The Charlotte News

Friday, February 7, 1941

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: …And perhaps Groucho could have testified, "Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms," or "You've got the brain of a four year old boy and I'll bet he was glad to get rid of it," or "Why should I worry about posterity? What has posterity ever done for me?"

State Needs To Train Many Technicians for Problems

President Graham's request for additional funds for new buildings, equipment, and maintenance in the University is distributed among the three units as follows:

State College ...................... $2,026,747
Chapel Hill .......................… 1,419,136
Woman's College ................. 945,440

Which are probably about the right proportions for the present.

All three units are necessary and should not be neglected, of course. But the candid fact is that the State College unit has fared somewhat more poorly than the other two for some time--in view of its needs, at least.

The college is the main source of the state's technicians, and technicians are greatly needed already--are going to be needed more in the years immediately ahead. For many of the chief problems which face North Carolina can be solved only with the aid of technicians, however much the capacity to see these problems in the future is also necessary.

The curse of Southern industry has been that it mainly manufactured cheap and simple goods, which could be sold at prices below those fixed by standards in the North. That day is plainly about over for North Carolina. And the industrial development of the state hereafter is going to be primarily a task for highly trained technicians.

Furthermore, the state is confronted with the necessity, not to say the pressing desirability, of great changes in its agriculture. It is not impossible that it may have to abandon cotton altogether, and it may never again have the tobacco market abroad that it has long enjoyed. In any case the changes will be extensive. And if they are to be made wisely and with the least human suffering, they must be made under the advice and direction of a man who knows the state and its agricultural possibilities thoroughly.

If McCormick Qualifies, Why Not Gracie Allen?

What is going on in both the House and the Senate now has all the earmarks of deliberate obstructionism on the part of the isolationists and appeasers--a deliberate effort to delay the Lease-Lend Bill if they cannot wreck it, at a time when weeks and even days may prove crucial.

All the rational and irrational arguments by experts and inexperts have already been threshed out to the point of threadbareness and the public has read them until it knows them all by heart.

But in the Senate long hours are consumed in hearing Robert R. McCormick, whose sole claim to expertise on the question of whether or not this country can be invaded is the fact that he is the publisher of the Chicago Tribune and one of the most bitter-end partisans alive on the planet. If he is to be heard, why not publishers of the New York Times, the Herald-Tribune, the Baltimore Sunpapers, the Washington, St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, New Orleans, San Francisco papers? Why not, indeed, the publisher of every paper in the United States?

And after him came again Lindbergh, who had already been heard by the House--and his sole claim to experience in the field is that, by his own confession, he is not disturbed by the prospect of a victory for the Nazis. If he gets on, why not "Wrong Way Corrigan," who can fly an airplane, too? Indeed why not Bing Crosby or Ed Wynn or Harpo Marx--all of whom, and especially Harpo, have great merits even if they can't fly. In fact, we demand that Harpo be called. The more we think about it the more he becomes our favorite expert on these matters.

And on the floor of the House the members are grinding out again all the old chestnuts already fought over in the hearings before the Foreign Affairs Committee--such as "if Hitler can't cross the Channel how can he cross the Atlantic?" Harpo--or perhaps Groucho--is obviously the man to discuss that brilliant proposition.

Which the Little Reader Can Figure for Himself

Charles Augustus Lindbergh, who has succeeded the late Captain Mahan as the ranking authority on the importance of sea power to the United States, explained modestly about his second appearance before the Congress that he declined at first but had reconsidered at the request of a Senator who was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

For our own reasons we'd give a nickel to know who that Senator was.

George, Harrison, Wagner, Tom Connally, Pepper, Green, Barkley, White, Guffey--all these members of the committee, we suppose, can safely be charged off the list.

Thomas, Capper, Van Nuys, Murray, Gillette--any of these could be guilty, though we don't suspect them.

That leaves the following, all militant isolationists or appeasers:

Hiram Johnson (R)
Vandenberg (R)
Shipsted (FL)
La Follette (P)
Nye (R)
Bennett Champ Clark (D)
Robert Rice Reynolds (D)

Take your choice. We just wondered who was so anxious for Mr. Lindbergh to use the Congress for a sounding board twice.