The Charlotte News

Saturday, April 13, 1940

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: "More! More!" suggests perhaps some of the origin of our modern fixation on immediate gratification. Then, it was for that feeling of downy security, that tomorrow the world would get better. Ride, ride, ride…

Food-Dispensers Who Defy Law Deserve The Works

The disposal in City Court of the case of the man who operated the concession for a number of lunch stands at the carnival grounds on Tremont Avenue seems to us to be highly dubious.

The Health Department had inspected his premises, reported that he was violating the health laws, and an order had been issued requiring him to remedy the case at once. He ignored it, according to the findings of the court, and went right ahead dishing up food according to his own ideas.

Now obviously, this fellow was a menace. What particular requirements of the health code he was violating we don't know, but it doesn't matter. All of them are presumably necessary to the safety of the people. Food served in such places as he operated is doubtful enough when the authorities rigidly do their best to see that all the rules are obeyed. And when the food-dispenser defies the law and insists on doing as he pleases, it may well become, is very likely to become, a threat to the health and even the lives of many people.

There seems to have been no excuse for this man save that he found it more profitable to do it his way. Nevertheless the court suspended a 30-day sentence upon condition that he pay a $25 and the costs--say $40 in all.

It is quite possible and even probable that he made a good deal more than that as a result of his violation of the law. In any case it comes unpleasantly close to amounting to a license to gamble with the health of the people.

The Nazis Use It In Norway As In Poland

A favorite Nazi game is to make sure of an intended victim by first honey-combing it with treason and placing their creatures in key positions before striking with force. It was in such fashion that the Blitzkrieg against Poland was accomplished with such remarkable dispatch. Evidence now piles up to prove what many observers suspected from the first, that traitors operating from within and not the unsupported force of German arms explain the swift collapse of that country.

Apparently, the same scheme has been used in Norway also--but with less success. The surrender without a blow of Oslo and other seaports exceedingly well protected by nature has seemed odd since it developed that the Norwegian Government has said she never had any intention of giving up tamely to the invaders. And probable light was thrown on it when the news came through yesterday that Colonel Sundlo, commander of the northern section of the Norwegian Army, had been placed under arrest for collaborating with the Germans.

This Sundlo was a close friend of the Norwegian gallows-bird, Major Quisling, who attempted to set up a Nazi government for Norway in Oslo immediately after the city surrendered. Army officers seem to be suckers for the Nazi line throughout Europe. And it is probable that there has been more of this sort of thing than has yet been revealed--that it explains much. But it does not appear to have been widespread enough to seriously weaken the Norwegian will to resist.

A Huge One For The Nazis, Wee One For The Allies

General Hugh Johnson is crowded off this page today, but a passage in his latest column deserves notice:

The General chooses to have it that Britain is as bad as the Nazis--as he always does--in face of the plain fact that she has killed no neutrals in the present war, and killed none in the last war save by accident.

Norwegian merchantmen were warned of the mines.

As for his remarks on our own case, we got "off the ocean in areas where this death struggle is going on," as the General knows very well, because we knew--not that Britain would sink our merchant ships and drown our sailors without warning but that Nazi Germany would; something that she proved correct by doing it to the ships of all other neutrals. In doing so we surrendered our oldest and most fundamental rights under international law, rights for which we had fought several wars.

The General finds that the very wisest thing we could have done. But is he in favor of surrendering even lesser and far more dubious rights as against Britain? It is plain from the above passage that he is not. On the contrary, he seems to say clearly that we ought to get ready to fight Britain rather than allow her to continue her probable right of searching our mails and her slight violation of international law by taking our ships into port to search them instead of searching them on the high seas.

In short, let us give up everything as against Nazi Germany, but let us be prepared to shed our blood rather than yield an inch to Britain.

We Expect War To Move In Moving Picture Tempo

One of the most curious phenomena thrown out by a war which has not been lacking in such characteristics is the absolute impatience of the American armchair strategist, which classification includes practically the whole American male population over the age of six and a large proportion of the distaff side of the argument. Everybody, including ourselves, demands swift, constant, and heroically decisive action at least 30 hours out of each 24.

And when we fail to get it, we wax impatient and disgusted, and announce bitterly that the horse we are betting on, the Allies, is plainly blind, spavine, and afflicted with chilblains, and so far from being destined to win is in fact plainly busily running in the opposite direction from the goal.

What primarily explains this is clear enough, when we think about it. We are more aware of this war than we have ever been of any in the history of the race.

When the last war broke out, the European staff of even the great news gathering agencies consisted of a few somewhat indefinite resident correspondents in capitals like London and Paris, plus a few more occasional and roaming reporters of the type of Richard Harding Davis. The whole daily news report from Europe was made up of mere bulletins, and was not generally carried in any but the metropolitan newspapers. The war, when it broke, came as a sudden shock to most people--a shock of much the same sort as though Mars had suddenly blown out to be the size of the moon.

And after the first startled gasp or two, people went on about their business and thought of Europe only now and then, though oftener as time went on. Even so, few people were greatly absorbed in the matter until the approach of our own entry. And even then, nobody expected new and startling news at every breath. War news, everybody knew, was apt to come only long after the event. It always had been that way and presumably always would be that way.

But this time we have vast news staffs in Europe--and the radio: both going over Europe with a microscope to pick up the last shred of fact or rumor. For years before the outbreak of the war, thousands of printed words had poured out of Europe every day to be published in every daily in the land. And the radio blared of Europe almost continually, turned in the shrieking of Adolf Hitler, the cold quietness of old Mr. Chamberlain, the excited babble of hundreds of reporters, all trying to extract the last drop of drama from every situation. And the thing has gone continuously since, rising to new heights at each new spurt of action.

Result is that we have grown to expect that every hour ought to bring forth vastly dramatic events. But wars, of course, are not all that way, have never been. Always there have been a few days of electric events, broken by long periods of preparation and waiting.