The Charlotte News

Monday, September 4, 1939

FOUR EDITORIALS

Apocalypse

The Seven Angels Pour Out The Vials Of God's Wrath

And I heard a great voice out of the temples saying to the seven angels, Go your ways and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.

And the first went and poured out his vial upon the earth: and their fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the man who had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image.

And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea: and became as the blood of a dead man and every living soul died in the city.

And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters: and they became blood.

And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun: and power was given unto him to scorch man with fire.

And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not, to give him glory.

And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast: and his kingdom was full of darkness: and they gnawed their tongues for pain...

And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates: and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.

And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.

For they are the spirits of devils working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty...

And he gathered them together in a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.

And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air: and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done.

And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings: and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since man were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great.

And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell...

And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found.

Lusitania

Sinking Of Athenia Recalls Famous Disaster Of Past

On the evening of May 7, 1915, the crack Cunard Liner, Lusitania, was steaming through quiet waters off Ireland, en route to England. There had been a grim little noise. In The New York Times before she sailed-- an advertisement signed by the German Embassy announcing that it was known that she would be carrying contraband on this voyage and that all persons who sailed on her should know that she was liable to be destroyed.

But nobody had heeded. On board were a great list of notables including Elbert Hubbard, Alfred Vanderbilt, and Charles Frohman. And now, with Kinsale Head lying only ten miles to leeward, passengers were celebrating their safe passage. In the great ballroom there was dancing and the bars were crowded. Then the torpedo struck...

Twenty minutes later the Lusitania was on the bottom of the sea, and 1,154 persons, 114 of them Americans, had drowned, or, in the case of the stronger swimmers, were in process of drowning. A few of the passengers, lucky enough to get in boats or cling to pieces of wreckage, made their way to the Irish coast. They reported that there was little panic, and that the 1,154 dead died quietly.

Afterward the German Government struck a medal to commemorate the deed.

Forever Behind

Chamberlain Does The Right Thing, But Always Too Late

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain puts us in mind of what small boys and native wits used to say about a certain railroad that runs through this section. Always behind. Always doing the right thing too late.

The primary reason for taking Anthony Eden and Winston Churchill into his Cabinet, which has been advocated for some time, was as a sign to the dictator nations that England at last meant business. Eden represented non-appeasement, a policy which he would have enforced more effectively against Italy in the Abyssinian conquest had not Stanley Baldwin, Bumble's predecessor and sponsor, made deals with Mussolini on the sly.

And as for Churchill, he has been warning Britain for years against the rising, growing German menace, and he is fully entitled now to point out that he told 'em so. But, no. Chamberlain still thought it best not to offend Hitler until he had to.

And it is this characteristic of his to procrastinate, to wish for a solution rather than to make one, that has given Hitler command of the Moravian heights and a tough little Czecho-Slovakian army that once would have been on his heels. And a pestiferous little Czecho-Slovakian air force.

Our Neutrality

Sinking Of Athenia Serves To Point President's Talk

The President was a little sharp with old Bill Borah last night, for of course it was Borah to whom he was referring when he indulged in sarcasm about men who assumed to make prophecies about what was going to happen on the basis of incomplete knowledge. But Borah after all, had it coming, for he did make bold, at the White House conference on the eve of the Senate's rejection of the Hull-Bloom neutrality bill, to assert that he had sources of information in Europe which were at least as good as the State Department's, and that on the basis of advices received from them he was confident that there would be no war for a year.

But aside from that indulgence in personalities, the speech was an excellent exposition of what our position ought and probably will be. Certainly, the plea for the abandonment of partisanship and spite in questions involving our international relations was justified. It has been denied, as by Ironpants Johnson, that the Congress acted from anything but high principle in the neutrality bill fight. But the fact is quite plain that the solid Republican and anti-New Deal opposition did not really proceed from any genuine isolationism. One of the most flagrant cases was that of Ham Fish in the House. He fumed and roared that talk of war was mere hysteria and every American ought to keep religiously out of the argument.

But within a month he himself went to Europe and promptly climbed on the front pages by announcing in a hysterical tone that war was about to break and trying himself to arrange a settlement! And in the Senate--well, whoever heard of Walter George as an isolationist until the President tried to purge him?

That the action of Congress on the neutrality bill had any effect in bringing about the war is improbable, and the President and his henchmen are merely indulging in politics when they charge it--are themselves doing their best to create an atmosphere in which co-operation will be unlikely. But the failure to repeal the arm's embargo has [remainder of sentence indiscernible].

There is not the slightest doubt about how the country feels, and Mr. Roosevelt is entirely right in saying that it is impossible for us to be neutral in our sympathies. Where the blame for this war lies is plainer than has ever been the case in a modern war except that between Italy and Abyssinia. Moreover, the sinking of the Athenia last night shows us what kind of war Germany intends to wage, for that ship certainly carried no contraband and was crowded with refugees fleeing homeward, many of them citizens of the United States.

Germany begins the war with a new and far more flagrant Lusitania case--which was less tragic than that of the Lusitania through no German consideration. The fact that German submarines are fueling in the Dutch West Indies is also an indication of what we may expect.

What we shall want to do is, therefore, plain enough. All our interests and feelings decree that we shall want England and France to win as quickly as possible--to allow them to buy arms here, as they are entitled to do under international law. The arms embargo in fact will probably be repealed in short order. But it is going to smoke us more clearly out into the open than would have been the case had it been repealed by the last session of Congress.


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