St. Louis Whips Smoke With Drastic Ordinance

St. Louis has solved its smoke problem. The weather bureau in that city reports that the new smoke ordinance there has cut hours of smoke--the measure used--71 per cent for the Fall and Winter of 1940-41 over that of 1939-40. In a single day in February 1940 there was more smoke than the city had n all of February 1941.

For years St. Louis, lying at low elevation on the river banks and having many factories and great railroad yards, has been one of the smokiest cities in the world. And for years St. Louis like many other cities has been wrestling with the problem of getting rid of the nuisance which turns the very breath by which men live into a dirty, lung-clogging menace. Smoke engineers were called in, various ordinances passed, but still St. Louis remained shrouded in its cloud of smoke.

Then the city took the bull by the horns and passed the strongest smoke ordinance yet passed by any American city. It permits the use of soft coal only when it is burned mechanically.

That is drastic action and one which other cities will be reluctant to follow--one, too, which might ruin the soft coal industry if it were generally applied. Nevertheless, the people of every city have a right to demand that the air they breathe shall not be polluted. And manufacturers who refuse to co-operate with milder schemes for eliminating the smoke menace are simply asking for the kind of action St. Louis was driven to.

Hitler May Be On His Way To Victory or Gallows

Adolf Hitler may be on his way to a new Blitzkrieg and final victory in his war to destroy western civilization and replace it with barbarism. But he may also be on his way to the day when the rope will be adjusted to his neck.

Hitler has undoubtedly counted on his threats to bring Greece and Turkey to terms. And it is still too early to be sure that he is not correct. Poor Greece has the odds overwhelmingly against her. Attacked on two fronts by nations vastly more powerful than she is, she would certainly be justified in seeking the best possible terms for herself--if she had to do with a civilized power. But of course she hasn't, and she has already proved her determination not to play the part of an ignominious Rumania.

The Turks also show every indication of intending to fight if Adolf threatens the Dardanelles. If so, it is a significant show of their belief that in the end Britain will win the war.

From London comes the report that the British have deliberately courted the fight on this front, in order to insure themselves a bridgehead on the Continent, with a view to invading Germany next year.

Not from London comes the report that the British have already landed a great part of the Army of the Nile at Salonica. If that is so, Adolf Hitler and his Storm Troopers probably are in for some such surprise as the Kaiser's army encountered in the great Spring offensive of 1918, when the Australians stopped the German Army in their tracks and put Germany on the road to surrender.

Critic of South Overlooks Tit-for-Tat Rule

Representative Wolcott, of Michigan, didn't carry his argument through to its logical conclusion.

The House Banking Committee was holding a hearing on the bill approved by the Senate to regulate the warehousing of cotton. More or less apropos of the argument, Mr. Wolcott had to say:

Which was sensible so far as it went. It is a problem which every informed Southerner knows to exist. And unless the foreign market can be recovered--which seems less and less likely--the present solution simply will not do.

But what Wolcott overlooked is that it is not merely cotton and the South. Take Michigan, for instance. Michigan's first crop is corn, her second crops wheat and oats. All of these are produced in greater quantities than the market will absorb, and the surpluses are dumped into the Government's lap, precisely as cotton is.

Besides corn and wheat and oats, Michigan produces much beef, ranks with Wisconsin as a dairy state, is full of orchards and truck farms--produced more celery than the rest of America. And there is not the slightest reason that the South cannot produce its own corn, wheat, beef, dairy products, food and celery instead of so much cotton. But if it did, Michigan would be deprived of one of its great markets for all these products, would still have more surpluses.

Would Michigan like that? Would Representative Wolcott like it? If it came about, would he favor relieving the Government of the buying up of surplus Michigan products at the same time they got rid of buying surplus cotton?

On the answer to that depends the whole honesty and worth of his position.

Wheeler Takes Fearful Risk in His Tactics

When Senator George accuses Burton Wheeler and his associates of filibustering, he is within the fact. It is no formal filibuster Wheeler is resorting to, but it is a filibuster in its essence all the same--an action designed to delay and delay and delay.

But, as The Richmond Times-Dispatch suggests, he is skating dangerously close to something that is identified by an ugly word.

That is not to intimate that Wheeler or his associates are consciously traitors. Most of them at least--and certainly Wheeler--are simply British-haters and isolationists who are profoundly and stubbornly convinced of the wisdom of their course, of the foolishness of the President's.

They have a right to that opinion. They had a right to set it forth clearly and fully. But they have already done it.

Congress and the American people have heard them and the decision is already made. And what they are doing now is endlessly repeating what they have already said many times over.

The Lend-Lease Bill is going to pass, and Wheeler well knows it--admits as much in private. Hence, it is clear that the sole purpose his present tactics can serve is to delay the aid for Britain that is provided in it.