The Charlotte News

Saturday, September 21, 1940

FOUR EDITORIALS

 

Site Ed. Note: "Sentimentality" may betray in Cash what some later called a hint of male chauvinism. But it was, after all, 1940. And it did not appear to bother the progressive lights of Lillian Smith, an early champion of The Mind of the South.

In "Cities War", a little Cash humor--brought eponymously to his attention by the county bearing the same name of his sister, (named for her grandmother Bertha, not the county), poised in turn on the Cashie River? Who knows? We are sure our little readers probably neither care, nor should it make sense if they did, but we thought we would also impart the thought, if for no other reason than to pre-dispel deep psychoanalytic interpretation, at no extra sound to the cash register.

Likewise without expense, we add the notions that Charlotte was named eponymously for Queen Charlotte Sophia, queen consort to George III of England and niece of Fredrick, duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Paris, maybe for Hector's brother, the lover of Helen, whose face launched the thousand ships on the odyssey, St. Helena, for the mother of Constantine I of Rome, (Constantinople, now Istanbul), and Rome, for Romulus. But, so far as we know, Remus had nothing to do with the Uncle stories, (nor did the cigarettes with Winston or Salem, though the reverse, some say, is likely the case).

From whom, or what, might we wonder, did the name Baghdad derive?

..."And what became of the blacksmith?" the little boy asked, as Uncle Remus paused to snuff the candle with his fingers.

"I'm drivin' on 'roan', honey. Atter 'long time, de blacksmif he tuck'n die, en w'en he go ter de Good Place de man at de gate dunner who he is, en he can't squeeze in. Den he go down ter de Bad Place, en knock. De Ole Boy, he look out, he did, en he know'd de blacksmif de minnit he laid eyes on 'im; but he shake his head en say, sezee:

"'You'll hatter skuze me, Brer Blacksmif, kase I d an had 'speunce 'longer you. You'll hatter go some'rs else ef you wanter raise enny racket,' sezee, en wid dat he shet do do."

"En dey do say," continued Uncle Remus, with unction, "dat sense dat day de blacksmif bin sorter huv'rin' 'roan' 'twix' de heavens en de ye'th, en dark nights he shine out so fokes call 'im Jacky-my-lantun. Dat's w'at dey tells me. Hit may be wrong er't maybe right, but dat's w'at I years."

--"'Bred en bawn in a brier-patch, Brer Fox,--bred en bawn in a brier-patch!' en wid dat he skip out des ez lively ez a cricket in de embers."

"I say, ach-ahh, honey don't..."

Judge & Jury

Herewith a Diagram for Worried Drunken Drivers

So you've been arrested for driving drunk, eh? The cops have picked you up and are ready to swear that you were in no condition to drive? You stand a good chance of being convicted, fined and having your driver's license revoked for a year?

Don't worry. All hope is not fled.

A way out is diagrammed in the case of a man arrested for drunken driving by two County officers on Aug. 24. They considered him drunk then and the one of them we have checked with insists now that he was drunk.

His case was called in County Recorder's Court. The officers were there to testify. He demanded a trial by jury, which automatically carried the case up to Superior Court. It was docketed there.

That, now, was on Aug. 24 and 25. Yet on Sept. 20 Solicitor Carpenter moved to the judge presiding that the case, which came up from the lower court on the defendant's demand that a jury sit on it, be nol-prossed. It was so ordered.

The alleged drunken driver thus goes scot-free and keeps his driver's license, as he may have been justly entitled to. But not by the verdict of the jury. Not by the weakness of the testimony of the arresting officers, who weren't even notified that the case was to be called up and wiped off.

By the overbearing lenience of the Solicitor of this district whose desire to be accommodating and whose inefficiency have led him to constitute himself as a sort of one-man court of appeals whose sessions are held in his chambers.

 

First Defeat

What Hitler Faces If His Invasion Is Postponed

It is too early even yet to assume that Adolf Hitler positively will not attempt to invade England this year. The hints in the German press to that effect may be designed to hoodwink the English and relax their vigilance. And so may all the apparent effort to direct attention away from England to the Axis conference in Rome and its "plans" for a "new order" in the Mediterranean and the Near East.

Nevertheless, the evidence does favor the belief that the attack by sea is not to come now.

