The Charlotte News

Monday, January 16, 1939

SIX EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: In "Within the Guild" Cash yet again demonstrates his being without, and his not coincidental Redness, by smearing the honorable campaign to ferret out Reds and to preserve the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution, who, in their original incarnation, as everyone knows who was there, flew a flag with only white and blue stitched into it, (the sometimes ascribed red having been interloped by some Reds into your history textbooks, probably during the Red era in American history), the American Way, Pandowdy and Howdy Doody, Bosco and Bonzo, Dave Clark, the American Bandstand on Saturday afternoons in the park, vanilla ice cream, strawberries, that is, blueberries, and all the blue udders, by that most right honorable protector of Blueness and Whitenessestess Purity and Pasteurization, who favored, no doubt, the blue moon, the blue Christmas, the blue gene, blue dye no. 1, the blues generally, over their red counterparts, the Supremest Blue in all the world, from the state where Pure Blue Stock has always been its hallmark, Texas.

Legislator J. Wilson Alexander probably didn't mean it that way, but it will surely give that impression to the Republicans. His announcement, we mean, that he would vote to eliminate the absentee ballot altogether from primaries and only to revise the law as applied to general elections. The Republicans will conclude at once that Mr. Alexander's intent is to forbid Democrats to employ the absentee ballot against other Democrats, inter -familias, but to declare Republicans fair game.

And inasmuch as the election is practically over when the Democrats have nominated their candidates, the effect of Mr. Alexander's before-and-after system will be to deny bed-ridden Democrats, not to speak of those registered from the graveyard precincts, a voice in the selection of office-holders. About all they get out of an election year would be the pleasure of running up majorities against the lesser party.

Before Harry Hopkins is confirmed by the Senate as Secretary of Commerce, a foregone conclusion, we should like to advert one more time to his defense against the charge that he had admixed politics and relief. He admitted quite frankly that the Kentucky affair had been bad. "The local fellows," he said, "started operating on our boys, and our boys gave in." Our boys, in fine, let WPA be used as an instrument in the renomination of "Dear Alben" Barkley.

And what did Mr. Hopkins, the relief administrator, do to prevent this misuse of relief or to punish it? Well, he did this:

He denied the allegations almost in toto;

He admitted that in a couple of instances the allegations were true, so he told the two offending subordinates that if he caught them at it again, he would fire them or something.

By that time, it so happened, the primary was over and "Dear Alben" was in.

Site Ed. Note: "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree..." as in Sikan did Chiang-kai-Shek his camp from fates-of-warlord refugees.

The new province of Sikan which China set up on New Year's Day as a refuge for war refugees, lies in one of the least known regions of the earth. Part of it is made up of the western portion of Szechuan, the rest of the eastern portion of Tibet, which together with the Himalayas and the Pamirs make up the "roof of the world."

Marco Polo came prowling down this way 700 years ago, bound for Yunnan and Burma on a mission from the great Khan of Cathay, that Kublai whose name his book was to make a household word for Europe in his time, as Coleridge has made it one for us--the last leg of the astounding journey past Samarkand and Bokhara, past Kashgar, Yarkand and Kotan, and over the Great Gobi. And it is not improbable that he came all the way into the country which is now Sikan. For he reports having encountered on his journey men among whom it was a custom for several brothers to keep a wife in common, whom they felt duty bound to lend to any guest with whom they shared salt. That tale got Marco a good part of his reputation as a liar, but the custom is very well known now under the name of polyandry. It seems to have been widely spread over the world once, but in historical times has been little-known save in Tibet and its bordering provinces, of which this Sikan is one.

A land full great stands of fir and great naked, barren plateaus across which the camel bells tinkle as the caravans wind down from the north, laden with furs and gold. A land without towns, save trading posts where the caravans halt. And so a strange land to send the coolies and the peasants of the valleys of the Hwang-ho and Yang-tse-kiang to pioneer in. But they are a tough breed, those coolies and peasants, and the land is little stranger to them than was Manchuria, in which many thousands of them have successfully established themselves.

The National Americanism Award Committee last week conferred its 1938 Americanism award "for outstanding patriotic service" upon the Hon. Martin Dies, captain-general of the Smear Inquisition now sitting at Washington.

The award will hardly startle the judicious. The self-elected committee which makes it consists mainly of the Hon. Grace Lincoln Hall Brousseau (League of American Penwomen, Barons of Runnymede, Order of the Crown), who, as president of the D.A.R. in 1926-29 made herself the greatest female Red-spotter among us, save only Lizzie Dilling: Hon. Messmore Kendall, (another sprig of barons and kings and maybe of old Adam himself), who, as sometime president of the Sons of the Revolution, has been almost as good a smearer as the third member of the outfit, the Hon. Edward Stafford, sometime commander of the American Legion.

Dies has used his position as Grand Inquisitor, not actually to turn up facts about Communism and Fascism in this country, but (1) to paint as Reds the people and organizations who believe in simple liberty, without giving them a chance to defend themselves, and so (2) to drum up sentiment for repressive laws that would destroy the Bill of Rights. That is exactly what the trio just named always made Americanism and patriotism mean, and so it is scarcely surprising that they approve of the Hon. Dies. Moreover, at this moment Dies is waging a ferocious fight to extract $150,000 from Congress for the expanding of his pogrom. And this award, posing as a disinterested one, is admirably timed to aid him in that fight.

That a man as addicted to horse trading as Mr. Bumble went to Rome and came away with nothing more concrete that Mussolini's vague promised "aid" in settling the Jewish problem created by his senior partner, A. Hitler, seems, on the face of it, highly doubtful.

And it is possible to read in yesterday's news a confirmation of those doubts. It is possible, that is, to suspect that what Mr. Bumble really did was privately to give Mussolini an "all clear" signal on Spain, and to promise his cooperation in keeping France from coming to the aid of the Loyalist Government as she sees herself forced to a choice between that or having a new Italian empire established on her Southern border and across her lines of communication with North Africa. For yesterday spokesmen for Mussolini told the world that Il Duce had warned Bumble that he would kick out of the phoney "non-intervention" agreement and "reassume full liberty of action" if "governments friendly to Negrin" should intervene on a grand scale. It is an obvious use of the usual Fascist-Nazi tactics--a threat to make a general war if he isn't given his way. And, considering the demonstrated fact that the French people don't want war, it is manifestly an exceedingly powerful weapon for Bumble, who has always favored forcing France to acquiesce.

There is nothing dogmatic about this analysis, of course. Ultimately, it is only a guess. But in view of the collaboration, perhaps only tacit, which has existed between the dictators and Bumble, Daladier & Co. in the past, it does not seem an altogether improbable guess.

There doesn't seem to be a great deal to choose between the way Pennsylvania does it and the way North Carolina does it. Pennsylvania has, to be sure, convicted the deputy warden of the Philadelphia County Prison who cooked nine men to death with steam. But for involuntary manslaughter--a crime carrying a penalty of only from eighteen months to three years--despite the fact that he ordered the punishment of the man continued long after it ought to have been plain to the most cursory eye that they were near death. And as against North Carolina's acquitting of the man who did no more than freeze off the feet of the Mecklenburg Negroes, Shropshire and Barnes, that gives Pennsylvania only a very slight edge.

But on second thought, maybe Pennsylvania has, according to the new stories, taken adequate steps to see that the thing doesn't happen again. But after three years, the Shropshire-Barnes case did happen, or at least almost happened, all over again in the case of the white man in Forsyth County.