The Charlotte News

Wednesday, August 3, 1938

SIX EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: So how did the bicyclist from L.A. get 30 fascists, under the grip of the Devils, to surrender at the crossroads? We venture to say that, in truth, no foot soldier really wants to be a fascist. There is no percentage in it. But, for whatever cruel twist of fate, he (or she) is cast in servitude to a cruel and unforgiving master demanding absolute obedience to will, unremittingly. So, a good bicyclist need only come along--and voila! All are freed to carry on the good fight, one for human dignity, free from cruel megalomaniacal fascist masters, drunk with authority, impressed with the sound of their own voice and militaristic will over others.

Incidentally, there was no new capitol building built, though in 1962 or thereabouts, there came a fancy, modern new State Legislature building, replete with red carpet, perhaps as a compromise to modernity. (After all, when you been behine de plow all your life and then suddenly you are a state legislator, why, then, who's to deny you a nice plush red carpet to look at every day in lieu of musty old echoing marble and stone corridors full of stately old portraits? Besides, there are contractors back home who need the work.) (Just why the word apparently got mispelt a couple of times in the piece, we can't say--unless it was poetic; perhaps the debil again.)

For more on the Rev. Winrod, as mentioned at the conclusion of "Memo on the Expected", see "Kansas Bogeyman", July 28, 1938. It seems that the Reverend had offspring every bit as baitingly biting as he, offspring who have carried on even into recent years. Some even credit the Rev., along with Father Coughlin, for having spawned the modern extreme right in American politics, the so-called "religious right", though religious in fact they fail to be in any sense of understanding the central tenets of the religion they usually profess, Christianity. But of course, that fails to accord the proper place in all of that to the Rev. Thomas Dixon and his precursors, going on then back eventually to Judas Iscariot, himself, and before that even, to whatever the universal instrument, energetic such that it always is, was which produced the collision which produced the bang out there. Boom. Boom.

"Glance at a Collision" reminds us that trains and trucks best not tangle, bad for the trucks and trains, bad for commerce. While trucks, to insure the safety of the driver and the load and surrounding traffic, must heed the crossings, trains, for the safety of all, must mind their speed also, especially Southern No. 30's out of Atlanta. 30-30. Otherwise, after the collision and boom, the bicyclist has to come along and sort out all the wreckage for fault allocation, if any there be on either side, (unavoidable accident because of signs not visible in the night?), you see, and that takes a lot of time and truly unnecessary effort--when both driver and engineer, traffic and train alike, stopping for a brief mutual chat at the diner over a good cup o' Joe at a minute to midnight would likely have prevented the whole thing in the first instance.

On "Heavy Tongues", for our continued good health, we reserve all comment. (Except that we advise, advisory warning only: Best not wrangle too much over the angles, and let the cats fight over the leftover fat.)

Other tongues of the day not sewn shut yet by fascists... For it is far more important for the future to understand and have insight into how, as opposed, so much anyway, to who.

It is a strange urge that makes men leave comfortable homes and fight battles, risking their lives, in far countries.

It is men like that who have gone over to the Government's assistance, not because so much that they like the Loyalists but because of their intense hatred of fascism.

And they are putting up a good fight, those Americans and other foreigners in the International Brigade.

That was an interesting story in yesterday's report of the Los Angeles fellow who was riding up to the division on a bicycle when the party of 30 fascists behind their lines cut across the road.

"He had to stop and they captured him. But he persuaded them all to surrender."

Reminds us somehow of Corrigan. Remember him?

Mr. Vogler's scheme to build a new $15,000,000 capitol building at Raleigh with PWA funds leaves us unenthusiastic. There is no particular need for a new capital, and there are good reasons why the present building and site should remain the seat of state government. The building is a beautiful one--one of the most beautiful of its sort in America--and the chances are the new building wouldn't be; for it is only now and then that a public building in America turns out well. Moreover, the place is rich in memories, certainly something no new building could have for a long while to come.

But it is not only that the place is beautiful and steeped in tradition, but that its beauty is exactly fitted to our ideal notion of North Carolina. Plain and sober, impressive not through its vagueness or any showy ornament, but only through its innate dignity,--these are qualities of the building. And they are precisely the qualities we have always liked to believe to be those of the Tar Heel State. Anyhow, the old building makes a far better face for us than any huge new building is likely to do.

Govenor Nelson G. Kraschel, of Iowa, had probably better think it over. He has a perfect right to dislike the Wagner Labor Relations Act. And he may be right in contending that the hearings at the National Labor Relations Board are tending to hinder rather than help the settlement of the Maytag strike. More than that, he has an undoubted right to call out the Iowa militia for the maintenance of order in the strike district.

