The Charlotte News

Tuesday, April 4, 1939

SIX EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The following letter to the editor and comment appeared on this date's page. The answer of course is not as the editor's note implied, but rather, if not Pepsi, invented at a Greensboro pharmacy, certainly, out of Salisbury's moors, Cheerwine.

In any event, it serves to show that plaintive palliation for free advertising has never wanted for boundless creativity.

And we would be remiss if we didn't point out our abstruse prophecy (of a kind) with regard to the N.C.A.A. Final Four for 2006. The latter paragraphs of the notes associated with March 10 and 14, 1939 have embedded in their recesses the names or mascots of three of the four unlikely participants this year. And not one of them was a Spartan. Too bad we didn't know at the time how accurate the poesy.

We suppose one, if spooked enough, might even make the argument that March 19 predicted even the fourth final entrant. (But that is stretching things in our estimation as we know of no red stick in or around Shelby--but who knows?) As we said, if you're a novice to the whole thing, now you begin to understand how reality works?

Dear Sir:

Will you kindly tell me whether your state has an "official" drink?

If not, I have a plan that will enable us, (1) to extend special service and consideration to those of your readers who are coming to the New York World's Fair and (2) to advertise and publicize your commonwealth.

The reason for this is that we want to show that New Yorkers are not to be outdone in courtesy, friendliness and hospitality. I operate the restaurant "Queen Mary," which, I am proud to say, is most highly regarded in New York. I have observed that different sections of the country have different beverage preferences. In our restaurant we want to give courteous consideration to these preferences, but to do this we must know what they are.

My plan therefore depends on help from the readers of a newspaper in each state plus co-operation from that newspaper. In its columns its readers would be asked to engage in a "drink election" to register their choice in the matter of beverages. The beverage or drink whether hard or soft, mixed or straight, receiving a majority of "votes" would then be designated as the "official" drink of that state and its title or name would be the name of the state. The newspaper would advise me of the "election returns" and the winning drink would be placed on my beverage list under its "official" name. No brand name would be used.

When complete, this list would permit me to give special consideration to visitors from every state. Printed notices in our restaurant would suggest that visitors order their first beverage by asking for the state from which they came. A man from North Carolina would ask for "a North Carolina" or in the case of a party from several states the order might be "three Ohios, two Nevadas and an Idaho." Our waiters would understand without further explanation. Having identified themselves in this way our guests would immediately be given extra attention and special service; our orchestra would salute them with a musical greeting and our master-of-ceremonies would pay special tribute to their state or states. Your co-operation is asked only because we want to make things as pleasant as possible for World's Fair visitors.

New York City.

[Note: There is, come to think of it, a North Carolina drink, more typical than official, however. And Herr Larsen might have trouble procuring it, since the Federal Government's T-Men are dedicated to the proposition of preventing its manufacture.

So, in the unavailability of the juice of the corn, what shall be the ingredients of a "North Carolina"? Any suggestions? --Editors, The News.]

The all-time North Carolina championship for serving on committees, commissions, boards, bodies, groups, synods, organizations, councils and what-have-you, we have previously awarded to Frank Graham, president of the Greater University of North Carolina. In fact, Frank occupies in the serving-on-things sphere a position much like that of Joe Louis in the fistic. There is nobody in his class. The days he isn't being called to Washington to ponder this, he is on the way somewhere else to cogitate that.

Hence it is no sort of surprise to find listed in the group appointed by President Roosevelt to survey the University of Puerto Rico, the name of Frank Graham. Verily, fellow Tar Heels, we got us another first. First at Bethel, farthest at Gettysburg, last at Appomattox and supreme in surveyors.

Yesterday the United States of America acquired two new citizens in Judge Yates Webb's Federal Court. It acquired seven in fact. But the two in which we are particularly interested are Mr. and Mrs. Guillermo de Roxio. Our congratulations and good wishes to all of them, who can claim that this is particularly their country since they have acquired citizenship in it through deliberate choice rather than through the accident of birth. But in especial our congratulations and good wishes to the De Roxios.

They have been very useful people to Charlotte. The outlook for the establishment of a symphony orchestra here, when the Spanish man set out to establish one, was decidedly unpromising. And the going has never been easy--isn't really easy yet. Nevertheless, an orchestra, and a pretty good one, he has succeeded in establishing. And by degrees that has begun to break down the notion, common not only in Charlotte but all America, that what is called "classical" music is only a means by which high brow poseurs set themselves up as superior, whereas it is in reality the great speech of the human heart. And besides that, the De Roxios are highly desirable citizens in their own personal right.

A Deserted Land That Germany Would Like Very Much To Have For Several Reasons

Despite denials by Germany, the Argentine Government says it has proof of a Nazi plot to detach Patagonia from its allegiance and set up a German colonial state therein. That will interest Washington, for if it is true it constitutes a cool effort to destroy the Monroe Doctrine. And it may well be true.

