason, because natural, therefore God-willed. Our humility is the unconditional submission before the divine laws of existence so far as they are known to us men: it is to these we pay our respect. Our commandment is the courageous fulfillment of the duties arising from those laws. But for religious rites we are not the authorities, but the churches! If anyone should believe that these tasks of ours are not enough for him, that they do not correspond with his convictions, then it is for him to prove that God desires to use him to change things for the better. In no event can National Socialism or the National Socialist State give to German art other tasks than those which accord with our view of the world.

The only sphere in which the Jewish international newspapers still today think that they can attack the new Reich is the cultural sphere. Here they attempt, by a constant appeal to the sentimentality--untroubled by any sort of knowledge--of the world-citizens of democracy to bewail the downfall of German culture: in other words, they lament the commercial closing-down of those elements which, as the heralds and exponents of the November Republic, forced their cultural characteristics, as unnatural as they were deplorable, upon the period between the two Empires; and which have now played out their role for good and all...

Fortunately, however, despite the short time which the National Socialist leadership has been able to allot to works of culture, positive facts, here too, speak louder than any negative criticism. We Germans can today speak with justice of a new awakening of our cultural life, which finds its confirmation not in mutual compliments and literary phrases, but rather in positive evidences of cultural creative force. German architecture, sculpture, painting, drama, and the rest bring today documentary proof of a creative period in art, which for richness and impetuosity has rarely been matched in the course of human history. And although the Jewish-democratic press magnates in their effrontery even today seek brazenly to turn these facts upside down, we know that the cultural achievements of Germany will in a few years have won from the world respect and appreciation far more unstinted even than that which they now accord to our work in the material field. The buildings which are arising in the Reich today will speak a language that endures, a language, above all, more compelling than the Yiddish gabblings of the democratic, international judges of our culture. What the fingers of these poor wretches have penned or are penning the world will--perhaps unfortunately--forget, as it has forgotten so much else. But the gigantic works of the Third Reich are a token of its cultural renascence and shall one day belong to the inalienable cultural heritage of the Western world, just as the great cultural achievements of this world in the past belong to us today.

Moreover, it is naturally not decisive what attitude, if any, foreign peoples take toward our works of culture, for we have no doubt that cultural creative work, since it is the most sensitive expression of a talent conditioned by blood, cannot be understood, far less appreciated, by individuals or races who are not of the same or related blood. Therefore we do not trouble in any way to make German art and culture suit the tastes of international Jewry...

The art of Greece is not merely a formal reproduction of the Greek mode of life, of the landscapes and inhabitants of Greece; no, it is a proclamation of the Greek body and of the essential Greek spirit. It does not make propaganda for an individual work, for the subject, or for the artist; it makes propaganda for the Greek world as such, which confronts us in Hellenism...

And so art today will in the same way announce and herald that common mental attitude, that common view of life, which governs the present age. It will do this not because this age entrusts commissions to artists, but because the execution of these commissions can meet with understanding only if it reveals in itself the true essence of the spirit of this age. The mysticism of Christianity, at the period of its greatest intensity, demanded for the buildings which it ordered an architectonic form which not only did not contradict the spirit of the age, but rather helped it to attain that mysterious gloom which made men the more ready to submit to renunciation of self. The growing protest against this crushing of the freedom of the soul and of the will, which had lasted for centuries, immediately opened the way to new forms of expression in artistic creation. The mystic narrowness and gloom of the cathedrals began to recede and, to match the free life of the spirit, buildings became spacious and flooded with light. Mystical twilight gave way before increasing brightness. The unsteady, groping transition of the nineteenth century led finally in our days to that crisis which in one way or another had to find its solution. Jewry, with its bolshevist onslaught, might smash the Aryan States and destroy those native strata of the people whose blood destined them for leadership, and in that case the culture which had hitherto sprung from these roots would be brought to the same destruction...

For Cash's observations on this speech, see "A Man Abstracted", September 7.

And The London Times, generally a voice box for 10 Downing Street, would weigh in on September 7, favoring appeasement by cession of the Sudetenland to Germany, with scarcely a hint of the fact that, for its carrying with it virtually the entire industrial base of the country, such a cession ultimately assured the gobbling up of all of Czechoslovakia, as would become the case by March, 1939. (For Cash's take on this piece, see "More Appeasement", September 8.)

The opening address by the Führer to his followers at Nuremberg contained nothing about the subject uppermost, probably, in their minds, and certainly uppermost in the minds of the listening outside world. No doubt he left Czechoslovakia for treatment on a subsequent occasion, knowing, like a good showman, that what follows the piece de resistance may easily produce the effect of an anti-climax. Herr Hitler devoted himself chiefly to the economic and financial revolution effected by National Socialism. He gave a kind of Child's Guide to an economy based not on gold but on productivity when he said that for every mark more which was issued in Germany one more mark's worth of goods must be produced; failing which the amount issued remained worthless paper, since it had no purchasing power owing to the lack of corresponding production. This felicitous explanation was by an admonition to democratic States to spend less time in criticizing the German system and more time in putting their own house in order; and the general effect of the speech was spoiled for its foreign audience by the repeated insinuation that every man's hand was against Germany, and that Germany had only one or two stout-hearted authoritarian friends to look to for understanding, and that all the world in arms would no longer prevail against her.

