The Charlotte News

Saturday, October 8, 1938

FOUR EDITORIALS

While Mr. Agar's point, made again here as in the September 30 offering, that the best way to undermine Fascism is to make democracy live up to its ideals, appears a sound one at first blush, it also is deceptively overly simple, even facile. After positing the ideal, his track afterward leads him to the Agrarian brink--that being the position more or less embraced by the Cliveden Set in England and the isolationists in the United States, that to wage a war against Fascism in Europe would inevitably lead to a disintegration of democracy by virtue of the war itself, win or lose, and that the result would be that Communism would be able then to prevail over the weakened democratic states. The logical extension of this notion being, though not stated by Mr. Agar, one embraced expressly by the Clivedens and many of the prominent isolationists, that Nazism and Fascism provided a necessary check on the advance of Communism in Europe, "a necessary evil" to ward off a greater evil as, for instance, John Foster Dulles toured the country saying in 1939.

Mr. Agar's point was of course a theory which was not without some degree of sound reason at the time to believe, that is if its idealism could be matched in practice and if that idealism had been practiced in America since the Civil War and in Great Britain and France, meaning in the latter two cases divestiture and discontinuance of imperialism after World War I. Then Fascism would have no traction anywhere at any time when contrasted with the inherent attractiveness of true democratic freedom. But as things were, such idealism was short-sighted and stressed the fear aroused in Americans and, to a lesser extent, though still extant among the masses in Great Britain, of the "C"-word, without examining the real difficulties and practicalities which ensued for Russia in bringing anything of the kind about at the time, with an army still very much in 19th century trappings, horse cavalry and all. And very much ill-fitted, therefore, to waging any lasting offensive much beyond its own territory. All of that changed of course because of its joinder with the Allies by 1942 and the dividing of Germany and its resources in two after the war. And of course any society which is maintained on a military basis has some inevitable advantage over any true democracy, at least at the beginning of an offensive campaign, though muster democracies have and will inevitably do when the concept of richly enjoyed freedom is attacked.

But the primary fallacy in Agar's point comes in this: his ideal, that which sounded fine and diplomatic and which ought to have been acceptable to every American with ease in 1938, the concept of true democracy, still to this day finds great struggle when put to the acid test, as witness the long bitter struggle over civil rights for minorities, for women--such basic rights as equal access to public education, the right to vote and serve on juries, equal pay for equal work, the right to eat and find lodging in facilities open to the general interstate traffic, the right to sit anywhere on the bus, the right to obtain loans equally for housing, and so on--rights still sometimes reluctantly provided in some places to all who are citizens. So the ideal which Mr. Agar posited in 1938, while laudable in notion, in actuated motion left behind a trail of tears which, in perfect hindsight, is best described by Matthew Arnold's phrase, "the barren optimistic sophistries".

The United States and Great Britain and France had no chance realistically obviously to perfect democracy in the course of time necessary to ward off the immense war machines built up since 1933 by Hitler and Mussolini, to say nothing of the threat in the Pacific posed by the warlords of Japan, battling in China since 1931. It was too late by 1938 to do much but either appease or fight. The only argument which might be advanced in Chamberlain's favor by that junction is that time was yet needed to build Britain's fighting capability to greater strength, laid languishing largely since the end of World War I. But, the same time also enabled Hitler to exploit the resources of the Czech provinces, gain access to Rumania's oilfields, and perfect his war machine, laying the ground for the next offensive, Poland. Hitler fared much the better in the beginning as witness Dunkirk. So, that argument fails in hindsight, too. And of course Hitler's pattern had already been set in Austria after Anschluss in March, 1938, established the Reich as the controlling force over any attempt at genuine plebiscite, indeed had been established for all to see, as Cash pointed out many times, by the pages of Mein Kampf itself, in publication since 1923 and mandated German reading by 1933.

So, that Hitler broke the Munich Pact in six months came as no surprise to anyone save the complete ostrich or illiterate. The truth was that many in Great Britain, led by the Clivedens, didn't give a care in hell about the Czechs and would rather have seen Hitler or Genghis or Tamerlane rule them than Stalin, because of the "C"-word, simply too short-sighted to understand that Hitler was no puppet to be manipulated and cajoled from London and Paris, just as the frottage of the Junker class in Germany to Hitler had misplaced similar assumptions when giving him the plurality to become Chancellor in 1933, thinking then that he would be a suitably malleable instrument to ward off the Social Democrats while preserving the aristocracy. This hypnotic fallacy of convincing that he was preferable, even if an unwanted suitor, to some straw Muscovite alternative, Hitler time and again was able successfully to purvey precisely because the duncely obscurantists among the aristocrats failed to see beyond their own immediate self-interest, economic and station preservation, rather than understanding the conflict in terms of a challenge by National Sozialism to the very social and political fabric of any group held subject to it, as a snake charms its prey, not just a convenient economic and militaristic hedge against Communism. Take the narcotic to ward off pressure from the outside; dependence becomes quickly slavish, altering judgment, to become more slavish still, until the devolution to barbarity all round is complete. To quote a merciful poet, "It begins with your family, but soon it comes 'round to your soul..."