And if Adolf Hitler does not invade England this Fall? Then he has suffered the first defeat of his career, and a tremendous psychological reverse.

On Jan. 1, 1940, he promised his people positively that he would end the war this year. And after the fall of France German spokesmen jubilantly rushed into print with pronouncements that the doom of England was already at hand.

On June 22, a "responsible spokesman" told Louis Lochner, of the Associated Press, that England was "right for storming"--"an ideal subject for attack"--"a set-up for quick, destructive air forays and blockade." On June 23 Admiral Raeder ostentatiously inspected his navy to assure himself that it was ready for the destruction of England. And so it went, in rising crescendo throughout June, July, and early August. The fate of England, we heard, was to be finally sealed by Sept. 1.

And if Hitler fails to make good this threat, it is obviously going to react powerfully on the psychology of his people, who have so far believed that they were irresistible.

But far more dangerous is going to be its reaction upon the psychology of the outside world. In Asia Turkey has been waiting watchfully to see how the battle of Britain went. In Africa Egypt has been playing the same game. In the Balkans Greece and perhaps Yugoslavia also wait upon the same issue. And in western Europe Spain has lain low to observe the decision. Turkish statesmen are on the record as believing that if England did not succumb to blitzkrieg, her superior resources and sea power made the ultimate outcome of the struggle certain. The Egyptians undoubtedly believe the same thing. And so quite probably do all the rest.

And inevitably these nations are going to take to recalling their history--will certainly observe that Hitler, like Napoleon, who once was the master of the Continent also, has come to his first defeat against the stubborn rock of England.

 

Sentimentality

A Seat in Congress Is No Family Heirloom To Pass

A new American custom which ought to be nipped in the budding before it becomes fixed is that of appointing the widow of a Congressman to fill out his unexpired term or nominating her to run for the full following term. That is not to say that a good many wives of the Hon. Senators and Representatives can do about as well as their lords but it is to say, positively, that there is no vested interest in this office by which it may rightfully or even wisely be bequeathed to a surviving spouse.

It is the rule in Congress to vote a full year's pay to the widow of the deceased member. That may be all right. At any rate, a year's pay is only money, whereas the bequest of the job itself is a bequest of authority to women who may be entirely incapable of using it wisely.

Such as Mrs. Florence Bankhead, widow of the late Speaker. Her name will be recommended by a district committee in Alabama to the State Democratic Committee for nomination as the candidate for the full two-year term commencing in January, to which her husband had been renominated before his lamentable death. True, she would be only one out of 435 Representatives, and doubtless would vote as she was told to vote and introduce no measures on her own hook save of the type to relieve distress and accomplish good works (at the Federal expense) among her own immediate constituents.

But such sentimentalities as nominating Mrs. Bankhead are hardly calculated to emphasize the virility of democracy as against that of the dictatorships. Indeed, this is no time for petticoats in government. The nation needs men of the hour, not sympathetic gestures by politicians to show their love and respect for late colleagues.

 

Cities War

Cause of This Battle Is Dim But It Seems Powerful

Ghibelline and Guelph, Capulet and Montague, seem to have met in the case of Mars Hill and Powellsville. The two places, we are informed by the erudite Associated Press, are in Bertie County, which lies about the lower courses of the Chinquapin, the Cashie, and the Chowan. However, of Mars Hill (not the Madison County Mars Hill) we can discover nothing in the atlas, a road map of North Carolina, or the omniscient U.S. Postal Guide.

Powellsville, on the other hand, enjoys the dignity of a post office empowered to issue international money orders and is planted proudly upon NC Highway No. 9, at a distance of seventeen miles from Windsor, five from Ahoskie.

Maybe that is the explanation of the quarrel--the outrage of Sparta in witnessing Athens grown the greater and more celebrated city, as of Winston-Salem before Charlotte. Anyhow Mars Hill now confronts Powellsville with all the fierce determination with which Rome once confronted Carthage, Florence, Pisa. And the quarrel has already drawn blood, threatens more.

It all began when the State decided to abolish Mars Hill High School and consolidate it with Powellsville High School. But the Mars Hillians would have none of it, and displayed all the grim resolution of their eponymous* deity. No Mars Hillian, they announced with finality, would ever deign to set foot in a Powellsville school. Yes, while the question was pending, they were perfectly willing to go to Ahoskie High School--which, since it is in Hertford County, seems bound to be farther from Mars Hill than Powellsville. But consort with Powellsvillians they would not.

