The Charlotte News

Monday, February 26, 1940

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: "'Equal Rights'" tells the brave tale of one who stood loudly for equal rights for one and all, circumscribed only by the limit that the one and all was inclusive of an exclusive club for good little Nazis only, those who prayed respectfully, regularly and quite ostentatiously to its chieftain, and who were also free from the taint of corrupted non-Aryan bloodlines, or, in the case of newly acquired satrapies, were not so silly to believe in nationalist causes within their formerly native lands now needed by the Nazi to foist his geopolitical dominion abroad Europe, then the world. Equal Rights, in other words, for all who qualify for equal rights, within the club.

Also, the following two little pieces from the page this date--and, meantime, beware the Revolution:

As a novelty in London nightspots, song lyrics are now sung backward. We must think to give this a try, with "Oh, Johnny, Oh, Johnny, Oh."

A Tip To Mr. Starnes

Pass The Peanuts, Winston-Salem Sentinel

Tonight Congressman Joe Starnes, who has been helping Mr. Dies and others investigate un-Americanism, will appear before the Junior Chamber of Commerce and talk on Americanism.

It would seem more proper for him to talk about what he knows most about and we trust that Mr. Starnes will devote a considerable amount of his time to discussing the alien and suspicious activities of those who are trying to overthrow the Government of the United States.

It was only last night that we heard two persons plotting to stamp out the entire educational system and in its place to erect a new and greater institution. The details of this revolutionary plan were not complete, but we heard enough to convince us that violent and un-evolutionary change is being plotted.

The plan is to seize all local school officials and teachers and put them in a concentration camp. There they would be kept until they agreed to let out all classes after lunch.

Of course, the two conspirators were aged eight and six respectively, but Mr. Starnes ought to be warned about it because it probably represents a trend or something.

Indicative?

Weir's Appointment Suggests GOP Has Learned Nothing

The repeated warnings of leading publicists of the Republican Party that an attempt to return to the Old Guard viewpoint and policies will be fatal to its hopes, have apparently had little effect if the selection of a finance chairman for the campaign of 1940 is to be taken as a criterion.

Ernest T. Weir, the Pittsburgh steel man, is an efficient fellow, all right. He kept his mills running most of the time during the depression and showed a profit every year. But he is also about as definite a justification of the New Deal's terms, "Tory" and "economic royalist" and so on, as could be found in the republic. He makes no bones about the fact that he hates every objective of the New Deal, and not merely its methods. And that he is dead against the whole idea of labor unions and the right to collective bargaining.

His selection, moreover, suggests quite pointedly that the GOP proposes to raise its war chest, not from contributions by the rank and file, but by appealing to the fat cats. He is admirably calculated to the purpose. But this policy may well be a boomerang.

The Republicans have made much of CIO's contribution of half a million smackers to the Roosevelt cause in 1936, of John Lewis's subsequent arrogant demands. But the record surely does not indicate that multi-millionaires who put up huge sums are any less expectant of favors than Mr. Lewis--any less demanding about being paid off.

Altogether, a dubious start.

The Wrong Tag*

Norris Injects Politics Into Bankruptcy Trusteeship

Senator George Norris has succeeded, as undoubtedly he calculated, in making it so unpleasant for John Hanes that he has declined appointment as trustee in bankruptcy of the complex Associated Gas & Electric Co.

The SEC, the Federal judge in the case and persons interested in the company wanted Hanes. But Senator Norris emphatically did not want him. Hanes had an investment banking background. He had Wall Street connections. He was suspect as a conservative, did not share the progressive belief in public ownership of utilities.

And so Johnny renounced the job for which he was beautifully fitted, and Senator Norris subsided, secure in the conviction that competence to administer a trusteeship is of no account if the man doesn't run with the Liberal crowd.

Cock And Bull

This Story Is Probably Propaganda Of Some Sort

Rumors are being peddled around by various commercial reporting agencies and publicists to the effect that "insiders" in Washington are betting four to one that the Nazis will win the war in Europe.

