The Charlotte News

Wednesday, November 9, 1938

FOUR EDITORIALS

The following day, Reinhard Heydrich addressed further orders to all Gestapo and SD district and subdistrict offices:

It just goes to show, yesterday does once more, that when the Democrats in North Carolina have held their primary, the election is over. The Democrats may have a falling out and not name their candidate until the eleventh hour, and then with bitter dissension, as happened in the Eighth Congressional District, and still they win hands down. Or in the man they nominate may die, as in the Sixth, and they may go over the head of the second in the race to put up some astonished citizen whom few of the voters ever heard of; and he wins.

On the other hand, the Republicans may concentrate their fire on a few offices, putting up an able man for Senator against the Democratic candidate who is nine parts show and one part performance; and the Republican barely manages to come in second. Verily, the great number of places the Republicans let go by default went no more certainly to Democrats than those for which they actively campaigned.

There simply wasn't anything to it. The Republican Party in North Carolina is now, except for occasional fits of animation, dead--dead as a doornail, beyond any hope of resuscitation. In fact, about the only Republican anywhere in the State to survive the regular biennial Democratic landslide was Mecklenburg's own Marvin L. (Philly) Ritch. Despairing of beating 'em, Mr. Ritch joined 'em; and today he is a delegate to the Legislature.

The Republican Party would do well to take a leaf from Mr. Ritch's book. Join up, boys! Change the label. Enter the Democratic primary and we'll dispense with the formality of the election altogether.

Exceedingly spotty and fundamentally inclusive--that seems to be about the only rational verdict which can be returned on the national elections. The New Deal lost ground, certainly. The Republicans definitely gained it. But the results in most cases are open to a good many reservations and in general they are far from indicating how the cat is going to jump in 1940--which was the most interesting single question involved.

Perhaps the most conclusive states are Michigan and Pennsylvania. Those seem to have registered an emphatic return to the Right, and emphatic disapproval of the handling of the sit-down strikes by Governors Murphy and Earle, and the President's endorsement of their methods. But it has to be remembered that both states are normally Republican, that is in the nature of things for them to be drifting back from the enthusiasm of 1936; regardless of circumstances, and that the big money in both states was heavily against both Murphy and Earle--though that was at least partly canceled out by the fact that the WPA machine was backing both.

In the case of Pennsylvania, it also has to be remembered that the primary dispute had split labor wide open, and that many labor men voted for the Republicans to vent their bitterness.

Nevertheless it is probable that both states are to be Republican in 1940. So, probably are the New England states. And so perhaps even Ohio and New Jersey. In the case of Connecticut, however, it is to be observed that the victory of the Republican candidate for Governor is partly explained by the startlingly large vote run up by the Socialist candidate, who has been Mayor of Bridgeport. If there is a swing to the right of the New Deal going on in that state, a swing to the left of it seems also to be going on. In Ohio, again, a Democratic Governor was elected at the same time that Robert Taft defeated Bulkley for the Senate. And this Democratic candidate for Governor was the man who defeated the extreme Rightist, Davey, who adopted exactly the opposite methods from Murphy and Earle in handling the sit-down strike! More than that, Bulkley was obviously no whole-souled New Dealer but a now-and-again one. And Taft, who is a good deal the more genuinely liberal of the two, is said to have poured out money by the wholesale. Altogether, and considering that Ohio is more often Republican than not, it is perhaps best to say that the state is still doubtful for 1940.

As for New Jersey, normally Republican, we like to think, at least, that the overwhelming defeat of the Democratic candidate for the Senate there is evidence of revolt against Hague and the President's inexcusable endorsement of the Hague slate. If so, it is one of the most cheering things to come out of the election.

Meantime, the New Deal emphatically holds New York and Illinois, and has plainly grown in power in California.

In Maryland the New Deal lost in the primary, but the Democratic Party won overwhelmingly in the election. And the chances are that the state will be in the Democratic column in 1940, even though the candidate is a New Dealer.

To sum up, the New Deal still retains the edge for 1940. If the election were held now, it would almost certainly win. But against that has to be set the fact that the Republicans are deftly on the upswing.

That's the Deutsche Diplomatique-Politische Korrespondenz, official stooge journal of the German Foreign Office, with particular reference to the recent speeches of the President and Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Welles.

One hundred and fifteen years ago a President of the United States confronted by the design of certain hungry European states to try to halt South America under pretense of restoring the power of Spain, served brusque notice on the world that the continent was no longer open to colonial ambition. And for all the years since, that policy--the Monroe Doctrine--has remained a well-known and unshakable part of the foreign policy of the United States. Last week Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Welles, in the speeches referred to by the Nazi journal, took occasion to say over again that that policy still holds and will hold--and that is all they said.

Ergo, when the journal speaks as it does speak, it is flatly confessing that Germany does intend (1) to attempt to defy the Monroe Doctrine and treat South America as a part of the colonial question, and (2) to attempt to extend her political and economic influence to this hemisphere, even at the risk of blood sacrifices.

It is the Nazi thesis--plain before Munich, much plainer since--that anybody who attempts to deny Germany anything she demands is guilty of a world attempt to disturbed peace. Well, let them have it so. By that curious standard, the United States is guilty in this case. World peace or no, the Nazis may as well get this into their pipe and smoke it: there is not going to be any Munich Pact about South America.

When the Government instituted war risk insurance for its soldiers and sailors in the World War, and afterward converted it into ordinary insurance, private insurance companies were alarmed. They feared that the coverage thus afforded--at one time in amounted to nearly four billions and is still in the neighborhood of two and a quarter millions--would curtail their sales. Actually, however, it seemed to stimulate sales. Insurance in force increased year by year.

What had happened, apparently, was that the Government had introduced to insurance a great many people who had never considered it. At any rate, it gave a great impetus to the principle of life insurance.

Whether the Government's system of old age insurance is going to have something of the same effect on the sale of annuities and endowment policies, it is too early to tell. We notice, however, that the Associated Press has made available to its employees a voluntary retirement insurance plan. It is supplementary to the Government's old age insurance, and is to be handled by one of the largest private companies.

And since some millions of American citizens now, for the first time, are insured against old age and the loss of earning capacity, it may very well be that we shall want to augment the modest benefits coming to us from the Government and build up an income at 65 which will enable us to retire in style