The Charlotte News

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1937

FOUR EDITORIALS

Soviet Sacrifices

 

Soviet Russia Sunday celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the OGPU, secret political police, with the execution of eight more persons. There's really nothing unusual about that. The OGPU, in the 7,300 days of its existence, has sent men to their deaths almost every day. This year alone the toll has run into the hundreds. And the most conservative estimates for the total period of its existence put the number of its victims at from 10,000 to 30,000.

There is one curious thing that we observe, however,--that it is increasingly becoming the practice of the Soviet Government to celebrate all great anniversaries with the formal executions of great persons. Four of these men had not only been active in the OGPU, but had also held other posts of the first importance. Which reminds us that it has been many times suggested by anthropologists that the Russian regime, like the German and Italian regimes, is in its essence a falling back to the pattern of barbarism. And that, in fact, the execution of great persons on great anniversaries and high dates has been universally characteristic of barbarism.

To be sure, the barbarians have commonly done so by way of sacrifice to a god--or gods. But then, Stalin, to whom these sacrifices are addressed, obviously occupies the status of a kind of god in Russia.

Tribute to an Egg

 

We confess to a certain limited admiration for Mayor Frank (l'Etat, c'est moi) Hague of Jersey City. For about superlatives of any sort there is a little something that takes our breath, even in these times when co-loss-al exhibits may be seen in any of the local movie houses practically any night. A superlative clown. The fattest lady. The smallest man. The most numerous father. The biggest louse. The champion bull. And for brassbound triple-plated, hundred-proof , unadulterated simon-pure nerve, this Mayor Hague is tops even in a world which boasts Mussolini, Hitler, and the Japanese warlords.

Consider. A few weeks ago, he announced his intention to remove Jersey City from the jurisdiction of the United States, suspend the Bill of Rights, and bar the CIO completely out of the town. Afterwards he sicked his cops on some CIO organizers who made bold to come into the town anyhow, and actually threw them into jail for no crime save having disobeyed his order to stay out. And yesterday, when it was announced that a committee had been formed to go to bat for civil liberties in Jersey City--a committee including such eminentissimoes as Walter Lippman, George Kaufman, and Edna Ferber--Mayor Hague rose up and denounced the action as "insolence! "

The fellow is so awful, he dazzles.

After Kellogg

 

It must have been in considerable gloom that Frank Kellogg departed this troubled sphere last night. For the great work of his life, the Kellogg-Briand Treaty, was manifestly a failure. The Brussels Conference had finally proved what the actions of Italy, Germany, and Japan had been establishing for five years, that peace cannot be kept in the world merely by signing papers and holding talk-fests.

But perhaps it was not necessary for him to depart in utter despair. For even as he passed, a new policy was beginning to take inchoate form. A policy based on the grim acceptance of the manifest facts that there are nations which will hear no argument save that of superior force, and which have taken the peaceableness of the democratic powers as cowardice and as carte blanche to do what they would. A French battle squadron was already in the Pacific, the British were preparing to send six of their mightiest ships, and on our own West Coast the Navy was moving restlessly as the President uttered ominous words.

A dangerous policy? An exceedingly dangerous one. One full of the possibility of war. And yet--that other policy of eternally retreating before ever mounting insolence was full of the possibility, almost the certainty, indeed, of another worldwide conflict. After all, the United States, Britain, and France, do hold the overwhelming preponderance of might in the world, as not even the megalomania of the brass hats who rule the bandit nations will fail to know. And so it may be that the demonstration of the determination to use that power if necessary is the best bet for the securing and maintaining of that peace which was the great goal at which Frank Kellogg aimed.

*Process of Elimination

 

In his fireside chat last October calling the special session of Congress, the President asked "early enactment"of the following legislation:

1. Crop control.

2. Minimum wages and maximum hours in industry

3. Reorganization of the executive department of the Government.

4. Regional planning.

5. Stricter anti-trust laws.

In his message to the assembled Congress in November, the President stressed:

1. Crop control

2. Minimum wages and maximum hours in industry.

3. Reorganization of the executive department of the Government.

4. Regional planning.

In a special message on November 29, and in another the day following, the President urged Congress:

1. To pass a liberalized housing act.

2. To reduce, before January 1, 1938-39 Federal highway appropriations to the states.

Last night, Congress adjourned.

The House and Senate had passed farm control bills and housing bills, but in such varying form that they had to be sent to conference. Otherwise, bills finally enacted were--

1. None at all.

But it could have been worse, at that.


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