The Charlotte News

Monday, May 26, 1941

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: So Mr. Hearst and his newspapers were on the forefront of trumpeting the traditional use of seniority to elevate Senator Reynolds to the chairmanship of the Military Affairs Committee. Mr. Hearst, who had championed entry to the Spanish-American War after the Maine, finally forcing a reluctant President McKinley to capitulate. In any event, there was Bob, big as life, ah yes, chairman of the Military Affairs Committee. And, six months later...

Rosebud: It was a sled.

News on the march--

"Futurama", somewhat akin to the Cyclorama in Atlanta, pretty much in short order spells it all out for the future to our warehouse eyes. But, as someone once said on a cold January day in 1961, those who ride the Tiger often wind up inside. Tora, tora, tora.

Meanwhile, to escape the disconcerting and disconcerted world, one fellow on the page tells us of a completely preposterous bear story in Alaska having to do with brownies and a great leap of faith to escape them up a tree, as another tells us of a parrot whose new owner at the auction questioned whether it could talk. No, it wasn't dead, deef, or merely asleep; in fact, it was nearly the high bidder.

And from the bleeding slopes of Rocky Mount it was reported that Sunday baseball and movies had not served to disorient Western civilization in that fair burg or pollute the mind and morals of the populace into defalcation from the established standards of recognized good conduct and character and carriage in a fruitful mien or disestablish four-square citizenship or even induce general chaos, disorder and dissoluteness, dissuading the citizenry from Christian principle and thought, betraying them instead into the throes of barbaristic Communism practiced with Belial fervor, leading socially inimical reprobates thus recrudescently recreated to lace their drinking water with fluoridic pompous poison, acidic aphorisms, ideational irony, or ruthless, if not incongruous, metaphor, confusing, as the Devil always does, causing finally the displacement even of one's aura with that of celluloid characters replete with their innumerable psycho-neurotic romeric tendencies, or even the irresistible compulsion to embrace, in lieu of vegetables, bread, milk, and meat, an habitual exclusive diet of popcorn, peanuts and Cracker Jack.

In any event, as Herblock suggests, amid it all, they moved Thanksgiving back to where 'twas, the fourth Thursday--like an Olde Mobile.

Glass Barks Out Truth About Leaders and Reynolds

According to Washington Merry-Go-Round, old Senator Carter Glass was in a fury when first he heard that the Democratic Steering Committee had nominated Robert Rice Reynolds for the key post of chairman of the Military Affairs Committee. He all but bit himself and mumbled powerful epithets as he swung his arms about.

We know exactly how he felt, having done some mumbling and swinging ourselves.

But even in a fury the old gentleman's mind was still as alert as ever.

"I'll tell you what's the matter," he snapped. "It's the alleged Democratic leadership of this chamber. I just read that Barkley and Jimmy Byrnes voted for him..."

It summed it up in a nutshell. Indeed, the ultimate responsibility went back to Franklin Roosevelt, who knew well that Reynolds was opposed to the national foreign and defense policy, for which the Military Affairs Committee is so important. The Republicans had lined up solid with the Democratic appeasers to back Reynolds for partisan and anti-British purposes. And seeing that, the Administration dodged out--as Glass said, "sold out to the appeasers"--though it had the strength easily to have blocked Reynolds.

Nor was this all Glass saw. He observed tartly of Reynolds that his first vote after his elevation had been in favor of the Vandenberg-Clark amendment to forbid the sale of seized ships to Britain--an effort to wreck the whole seizure move.

It was a pretty good index, the Senator obviously thought--and so we think--of exactly what might be expected from Robert despite his solemn promise about recognizing the responsibility of his office. "I want," said Robert upon notification, "first of all to thank the Hearst papers." The Hearst papers which supported Reynolds, are bitterly anti-British and for appeasement. It is the key to his course.

District Should Pay Part of Its Own Road Costs

The Hon. Raymond Smiley Springer, of Indiana, has introduced a bill in the House, which would impose a two-cents-a-gallon gas tax on residents of the District of Columbia.

At present they pay nothing but the regular Federal tax of two cents, paid by residents of the rest of the nation. But the District, of course, has to have its roads, streets, and bridges and traffic police. Indeed, it has to have them in much more elaborate and costly in general than the other parts of the country.