Thus, while a concept to be nourished for the long tenure of any society, the exigencies of tyrannical, aggressive warfare require more as a stopgap than platitudes, as the democracies would quickly enough have confirmed within eleven months.

And one must never confuse this type of territorial warfare, for acquisition and wealth, to build Germania in the sky, with a jihad. As with all warfare, to achieve the support of the common imbecile, there must be an emotional rallying point addressed by the war-mongers, be it nationalistic, religious, racial, one or all three, to stir the little cockles of the little hearts of the little lilly-likes in Lilliput and move them to impassioned tears over their fallen heroes and threatened ladykins of the past and present, all brought on by the big bad scapegoat of one sort of anti-archetype or another, be it damnyankee, nigger, Jew-boy, long-haired Libber, or Ugly American.

But the holy war has with it, built in over decades or even centuries, not just by deign of the trumping by a transitory dictator's will, the fervid nature of state-sponsored religious inculcation based on a type of faith fused of militaristic discipline and punitive sanction for deviation from the precept, such there is a blindset conquering even the universal, natural, self-preservatory fear of death. Such that ritualistic sacrifice to the deity, be it by car bomb or seppuku or kamikaze, is demanded for the heart to vest in the minds of the likewise infested little peasant women and children back in the grass shack or the great smoky morning endewed log cabin in the hills or the desert mudhut by the oasis, that place preserving all vaunting memory of home to bear the hero in palms as he takes ride to his last long sacrificial odyssey to Valhalla--that little alienated piggy all over again, running in his circle round and round, by it getting more emboldened of leg by the process, precisely of being lost, all eventually to be fatted for the bacon-kill by a snoring sow too weakened by her other naturally fitted sucklings to care for the weest of the lot.

The territorial war has at best some half-particled mythological underlayment beneath the magic carpet, combining a lean-to fable of the current majesty of the dictator of the moment as pipeline and suction conveyor of messages to and from the floors managed by each of the favored deities, richly colored in marquee advertisements on the graffiti walls of the town and village, having little if anything to do with any long-established religious doctrine permeating the society and thus not enjoying the centuries-imbued unmitigated fervor on that basis which the jihad does.

We need not bear witness to these distinctions by examples from history for that history is bearing witness to us in the present by simple contrast to a close study of the history preceding World War II and the many contrasts, fundamental contrasts, offered thusly between these two types of wars.

In any event, the article by Mr. Agar does serve to frame the debate which some of the more thoughtful isolationists put forward at the time for not going to war, albeit with odd choice of wording, at once labeling the Thompson position, virtually identical to the Cash position, as that of "liberals and peace-lovers", while never suggesting that the hollow phrase "peace in our time" and the worthless slip of paper manifesting its supposed evidence was anything more than selling out the Czechs to slave status. That abdication of judgment by Agar underdug his argument by the voluble day, even by the hour, as borne out by Cash's "Correction", filed just before press time, to his comparisons between the terms of the respective conferees set forth in "Versailles and Munich".

Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Daladier and their backers, flying too high to understand the snake's grasp, once adnegating its attenuation, had to endure the predator largely alone, as Churchill warned they would, for the ensuing three and a half years--that is until the snake called upon the tiger for assistance against the keeper walling off his means of sustenance and the sleepy giant awakened across the sea, bringing with him his fearless ol' prairie dogs and horses and buffalo and roosters, from Worcester and Brewster and Gloucester and Foster, well familiar with the ways of the snake, finally, in yet three and a half more years of blood and guts left curdling alongside the road, to arrest its coil.

By Herbert Agar

In an eloquent and moving piece on the world crisis, Miss Dorothy Thompson compresses into one paragraph the point of view which led too many liberals and peace-lovers to push the world to the brink of a useless war. This point of view is so dangerous, and in my opinion so false, that we should be thankful to have it in a compact form, so that we can study it in its naked simplicity.

"The world today," writes Miss Thompson, "is hailing Mr. Chamberlain as a prince of peace. But Mr. Chamberlain is actually the Von Papen of a coup d'etat which makes the one of 1933 trivial.

"Like Von Papen and Hugenberg, he apparently believes that conservatism can sleep in the same bed with Fascism. Mr. Chamberlain's kind of conservatism, can only be swallowed by Fascism. Either Mr. Chamberlain is another Von Papen, the unwitting dupe and tool of a powerful conspiracy, or he is a fellow co-conspirator."

