The Charlotte News

Tuesday, March 8, 1938

TWO EDITORIALS

 

Retaliation

The day before yesterday a destroyer squadron of the legitimate Spanish Government came out of Cartegena, met the heavier navy given General Franco by his master, Mussolini--and in fair fight sank one 10,000-ton cruiser. Afterwards Spanish Government planes bombed the Insurgent fleet and crippled another cruiser, and incidentally hit a British destroyer which was standing by.

Yesterday morning General Franco retaliated by bombing Cartagena five times. And if his objective was the naval base there, his Italian bombers are cross-eyed. Not once did they hit the naval base. What they did hit was the areas of the city occupied by civilians, men, women and children. In other words, having been licked in fair fight by the man of the house, they hurled rocks through the windows at his wife and children.

 

In a German Church

The vicinity of Jesus Christus Lutheran Church in Berlin's suburb of.Dahlem is by ordinary a quiet place. But Sunday it was so quiet that not a Nazi uniform or even a policeman could be seen. Inside, where the Rev. Martin Niemoeller used to stand, the Rev. Frederick Mueller read the 22nd Chapter of Luke wherein is told the story of how Jesus was seized by the priests and carried to the house of the high priest and mocked and beaten. And then, with every seat filled, he pointed out boldly that the case was parallel to that of Niemoeller himself. And then,

"At the end of the service the congregation--in accents weighted with emotion--repeated the Lord's Prayer in unison."

And as the stately, noble words went pacing under the lofty vaulting, Adolf Hitler, if he were a wiser man, might have trembled. For in the chanting of the old, old prayer, simple and without theology, there is something more ominous for him and his snide little ideology than the roar of all the cannon of France marching over the Rhine. "Who art in heaven, hallowed be... Thy kingdom come... on earth as it is... our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those... and the power and glory forever..."

There is an ideology there older than Adolf's by many thousands of year, an ideology springing from emotions primal in the race--the emotions that differentiate man from the tiger and the ape. And soon or late Adolf Hitler will have to grapple with that in decisive combat on the battleground of the mind of his own people.

&


Framed Edition
[Go to Links-Page by Subject] [Go to Links-Page by Date] [Go to News Framed Edition]
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.