In the absence of local taxes to provide them, they have been largely paid by Federal funds, which is [to] say funds paid by the taxpayers of all the states.

But these taxpayers also have to pay state taxes on gasoline, running in some cases as high as six cents, in order to provide roads, streets and bridges at home. That they should also have to carry the burden for the residents of the District is obviously unfair.

You can make out a case for the Federal Government paying some share of the costs in the District, of course--not only on the ground that it does as much for the states but also because the national pride in the capital demands that its streets and bridges should be more than ordinarily imposing and costly.

But the two-cent tax proposed is a very modest one, and every cent that of it is to be set apart for the District's roads, streets and bridges.

The bill plainly ought to be passed.

Japanese Move Is Typical of Life Under Axis Rule

Yesterday in Hanoi, Indo-China, the Japanese Army smashed into two American-owned warehouses, seized $10,000,000 worth of American supplies destined for China.

Indo-China is supposed to be French. Japan has got herself into that land by an act of aggression disguised as "mediation" between her stooge, Thailand, and France--has no legal rights there. Legally, Indo-China is a neutral land.

And there is no war between the United States and Japan--not yet. On the contrary, the United States has been trying to appease Japan by continuing to serve as one of her chief sources of supply--war materials among other things.

It is a sort of summing up of what we may expect in the world if the Axis wins the war. Totally apart from the values represented by such fine terms as freedom, democracy, Christianity, etc., the cold practical consequences will be appalling.

Our goods will be subject to seizure whenever the Axis chooses. The Axis--continuing the principle which Germany is already applying--will mark out areas where our ships may go or may not go, under what terms it chooses. And we will obey under penalty of having those ships destroyed.

In sum, we shall exist in a world where the only law is the law of the pirate and the tiger. Perhaps then we shall have isolation enough to suit even the isolationists.

Nazis Turn On Heat to Counter Mr. Roosevelt's Speech

The Nazis are working over-time to furnish the American appeasers with ammunition and wants to scare and cajole the American people into retreat, as the hour of Mr. Roosevelt's speech approaches.

Perhaps it even had something to do with the bold invasion of the Monroe Doctrine zone by the Bismarck and the desperate risk taken in sinking the Hood.

Certainly, it explained the sudden tide of rumors about a "negotiated" peace being assiduously propagated by American Fifth Columnists and appeasers.

Pierre Laval, traitor to France, was up to the same game yesterday when he warned the American people to stay out of the war, and in honeyed tones assured that a place in Mr. Hitler's new order is open to us. Mr. Laval perhaps said too much.

It is just the perception that a place in that order will be open to us--at pistol's point--that moves this country toward the decision to resist. What that place would be like the Japanese Foreign Office and the official German propaganda bureau in this country have already told us.

And Admiral Raeder's bellow about international law and threats to shoot were all to the same purpose. The Admiral's appeal is quaint from the man who ordered the sinking of the Athenia and whose U-boats regularly sink ships without warning or provision for the safety of the crew--doubly quaint in view of his closing warning that ships with dim lights would be sunk on site.

All these moves served perhaps to feed dissension in the United States. It is not likely, however, that they will lead the Administration to backtrack.

USO Drive Should Get Its Quota Here Quickly

The Mecklenburg County quota in the drive of the United States Organizations for Defense, Inc., has been set at $14,000.

The USO is composed of six component organizations--the YMCA, YWCA, National Catholic Community Service, Salvation Army, Jewish Welfare Board and Travelers' Aid. It will be its business to get up recreation programs and informational services for the soldiers of the nation's growing army.

At first glance, the figure for Mecklenburg might seem a little excessive. The whole amount will probably not be expended here and at the Air Base for the benefit of outfits stationed there.

But in reality, this is a job which in the nature of the case must be tackled nationally. Think, for instance, of the impossibility of Cumberland County taking care of the enormous demands of Fort Bragg for such services. And of the essential unfairness of asking it to do so, even if it could. Mecklenburg soldiers go to Bragg, to Jackson, and to dozens of other forts and bases in the nation, and of course Mecklenburg wants them looked after in the matter of recreation and other services.

It is easy enough for officers to maintain morale among their men while they are on duty. But single men in barracks are not plaster saints. And once away from duty, they turn to dubious amusements unless they can readily find decent ones.