So Chamberlain should have accepted war, since Fascism cannot live side by side with any other system. Here is the "ideological war" in all its horror. Here is the War to End Peace once and for all, the war to turn our whole Western World into the wolf-infested desolation that was Germany at the end of the Thirty Years War. And all to be done in the greatest kindness, out of sheer love of humanity.

CIVILIZATION WOULD NOT SURVIVE ANOTHER LONG WAR

Of course Hugenberg was stupid to think Fascism and conservatism could exist together within Germany. Fascism is a social and economic revolution; it is only the Communists who still pretend that Fascism is conservative capitalism.

Within a country, Fascism must devour all and rule all. But it does not follow that Fascism must destroy all the non-Fascist Great Powers unless the non-Fascist Powers unite to destroy Fascism.

Our peace-lovers would plunge us into a Carthaginian war of extermination. There is small reason to believe that our civilization would survive that war.

In opposition to Miss Thompson's theory that Chamberlain is either a dupe or a traitor, I set down the arguments whereby a friend of democracy may conclude that there is no need for a war against Fascism.

TO SAVE DEMOCRACY, IT MUST BE MADE TO WORK

First, the way to defend democracy is to make democracy work. It is not working satisfactorily in any great power today. Fascism made headway in post-war Europe because democracy was failing to deal with the grave problems that littered the Continent.

Second, people naturally prefer freedom and democracy, if it is real. Give them a reasonable hope for believing that freedom and democracy can prevail, and they will not turn to Fascism. The minute the democracies cease failing to do their job, Fascism will cease growing. The one sure way to destroy the prestige of Fascism would be to show that some great power (the United States, for example) can make freedom and democracy come true.

Third, the one sure way to kill democracy for our lifetimes is to permit another World War. The essence of Fascism is military dictatorship. In a world war we should all become Fascist. And we should all become poor and cynical and depleted--in no condition to attempt to reconquer our lost liberties.

Democracy would murder itself if a new World War were fought tomorrow. And then Communism would conquer the corpse. The war to make the world safe for democracy created Fascism. The war to destroy Fascism will prepare the world for Moscow.

To undermine Fascism, we have only to make our own system live up to its ideals.

A frequent complaint of ours, made without intent to disparage, is that the local traffic squad as a whole knows nothing whatsoever about the duties of traffic policemen. And why should they? If they receive any instruction at all before being turned loose with a whistle, it is exceedingly skimpy. They are ornamental, to be sure, and courteous, and they make marks on tires and are comforting to have around in case of emergency. But about the handling of traffic they don't know the first principle--unless they pick it up by experience.

What the traffic department has long needed is a traffic chief. They're about to get one. The Civil Service Commission has appointed Lieutenant B. A. Williams acting traffic inspector. He will be sent to Northwestern University's traffic school, where he will be introduced to the traffic problem and grounded in its solution, and on his return he will have complete charge of the department and work with the Central Traffic Authority--who, by the way, is a first-rate building inspector.

We are likely to see a wondrous improvement in traffic control and the better utilization of a force of officers who are competent in every way but training.

The hopeless tangle over the Democratic Congressional nominee in the eighth district, with election day coming on apace, is growing more and more snarled. The State Board of Elections is convinced that Deane is the rightful winner, by a nose, but in order to declare him so it will have to find a Davidson County board willing to certify to the State's count of the result there. There has been little disposition in Davidson to accede to this insistence, and, indeed, some new court action is taken every few days which makes the final result all the more in doubt. Meanwhile, the Republican nominee, an able campaigner, is licking his chops.

Whichever way the Democratic squabble turns out, and it's a beauty, there is bound to be uncertainty over whether Deane or Burgin was rightfully entitled to the nomination. The race between them was a dead heat, by the local counts, and by the State board's count it is still neck and neck. What, in those circumstances, could be fairer to all concerned than to let them both run it off against the Republican candidate? If the Democrat electorate has a clear choice, this would compel agreement upon him. If the vote was split and the Republican candidate should ease in, why, it would serve the Democrats right and convince them, perhaps, that honesty of elections is the best policy.

Thus Bill Green, in announcing that the AFL is going to give the ITU six more months to think over its refusal to pay its assessment to be used to fight the CIO, John Lewis's "vertical union" movement. But he goes on to threaten that if the ITU doesn't agree to pay by that time, it will be "definitely out of the American Federation of Labor."

