The Charlotte News

Saturday March 2, 1940

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Ah-hah, back where it started from--

This set of circumstances besetting the fair state of things probably explains why the livestock had to get their coiffures at the High Point barber shop,--where, no doubt, they plucked the wool with the pluralistic "we", and all the way home from the baby to the wisdom tooth, even unto the boar's head tusks--, instead of on the farm where normally they would be clipped by Congressmen, until, that is, they realized that the farmers voted, too, at which time, they then proceeded only to clip in the name of the evangelical church, just as with the Chinee Open Door.

The only real question we have from all of this is: why were the children in school at dinner time? Well, get-on-down-to-the-stoned-soul picnic us, Surry must really go in for education with a vengeance. Red, yellow honey, sassafras and moon shine. Even at night, they go to school.

As to the Ironpants "Omissions", we instruct you, with our two-cents plain, on the cuff, that the key is Krupp--the tail of which curls in the best prize versions of them, even if they had no jets quite yet to cross the oceans wide.

The Congressional Heart Softened By The Farmers

What makes weasels go pop! is a matter over which naturalists have disagreed, but what makes budgets go whush! every little school boy knows.

It's the farmer. A Congressman can't any more resist an appeal in the name of the farmer than the evangelical church in the name of the heathen Chinee.

This sympathy for the toilers of the soil cannot be explained away entirely by cynically citing the size of the farm population. Congressmen who come from predominantly rural districts are all for the farmer, naturally. But, surprisingly enough, so are many whose constituents wear kid gloves.

And so it is almost a foregone conclusion that the economy mood which has sat upon this Congress so far, and which has resulted in actual savings of some $300,000,000 below the President's budget recommendations, will blow over with the enactment of the regular annual farm legislation. The House stood its ground and cut farm appropriations right manfully. But a Senate subcommittee has inserted an appropriation for $200,000,000 up to $300,000,000, which puts economy right back where it started from.

Ironpants Arranges Some Logic To Suit Himself

General Johnson's column yesterday was a notable demonstration of the fact that, if you are determined, you can make it out that the Allies are at least as bad as the Nazis and probably worse.

The General says that we gave up most of our neutral rights at the beginning of the war by legislative enactment--the so-called Neutrality Act. He neglects to say, however, that it was mainly as regards Germany that we gave them up. That was the only nation which threatened to sink our ships without prior visit or search, ruthlessly to drown our sailors and citizens. In point of fact, the General himself militantly demands that all our rights be maintained as against England, if necessary by the use of force--with a war with England as the probable result.

He says that the taking of merchant ships into English ports for search is a violation of international law. It is--as international law is written. But he neglects to recall that he himself has justified Nazi Germany's submarine policy of sinking merchant ships without search and warning as necessary in the nature of the case, though the same logic obviously applies to the English case. International law authorities have repeatedly pointed out that it is impossible for search of modern merchantmen on the high seas.

And then he trots out the unsupported fable that the Allies have not bombed the Krupp works because French and English capitalists have a stake in those works. For Germany's failure to bomb English munitions plants he has the ready apology that she hasn't enough long range fighters as yet. But he neglects to say why she hasn't bombed the French munitions works, which are just as available to Nazi bombers as the Krupp works are to French and English bombers. And he says not a word about the obvious reluctance of the Allies to accept responsibility for unleashing wholesale air warfare, with its inevitable horrors for civilians, that they fear with good reason that an attack on the Krupp works (necessarily involving civilians) will meet prompt and terrible retaliation in kind--fails wholly to mention that these things might just possibly have something to do with the case.

Is the General, then, a Nazi sympathizer? Probably not. Merely, it is his curious theory that the best way to keep us out of the war is to whitewash the Nazis and stir up hate here for the Allies.

Distasteful Fare Cuts Are Probably Good For Roads

The Interstate Commerce Commission's order that Eastern railroads must return to the 2-cent coach fare on March 24 has the approval of only one of them, the Baltimore & Ohio. The others maintain that, however true it may be that the lower fare has brought greater revenue to the Southern roads, their own case is different--that they normally carry a much greater number of passengers than the Southern roads. Also they insist that the ICC is invading the field of management when it assumes to tell them to change fares for their own good. However, they had already cut the ground of that argument out from under themselves in 1938 by accepting an order to raise the rate without protest.

In any case, the ICC seems to have made up its mind to try to get away from the old basic rate of 1920 for good. That year it was set at 3.0 cents a mile, with Pullman fares running about four cents. In 1921 the number of passengers carried by the railroads reached an all-time high--1,035,496,000. But each year thereafter it declined, until a recent level of 432,979,000 in 1932.

The roads of the South were particularly hard hit. And to meet the problem, some of them asked the ICC to let them install a rate of one and one-half cents. Revenue probably picked up. But the Southern rate has since been adjusted to a basis of two cents, though its excursion and long-haul rates often make it considerably lower than that.

Other roads in other sections of the country followed suit. But the Eastern roads made no general reduction until ordered to install the two cent rate in 1936. Their business picked up in 1936 and 1937, but in 1938 the Commission agreed to the railroads' demand or a 2 1-2 cent rate. That year business fell off again.

The case is somewhat complicated by the various rises and falls of the general business level in the period. But there does not seem to be much doubt that the best way to quit hauling the empties is to stay to the two-cent rate.

This New Way To Pay Old Debts Is Hard On Creditor

The Hon. Robert Rice Reynolds announces that he is drafting a resolution for the Senate which will call upon the President to open negotiations at once with Great Britain for handing over of various of her West Indian possessions as part payment on the war debt.

The Hon. Robert Rice, like the Hon. Lundeen and others, is very hot for this proposition right now. For the very good reason that it has turned out to be an excellent experiment in rabble-rousing--much better to date than the Vindicators.

A few weeks ago, a majority of the American people, played on by falsehoods concerning the value of the West Indian islands and the nature of international debts, indicated in a poll that they thought grabbing these islands might be a good idea.

As a matter of fact, every one of these islands, with the possible exception of Bermuda, is a definite economic liability. The British and French sweat and groan under the burden of their shiftless, starving populations, and riots are common. Worse, all the evidence shows that the moment we get hold of such islands, they immediately become a greater liability.

There is the classic case of the Virgin Islands, which we bought from Denmark in 1917 for twenty-five million smackers, with Secretary of State Lansing enthusiastically predicting that they would be a great source of wealth for us. In point of fact, we are presently pouring out many millions annually to keep the population from starving and flinging a revolution--which they continually threaten to do.

More still, there is ample evidence that the Hon. Robert Rice Reynolds is well aware of this. Some years ago, when he was engaged in setting up his reputation as the greatest tourist who ever cooled his heels on any Capitol Hill desk, he went down to have a look at the Virgins--as an official representative of the Senate. It didn't take him long. He saw misery and felt enmity and he hastened away, stopping at St. Thomas only long enough to tell the reporters:

As the man said, and should be understood, virgineously: "Now, by the jealous queen of heaven, that kisse I carried from thee, deare; and my true Lippe hath Virgin'd it e'er since."

Such is the Clematis Vitalba, the Traveller's-Joy, the Great Wild Climber--