The Charlotte News

Monday, April 7, 1941

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Okay, you might ask. What are we talking about in terms of accurate predictions if we could be not do any better than the prediction apparently implied in the note attached to April 4.

Well, we shan't give away the riddle for those still trying to figure it; and just below it, it did say something about overtime on Kansas Avenue. But that was in 1941; 1957 had not yet happened and so, of course, the print was referring to that one, (except maybe, then again, tonight...) Another successful attempt at augury from the pages of The News. And if you think on it a little, we are certain you will understand that even the score was correct on that contest a few years ago.

Tonight? Not yet.

But Saturday's game. What happened there? you inquire. How does a team as good as this one, the one with more victories than any other team in the entire number of 98 since 1910 to take the court under the banner of the First State University then proceed to fall behind in the first 15 minutes by 28 points, 40 to 12? (the worst deficit since, well since Winston-Salem or College Park in '02--what a frosty winter 'twas, too, me boys). Jitters? Too great expectations? Taking the other team too lightly after the cruise of last week? The rim was too small? Slick spots on the floor?

No. They have overcome all of these vagaries of the game before, even including rims being obviously too small down at Clemson and in the first half up in Boston. So what in the world was going on? Nine minutes without a fieldgoal. And then the comeback, and so quickly, cutting the margin to 4 within just over fourteen minutes of playing time. But only to lose in the last five minutes by 18?!

We can't explain the bounces of the peach always. But when all the bounces are going one way, then the other, then the other yet again, one has to conclude that the peach they were using had a mind of its own on that particular night. Indeed, that this idea must be investigated to determine for next season whether or not a new form of leather hide to grow the peaches has been insinuated causing the will o' wisp to go willy-nilly of its self-determination. In fact, Congress should hold hearings to determine whether or not the peach is on steroids.

In any event, whatever the reason for the peach so behaving, the better team on this particular night won the game. And more power to them. Our school couldn't have lost to a better in the world of the peach pickings, with not a single Picklesimer among them on either side.

Perhaps, in the end, it does all prove that you can go back to Kansas.

And that there is always next year.

But the score? The score? Where was the prediction on the score, Great Bird of Paradise?

Okay, we shall reveal that much to you if you insist, though obvious it may be to the even mildly observant, you insipid transient from the lower depths: 41 + 41 + two (in "Victory") = 84; 32 + (either 29 or 28) + five or six (in "Swell Scheme") = 66. Voila!

Jules and binoculars hang from the heid of the hied Bottom.

So, we conclude, there were too many Not-see spies spoiling the broth.

That is, too many of the people watching, who were no more interested in either team than the outcome of World War II, getting in on the act, pulling for the fuzzy to be so erratic that the whole thing would blow up in everyone's face. The Peach-Picker spies, who want a return to the cotton-picking way things used to be, spoiling all the fun.

All we can say is that we would send a message to find out who has lost, but then inevitably history repeats itself and we just wind up tempest-tost.

We knew it a bad omen, incidentally, when it rained all day Saturday, meaning, forsooth, that the other team would rain peaches on us, and in threes, much as when it hailed where we were in 1998, just before game time, communicating to us the ice-cold performance to come.

But the thing of it is that when you have so many entangled alliances, it is hard as heck to hate someone, and thus to beat the tar, that is the hawk out of them. For example, we hated the British for the longest time, then allied with them in the WW I and, even then, some continued to hate them afterward; then got on their side again in the WWII, even eventually bought their music, made them wealthy again. Germany: we hated Germany for the longest time in the first half of the century, then got on at least half their side, the one to the lee side of the Wall, even bought their cars and eventually, after the Wall fell down, even started building them in Spartanburg, S.C., even if the manufacturer built the engines for the planes in the WW's, I and II, which dropped all the bombs on all those people with whom we were allied. Italy: we liked them in the WWI and then hated them in the WWII, then bought their clothes and cars afterward, like them now. Japan: same idea, only it was the little cheap radios which won our all shook up hearts finally, the little toy cars merely coming as an after thought. Russia: hated them all along, then suddenly fell in love with them, then hated them again, then sent them a Beatle B.M.O.A.C., and all was well again for the nonce, even if still hating their cars. China: loved them for their silk, hated them for their Revolution and denial of rights in the offing, love them though every time we go to Walmart and find their cheap products to consume. Vietnam: well, you know the story there: Ho and Agent Orange and all that, but now all is okay, with all the rice. Iraq?

Well, Iraq. Rather than dropping more bombs on them, perhaps it is time to send up an airplane full of clockwork peaches made in China and bought through Walmart, drop them all over the place, and let them learn the game. Call it Peach Diplomacy Quodilibetical, P.D.Q.

Won't work, you blandly contend and without the least bit of imagination. Too entrenched. Civil war. Religious differences; religious beliefs fanatical which provide the prevent defense ab initio and before even anything else has been primally moved by the prime mover, in origins primal.

We respond: read the letters to the editor of this date, think a little about our own history, and then try to tell us that humanity is not humanity, anywhere it occurs. It works--in any village anywhere. There is after all something a little hypnotic about a round peach and a basket in which to place it.

The game may not be perfect, and may usher in a whole host of problems and contentions which were not there before it began: carping at Ref Lumpkin, throwing of chairs across the dance floor, screaming in the faces of the opposer, battered bones, cartilages ripped from their twinings, yelling "go to Hell, Carolina, go to Hell", and other such sacrilegious, anti-patriotic expressions. But it is better that, with leather peaches in a bucket as the contentious objective in the square Garden rounded, to contest those entangled alliances, than buckets of blood on the ground, only then to say once again amid the circuit of death, in gator tears: Why?

We have already predicted, incidentally, the winner of tonight's game. You will see it--tomorrow. (We may have predicted it actually last year. But that only goes to show that time is an irrelevant illusion created by man to delimit his space in the universe. And that we may have predicted next year's opponents and the outcome this year.)

In any event, the peach is not round for nothing.

Hell... we mean, heck... they hit one...

Out in Missouri, they say: show us.

Alright. But first, you must paint the fence for us. Over in the woodsy woods around Durham.

In any event, one consolation--and we kid not--just at the conclusion of the radio broadcast Saturday, after all was said and done, the radio station on which we listened, out of Lexington, N.C.--starting at about the six minute mark of the first half anyway, after deciding to pack up all those troubles communicated on the tv for the fourteen minutes afore it and send them back--played, from 1966, "Bus Stop". Just as with the result with Princeton that same year, every cloud has a little Christmas in it.

But those 1945 and 1946 teams... Can you beat 'em?

Currie

He Would Make First-Rate Mayor But At A Sacrifice

E. McA. Currie for Mayor? It's a first-rate man the Good Government League has drafted. He is absolutely trustworthy in every respect, a sensible man who could surely be counted on to govern for the best interests of the city and all its people.

There's no use going by the numbers into Mr. Currie's qualifications. He has them, all right; is well known and well liked and well thought of. About him for Mayor there's only one thing that worries us.

And that is the fact that he had to be drafted.

He would be responsive to the demands of the office, if he was elected, and he would handle whatever business there was to be handled. But he has a law practice which he cannot afford to neglect, and the job of mayor as Ben Douglas has filled it has become, particularly in the strenuous times of the Defense Program, almost a full-time job.

Mr. Currie, in fine, to be the sort of mayor the city needs, has got to make a considerable sacrifice which would come to a great deal more than simply consenting to stand for election. He has got to hanker to get a-holt of the reins and do a fancy piece of driving if he would make the most of an opportunity and follow through with the tacit prospectus of the Good Government League.

We don't envy him the assignment, but we know he can carry it out if he makes up his mind to it.

No Trade

But Boycott Does Not At All Become Medical Calling

We agree thoroughly with the defense attorneys in the American Medical Association case decided in Washington Friday. The practice of medicine ought not to be treated as a "trade" in the meaning of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

Since the time of Hippocrates medical men have been treated as a race apart, like priests. Their calling was conceived, as Hippocrates and the famous Oath made clear, as a sacred trust which had as its primary purpose the healing of humanity, not the aggrandizement of the individual practitioner. There have, all along for the ages, been renegades to that attitude, but by and large the great body of them have lived up to the faith of Ambroise Paré as he followed the French armies, "I dressed him and God healed him."

There is no more devoted story in American annals than that of the old-fashioned country doctor.

Still, it must never be forgotten, that if the medical doctor is to have his privileges and stand apart, he also has his duties. The AMA and the District of Columbia Medical Society claim that they had not conspired to boycott the Group Health Association in Washington, but the jury found differently.

Doctors should, we think, resent the control of medicine by the Federal Government. But it is surely within the right of a group of private citizens to combine in order to secure the medical attention which they could not otherwise afford, to enter into agreement with doctors to serve them at reduced rates.

And any attempt to boycott that violates not only the spirit of the Sherman Act but the sprit of medical ethics also. If such an attitude prevailed, medicine would become a trade, which would be a tragedy not only for the doctors but for all Americans.

Nervous Man

Lord Mussolini Has Good Cause for That Breakdown

No war of nerves yet waged in the World War II could compare in intensity with the campaign which is shaping up now in Italy. The Christmas lull before the French-Nazi conflict, the strain of British vigilance while waiting the German invasion, the breath-holding in Yugoslavia after the overthrow of the pro-Axis cabinet--not one could be as nerve-wracking as the present plight of Mussolini.

There is still a Berlin-Rome Axis and Mussolini is still the boss in his backyard. But he has been guilty, like Cassius, of abusing patience. He can lose to Hitler, he can lose to Britain and he can lose to his own people. Of the three he would probably prefer losing to the British.

Hitler would have little patience with a useless big-shot. He knows that Il Duce spent $7,500,000 trying to bribe Greek officials, who might have taken the money, but wouldn't give the paid-for support. He knows that the Italian campaign has been the black-eye of the Axis mask. Hitler has no use for a bungler. If Hitler takes over the Italian end of the burden, as he is rapidly getting into position to do, Mussolini is going to meet a bitter end.

If Mussolini's political enemies get the upper hand, his end again will be harsh. The people know that soldiers died because trenches were so deep that the troops couldn't look out to see the enemy coming; that soldiers were sent into ice and snow-covered mountain in Summer uniforms and with small parts missing from their guns and artillery; that docks were loaded with supplies and ammunition which were never distributed.

It would be better not to be sitting under the sword of Damocles without the additional nervous strain of not knowing whether or not the hearty meal just eaten by the condemned man has been poisoned.

Goliath Moves

But He Will Have To Win Quickly If He Wins At All

The Yugoslavs have now forced Adolf Hitler to what he greatly desired to avoid: a resort to force in the Balkans and the creation of an eastern front.

That, unfortunately, does not mean that he is yet whipped. The terrain in which he now has to fight is not suited for mechanical warfare and some of the advantage of his enormous equipment is wiped out. Nevertheless, it is certain that he has been preparing for just this possibility for a long time and many of the Austrians are themselves mountain men and used to the Balkan kind of country.

The German newspapers are warning the home folks that no lightning campaign is to be expected this time. But it is still possible that the Nazi striking power may be so great as to cut through to Salonika in rapid order.

If not, then Yugoslavia is likely to prove to be the David to Hitler's Goliath. The Nazis probably cannot win a long campaign. If the first shock of assault does not take them over, then the odds will mount swiftly against them.

The British are very near the end of the East African campaign, with the fall of the Ethiopian capital, and a great veteran army will be released for service in the Balkans once that end is reached. The Nazi forces at present in Libya are too light to make really serious trouble, and with the command of the Mediterranean firmly in the hands of the Royal Navy, no great force can be sent there or supplied if it got there. On the other hand, the British can send men and supplies into Greece with a good deal of success.

And behind the British is the growing force of American aid. If the Nazis bog down in the Balkans it is likely to be the signal for the growth of revolt in all the conquered lands. The arming of these people as they spring up is the business of America.

Don't Do It

A Plea To Mr. Ritch To Think It Over Again

A good many people who know and like Marvin Ritch, such as ourselves, will be sorry that he has decided to run for Mayor. If he goes ahead and makes an intensive campaign ("intensive" will be the word for it), he will run a surprisingly good race, too.

But we hope he won't actually run, for if he does it will be necessary to oppose him. It will be necessary to say, quite candidly and rudely, that he is not the man for the office and that the interests he represents politically make it unwise that he should be entrusted with the office.

Mr. Ritch was never one to flee from either a fight or an argument, that latter especially being his dish. It is not our design herewith to start one with him, but only to put in a word in time in the faint hope of avoiding an all-out wrangle.

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