And if he means that, then it is our guess that the Bill Green [site ed. note: "the Bill Green", as printed, perhaps by that printer's devil again] is going to be "so foolish" after all. The printers are the aristocrats among trade unionists. Being skilled, they admit [note from the basement: the damned dictation software first had it "had met"; our error, not 1938's, so we fixed it, staying after hours for those rich chieftains in the Tower to do it, but damn ye all for making us stay so til the wee hours without so much as ot for the lil starvelings back home] no such notion as that unskilled men ought to be paid as well as the skilled. But being intelligent, they know also that there is room in the labor movement for both craft unions and--in the mass production industries--"the one big union." They know that making war on another labor movement is not going to help their cause but hurt it, that the general public, too, is bound to suffer from the interminable and costly jurisdictional strikes which would result from such a war, and that the only really insurmountable difficulty in the way of setting [note site ed.: ditto from the first note, not "settling"] the dispute between the two movements is simply the solemn wills of Mr. Bill Green and Mr. John Lewis.

And so if Mr. Green wants to be "so foolish," we best let him [strike that, remove those blocks, it's "bet they let him"--and we're outta here till ya'll fix this dracontine thing, setting our toes all black and blue like that]. For they are entirely able to paddle their own canoe without aid from anybody.

We remarked yesterday upon the smug hypocrisy which Bumble & Co. are displaying in the claim that they have "saved Czechoslovakia." But Bumble is a mere tyro at Pecksniffery when set up against the Germans. Thus, the AP yesterday reported a Foreign Office spokesman as saying:

Hearing that, not only old Pecksniff but Tartufe as well would curl up and die with envy. For the facts about German conduct as against the conduct of the Allies at Versailles are these.

The Versailles Treaty chopped off a little more than one-eighth of Germany's territory--27,275 sq. miles out of 208,780 sq. miles--and 6,500,000 people, about one-tenth of the German population in 1914.

Germany is chopping off a little more than one-eighth of the territory of Czechoslovakia--7,000 sq. miles out of a little more than 54,000--and about one-third of its population, counting the Czechs living in Sudetenland.

That, however, does not tell the story. Germany is ringing all the Bohemian and Moravian portions of Czechoslovakia. To compare Versailles to that, you would have to suppose a ring drawn around Berlin through the Rhineland, Westphalia, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg, East Brandenburg, and Saxony.

Versailles took away from Germany the rich iron and coal mines of Alsace-Lorraine, which had never belonged to her except by force: those of the Ruhr, which did belong to her rightfully, for a few years: and those of parts of Silesia which she had taken from Poland--this and almost nothing else of industrial wealth. Germany is taking away from Czechoslovakia virtually all the industrial wealth of Bohemia and Moravia, which areas have belonged to the Czechs for fifteen centuries. Not only nearly all her coal and iron mines but also the majority of her 11,744 factories for the making of textiles, furniture and woodwork, pottery, etc.

Versailles left Germany an entity except for the small territory of East Prussia, cut off by the Polish Corridor. Germany is cutting Czechoslovakia virtually in two, by seizing the chief towns in Moravia and all railroad lines between Bohemia and Slovakia. To suppose Versailles doing anything of the sort, you have to suppose the Allies taking over all the chief towns and rail lines all across Germany from Baden to the old Czechoslovakian border.

Versailles imposed heavy reparations upon Germany for the damage done in France, of which she paid almost no part save in funds borrowed from the Allies themselves--debts which she has since repudiated. Germany is demanding "reparations"--how much no one knows--from Czechoslovakia for entirely imaginary injuries visited upon the Sudetens since 1918, and stand to collect them regardless of how high they come.

Versailles sought to disarm the Germans by demilitarizing the Rhineland and limiting the size of her army. Germany has already disarmed Czechoslovakia by taking over all her fortresses and natural defenses. And she confesses quite openly that she means to force the reduction of the Czech army to mere police proportions.

Versailles provided that any German living in transferred territories can remove to Germany within three years, taking all he possessed with him, free of all duties. Germany gives the Czechs living in Sudetenland six months in which to remove to Czechoslovakia, and denies them the right to take any property of any sort with them.

Versailles left the form of the German Government and the question of what persons, apart from the Hohenzollerns, should make up that government, entirely up to the Germans. Germany demands that the government of Czechoslovakia shall be such as is acceptable to it, that it shall be pro-German, and that it agreed to "work with"--i.e., take orders from--Berlin, and that its personnel be approved by Hitler.

Versailles cramped and hemmed in the German economy. But it made no effort to make it a mere subsidiary part of the economy of the Allied nations. Germany is doing just that last to Czechoslovakia.

When writing the foregoing editorial, it was apparently correct to say that Germany was taking a little more than an eighth of the territory of Czechoslovakia, just as Versailles took a little more than an eighth of Germany's. But it now appears that she is taking a little more than a fifth. The Germans' own estimates have been going steadily up. First, they said they were going to take 3,500 sq. miles, then 5,000, then 7,000, and now 11,500--out of the 54,244 which belonged to Czechoslovakia prior to Munich.