The story is nonsense on its face. There are no "insiders" in Washington, save the President, a few State Department officials and their aides. And you may be sure that none of these are talking or even pretending to know with any definiteness as to how the war will come out. The commercial services get rumors through business channels from Europe. But all these rumors are equally open to the regular newspaper correspondents and if they do not publish them it is because they have little probability or are just plain silly. Despite their claims, the commercial reporting services have scored no beats on the journalists.

Nor do the facts, as at present developed, suggest any reason why "insiders" should believe that the odds overwhelmingly favor the Nazis. Quite obviously, Turkey, whose whole future imperatively requires her to guess right, does not expect the Allies to lose, the Nazis to win. Nor does Rumania, which occupies the hottest spot in Europe--else she would have been insane to yield to British and French pressure and cut down her exports of oil to Germany.

Best guess about this rumor is that it is a piece of defeatist propaganda. Perhaps it was invented and is being promoted by "appeasers" in both England and the United States, with a view to creating a hysterical conviction that peace on any terms is necessary. Or perhaps by Nazi agents. Or perhaps by rabid interventionists who want to make it appear that we must rush into the war pronto if civilization is to be saved. Or, on the other hand, by rabid isolationists who want to create the impression that the cause of the Allies is already hopelessly lost and that we couldn't save them in time if we would.

In any case, there is absolutely no reason to put any faith in the tale as indicating the probable outcome of the war.

"Equal Rights"

The Father Of Lies Must Have Felt Like A Piker

Auld Hornie must have had a bad time of it Saturday if he was tuned in on Munich--torn, as he was bound to have been, between giggling admiration and jealousy.

Said Lord Hitler:

"What we are fighting against is the idea that one or two peoples of the earth should have everything. God didn't make the world for Englishmen alone... It simply cannot be that German people are destined to be slaves of the English and the French."

And again:

"There is a God--he creates people with equal rights."

Satan, remembering his effrontery in challenging the King of Heaven on His golden throne, might still have envied that.

In "Mein Kampf" it had gone quite differently. There it ran like this: there is no such thing as equality of right among peoples. There is in the world one single "culture-bearing people," the Germans. It is their business to rule the earth, it is the business of other peoples to obey and serve the shining ones. Nothing less than the whole earth will serve the purpose of allowing each German to realize his full potentialities as a master of the other inferior peoples, and at the same time bring civilization to these inferiors that cannot develop it for themselves. But first, let it clearly be understood, (these) people must be transformed into work animals. When the Germans have developed to the fullest it will be time to talk about giving them rights.

God has created peoples with equal rights. It follows, therefore, that the Jews, the Poles, and the Czechs must not be people but a sort of intermediate type between the lesser primates and man. God has not created Germany to be a slave to England and France. But it is plain that he has created Poland and Czechoslovakia and the Balkans and the world (according to "Mein Kampf") to be slaves to Germany.

God exists, there is no doubt of it. But the laws "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not steal"--these laws do not exist.

The equal rights of a Pole and a Czech are to step into the gutter and tip their hats when a German passes, to be inside their houses at 8 o'clock in the evening, to have their shops and factories and farms taken over by Germans for the price the Germans choose or for no price at all, to have their universities closed, to have the books and pianos carted out of their houses, to be told that inferior peoples do not need books and music, that it contaminates Beethoven for them to listen to him.

The equal rights of Poles and Czechs and Jews and dissenting Austrians are to have their intellectual and political leaders systematically murdered, to have themselves systematically stripped of their property so they will have to work for Germans on the terms the Germans choose, to be driven out of whole provinces of their native land to make room for the German hogs pouring in, to be herded into concentration camps and have their heads rammed into latrines, to be whipped with truncheons at intervals of every two or three days, to have their women raped by whole regiments of SS swine and then kicked to death, to be turned out with their women and children to starve and rot along the roadside.

These are their equal rights.

Freedom for Germany. That is all milord Hitler wants, by his own confession. But by definition freedom for Germany means immediately, extermination or slavery for Poles, Czechs, Jews, dissenting Austrians, and ultimately the same for the rest of mankind.

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