The Charlotte News

Friday, September 23, 1938

SIX EDITORIALS

The Hon. John J. O'Connor, Democratic Chairman of the Rules Committee of the House of Representatives, will not go back to Congress unless he goes as a Republican. The "purge"--in which he was included for having held the wage-and-hour bill from the floor of the House through most of the last Congressional session--got him, and Wednesday he lost the Democratic nomination by 600 votes to Jim Fay, New Deal candidate. Meantime, however, he captured the Republican nomination from the regular Republican candidate! And to make the mix-up yet more complete, Fay, in November, will have not only the Democratic nomination but also the support of the American Labor Party, on whose ticket also he ran.

This is the President's first major victory in the purge. But he seems to be making head at breaking down the old party lines. And more than that, the victory is undoubtedly an important one. For even if O'Connor, Democrat, wins out as a Republican over Fay, Democrat, New Dealer, and American Laborite, he will still automatically lose his chairmanship of the Rules Committee, which, next to the Speakership, is all important for the control of legislation.

Senator Their Bob Reynolds was in town yesterday, briefly but long enough to make a couple of predictions:

(1) That there would be no general war in Europe now or soon; and

(2) That the Democratic Party was split, but was having only a family fight, and that when the test came in November it would pull together.

We earnestly hope that Robert is right in the first instance, perhaps as earnestly as Robert hopes that he is right in the second. For at this juncture, solidarity in the ranks of the Democratic Party is his rod and his staff. Without it, that is, with the extraordinary inclination of a great many Democrats away from Robert himself, and the extraordinary inclination of a great many other Democrats away from the New Deal, and, with the ordinary inclination of some 40 per cent of the electorate toward the Republican ticket, it can be seen at a glance that any substantial defection could jeopardize Robert's Senatorship.

It's a remote possibility, perhaps, yet a possibility still. In any event, we may expect from now on to hear Robert bearing down more and more on the virtue of loyalty to party and incidentally, to Robert.

The astuteness of the astute Mr. Cordell Hull was never more clearly shown than in the case of the Czechoslovakian business. All along he has been an advocate of moral solidarity among the democracies of the West. And it was undoubtedly with his approval that the President made the speech at Chicago last year in which it was proposed that the dictator nations be "quarantined," and all the other speeches of the same tenor that have come since.

But then, the other day when the President was racing home from his son's bedside, he suddenly told the reporters that he wanted the world to understand well that there was no agreement of any sort, express or tacit, and not even any moral solidarity, between the United States and England and France. It looked inexplicable and pretty nasty, seeing that it threw cold water on everything that had been said before. What! Were Mr. Hull and the President letting England and France down just when they were getting ready bravely to go to war to defend the Czechs?

Then Bumble made his pilgrimage to Berchtesgaden, and the cat was out of the bag. Undoubtedly Hull had got wind of what was coming, and taken swift measures to see that nobody could suppose that we had any "moral solidarity" with that.

The country is exceedingly fortunate in its Minister of State

All unnoticed amid the world's excitement over Czechoslovakia, a significant development affecting the war in Spain took place this week. Loyalist Premiere Negrin announced to the League of Nations Assembly that his Government had just decided on the immediate and complete withdrawal of all non-combatant on the Government side--unconditionally, whether the Insurgents followed suit, or not.

Signor Negrin left no doubt what he was getting at. He meant, admittedly, to cut the ground from under the pretended positions of Messrs. Franco, Mussolini, Hitler and--Chamberlain. He proposed that once international interference in Spain had been eliminated, an armistice be declared, an election held and Spain given what Czechoslovakia has resentfully had to accept--self-determination. Foreign correspondents read into it an intent to show up Mussolini and his pal in crime, Hitler.

Nobody, we suppose, not even Negrin, expects Italy actually to withdraw from Spain until the fight is won and the nation comes under the Italian hegemony. But at least the Loyalists' proposal may have the effect of stifling Mussolini whenever he feels a speech coming on about the sacred right of peoples to determine their own destiny. There is overwhelming ground for the assumption that Spain, given a whiff of this privilege, would send the Italian legions packing.

The Supreme Court's decision in the Burgin-Deane case, that the State Election Board does and ought to have supervisory power over county boards, seems the simplest common sense. In the nature of the case, a State board, made up of men of some eminence and removed from the heat and passion of personal interest and enthusiasm, is more to be trusted, both for fairness and judgment, than a local one. And, indeed, to say that the board lacked these powers would have been to say that there was no appeal for a candidate, even in a case of manifest fraud, save perhaps through the regular courts--a process long and costly both for the State and the appellant.

And now that the issue is settled, it seems to us that, altogether, the matter was handled in a fashion to cheer our faith in decent government in North Carolina. There were some disorders immediately after the election, and once it looked as if resort to violence might call out the guard. But sober second thought ended that, and both sides, recovering their tempers, took the sensible way of legal remedy. And though we do not like the holier-than-thou attitude, we can't avoid reflecting that that was an exceedingly pleasing contrast to the methods employed in South Carolina, where Governor Johnston ordered out the militia merely on the complaint of the defeated candidate, which that state's election board, with hardly any pretense of examination, afterward decided was without good ground.

The American Legion, in convention at Los Angeles, yesterday went on record against all "isms" save only Americanism. Which so far as it goes is well and good. If by Americanism the Legion meant democracy and the rights set forth in the Bill of Rights, it does itself honor in being wholly for it. But it is unfortunate that it did not specify these things as being what it has in mind.

All over the world, democracy and the freedom of speech, assembly, etc., are rapidly going by the board. Even in England a moving picture newsreel was yesterday everywhere suppressed "at the suggestion of the authorities," because in a discussion of the Czechoslovakian mess one of two journalist called attention to the fact that Chamberlain was making his decisions without "consulting Parliament and the British people."

Moreover, the American Legion has itself often been charged with meaning something else than democracy and the preservation of the Bill of Rights when it speaks of Americanism--even in being out to destroy the rights of freedom of speech, etc. in the name of Americanism. We do not believe that it is true of the great body of Legionnaires or of the national organization as such. Nevertheless, there have been incidents which lend the charge a kind of color, as those at Jersey City--a sufficient number of incidents to seem to furnish good cause why the Legion should have taken care to make it explicitly clear where it stands.