But when he assumes to prohibit the NLRB from continuing its hearings, he is clearly outside the bounds of his right and authority. It is precisely as though he had assumed to suspend a Federal District Court in the performance of its functions. For, mind you, the constitutional status of the Wagner Act and the NLRB are no longer questions for dispute and doubt. The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled the labor act is a proper part of the law of the land. There is therefore, no question whatever about the legal right of the labor board to continue its hearings. And when Governor Kraschel denies it, he in effect denies the sovereign authority of the United States--in effect attempts to make his personal judgment and his status as commander of the Iowa militia superior to the sovereign law of the United States.

He does worse, indeed. For when he assumes to suspend the law of the United States by the use of the militia--a militia which, incidentally, is armed with arms which are the property of the United States, and which is a part of the National Army of the United States--he comes dangerously close to raising a rebellion against the United States.

Yesterday's primary elections were a sort of orgy of the expected. Up in Virginia, Representative Howard W. Smith, blacklisted by the Non-Partisan League, CIO dominated organization, and sometimes denounced by Honest Harold Ickes for his anti-New Deal record, overwhelmed William E. Dodd Jr., son of the former Ambassador to Germany. But that had been looked for. The district which includes Alexandria (where Boss John Lewis lives in a particularly nice house) is a silk-stocking one, inhabited about equally by old conservative Virginians of the landed gentry tradition and well-heeled Washingtonians who do not care for Neighbor Lewis or the New Deal. And Smith had the backing of the all-powerful Glass-Byrd machine, whereas Dodd was running as a maverick.

There was some comfort for anti-New Dealers in the victory of former Representative Colgate W. Dorden Jr. over Incumbent Norman R. Hamilton, but not a great deal, seeing that, though Hamilton campaigned as a Roosevelt man, he has sometimes kicked off the New Deal reservation, and local issues figured more in the campaign than national ones.

Maybe there is a crumb of comfort for the Antis in the vast lead of Senator Bennett Champ Clark in Missouri, too. But there, again, it is small. For vast leads are natural for anybody in Missouri who has the backing of both Clark's own machine and that of Boss Pendergast of Kansas City.

On the other hand, the New Dealers can find some little solace in the returns from West Virginia where, though they seem to have lost a newly-created district, they captured seven out of ten elections.

All in all, it looks very much like a draw. If anything was proved, it is simply that the New Deal has fallen off somewhat in popularity, without falling off enough to get the Antis any great cause for confidence as to their prospects in 1940.

There was, however, one source of comfort for all sane parties. The Rev. Gerald Winrod was apparently defeated for the Republican nomination to the Senate from Kansas. And the Rev. Gerald, who has been accused of being financed by the Hitler regime in Germany, is an essential Klucker, whose stock in trade is racial and religious hate. We can do without more hate just now.

Two things strike us about the story of the train and trailer truck crash at the crossing on Dowd Road this morning. One of them is that, according to his own testimony, the driver of the truck was moving too fast to stop when he saw the danger signal and heard the warning bell, that he attempted to beat the train, and that the vehicle was struck in the rear. Yet, as we recall it, the view of the signals is unobstructed for some distance. How does it come, then, that the driver couldn't stop? It has been our understanding that these trucks, which used to be twenty tons of rolling menace, have been considerably tamed down since the Interstate Commerce Commission took them in charge. But this hardly looks like it. True enough, the time was 1:30 in the morning. But even so, there are other vehicles besides trains about even at that time.

The other thing we notice is that the train, Southern No. 30, coming in from Atlanta, is reported to have been traveling at "a fast rate of speed." We have no law books at hand, but somehow we seem to recall that there is a statute in North Carolina which has something to say about the speed with which trains are permitted to travel in cities and to pass over city crossings.

The boast of Olivia De Havilland, one of the movie stars, that she gained ten pounds, is heartening. Stream-lining has gone too far, and, while nobody admires fat in the real fat sense, skinniness is also ugly.

Of course here in the South people dislike to apply the term "ugly" to any woman, but why not be a realist for a little while and admit that a body in which the predominant note is one of sharp angles is ugly? And that is not all, young men.

You may not yet know it, but we have it on high and ancient authority that sharpened nerves make for shrewish wives. The streamlined girl may seem preferable in the courting days but she suffers from too much dieting and has to take her discomfort out on somebody. Who will that somebody be after marriage? It will be you, young fellows--so we hear.

Better a few good pounds of flesh and an amiable wife than a willowy wand of a spouse carrying a ten-pound punch in her tongue--according to our informant.