Site Ed. Note: "If It Must Come, Now" predicts precisely what would come a year later after Munich and appeasement, after Hitler did exactly as Cash posits he would after being provided the Sudetenland, swallowing Czechoslovakia whole by March, 1939, leading him on to believe he could do exactly the same with Danzig and the Corridor in Poland, leading to war.

Meanwhile, as Cash further explained, Mussolini was sending troops in support of Franco and Franco was refusing Chamberlain's demand that Franco evict all foreign troops from Spain in exchange for a promise from England not to aid the Loyalists against Franco. And as Franco ignored the demand and Mussolini continued the flow of troops and arms with even increased troop penetration, the Spanish civil war provided a training ground for both the Italian ground troops and moreover eventually the German Luftwaffe pilots, just as Ethiopia had given the Italian pilots their grim target and carnage training against helpless peasants armed with spears in 1935-36, this from bombance, to sate the desire to avenge the humiliating Italian defeat at Adwa in 1896,and, ultimately, to reprise the Roman Legions.

It must come as a grievous shock to the New Deal that William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor and once the President's best labor friend "most heartily" endorsed a Republican candidate for Senator. The shock is probably all the more unkind because it is Puddler Jim Davis of Pennsylvania whom Green has endorsed, and because it is the New Deal's most vociferous admirer and sycophant, Governor George Earle, that Davis will have to beat.

On the AFL's part, however, it has only followed its tradition of singing the praises of whose bread it eats, regardless of party. Senator Puddler Jim "voted for and supported all measures sponsored and approved by the Federation." It is of no moment that as Secretary of Labor in President Hoover's Cabinet, Puddler Jim distinguished himself mainly by an astonishing ineptitude, contagious or contacted. And he wasn't convicted of running a rich lottery in the name of the Moose, though he was tried on that charge.

No, it is enough for the AFL, as it is for the New Deal, that those who receive its endorsement be yessirs. And the worst of it in Pennsylvania is that the voters of both parties have no choice save that between a "yessir" for labor and a "yessir" for the New Deal.

The chance for avoiding war in Europe seems worse by far after Goering's speech in Nurnberg yesterday. As Hitler's Chief Stooge In Waiting, he may fairly be taken as Hitler's mouthpiece when he says that Germany will now be satisfied with nothing less than the outright annexation of the Sudeten area of Czechoslovakia, which is to say of Czechoslovakia as a whole, for the Sudeten Mountains are the key to the whole country. And if nothing less will satisfy Germany, the war is inevitable, unless... Unless we suppose that France and Russia will back down and ignore their treaty obligations, after the former has already virtually mobilized to indicate its determination to stand by those obligations. It has not historically been the French tradition for them to back down. They did not back down even in 1870, when the dice were plainly against them, and they did not back down in 1914.

There is the fact, certainly, that they have to reckon on the English backing them up. But the English seem likely to do just that. Mr. Chamberlain, to be sure, is as devious as ever. But the temper of the English public promises to take the decision out of his hands if he attempts to vacillate much further.

As for Russia, no one can be sure. But there is the fact that the Czechs have already conceded too much for Russia's safety. Let Hitler have Czechoslovakia, and the way to the wheatfields of the Russian Ukraine--his avowed first objective in achieving the hegemony of Europe--lies wide open to him.

In common sense, indeed, there seems to be little reason why anybody should back down if Hitler attempts to take the Sudeten territory. For with that in hand he immediately becomes master of the wheatfields of Hungary and Rumania--which is to say in position to wage war indefinitely. And according to his own statements in "Mein Kampf" he means, once he gets into that position, to wage war for a number of other objectives besides the wheatfields of the Ukraine, among which are the taking back of the old German colonies which England and France now hold, the re-annexation of the Alsace-Lorraine (which have a larger relative German population than Czechoslovakia), and the taking over of the French Channel ports. In short, once he takes Czechoslovakia, eventual war with him becomes all but inevitable for England and France. And that being so, common sense would seem to say that, if it must come, 't'were better it came quickly.

For now, before he has become master of the Rumanian and Hungarian fields, he can be dealt with. And dealt with he will have to be, sooner or later.

At the instigation of the Civil Service Commission, the police began this week to enforce sections of the anti-noise ordinance. Ten persons, most of them drivers of trucks without mufflers or with defective mufflers, were given tickets the first day, and one or two more the day following.

It serves them right, and it serves likewise to remind us that there actually is an anti-noise ordinance in the city's law books. We'd forgotten all about it. The people, especially the people who toot automobile horns with a sort of cold fury, had forgotten all about it. The cops, it was plain to see, had forgotten all about it. But the Civil Service Commission hadn't forgotten--at least it suddenly remembered. One of the Commissioners must've heard a noise.