The Charlotte News

Sunday, February 16, 1941

TWO EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: And if you should encounter anyone who might doubt the argument put forward in our note accompanying the editorials of February 8, 1941, perhaps based on the idea that we are "splitting hairs" on time, because, after all, as everyone knows, .1 of a second or .2 of a second or .3 of a second are just that, fractions of time, far too small to calculate in normal terms or to be meaningful--well, you can go into fancy statements about the natural physical laws of the universe and such as that and explain to them that such laws are, despite attempts from Genghis to Hitler to bend them, immutable for the very simple reason that they are the laws of the universe. And that, according to Professor Shakespeare, the truth about murder always will out.

Or, you can simply ask them this simple question: Have you ever watched a college basketball game since the institution of the shot clock in 1983? Have you watched it tick away in the last minute, in its increments, especially within the last seconds, paused for timeouts, and so on? Have you noticed how much can be accomplished in such small increments of time in the way of human activity? Have you ever seen a basketball team score eight points in sixteen seconds in two and one-point increments? Have you noticed that by N.C.A.A. rules a player has time to catch a twelve-inch round ball and shoot it into a twenty-four inch hoop--that is a 9 in an 18, though it sure does look smaller than that sometimes, despite that we do pray to it a' times, practically as big as the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, combined, unless the ball thinks it is going to go through the hoop, that is--in the course of a third of a second, that a player can tap a ball in this hoop in the course of even .1 of a second? Then, if they have, ask them if they can see the ball during that .1 second as it is passed to the player who taps it. If they tell you they can, then ask them whether they have ever seen a bullet traveling through the air, having been projected by a rifle. If they tell you that they have, then ask them if they are indeed the true Superman. If they say that they are, then you will have your answer.

And then ask them, please, whether at these hoop shooting contests they have ever seen folks--just like them, perhaps--stamping their feet, clapping their hands, singing the "Star Bangled Banner" and perhaps even forms, at least, of the spiritual, "I Shall Not Be Moved". And if they have, say, "Amen, brother."

And then explain to them that it is a documented fact that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was, at age 23, in Charlotte, North Carolina on the weekend of February 8-9, 1941, and that the reason he was there was to find a ghost-writer for his father's memoirs, something he said he wanted to be written on the order of that of Walter Hines Page, a North Carolinian. Tell them that North Carolinians are Tar Heels. Tell them John F. Kennedy liked Tar Heels, had one in his Cabinet, often asked about the Governor, spoke on University Day at the University of North Carolina in Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill, on a warm fall day, October 12, 1961. Tell them that the state motto of North Carolina is Esse Quam Videri. And tell them that Bostonians are Patriots. Explain to them that we are a nation, united, given to debate, not always informed debate, but debate nevertheless. And that it is that, foremost, and always, though we may at times fall short of the aspiration, about which we are or at least aspire to be.

And if you wonder why we have elected to make these statements on this day's pieces, then please read the two editorials below slowly, and think about them, and think about their context in time, the coincidences, and the intersections. Truly. Maybe even go locate one of your old, old elementary textbooks and have a laugh or two, maybe a tear, and relax.

We think it improbable, incidentally, that the first editorial should necessarily suggest of something to be taken literally with reference to years after 1941. But how that editorial might have been used later, as a method of coding something, not by Chief Justice Earl Warren and not by Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, but by others, is another matter.

And having thought about that some vis á vis the adduced, uncontroverted evidence, you will be able to say you count because you will understand something, something about justice, something about truth, something about the heavens, perhaps--and the spirit which is this country. The spirit of a liberal, free democracy.

We urge you continually to learn about our Constitution, how our laws work under it, how our states and municipalities function under it, how each one of us is empowered under it--and to stand up for that Constitution always, regardless of whether it happens to cut in favor of the position of your political persuasion or is opposed to it, and no matter how much anyone may argue with you, may debate with you, may fire slings and arrows at you for so doing. Debate with them; listen to them. Explain what that Constitution says if it appears their argument runs counter to it. They might learn something, but so too might you, and so too might anyone listening to the debate. And try to reach a mutual understanding with them whether there is agreement or not on the given issue. In the final analysis, appreciate their basic humanity. Shake hands and part peaceably.

Then, regardless of anything else, you are an American, wherever you are, from wherever you are.

School Board Goes All Out Against Chapel Hill Book

The State Board of Education approves 384 out of a total of 385 books submitted by publishers for a list of supplementary reading in elementary schools. It turns down one, "The Growth of North Carolina," by Dr. A. R. Newsome and Dr. Hugh Lefler, University of North Carolina professors.

This certainly gives weight to the charge that its action about this book has been prejudiced and questionable.

First the State Textbook Commission recommended it as the best available textbook for classroom use in the state schools. Then the Board of Education selected instead a book by Jule B. Warren, Secretary of the North Carolina Education Commission--(incidentally, why all these agencies for one job?)--like the members of the School Board, a political appointee.

Reason given was that the Newsome-Lefler book contained expressions of opinion about the recent history of the Democratic Party in the state, not facts. Reference was to mention of cynical and corrupt practices. These are not facts legally established in the courts, no, but they are nevertheless facts of common knowledge to all informed men in the state.

What the position of the School Board came to was that if anybody wanted to get his book used as textbook, he had better lay off the party and its practices.

And its latest action smacks heavily of spite because of the protests of the champions of the Newsome-Lefler book and the attacks on Warren as a "fellow politician" of the School Board members. And of something worse, the determination to make the Party so sacrosanct that no pupil shall even be allowed to read a book which suggests, mildly enough, the plain facts about it.

Thinner Than a Vacuum, They Outburn the Sun

It is a little ghostly, this universe with all its accompaniment of "space" and "time" and vast whirling balls of fiery gases and solid matter forever falling around one another. You can "explain" it all by using the word "relationships"--that is, until you remember that it also is just a word.

Take the discovery of Dr. Walter S. Adams, director of the Mt. Wilson Observatory, for instance. The world's greatest telescope is there, and with it the learned astronomer has found "spots" in "empty space" where the temperature is twice as great as that of the sun. Empty space itself is supposed to be devoid of heat and closed in complete darkness. But the spots are made up a very thin gas--"thinner than the best vacuum that can be made on earth."

Heat, we recall dimly, is supposed to be generated by the bombardment of molecules, atoms, electrons, or whatever ghostly division of matter you like to use, by others, and to be developed in proportion to the rapidity of the bombardment. More than that, it is supposed to decrease in proportion to the distance of the bombarded object from the original source of light or heat or energy, as you care to say.

But now, the gases and the spots are much too thin to generate that terrific heat by the mutual action of their own molecules. And more than that they are surrounded by nothing, or perhaps by the "ether" which is another name for nothing. And--though they are supposed to get their heat by reflection from the stars (suns), the spots far away from the stars are just as hot as those close at hand!

With words we describe certain effects upon ourselves and our world. But the ghostly universe sweeps on, with us aboard it, as completely impenetrable in the last analysis as it was to any Cro-Magnon man gnawing his ox bone in the caves of the Pyrenees twenty thousand years ago.

We also suggest a thorough, slow reading of Love's Labour's Lost.