The Charlotte News

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 1938

TWO EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Well, sirree, and mammee, too--we have to wonder what old W.J. Cash would have satter down and said heyere of a Presi-dent, appointed by the Su-preme Court or not, who suspends certain rights during "wartime" when that war (what war?) is declared by the ap-pointed Commander-in-Chief as an indefinite "war on evil". Don't you reckon? God Almighty. (We can say "God" now. The Chief said so. Skip what them com-munist, liberawl courtroom judges say. You know who appointed them, don’t ye? Yepper.) But I'll be switched. Evil has been around since the Apple in the Garden--at least, that's what we have been led to believe, weren't it? That's what them preachermen have always said, anyhow. Now weren't it? Why, we's led 'bout as much to believe, what with growin' up with all kinds of war, murder, and mayhem, that it was Evil that made the world go 'round. I mean, weren't it? It sure do occupy most of our time, don't it?

And by the by, if there's some wise-acre out yonder who's lookin' to stick his nose in heyere and say, nosir, it's that thar grav-it-y which makes the world go 'round, not Evil. Well now there's the point right thar. Why, without that, that sucker, grav-it-y, why, you wouldn't have things a fallin' from the sky now would you? No bombs, bullets 'd be hard-pressed to get a bead on anything, and why even your old dirk and dagger would have a bit of a durned problem with bein' thrusted into you vitals, without a might of a danged struggle, that is. Now wouldn't it be the case? Tell the truth. Fact, you wouldn't even have no graves without that thar grav-it-y. Would ye? So's then all our dead rel-a-tives could get right up and float right on out. See what I mean? So's ain't it Evil that makes the world go 'round? Think about them Apples awhile. Come to think of it, maybe that's why his name was Fig Newton.

But, by golly gee, we mean double-u, this One is going to end it--the Chief, that is. Yepper. We're sure looking forward to that. I think they call that the A-poc-o-lips--or somethin' like 'at. And we will say, "Thank you, Mr. Chief." No one left on earth but us good 'uns. Yepper, just Us. Yepper, yes. Let's all stand up, say the Pledge, wave our little flags, and forget about that old piece of parchment under glass that the old boys call the Const-st-itution. Suspend that old thing as long as this here war on evil should last--which we hope to God is forever and an eternity--or from here to eternity,--maybe. 'Cause it's that danged Const-st-tution that got us all into this evil trouble, weren't it? I mean, weren't it? Think 'bout that thar.

Why that old thing, (as we actually heard a bumbailiff once say quite seriously in a California courtroom), is plainly outmoded. Yepper. (That means, yessir, Gipper, for those unfamiliar with that inside kind of talk.) Let's just throw that all away and let the Chief tell us what we can/cannot do. Order number 13801034, "Thou shalt not spit in public places for fear that it may contain germ warfare within the salivary processes and that might be evil, if it did, that is." Yepper.

That's the way it work, don't it? The Chief of the tribe tells all the members what they can/cannot do--just like all them CEO's say to their em-plo-yees. And we all know thems make a lot of money and everything's good and sweet and kind and American, too. Yepper.

I seen that once in a John Ford western. It worked there with them Injuns. Yepperoo. (That's means, yessir, Gipper, you old Buckaroo, you.) I know what is what and when was when. Weren't it "Stagecoach"? But was it the 1939 one or the 1959 one with Sal Mineo as a Injun? I cain't remember.

But now wait a minute. Wait just a dang minute. Yepper. Wasn't that what that feller--what's his name, you know the one, what is his name?--did back there, whenever, in that foreign country--you know the one I mean? You know?

Well now, that's got us to thinkin'. That's not cool.

We're no dummy. Yepper.

The Gumshoe Crew

A spy story with a red-headed woman, and a couple of soldiers of the American army--ah, that's an exciting story for these times. But, though we are pleasantly titillated, we are not, to tell the truth, much excited. If the German Reich is trying to find out our naval and military "secrets," why, the German Reich has been doing that for many years. And though we haven't looked into the Intelligence Service files, we'll bet you a tin whistle that our own spies are busy with the secrets of the German Reich.

On the whole, indeed, we probably have the best of the spy business. We haven't many genuine secrets. You can't have it in a democracy, except perhaps in wartime when we quit being democratic for awhile. That "aerial mine," for instance. After all the talk in Congress, the whole world knows it exists. And knowing that it exists, the nations will inevitably find out if it is workable, and if it is, it won't in the least matter whether they can lay hands on its plans or not: for they have inventive brains, too, and, given the problem, can work out independently one just as good and maybe better. Or, again, take those plans for the aircraft carriers the Reich wanted to pay a thousand smackers for. With them in hand, a German gunner would know just where to fire to damage the ship most? To be sure. But a competent authority on naval hulls could have figured that, anyhow, without any plans at all.

Ambilevous Adolf

Adolf Hitler's orders to German citizens residing in the United States to stay out of such play-soldier organizations as the American-German Volksbund appears to testify that he has at last begun to be alarmed over the reaction of the American public.

It's high time. So long ago as early 1936, he made that public hopping mad with the order that every German citizen here must report to a German consulate and register for draft service in the Nazi legions. Then came the idiotic demands that the President make Nazi law American law and shut up LaGuardia and other American critics. And after that, the announcement last fall that Germany propose, through the "Auslands organization," to follow German citizens wherever they were and "protect" them, the order on February 10 that Germans here must notify German consulates of all of their movements, and Hitler's reiteration of the "protection for Germans everywhere" nonsense in his speech ten days ago.

The result of it all is that Americans probably hate this man more cordially than they have hated anybody since Kaiser Bill of World War days. The feeling toward either Mussolini or Stalin is mild in comparison, for both are more expert in public relations than the Germans who invariably do the wrong thing.

Indeed, it may very well be that their last order will not at all accomplish the conciliation of opinion it is plainly intended to accomplish. For after all, is it not true that the assertion of the rights to order Germans on this soil out of a fascist organization, is also assertion of the right to order them into it?

Site Ed. Note: It may actually be "Ambivelous Adolf", (Ambidevilous?), but we leave it the way the typesetter set it--and that may have been the way the not-so-ambivalent but also not so ambidexterous Mr. Cash may have erratically typed it--or meant it.


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