Patagonia is a curious land, stretching from the River Colorado, about 300 miles south of Buenos Ayres, to Tierra del Fuego. Discovered by Magellan so long ago as 1520, it was not fully explored until after 1867. In its form, it is a series of great plains arising in terraces, one above the other, from the Atlantic to the Andes. Much of it is covered with shingle (gravel) and salt lagoons and is almost devoid of vegetation. And formerly its climate was considered as being uniformly bleak. Hence for long it was regarded as a sort of waste land, interesting only as the place where the bones of all sorts of strange prehistoric beasts, such as the giant armadillo and the giant sloth and the macrauchenia--a sort of nightmare combination of horse, camel, and rhinoceros--were constantly being dug up; where strange tall Indians hunted with the bola such strange living animals as the guanaco, where troops of hummingbirds and parakeets flew about in the falling snow.

But more recently that estimate has had to be revised. Its mean annual temperature is actually about 52 degrees. Large areas of its plains have been found to be ideally adapted to cattle, and in the province of Chubut the best wheat of the Argentine is now grown. Moreover, in the western parts there are very valuable forests and mineral deposits, including gold, silver, lignite, copper and--oil. But the population is still about 175,000 (the Indians, never numerous, have virtually disappeared), though the region, nearly six times as great as North Carolina, makes up about a fourth of the territory of Argentina.

Given irrigation and systematic exploitation of its resources, the land can probably be made a very rich one. But Germany would find it desirable for other reasons. It would enable her to get a foothold on the American continent in a location where the United States would have much difficulty in preventing it. And in addition, it would enable her to break the British grip on Cape Horn consequent upon their possession of the Falkland Islands. That would be important in the case of a war. For the passage at the Horn constitutes one of the great doorways from East to West. It was at the Falklands that the British destroyed the German Pacific squadron on Dec. 8, 1914, when, having sadly ravaged British shipping in the East, it sought to steam into the Atlantic to continue its depredations.

In Boston the other evening old General R. E. Wood told a civic club that it might be a very good thing if the United States took a leaf out of the totalitarian book and set up the doctrine that every man owes the state one year's service. We have, he suggested, entirely too much freedom and individualism, and unless we go in for "voluntary" discipline, we are going to pot. And then he went the whole hog and again proposed that this "voluntary" discipline be made compulsory--that every male be required by law to give one year of his life either to military service or--look at this--forced labor, as the state should choose!

It seems to be the privilege of retired generals to spout off a given amount of tosh, as witness the Van Horne Moseleys and the Smedley Butlers. But this is tops so far. It may be that in order to defend the country it will some time be necessary for all males to submit to military service. But the fathers of this republic very rightly distrusted the military mind, and did their best to make sure it should never acquire dominance among us. And certainly, the thing should be held off until the last possible day--for, once it happens, for any extended period you may write it down in the book that our days as a democratic nation are at an end. And as for the proposal for forced labor--whew! If the state can force a man to work for it one year, it can force him to work ten or fifty--can force him to work for other individuals. And that masters, is not merely Fascism--it is slavery.

In a few weeks there will come from the printers a fat volume, bound in buckram, entitled, "Public Laws of North Carolina, Session 1939." In it will be contained all the general acts and resolutions of the Legislature that wound up last night three months' session.

And it is something of a testimonial, this fat book, to the processes of democratic government and the conservative mind of North Carolina. Not that all the words writ therein will please all the people. Not, indeed, that some of the actions of this Legislature are at all defensible, or that it has not done much that might better have been left undone and left undone that which might better have been done. But as the distillation of the judgments and opinions of 150 men of diverse views and clashing interests, the volume represents a remarkable and, on the whole, admirable compromise. It and its predecessors go far toward explaining why North Carolina is one of the best-governed states in the union.

The Hon. Lundeen, Farmer-Laborite Senator in Congress, doesn't, we gather, in his heart care for his state of Minnesota, or at least for its cities. For he has snipped a page out of the book of Robert Rice Reynolds--and with a vengeance. A year or so ago, as the little reader will no doubt remember, Robert added more wreaths for immortality to his brow by coming right out and proposing that the United States ask England to hand over the West Indies, Newfoundland, and other of her possessions in this hemisphere, in payment of her war debts to us. But last week the Hon. Lundeen cooly proposed that we simply steam the navy out, seize 'em and hold 'em, at least until England came through with the jack!

From that you will gather, of course, that the Hon. Lundeen doesn't like the lion. You may also gather that in his Freudian depths he doesn't like the United States either. For what he proposes is plain: Robert only wanted to make the British lion fighting mad. The Hon. Lundeen wants to start it fighting us pronto. But least of all, evidently, does he like Minnesota, or at least its cities. For if you look at the map you'll see that Minnesota lies right up against Canada, and on Lake Superior--in a particularly vulnerable spot. And, contrary to popular belief, the British do have a sense of humor of their own. The kind of humor that, if the Hon. Lundeen had his way, would be almost certain to lead them, as the very first thing, to throw an army into Minnesota and burn St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Duluth. Didn't those towns vote for the Hon. Lundeen the last time he was up for election?