The Charlotte News

Tuesday, April 1, 1941

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: So, how did we predict, and with splendid accuracy, last weekend's triumph of 83-73 against the Cardinals? You have waited all week for the answer from on high here atop the mainyard. Surely you must have it figured out by now, for it is simple: 18(99) - 19(13) - 19(03) = 83; 18(99) - 19(41) + 19(15) = 73. There you are. Once again, pluperfect and splendid foresightedness.

And of course we did predict the next opponent as well. The discernment of that is so obvious that we shall not deign to condescend to your superior ability to reason through it on your own.

And, not to look ahead, but the one afterward also.

Four down, two to go.

How do we do it? Well, it's all a matter of studying Dem Bones.

We heard, incidentally, that Ben Carnevale, coach of the 1946 edition of our school's teams which lost to Oklahoma A&M in the national finals, as we recently pointed out, passed away last week.

The rest of the page is here.

Apathy Towards Red Cross Doesn't Fit With Claims

The Red Cross drive in Charlotte to date has brought in only about a fourth as many members and a fourth as much money as had been set as a goal. Worse, members and funds are coming in at such a dribbling rate as to give no promise of the goal's eventually being realized.

The public apathy toward the Red Cross at present is a curious thing to witness. Everybody is going around telling everybody else that patriotism is our great need now, and that everybody must be prepared to make sacrifices. Labor unions, we hear, must be prepared to surrender their right to strike so long as the emergency lasts. People who own factories must put aside questions of profit and put them wholly at the service of national defense. The young men must daily consent to be drilled and get ready to fight. England must get aid in time to defeat Hitler. And so on and so on.

But when it comes down to something patriotic that everybody can participate in--joining the Red Cross and contributing to the fund-the people simply don't show up.

The work of the Red Cross is a fundamental patriotic activity at any time. It is doubly so at the present. And if it is allowed to languish for lack of interest and support, then a lot of the patriotism on tap here will be proved a mere matter of words.

Italy's Naval Losses Put Her In Desperate Position

When Italy begins to make triumphant claims about sinking British ships, it is a sure sign that she has been taking another shellacking from the Royal Navy and the RAF.

Thursday and Friday she was boasting of having sneaked into a harbor at Crete and sunk a British "warship," of having damaged three others in naval and air attack.

And sure enough, on Saturday the British Admiralty announced the destruction of five Italian ships in the Eastern Mediterranean-three of them heavy cruisers of the latest type. Monday the Italians acknowledged the truth of the claims, though it denied the British assertion that the Royal Navy suffered no damage or casualties in the action.

Italy's case is now desperate, and it is not unlikely that we shall hear of more naval fighting soon, as she resorts to reckless matters to try to regain what she has already lost.

Meantime the heat is obviously being turned on what calls itself the "French Government" at Vichy to use the French Navy actively to aid the Axis.

The firing on British warships by land batteries has the earmarks of a deliberate effort to create an incident. The British warships were within their rights under international law in stopping and searching the French merchantmen involved in the case. And Vichy's claim that the ship was only carrying food from North Africa, instead of the rubber cargo intended for Germany as the British charge, does not seem probable.

The British have leaned over backward in their efforts to avoid offending the French and have been letting food ships through the blockade. But rubber is a different matter.

Automobile Boneyards Do Not Enhance The Highway View

We're not asking millions for this fence, just a few dollars. That's all it would cost owners of the yards to stay within the law and, at the same time, to heal some of the eyesores surrounding Charlotte.

No attention has been paid to the State law requiring that junkyards alongside public highways be screened from view of by fencing. Maybe it is because of an oversight that the owners of the junkyards on the Gastonia and Monroe roads, as well as others, have failed to comply with the regulation. But that won't keep passersby from shuddering.

And all this scrap metal-surely the armament-makers could use it. After the innards of the chassis have been stripped out, there is little if any value left in these junked cars. The practice is to cut up the shells. This the junkyards are having to do, trying to keep pace with the accident rate around Charlotte in a losing war. But why do we have to watch them do it? Our imagination is not yet vivid enough to create a sleek battle cruiser out of the rusted car frames which fringe the highway.

That to screen these boneyards from public view would go a long way toward beautifying the approaches of the Friendly City is plain to see. Our municipal lily could stand a little gilding around the edges. And there is always the little matter of the law.

John Lewis Faces Acid Test In His Position On This

The strike situation in regard to national defense now approaches a showdown.

Yesterday representatives of the United Mine Workers (John Lewis's key union in the CIO) and the coal operators in the Appalachian announced that they had reached a deadlock on negotiations for a new contract. John Lewis announced that this automatically meant a walk-out today. But that there is some spirit of conciliation, or at least hesitancy, is perhaps shown by the fact that the negotiators agreed to continue their conference at ten o'clock today, even before the President had issued his statement protesting the strike.

The coal industry, long in a slump, is now enjoying good business again. The same holds for steel, which also is scheduled for a big strike under Lewis's direction. It seems likely, therefore, that the workmen are justified in demanding that their wages be scaled upward. Seeing to such wage increases is John Lewis's proper business, and no one can reasonably blame him for it

But Lewis is a bitter-end opponent of the foreign policy sponsored by the President, by Mr. Willkie, by the majority of the American people and two-thirds of Congress. And he has been scrupulous in his exercise of power; so that there may be ground for the speculation that he actually plans to use the coal and steel strikes to paralyze that policy and seek to attempt to enforce the one he himself favors, that of isolation and appeasement.

There is suspicion of the same thing in other cases, especially the particularly stubborn Allis-Chalmers strike in a key industry. There the president of the company is a member of the so-called America First Committee, a rabid isolationist group. And the CIO leader is a man who was last year expelled from the Socialist Party on the ground that he was in reality a fellow-traveler of the Communist Party-which, of course, is actively engaged in trying to block the policy of aid-to-Britain.

To assume too easily that these charges are all true-that these men are actually engaged in or contemplate what amounts to an attempt at sabotage, would be rash. But it can be said that if they did attempt it, they would be betraying not only the nation but, specifically, labor itself.

This Sort of Pretense Smacks of Nazis Themselves

Defending German and Italian rights is not a popular pastime in this country right now, and we discover in ourselves only reluctance to do it. Attorney General Jackson's blast to the effect that their own dastardly contempt for international law has deprived them of any claims under it may have sophistical elements in it, but to a layman, who observes that international law is after all a matter of mutual agreement, it will seem to have general truth on its side.

However, there is another factor to be taken into consideration-the need of a democracy to take care that, in opposing the Nazis, it does not itself lapse into the high-handedness which is the salient characteristic of Nazism.

And it must be confessed that the arrest of German and Italian sailors from the ships in our harbors smacks unpleasantly of that. The seizure of the ships was quite justified, since to leave them alone was to insure that they would be useless to us in case of war. The arrest of the saboteurs was fully justified also, since sabotage on any ship in an American port is a direct violation of our law.

For that matter, there is a law under which the whole corps of the Germans and Italians could be and were legally arrested. But the fact that the Danes, who had also overstayed the period allowed foreign sailors in America, were not molested is in glaring contrast with our rule that laws must be equally` enforced against all comers.