The Charlotte News

Friday, February 6, 1942

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: "No Rout" realistically appraises the situation in Russia, that the way lay ahead for considerable retrenchment and siege to come, as there would be.

"Antidote" provides statistics compiled by an Atlanta organization, counter to the Neanderthalism of Governor Talmadge. The statistics demonstrate an emerging middle class among African-Americans, showing 50% employment among those older than ten, as compared to 45% in the same group among whites.

Paul Mallon again counsels that the Allies take the offensive as soon as practicable and cease the Churchill strategy of waging a defensive war, fighting on scattered fronts while having to maintain a huge army in Britain to protect against invasion, thinning the forces available in Libya, Singapore, Burma, and N.E.I., leaving each exposed to being overwhelmed by superior numbers. Saving Libya for the time was the equivalent distraction for the Nazis in Russia; while China also served as a distraction for Japan, the Japanese nevertheless were able to bring far superior and unexpected air power to the South Pacific theater, as pointed out in "Planes A-Plenty". Mr. Mallon favored an approach whereby Britain and the United States would concentrate on one Axis target at a time, such as Libya, and thereby open one pathway, such as that through Sicily into Italy, and eliminate one branch of the Axis at a time. The Allies would, indeed, do that the following year, after halting the Nazis' advance short of Alexandria and the Suez in Egypt, the British under General Bernard Montgomery pushing the Wehrmacht half-way back across Africa into Tunisia.

And two other letter writers, former patients at the Morganton insane asylum, confirm the mistreatment described by Tom Jimison in his series on the institution. The Fayetteville Observer as well registers its disgust over the description provided, while cautioning to take the matter with some degree of skepticism, given its source, that of a former patient. But, all of these various letter writers who either were patients or relatives of former patients, uniformly thus far condemning the treatment and physical conditions and sanitation of the facility, and doing so anecdotally in ways consistent with that described by Mr. Jimison, had no motive whatsoever to lie or exaggerate. Obviously, the place was a virtual torture chamber where patients were treated as prisoners, placed without reason in surroundings which were inferior to most prisons of the day. The place needed a good lawsuit brought pursuant to the Eighth Amendment for Cruel and Unusual Punishment, at least insofar as those confined there by order of the court. The result would have been salutary for all the patients. Unfortunately, no one apparently thought of doing so, challenging the fitness of the facility under 42 USC 1983 as effectively denying civil rights of the involuntarily committed patients to be free from violations of the Eighth Amendment. It is too bad Mr. Jimison did not think to do it himself; it would have been a perfect coda to his obviously moving series of articles. Although 42 USC 1983, enabling civil suit for damages or injunctive relief against any person acting under color of state law in violation of another's civil rights, was very much on the books, and had been since shortly after the Civil War, no one much thought to challenge such institutional conditions by its use until the 1960's.