The Charlotte News

Wednesday, May 7, 1941

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Riddle of the day: If the mule in Mineral Springs was to die Monday, then why weren't it the case that it was to up and die long time ago?

The truth about the mocker, of which Mrs. Theo B. Davis of Zebulon wrote this date--the same, you may recall, who wrote in December, 1938 about its apostrophe, whether it's or not, existentially speaking, bearing in mind that the id is something different, say some psychologists, from the It, being broader, though we think its all the same, derived from Nietzsche's nihilism extended so universally until it isn't--is that it couldn't make up, it's mind-being which prevented its 'tis, whether 'twas a mod or a rocker; so it contracted it, is by its shortening bred via the elongating apostrophal chirp jammed in between for the eye, but saving not a whit on the hand or keyboard whither they fie.

For those discontent with being mockers in need of a thrashing, there is the possibility of becoming alternatively a rodder, crashing, ever crashing.

The piece about food relating the objection of the millers to the injection of riboflavin, B-2, to the flour, also indicates that the nutritionists couldn't make up their minds either, as the British were busy beefing up the flour with thiamin, B-1. And, it was a good thing probably, because ultimately, as the war dragged on, price controls on meat drove beef producers to other pursuits, holding cattle off the market in droves during lean times until the price controls were released back to the fats. The result was that most couldn't eat meat, not even the cats.

As to "Gangrene", of course none of the vice mentioned was allowed in Charlotte at all, especially on Sundays, until open Sundays came about and everything went to the dogs, especially when it rained.

With the People's Backing It Ought To Work Wonders

The Citizens Group showed yesterday that it was no flash in the pan. Quite to the contrary, it demonstrated even more forcefully than in the primary that it had the strength to have elected a full City Council of eleven men. It would have elected them in a walk if in the beginning it had mustered a complete slate.

That was a salutary, entirely wholesome display of the power of the unorganized people. Now remains to be seen what sort of municipal government their representatives contrive.

They start out splendidly, with enthusiastic public backing behind them. There is the risk of factionalism, to be sure, because antipathy could easily spring up between the newcomers to the Council and the hold-overs whom they fought in the election. But closer acquaintance and the common desire of the best possible government for Charlotte should obviate that hazard.

Still, there remains to be seen what sort of government we are going to get.

It will be conservative, we feel sure, and wholly on the up and up. There won't be any funny business. There will be close attention to the operation of this vast municipal corporation, with responsibility resting squarely upon the City Manager and department heads.

For the rest--the attack on the murder and crime menaces, the abatement of prostitution and worse vice, traffic and the dime cabs, city planning and street widening, smoke abatement, noise abatement, community facilities such as an up-town theater-auditorium, uptown rest-rooms, parks, playgrounds and all the requirements of a growing concentration of population--all these benefits and improvements remain to be considered in the order of their importance in the light of practicability.

At the moment, however, it is immensely encouraging to see going into office a new Mayor and almost a new Council on the platform of better government by the representatives of the people themselves. Success to their endeavors.

New Growth of Vice and Crime Was To Be Expected

The case of the Fort Bragg sergeant who got off a bus in Charlotte, was accosted by two white men, went with them to get a drink and ended up as the victim of a "clip joint" run by a Negro criminal, is only one dramatic incident in a rapidly developing picture of the reaction of the city's pattern of vice and crime with the influx of the soldiers.

Prostitution, bootlegging, gambling, dope-selling, petty crime already so flourish here, as you may read in detail in The News today, that the authorities at the Air Base have been compelled to make large areas of the city "restricted districts"--areas which contain many respectable business houses, including, ironically enough, The News itself.

The fault in all this is plain enough. Ultimately, it undoubtedly lies in large part with such policies as driving the liquor business underground and into the hands of illicit or criminal elements. Everyone who knows the facts knows that the bootlegging trade is the heart and the center of the whole crime and vice picture here.

But the proximate fault lies in the fact that nothing vigorous has been done to deal with the situation within the existing limitations--it has been notorious for years that the thing was constantly and rapidly growing.

Prostitution flourishes here, and has long flourished, as openly as it ever flourished in any town with a legal red light district, but without any of the medical safeguards of legalized vice. Result is that the town is a sort of dumping ground for women infected with the most malignant diseases.

But nothing has ever been done about it beyond a few vague gestures, and also, as the soldiers arrive, new contingents of the disease-bearers pour in--to the point that the Air Base authorities are gravely alarmed over the rising incident of venereal infection among their men.

It is not surprising. Anybody with a grain a sense could have predicted that beforehand.

Brash Men Have Their Uses When They Set Out Facts

Claude Pepper will certainly be denounced by the appeasers as a warlock, and many millions will think him too rash--and brash.

Yet the calm fact is that in his speech yesterday he pointed out questions which are inescapable under penalty of disaster, and which the nation, with the Administration at its head, is refusing to face.

The Administration, do we say? More accurately, the President of the United States himself. Secretary Hull and Secretary Knox are already on record as pointing out that it is nonsense to send England goods which are going to be sunk by the Nazis while en route, and that convoy right on into the so-called war zones--both those that are arbitrarily marked out by Germany and the much smaller ones fixed under our own Neutrality Act--is the only possible solution to that problem, short of retreat into appeasement and certain destruction.

And now comes Secretary Stimson to say the same thing. But the President does not say it. Instead, he goes on sending up these trial balloons--everyone understands that these Cabinet speeches are exactly that--and what looks like a very ague of fear that he cannot count on the American people to back him in decisions and actions necessary to the national safety and even the national existence.

Perhaps his fears are right, but if so the American nation is already in process of disintegration, and the sooner it is demonstrated the better.

But, according to the opinion polls, more than 70 per cent of the people are in favor of convoy, even if that involves shooting (war), provided the alternative is the fall of Britain. Is that not good evidence that there is nothing really wrong with the American people as a whole, but that they hesitate simply because they feel--quite rightly--that if we are faced with this alternative, it is the President's own business to inform them personally and frankly and fully, to assume the function of leadership which is his right and his duty?

But the matter goes beyond convoy. Pepper undoubtedly stepped out ahead of American opinion yesterday when he proposed that we take the initiative in the East and, from Chinese bases, bomb Tokyo, an easily burned city.

But what about his references to the Azores, the Canaries, the Cape Verdes, Dakar, Greenland, Iceland?

The Azores bear exactly the same relation to our Atlantic Coast that Hawaii bears to our Pacific Coast. The Canaries, the Cape Verdes, and Dakar bear the same relationship to Latin America.

Even more important at the moment, these points, with Iceland, dominate the Eastern Atlantic along its whole length. If Hitler gets to them first, convoy isn't going to be of much use. Or at least, it is going to involve enormous losses for our navy, inevitably great losses in supply.

As for Greenland, it dominates the whole northern quarter of the Western Atlantic, the waters off Canada. And [under] our present unclear policy there is certainly ground for uneasiness.

It is a grim prospect. But we are not going to solve it reasonably by simply pretending that it doesn't exist. The alternative to facing it, as Herbert Agar pointed out in Rock Hill last night, is likely to be the defeat of Britain, the passage of the British navy into Nazi hands, and perhaps the disintegration of the United States from within during the next twelve months.

Framed Edition

Links-Date -- Links-Subj.