The Charlotte News
Thursday, October 3, 1940
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The first game of the 1940 World Series on October 2 wound up 7-2 in favor of the heavily favored Detroit Tigers behind the pitching of Bobo Newsom. His father, in the stands for the game, died, however, of a heart attack. Cincinnati would win game two on this date 5-3. After the teams exchanged another victory apiece, the Tigers winning game three despite sloppy pitching by Rocky Bridges, Newsom returned with an 8-0 victory in game 5. Then the Reds' ace Bucky Walters pitched a 4-0 shutout in the 6th to even the series. Newsom returned in game 7 after one day's rest and the Reds (a.k.a. Motor City) capitalized, winning 2-1 off the pitching of Paul Derringer, to win the Series, after all. So the underdog (a.k.a. overcat) won, bets were paid, the beer flowed, the peanuts cracked, the tube steaks swirled on the griddle, all was right in Caseyville, and that's the news, sports fans.
Some things a world war will not stop--though greasy palms and loose bats may sometimes.
Sighs In Zion
A Note on the Prevailing Preference for the Reds
Outside of the hard-boiled clairvoyance to have their money on the Tigers, the population of these parts at least seems generally to be taken down with gloom over the one-sided defeat of the Reds at Cincinnati yesterday.
That is explained in part of course by the simple and manifest consideration that involve the loss of bets for them. But the melancholy extended far over and beyond the limits of those wounded in the pocketbook.
Which is a little curious. In general, there is no particular reason we can think of why Cincinnati should so predominantly take preference over Detroit. Neither team has any particular ties with this section, and neither town is Southern.
No doubt the fondness of sports fans for the underdog goes far to explain it. For many years the Reds have been trying to return to the glory which was theirs long ago, always until now to come upon hard luck and end in disaster. And moreover, the league to which the team belongs hasn't won the World Series since 1934. That sort of thing becomes monotonous after a while. In addition, the Reds entered the contest sadly handicapped by the fact that three of their best players were crippled.
Yet in the end, we have the feeling that even this is not sufficient wholly to explain it. In this prevailing fondness for the Reds as against the Tigers we seem to have one of those curious quirks of human psychology which defy ultimately analysis. Still, it seems unnecessary to call in the Senate for an investigation, despite that Red name. And the fans can still take comfort in the thought that it is only the Battle of Norway which is lost as yet.
Spanish Fake
Phoney Neutrality Won't Save Her From Attack
The Spanish population's noisy joy over the news that Spain is to remain a "non-belligerent" in the European war may be premature.
Fact is that the Axis probably didn't want Spain to join the war now. For if she did, it might result in the British striking before the Nazis were ready to launch their attack on Gibraltar. The indications are that Franco plans to hand over bases to the Axis for the attack and to afford the Axis armies every facility and aid on Spanish soil.
In short, Spain promises to be an active participant in the war in all but a formal declaration and the furnishing of armies.
And the chances that, under those circumstances, she will escape attack from the British are nil. The days of "non-intervention" and phoney neutrality are over. The British may not choose to strike at once, in order not to extend their lines unduly until they are ready. But Spain is vulnerable when they do decide to move.
The Spanish coastal cities are all poorly fortified and, as the Germans proved at Almeria in 1937, can easily be destroyed by naval fire. When the attack on Gibraltar really begins, Spain may expect attacks on the cities to begin also.
Moreover, if the attempt on Gibraltar fails, it is quite possible and even probable that Spain will ultimately be invaded and overrun. Spain was the bridgehead from which the British first struck by land for the destruction of Napoleon. History may well repeat.
Hard At Work
Portrait of Three Statesmen Earning Their Ten Thousand
Mr. Shipstead of Minnesota, colleague of the late Lundeen in the United States Senate, was quite upset. He had been upset a long time, it seemed. So long ago as the visit of Duff Cooper to the United States last Winter. Actually, they had allowed this Duff Cooper to address school children out in Minnesota. This agent of the wicked British Government, cunningly plotting the destruction of the Republic by getting it into war. Mr. Shipstead's heart bled as he thought about it, and his gorge arose against the President of the United States for allowing the foul crime to transpire.
Then up rose Senator Rush Holt, the ornament from West Virginia. He could hardly contain his emotions of grief and rage as he recited to the Senate the sinister news that Sir Campbell Stuart, another wicked Britisher, had actually come to Washington and, against all established canons of decency, had had a conference with the President. And worse, the President hadn't told reporters all about it.
As for Senator Bennett Champ Clark, the shield of the Republic from the old seat of Anheuser-Busch, he contented himself with exposing a Fifth Columnist named William Allen White, who runs a newspaper out in Emporia, Kansas, as a front for his activities in behalf of the same wicked British Government. This man, said the grave and reverend Senator, was the center of a great interlocking web of plots, all designed to the foul end of killing off American boys in foreign fields.
In such fashion were the Government printers kept busy filling out the Congressional Record in October, 1940--at $84 of the taxpayer's money per page.
White Murder
The Blacks No Longer Have a Monopoly Here
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has not yet released its figures on murder in the towns of the United States during the third quarter of 1940. But, on the basis of past experience, we are supremely sure that it may be said that Charlotte, with twelve murders in the period, led the nation and is now sure to capture the 1940 crown as the most murderous town in that part of the world which isn't at war.
That was to have been expected. More notable is the fact that of the twelve victims in this three-month period, three were white people, murdered by other white people. That, as we recall it, is the highest percentage of whites which has been chaulked up in the city since we began to take account of the record. Usually, the list of the slain and the slayers is all black.
Maybe it is simply the operation of the law of chance. And yet, in the last analysis, we do not believe that it is simply the law of chance. On the contrary, what we probably have here is the slow, intermittent, but nonetheless certain emergence of a tendency, the tendency of easy and relatively safe murder to pour over from the ranks of the blacks to those of the whites.
That also was to be expected. You cannot let the constant example of unchecked and weakly-punished murder flourish in any group without others eventually taking it up.
By-product
Partisanship Insures Defeat Of a Doubtful Measure
Sometimes even mere partisanship has its uses. As witness the killing of the bill which would have empowered the President to bar from this country any goods confiscated by foreign nations "by force and without just compensation." The nearly solid vote of the Republican delegation in the House did it.
Reason for their action, as the debate showed quite plainly, was angry dislike for Mr. Roosevelt and a desire to balk any attempt to grant him the powers, whether justified or not.
Nevertheless, and though the bill had the okay of the State Department, the measure was an immensely dubious one.
In reality, it seems to have been cooked up by oil interests in this country for the purpose of shutting off competition from Mexico. Representative Hatton Sumners and other Democrats from the oil states let that cat clearly out of the bag in their speeches on the measure.
So far as that goes, Mexico may deserve to have its oils shut out of this country as a penalty for its brazen confiscation of American-owned oil properties. But we simply cannot afford a President to antagonize Mexico. The country represents a perfect base for Nazi operations against us, and that it has already been flirting with the idea of becoming Japan's source of oil supply if the United States should embargo oil entirely. This bill would have driven Mexico into the Japanese arms.
Framed Edition
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