The Charlotte News

Sunday, March 17, 1940

FIVE EDITORIALS

Forgive S. A. Ellis of Shelby who said that FDR was as popular as Jesus. He wasn't knockin' it or puttin' it down. He was just sayin' it. It was a fact.

So, couldn't we make an exception again, just this once? Wouldn't the Congress see fit to pass an emergency amendment to allow the current President the opportunity at least to be put before the American people for the acid test, that is whether he should be the first three-termer since FDR? We mean, like, what's the harm? Isn't that the democratic thing to do? And isn't that other party called the Democratic Party?

So we urge Speaker Hastert and the Republican Congress, no, we demand that democracy be done here, and that this gentleman be given the opportunity to run in an honest election for once, where the Democrats aren't out to steal all the votes and make it look "close", like that silly made-up business in Florida, when we know this President won both those elections by overwhelming super-majorities of the votes, probably like 89% or something.

Please, do your duty, Republicans!

What's that?

Oh, we didn't know that.

"Resurgam!" provides the sad and baneful tale of the kleptomaniac who clipped the college clapper before it could clang to class each student clinging their classics, such as Conics or that of Calvin, yet far the cleaner to case a campus carillon and carry off the clanker, than to conjoin the clubs constituted of coney-headed cony-catchers, cuddling their crottels, the caverniculous, captious cavillers who cavalierly cavort and coddle the cautelous in cause of throttling the causidical. But--you got it. We caught them, this caballistic crew of croteying cretins, just as they were crepitaculously attaching their clampons to climb the cable.

Again, you don't have to thank us. It's our job.

They Can Be A Lot Less Harmful Than First Terms

In letters to the editor this week about a third term for President Roosevelt, many people have viewed with alarm the possibility of a dictatorship. It seems to us, trying to view the case objectively, that eight years' experience with a President who has done his best to preserve the civil liberties that are so essential to democracy is an acceptable guarantee of his lack of such an ambition.

As much, however, cannot be said of some of his enthusiastic disciples in this part of the country. Dictatorship, perhaps, was farthest from their minds, but in the motions they went through it was perilously close.

The primary move in establishing a dictatorship is to suspend civil processes by force. That, precisely, was what New Deal worshiper Governor Olin Johnston of South Carolina did when he took over the highway department by show of arms. And that, precisely, is what New Deal worshiper Governor Rivers of Georgia has done, only he has gone to greater extremes of defiance.

He has defied his State courts and he has defied the Federal courts. He has pardoned officers of the National Guard who were sentenced to imprisonment for flouting court orders. He has said, quite frankly, that as governor of Georgia he does not propose to have a highway commissioner using that office to advance his campaign for the governorship, and that he will kick him out, courts or no courts.

Third terms, it may be, are unwise, but first terms for men who brook no limitation upon their authority are worse by far.

Even St. John's Is Still Haunted By Old Adam

What the authorities of St. John's College think about, we don't know. But they are great on the notion of discipline, and so it is quite possible that they learn with a certain gloomy sadness that a student has stolen the clapper from the college bell.

But for ourselves, it leaves us with a decided sensation of relief. Not that we altogether lack sympathy with the St. John's program of educating the young men in its halls by instructing them exclusively in the Hundred Greatest Authors. It was about time that somebody began to make American education something more than the acquisition of a vague smattering of knowledge concerning a hash of, say, the rock sculptures at Abu-Simbel and Practical Exporting, as an incidental to four years of enthusiastic devotion to football and the Greek letter fraternities.

But apparently it was ourselves who were too solemn. The Old Adam turns out to be irrepressible and quite able to take care of himself, thankee. Of course, it was not done in the really grand manner of stabling Prexy's horse on the belfry, but considering our degenerate times and St. John's it will serve.

Site Ed. Note: By the by and query: do we not unimperfectly reimbibe a memory that old Prexy there was a leading equestrian, stellar scholar, and even ROTC captain at Faber back in '62?

Yes, stout old fellow, he, right stout.

Oh dear, we must pause here. We dropped a bit of ash on our favorite smoking jacket and it seems to be arising in flame now.

Well, stiff upper lip and all that, and, as they say, never a look gift-Hobbes in the mouth. By Jove, it does look a bit drearier than ordinary and quite on the icy side down there, doesn't it? Well, suppose better that than sliding with the deck chairs. Off we go. Cheerio.

An Admirable Judge Permits Himself An Unworthy Mood

The "portrait in type" of Judge H. Hoyle Sink, to be found elsewhere in this issue of The News, makes him out a fair and square man whom wrongdoers dread, lawyers have to respect and newspaper men admire for his forthrightness. With this characterization we have no argument--indeed, the assignment was at our suggestion.

But even a fair and square man can err, and we think that Judge Sink erred lavishly in his treatment of the superintendent of the Morrison Training School, a reformatory for Negroes.

The circumstances were these. Judge Burgwyn, holding court here last December, had ordered the school to receive a boy and to hold him for an indeterminate period. The superintendent denied him admittance, writing Mecklenburg officials that he had no space for him, no bed.

Judge Sink, when the matter came before him, was furious. He threatened to cite the man for contempt because he had replied to the court order by letter instead of putting in a personal appearance. He overrode with contemptuous impatience of his own the man's recital of overcrowding conditions at the institution. He waved aside the statute setting forth that authority over admissions to the reformatory was conferred on its superintendent (by the same State that commissions Superior Court judges to administer its laws).

And finally he sent the man packing, the boy in his charge, with the command to make room if there was no room and the advice hereafter to appeal contraventions of his legal authority if he did not like it.

A fair and square man, Judge Sink is portrayed. Being such, he may be bound to conclude upon re-examining his action in this case that a white judge was unduly hard on a Negro superintendent, and that one State official, sworn to uphold the law, arbitrarily overrode the rights of another.

Ireland Proposes A Bit Of Oppression Of Its Own

When Eamon de Valera was "president" of an outlawed Irish Republic, when the memory of the execution of Padraic Pearse was still new, when Ireland was fighting for her liberty and had just complaint against the long English oppression--in those days Mr. de Valera could and did get the sympathy and the active aid of Americans.

But he is not likely to get much of either for his latest appeal, save from Irish-Americans of the Green persuasion and from professional British-baiters. What he wants is "active moral support" from Americans for the Irish Republic's scheme to "end the dismemberment of Ireland."

That last innocent-sounding phrase, however, hides a project for oppression which would have done credit to Cromwell himself. What is proposed is the taking over of Northern Ireland, which is now a part of the United Kingdom. But the great majority of Northern Irishmen are dead against that.

They are Orangemen, which is to say Protestant Irishmen. For centuries they have fought their Catholic brethren in the south, and the last thing they want is to be united with them--as a minority group. They are satisfied with their present political status, and it is doubtful that they would submit to having it changed--even if England agreed--without bloodshed.

Mr. de Valera, though he has been often in America, does not seem quite to understand the nature of America's view of what causes are entitled to its "moral support."