These, of course, are the traditional arguments of the turannos, who allows no opposition at home and has therefore perpetually to ward his country against imagined enemies without. Thus the Führer assured his hearers that the idea of a blockade of Germany "might now be buried as a completely ineffective weapon". But was anyone thinking of blockading Germany? Nevertheless the idea of collaborating with other nations, economically, at least, was not excluded, for Herr Hitler congratulated himself on the increase in German exports and imports, and said that the improvement in Germany's own economic condition made her the better able to contribute to an improvement of world economy. In this connexion, it may be added, it is probably best for all of us to recognize that the totalitarian system of economy is well established, and that we must prepare to improve our commercial intercourse without waiting for conditions which may never happen.

In the meantime the news comes from Prague that the Sudeten German Party, which is being fully represented at Nuremberg, intends to have a rally of its own at Aussig, in Bohemia, next month. The intention seems to show a bold confidence that by that time--October 15 and 16 are mentioned for the meeting--the Sudetens will have been conceded, or will have taken, the right claimed by Herr Henlein to profess openly the National-Socialist creed. The announcement, which comes of course from Sudeten quarters, is in full accord with the terms of the communiqué which was issued on Monday after the meeting at Eger at which Herr Henlein had given his followers an account of his interview with Herr Hitler at Berchtesgaden. The dispute between the Sudetens and the Czech Government could only be settled, the communiqué said, "by a comprehensive and rapid realization of the Carlsbad demands". It has all along been obvious that the Carlsbad demands contained much that the Czech Government could accord, and ought indeed to have accorded to the Sudetens long before they were formulated in rather forceful language by Herr Henlein. But the demand for the full exercise of National-Socialist methods in Czechoslovakia was one which it would plainly not be possible for the Prague Government to accept, for it would create an entirely heterodox State within the Parliamentary Republic and would transfer the personal allegiance of the Sudetens from the Head of the State in which they lived to the head of a neighbouring State. There were also demands for the reorientation of the foreign policy of the country which no Government could accept at the dictation of a minority. Herr Henlein demanded that Czechoslovakia should not remain the ally of France and of Russia and constitute itself "a bulwark against the so-called Drang nach Osten".

It is natural enough that the Sudeten Germans should be unwilling to assume the position of having to fight, if a war were to break out, on the same side as Russians and Frenchmen against their racial co-nationals; but a group which composes less than a quarter of the population can hardly expect to control the foreign policy of the other 78 per cent while also challenging, internally, their whole political outlook. The message which our Prague correspondent sends this morning shows that the Czechoslovak Government are now ready to go very far indeed in meeting all reasonable demands. There is no difficulty about allowing the Germans--and all other nationalities--full equality of status with the Czechs. The exact meaning of recognizing the Sudetens as "a legal body incorporate" has not been fully ascertained, but it appears to be a question of juridical interpretation. The recognition of the German areas within the State was one of the main purposes of the recent Prague plan which was rejected by Herr Henlein; and it appears likely that even more in this respect may now be granted, for, according to our Special Correspondent, "very far-reaching concessions" are now to be made towards "full self-government" for the German areas. The local administrations are to control the police as well as enjoying all the usual prerogatives of local councils. Legal protection will of course be provided for all Germans living outside the Sudeten area--provided, that is, by the Central Government. Herr Henlein's demand for the removal of injustices inflicted since 1918 and "reparations for damages caused thereby" must clearly be a matter of interpretation between the negotiating parties. The whole plan is one for the removal of grievances, and for the greater participation of Sudeten Germans (and other minorities) in the government of the country.

No Central Government would still deserve its title if it did not reserve in its own hands Defence, Foreign Policy and Finance. There does not appear to be any dispute about this principle in the minds of the Government or of Herr Henlein; and, if the Sudetens now ask for more than the Czech Government are apparently ready to give in their latest set of proposals, it can only be inferred that the Germans are going beyond the mere removal of disabilities and do not find themselves at ease within the Czechoslovak Republic. In that case it might be worth while for the Czechoslovak Government to consider whether they should exclude altogether the project, which has found favour in some quarters, of making Czechoslovakia a more homogeneous State by the secession of that fringe of alien populations who are contiguous to the nation with which they are united by race. In any case the wishes of the population concerned would seem to be a decisively important element in any solution that can hope to be regarded as permanent, and the advantages to Czechoslovakia of becoming a homogeneous State might conceivably outweigh the obvious disadvantages of losing the Sudeten German districts of the borderland.

Site Ed. Note: The other glass and bird stories of the day are here, with yesterday's. Our question anent all that is: Did he drop them from eight truffles high or did they come up in the well bucket?

By the way, Jim Farley declared his presidential bid there in Winston-Salem in early February, 1940 at the Robert E. Lee Hotel, located in what once was Winston; and the Moravians, down from Bethlehem, Pa. and thereabouts, after fleeing persecution in Moravia and Bohemia, birthed Salem in 1765; and Mussolini wrote a book on John Huss, to whom the Moravians attribute their founding principles, a martyr who supported Czech nationalism against German influence and was finally burned at the stake for heresy to the Roman Catholic Church, in the year 1414--for whatever it is worth.

And, what is more, we ourselves first saw "Gone With the Wind", upon its 25th anniversary theatrical re-release, next door to the Robert E. Lee there, at the Carolina Theater, where Elvis once performed before he hit it big.


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