Wednesday, two young champions of Mars Hill invaded the office of the superintendent of public education in Bertie, proceeded to emphasize their emotions by giving him a licking. So first blood was drawn. As the war develops we shall try to keep our little readers informed.

*[Eponymous--name-giving. And no additional charge for this service. --Editors, The News.]

Further Site Ed. Note: We sure don't have no 1940 road atlas at our immediate disposal to look at, but could it have been, notwithstanding the er-udited A.P., Merr' Hill? Well, we sure as heck don't know, but we's sure as shootin' gonna keep you informed of this deepenin' abstract, semantical mystere. And we's sure enough goina let you know when we'uns finds out. Paint it as you will, says Simon and Nellie Belle, whichever way done suits you'uns best, but, they say, we say we knows what we knows. Well, we sure as heck don't. Grabtown? Roxobel? Mount Gould? Colerain? Edenhouse? ...Gates, a different county altogether? Cash Corners--in the Lowlands? Like as not, 'least we done heard once upon a time, we'd have to go to Askewville to find out. Or...maybe Oakland...? (How did them bucking Broncos beat them Tar Babies, (that is, once upon a time), anyway? Over-rated? We'd say, like as not. But, however, Patience, quickly executed once cogitated, like Brer Rabbit, on offense, and a pretty fair defence, be the key--plus not getting too heady once thou gets the lead such that thou dost lose it, which Brer Fox (of Sirrah Raleigh?) and Brer Bear always like as not do. Ah, from and to the Four Corners of the Globe... It's a continual revelation. Do anythings, from cradle to grave, mean much of anything of significance, here or there? Probably, but then, maybe not. Earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis ultimately have the final say, so it seems.) Thisbe, (of Windsor), that of which we dost learn, as sands through the hourglass. Come high tides and misdemeanors, treat us though ill thou will, kindly thou willst also refrain, when it dost rain, as 'twill you know it, through your celestial strain, you kill your poets. That little rocky slope, bleeding... Areopagus, like Pegasus, Bellerophon thrown by Draco.

Of this smithy, of whom you once indited, pithy, that he a deal wid debil made, re his st-i-th, to wiel' it treble, paid in myth, or mere fig of mind? Smithy debil, of pre-pense, smithy-sainte, or smithy's moment lost of charact paint in de-fence? All in all, words, muse, enchanted Chair, late of Fanques's Faire? Pick heaven, save earth, fell hell, cuittle, six-seven, grave mirth, pall-mall-beetle? Caule-wheedled boodle, raw food o' nettle, cozen-begged question, lost in keg-buoyed fustian? Cultus coolee, curandero, pulled fust muly, cured 'n' dare row? Boat leaked, up a creek, swampy mist, cant-see, vote seek, cup o' tea, Pompeii tryst? Frozen time, toes in line, boot kick, fruit-sick, barber's slice, souls o' ice, bounce back, contract? Say-say, hey-hey, ho-ho, dis be greys, Thisbe fays? Who knows? Geste o' phrase, jest a phase, ye justice days? True foes? Cream can seem to curdle in the brain when soured by its shame. In Dream-land means we hurdle the pane though cowered, repulsed and lame. That Bloody Lane 's for instant's tamed, passance gone and returned to store for next term's empowered loss, revulsed gain. The redolence of particoloured seisin, black ox-beef treads a front, but bull we harrow with bull, the card of uttered reason; deuces low, Joker's trump; cornered in the edge of lull, a crack offends and sends a letter penned in Hell's raid, Fokker dump. No one heeded Fauquier's caveat, engines revved, rationed tea cott proned, soaked ears, haven't blocked. Vengeance fed, nation's sea lot stone. Rime and resen rot and fade. Perpend the parallelogram of fact-corrupt forces, terse ends of caret ell, a lamb pulled by back-stirruped horses. Boots to be worn on Monday, Thursday worth commerce in trade. Where sail we, where sail we? Debts owe we all, why must some sum worse than pay? Empale we, impale we, through perped sets o' the Ball, from summer to summer and fall to fall.

 


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