Any number of Tar Heel newspapers, our own included, have had a try at explaining Bob Reynolds' winning political ways. All these analyses have left us with the feeling that, while they might explain a few votes here and a few votes there, they didn't come close to explaining 315,000 votes for a Senator like Reynolds in a state like North Carolina.

Robert's very own explanation, as quoted by Washington Merry-Go-Round yesterday, was--

Maybe so, but we don't believe that was it. In fact, we don't believe Robert's phobia about aliens made him any considerable number of votes at all. It simply didn't catch on in a state that is 99 44-100% native-born.

But it did, we grant, have one shining use. It gave Robert something to talk about so that he wouldn't have to talk about some things that really matter to Tarheelia.

We remarked yesterday upon the striking unanimity of Cotton Ed Smith, Olin Johnston, and Edgar Brown, the three South Carolina candidates for the Senate who spoke at Camden Tuesday, on what may be the function of a statesman from the old home state of the Pinckneys, Rutledges, Lowndes, and John Caldwell Calhoun. They all agreed, we observed, that, in the elegant phrase of Mr. Brown, it is to go to Washington "and bring home the bacon."

But we unintentionally overlooked one John L. McMillan, for fourteen years private secretary to the late Representative Allard Gasque Florence, who Monday announced himself as a candidate to succeed his old boss. For, from the Associated Press account of his announcement it is quite clear that his grasp of the case is brilliantly lucid, thus:

The news that Cordell Hull is planning new conventions and treaties to "humanize war" leaves us colder than anything the gentleman has ever proposed.

It goes without saying that we are in favor of "humanizing war"--if war we must have. But the whole record for the last five years shows clearly that an attempt to make binding treaties with the fascist governments (those of Italy, Germany and Japan) is as bootless as trying to make them with mad dogs. It is already against international convention to bomb open cities--has been ever since 1899. It is already against international convention to war on civilian populations. But these governments, openly denying the value of human life and glorifying murder, bad faith, and lying as instruments of national policy, have brazenly violated these conventions, as they have brazenly violated, over and over again, every other solemn obligation into which they have entered.

About all that existing treaties seem to have done, has been to place at a great disadvantage the nations which observed them. And there is no reason to believe that a new treaty would be observed. Indeed, we are far from sure that the best thing to do isn't to make a clean sweep of all treaties whatever--to accept the fact that fascist action has abrogated them all--to announce that we will not hereafter be bound by any of them--and to refuse even to discuss new conventions with the treaty-breaking powers until they show good evidence of having come to their senses or put up a forfeit.

In December, 1898, the Treaty of Paris was signed by Spain and the United States, under the terms of which the Philippines and Puerto Rico became U.S. possessions. The Filipinos, however, led astray by the fierce Emilio Aguinaldo, had other ideas, and began a revolution against all outside authority. Troops were sent to put down this rebellion, and in February, 1899, hostilities began.

Aguinaldo and his bushmen managed to make a most aggravating nuisance of themselves. They ambushed American detachments, killed a couple of American generals and Major Logan, and were not finally subdued until Aguinaldo's capture in March, 1901. William Howard Taft became the first American civil governor, which began the notion, currently entertained by a gentleman named McNutt, that this post is a sort of stepping stone to the Presidency.

The United States was engaged for two years in putting down the Philippine Insurrection. This week, 37 years after the last volley was fired, the President vetoed a bill to pay to volunteers in the Spanish-American War who had remained in the service to fight the Filipinos, a bonus, ostensibly for re-enlisting. There were some 15,000 of these, officers and men, and the estimated cost of having induced them to stay and fight it out with Aguinaldo would have come to between $6,000,000 and $8,000,000.

The Associated Press reported last week that--

Ironically it appended:

AP correspondents are forbidden, of course, to make guesses, but this fellow would have been warranted in adding, "Informed sources state that the silver will probably be shipped to the United States." Not at once, perhaps, but sooner or later.

For sooner or later, as the result of this administration's mysterious yen to accumulate silver, which it promptly stores in the ground, the silver that crossed the border at Le Perthus will cross the sea and be unloaded at New York. And Uncle Henry Morganthau will write a check, and that, boys and girls, will be that.

Last night a young American Negro named Louis swarmed all over a no-longer-so-young German named Schmeling and knocked him out in the first round of a fifteen-round bout for the heavyweight championship of the world. This was an unpardonable blow to Aryan superiority, of which Schmeling is an unostentatious symbol, but the German press, we bet you, will do its best to soften that blow to the race.

In fact, if the account of the fight gets in the German papers at all, it will probably be handled as follows--

Der Angriff, organ of Propaganda Minister Goebbels:

Der Sturmer, organ of the notorious Jew-baiter, Julius Streicher:

Der Voelkischer Beobachter, organ of Adolf Hitler: