The Charlotte News

Saturday, September 13, 1941

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Another sinking of a U.S. vessel by a Nazi U-boat is reported in "The Cue", this time a merchant ship, the Montana. Yet again, in combination with the Greer of a few days earlier, the Robin Moor and Zamzam in the spring, and another ship sunk recently, the Saasa, as mentioned in the piece, all a sufficient cause of war in other times, 1898, in 1917, in 1964. Yet again, however, the President would not seek a declaration of war from Congress; nor any precipitant move to send large numbers of pilots to Britain to man planes for a general assault on Berlin while the defenses were weakened, preoccupied in Russia, nor to send U.S. ships manned by U.S. naval personnel into the North Sea and the Baltic or into the Mediterranean.

The United States was already a passive participant in the war by way of Lend-Lease and Atlantic patrols to keep the Nazi shark away from the spoils. But it was a far different notion from being actively committed with troop personnel. There had been no attack as yet on the soil of the United States, however, and Roosevelt intended to honor his 1940 campaign promise. Moreover, the small clique of isolationists in Congress held sufficient key positions to obstruct any effort at declaring war, some even being instead outwardly sympathetic with Hitler. But then Roosevelt had not sought to mount a concerted effort among his fellow Democrats to block promotion of isolationist-obstructionist Robert Rice Reynolds to the chair of the Military Affairs Committee back in April, a task which would have communicated far less intra-party disloyalty by the Administration than in the purges of 1938 when all anti-New Dealers were thrown curve balls by the party chieftains to precipitate electoral misfortune. Then again, of course, the reason Robert had survived the purge in his re-election bid in 1938 was precisely because of his solid support of the New Deal, which likely explains also why the President did not want to interfere with his advance to the chair of the important military oversight committee.

But it does lead to the question of whether Roosevelt was truly so hamstrung by Congress as he was by the reluctant mood of the country to go to war, as he was too by the realization of lack of military preparedness to enter a war to be fought on two fronts, as he was even more by his genuine hatred of war, having served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy during World War I. Roosevelt had never personally fought in a war and thus had not the blood-lust for war, perhaps, which some did. He did not ever seem to feel the need to prove his manhood the way Theodore Roosevelt, the sickly boy, grown to bully manhood, needed to accomplish at San Juan Hill. So, maybe it was this combination of factors which led to the waiting, endless waiting, until the attack at long last came, as Hull and Roosevelt persisted to the last to try to ingratiate the Japanese to a commitment against further aggression, withdrawal from China and Indochina in exchange for resumption of the silk trade so critical to the Japanese economy, and the unfreezing of its assets in the United States so that it might again be able to obtain American oil, steel, copper, rubber and the other critical needs for which the island nation depended on U.S. trade.

And you might wish to read the Dorothy Thompson piece, in conjunction with the equally deploring and outraged words of yesterday by Hugh Johnson, re the coming of what by the 1950's would be called McCarthyism, (the coinage of which term, incidentally, is attributed to a cartoon by Herblock). For now it was still Diesism or Nyeism or Wheelerism or Reynoldsism; yet, as it would be in part also in the fifties, aimed at Hollywood. Regardless of name, the effort was the same--to find a scapegoat, pick on it as example to all of anti-liberty, anti-justice, to chill freedom of speech generally among the masses, to chill freedom generally among the masses, just as Hitler had done in Germany the year before coming to power, as Ms. Thompson relates, by leading the fight to suppress the film version of "All Quiet on the Western Front".

The shark which circles its prey, sensing vulnerability and opportunity, until it finds its mark and strikes, bloodying the waters for its fellow sharks to draw nigh and feast further, until all aboard are devoured, or the survivors destroy the shark.

What such individuals who play the shark never quite seem to understand is that the great responsibility which comes with freedom, as so many of them preach, is most greatly placed in those who earn their living in government service by representing the people. The citizens are not only free to carp and criticize at will at their government representatives to keep them honest, fair, diligent, and free from bribes, whether directly or indirectly taken, but are obliged to do so. This indeed is a principal responsibility of the public at large. Otherwise, government becomes no different from royalty, that which some have desired since the founding, no different from a dictatorship, that which some also at times appear to desire. Not greatly discernible, indeed, from that which government has slowly become in the United States.

Those who would clean up government corruption from within are too often held in check with threat of exposure for this or that peccadillo, whether real or manufactured. It is of course all a function ultimately of what the public will tolerate, determining how much such a threat of exposure will chill action. If the public tolerates McCarthy in government, McCarthy will thrive. If the public thrives on juicy morsels of shark bait on this or that peccadillo of a public servant, then such stories will take precedence over genuine attempts to ferret out corruption. It is a fact today that people who commit outright perjury, the rabbits running down their rabbit holes, are given a pass if the party against whom the perjury is committed is one of the informally blacklisted whose freedom is sought to be taken away as example to others not to speak out against any form of government corruption, state, local or national.

We get the system we ask for en masse. It is up to us, en masse, to reverse trends. That effort begins in the voting booth.

If those then elected do not respond, it proceeds to the streets with pickets and general strikes until they obey the common weal, that is not necessarily with respect to particular legislation, but at least in terms of serving the people honestly, without taking bribes from special interests to serve the weal of the corporate few, without promises of fat lobbying or rainmaker jobs in the private sector when they are turned out of office by the voters or quit for higher pay.

Incidentally, here's a suggestion for the kids to think about performing at Halloween, one with which we came up the other day as we passed by a yard with a placard stuck down in front. Take some royal blue watercolor paint (no enamel or anything which will leave lasting stains on property--no naughty-naughty now), and wherever you find one of those "McCain-Palin" signs sticking up out of the turf, paint over the "l", as are ye, ye serf. It will lend to the team a certain nuance of reason presently missing, we think, as well as rhyme currently absent or at least listing in lipstick pink. Furthermore, it highlights their proposed health care plan, which is, we hear, akin to the palin' clan, that is one whereby one, when sick and pale, calls up your pal and asks, whate'er be the wrong with thou thus entailed, and in retort gets the remedy in mousy fits suggested: bleed some more, ye puling pasty-faced pusillanimous dead mouse o' dor emits infested, until it is all out, rude and reddened upon the floor.

So, we think it would serve both to lend a form of opulent pun to the viewing in the eyes of the antipathetic, then in full fain, as well ocular tension, by equal and contrary measures of dose, quite well-deserved, to those, kith, kin, and kits, of bull-pain boasts, those craven and tambour-sore, all alike the bust of Minerv' hovering, covering solemn above our fant-haven's chamber door.

Be careful though. Don't let the gendarmes catch you at it. We'll call the op "Dirty Tricks Again" in return for the fop's "Drill Now!" arend.

Besides, there is long tradition here: painting out that "g" in the signs in 1960 was great and splendid fun back in your parents' days, arrear.

It's all kind of like the Manchester Guardian Weekly said back on December 9, 1948, as surely you remember: "The committee sank their pick in a farmyard and struck their Comstock lode in the shape of a hollowed-out pumpkin."

We have come to appreciate microfilm and pumpkins, ourselves, not to mention the knightly ghost in the OED.

By the way, should you have ever wondered why we use the convention of "perhaps" and "maybe" so much of the time, it is because, unlike some, having read a little poetry, heard a few songs and symphonies, and smiling symphonies in song, studied a little philosophy here and there, we are not so guilty of "certitude" about much of anything other than death, and even that has its maybes, baby.